V 10 - Death Tide

by A C Crispin, Deborah A Marshall (UC) (epub)

  “It could still be dangerous out there.”

  “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry so much.” Reaching up, she pulled his head down to hers and kissed him, harder and longer than could be considered just sisterly.

  Julie bit her lip and took a sudden, intense interest in the ice fragments at the bottom of her Coke glass. Her stomach felt taut and uneasy again, and she doubted that it was entirely due to whatever was wrong with her. Hey, grow up! she scolded herself fiercely. Mike’s an adult, and you’re supposed to be one too. People can change, move in and out of relationships. If it’s over, it’s over. The best thing you can do is let it go, be as gracious as—

  “Hey.” He was suddenly standing beside her, and his hand

  on her shoulder made her jump. “I’ve been wanting to get a little time with you all evening.”

  “Hail the conquering hero,” she said. “Obviously, you’ve been busy.”

  “Aw, that was no big deal. ” He absently touched his temple. “A couple of drunks, except they were carrying laser pistols. Makes me want to be back in New York City, where the most dangerous thing there is the ordinary, garden-variety mugger.” “Margie thought it was a big deal.” She heard herself sounding bitchy and petulant, but she didn’t care. She was tired, her stomach hurt, and as far as she was concerned, Donovan had behaved like a jerk most of the evening.

  “Julie, are you jealous of Margie?” He looked as though the idea had never occurred to him before—not seriously, at least.

  “I don’t know, Mike. Should I be? You two have been spending a lot of time together, you have a lot in common again, it seems, and there’s obviously a lot of mutual admiration going on.”

  “Yeah,” he said, his mouth tightening in the way that told Julie he was angry. “I like her again. Probably for the first time in ten years or more. And, yeah, we have something in common. She’s the mother of my son, my missing son. We both miss him, and she’s the only person who shares the way I feel about that, because he’s her son also. You don’t just throw that away, whatever happens.”

  Julie’s stomach lurched queasily, and she thought, Maybe I’m carrying your next child, Mike. What would you say if I told you that? But aloud she said only, “Mike you don’t owe me any explanations.”

  “Yeah, I do.” His expression turned gentle and earnest, making him look suddenly much younger. “Because you’re the—”

  “You mean I missed out on the action again?” Chris Faber’s expression was genuinely amazed as he strolled up to shake Mike’s hand.

  “It was over almost before it started, thanks to Ham.” Donovan smiled, his eyes still on Julie.

  “It would have been over ’fore it started if I’d been there,” Chris said matter-of-factly.

  Beside him, Maggie Blodgett, looking flushed and pretty— and slightly lit—laughed. “C’mon, Mr. Macho-man. About the only thing you’re ready to tackle tonight is your pint-size pooch, then your king-size bed.”

  He put an arm around her, and the new tenderness in his expression made Julie’s throat contract. “You’re getting bossier than The Fixer over there, woman.”

  Giggling, she pushed him away. “Julie, in your considered medical opinion, is it true that large men actually hold their liquor worse than smaller ones?”

  “I don’t know, Maggie. Maybe I should do some lab tests on it.” Juliet tried to smile, but the cramp which caught her then almost made her gasp instead. She took a swallow of her mostly melted ice, trying to cover her discomfort and wishing Nathan hadn’t scheduled that damned shutdown today. If she’d been able to see Joe Akers, by now she’d know one way or another what was wrong.

  “Well, anyway I look at it, he’s a handful.” Maggie squeezed Chris’s arm affectionately. “G’night, everybody. Great party, Elias.”

  The party was drawing to a close as people reached for coats and purses. Her nausea intensifying, Julie thought that visiting the bathroom might be a good idea, and it would get her away from Mike a few moments, give her a chance to sort through her jumbled emotions. “Excuse me,” she murmured, standing.

  “Are you okay?” Mike’s green eyes were narrowed in concern as he looked at her. “Robin and I had a talk earlier. She said you and I had something to discuss.”

  For an instant, Julie wanted to fling her arms around him, hold him tight in the way she had so often up until recently, and tell him her hopes and fears as to what might be happening to her. But was this the right time and place?

  Was there a right time and place?

  “I . . . I’ll be right back, Mike.” Almost running, she burst through the kitchen doors.

  Washing her face with cold water and swallowing a couple of spoonfuls of antacid helped. Eyes closed, she leaned heavily against the cupboard. She knew he cared about her, he really did, and she cared about him, enough not to give him something else to worry about. At least not until she was sure.

  She knew he was suspicious now, though. How long could she keep up the feeble excuses about a virus or being “just tired”? He wasn’t stupid; he would—

  Her gaze fell on the door to the linen closet. The handle was tilted at an odd angle, as though it hadn’t quite caught.

  Julie frowned. The members of the resistance lived with a constant low-grade paranoia; they were all very careful about security measures. Slowly, she approached the door. Maybe someone with just a little too much champagne in him or her had left it open by mistake.

  She opened the door and went into the dark closet. Her eyes scanned the neat, ordinary-looking shelves, especially the ones in back, which concealed the secret door. Everything seemed as it should be—all the linens, toilet paper, and other supplies were in place and appeared undisturbed.

  Smiling a little at her own jumpiness, she was about to turn around and go back when she distinctly heard the scrape of a footstep on the stair below.

  Julie looked around frantically for something, anything she could use as a weapon, her heart pounding loudly in her ears. An aerosol bottle of ammonia-based glass cleaner was the best she could find. Making herself small in the darkness of the closet near the outer door, she tensed, holding the bottle ready.

  A thin rectangle of light appeared at the back of the closet as the door panel slid sideways; the opening grew larger, briefly framing the shape of someone. Then darkness swallowed the figure again, who stepped forward—

  “Mike!” Julie shouted, ducking as she squirted the intruder full in the face.

  Gasping sharply, the intruder staggered back against the shelves, arms flailing. Julie dashed for the outer door and jerked it open just as Ham, Mike, and Elias ran into the kitchen. “Someone broke into headquarters!” she panted. She fumbled for the light switch, flooding the closet with brightness.

  Rubbing at her eyes, Marjorie Donovan slowly rose to her feet. In her hand was a small, unmistakably Visitor device.

  “It neutralized all of our security systems, alarms, everything.” Elias turned the object they had taken from Margie over in his hands.

  “It also probably located the hidden entrance and activated the lock,” Julie said, pushing her glasses up to rub her forehead.

  At almost five in the morning, gray predawn light was trying to filter through the drawn Venetian blinds of the Club Creole. Dishes and condiments on the still-uncleared tables looked like small ghosts in the dimness of the farther comers. Elias had sent Miranda and Willie home two hours ago.

  Margie sat in a straight-backed chair in one comer, her expression vacant, staring down at nothing. For several hours they had been trying everything short of physical abuse to get her to talk, to answer even their simplest questions. She had remained silent and unresponsive, almost catatonic as she sat in the chair.

  “Let’s try it again,” Ham Tyler said, draining his beer bottle and rising to his feet.

  “I’m going to make some more coffee,” Elias said, and went toward the kitchen.

  Mike Donovan heard the words, saw the people he knew and cared about�
�especially the one he’d once been married to. But nothing seemed quite real anymore. Everyone moved, spoke, and looked as though each was part of an elaborately staged play that Mike was watching. In ten minutes the curtain would fall, and the applause could start because it would be all over . . .

  “I’m getting real tired of this.” Ham Tyler paced like a barely restrained panther, hungry for a kill. “You listening, bitch?”

  His sudden shout as he leaned over her made Margie flinch, but she didn’t raise her head or respond.

  “I’m not known as a patient man, Mrs. Donovan. Ask your ex-husband over there. He’ll tell you how ugly I can get. Or maybe you wouldn’t believe him. Maybe it’s best if I just show you.”

  Reaching for his empty beer bottle, he slammed it down on the table’s edge with a twisting motion. He grabbed Margie by the hair and jerked her head back, holding the bottle’s broken end close to her face. “You’re a nice-looking woman, Margie. I’d sure hate to ruin such a pretty face, but I’ve done a lot worse for—”

  “For God’s sake, Ham!” Julie started forward.

  Margie whimpered a little, her terrified eyes focused on the jagged shards, but she made no other sound.

  “Lay off, Tyler.” Anger pushed its way through Donovan’s numbed sense of reality, and he moved toward the shorter man.

  “I’m tired of talking to myself,” Ham said, holding his ground. “First time we’ve gotten a little rise outa her—”

  “I said, lay off1.” Careful of his approach, Mike clamped a hand on Ham’s arm. “Can’t you see what’s going on? Diana must have converted her. She’s probably been conditioned so she can't talk if she’s been captured.”

  “Mike’s right, Ham,” Julie said more softly. Her face and voice grew strained with the memory of old horrors. “I . . . personally know what it’s like to be caught in the grip of that special kind of hell. After Diana’s finished with you, you lose control, you feel like a stranger to yourself, and even though you know what’s going on around you, you’re absolutely powerless to stop it. So leave her alone, okay?”

  Tyler looked at her for many seconds, then slowly he lowered the bottle. “Only for you, Doc,” he said. “Otherwise she’d be worm food by now.”

  Mike looked at his ex-wife and felt a sharp pang of grief. First he had lost his son, Sean, to the Visitors, then he had gotten him back briefly—much too briefly—but soon Diana and her damned mind manipulation had stolen him away again. Now the pattern was repeating itself with Margie.

  He sensed himself skating toward some thin-iced edge, toward a dark morass of defeat and hopelessness as profound and final as any he’d every experienced since the Visitors had first arrived. What was the point of fighting so hard all the time, when they were going to get you in the end anyway?

  As though reading his thoughts, Julie touched his arm for a moment, then she went over to Margie. “Margie, I know what you’re feeling.” Kneeling by the older woman, she brushed the hair back from her forehead. “Diana converted me once, almost two years ago, and I’ve never forgotten how horrible it was. You have to understand, Diana will kill you when she’s finished with you. You have to keep in mind that she’s not your friend, that all her words are lies. But we’re your friends, we want to help you. You have to trust us.”

  Something seemed to soften in Margie’s expression, and she lifted her head and actually looked at Julie.

  “But you have to trust us,” Julie repeated.

  Margie appeared as though she might say something. Her mouth worked soundlessly for a moment, but then her eyes turned dull and her head lowered again.

  “It’s no good,” Ham said, moving back to the table.

  Julie sighed and straightened, shaking her head. “There are a number of psychiatrists specializing in PVSS—Post-Visitor Stress Syndrome—these days. Maybe Dr. Akers can recommend someone who’s worked with conversion victims.” “Yeah,” Donovan said. “Sean’s doctor was—”

  Margie suddenly leaped out of the chair, knocking the shocked Julie and Mike aside. Julie slipped and fell. Before anyone could react, Maijorie had snatched the small Visitor device left on a nearby table, then shoved the table over at Ham, catching him in the legs.

  Moving at almost superhuman speed, she grabbed a half-full pitcher of beer from another table near the door and flung it in their faces; Elias yelped in surprise and dropped the carafe of fresh-brewed coffee, narrowly missing Julie at his feet.

  Mike wasn’t so lucky. Some of the steaming liquid sloshed onto his right hand and arm, sending white-hot agony blistering through his skin, and he screamed.

  As Margie aimed the Visitor device on the front entrance, they heard the locks snap back audibly. As she snatched the door open, Ham Tyler calmly pulled out his lasergun and sighted on her back, his finger tightening on the trigger— "No—!” Donovan leaped at him, slamming his shoulder and knocking his aim off so that a black, charred-looking rose suddenly bloomed in the wall beside the door. They heard the bang of the outer wrought-iron gate and knew she was gone.

  “You stupid son of a bitch!” Ham muttered, pushing past him to go after her, but Mike grabbed his arm.

  “Don’t hurt her,” he said, his voice soft and final. Jerking his arm free, Ham glared at him, his expression suggesting that he would just as soon use the laser on Donovan as his ex-wife. “You disgust me. You and your half-baked selfish actions under the guise of—”

  “I mean it, Ham. Anything happens to her, and I’ll come looking for you.”

  Tyler smiled slightly. On him, the expression looked cold and out of place. “See you around, Gooder. ”

  Chapter 12

  Contingency Plans

  At ten the following morning, Nathan Bates was an unhappy man. Julie could hear his shouting even in the outer office.

  “I don’t understand it, Diana. This was supposed to be a routine delivery. You assured me the route was a safe one and that there was nothing to worry about!”

  “Dear Nathan. Unforeseen events happen in everyone’s life. Surely you, of all people, can appreciate that.”

  Even through the electronic distortions of the telecommunications system, Diana’s voice dripped oiliness. Julie’s mouth twisted downward as she poured two cups of coffee, dumping cream and sugar into one. Diana was hard to take at the best of times, but after less than two hours’ sleep, Julie found the Visitors’ commander of Earth-based forces damn near impossible to stomach.

  She could feel the strains from last night around her eyes and in her throat, and the demon in her abdomen had been twisting and coiling restlessly since she had dragged herself out of bed and down to Science Frontiers.

  She wished Mike could have stayed with her, even for a couple of hours. But his arm, although not badly burned, was painful, and the codeine he’d taken had made him so drowsy that Elias had taken him home. Besides, Julie knew he probably needed time to think things through.

  “. . . already paid for them, too,” Bates was saying, pounding his desktop for emphasis as she put the black coffee down in front of him. Acknowledging her with a quick glance, he leaned forward toward the screen. “And since Science Frontiers had not accepted delivery on them, their loss would seem to be your problem, not ours.”

  “If you could control that annoying resistance of yours, then neither of us would have these problems,” Diana said.

  “We’re working on that,” Bates said tightly. Julie had seldom seen the head of Science Frontiers and Los Angeles’s provisional government look so angry, his dour mouth compressed into a thin line, knuckles whitening on the handle of his coffee cup as he took a couple of slow, deliberate swallows. “In the meantime, Diana, I need those power packs.” “Yes, I know. I have already contacted our ship over Buenos Aires and directed them to release the power packs from their own reserve stock rather than subject you to additional delays while we manufacture them here.”

  Diana’s voice was soothing sweetness itself—the voice of the old woman who lured Hansel an
d Gretel into her gingerbread house, or the evil witch who made Snow White eat the poisoned apple. Julie had to press a hand over her mouth to suppress the sudden, insane urge to giggle.

  “And when can we expect them?” Bates asked, slightly mollified.

  “Tomorrow afternoon. I will send an escorted shuttlecraft directly to the helipad on the roof of your main building.” “Thank you, Diana. We’ll look forward to that. I wish you a good day—”

  “Ah, Nathan . . . there is one small thing. Hardly worth mentioning, but I wanted to inform you that there will be a little oceanfront testing tonight. Our troops and vehicles will be moving in and around the coast. It’s really nothing to worry about, but you might want to notify the local residents. Humans are so excitable, after all.”

  Tonight! Julie had to work to keep her expression unchanged as the implications hit her.

  Frowning, Bates gestured to Julie to come closer. “Is this what’s been rumored to be a wide-scale experiment conducted in local waters?” he asked.

  “Hardly ‘wide-scale,’ Nathan. This is a small . . . water purification project that will no doubt benefit humanity as well as our people. And as you know, those things that are mutually beneficial to our two races can also be highly profitable to Science Frontiers.”

  “Would you care to enlighten me further concerning this?” “That would be premature, I think.” Julie didn’t have to see Diana’s face to picture her smug, patronizing expression. “Nathan, don’t look so suspicious. I thought you humans loved surprises. Believe me, this one, if it works out, will be worth waiting for. I must run. Give my love to Julie.” Bates stared art the screen for some moments after Diana’s image had faded from the screen, his expression thoughtful as he re-formed a paper clip. “Did you hear that?” he asked.

  “Yeah.” Julie stifled a yawn and feigned indifference. “I wish she’d choke on a mouse and die.”

  “You look terrible,” he said.

  “I was at a . . . birthday party last night.” She smiled ruefully. “I know I’m moving a little slowly this morning. Guess I drank too much champagne.”