The Girl With the Jade Green Eyes (12 page)

“But the dreadful assumptions aren’t logical in the light of her behavior.”

“Logic’s a process of human minds, Breedlove, and Kyra’s superhuman… I’m not saying we won’t give her the uranium, but we have to analyze the comparative risks, and it will be a while before we make our recommendations to the Atomic Energy Commission.”

“Time is her problem, Admiral.”

“We’re aware of this. Our recommendation is being formulated with all due haste. That’s why you’re here—to help us decide.”

“It seems to me we have no choice but to grant her request.”

“Negative,” Harper snapped. “We have options. She could be retained on earth in protective custody indefinitely.”

“That would be illegal,” Breedlove said, and there was an edge to his voice. “Abe Cohen would have something to say about that.”

“Then we have legal but more drastic options, fail safe and, in the end perhaps, more humane.” He was cutting his salad with the side of his fork when he added, “A formal declaration of war on Kanab would solve the legal problems very nicely.”

Harper’s passive, uninflected tone of voice when he advanced the proposal was more chilling to Breedlove than regret or even vehemence could have made it. Suddenly and incongruously he recalled that Adolf Hitler had been a vegetarian also.

“That would only be giving legal sanction to murder.”

“Not murder,” the admiral demurred. “ ‘Slaughter’ is the better term. It’s done in stockyards every day for far less urgent reasons, as we vegetarians know. Remember, we’re not dealing in human beings.”

He paused to taste the soyburger patty, focusing on his palate with the detached concentration of a wine taster, and delivered his verdict, “Excellent!”

Not to be put off by the epicurean interruption, Breedlove continued his attack. “Admiral, the beasts we slaughter in stockyards are dumb brutes.”

“Don’t tell that to an animal trainer. The beasts have a different order of intelligence, as do the Kanabians. But extermination of the visitors, if not a likely alternative, must remain out option, and you can help us here. You’re the only human being on earth who can pinpoint the space vehicle on a military map of the area.”

“It will be a cold day in hell before I do that!”

For a moment the admiral’s gaze seemed to soften as he looked up from the patty, and he said, “Welcome to the loneliness of command, Breedlove.”

“With all respect for the gravity of the problem as you see it, Admiral, I suggest that it’s a criminal perversion of the Good Samaritan doctrine to even consider destroying that gallant band.”

Harper took no umbrage from Breedlove’s remarks.

“Yours might be my own personal opinion, but above my personal wishes stands my duty to my country,—above that my duty to mankind.”

“It’s precisely my duty to mankind that I’m thinking about,” Breedlove said, and even as he spoke he realized he was not thinking exclusively about his duty to mankind. Much of his concern was for Kyra, and a little of his loyalty to her was in atonement. In a manner of speaking, he had betrayed her already by trying to palm off Poe’s poem to her as his own—it was an intellectual and cultural betrayal—and many a cock would crow before he betrayed her twice. No argument of this gold-striped merchant of death would go undisputed.

“Remember, this is a social conversation, Breedlove,” the admiral said placatingly, “and my reasons for mentioning the military contingencies are to give you time to think over the problems. You’re not under oath, and you won’t be at 1400 when I’m asking you to address a group of concerned scientists in the ready room. I’m confident you’re a patriotic citizen who’ll cooperate when the need arises, and besides, I’m sure as a ranger you’ll want to minimize any damage to the park area that high explosives might incur.”

Arguing with Harper was futile, Breedlove decided. The man reflected nothing but official policy, and the policy was hard line.

“I’d like to talk to Abe Cohen about these matters, Admiral.”

“Leave his number with my secretary, and she’ll have Cohen proceed over without delay.”

“I’ll be honest, Admiral, I don’t like the drift of this conversation. I have confidence in Kyra. I trust that her reason for being here is precisely as she claims. I believe she’s been honest with me all the way.”

Harper arched an eyebrow over his lifted cup of coffee.

“Has she? Did she mention to you that she’s been in constant communication with her space vehicle since she left it, that she’s probably getting directives from that source?”

The question felt like a fist slamming into Breedlove’s stomach, and there was no way he could conceal his shock and consternation. “No, sir.”

“X-rays revealed an implant in her skull above her left ear with filaments from the bug leading to her tympanic membrane. Our experts have determined that it’s a minutely transistorized ultra-high-frequency radio receiver, but she refuses to answer any questions regarding the device.”

“Kyra never mentioned it to me.”

It was a painful admission for Breedlove to voice, and Harper nodded tactfully. “Come with me to my office, and I’ll show you the evidence.”

When they entered the admiral’s suite on the eighth floor, a Wave lieutenant at a desk near the entrance to the admiral’s private office stood up as the admiral approached. Breedlove could hear her heels click as she snapped to attention and extended three telephone slips for Harper to take.

“Belay those calls,” Harper snapped. “Call this number and get Attorney Cohen here without delay. Then bring me the file on our visitor.”

Click, the Wave reached for the telephone. Click-click, she was dialing. As the admiral held open his private door for Breedlove to enter, he commented proudly, “I run a taut ship. Everything’s done by the numbers.”

The admiral’s private office featured a window opening onto a view of the harbor. Height-shortened freighters lay at the docks below. The Bremerton ferry had left its Seattle slip and was scrawling its wake across the sound. Waving a hand toward the view, the admiral said, “This is the closest I’ve been to the ocean in two years, and I get homesick for the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song.”

“What was your last command at sea, Admiral?”

“A guided-missile cruiser… Be seated, Breedlove. By showing you Kyra’s X-ray negatives, I’m paying out the slack on the security lines, but I’m doing it because I like the cut of your jib and I think you’re tacking against the wind with our fair visitor, the Navy’s code name for Kyra. Incidentally, our astronomers determined that her sun lay in the general direction of the Pleiades. A classified program, such as Project Fair Visitor, is compartmentalized. Each operative functions on a ‘need to know’ basis. Security clearances run from 1-A to 3-B, and your classification is 3-B—you know the fair visitor is on the planet, and that’s all you need to know, but as an eyewitness to her arrival you are yourself classified information.”

With a half-smile Harper raised his hand. “Ranger Thomas Breedlove, I hereby classify you a top-secret document. You’re on file for all qualified personnel who wish to share your information.”

“How will I know who’s qualified?”

“Your contact will tell you, and you’ll be meeting him shortly.”

“Who is coordinating the project?” Breedlove asked, thinking more in terms of government bureaus than of individuals.

“Only the chief coordinator knows that, because he’s the only person who needs to know.”

Two sharp raps came on the door and the Wave lieutenant entered, bringing a red manila folder. As if on parade she paced across the room, came to a heel-clicking halt before Harper’s desk, laid the folder before him, about-faced, and paraded out of the office. The bulk of the folder amazed Breedlove. Yesterday he had left Kyra without a driver’s license, and today her dossier was already as thick as a small town’s telephone book.

Harper drew an X-ray negative from the file and handed it to Breedlove. “Here’s the item she won’t talk about.”

Looking at Kyra’s skull, the seat of her wit and wisdom, revealed in such dull shades of gray struck him as almost obscene. Showing brightly on the film, slightly above and behind the ear orifice, were the implanted metal object and its trailing filaments.

“Proof of perfidy,” Harper said, and his tone sounded gloating.

“Not at all,” Breedlove snapped. “Maybe the device is classified 1-A under Kanabian security regulations, and we have no clearance.”

Harper’s face went cold, and he snapped the folder shut. “Let’s go to the ready room, Breedlove.”

Down the hall from the admiral’s office, the ready room was designed to resemble the pilots’ briefing room on an aircraft carrier. Leather upholstered chairs were anchored to the deck. The walls were painted gray, and at one end of the room stood a lectern on a dais before a blackboard. Three men were already seated on the front row of chairs. Each man had brought a tape recorder, and there was a mike on the lectern with a recorder.

Harper introduced the three early arrivals to Breedlove. The gray-haired man with the unlit pipe in his mouth nearest the window was Dr. Hargrove, an anthropologist. Next to him, black-bearded, young, and muscular, sat Dr. Teach, sociologist. Finally came Dr. Upton, short, rotund, a blond fuzz of close-cropped hair on his ball-like head. Upton wore thick glasses that magnified his pale blue eyes until they appeared huge and protuberant. He was an entomologist. Breedlove wondered what an entomologist was doing here, but apparently the Navy was covering all bases with Project Fair Visitor.

“These gentlemen, and others who will be arriving, interrogated Kyra this morning, briefly since her time is limited, and they’re seeking substantiation of their interviews and additional information from your account of your relationship with Kyra.”

Three other scientists entered as Harper spoke, but he ignored them. “You commence the lecture promptly at 1400. Latecomers will be required to play back the log tape. Tomorrow morning’s debriefing will commence at 0900. Please report five minutes early, Ranger Breedlove, to test the recording equipment.”

The admiral had issued an order, and Breedlove nodded, feeling suddenly optimistic. He had been given a chance to enter a plea for kindness and generosity toward Kyra and her people before an influential group of civilians, and if he could convey to these scientists a fraction of his own regard for Kyra, they might thwart any military solution of the threat her presence hypothetically posed to earth.

“Gentlemen,” the admiral addressed a group, now swollen to eight men, “the smoking lamp is out, I repeat, out!”

He nodded to Breedlove and stepped back to stand behind the speaker. Hargrove laid down his pipe. It was exactly 1400 by the chronometer on the bulkhead. Admiral Harper ran a taut ship.

Breedlove began at the beginning, opening his talk with the report of the nude campers in Jones Meadow and of his setting out to investigate. He knew he was speaking for history, and he wanted all the facts in order and as accurate as his memory could make them. As a storyteller, he realized he was being somewhat pedestrian, and his listeners did appear to be fidgety until he told of Kyra drifting out of the mists. Now they were leaning forward, as rapt as children attending a favorite fairy tale, and he knew what had generated the intensity of their interest: Kyra. Her presence lay over them all as invisible but as obvious as the scent of perfume.

With twelve men present, Breedlove figured he had his full audience of the men who had interviewed Kyra before noon today, but there was no interruption from his listeners until he mentioned Kyra’s claim that her dress was made of hydrogen plasma. The remark brought a disdainful snort from someone in the back row, and the snort brought an extemporaneous rebuttal from a physicist from the University of Oregon who rose to his feet and began to rattle off the mathematic formulae for interlocking nuclei of stripped hydrogen atoms. Breedlove had lost the floor until the admiral stepped to the lectern, gaveled for silence, and barked, “Gentlemen, postpone all disputation until after the debriefing.”

Breedlove continued, growing more and more aware of the blue eyes of Upton, who was asking no questions at all but listening so intently his ears seemed to be cupping forward. Those blue, floating orbs, magnified and detached by the thick lenses, grew hypnotic and disturbing. Breedlove talked on, trying to keep his gaze from drifting back to Upton, and he was losing his peculiar battle with the entomologist when the thirteenth man stalked into the room.

The man entered to no welcoming nods or hand waves from colleagues who recognized him. With a pacing stride he walked down the side aisle to the rear of the room and stood looking over the group with cold, expressionless eyes. He was tall, whipcord lean, dressed in black with a long deacon’s coat and a vest. His face was long, square-jawed, with an Indian’s high cheekbones and hooked nose. For a moment he stood, his gray eyes moving over the group from an immobile face, his legs spread slightly in a gunfighter’s stance. The black suit, the long, impassive face, and, above all, the cold and deadly eyes brought a menace into the room.

The stranger was out of his habitat in Seattle, Breedlove sensed. He should have been stalking down the street of a west Texas town, his thumbs hooked into a gunbelt, advancing toward some ultimate shoot-out. Finally, jackknifing his legs, he settled into a chair, pulled a cigar from a coat pocket, a kitchen match from his vest, and struck the match with his thumbnail. He lifted the light to his cigar.

From behind Breedlove Admiral Harper called, “The smoking lamp is out, Mr. Slade.”

“Up yours, Harper,” Slade answered, loud and clear. “The smoking lamp is lit.”

“Gentlemen, the smoking lamp is lit,” the admiral said. “Doctor Hargrove, would you open the window, please.”

A pleasant murmur ran through the room as the scientists reached for cigarettes or tobacco pouches, and suddenly Breedlove, though a nonsmoker, found himself liking the mysterious and malevolent Mr. Slade. Even Dr. Upton became animated, asking a question about the interior of the space vehicle Breedlove had been describing.

“Did the hatch covers opening onto the spiral ramp differ in size?”