I debated between going to the Planned Parenthood in Flagstaff or the one over in Prescott, then decided there was less chance of running into anyone I knew over Prescott way. True, it had been years since I’d gone to college or lived in Flagstaff, but you never knew. And there was no way I was going to my regular G.P., Lisa Michaels, for this. If it turned out I really was pregnant and not just having a screaming case of the heebie-jeebies, I’d figure out what to do then, but in the meantime, I wanted to keep things as much on the down-low as possible.
So I got in my car and headed out at roughly nine the next morning, after asking Kiki if she could watch the store until I got back. Of course, I didn’t say where I was going or why, but Kiki somehow seemed to sense that any questions she asked weren’t going to get answers. She’d only said, “Sure, no problem,” and then asked if it was okay if Jeff hung out at the store for a while.
By that point, I was feeling so wretched that I really didn’t care if Jeff took up residence in the place, so I said that would be fine and hung up. What was really going on between those two?
With a head shake, I dispelled nightmarish visions of Jeff Makowski as my future brother-in-law and pointed the car south on 179. This route was slightly out of the way, but I just didn’t feel like dealing with the switchbacks on 89A as it went over Mingus Mountain on its way to Prescott. Besides, I had no wish to go back through Jerome and be reminded of my idyllic day with Grayson there.
I brought along some bottled water in case the nausea returned, but it seemed to have retreated for the moment. My thoughts jumped this way and that, not settling on any one thing. Foremost among them, though, seemed to be, What the hell am I going to say to Lance?
Worry about that when you need to, I told myself sternly, and made myself look at the dry golden fields passing by, the rock formations, the bruise-colored mass of clouds piling up to the south and east. It might be raining by the time I returned home, but I couldn’t worry about that now. The Prius had new tires, and I was a good driver. A monsoon storm was no big deal.
The miles blew past. I knew I was speeding, although I couldn’t seem to ease off on the accelerator. Stupid, really, because if I got there too early, all I’d end up doing would be sitting and waiting with a bunch of pregnant women, some of whom — maybe most of whom? — would have small children with them. Not that I minded kids, but dealing with a horde of screaming toddlers was really not what my nerves needed right then.
I came into Prescott, drove through its quiet streets, past the historic downtown area, and pulled into the parking lot for Planned Parenthood. The building was new and modern and very clean, and it helped put my mind at ease somewhat. Also, the waiting room wasn’t too crowded — just two other women sat on the chairs there, one who looked as if she was about to pop at any moment. The second woman was barely more than a girl, and she didn’t appear any more pregnant than I myself did. She looked around furtively in between bursts of rapid-fire texting on her phone. I wondered if she was there for a pregnancy test, just as I was. No need to come to Planned Parenthood for a Plan B pill, not when you could get it over the counter.
Too late for that for me, I thought as I signed myself in and sat down to wait.
The pregnant woman was called almost immediately, which was something of a relief, since that seemed to indicate the staff there was dedicated to making sure patients were seen quickly. Instead of staring down at my watch, I forced myself to look over at the closed-circuit TV with its ongoing round of bite-sized shows with information about pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, family planning.
What about family not-planning? I wondered, and had to bite back a small, nervous giggle. Luckily, Texting Girl didn’t seem to be paying me any attention.
The minutes crawled by. After a bit, Texting Girl got up, had a brief whispered convo with the receptionist, and scurried out, looking both frightened and relieved at the same time. Once again, I had to wonder why she’d come here. Something as extreme as a D&C, or maybe just free birth control pills after being pressured by a boyfriend?
Impossible to know, although worrying about someone else’s problems helped me take my mind off my own troubles for a while.
Then the receptionist, a comfortable-looking redhead in her fifties, said, “Kara Swenson?”
Taking a breath, I got up and followed the woman to a place where I was weighed, then guided into an exam room and given a cup.
“Just put it on the ledge over here when you’re done. A nurse will be in to take your blood pressure in a moment,” the receptionist instructed me.
So which was worse, peeing in a cup or peeing on a stick? I really didn’t know, but I performed the procedure with too much trouble, placed the cup on its ledge, and headed back into the exam room, where I put on the paper garments they’d left for me and waited.
A minute or two later, the nurse came in, asked the standard questions, then took my blood pressure and temperature. “So, what are your symptoms?”
“Nausea, sore breasts. And an over-the-counter pregnancy test was positive.”
The nurse made a few notes. “Got it. We’re going to run the test, and then the doctor will be in to see you.”
I nodded, not quite trusting my voice right then. Every passing moment in this place seemed to make the possibility more real, that I could actually be pregnant. I’d wanted to think it was just a mistake, that the home test had thrown back a false positive for some reason. Never mind that those things were actually highly accurate.
So I sat there with my feet dangling off the exam table and stared down at my toes. The polish was starting to chip, I realized. I’d have to schedule a pedicure sometime soon.
Oh, yeah, I’ll just squeeze that in between handling an alien invasion and having E.T.’s baby, I thought, and made an odd little hiccuping noise, halfway between a sob and a laugh. Maybe coming here alone wasn’t such a great idea. Maybe I should have told Persephone, had her come along —
The door opened, and the doctor, a pretty Filipina probably around my own age, came in. She smiled, her brown eyes warm and sympathetic. “Hi, Ms. Swenson. I’m Dr. Santos.”
“Hi.”
“We just ran the test, and you are pregnant.”
The bottom seemed to fall out of the world, or at least it tilted on its axis, swung crazily around me. I gripped the edges of the exam table and told myself, You will not pass out. You will not pass out….
Dr. Santos’ voice was very kind. “I take it this wasn’t planned.”
Somehow, I managed to nod. “I’m on the pill.”
“I see.” A pause, then, “If you’re planning to continue with the pregnancy, then of course you need to stop taking it immediately.”
Was I planning to continue with the pregnancy? I couldn’t think about that right then, couldn’t seem to think about anything except those three words swirling around in my brain. You are pregnant. You are PREGNANT. You ARE pregnant….
Hazily, I realized Dr. Santos had said something else. “I’m sorry, can you repeat that?”
The doctor paused. “Are you all right, Ms. Swenson? Did you bring someone with you?”
“No, I’m fine. Really. What did you say?”
“I said that, based on the level of HCGs in your system, you’re about three weeks along. It’s still very early.”
What the hell? Three weeks ago, I hadn’t been with anybody, let alone a hybrid alien soldier. Maybe the test was off. “Is this where you start to talk to me about my options?”
“Do you need me to?”
Wearily, I shook my head. “No, I think I know what comes next. But I’ve got time to decide.”
“Some, yes. But in the meantime, you should still take care of yourself, rest, eat healthy, avoid alcohol.”
Naturally. Never mind that at the moment, I wanted a margarita roughly the size of my head. “Thanks, Dr. Santos. I’ll be careful.”
The doctor didn’t appear entirely convinced, but she just made a notation on her chart before adding, “We can set you up for a follow-up appointment in a few weeks, or if you have a doctor back in” — she stopped to read my chart — “Sedona, we can forward the results there.”
“I’m not sure yet. I’ll have to get back to you on that.”
“Not a problem. Take care, Ms. Swenson.” And she went out, no doubt to see a patient who wasn’t pregnant with an alien’s baby.
I peeled off the paper examination gown, got dressed, and headed for home.
If possible, the drive back seemed even longer. As I turned off Highway 69 onto I-17 northbound, rain began to fall. I turned on the windshield wipers. With every scratch back and forth across the windshield, they seemed to be saying, “You’re pregnant! You’re pregnant!”
Angrily, I switched on the radio, but of course out here, I couldn’t get much more than static, and I wasn’t about to try pairing my phone with the car’s audio system, not in the rain and with my hands shaking the way they were. Nothing to do but push grimly northward, heading home, even though it didn’t seem to be the refuge it once was.
Over the years, I’d reconciled myself to the fact that I didn’t have any kind of mother figure in my life, but I found myself longing for someone like that, someone I could just fall upon and weep, someone who would tell me it was going to be all right, even if it wasn’t. Yes, Kiki was very dear to me, but I was my sister’s mother figure, not the other way around.
As I turned off the freeway and onto 179 to head up into Sedona, I pulled out my cell phone and called Persephone. Persephone would listen to me, would help me figure out what I was supposed to do next. Persephone wouldn’t judge.
She sounded a little surprised to hear my obviously shaky request for a meeting at the Secret Garden Café, but she agreed right away. “Paul and Michael and Grayson are all huddled in Paul’s study, having some sort of council of war. I’d complain about the sexism of them locking me out, but I know I suck at strategy. So you’ll be there…when, a little after one?”
“Something like that,” I replied, relieved beyond measure that Persephone didn’t have a client scheduled. She actually kept pretty busy, had even retained a few of her L.A. clients, who would make the trek out to Arizona once a month to receive her pearls of wisdom. One of them was some sort of big-shot producer who flew in on a private jet and then hired someone to drive him around Sedona for the weekend. I couldn’t really wrap my brain around that kind of extravagance, but it didn’t seem to faze Persephone.
The café was a little crowded, since it was the tail end of lunch, but luckily, Persephone appeared to have gone early so she could snag us a shady table in one corner of the patio. The rain hadn’t gotten here yet, but the heat, instead of feeling oppressive, seemed to wrap itself around me, helped to still the shakiness of my limbs.
I’d barely slid into my chair when Sharon, one of the restaurant’s co-owners, came up and asked what we’d like.
“Iced tea,” I said automatically, then realized I probably wasn’t supposed to be drinking caffeine. Sorry, kid…you’ll just have to suck it up this one time.
Persephone ordered the same, and then sat back a little and watched me with speculative eyes. “You’ve just had some bad news.”
“Seph, please don’t do the psychic thing right now. I called you because I needed a friend.”
At once, she leaned forward and clasped her hands on the tabletop. “Sorry, Kara. It’s just — it’s coming off you in waves. It’s hard not to pick it up.”
Sharon emerged then with our iced teas and asked if we wanted to order anything. My appetite seemed to have deserted me, but Persephone came to the rescue and said we’d like to split an order of bruschetta while we made up our minds.
“So, what is it, Kara?”
There was no way to say it easily. I blurted, “I’m pregnant.”
That revelation obviously shocked Persephone. Her hazel-green eyes widened, and she sat silent for a moment before venturing, “How is that possible? I mean, you’ve only been with Lance a few days, and even Grayson….”
She trailed off, and I said, “According to the test, I’m about three weeks along. Never mind that three weeks ago, my only sexual partner was a vibrator, and I’m pretty sure those don’t go around knocking people up.”
Persephone’s cheeks flushed, but she replied steadily enough, “Then how is this possible?”
“I don’t know!” I replied, probably too loudly, since the couple at the next table shot us a curious glance. “I don’t know anything, except I’ve been feeling sick, and my boobs feel like a couple of sandbags, and two separate pregnancy tests are telling me I’m pregnant.”
“But you…you were careful, weren’t you?”
I smiled humorlessly, and wondered if the expression made me look a little bit like a shark. “I’m on the pill. And I used a condom with Grayson every time. Every time…except one.” My voice faltered a little as I recalled those moments of abandon, when all I’d wanted was him, just the feel of him inside me. I’d thought the pill would be protection enough. Guess I thought wrong. Those suckers weren’t designed to stand up to alien super-hybrid sperm, apparently.
Wow. I’d actually managed to render Persephone Oliver speechless. She just sat there, staring at me, obviously searching for something appropriately comforting to say and coming up empty.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m feeling pretty gobsmacked right now, too.”
The bruschetta showed up then, and surprisingly, it smelled great. I picked up a piece and bit into it, while Persephone appeared to gather herself before saying,
“So…have you thought about what you’re going to do next?”
Well, since I can’t drown myself in a margarita, not really. I set down my half-eaten piece of bruschetta, then hesitated a long time before answering. The answer had begun to surface all during the drive here, even though at the time, I hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it, didn’t want to face what I knew I had to do.
“I’m…well, I guess I’m going to stay the course. Not because I’m some sort of holier-than-thou right-to-life person, but because of Kiki.”
“Kiki?” Persephone asked, surprise once again lifting her eyebrows.
I reflected on how much we still didn’t know about one another, despite becoming friends over the past five months. “Kiki wasn’t exactly planned, you might say. And my mother, being the mess she was, sort of waffled over whether or not to get an abortion until it was too late for her to do anything about it. And if she had, well, I wouldn’t have a little sister. So I just don’t think I could get rid of this baby and be able to look at myself in the mirror in the morning, not when I know that about my sister.”
Unexpectedly, Persephone reached across the little wrought-iron tabletop and gave my hand a quick squeeze before releasing it again. “I understand. But if you’re already supposedly three weeks along when it’s only been a few days….”
“I know,” I said, and forced myself to take another bite of bruschetta, although my mouth at the moment felt drier than the desert outside town. “It’s not going to be a normal pregnancy. But if I can’t get help for this sort of thing from a group of UFO chasers, then where can I?”
Persephone stared at me for a second or two, then actually laughed. “You’re right. Guess I hadn’t thought about it that way. I’m sure Paul has some connections.”
And I’ll have to hope they know how to keep their mouths shut. But I didn’t give voice to this worry, instead drinking my iced tea and then managing a smile. Of course it was fake; my insides felt like ice. This talk with Persephone was the easy part.
I still had to face Grayson and Lance…and I had no idea which of those interviews was going to be the worst.
Lance
He watched Grayson as the hybrid and Paul went over an aerial map of Boynton Canyon, and wondered whether he’d be quite that calm if he was planning his own death.
Oh, no one had come out and said it in so many words. But it was pretty clear that Grayson didn’t expect to come back from this mission, no matter how he might phrase things when Kara was around. They might be talking about reconnoitering and gathering intelligence, but the basic subtext was this: Get in, find out what you can, relay any information you find…until they catch you, or you blow the place up.
Because that was what Grayson had asked for, quite calmly, as if requesting pepper on his salad. I’d like as many explosives as I can carry, if you can manage it.
Lance had replied that he could manage it without any problem, to which Paul gave him a sharp look but said nothing. The astrophysicist might appear to have his head in the clouds half the time, but he had a fairly practical streak for all that. After what had happened to Brian, Paul knew the aliens were playing for keeps. And Michael…well, he sat quietly in the corner of the office, observing but not saying anything, as if he knew that any protests he might make would be ignored.
Luckily, Persephone had excused herself from this meeting, saying she knew as much about planning an infiltration mission as she did about baking a cake — namely, nothing — and Kara had said she was going to be away part of the day, since she had to run over to Prescott. She gave no other details, and Lance didn’t press her, but he could tell something was up. On the phone, her voice had that too-bright, almost metallic quality that usually indicated she was upset about something and desperately trying to conceal it. He didn’t like the feeling that she was hiding something from him, though he knew better than to ask for any more information. If she wanted to talk about it, she would…in her own time.
And Kiki probably was grinding her teeth right now and wishing she could be putting in her own two cents on the plan, but since Kara had drafted her little sister to mind the store, there wasn’t any worry that she’d be butting in any time soon. Oddly, Jeff had opted to hang out with Kiki at the UFO Depot rather than come over here, but Lance couldn’t worry about that right now. If Jeff wanted to play footsie with the girl, that was his problem.
“On the map, it looks as if the canyon dead-ends, but it doesn’t.” Grayson was tracing his finger along the paper, pointing to the spot in question. “You can continue on through here, come in through this narrow ravine until you’re at the upper end of Secret. From there, it’s only about five hundred yards to the service entrance I told you about.”
“Hmm,” Paul murmured, then looked up from the map and frowned at Lance. “You getting all this?”
“Sure.” Just because it might have looked as if he was woolgathering didn’t mean he hadn’t been paying attention all along. “So we drop Grayson in Boynton, have him go in wearing normal hiking gear. He can carry the jumpsuit and other…items…in his backpack, and then change inside the ravine where he can’t be spotted from the air.”
“Sounds good,” Grayson said. His whole demeanor had begun to subtly change, his jaw harder, eyes narrower. Despite the shocking difference of the green eyes, he was beginning to look a lot more like the hybrids who had been shooting at Lance and company back during their first encounter with the aliens. “From there, I’ll just wait until I have an opening. With any luck, there’ll be a shipment coming in. Usually that involves enough people coming and going that I should be able to join in without anyone noticing.”
“You sure about that?” Paul asked. “Because Persephone was pretty clear about how the hybrids all seemed to be psychically linked somehow. Won’t they be able to tell that you’re no longer…like them?”
Damn. Lance hadn’t even thought of that. He scowled at this new complication, but Grayson appeared untroubled.
“No. At least, I don’t think so. We — they aren’t telepaths, not in the true sense of the word. We can link consciousnesses to achieve some common goal, but it isn’t as if we — they — are connected at every moment. And the thing is, I can still feel them out there.”
“You what?” Lance demanded. “Since when?”
“Since yesterday, when Persephone put me under. I don’t know why, but for some reason, the trance she initiated affected me differently from the one the other hypnotherapist performed. Maybe it’s because Persephone is a psychic. Anyway, when I came out of it, I could sense them again. Faintly, just like a pulse at the edge of my mind, but definitely there.”
“So why the hell didn’t you tell us?”
“You didn’t ask.”
Paul made a noise that was probably meant to sound like a throat-clearing but which Lance guessed was a smothered laugh. In his corner, Michael smiled serenely, like the world’s first Native American Buddha impersonator.
“Okay, fine,” Lance gritted. “So maybe your change in mental status isn’t going to register with them. If you do manage to get in, what then?”
For the first time, Grayson looked a little hesitant. “Well, the lower levels aren’t going to do us much good. They’re storage, holding cells, that sort of thing. Levels Four and Five are where most of the labs are located. I don’t know what they’re up to — ”
“Power,” said Paul.
“What?” Grayson responded, obviously confused.
“In your session yesterday, you said they were here because of power. What power? What does that mean? The vortexes?”
“I…I don’t know.”
Somehow, Lance managed to keep his eyes from rolling. “No clue at all.”
Grayson didn’t so much shake his head as lower it a little, as if he found something intensely fascinating in the contours of the topographical map spread out on the table below him. “I don’t know where that came from. Sorry. Maybe it didn’t mean anything. Anyway, I know where the labs are, but I was never assigned to those levels, so I don’t know what’s actually in them. It just seems to me that would be a logical place to start. That, or the power-generating station on Level Nine.”
“Which is…?”
“A fusion reactor.”
Paul swore under his breath, then said, “I’m not going to contemplate the irony of us wanting to blow up a fusion reactor when it’s the sort of technology our world so desperately needs.”
Lance shrugged. “The world’s in more immediate need of saving right now. We can figure out the whole environmentally friendly energy thing later. ”
The physicist looked more than a little pained, but he didn’t bother to contradict Lance.
Grayson said in neutral tones, “If I can get to the labs, of course they’re my first choice as a target.”
“Okay,” Lance replied.
So…drop Grayson off at the far edge of Boynton, make sure he gets on his way to the ravine that connects the two canyons, hope he can get himself inside and to an area where some high-level explosives can do some good. Piece of cake.
He didn’t bother to articulate the many things that could go wrong with this plan, starting with Grayson getting captured the second he emerged from the ravine and going downhill from there. But Grayson was the only viable asset they had. Lance knew he didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of getting inside himself. They’d managed that once. Once. And he still didn’t know whether that was blind luck or Persephone’s guardian angel — or whatever he was — doing his own version of the Jedi mind trick so the aliens wouldn’t notice the interlopers getting inside. Somehow, though, he had the feeling that guardian angels might not look on an infiltrate-and-destroy mission in the same light as they would a simple rescue.
“Okay,” he said. “I think we’re getting there. The soonest we’ll have Grayson’s replacement uniform is Friday, so I suggest we all just hang tight until then. And if anyone comes up with any enhancements to the plan, any more ideas, we can reconvene here. All right?”
The other three variously nodded or murmured their assent, and the meeting broke up, Michael driving Grayson back to the shabby house down by the creek, Lance heading home to his condo. He wanted to talk to Kara, but she hadn’t said when she would be back in town. Besides, the UFO Depot didn’t exactly lend itself to private conversation.
Waiting. More waiting. He didn’t like it, but he’d survive.
Somehow, he always did.