It snapped into place.
“You can’t seriously want me to—?”
“I have already appointed you—you have already utilized your proto-command when you extricated yourself from the Sanalabreum. Under martial law, an expeditious vote of the Quorum is all that is necessary. I am the only surviving Quorum member. It is merely a formality now. You have only to accept.”
She staggered back from the glass, blood pounding audibly in her ears.
“What then?” she mumbled aloud.
“I am your servant.” Another fact. Another truth, from his point of view.
“Oh, give me a break!” She raised a hand to pinch the bridge of her nose, but caught sight of the gauntlet just in time and threw her arm away. They really should retract like the helmet, for goodness’ sake. “So, we just…we move the ship.”
“Obviously. We complete the mission and return.”
She stared at him, aghast, her lips formed in a moue of disbelief. “To Sectilius? You’re joking!”
“I do not dissemble. It is your duty to complete the mission begun by your predecessor. It is not in your nature to shirk duty, especially to those to whom you believe yourself responsible. I am now your ward. That responsibility extends to me.”
“That—I—that’s ridiculous! I don’t know anything about—”
She paused. But she did know, dammit. She knew everything about it, if she just searched in the right corner of her mind. The sneaky bastard had put everything into place at the very beginning with that insane download.
She half-expected to see some kind of maniacal grin on his face, which wasn’t there, of course—only an innocent, wide-eyed look, that bespoke nothing of the devious nature of the mind beneath the white flesh, still rhythmically flashing a crimson “friend” signal at her.
She turned and walked a few feet away, grateful for the support of the suit. Her legs felt wobbly and weak within its generous support and her injured leg ached. “This is nonsense. We’ll go to Earth and let the bureaucrats there work it all out. They’ll appoint someone suitable for this task. It’s not me you want.”
“It is you, Dr. Jane Holloway. There can be no other.”
She stopped, began to form a retort.
He interrupted her thought. “This is what you will give me over to them for?”
He pushed a memory at her. She meant to resist, but when she saw familiar faces, curiosity got the better of her. It was a small conference room, somewhere on Earth.
In the memory, she stood stiffly, with folded arms, and made eye contact with the Deputy Administrator of Johnson Space Center.
What was his name again? Dr. Marshall?
Marshall nodded brusquely, indicating that she should dim the lights. As she turned, she glanced into the faces of three others that occupied the room—Ajaya Varma, Tom Compton and Ronald Gibbs stood at ease nearby, dressed in fatigues. She was feeling grim. She moved forward, picked up a remote, and looked up. She could see her reflection in the television screen before it came to life. She was Walsh. This was his memory.
As she watched, ancient black and white film footage played on the screen, hastily shot, documenting some long ago event that the military had been brought in to deal with. Walsh had seen this before, but he still squinted to see the grainy images, interspersed with snow and flashing jumps. It was dark. There was smoke, lots of smoke. There were floodlights in a perimeter, flooding a large object with harsh light, making the camera white out from time to time.
Then she recognized the ship that the soldiers were swarming over—a Speroancora shuttle—and she realized this had to be the 1947 New Mexican crash site. There were Sectilius inside that small ship. The cameraman drew closer and asked questions of men working on and around the ship in a disgustingly jaunty manner, belying the seriousness of the moment.
Ei’Brai watched and listened, silently absorbed in her reaction. She perceived him and the video on different levels as information streamed between them. He did not understand the language spoken, only the emotions conveyed. She was surprised at how accurate his interpretations actually were.
Several soldiers put their backs into some large tools to pry open a hatch, which suddenly gave way with a hiss. Someone barked an order at the cameraman and he moved in closer. The camera shook, making the footage difficult to watch. He didn’t sound so jolly anymore. Soldiers moved in with weapons drawn. The camera followed.
There were four Sectilius inside—three men and one woman. One of the men was obviously dead, impaled by a twisted component of the control console. The other two were stunned and moving lethargically—they would have been affected by the same mysterious illness as Compton at some point during their journey to Earth.
The female Sectilius was in the process of donning an armored suit, exactly like the one Jane was wearing. The woman was exceedingly thin, tall, lithe, sharply featured—to Walsh’s eyes, alien and suspicious.
She was ordered to stop what she was doing. She answered calmly, matter of fact, in Mensententia that she meant no harm, that she intended to protect herself from the violence of this bizarre, chaotic world. These men couldn’t comprehend her, nor Walsh, but Jane could and the following sequence made her blood run cold.
Two soldiers advanced on her while other soldiers crowded the unresisting, catatonic Sectilius men, slumped at the controls of the vehicle. The soldiers ordered the woman to stop again as she slipped one arm down into the suit. She narrowed her eyes and slowly continued, no expression of any kind on her face. They tried to stop her physically. She pushed them away with a force that clearly surprised them.
There were angry words, cursing. A shot rang out. The Sectilius woman looked down at her torso, registered that she’d been wounded, and shouldered the suit, which instantly enveloped her. She returned fire, obliterating the man who’d just shot her with a single concussive blast from her wrist. The camera rocked violently and it was hard to tell what was happening for a few moments. When it righted itself, bullets were pinging off the Sectilius woman as she staggered forward, arm raised, sending out a few more pressure waves before she collapsed.
The screen went blank for a moment then lit up again in a new location. This scene was very different—the contrast was stark. Bright light flooded the room from above. It was a surgical suite filled with gowned, masked men crowded around the center of the room. It was very quiet. The men spoke in low murmurs as they worked over someone.
Then she heard an agonized moan.
Jane involuntarily put the back of her hand to her mouth and tasted blood as the mechanical hand smashed her tender lips.
One man smoked a cigarette nearby, watching the proceedings with intense absorption.
The camera moved in. Men with oiled hair and horn-rimmed glasses glanced up and stepped aside. One of the Sectilius was naked on an operating table. It was the short, stocky male—his body corded with dense musculature.
The camera moved in closer, revealing that his body was flayed and cut wide open from neck to groin. They were dissecting him. He was alive and awake and in agony.
Jane could sense Walsh’s unarticulated emotions. It was very clear. He approved of this.
Jane fell to her knees against the glass and wretched. Ei’Brai stopped the flood of the memory and she thanked him for that kindness while she recovered her composure.
If Ei’Brai saw this in Walsh’s mind—from the beginning? That explained a few things.
When she was able to stand again, she choked out, “I will not let them do that to you!”
“How will you prevent it? They will be curious about the similarities and dissimilarities between my kind and homologous creatures on your world. I have seen in your mind, my form is not unfamiliar to you, yet my intellect, my abilities, are singular—you have encountered nothing that compares in your cumulative experience as a species. The precedent has been set. Surely you must see that this is the natural conclusion to any alien introduction to your culture. They will not be able to help themselves.” All his concentration was fixed on her every move, every thought. “You, however, are different. You know me as they cannot.”