Roswell Fanatics

Hello to anyone reading! :fadein:

Minanda: Now, who says Dee won't meet up with our pod squad? Methinks some day, an older woman of our acquaintance will tell a little girl (also of our aquaintance) what sounds like a marvelous fairy tale...but it's all true.

We find out what role Dee winds up playing with the pod squad later on in this book.







PART FIFTY


July 8, 1947, 7:30 a.m.

Proctor residence




“Are you sure you’re going to be all right?” David Proctor asked his wife solicitously as he paused by the front door on his way to work. “I can stay home another day.”

“Don’t be silly,” Emily responded, pulling her robe closer around her even though it was already seventy-eight degrees and muggy. “We’ll be fine. They’re gone, David. It’s over.”

Don’t bet on it, David thought. The last time he thought it was over, it hadn’t been. Still, the aliens had been gone the entire night. Perhaps they had found what they were looking for and gone into their promised hiding. Or been captured. Either way, there was nothing they could do for them now.

David looked over at Mac’s house. It was quiet in the early summer morning, and Mac’s truck was still parked in the driveway. Mac wasn’t back yet, and that gave David pause. There had been nothing on the radio about spaceships or Russians, but David still had the uneasy feeling the other shoe was about to drop.

But—fretting over it wouldn’t make it drop faster, and he didn’t want it to anyway. David kissed his wife’s forehead and pulled her into a hug. “If anything else happens, you call me, you hear?”

“I hear,” she said softly, returning the embrace. “But I don’t see what’s going to happen. Besides, you know me—if anyone tries to mess with my family, I’ll pound’em into the ground.”

She was smiling, but David knew just how sincerely she meant that. Even the fabled maternal instincts of the mother bear didn’t hold a candle to Emily with her dander up. And he wasn’t the only one who had noticed.

“I never told you what Brivari said about you, did I?” he said in a teasing tone.

Emily’s eyes turned wary. “He said something about……me?”

“He did indeed,” David said, tucking his arm around her and ushering her out onto the front porch. “He told me to convey his thanks to my ‘mate’, and said you would make a 'formidable Warder'.”

“What does that mean, exactly?” Emily asked, still wary.

David paused at the front porch steps. “Those people are guardians of some sort, Em. They apparently guard a Royal Family on their planet. Each of them is assigned to a member of the royal family, sort of like their own personal secret service agent. So I guess he meant you’d be good at his job.”

Emily looked uncertain as to just exactly how to take this information, and David wondered again what had passed between her and Brivari. “I noticed you took him some food yesterday. Did something happen between you?”

A look of embarrassment came over Emily’s face. “Well….I might have gotten a little….testy with him. Sort of. Once.”

David raised his eyebrows and smiled. This sounded good. “Testy?”

“Look, he wanted to wake up Dee, and there was no way I would let him do that,” Emily said in sudden exasperation. “I had offered him something to eat, and I guess he didn’t want to talk; he wanted her to translate for him. I just stopped him from waking her up, that’s all.”

“I see,” David said, pursing his lips. “So, you stopped him from waking up Dee, and that’s why he thinks you’d make a ‘formidable Warder’?”

Emily stuffed her hands in the pockets of her robe, looking distinctly uncomfortable. “I might have mentioned—just in passing—that if he didn’t leave her alone, I’d…….well…….dump him on the front lawn and call the Army,” she finished, sounding only slightly abashed.

David burst out laughing, earning him a playful smack from his wife. “What?” Emily demanded.

“Oh, I wish I could have seen the expression on his face when you said that,” David said, chuckling. “I get the impression people don’t talk back to him much.”

“Their faces don’t have much in the way of ‘expression’,” Emily noted, “but at least he took me seriously. He left her alone.”

“Of course he took you seriously,” David replied, eyes twinkling. “He’s alien, not stupid.” He dodged another half-hearted swat. “Maybe we should send you back wherever they came from. You’d whip’em into shape.”

“Go to work before I decide I’m insulted,” Emily ordered, but she was smiling. “I’ll hold the fort against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

“I’m sure you will,” David said sincerely. “Don’t I get a goodbye kiss?”

“Do you really think you deserve one after picking on me like that?” But she gave him one anyway, then turned and scooted back into the house, no doubt hoping no one had seen her in her bathrobe.

David walked to his car, still chuckling. What he wouldn’t have given to have seen that altercation. If it came to a showdown between his wife and the guardian of an alien king, he’d put his money on his wife in a heartbeat.

David slipped into the driver’s seat and shut the door. The last time he’d been in this car he’d been ferrying aliens and alien something-or-others out into the desert, and he looked around nervously, wondering if anything had been left behind. Nothing seemed amiss. He started the car and reached up to adjust the rear view mirror.

Now, that was odd.

David stared for a moment at the squad car clearly visible in his rear view mirror. It wasn’t one of George’s deputies; it was a Roswell car, just sitting there across the street. A lone deputy sat at the wheel. He looked like he was reading something.

David slowly turned around and looked at the squad car. The deputy didn’t look up from whatever he was doing. But what was he doing sitting here on a Corona side street at 7:30 on a Tuesday morning? And why a Roswell deputy? This was George’s jurisdiction. Did this have something to do with Mac? Or his family, perhaps? Was George so low on men that he was borrowing from Roswell?

For a moment, David seriously considered going over and asking the deputy point blank what he was doing there. Then he decided he was being paranoid. The deputy hadn’t come up to their house, hadn’t said word one to him or his family. They certainly weren’t doing anything illegal. Heck, they didn’t even have any aliens left to hide. Let him sit there if he wanted to.

David backed out of his driveway, studiously pretending he did not see the squad car even though he passed within feet of it. So he didn’t see the deputy’s eyes watch him as he pulled away, then swing sideways to cast an appraising glance at his house.



******************************************************


Eagle Rock Military Base



Yvonne threw herself into her car and slammed the door, hot tears welling in her eyes. That had been the most humiliating experience of her life. Make that the second most humiliating experience of her life. Although frankly it was hard to assign a value to either when both were running neck and neck.

Casting a wary eye around the deserted base parking lot, Yvonne put her head down on the steering wheel and finally released the tears that had threatened for hours. Up until now she had held it all in. Somehow, someway, she had managed to stay calm, focused, professional, and tear-free as she had watched—no, assisted—in cutting up a being who could have been saved. She had sat stoically through the first degrading debriefing, where not-so-veiled threats were issued if she ever so much as uttered a peep about what she’d seen last night. After that they had ordered her to get some sleep, which was downright impossible. But she had lain there anyway, wide awake and dry-eyed, refusing to let go, because she knew that doing so would be dangerous. If only they knew, she thought grimly. If only they knew how much I’ve seen. She was far more dangerous to them than they could ever imagine.

When morning came she had tried to see Private Spade. He was the only person she could safely talk to, the only one who would sympathize. But he wasn’t in the infirmary, and her attempts to locate him had proven unsuccessful. Something else to worry about.

So she had checked out a base car and headed for the door. She needed to get off the base, to clear her head, to think. But before she had walked twenty feet she had been stopped and ushered into a Captain Cavitt’s office. She remembered what Stephen—Private Spade—had said about Cavitt, and his description proved accurate. Cavitt eschewed the veiled threats for bald ones, making it quite clear what would happen to her if she opened her mouth. Yvonne had sat there, biting her tongue and nodding, wishing she could do to Cavitt what had been done to Urza the night before.

In the end he had let her go, and she had fled as though she were escaping a prison with no real idea of where she was going. Just away, that was all. She swiped at her eyes with her hands, certain that her make-up was a mess. She’d stop somewhere for breakfast, somewhere with a washroom where she could clean up. Still sniffling, she started the car and drove to the entrance, waiting for the guard to acknowledge her.

But the guard was otherwise engaged with a car on the opposite side trying to gain entry. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he was saying with exasperation, “but you can’t go in there. No one wants to talk to you.”

“How do you know no one wants to talk to me?” demanded the driver of the car, an assertive woman with beautifully coifed hair. “Why can’t they tell me that themselves?”

“There are no reporters allowed on base,” the guard ground out, obviously have trouble controlling his temper. Guard and reporter must have been at this for some time. “The few people authorized to speak with the press don’t want to speak to you. That’s final.”

“Why? They got somethin’ to hide?”

Do they ever, Yvonne thought. She sat in her car on the opposite side of the guard hut watching the altercation, and for just a moment, her eyes locked with that of the reporter.

Yvonne held the gaze for several seconds until the guard turned around. She held up her pass. “You can go,” the guard said without examining it further, and turned back to continue the argument with the reporter.

Yvonne threw the reporter one more look before driving off. She drove until she was just out of sight of the base, and then pulled off the road and waited. What am I doing? she thought fiercely. They would have her head for this if anyone found out. And she needed to be careful what she said—no one could know the extent of her involvement. But she had to talk to someone. They were going to deny everything, pretend this never happened. They claimed the American people weren’t ready to hear there was life on other planets. They might be right about that, but one thing Yvonne was sure of—keeping all of this a secret gave them the freedom to do anything they wanted without having to answer to anyone. No one should have that much freedom. A lack of checks and balances was always alluring to those with a lust for power, and there was never a shortage of people who fit that description.

A sound made her glance in the rear view mirror; a car had pulled up behind her. A moment later, the lady reporter climbed into Yvonne’s passenger seat and studied her carefully. “Sweetheart, you look like you just lost your best friend,” she said sincerely.

Feeling like an absolute idiot, Yvonne dissolved in tears. The reporter said nothing, merely produced a handkerchief and let her cry. When the sobs subsided a couple of minutes later, the reporter said, “What’s your name, dear?”

“Yvonne.”

“Well Yvonne, I’m Betty Osorio, Fort Worth Star Telegram. Are you sure you want to be seen in the company of a woman of such ill repute?” Betty smiled at her own joke, and Yvonne couldn’t help smiling in return. “You look like you need someone to talk to,” Betty commented seriously. Yvonne nodded.

“You’re not the only one,” Betty said, offering a second handkerchief. “Talked to someone else this morning who needs to spill, most likely about the same thing’s bothering you. Lucky for both of you I’m a great listener.”

Yvonne stared at her, uncertain of what to say or whether to say anything at all. Maybe this was a bad idea.

“Tell you what,” Betty was saying. “I’m meeting that someone else for breakfast. Why don’t you join us? You can just listen if you want to. I can’t make you say anything. Or threaten you if you do,” she added, with a knowing look.

Yvonne’s eyes widened. She knew. There was no telling how much she knew, but she definitely knew something. And if she already knew, why then, it wouldn’t be telling, would it?

“I’ll go hop back in my car, and you follow me,” Betty instructed, climbing out. “We’re heading for downtown Roswell. That should be far enough away to throw off Cavitt’s goons.” She winked at Yvonne and shut the door.

Yvonne watched Betty walk back to her car. So Captain Cavitt was threatening other people besides her? Well, of course he was. Because no one was watching. No one would know. Unless, of course, someone said something.

Betty’s car pulled away, heading south toward Roswell. Yvonne hesitated only a moment before starting her own car and following.



******************************************************


Proctor residence



Emily Proctor wearily climbed the stairs to the second floor. She really should stay up and get some work done, what with having been away and all, but she couldn’t help thinking how much she would dearly love to climb into bed and go back to sleep. She had been awakened several times last night for reasons that weren’t clear. Probably just paranoia from her exceedingly odd day yesterday.

She paused as she passed Dee’s bedroom door. Her daughter was sleeping peacefully, so peacefully that Emily decided to indulge herself and head back to bed. But as she walked toward her bedroom, a noise from the guest bedroom down the hall made her head that way. Reaching the doorway, she saw the source—the guest bedroom window was wide open, curtains blowing in the breeze.

Emily relaxed against the doorframe. That’s what she had kept hearing last night. This bedroom wasn’t used often, so she had no idea how the window had been opened, but no matter. Maybe Dee had been playing in here. She entered the room to close the window, and froze as she approached the neat twin bed in the middle of the room.

There was a hand on the floor, jutting out from the end of the bed. A human hand.

Emily stood stock still, accelerating from sleepy to hyper in three seconds flat. She waited several long, endless seconds, her heart pounding in her chest. The hand didn’t move. Its owner appeared to be unconscious or…….worse. Creeping slowly forward, she rounded the end of the bed.

Two men were sprawled on the floor. She didn’t recognize the owner of the hand. He was lying on his side, one arm flung out, with a nasty looking wound in his chest. The other man was slumped against the wall, his left hand cradling an amber colored rock. She recognized that one: Brivari

Emily turned and scooted out of the room, pausing at the end of the hallway to lean on the banister, breathing heavily. She had a sudden, irrational urge to run screaming out of the house, calling for the husband she had so cavalierly sent off to work with assurances that she could handle anything. One injured alien had been unsettling enough; now there were two. Did this mean the rescue mission had been successful? What on earth should she do with them? She couldn’t just call an ambulance. But she could call the Sheriff—according to David, George Wilcox had at least a working knowledge of what was going on. Or she could wake up Dee, who seemed to be the reigning human expert on all things alien.

Emily stood there for a good five minutes, regaining her composure and thinking. Finally she reached a decision. She would not call George—he knew even less than she did. And she would not disturb her daughter, who had already been through enough. I handled them myself yesterday, and I’ll handle them myself again, she thought, deliberately ignoring the fact that yesterday there had been only one of “them” to handle, and that one had been quite a handful all by himself.

Emily walked back to the guest bedroom, moving through sheer force of will. I can do this, she coaxed herself. Of course she could; she’d done worse. She had been the first to enter her brother-in-law’s apartment after he had killed himself, the only one besides the ambulance crew and the poor souls who’d had to clean up who knew the grisly extent of what they’d found there. She had lived through that, and she would live through this too. She entered the room quickly, before she had a chance to lose her nerve, and forced herself to rationally assess the situation at hand.

The bag containing the strange stones lay at Brivari’s side. Most likely he had been trying to heal the man on the floor when his strength had just given out. Emily knelt down and examined the chest wound on the injured man. The wound looked as though it had partially healed and he was breathing, but he still didn’t look good.

What to do? Should she attempt to finish what Brivari had started? Did it work on unconscious people? Brivari had been conscious when she had used the stone on him. Conscious and melting into many strange shapes. Emily uttered a silent thank you to any deity listening that this new alien wasn’t doing the same thing.

Deciding it was worth a try, Emily reached over the injured alien for one of the stones. Something flew up behind her and caught her around the throat. She scratched frantically at it with her fingers, trying to twist her head to see what held her. Brivari was still slumped against the wall unmoving, so it must be the other one—he was awake! That was his arm around her neck, his breath hissing in her ear. “Who are you?” a voice hissed, heavy with malice.

But his grip was weak, and Emily could feel him trembling. He wasn’t up to this. She struggled to remember which side his wound was on now that she was facing away from him, and decided it would be his left. Elbowing him hard in his left side, she was rewarded with release and a gasp of pain. She scrambled away and turned around, pressing her back up against the opposite wall and staring at her attacker, panting.

The alien was leaning on one elbow, clutching his side in obvious agony. But his eyes were open and gazing at her with palpable hatred. Why would he hate her? What had she done to him?

“Who are you?” he hissed again, wincing as the effort to speak cost him more pain.

“Who am I?” Emily said wildly. “Who the hell are you?”

“Am I your prisoner?”

“Pris……..what?” Emily said, flabbergasted. “No, you’re not my prisoner! What are you talking about?”

“Why did you attack me?”

All right. That did it. Now she was mad. Emily harkened back to her Irish ancestors, who tended to get mad long before they got scared. It was a useful trait in certain situations, and this was one of them. “Attack you? Excuse me? You’re the one who attacked me. And for no good reason, I might add. I was just trying to reach one of those stones to help you. Although at the moment, I can’t think why I would have wanted to do that,” she added darkly.

The alien’s expression changed at the mention of the stones. For the first time he seemed to take in his surroundings, looking around the room, eyes coming to rest on Brivari and the bag of stones on the floor beside him. His gaze dropped to his wound and then returned to her. “Where am I?” he asked sharply, although with somewhat less malice. “How did I get here?”

“You’re in my house,” Emily answered curtly, still flat against the wall, “and I have no idea how you got here. Ask him,” she said, indicating Brivari. “He was here yesterday recuperating from his injuries. That’s probably why he brought you here.”

“Yesterday?” The alien slumped back down on the floor. “So that’s where he was. All that time I spent looking for him…..” Then it must have suddenly occurred to him that she had never answered his initial question, and he pushed himself up on one elbow and repeated it. “Who are you?”

Emily opened her mouth to announce that he was in her house, so he could damned well go first with the introductions. But the words froze in her throat when she looked past him to the doorway where a small figure was standing. The alien followed her gaze and whipped his head around to see her daughter, her small, vulnerable daughter standing in the doorway.

Run! Emily thought, gesturing frantically. But Dee ignored her, walking right into the room and up to the prone alien. Kneeling down beside him, she looked him directly in the eyes without so much as a shred of fear.

“She’s my mother.”


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Next week....

Emily Proctor deals with her uninvited houseguests, and...

....Dee finds about what really happened to Valeris, and....

....the Proctors receive a visit from a certain nosy deputy of our aquaintance.

I'll post Part 51 next Sunday.

Hello and thank you to all who are reading! :Fade-color

Hi Minanda!






PART FIFTY-ONE


July 8, 1947, 8 a.m.

Proctor residence




“Dee,” Emily said carefully, struggling to keep her voice even, “walk out and close the door. I’ll handle this.” Even as she spoke, Emily had no idea how she would “handle” this. But whoever this new alien was, he had attacked her, and she didn’t want her daughter anywhere near him.

“It’s okay, Mama,” Dee said gravely, as though apologizing for an unruly relative. “He’s just like that.”

“You know him?” Emily asked, incredulous. Dee nodded, and Emily glanced down at the alien to find him looking quite different than he had earlier. All the fight seemed to have gone out of him. He had slumped back to the floor and closed his eyes, relaxing in a way that made it clear he felt safe. Safe in the presence of her eight year-old. Don’t get too comfortable, buster, Emily thought grimly. You’re not safe in my presence.

The tension in the room had evaporated. Still kneeling beside the prone alien, Dee proceeded to have the most incredible conversation.

“Urza died.”

Urza. The name sounded familiar, but Emily had heard so many names, most of them strange. Her husband and her daughter had told her so much yesterday, and she hadn’t been able to digest it all. Much of it had gone in one ear and out the other.

The alien’s eyes flicked open. “He came to me in a dream,” Dee said, as if answering an unspoken question. “He….” her voice trembled a little “……he died in my dream.”

The alien’s eyes closed, whether from exhaustion or grief, Emily could not tell. More silence. Dee looked as though she were listening. At length, she said, “He told me Valeris was dead. Is that true?”

This time the silence was longer. Emily grew increasingly uncomfortable that her daughter could communicate semi-privately with this person, effectively shutting her out of the conversation. A long time passed while Emily looked from one to the other, trying to figure out what was happening. She got her answer when Dee suddenly broke down in tears. Dee hated crying in front of anyone, so whatever she had heard must have been very upsetting indeed.

Moving for the first time since she had broken free of the alien’s grasp, Emily pulled her daughter into her lap and hugged her tightly, stroking her hair and murmuring softly. “What is it, sweetheart? What happened?”

“They shot him, Mama!” Dee sobbed, sounding angry as well as sad. “He was surrendering, and they shot him! They can’t do that, can they? If someone surrenders they’re not supposed to shoot, are they? Didn’t Daddy say that? Didn’t he?”

Emily closed her eyes and rocked her daughter back and forth, back and forth. How did one explain that angry, frightened people frequently don’t follow the rules? The whole idea of something as messy and chaotic as war actually having ‘rules’ was a notion she had always found ridiculous. Perhaps it was a way to insert sanity into an insane situation, and perhaps she should be grateful that someone had bothered to try. But somehow she doubted that would be any consolation to the sobbing child in her arms .

I shouldn’t have to console her at all, Emily thought bitterly, as Dee continued to cry. She and David had jumped through all sorts of hoops trying to keep as much of the war as possible from their daughter. They had hidden the newspapers, listened to the radio only at night after she went to bed, and been careful what was said in front of her. Who would have thought that after all they went through to preserve her innocence from the war on this planet, it would be a war on another that would prove its thief.

Emily hugged Dee tightly and threw a murderous glare at the alien on the floor, who was watching them through half open eyes. If it were anyone else, Emily might have considered the expression on his face to be one of regret, but given who they were dealing with, it might only be exhaustion. “I hate what you people have done to her!” she hissed over her daughter’s heartbroken sobs.

“It was not my people who did this to her,” the alien replied wearily. “It was yours.”



******************************************************


11:45 a.m.

Office of The Roswell Daily Record, Roswell, New Mexico.




Frank Tepper bit into the glazed doughnut, feeling only slightly guilty that it was almost lunch time. So he was eating lunch backwards…..so what? What difference did it make if one ate one’s dessert first? It was all going to the same place, right? No different than reading his newspaper back to front instead of the other way around. Frank eased his portly frame into the chair behind his newsroom desk and made short work of the doughnut.

The door to the newsroom flew open suddenly, banging into the wall with such force that Frank almost dropped the second doughnut he had just picked up. Looking up in surprise, he saw Jack Armstrong, cub reporter, barging into the newsroom waving a sheet of paper and calling excitedly, “Frank! You’re not going to believe this!”

“Believe what?” Frank asked through a mouthful of doughnut. He looked around the room for rescue, but none was at hand; everyone had already left for lunch, apparently deciding to bake elsewhere in the New Mexico summer heat for at least a little while. Frank made a mental note to make another attempt at convincing his supervisors that the notion of "siesta" made perfect sense in their climate. It’s not like they would be missing much—nothing ever happened in Roswell anyway. It was definitely not on anyone’s map.

“You are not going to believe this!” Jack repeated. He slapped the paper down on Frank’s desk and proceeded to announce triumphantly, “An alien ship has crashed up on Pohlman Ranch!”

Frank sighed, spitting doughnut crumbs as he did so. Jack was brand new, nineteen years-old, fresh out of high school, an eager worker and a total pushover. Basically the kid believed everything he heard. How many times had he come crashing in here with some wild tale or other? Frank had lost count. Honestly, the crazies out there must love Jack Armstrong. He fell for everything hook, line, and sinker.

“Jack, Jack, Jack, how many times have I told you not to believe everything you hear?” Frank said in a bored tone, still chewing. “I swear, the way you believe even the nuttiest stories, you’re walking around with a bulls eye on your forehead. And every nut in town has their bow cocked, ready to shoot.”

Jack was unfazed. “This time I’m right,” he said confidently. “I have proof!”

Frank shook his head in exasperation. “Proof? What proof? Another drunk that had a spiritual vision? Oh, wait, I forgot; it’s a spaceship this time. So the drunk saw God on a spaceship—right?”

Jack tapped the paper on the desk. “This press release is from the Eagle Rock Base. Says they found a crashed flying saucer.” He grinned smugly. “Read it and weep, Frank. This time, I’m right!”

Frank stopped chewing. The Army base? He picked up the paper and began to read. About halfway through, the doughnut dropped from his hands, and he clutched the document in both sets of sticky fingers as he finished reading it.

By God, the kid was right. It was official. The United States Army was actually admitting that an alien spaceship had crashed north of Roswell on Pohlman Ranch. “Where did you get this?” he asked in a shaky voice.

“United Press Bureau,” Jack answered, beaming. “They got it from Frank Joyce down at the radio station. This was delivered to KGFL a little while ago, and Frank sent it on to United Press.”

Frank hastily rummaged through his desk for a notebook and a pencil. “Go,” he ordered Jack. “Get anything you can. Anything. If the radio has broadcast this, then everyone in town knows, or they will shortly.”

“Will do,” Jack said happily. “But….where are you going?”

“The Army base, of course,” Frank replied. “No hard feelings, kid,” he added upon seeing Jack’s crestfallen look. “Seniority, you know. Now, move.”

Jack scurried away while Frank scrambled for his car keys. Lunch would have to wait.

Roswell was now officially on the map.



******************************************************


Brazel residence




Shielding her eyes from the bright summer sunshine, Dee Proctor peered into the front window of Mac Brazel’s house. Empty. No one was home, not even Mrs. Brazel, and that worried her. She kept telling herself that Mac could take care of himself, but she had felt the same way about Urza and Valeris, and look what had happened to them.

She moved to the front door and tried it—locked. That was weird. No one in Corona locked their doors. She trudged around the back and tried the back door, but that was locked too. Frustrated, she circled back around to the front and banged on the door, shouting, “Mac! Mac! Are you home?” Maybe he was hiding because he didn’t want the Army to find him again. Or maybe he just didn’t want to talk to anyone at all after what had happened, something she could certainly understand. But no one answered, and she slid to her knees in frustration, those damnable tears sliding down her face once again.

Dee swiped her hand furiously across her face. How much longer was this going to go on? Just when she thought she couldn’t cry anymore, she did. No one she’d been close to had ever died before. She remembered Uncle James’s funeral, but she hadn’t been that close to him. He had gone to war when she was very young, and her memories of him back then were vague. After the war he had been sad and quiet, but not unfriendly. He had seemed to perk up when she was around, which was probably why her father kept bringing her with him whenever he visited his brother. Not that it had helped in the end.

Dee thought back to the funeral and the sad time afterward, realizing that, for the first time, she understood just a little of what her father had gone through. For the first time she understood why his throat would seem to catch and he would just stop talking, why he would abruptly get up from the dinner table and disappear for no apparent reason. It was because the hurt was always there. It never went away, and when it bubbled to the surface unbidden you just started crying, and there was nothing you could do about it.

She had sat for a very long time watching the fireworks burst in Antar’s reddish sky, refusing to look at what she knew would be an empty space where Urza had been sitting. She had tried to tell herself that his absence didn’t necessarily mean he was dead; he might be just exhausted and unable to keep himself in her dream. But he had told her he was dying, and in her heart she had known he was right. She had sat there for ages, delaying the moment when she would have to admit he was dead, and the next thing she knew she was hearing the sounds of scuffling and her mother’s angry voice. And she had walked into the guest room, still half asleep, and asked Jaddo what had happened. “He was attacked with a human projectile weapon,” he had answered. "We were unable to save him.”

How could they shoot him? Dee wondered furiously, clenching her fists. They broke the rules! Grown-ups had no business breaking rules, what with the way they carried on about children following them. And she was the one who had told Valeris what to do, how to surrender, and they had let her down. Her own people had let her down.

Dee pulled herself to her feet, her face set. The tears had stopped, and she found herself feeling more angry than sad. If she had learned one thing, it was this: Never trust grown-ups. They didn’t even follow their own rules. She would never make the mistake of trusting a grown-up again.

“Hey there, Missy.”

Dee whirled around to see a sheriff’s deputy standing at the bottom of the front porch steps. She knew most of Sheriff Wilcox’s deputies, but this man was unfamiliar. His uniform was different too.

“Hello,” she said warily.

The deputy smiled and put a foot up on the first step. It was a careful smile, a fake smile. The smile of someone who wants something.

“I’ve been lookin’ for you,” the deputy said.

Dee’s eyes narrowed. “Looking for me? Why?”

“I’ve got something that belongs to you. Thought I’d bring it by.”

Dee didn’t reply. She didn’t get the feeling this man was one of those other aliens, but all the same she didn’t like him. His face was smiling, but his eyes were hungry. Predatory.

The deputy waited for a response and, when none was forthcoming, pulled one hand from behind his back. A hand that held a sneaker. A red sneaker. Her sneaker. The one she had left in the hallway of the ship to mark the invisible door.

“Why do you think that’s mine?” she asked, careful to keep her face expressionless. Now she knew what he wanted, and she meant to see he didn’t get it.

“I see you’re wearing red sneakers,” the deputy answered, still smiling.

“If you can see that, you can also see I’m wearing two red sneakers,” Dee said flatly. “What would I do with a third?” She silently thanked her lucky stars that she had a pack rat mother who bought clothes ahead of time when they were on sale. These new red sneakers, a size larger than she usually wore, had been dutifully tucked away in the closet, awaiting the day she would need them. And boy had she needed them.

The deputy’s mouth twitched a little, as though holding that false smile was becoming a mite difficult. “Are you saying this isn’t yours?”

“I’m saying I don’t have a third foot to put it on,” Dee replied tartly. She started down the porch steps, only to have Mr. Fake Smile block her path.

“I know this is yours, missy,” the deputy said evenly. “Don’t lie to me.”

Lie? We’ll see about lying. “Where did you find it?” Dee challenged, wondering if he would have the nerve to tell the truth, and doubting very much that he would.

Several long seconds passed. Dee watched with satisfaction as the deputy hesitated, obviously weighing his options. Finally he seemed to reach some inner compromise. “I found it up on Pohlman Ranch,” he said carefully, “in a place where I wouldn’t have expected to see something like this.”

Not bad, Dee thought, impressed in spite of herself. But not good enough for someone who just called her a liar. She shrugged and pushed past him, marching toward her house.

A hand caught her arm, stopping her in her tracks. “Let go of me,” she ordered coldly.

Her tone surprise him and he dropped her arm, but his eyes were hard. “Look here, sweetheart,” the deputy snapped, dropping all pretense of cheerfulness. “You and I both know where I found this shoe. I was hoping we could keep this between ourselves, but if I have to I’ll…..”

“You’ll what?” Dee interrupted. “Tell my parents?” She had the sudden, irrational urge to laugh at the lunacy of that. Just a few days ago that would have been a viable threat, but now? No way.

“I know where you live,” the deputy pointed out.

“Big deal,” Dee said in a bored tone. “Everyone in Corona knows where I live. Everyone in Corona knows where everyone else in Corona lives.” She turned and started walking away again.

“I mean it!” he called after her, a tinge of desperation in his voice. “I’ll talk to your parents!”

“Go right ahead,” she called back without turning around. “But I’ll warn you—my Mama’s in a mood today.” She smiled as she kept walking, hearing no footsteps behind her. He didn’t really want to talk to her parents. He didn’t want to have to admit where he found that sneaker because then he’d sound like a crazy man. He probably had plenty of crazy people to deal with in his job, and didn’t want to look like one himself.

As Dee kept walking, she felt those traitorous tears welling up in her eyes again. Seeing that shoe had been hard. It was covered with dark stains that most people would have taken for dirt, but she knew better.

It was Urza’s blood.



******************************************************


Proctor residence



Emily Proctor turned the grilled cheese sandwiches in the frying pan, noting with no small amount of satisfaction that her hands had finally stopped shaking. There’s a record, she thought ironically. It only took four hours this time.

A noise behind her made her jump. Whirling around, she was chagrined to see a bird tapping on the kitchen window. Good Lord. Even birds were setting her off now. Having aliens in the house could do that to you.

She had sat for a long time on the guest room floor, cradling her sobbing child and only barely resisting the urge to clobber the prone alien on the floor. He was right and she hated him for it: It was her people who were to blame for her daughter’s current state, not his. All that time she and David had spent shielding Dee from what happened during the war, only to have to sit there and watch her child’s innocence stripped away by something she never could have even imagined. It was like watching her being skinned alive.

After she had calmed down, Dee had insisted on using the special stones on the two aliens, saying that she would take Brivari and Emily should help the other, more injured one because the stones seemed to work better for her. Emily had been less than enthusiastic about this idea, and the injured alien, whom Dee kept referring to as “Jaddo”, looked extremely skeptical. But he must have learned something about her because he wisely kept his mouth shut, offering no objection when she knelt beside him and gingerly picked up one of the strange rocks. It burst to life just as quickly as before, causing the alien to suck in his breath in surprise. Emily had found herself a bit more adept using the stones this time, although she still didn’t really understand what she was doing with them. She had sent the alien so much energy so quickly that the wound on his chest rippled and disappeared before their eyes. The speed with which it healed looked almost painful, but she had been unable to summon pity for him. That’s for grabbing me around the neck, she had thought sourly.

Afterward, Dee had explained that Jaddo and Brivari had been trying to rescue the two others when they had been discovered and attacked. The last thing Jaddo said he remembered was being shot and falling to the floor on the Army base; the next thing he remembered was waking up in their guest room with Emily reaching over him. She had felt slightly guilty upon hearing that. No wonder he had grabbed her, if the last thing he remembered was being shot.

Emily reached into the refrigerator for a bottle of milk; there was none. Damn! In all the “excitement” she’d forgotten to get the fresh bottles out of the milk box this morning. Hopefully the milk hadn’t spoiled. On the way to the side door she glanced up the back stairway. They had heard nothing from either alien for the past several hours. Jaddo had seemed to fall into a deep sleep after he had healed, while Brivari merely stirred a bit. They had decided to leave them on the floor where they were, a strategy which had certain advantages: The two aliens were invisible from the doorway. Emily wasn’t exactly sure why this fact gave her comfort. It was as if she expected the Army to descend at any moment and arrest them for harboring fugitives.

Emily reached for the door handle only to have her daughter appear out of nowhere, whisking the door open before Emily could reach it. As the screen door slammed, Dee deliberately closed the main door, which was odd given that it was already ninety degrees in the shade. “What’s wrong?” Emily asked in alarm, silently adding to herself, I mean, what’s wrong now. “Did something happen?”

“There’s a sheriff’s deputy on the way over here with my shoe, the one I lost in the spaceship,” Dee said without preamble. “He’s trying to make me admit I was out there, but I wouldn’t. He said he’s coming over here.”

Emily dimly remembered seeing David hide the mate to Dee’s lost shoe far under her bed. At the time, she’d thought that perhaps he’d snapped. Now she saw the sense in what he’d done. But no matter. George Wilcox was a good friend of the family, and he knew of all these shenanigans. One phone call to George should smooth this all out. “Go upstairs,” Emily said calmly, kissing the top of her daughter’s head. “I’ll handle this.” After everything else she’d handled, this should be a piece of cake.

Dee nodded and headed up the stairs wordlessly. Emily watched her go, uneasy about the hard look in her daughter’s eyes. She had never seen her look so stony. The skinned alive look had been replaced by a hard, impenetrable shell. It was not an improvement.

There was a knock at the side door. Emily opened the main door and peered through the screen, expecting to see a familiar face. Chaves County was not huge, and the Proctors had at least met all of George’s deputies. But the man at the door was wearing a Roswell uniform, and his face was unfamiliar. Not to mention covered with an irritatingly fake smile. Emily disliked him immediately.

Plastering a similar smile on her own face and placing her hand on the screen door handle just in case, Emily said, “Morning, Deputy. Or is it afternoon? Can I help you?”

“Morning, Mrs. Proctor,” the deputy replied pointedly. “I came to return something that belongs to your daughter.”

“I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage, Deputy,” Emily replied, annoyed that he had sought to intimidate her by using her name. Corona being such a small town, that was hardly difficult information to come by.

“My apologies, ma’am. Deputy Valenti.” He doffed his hat politely, and Emily nodded perfunctorily. “As I said, I have something that belongs to your daughter.”

“And what might that be?”

The deputy produced Dee’s red sneaker, covered in black stains that looked like tar. Emily knew perfectly well the stains were not tar, and wasn’t currently interested in speculating on just what they might be. “I’m sorry,” Emily said sweetly, “but my daughter has both of her sneakers. I’m afraid that belongs to someone else.”

“Oh it’s hers, all right,” the deputy replied lightly. “I’m sure of that.”

“And why is that?” Emily asked, watching Deputy Valenti’s appraising glance as he tried to decide if she knew anything.

After several seconds he had apparently decided she didn’t. “She left it somewhere. Somewhere she shouldn’t have been. I saw her.”

“ ‘Somewhere’, Deputy? If you’re implying my daughter has broken a law, you’ll have to do much better than that.”

The deputy leaned in toward the screen door and lowered his voice. “I know this may come as a shock to you, Mrs. Proctor, but your daughter has information which is vital to national security. She may not even realize she has it. I’d be much obliged if you’d let me in to have a look around and speak with her.”

Emily managed a light laugh. “My daughter? National security? Nonsense! Besides, if my daughter has such valuable information, why are you here? You’re just a local Sheriff's Deputy.”

Deputy Valenti dropped his voice to a whisper. “I was hoping to leave other authorities out of this,” he said cryptically. “There’s no telling how they’d react if they knew she knows something. It would be a lot safer for her if you would just let me handle this. If you don’t, and they find out, well……..” He let the sentence drop suggestively.

“Why, that sounds suspiciously like a threat,” Emily said coolly, letting her words and change in tone sink in for a moment before moving in for the kill. “Let me get this straight. You announce that sneaker belongs to my daughter without a shred of proof. You imply she has committed some kind of wrongdoing, but you won’t say what, or where. You produce no evidence to back up any of these nebulous claims, only a sneaker, the likes of which are probably worn by dozens of children in this town alone. How am I doing so far, Deputy?”

“Your daughter’s current pair of sneakers is obviously brand new,” Valenti pointed out.

“So? Is wearing new sneakers a crime?”

Deputy Valenti’s casual smile evaporated, replaced by a look of grim determination. “Let me in, Mrs. Proctor, and things will go much easier for you.”

“Get off my property,” Emily ordered.

Then two things happened in swift succession—Valenti whipped open the screen door, tearing it from her hands. And Emily threw the inner door closed, realizing at the last minute that Valenti’s hand was on the doorjamb, right in line with the rapidly closing door.

Afterwards Emily would remember this moment as a turning point for her. At the time, all she could think of was that she couldn’t under any circumstances let that deputy in her house. He wasn’t likely to find the mate to the missing sneaker buried under Dee’s bed, but there were a couple of other things lying around upstairs he was bound to notice. He had no solid evidence now, and it was her job to make sure he didn’t find any, because he was right about one thing—she had no doubt that horrible things would happen to Dee if her involvement in all of this came to light.

So Emily slammed the door right on Valenti’s hand, provoking a howl of rage and pain. She leaned her shoulder against the door, the deputy’s struggling fingers only inches from her nose, and pushed as hard as she could. Even as she did it, she couldn’t believe it. She couldn’t believe she was willfully inflicting pain on another human being out of fear.

After what seemed like an eternity of pushing and howling, Emily released the door. The hand abruptly disappeared. The screen door slammed. Opening the door, Emily found a steaming mad Valenti outside, nursing his swollen hand and glaring at her furiously.

She plastered a beatific smile on her face. “Honestly, Deputy, you should be more careful. It’s a bad idea to stick your hand where it doesn’t belong.”

Then she closed the inner door and locked it, leaning her head against the door and breathing hard. “I can’t believe I did that,” she whispered out loud. “I can’t believe I hurt him.”

“Why not?” said an unfamiliar voice behind her.

Emily whirled around to find Brivari at the top of the stairs behind her.

“You should not feel guilty,” he continued casually, as though he were discussing the weather. “Protection sometimes requires violence. But you already knew that, didn’t you?”


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Next week....

...Emily has her first real conversation with Briviari, and....

......the consequences of the Army's press release come home to roost in Sheriff George Wilcox's office in the form of a testy Roswell deputy with a sore hand.


I'll post Part 52 next Sunday.

Hello everyone! :Fade-color

Misha: Hey there! I appreciate feedback from any source, whether it's the board, e-mails, carrier pigeon, whatever. But it was a nice surprise to see you here! :turn-l:

Emily will be sparring with both Brivari and Jaddo all the way through Book 4, and Dee will be with us right to the end of the series, so there's a lot more stubborn human female/stubborn alien action in the future.






PART FIFTY-TWO


July 8, 1947, 12:30 p.m.

Proctor residence



Emily Proctor closed her eyes for a moment. Her heart had already been beating at about a million miles per hour. She really didn’t need to find an alien standing behind her, eavesdropping on the most despicable thing she’d ever done.

After several deep breaths in blessed darkness, Emily opened her eyes to find that Brivari had descended the staircase halfway. Instinctively she backed up, bumping into the recently closed door. The recently closed door that probably had the blood of a Roswell sheriff’s deputy on it.

He made no move to come closer, and Emily was grateful for that. She had never seen him up and about, never heard him speak. She had briefly seen him in this form yesterday, but he had been injured then, and….well, buck naked. She liked him much better clothed and speaking English. He looked so…..normal. Even if the casual way he had dismissed what she had just done did chill her to the bone.

“How can you say I shouldn’t feel guilty?” Emily asked in disbelief. “Did you see what I did to him?”

“I doubt he was permanently injured,” Brivari replied calmly, as if that made it all right. “You made it clear you would not tolerate threats to the one you guard. I believe he understood your point.”

“But I don’t know that he meant any real harm,” Emily objected. “He may have just been curious.”

“Even if he meant no harm, consider the ones he would tell, whether out of fear or a desire to profit from this information. You don’t really think he would keep such knowledge to himself, do you?”

“I……” Emily stopped. She had been about to argue that the deputy’s kinder, gentler instincts may have taken over if he had learned the truth, but she didn’t really believe that. Not for a moment. “You just got here. What makes you think you’re such an excellent judge of human nature?” she said irritably, annoyed in spite of herself.

Brivari sat down on the stairs, even that small movement causing Emily to back more firmly into the door. For the first time she noticed how haggard he looked. He had been exhausted when he left yesterday; he couldn’t be much better off today.

“Not human nature—sentient nature,” he replied patiently, as though explaining something to a child. “All sentient species are essentially the same: They crave self-preservation and self-advancement.” He paused. “You are ordinary people. You have likely not had to face danger of this magnitude and the choices it presents. I have lived a long time, with most of that time spent guarding those who are constantly in danger due to their station. My job was to keep my charges alive by any means necessary, and there were times when those means were violent. I have learned to quickly assess the danger a given individual poses. And that one,” he said, indicating the nearest window, “poses a danger—of that I am certain. And so are you, which is why you acted to neutralize that danger.”

“That still doesn’t give me the right to hurt anybody,” Emily said, though with less certainty. Her guilt was beginning to evaporate, and she wasn’t sure that was a good thing.

“Nonsense,” Brivari said firmly. “If he would harm those you guard, you have a responsibility to prevent that. You do have some grasp of what they would do to your child were they to learn of her involvement with us, do you not?”

Emily didn’t answer. She wanted to argue that the better angels of our natures should at least be given a chance to assert themselves before being slapped aside by violence. She wanted to argue that, despite all his alleged experience, and despite all the alarms going off in her own head, neither of them really knew for certain what would have happened if she had let that deputy into the house. Perhaps he would have found nothing and been thrown off the trail, dispensing with the need for crushed knuckles. But she couldn’t, because she didn’t believe any of that herself. The choice had been the deputy or her family, and she had chosen her family. An obvious choice for her…but what about Brivari?

“Why do you care about what would happen to Dee?” Emily asked, her eyes narrowing, “She’s not your concern.”

His reply was succinct. “At the moment, her safety and mine are inextricably linked.”

“So that’s it,” Emily said, tight-lipped. “You’re not worried about the safety of who I guard—you’re worried about the safety of who you guard.”

“Of course I am,” he answered calmly, and without the slightest tinge of regret. “Just as you are more concerned about your daughter than about us. If you had to make a choice, would you give me up to save your child?”

In a heartbeat, Emily thought, feeling selfish even as she thought it.

“Of course you would,” Brivari answered for her. “And that is as it should be. You are a Warder, Emily Proctor, whether you realize it or not. Your daughter is fortunate that you know what must be done and are not afraid to do it. Warders who behave otherwise often find they have no one left to Ward.”

Your daughter…. That reminded her….. “Where is Dee?” Emily asked, a touch of alarm in her voice. She had disappeared upstairs after announcing the deputy was on his way, and Emily had not seen her since.

“She is in her bedchamber,” Brivari replied, adding quickly, “I have not disturbed her. Nor did I disturb her last night when we arrived at your house.”

Emily allowed herself a small smile. That was true—Brivari had disturbed none of them last night, choosing instead to do what he could by himself until he collapsed, even though help was only a few feet away. She must have scared the daylights out of him yesterday when she threatened to dump him on the lawn and call the Army.

Dee appeared at the top of the stairs. “He’s leaving, Mama. I was waiting until he left just in case he decided to try again.”

“What?” Emily turned and gazed out the window, just barely able to make out the deputy’s retreating car. “I thought he’d left. Do you mean to tell me that he was sitting out there in his car all this time?”

Then she caught Brivari’s penetrating stare, and sighed. She wasn’t really surprised. Deputy Valenti wasn’t one to give up easily. Not only had he sat out there, probably waiting for her to run out and burn the other sneaker, but he would probably be back. She knew that. What she couldn’t figure out was why knowing that bothered her so much. And why Brivari’s on the spot, accurate assessment of someone he’d never met was so unnerving.

Brivari stood up and headed back up the stairs. “Wait,” Emily called.

She walked, a little stiffly, to the base of the stairs. She still found his viewpoint disturbing, but he had eased her guilt somewhat. “You must be hungry. Would you like to join us for lunch?”

“We’re having grilled cheese,” Dee added helpfully. “That’s soft. I think you’d like it.”

The three of them went into the kitchen, where Emily found herself nervous about the prospect of eating with a space alien. It had been one thing to set down a plate and walk away, but to actually eat with one? Did they sit at tables? Eat off plates? Drink out of glasses? There was no way to answer that, so Emily served up plates of sandwiches and glasses of milk and hoped for the best. She was relieved to find that Brivari seemed accustomed to furniture and tableware, and marveled anew at her daughter’s ease with these people. Dee had sat down right next to him; Emily still preferred to keep her distance. She glanced out of the corner of her eye as Dee cut her sandwich in half with a knife, with Brivari watching. He looked so normal, so human. Perhaps if she just pretended he was human she would finally be able to calm her ever spiraling heart rate.

And then Brivari raised his hand, held it a couple of inches over his own sandwich, and neatly sliced it in two. No knife. No anything.

“Neat!” Dee said enthusiastically, unaware that her mother had practically stopped breathing. “Could you cut my other sandwich that way?”

Brivari obliged, and Emily reached a shaking hand toward the radio. So much for pretending he was human. She was badly in need of a distraction; the radio should give her something to focus on besides the extraterrestrial sitting at her kitchen table slicing sandwiches with thin air. She turned the dial….

……..and a voice boomed out, tense and urgent. “The Army has refused to release any more details about the crashed flying saucer it admits has been found on Pohlman Ranch. But we have here in our studio a witness to the recovery effort. Mr. Brazel, what did you see?”

Three heads swung toward the radio.

“Oh no,” Dee whispered.



******************************************************



3 p.m.

Chaves County Sheriff’s Station



Sheriff George Wilcox angrily clicked off the radio. KGFL kept playing and replaying the interview with that idiot Mac. What was he thinking? the Sheriff wondered for what must be the umpteenth time. They’re going to hang him out to dry like yesterday’s laundry.

George sat back in his chair and sighed, listening to the phone ring yet again. Ever since the press release, all hell had broken loose. So many people had flooded into the station that he had sent deputies outside to screen those who entered—anyone here on UFO business got turned away. The phone was ringing off the hook. It wasn’t exactly panic in the streets, but it was getting pretty damned close.

Picking up the press release that had started all this, George once again wondered what Major Marcel had been thinking when he had let the cat out of the bag. Mac had mentioned that Marcel was a decent sort, so he was probably trying to make sure the whole thing didn’t get swept under the rug. That was commendable, but George wasn’t entirely certain this was the best way to communicate the news that Earth had been visited by its first extraterrestrials. Judging by the reaction, people just weren’t ready for this. Hell, he even knew what was going on better than the Army did, and even he wasn’t ready for this.

George plopped the press release down and pushed his chair away from his desk. Time to face the music. He’d been making periodic visits to the crowd outside, reassuring them that aliens were not running amok in the streets and that any new information received would be passed along posthaste. So far that had been working; regular Sheriff sightings seemed to be a good thing. This time he made it only as far as the door before he found himself blocked by a very unwelcome sight: That chomping-at-the-bit Roswell deputy who had visited yesterday with Dee Proctor’s shoe in tow.

The Corona deputy behind Valenti looked worried. “Sorry, sir,” he said, seeing the look on his boss’s face. “He’s from the Roswell, station, so I thought…..”

“It’s all right, Deputy. That’ll be all.” The deputy gave a curt nod, then scurried away to return to the joys of crowd control.

“Deputy Valenti,” George said icily, by way of greeting. “What brings you so unwisely back here?”

“You wanted proof, Sheriff. I have your proof,” Valenti announced smugly.

Shit. “Oh, really? Let’s see it then,” George said in a bored tone, hoping against hope that he’d be able to either bury or explain whatever it was. There was no way in hell he was going to let the Army get their hands on David Proctor’s daughter.

Valenti’s triumphant expression suddenly looked a tad less triumphant. “Haven’t you been listening to the radio, Sheriff? The Army admitted finding a spaceship. What do you have to say about that?”

George blinked. That was it? “Deputy, did you happen to notice a large crowd outside this station when you arrived?”

Valenti bristled at the sarcasm in George’s voice, but he played along and nodded.

“Oh, good,” George purred. “And by any chance did you happen to notice how the phone never stops ringing?”

Valenti looked furious, but nodded again.

“Excellent powers of observation,” George said dryly. “I’m impressed. Now, given all that’s happening, how is it that you come to be standing in my station asking me if I know what’s going on?”

“There is an alien craft of unknown origin out on that ranch,” Valenti said hotly. “I saw it! You must have seen it. The Army admitted it!”

“ ‘Alien craft of unknown origin’—isn’t that an oxymoron?” George asked. “Since I’m not aware of us knowing any aliens, any alien craft would, by definition, be of ‘unknown origin’.”

“Sheriff, are you going to stand here and play word games with me, or are you going to tell me the truth?” Valenti snapped.

“The truth about what? The alleged spaceship parked on Pohlman Ranch? Haven’t a clue. Ask the Army.”

“You wanted proof,” Valenti said, his voice rising. “There’s your proof. There is something out there on that ranch!”

“That wasn’t what you were spouting off about this morning, son,” George retorted. “You came in here going on about little girls and red sneakers. Nothing the Army has said has anything to do with that. So…do you have proof that this fictitious little girl was in this alleged spaceship, or whatever it was you said? Is there someone else who saw this incredible event take place, or does it still reside only in the recesses of your imagination?”

Valenti’s face reddened. His character was being called into question, and he was livid. George didn’t blame him for that. The kid really had seen what he thought he’d seen, and George felt a tad guilty for snowing him like this. But only a tad. Young Valenti was going about this all wrong, barging in here with his accusations and threats. Trust had to be earned, and this was not the way to earn someone’s trust.

“Sheriff, you and I both know there is an alien craft out on Pohlman Ranch,” Valenti said, struggling to keep his voice level. “You and I also both know that a female child wearing only one red sneaker jumped from this craft yesterday morning and ran toward three figures on the nearby rise, one of whom was you. Her other sneaker had already been found by the Army. I know this. You know this. And if you don’t start talking, I’m going to the base and point the finger straight at Dee Proctor.”

“Dee Proctor?” George echoed, as a cold, invisible hand grabbed his insides. “David Proctor’s daughter? The eight year-old?” George shook his head and smiled. “Really now. What would an eight year-old girl have to do with a spaceship? Honestly, Deputy, listen to yourself. You sound positively whacked.”

But Valenti now appeared immune to insults. “I mean it, Sheriff. You can either talk to me or to the Army. It’s your choice.”

George’s face darkened. “I never placed that call to your boss, but I still can. I don’t like threats.”

“And I don’t like being called a liar and a kook,” Valenti replied stonily.

George paused as he and Valenti eyed one another. He had to give the boy credit for pluck and persistence, but that’s as far as his admiration went. Valenti had no idea what he’d just stepped in, or how he was endangering the life of an innocent child. And if he went to the Army, George had no doubt the Army would listen. The entire Proctor family would likely be taken into custody. It would not be a pretty sight.

But how to stop him? George’s own threats didn’t seem to be working anymore. Valenti had apparently decided that the truth was more important than his job. A noble sentiment, to be sure, but badly misplaced in this instance.

“Sheriff? Sorry to bother you again, but this just came in.” The Corona deputy handed George a sheet of paper with a look of relief on his face, and disappeared. George skimmed it quickly, a smile spreading over his face.

“Well now, Deputy. It seems there’s been a mistake.”

“What ‘mistake’?” Valenti asked, scowling.

“This is a press release from the United States Army stating that the report of a crashed flying saucer was in error. It was, in fact, a weather balloon.”

“What?! A weather balloon?” Valenti snatched the paper from George’s hands and read it, eyes wide. “But you saw the number of men they had out there! They closed down the ranch, they were hauling away debris, they…..” He stopped, and his eyes narrowed. “Sheriff Wilcox, you and I both know that was no weather balloon!”

“Are you saying the United States Army is lying?” George asked, eyebrows raised.

Valenti’s face clouded. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it.

“How exactly do you think the United States Army would feel about someone continuing to spread a story they’ve just refuted?” George asked pointedly.

Eyes smoldering, Valenti handed the press release back to George, and as he did so, George noticed the red, swollen knuckles on his right hand. “That’s a nasty injury you have there. Get in a fight with someone?”

His face reddening, Valenti turned on his heel and strode away without another word. George walked to his office window and waited until Valenti had climbed into his cruiser, slammed the door behind him, and driven away. He could still go to the Army, and they might still listen. But the price for doing so had just risen sky high. If the Army was going to dance the cover-up tango, it wouldn’t want anyone else dancing the blow-its-cover foxtrot. If Valenti talked, he’d go down. George sincerely hoped that was a trade off he wasn’t willing to make.

George strode down the station hallway and walked out through the front doors, smiling and waving the press release. He certainly wasn’t thrilled about the prospect of lying to people, but at the moment, lies appeared kinder than the truth.

“I have good news, ladies and gentleman!” he boomed to the expectant crowd. “The Army was in error! There is no spaceship! There are no aliens here!”




******************************************************


Proctor residence



Emily Proctor rubbed her sore ear as she climbed the stairs to the second floor. She’d been on the phone for the lion’s share of the past couple of hours. People were so afraid of aliens descending upon them that they phoned instead, refusing to visit even their neighbors for fear of an alien attack. Only my neighbors need to worry about that, Emily thought ironically, as she paused outside the door to the guest room.

“Have tempers calmed?” came a voice from inside.

Brivari was sitting in the rocking chair, staring out the window. The other alien was lying on the bed, still unconscious. He didn’t look much better.

“The Army just issued another press release saying that there is no spaceship,” Emily reported. “They claim it was a weather balloon.”

“And will your people believe this tale?”

“Probably. Not all of them. But most of them will. And that may be just as well,” she added with a sigh. “People are going crazy. They’re terrified; they’re afraid to even leave their houses. They think aliens are taking over the Earth.”

“All one of me,” Brivari deadpanned.

Emily stared in surprise. She certainly hadn’t expected humor from him, and her feelings must have been written on her face.

“One of my colleagues was very fond of joking,” Brivari said quietly, as though reading her mind. “He claimed it made difficult situations easier to bear.”

“I think it does,” Emily agreed. “Don’t you?”

“No.” He paused. “At least not as of yet. And that colleague is now dead. I will not have the opportunity to argue the point with him again.”

Emily paused awkwardly at this sad announcement. This was familiar ground, unfortunately, for herself and everyone else in town. How many times had she had to offer condolences to people who had lost sons, husbands, brothers, and fathers to the war? She’d had plenty of practice; she should be better at this by now. But no matter what she said, it never sounded right, and she doubted she’d be any more adept at offering condolences to an alien.

“Look,” she said finally, taking the easy way out. “I just came up here to see if you needed anything.”

“He will recover,” Brivari said, glancing at the figure on the bed. “There is nothing we require at this time.” He paused. “I extend to you the King’s gratitude for all that you, your mate, and your child have done for us. You have placed yourselves in danger on our behalf. I would not have expected that from so primitive a race.”

Emily blinked. Talk about a left-handed compliment. Was that even a compliment? Hard to tell, really, but despite the zinger at the end, nothing in his tone suggested he meant to insult. He was still staring out the window, his face serious….and sad.

“You’re welcome,” Emily answered, a bit uncertainly. “And…” she bit her lip and decided that however inadequate words may be, some words were better than none. “I’m sorry about the two who died,” she added sincerely. “I wish we could have done more to help all of you.”

Brivari turned to stare at her in surprise. “The ‘two’ who died?” he repeated. “I am aware of only one who died.”

With a start, Emily realized that Brivari had still been unconscious this morning when Dee and the other one had had their only partly audible conversation. And since the other one hadn’t woken up yet, and Dee had spent most of her time hanging around Mac’s house waiting for him to come back, it was possible Brivari didn’t know about the death of yet another of their group. Wonderful, she thought ruefully. I get to be the bearer of the glad tidings.

“This morning,” Emily began carefully, “when we found you here, Dee told that one…”—she indicated the alien on the bed—“…that one of you had died. I think she said he came to her in a dream? And died in her dream? But that doesn’t make sense,” she finished, feeling foolish. “I must have heard wrong.”

But Brivari had turned back to the window, his face hard. “You heard correctly,” he said in a tight voice.

“Then I gather that whoever Dee was talking about is dead,” Emily said gently, “and I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Brivari said flatly. “He received a better death than he deserved.”

Stunned, Emily was silent for a long moment before slipping away, mentally kicking herself for having raised the subject in the first place. Grief she had expected, but not this cold fury. She had no idea who they were talking about, but judging from the almost palpable anger in Brivari’s voice, perhaps dying in her daughter’s dream was not such a bad fate after all.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Next week....

...Yvonne White and Private Spade catch up with each other, and....

......Deputy Valenti tries again, this time with David Proctor.


I'll post Part 53 next Sunday.

Hello to all who are reading! :fadein:

Minanda wrote:It will be interesting to see how Dee processes the losses she has experienced. Will she just become hardened or will she begin to fight for justice?

Have you been rummaging in my hard drive?

But to answer your question, initially the former, ultimately the latter. Which makes sense, given the profession she winds up pursuing and whose mother she turns out to be. (Yes, I'm blatently teasing. Bad Kathy! )






PART FIFTY-THREE


July 8, 1947, 1630 hours

Eagle Rock Military Base



Private Spade risked another peek around the corner. No such luck—Battle Axe was still there. At least that was what he had nicknamed the portly nurse who stood guard in the reception area of the women’s barracks. He had been watching for a while now, and he had observed that Battle Axe always took a constitutional every half hour, on the half hour. Regularity was a wonderful thing, to be sure.

C’mon—git! he thought fiercely. As if on cue, Battle Axe rose and lumbered away from the desk. Spade crept quietly by, musing once again on why most of the nurses he encountered weighed at least two hundred pounds and sported faces that would scare their own mothers. It probably wouldn’t do to put more nurses like Yvonne White in medical wards. Men would be “dying” to get in.

He reached the main hallway and ceased creeping. Now that he was past the desk anyone who saw him would assume he was here with the pope’s blessing, so creeping guiltily along would not do. Of course sneaking into the women’s barracks wasn’t exactly a smart idea either, but at the moment, it would be better to be caught doing that as opposed to being caught with Lieutenant White. Cavitt had limited social skills, but he had a good grasp of basic math. If the two people who were near alien intruders just last night were found together, he’d be able to put one and one together just fine.

Spade had awakened that morning feeling much better, so much better, in fact, that debriefing had begun almost immediately. Captain Cavitt, Colonel Cassidy, and Major Marcel had grilled him for hours, making him go over and over the events of the previous evening. Before Yvonne had left the night before, she had given him a tip: Concussions frequently cause short term memory loss. He had made heavy use of this handy fact, insisting that he could remember little other than being coerced into guiding the aliens to the hangar. When asked what the aliens were after in that hangar, his memory loss had suddenly become severe, and it had remained so when he was questioned about the events which had led to their discovery.

A doctor was called in to certify that such memory loss was possible with concussions. Upon hearing that it was, Cassidy and Marcel were satisfied, at least for the moment. Not so Cavitt. Cavitt was an asshole, but he was a shrewd asshole. He knew damned well there was more to it, and Spade wisely didn’t refute that. He merely kept saying that he couldn’t remember.

Still, it had been wearying repeating himself hour after hour after hour. At long last, he had been saved the way one is usually saved when the wolves are out for blood—by the substitution of one victim for another. Word of Marcel’s press release had filtered back to the base, and Cavitt had promptly chosen another target. Spade and his unfortunate lack of memory were forgotten in the ensuing hullabaloo as a cover up story was hastily concocted and Marcel was hung out to dry.

Spade had no doubt that Cavitt would try again after things had calmed down, so he needed to be extra careful not to be seen with Lieutenant White. But he had to see her; he needed to know what had happened while he'd been out of commission. He knew the two aliens had definitely escaped, but little else. Had they returned? What about the one she’d been watching who had still been alive? Had Yvonne’s involvement in all this been discovered? He had to know, and she was the only person he could talk to.

Slipping down hallways, doing his best to look nonchalant, Spade read the names posted outside the rooms and honed in on his target. He knew she was here; he'd managed to weasel that out of someone currently on duty. She shouldn’t be that hard to find because the nurses were bunked alphabetically. The military was nothing if not efficient.

There! “Yvonne White” read the sign, directly above “Bernadette Wiley”. The door was open, and Spade cautiously peered inside to make certain that Bernadette was not currently in residence. She wasn’t. Yvonne was, her back to him, folding piles of clothes and…..packing?

“Lieutenant?”

She turned around and her eyes grew wide. Coming to the door, she cast a nervous glance up and down the deserted hallway before pulling him into the room and closing the door.

“Stephen! How did you get in here? When I couldn’t find you this morning, I was worried!”

She called me ‘Stephen’. And she was worried about me. Spade allowed himself a small, inward smile. If nothing else good came of this mess, he’d take that, and gladly.

“I’m fine,” he assured her. “I was so much better this morning that they started debriefing me as soon as I woke up.”

She bit her lip. “What did you tell them?”

“Not much. Your memory loss bit worked wonders. What happened with you?”

Yvonne sat down on the bed, tears welling in her eyes. Whatever had happened, it couldn’t have been good. “Tell me,” he said gently, sitting down beside her.

“It was horrible. The doctors came right after I left you last night, and they started the autopsies right away. I managed to get them to start on the alien that was already dead, but then….he collapsed.”

“Collapsed?” Spade puzzled. “He was already dead. How could he collapse?”

“I mean his body collapsed. Just disintegrated, right before our very eyes. Everything disintegrated into this fine, powdery dust. The body, the blood samples, tissue samples, bone fragments…”

“I get the picture,” Spade said, cutting her off before his stomach did somersaults. “What about the other one?”

“They autopsied him too,” Yvonne answered in a stricken voice. “I think he was dead. That one alien—the grumpy one—told me that they’d be able to help him even if he appeared dead to us, but I couldn’t stop them,” she said, staring at her hands. “He’s certainly dead now.”

“That must have been hard to watch,” Spade said sympathetically, putting his hand over hers and instantly wondering if he was being too forward.

But she didn’t pull away. “It was awful,” she whispered, her voice breaking. “I kept wondering if he was really dead. If he could feel anything. They could have saved him if they’d made it back. That’s all I could think about.”

Spade squeezed her hand. “It wasn’t your fault. You did all that you could.”

Yvonne was silent for a moment. Spade let her sit for a minute before asking another question. “You said the first alien ‘disintegrated’. What about the second one?”

“His body did the same thing just a short while ago. Everything turned to dust: The body, every sample we took. Everything.”

“Incredible,” Spade murmured. “Is that some sort of protective mechanism so no one can study them?”

“Maybe,” she agreed. “It certainly worked. All they have left are the pictures.”

“What else?” Spade asked. “Did anyone find out anything more about what really happened? Did the other aliens come back?”

Yvonne shook her head. “They debriefed me just like they did you, but I didn’t tell them a thing. I just said I never saw the aliens, never heard anything happening outside my door. They figure the aliens didn’t come into the room where I was because they knew the two we had were dead. And no one’s seen or heard from the two who escaped.”

They sat in heavy silence for a moment before Yvonne wiped her eyes, pulled her hand away, and stood up. “I have to finish packing.”

“Packing? Where are you going?”

“I’ve been transferred to London. I just got the orders an hour ago.”

Spade felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise. “Did you ask for the transfer?”

“No. Why?”

Spade spent a long minute staring at nothing before abruptly getting to his feet and beginning to pace. “I don’t like this.”

Yvonne smiled. “I’m flattered, Private. But you know very well that we can’t fraternize with…..”

“That’s not what I meant,” he interrupted, hastily adding “not that I wouldn’t love to fraternize with you,” as Yvonne flushed. “It’s just that they’re treating you differently than the rest of us, and that’s rarely a good sign.”

Her brow furrowed. “Who is 'us'? And differently how?”

“Cavitt is keeping everyone who’s had any contact with the aliens close to him. That’s a pretty small group: Private Belmont, who was with us when we first discovered the craft, Private West, the one who panicked and shot the surrendering alien, and me, of course. We’ve all been given posts close to Cavitt, and everyone who set foot on that crash site has been threatened with a fate worse than death if they talk.”

“I know,” Yvonne said. “I was debriefed twice this morning, and they threatened me too.”

“Did they say anything about the transfer then?”

“No. Nothing. Look, Stephen, I don’t know what you’re thinking, but I’m glad I’m leaving. I’ve had enough. I want to get away from Roswell and just forget any of this every happened.”

Spade sighed, and shoved his hands in his pockets. “I’m not sure what I’m thinking. It’s just weird. Why would they keep the rest of us so close, but send you halfway around the world? It doesn’t make sense.”

“Sense or no, I’m leaving,” she said firmly. “I….I wish we had met under better circumstances. Perhaps if things had been different….” She paused awkwardly before continuing. “I wish you all the best, Stephen. I know…. ‘they’ will be back, and they’ll need help. Do what you can for them. For me. Will you?”

Spade nodded. He still didn’t like the sound of this, but she was obviously glad to be leaving, and there was no sense worrying her.

Yvonne made a small gesture toward the door. “You’d better go. We shouldn’t be seen together.”

Spade paused at the door. “Two more things.”

“What?”

“First, what happened to their children? Or whatever it was they were trying to rescue from the hangar. They looked like big, glowing lumps to me.”

“I would imagine the doctors have them. I never saw them. I don’t want to,” she added with conviction. “Everything else from the ship is still in the hangar, with the exception of the remains of the two who died. They’re locked in Med Lab C.”

“Okay. And second…..” He pursed his lips. Should he, or shouldn’t he?

Aw, what the heck……

In one fluid movement, Spade swept Yvonne into his arms and planted a kiss squarely on her beautiful mouth. She didn’t pull away, and when he came up for air a few seconds later, he smiled sheepishly.

“Sorry. I just couldn’t resist.”

Her cheeks were pink. “Goodbye, Stephen. And good luck.”

“You too,” he replied softly.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


As she watched him go, Yvonne put her hand to her lips and smiled. But her smile promptly faded when she remembered Stephen's misgivings about her transfer. Was it possible someone had seen her talking to that reporter this morning? She’d been very careful about what she said, not wanting to give away all of the details of her involvement, but just enough so that the truth would get out. Unfortunately, Betty’s other guest, one Captain Carver, had left without speaking to her. A pity. She would have dearly loved to compare notes with him.

Time to finish packing. If the alternative to London was staying here under that awful Cavitt’s watchful eye, she’d choose London any day.

Down the hall, the phone rang. Yvonne heard someone answer it, then footsteps coming toward her room. “Lieutenant White?”

She turned from her suitcase to see a fellow nurse at the door. “Yes?”

“Phone call for you. Fellow by the name of Carver.”



******************************************************




Proctor residence




David Proctor approached his house, anxiously scanning the neighborhood. He’d tried to call Emily twice since news of the crash had broken at midday, both times getting a busy signal. Reactions on his end of things had ranged from nervous laughter, to uneasiness, to something uncomfortably close to panic. The retraction issued a few hours later had pretty much calmed everyone down, but the evening newspaper was sure to stir them up again. David glanced at the Roswell Daily Record on the seat next to him, its headline screaming, “UFO CRASHES!” The morning papers would probably carry that ridiculous weather balloon story, but the evening papers like the Daily Record had already been put to bed by the time the retraction arrived.

And then there had been Mac Brazel’s infamous radio interview, broadcast and rebroadcast throughout the day. When the Army said something, that was one thing, but when one of your own said something, that was another. Mac had refused to take back a word of what he’d so unwisely said earlier that day, retraction or no retraction. His stubbornness was giving many pause when it came to the question of which of the Army’s two very different tales was correct. God, they’re going to get him for this, David thought apprehensively. Just like I know they’ll get Jesse Marcel.

He pulled into his driveway, relieved to find his house peaceful, and disturbed to find the Brazel’s house looking empty. Grabbing the newspaper, he climbed out of the car and shut the door.

“David Proctor?”

David turned to find a Roswell sheriff’s deputy standing there, hands on hips, a determined expression on his face. And not just any sheriff’s deputy. This was the deputy who’d been planted outside his house just this morning. “Valenti”, his name tag read. David felt his stomach knot.

“Yes?”

“Mr. Proctor, I need to have a word with you.”

“Is something wrong, Deputy?” David asked, trying to sound casual. “Something that would bring a Roswell deputy to my door?”

The mention of jurisdiction was not lost on the deputy. “Now, Mr. Proctor, I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to point out that this isn’t my town. And you’re right, it isn’t. But we have bigger fish to fry, you and I. Bigger than Roswell, bigger than Chaves County, bigger even than the state of New Mexico.”

David raised his eyebrows. “Really? And what might this ‘fish’ be?”

Valenti adjusted his hat. “Mr. Proctor, I’m going to be straight with you. I know you were up on Pohlman Ranch yesterday morning. And you and I both know that ain’t no weather balloon up there. Another thing you and I both know is that your daughter, Dee, was also up there. I saw her jump from the craft wearing only one red sneaker. She ran up a nearby hill to three people, one of whom was Sheriff Wilcox, and another of whom I’m certain was you. The Army found her other sneaker, which I have right here.”

Valenti produced the sneaker from behind his back, stained black in several places. Anyone else would have taken those stains for mud, but knowing what he knew, David strongly suspected otherwise.

“I know your daughter wears red sneakers, Mr. Proctor,” Valenti continued. “I have witnesses that place you at the crash site yesterday morning. I want to know why your daughter was in that craft, and if you won’t talk to me, I’m going to take what I know to the Army and let them decide what to do with you.”

David stood silently during this recital. Apparently he, Mac, and George weren’t the only ones outside the range of Valeris’s deception. Still, if there had been other witnesses Valenti would not now be standing in his driveway looking desperate. He’d obviously asked around—he must not have been able to find another witness. All he had to back up his story was that sneaker.

“That’s quite a tale,” David said calmly, leaning against the car. “I was at the ranch yesterday helping out Sheriff Wilcox, but my daughter wasn’t with me. She was out of town with her mother. As for the rest of it, I have no idea where that’s coming from. I’m sure it has nothing to do with me.”

“Your daughter wears red sneakers,” Valenti observed.

“So? Lots of kids wear red sneakers.”

“Sure they do,” Valenti smiled. “Boys wear red sneakers. Or black sneakers. Girls wear white sneakers. Know of any other girls who wear red sneakers, Mr. Proctor?”

“Sorry, I haven’t had time to do a poll,” David said, in what he hoped was an amused tone. He desperately wanted to throttle this nosey man right then and there. “You said you have witnesses who place me at the ranch yesterday morning—that’s common knowledge. Do you have any witnesses who saw my daughter at the ranch?”

Deputy Valenti’s face clouded. David paused for effect before continuing. “Did it ever occur to you, Deputy, that the reason there are no other witnesses is because she wasn’t there?”

“I know what I saw!” Valenti said tersely, stepping closer to David. “And you know what I saw. I’m sure of it!”

David breathed an inward sigh of relief. He was right--Valenti didn’t have anything else but the sneaker and his own eyeballs. In David’s experience, people who had ammunition used it. “If you’re so sure of it, then what do you need me for?” he asked reasonably, starting for the house. “Good evening, Deputy.”

Valenti scooted past him and planted himself in front of David. “I don’t care what happens to me,” he said in a low voice, “but I swear, even it costs me my job, I am going to get to the bottom of this. And in order to do that, I need you.”

“You have an odd way of asking for help,” David said frostily. “Now, would you be so kind as to get the hell out of my way?”


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Emily Proctor watched from the window as the confrontation in their driveway grew louder. David was trying to get to the house, but Deputy Valenti was still in front of him, walking backwards and arguing every step of the way. He’s not going to give up this time, she thought to herself with alarm.

Emily crossed to the bottom of the stairs and stood there, looking up at the top. Should she do this? It wasn’t a question of pride—she knew when she was in over her head. But she feared the outcome of what she had in mind almost as much as she feared the results of the commotion in her front yard.

Loud voices wafted through the window. David had reached the front steps. It was now or never.

Moving quickly lest she lose her nerve, Emily skipped up the steps and marched straight to the door of the guest room. She had feared she would need to waken him but he was already awake, sitting in the rocking chair just as before, staring at her. He had heard her coming.

Emily took a moment to compose herself before speaking. “Do you remember what we talked about earlier? That bit about assessing danger?”

Brivari didn’t answer, merely raised his eyebrows.

Emily took a deep breath. “I need your help.”




~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



David Proctor was getting desperate. He’d spent the last ten minutes trying to keep both his temper and his panic in check. Both were wearing thin, and it was anyone’s guess which would go first.

Deputy Valenti refused to give up. Like a dog with his teeth in your leg, he just wouldn’t let go. Under other circumstances, David might have admired such persistence. But when the circumstances in question involved the safety of his child, he found no room for admiration, or explanation, or even restraint. Valenti obviously had no idea what he’d just stepped in. David did.

Valenti continued his harangue, his temper clearly getting ragged around the edges. David glanced at the front door. Where was Emily? The main door was closed, which never happened in the summer unless they left the house. Perhaps she wasn’t home? He could have used her right now to help him decide what to do. Valenti clearly wasn’t going away of his own accord, and David was afraid that if he drove him off his property, he would go straight to the Army. The evidence he had was slim, but it would be enough to pique the interest of someone like Cavitt who was already suspicious. David hadn’t heard anything more about anyone pursuing the child Mac initially said was with him when he found the alien metal; no doubt everyone was too busy climbing all over their new alien booty. The Army appeared to have forgotten Mac’s first rendition of events, for the moment at least, but it wouldn’t take much for them to remember. He should call George Wilcox; he would know best how to handle this.

“Well, Mr. Proctor?” Valenti was saying.

David managed a cold smile. “Deputy, I’ve already answered your questions. Those answers haven’t changed, so I’ll save both of us the time and effort of repeating them. I’m going inside now. Have a good evening.”

David turned toward the door, but Valenti blocked his path.

“You’re not going anywhere until you tell me the truth!”


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


“Do something!” Emily said impatiently. “What are you waiting for?”

Emily folded her arms across her chest in exasperation as Brivari calmly watched the altercation only feet away on the other side of the door. She wasn’t exactly certain what she wanted Brivari to do. She just knew she wanted her husband safe inside and that meddling deputy out of her life.

“I am waiting to see how the confrontation progresses,” Brivari answered calmly, not moving a muscle from the window where he’d been watching for the past several minutes.

“Progresses? It’s not progressing. As in he’s not leaving,” she said hotly, indicating the deputy.

Brivari gave her a level stare. “Always know your enemy, Emily Proctor. Observe. Listen. The better you know your enemy, the easier is will be to bring him down.”

“I don’t want to ‘know him’,” Emily said, her voice rising. “And you’re in no position to lecture me about ‘knowing your enemy’. If you’re so great at that, why are the people you protect dead?”

His face darkened, and she was instantly sorry she’d said that. He had come at once when she had asked for his help, and she really had no idea what had happened on his planet.

“Our failure to keep our Wards alive is a perfect example of the need to know your enemy,” he replied in a tight voice. “And the need to know exactly who your enemy is.” He stepped away from the window. “Open the door.”

“What?”

“Open the door. Let them in.”

“What….why?” Emily said, flabbergasted. “I don’t want Valenti in my house!”

“Weren’t you just abjuring me to ‘do something’?”

“This isn’t what I had in mind,” Emily objected. “If I wanted him in the house, I could have done that myself!”

“You will open the door and allow him to enter,” Brivari said firmly. “I need to be close to him.”

It was the middle of summer, and the hottest part of the day, but Emily suddenly felt very cold. “Why?” she asked, wondering if she had done the right thing by dragging Brivari into this. “You’re not going to….you’re not going to kill him……are you?”

“Killing him would focus attention on this dwelling, something that would be detrimental to both of us,” Brivari replied in a perfectly logical tone, as if cold-blooded murder was merely an unattractive option. “I doubt it will be necessary.”

“ ‘Necessary’,” Emily echoed. “And what if it were….’necessary’?”

Brivari gave her a hard stare. “We already had this discussion, did we not?”

Emily suddenly got cold feet. “Look, I know you feel indebted to Dee for helping you, and I know I asked for your help, but maybe I overreacted,” she said quickly. “We can take care of this ourselves.”

“Unlikely,” Brivari said flatly. “And this concerns me as well as you. If they find your daughter, they are far more likely to find me. And if they find me, they find what I protect. I cannot, and will not, allow that to happen.” He took a step closer. “Now, open the door.”

It was not a request. Emily put her hand on the door…and hesitated. Too long, apparently. Brivari took the decision—and the door—out of her hands by raising one of his own. The door abruptly flew open, so quickly she had to jump back to avoid being hit by it.

Two heads swung to look at her; two startled pairs of eyes locked with hers. Emily shot Brivari an angry look, but it was too late; she had to play along.

“Deputy Valenti,” Emily said frostily. “I hardly expected to see you here again. Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, are you?”

She stepped back as Valenti flushed angrily. “Why don’t you step inside before you frighten the neighbors,” Emily continued, “and we’ll finish this nonsense. Once and for all.”



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~




Next week....

Okay--Valenti's coming in. Now what? And...

....Yvonne White makes her fateful attempt to get on that bus. More from "Summer of '47".

I'll post Part 54 next Sunday. (Actually, it will probably be Saturday. Sunday is Easter! Happy Easter to all who celebrate it! )

Minanda: Sorry about that. :puppydogeyes: Ten lashes with a wet fanfic printout for me.

ukspacegirl: Welcome back! I know how busy you are, and I'm very grateful you took the time to catch up. :Fade-color Every time Yvonne shows up I think of Liz too.







PART FIFTY-FOUR


July 8, 1947, 5:50 p.m.

Proctor residence



David gazed at his wife in shock. She had looked as surprised as he was when the door first opened, but now she just looked angry. How did she know this guy, and why was she inviting him in? The last thing they wanted was Valenti in their house. Granted he wasn’t likely to find the mate to that sneaker he was holding, but still…the thought of having someone so close to the truth actually inside his house was unnerving.

Valenti didn’t wait for a second invitation. He quickly stepped inside the house and David promptly followed. The three of them—David, Valenti, and Emily—stood beside the open front door, staring at each other with expressions ranging from wariness to fury. Valenti’s eyes darted around the house as though he expected an alien to pop up at any moment.

“Deputy Valenti has been here before,” Emily explained, her eyes flashing. “First he went after Dee over on the Brazel’s front porch, and then he came after me. And I believe I made it clear at that time that you were not welcome here,” she added icily. “Apparently you learn slowly.”

David felt the color drain from his face. This jackass had already been here harassing his wife and daughter? “How dare you!” David growled, forgetting his resolve to remain calm and throwing caution to the winds. “You have no right to harass my family with your cockamamie stories and threats! After I report this you’ll be lucky to walk away with your job. And if have anything to say about it, you won’t.”

Valenti said something in reply, but David wasn’t listening. The door behind the deputy had begun to swing closed of its own accord. Slowly, slowly, it moved, revealing a figure standing behind it.

Brivari.

David was still digesting this information when Brivari’s hand moved toward Valenti.

He’s going to kill him, was the first thought that passed through David’s mind. No great loss, was his second, shocking thought. No, given what could happen to his child, it would be difficult for David to summon much in the way of grief if Deputy Valenti were to meet with an unfortunate accident right here and now.

Good God—what’s happening to me? David couldn’t believe he had just thought that. He had told Dee that fear caused people to do all sorts of things they would normally never do, but he had never expected to be a living, breathing example of that unfortunate fact.

He glanced at Emily. She was careful to look at Valenti, but her face was tight, her eyes wide and staring as Brivari’s hand crept closer and closer. She seemed to be having an inner battle with herself, probably for the same reasons he was. If one of them didn’t intervene soon, Valenti could be dead in seconds. All it would take was one gesture to the room behind him, one well-placed interruption.

But neither David nor Emily moved, and the hand crept closer, until it connected with……

….no, not Valenti. With the sneaker he was holding at his side. His daughter’s red sneaker with those odd stains. The sneaker that was rapidly turning…black?

David forced himself not to stare at the shoe, lest he give it all away. After a few more seconds of Valenti's tirade about the virtues of trusting local law enforcement, David looked down again to see the sneaker had turned completely black. No trace of red, no trace of stains. It had been completely transformed.

He destroyed the evidence, David thought, with no small amount of relief. Now there was nothing left but Valenti’s own eyewitness account of something that only he had seen.

Emily’s eyes had gone wide with shock. Valenti hadn’t reacted to this, most likely because he thought she was afraid of what he was saying. “Excuse me…Deputy?” David interrupted.

Valenti folded his arms across his chest, one hand still holding the now black sneaker. “Are you ready to talk now?”

““Didn’t you say you had a red sneaker?” David asked innocently.

By way of answer, the deputy held up the sneaker. The look on his face when he saw the color change was priceless.

David let him stare in silence for a full minute before speaking again. “As you can see, that sneaker does not match my daughter’s. Now, if you’re through haranguing me and my family, I’d much appreciate it if you’d get the hell out of here.”

Valenti's head swung left and right as he peered suspiciously into the parts of the house he could see. David’s heart skipped a beat as Valenti whipped the front door closed, but there was no one there. Brivari had vanished.

Finally, shaking his head in consternation, Valenti walked up to David until they were almost nose to nose. “I know your kid was up there, Proctor,” he said flatly. “I don’t know how you did what you just did, but I promise you, I will get answers. Come hell or high water, someday I will.”

“Confrontation. Intimidation. Threats.” David shook his head sadly. “And after all those excellent reasons you gave to trust local law enforcement.”

Valenti’s eyes grew hard. “Mr. Proctor,” he said, nodding curtly. “Mrs. Proctor. Have yourselves a good evening.” He walked through the open doorway, then stopped. “I’ll be watching,” he added without turning around.

David waited until Valenti had driven off before closing the door and asking the single, most important question on his mind: “Where is Dee?”

“Across the street,” Emily said tensely, arms folded tightly across her chest as if to stabilize herself. “I sent her over to play with the neighbors. I thought she could use a bit of normalcy.” She laughed suddenly, a raw sound that held no humor. “Normalcy. Listen to me. What the hell is normalcy?” She drew a deep breath and looked around nervously. “Where did he go, David?”

As if on cue, Brivari literally walked out of the wall on the other side of the front door. David watched Emily sympathetically as she tried to come to grips with this new information about their uninvited houseguest. Other than the frantic, pain-racked shapeshifting she had seen yesterday, she had not seen any of them use their other…talents. David remembered how unnerving it had been to watch Brivari materialize from the seat of the car two days ago. No wonder his kind made people uncomfortable on their planet. How could you trust someone who could change their appearance so completely?

Brivari, for his part, was completely unperturbed. “David Proctor,” he said by way of greeting.

“Brivari,” David nodded. “Did things go well last night?”

“They did not,” Brivari said shortly.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” David said. He ruffled a hand through his hair uncomfortably. “Thanks for getting rid of him…I mean, throwing him off the trail,” he amended quickly.

“The piece of clothing was his only evidence,” Brivari replied. “With that gone, he has only his recollection of events to use as evidence, a recollection that others do not share. Hopefully he values his credibility too much to push this particular point further.”

David sighed. “I certainly hope so.” He looked at Emily, who was watching their “guest” with a mixture of discomfort and what looked like annoyance. “I should call George and let him know this guy is after us. Maybe he could file a complaint with the Sheriff in Roswell, or…”

“That would not be wise,” Brivari interrupted. “That will only call further attention to his claims.”

“Excuse me,” Emily snapped, “but this is our decision, not yours.”

Brivari’s eyebrows almost hit the ceiling. “And if your decision conflicts with the guarding of my Wards?”

“That’s your problem,” Emily replied coolly. “Just like it’s my problem when your decisions conflict with the guarding of my daughter. If I were you, I’d hit my knees and pray that doesn’t happen.”

A small smile played across Brivari’s lips. Then he nodded slightly, climbed the staircase, and disappeared down the upstairs hallway.

David watched him go with his mouth hanging open. “What on earth was that all about?”



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



“Why didn’t you call me?” David asked, pouring himself a cup of coffee and sinking into a nearby chair.

“Because I felt like an idiot,” Emily replied with exasperation, leaning against the kitchen counter. She had just finished a recital of how Brivari had commandeered the situation with Valenti. “I’d only just sent you off to work this morning, insisting this was all over, and then I go upstairs to find them on the floor of the guest room. So much for it being ‘over’.”

“Them? Who else is here?”

“Someone Dee calls ‘Jaddo’. He was shot last night doing whatever they were doing, and Brivari brought him back here.”

“Did they find the others?”

“Yes.” Emily paused. “They’re dead.”

David set down his coffee cup, rose, and crossed to the window. He was silent for so long that Emily finally went to him, wrapping her arms around his waist and leaning her head on his shoulder. “You should have seen Dee when she found out,” she whispered. “She was heartbroken. She cried for so long…I’ve never seen her cry like that. Never.”

“She’s never had anyone close to her die,” David said quietly.

“Close? She was ‘close’ to the two who died?”

David nodded. “One of those two was the first she befriended. He was the one who convinced the others to help when Miltnor attacked her. The other got her off that ship in one piece without anyone seeing. Almost anyone,” he amended, with a rueful look toward the front door. “They both saved her life; she tried to save theirs and failed. I know what that feels like.”

“Look,” Emily said, “I’m really sorry about what happened to these people. I don’t think they mean to hurt us. I don’t think they deserve what they’re getting. But I hate what all this is doing to us. To Dee. She’s different now. She seems cold. Hard. She seems like….” She paused, as if unwilling to say what she was thinking.

“…..she seems like an awful lot of the soldiers who came back from the war,” David finished for her.

Emily nodded reluctantly. “I don’t like it.”

David sighed. “I don’t either. But this is what you go through when you have to confront the truth that sometimes the world is an awful place and there’s not much you can do about it. You go through a stage where you’re mad at everything and everyone. It seems like nothing you do matters, like you’re helpless to change anything. That’s not true of course, and most people work their way through that swamp and come out safely on the other side. And she will too. I’ve been amazed at the way she’s handled herself lately. She’s a lot tougher than we think she is.”

“Not everyone comes out safely on the other side,” Emily said sadly. “Your brother didn’t.”

“Dee will,” David said firmly. “She’ll find her way through this, and we’ll help her do that.”

“How could we let this happen?” Emily murmured into his shoulder. “We didn’t want this to happen to her.”

“We didn’t ‘let’ it happen. It just happened,” David said, holding her tightly. “Nobody wanted this, least of all Brivari and his people. They wanted to land somewhere in the mountains and never have anything to do with us. They didn’t mean to crash their ship. And Dee was just trying to help them out. Nobody expected it to turn out this way.”

“I know that,” Emily said, pulling away. “But I still don’t like it. He could have killed Valenti.”

“Then why did you ask for his help? What did you expect him to do?”

“I don’t know!” Emily exclaimed in frustration. “It was just that I didn’t have any ideas, and I thought he might.”

“And he did,” David pointed out. “He took care of it, and without bloodshed, I might add, despite what you and I were thinking. They’re not indiscriminate killers. If they were, we’d all be dead.”

“But bloodshed was on his list of possibilities,” Emily protested. “It sure as hell wasn’t on mine. You didn’t hear what he said.”

“And you didn’t see what I saw yesterday morning,” David pointed out. “There are two sides to this coin. I saw far more aggression from the Army then I ever have from the aliens.”

“What about the way he took over? He didn’t tell me what he had in mind, he just ripped the door out of my hands. And now he’s telling us not to call George!”

“Maybe we shouldn’t.”

Emily blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Look, Em, I’m in over my head here,” David said uncomfortably. “I fought in the war, but that was different. I’ve never been personally pursued like this, had my child hunted like this. Brivari knows a lot more about this than we do. We should at least consider what he has to say.”

“I can’t believe I’m hearing this,” Emily protested. “He could have killed him!”

“He could have killed him,” David repeated. “But he didn’t.”

“But not because it was wrong; just because it was ‘unnecessary’,” Emily argued. “Because it was inconvenient.”

David stared out the window a moment, then turned to look at her squarely. “Emily, you and I both thought Brivari might kill. I saw it in your eyes. But neither of us moved to stop him.”

Emily dropped her eyes. “I know,” she said in a hollow voice. “And that’s what scares me.”



******************************************************


9:09 p.m.

Proctor residence


Thunder pounded and lightning flashed as David Proctor stood in the doorway of his daughter’s bedroom. It was pouring outside, adding to the already oppressive mugginess. Dee was sitting cross-legged on her bed, all of her bedroom lights off, staring out the window at the storm. No doubt remembering the last storm she had watched, when things had been different. A lot different.

Their “guests” had been completely quiet. After the encounter with Valenti, Brivari had retired to the guest room and apparently fallen asleep. David guessed he must be exhausted after being injured yesterday, and then healing Jaddo basically by himself soon after that. As for Jaddo, he still lay in bed, whether unconscious or sleeping David could not tell.

Dee had returned home for dinner, and David had been struck by the change in her. She was withdrawn, terse, with an edge to her that hadn’t been there before. David had carefully avoided the subject of Urza and Valeris, but he had told her what Brivari had done about Valenti, noting that both he and her mother had been concerned that Valenti would wind up hurt. Or worse.

“Why? Valenti would have hurt me. He certainly would have hurt them,” Dee had responded flatly, indicating the upstairs with a nod. She had not sounded fearful, or worried, or hesitant—just angry. Her world and its inhabitants had not lived up to her expectations, and she was furious.

David was of two minds about her anger. In his own experience, anger was preferable to fear or despair; the angry ones were the ones who tended to survive. But anger ultimately took one of two paths: It either consumed its owner, or it motivated them to change what they felt was wrong. Many times one had to pass through the fire of the first in order to arrive at the second. It was a journey he had seen grown men fail to navigate successfully. Dee was just a child; to say that he feared for her now would be a gross understatement.

But navigate it she must, and it was his job to help her do that. And the first thing to do was to get her talking, however much she didn’t want to. He had made several overtures that evening, hoping that she would say something about what had happened, but she had firmly rejected all of them. He’d just gotten off the phone with Rose Brazel, and he was hoping that would interest her. Now he eased into the room and sat on the end of the bed. Not quite next to her, but not behind her either.

“Hi.”

Dee didn’t respond. He hadn’t expected her to. “That was Mrs. Brazel on the phone.”

Now she turned to look at him. “And?”

“The Army has Mac at the base. Rose got to see him for a little while. She says he’s okay, but madder than a hornet.”

“So why isn’t he home?” Dee demanded. “What are they doing to him?”

David sighed. “I guess they’re not ‘doing’ anything to him, Dee. They’re just not letting him go home yet. We think they want to make it clear that he can’t talk about what happened, especially since they’re denying it now.” He paused. “Rose is staying with friends until this blows over. She says their eldest son might drop by next door. He’s going to look after the ranch until Mac gets back.”

His daughter leveled a hard stare at him. “Are they going to shoot Mac too?”

David stared at his eight-year old and felt a wave of sadness wash over him. Just a few days ago, she would never have asked a question like that. Just a few days ago, she wouldn’t have had a reason to. And the troubling thing was, it was a legitimate question.

“Too many people know Mac,” David said, keeping his voice level. “The radio station is still hammering the Army for news about him after that interview he gave. Too many questions would be asked if he just disappeared. Mac will be all right.”

“Right,” Dee said in a strained voice. “Just like Valeris was ‘all right’.”

There it was. The opening. “Dee, I heard about Urza and Valeris dying. I’m so sorry. I know how hard you tried to prevent that from happening.”

“Not hard enough, obviously,” she said in a low voice.

“Nonsense,” David said firmly. “Their deaths were not your fault. You did everything you could have done. That’s all you can do.”

Silence. David tried again. “Do you want to tell me what happened?”

“No.”

“I…”

“Daddy, I’m fine.”

“It doesn’t sound like you were ‘fine’ this morning.”

“It’s okay.”

“No, Dee, it’s not okay,” David said passionately. “Two people you cared about are dead. That’s not okay. It will never be okay. It’s not supposed to be okay.” He paused. “It hurts because it’s supposed to hurt. What kind of people would we be if it didn’t?”

Glancing sideways at her, he thought he saw her lower lip quiver. “Maybe,” she whispered, “we would be better off.”

“I don’t think so,” David protested gently. “I think pain is one of the things that motivates us to change the things in our world that need changing. Without it, we wouldn’t grow.”

Now she twisted to look at him, her eyes flashing. “If that’s what I’m going to grow up to be, then I don’t want to grow up!” she said fiercely. “Daddy, they shot them! They didn’t try to talk to them, or find out why they were here. They just shot them. Like animals!”

“They were scared,” David argued. “I know they shouldn’t have done what they did, but try to look at it from their perspective, just for a moment. We didn’t even know there was life anywhere else but here. And then these….beings show up, obviously more advanced than we are, and they don’t come forward to say why they’re here, they just hid…”

“Exactly,” Dee interrupted. “They hid. They didn’t attack anyone, or try to take over the world. They just came here to hide.”

“But we didn’t know that,” David countered.

“We didn’t ask. We didn’t even try to find out why they were here.”

David sighed. “Remember what I told you about people when they’re afraid? How they do things they normally wouldn’t do?”

“That’s just it, Daddy,” Dee said in a brittle voice. “I’m not so sure those people were doing things they normally wouldn’t do.”

Ouch. She had him there. People like Cavitt most certainly were not merely reacting out of fear, but out of a need to control, to dominate.

“Some people are like that,” David allowed. “But most were just plain scared.”

“And that’s an excuse for killing someone?”

“Of course not. But our people aren’t the only ones who killed,” David said firmly. “Urza and the others killed too. You saw it happen.”

“They killed to save my life. And because they knew what would happen if they were found. And they were right,” she added bitterly. “What excuse did we have? There are a lot more of us than there are of them. No one was hunting us. No one was going to hurt us.”

“But how were we supposed to know that?”

“I can’t believe you’re defending them!” Dee said angrily.

“I’m not defending them,” David said, feeling his own temper rising. “I’m only pointing out that there is always another side to the story. And if you’re only willing to look at one side, you’ll never find out what really happened.”

They both sat, irritated and silent, for several minutes before David decided that he had gone as far as he could go just then. “I’m really sorry about your friends,” he said gently. “But I can see why both sides did what they did. They were all afraid. And fear is rarely a good decision maker, in my experience.”

“So what happens when both sides are afraid?” Dee asked, a twinge of despair in her voice. “What happens if nobody’s willing to talk and everybody just shoots because they’re scared?” She paused. “Valeris was willing to talk. He tried, Daddy. They wouldn’t listen. How do we make people listen?”

“We don’t give up,” David answered. “It’s hard to get people to listen, but I guarantee you they will never listen if we stop trying to make them listen.”

He reached for her hand. She flinched, but didn’t pull away. “Don’t give up on us, Dee. We’re not all like that. You and I and your mother, we’re living proof of that. There are other people who would listen. I’m sure of that.”

She didn’t answer, and after a moment David stood up. “Would you like me to tuck you in?”

“No.”

“All right. Good night then.”

“Daddy?”

“What?”

“Do you remember the night their ship crashed? How there was a storm just like tonight? And I sat in my room watching for falling stars?” He nodded.

“I wish I hadn’t been looking.”

David’s heart broke as he saw the look on her face and realized she meant every word she said. He certainly couldn’t blame her for feeling that way, but he wasn’t willing to let this conversation end on such a dour note. “Well, I’m glad you were looking,” he said firmly. “And I’m willing to bet that Urza and his people are glad you were looking too.”

Dee didn’t answer. David left the room, pulling the door ajar the way she usually liked it at night and leaned against the wall, eyes closed, reflecting on the fact that some of the worst casualties of war were not those who wound up dead.



******************************************************


10:30 p.m.

Roswell, New Mexico




Yvonne White climbed out the car into the pouring rain, so eager to leave that she barely even noticed the downpour. Hopefully what she had just told Captain Carver had been enough to pique his interest without giving too much away. Certainly she had said nothing about her involvement in all of this other than her participation in the autopsy. But she had drawn him a sketch of what they looked like, just like the one she had drawn for Betty, and hopefully he and Betty would be able to get the word out.

She was more convinced than ever now that word must get out about what had happened here in Roswell. She had heard whispers that evening that plans were being laid to trap the two remaining aliens, and she had no illusions about what would happen if those plans succeeded. People like Captain Cavitt thrived on secrecy and ignorance. Hopefully she had played some small part in destroying that ignorance.

Yvonne reached the end of the bus line, fretting over how slowly it was moving. She might be soaked by the time she boarded, but, upon reflection, it was a worthy trade-off. She couldn’t wait to get out of here. Halfway around the world didn’t seem far enough.

“Yvonne White?”

Yvonne turned around. Who was calling her?

“Hello?”

“Lieutenant White?”

Yvonne took a tentative step forward. She was at the end of the line; there was no one behind her. “Who’s calling?”

“Lieutenant White?” the voice repeated.

Who was that? Was it Captain Carver? She walked forward toward the darkness between two buildings, the rain obscuring her vision. “Who is it?”

Two figures loomed out of the darkness, both dressed in uniform and bearing the insignia of Privates, neither too well groomed.

“Who are you?” Yvonne demanded.

“We have orders, Lieutenant,” the left hand Private said, ignoring her question. “You’re to come with us. We’ll deliver you to your next posting.”

“My next posting is London,” Yvonne said frostily. “I’m on my way to the airport now. And now if you’ll excuse me, I have no intention of missing my bus.”

“You’re not getting on the bus, Lieutenant,” the left hand Private said with a distinctly unpleasant smile, “and you’re not going to London.”

“Shhhh!” the other hissed, drawing a sour look from the first.

“Not going to London?” Yvonne repeated. “Don’t be ridiculous. I have my transfer papers right here. And besides,” she added tartly, “If there’s been a change of plans, the Army certainly wouldn’t choose to notify me via two Privates lurking in a dark alley. Good evening.”

Yvonne turned on her heel. Honestly. They shouldn’t let these young ones off the base if they were going to get drunk and harass people like this.

Hands grabbed her from behind. She managed one scream before a hand was clamped firmly over her mouth, her arms were pinned behind her, and she was dragged into the darkness of the alley. Struggling mightily, peering over the dirty hand, she saw Captain Carver run up to the bus and talk to the driver. But the driver wouldn’t know anything about her because she’d never made it onto the bus.

“Now, Lieutenant,” said a voice in her ear, “no need for such a fuss. We just have our orders, is all. We’re to deliver you to your next posting, one way or another.” Over the hand, Yvonne watched with rising panic as the bus pulled away. Moments later, Captain Carver’s car went by. She was alone.

“It’s a tough job, but someone’s gotta do it,” the voice in her ear continued suggestively, adding, “I ain’t never been this close to a Lieutenant before.” Yvonne stiffened as another hand briefly caressed her neck before straying south.

“Stop it!” the other Private said severely, the one pinning her arms behind her. “We’re supposed to deliver her, not feel her up!”

“Awright, awright,” a grumpy voice answered. “I didn’t hurt her. Just admirin’ the scenery.”

“Lieutenant,” the Private behind her said pleadingly, “we do have orders. Now why don’t you just calm down and come with us. We don’t want to have to tie you up.”

“Speak for yourself,” a voice said in her ear.

Yvonne’s eyes darted frantically left and right. She still couldn’t see her captors, not that that would help, and she sincerely doubted they were acting on orders. More likely she’d wind up raped and dead by the side of the road. But there were two of them and one of her, and at the moment, she was pinned down. She’d have to break free in order to have any chance of escaping them. Instinctively, she relaxed.

“There now,” the voice in her ear crooned. “That’s better. Be a good girl.”

Slowly, the hand moved away from her mouth, hovering for a moment in case she screamed again. She didn’t. The hand disappeared, and she felt her arms released behind her. First her left, then her right.

Good. She was right-handed.

Whirling around, Yvonne aimed her right fist in the direction of the jackass whose hands had been on her breasts only moments before. Her hand connected with a satisfying smack, drawing an even more satisfying howl from the recipient. A mighty shove sent the second Private flying, and then she was off, running up the alley, splashing through puddles, kicking off her shoes as she ran. If she could just reach the street, she could call for help….

They caught her only a few yards from the road, lunging at her from behind, pinning her to the ground. She kicked like a fiend, sank her teeth into a passing arm, and poked a nail into a passing eyeball, drawing a shriek from its owner.

“Feisty one, eh?” a voice said admiringly.

Admiring or no, she was losing the battle. Desperate now, Yvonne began struggling mightily.

“She’s kicking like a mule,” complained another voice, frantically trying to restrain her. “He won’t like it if she’s hurt.”

Who won’t like it if I’m hurt? Yvonne had no idea, but she was inspired to kick even harder. If someone didn’t want her hurt, perhaps these two thugs would think twice about doing anything drastic.

“This is no good,” the second voice said despairingly. “He’ll have our heads.”

A second later, Yvonne felt a sharp rap on the back of her head. Then her vision dimmed, and darkness fell.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Next week........

Both the evening and the morning papers are now on the newstands, each with their own version of what happened on that ranch north of Roswell. Remember the two other shapeshifters, the ones who were looking for Brivari and company? Turns out they visit newstands.


I'll post Part 55 next Sunday.

Minanda: Controlling (or perhaps I should say redirecting) one's anger, disappointment, sorrow...anything along that spectrum....is probably one of the hardest things we learn to do in life. It's also something we seem to have to keep learning, as new situations pop up to make us disappointed, sad, or angry. That's one lesson that never ends.

Wow, but that was cheerful! :lol!: Good thing Dee's fictional and can't read that.



PART FIFTY-FIVE



July 9, 1947, 6:30 a.m.

Proctor residence




Emily Proctor’s fingers flew dangerously close to the knife as she cut the bacon into strips and tossed it into the frying pan, heedless of the spatter. She hadn’t slept well last night, and to make matters worse she was running late. She could clean up later.

She heard footsteps behind her entering the kitchen. “Oh, good. You’re up,” she said, without turning around. “Put the coffee on, will you? The bacon and eggs will be done in a few minutes.”

There was silence behind her. No footsteps moving to the stove, no telltale plunk of a coffee pot. “You’re either going to miss breakfast or be late to work if we don’t hurry,” she called back, still slicing.

Still not hearing a sound behind her, Emily slapped the knife down in frustration. “Is it too much to ask you to do something?”

“What exactly does it mean to ‘put the coffee on’? I’m familiar with ‘coffee’, but what do I put it on?”

Emily whirled around. That’s not David’s voice. The plate she had been holding to collect the cooked bacon fell to the floor, shattering into several pieces at Brivari’s feet.

“I….I’m sorry. I thought you were David,” Emily said, flustered. She hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Brivari since their altercation the day before. This sudden, unexpected appearance of their sudden, unexpected guest wasn't exactly welcome at this hour of the morning.

Brivari looked from the plate, to her, to the coffee pot, and back. “You wanted me to do something with the coffee?”

“I don’t expect you to know what to do with the coffee,” Emily said, stepping over the mess on the floor that would have to wait until breakfast was ready and bustling over to the stove. “ ‘Put the coffee on’ means to put the pot on the stove and let it heat up.”

“You want it heated?” Brivari asked. When she nodded, he looked somewhat miffed. “Why didn’t you say so?”

Her eyes widened as he touched the coffee pot; steam wafted from the pot, and the smell of fresh coffee filled the kitchen. It was way too early for new information, but she had to admit this was one alien trick that had practical use. Instant coffee, anyone?

“Thank you,” Emily said, a bit awkwardly. “That will make breakfast go faster.” She handed him a cup and filled it with coffee. “So is your friend any better?”

“He is not my friend.”

There was obvious bitterness in his voice, and no small amount of anger. Gracious, was there anyone he wasn’t mad at? She flipped the bacon again, pondering whether or not now was a good time to settle what had been bothering her ever since Valenti had left yesterday evening, and ultimately deciding that now was as good a time as any. Besides, she wanted it off her conscience.

“I never thanked you for what you did with that sheriff’s deputy yesterday,” she said, studying the bacon like she had to take a test on it. “I don’t like the way you did it, but….but I am grateful for your help.”

“You were afraid I would kill him.”

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. These people didn’t beat around the bush. Emily didn’t turn around, but after a moment’s hesitation, she nodded.

“But I did not kill him.”

“No,” Emily allowed. “But I thought you might.”

There was silence behind her for a moment. Then, “Do humans always expend this much energy worrying about things that might have happened, but did not?”

Annoyed, Emily plopped the lid on the frying pan with a bang. “What didn’t happen yesterday might happen today. Or tomorrow. Surely you’re familiar with the concept of trying to avoid those things you hope won’t happen?”

“Absolutely,” Brivari said in a tone which bordered suspiciously on amusement. “For example, I shall continue to hope that the interests of my Ward and yours do not conflict. That, I think, would be something worth avoiding.”

His tone was casual, but Emily still felt a chill run through her as she turned to face him. “Was that a threat?” she asked sharply.

“I never threaten in such a way that one has to wonder if that was my intention,” Brivari replied levelly.

“Funny. Neither do I,” Emily replied, hoping her voice wasn’t shaking the way her nerves were.

“I know,” Brivari answered, sipping his coffee. “We are much alike, you and I.” He paused, regarding her closely. “I suspect that bothers you.”

“I’ll just go a get a broom to clean up the plate,” Emily said, and fled to the broom closet in the basement stairway, leaning against the wall of the closet, trying to coax her racing heart into slowing down. I suspect that bothers you….he was wrong about that. Their similarities didn’t merely bother her—they scared the ever-loving shit out of her.

Emily scrubbed her sweaty palms on her robe and reached for the broom. She’d only been up for twenty minutes, and she’d already had enough excitement to last the entire day. Bandying words with that one was exhausting.

Reentering the kitchen, broom and dustpan in hand, Emily stared in confusion at the empty kitchen and the empty floor. Brivari was gone, but where was the plate? Was sweeping another alien talent? If so, she really had to put that guy to work.

When she finally gave up inspecting the floor, her eyes fell on the kitchen table.

And there was the plate, whole and pristine, with nary a crack to be seen.



******************************************************



David Proctor paused in the doorway, mentally sighing with relief. During breakfast he had asked Emily whose voice he’d heard in the kitchen and she had nodded wordlessly toward the back porch, making him wonder if Jaddo was up. He really wasn’t in the mood to make that one’s acquaintance at this hour, and was very glad to find Brivari instead. Not that he felt comfortable around Brivari—when dealing with aliens, comfort was a relative thing at best—but what he had to say was for Brivari’s ears alone.

Brivari was staring out the window at the early morning sun, lost in thought. It was really quite remarkable how unremarkable these people could make themselves look. It was hard to believe this perfectly normal looking “man” was capable of walking out of walls, melting into car seats, and changing colors with a touch. Not to mention doing other things with a touch.

“Good morning,” David said, sitting down in a nearby chair, his coffee in one hand and yesterday evening’s newspaper in the other.

Brivari looked at him in confusion. “ ‘Good morning’? Is that a greeting, or a statement of fact?”

Well, perhaps now someone would find him a bit odd. “It’s a greeting,” David confirmed. “We might say ‘Good morning’, ‘Good afternoon’, ‘Good evening’, or ‘Good night’, depending on the time of day.”

“Good Lord,” Brivari deadpanned, drawing a chuckle from David. “How many different ways does one need to say ‘Hello’?”

“Tell me, how is that you know the phrase, ‘Good Lord’, but not ‘Good morning’?”

“Always study religious references,” Brivari said seriously. “They frequently come in handy.”

“I’ll remember that if I crash on any alien planets,” David replied, dropping his smile when he saw the sober look on Brivari’s face. “Sorry,” he amended. “Bad joke.”

Brivari stared down at his cup. “Valeris would have approved.”

David pondered pursuing the subject of Valeris, but decided not to. He was running late; better to stick to the matter at hand. “I thought you should see this,” he said, handing over the copy of yesterday evening’s Roswell Daily Record. “It’s yesterday evening’s newspaper, which was printed before the Army issued their retraction. Which means that most of information in here is true.”

“Paper,” Brivari commented, fingering the newspaper. “How quaint.” He went back to sipping his coffee. “Why are you showing me this? I have already heard both versions of their story. People will believe what they want to believe.”

“I'm not thinking of my people,” David answered. “I'm thinking of yours. Specifically the ones who are hunting you. The ones you didn’t want the rest of your people to know about.”

Brivari’s expression turned guarded. “What of them?”

“There are lots of evening newspapers,” David answered. “If those…others have been here awhile, it’s a good bet they know how to read a newspaper. They’re going to see this. They’re going to come back.”

Brivari was silent for a time. “There is nothing I can do about that,” he said finally, “except retrieve what the soldiers took from us as quickly as possible and go into hiding.”

“You’re going to tell Jaddo about this, aren’t you?” David asked. “He should know.”

“What if he already knows?”

“So you told him?”

“That is not what I meant.”

David stared. “You think he led them to you?”

“I think that is a possibility I can ill afford to ignore, David Proctor.”

David leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling, trying to remember everything he’d been told about the alien upstairs. He’d been told a great deal over the last two days. Much of it was a jumble, but he remembered key details. At length he shook his head.

“It doesn’t add up. If he were working with them, why didn’t they find you when they were here before? Why did a couple of days go by before they got here in the first place? If he’s a spy, he’s a damned incompetent one. I can think of many words I’d use to describe him, not many of them flattering,” David admitted. “But ‘incompetent’ isn’t one of them.”

“I have asked myself the same questions,” Brivari answered. “All I know for certain at this point is that something Jaddo did—something he admitted doing—led those others here, whether by accident or design, I do not know.”

“Then you’d better find out. Ask him.”

Now it was Brivari's turn to stare. “And reveal what I’ve discovered?”

“Look,” David said, leaning forward in his chair, “I’m not certain exactly what you’re doing here, but I can count—there are only two of you left. Without him, you’re on your own. Are you prepared to carry out whatever it is you’re doing all by yourself?”

“Since you can count, count again,” Brivari answered. “If he is a traitor, he has others to back him up. I have no one. If I force his hand too quickly, I will be alone and badly outnumbered.”

“True,” David allowed, “But if he is a traitor, you can’t trust him. Do you really want him working with you? If you confront him and he leaves, at least he won’t know what you’re planning.” He paused. “I don’t see as you have much choice. You have to find out, one way or the other.”

Brivari was silent, tapping his coffee cup with his index finger in a decidedly human gesture. “Valeris thought as you did,” he said finally.

“Valeris was a smart man,” David allowed. “You can’t afford to lose another one of you unnecessarily. If there’s even a small chance that he’s not a spy, you owe it to your mission—and yourself—to find out for certain before you wind up all alone in this.”

Brivari didn't answer. Emily appeared in the doorway, holding his lunch and tapping her watch. “I need to be on my way,” David said, rising. “I just thought you should see that.”

David took the lunch from Emily, noting the wary look she was sending Brivari’s way. She had declined to elaborate when he had asked her what she and Brivari had been talking about earlier, and her silence was a dead giveaway that whatever the subject, she had found it annoying. And then there was the plate she had grabbed away from him when he’d been trying to dish up bacon and eggs, snatching it away and handing him a new one without explanation, setting the other aside and watching it carefully as though it were a grenade that might explode at any moment. Dee wasn't the only one acting strangely.

“I can trust you two to play nice together—right?” David asked, only half-joking.

“We’ll be fine,” Emily assured him, looking at Brivari, who didn’t look up from his coffee. “I doubt it’ll be necessary to kill him.”

David gaped as Emily handed him his lunch and kissed him lightly on the cheek. “See you after work,” she said sweetly, and walked out.

“I’m sure she was only joking,” David said awkwardly to Brivari, who, for some reason, was smiling slightly.

“I am equally sure she wasn’t,” Brivari said calmly. “A remarkable woman, your mate,” he murmured. “Remarkable.”

“Uh...yes. Remarkable,” David echoed, wondering why Brivari found a not-so-implied threat worthy of praise. Add that to the list of unexplained phenomena this morning. “I’ll see you later.”

As he left the porch, David’s eyes fell on the headline of the newspaper beside Brivari, remembering the two other aliens who had stood in his kitchen and frightened his daughter so badly, and desperately hoping they didn’t read newspapers.



******************************************************



7 a.m.

Copper Summit, Arizona


Hank Walker plopped yet another bundle of newspapers on the counter of his newsstand and reached for a pair of scissors to cut the twine. Business was brisk this morning, so brisk he was only a bundle away from selling out. He hadn’t sold this many papers since V-J day. Turned out spaceships were good for business.

Hank added the papers from the bundle to the display, the last of the evening papers that were selling like hotcakes. Everyone wanted to read about the flying saucer that had crashed in a field north of Roswell; comparatively few wanted to read the Army’s “Oops!” available in the morning papers. Even when Hank pointed out to his customers that there were two versions of the story issued on the same day, few showed any interest in the retraction. Watching their eyes glow, Hank realized they actually wanted flying saucers and big-eyed aliens. People were weird, plain and simple.

A car pulled up. Hank smiled and waved when he saw its occupant, one of his best customers. Carl stopped by every day like clockwork and bought one of every single paper, except when he was out of town, which he seemed to be a lot lately. But when he was gone, Hank saved a copy of every issue, and Carl dutifully purchased them when he returned. When Hank had started to get close to selling out this morning, he’d made certain to save one of every issue containing either version of the flying saucer story for Carl, stashing them under the counter where other customers wouldn’t find them. It was always good business to keep your best customers happy, even if that meant fibbing about being “sold out” to your less than best customers.

“Mornin’, Carl!” Hank called as he climbed out of his car. Carl was the local handyman, and a damned good one at that; it was downright uncanny the way he could fix just about anything a body could own. He and Tom, that surly friend of his that lived with him, had shown up here several years ago and bought a house on the outskirts of town. Actually, if Hank recollected correctly, there had been more of them at first than just Carl and Tom. Had there been three? Or four? Hank couldn’t remember, nor could he remember hearing what had happened to the other one or two. But no matter. Carl was a good-natured fellow who’d been his best customer almost since he’d moved in.

“Mornin’, Hank!” Carl said, walking up to the counter. “Any news today?”

Hank beamed. Carl asked that every morning, and today he actually had an answer. “Is there ever! Wait’ll you see this!” Hank pulled two newspapers out from behind the counter, The Roswell Daily Record and the Chicago Tribune, the former sporting a flying saucer, the latter a weather balloon. Arraying the papers with a flourish, he waited expectantly to see how Carl would react. Hank had been cataloging people’s reactions all morning, and he was eager to add one more to his tally.

He was completely unprepared, however, for this latest reaction. Carl’s face clouded as he scanned both papers, moving from alarmed to angry in the space of half an article, and he uttered a word the likes of which Hank had never heard.

“What did you say?” Hank asked in surprise.

Carl looked up in surprise as though unaware he had spoken out loud. “Sorry,” he said to Hank. “Just a little profanity in my native language.”

“What language might that be?” Hank wondered.

“Nothing you’d be familiar with,” Carl said absentmindedly, opening the Record and continuing to scan the article. “Is there any more on this?”

“Sure,” Hank replied, baffled. A lot of people had laughed when they’d seen the headlines. Some had gotten nervous, and a few frantic types had gone off the deep end. But Carl was the first to become genuinely angry. “It’s everywhere. First the Army said it had found a flying saucer; that was early yesterday afternoon. Then a few hours later they took it all back and said they’d just found a weather balloon. Deadlines for the evening papers had passed at that point, so the evening editions have the saucer story. All the morning editions have the weather balloon story. I saved one of each for you,” he added, pulling all of them out from under the counter.

Carl leafed through the papers in stoney silence as Hank continued to puzzle over why he was so agitated. “All right,” Carl said finally, “I’ll take one of each that have the weather balloon story.”

Hank’s mouth dropped open. “But…don’t you want to read about the flying saucer? And the bodies they supposedly found?” He couldn’t believe it. Everyone wanted to read about the flying saucer and the bodies. Everyone.

“No, I don’t."

“They said they was gray, with big black eyes,” Hank noted, finding it hard to believe this was the first day that Carl hadn’t bought one of every single paper. “Black eyes, with no pupils.”

“Really?” Carl said flatly. “Imagine that.” He handed Hank some money, scooped up his papers, and headed back to his car wearing an expression like grim death. Throwing the papers in the passenger seat, Carl gunned the engine and roared off without so much as a “goodbye”.

Hank leaned over the newsstand and watched the dust cloud left in his wake. Now, what in blazes was bugging him?



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



“Carl” headed away from downtown Copper Summit, heedless of the fact he was driving way over the speed limit, heedless of everything except what he had just learned. What would he say? He had to tell them something. He couldn’t just show up without any newspapers—they would immediately be suspicious. So far he was fairly certain he had managed to avoid arousing suspicion, and now was certainly not the time to start.

He glanced at the half dozen or so papers in the passenger seat. Even though all of those carried the retraction, they still inevitably referred to the original story. That was bad, but not as bad as the other papers with only the flying saucer story.

Fretting, he began chewing on his fingernails, a habit he’d developed ever since habitually having fingernails to chew on. He would just have to do the best he could. Maybe they would buy the weather balloon story. Perhaps the military's attempt to hide this would work in his favor. He could play up the ordinary bits of metal the girl’s father had shown them as further evidence of human stupidity, something they regarded as an article of faith. It was worth a try.

Reaching a deserted section of country road, he pulled over and stopped. He needed to read every single word of every single article before they did. One word leaped out at him: Bodies. Two bodies, according to one article, gray with large black eyes. But which two? Who had it been?

Damn it, Brivari! Malik thought fiercely. You almost made it!



******************************************************



0900 hours

Eagle Rock Military Base


Two MP’s snapped to attention and saluted as Captain Cavitt and his aide de camp approached the room they were guarding. Raising the shade which obscured the window, Cavitt peered through for several seconds before lowering it and turning to his aide.

“Report.”

“She suffered a concussion, sir,” the aide replied nervously, as Cavitt glowered. “Apparently she put up a fair amount of resistance.”

“Resistance that necessitated a head injury?” Cavitt snapped. “You sent two men after her, Lieutenant. Do you really expect me to believe that two men couldn’t restrain one woman without injuring her? Need I point out to you that she is of no use to me damaged?”

“The doctor says she’ll recover, sir,” the aide replied quickly. “I’ve reprimanded the messengers, and I’ve rethought the way the others will be approached.”

“Good,” Cavitt muttered. “If you take the “dark alley at night” approach with a male soldier, it’s your witless “messengers” who will likely wind up with concussions.”

The aide swallowed. “Yes, sir.”

Cavitt turned and began walking down the hallway as the aide fell in step beside him. “What about the reporter?”

“She’ll be taken care of, sir.”

“And Captain Carver?”

“The papers are being drawn up now, sir. Did you want me to…..”

“No,” Cavitt said quickly. “I have that under control. Captain Dodie will be handling that matter.”

“Dodie, sir?” the aide said quizzically. “Aren’t Carver and Dodie friends?”

“Not such good friends that Dodie can’t see his duty clearly,” Cavitt replied. “And Private Spade?”

“Hasn’t offered any new information, sir.”

“I see. I see,” Cavitt murmured. “Well, we’ll just have to do something about that, won’t we?”

“Sir?”

Cavitt stopped and glanced at the aide. “Don’t worry about Spade; I’ll take care of him. You just take care of that reporter, and see to it that whatever happens can’t be traced anywhere near this base. Dismissed.”

The aide scuttled away as Cavitt reflected that it was always better to spread out unpleasant duties such as these. Sharing the burden meant there were just that many more people who had a reason to stay silent should some do-gooder come along and make inconvenient discoveries. It also meant that events were harder to trace back to the source. It was galling, really, to have to go to these lengths when one was only doing one’s duty by God and country, but there you had it.

Still, he had to admit that things were going better than expected. Cavitt had never been the athletic sort; he’d taken a good deal of ribbing for that in school. Bowling had been one of the few sports in which he could hold his own, and even that was not something he excelled at. But bowling had taught him a useful lesson: Even if one couldn’t finesse a strike, if one was persistent, the pins kept falling. And falling.

Smiling, Cavitt headed back to his office. Who would have thought that bowling would yield such salient life lessons.

The pins were falling, one by one.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Next week.....

Brivari pins Jaddo to the proverbial wall about that transponder he planted, and....

....Malik has some fast talking to do, and....

....Dee finally delivers Valeris's message.


I'll post Part 56 next Sunday.

Minanda: Oh no, it was me I was laughing at for not being cheerful! :lol!: I'm not usually that much of a downer. Must have been one of those days.





PART FIFTY-SIX


July 9, 1947, 11:55 a.m.

Proctor residence




Earth’s huge sun was high in the sky before Jaddo began to stir. Brivari watched him turn stiffly in the bed, squinting against the light streaming in the window. He propped himself up on one elbow, gazing around the room with a confused expression, until his eyes fell upon Brivari.

Jaddo dropped back down on the bed and closed his eyes. Brivari was silent, waiting.

“Where am I?”

“In the Proctor’s dwelling,” Brivari answered in a cold voice.

“How did I get here?”

“I brought you here.”

Jaddo twisted his head so he could look at Brivari. “Why?”

“Believe me, I have asked myself the same question several times,” Brivari replied stonily. “I almost didn’t bother.”

“So why did you?”

“Because unfortunately, I still have need of you, untrustworthy though you are.”

Jaddo lifted his head to look at his side, gingerly touching the place where the wound had been. “You healed me?”

“I did what I could, which wasn’t much given the state I was in. The human woman did the rest. She has an unusual facility with the stones.”

“I remember her,” Jaddo said, wincing as he touched his other side, where Emily’s elbow had connected so well. “A hellion, that one.”

“At least she isn’t a traitor.”

Jaddo sighed, rubbing his eyes with his hands. “I am not a traitor, Brivari.”

Brivari sat forward in his chair. “Who were you signaling with that transponder?”

“Signaling?” Jaddo echoed, managing only a fraction of his usual level of sarcasm. “From this distance, I would hardly refer to it as ‘signaling’.”

“Who?” Brivari demanded, rising from the chair. “Answer me!”

“We need allies, Brivari, allies on our own….”

“Spare me the sermon!” Brivari snapped. “Get to the part where you turned our ship into a huge, blinking target!”

Jaddo struggled into a sitting position. “The rebels. I was signaling the rebels that we had landed safely.”

“What ‘rebels’?”

“The Argilian rebels. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the rebels who are against Khivar.”

“Not to put too fine a point on it, but aren’t these the same rebels who want Rath on the throne?” Brivari asked sarcastically.

“Yes, but…”

“Yes, but what?” Brivari spat. “There is no ‘but’, Jaddo! These people sought to usurp the rightful King! That makes them traitors; that makes you a traitor for conspiring with them. I am surrounded by traitors!” Brivari finished angrily, beginning to pace.

“Only some openly espoused placing Rath on the throne,” Jaddo said carefully, as if afraid Brivari might explode. “Others were more moderate. They merely wanted Rath to have more of a hand in the decision making process. They felt his personality was better suited to dealing with people like Khivar, and…”

“I don’t care what they wanted!” Brivari exploded. “Tell me what you set in motion with that transponder!”

“Nothing was ‘set in motion’…” Jaddo protested.

“Are they on their way here now?” Brivari went on, still pacing. “Are they planning to kill Zan’s hybrids so there will be no chance of him returning to the throne?”

Jaddo stared at Brivari a long moment before replying. “You may find this hard to believe, but I would never allow that. And they don’t know where ‘here’ is. You know perfectly well that distance would have made the signal too weak to tell them much more than that we had landed.”

“You’re right, Jaddo. I do find that hard to believe. And why else would you plant that transponder if not to give away our position?”

Jaddo studied Brivari for several seconds, watching him pace. “Well?” Brivari said impatiently.

“This is not about the transponder,” Jaddo said quietly. “This is about your mistakes.”

“My mistakes?” Brivari flared, advancing on Jaddo till they were all but nose to nose. “Oh, I can’t wait to hear this one. Explain to me, if you’d be so kind, just exactly how this is about my mistakes.”

“We missed it,” Jaddo said with resignation, ignoring the sarcasm dripping from Brivari’s voice. “We all did. Not just Urza. We all missed Vilandra’s deception, and we, of all people, should have thought of it. We were not blinded by love for her as Urza was. We should have been suspicious of her abrupt change of mood. We're as much to blame as Urza is.”

Brivari’s eyes shot fire. “We had no idea what was going on!” he fumed. “Urza did.”

“And why didn’t we know?” Jaddo demanded. “Why didn’t you know? I’ll tell you why—because Zan kept his knowledge of Vilandra's and Khivar's affair from us. Zan kept it from you. He didn’t tell you because he didn’t want to hear you bitch!”

“You’re off topic, Jaddo,” Brivari ground out. “You still haven’t told me what you were up to.”

“You have interrupted me every single time I have tried to explain!” Jaddo said angrily.

“Tell me!”

“Then shut up and listen to me!”

Two hands shot up. Two bodies thumped rather weakly into two walls. Brivari and Jaddo glared at each other from across the room, panting. Neither had the strength to do much damage to the other.

“Well?” Brivari said at length. “I’ve shut up. I’m listening. Although I can’t imagine anything you could say that would make this any better.”

“Brivari, you fool,” Jaddo whispered, leaning heavily against the wall. “You shortsighted fool. You are so busy finding allies on this planet that you have neglected to recognize allies on our own.”

“We need allies on this planet,” Brivari retorted. “If I had listened to you when you advised me not to heal the child, where would we be now? Where would our Wards be? We have sanctuary here because of that one act. Most of the hybrids are safe now because of that one act. For all we know, the fact that we are still alive may well be because of that one act.”

Jaddo sighed. “I concede the point: We need allies on this planet. But we also need allies at home. The plan is still to go home, isn’t it? We aren’t staying here forever, are we?”

“We already have allies at home.”

“Not allies like these,” Jaddo said pointedly. “Think, Brivari! The rebels hate Khivar just as we do, maybe more. They have infiltrated his ranks almost to the top level. They are in a unique position to help us bring him down. When we return with our Wards, we will need that inside support.”

“What ‘inside support’?” Brivari said acidly. “The moment we set foot on Antarian soil with our Wards, our interests and those of the rebels diverge. They may not want Khivar, but neither do they want Zan.”

“At the moment, we both want the same thing,” Jaddo argued. “We both want Khivar weakened. The rebels can help us do that, and we would be foolish to refuse their assistance.”

“Haven’t we already had this discussion?” Brivari said irritably, pulling himself to his feet. “As I recall the subject was Orlon, but the gist was the same. And my answer is the same: It is too dangerous to ally ourselves with people who want Zan off the throne. Wanting the same thing ‘at the moment’ is not good enough. One never knows when that ‘moment’ will shift, and alleged allies suddenly become enemies.”

“We have years, decades even, to sort that out,” Jaddo said wearily. “At least give them a chance.” He paused. “They found him, you know,” he said softly.

“Found who?”

“Rath. It was the rebels who took me to his body, and told me that Athenor had killed him. One of them handed me the transponder and asked me to take it.”

“And you just took it?” Brivari said incredulously. “Without discussing it with anyone?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Jaddo said, exasperated. “You were there! You know what a mess it was! There wasn’t time to discuss it in committee.”

“There was plenty of time for the ‘committee’ to discuss it en route,” Brivari pointed out. “Why didn’t you bring it up then?” Jaddo sat in sullen silence, not answering. “We were supposed to make contact when we reached Earth,” Brivari continued angrily. “Wouldn’t that have been sufficient? Why the transponder?”

“They don’t trust what Khivar tells them. They wanted to know for themselves if we had made it, if there was any hope at all of the Royal Four’s return.”

“You mean Rath’s return. And they don’t know if we made it, do they? You turned the transponder off just as we were entering the atmosphere. Why?”

Jaddo swallowed. “I….I was suspicious when the braking thrusters didn’t fire. I didn’t see how the transponder had anything to do with that, but just to be certain, I turned it off.”

“Amazing,” Brivari said sarcastically. “Common sense prevailed at the last possible moment. Imagine that.”

“I….wait a minute,” Jaddo said, eyes narrowing. He pushed himself to his feet with obvious effort. “How did you know when I turned it off? We’ve never discussed this.”

Brivari stopped pacing and glared at his fellow Warder. Should he answer? Should he point out that he knew there were rogue Covari on this planet for whom that transponder signal would have been the equivalent of one of the humans’ air raid sirens?

No, he finally decided. It sounded like Jaddo didn’t know about Malik and the others, but if he did—and if Brivari let slip that he was aware of their presence—that might induce them to make their next move sooner. He couldn’t risk that, not with being so weak from events thus far. He needed every ounce of strength to rescue the captured hybrids. Assuming there were still hybrids left to rescue.

“Never mind,” Brivari answered coldly. “I know—that is all that matters. Have you contacted these ‘rebels’ since our arrival?”

“Of course not. You ordered me to maintain radio silence.”

“And am I to believe that you actually obeyed that order?”

Jaddo fixed Brivari with a hard stare. “I know we frequently disagree with one another. Too often you behave like an overbearing know-it-all, paranoid about all the wrong things. But I have never questioned your intentions, or your intelligence. If you wanted radio silence maintained, you must have a reason, unfathomable as that reason may be. I have contacted no one since our arrival.”

“There’s one piece of good news,” Brivari grumbled. “We could use some about now.”

Jaddo sank down onto the bed. “Have you been back to the humans’ military base?”

“I have not had the strength,” Brivari replied. “I used up what little I had healing you.”

“And I nearly killed myself yesterday looking for you,” Jaddo pointed out.

“Then we’re even,” Brivari said shortly. He headed for the door. “I will go back tonight and see if I can locate the hybrids. Hopefully the humans will be intrigued enough that they haven’t harmed them. And you,” he said, pointing at Jaddo, “get some rest. I will speak with the human woman about getting you something to eat. We can’t wait much longer.”

“Can we trust these humans?” Jaddo asked, as Brivari reached the door. “I know we have successfully trusted the child in the past, but what of her parents?”

Brivari did not turn around. “At the moment, Jaddo, I trust these humans more than I trust you.”




******************************************************


12 p.m.

Copper Summit, Arizona.



Malik parked the car in the driveway and climbed out, the stack of papers tucked under his arm. Their neat, two-story house was in a tree-lined neighborhood on the edge of town, a town chosen for its proximity to the raw materials they needed. He climbed the stairs to the front porch and headed for the front door, picking up the note caught between the screen and the main door as he opened it.

Carl,

Refrigerator’s on the fritz. Food will spoil. Come as soon as possible, please.

Margaret Tantillo

Malik smiled as he dropped the papers and the note on the kitchen table. People always left notes when he wasn’t in because they didn’t want to talk to Amar, who went by the human name of “Tom”. Amar wanted as little as possible to do with the humans in whose midst they lived; Malik was their public face in a world where one needed currency to survive, and where not being employed would raise inconvenient questions. He didn’t mind. He found Amar’s company less than easy, the humans welcoming, and their primitive machinery easy to repair. Every now and then he would tweak one of their “washing machines” or “lawn mowers”, rendering them markedly more efficient and less prone to breakage. The humans had no idea what he was doing, of course, but his reputation as a “handyman”, as they called him, had spread quite far. He earned a considerable amount of currency doing what he did, more than enough to squelch any curiosity about the fact that “Tom” didn’t appear to be gainfully employed. And he enjoyed his work, something he certainly couldn’t say about his previous occupation.

Pulling open the refrigerator door, Malik pulled out a pitcher of orange juice, poured himself a glass, picked up his papers and headed for the basement. Turns out the papers weren’t as bad as he had feared; Hank had been engaging in selective reporting. True, some editions did have an accurate description of Antarian forms, but some veered in other directions, changing colors and adding or subtracting body parts. Green seemed to be running neck and neck with gray for body color, and speculation abounded as to how many fingers the aliens had and how long they were. There were enough different descriptions that Malik was fairly certain he’d be able to pull off what he was planning. As the humans said about that ridiculous game with the oddly shaped ball, the best defense was a good offense.

Reaching the bottom of the basement staircase, Malik headed for the back wall. The basement appeared unremarkable, dark and a bit dank, filled with the usual assortment of cast-off furniture and boxes. Unless one knew where to look, of course. Malik passed his hand over an innocuous place on the stone wall, causing a shimmering silver handprint to appear. Pressing his hand to the print, the seemingly solid wall slid open to reveal a doorway to another section of the basement. He walked through, the stone door sliding closed behind him.

Amar was there, hunched over his workbench. He’d left early that morning, and had still been gone when Malik had left for Hank’s newsstand. That was unusual; Amar wasn’t typically an early riser.

“Where were you?” Malik asked, setting his orange juice down on the workbench. “You were gone early.”

“Looking for raw material,” Amar said, scorn evident in his voice. “We’re so close to a seal, but this damned planet is so primitive it’s getting harder and harder to find usable material. Honestly, if it weren’t for the uprising back home, I’d be at a serious loss as to why we shouldn’t get the hell off this rock.”

Malik let Amar continue his tirade uninterrupted. He was familiar with the other’s disdain for Earth and its inhabitants, a disdain he paid lip service to for appearance’s sake, but did not share. He’d learned to tune out the majority of it, so he sipped his juice in silence while Amar went on and on. Malik had grown quite fond of orange juice. He couldn’t taste it, of course, but it had an acidic texture that sizzled on the tongue, which he found interesting.

“What are they thinking, attempting something this difficult in such a godforsaken place?” Amar wondered for the umpteenth time, shaking his head in frustration. “We should be doing this back home.”

“You already know the answer to that,” Malik sighed. “They felt it would be better to develop the seal….”

“…..in the environment in which it will be used,” Amar finished impatiently. “Yes, yes, I know. It’s just that the more I try to refine it, the harder it becomes because I don’t have the right materials.”

“You never have the right materials,” Malik said casually, having never yet met an engineer who didn’t complain about not having the right materials. “They did do most of the design at home. Do you want me to go back to the ship and scrounge around?”

Amar looked up in surprise. “ ‘Scrounge around’? Honestly, it frightens me sometimes, the way you’ve picked up human speech patterns.” He shook his head. “I have everything we can get from the ship—I just need to find the right alloy that will resist this atmosphere without harming their physiology. So far everything I’ve come up with does either one or the other, not both. Damned thing,” he muttered, shoving his latest prototype away in a typical fit of bad temper.

“Now who’s picking up human speech patterns?” Malik teased.

Amar threw him an exasperated look, his eyes falling on the newspapers. “So—any news of our wayward Royals?”

“No, but look at this,” Malik said, trying to sound amused. “Remember those plain old metal pieces some guy was going on about near Roswell?” Amar nodded. “Looks like he got someone else all excited about them too. Look at this…can humans get any more stupid?”

Malik passed the first newspaper to Amar, trying to look excited and mocking and eager to share. Amar was smiling when he took the paper, but the smile froze when he saw the headline. By the time he had finished skimming the article, his smile had melted completely.

“We missed something,” he said flatly.

“Nonsense,” Malik scoffed, hoping desperately he sounded convincing. “You saw what they had. It was ordinary steel, nothing more. I’ve never understood why humans put so much stock in imagination. A rather worthless trait, if you ask me.”

“This says they found bodies,” Amar said slowly, reading the account. “Sounds like Antarian bodies.”

“Maybe in that issue,” Malik allowed. “Look at this one.” He handed Amar another paper with a decidedly different description. “This one says they’re green; this one here says blue. This one says they look ‘Chinese’, whatever that means.” He shook his head dismissively. “Stories like this have been going around for years, ever since we started coming here. Sometimes their memories come back, hard as we tried to prevent it. We’re heard this before.”

Amar was staring at yet another newspaper. “Are you sure you didn’t hear that child say something?”

Malik shook his head firmly. “Positive. You know humans can’t communicate telepathically. You’re hearing things.”

Amar continued to laboriously pick his way through the newspaper articles while Malik fretted silently. Amar was a slow reader. Had it been any other subject he likely would have given up in frustration, but his hatred of Brivari and the king were apparently severe enough to warrant extra effort. Several minutes passed before he put the papers down.

“Should we tell him?” he asked uncertainly, indicating the airlock with a nod of his head.

Malik shrugged. “Don’t see why we should. Why bother him with some human folk tale that’s just like hundreds of others we’ve heard?”

“That’s just it,” Amar said, puzzled. “This one seems different. More intense. I mean, you’re right, we have heard versions of this before. But for some reason….” He paused. “You’d better tell him. Just in case he wants us to go back there. I’ll let you do it,” he added uneasily, passing the papers to Malik. “I’ve already been the bearer of bad news once today.”

“What bad news?”

“We heard from home while you were out,” Amar said, casting a sidelong glance at the communicator nearby. “The population’s in an uproar, Khivar’s position is very shaky, the Royals are dead when they weren’t supposed to be, the bodies are missing, the Warders escaped—just about everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. They’re really putting the pressure on us to finish this as soon as possible, plus find the Warders. Everyone wants some good news; they didn’t expect things to go this way.”

“Neither did I,” Malik said quietly, staring at his empty glass.

“Doesn’t matter,” Amar replied firmly. “We do our job, we get what we want. From our perspective, nothing’s changed.”

Of course it has, Malik thought soberly. Things always changed when the pendulum of power swung sharply to one side. That the pendulum had just unexpectedly ricocheted in the opposite direction was no comfort; there was still a lack of balance, and finding balance was the very reason Malik had agreed to participate in all this in the first place. That, and the fact that, had he not agreed to participate, he would likely now be dead.

“You’re not going all sentimental on me now, are you?” Amar asked, watching him closely. “Don’t you think we’re better off?”

“I never wanted the king assassinated,” Malik replied, “and, no, not necessarily.”

“If it makes you feel any better, Khivar didn’t want him assassinated either—not yet anyway,” Amar said, a nasty smile on his face. “It’s still not clear how that happened. But however it happened, it’s done, and we get the happy job of picking up the pieces.” He thrust the newspapers into Malik’s hands and nodded toward the airlock. “Good luck. He’s under a lot more pressure now, and he’s not happy to have more on his plate.”

Good, Malik thought. That would make diverting his attention all the easier. Malik picked up the papers and headed for the airlock that sealed off the atmospheric chamber from the rest of the planet. As he stepped inside, the door sealed shut behind him; a hissing noise announced that Earth’s oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere was being replaced with a different mixture, and the relative humidity rose, fogging the windows in the doors. It mattered little to Malik, of course. He was Covari; he could tolerate many different atmospheric compositions. The one inside the atmospheric chamber was not so blessed. His existence here was due solely to Malik’s and Amar’s cooperation, their willingness to be his eyes, ears, and hands in a world where he normally would be unable to function. Leaving this enclosure would kill him.

The atmospheric exchange began to level off, and the mist to evaporate from the windows. Malik could see him now, hunched over his experiments, paying him no mind. He was a scientist, a bioengineer to be precise, one of the Argilian’s finest, charged with the task of finding a way for their race to live on this planet so that they might avail themselves of the same advantages that Riall, and Zan after him, had sought here. They had never been told his name, but as he had led the team of scientists back home whose efforts had brought them so close to their goal, they had taken to calling him “The Leader”. Not precisely unpleasant, he was the typical, focused scientist, intent upon his work and little else. Malik knew he had no appetite for politics, and no patience with anything that interrupted his work. Hopefully that impatience extended to the political nightmare that had quite literally fallen out of Earth’s sky into his lap.

And hopefully that impatience could be used to buy more time for the surviving Warders. More time for them to hide what Malik hoped they’d succeeded in creating. More time to begin the long process of restoring the balance of power.



******************************************************


4:30 p.m.

Proctor residence




Dee reached for another red crayon, her third this afternoon. She had only one more red one left, but that should be enough. She’d been drawing for at least a couple of hours now, and she was nearly finished.

She smiled as she rubbed the crayon across the paper, thinking of all the dozens of boxes of crayons she had received as gifts that had gone unused. Grown-ups seemed to think all children loved coloring, hence all children would love to have yet another box of crayons. Every birthday and Christmas that Dee could remember had been laden with crayons. Teachers gave out crayons as prizes, as if every kid on the planet didn’t have zillions already. Her church passed out coloring pages and crayons and called it Sunday School; teachers passed out crayons and coloring pages when they needed something to keep kids quiet and couldn’t think of anything better for them to do. Sometimes Dee thought the national pastime wasn’t baseball, it was coloring.

There was just one problem: Dee hated coloring. It was the most boring thing she had ever done. Filling in the blanks on someone else’s outlined picture was tedious beyond belief, all the more so because she was expected to love it. Dee liked to draw her own pictures, and her instrument of choice was a pencil. Crayons were too fat and imprecise. Crayons were for little kids.

But crayons were exactly what she needed now, so she had dug around in her closet and produced the seemingly endless boxes of crayons received on so many different occasions. With some prodding her mother had produced paper, accompanied by a mystified expression when she saw all the crayons arrayed on Dee’s bed. But she had wisely said nothing, just looked back a bit wistfully as she left the room, with Dee stretched out on her bed, coloring away as if her life depended on it.

In a way, it did. Dee didn’t want to forget one moment of her dream journey with Urza, so she had filled sheets and sheets with what she had seen from the window of their ‘spaceship’: Planets, stars, the “V” constellation that Urza had said was his home. More sheets chronicled Antar, with its tiny red sun and orangey moons. Still more traced the outlines of the interior of the ship. It had hurt to do these last, but it also felt good somehow to draw the room where she had spent her last hours with Valeris, and the box in the corner that held what was so important to them. She'd even drawn the sacs with the tiny babies inside. She wanted to draw everything, every single thing that had happened to her in the past few days, all in vivid color.

Something nudged her mind. Not words, exactly….a presence. She looked up to find Brivari standing in the doorway, watching her. Dee glanced down at her current picture, one of Urza in his alien shape holding that huge crystal “key” up in the air as the swirly alien symbol glowed on the side of the ship. Instinctively she slid another, more innocuous picture of Saturn over top of it and gathered the rest into a pile as casually as she could. She wasn’t certain how Brivari would feel about what Urza had done.

<You said you have a message for me.>

Dee swallowed hard. She’d practiced the message several times a day for the past couple of days so she wouldn’t forget it, and it’d be good to get it over with, but still, she wasn’t looking forward to this. Valeris had said that Brivari would be furious upon hearing his message, and Valeris would know.

“Okay,” she said slowly. “But first, I want you to know that Valeris said you would be really mad when you heard it. And that if you took it out on me, he’d come back to haunt you.”

Brivari smiled faintly. <Will he, now? I don’t doubt it.> He walked into the room and sat down on the end of the bed. Dee backed up until she was sitting on the pillow. If he did get really angry, she didn’t want to be too close to him.

<No doubt his message has something to do with pressing on to the bitter end no matter what happens—right?>

“Part of it,” Dee admitted.

Brivari nodded. <That sounds like Valeris. But why would that make me angry?>

“There’s more,” Dee said, “something he didn’t tell you before.” She closed her eyes and prepared to recite the way she did in English class.

<What?> Brivari asked sharply.

Dee’s eyes flew open. “Look, I memorized this, okay? I don’t understand most of it, so I hope you do. But I promised him I would do this for him, and I don’t want to mess it up. So just be quiet a minute and let me think!”

Brivari raised an eyebrow at this mini tirade, but said nothing. Dee needed to think; she’d memorized Valeris’s message line for line, word for word because she’d had to—it was long, and had a million big words in it she didn’t understand. She had been instructed to leave certain parts out if she wound up delivering it to someone other than Brivari, but that wasn’t an issue now. Dee closed her eyes; she didn’t want to see his face while she recited, and the darkness would help her to concentrate, to place herself once again in that little room on the ship, with Valeris sitting on the floor propped against the counter, and their time running out.

“Brivari, if you are receiving this message, then I am dead. I am sorry to leave you in a time of such dire need. Please know that I did everything in my power to protect our Wards. I have the utmost confidence in you, and am pleased to leave Ava in your care. No matter what happened to cause my death, you must not give up hope: Our mission will never be over unless the very last hybrid dies. So long as even one of them survives, there is still a chance.

“There is something I have not told you, something that had no bearing on our current situation, but may become important in the future if certain individuals were to stand trial for treason. I have one more name to add to the list of the slain: Antar’s Crown Prince, the heir to Zan’s throne. Ava was pregnant with a son. Her unborn child died with her, and I placed him in his mother’s stasis unit and sent them out together. The child was in such an early state of development that his body was not suitable for hybridization.

“I did not tell you this because, at the time, I did not see the point in upsetting you further. I meant to disclose this information when we were safely hidden, but, as you are well aware, things did not work out as we had hoped. Forgive me. I meant only to shield you from further pain at a time when I felt we all had enough to deal with as it was.

“Years from now our Wards will emerge, and you will return them to their rightful place. You have no idea how much I wish I could be there with you. All of my hopes go with you on your long and difficult journey. Make it work, Brivari. Bring them back and set things right. Our world will be waiting.

“And Brivari, since I know you so well, I have two more things to add. While you are waiting, don’t forget how to laugh. And don’t forget to live.

“Goodbye, old friend.”

Dee felt one of those annoying tears roll down her cheek. She had never really stopped to think about what she had been memorizing. There hadn’t been time, there was too much of it, and it hadn’t made a whole lot of sense. Now that she'd actually said it to someone, it made more sense, and it seemed so sad. So final.

She opened her eyes, glad it was over. The room seemed bright after having her eyes closed for so long. She cast a tentative glance at Brivari, but he didn’t look angry. He didn’t look…anything. He had a completely blank expression on his face, as though he were in shock. She waited, expecting him to react, to do something. Hopefully he wouldn’t ask her to repeat the message. She wasn’t sure she could do that again.

The minutes ticked by, and still Brivari didn’t move. At least he’s not mad, she thought with relief. There was that much to be grateful for.

Suddenly Brivari stood up, and his face didn’t look blank anymore. His current expression made Dee instinctively dive for cover, rolling off the bed onto the floor. She was just in time. Brivari let out a roar of rage, and she heard the sound of glass shattering. Dee cowered on the floor, her hands over her head as bits of glass stung her arms and tinkled around her everywhere.

Then there was silence. After a few seconds of quiet, she cautiously raised her head.

Brivari was gone.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Next week....

.....Mama Proctor is not happy about Brivari's behavior. And then Jaddo shows up to investigate the ruckus, and she winds up not terribly happy about his behavior either. And....

....Captain Cavitt and his team of doctors make some disturbing discoveries about those sacs they captured.


I'll post Part 57 next Sunday.

Minanda: I always wondered if there were more Michael worshipers, or if Courtney was the only one left.

GoodVsEvil: Welcome! My impression from the show was that Zan did love Ava...but frankly, that has little to do with Max and Tess. I see them all as different people. So in my head, Zan can love Ava while Max still loves Liz.

Hope I didn't wreck the story for you.







PART FIFTY-SEVEN


July 9, 1947, 4:45 p.m.

Proctor residence


Dee stared in astonishment at the carnage in her room. Her window frame was a gaping hole. Shattered glass covered the floor in front of the window. Unfortunately she had rolled off the side of the bed nearest the window, so there was glass on her too. What a mess.

Footsteps came charging up the stairs. Dee’s mother screeched to a halt in the doorway, eyes wide, taking in the scene. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” she breathed, using her favorite substitute for swear words. “What in the name of all that’s holy happened here? Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” Dee said, brushing glass out of her hair. “He was just mad.”

“Who was mad?” Emily demanded, stepping gingerly over the mess and pulling Dee away from the worst of it.

“Brivari was mad,” Dee answered, as she picked off the last few shards. She didn’t seem to have any cuts or scratches, despite all the glass. “He’s gone now.”

“Gone? Gone where?”

“How should I know?” Dee answered crossly. “I’m not his secretary.”

Her mother raised an eyebrow, then apparently decided to ignore her sass, at least for the moment. “What was he so mad about that he decided to take it out on a window?”

Dee sighed. “I delivered a message to him from Valeris—one of the others who died. Valeris said he would be mad, and I guess he was right.”

“What message?”

Dee gave her mother a level stare. “It was a private message just for him. I didn’t understand much of it, and you wouldn’t either.”

Dee’s mother turned to face her, arms crossed in front of her chest. That was bad. Her mother’s hands-on-hips stance meant she was annoyed. Her arms-crossed stance meant she was angry. Really angry.

“I want to know what you told him that made him break your bedroom window,” she said in a steely tone. “Now.”

“It’s none of your business,” Dee said flatly.

Emily sucked in a breath. “Anything that happens under my roof is my business, young lady! Answer me!”

“No.”

Her mother promptly turned at least two interesting shades of purple. Dee didn’t care. She was tired of people taking things that didn’t belong to them, whether it was ships, or babies, or other people. Or other people’s messages.

Emily stood smoldering for several seconds while Dee waited calmly for the storm she knew was coming. She wasn’t worried. What could her mother do? She couldn’t drag it out of her. The worst she would do was ground her, or give her extra chores. Big deal. After what she’d been through in the last few days, that was nothing.

“Very well,” Emily finally said in a clipped tone. “We will go downstairs and get the broom and the vacuum cleaner. I’ll decide what to do with you while we clean this up.”

Fair enough. As Dee followed her fuming mother out of the room, she saw something move out of the corner of her eye, and turned to look down the hall. Jaddo was standing just outside the guest room, watching her closely.

Dee continued down the stairs without speaking to him. That message had been for Brivari. It wasn’t any of his business either.



******************************************************



1700 hours

Eagle Rock Military Base



Captain Cavitt strode purposefully down the hallway, looking neither right nor left as he walked. He strode purposefully everywhere he went these days because his life had suddenly taken on new meaning, a meaning it seemed to have lost after the war had ended. Cavitt was born to protect, to fend off the enemy. It was something he relished doing, and he did it well. So when the war had ended and there was no enemy left to vanquish, he had felt aimless. There were many others who felt as he did, and like them, he had turned his attention to the Communist threat. But that was distant and hard to quantify. Not very satisfying.

Which was precisely why this new alien threat was so galvanizing. Here was an enemy he could see. Here was physical evidence of their presence, their technical superiority, their willingness to kill. The thought of it gave Cavitt an adrenaline rush the likes of which he hadn’t felt since D-Day. People scoffed at stories of the ancient Celts and their battle madness, but Cavitt could identify. He had felt it himself.

The first step had already been accomplished: Plausible deniability. After that idiot Marcel had leaked the truth to the press, and that even bigger idiot Brazel had yapped about it on the radio, pulling off plausible deniability had been harder than he had first expected. But newspapers everywhere were now running the weather balloon story, Marcel had been tactfully reassigned, and Brazel was being held on the base pending a promise to go back on the air and retract his story, a promise which he had so far been resistant to make.

No matter. More important than a retraction was making it very clear to Mr. Brazel that, in future, he had to keep his mouth shut. Cavitt’s own men knew the importance of keeping their mouths shut, not to mention the price they would pay if they talked. Law enforcement like Sheriff Wilcox knew the value of keeping their mouths shut—they didn’t want the general population to panic. Which is exactly what would happen if word got out, indeed had happened when word had oh-so-unfortunately gotten out. The American public was not ready for what was happening here; Cavitt was certain of that.

Rounding a corner in a little-used section of the base, he reached a room guarded by two MP’s. Both snapped to attention and stepped aside as he entered.

Cavitt felt his dinner threaten to come back up as he surveyed the room. The two doctors who had autopsied the alien corpses were busy examining the huge, glowing sacs that had been found inside the ship. Disgusting, Cavitt thought. The sight of those sacs made his skin crawl. His one brief glimpse of what was inside was all the evidence he’d needed that he was doing the right thing.

“I was told you had something for me?” Cavitt said, addressing one of the doctors, the one called “Perkins”.

Dr. Perkins gestured to an illuminator on the wall. “Over here. Take a look at this.” He snapped on the light, illuminating several x-rays.

Cavitt blinked. “I’m a soldier, not a doctor. What am I looking at?”

“Human fetuses,” the doctor replied. “Or at least what look like human fetuses.”

“Human? But these were found on the ship, hidden in some kind of container.”

Perkins nodded. “Near as we can tell, that ‘container’ was an incubator. It makes sense these things would need a controlled environment.” He gestured to the nearest sac. “Each sac contains four fetuses: Two males, two females. These preliminary films are fuzzy, but what we can see of their bone structure and organs appears to be human.”

“But…the bodies you autopsied were definitely not human.”

The doctor shook his head. “Not at all, except that one anomaly.”

“And has that been confirmed?”

By way of answer, Perkins plucked two of the x-rays off the illuminator and replaced them with new ones that were obviously alien. The huge, misshapen heads looked grotesque even as negatives. “As you know, all we have left of the two bodies are the photographs and x-rays. Everything else disintegrated into dust: The bodies, the blood samples, tissue samples, everything. I airmailed selected copies of what we have to three of the finest neurologists in the country…”

“…without telling them exactly what they were looking at, I hope?” Cavitt interrupted.

The doctor threw him an irritated look. “Of course not,” he said defensively. “All of them agreed this looks remarkably like human brain tissue.”

“Human brain tissue inside an alien brain?”

“I don’t think so,” the doctor replied, shaking his head. “It doesn't look grafted on. Perhaps their race is related to ours? Perhaps we’re an offshoot of their race, or vice versa. Or we could have a common ancestor…..”

“Doctor,” Cavitt interrupted, “I’m sure you find the particulars fascinating, but what I want to know is, how does this help us?”

Perkins shrugged. “If this brain tissue is similar to human brain tissue, I would imagine it would be affected by agents that affect the human brain.”

“Like sedatives?”

“Quite possibly.”

“Good,” Cavitt said with satisfaction. He turned and looked at the sacs with an expression of repugnance. “What’s next?”

“We have more tests we’d like to run,” the doctor answered. “After that we’d like to open one of the sacs and autopsy the fetuses. We’ll leave the other one intact to see what it does.”

“All right,” Cavitt said doubtfully, “but under no circumstances are you to allow these things to reach maturity. Is that clear?”

“Is that wise?” Perkins asked skeptically. “How are we supposed to know what they’re up to if we don’t let at least one of them mature?”

Cavitt gave an exasperated sigh. Sometimes it seemed he was surrounded by simpletons who failed to see the danger right in front of them. “I already know what they’re up to, Doctor. And so would you, if you’d just haul your eyeballs away from your microscope and take a good look. Think about it: Why would aliens be breeding fetuses that look completely human?”

“You think they’re planning an invasion?”

“What else? What better way to infiltrate our planet than to use doppelgangers who look human inside and out?”

“I think you’re jumping to conclusions,” Perkins objected. “As I said, our races could be related; these fetuses may look human simply because they’re in such an early stage of development, much the same way that human fetuses have vestigial tails for a short period of time. And besides these people, whoever they are, are obviously highly advanced. What could they possibly want with us?”

“Who knows?” Cavitt replied impatiently. “Who cares? Maybe they want Earth’s natural resources. Maybe they’re looking for a food supply. Maybe they just like to conquer. Now, is that all you have for me?”

The doctor sighed and switched off the viewer. “At the moment. I’ll let you know if we find anything else.”

“Very good. And one more thing,” Cavitt added. “All information about this stays here. Only a handful of people have seen what’s inside these things, and I’d like to keep it that way. I don’t want this getting out yet, or we’ll have a different kind of invasion, and I’ll lose control of the situation for sure. And if I lose control, you likely will too.”

“All right, all right,” Perkins said somewhat peevishly. “I see your point. We’ll keep this quiet until you decide otherwise.”

Good. Perhaps this one wasn’t quite as much of a simpleton as he’d thought. Cavitt spared one more distasteful glance for the glowing sacs before striding toward the door.

He stopped when he came abreast of the door. Something wasn’t right with the tile on the left side. It looked like it didn’t quite match the surrounding tile, and for one brief moment, he thought he had seen it…move.

Cavitt moved closer to the tile, peering at it. Why did it look strange? He reached out a finger to touch it…….

…..and jumped as something clattered across the room behind him. Every head swiveled toward the sound. The second doctor walked over and picked up a metal instrument table that had fallen over. “How did that happen?” he muttered.

Cavitt turned back to the wall; it looked fine now. He touched it with his hand, but felt nothing unusual. Just cold tile.

“Is something wrong, Captain?” Perkins asked.

Cavitt hesitated, then shook his head. “No. For a moment there…never mind. Carry on.”

Cavitt left the room, ignoring the guards who once again snapped to attention. That had been odd. For a moment there, looking at that wall, he had had the strangest feeling. A feeling honed by years on the front lines, and more years in the Counter Intelligence Corps.

The feeling that he was being watched.



******************************************************



Proctor residence



Emily Proctor stomped up the staircase, vacuum cleaner in hand. After making sure that Dee hadn’t been hurt in this latest alien debacle, she had sent her out with a pair of heavy rubber gloves and a broom to sweep up what she could of the glass underneath her bedroom window. Dee had seemed grateful that she would be cleaning alone, and frankly, Emily felt the same way. She needed time to think about how best to address the change in her daughter’s attitude. She also needed to decide if she still wanted these people in her house. It was bad enough that their arrival had shattered her child’s fiercely protected innocence. Now they were shattering her house too.

She hauled the cleaner into Dee’s bedroom, passing the bed on the way to the ruined window. A pile of pictures lay there along with several boxes of crayons, further evidence that the world had indeed turned upside down. Dee, who hated crayons, had spent the entire afternoon in her hot, stuffy, upstairs bedroom, coloring as if her life depended on it. Curiosity overcame Emily, and she peered at the top picture. It was a planet with huge rings against a backdrop of stars. And it’s good, Emily mused, wondering from whose gene pool Dee had gotten her artistic talent. Certainly not Emily’s.

The second picture was of a circular ship, a short gray figure with huge black eyes standing in front, holding something aloft in his long-fingered hand. And on the ship a symbol, two swirls with a triangle in the center. The same symbol from the metal fragment currently hidden under the bed. There was no mistaking the figure; she had grabbed a skinny gray arm just like that one only two days ago.

The third made her breath catch in her throat. A gray figure lay on the floor, an angry wound in its chest. Dee had drawn the wound perfectly, leaving no doubt as to what caused it; it was a gunshot wound, drawn by the hand of someone who knew what they looked like. Good Lord, Emily thought despairingly. No wonder she’s so upset.

A soft noise made her looked up. The second alien, the one David had referred to as “Jaddo”, stood in the doorway, staring curiously at the broken window. Just what she needed. More aliens.

“Are you here to break something?” Emily asked him, unable to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. “Because if you are, I’m afraid the other one beat you to it.”

He fixed her with a penetrating stare. “With all that’s happened, I can certainly see why a broken window would be at the top of your list of concerns.”

Emily stiffened, her face flushing. Why did speaking with these people always leave her feeling lectured to and looked down upon?

“How would you know what concerns me?” she said angrily, barely controlling her temper. As if it wasn’t bad enough to have a smart aleck daughter, now she had a smart aleck alien to deal with. Brivari could be irritating, but he hadn’t been sarcastic. Yet. “I want to know why your buddy there felt the need to damage my house!”

“Obviously he was angry about something,” the alien responded, in a tone that made it clear she should have been able to figure that one out on her own. “I have no idea what. This is not like him. Angry outbursts are usually my department. And yours, I’m told.”

Emily couldn’t believe her ears. “Do you make a habit of insulting people who help you and hide you from the bad guys?” she retorted angrily. “Because if you do, it’s a wonder you’re still alive. And no wonder whoever you worked for isn’t. Now, if you’re quite finished—because, really, I’d hate to interrupt—I have some cleaning to do. Unless, of course, you’d like to help?”

The alien gave her an annoyed look, then raised his palm in the direction of the window. Shards of glass leaped off the floor and into the air, tinkling as they moved, flying into the empty window frame like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. For one brief moment the window merely looked cracked; then the lines fuzzed and faded, leaving a perfectly whole, undamaged window.

The alien lowered his hand. “Your property has been repaired,” he announced.

Well. That was better. “Thank you,” Emily said, slightly mollified. She noted that she wasn’t too awfully surprised at this latest manifestation of alien voodoo. She seemed to be losing her capacity for astonishment. “Too bad you couldn’t fix my daughter just as easily.”

“We did repair your daughter’s injuries,” the alien said sharply. “Has she been injured again?”

“Not physically,” Emily said, rewrapping the cord for the cleaner with sharp, jerky motions. “She used to be friendly and trusting. Now she’s angry, she’s sullen, she’s smart-mouthed, she’s….” Emily paused a moment, a hand over her mouth. Why was she telling him this?

“Your daughter has recently been through battle,” the alien said, sounding exactly like the general she’d been told he worked for. “She has discovered that not all of her people have good intentions, and that even those who do are perfectly capable of wreaking havoc, whether through ignorance or fear. Her feelings have merit.”

“She’s a child,”Emily argued. “She shouldn’t have to go through this at this age. That’s not what we wanted!”

“What you ‘want’ is irrelevant. You should expend your energies dealing with what happens, not waste them lamenting what you would have chosen instead.”

“Wonderful. An alien philosopher,” Emily said sarcastically. “Of all the places you could have dropped out of the sky, why did have to do it on top of my daughter?”

“We did not choose to ‘drop out of your sky’,” the alien said coldly. “Nor did we choose to have our world fall apart. Further proof that the universe is not interested in our preferences.”

“We agree on that much, at least,” Emily said, plopping down on the bed and staring out the newly reconstructed window. “I can’t believe this. After all we went through to keep the war away from her, hiding the newspapers, turning off the radio…and it didn’t work.”

“Thank goodness.”

Emily blinked. “I…excuse me?”

The alien fixed her with a hard stare. “You said your child was ‘trusting’. Why then, did she not alert others to our presence immediately? Why was she willing to enter the house of her neighbor and remove what he considered his property? Why did she not surrender to the soldiers of your world when they discovered our ship? Because she knew they could not be trusted,” he continued, as Emily stared at him, wide-eyed. “Where did she learn that? She must have learned that somewhere. Not everyone can or should be trusted. Knowing that may well have saved her life. Not to mention ours.”

Thunderstruck, Emily stared at him. Much as she hated to admit it, he was right. The child she had always thought of as so trusting and innocent had lied, stolen, and run rings around the United States Army. A week ago, she would never have thought her daughter capable of such things.

“How could she have done all that?” she whispered. “She’s just a child.”

“Yes, she is a child,” the alien replied. “That means she is inexperienced, not stupid. Did you really think you could keep your daughter ignorant of her own world? Or that such ignorance was desirable? It is your responsibility to teach her how to navigate the perils of life. You do her no favors when you attempt to keep them from her.”

Emily closed her eyes. She really wished he would shut up. First she’d had one alien psychiatrist announcing that it was her duty to protect her child, and now she had another announcing that was impossible.

“Great,” she said in a hollow voice. “So my daughter is a liar and a thief, and she learned it all at my knee, despite all my efforts to raise a decent human being. Thanks loads. That makes me feel a lot better.”

“Your daughter responded to a crisis she could not have dreamed of with an intelligence and bravery I frankly did not think she possessed,” the alien responded, with no trace of his earlier sarcasm. “Why should that make you anything less than proud? Your time would be better spent helping her make sense of what has happened to her, rather than being angry that reality has intruded. It always does.”

Emily reached behind her and picked up the picture of the injured alien. “But how do I help her through it?” she asked, feeling more than a bit foolish for asking him this question. “I have no idea who these people are who died. I’ve heard only bits and pieces of what she went through.” She held up the picture. “How do I help her through this?”

The alien’s eyes widened as he stared at the drawing Dee had done. He glanced down at the pile of similar drawings on the bed and began leafing through them, pausing at one Emily hadn’t reached yet: A reddish-yellow planet with what looked like a small red sun and three orange moons.

“Where did these come from?” the alien whispered.

“From…from my daughter,” Emily answered uncertainly, trying to decide if he was whispering because he was furious or merely shocked. “She mentioned this. Yesterday, when you told Dee that…the others….were dead, and she got all upset, she said something about one of them coming to her in a dream. I thought she was just dreaming, but she seemed to think he was really there, in her dream. She said he took her to see his world….your world,” she amended. “This must be it.”

The alien was silent, still staring at the drawing of the strange planet. “I don’t know what she was talking about,” Emily continued. “She was so upset…I mean, you can’t actually…do that, can you? Go into people’s dreams, I mean?”

The alien pulled his gaze away from the drawing and stared at her. He said nothing; he didn’t need to. His silence was answer enough.




******************************************************




Deputy Valenti stared intently through his binoculars, which were fixed on the window of a certain room in the second story of a perfectly normal looking house up the street. But it wasn’t a perfectly normal house, or a perfectly normal family. Unfortunately, he was one of the few people around who realized that.

And now he had just seen further evidence that something was awry in the Proctor household. Only minutes before, the glass in the window of the upstairs bedroom had shattered from the inside, ruling out the usual cause of broken upstairs windows: Baseballs. Seconds later, a bird had flown from the window, rocketing over the rooftops in the direction of the Army base.

And now this. He’d tried very hard to watch without interruption, but it was difficult; Corona was the classic small town where everyone knew everyone else, and everyone minded everyone else’s business. Even though he was sitting in his own car in civilian clothes, he still attracted stares from curious passers-by, all the more so if he had a pair of binoculars glued to his face. From time to time he’d had to put the binoculars down and resume his ruse of reading the newspaper, and the last time he’d had to do that it had cost him dearly. Because the upstairs window of the Proctor’s house now looked unbroken, the late afternoon summer sun reflecting off a shimmering pane that didn’t even look cracked. For a moment Valenti wondered if he’d imagined it, but then movement from below caught his eye, and he lowered the binoculars to find eight year-old Dee Proctor sweeping up something from the ground below that glittered in the late afternoon sun—glass.

Valenti lowered the binoculars and tapped his fingers impatiently on the steering wheel. He had seen the window break; that’s why the kid was picking up pieces of glass. How could they have repaired it so quickly? More questions about the puzzle that was the Proctors.

Yet another puzzle was why they hadn’t filed a complaint about his visits to their house yesterday. As far as Valenti was concerned, that was proof positive that the Proctors had something to hide; if they turned him in, they risked raising the subject of why he’d been there in the first place. He had debated going to the Army with what he suspected, but decided against it. Not only did he no longer have any proof, but the Army’s strident denial of what was really on that ranch meant that they wouldn’t be exactly eager to share information with him. They would probably follow up on his lead, but given their position, they would be forced to discredit him. Or worse. If he wanted to find out what was going on, he would have to find out himself.

Another Corona resident gave him a curious stare, and Valenti decided not to push his luck. There were few good vantage points from which to spy on the Proctors from a sufficient distance that they wouldn’t notice him. He had driven by a couple of times today, but he’d been in uniform in his patrol car. Doing that too many times was risky and not very informative to boot; he’d never have seen what he’d just seen if he’d only been driving by. He needed places to sit and watch for extended periods of time, but he had to move periodically or he’d arouse suspicion.

Valenti set the binoculars down on the passenger seat next to the inexplicably changed sneaker that he was certain belonged to the Proctor’s daughter and started his car. The child was the key to all of this; he was sure of it. Come hell or high water, he was going to find out how.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Next week........

....Jaddo has something to say about those pictures Dee drew, and...

.....Dr. Perkins makes another interesting discovery about one of the hybrids.


I'll post Part 58 next Sunday.

Hello and thank you to anyone reading! :flasingsmile:






PART FIFTY-EIGHT

July 9, 1947, 7:00 p.m.

Proctor residence




Dee Proctor paused on the staircase, looking back down toward the kitchen. Dinner had been weird. Her mother hadn’t raised the subject of the window at all, neither to punish her nor to complain to her father about aliens who broke things. She’d seemed lost in thought, forgetting to turn the oven off and putting plain milk in the cream pitcher. Her father had looked back and forth from Dee to her mother with raised eyebrows, but Dee had said nothing. She’d probably be punished later for sassing her mother, and she would just as soon put that off.

Hearing nothing, Dee continued upstairs. She noticed two things when she walked into her room for the first time since Brivari broke the window, the first of which explained her Mother’s silence: The glass was inexplicably repaired, looking good as new…and her drawings were missing. She was willing to bet the second had something to do with the first.

She turned around and marched to the guest bedroom. Jaddo was there, sitting in the rocking chair. He had pulled it up to the bed, which was covered with her drawings. All of them. Wonderful. Now he was probably mad at her too.

“Those are mine,” Dee announced, bracing herself for an argument.

“I was trying to decide which was my favorite,” Jaddo replied without looking up. “Definitely not those,” he added, indicating a pile to his left which was topped by a picture of Urza studded with bullet holes. “I believe I’ve narrowed it down to these three. What do you think?”

Dee gave him a calculating look. “Is this some kind of joke?”

“I rarely joke,” Jaddo observed. “Valeris was fond of reminding me of that.”

Dee was still wary. “You mean…you’re not mad?”

His eyes flicked up to meet hers. “My dear, when I’m angry, I make that clear enough that no one needs to ponder the question. You’ve seen me angry, so you should know that.”

“Don’t remind me. You accused me of leading the Army right to you.”

“That I did.”

“Care to take that back?”

Jaddo sat back in the chair and almost smiled. “You know, I opposed your involvement with us from the very beginning. I even told Brivari he shouldn’t heal you.”

“I don’t like you either,” Dee said flatly.

“Urza and Valeris thought you could be trusted,” he went on, ignoring her. “And later, that your father could be trusted.”

“And they were right.”

“I take it he came to you in a dream,” Jaddo continued, sifting through the pictures. “He was alive when we left him, but just barely. I’m curious—what did he say?”

“What do you care?” Dee challenged. “You never liked him, or Valeris. You’re probably glad they’re dead.

Jaddo gave her a level stare. “I see I’m not the only one guilty of misjudgment. It appears we have each misjudged the other.”

Dee stared at him skeptically. She had seen very little of Jaddo, and that was just fine with her. He always sounded irritable, or sarcastic, or just plain mad; she’d never heard him sound even remotely friendly. Yet Valeris had insisted there was more to him than his rough exterior. “Look deeper, and you may be surprised what you will find.” And she found herself longing to talk about what had happened with someone who had known her two friends. Still…

“I know you didn’t like them,” Dee said, wondering if he would admit it.

“No, I didn’t,” he replied calmly. “But it’s not necessary to like someone in order to work with them. And it’s a long way from not liking someone to celebrating their demise.”

Dee sat down on the bed. “They shouldn’t be dead,” she muttered furiously. “They weren’t hurting anybody. It’s not fair!”

“No, it isn’t.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Are you agreeing with me just to make me feel better?”

“I don’t think it’s possible to make you ‘feel better’ just now. And I would not presume to try.”

Good. Dee didn’t want to feel better, didn’t want to lose her protective shell of anger. Being angry meant you could forget how sad you were.

“So what did you think of our world?” Jaddo asked, holding her drawing of his planet.

“I think I liked it better when Urza was in it,” Dee said bluntly. “You said he was alive when you left him. Why did you leave him? Why didn’t you get him out of there?”

“We meant to,” Jaddo answered. “We were going to go back after we had rescued our Wards. But things went awry, we were discovered…and you know the rest.”

“I don’t get it!” Dee said angrily. “You have so many of those babies! Daddy helped you hide most of them. But Valeris wouldn’t help Urza because of the babies, and now you say you left him because of the babies. You have lots of babies, but there was only one Urza. Why couldn’t you have saved him and gone back for the babies later? You didn’t get them anyway. Urza shouldn’t have died, and he wouldn’t have if you’d saved him when you had the chance.”

More of those damned tears rolled down her face after this outburst. She swiped them away irritably and waited almost eagerly for Jaddo to yell at her, to tell her this wasn’t any of her business, or that she was just a stupid child, or a stupid human. Her anger didn’t seem to upset him the way it did Mama, and she was itching to lash out at someone—anyone. Even him. Perhaps especially him.

Ironically, the one time she was spoiling for an argument, Jaddo wasn’t. “Protection of our Wards comes first; we are secondary,” he answered levelly. “Urza would have done the same in our position.”

“He did do the same,” Dee said miserably. “He wouldn’t help Valeris until the babies were put away in that box. And after he was shot, he wouldn’t let me get Valeris to help him because Valeris was making everyone think the room wasn’t there.”

“Of course he wouldn’t. Whatever I may have thought of him, Urza was a Royal Warder. He knew his duty.”

“I didn’t get it then, and I don’t get it now,” Dee said crossly.

Jaddo was silent for a time, elbows resting on the armrests of the rocking chair, fingers forming a tent. “Tell me,” he said at length, “why do you think so many, including your own father, were willing to fight in your recent war?”

“Because they wanted to stop Hitler,” Dee answered, swiping at her face again. “He was taking over countries and killing people.”

“But those who fought may have died. Many did.”

“Well…yes, but a lot more would have died if they hadn’t stopped him”

“I see,” Jaddo said thoughtfully. “So those who fought considered stopping this ‘Hitler’ more important than any one of them. Important enough to die for.” He paused. “It is the same for us. Those we protect represent our entire planet. We are part of something much bigger and more important than any one person. We know we might die in the effort. We accept that, just as your soldiers did when they went to fight your war.”

“Urza said that,” Dee said slowly. “He said your world was worth fighting for. And dying for,” she added reluctantly, because she didn’t feel quite as angry as she had a few minutes ago, and that scared her. “It’s just that they shouldn’t have had to die! We were all trying so hard to stop it, and we couldn’t.”

“Lack of success does not invalidate the effort. Surely you don’t feel you shouldn’t have tried because success was not guaranteed?”

“No, of course not,” she grumbled, feeling the welcome anger come flooding back, this time because he was making sense and she didn’t want him to. Rising abruptly, she began gathering up the pictures on the bed, noticing as she did so the three he had picked out as his favorites: The three moons, Dimaras Rock, and the stars in the shape of a “V”. Dee stared at the drawing wistfully, remembering how pretty she had found that particular constellation, how thrilled she had been when she had realized Urza was going to show her his home planet, and how certain she had been that he was better. And how wrong.

“This one was my favorite,” she said, holding up the “V” picture. “I’ve always liked stars, and…well, I used to like stars. I used to like people too,” she added darkly, picking up the pictures and heading for the door.”

“In that case, there is one more thing you should know,” Jaddo called after her.

Dee stopped and rolled her eyes, her back still turned. Now what? She had managed to make herself angry again and she didn’t want to lose that, didn’t want it drowned out by reason, or logic, or higher purposes. Especially from such an unlikely source.

“There was someone with Urza at the end. A female; a healer of some kind, I believe. He said she had been kind to him. She helped us when we were there, as did one of the soldiers.”

Dee held her lower lip steady with an effort. Someone had been kind to him? Someone had helped them? That sounded too good to be true.

“Do not misjudge your entire race,” Jaddo said behind her. “Do not make the same mistake I did.”

Dee walked out of the room without replying, her drawings clutched to her chest. She’d had no idea there were so many things lethal to anger—not only logic and higher purposes, it seemed, but something else, something she’d thought she might never feel again.

Hope.



******************************************************



July 10, 1947, 0130 hours

Eagle Rock Military Base




Captain Cavitt marched angrily into the room in the medical wing, waving aside the two nervous MP’s at the center. “What happened?” he demanded.

“I…we’re not sure, sir,” one of the MP’s said uncertainly. “We were doing our usual thirty minute sweep of the room, and we found one of the refrigeration units open. Nothing else looked disturbed. We’re not sure if anything is missing. I just thought you should know.”

Cavitt gazed into the open refrigeration unit, already knowing what he would find. Or, more to the point, what he wouldn’t find: The remains of the two alien bodies. Of course these two simpletons wouldn’t know that. They’d had no idea what they were guarding.

“There is something missing, Lieutenant,” Cavitt said in an icy voice. “Now, you tell me—how is that possible? There are no windows in this room. There are no doors leading to other rooms. The only way into this room was through that door,” he said, pointing. “And the two of you have been stationed right in front of that door for the past four hours, have you not?”

“Yes, sir, four hours sir,” the lieutenant said earnestly.

“And you didn’t see or hear anything?”

“No, sir,” the lieutenant said, swallowing hard and casting a nervous glance at his fellow officer. “Neither of us heard or saw anything.” The other MP’s head bobbed in agreement.

“Lieutenant,” Cavitt said slowly, “whatever got into this room had to go past you. Or over you, or under you, or through you. Not to mention the fact that it had to leave carrying the.…carrying what it took,” he finished. “How could it have gotten past you without either of you noticing?”

“Uh…Captain?”

“What?” Cavitt said with exasperation.

“Why are you referring to the thief as ‘it’?”

Cavitt took a deep breath and closed his eyes. If he wanted to keep this information to himself, he really needed to be more careful. “Carry on, men,” he said, without answering the lieutenant’s question. “Notify me at once if anything else happens.”

“Yes, sir,” they both chorused, looking confused.

Cavitt took off up the hall at a fast trot. He was angry, and when he was angry he liked to walk fast. He marched until he reached the section where the alien fetuses were being held. The two MP’s outside snapped to attention as he approached.

“Is everything all right in there?” he asked.

The two MP’s exchanged curious glances. “Yes, sir. All’s quiet.”

“Open the door,” Cavitt commanded.

The MP on the right opened the door, and Cavitt peeked inside. The sacs were still there, the doctors still working. “Get four more men down here,” Cavitt ordered the MP. “I want two more on the door, and one at each end of the corridor.”

“Yes, sir,” the MP replied.

“And call down to the hangar,” Cavitt continued. “Have them double the guards down there as well.”

“Yes, sir. Is something wrong, sir?”

“Just do your job, soldier,” Cavitt ordered.

You got something, you alien bastards, he thought grimly as he strode off, but I’ve got what you really want. He couldn’t imagine they were really after the dust. What were they going to do? Add water and stir? No, they would either be after their ship or whatever those abominations were back in that room. His earlier feeling of being watched had been genuine. They had been there earlier, and they would be back. He was certain of it.

Striding quickly down yet another corridor, Cavitt reached a decision. Not a pleasant one, mind you, but that was his job: To make the hard decisions others didn’t have the stomach for. Aliens had infiltrated his base twice now without anyone noticing. He did not intend to let that happen again.




******************************************************




Dr. Perkins looked up from the microscope and yawned. He really should get some sleep. He’d been staring at the sample of fluid from one of the sacs for a good half hour, his jaw dropping with each new discovery. Somehow the fluid generated its own heat, its own oxygen, and seemed to contain some kind of protein, possibly food for the fetuses. Something like this could cause prenatal medicine to leap forward by years, maybe even decades. It was the perfect synthetic womb, proof that whoever had made it was advanced far beyond humans in the sciences of bioengineering and biochemistry.

As were the beings floating in it. Replacing his glasses, he moved to the new set of x-rays on the wall. There was now no question about it—the fetuses were human, inside and out. It had been hard to get clear pictures what with them moving around as much as they did, but patience and persistence had paid off. According to the x-rays their skeletal structure was human, nothing at all like what they’d seen in the autopsies. Their organs were all present and accounted for. Their development was appropriate for their gestational age. Either these things were created by someone who had studied humans in great detail, or they were actual human fetuses, acquired by God only knew what method. Neither idea was a pleasant thought.

Perkins pulled the x-rays off the viewer, carefully placed them in an unmarked, unobtrusive envelope, locked them in a cabinet, and pocketed the key. He wasn’t going to tell Cavitt about this just yet. Cavitt had reacted so strongly to just the hint of information like this earlier that Perkins was afraid he would order the fetuses destroyed before they had a chance to take a good look at them. Naturally they would have to destroy one set in order to get some answers, but the other should be left intact. There were things one could only learn from live specimens. He wouldn’t be able to keep a lid on this for more than a few days, but that might be enough to convince some friends in high places that the other set should live. It was worth a try.

Gathering up his things, Dr. Perkins switched off the lights. The sacs glowed more brilliantly in the dark, and he examined them again. Each set of four was arranged in a square, with a male and female on top and another male and female just below, males on the left, females on the right. One set was sluggish, barely moving. Something might be wrong with that set; that was likely the one they would autopsy. The other set was vigorously active, kicking and twisting in their glowing worlds, their eyes not yet open. The male fetus in the upper left hand corner was sucking his thumb. And…

Blinking, Perkins removed his glasses, rubbed his eyes, then put them back on. It was still there. He knew it hadn’t been there before. They had examined every single fetus carefully, and he hadn’t seen anything like this.

His hands shaking, Dr. Perkins fumbled for a pair of rubber gloves. Pushing down on the sac, he managed to catch the head of the upper male fetus, earning a surprisingly furious kick in the process. Whoever this was already possessed a formidable personality.

Formidable or no, the doctor was still much bigger and stronger, and he pressed down on the sac, anchoring the tiny head in place, much to the distress of its owner. One needed just the right angle to see it, but there was definitely something on the forehead of this fetus that he hadn’t seen before: Five pinpricks of light in the shape of a “V”.

A savage kick from the male directly below startled Perkins. Surprised, he released the fetus, staring in astonishment as the three others briefly thrashed vigorously. The male with the dots curled away, turning its back as if to hide the emblem on its forehead from prying eyes.

Reaching for the upper left male again, Perkins was startled anew as the male fetus directly below responded with yet another savage flurry of kicking. For one brief, bizarre moment, the doctor got the distinct impression the lower fetus was trying to protect the upper one.

Good Lord, he thought, pulling off his rubber gloves. He was more tired than he realized. Now he was so exhausted that he was ascribing conscious thought to fetuses. Whatever those dots were, they would have to wait until morning. He pulled heavy blankets over the sacs to shield them from the prying eyes of the guards who would take up residence in this room after his departure, and headed out the door.

Underneath the blanket where no one could see, the fetus Perkins had been restraining rolled over again, the dots of light now clearly visible on its forehead. The dots flared briefly, brilliantly, before gradually fading out altogether.

Silence descended on the room as the King of the Antarians slept.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Next week......

......the disappearance of the alien dust wasn't the only thing that happened at the base that night. Something else happened, something that will have dire consequences for the shapeshifters in the near future.


I'll post Part 59 next Sunday.

Hello to all who are reading! :Fade-color

Misha: O_O! Got it. :lol!: That's an emoticon I hadn't seen before; would that be the generic version of "eek"?

Valeris said that the first Zan hybrid to reach a certain stage of development would develop what the shapeshifters call "the mark". That was waaaaaaaaaaay back in Part 5 of Book 1, and I'm impressed that you remembered.

kittens: I would imagine many parents would be appalled at how early their children's "bubble" is shattered. I've certainly done some "bubble protecting" myself, so I can understand how Emily feels.

The line about children being inexperienced, not stupid, comes from my experience in a dance class with an abusive teacher. I was an adult in a class full of children (I won't bore you with why), and I watched child after child tell their parents what was happening in there and be dismissed because they were "too young", and the teacher couldn't possibly be "that bad". The kids couldn't put into words exactly what he was doing--they said things like, "He's mean," which he was--but what was really happening was that he inflicted pain recreationally, that he enjoyed hurting people. The kids were right, but they couldn't articulate it well enough to convince their parents (inexperienced, not stupid), so they were ignored by the very people who were supposed to protect them.

So I tried. I stepped between the teacher and the kids countless times, and talked to their parents myself. I was brushed off with, "Well, she's young, she's overreacting." I had better luck getting the teacher to back off by threatening to blow him in, but the truth was, I'm not sure there was anyone listening to blow him in to.

Minanda: You know what they say about having surgery: Get a second opinion from someone other than a surgeon. Because surgeons like to cut--that's what they do. And I would imagine a number of soldiers/police officers/etc. like to fight--that's what they do. God knows we all benefit from that a lot, but sometimes it's taken too far.






PART FIFTY-NINE


July 10, 1947, 0500 hours

Eagle Rock Military Base




Private Spade lurched through the door of the lavatory and flung himself into the nearest stall, leaning over the toilet. Never mind that he hadn’t had anything to eat in hours. He heaved, acid burning his throat as whatever was left in his stomach came up. He kept heaving long after it was empty.

Finally he sat up, clutching his cramping abdomen. Reaching behind him, he locked the door of the stall and leaned against it. He needed privacy, and there were precious few places to find it on an Army base. This was one of those places.

What the hell am I going to do? Questions rattled around his brain, questions with no answers, no good answers, anyway. All of his options looked bad. He was going to lose this one no matter which way it went down.

Spade had just come from Captain Cavitt’s office, having been summoned there at the ungodly hour, even for the Army, of 0430 hours. Assuming this was another unscheduled “talk”, Cavitt’s current, useless euphemism for an interrogation, Spade had taken his time dressing and trudging down there. He was still saying he didn’t remember much of what happened the night the two aliens were there, and Cavitt still didn’t believe him, despite the fact the doctors said his lack of memory was quite possible. So Cavitt had taken to having these so called “talks” with him, going over and over every little detail. So far, Cavitt hadn’t managed to trip him up. It must be driving him crazy.

But Cavitt wasn’t interested in "talking" this time. Spade knew something was up because other officers with grim faces were there, one of them a doctor. And then Cavitt had informed him in a somber tone that Privates West and Belmont were dead, murdered in their sleep by an alien hand.

“We assume they’re trying to remove anyone who saw them alive,” Cavitt had said. “Or perhaps trying to avenge the deaths of their comrades. Private West was responsible for the death of the second alien, however justified that death may have been.”

In a stupor over this news, Spade had waited for Cavitt to go into that still disputed incident, and the fact that Spade had never retracted his very different version of that event. But he hadn’t.

“Private Belmont, as you well know, was one of the original four who discovered the craft,” Cavitt went on. “You are the only remaining survivor of that mission. We can only imagine that you are next on the list.”

“Wait,” Spade had protested. “How did the aliens find West and Belmont? I’m the one they had the most contact with. I’m the one they should have come after first.”

Cavitt had shrugged. “Perhaps they had difficulty locating you. Or perhaps they didn't have time. The remains of the two dead aliens were stolen last night; our intruders were busy.”

Spade had broken into a cold sweat. If they were able to flush out West and Belmont with no one the wiser till morning, they'd be able to flush him out also. Thank God Yvonne had left for London, or she might be dead now too.

“We were wondering if there was anything else you could tell us, Private,” Cavitt had continued. “Anything at all. If there’s any way you could help us, you might be saving your own life. No detail is unimportant.”

And Spade had sat there, speechless, his mind churning with the possibilities. If he said nothing, he was likely signing his own death warrant. Yet he knew what the aliens were really after. If he admitted that, he might be signing his own dishonorable discharge. Or worse.

Leaning against the wall of the bathroom stall, Spade closed his eyes. None of this made sense. There was no good reason the aliens wouldn’t have been able to find him last night. There was no good reason for them to waste their precious time and energy on retribution. They would have had to find out who West and Belmont were and track them down. That would have taken time, time they could have been spending rescuing those glowing sacs that held their children.

Still, he had stood at the observation window in the morgue after the doctor had marched him there and seen the silver handprints emblazoned on the chests of his fellow soldiers. Aliens had killed them—there was no denying that. He remembered seeing the hand rising, hearing the sizzling noise it made when it connected with its target, smelling the acrid odor of burning flesh. He couldn’t deny they were killers, and this was the way they killed. But they had only seemed to kill when they needed to, and they had left him and Yvonne alive. Why?

Maybe they lacked the energy that night, Spade argued with himself. Or the time. Maybe they had left them alive, then thought better of it. Whatever the reason, Spade was in an unenviable position: He was the base’s only survivor of encounters with live aliens. For the moment, at least.

Spade unlatched the door and poked his head out of the stall. The lavatory was empty. He went to the sink and splashed some cold water on his face, leaning on the sink afterwards as his stomach threatened to betray him again.

He hadn’t told anyone much of anything about the night the aliens had been here. They already knew most of the important stuff: The aliens could change their shape, taking someone else’s form right down to the voice. They could unlock doors, knock people over from a distance, and kill with a touch. All of this had been clear without Spade having to say anything. But the one thing no one had been able to figure out for certain was what the aliens had been after the night he and Yvonne had seen them. They had killed the guard outside the room where the bodies were…but left the bodies. They had gone after the truck in the hangar, but those glowing sacs weren’t the only things inside the truck, nor in the hangar.

Now the top brass wanted to lay a trap for the aliens, and in order to do that they needed to know where they would be headed next. Spade knew very well what they were after. But could he risk telling Cavitt that? How would he explain this sudden burst of memory? Cavitt would never buy it.

Spade shook the water off his hands and dried his face on his sleeve. In the long run, it didn’t matter if Cavitt bought it. If he said nothing, he was as good as dead. The aliens had missed him once; it was unlikely they would miss him twice. If he said something, Cavitt might work that into a dishonorable discharge or even a court martial. But at least he’d still be alive.

Alive or dead? That’s a toughie.

Straightening his uniform, Spade marched out the door, heading for Captain Cavitt’s office. He had given the aliens the benefit of the doubt once and they had repaid him with more death. Death that benefited no one, brought them no closer to their goal. It was revenge, pure and simple.

And revenge was a game two could play.



******************************************************




Proctor residence




Brivari entered the upstairs window silently and headed for a nearby table. Jaddo looked to be asleep, but as Brivari placed his burdens on the table, he heard a voice behind him.

“Where have you been?”

“Why? Has something happened?”

Jaddo propped himself up on one elbow. “Only that you nearly got us kicked out of here with your charming display last night. Honestly, Brivari, what got into you? Tantrums aren't your style.”

“I can repair the window.”

“I already have. And I attempted to repair the ‘alliance’ as well. Your behavior is interesting for one who goes on and on about making alliances with humans.”

Brivari shot him an irritated glance. “If you repaired the window, then what was the problem?”

Jaddo pulled himself to a sitting position. “The human woman is concerned about the effect all of this is having on her child.”

“Her child is strong. She will be fine,” Brivari said shortly.

“The very point I attempted to make,” Jaddo answered. “I have never understood why these humans spend so much time fretting over something that has already happened and cannot be changed.”

“They also fret over things that never happened,” Brivari noted dryly. He turned around, still standing in front of what he had been carrying. “But we have a more pressing problem. The hybrids are being moved.”

“When? Where?” Jaddo asked sharply.

“Tonight at 2200 hours, human military time. They’re being flown to another part of the country, but I haven’t managed to find out where yet. It doesn’t matter—we must rescue them tonight before they leave.”

“Are they still unharmed?”

“For the moment. I’ve been keeping an eye on them. So far, the humans have run only non-invasive tests, and that was scheduled to continue for several more days before they attempted to open one of the sacs.”

“What changed?”

“It doesn’t matter. One of those sets was our best set. Valeris saved it for last to keep it in the incubator the longest. We have to get them back tonight, whether or not you are fully recovered.”

Jaddo nodded. “If we scout the area carefully ahead of time, I should be fine.”

“I will keep an eye on them throughout the day,” Brivari said. “You rest. You will need as much of your energy as possible.”

Brivari moved aside, and for the first time, Jaddo saw what he had been carrying. “What are those?”

“Urza’s and Valeris’s remains. I found them at the military base. We can perform the dispersal later—for Valeris, anyway,” Brivari added darkly. “Urza deserves no such consideration.”

Jaddo looked at Brivari suspiciously. “I heard the child say she had a message from Valeris. What could he have possibly have had to say that would have sent you into such a temper? Was it something else about Urza?”

Brivari began to pace. “Things were even worse than we thought,” he said grimly. “Ava was pregnant, with a prince, no less. I saw Valeris putting something into her stasis unit. I thought it was a failed hybrid, but that didn’t make sense. Urza was already mourning one of Vilandra’s failed hybrids, but Valeris was a scientist. It wasn’t like him to become attached like that, but it never occurred to me that it was anything other than a hybrid. I never thought…” He stopped, his voice cracking with anger.

Jaddo stared at Brivari for several long moments. “That’s it?” he said finally. “You jeopardized your precious alliance with these humans by damaging their property over that?”

Brivari gave him a withering look. “Surely you realize what this means, Jaddo.”

“Yes, let’s take a close look at what it means,” Jaddo said seriously. “Prior to this information, the royal family was dead, we were attempting to bring them back, our ship had been discovered, two of our colleagues were dead, and two sets of hybrids were in danger. After this information, the royal family remains dead, we are still attempting to bring them back, our ship remains discovered, two of our colleagues are no less dead, and two sets of hybrids still require rescue.” He paused a moment for effect. “I don’t see a difference. Do be so kind as to point it out to me.”

“There was an heir to the throne!” Brivari snapped. “An heir that would have ensured what would have been only the second peaceful transition of power in centuries!”

“Ensured? That’s a bit of a stretch,” Jaddo commented. “Our history makes the point that nothing is ever ‘ensured’. But heir or no heir, the result is the same: Our Wards are dead. We are here. Our task remains unchanged.”

“Easy for you to say,” Brivari said coldly. “You don’t remember what it was like before Riall. You have no idea what it was like to live through that. You have no idea how hard it was to build what we built, and…”

“…and you and Riall vanquished the night and made a shiny, new world, elevated our race to new heights, etc., etc., etc.,” Jaddo said impatiently. “I have heard this tale countless times, and every time you make it sound like the two of you accomplished this all by yourselves. Like you have a personal claim on our society.”

“Don’t I?”

“No,” Jaddo replied curtly. “The vast majority of our people backed Riall, as did most of his rivals when they found we had allied with him. Everyone made it happen. You have no business acting like you have more of a right to take personal offense at recent events.”

“You idiot!” Brivari thundered. “This isn’t about me!”

“Really? You had me fooled.”

“Don't you realize how this could have changed things?” Brivari went on, ignoring him. “The presence of an heir would have strengthened Zan’s position immeasurably. The people would have rejoiced; Zan’s allies would not have dared turn against him.”

“Are you suffering from memory loss?” Jaddo said caustically. “It was not his allies that were the problem! None of them turned against him. Besides, even if a fetal prince would have been enough to galvanize Zan’s allies, it would also have galvanized his enemies. They would not have been thrilled about the prospect of his line continuing. Valeris may have had to set aside his test tubes and books and seriously ward Ava after all.”

“We can debate what may have been, but one thing is clear,” Brivari said bitterly. “Urza did not just bring down the monarchy—he brought down the dynasty.”

“Urza brought down nothing—his Ward did. Without meaning to, I might add.”

“You, defending Vilandra?” Brivari said, astonished. “I never thought I’d live to see the day! Especially now that you have something specific to pin on her, rather than just grousing that she was vain and superficial.”

Jaddo sighed with exasperation. “As I said before, neither Urza nor Vilandra plotted to bring down Zan. That was the unfortunate result of her idiocy and his incompetence, but it was not deliberate.”

“I disagree,” Brivari said firmly. “His remains will be disposed of as befits a traitor.”

Jaddo stared at Brivari a moment, then slowly rose to his feet. “You have no right to deny him dispersal. He died protecting his Ward and his King. He deserves the proper rites.”

“I will allow that he did regret his actions,” Brivari replied, "but he died trying to mop up his own mess.”

“You have just invalidated your own argument,” Jaddo said. “Even if Urza were held as traitor, the one and only way to wipe that charge from the record is death in defense of the King. Urza has paid any debt, even the largest debt a Covari can owe. He deserves dispersal.”

“Urza died in the basement of a human military facility,” Brivari said flatly. “He was nowhere near his King or his Ward.”

“He would have been near them had not the human child left him for others to find,” Jaddo argued. “Most likely he would have died in the lab if she had not intervened. And what difference does it make where he died? His death was a direct result of an attack upon the King; the actions he took that led to his death were taken in defense of the King. I repeat, though I shouldn’t have to: You have no right to deny him his due as one who has died in the King’s service. ”

“I would hardly term what his lack of attention brought about as ‘service’.”

“Your words betray you, Brivari,” Jaddo said, eyes narrowing. “Referring to Urza’s mistakes as a ‘lack of attention’ is exactly right. And that is a long way from treason. A very long way.”

“Urza is to blame for what happened!” Brivari said hotly. “Do you deny that?”

“I do not deny that Urza is partially to blame, but there is plenty of blame to go around. If you’re so eager to point fingers, find a mirror and point one at yourself.”

Brivari stopped pacing, astonished. “What, now I am to blame for the fall of our civilization?”

“You created a climate in which Zan was unwilling to talk to you,” Jaddo said accusingly. “If he had told you the subject of his argument with Vilandra, you would not have hesitated to have her watched around the clock.”

“There is no way I could have known what was happening!” Brivari said defensively.

“And what about Zan?” Jaddo continued. “He forced his sister into an engagement she did not want, effectively pushing her back against the wall. He knew what she was like better than any of us, better even than Urza. Should he not have suspected that her sudden change of heart was anything but? He need not have pulled you into it; he could have ordered anyone to follow her. He is as much to blame as Urza, perhaps more so. At least Urza figured it out. And I…” Jaddo broke off suddenly.

“What about you?” Brivari asked suspiciously.

Jaddo sighed. “I heard something that now makes sense,” he said quietly. He walked to the window and stared out, not looking at Brivari. “When we met with the Argilian rebels, one of them told us that some of Khivar’s people were unhappy with him because he had fallen in love. The rebels did not know who the woman was, but there was sufficient unrest in Khivar’s camp that they were hoping to recruit new people to their cause. I assumed he’d fallen for some doxie or other. I never dreamed it was Vilandra.”

“That must have been who killed her,” Brivari said slowly. “And the others. Even with Khivar on the throne, there are those who would be most unhappy to see Zan’s sister at his side.”

“And Khivar might have let the rest of them live because of her,” Jaddo added. “That would not have gone over well either.” He paused. “We were all to blame, Brivari. We didn’t communicate with each other. If you insist on holding Urza as traitor, you must hold the rest of as well.”

Brivari shook his head stubbornly. “It was Urza’s Ward who plotted the invasion.”

“For the hundredth time,” Jaddo said with exasperation, “she was not plotting an invasion! Honestly, you give her more credit than she deserves. Vilandra wasn’t smart enough to plot an invasion! Besides, you know perfectly well that Warders are not responsible for their Ward’s behavior, only their safety. Which is a good thing, considering what you frequently thought of Zan’s behavior,” he added pointedly.

“I see. So you consider Urza successful in his efforts to secure his Ward’s safety?” Brivari said sarcastically.

“All of us attempted to secure our Wards’ safety. And all of us were unsuccessful. Lack of success does not constitute treason. Nor, as I pointed out to the human child, does lack of success invalidate the effort. Urza died in the service of his King. Whatever your personal feelings about him, you owe him respect for that if nothing else.”

Brivari shot him a calculating look. “You always hated Urza. What do you care?”

“An odd question from one who agreed with Valeris’s argument that we should save the human child out of principle,” Jaddo retorted. “Where are your precious principles now, Brivari? Or do you only trot them out and dust them off when it’s convenient for you?”

Brivari took a step toward him, hands twitching at his sides.

“I have neither the time nor the energy for this,” he said at length, “and you have even less. We will settle this later. In the meantime, I suggest you recuperate. You will need all your strength tonight.” He paused. “I can count on you to do your duty, can’t I?”

Jaddo stared at him a moment, eyes aflame. “If I were you,” he said in a menacing tone, “I would not make the mistake of asking me that question again. Ever.”

Brivari stared at him a moment longer before abruptly collapsing into bird shape and flying out the window. After he was gone, Jaddo sank onto the bed, lost in thought. He had hoped it would not come to this. He was feeling much better now, but still…

Jaddo wrestled with himself for several minutes before reaching a decision. He took his time shifting, doing it slowly so as not to exhaust himself. Then he took flight, soaring out the upstairs window after Brivari.

For several minutes after his departure, the room lay in silence, the warm summer sun shining in the window. Then a pair of small feet, owned by one who had been listening to their conversation, padded quietly across the floor, coming to rest in front of the two metal containers.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Next week:

We catch up with Yvonne White, and...

....Jaddo decides to try phoning home despite Brivari's warnings not to, and that proves to be a big mistake.


I'll post Part 60 next Sunday.