Variations on Humanity

by Paul Eslinger

  “We collected the information. You can use it how you see fit.”

  “Did you write an executive summary?”

  David opened the folder and handed over the top page.

  The president adjusted his glasses and read silently. Finally, he lowered the page. “I already knew part of it, but it is more extensive than I expected.”

  He nodded at Rhona and Keene. “Thank you for gathering this.” He then looked at David. “I’ll handle this one, David. You can focus on interfacing with Rhona and the Abantu.”

  “Very well, sir.” David looked relieved as he closed the folder and slid it across the table.

  The president placed the summary in the folder and then rose, holding the folder in his hands. “I still plan on coming to your wedding. Let me know if I can help in any other way.”

  Rhona stood. “Thank you for your confidence. We’ll call David if there are any more problems.”

  Chapter 35 – Two Minds

  Rhona looked at her parents when she joined them for breakfast. “What are you doing today?” she asked.

  “More preparations for vaccine distribution,” Charles responded while Keene entered the cafeteria. “We’re actually going to make the scheduled deadline.”

  Judith nodded. “I’m visiting two more nursing homes.”

  “Is that safe?” Rhona asked.

  “Probably not, but Adara is flying me in a chariot and we’re taking a pilentum with us. You and I already field-tested it.”

  “The folks in Salmon haven’t had any more problems,” Keene said. “I predict the PURE organization will fold within two days.”

  “Why’s that?” Charles asked with a frown. He had been so busy Rhona hadn’t tried to brief him on her most recent trip.

  “Two government employees provided most of the funds to start it by dipping into federal coffers. Several IG people are already sniffing along the funding trail.”

  “IG?” Judith asked.

  “The Inspector General,” Rhona explained. She looked at Keene. “That was a quick response.”

  “Sort of,” he admitted. “Laura said we could leave true facts lying around to help our case. We submitted an anonymous tip to the IG right after we determined that Parker and Breneman were funding PURE. The IG office assigned an investigator and we’ve provided a couple more anonymous tips to keep them on track.”

  The conversation died away when Andrea and Nanda came into the cafeteria. Rhona jumped to her feet and moved closer to the newcomers. “You’re looking good, Andrea.”

  “Thank you.” Andrea gave Rhona a fierce hug. “I thought I was dead, but now I’m alive and healthy.”

  “I’m glad we could help. Come sit with us,” Rhona offered.

  “Sure.”

  Near the end of the meal, Rhona leaned back holding a cup of steaming coffee. She looked at Andrea closely, noting that her face looked smoother than previously. “Are you living here underground or going back to your apartment?”

  Andrea twiddled her thumbs and shrugged. “I’m really grateful to all of you, but I enjoy my apartment. Jeff Spotts had his people install several new security features. Laura also gave me a security beeper and one of the protective suits. I should be fine living there.”

  “That’s good. Did Nanda give you a clean bill of health?” Rhona asked before taking a sip of coffee.

  After running her hand over her abdomen, Andrea nodded. “She says I am totally healed, but she wants to give me daily booster shots for a while. They will remove all of the internal scarring.”

  That’s not all they will do, Rhona thought. I need to check my theory about giving different DNA treatments for people with Karthi scores above 9.43. Andrea was below that the last time I checked. Maybe a personal friendship with Laura makes a difference. If so, that means she is the one making the decisions, rather than an abstract rule set by people on Ceres.

  Keene cocked his head as if listening and then stood. “A box of the new sensors just came in from Mars via Star Portal. Sam and I are going to deploy them so Trixie can collect field data.”

  “Do you need help from me?” Rhona asked.

  “Not now. We’ll call if there are any difficulties.”

  Rhona looked over her shoulder and saw Sam and Trixie stand and pick up their food trays. She faced back towards Keene. “Where are you putting them?”

  “Courthouse, store, gas station and Andrea’s place.”

  Andrea perked up. “My place?”

  “Think of them as a more extensive security system. The sensors will all be outside.” Keene flipped one hand gently in the air. “More strangers stop at your lodge than at any other place in town other than the gas station.”

  Rhona walked beside Andrea while they put the trays away. “The food here is great, but sometimes I get a hankering for a dirt bomb. Do you mind if I go with you to your place before I go over to the store?”

  Andrea shivered. “That would be great. I want to go back, but I’m dreading it. I’m sure the first time will be the worst.”

  * * *

  The lodge office appeared unchanged to Rhona when she entered it behind Andrea. A grey-haired woman sitting at the desk looked up. “Hi, Andrea.”

  “Hello, Holly.”

  Andrea turned towards Rhona. “Have you met Holly Smoot? I found out yesterday afternoon she volunteered to run the place until I got back.”

  “We haven’t met, but I cleaned her mother’s teeth last summer.”

  Holly smiled. “She probably talked so much you couldn’t finish the cleaning.”

  “She talked a little,” Rhona agreed. “I learned a lot about you in the process.”

  “She’s lonely after Dad died. Any visit is important to her and she’ll talk to anyone who will listen.” Holly turned her attention to Andrea. “Are you coming back full time?”

  “Yep. Starting now. Please tell me how many hours you worked so I can pay you.”

  “You don’t need to pay me.”

  “I do,” Andrea disagreed. “You kept the place running, and…”

  “And what?”

  “You need the money, don’t you? If not, give it to your mother. I know she needs it.”

  Rhona noticed a difference in the office when she moved around the partition and studied the door leading to Andrea’s apartment. The paint on the wall was fresh and the door was different. The door and the frame were metal and there was a keypad on the wall beside the door.

  After paying Holly, Andrea moved over and tapped on the keypad. There was a small click. She twisted the handle and the door swung open easily when she tugged on it.

  Except for small cosmetic differences, the room generally looked like it had before the attack. Andrea spun in a circle and pointed at the walls, interior doors, and windows. “Jeff said they gutted the place, put in advanced armor, added bulletproof doors and windows, and then refinished it.”

  Rhona sniffed the air. “It smells new.”

  “It is new.” Andrea opened a closet door. “They even laundered my clothes and put them back.”

  “I’m glad things are suitable,” Rhona replied. “Are you sure you will be okay?”

  “I’ll be fine.” Andrea pulled a phone out of her pocket and placed in on an end table. “Laura gave me a new phone.”

  “Did she explain it was different?”

  “She did.” Andrea plopped down on the bed, lifted her legs off the floor and hugged her knees. “I’m having a tough time getting used to the new stuff. Trixie told me government goons often listen when I use my old phone.”

  “You can thank Big Brother for that.”

  Andrea seemed to shrink. Even her voice seemed small. “I like to know what’s going on, but…”

  “But things are different now,” Rhona said. “The same kind of thing happened to me. They blew
up my house and I ended up in the hospital with a broken arm. Then they kidnapped Keene.”

  Andrea looked at the floor. “My boyfriend was two years older than I was. He was killed in the last week of Operation Desert Storm. I kept busy after that so I didn’t think about him–or my mother.”

  “Did Laura have any suggestions?”

  “She offered me a job.”

  “Hmm. Doing what?”

  “She wants to improve housing for people who live in the county–in the embassy. She said I could run a company to make that happen.” Andrea looked at Rhona. “Could I actually do something like that?”

  Unsure of how to proceed, Rhona decided a little encouragement would go a long way. “Laura is a good judge of character. She must think you can do it. She also has enough money to make the changes she wants.”

  “Yeah. I recently found out they own most of the county.” Andrea sat quietly for some time. Finally, she shivered and began nodding her head. “Holly can run the Lodge just fine, and she needs the work. I may just do what Laura suggested.”

  Rhona smiled and pointed. “There’s the phone. Give her a call.” She waited until Andrea reached for the phone before continuing. “I’m going to head on over to the store. See you later.”

  Outside, Rhona turned towards the pilentum in the parking lot. As she did, she saw Keene walking along the edge of Main Street, carrying what looked like a cane. She trotted over to him and smiled. “Are you installing sensors?”

  “Yep.” He held up his tool. It looked like a walking stick with a thin metal tip. “They work fine when we bury them a few inches. I poke this thing in the ground and push a button to leave a sensor. I’m putting four of them in a two-block area around the Lodge. We should be able to track a cicada flying through the parking lot.”

  Rhona smiled. “I’d settle for finding the cockroaches.”

  “Two-legged or six-legged?”

  “Both kinds.” Rhona tilted her face up for a kiss. “I’ll see you back in the Intelligence Center.”

  * * *

  Occasionally Rhona thought she was getting used to the chaos in the Intelligence Center and then the vast quantity of information would almost overwhelm her. This afternoon she was overwhelmed and there were eight Abantu in the room, all pursuing different topics. Rhona paused and drew a deep breath, trying to calm her frayed nerves.

  They were collecting more information about covert teams but Rucker and Martin were still elusive. Sam blamed it on simple precautions. They rarely used anything with a computer, only used disposable cell phones once, and they even disconnected the batteries in their cars when they weren’t traveling. The only electronic trail was an occasional image from a traffic camera.

  A piercing whistle broke through Rhona’s introspection. She looked around and spotted Keene waving his hand.

  “What’s up?” she asked as she trotted closer. Physically she was feeling so well–other than the pervasive itch from the growing subdermal armor–that she trotted or ran much of the time instead of walking.

  “We just integrated the new sensors into Dulcis.”

  “What can you see?”

  He raised a hand and crooked one finger. Several displays coalesced in the air. He pointed at them one at a time. “We have visual coverage from fifty-seven cameras in town and a lot more across the county. They even work at night. Next, we have audio coverage from each of the cameras and another 500 microphones. We also have the new sensors. We have four hundred of them installed across the embassy.”

  Rhona shook her head. “The embassy is only 860 square miles and includes a lot of farmland. Where did you put them?”

  “In the rock piles and the trees between fields.” Keene grinned. “Andrea suggested several high school boys who could help with deployment.”

  “Okay, big boy,” Rhona said with a smile. “Show me what’s happening at Pawnee Valley Lodge.”

  “Of course.” Keene issued a command and one display showed visual images of the Lodge from four different directions. “There’s one car in the parking lot,” he said.

  “I can see that,” Rhona muttered. “What about the other sensors?”

  Keene issued new commands. Both he and Rhona were getting proficient enough with the Abantu language that they could hold a reasonable conversation at mealtime. “Computer enhanced sound coming up.”

  The voice rendition wasn’t superb quality, but it was understandable. “You can use room eleven,” Andrea said. “Will you be paying by cash or credit card?”

  “Cash,” replied a male voice.

  Rhona held up both hands. “We could do that with human technology. What about the new sensors?”

  “I thought you would never ask.” Keene issued more commands and another display came to life. “I’m a novice here, but Trixie says you can use the display of mental activity as a mind map–a unique mind map.”

  Colors and textures swirled on the new display and then coalesced. The closest thing Rhona could relate to was a blood flow map of a human head she had seen in dental school. The one on the left of the display squirmed and then snapped into focus. It wasn’t static, but the large-scale changes were slow while small-scale changes flickered at a fast pace.

  “That’s Andrea,” said Nanda from behind Rhona.

  Rhona jumped. There was too much noise and movement in the room to keep track of approaching people. “How do you know?”

  “We mapped her brain while she was still in the infirmary. She had a more coherent persona than we anticipated.”

  The interesting tidbit of information distracted Rhona, but she focused on the display. The other splotch of color split into two fuzzy mind maps. Both of them sharpened and then they merged. The single one sharpened–and then split again.

  Rhona pointed at the screen. “What’s going on? Computer malfunction?”

  Nanda frowned. “These are stable algorithms. There shouldn’t be any glitches.”

  “Have you ever seen this?”

  “Yes. It sometimes happens when you have only one sensor and you are mapping two people, with one behind the other one.”

  “We’re using four sensors,” Keene said.

  “I know.” Nanda tugged on one earlobe as she thought. “How many people are in the office?”

  “Two.”

  Rhona glanced at the visual display. “Only one is in the office. The male customer is out by his car.”

  Keene ran through several combinations of shutting off one sensor at a time. All of the combinations, and each sensor individually, showed Andrea clearly and also the merging and dividing pair of minds.

  Finally, Rhona shook her head and offered a weak suggestion. “Schizophrenic personality?”

  “No,” Nanda replied. “The map would shift for a person like that, but it would still be one mind.”

  Moments later, Sam spoke from behind Keene. “I know what my grandmother would say.”

  Rhona whirled around. “What would she say?”

  “Demon possession.”

  Chapter 36 – Tagging Rucker

  Rhona’s eyebrows rose and a tingle ran down her spine. She looked at Sam in disbelief and spoke loud enough for the others to hear, “Are demons real?”

  Keene shrugged. He didn’t reply.

  “My grandmother was very religious. She said they were real. I’m not so positive, but I’ve met some folks that acted like they were demon-possessed,” Sam said.

  He looked at Keene. “The people who buried you and Nanda alive fall in that category.”

  Disbelief made Rhona’s words clipped and strident. “Have you ever seen a demon?”

  Sam shook his head. “Even if they’re real, they supposedly don’t have bodies like we do. I’ve never seen one.”

  Stymied for the moment, Rhona glanced at Nanda. Nanda had been quiet since Sam made his de
mon possession proclamation. “What do you think?” Rhona asked.

  Nanda opened and closed her mouth twice before speaking. “I talked with Methuselah several times.”

  “Yes, yes,” Rhona prompted when Nanda paused. “You already told us that. I even have several pictures you took of him.”

  Nanda’s words came slowly as if she was struggling to think. “He was sixty-five years younger than another man named Enoch. Methuselah and Enoch were good friends when they were younger.”

  The mention of the name brought a Bible passage to Rhona’s mind. “Was he the one who walked with God, and was not–whatever that means?”

  “That’s the one,” Nanda said. Her next words flowed at a normal rate. “Methuselah said he accompanied Enoch once when he was walking with God.”

  “That would have been interesting,” Keene muttered.

  “I didn’t ever meet this person or entity they called God,” Nanda said, “but that isn’t the crucial point. There were other beings, a few of them, who also walked among humans. Most Bible translations call them the Sons of God or the Nephilim. I met one of them once. He was evil incarnate and his children were just as bad. Methuselah agreed they were evil.”

  “Where did these Sons of God come from?” Rhona asked.

  “I don’t know,” Nanda protested, “and neither did Methuselah. They supposedly just showed up–a few of them–when Methuselah was a boy. Most of them vanished after a time. We looked and looked, but we didn’t find any trace of a spaceship or other advanced equipment. Unfortunately, we didn’t get any DNA samples from the either.”

  “Star Portal,” Keene suggested.

  “Possibly, but even they emit energy we can detect.”

  Sam jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “That guy renting the room at the Lodge isn’t one of these Sons of God. We already traced back on his life history. He was born forty-seven years ago in Maine. He has second-degree links to Rucker’s people.”

  Nanda shook her head hard enough her long brown hair flew in all directions. “No, no. My point is there are beings of power that appear, interact with humans, and disappear. I was fascinated with the topic back then, and that was one of the reasons we visited Earth again. We don’t have anything similar in our history. However, it is illogical to think we are the only sentient species in the universe. We didn’t want to provoke a being of power.”