The Chromosomal Code, page 10
“So tell me about the aliens,” he said. “Where did they come from? What do they look like?”
“You've seen them,” Curtis said.
“You mean the zom – the young men in uniform? Those are the aliens?”
“Those are all anyone's ever seen.”
“Where did they come from?”
She shrugged again. “Who knows? Somewhere in Sagittarius, apparently.”
“Are you sure they're really aliens? They look so human!”
“They came off the ships, and the ships came from outer space; there's no doubt about that. I know it's strange that they look so much like us. Maybe they changed their appearance somehow, or maybe all those old theories about gods from other worlds are right.”
Starkman still didn't believe that, but it didn't seem he was going to learn anything new about the aliens' authenticity here. He changed the subject. “You don't know why they'd want me?”
“No.”
“You don't have any idea?”
“None at all.”
“When they've taken an interest in people before – yellow-jaundice victims, or whoever – what did they do to them?”
“Nothing very special, really; they just took one sample after another, and gave them a super-thorough exam. If it was jaundice, they cured it; if it was albinism or whatever, they just turned them loose.”
“They weren't hurt?”
“No, not really. But that doesn't mean anything, because they weren't what was really wanted, and you are.”
“I'd figured that out for myself, thank you.” He considered for a moment, then asked, “Are those aliens human?”
Curtis hesitated. “I don't know,” she said at last. “They all look human.”
“I know. You said that maybe they'd changed their appearance; have you ever examined one?”
“Oh, no! They won't allow it.”
“Do they all speak English?”
“No; some speak Portuguese, or Spanish, or whatever.”
“They don't all speak everything?”
“No. Or at least, they don't admit it; I've never heard any of them speak more than one language.”
“What about their native language? What's that sound like?”
“I've never heard it; I don't think anyone has.”
“The ones who captured me said their names were Mike and Jason and so on; where'd they get such ordinary names?”
“We don't know, but they all have them. They all have completely ordinary first names appropriate to whatever language they happen to be speaking, and they answer to them as if they were their own real names. None of them admit to last names.”
“And no one's ever seen any alien aliens?”
“No.”
“What about the Governor I've heard mentioned?”
“He's their head man, whatever he is, but no one's ever seen him. He won't talk to anyone except his own Imperials face to face; when he talks to ordinary Earth people it's always over audio circuits, with no video. I've heard some big shots get to speak with him through one-way glass, but nobody human has ever seen him.”
“Do you think he's not humanoid?”
“Who knows?”
Starkman considered for a moment. “I think they must be androids,” he said. “It doesn't make sense for aliens to look and act like humans.”
Curtis shrugged. “Maybe they are. We just don't know. They're not robots; they breathe and eat, and we've seen 'em bleed. And whatever they are, they may act like humans, but they don't think like humans.”
The conversation was interrupted by a sudden clatter from the hallway outside the conference room; someone was running. Starkman turned, startled, as the door of the room burst open and a young man leaned in.
“Emilio! Imperiales!”
“Que?” Suares was on his feet, and Santangelo was halfway to the door by the time Dr. Curtis managed to stammer out, “What? Where?”
“There are Imperiales, Doctor Curtis, coming up the path from the Welcome Center. They have machines, lights, and trackers.”
Santangelo was out the door, pushing past the newcomer with his rifle in his hand, then breaking into a run.
Starkman sat, utterly confused, as Suares followed Santangelo out, and Mueller vanished through another door. He had no idea what they were planning to do. Curtis and Fanshaw were on their feet but not moving, and looking as bewildered as Starkman felt. Ingrao simply sat, unperturbed, watching the others curiously.
A sudden chatter of gunfire sounded from somewhere not far away, and Starkman knew where Santangelo, at least, had been going. He wondered who had fired first.
A flicker caught his eye, and he turned to look at the television. The talk show had vanished, to be replaced by a red-and-black bulletin symbol. A moment later that faded away, and with a start Starkman realized that he was seeing the outside of the building he was in. Spotlights washed the plywood-and-metal walls in uneven light, and tiny figures moved.
The others remaining in the room had not yet noticed it; he decided against pointing it out.
The picture was apparently being shot from a helicopter, or perhaps a crane of some sort; the image was quite steady, with none of the vibration he would have expected in a helicopter-mounted camera. It looked down at the facade of the processing center from about twenty meters up. Starkman watched as it zoomed in slightly on two figures crouched in the doorway he had entered through; he could not distinguish faces, but judging by what he could see of their clothing he took them to be Suares and Santangelo. One of them held a weapon; he aimed, and fired at something off-screen.
Simultaneously, Starkman heard another burst of gunfire nearby. The sound was still turned off; the shots were real.
The camera zoomed in closer, and Starkman was almost certain he recognized the gunman as Santangelo. Then the image shrank again, and the camera panned outward across the surrounding pavement to the forest. Indistinct shapes were moving about in the underbrush, between the great spotlights that were spaced out along the edge of the pavement, at least four of them.
One man – or zombie, or Imperial, or alien, or whatever he was – lay unmoving in a dark pool of something, half hidden in shadow, half lit by the beam from one of the lights. Starkman felt a slight twinge of nausea. Santangelo was obviously not just playing games.
He was distracted by Mueller's return. The man's arms were heaped with guns, and he began handing them out, like a wartime parody of Santa Claus distributing gifts.
Fanshaw refused to accept one. Curtis hesitated, but finally took a small submachine gun. Starkman, who knew almost nothing about firearms, thought he recognized it as an Uzi. Ingrao silently received an automatic rifle. Mueller looked at Starkman uncertainly, then turned and left, still holding three or four guns, without offering Starkman a weapon.
Starkman honestly could not have said whether or not he would have accepted had one been offered.
Moving with serene calm, Ingrao rose and walked out the door, his weapon ready in his hands. Curtis followed him, far less composed, leaving Starkman alone with Fanshaw.
He heard the sharp crack of a single rifle shot a few seconds later, then a stuttering burst from one of the automatic weapons, then a moment of silence. He turned back to the television, noting in passing that Fanshaw jumped at the sound of every shot.
She noticed where he was looking, and her eyes turned as well. “Oh, my God,” she said when she recognized the scene.
The two figures in the doorway were joined by others, the whole group jammed into the opening, their weapons bristling.
“Do you think the Imperials brought the TV people themselves?” Starkman asked.
“No, I don't think so; one of the news networks just follows them around whenever it sees a group of them. They've done it before.”
Starkman nodded. Ambulance-chasing, that's all it was; there was nothing mysterious about that.
The camera panned out across the pavement and the forest. Starkman saw that half a dozen Imperials lay dead or wounded, where only one had been before. He realized that there might be others lost in the darkness or behind the trees. There was no sign that they had been armed, or that any of the gunfire came from anywhere other than the group in the doorway.
“Oh, my God,” Fanshaw said again. She reached over and turned up the sound.
The newscaster's voice told Starkman nothing at all; like everyone else he had heard on this channel, she spoke Portuguese. Fanshaw listened intently, and Starkman wondered whether she knew the language or was just trying to pick out familiar words where she could.
The momentary silence outside was broken by a calm voice, distorted by amplification and intervening walls, eerily echoed by the television, speaking English loud enough to be heard in the windowless room without any relay.
“I am speaking as a representative of the government. We mean you no harm. We respect the right of all citizens to assemble, and the right to bear arms. We have come for the new arrival taken from the Welcome Center, the man who called himself John Starkman.”
Gunfire interrupted the speech. Someone was shouting, incoherent through the corridors and doors, and not loudly enough to be picked up by the television crew. The newscaster was saying something in Portuguese. Starkman sat, frozen, trying to accept the fact that the voice had said what it had. He could handle the idea that they had come after him, but the statement of rights contrasted so grotesquely with the twisted bodies of the downed Imperials that the camera kept returning to that he could not believe both speech and bodies were real and simultaneous.
Starkman decided that it was time to leave. Dr. Curtis had been quite correct; the government did want him for something, and he didn't want any part of it until he had a better idea of what was happening. Furthermore, he didn't think he wanted anything to do with either side of this conflict, neither the revolutionaries blazing away at anything that moved, nor the government that blithely sent unarmed men up against guns while reasserting its commitment to human rights.
The revolutionaries hadn't thought to leave anyone to guard him, unless the young Englishwoman, unarmed and obviously frightened, was supposed to do that. Her eyes were fixed on the set, and paying no attention to him.
Of course, he couldn't go out the way he had come in; that doorway was where the gunfire was coming from, where the firefight was blocking his way. He was sure that a building this size must have other exits; it was just a matter of finding them and eluding whoever might be guarding them.
As he thought that over, the camera panned away from bullets bouncing harmlessly off the armor plastic of the spotlights, and zoomed back for an overall bird's-eye view of the processing center. Starkman saw that the Imperials and their machines were all clustered together in a ragged pool of light at the front of the building, facing the door where the Underground waited, while the rest of the area remained dark.
That seemed incredibly stupid; in fact, both sides were being stupid. There must be other doors; why was there no sign of anyone guarding them?
Perhaps they were sealed off, somehow, or the government forces there were hiding. It might be impossible to avoid the Imperials, whoever and whatever they really were. However, if he stayed where he was, he would almost certainly be either captured or killed; the revolutionaries couldn't stand off the government forever, he was sure. Capture might be tolerable, but he had no intention of getting killed if he could possibly do otherwise. If he left the building by another route, he might be captured or he might escape, but he didn't see any reason for the Imperials to kill him.
Having thought this out, he stood, hesitated, and then decided to try the door he had entered by, and which most of the others had departed by. He crossed the room and leaned cautiously out through the doorway.
He waved at Fanshaw vaguely, hoping she wouldn't press the issue; he would have had to shout to be heard over the gunfire in any case.
The corridor was empty; to his right were the swinging doors that separated it from the passageway where he had sat and talked with Dr. Curtis, and where the fighting was now going on. To his left the corridor ran off into the dark for about twenty meters and then ended in a blank wall. There were two doors in the opposite wall, and two others, besides the one he stood in, in the near wall. All were closed.
He wished that the old waiting room had windows, so that he could have seen directly what was going on outside. The swinging doors did have small windows in them, through which light was pouring into the corridor from one of the government spotlights. He crept up to peer through, his sunglasses protecting his eyes from the glare.
He was looking at the backs of several of the revolutionaries; he could see Santangelo and Curtis and Ingrao, and a figure he didn't recognize immediately, but then realized was the young man who had alerted them to the approach of the enemy. Suares was presumably in the front of the group, hidden from him by the others. They were all jammed together in the passageway, taking turns in leaning out through the entrance and firing, it seemed. He could not see past them to see what they were shooting at; for all he knew they were firing at nothing.
This was not a way out. He turned and headed up the corridor.
The doors opposite the waiting room opened into a lecture hall, much like the one he had sat in at the Welcome Center, though somewhat larger. It seemed to him that the similarities might continue; perhaps there would be exits at the front of the hall leading to examining rooms, and some way of leaving the building beyond those. He took off his sunglasses, which were a serious impediment in the dark, and started down one of the sloping aisles.
He heard footsteps behind him, suddenly audible in a lull in the gunfire; he turned and found Mueller pointing a rifle at him.
“Where did you think you were going?” Mueller asked.
Starkman shrugged.
“Get back out here.”
Reluctantly, Starkman obeyed, emerging once again into the corridor. He fumbled with his glasses, uncomfortable with them off, but not sure that there was enough light to see by with them on.
Mueller began to say something, but was interrupted by the amplified voice from outside.
“We regret that you have chosen to behave violently, rather than turning John Starkman over to us peacefully. To insure his safety we must take him from you by force if you do not surrender him to us immediately. We have summoned human troops to aid us, since we are categorically forbidden to harm any human beings ourselves, whatever the circumstances.”
There was a pause; Starkman heard Dr. Curtis shout, “Traitors!”
The outside voice spoke again. “We offer you a last chance for a peaceful settlement. This is your final opportunity to avoid bloodshed. We will not harm any of you, nor will we harm Mr. Starkman, if you surrender now. We can make no guarantees of your safety if you continue to resist. You have fifteen seconds to reconsider.”
Curtis shouted a string of obscenities, and someone fired a burst from one of the automatic weapons.
Then there was a moment of silence. Starkman, staggered by the voice's offer of an “opportunity to avoid bloodshed” and the memory of the bodies he had seen on TV, mentally reviewed once again what he had seen and heard. All the gunfire had been from the members of the Underground; there was still no sign that the government's forces, whoever they were, had returned fire. This government seemed to have a perverse idea of what constituted bloodshed; it apparently counted only its enemies.
He wondered if the revolutionaries had noticed that; he was about to ask Mueller when there came a sudden whistling noise, followed by a dull thud, then renewed shooting and shouting, all in the little entryway. Mueller turned, gun ready, and Starkman's gaze followed his.
Something gray and cloudy was blocking the view through the little windows, and what looked like pale smoke was seeping under the swinging doors.
Another whistle and thud sounded. “Gas!” Mueller spat. He lowered his gun and ran toward the door.
Starkman immediately ran in the opposite direction. As he turned and dove through the farther of the two doors to the auditorium he saw Mueller push open one of the doors, releasing a billowing cloud into the corridor. The shouting beyond had turned to coughing, but the revolutionaries were still firing sporadically.
Another whistle sounded, much louder this time; Mueller was holding the door open. The thud came from the far end of the corridor, and a new cloud sprang up.
Starkman ignored it and ran down the aisle, slamming into the front wall before he could stop himself completely. There was a door to one side; he struggled for a moment with the latch, then got it open and staggered through. A thin fog was drifting through the lecture hall as he did so; he felt a tickling in his throat.
He was in another corridor, dimly lit by a single surviving ceiling light and lined with doors on both sides. He picked one at random.
It was locked.
He tried the next, and the next; they were all securely locked, and would not yield to his rattling and pounding.
The wafting smoke was beginning to seep into the corridor; from somewhere behind him he heard muffled shouting. The sound of gunfire had ceased completely.
Desperately, Starkman flung himself against the last door in the corridor. The shoddy construction of the building worked to aid him; it sprang open, and he sprawled heavily into the dark room beyond, while a broken piece of door frame clattered off the far wall.
He picked himself up off the floor, found that his sunglasses were still in his hand and miraculously unbroken, then paused and looked around.
He was, as he had expected, in an examining room. A folding screen leaned against one wall, and electronic equipment was piled haphazardly to the other side, apparently discarded. The machinery was perhaps a third of what he had seen in the room where he had met Dr. Curtis; the remainder, he guessed, had been worth salvaging, and had been removed when the building was abandoned.
Noticing that the room was unlit, it occurred to him to wonder why the ceiling light in the corridor was on. Had the revolutionaries turned it on, and then left it? Did it come on automatically when someone entered? Had it been left on by accident?
