These days actual CT scan films weren’t viewed against a blinding back-lit board. The results and technician’s report were e-mailed to the treating physician to become part of the patient’s electronic medical records. Armed with Alex’s patient ID number, she switched on Payne’s computer and waited for the laptop to boot up, counting down the seconds in her head as the fire alarm continued to wail.
The screen came to life and Sam quickly found an icon that looked like a filing cabinet and clicked on it. Sure enough, it opened into the medical records portal through which any physician with the proper patient ID could access a patient’s assembled history. The box that appeared on the screen, though, wasn’t asking her for that; it was asking her for a physician’s user name and password. Even if she guessed Dr. Payne’s identification correctly, she’d be no closer to guessing his password. Then in the clutter on the desk she spotted his clip-on ID badge she recalled from noting his altogether wrong name for a doctor.
And beneath that name was his hospital identification number.
Sam entered JOHNPAYNE in the user name box, then typed in the combination of letters and numbers forming his ID number into the password box, certain it would work. But the machine lit up with bright letters warning that she’d entered the wrong password and did she need help finding it. Sam clicked on “yes” and waited for the next prompt.
Until the medical records doorway closed and the home screen returned, Sam finding herself unable to manipulate the cursor anymore.
What the hell?
She’d done exactly what any thief or hacker would have done, she imagined, thereby activating the system’s security override. That was it. She was done here, finished.
Except …
Sam yanked the power cord from the laptop and folded its top back down. Wasting no further time, she tucked it under her arm and headed back into the hall, turning toward the gurney she’d abandoned and tucking the still faintly humming machine under the top sheet.
Then she started pushing the gurney along the freshly polished floor, moving with apparent purpose. Reaching the elevator just as the fire alarm stopped wailing.
93
DIVIDED LOYALTIES
ALEX CONTINUED TO STARE at the ash man, more through him than at him, really.
“That’s bullshit.”
“Is it? Can you really be so sure? Do you really think I’d squander the best leverage I had over you?”
“I watched them die.”
“You saw what I wanted you to see, Alex,” the ash man told him, through a mouth that looked like a gaping black hole. “Just as you’re seeing me now.”
“More crap,” Alex persisted, not so sure anymore. “And you’re just a projection who’s full of it.”
“I’m not just a projection. I’m standing here right now. Go ahead, reach out and touch me.”
“I’d rather cut you in half again.”
“I’d welcome you trying. Stronger signal this time so I can take you with me. Not your physical form, just the part that matters, the part that knows the secret of why you were brought here, the knowledge you’ve been entrusted with. You didn’t ask for this, boy. It’s not your doing. You don’t belong here; you never did. Come back with me so I can reveal the truth of your identity, introduce you to who you really are and your true fate.”
“And my parents?”
“The Chins? They will be waiting for you, just as promised. Part of the deal.”
Alex felt himself weaken, seeing the easy way before him, the route to end this nightmare from which there otherwise seemed no end.
“What’s my name?” he heard himself ask.
Something changed in the ash man’s hazy visage, the dark holes that rode his face for eyes seeming to narrow, suddenly evasive.
“What’s my real name?” Alex challenged again.
“Alex—”
“Stop! You don’t know, do you? You can’t tell me because you don’t know.”
The ash man’s broadcasted face flattened. “But I know where to find the girl, Alex. We didn’t kill her, we only left her alive because of you. Cooperate with us or she dies. Join me now or she dies. Go ahead, take my hand.…”
Alex saw a semi-translucent hand stretching out for him, the arm seeming to lengthen as it came forward, slow enough for Alex to stretch a hand into his pocket and come out with the thing that looked like an old-fashioned slap bracelet that had restrained his father. He snapped it forward in line with the gray-toned wrist coming his way, felt it lodge over air and energy. Watched the ash man’s liquidy eyes bulge.
“Take that, you son of a bitch!”
“Noooooooooooooo!” the ash man screamed, frozen in place as Alex burst past him like the spectral shape was a linebacker keeping him from the end zone.
94
THE EMBARCADERO
SAM SAT AMONG ALL manner of tourists and locals enjoying their evening meals at outdoor tables in the Embarcadero’s Justin Herman Plaza, conspicuous in her mind because she was alone in clear view of the bustling Ferry Building marketplace. A concert had just wrapped up in the area that would be dominated by an ice skating rink during the winter months. She sat a bit isolated in the shadow of Vaillancourt Fountain, a modernistic water-spraying sculpture that many local purists hated but she actually loved for its symmetrical form, everything seeming to belong just where it was placed.
Unlike life.
Dr. Payne’s laptop tucked under her thigh, she’d taken the BART and then a streetcar, of all things, to the Embarcadero Station, satisfied that she hadn’t been followed from the hospital. Night had fallen and with that all manner of new options for anyone watching her to stay out of sight. She felt like a little kid, having dreaded its fall and now hating the way darkness made the world feel scary and her more vulnerable, to boot.
One of the few things she and her parents actually agreed on was a love for this part of the city, its great history, color, and vibrancy. The Embarcadero in general and this section of it in particular were the encapsulation of everything that made San Francisco special, featuring an easy mix of the old and the new, of history and modernity. That probably explained why she liked the Vaillancourt Fountain in spite of its perceived affront to the area’s more classical sensibility. Its presence made her appreciate that sensibility even more and highlighted the area’s historical nature by contrast. The Ferry Building had been a pier before being converted to house an assortment of high-end shops and restaurants comparable to an upscale mall, its majestic facade watched over by a huge clock tower.
Alex and Raiff were headed here now, having recovered the sketchbook just as she’d absconded with the computer containing Alex’s medical file.
What does it say? What had Payne seen in the CT scan results that had ultimately led to his death?
Sam realized she’d been peering downward and jerked her gaze back up, finding Justin Herman Plaza to be the same. No one amiss in sight, no one seeming to have any interest in her.
She regarded the laptop again, wondering what secrets it held, when a hand grasped her shoulder.
95
BOAT RIDE
“SORRY TO STARTLE YOU, Dixon,” Dr. Donati greeted her.
“You … I…”
Sam tried to stop stammering but couldn’t collect her thoughts. Donati noticed the laptop.
“I assume that’s…”
“Yes, Doctor. But—”
“Not here, Dixon. I think someone’s coming.”
It was Alex, moving with the same grace and agility he always did. Sliding through the crowd so easily no one even seemed to notice him. But he looked different to Sam from this distance, older somehow and sadder, his shoulders still squared and strong but burdened, as if something was weighing him down. And he wasn’t smiling like he always did. Looked grimly determined instead.
Donati looked from Alex to her and then back to Alex. “That must be…”
“Yes,” Sam confirmed.
“He’s just a kid.”
br />
“We’re in high school. What were you expecting?”
Dr. Donati looked hurt. “I don’t think of you as a high school student, Dixon. You should know that. Especially now.”
“Those findings I shared with you…,” Sam thought out loud.
“Long story. Well, actually, a short one. You were spot-on. Picked up just where I left off and went further. All that was missing was a final dot on the map. But no more, because I’ve figured out where the wormhole’s going to open.”
Sam’s throwaway cell phone rang. She snatched it from the pocket of her jeans and recognized the number Raiff told her to look for.
“I’m waiting for you now.”
“Where?”
“Fisherman’s Wharf,” he told her. “Pier Thirty-nine. We’re going on a sight-seeing tour of the bay.”
* * *
“Raiff?” Donati asked, as they moved among typically heavy pedestrian traffic for Fisherman’s Wharf.
“I thought I told you about him.”
“You probably did, Dixon, but my mind’s swimming in the shallows, so much sticking to it that I can’t sort through it all.”
“He saved us,” Sam elaborated, edging farther forward. “A couple times.”
Donati’s gaze remained rooted on Alex, as if wondering if he were real or just some imaginary figment. “Yes, I recall that now. The other alien, your boyfriend’s guardian or something.”
Sam looked toward Alex, expecting him to correct Donati. But he didn’t.
“You were there,” Alex said to him instead, “at the very beginning, weren’t you? You and the old guy we met at Bishop Ranch.”
Donati was still staring at him, almost through him, the way Alex could see through the ash man. “Extraterrestrial life … I’ve waited my entire life for this moment and I find myself at a total loss for words.”
“Maybe this will help,” Alex said, handing Donati the folded pages containing the tests conducted by Dr. Chu.
* * *
Raiff was waiting with their tickets at Pier 39, where a long line of people slowly boarded a tour boat docked there. Donati shook hands with him, stiffly, as if unsure what Raiff’s grasp might yield. Then he went back to clutching Alex’s pages tight against his body. They reached the front of the line, an attendant waiting for them to hand over their tickets. They did and stepped off the gangway onto the tour boat.
“Let’s go below,” Raiff said.
Sam showed him the laptop. “It’s password protected. We’ve got a problem.”
He flashed a wink. “No, we don’t.”
* * *
The cruise, a last-minute addition to the Blue and Gold Fleet schedule, was only about half full with almost all the passengers perched on deck, where they could better hear the tour guide’s narration. That left the tables making up the enclosed area below, featuring a snack bar, virtually abandoned. They chose one against the wall that featured plenty of light for Raiff to hack into Dr. Payne’s laptop in record fashion, hardly even a challenge for him.
“How’d you do that?”
“Where I come from such skills are as natural as walking.” He plugged in Alex’s patient ID number, opened the file, and turned the laptop toward Donati.
But Donati was currently entrenched in reviewing the findings accumulated by Dr. Chu first, focusing on the blood tests. He peeked over the pages at Alex several times while reviewing them, once and then again to make sure he was reading the results right.
“You know my specialty,” he said suddenly to him.
“Sam told me it was astrobiology.”
“Which makes me rather expert on regular biology as well, enough so I can tell you that if I didn’t know better, I’d say these blood tests were the result of a hoax instead of actual samples. The astrobiologist in me passes that off to what must be subtle differences in the atmosphere of your home planet, leading to different levels of oxygen and CO two, just for starters.”
“This is my planet,” Alex corrected. “Just like you.”
“I was speaking of your native planet,” Donati corrected quickly. Then his gaze moved to Raiff. “Unbelievable,” he said, shaking his head, trying to process everything at once. “All this is truly unbelievable. I’ve spent my life trying to prove what I always suspected to be the case. And you’ve validated everything I’ve ever believed, and instead of being joyous, I find myself terrified. Not of you, or the boy, but of what’s coming.”
“I wish I could be more helpful,” Raiff told him.
“Perhaps you can,” Donati said, leaning forward. “Tell me more about this world you come from.”
“Virtually identical to your own, just more advanced. Our landmasses are smaller. As a result, our population is substantially smaller. And there’s no famine or poverty.”
“But there will be, won’t there?” Sam interjected. “That’s why you came here in the first place. To plant us like crops to be harvested when you needed us to handle the heavy lifting.”
“Not me,” Raiff corrected, “or those like me. But, yes, human life on this planet owes its existence to the same forces that want to enslave you the way they enslaved us.”
“You came here as refugees,” Donati concluded, utterly transfixed, hanging on Raiff’s every word. Still having only skimmed Alex’s medical records.
“There were others who knew more, who preceded Dancer to this world, but they’re gone now.”
“Gone?”
“Eradicated, exterminated.”
“I don’t understand.”
Raiff crossed his arms and laid his elbows on the table as the boat engines began to rumble louder. The tour guide’s voice continued to blare through the speakers on the deck above, echoes merging by the time the sound reached down below.
“Have you ever heard of a man named Langston Marsh?”
“Should I have?” Donati asked him.
“He’s built a private army whose sole purpose is to track down and kill every alien they can find. His soldiers have been hot on Dancer’s trail since his parents were murdered last night.”
“Murdered?” Donati asked, eyes widening.
“Maybe not,” Alex interjected tentatively. “The ash man told me they were still alive.”
“You saw him?” Sam exclaimed in disbelief. “He came back?”
“He appeared at my house when I went to pick up my sketchbook,” Alex responded, leaving out the ash man’s mention of her.
“Speaking of which,” said Raiff, extending a hand toward Alex.
Alex handed the sketchbook to him. “Not sure if this is going to mean anything to you.”
“Let’s take a look and see.”
* * *
There was a slight jolt as the tour boat eased away from Pier 39 and angled toward the bay. Raiff scanned the contents of the sketchbook quickly, shaking his head in silent amazement at some of the drawings, the ones featuring the most detail. Donati had come around to the other side of the table to study the pages as Raiff flipped them.
“I don’t remember drawing those,” Alex told them, breaking the silence and feeling the ship being jostled by a combination of waves and the rolling wakes of the big freighters and cargo carriers clinging to the center of the channel. “It was like I was in a trance or something.”
“Machines,” Raiff explained. “Machines from my world, that practically ran my world. That’s what most of these pictures are of.”
“But how would I know about them?”
“Let’s see if this might help tell us,” Donati said, moving back to the laptop to view the results of Alex’s initial CT scan.
96
CT SCAN
DONATI SQUINTED TO BETTER view the laptop screen, scrolling through the various images. “Come have a look, Dixon. Your boyfriend has something tucked in his head besides his brain.”
This time Sam didn’t even think of correcting him. They’d just passed a family of sea lions nesting on a rock assemblage sticking out of the bay. The boat
turned so they had a brilliant view of both the San Francisco waterfront and the city’s striking, if irregular, skyline. Nothing like a large city framed by the water at night.
Sam positioned herself to better see the screen Donati had tilted toward her. The object to which he’d referred was oblong, almost egg-shaped. What looked like small hairs of varying sizes jutted out from it at irregularly spaced intervals.
“You’re looking at a microchip formed of organic molecules instead of silicon, fully capable of interfacing with the human brain.”
“And these tendrils?” Sam posed, referring to the wispy, hair-like things protruding from the organic chip.
“Neuron storage would be my first guess, along with expansion capabilities. If the chip requires additional space, it simply sprouts another. We already know that DNA can reliably store data for two thousand years or more. My guess is the microchip you’re looking at has been genetically engineered to interface with Alex’s DNA in order to cram an incredible amount of information into an infinitesimal physical space.” He moved his gaze to Alex. “Looks like we found the reason you were brought to this planet.”
* * *
“Then the secrets we’re looking for,” Raiff interjected, “the secrets to stopping this invasion…”
“Might well be stored on that chip.” Donati completed the thought for him.
“Why not just bring it over in somebody’s pocket?” Sam wondered.
“My guess would be the electromagnetic displacement inside the wormhole,” Donati theorized. “In all probability that would cause severe damage or degradation, if not outright destruction, of anything stored on a microchip.” Donati reviewed the CT scan images again to make sure what he’d noted the first time was accurate. “I think the chip was installed while your boyfriend was still in utero, Dixon,” he added. “Have a look. You can see in some of the scans how the brain has grown over a portion of it. You can also see how the soft tissue has virtually melded to it, no attempts at rejection, which can only mean one thing.”