CHAPTER TWENTY

AS THEY drove off the base, Mac was unusually quiet.

“You trying to come up with a question that makes sense?”

“I guess I am. What I’m thinking is you might’ve gotten those two guys killed just now.”

“I agree.”

“You sent them in harm’s way without so much as a prayer book.”

“I’m not sending them into any more danger than I’m going to take on myself. Less, probably.”

They drove on for a while. It was six fifteen, and Houston’s notorious traffic was just that—notorious.

“How much have you lost on this so far, Mac? What with your house and all?”

“Four million.”

“So, maybe a million.”

“No, it really is four. The paintings were originals.”

“They’re forgeries.”

“That is not true.”

“Manet was right-handed. Your forger painted with his left. Who were you planning to sell them to, billionaire morons? I didn’t know there were any.”

“Gifts for drogos.”

“So, a grand for the paintings. Tell you what I’ll do. I know how hard you have to work for your money.”

“Which you do not.”

“I do not. So I’ll rebuild your place for you. As long as you don’t cheat me, I’ll pay the bills.”

“My accountant—”

“He outta jail?”

“Four more months.”

“Any contractors on the outside, but not on the lam?”

“I’ll need to check.”

“We’ll use my accountant. My contractors.”

“I get that.”

Flynn watched the passing cars and kept his eye on the low, thick clouds, looking into their faint glow for any sign of a shadow. Mac sat with his knee up against the dashboard. His long face was usually ready to crinkle into an affable smile, but that easiness was gone now. He, too, stared into the empty night.

“I miss my dogs.”

“Those weren’t dogs.”

“Yeah, I guess not. Alien animals.”

“Those were people who’d been genetically mixed with dogs.”

“Oh. That must be why I liked them so much. I like people.”

“Then you like Snow Mountain, too.”

“Only see him once in a while. He liked Mozart. He liked the Stones. I used to hire bands and quartets from over at Sul Ross University to come play for him.”

“What did they think of him?”

“The kids? Nothing. They never saw him. But he was there.”

“Who did they see?”

“I’m more of a narcocorrido type of guy, so, nobody, basically.”

He tried to imagine the scene, a string quartet or a rock band set up in Mac’s house pasture, playing to the night, with a tiger way back in the dark somewhere, listening blissfully.

“I guess they thought they were playing for a rich, cantankerous eccentric, then?”

“I guess they did. I never really thought about it. There’s a lot of eccentricity out in our neck of the woods, as you know.”

“All too well.”

“I think it’s the Marfa Lights. They make us crazy.” He paused for a moment. “I want to go home, Flynn. I’m not cut out for this.”

“I wish it was safe for you, buddy. I wish to God it was. You stick close for a little while longer, I’ll make it safe. I promise you that.”

“When I went back there and saw my house burning up, I really, seriously thought about killin’ your sorry ass, Flynn. But I love you, goddamnit. You’re a good friend and always have been. So here’s what I think: Let’s kill ourselves a damn alien and do it soon.”

“I have a plan.”

“You always do. Only remember that only some of ’em work. Just never forget the freight train.”

When they were kids, Flynn had devised a plan to slow down a freight so they could hop it more easily. The result of their attempt had been a fifty-three-car derailment.

“I believe Eddie set that one up.”

“Your idea, Flynn. Your idea.”

Flynn had been way overconfident, thinking the engineer would notice the switch signal and stop. He didn’t notice a thing, and rolled the whole consist out onto the siding at forty miles an hour. Nobody was hurt, fortunately, but seven thousand chickens had escaped into the night.

That was then, in the delicious, lingering summer that had been their boyhood. This was now, and this was a time of storms.

They parked and walked silently to the terminal. As they exited the parking structure and were briefly exposed to the sky, Flynn felt a tremendous sense of vulnerability. If only he could know for certain how capable of following him and reinserting themselves the implants were. He knew now that nobody had been there to insert them in the first place, which was why he had no memory of it. They’d been released at some point, probably when he was at the Miller place, and entered on their own. He recalled feeling a sudden, sharp headache there, just as he was leaving for Wright-Pat. It had passed quickly and he’d thought no more of it.

He remembered the old Hobby terminal from his childhood, flying in here with his dad to watch him do his business with the big oil companies downtown, which chiefly consisted of making sure they were reporting his royalties accurately. It was still a battle, but Flynn had others to fight it now.

“We need to find a pay phone, because Diana’s going to have to get us on the plane from her side of the line.”

“I’ve got plenty of cash.”

“We’re both packing heavy heat and have no luggage, and I have no ID. And what happens when you show your license?”

“Depends on which one.”

“You have more than one on you right now?”

“I’ve got seven on me right now.”

“Give me one, and we can buy the tickets.”

The ticket counter was empty. “Two for Dayton,” Flynn said.

“Credit card and ID, please,” the agent replied, standing up from her stool and going to her terminal.

“Cash,” Flynn said. He handed over the two IDs.

She looked at them, blinked, and looked up. “I could give you military. You got air force IDs?”

Mac pointed a thumb at Flynn. “We don’t have those with us, because this gentleman here is a professional fool.”

She smiled, then looked again at the driver’s licenses. “Are you two twins?”

“Yes,” Flynn said.

“And in the air force together. I think that’s cool.” Her smile widened. “I’ll write you up military—that way you won’t have to bicker. I know how twins like to bicker.”

A few minutes later, they had their tickets on the last flight out, a 9:20 through Atlanta.

“I don’t look a thing like you, Flynn.”

“They see a lot of people. This time of day, they’re looking right through you.”

“You’re one of the most hideous men I’ve ever seen. I’m very insulted.”

“Mac, you know what you look like? You look like a wizened, shifty-eyed cowboy who got shrunk by too much exposure to the sun.”

“You realize how much of your height is in that neck? My dogs mighta been part human, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the aliens didn’t start you out right in your mother’s womb, and make you part turkey.”

“You need to quit using that shoe polish or whatever it is you’re putting on your hair. Spring for a dye job.”

“If I get my hair dyed down in Marfa, everybody in West Texas is gonna know.”

“You look like somebody pushed you up a chimney.”

“Women happen to go for my hair.”

“Women only go for you because they find your criminal ways exciting.”

“Yeah, they do get off on murder stories.”

“Don’t tell me that. Then I’ll have to tell Eddie, and he’s gotta question every damn one of ’em.”

“Okay, so I didn’t tell you.”

“Let’s find us that phone.”

“Use my cell.”

“Give it to me.” He removed the SIM card and handed it back. “I’ll keep the card for now.”

Mac said nothing. He understood perfectly well what Flynn was doing, covering their tracks. This was also part of the way he conducted his life, whichever side of the law he happened to be on at any given time.

“We oughta get us some throwaway cells.”

“You will find that they don’t sell them in airports.” He located a pay phone and dialed Diana’s home number directly. He did not go through the secure network.

It rang once, then twice, then a third time.

He hung up.

“She’s not there?”

“Three rings. Our prearranged emergency signal. She hears that on her landline, she knows there’s big trouble.”

“I thought we were out of trouble.”

“We’re not out of trouble.” He dialed again. This time, she answered midway through ring one. He listened as she accepted the charges on the call.

“What do you need?”

“Back door through Hobby, then I need to see General Sam Dickerson at Wright-Pat. We’ll be landing in Dayton at three this morning. I want to see him at seven. Still no ID and no money.”

“Can I get some kind of an update, Flynn?”

“We’re alive.”

“I’m glad you are, because I thought Morris had you.”

“I thought he had you.”

“Why?”

“The way I learned that you’d returned to Washington was from him.”

“How could he know my movements?”

“He figured it out. Not too hard, though. Where else would you be going except to your safest place?”

“I need to be sure we’re secure here.”

“You got that right. Is Geri still with you? Because I have a question for her.”

“She’s always with me. In my office right now. I’m sitting in my suite, wishing I were alone.” He could hear the crackle of tension in Diana’s voice.

“Trouble?”

“She doesn’t sleep, ever. She just sits there, watching me. She doesn’t read, watch television. Hardly eats. Just stares.”

“She’s scared.”

“I think she’s absolutely furious about what happened out there. She considers us dangerously incompetent, and she wants in the worst way to go home.”

“Put her on.”

A moment later, he heard Geri’s voice. “Yes, Mr. Carroll?”

“You know what a tracking implant is?”

“Yes.”

“Two of them were removed from my head today. They seemed to have some sort of an ability to move on their own.”

“They do. Once they’re synched to an individual’s genetic identity, they can be released and they’ll find their target on their own.”

“How much range do they have?”

“Range? You mean, how far can they broadcast a signal?”

“No, how far away do they have to be before they can no longer find their intended host?”

“Far. Ten, twenty thousand miles.”

“All right. How can they be destroyed?”

“Heat above two thousand degrees.”

“How about blowing them up or smashing them?”

“They’re holographic. Even a small bit of one will retain the functionality of the whole.”

“What about containing them?”

“With things you manufacture? Some of your safes might work. I’ll look into it.”

“Unfortunately, we didn’t understand their capabilities and put them in a jar.”

“That wouldn’t work.”

“It didn’t. When I last saw them, they were in the process of breaking through the glass in a car window. We ran. Within fifteen minutes, we had transport and were ten miles away. I’m now twenty-two miles from the spot where I last saw them. What’s my exposure?”

“All of this was in populated areas?”

“Yes.”

“It’s possible that they’ve lost you for a while.”

“How long?”

“They’ll be doing a grid search right now. Your advantage is the populated area. They’ll need to get pretty close to you before they can detect you against all the background noise.”

“Listen, Geri, we sort of know each other.”

“I would say we do.”

“So I need to give you some friendly advice.”

“And what would that be?” He heard the rigidity that had come into her voice. She was the authority figure here, at least in her own mind.

“We’re not incompetent. Just uninformed and technologically backwards. Forcing us to use only our own locally produced equipment is tying our hands.”

“You threw my pulse weapon onto a roof. My weapon, registered to me. What if somebody tossed your gun away? You’d have to report that. You’d have to take a reprimand.”

“I’m sorry about that, but it didn’t work, and that was dangerous to all of us. But some things do work. Those implants, for example. I’d love to be able to get something like that into Morris. And the disks. So I want to repeat—we need a disk.”

“That’s all gap-distant technology, meaning that your science is so far behind on it that you can’t understand it even if it’s explained to you. Exporting technology like that for any reason is highly illegal, and licenses just do not get granted. The latitude for abuse is too great, not to mention the cultural disempowerment that’s involved. Scientists who see something so potent and so advanced that they can’t even begin to understand its most basic principles, lose hope. They become scavengers.”

“Look, your technology is so advanced—the stuff that works—that this one guy is potentially more powerful than all the military forces on Earth.”

“He has vulnerabilities.”

“What are they, exactly?”

“One disk and no ability to resupply without letting the main body of biorobots know where he is. He’s a full biological running a squadron of biorobots who know nothing about what’s happening on Aeon, and they must not find out, or he’s going to lose control of them. He can’t go back. What he has is all he’ll ever have.”

“That’s true now, but what about next year? The year after? We’re talking Cortés taking the Aztec Empire with five hundred Spaniards. You know that story?”

“It’s a great myth that higher ethics follow scientific advancement. Lower planets are vulnerable.”

“Morris and a few hundred robotic entities could end up owning this world, so I have to tell you, I don’t think your scruples matter just now. Earth is on the line, so give us what we need.”

“Flynn, the truth is that we don’t have the resources.”

“Not one spare disk? A couple of implants?”

“Getting things off-planet is the problem. All of our movements are resisted, and as far as Earth is concerned, we must not be followed here by the main body, as I said.” She stopped. He heard a swallowed gagging sound that told him she was fighting back emotions of great power.

He realized, really for the first time, how much courage it had taken for her to come here.

“Just do what you can.” He hung up. “Let’s go,” he said to Mac. “We’ve got a flight to catch.”

Diana had done her administrative work well, and they were escorted through TSA security by the station supervisor. As they stepped away toward their gate, she saluted them.

“What’s that about?” Mac asked.

“She’s probably been told we’re on some sort of crucial mission.”

“True enough.”

The plane was crowded. Given what Geri had explained to him, that was a good thing. As best he could, Flynn leaned back, forcing his substantial frame into the narrow economy-class seat.

“You know what their greatest problem is?”

“Whose?”

“Aeon’s. They didn’t just invent a new life-form, but one that’s also stronger, faster, and more intelligent than they are. Their biorobots are an evolutionary leap, and they’re going to replace their creators. What’s happening to the people of Aeon is what happened to the Neanderthals. A better species is pushing theirs aside.”

Flynn thought, And maybe ours, too. Maybe a lot of species. How ironic that a civilization far away and so deeply hidden in the vastness of space had created something that would turn out to be such a scourge right here at home.

He was a cop, though, not a soldier—at least, not yet. Right now his job remained what it had been from the beginning: Get the lawless element under control. Contain Morris and roll up his operation.

The plane flew on, as did Earth on its mysterious journey, each bearing its cargo of innocent lives into an uncertain future.