The phone said, We are sorry. The code you have entered is temporarily ex-operational.
Rats! The damned Haluk must have sabotaged it, perhaps to make sure I didn’t use the aircraft to escape their dragnet. My car was probably ex-op, too.
Right. So I entered the personal code of my friend and associate Karl Nazarian.
Karl was a charter Rampart Starcorp stakeholder and its first security chief at the operating HQ on the planet Seriphos in the Perseus Spur. My father made the huge mistake of putting him out to pasture after long years of service, installing a hotshot named Oliver Schneider in his place. Schneider sold out to Galapharma and became their main mole inside Rampart.
I came along and drafted Karl Nazarian to assist in the search for my missing sister Eve. The veteran security man helped make that operation a success, and continued the good work in subsequent covert actions that culminated in the capture of the material witness Schneider and the indictment of Galapharma. Since then Karl had shared my private investigations of the Haluk.
When Rampart became an Amalgamated Concern and I agreed to become Acting Chief Legal Officer, I saw to it that Karl was appointed Vice President for Special—i.e., spooky—Projects, a post that Simon had originally dragooned me into accepting. Karl reported only to me. During the pretrial phase of the Galapharma case, he supervised “discoveries” for my cadre of legal eagles, helping to organize—and edit—ultrasensitive pieces of evidence. When that work was done, he and his small staff of trustworthy cronies occupied themselves gathering information about the shady machinations of the big businesses that called themselves the Haluk Consortium. Not that I was in a position to do anything with the intelligence during the trial, other than pass on the juicier bits to Ef Sontag.
Karl was the only person I would have trusted to do the delicate psychotronic interrogation of Lorne Buchanan. I’d confided my early hopes for the Barky Hunt to him, too. And now I desperately needed his help again.
“Nazarian here.” The gnarled face, like a topographic map of Armenia divided by a rocky cleaver of a nose, gazed at me from the phone screen. “Good God, Helly, you look like a drowned rat. A thoroughly buggered-up drowned rat.”
“I feel even worse. I’m sitting on the shoulder of the Ottawa Highroad in a snowstorm, next to the corpse of a Haluk demiclone.”
“That’s fantastic! You’re certain it’s a Haluk?”
“Absolutely. The demi’s mine if I can sneak him out of here before the county mounties spot us. It could happen any minute. Can you come and do an evac in your hopper? Mine’s ex-op.”
A shocked silence, then: “I’m not in Toronto Conurb. I’m nearly 1,200 kilometers away, out in the Kenora at Kingfisher Lodge.”
I knew what that had to mean. “Oh, shit—not Dan!”
“I’m afraid so. Your brother flew the coop a couple of hours ago. He had help. Four of the six guards are dead. The survivors can’t tell us much. The lodge just wasn’t secured for a massive armed assault. An EMP blast took out the sensors and the rest of the electronics. A single large hopper carrying a dozen bandits did the job in less than ten minutes.”
“Karl, there’s a good chance that Dan didn’t escape. He might have been kidnapped by Haluk.”
“Christ!”
“My sister Beth could also be in danger. The aliens might try to nab her, too. She’ll need round-the-clock security.”
“I’ll get InSec over to her place immediately. What kind of a cluster-fuck have we got going here?”
“The situation is even worse than you might think. Earlier this evening two Haluk demiclones snatched me. Bold as brass. The bastards took me right off the Underground Path in the midst of the Friday night crush. They talked to each other about some plan involving Dan and maybe Beth. I couldn’t make any sense of it. My knowledge of the Haluk language is too rusty. I managed to get out of their limousine when the Ottawa Highroad shut down with a multicar accident. One of the alien goons is with me here, stone cold dead on the tarmac. The other one skipped out.”
“Oh, boy. More demiclone operatives! Just what we were afraid those blue bastards would do—”
“Listen, Karl. You know how vital it is for us to hang on to this corpse and get it to Bea Mangan for a genetic assay. But I can’t use regular Rampart Security for transport. There’s no way I could explain this situation to them. And if we’re caught with the stiff, Rampart itself could face criminal charges. I killed the Haluk accidentally, in self-defense, but body-snatching is a felony, and interfering with the scene of a fatality could lead to a charge of obstruction of justice, at the very least. You got any thoughts?”
“You say you want to take the body to Mangan right away?”
“I’ll check with her first, but I know she won’t have any scruples about cooperating. This is the break we’ve been waiting for. The smoking gun that proves the Haluk are infiltrating humanity.”
“Then call Bea herself for a lift,” Karl advised. “Her place in Fenelon Falls is—what?—only fifty klicks or so north of the highroad. She’s sure to have a hopper at her disposal. Or her husband Charlie will.”
“Damn. I should have thought of that. The Haluk punched out my lights and I’m kinda nebular at the moment.”
“Is there anything else I can do to help?”
I tried to think. It wasn’t easy. “Cover me with Sean Callahan at Rampart Tower InSec. Just before the Haluk grabbed me down on the Path I phoned Sean and asked for help. He sent a situation team, but too late to do any good. Tell him I’m with you—that my emergency turned out to be a false alarm. He’ll be suspicious, but there’s nothing we can do about that.”
“Listen, Helly, if you can’t reach Bea Mangan, call me again. I’ll get to you, but it could take a while.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. I think you should return to Toronto as soon as possible. We’d better meet at Bea’s place. I don’t want to go back to my apartment just yet. Haluk might have the place staked out. Hasta luego.” I ended the call.
The cold was beginning to get to me. My hood had come off again and melting snow ran from my hair into my two blackened eyes. I wiped them, cringing at the pain, pulled the hood up, and summoned Mangan’s personal code from the dex. The phone buzzed.
“Pick it up,” I prayed. “Please, Bea.” I stared at the small blank screen, shivering hard now, and waited. After five buzzes a robot voice asked me if I wished to continue my attempt to reach Beatrice Mangan directly, or if I wished to go to voice mail and leave a message. I told it, “Try again.” The robot hadn’t said she was unavailable; for some reason she just wasn’t choosing to answer. Busy people did that all the time.
The buzzes resumed, and every five seconds the artificial voice cut in again. I kept saying, “Try again,” and watched the display that said STAND BY FOR CONNECTION. Snowflakes fell on me and the demiclone corpse, coating us with tiny points of light that sparkled in the sweeping car headlights.
Beatrice Mangan, who held the rank of Chief Superintendent in the ICS Forensic Division, was a respected expert in molecular biology and the criminal aspects of genetic engineering. She was also an old friend from my days in the enforcement arm of the Interstellar Commerce Secretariat, one of the few people who had not believed the trumped-up charges that led to my disgrace and dismissal.
I had drawn her into the Galapharma conspiracy almost from the beginning of my own involvement. She helped me to nail Bronson Elgar, Galapharma assassin and master of dirty tricks—who unfortunately proved to be completely human. Later, she’d continued to lend her expertise to my quest for evidence that Haluk demiclones were wearing Earthling bodies with nefarious intent.
Bea had shared my frustration when every likely lead dug up by Karl and his associates petered away into failure or uncertainty. The efficient robotic cleaners so ubiquitous in modern society made it almost impossible to find castoff bits of incriminating DNA in starships or buildings that we knew had harbored faux humans. The biosamples Karl’s people did manage to gle
an had been too badly damaged by mechanical housekeepers to be conclusive.
But now I had a whole demiclone corpse for Bea to analyze—if she’d just answer her goddamn phone!
All she had to do to prove conclusively that Fleece was a Haluk in disguise was take cellular material from him, run it through a fine-spectrum genome analyzer, and compare its DNA profile to the genetic marker data that Lorne Buchanan had just turned over to Efrem Sontag. By consulting the population database, she could also ascertain the identity of the human template who had been used to engineer Fleece’s transformation. Along with our other evidence, the demiclone corpse would tangibly demonstrate to the Commonwealth Assembly that Haluk were infiltrating humanity.
What Fleece’s body wouldn’t necessarily prove was malicious intent, although we could show that the Haluk leader had lied when he claimed that all of the living demiclones had gone to the Haluk Cluster to serve as goodwill ambassadors. Getting more concrete evidence of alien evil-doing might take a long time, unless—
The interminable buzzing stopped.
“Bea? Thank God! I’d about given up.”
“Helly?” a nonrobotic voice said. “That is you, isn’t it? Your code is security-blanked and the video pickup on your phone isn’t working very well.” Bea Mangan’s gentle round face, framed with a loosely wound turban of white toweling, smiled at me. She’d been taking a bath.
“It’s probably melted snow blurring the sensor. I’m sitting on the side of the Ottawa Highroad in a blizzard, and I have a wonderful present for you. The only catch is, you have to come and collect it—and me, too. Do you have a hopper available? I’m not far from the Clarington interchange.”
“Charlie and I can be there in fifteen minutes.”
“No. It would be best if your husband knew nothing about this—at least for the time being. It’s a matter that relates to our … alien extracurricular activities.”
She stared in silence for a moment. “Tell me your exact location.”
I gave it to her, trying to keep my voice from quavering. “Bea? Bring along a thermos of hot coffee and an electric blanket, will you? Maybe some painkillers and antibiotic goop, too.”
“Oh, my. What have you been up to?”
“We’ll also need a body bag.” I punched out using a frigid finger, the color of which closely approximated Haluk blue.
I made one last phone call, to the voice-mail option of Efrem Sontag’s ultrasecure private code, and left a request for him to allow Bea Mangan unlimited access to the computer files obtained from Lorne Buchanan. I told him I had finally obtained a valid biosample from a Haluk demiclone for Bea to analyze, but gave no other details. I asked him not to call me; I would call him.
Then, groaning with the effort, I grasped Brown Fleece by the wrists. It took nearly all my dwindling strength to drag him to the pylon platform and get him through the emergency exit door onto the upper landing of the open spiral staircase. There was no way I could carry him down, but I’m not squeamish and Fleece was beyond caring, so I folded him over the stairwell railing and let him fall thirty meters to the bottom of the shaft. Then I lugged him off into the snow.
We hid together in a nearby thicket, me shivering convulsively and he taking it easy, until Bea Mangan’s hopper arrived. She was flying very low, without navigation lights, to avoid being seen from the highroad. Snow was falling thickly. I staggered out to greet her, arms wide, using my last erg of energy, and fell flat on my face. By then I was so deeply hypothermic that I suspect my internal temperature nearly matched Fleece’s. Her scanner found me anyhow.
She used an antigrav tote to hoist me into the aircraft’s passenger compartment, stripped off most of my icy clothes, wrapped me in the electric blanket, and clamped my chilled fingers around a cup of steaming coffee. I made pitiful noises as the thawing process began.
“You belong in a hospital, Helly. I’ll call Charlie and he can have an ambulance—”
“N-N-N-Noo!” I groaned, through chattering teeth. Her husband, Charles White, was a family practitioner in the small resort community of Fenelon Falls. He was aware that Bea had given me unofficial help gathering evidence of the Galapharma conspiracy, but he knew nothing about the Haluk demiclones.
“I’m going to have Charlie look at you, whether you like it or not,” she insisted stubbornly. “You need a full-body scan.”
Which would turn up the needle puncture in my calf and suspicious drug residuals in my blood. Perhaps Dr. White would have to be let in on the secret after all.
“Go get your present, Bea.” I jerked my head in the direction of the thicket. “Over under the little trees. Sorry if he’s a trifle stinky.”
“First, you get dosed with analgesic. It may make you drowsy.”
She held a device tipped with a glass knob to my jugular. Ooh. Fly me to the moon. Then she smeared my damaged face and hands with antibiotic and pressed prickly bruise-diffuse pads gently around my eyes. A not quite painful tingling ensued. I could feel the swelling begin to subside.
“Feel better?”
“Much. Got the body bag?”
She nodded resignedly. “Who’s the deceased?”
“Don’t know his name. But he’s a genuine twenty-four karat totally authentic Haluk demiclone. I killed him … didn’t mean to. Mighty convenient for a comprehensive DNA assay, though.”
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” she said.
“I don’t think he’s part of their congregation. Check with Great Almighty Luk.”
Bea was dressed in an orange snowmobiler’s suit with a fur ruff around the hood. She slipped a pair of protective plastic mitts over her gloves and went to get the corpse.
Pain free at last, I sipped caffeine-laden elixir and felt warmth and life seep back into my anatomy. In a few minutes Bea returned with the loaded tote floating behind her and stowed the sealed body bag in the hopper’s cargo compartment. Then we lofted into the sky. She kept the running lights off and flew low until we were safely away from the highroad.
I finished the coffee, drew the blanket close about me, and allowed myself a nasty smile, thinking about Black Leather. He’d have a hell of a lot of explaining to do once he reached Mount Julian. Not only had he lost me, but he’d also let his fellow demiclone fall into the hands of the one person in a position to do serious dirt to the alien cause.
My eyes were drifting shut, but I resisted sleep. Something important about the town of Mount Julian … What?
Other thoughts swirled in my punchy mind: I’d have to leave Earth as soon as possible … stay out of reach of Haluk kidnappers and consortium thugs … at Phlegethon, go in without giving away my identity … disguised … mustn’t let Barky know I’m the guy who paid off Ram Mahtani … need some gimmick to get me close to him … trade goods … meanwhile, Karl works with Bea and Ef Sontag … coordinates the search for my brother.
Poor old Dan! Once, I was the prodigal son, he was the golden boy with high hopes of someday heading up Rampart. Now the Haluk had taken him—
Suddenly, I thought I knew where.
“Bea?” I mumbled.
“Yes, Helly.”
“Do something very important for me. My phone … inside pocket. Find Karl Nazarian’s personal code in the dex. Call him as soon as you get to your house. Tell him you have me and the dead demiclone safe. Tell him … urgent he takes an armed security team to Alistair Drummond’s former country home in Mount Julian. Place might be a hive of Haluk … maybe they’re taking my kidnapped brother Dan there … old bastard himself might still be alive … crazy as a bedbug, working with the blueberries. Tell Karl.”
“I’ll tell him everything you said,” Bea Mangan said, “even though it doesn’t make much sense. Rest now, Helly. It’s the best thing for you.”
So I did.
I woke up in a quaintsy-poo guest room, tucked in a four-poster bed beneath a flowery comforter. I was wearing an honest-to-God flannel nightshirt, and there were small adhesive medical sensors stuck to my forehead,
sternum, and inner left wrist, which I peeled off and dropped into the wastebasket. The old-style bedside alarm clock with external bells read 7:13. The turquoise pin from my neck scarf, my pocket phone, wallet, and wrist chronometer were there on a bedstand. I ascertained from the latter that it was Saturday evening. I’d just about slept the clock around.
Rolling off the bed, I lurched over to the chintz-curtained windows and opened the blinds. Gray twilight. A soft rain was falling and the snow had all melted away. The cottage garden had patches of pink daffodils, purple and white crocuses with their petals clenched, and yellow forsythia bushes. Green-painted wrought-iron furniture stood on a patch of winter-sere lawn faintly tinged with new growth. Beyond a screen of balsams and budding maple trees, Sturgeon Lake was a silver glimmer beneath a cloudy sky.
The bedroom door opened behind me. I turned around and there was Dr. Charles White, looking benign and reassuring in an open-necked shirt, khaki pants, and a tattered brown cardigan. He was a tall man, skinny as a rail, with skin the color of polished teak and eyes that were a startling sea-green. His tightly curled dark hair was worn in a sculptured style, with long sideburns like the cheekpieces on a Roman helmet.
“Ah, Helly. So you’re finally up and about.” He pronounced it a-boot in the good old Canadian way. “The med monitors showed you perking along in fine fettle before you eighty-sixed the poor little things. How do you feel?”
The mirror above the dresser showed me a sandy-stubbled face, slightly purplish-green around the eyes, but unlikely to frighten timid toddlers.
“Good enough. Thanks for the repair job, Charlie. I presume I’m pretty much okay?”
“You’re normal except for scabs on your knuckles and healing contusions. There’ll be no lingering side effects from the paralyzing agent. The needle only grazed your calf, gave you a minimal dose.”
“Lucky me.” I checked my bare shank. A faint red line was the only souvenir of my narrow escape.
He tactfully didn’t ask what kind of fine mess I’d gotten myself into this time. “Fresh clothes for you in the closet. Your business suit was ruined but the handmade cowboy boots survived with a little attention from the valet machine. The syringe puncture in the left boot is repaired. I’ve got supper downstairs, pizza and spinach-tomato salad. Karl and I have already eaten, but we’ll keep you company with coffee and homemade German chocolate cake.”