“Drugs?”
“No drugs, I promise you. We don’t even use aspirin here.”
“I use things. I have to.”
“We won’t stop you.”
“What are you?” she pleaded suddenly. “Please tell us.”
Eli put his hands behind his back, though not before Blake noticed that they were trembling.
“Hey,” Ingraham said softly. “You okay?”
Eli glanced at him angrily. “No, I’m not okay. Are you okay?”
Keira looked from one of them to the other, then spoke to Eli. “What is it you’re keeping yourself from doing to me?”
“Kerry,” Rane cautioned. That was a switch—Rane cautioning. Blake wanted to stop Keira himself, would have stopped her, had he not wanted an answer as badly as she did.
“Give me your hands,” Eli said to her.
“No!” Blake said, suddenly wary.
But Keira was already extending her hands, palms up, toward Eli. Blake grabbed her hands and pulled them down.
“You made a promise!” he said to Eli. “You said you’d keep her safe!”
“Yes.” Eli’s coloring looked worse than ever in the cool dimness of the room. His voice was almost too soft to be heard. “I said that.” He was perspiring heavily.
“What were you going to do?”
“Answer her question. Nothing else.”
Blake did not believe him, but saw no point in saying so. Eli smiled as though Blake had spoken the thought aloud anyway. He unclasped his hands, and Blake noticed that even they were dripping wet. Diaphoresis, Blake thought. Excessive sweating—symptomatic of what? Emaciation, trembling, bad coloring, now sweating—plus surprising strength, speed, and coordination. God knew what else. Symptomatic of what?
“Want to hear something funny, Doc?” Eli said in an oddly distant voice. He held his wrist where Blake could see it and pointed to a small double scar that looked black against his gray-brown skin. “A couple of weeks ago while I was helping with the building, I got careless about where I put my hand. A rattlesnake bit me.” Eli laughed hollowly. “You know, the damn thing died.”
He turned stiffly and went to the door, no longer laughing.
“Eli?” Ingraham said.
“I got to get out of here for a while, man, I’m getting punchy. I’ll be back.” Eli stumbled out the door and away from the house. When Blake could no longer hear him, he spoke to Ingraham. “That did look like a snakebite scar,” he said.
“What the hell do you think it was?” demanded Ingraham. “I was there. The rattler bit him, tried to crawl off, then doubled up a few times and died. We kept the tail. Fifteen-bead rattle.”
Blake decided he was being lied to. He sighed and leaned back in silent rejection of whatever fantasy might come next.
“This whole thing is going to be hard on you, Doc,” Ingraham said. “You’re going to want to ignore just about everything we say because none of it makes any sense in the world you come from. You’ll deny and Rane will try to deny and it won’t make a damn bit of difference because one way or another, all three of you are here to stay.”
Past 5
THE DOGS WERE WINNING.
They had attacked almost in unison, furiously, angered by his alien scent. Together, they managed to bring him down before he could hurt either of them. Then the smaller one, who appeared to be part Doberman, bit into the arm he had thrown up to protect his throat.
Pain was the trigger that threw him into his changed body’s version of overdrive. Moving faster than the dogs could follow, he rolled, came to his feet, locked both hands together and battered the smaller dog down in midair. The dog gave a short shrieking cry, fell, and lay twitching on the ground.
The larger dog leaped for his throat. He threw himself to one side, avoiding its teeth, but hunger and weariness had taken their toll. He stumbled, fell. The dog lunged again. He knew he could not avoid it this time, knew he was about to die.
Then there was a thunderous sound—a shot, he realized. The dog landed awkwardly, unhurt, but startled by the sound. There was human shouting. Someone pulled the dog back before it could renew its attack.
He looked up and saw a man standing over him, holding an old shotgun. In that brief moment, he noted that the man was frightened both of him and for him, that the man did not want to do harm, but certainly would in self-defense, that this man, according to his body language, would not harm anything helpless.
That was enough.
He let his weariness, hunger, and pain take him. Leaving his abused body to the care of the stranger with the out-of-date conscience and the old-fashioned shotgun, he passed out.
When he came to, he was in a big, cool, blue-walled room, lying in a clean, comfortable bed. He smiled, lay still for a while, taking mental inventory of his already nearly healed injuries. His arm had been bitten and torn in three places. His hands and arms had been scratched and bruised. His legs were bruised. Some of this was from climbing the rocks to this house. Some was from climbing out of the red volcanic mountains where he had hidden when the ship was destroyed. His muscles ached and he was thirsty again. But more important, he was intensely hungry. Food was available now. He could smell it. Someone was cooking pork, roasting it, he thought, so that the savory meat smell drifted through the house and seemed almost edible itself. His body required more food than a normal person’s and in spite of his desert kills, he had been hungry for days. The food smells now made him almost sick with hunger.
He found a pitcher of water and a glass on the night table next to his bed. He drank all the water directly from the pitcher, then sat up and looked himself over.
He had been bathed, and clothed in someone’s gray pajamas. Whoever had removed his coverall and bathed him was probably ill. They would not realize it for about three weeks, but when the symptoms began to make themselves felt, chances were, his rescuer would go to a doctor and pass the infection on beyond this isolated place. And chances were, neither the rescuer nor the doctor would survive—though, of course, both would live long enough to infect others. Many others. Both would be infectious long before they began to exhibit symptoms. The doctor would not recognize the illness, would probably give it first to family and friends.
The ship had died, the three people he had come to love most had died with it to prevent the epidemic he had probably just begun. He should have died with them. But of the four, only his enhanced survival drive had saved him—much against his will. He had been a prisoner within his own skull, cut off from conscious control of his body. He had watched himself running for cover, saving himself, and thus nullifying the sacrifice of the others. To his sorrow, to his ultimate shame, he, and he alone, had brought the first extraterrestrial life to Earth.
What could he do now? Could he do anything? Was not the whole matter literally out of his hands? Had it ever been otherwise?
A woman came into the room. She was tall and rangy and about fifty—too old to attract his interest in any dangerous way.
“So,” she said, “you’re among the living again. I thought you might be. Are you hungry?”
“Yes,” he croaked. He coughed and tried again. “Please, yes.”
“Coming right up,” the woman said. “By the way, what’s your name?”
“Jake,” he lied. “Jacob Moore.” Jake Moore had been his maternal grandfather, a good man, an old-style, shouting Baptist preacher who had stepped in and taken the place of his father when his father died. It was a name he would not forget, no matter how his body distracted him. His own name would send this woman hurrying to the nearest phone or radio or whatever people in this desolate place used to communicate with the world outside. She would call the would-be rescuers he had hidden from for three days after the destruction of the ship, and she would feel that she had done him a great favor. Then how many people would he be driven to infect before someone realized what was happening?
Or was he wrong? Should he give himself up? Would he be able to tell everything he
knew and dump the problem and himself into the laps of others?
The moment the thought came to him, he knew it was impossible. To give himself up would be an act of self-destruction. He would be confined, isolated. He would be prevented from doing the one thing he must do: seeking out new hosts for the alien microorganisms that had made themselves such fundamental parts of his body. Their purpose was now his purpose, and their only purpose was to survive and multiply. All his increased strength, speed, coordination, and sensory ability was to keep him alive and mobile, able to find new hosts or beget them. Many hosts. Perhaps three out of four of those found would die, but that magical fourth was worth any amount of trouble.
The organisms were not intelligent. They could not tell him how to keep himself alive, free, and able to find new hosts. But they became intensely uncomfortable if he did not, and their discomfort was his discomfort. He might interpret what they made him feel as pleasure when he did what was necessary, desirable, essential: or as pain when he tried to do what was terrifying, self-destructive, impossible. But what he was actually feeling were secondhand advance-retreat responses of millions of tiny symbionts.
The woman touched him to get his attention. She had brought him a tray. He took it on his lap, trying, and in the final, driven instant, failing to return the woman’s kindness. He could not spare her. He scratched her wrist just hard enough to draw blood.
“I’m sorry,” he said at once. “The rocks …” He displayed his jagged nails. “Sorry.”
“It’s nothing,” the woman said. “I’d like to hear how you wound up out here so far from any other settlement. And here.” She handed him a linen napkin—real linen. “Wipe your hands and face. Why are you perspiring so? It’s cool in here.”
Present 6
IN SURPRISINGLY LITTLE TIME, Meda served a huge meal. There was a whole ham—Blake wondered whether it was homegrown—several chickens, more salad than Blake thought six people could possibly eat, corn on the cob, buttered carrots, green beans, baked potatoes, rolls… Blake suspected this was the first meal he had eaten that contained almost nothing from boxes, bags, or cans. Not even salt on most of the food, he realized unhappily. He wondered whether the food was clean and free of live parasites. Could some parasite, some worm, perhaps, be responsible for these people’s weight loss? Parasitic worm infestations were almost unknown now, but these people had not chosen to live in the present. They had adopted a nineteenth-century lifestyle. Perhaps they had contracted a nineteenth-century disease. Yet they were strong and alert. If they were sharing their bodies with worms, the worms were damned unusual.
Blake picked at the barely seasoned food, eating little of it. He wasn’t concerned about any possible worm infestation. That could be taken care of easily once he was free. And since everyone took food from the same serving dishes, selective drugging was impossible. He let the girls eat their fill. And he watched the abductors—especially Eli—eat prodigious amounts.
Keira tried to talk to him during the meal, but he gave the impression of being too busy eating to listen. Blake thought he tried a little too hard to give that impression. Eli was attracted to Keira; that was obvious. Blake hoped his ignoring her meant he was rejecting the attraction. The girl was sixteen, naive, and sheltered. Like most enclave parents, Blake had done all he could to re-create the safe world of perhaps sixty years past for his children. Enclaves were islands surrounded by vast, crowded, vulnerable residential areas through which ran sewers of utter lawlessness connecting cesspools—economic ghettos that regularly chewed their inhabitants up and spat the pieces into surrounding communities. The girls knew about such things only superficially. Neither of them would know how to handle a grown man who saw them as fair game. Nothing had ever truly threatened them before.
Meda was staring at Blake.
She must have been doing it for some time now. She had eaten her meal—a whole, roasted chicken plus generous helpings of everything else. Now she nibbled at a thick slice of ham and stared.
“What is it?” he asked her.
She looked at Eli. “Why wait?” she asked.
“God knows I almost didn’t,” he said. “Do what you want to.”
She got up, walked around the table, stood over Blake, staring down at him intently. Sweat ran down her thin, predatory face. “Come on, Doc,” she whispered.
Blake was afraid of her. It was ridiculous, but he was afraid.
“Get up,” she said. “Come on. Believe it or not, I don’t like to humiliate people.”
Sweat ran into her eyes, but she did not seem to notice. In a moment, she would take hold of him with her skinny claws. He stood up, stiff with fear of the woman and fear of showing it. He bumped the table, palmed a knife, secretly, he thought. The idea of threatening her with it, maybe using it on her, repelled him, but he gripped it tightly.
“Bring the knife if you want to,” she said. “I don’t care.” She turned and walked to the hall door. There she stood, waiting.
“Dad,” Keira said anxiously. “Please … do what they say.”
He looked at her, saw that she was frightened too.
She looked from him to Eli, but Eli would not meet her eyes. She faced Blake again. “Dad, don’t make them hurt you.”
What was it about these people? How were they able to terrify when they did nothing? It was as though there were something other than human about them. Or was it only their several guns?
“Dad,” Rane said, “do it. They’re crazy.”
He looked at Eli. If the girls were hurt in any way—any way at all—Eli would pay. Eli seemed to be in charge. He could permit harm or prevent it. If he did not prevent it, no circus trick would save him.
Eli stared back, and Blake felt that he understood. Eli had shown himself to be unusually perceptive. And now he looked almost as miserable as Blake felt.
Blake turned and followed Meda. He kept the knife. Everyone saw it now, and they let him keep it. That alone was almost enough to make him leave it. They managed to make him feel like a fool for wanting a weapon against armed people who had kidnapped him and his children at gunpoint. But he would have felt like a bigger fool if he had left the knife behind.
Meda led him into a back bedroom with blue walls, a solid, heavy door, and barred windows.
“My daughter is going to need her medication,” he said, wondering why he had not spoken of it to Eli.
“Eli will take care of her,” the woman said. Blake thought he heard bitterness in her voice, but her face was expressionless.
“He doesn’t know what she needs.”
“She knows, doesn’t she?” In the instant before he could lie, Meda nodded. “I thought she did. Give me the knife, Blake.” She said it quietly as she locked the door and turned to face him. She saw his refusal before he could voice it. “I didn’t want to tear into you in front of your kids,” she said. “Human nature being what it is, you probably wouldn’t be able to forgive me for that as quickly as you’ll forgive me for … other things. But in here, I’m not going to hold back. I don’t have the patience.”
“What are you talking about?”
She reached out so quickly that by the time he realized she had moved, she had him by the wrist in a grip just short of bone-cracking. As she forced the knife from his captive hand, he hit at her. He had never hit a woman with his fist before, but he had had enough from this one.
His fist met only air. Inhumanly fast, inhumanly strong, the woman dodged his blow. She caught his fist in her crushing grip.
He lurched against her to throw her off-balance. She fell, dragging him with her, cursing him as they hit the floor. The knife was still between them in one of his captive hands. He fought desperately to keep it, believing that at any moment the noise would draw one or both of the men into the room. What would they do to him for attacking her? He was committed. He had to keep the knife and, if necessary, threaten to use it on her. His daughters were not the only people who could be held as hostages.
The wom
an tried to get him off her. He had managed to fall on top and he weighed perhaps twice what she did. As strong as she was, she did not seem to know how to fight. She managed to take the knife and throw it off to one side so that it skittered under a chair. Angrily, he tried to punch her again. This time he connected. She went limp.
She was not unconscious; only stunned. She tried feebly to stop him when he went after the knife, but she no longer had the strength.
The knife was embedded in the wall behind the chair. Before he could pull it free, she was on him again. This time, she hit him. While he lay semiconscious, she retrieved the knife, opened a window, and threw it out between the bars. Then she staggered back to him, sat down on the floor next to him, hugging her knees, resting her forehead against them. She did not look as though she could see him. She was temptingly close, and as his vision cleared, he was tempted.
“You start that shit again, I’ll break your jaw!” she muttered. She stretched out on the rug beside him, rubbing her jaw. “If I break your bones, you won’t survive,” she said. “You’ll be like those damn bikers. We had to hurt them because there were too many of them for us to take it easy. All but two wound up with broken bones or other serious injuries. They died.”
“They died of their injuries … or of a disease?”
“It’s a disease,” she said.
“Have I been infected?”
She turned her head to look at him, smiled sadly. “Oh yes.”
“The food?”
“No. The food was just food. Me.”
“Contact?”
“No, inoculation.” She lifted his right arm, exposing the bloody scratches she had made. They hurt now that she had drawn his attention to them.
“You would have done that even if I hadn’t had the knife?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“All right, you’ve done it. Get away from me.”
“No, we’ll talk now. You’re our first doctor. We’ve wanted one for along time.”
Blake said nothing.
“It’s something like a virus,” she said. “Except that it can live and multiply on its own for a few hours if it has warmth and moisture.”