Starfist FR - 03 - Recoil (18 page)

“But our agent on Kingdom, I’ve read his report. Jasper’s never been in the hospital, never been sick a day in his life, J.B.!”

“Right. Now, attached to the lab analysis are two printouts we took off a trid of Mr. Jasper preaching the Gospel to the faithful. Take a look at them.”

Long flipped over the lab report. Attached were several fullcolor printouts, the first two of Jimmy Jasper’s neck and throat. Someone had circled two tiny scars over the trachea. “Holy jumpin’ Jehosephat,” Long whispered. “Never been in the hospital, never been sick a day in his life. J.B., the Skinks, they did this.” He tapped the printout with a finger.

“Yep. I’ll bet that substance in his blood is being released by those implants. We don’t know what it does, but I’ll also bet it blocks his memory of whatever it was the aliens did to him while he was in captivity, and it also may be helping him ‘see Jesus,’ if you get my drift.” J.B. sat back triumphantly. Long glanced at the other printouts. “Who’s this? Looks like a woman.”

“Sally Consolador. She has the same marks.”

“So she does! They’ve both been fixed.” Long rubbed his hands. “We’re on to something here, J.B. Now, I’ve had people reviewing the reports coming back from the survey teams sent to Kingdom to interview the people taken by the Skinks and later released. They haven’t been subjected to any biomedical scanning, but none has much memory of what happened while he was a prisoner, and they all are acting normal, or as normal as anyone on that world ever acts. Except for the other preachers, like Jasper, who’ve shown up on some of the other member worlds, and we haven’t been able to get to all of them yet.”

“Call them in and have them scanned.”

“No, no, J.B., we start doing that and Senator Maxim’ll be standing up in the Congress and accusing us of religious persecution. I have to tread lightly here.”

J.B. nodded. “I understand. Can’t have you playing Pontius Pilate to his Messiah, can we?”

Long laughed and patted his stomach. “Some already are calling me ‘Paunchy Pilot.’ But fuck anyone who can’t take a joke. We get the goods on this guy, we’ll go to the president and arrest him. Can’t crucify him though. That’s gone out of style.”

“Seriously, AG, you know some people are already comparing Jasper to the Messiah, some of them believe he is the Messiah and that the Second Coming is upon us.”

“That would sure solve all our problems,” Long answered archly.

“Seriously, AG, we’ve got a real problem on our hands with this guy. If this is the doing of the Skinks, they’ve really figured out a way to fuck us over but good. He’s got to be stopped before too many more people buy into this Messiah stuff.”

Long nodded. He was silent for a moment, drumming his fingers thoughtfully on his desk. “But the president ordered everyone taken by the Skinks to be interviewed. We don’t have anything on this Sally Whatshername, Consolador, Jasper’s assistant. She’s not in our database either. Those Kingdomites never cooperated with us in getting their people’s vital statistics into the system. But that has turned out to be a good thing, J.B.”

He grinned. “I’m going to get her in here for that interview; good excuse to run her through the scanner, see what’s floating around in her bloodstream. I want you to sit in on the interview with me. If she has the same alterations as her mentor, all these preachers will probably have them too.” He looked at the printouts of Sally’s throat. “Nice neck on this girl. But why have some of the abductees been treated like this and not the others, J.B.?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it didn’t take on some, maybe the candidates weren’t susceptible to the drug, maybe they felt they didn’t need to convert everyone they took. Only the Skinks know the reason for that. I suspect all they wanted from most of those prisoners was information about the human species, and they selected a few likely specimens out of all those people for infiltration. And you know, plenty of the people on Kingdom who were taken have never come back. Maybe the Skinks think they’re doctors and bury their mistakes,” he said, chuckling. “However you cut it, AG, our Jimmy Jasper is a damned traitor; they all are.”

“Well, J.B., maybe not. Maybe the poor bastard doesn’t even know what he’s doing.”

Senator Maxim’s Villa, Outskirts of Fargo

“What shall I do, master?” Sally asked Jasper. She was referring to the summons issued for her appearance at the Ministry of Justice to undergo an interview. Jimmy had recently begun to insist that his assistants and acolytes refer to him as “master.”

“Child, thou must render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s.” Jimmy smiled, laying a hand on her shoulder. He fixed her with his hypnotic, compelling eyes, something he had only recently started doing, as if an inner light had begun to burn inside him that had not been there before. She had to blink to get away from that gaze. “Go now, woman, and prepare thyself. Upon your return, thou shalt accompany me into the city this holy night, where I shall preach to twelve learned men whom my disciple, Luke, will have gathered to hear me.” Luke was the Confederation’s powerful Senator Maxim. Sally had begun to have her doubts about Jimmy’s ministry of late, and she was beginning to fear him. He had not yet come out and said to anyone, even her, that he thought he was the Messiah, but he had started acting like it, and many of his followers had started talking as if the Second Coming was already upon them. Worst of all, the daymares, the frightening visions, had started occurring with much more frequency and vividness. The faces of her tormentors in those visions were becoming clearer, and she was horrified that they were the visages of the devils

whom men called “Skinks,” the creatures that had ravaged her home world. In her visions, they were not angels, and they were hurting her, putting things into her, doing terrible things to her. She was terrified that one day the visions would not go away and she would find herself sucked down into the bowels of hell.

“Then I shall prepare, master.” She bowed in resignation. Jimmy said nothing, just stood, regarding her with a beatific, allknowing smile. She turned and rapidly left the room, leaving Jimmy staring after her. Her heart skipped a beat. She realized that he knew what was happening to her, knew what the visions meant, knew everything about her. He knew that her faith in him was slipping as if it had been foreordained. Getting into the landcar the Ministry of Justice had sent to convey Sally to her interview was like breathing fresh air. She sat back and closed her eyes as she was driven away from the villa. The farther she got from Jimmy Jasper the better she felt. She looked about her as they entered Fargo, at the soaring buildings, the crowds teeming in the streets, all the brightly lit shops and stores, the happy crowds vibrant with life. Clearly, it was not the Sodom Jimmy kept calling it; Fargo was a great metropolis, a thriving, dynamic city full of normal human beings going about their normal human business, enjoying the fruits of their honest labor. Sally covered her face with a hand. What is happening to me? she asked herself. What has happened to me? Why am I being punished like this? Back on Kingdom, in the small town where she’d been raised, where she’d spent her whole life until she had been taken, Sally Consolador had been a happy, carefree girl, a believer, yes, but not a zealot. She wept silently behind her hand.

Ministry of Justice

Passing through the biomedical scanner proved to be a simple, noninvasive process. Sally was asked to place her hand on a pad, look into a camera, and state her name. She then stepped into a very ordinary-looking doorway, was asked to stand still for a moment, and then a smiling female guard walked around the barrier, gave her a visitor’s pass, and escorted her through the corridors of the Ministry of Justice to Huygens Long’s office. Two men rose to greet her as she was ushered in. “Good morning, Miss Consolador,” a man with a heavy paunch greeted her, coming forward to take her hand. “I am Huygens Long, the attorney general. Call me Hugh. Please have a seat. This gentleman here is Dr. Jeroboam; we all call him J.B. because nobody can pronounce his name correctly.” The fat man chuckled. He had pleasant laugh lines around his eyes and his hand was warm and dry and held hers firmly, reassuringly.

“I am very pleased to meet you, miss,” J.B. said. He gently brushed his lips across the back of Sally’s hand. He had long, tapering fingers with big knuckles, the hands of a man who used them in his work. He held her hand gently, like a precious porcelain. His lips brushed its back ever so lightly. To her he seemed an elegant, old-fashioned gentleman, and she found herself enormously flattered.

“Are you any relation to the king who caused Israel to sin?”

Sally blurted the question out inadvertently and then grinned as her face turned red with embarrassment at her forwardness. She surprised herself with the remark because it was the first attempt at humor she had made since returning from—them. Jeroboam started and looked intently at Sally for a moment, then he too smiled. “In First Kings, somewhere, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir, 1 Kings 14:16. ‘And he shall give Israel up because of the sins of Jeroboam, who did sin, and who made Israel to sin.’ ”

“You do know your Bible.” J.B. smiled. “Please have a seat.”

“Refreshments, Miss Consolador?” Long asked, rhetorically because he’d already ordered coffee. “You do drink coffee, miss?”

“No! Oh, yes! Yes, I would like some, sir.”

They sat around a low coffee table in comfortable chairs, almost like friends having a chat. They talked for over an hour.

The longer she sat there the more comfortable Sally Consolador grew in their presence. It was the first time since leaving Kingdom that she had felt such ease and pleasure in talking, even though they kept asking her questions about her abduction. She tried, unsuccessfully, to skirt around the visions she’d been having, but both Long and Dr. Jeroboam sensed her resistance. At one point they were interrupted by an aide who laid a computer printout on Mr. Long’s desk. He glanced at it and smiled at Sally. “Are you ready for a refill?” Long gestured at Sally’s coffee cup.

“Oh, yes, sir!” She had almost forgotten how wonderful a good cup of coffee could be. Jimmy Jasper hated drugs of all kinds. “Your body is the Lord’s temple,” he would thunder during a sermon, “and it is a sin to defile it with man’s evil concoctions!” She realized suddenly how silly that prohibition was. They engaged in small talk for a while after the supposed object of the meeting, the Skink abduction, had been covered. Sally noticed, idly, that neither man had bothered to take any notes of the conversation. But she liked talking about her family and friends back on Kingdom. She hadn’t thought of them in a long time. At last Dr. Jeroboam stood up. “Well, Miss Consolador, we want to thank you for coming to see us and being so cooperative.”

“You have been a great help to us, miss,” Long said, coming around the coffee table to give her his hand. He helped her to her feet. A guard appeared silently at the door to escort her out of the building. “Please have a safe trip back to Senator Maxim’s villa, and feel free to visit us here again anytime.”

Sally felt like yelling, No! Keep me here! Help me! I do not want to go back there! but she could not. “Thank you, sirs,”

she said instead, and let herself be led out of the room.

“Whew!” J.B. said. “That girl is desperate, AG. We should have kept her here for her own good. I shudder to think of that poor girl returning to Jasper’s clutches.”

“Not ready to do that yet, J.B. Here are the lab analyses. Compare Consolador’s with Jasper’s. Oh, she has the thyroid grafts, just like he does, but look at this blood serum analysis.”

Jeroboam glanced at the printouts briefly and whistled. “The level of that stuff in his blood is 240 milligrams per milliliter. Hers is—holy jumpin’ Jehosephat—40 milligrams! The stuff is wearing off on her!”

“Right. Come on, J.B. We’re getting all this stuff together and we’re going to see the president. I’m going to get her to agree to get one of the justices to issue us a warrant for the arrest of Mr. Reverend Jimmy Jasper.”

Sally Consolador wept quietly all the way back to Senator Maxim’s villa.

SIXTEEN

Marine House, Sky City, Haulover Since the dawn of professional standing armies, seasoned noncommissioned officers have found it necessary to take newly commissioned officers aside and teach them how to be good officers. That’s because, no matter how well educated or trained a new officer is, he lacks the experience to put his education or training to its best use. High among such “best uses” is the art of dealing with people, commonly called “people skills.” The Confederation Marine Corps didn’t have that problem because all of its officers were commissioned from the ranks, most new ensigns being elevated from the ranks of sergeants and staff sergeants, and already had the requisite “people skills.”

Usually.

But there was the occasional exception. And Sergeant Kindy and Sergeant Williams were of the opinion that Ensign Daly had become such an exception. So when they returned to their quarters in the capital to plan their next steps, the two squad leaders took Ensign Daly aside.

“Don’t you think you’re overdoing it a bit, boss?” Kindy asked.

“What do you mean?” Daly asked.

“You virtually accused Miner of being responsible for the raids,” Kindy said. “That’s pretty damn harsh. Especially when we don’t have a bit of evidence.”

“I think the son of a bitch is behind them, and that’s why he’s stonewalling us. So I’m on his case. What?” The last word was directed at Williams when the latter smiled and shook his head.

“You do have a reputation, sir,” Williams said.

“Reputation?” Daly demanded. “What are you talking about?”

Kindy leaned close and stuck his face in Daly’s. “What he means is, you’ve got a rep as one arrogant SOB, that’s what.”

“Arrogant! I’m not—”

Kindy stepped in even closer. “I was with you for a long time when you were my squad leader, sir. Take my word for it, you are arrogant.” He pulled back slightly. “Hell’s bells, we’re all—all of us Force Recon Marines—we’re all arrogant. We damn well earn the right to our arrogance just by being what we are! But you, Mr. Daly, you have always been a little more arrogant than the rest of us. And you’ve gotten worse since you became a damn ossifer!”