Colonization (Alien Invasion Book 3) (15 page)

Still, none had moved.

Cameron looked at the road’s surface. There were
thousands
of ball bearings. They were everywhere: some asshole prankster’s idea of an excellent time. Even now, he could see the swath he’d disturbed while fishtailing in, rocking before settling and rolling into clusters.

Cameron looked ahead at the shuttles still blocking the highway.

But really: Were they
blocking
it?

Farther down the hill, Cameron could see that the alignment he’d taken to put five ships perpendicular to the road was more of a diagonal. They weren’t side by side; they were one slightly behind and to the side of the other, lined at an angle rather than perpendicular to the highway.

Cameron looked to the side. Grass was tall all the way to the trees — and there
were
plenty of trees now, farther from the desert, and into the forested area. He should ditch the bike and walk away — or better yet, right the bike, walk it a bit, and re-key the engine once around the odd alien obstruction. He had no idea why the spheres weren’t reacting, but should he question it, or count his blessings and move on?

Something nagged at Cameron. Something on the same frequency he remembered from years ago, when he and Piper had crossed that double line of stones not far from here, south of the highway.

That sense of psychic connection wasn’t precisely returning, but the deserted stretch of Andreus-controlled highway felt like a double exposure. There was more here than met the eye, and Cameron’s mind was tuning into some of it — whatever
it
was.

He ascended the hill, now standing tall at the road’s edge, fearless. Now, his sensation felt closer to curiosity.

But that curiosity wasn’t his own.

And considering that there was nobody else here — no Piper to sense, as there had been during his previous psychic inklings — it wasn’t those absent people’s curiosity, either.

There were no sights, no sounds, no images beyond Cameron’s own senses.

But there was that sense of wonder. Or rather, of wonder
ing
.

There was a large building not far from the road. There was also a highway maintenance garage on the left. There would normally be cars here, Cameron supposed, but the Andreus Republic made sure that there weren’t. Several dozen thick black cables emerged from boxes on the building’s roof to the left. They formed a thick almost-braid, suspended from towers and crossing the roads above …

Well, right above the line of Astral shuttles, in fact.

With that thought, Cameron realized where he was.

And he realized what the building was.

And then, he realized whose curiosity he must — against all sense — be feeling.

It was Astral curiosity.
He was feeling a sense of wonder and befuddlement from … from the alien ships themselves.

There was a strange rattling behind him. He almost jumped, wondering if a rattlesnake had crept up from behind. Or dozens of rattlesnakes, by the sound.

But it wasn’t snakes. Or castanets. It wasn’t the stir of bones in a crypt or rolling dice.

It was the ball bearings.

The tiny metal spheres were rising from the road. All of them. Slowly, almost tentatively. Within a moment, they began circling Cameron like a lazy tornado. Assessing without threat. The little BB-like objects seemed to be wondering about him, just as their larger brothers had been wondering about those cables, and about that building to the road’s left side.

The building, Cameron knew from Benjamin’s attempts to reach an uncensored network, housed operations for MultiPlexity: the leading wired Internet provider for the western United States.

Something about that building made the Astral ships — or possibly those inside it — extremely curious.

Cameron watched the tiny spheres circle him.

A line of the things seemed to reach out like an arm — like a column of insects swirling above a body of water. Cameron felt a nudge at his backpack. He shrugged it from his shoulder. The balls pushed their way inside the pack then used their bulk to force the zipper open from the inside.

The cylinder of what Benjamin had called Canned Heat rose from the backpack on a floating cushion of ball bearings.

“Hey,” Cameron said, reaching for the cylinder, dimly aware that he should be frightened, worried about discovery … basically any emotion other than the numb and stupid curiosity he felt, inherited from the air and its psychic alien activity.

The cushion of tiny balls flinched playfully back. They held the cylinder away from Cameron then covered it in a writhing, moving mass. Its surface became a roiling storm of beads, then drained away and opened like a blooming flower. The bearings held the Canned Heat above his hand and let it go. Cameron caught it.

The swarm moved away, heading toward the five shuttles under the braid of data lines leaving the MultiPlexity building.

Cameron, feeling as if he were in a trance, followed.

His feet found the road’s hard surface. There were now no ball bearings on it at all — no hazard for the weary motorcyclist on his way to sabotage. And yet here he was, facing emissaries of those he planned to disrupt, still holding his instrument of destruction. The Astral occupation had bugged and filtered the network, keeping lines of communication between people like Benjamin closed while allowing only population opiates to escape in a parody of freedom. The tiny balls had held the device he’d use to undo all they’d done then let it go.

Just as they were letting
Cameron
go.

What is it?
said a voice inside his head.

But the voice wasn’t his own. Or in English. It wasn’t words. Only a feeling, the same one he’d been feeling since he started standing in the grass.

What is it?
he wondered.

They
wondered.

Cameron could feel tendrils wanting to infiltrate his mind. Searching for his plans, perhaps — his intentions with that strange metal cylinder he was transporting to the capital from nowhere. But Cameron had felt the intrusion before and thought he could deflect it. He thought of Piper. He thought of Dan, who’d last made this trip at his side. He thought of Vincent, who’d been there too, before he’d been murdered while protecting a family of strangers.

What is it?

It’s nothing,
Cameron tried to reply.

The shuttles moved upward, approaching the wire streaming its billions of data bytes drifting side to side to side in rhythm, as if trying to find resonance. Now rising, circling the cables. The ball bearings approached Cameron, and for a blink he thought the cloud of tiny spheres formed a Titan’s face, but then it was gone.

What is it?
he wondered.

They
wondered.

It
wondered.

The world, itself, seemed to wonder.

But Cameron wouldn’t answer. They could kill him if they wanted. The shuttles could release their death rays and turn him to ash. They could open up and release their terrible black-skinned, blue-glowing creatures with needle teeth. The tall, hairless Astrals could come from the shuttles, walk forward, and snap his neck like a twig. The ball bearings could surround him again, then squeeze the life from his body, clog his throat, or fill his lungs.

They could do anything they wanted, but Cameron wouldn’t answer. He could fail at his mission, but he’d never willingly give it up.

What IS it?

Now the curiosity was frustrated, borderline angry.

Cameron felt emotion surround him like a cloak. He was so close to something, yet he couldn’t solve it. He was a man with four sides and sixteen squares of a Rubik’s Cube solved who couldn’t move the last two squares into place. He was a man playing solitaire, almost finished but unable to find the final ace. Something felt very,
very
close.

But it was their feeling, not his.

Just as Cameron was considering running after all — as if
that
would make a hair of difference — the bead-like spheres began to float upward like a cloud of hornets. They roiled in a tiny tornado again, now spilling upward instead of down. They coated the lines above, hugging them, making them sag and bounce. They flicked up and down with the eerie speed of their larger counterparts. The five large shuttles rose up and swapped positions, one for the others, like a dealer shuffling cards for three-card monte.

Then all at once, five shuttles and countless ball bearings formed a giant circle in the air, pausing, seeming to send Cameron a silent message. What it was, Cameron had no idea.

Then the formation exploded, flew into separate directions, and was gone.

Cameron stood in the middle of the now-deserted highway for a few more minutes, his foggy mind slowly returning to normal. Then, feeling hypnotized, he slipped the cylinder containing Terrence’s communication virus back into his pack. He zipped the bag, shrugged it back onto his shoulders, and took a moment to wonder what the hell had just happened.

Five minutes later, Cameron was again motoring eastward in shredded jeans, with a bloody leg and shattered helmet, unable to radio anyone about his suddenly more interesting mission.

But it was okay. For a while, Cameron was content to have only his own voice in his head.

It took Cameron another hour and a half before the capital gates entered his view — but when they did, a single ball bearing was still rolling along behind him, unseen, like a tiny escort.

C
HAPTER
18

Piper felt acutely aware of the slip drive’s presence in her pocket but forgot it once the abbess started discussing things she couldn’t possibly know.

“This church represents a diverse group,” Gloria said. “There are those like me, who seek the spiritual. There are those like the people in this room and Thelonius here (whose real name is Franklin, by the way) seeking rationality. There are people like Terrence, adept with their minds and hands, easily able to fix things. There are malcontents — people who never quite fit, rarely satisfied with the status quo. But of all the people who know and visit this church, most will never see what you’re seeing now.”

“Why?” Piper asked.

“Because most people are looking for someone to follow. Others? They’re searching for something to believe in. Many want someone to tell them that everything will be fine. Those last are usually lost. I can spot them on sight.”

“How?”

“Because
everyone
is lost.” The abbess smiled. “I was reverend of a small Methodist church, back before it all. There are many schools of religion and spirituality, but we all have something in common, organized or not — congregation, bedside, or the depths of a mind.”

“What one thing?” Of course, Piper already knew.

“Faith.”

Piper repeated the abbess’s out-of-place word, deadpan: “Faith.”

“Belief in the absence of a sure answer,” Gloria elaborated. “But you see the trick there, don’t you?”

“What trick?”

“Being lost becomes necessary if one is to ever be found.” The abbess shifted in her chair, still smiling in spite of their strange surroundings. “See, in order for any of us to get on in life, we must have faith in
something
. And in order to have any faith, there must be something we cannot
know
that requires our trust. That leap of faith might be small, and for most it is. But regardless,
it is still a necessary leap.
A leap past uncertainty. A leap you took in coming here, Mrs. Dempsey. A leap you’re taking right now in listening to me, believing I am who I say, and that my words are worth hearing.”

“But you said most of your … your
congregation?
… would never come here. To this room. To know what you really do at this church.”

“There are many things this church does. This room represents just one. The only one your friend Terrence cares about, perhaps, and probably the only one you care about — but merely one of many nonetheless.” The abbess looked toward the closed doors to the chapel’s body. “If this bit of rebellion isn’t what they’re seeking, they may stay out front for our services.”

“But it’s all a sham. A cover.”

“Our services are as true as what happens in this room, helping Terrence reach his friends in Utah.”

Piper took a breath, held it, then exhaled with a feeling of deep fatigue. She must have been running on adrenaline when fleeing the mansion, then evading the Reptars. Now she was crashing. Piper realized how beaten she was, how frightened she’d been, how alone she was starting to feel.

“What does any of this have to do with Meyer? You said something about my husband.”

“I’ve spoken to enough of those who were taken into the ships and later returned to guess at what compelled him,” Gloria said. “But you tell me, Piper: Did he seem strangely driven to come to this place?
Unduly
driven, like a compulsion? Like he was being
told
to come?”

“Are you saying he was in communication with the Astrals from the beginning?” The idea was a little offensive. Piper was split on how she felt about Meyer today, but her root — especially relating to the Meyer of the past — was still in unwavering love. He’d never been a traitor. But he’d surely been compelled.