Colonization (Alien Invasion Book 3) (28 page)

Clara sat and started pulling two dolls apart. One had dark skin, the other’s was white, their dual colored hair intertwined in a tangled nest. Racial harmony by force in this dollhouse, if not by design.

“What about Grandma, Clara?” Lila repeated.

“I’d like to play a game with Grandma.”

“Do you think Grandma would like to play a game?”

Clara shrugged. “Maybe. It’ll make her feel better.”

Lila sat slowly. This was always strange, and Lila felt like she was balancing whenever speaking to Clara about events she couldn’t possibly know. Until someone drew her attention to the differences between herself and other young children, Clara would probably think that what she could do and know was normal. Lila didn’t want to point it out, or for her tone (or the tenor of her hesitant questions) to frighten her daughter. But Clara’s gift — if that’s what it was — startled Lila plenty.

The gift, yes. And in her quietest moments, Lila sometimes admitted to herself that she was a bit unnerved by the girl who held it.

“Why does Grandma want to feel better, Clara?”

“Everyone likes to feel better.”

“But why today?” Lila tried to make herself smile. “I didn’t talk to Grandma yet.” She swallowed then forced herself to finish the sentence: “To ask her about what she did today.”

“Oh. Well, Uncle Trevor is gone. Them and Grandma Piper.”

“Piper?”
Lila’s hand went to her mouth. Where were they? She didn’t know how to ask if they were dead. She also wondered what it said about her that she’d reacted more to news about Piper than about her brother. Her stepmother seemed so innocent. She’d become her dad’s quiet companion again the moment he’d returned — always a bit unhappy perhaps. Trapped. Dragged along for the ride.

But then she remembered Clara’s plural. “
Them
and Piper?”

“Mr. Cameron too.”

But Clara, of course, would have no idea who Cameron was, if it was the Cameron Lila suspected.

“They’ll be happy there,” Clara said, finally separating the dolls’ hair.

“Where?” But she didn’t want to know, if the answer was Heaven — not the city but the place she’d grown up believing was somewhere out there in the clouds, beyond the reach of spherical spaceships. She didn’t want to know that any more than she wanted to head downstairs for her mother’s report.

“With Mr. Cameron’s daddy. Where Grandma Piper was happy.”

Moab?
Was Clara talking about the lab in Utah? Why not; she’d covered so much unknown ground already.

“So you know Mr. Benjamin,” said Lila, playing along.

Clara made a little
mmm-hmm
noise and began dressing the dolls, sticking purses into their claw-like hands. Apparently, the discussion was over.

Lila stood, casting her daughter a final glance. She really should talk to her mother and face whatever music needed facing — good, bad, or indifferent.

“I hope Mr. Benjamin doesn’t help them find it,” Clara said.

“Find what, Clara?”

“If he helps them,” she said, “I guess we’ll
all
be leaving.”

Lila didn’t think Clara was being literal. This time, she felt sure that leaving was something she wouldn’t want to face.

C
HAPTER
45

Benjamin watched the vehicle approach. It was a refurbished Jeep Cherokee from years before Astral Day — probably not even auto-drivable; hardly a suitable vehicle for outlands royalty. But as much as Benjamin feared Nathan Andreus, he couldn’t help but respect the man even before properly meeting him. He ruled the outlands like a despot but didn’t court luxury. He’d done what he needed to do, from beginning to end, mass murderer or not.

The Jeep stopped. Again, Benjamin expected the driver to let Andreus out through the rear doors, but instead he walked a few feet away and took in the open desert surroundings, allowing the passenger to get out on his own.

The rear door opened, and instead of Andreus, a woman emerged in a black Andreus Republic uniform, same as Benjamin had seen on broadcasts about the outlands. He tried to contain himself, but the uniform’s sight gave him a chill.

The vehicle’s driver walked forward, the woman fell into place beside and slightly behind him. The pair reached Benjamin, and the man extended a hand.

He wasn’t merely a driver. The man from the driver’s seat was Nathan Andreus himself.

“Are you Benjamin?” he asked.

Benjamin fought a hard response. He made himself grasp the man’s hand then meet his icy eyes. They were buried in wrinkles as he squinted in the bright Utah sun, hard and unyielding. His grip, for a man who’d left his thirties behind quite a while ago, was strong. He had a trimmed goatee and a shaved head that practically glowed in the sun.

“Yes.”

“Nathan Andreus. This is Jeanine Coffey.”

Benjamin shook the woman’s hand.

“Thanks for coming,” he said, unsure what else to say. This was an awkward meeting, but Andreus had given him a choice: They could meet at Andreus Republic HQ or in Moab — but (and Andreus didn’t need to say this; it had been implied in bold type)
they would be meeting
. Andreus had given his estranged wife and daughter their space for long enough. Now that the elder in that pair was dead, Andreus was through being an absentee father, even if it meant grabbing responsibility by its quivering throat.

If they had to meet, Moab was better than Andreus’s turf every day ending in Y.

“Is Grace inside?”

Benjamin nodded, trying to fight the feeling that Andreus claiming his sixteen-year-old daughter was being handled like a hostage exchange.

“Yes. Come on in.” He didn’t want to ask the next question because it sounded untrusting, but there was something missing — something that intensified the feeling of a hostage exchange. “Where are our people?” he added.

“They’re coming,” Andreus said.

Benjamin looked at the Cherokee. There would have been room in the vehicle for five.

Andreus followed Benjamin’s gaze. Then, blessedly, a seemingly genuine smile cracked his weathered features. “It’s too tight in the back if it’s three wide. Besides, I don’t ride with anyone I don’t know. No offense.”

“Of course,” Benjamin said.

The way people talked about the Republic, Andreus had his people trained and fiercely loyal. But outsiders might take it upon themselves to rid the outlands of a warlord, jumping forward with a garrote to strangle him while crossing the desert.

“There,” he said.

Benjamin followed his finger. At first, there was just the sound of an engine and a brown plume of dust, but after a few minutes the distant noise changed pitch. The cloud got bigger. Sunlight winked off a windshield. Tires ground on packed clay. Then a second Jeep SUV pulled up beside the first. Cameron was the first one out, his shoulder wrapped in a white bandage, his arm in a sling. Piper followed, holding his arm as if to lend support where it wasn’t needed. A Hispanic driver emerged next but didn’t come forward. Last to exit, via the passenger side door, was a young man Benjamin assumed must be Trevor Dempsey.

They came forward. Taking care with Cameron’s shoulder, Benjamin wrapped his son in an embrace. He hugged Piper too, finding her smile all too grateful, as if she’d wanted to be here all along, having suffered a two-year prison term. He shook Trevor’s hand, introducing himself unnecessarily, while the young man did the same.

He took a moment to survey the new arrivals: the outlands leader and his lieutenant, the three prodigal sons and daughters, and the second driver who, it turned out, apparently meant to stay outside, on a picnic table in the shade. Benjamin led the others inside, wondering what he’d managed to get himself into.

Piper Dempsey, wife of the viceroy.

Trevor Dempsey, son of the viceroy.

And their new mutual, reluctant allies.

For better or worse, the Andreus Republic and the scientists now shared an enemy. The Astrals might need Andreus’s control of the outlands, and might hold their retaliation until all arguments were considered. But Benjamin felt deeply that the laboratory’s luck, which had held for far too long, was now finally numbered in days.

He looked up before holding the door open for the others to enter.

The sky was blue, wide, and empty.

But soon that would change.

C
HAPTER
46

“I’ll need some time to analyze this.” Benjamin pointed at the stone tablet’s projected image and its strange legend Piper had seen on Meyer’s computer. “For now, let’s not assume anything. Assuming, on this scale, is a terrible idea.”

“What do you mean, on this scale?” Cameron sat beside on another of the lab’s plastic-and-tubular metal chairs. It felt better than Piper had expected — better, perhaps, than she wanted to admit — to be back in Moab. She’d never have wanted to vacation in Utah back in her New York City days, but the time between her last Moab visit and now had been spent somewhere more comfortable and yet far less bearable. Returning to Benjamin and even Charlie — with Cameron by her side, guilty as it felt — was like a warm fire after a long, cold winter.

“You’ve played the telephone game, right?” Benjamin said. “Where one person whispers a phrase to the next person, and that person passes the message along. And by the time the message makes it around the circle, it’s always wildly distorted?”

“Sure.”

“This,” Benjamin said, tapping the projection, “is at least a thousand-year-old game of telephone. Maybe much older than that. The oldest ruins we know of — and that ancient astronaut theorists would point to as evidence of extraterrestrial visitation — go back twelve thousand years and effectively double what most archaeologists admit is the history of civilized humanity. Everything we’re dealing with here — everything we might use to make sense of the Astrals’ actions today based on their actions in the past — is thousands of years of hearsay at best. And before we can analyze something like this, it’s guesswork threaded through speculation.”

Piper felt disappointed. Part of her had hoped Benjamin would take one look at the tablet and know exactly what to do with it. Worse: Deep down, she realized she’d been seeing getting the slip drive’s information to Benjamin as the end of this adventure rather than one of its many midpoints. But that was ridiculous. What had she thought — that the language upon it would reveal a recipe for a universal Astral poison that, once brewed, would cause the aliens to flee the planet and allow it to regain its feet without harm? She dimly remembered watching an alien movie with Meyer, what felt like a thousand years ago. The aliens in that movie had been allergic to water. In the famous
War of the Worlds
, the more sensible culprit defeating the aliens had been Earthbound bacteria. That’s what she’d been foolishly hoping for: a quick fix. But of course life was never that easy.

“But it does tell us something we need to know, right away,” he continued.

Piper’s chin lifted. From the corner of her eye, she caught Nathan Andreus and Jeanine Coffey. He looked stoic, and that was frightening to Piper. Nathan’s daughter, on their reunion, still wouldn’t talk to him. She supposed that would make anyone unfriendly.

“It tells us,” Benjamin lectured like a natural professor, “that what they’re looking for — the weapon we call Thor’s Hammer — probably isn’t as readily accessible to them as we’d thought.” He touched the screen where the placard read,
DEVICE MISSING
. “What Trevor overheard seems to corroborate this. They’re searching at every capital, under all the new structures. Which, I’m proud to say, at least ties up one loose end.”

“Which loose end?” Cameron asked.

“The question, ‘What’s special about Vail?’ There’s something under that mountain after all.”

“What?”

“Don’t get ahead of me, Cameron.” Benjamin flashed his usual smirk. “I said something under the mountain. Give me credit for that before more questions are asked.” His affable expression flicked toward Andreus, but the man didn’t return his smile.

“I don’t know what’s under there,” Benjamin continued. “Nobody does. It’s not in any of the records. If I had to guess — and this is only a guess, you understand — I’d say it’s a temple of some sort. Some place of symbolic intent where they left their doomsday device.”

Nathan said, “Why?”

“That’s what we can’t quite figure out.” Benjamin’s voice went a bit jittery as he answered Andreus. “One theory is that it’s something necessarily Earthbound because of effects it has on the planet. A means of tipping our rotational axis, for instance.”

“You think there’s some magic box under that pyramid that will knock the Earth off kilter?” Nathan wasn’t really asking; Piper could hear the difference. He was expressing disbelief in a ridiculous crackpot idea — which, for most of Benjamin’s life, was how his ideology had always been seen.

“Maybe literally, maybe symbolically,” Benjamin said. “Think of some of the legendary disasters of the past. The
Bible
is full of examples.”

“The
Bible?”

“Stories,” said Benjamin. “Again, I’ll refer you to a game of telephone. Maybe some of what’s in there is totally true. But maybe some of it has simply been told enough times that it’s become distorted. Certainly, extraterrestrial visitations of ancient peoples would appear godlike. Think of some of the stories we know: a great flood, for instance. A man tasked with preserving history beyond what was essentially a biblical reset.”