Earth Alert!, Kris Neville [best value ebook reader TXT] 📗

mend the breaks and ruptures and wounds.

It took time.

Don't reheal his mutant bridge, she thought. Leave him defanged.

His jaw returned to its socket. The dried blood on his skin no longer led from vicious gashes: they had closed and were knitting.

She was finished. He was still unconscious.

Even as she turned to heal the farmer, a section of her brain drew conclusions from the fact she could be relieved of her powers. Some outside force was responsible for holding the bridge closed in her mind. It could be turned on and off.

But why, when the force controlling her bridge had vanished, had Walt's bridge remained intact? She reviewed all the information she had.

There are two compartments of mutants on the alien ship.

Then each compartment must have its own ... frequency. The aliens selected Walt, she thought, to kill me because his bridge operated on a different frequency than mine.

Speechless the farmer had watched her heal Walt; now he relaxed under the soothing fingers of her thought. He felt the bone in his arm being made whole again.

He no longer needed to cough.

She tried to create a bridge in his brain; but she could not; it was outside the pattern. If she were to give him one, it would require surgery.

She was once again in the seat beside him.

"You're a, you're an angel," he said. Awe made his voice hollow. "I'll be God damned if you're not an honest to Jesus, real live angel."

"I'm human."

"... you couldn't be."

"Well, I am."

He frowned, "... lady, after what I just seen you do, I'll believe it if you say so. You just tell me, I'll believe it."

"I've got to get into San Francisco. I'll have to leave you. You can catch a ride or something."

He scrambled out of the car.

Impulsively Julia reached in her handbag for a bill. She found one. "Here," she said, thrusting it on him, "this is for your milk."

The farmer took it automatically. He put it in his wallet and put the wallet back in his overalls without bothering to watch what he was doing. He was watching her.

If they're all as easy to convert as he is ... she thought.

"Can I ask you a question?"

"What?" she said.

"If you're human, what am I?"

"We're not quite the same," Julia said. "Maybe some day we will be...."

She wheeled onto the super-highway and headed toward San Francisco.

She switched on the automatic-drive and turned her attention to Walt.

She was unable to awaken him. After such a severe shock as he had experienced, his nervous system demanded rest; he no longer had the recuperative powers of a mutant.

Even if I alert Earth, she thought what can we do? How can we prepare? I could ... but I'm only one. They'd gang up on me and kill me in a minute.... Earth will fight; at least we won't give up. I'll have to get us as ready as I can, and we'll fight.

I need Walt. What kind of weapons will we be up against? Where will the invasion strike first? When? He'll have scraps of information that I can put together to tell me more than he thinks he knows.

How can I convince him to help me?

... if I've figured it out right, there's got to be records somewhere. Birth certificates, things like that. If I'm right about babies being missing the year of the last big saucer scare, there's got to be birth certificates. I'll check newspaper files in San Francisco.

If I can just find Walt's birth certificate! That will convince him!

She thought about the space station floating somewhere in the sky; she tried to picture the aliens who manned it.

God knows how, she thought, but we'll fight!

In the space station, the aliens were in conference.

**There can't be any doubt but that she's dead,** Forential projected.

**Your Walt is a good one,** Lycan thought. **Best mutant on the ship.**

Jubilation flowed back and forth. The other aliens congratulated Forential.

**It was nothing,** Forential told them.

**I feel infinitely better, now that she's out of the way,** the Elder commented.

**We'll strike with the main force a day before we planned to,** Lycan told them. **That's best all around. We expect most trouble from the American Air Force. It will be least alert on a Sunday morning.**

In San Francisco Julia drew up in front of an unpretentious hotel on Polk Street. Walt, was still unconscious in the back seat.

After she arranged for a room, she returned to the car. She seized Walt at his arm pits and hauled him to the sidewalk. She held a tight distortion field around his body. He was dead weight against her. She draped one of his arms about her neck. When she began to walk, his feet shuffled awkwardly.

She felt as conspicuous as if she were smoking a pipe.

She wedged her body against the door of the hotel and dragged Walt inside. Although he was invisible, the effect of his body pulling down on hers was readily apparent. She half stumbled toward the elevator.

The clerk, a counterpart of the one she had had in Hollywood looked up in annoyance. He snorted through his nose. He eyed her narrowly. He seemed about to leave his position behind the desk.

Julia propped Walt against the wall and rang for the elevator. She smiled wanly in the direction of the clerk. Shaking his head and grunting his disapproval, he settled back in his chair.

Walt's heavy breathing was thunderous in her ear. She braced him with her hip when he started to slip to the floor.

The elevator came.

"Step up, please."

Straining against his weight, she hauled Walt's feet up over the edge of the cage. The feet scraped loudly on the floor.

The elevator operator raised his eyebrows ever so slightly. He cocked his head to one side. "Something wrong?"

"Oh, no," Julia said brightly. "Everything's fine."

The operator started the car. "A young lady ought to be careful in this town," he said. "A young lady oughtn't to drink so much." He shook his head sadly. "There's a case of rape in the papers nearly every day."

"... I'll be careful."

"They pick up young ladies in bars all the time. You never can tell about the men you're liable to meet, if you go in bars. You have to watch yourself in this town."

"Seven, please."

"Yes, ma'm."

The elevator stopped. Julia dragged Walt out.

"You mind what I say!" the operator called after her. "You be careful, now, and stay out of bars. You never can tell...."

Once she got Walt inside her room, she breathed a sigh of relief. She released the distortion field. He was visible again.

She removed the top sheet from the bed. She wrestled his body onto the bed.

She ripped the sheet into strips. She worked rapidly. She was still able to hold off fatigue; she felt no need of sleep. She was ravenously hungry.

With the strips of sheet, she tied Walt securely. She used a knot that would require cutting to be undone. She pulled the strips tight. They did not interfere with free circulation, but there was no possibility of them being slipped. She had no intention of not finding Walt there when she came back.

She surveyed her handiwork with satisfaction.

Whistling softly she left the room and walked down the corridor. She stopped whistling abruptly and glanced around in embarrassment. She had remembered the old adage: 'A whistling girl and a crowing hen are sure to come to some bad end'.

There seemed to be something indecent about whistling in public.

The fact that she had, colored her emotions with uneasiness.

She realized that there might be a million such superstitions—many of them not recognized as superstitions at all—buried in her personality. Her brain might be highly efficient, but was it efficient enough to overcome all the emotional biases implanted by twenty-four years of environment? Was even her knowledge of the real nature of the world—was mankind's—sufficient to overcome such biases?

Perhaps, she thought, I'm not as smart as I thought I was. There may be deep and illogical currents in me. Perhaps I'm not, not mature enough for such power as I've been given.

Annoyed, she took out a cigarette, and in defiance of cultural tradition, lit it there in the corridor while she waited for the elevator.

The operator did not approve of women smoking in public. He said so.

She ate in the coffee shop.

After the meal, she took a cab to the offices of the morning paper.

In the entranceway to the building, sure that no one was watching, she became invisible.

Half an hour later, possessed of the information she had come after (harvested from the back files of the paper) she was once again in the street.

In her room, she went to the telephone. She placed a long distance call to a Boston hospital.

The news had not been widely reported. She found most of the names in brief paragraphs stating that Mr. and Mrs. such and such had settled their suit against the so and so hospital out of court. In the three cases where the confinements had been in private homes, there had been kidnapping stories in the paper. In one of the cases, a man had later been convicted and executed—although the body of the child had never been recovered from the pond into which the prosecution contended it had been thrown.

She talked to the switch board operator at the Boston hospital. She was given the superintendent. He—impressed by the fact that she was calling from the Pacific coast—sent his secretary to rummage the files for the hospital's copy of the birth certificate.

Julia waited.

"Yes, I have it."

"It's on the child of Mr. and Mrs. George Temple?"

"That's right."

Julia concentrated as hard as she could.

"You have it in your hand?"

"Yes."

"Would you look at it closely?"

"... what?"

"Look at it closely, please."

"Young lady—"

"Please, sir."

"All right. I am. Now what information did you want? It reads—What the hell! Where did that go? Say, how did you—"

Julia hung up. She looked at the birth certificate lying by the telephone. She picked it up. It was none the worse for teleportation.

She put it on the dresser and returned to the phone.

By the time Tuesday was well into the afternoon, when the cool rays of the winter sun lay slanting upon the murmuring crest outside, she had nine birth certificates on the dresser. Nine times the bell boy had come to her room to collect for the telephone charges. The last time, she forgot to make Walt invisible. The bell boy said nothing.

Julia was annoyed by her carelessness. The bell boy's foot-falls died in the carpet of the corridor. She went to the door and looked out. He was gone.

She closed the door and crossed to the bed. She had exhausted her list of names. She set about rousing Walt.

He's handsome, she thought.

His eyelids flickered.

He opened his eyes. Memory slowly darkened his irises. He glared up at her.

He surged at his bonds, striving to rip free and throw himself upon her. He tugged at his right hand. His fingers writhed. A frown passed over his face. He jerked his right hand savagely.

"You have been deprived of your power," Julia said.

Stunned, he lay back. "I, I don't understand."

"You thought you were a Lyrian," Julia said. "You were wrong. You're an earthman. I am an earthwoman."

"That's a lie! I'm not an earthman!"

"You are now. How are you different?"

"That's a lie. I'm, I'm...." He fought against the tentacle-like strips of sheet.

"Is it a lie, Walt?"

He continued to struggle.

Smiling, she taunted him: "When I was a little girl, I used to get mad and throw rocks.... It never did any good. Lie still."

I shouldn't tease him, she thought contritely.

She felt very sorry for him. How frustrated he must feel! How hurt and puzzled and helpless and betrayed!

He's like Samson shorn.

"I know how you feel," she said softly. "I felt that way when you were chasing me. You're going to listen to me. After I'm through talking to you, maybe I'll let you up."

Glaring hotly, he relaxed.

"I saved your life," Julia said. "Don't forget that. You could thank me."

"You had a reason then. You're a traitor. You had your reasons to."

She slipped to the end of the bed. Gently she unlaced his shoes and slipped them off.

His face purpled with impotent anger.

She peeled off his socks.

Then, one by one, Julia compared the footprints on the birth certificates with Walt's feet.

Hot tears of defeat brimmed up within Walt; indignant rage filled his eyes.

Julia turned to put the birth certificates back on the dresser.

None of them corresponded to his prints.

Walt wanted to bite down on something. He gritted his teeth. Then, as Julia was turning away from him, he felt once