She laughed, nervously. “He wasn’t one of those hippie freaks who think that the Snakes are going to bring peace, prosperity and unlimited food and drink for people who have never worked a day in their lives,” she added. “He was certain that the aliens had their own reasons for visiting Earth and that we might not like them when we discovered what they were. And then he was invited to the alien base. I don’t even know why he went; he told me that he expected to be flattered, but not to be told anything useful.”
Jayne frowned, thoughtfully. “Do you know why he was selected?”
“The letter he received from SETI said it was because he was a famous writer,” Callie said. “He was always getting invitations to conventions and suchlike — he once told me that if he took up every speaking engagement he’d never have time to write. And I think a lot of his fans probably suggested him to someone. They used to write him such flattering letters, even the ex-military people. Joe kept each and every one of them.”
She shook her head. “So he went,” she said, “and now he’s not the same man anymore. They did something to him on that base, something that turned him into their dupe. He’s always telling people how much one can trust the Galactic Federation, how they have Earth’s best interests in mind and how we will benefit from their presence. And he won’t talk about what happened at the base. It’s like watching one of the brats from the Demon Headmaster! You ask him a question and he’ll rattle out a rote response… it’s like someone hypnotised him or something.”
“I see,” Jayne said. “Are you sure he didn’t just have a conversion when he saw what they could do?”
“I’m sure,” Callie said. “The old Joe loved food, drink, sex and — sometimes — fighting and it was my job to provide all four of them. Now he’s barely into any of them; he nibbles his food, avoids alcohol and seems uninterested in sex. And when I pry, as I do sometimes, he doesn’t even rise to the bait. He’s a fucking pod person!”
“They did something to him,” Jayne said. It made a certain kind of sense. Joe Buckley was one of the people who shaped public opinion. If the aliens could convert someone into a loyal follower — and the CIA had carried out all kinds of experiments into brainwashing — why wouldn’t they take advantage of the opportunity? Except… if Joe Buckley was no longer the man he’d been, the process obviously wasn’t perfect. It might actually explain why the aliens hadn’t simply converted everyone who’d visited one of their bases; besides, there were plenty of people who took the aliens at their word without needing to be brainwashed. “Does he have nightmares?”
The look Callie gave her — a look of absolute terror — convinced her that she was right. “He does,” she confirmed. “You don’t understand; even when we were fighting, I felt safe with my Joe. And now he’s quiet, gets into bed without a bit of slap and tickle, and has terrible nightmares when he’s asleep. I watch him tossing and turning, but when he awakens he doesn’t remember anything — anything at all! He doesn’t even have the energy to argue with me over his dreams. I don’t feel safe with him any longer.”
Jayne reached into her pocket and produced one of her business cards. “If you have any problems, call me at once,” she said, firmly. “I think…”
“I already have a problem, you stupid bitch,” Callie snapped. She sounded as if she were on the verge of a breakdown. “I want my husband back!”
She stood up and stalked around the room. “God knows, I’d almost be happier if he was hitting me rather than being a… fucking pod person,” she said. Tears were streaking down her face. “He’s not human anymore! It’s like he’s joined one of those crazy cults and become one of their loyal followers and isn’t allowed to share anything with non-believers…”
“It’s going to be all right,” Jayne said, standing up and giving the older woman a hug. “Take my card; if you don’t feel safe any longer, perhaps you should leave and stay with a friend…”
“But Joe won’t care,” Callie protested. “The new Joe wouldn’t care if I stayed or left!”
Jayne asked several more questions, but Callie was too upset to answer properly. All she could do was offer Jayne a folder containing Joe Buckley’s correspondence for the last few months and a file of extracts from various novels. Most of them referred to a character called Joe Buckley meeting a horrific death at the hands of various enemy forces, including one where he was killed making love to his superior in a tank. Jayne put those aside and started to read through the letters. The letter from SETI was bland and largely uninformative. Joe Buckley had been invited to join one of the groups visiting an alien base; would he be interested. There was nothing else, apart from a pile of unopened letters. The date on the envelopes suggested that they’d been posted after Buckley returned from the alien base.
Shaking her head, Jayne bade Callie farewell. In some ways, Callie was alarmingly like some of the abused wives she’d met while looking for human interest stories. She was being tormented by her husband, but she couldn’t leave him — except Joe Buckley seemed to be showing no interest in her at all. Whatever the aliens had done to him had permanently damaged his mind in some respects, yet in others he could almost function normally.
She froze as a thought ran through her mind. What if the aliens were improving their technique? What if they were arranging for senior military officers to get a tour of their base — and brainwashing them into compliance with alien commands? The entire military was undergoing a massive reshuffle and reduction in force; with a little care, brainwashed officers would be left in high places, while free-thinking officers would be dismissed from the service. And then they’d own the military…
Cursing, she hailed a cab. It was time to start transmitting what she knew to the world — and pray that the aliens couldn’t track her down afterwards.
“It looks,” Toby said dryly, “as if a ghetto blaster had been unfaithful with a television.”
Gillian snorted. The device on the table had clearly been put together in haste, with a dozen components linked together into one confusing mass. Toby could do basic computer repair work, but he’d never had to actually open up a hard drive and repair the interior, not when a replacement could be easily obtained from a computer store. Gillian and her NSA colleagues knew computers inside out. They could put one together by hand out of a remarkable selection of mundane devices.
“The next model will be sexier, I promise,” she said. “Whatever it looks like, the device is capable of detecting an alien bug when transmitting at several metres. I think that the devices actually respond to pings from the alien starships, so we’re attempting to trigger an automatic dump response from the bugs we have in the vault. Unfortunately, if we ping a device out in the open, the aliens will pick up the unscheduled dump and know that something’s wrong.”
Toby frowned. “Rather like having a rogue signal opening a garage door?”
“Something like that,” Gillian agreed. “The aliens don’t seem to use a constant stream of signals from their devices, which makes perfect sense when you consider that we might pick up a signal if it was constantly there — or it might scramble some of our transmissions. I think that given enough time we might be able to construct a jamming device, but I’m afraid that that will definitely tip off the aliens. There’s no other logical reason for us producing such a device.”
“Because the Chinese aren’t as capable as the aliens,” Toby agreed. The aliens would know that the device was aimed at them, if only because there were no other possible targets. And then they’d know that they’d been rumbled. “What are they playing at?”