Alan E. Nourse & J. A. Meyer (31 page)
Read Alan E. Nourse & J. A. Meyer Online
Authors: The invaders are Coming
"And
shaken the government apart, and entrenched himself like an iron fist,"
MacKenzie
said. "What do we do when Project Tiger is
half-completed and Bahr has made
himself
invincible?"
"Then we dump him," Alexander said.
MacKenzie
was about to make a sharp retort, but he
looked at the major's face, and realized that he was serious. "We can't do
it by brute force. Do you have an idea?"
"I
have an idea,"
Alexander said. "I think Julian Bahr's great strength can be his weakness.
I'll need help. But if
I
'm right, when the time comes, I'll dump
Julian Bahr."
"At
the height of his power?"
MacKenzie
asked.
"Like die tragic
hero," said Alexander.
To
Lidby
Allison
it seemed as if the world of nightmare had
suddenly become reality. There were people here, a million people in the rooms
and corridors, all talking at once, milling around, laughing too loudly,
shaking hands too eagerly, with smiles on
tiieir
faces and fear deep in their eyes. It had all been over after the speech,
everybody knew that, yet they had waited for the formality of congressional
approval, waited until the resolution had been formally read, and debated, and
carried without a dissenting vote. And then the reporters were there by the
thousands, flashbulbs popping, a hundred questions in the air, and every eye
was on Julian Bahr.
He
was the center of attention, talking, laughing, proclaiming, as all the little
men with pads jotted down his words. He was flushed and voluble, almost as
though he were drunk. When die vote results came down four men moved in to his
side, heavily-built men dressed in
psychophan
-tic
imitation of Bahr, keeping the crowding groups of people from coming too close.
She
watched him in growing horror, and in growing fascination. There had been
times when she had seen this clearly, the thing that had been coming from the
very first. Now, suddenly, all the restraints were broken, all the barriers
down. He had stamped and pounded and bulldozed through the field, and suddenly
it was empty before him; he was in command. He stood there, talking, his ego
swelling, power and confidence in every word, every movement of his head, every
gesture of his hands. And still he was
chiving
forward, fighting . . .
He
will change the whole country, everything in Federation America into a dynasty,
she thought.
He will set civilization back six hundred
years. There will be no stopping him if he succeeds in this. He is thirty-four
years old, and in a week he will be ruling a continent, but that will not be
enough. He could be the master of the world, and that would not be enough. By
the time he is fifty, the idolatry of ten billion people might still make him
feel unloved.
It
seemed to her that this was unreality, a dream she was floating
tiirough
, and she could only see it with a sense of
detachment, as though it were not really happening to her. Even when Bahr was
at her side, taking her arm through the crowds, smiling and talking about
reform and the part she would play in it, there was no sense of reality. She
saw him, and realized with a shock of horror that she was proud of him, excited
for him, eager for him. He had fought so hard, he had even fought her, and now
he had won, in spite of everything. And now he was making her a part of the
victory.
His white goddess.
His empress.
His
wife, his lover, his concubine, his first love, his partner, his daughter, his
sister, his mother . . .
Reality
broke in on the dream with sudden brutality, and the vast panoramic nightmare-lens
clamped down to a tight, narrow channel and came into focus on Adams' face.
Adams,
pushing his way through the room, his coat lapels flapping, lank blond hair
awry, face white and distorted and ugly as he made his way across toward them.
He thrust at the crowds of people that were intervening, and they stepped back
as his anger swept the room like a wave. He approached Julian Bahr, and two of
Bahr's men appeared at Adams' side, suddenly, each taking an arm, holding him
as he writhed to break away from them. But his hate-filled eyes were not turned
toward Bahr at all; they were turned toward Libby.
"You
bitch!" he screamed at her, lunging forward to glare into her face.
"You bitch! You did it, it's
yours.
Aren't
you proud!
Vanner
should be proud of his bastard
daughter. Oh, yes, he should be proud, and your whore mother, too! You've done
their work well for them, haven't you? You've betrayed everything they ever
believed in, and now see what you've won for
yourself ,
. ."
She
had a drink in her hand, and she hit him in the face with it so hard that the
glass shattered. Something snapped in her mind, and she threw herself on Adams,
gashing his face again and again with the broken glass, pouring out all the
hatred she had ever felt. And then she heard somebody screaming, and it was
Adams screaming, and his face looked like the skin had been hacked off. She
stepped back, gasping, and at her side Bahr was laughing, and the DIA men were
grinning at her and holding Adams so he couldn't move, and Adams kept
screaming, "Traitor!
Traitor!"
Then
Bahr nodded, a
curt
order, and the men dragged Adams
out through the door, and Libby was sick, more violently sick than she had ever
been in her life. Somebody was helping her across the room, into a lavatory. In
the mirror she saw herself, and there was blood all over her hands and arms and
dress, and some of it was her blood, but most of it was Adams'.
All
the way home, through the dark wet streets, something in her mind was
screaming at her that the nightmare was real, the nightmare was real, the
nightmare was real . . .
He didn't notice that she was not there for
quite a long time, and then only vaguely, as he caught himself looking around
the room, trying to see where Libby had gone. He chuckled to himself. She had turned
on Adams, all right. God how she had turned on him! He hadn't thought that she
had it in her, and he felt his pride swell as he thought of it. He'd been right
about Libby. She would help him. She knew the DEPCO organization, she would
know whom to keep, whom to get rid of. With Libby at his
side
...
But she was not in the room, and he spoke to
one of his men, who vanished from his side for five minutes or so, then
returned, frowning.
"She's gone,
Chief
.
She left the lavatory, and somebody saw her hail a cab outside."
Alarm leaped in his mind, and he blinked,
trying to think it through. Not a word to him, nothing, and there were people
she would have to see, work to do, plans to be made. "Get a car," he
said, "and
get
these parasites out of here."
How
long had it been since she left? He tried to wade through the drunken
exhilaration of the past hours, and he couldn't remember. But something cold
was eating away at his chest, and he snarled at the driver and slammed his fist
into his palm, wondering why it was that he was actually feeling pain in his
chest, physical pain, as though something were crushing the life and breath out
of him.
Outside
the apartment building he leaped from the car, jammed die elevator button with
his thumb, then cursed and started up the stairs three at a time, with his men
panting behind him. He ran down the corridor, digging for keys in his pocket,
but he didn't need the key. He stopped at the apartment door, and saw that it
was hanging wide open into the darkened room.
Inside,
with the lights on, there was nothing. She was gone. The closet doors hung
open, clothes gone as though grabbed up in a desperate sweep of the hand. A
suitcase was gone from the shelf. Dresser drawers yawned at him, empty. And in
the back room the crib was also empty.
He
stared at the room, unable to believe what he saw, shaking his head helplessly
as he tried to fight down the rising wave of fear in his mind, surging in to
fill the void left by the shock.
He
looked up at his men, and told them to wait in the hall. He was trembling; he
couldn't control the shaking of his hands. He saw his face in the mirror, and
slammed off the light switch with a snarl of rage. He stood in the darkness,
and then walked over to the window, stared out at the lights of the city,
trying to make his hands hold still by gripping the sill with all his strength.
She
was gone as if she had never been there. But now, in the silent room, things
were blurred in his mind, confused. Was it Libby who was gone, or was it
someone else? Suddenly, it seemed that it had all happened before, so long ago
that he could hardly remember, and the bafflement and rage and pain he was
feeling now was the same bafflement and rage and pain he had felt then, when
someone, someone . . .
Ruth.
A door opened in his mind. Click, a light went
onl
A
face stood stark and revealed. A faceless woman he had
dreamed about, a woman and an elephant. Even the thought brought a shudder of
fear through his body, and he clenched the window sill. Out across the city he
seemed to see fires rising, blazing infernos, with yellow flames licking up
into the black sky. A woman's face, but he could see it now stark in every line
and hollow, and it was Ruth's face. And he knew that the elephant was only a
symbol of the one he did not even dare to dream about.
Ruth
had left him, just as Libby had left him. He had cast it away, buried it,
driven it from his mind, but now it was back, fearfully back, etched in orange
and crimson on the black night sky.
Ruth
had left him. But that was another place, in another time. Bitterly, then,
Julian Bahr remembered it all.
1995, and the desert installation of the XAR
rocket ships.
He
was twelve years old, an angry, lonely, bitter twelve years in a world where
there was no love, no understanding, no place to anchor firmly—a world of
absolute authority, utter loneliness, and uncertain affection. He did not know
what Howard did on the spaceship, he was an engineer of some sort, working
eighteen hours a day in the testing labs, seldom home, and when he was home,
the endless siege that Julian could only watch helplessly from the sidelines.
Ruth was sick so much of the time, gone so much of the time, and those
month-long absences were barren for Julian, utterly barren. Then, when Ruth
came back from the hospital, or from the coast where she was
"resting," things became warm and alive again. She sang, she
chattered, she hugged him and wept over him and drowned him with tearful demonstration.
Those returns were the oases of his life, but then Howard would come in, bone
weary, and the laughing and singing would stop. In a few days Ruth's warmth
would
recede
,
and her nervousness would begin again, and Julian would fold inward again.
Life
was life, and the facts of life were simple and unyielding. First there was
Howard, who was to be obeyed, with his sarcasm, his cruelty, and the long
bitter battles that drove Ruth away again and again. Above his father was a
uniformed unknown, the Army, which was powerful and treacherous. His
modier
, when she came into his life at all, brought warmth
and happiness and love. But then she was gone again, without warning, and he
was alone with Howard.
He
hated it. His rebellion was total, and oblivious to consequences. There were
the schoolyard fights, the petty larceny,
the
bitter
obsessive competition. His classmates hated him because he hurled back their
overtures of friendship with sarcastic bitter words from Howard's mouth. His
teachers hated him, and he returned this with interest. And as the reports
sifted home, into Howard's hands, he knew that Howard hated him, and was
disgusted with him, and despised him, and for this there was no answer, no way
to fight back.
He
found himself one day pointing a rifle at his father's back. He could not
remember the circumstances; he could remember clearly the long, glinting barrel
of the rifle, the sight at the end,
his
father's back
through the open window clearly outlined. The gun was loaded, and he could see
the exact spot where die bullet would hit; he could visualize excitedly the
exact action of his father falling forward against the desk, collapsing to the
floor, writhing and spurting blood and dying. He saw it coldly, clinically,
without the slightest flicker of concern or affection. He could do it, and then
Ruth would come home and stay home. His finger was tightening on the trigger
when it occurred to him that Ruth would probably be upset, so he lowered the
gun and returned it carefully to the gun rack. The next day he took the rifle
out to a quarry and threw it into thirty feet of water.
Then, incredibly, the crash, and the storming of the Rocket Project.
He was thirteen when the mobs smashed into
the compound at White Sands, murdering, sacking and burning their way to the
hated spaceships and all who had worked on them. The rumors of the
"gasoline day" gauntlet spread with the growing national riot, where
scientists and engineers and technicians were wrapped in gasoline-soaked rags,
set aflame, and forced to race each other a hundred yards to a single
waterfilled
drum, as the mob lined up screaming on either
side.
The
mob came to their part of the compound, and Julian's father did not hesitate a
second. He snatched up a box of shells, and opened the gun rack as the
shouting, angry, blood-hungry gang reached the front door. But the rifle was
not in the gun rack.
Three
of the men were killed and two others beaten senseless before they broke Howard
Bahr's arm and knocked him down and dragged him out into the street. They
caught Julian and Ruth and hauled them out to watch the beating and mutilation,
and finally the inferno, all of which Howard endured with stubborn, scornful
silence. That day Julian realized something very surprising about his father,
yet even as he watched the orange flames consuming the dead body he felt a
strange excitement and release.
He
wrung free of the man holding him, picked up a gasoline can and sloshed it in
the face of the bully who had led the execution. The man roared and lunged at
him, but Julian jumped back over the fire. The flames caught the man, and while
he thrashed and screamed and rolled on the ground Julian broke and ran through
the compound, dodging into the flickering shadows thrown by the fires, running
until there were no more footsteps, until he was gasping for air choking with
exhaustion and fear. In the distance he heard the shrill tortured screams, but
they did not interest him. He had killed a man, but that was not enough. There
was more to do before the job was complete. He had to kill them all.
He
found Ruth standing in the shadows waiting for him in the smoking ruins of the
houses when he returned, after the men had gone. She had not gotten away, and
she had not been killed. Her mouth was drawn into a thin line, and she moved
very slowly and painfully, and she would not look into his eyes.
A confusion of nightmare days and nights, then.
There was violence, and more violence, as
everyone connected with the space projects fled for their lives. Julian lived
with Ruth in part of an abandoned church, and he begged, and stole, and
foraged, like everyone else in the early days of the crash, seizing anything to
live on or trade with. Ruth was
changed,
she never
seemed to be herself. She was always talking and laughing without making sense,
talking about her school days in Vermont and her father's pipe, and acting as
though there hadn't been any crash.
One
night she had shown Julian a small bottle, and he had been afraid it was poison
until she explained. "I've kept it for weeks.
A very
expensive fragrance."
She held it to his nose, her eyes bright, and
his flesh crawled on his spine as he realized it was nothing but perfume.
"Of course it's worthless now," she said. "All fine beautiful
things are worthless now. I'll have to go home soon." She had held his
hand against her cheek, kneeling beside him in the darkness as if she expected
him to say something reassuring, but there was nothing to say. He couldn't
steal enough to feed both of them. He had pulled his hand away.
And the next night, when he came home from
scavenging, Ruth was gone. All the food, clothes and cigarettes he had been
hoarding were also gone. He searched for two days, but he could not find her.
Then he made an impossible decision, crept through the guarded double-fence of
the Military Police compound and headed toward the well-lit barracks in die
officer's quarters.
There
were many women there, with hungry pinched faces. Someone was playing a piano,
and through the partly opened door he could see Ruth dancing while everybody
watched. Her face was
flushed,
her eyes were sharp and
hard with a vision of death and hatred. The men laughed and shouted to her, and
she smiled, and sang something in French, and went on with her dance.
Julian had turned and walked away, then, and
never looked back. Until now, as he walked through Libby's empty apartment,
staring at the empty drawers, the empty closet, the empty crib.
He
drove his fist down on the table, snapping a leg and splintering the top. Pain
surged through his wrist, and rage boiled out of control. He moved about the
room, half-blind, smashing, kicking, destroying until the rage had burned down
to a hard red coal. Then he opened the door and went out into the hall.
Libby
had walked out. After all he had done for her, even after what had happened
tonight, she had walked out, left him flat,
turned
her
back on him.
But this time he wouldn't
walk away.
This
time he wasn't hungry, frightened,
helpless
. This time
he was in command, and he would see her burn in hell before he was through with
her. This time she would suffer, the way
he
had
suffered.
And
then, when he was through with her, there was the boy.
He turned to his men, and swiftly, carefully,
he began giving his orders.