“Makes you wish Spock was here, don’t it?” Weaver said, looking over her shoulder.
“Or Bones,” she answered, looking up and grinning. “He was always my favorite. ‘Damnit, Jim, I’m a doctor not a mason!’ Well, I’m a terrestrial biologist, not a xenobiologist.”
“You’re one now,” Weaver pointed out. “The only one, so far.”
“There will be more,” she said, darkly. “Get what you can while you can, you know this is going to be taken away from us.”
“Oh?” Weaver said. “Why?”
“The military is all over it,” she sighed. “SEALs doing the biological collecting, which could be done better by grad students. Soldiers on your instruments…”
“I asked for him,” Weaver said. “He used to be a physics masters candidate.”
“Yeah, but some Beltway Bandit corporation is going to take all this over and bury it deep; you know they will.”
“Well, as long as it’s Columbia I’m safe,” Weaver said, smiling. “Where do you think they found me?”
“Really?” she asked. “You work for the Man?”
“Most of the time,” the physicist replied. “And it’s not like a social disease or something. Sure, some of your work gets classified, but most of the time you can publish. And the pay is a hell of a lot better than working for a university. Mostly I wear my engineering hat, anyway.”
“Well, you’re safe I guess,” she muttered.
“So are you as long as you don’t get all upset at what’s going on,” Weaver pointed out. “Some of this stuff is going to be classified. But I’m going to argue for declass of most of it. The classified community isn’t large enough to handle the data we’ll be getting and most of the world-class people we’ll need to analyze it and make sense of it aren’t prone to working with classified material. It makes sense to classify some of it, though. You don’t want everyone and their brother making Higgs bosons if a nuclear bomb is the result.”
“That’s a point,” she admitted.
“And they’re already talking about bringing in the Tropical Disease people at UGA,” he noted. “I don’t think any of them are cleared for TS work. So don’t worry about it for now. Have you been able to take a good look at Tuffy, yet?” he asked, changing the subject.
“A small one,” she said. “Mimi was getting tired, no surprise, so am I. Just before she nodded off I got her to let me hold him for a moment. I was worried but he didn’t do anything. He’s decally symmetric, covered in fur and has a mouth on the underside. That’s about all I could tell. I got a small piece of fur on my hand and I ran it through what I’ve got as an analyzer. It’s got proteins and some dense long-chain carbon molecules in it. No DNA again. That’s all I could get from it. And none of the molecules looked like what I was getting from this mess,” she added, gesturing at the dissected bugs on the worktable.
“Where is she?” he asked.
“Bedded down in one of the officer tents,” Susan said. “We’re going to have to release her to her next of kin sooner or later.”
“Only if they’re in here,” Weaver pointed out. “They don’t want anything going out unless it’s been decontaminated. I think it’s a bit late; we had soldiers going in and out for a while. If there’s going to be a purple plague, quarantine has already been breached.”
“Let’s hope not,” McBain said, shivering. “But I’d be really surprised if this biology could interact with ours. I’m done in. I’m going to go get some rest.”
“Go on,” Weaver said. “I’m not tired.”
He headed back to his tent and started making notes of everything they knew, not much, and everything he wanted to know. A lot. But Tuffy kept coming back to mind. If another gate had opened during the explosion, it wouldn’t be a limited event. He suspected that they weren’t anywhere near the end of the surprises.
“A closed world has opened,” Collective 15379 emitted. “Intentional Boson formation from far side.”
“Reconnaissance?” Collective 47 asked.
“Already ordered,” 15379 answered. “Four gate parallels so far and expanding on available fractal line. Wormhole opened at one of the proximate parallels. Reconnaissance team entering now.”
“Report back on viability for colonization.”
“911 emergency services,” the operator said, noting the time of the call on a pad. “Police, fire or medical?”
“Police!” a female voice answered. The display read 1358 Jules Ct. Eustis. So far all normal, except for the boom of a shotgun in the background.
“Is that firing?” operator asked.
“Yes! There are demons attacking my house! My husband’s got his shotgun!”
“Ma’am, just calm down,” the operator said. She tapped her computer, dispatching a patrol car. Possible crazy person, guns fired. “You’ll be okay.”
“No I won’t,” the woman sobbed. “They’re coming in the back door! Don’t you hear them?”
It was then that the operator realized that she did hear something in the background, a strange ululation like an off-tone fire engine. It was… unworldly. She tapped the computer again and keyed for home invasion and multiple response.
“Ma’am, the police are on their way,” she said as calmly as she could. “Is this 1358 Jules Court?”
“Yes, they’re…” There was a scream in the background. “Please hurry! They’re coming…” The call cut off.
Lieutenant Doug Jones was chief investigator for the Lake County Sheriff’s department. He had gotten that position, and his promotion from sergeant, when the sheriff and his ex-boss agreed that it was unlikely the ex-boss, who had been called up in the National Guard, was going to be coming back for more than a year. Right now he regretted the promotion.
Generally he was in charge of investigations into burglaries, fairly frequent, rapes, not too frequent, murders, infrequent and, most of all, drug dealing and drug running. Lake County was at the crossroads of several major highways and drugs flowed up from the south, coming from Miami and Tampa, and often were distributed or transferred or dealt in Lake County.
What he wasn’t used to was investigating home invasions by demons.
He looked at the patch of… what did the forensic tech call it? Oh, yeah, “ichor” on the ground and shook his head.
“This truly sucks,” he said, looking over at the first-in officer. “And you didn’t see anything?”
“No, Lieutenant,” the deputy said. “When I got here there were neighbors out in the street. Based on my information I went to the back of the house. The rear door had been busted in; it was on the floor of the kitchen. There were shotgun shells on the stairs and upstairs landing and a twelve gauge pump shotgun. Blood patch on the landing, blood patch in the upstairs bedroom, wireless phone on the floor. And…” he pointed at the patch of drying green stuff. “That on the stairs, the landing and a trail going out the door. Also blood mixed with it in places.”
“So, what we have here, is demons coming out of nowhere, invading a house, killing or injuring two retirees, dragging them out of the house and…” He looked at the hummock of oak and cypress behind the house. It was much the same as dozens he had walked through before but at the moment it was a dark and ominous presence. “And dragging them off into the darkness. I really don’t like that.”