The Stranded Ones

by Jay B. Gaskill

  Drastic and decisive action was appropriate. Discovery of aliens providing technology to humans could unravel the whole regulatory scheme. The further discovery that aliens were actually advising Commissioner Torque would generate a firestorm of publicity, charges of corruption, ridicule and hypocrisy. Everything he had worked for could be ruined in a week. Torque told himself it was regrettable that people would die. Of course, he knew, deep down, that his regret was thin, but the pretense made him feel better somehow.

  To Torque, men like Gael and Falstaff were dangerous to the “common good” because they did not know or care about the proper limits of human endeavor. Gael had repeatedly defied Torque’s agency and its various attempts to stamp out their illicit information piracy. People should not cling to property at all. They should be happy enough just working for the greater good, as Torque and like-minded leaders saw the greater good. But Gael and Falstaff were perniciously clever men, working within those shadowy areas where the full force of the necessary “transparency and sharing” rules had yet to be fully implemented.

  In Torque’s moral universe, bureaucracy was the key to human survival, but its penetration into all aspects of human affairs was still incomplete. These aliens, the “Advisors”, were kindred spirits who understood that ultimately, control must prevail over freedom or all is lost. Of course, isolated pockets of relative anarchy remained – notably in autonomous Quebec, Australia (where Gael and Falstaff had made their corporate headquarters), and New Zealand, among other still unregulated zones. And somewhere, those non-compliant aliens, the so-called Little Ones, the Advisors’ ancient enemies, remained at large, posing some undefined threat. Torque assumed it was all part of the continuing threat of unregulated freedom and uncontrolled creative innovation.

  He turned off the overhead lights and sat down at a table near his desk. It was frustrating to contemplate that those areas in which the Advisor’s authority was weakest were, for the moment, the most prosperous places that human beings carried on the business of living. Such self-exempt areas were now springing up everywhere, like a stubborn cancer resistant to anything but the most drastic surgery. Torque found this development irritating, but not on any fundamental level to be unsettling. Torque generally lacked the capacity for self-examination that might have led him to question any of his premises.

  Truth be told, Commissioner Torque resented genius in all its forms. For him, it was a mere fact of nature, like a tornado. In his professional life Torque always demoted genius to mere “talent”. And talent was something to be controlled by those who are specially gifted in the exercise of power. Of course, those who couldn’t be controlled were dangerous.

  Finnegan Gael and Jack Falstaff were existential threats; they represented both defiance and the destabilizing prosperity that such defiance always brought. Their organizational styles were personal and anti-bureaucratic. And this, Torque believed, was a fatal weakness. Any sound bureaucracy was capable of great organizational integrity irrespective of the will of a single person…even a genius. After all, genius was the enemy of bureaucracy. And that was as it should be. Genius had brought the human race nothing but grief, risk, and danger.

  Sadly, it would be better for everyone if Finnegan Gael and Jack Falstaff would die. Gael’s death alone would cripple much opposition to the Advisors’ agenda. On another, more moral level, it would represent the triumph of organization over personality.

  Torque pressed a key in the desk’s recessed screen. “I will seek my formal audience with the Senior Advisor in ten minutes.” Torque felt a quickening and a lightness of spirit he had not felt for days.

  Ten minutes became four hours. Torque pulled gray plastic coveralls and a breathing mask from the locker, and put them on, connecting the mask to a small life-support case that fastened to his waist with a webbed belt. The door to the airlock slid open and he stepped in to a closet sized room from which all illumination disappeared when the door slid shut behind him. For a moment he was totally in the alien’s power, a fact that made him acutely uncomfortable in a way he dared not consciously address.

  Then the door opened into a huge and dimly lit chamber that roiled with brown fumes. The Advisor sat on a pedestal beneath a blue-white lamp, its coils extended in a series of concentric braids that resembled a pulsing black mass of squirming snakes. Torque reminded himself that this creature was privileged to travel between the stars, that it was as brilliantly adapted to its environment as Torque was to his…that these creatures held the future.

  “Get right to the point, Commissioner,” it said.

  Torque hesitated. “We have good reason to believe that both Finnegan Gael and Jack Falstaff are meeting in Quebec with others to discuss the stolen data within the next three days.”

  “But you assured me that the data is encrypted.”

  “There is a decryption key. And the former Australian prime minister may have it.”

  “This person is attending the meeting? How unfortunate…”

  “We’re preparing for an assault.”

  “Do what you will. We continue to supply technical support on the condition that we remain invisible. We will not tolerate exposure.”

  “Of course. There will be no evidence of non-terrestrial involvement. I am seeing to that.”

  “You will not have ‘seen to that’ so long as there are witnesses abroad who have credibility on the point.”

  “I understand.”

  “No witnesses. No survivors. The slightest suggestion of my involvement in such an act would, under the present circumstances, be a serious inconvenience to me personally, and much more than that, I assure you, to the career of Commissioner Torque.”

  “Yes, Advisor. I have listened and I will consider all the implications of what you say.”

  “I hope that you do, Torque.”

  The Commission’s offices on the Denver outskirts were on a short, well controlled street near a converted strip mall. Access was controlled by security gates at either end. A “delegation” had arrived at dawn, a few hours after his meeting with the Advisor. The arrival was unannounced, but a large van, equipped for disabled access, had been passed through security on the direct order of the Advisor. Torque peered down from the second story conference room window where he kept a sleeping cot. The scene below was well lit by the street lamps and the even brighter illumination from his building.

  All eight “delegates” appeared to be people of various ages and conditions. All were confined to wheelchairs. One by one, they were pneumatically lifted to the curbside, while the driver, someone with dark glasses, remained inside operating the controls. Eight slightly oversized wheelchairs carried eight obviously disabled individuals, who then quietly assembled in a crude formation in front of the door to the first floor lobby of the Regional Biotechnology License Review.

  The Advisor had casually announced the delegation’s visit in a call five minutes before, as if it were commonplace for the creature to entertain visitors.

  “You what!” Marius had lost his composure, and immediately blushed.

  “Torque, I do not appreciate your tone. There will be eight in the Delegation, arriving in one vehicle. They are coming, very privately, and by my special invitation. You will have them escorted to the room next my quarters and leave us alone until otherwise directed. I trust I am being clear?”

  “Very clear. How long, then?”

  “An hour, perhaps two.”

  Marius Torque knew better than to argue or ask unwelcome questions. Well it seems they have arrived. His mind roiled with questions. Who would know that the Advisor is even here? How many people even know about the Others? What does the Advisor want with these visitors? A delegation? From where? Why wasn’t I told?

  The answer to the last question was dreadfully obvious: The Advisor doesn’t trust me.

  Torque noticed that two of the visitors seemed almost identical; each was dressed in a pressed white shirt, with a well-groomed head lolling to one side, and each used a
breathing tube for control. The resemblance to the legendary Steven Hawking was striking. The other six consisted of a teenage girl with no arms, two adult women, again strikingly similar in appearance sharing obvious motor-control difficulties, and two Asian males, each missing one leg and one arm. All were well dressed, and wore dangling ID tags. One woman, attractive but with withered legs, was the obvious leader. Minutes later, she greeted Marius in the hallway outside his office.

  “You must be Commissioner Torque”, she said with a winning smile. “I’d offer you my hand, but as you can see that isn’t possible.” Marius peered at her ID.

  “Janice Block – President: Political Alliance for the Advancement of Crippled Geniuses”.

  Torque didn’t flinch. “Follow me,” he said. The back of his neck prickled as the chairs lined up single file and whirred behind him. He could swear he detected that faint scent of rotting eggs.

  CHAPTER NINE - FINDING TOAD HALL

  Quebec - The next day

  Hugh McCahan glanced outside his car window ast the snow-cloaked forest passed in gray columns. He stared, indulging the moment. It was minutes after sunset, early afternoon in Quebec. McCahan had entered a relentless calm, impenetrable by anything but a major emergency. When the Rolls Zephyr went into a sharp, diagonal skid along the narrow roadway, his eyes never left the article he was reading.

  “Hugh, don’t you think you should actually drive this bleeding vehicle?” The voice came from Lew Springer in the back seat.

  “Sorry,” Hugh muttered.

  “You pulled my stitches again.”

  “Sorry!” Hugh repeated. “Bad road.” He held one stubby finger poised over the manual override, but the gray columns of trees continued to pass by outside, and the late edition of the Times continued to scroll across McCahan’s LitePage. Even when the Rolls Zephyr began to yaw back and forth in the snow-clotted roadway, Hugh did not look up.

  “Hugh!” Lew Springer was muttering from the back. “I’m a control freak when it comes to driving. How can you trust a simple minded guidance program? Humor an injured colleague: Drive this thing!” The answer was the steady click, click of the windshield wipers, the muted whine of the car’s electric motors, and the low-pitched moan of the blizzard that roiled outside the window. Hugh’s finger remained poised over the manual override. Finally, McCahan let his hand relax. The guidance program had brought the large car back under control.

  “Go back to sleep, Lew,” Hugh said.

  “Sod it. I’m wide awake now.”

  McCahan glanced up into sheets of advancing snowflakes, random and gray, dissolving as they struck the heated glass. He turned in his seat. “Lew, I’m not checked out on a vehicle of this type in blizzard conditions. Driving a fan-wheel hybrid in bad weather is as tricky as docking a sailboat in a high wind. If I were at the controls, we’d probably be in the ditch gathering snow…hoping to hell the heater would still be working in the morning.”

  “Bloody fools we are,” Springer said.

  “Anyway, I wonder about your health.”

  “Of course you do.”

  “We go through this after every job.”

  “I’d rather have you ‘go through’ this part next time, if you don’t mind,” Springer muttered.

  “Fair enough…” McCahan turned back in his seat and resumed scrolling through the Times article. He finished the piece a minute later and turned off the LitePage, just as the Rolls went into another self-correcting yaw. “So, Lew…” Hugh twisted in the seat again. “You, of all people, have lost your faith in guidance technology?” McCahan was grinning.

  “Just with your blinkin’ trust in it.”

  “Hah. What did you think when we got off that RentaRide plane?”

  “You mean did I think the GPS that courier gave us was lying about a non-existent airport? Or do you mean, did I expect to find a retrofitted Rolls Royce buried under a heap of snow in an Eastern Quebec parking lot fifty miles from the nearest bloody spot of civilization worth the name?” Lew shook his head, rolling his eyes. “I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to land us there at all. That place was a creep show. So how did you like the airport?” Lew asked.

  “What airport? Did you check out those lights?”

  “The runway lights?” Lew chuckled. “I thought we were doing an emergency landing until the last second.”

  “You were remarkably calm.”

  “Oh, I thought you were flying.”

  “Good one.”

  “It was just the pain medication and my complete faith in autopilot technology.”

  “I admit that turning those lights on just as the plane landed and off just before it touched town was hairy.”

  “But just the touch we’ve come to expect from our old friend Finnegan Gael,” Springer said. “This was his private airport, then?”

  “You can’t find it on any map. As far as the Quebec government is concerned, this airport doesn’t officially exist…And that was a very long runway, I was told.”

  “You could have fooled me,” Springer said.

  “You could land a space shuttle there.”

  “Finnegan would be a hard man to collect a fee from.”

  Hugh chuckled. “At least he pays us on time. When I looked at that lump of snow in the parking lot, you know what I thought for a minute?”

  “You thought he’d got us a taxi and that the bloody driver froze to death waiting for us?”

  “I figured we’d been dumped in the wrong airport…probably owned by some narcotics dealer. Can’t you see us, stuck out here, thumbs in the air by the side of the road?”

  “We’d be two snowmen by now,” Lew said. “I just never dreamed that he’d leave us a creepy automated car.”

  “Finnegan is even more devious lately,” Hugh said. “If that’s possible…I still don’t even know the location of his lodge here in Quebec. We’re the both captives of a guidance program.”

  “What are Gael and Falstaff really up to, Hugh?”

  “You tell me. We’re having dinner with your old friend, former Australian PM Liz Hoopes. I have a feeling she will have some answers. After all, she left office pretty soon after that Antarctic incident. Which bring us to Warehouse 25…What do you think that’s about?”

  “I have no sodding idea.”

  “Fifteen terabytes of data, half of them encrypted, Lew. I had no time to review it before we sent to him, did you?”

  “No.”

  “Tell me what you know about Hoopes.”

  “Tough as they come. I met Mother Liz twice…a long time ago, when she was Minister for their defense. We got on well enough, but we’re not exactly buddy-buddy friends.”

  “Too many questions…too many gigs…too little time. Good thing we keep the information we sell. We can always pull it off our backup, Big Bird.”

  “To answer your earlier question, Hugh…I don’t know any more than you do what these blokes are up to. But you can bet at lot of money is involved.”

  “Because the risks are very, very high?”

  “Higher than they are letting on, Hugh.”

  “So what could it be?”

  “I think something very dangerous landed in Antarctica. And you can be sure it’s very, very valuable.”

  “Not a meteor?”

  “No. It was something much more interesting, more even than somebody’s loose nuke.” Springer was almost talking to himself. “It’s that photographer’s flying pods account that intrigues me. How many pods did this blind, homeless, ex photographer say he saw?”

  “Ten. He was clear on that.”

  “Think of that. And no reported impacts anywhere?”

  “None. Reported is the operative word. Is this why we going to meet with a retired Australian PM?”

  “Of course it is. You can bet that Mother Liz knows the story, Hugh. Or part of it.” Springer leaned toward the front seat. “Consider how little you and I, the trusted ones, actually know at this point.”

  “We know that somet
hing very large struck the Antarctic ice cap about two hundred miles from the American Base at McMurdo. Satellite pictures showed a large crater. Everyone thought it was space borne debris.”

  “And?”

  “Before anyone could investigate this so called meteor impact point, something blew up. Mona Loa and three smaller observatories were in position to see any meteor, and saw nothing.”

  “And?”

  “Silence.”

  “Which means?”

  “Cover up?”

  “Was it just a coincidence that you found the photographer?”

  “I don’t believe in coincidences, either,” Hugh said. “But with so many agencies looking for the guy, this had to be an accident, right?”

  Then the Zephyr suddenly slowed, causing Springer to lurch forward against the restraints. “OUCH. Are you sure you couldn’t you do a better job driving than a moronic algorithm?”

  “Hey. Even morons have quick reflexes. I may be a technology thief, a hacker and an occasional burglar, but I’m not a professional driver. Trust the algorithm.”

  “You’re lucky to be out of jail.”

  “Not as lucky as that respect, Lew, as a certain bandaged spy in the back seat!”

  The soft chime of the approach alarm signaled the sudden appearance of a clearing on the right. A path through the snow was suddenly outlined by sequentially blinking lights. Before Hugh could acquire manual control, the Zephyr had already left the road, and was following the lights through a stand of pines.

  “I’m the burglar and you’re the bleeding accomplice. We just haven’t been caught…yet.”

  A dry, steaming strip of pavement emerged from the darkness. McCahan overrode the Rolls’ guidance program, noting in the rear view mirror that the guide lamps had already retracted from view. He killed the lift fans and the Rolls’ tires squeaked as they engaged the driveway. The car rolled past another stand of snow-blanketed trees.

  “How long has it been?” Hugh asked. A sudden gust of wind blew against the car.