“I want to believe,” she said.
“I know you do.”
“The Airlia—” she began, then stopped.
“Go ahead. Speak freely.”
“The Airlia aren’t human. How can we be sure…”
Parker smiled reassuringly. “If they were human, there would be no reason to believe. The Airlia are more than human. For us to become more than we have been, we must follow them. Meet them — if we could have before UNAOC took its sacrilegious action. But we still have their technology to take us to the stars. To help us rise above the disaster we have inflicted upon ourselves on this planet. It is the path we must take. It is the only path that will take us out of dirt-locked existence. But to take that path we must be prepared to serve.”
The young woman nodded, but her eyes still wouldn’t meet Parker’s. “I understand… but the talk of doom, of death for the nonbelievers. I don’t know if…”
There was only the faint sound of the candles flickering for several seconds before Parker spoke, his voice softening. “Do you know the story of the Great Flood?”
The young woman nodded.
Parker reached out and took her hand. “Another Great Flood is coming. Not of water, but just as deadly. And the chosen ones will have to rise above the flood to survive. If you believe, you will be saved. If not…” He didn’t finish the sentence, and when he spoke again, he pulled his hand away and his voice hardened.
“Do you understand free will? Everyone on the planet knows of the Airlia now. They cannot claim ignorance. Everyone has a choice. It is our job to tell people of their choice. But it is their choice, just as it is your choice.” Parker’s voice slowly changed timbre and the room seemed to close in. “But once the choice is made, each person must bear responsibility for their actions. And the weight of that responsibility if they choose wrong will be most dire!”
Yakov leaned back in his seat, and they could all see how weary he was. It was as if after making his pronouncement of doom, he had lost what little energy he had left. “I don’t know where to begin. I’ve told you there are these Guides. People who have been directly affected by a guardian computer and do the bidding of the aliens. They are not many in number, since access to the guardians is very limited. And then there are the STAAR. Humans who are cloned.”
“Not just cloned,” Major Quinn interjected.
Yakov raised his eyebrows at that.
“Go ahead, Major,” Duncan said. She wanted to give Yakov a chance to get his energy back. She also wanted a chance to think. First this stranger, Harrison, calling about Black Death, and now Yakov using the same term.
Quinn ran a hand through his thinning blond hair. His thick, tortoiseshell glasses reflected the lights inside the room. “We did an autopsy on the two STAAR personnel.”
“And?” Duncan prompted.
“They’re not human. Not exactly.”
Turcotte glanced at Duncan before speaking. “How are they not exactly human?”
He remembered Kostanov telling him that Section IV had captured a STAAR operative in the early nineties, and that Russian scientists had discovered that the man was a clone. But a clone was still human. Turcotte had assumed that the bodies in the tanks at Scorpion Base were human clones; this shed a different light on that assumption.
“We’re not sure exactly,” Quinn said. “UNAOC pathologists and other scientists are still working on the bodies, but the first thing we noticed was that their eyes were red with elongated pupils. They’d been wearing cosmetic contacts and, of course, the sunglasses. Red eyes are definitely not human.”
Turcotte remembered the holographic figure that had guarded the passageway in Qian-Ling. It had had the same type of eyes. “They’re Airlia?”
“We think they are a mixture of Airlia and human genetic material,” Major Quinn said.
“Any indication of cloning?” Turcotte asked.
Quinn nodded. “Both bodies’ genetic material are almost identical. That indicates they either are twin sisters or else they were — shall we say ‘developed’?—out of the same genetic material. So, yes, cloning is a very real possibility.
“The scientists are still working to determine what the exact percentages are, but it appears they are mostly human. However, we do have to assume that the Airlia were capable of surviving unaided on this planet, given that they established a base here and kept it going for several millennia. Plus the figure you saw in the holograph was shaped roughly like a human. Their genetic background can’t be too far off from ours.”
“Interbreeding?” Duncan wondered out loud.
“It’s possible,” Quinn said. “The scientists think it’s more likely, though, that the Airlia played with human DNA, mixing in some of their own, and came up with these STAAR people.”
Yakov shook his head. “The STAAR operative we captured did not have these eyes. He was a perfect clone, one hundred percent human.”
Quinn raised his hands to indicate it was beyond him. “I’m just telling you what we found.”
“Did you see this body?” Duncan asked.
Yakov turned in her direction, his eyes narrowing. “No.” Before she could say anything else, he raised his hand. “Point taken.”
“Maybe the ones you examined at Area 51 were sleeping like the Airlia on Mars,” Turcotte said.
Duncan shook her head. “No, they’ve been awake at least since 1948. When Majestic got formed, STAAR was also formed as the Strategic Advanced Alien Response team, but as Yakov says, I think it existed before that.”
“Zandra told me that STAAR existed in case of alien attack, but now that we know they were part Airlia we know that’s a bunch of bull,” Turcotte said. “Maybe not,” Duncan interjected. “Maybe they were to guard against a specific alien attack?”
“Against Aspasia?”
“Zandra didn’t seem too keen on him coming here in the talons,” Duncan said.
Turcotte considered that. “That means STAAR was Artad’s version of the foo fighters and guardian. Left here to keep a watch on things, to make sure the truce between Artad’s faction here on Earth and Aspasia’s on Mars was maintained.”
“That’s possible, but we need to know more,” Duncan said.
“We’ve only got the two bodies,” Quinn said. “We’re still working on them.”
“You’ll have more bodies soon,” Turcotte said. “We found ten at Scorpion Base. I’ll have them shipped to Area 51 once the engineers unfreeze them.”
“That might help,” Quinn said.
“No further intelligence on STAAR itself? Where the rest of it went?” Duncan asked.
“UNAOC has contacted the intelligence agencies of every country and requested any information they have, but the response has been slow. Nothing significant so far.”
“UNAOC has no idea where STAAR is now?” Turcotte pressed.
“None.”
“What do you know of STAAR?” Duncan asked Yakov.
“STAAR is one of the many names that group has gone under,” Yakov said. “STAAR is the enemy of The Mission and the Guides. Artad versus Aspasia. The two warring alien groups in their civil war.” “Great,” Turcotte muttered.
“All right,” Duncan said. “Yakov, you said this thing in South America is the Black Death. What is it and how do you know that?”
“History.” Yakov poured himself another glass of water and downed it quickly. “I should have said another Black Death.”
“Another?” Turcotte was looking at the imagery of the dead village.
“The Black Death we know from history books devastated the world in the fourteenth century like nothing before and nothing since,” Yakov said. “I have done some research on it, because I believe it, too, was caused by the Guides.”