May 19, 1957, Skink,
California
“And this, Agent Flanagan,
is one of the company’s top medics, Doc Taylor.” Lt. Niles said
with a smile. “Of course, she’s just a civilian like you for
the purpose of this exercise, but I—”
“Dani.” It seemed
to Steve as if Niles and the rest of the people in the bunker
faded into the background as he met Dani Taylor’s’s eyes for
the first time in four years.
He felt himself begin
to smile, but she didn’t, and then he started to speak, but he
couldn’t think of a damn thing to say, so he closed his mouth,
tried to stop smiling, and thrust out his hand. Dani looked down
at it as if it had sprouted extra fingers, then after what seemed
like forever, she shook it.
She had the same strong
fingers as four years ago. Same deep dark eyes, same ebony hair,
now close-cropped and military. Same lean body, though the cotton
shirt and striped pants were more casual than anything she’d
worn in Boston. Her skin was darker too, with a burn scar on
her right arm. And all he could think of was seeing her skin
by moonlight during the Invasion, tasting it, and the temperature
in the bunker seemed to rise forty degrees.
What the hell is
wrong with you? It’s been four years since she told you “so
long”. Seeing her again is no big deal—you knew she was stationed
here, you were bound to bump into her sooner or later. And
you’ve slept with other broads since, it’s not like Dani got
under your skin or anything.
Is it?
“Excuse me.” Claire
White, a gorgeous blonde from the TSC labs, brushed between them
carrying a tray of vacuum tubes, forcing Steve to let go Dani’s
hand, which he hadn’t realized he was still shaking. “Everything
should be cool, professor, once I put the last new tubes in the
idiot box and adjust the antenna.”
Dani turned, pulling
cigarettes out of her pocketbook, and said something to Claire;
Steve forced himself to turn around, away from Dani, and concentrate
on the bunker. There was Professor Caldwell, pointing at the
huge Omnivac computer with his briar while his assistant Howard
something-or-other nodded agreement. Col. Ankrum addressing a
couple of bigwigs from Washington, here for the day’s games.
Claire, ignoring the dust smearing on her blouse as she wriggled
under the television. That’s right, they’re going to try watching
the combat exercise as it happens. Seeing if the Guard company
can destroy Caldwell’s robots without hurting us ‘civilians.’
He wondered how long
it would take, and whether maybe he’d have a chance to talk to
Dani, and what he’d say, and whether it mattered when she obviously
didn’t care, and then they’d begun walking out of the bunker
along with his fellow agents DiNaldi and Trueblood, a Brit officer
called Barclay, and as they merged with the crowd already on
the street, he realized he’d lost sight of Dani.
No matter how she
looked at him, and how she’d ended it in Boston, he desperately
wanted to talk some more. Yeah, if I could only think what
to say.
It was sheer coincidence,
Dani assured herself, that although the crowd had forced them
apart as they left the bunker, she’d wound up walking beside
Steve a minute or two later, on what had once been Skink’s Main
Street .
What the hell is
he doing here? Niles said “agent”—why would Steve become a
Science Investigator? Not that I give a damn. He made it clear
back in Boston that I was just a lay. I should go and make
plans with Jason about that weekend away he’s been suggesting.
“So.” She found herself
unable to say anything else or even look at him, and lit a fresh
cigarette to buy time. “How long have you been in town?”
“Never been here in
Invasion City before. I read about how the Deathworms drove everyone
out of here, then the government turned it into a testing ground—”
“I meant in Wind Song.”
“Umm, eight months,
maybe.” She heard the click of a lighter, a deep inhalation. “Woman
I met back east talked me into becoming a Science Investigations
agent. I came out here last year, met Nate Strawn, spent a couple
of months looking for my brother—” From the longing in his voice,
Dani knew Steve hadn’t found him. “—then training in LA. Rules.
Procedures. Some science. Then me and my partner, Gwen, were
one of the teams sent to investigate those beast-man kidnappings
in the redwood forest, then we tracked down the last of Dr. Steig’s
atom-brain monsters—”
You see?
He’s been here long enough to find you if he wanted to. He
had to know you were here, he couldn’t have been around a
week before someone would have started cracking jokes about
Laura Lyons, girl medic.
“I took a look at
that comic book about you,” he said. For half a second Dani wondered
if she’d been thinking out loud. “You know, the one with the
girl medic who—”
“For Christ’s sake,
why does everyone bring Laura Lyons up?” In a second she had
him backed into a wall, her face inches from his own as she glared
down at him and thrust her finger into his chest. “She’s nothing
like me! Always crying over the guy who got away, I don’t cry,
I never have! Understand?”
“Sure, sure.” He held
out his hands in an appeasing gesture. “It’s called Young
Love Comics, right, I guess they’ve got to put in the mushy
stuff. Even if they make it up.”
“Made up. Exactly.
And don’t ever forget it!” Suddenly Dani was aware how loud her
voice was and how many eyes were watching them, and what a total
fool she was making of herself, and she turned and strode into
the nearest alley, refusing to run even as she felt her cheeks
turn crimson. It’s perfectly understandable, he was your first,
meeting him by surprise—dammit, if they’d lift that stupid rule
against women participating in combat training, I’d be with the
platoon instead of—
“Hey, Dani, wait up!” She
heard his footsteps, didn’t stop, then he was in front of her,
blocking the path. Better dressed than four years earlier: Cheap
suit, cheap shoes, cheap shirt and tie, cheap fedora, but better
quality and without any visible holes.
“What?”
“Look, I—” His mouth
opened and closed, fishlike, for a couple of seconds. “You know
my brother, Tommy? Don’t bring him up, okay? He’s still on the
FBI’s wanted list, I don’t want anyone to know—”
“Bring him up?” That’s
all he wanted? “Do you imagine I’m going to be discussing
you with someone, Mr. Flanagan?”
“Uh, no, but—”
“Maybe I should mention
it.” She moved closer, forcing him to back up along the alley. “Maybe
the TSC security people should know if a science agent’s brother
is a Red spy.”
“He wasn’t a spy,
and you gotta know I wouldn’t—”
“I don’t ‘gotta know’ anything
about you.” I guess I never did. “All I know—” She felt
anger start to overwhelm her again and took a deep breath. “This
is a waste of time. The robots will attack any second, the Guard
will arrive ten minutes later, we need to be out there with the
other—”
At the far end of
the alley, someone gave a scream that would have sounded phony
in a costume melodrama.
Then came the tearing
sound of shattering metal and glass, followed by gunshots and
a scream that wasn’t phony at all.
A beam of silvery
light shot into the sky overhead and struck the helicopter the
camera crew was using. The beam swung to the left and seemed
to drag the helicopter with it, despite the protesting whine
of the chopper engine, until the copter smashed into the fourth
floor of the Skink Savings and Loan and exploded into flames.
“Well, what do you
know?” Caldwell’s assistant Howard Chableau said in his sleepy
drawl as the television screen filled with static. “Told you
a pretty girl like Claire couldn’t—”
“That’s Dr. White
to you,” Claire snapped, rushing over to the screen. “And I don’t
think the problem’s here, you saw that flash? Either the filmless
camera the chopper’s using shorted out or—”
“Moran? Peabody?” Lt.
Niles’ frown deepened as he pressed the buttons on his wrist-radio. “I’m
not getting a response from the helicopter crew—just static.” He
pressed another button. “Nothing from Sgt. Hill at the base,
either.”
Howard frowned and
turned back to the gauges in front of his chair, adjusted a couple
of dials. “Now that’…odd. Omnivac says the magnetic director
is beaming signals to the robots, but it’s not getting anything
back. Professor, would you come look at this?”
“It’s the computer,” one
of the Washington men said uneasily. “There’s always a possibility
they’ll start thinking for themselves.”
“Omnivac could no
more think for itself than it could split this scene and go to
a coffee house,” Claire said, suppressing a laugh. Squares.
But listening to Caldwell
and Chableau, it was obvious something had gone wrong. She began
running through the possibilities, taking comfort from the fact
that even out of control, the robots didn’t have the weaponry
to put Dani or anyone else in danger.
“Stay back!” Dani’s
arm blocked Steve from running out onto the street, while she
fished her Colt from her pocketbook with her other hand. “Sarge’s
first rule: See what you’re fighting first and don’t let it see
you.”
“I bet Laura Lyons
never gets this bossy.” But even as he said it, Steve nodded
and crossed the last nine yards as stealthily as possible. He
tried his wrist-radio for the third time, but he still got nothing
but static.
The gunfire had stopped,
though Steve could still hear some further away. Four robots—eight
feet tall, humanoid, with dully metallic skin—stalked down the
center of the street, heading south, glancing side to side at
every step.
A dozen people lay
scattered up and down the road, some lying crumpled against walls
or trees, three pinned under an overturned Studebaker, a few
lying flat on the ground as if they’d been knocked out trying
to run. A couple of mailboxes and empty cars had been tossed
around for good measure.
Gunfire blazed from
the broken window of a five-and-dime across the street. One of
the robots turned and a silver beam flashed from its eyes through
the window. There was a choked shriek, then silence.
“Jesus.” Steve glanced
at Dani. “They’ve got real death rays!”
“Maybe not, some of
those people in the street are still moving.” Dani glanced from
the departing robots to her Colt, then shook her head reluctantly. “As
soon as the robots are gone, we’ve got to get out there and help
those people. Only—dammit, I don’t have my kit because I came
in Claire’s car and there wasn’t supposed to be—” He saw a fresh
thought hit her. “If the company can’t contact the bunker, they’ll
assume it’s part of the exercise. We have maybe ten minutes before
they get here.”
“And they’ve got tracer
blanks in their guns and handmines loaded with flour, nothing
that might hurt bystanders, right?”
“And there’s a dozen
of those robots on the loose. The way those four are headed,
they’ll be ready and waiting—”
“We gotta stop this.” Steve
stroked his chin, wishing he had Gwen’s brains to call on. “Maybe
if we head back to the bunker?”
“We’d have to get
past the robots. Besides, Claire’s there, if something’s gone
wrong with Omnivac, she can fix it better than we can.” Dani
glanced at the robots, then at the wounded. “Let’s start with
the guys trapped under the car and—”
The sound of squealing
tires cut her words short. A Mustang appeared in the intersection
behind the robots; as they turned, the car smashed into a power
pole, sending it toppling and the wires lashing toward the robots.
A second later, a burst of silver rays sent the car flying away,
the driver leaping out at the last minute, only to be caught
between the car and the wall as the two met.
Almost simultaneously
with his scream, the power lines hit the robots. A crackling
electric aura seemed to form around them, staying just an inch
or so away from their bodies. In addition, electricity seemed
to outline invisible wires reaching out from the robots, half
of them pointing down the street toward the bunker, the others
arcing backward toward the homes on the far side of the town
square. “What the hell is that, Steve?”
“Wait a second…Caldwell
makes these things run with magnetic motors, right? Controlled
from the bunker?” Dani nodded. “So maybe those invisible lines
are where the magnetic controls hit them. Which would mean the
other invisible lines are from someone else’s controller, right?” He
turned to her, grinning. “We can’t stop the robots, but if we
stop the robot-master, we don’t have to.”
“Not we.” Dani raced
into the street ahead of him as the robots turned the corner. “My
job’s to keep people alive while you’re doing that—if you can
do it alone. If you can’t—”
“We got a couple of
dozen agents volunteered for this thing, I’m sure I can find
some help.” They reached an unconscious woman bleeding heavily
from a broken leg that had been hit by a car hood. Steve pulled
off his tie, Dani snatched it from him. Just like in Beantown. “If
you see more robots show up, for god’s sake run and hide.”
“If you see any, find
a way past them. We’ve got maybe eight minutes, at most.” She
wrapped the tie round the woman’s leg. “Thanks for the tourniquet…be
careful, Steve.”
“You, too.” He wanted
to stay and help, but he turned and ran in the direction of those
invisible wires instead, eyes peeled for any agents he could
ask for help. If we don’t stop those robots, a full MASH unit
ain’t gonna be enough.
He turned into the
next street, racing past dried-up, overgrown tangles that had
once been front yards, leaping nimbly around cracks and potholes
in the sidewalk-then he heard metal scraping on stone behind
him. He braked to a stop, spun around and saw another of Caldwell’s
robots striding toward the corner Steve had just turned.
“No, you don’t, buddy!” Steve
drew his automatic and fired a couple of shots into its back.
The robot started to turn, so Steve dove into the nearest garden,
crouching behind a gazebo. The robot stood, surveying the street,
started to turn back; Steve fired three more shots, jumped up
and ran around the side of the house, a second before the silver
beam struck the ground where he’d been standing. A rusty trowel
flew into the air and embedded itself in a tree trunk.
The robot advanced
toward him; Steve drew a sigh of relief, knowing he’d drawn it
away from Dani. Now all I gotta do is keep it chasing me,
stay alive, and find whoever’s behind this. Yeah, piece of cake. He
fired another shot, just to keep its interest, then raced for
the next yard, keeping the house between him and the robots eyes. And
I didn’t bring any more ammo. Great…
After a couple of
minutes of ducking, weaving and shooting he heard the sound of
gunplay nearby with relief. Darting down the street as the robot
crashed through a faded white picket fence behind him, he spotted
the battle on the far side of two empty lots. Trueblood, DiNaldi
and a couple of other agents were trading fire with three men;
two robots were flashing their silver beams at the agents, but
unable to hit anything but walls or trees. The men, big guys
in leather jackets, crouched behind a wood-paneled station wagon
in the back of which a black disc rotated wildly on top of a
small pillar, sparks flashing over its surface. That must
be what’s controlling the robots—could I hit it from here? Maybe
if I move closer—
Then the English guy,
Barclay, leapt from behind a tree, went into a roll and landed
behind the nearest wall. It took Steve a second to realize that
in the middle of the leap he’d hurled a stone straight at the
disc. The black disc didn’t break, but shot off its stand through
the window of the station wagon. The robots suddenly turned and
walked down the street, no longer firing rays. Steve glanced
back and saw the one following him doing the same thing. Sonofabitch,
they did it!
The three men scrambled
into the station wagon and left just ahead of a hail of bullets.
Steve turned and began racing back toward Dani. He tensed a little
as he ran past the robots, but they gave no sign they even noticed.
“Dammit!” Fists clenched,
Dani rose as Steve approached, staring down at the dead man.
With his dark hair, blue suit and glasses, Steve thought the
guy looked like Clark Kent. “Something happened to his heart,
I can’t…so? Did you stop them? Were you right about—”
“I was, but I guess
I’m not the only one can put two and two together. Anything I
can do here?”
“We’ve done everything
that could be done.” Dani pointed at a couple of women. Steve
recognized one as a nurse from the base hospital that he’d dated
once working on some of the other victims, and some guys were
lifting metal off anyone trapped. “Hannah, call an ambulance,
okay? Only it won’t be any good for some of them, there’s four
or five they’ve had some sort of fatal heart attack.”
“I’m sorry,” Steve
said. “I know how you hate to lose anyone.”
“I keep reminding
myself I can’t save them all. It doesn’t help.” She leaned against
him for a second, then seemed to realize what she was doing and
moved away. “Steve, I-I guess you can—”
“So what happened
to us in Boston?” There. I said it. Not so hard. “I thought
we had something. Something…good. And I know that’s stupid, because
it was only one night—”
“The first night didn’t
count?”
“The first night was
great. I’ve never had that much fun without going past second
base. And the daytime, helping you keep people alive, doing something
to help, that felt good, too.”
“Why are you asking me about
Boston?” She looked down into his eyes, and he saw hers were
angry and hurt. “The morning after we made love you got up, told
me you had to go and left. There’s no woman in the world who
doesn’t know what that means.”
“I didn’t say that!”
“You told me that
with the Martians dead, you were heading out of town to resume
looking for Tommy.”
“I was gonna say I’d
come back. Or write. Or something.”
“Oh, were you?
Then why didn’t you?”
“You…you were…” He
thrust his hands in his pockets, remembering her expression,
her voice, her total lack of interest in whether he went or stayed,
lived or died. “It didn’t seem like you gave a damn. And suddenly
I realized how stupid it was to think a girl like you would be
interested in a bum like me.”
“As if you cared if
I was interested?” She stepped closer, taut and angry; he took
a step back. “When you said you were leaving, all I could think
of was when we met and you called me a—”
“I apologized, didn’t
I?” Dammit, I thought we’d settled that. “Look, the first
time I saw you in the dress, the gloves, the hat, I thought you
were like every other ‘lady’ I ever met. The social worker that
said ma was an unfit mother, Miss Trunsdale at the orphanage…then
you dragged that girl out of the car wreck and got her to safety
with Martian ships just a few yards away That’s when I knew you
were different.”
“Not different enough
to stay, though.”
“Tommy’s my brother.
I had to keep looking for him. And I really was going to talk
about staying in touch but…I figured if it wasn’t a big deal
to you, I should play it cool too, instead of acting like a lovesick
chump.”
“Lovesick.” Her voice
made a mockery of the word, but then it softened. “You?”
“Maybe. A little.
Back then, I mean, I—look, was I wrong? About it being no big
deal for you?”
“I told myself it
wasn’t. That there wasn’t any reason it should be.” She was close
enough now he could smell sweat and patients’ blood on her clothes,
the lingering odor of her last cigarette on her breath. “Then
I was talking to some doctors one afternoon, a couple of weeks
later…and I realized you were the only man I’d ever met who didn’t
see Paul Taylor’s daughter when he talked to me.”
“You’ve got a hell
of a lot more going for you than your pop, Dani.”
“My father cast a
long shadow. Being his daughter’s a big deal in Boston.” She
turned away, pulled out her cigarettes and lit one; Steve waited. “You
were the first man I ever met who was more impressed by me than
by my name. And maybe…” Dani scrutinized the end of her cigarette. “I
thought maybe there’d been something besides that, but when you
left I told myself, no, it was just because…well, just because.”
“So, if I’d offered
to write you—”
“I don’t know. You
running all over the country hunting Tommy, kind of hard to date.”
“I’m not running now.
I mean, I’m still looking, but we live almost next door.” He
reached out and caught her free hand; was it his imagination
that her fingers felt different from when he’d shaken it in the
bunker? Less than fifteen minutes ago. I guess a lot can change
in fifteen minutes.
“It’s been four years,
Steve.” She looked away, flushing a little. “I haven’t been waiting
in a spinster’s garrett, I’ve—dated.”
“I’ve—dated—too.”
“You could have tried
to see me when you got here.”
“I told myself it’d
be awkward. And that I didn’t really give a damn. But…hell, when
I saw you in the bunker, I knew the four years I spent without
you around were four wasted years”
“I—” A blaring siren
drawing closer turned Dani around, breaking contact. “The ambulance
is here. They’ll need me to fill them in.” She turned back. “Afterwards,
though—after a day like this I could use a drink.”
“Me, too.” Steve realized
he was smiling, a big goofy grin he couldn’t turn off.
“Only one thing, Steve
Flanagan.” He waited. “Never compare me to Laura Lyons
again, or I’ll show you how many painful places I can put a hypodermic!”
EPILOGUE
“Fingerprints.” Two
days later, Howard Chableau threw back his head with a bitter
laugh. “All the crime comics I used to read, I didn’t even think
about that.”
“Well, I’m sure you
never thought that magnetic controller would end up in our custody,
did you?” Kathleen Meara, TSC security head for the Southwest
office, adjusted her position in her wheelchair. Gianni, her
assistant, stood stony-faced behind her. “An amazing device,
how did you build it? And why—”
“I don’t think I’ll
be answering any questions without a lawyer, ma’am.” He gestured
around the room, an unoccupied office in the TSC’s underground
base. “If you’ll take me to where I can make my phone call—”
“I don’t think you’ll
be getting one of those.” Meara smiled. “Under the Kennedy Act,
I have full authority to hold you until I’m satisfied you’re
the real Chableau, not an alien imposter.”
“That’s ridiculous!
There is no proof—”
“You’re responsible
for the deaths of seventeen people, Mr. Chableau. Some from injuries,
three in the helicopter, most from the ray devices you installed
inside those robots.” Meara leaned forward, pinning him with
her eyes. “Magnetic rays that seized on the iron in the blood,
reversed the flow—would you like to see an autopsy photo of what
happens when blood tries to force its way backwards through a
heart valve?”
“I didn’t—I’m not
saying anything! You still can’t prove—”
“All I’m saying, there’s
not one person who’s going to give a damn if I check you thoroughly
as a possible alien saboteur. There’ll be at least two weeks
of brain scans, psychoanalysis, LSD, questioning—and until it’s
done, you won’t leave this room. I’ll bring in a chamber pot
for you to piss in. I’ll send out enough agents to turn over
every rock you’ve ever been under or even stood next to.”
“Jesus, I hate this
place.” Chableau jumped up, stared at the painting of President
Nixon on the wall. “Building underground, it’s just not natural…look,
if I tell you why I did it, there’s no need for anyone to go
digging, right? I mean, if it doesn’t leave this room, if I have
your word on that.”
“I’ll expect more
from you than that, Mr. Chableau.”
“Look, I swear to
you I don’t know who he is.” He paced up and down; Meara decided
denying him tobacco had been a good move. “And I thought he was
going to steal a couple of robots or something, have them walk
off—but I wasn’t in a position to say no.”
“Blackmail?” Howard
nodded, which sent a lock of dark hair into his eyes. He brushed
it back. “If you’re candid about everything, I see no reason
we have to divulge the details. It is drugs? Moral weakness?
Women?”
Chableau stood, indecisive,
for a long minute or two and the room filled with silence. “I’m
a quadroon.”
“A what?” Gianni said.
“My grandmother was
a nigger, that’s what!” He stayed facing them as if it was an
effort to do so. “She was passing, legally that means I’m colored,
my kids are colored, if they knew about it back in New Orleans…Tommy’s
engaged, Shirley just pledged Tri Delta, you can’t imagine what
it would mean if—”
“I know the way of
the world, Mr. Chableau.” Meara said.
“If you weren’t born
in Louisiana, you don’t know the first thing about it.” He slumped
into the chair. “I’ve no idea how he found out.”
“You should have come
to me when this came up.” Meara decided it wouldn’t encourage
Chableau’s cooperation if he knew his ancestry was already in
his security file. “Part of my job—”
“I couldn’t take that
chance. Not with my kids’ future, my parents’ standing at stake.”
“It won’t do their
social standing much good when you spend the rest of your life
in federal prison, will it?” Meara shook her head. “I’ll find
you better quarters, but Dr. White and Dr. Tyler will still have
to run a full battery of tests, just to make sure. But for now,
start telling me everything you know about your blackmailer.”
“Is there any chance…if
the charges were murder or something, that wouldn’t be as bad
as treason.” Meara shrugged; it wasn’t her decision to make. “It
was four months ago, I was trying to improve the efficiency on
the professor’s experimental magnetic scanner when I received
a package in the mail, with a mimeograph of the birth certificate…”
