by Gini Koch
Claudia and Lorraine looked excited, Reader looked slightly worried, and Christopher and Martini still looked pissed off and suspicious.
“Now that it’s just us, want to tell me what’s going on?”
Martini shrugged. “You know most of it already.”
“Oh? Let’s see . . . Mephistopheles manifests a few times a year. When, why, what’s the pattern?”
“There is no pattern,” Christopher said. “If there were, we’d have identified it.”
“Really? Like you identified that the Ancients’ manual was a religious text?” I decided that, as they went, Glare #5, which he was shooting at me right now, was probably his best. Eyes narrowed yet sending out laser beams of fury, face tensed, mouth poised to snarl something. Very impressive.
“Point taken,” Martini said, defusing Christopher’s snarl. “Feel free to tell us what you, having less than two days of this kind of experience, would like the rest of us to do. You know, those of us who have spent years,” he nodded his head toward Reader, “or merely our entire lives in this line of work.”
“Ooooh, that’s put me in my place. Only . . . I don’t have a place to be put into here. However, I know exactly where I fit in Mephistopheles’ plan. And you don’t.”
“You’re supposed to birth the babies,” Reader said, managing to keep a straight face.
“Only sort of.” Got their attention again with that one. Good. “See, there’s a problem with implanting a memory in someone else.”
“Uppity attitude?” Martini sounded as though he was headed back to normal. His body language was more relaxed—he was leaning his forearm against the wall, other hand on his hip—and his expression was amused.
“Limited control.” I sat on the edge of the conference table. “Mephistopheles can’t have had a lot of recent experience with this—I’m the first woman he’s touched in twenty years.”
“Lucky him,” Christopher muttered.
“He’d like to get lucky,” Reader said with a grin. Great, he’d appointed himself comic relief.
“Not so much. Look, let’s make this clear—he doesn’t want to have sex with me, nor does he want me to carry a zillion little Mephisties around. He wants to use me to get to all of you.”
“To stop us,” Lorraine said.
“No, I think Mephistopheles and all the other superbeings are here because of you, not in spite of you.”
“What do you mean, because of us?” Martini’s voice was low, but I recognized his expression—I’d seen it in the bathroom this morning. He’d also moved his back against the wall, crossed his arms over his chest, and one leg over the other at the ankle. It looked casual, but he was poised to move if he had to.
“You know what I mean, Jeff. Maybe the others haven’t figured it out, but I really think you have.” I looked at Christopher. He looked like Martini—face set like stone, eyes tortured. “You’ve figured it out, too. God, it must suck to be the two of you.”
“Thanks, we’re touched.” Christopher had moved closer to Martini and was standing in a similar position. It wasn’t a total surprise—when push was going to come to shove, it was going to be them against the world.
“It’s not an insult. I can’t imagine how the two of you have kept it together all this time. But it’s the real reason Jeff didn’t want to tell me about your religion. And, for the three of you who have no idea of what I’m talking about, this stays here, among the six of us, only.”
Claudia and Lorraine nodded slowly. They looked confused. Reader gave me a long look. “I know. Paul doesn’t, but I do.”
“Because you figured it out a long time ago.” He nodded. I looked at Martini and Christopher again. “See, it helps when you’ve dealt with prejudice all your life. It makes it easier to spot the lies that get told to cover up bigotry and the resulting actions that come from it.”
“Lies?” Claudia asked, sounding scared. “What do you mean, Kitty?”
“You’ve all been told you were sent here to Earth because your religion made you outcasts on your home world and you wanted to help protect Earth, so your government sent you here as an easy fix.”
I shook my head. I hoped I never had to tell my father about this. His righteous rage would go into overdrive. “But that sounds very familiar to me, as the granddaughter of people who were also part of what was, in some places, called a Final Solution.”
“The Holocaust,” Reader said quietly. “Over six million Jews, homosexuals, and others considered deviants murdered.”
“Your planet did it more humanely. For them. But not for you or for us. They sent you all here as bait.”
“No idea what you’re talking about,” Christopher said. He really couldn’t swing the lying thing, since he was looking at his shoes when he shared this.
“Funny you should say that, since I’ve never heard a bigger line of bullshit than the one you tried to hand me about your transference system working one way but not the other. If you were talking time travel, I might buy it. But you’re talking the laws of physics. I realize your planet’s very different from ours. But not so different that an A-C man and a human woman couldn’t have a functioning, normal child. Or is Paul some total freak by either race’s standards?”
“He’s as normal as the rest of us,” Martini said. “For what that’s worth.”
“So if it works one way, it can work the other. If the door on the other end isn’t locked, of course. Which it is. To you and to us.”
“What makes you think any of this, Kitty?” Lorraine asked. “We’ve been told the full history of our world and why we came to yours.”
“Have you? I doubt it. You’re a new example of the immigrant experience that America had in the early nineteen hundreds. People fled their homelands, many times due to religious persecution, to come settle in the Land of Opportunity. It’s what built this country. But what the immigrants told their children wasn’t always the total truth.”
“You’ve already said we can’t lie,” Christopher said. “Pick a side.”
“You can’t lie. But you all avoid giving out key information unless you’re asked point-blank. But you know what was interesting about the whole scenario when I said your translations were wrong?”
“I’ll play,” Martini said as he leaned his head back against the wall. “What?”
“Your Sovereign Pontifex wasn’t the one protesting against my charge. Oh, sure, he made a little show for the youngsters, but he wasn’t the one defending the translations. He left that to Beverly.”
“Because it’s her job,” Christopher snapped.
“No, because he can’t lie any better than the rest of you, and he’s started to pick up that I’m aware of it.” I looked at Reader. “How long did it take you to figure it out?”
He shrugged. “A few months, but I wasn’t kidding—we didn’t have the same level of action when I joined up. You’re right on schedule if I compress my first two months, and my first run-in with Mephistopheles into about a day and a half.”
Reader looked at Martini and Christopher. “I haven’t said anything because I couldn’t come up with any idea of how to fix it, so why make it harder for you guys?”
“Said what?” Martini asked. It was clear he was asking to ensure we actually had guessed right.
I answered. “That your home world sent you to Earth not to help us or give you someplace to go be useful but to use you all as bait to get the parasites distracted elsewhere.”
Reader nodded. “And they don’t want you back, any more than they want us to emigrate. We’re on our own together.”
“Why would they do that?” Claudia asked in a small voice. “We brought supplies to help. They still send us things.”
“Now and then,” Lorraine added.
“To ensure you don’t die out here, would be my guess.”
“Why would they need to?” Lorraine asked. “The ozone shield protects our home world.”
“Yeah, but can it or will it forever? If we take the
Heaven and Hell situations literally, Hell is hot, very hot. You all come from a planet with double suns. I’d have to guess it’s pretty warm there, particularly since you all wear black in the desert in the summertime. And you don’t sweat while doing it. None of you sweat, not even when you’re running fifty miles in a second.” Not even Martini through hours of vigorous, fantastic sex. I’d sweated, but he hadn’t.
“If there was an entity searching for his new home and he came from someplace very hot, then why would he aim for, say, an ice planet or this little green and blue jewel in the middle of nowhere? He’d aim right for the planet with a lot of heat and burning suns, where his body would feel normal. The warehouse is boiling hot, yet none of you were uncomfortable there—and neither were the preserved bodies of the dead superbeings.”
“The parasites would have come here no matter what. The Ancients warned everyone,” Lorraine protested.
“I’m sure they did, or tried to. But plagues don’t always hit everyone. Every dread disease leaves some alone for reasons only the disease would know. Vaccinations help, but not a hundred percent of the time.”
“Thanks, Dr. Kitty,” Christopher said, sarcasm dripping.
“Oh, stuff it. This is, essentially, a plague. The parasites don’t hit everyone. They don’t stabilize in most hosts. But in the ones they do, they create longer life, or Yates would already be dead.”
“Diseases like to attack the weak,” Reader offered. “But they also attack the strong. Polio, cancer, AIDS—they’re indiscriminate, and sometimes they’re more deadly in a healthy person.”
Christopher opened his mouth, and I decided I didn’t want to hear it. “You’d better have a snappier comeback than ‘Dr. James’ planned.”
He shut his mouth. Glare #1 in full force. Nice to see he remained consistent.
“Anything else?” Martini asked.
“Yeah, actually. If I were a being looking for another host body, I’d seriously consider the benefits of two hearts, supersonic speed, hyper-reflexes, and incredible stamina over a single heart and vastly reduced abilities.”
Martini shoved off the wall, flung himself into a chair, leaned back and put his legs up onto the desk, one ankle over the other. He looked straight at me. “The ozone shield wasn’t going to hold up against continued parasitic attacks. It’s another lie that the Ancients’ arrival was an all-world wake-up call. Just like here, it was hidden from the general populace. Because we ran heavy on the scientific side of the house, we knew what was going on. Once we got the ozone shield up and it was determined to work as well for keeping the parasites out as the ozone in, we were considered expendable.”
“You swore you’d never talk about this,” Christopher said angrily.
Martini shrugged. “We’ve sworn a lot of things. But nothing’s gotten better. The parasites arrived in our grand-parents’ time. When they wouldn’t stop trying to get in, despite the shield, the same idea dawned on the world leaders as it did on you. They wanted A-Cs, possibly more than other races, maybe only. So, they decided to doom Earth. Originally they were going to send condemned criminals here.”
“What a thoughtful bunch. How’d you all end up here?”
“Don’t,” Christopher growled at Martini. “Our entire race’s safety depends on this.”
“Our entire race’s safety depends on us succeeding,” Martini snarled right back. “Up until now, we’ve maintained, at best. Unless you have some brilliant idea you’ve been hiding all this time, stop getting in the way and break down and do something helpful.”
He and Christopher stared at each other, Christopher used his perfected Glare #1, but Martini put his bland, genial, “it’s all good” look back on. They looked as if they could do this for days.
“Guys, please. We have a world to save. The only one both of our races actually has left, right?”
Christopher spun and the glare was still going strong. “You have no right—”
“I have every right,” I interrupted him. “Stop pretending, or the big bad fugly’s going to win. And it’ll be your fault.”
“Actually,” Martini said with false, hearty cheerfulness, “it’d be our grandfather’s fault.”
CHAPTER 31
STUNNED SILENCE FILLED THE ROOM. The girls looked shocked, but I didn’t need to look at Reader or even Martini for confirmation—Christopher’s expression was proof enough. Guilt radiated from him.
The full realization of what was going on hit me. “They did send criminals here, didn’t they?”
“Just one,” Martini said, his voice clipped. “As a test.”
I wondered how to phrase this delicately and came up with no ideas. “What had your grandfather done?”
Christopher deflated. The anger just seemed to whoosh out of his body, leaving him looking sad and lost, like a little boy who’d never gotten to play with the other kids. “He was our religious leader. Only . . .” He stopped talking and closed his eyes.
“Only he wasn’t peaceful like his son,” Martini finished, voice still sharp. “He wanted to fight, to take what he considered our rightful place in the world.”
“It’s understandable. So why did they send the rest of you?”
Martini shrugged. “The shield was getting battered. They knew our grandfather had survived on Earth, so they could tell themselves they weren’t killing us or dooming all of you by sending us here. They agreed to give us what we needed to keep the parasitic threat somewhat at bay.”
“Everything but the materials to make an ozone shield here.”
“Right.” Martini looked exhausted. I wondered how long he’d been carrying this knowledge around. I checked out Christopher—at least as long as Mr. Surly had been, since he looked equally spent.
I decided to sneak up on the Horrible Truth. “You’re susceptible to Earth diseases, aren’t you? At least some of them?”
“Yes,” Christopher said. “We don’t get heart disease or anything related to it. But we’re fair game for other illnesses.”
“And, the real reason you have strict rules about interspecies marriages is, what?”
Martini looked as though I’d kicked him in the gut. Christopher didn’t reply—he looked over at Martini and I didn’t have to see his face to know he was glaring. It was clear he wanted me to hear this from Martini directly.
“The internal organs remain A-C dominant.” The words sounded dragged out of him.
“I’ll bet Paul’s parents were allowed to marry as a test, weren’t they? I’ll meet some others, interspecies couples with the human side coming from, what, every country or just every race?”
“Country and race both.” Martini’s jaw was clenched again.
I nodded. “You’re scientists, after all. Good testing theory.” I didn’t say that I figured all the tests had been run already. I’d save that for when I needed it. “So, how long before the parasites hit Earth did you arrive?”
“First waves came in the nineteen-sixties,” Christopher answered.
“Right when the parasites really started littering the ozone shield,” Martini added.
I shifted on the table, just in case I needed to jump out of reach. “Did your tribe reconnect with their exiled leader?”
Could have heard a pin drop. This time it was Martini who looked at Christopher with an expression that said it was time to return the Awkward Answer favor.
“We tried,” Christopher said finally. “But . . .”
I decided to save him some pain and me a lot of time. “But he really wasn’t like his son, and he’d discovered that he could get away with a lot more here on Earth than he had back home. Bitterness will do that to some people.”
Martini nodded. “From what we know, he rebuffed Richard’s attempts to reconnect.”
And now, here it was. Time to unveil the Horrible Truth. I took a deep breath. “He was rich, powerful, and celebrating by creating chaos all over the world. Is that why you haven’t killed him yet? Or is that just why the Mephistopheles parasi
te chose him?”
The girls looked sick. Claudia was obviously trying not to cry, and Lorraine was holding her stomach and rocking back and forth. Reader looked horrified. Martini and Christopher still looked exhausted, as if the weight of two worlds were on them.
Christopher managed to drag out an answer. “At first my father thought Yates could be redeemed. Then he decided we’d just ignore him. When we realized he was running a terrorist organization, we tried to stop him. But the parasites were coming, and that was more important.”
“It’s pretty odd on this world to have a terrorist group aimed at chaos only, not based on some religious belief. So what religious belief of yours is Yates actually working his terrorism for?”
“It’s not a religious belief,” Christopher said. “I don’t know how to explain it to you.”
“I do,” Martini said. “Devil worship.”
“Ah. He cracked and took the opposite side of the spectrum, religiously?”
Martini nodded. “Took every tenet of our religion and warped it.”
“Not a surprise, all things considered. And Yates doesn’t strike me as someone who controls his temper. But was it an intentional pairing?”
“We don’t know,” Martini answered. “It could have been, but I think you’re closer in saying the parasite made the decision, not good old Granddad. We hate him, you realize.”
“I can understand that.”
“No, not really,” Christopher said. “We’re not supposed to.”
“Religious rule?”
“Pretty much,” Claudia said. She seemed back under a semblance of control. “Revere your elders, that sort of thing.”
“We have that too. Some of us throw it out when said elders try to destroy entire populations.”
“And some don’t,” Martini said.
I thought about it. “The older generation’s split on this, at least.”
