by Clyde Key
* * *
When Ed awoke again, he had a visitor (human, not alien) but he couldn’t see who it was because he didn’t have his glasses. “Who is it?” asked Ed. “Who’s in here? Where are my glasses?”
The visitor patted Ed’s hand, but he couldn’t feel it because there was still no sensation below his elbows. Then the visitor kissed him on the forehead, before putting his glasses on him. It was Arlene Sisk.
“What! Why are you here?” Ed turned his head to get a better look at Arlene. She looked a bit ridiculous because she’d been wearing the thick cosmetic again to cover the green stain, but recent tears had washed green trails down from her eyes.
Arlene wrote a note on a pad and held it for him to see. The note, in large printed letters said, “Be careful what you say because this place is wired.”
Ed acknowledged the message with a nod. “How have you been, Arlene?”
“Fine. I’ve been doing just fine,” said Arlene, as she furiously printed another message. “You know, we’re getting a lot of help from Veezee. They’ve got a lot of great technology for excavations and things like that.” She held this note for him to see. It said, “They’re taking over and we have to fight back. I’m on your side.” Then she wadded the papers and put them in her bag.
Ed nodded again. “Excavations, huh? Are they going to teach us how to live in holes?”
“When I asked permission to see you, President Macklin asked me to give you a message—a deal, actually,” said Arlene. “He said a courtmartial would be bad for you and the government both, and that you’d probably wind up in prison for the rest of your life, so he has another offer.”
“A deal? With that traitor? I’d rather rot!”
Arlene shook her head. “You haven’t even heard it yet. As soon as you’re out of the hospital, you can go back to Kingman and be under supervision—like house arrest except a little looser. You wear an ankle bracelet that identifies your position and nobody cares where you go unless you get out of bounds. Of course you won’t be running the army.”
Ed turned his face away. He couldn’t believe that even Arlene would bring such a deal. “Tied up like an animal! Why don’t they bring back the firing squad?”
Then he turned back to look at Arlene again. Tears were sliding down the little green trails again, and she held another note for him to see. It said, “Just do it, stupid.”
“Okay,” he said weakly. “I guess I’m out of choices.”
41
April 2, 2113
It hadn’t turned out to be so bad, at least for the first few weeks. The supervision bracelet didn’t bother Ed very much as long as he stayed inside the bounds, and that allowed him to walk around most of Kingman Army Base, except near headquarters. And since Ed was no longer an important human in the affairs of the nation, the blue alien left him alone most of the time, except for when Ed invited the alien inside his magnetically shielded domain to pry about alien thoughts away from the control of the great Eldest Veezee.
But on the other hand, Ed was no longer in control of anything. The new president had installed a new commander who came from the upper echelons of AABC. This new commander, Colonel Vance Eldredge, had a mandate from President Macklin to facilitate the integration of Veezee into American life. Everybody knew that meant control of Terrestrials (especially Americans) by the aliens, with Macklin as a puppet leader and with Macklin’s lackies in control of all institutions.
