Ukiah - Alien Taste Part 17

The mouse skittered loudly in the stillness.

So this is what it meant not be human. It was pretty bad when your own kind could creep you out.

After wandering about the house trying to decide where would be the best place to experiment with the blood mouse, Ukiah decided on his bathroom. The last mouse had vanished without a trace. Until he figured out what he was supposed to do with this one, he would have to be careful with it. The bathroom was small, had only the toilet to hide behind, had no small holes through which the mouse could bolt if it got loose, and the door closed tight to the floor.Ukiah lifted one edge of the red plastic lid and peered into the coffee can. In the slant of light, the mouse looked back at him warily. It looked like the mouse he had found in Schenley Park, black-furred and black-eyed. The feeling was completely different. Before, it had been as if he had found something fragile that was lost. This mouse was going to hurt him if it could.

He closed the lid and considered the problem. How did one use a mouse? He thought blood had been tricky. He set the can into the center of the bathtub and went to flop onto his bed.

Obviously, the Pack and the Ontongard had a strange cell structure when compared to humans.

Humans did the normal bleeding/bled routine and that was the end of it. The blood of the Pack, though, seemed to be able to survive being removed from the body. There was Janet Haze and her organ ferrets.

There was Rennie's blood mouse. His thoughts went back to the mouse he found in Schenley Park, the way it had come fearlessly to him, as if it were his.

Realization hit him and he slapped a hand over his eyes. It was mine.

He had found it where his blood had soaked into the ground. Not as neat a container as a coffee can, but the results had been the same. How many mice had he left scattered behind unnoticed before? Not many, surely, or there would be more holes in his memories. Certainly his lost memories of Crazy Joe Gary still skittered about the cabin in West Virginia. Thinking back, he could remember the surprising lack of blood on the floor when he came to, the small frightened bodies scurrying from hiding place to hiding place.

But there had been his maddening hunger that led to the grisly find in the refrigerator, his battle to resist the roasted leg of Boy Scout, and the welcomed arrival of the paramedics. He had paid no attention to his scared, lost memories, never gone back to recover them.

But what about the thousands of cuts, sc.r.a.pes, and punctures he'd gotten over the years? He had no other memory loss. Why? Maybe the amount of blood mattered-usually he only bled a small amount.

Ukiah took out his Swiss army knife and made a shallow slice across his thumb. A pale slit of pain showed on the pad of flesh. Blood seeped up, coloring the line to crimson. He stared, making no move to blot away the blood, rub it away, lick it away, bandage it out of sight, or his favorite-just plain ignoring it until it wasn't a problem. This time he would watch.

The blood flowed, stopped-then slowly seeped back into his flesh where it laid. It took minutes to complete, but in the end there was no sign of the cut except a thin scab he knew would be gone by morning.

From his bathroom came the sound of small claws on metal, amplified by the porcelain bowl of the bathtub. If the mouse Rennie gave him was a holder of memories, then it would explain the reappearance of Ukiah's lost memories after he found the Schenley Park mouse.

Obviously Ukiah used his memory mouse, but how? Last he remembered, it had been in his pocket, and then it was gone. He had already scanned through the morning and then the afternoon of that day.

When he tried before, he hadn't bothered checking his sleep memories. They were fuzzy things, mostly of sound, smell, and touch. Occasionally he used sleep memories with books on ca.s.sette tapes, but otherwise found them useless. He focused on the long nap in the quiet house. Sure enough, there had been a stirring in his pocket followed by tiny feet running across his bare chest to rest in the hollow of his neck. A warm wetness developed there and then vanished completely.

So, one made flesh-on-flesh contact with the memory and it became part of you. Ukiah remembered the hostile look of the Pack memory. Yeah, sure.

It would be easiest to kill it and then hold it. He remembered the carefully created air holes in the coffee can's lid. No. It probably wouldn't work if it was dead.

He went back to the bathroom, closed the door tight, and peeled the lid off the coffee can. The black mouse glared up at him. Reaching into the can with both hands, he trapped the mouse between his palms and lifted it up.

It bit him. The pain was so sharp and unexpected that he almost flung the mouse away. He controlled the reaction and pressed his hands together tighter. The tiny body struggled frantically, tearingand biting with its small razor teeth. He could feel his own blood, hot and sticky, pouring out between his palms. He tried to stop the biting by pressing his palms together even tighter, but this made the mouse scream in a thin, terrified wail.

I hate this! I hate this! I can't do this!

He opened his hands to release the mouse, and it was gone. There were tiny mouse droppings, deep tiny bites, and his own blood covering his palms. No mouse. It worked! Maybe. He had the mouse in him. When could he access the Pack memories it contained? It hadn't been until the next day he had noticed the return of his own memories.

He debated about was.h.i.+ng his hands. What if the memory was just a coating at the moment, a bacterial and germ layer that needed to work in? It was a sure sign, he thought suddenly, of how civilized he had become-worried about blood on his hands. He rinsed them lightly as a compromise and threw himself into bed. He realized that he should call Indigo and- ***

-Is this Prime's monster? Rennie crouched among the trees, training his field gla.s.ses on the two private investigators standing beside the tan Hummer. He's just a kid. He doesn't look any more than sixteen. Why does he look so young?

Another question was, how did he get to Pittsburgh? All the paperwork on the boy started suddenly three years ago, all originating from Pittsburgh. It was as if he had materialized here. Had the Ontongard been involved?

Rennie shook his head. If the Ontongard had brought the boy to Pittsburgh, they would have him locked away, not left him running free with this private detective. Rennie watched as the man patted the boy on the back, gave the kid a smile, and got a grin back. The next-of-kin listing took on new meaning. The two were close. Oh d.a.m.n, this seemed so simple.

Rennie focused on the boy, trying to quell the rising doubt. He's Pack. I can feel him from here.

There was even a certain facial resemblance. He had h.e.l.lena's eyes; same shape, same color. He had the straight black hair common among the Pack. Bear's nose. Rennie's own mouth. It was as if he was the blend of all the Pack members, but Rennie knew it was actually the opposite, it was his traits spread through the Pack. No, not his, Prime's.

Rennie watched them walk up the front steps of the new Ontongard's house. He'd been inside and found it a poor ambush site. They would have to wait until the detectives made their way into the park, following the trail of the kidnapped FBI agent. He signaled the others into the park, then checked his shotgun.

This is going to be a b.i.t.c.h. I'm going to sit around the den for days wondering if I took out a child instead of a monster, that I'm becoming like the Ontongard, that somewhere I lost all the humanity that I had left. He gritted his teeth against the inner doubt. Come on, Rennie, don't start this.

Coyote changed you, but you're still human at heart. You know what Prime's child could do to this world.

Rennie glanced back to the house one last time and immediately wished he hadn't. The two had paused on the stoop, letting the FBI agent enter first. The man had his hand on the boy's shoulder, telling him something of importance. The boy nodded occasionally-silent, attentive, respectful. The speech reached its end. The boy gave his bright easy smile again. The man cuffed him and into the house they went.

Yeah, yeah. Facts don't change though. He looks like a good kid, and I'm going to kill him without even making sure he's the monster we think he is- ***

Ukiah found his own eyes and looked through them instead of Rennie's. His head was pounding, and he was half slumped over the edge of his bed. The room lurched and started to slowly spin. Somethingheaved and fought against his stomach muscles, trying hard to expel his stomach contents up the wrong way. He tried to stand, fell instead to the floor. Gagging in the effort to control his bile, he crawled on all fours to the bathroom. Somehow he made the toilet before he started to vomit. There wasn't much in his stomach to bring up. After the initial rush, he hunched over the bowl, dry heaving as if his gut was trying to leap out of his mouth. Finally the heaving stopped and he laid his head on the heavenly cool rim of the bowl.

Oh G.o.d, what have I done to myself? I should do something, get someone- ***

"-made it, Mary, I almost made it." Rennie whispered, his voice in tatters after hours of shouting.

He had called for a surgeon at first, then for help in getting the dead horse from his legs, then just for water.

"My time is up. I could have come home. Oh, Mary, why'd I leave you and Danny? A boy needs his father."

There was movement in the moonlight. He fell silent, peering into the slants of shadow and silver light.

"Is someone there?" He forced the shout out, each word feeling like a steel rasp against his throat.

He coughed in pain but cried out again. "Please, please help me."

A man drifted in and out of the shadows, his footsteps silent, his eyes gleaming like a dog's at night.

He went barefooted, with Confederate pants, a white unders.h.i.+rt, and a long Union officer's coat. He came to crouch across the dead horse to gaze at Rennie. "You want my help?"

Rennie flinched back in fear then controlled it. Think of Mary, Mary and Danny. He had to wet his mouth twice before managing, "Yes. Please."

The strange man tilted his head back and forth, considering the ma.s.sive damage to Rennie's body.

"What I have to offer might kill you, might not. I vowed I'll never be like them, twist and shape flesh to my needs, but I'm lonely."

The man threw back his head and howled, a deep-chest wolf howl that lifted all of Rennie's hair on end. He had had an uncle that could do what the family thought was a good wolf howl. It frightened all the children. It was a pale, thin thing compared to this-this sound of misery.

"I should be running with litter mates, aunts and uncles, cubs all around and underfoot. I should be running with my mate, watching her grow fat with our cubs. We would howl together and sleep in the suns.h.i.+ne, our bellies full, and our noses tucked under our tails. I shouldn't be here, running alone, hiding from evil among the dead of the petty brothers. I d.a.m.n Prime for what he did to me, as you will d.a.m.n me if you take my help."

"Please," Rennie whispered. "I beg you."

The man moved forward on all fours, flowing over the dead horse until his face almost touched Rennie's. "Don't beg. Not for this. This is something to be feared. Say yes, and I'll curse you with my help.

Say no, and I'll end your misery with your own weapon."

"Yes, I want your help."

The man crouched there, his gleaming dog-eyes bright, and finally he nodded. The man undid a canteen and held it to Rennie's lips, letting him drink all he could. Food followed, obviously stolen from the dead. When Rennie had eaten and drunk, the man pulled out a slender gla.s.s tube with a long needle at the end. He stripped off the coat, tied a tourniquet around his upper arm, and then slid the needle into his arm.

The gla.s.s tube filled with blood. The man put the tube in his mouth, clenching it between his teeth as he untied the tourniquet from his own arm and tightened it around Rennie's.

"Make a fist," the stranger commanded. After Rennie complied, the man sat still, looking down at the wounded soldier with unreadable eyes.

"I don't want to die.""Someday you might."

"I'm only twenty-three. I want to live to see my son grow up. I want to live to see my grandchildren and their children. I want to live to see the next century. I don't want to die for a long long time."

"If you survive tonight," The needle slid home, "you won't."

The one known as Prime knew he was going to die. The sled's engine screamed under full throttle, but still Hex gained. Somehow he had been discovered. During his childhood, his training, and the long s.p.a.ce flight to this planet, he pretended to be part of the collective mind. He kept hidden that he could stand apart, could see the evil of his father's race, could hate it with a pa.s.sion, and could conceive and carry out acts of sabotage.

Yet Hex now knew the truth. Prime couldn't remember how. All his recent memories had holes burned through them with the laser rifle. He had gotten away, but the sled's display showed that Hex would catch him soon. Any tactics he had were tattered, almost beyond even recalling them. What had he planned to do? Had he succeeded?

He remembered suddenly that he had helped to create a breeder, almost turned back, and then recalled that he left a bomb on the scout s.h.i.+p to kill the native female and the unborn child. Had it gone off?

Had Hex stopped the bomb's countdown?

The only thing certain was he was going to die. He was unarmed and Hex had the laser rifle. He scanned the sled, hoping for any chance to prolong his battle. In a bin beside the seat was a delivery pistol and two score darts, needing only genetic material to make them complete. He nearly tossed them aside as useless. The laser rifle had twice the range. The damage from the darts was easily healed.

Then he stopped, stared at it, sick at the very idea even as he recognized it as his only hope.

He could inject random native life forms with his genetic materials. True they would most likely die than be converted, thus the whole need for a breeder. But if he could make just one Get, Hex could never track it down, not lost among the thousand other creatures in the area.

He had promised himself he'd never sp.a.w.n himself onto another creature, destroy a viable life to proliferate his own. But if he died, who would stop Hex?

Hating himself, he filled the darts with his blood. He scanned for the natives that Hex had found to impregnate with the breeder, but his luck failed him. All he could find was a pack of four-legged predators, gathered around a kill. Hex was only minutes behind. They would have to do.

Coyote ran, ran howling. Death was in the air. It tore the air. It screamed like hawks. It stung like bees. It was death. Run. Run. Lay panting. Lick the wound. Death was all around. Sick here. Dying there.

Death in his stomach, heaving up. The pack was dead. Mourn, mourn the pack!

Rennie reached out and touched h.e.l.lena and pa.s.sed her the message of: We can't all move in, or he'll sense us coming. Let me get close, nail him once good, and then you can move in to hold off the others.

She nodded and replied: The sooner we finish, the happier I'll be. This slas.h.i.+ng our own makes me feel like Ontongard.

Me too, he admitted and broke the contact.

He stalked forward silently. He almost made it, but he'd gotten too focused, and the FBI agent's sudden gasp caught him off guard. Instinctively he turned, aiming the shotgun, and pulling the trigger. Even as the shotgun went off, he swore at himself. She wasn't to be hurt if possible.But the kid took the bullet. He had been moving even as Rennie aimed, and the blast caught him square in the chest. It tumbled him away and Rennie followed, working the next cartridge into the chamber.

There! He had started the killing. Now to make it as quick and as painless as possible. The boy was on his hands and knees, possibly with broken ribs, gasping for breath. Rennie sensed the boy reading him, and saw the knowledge of the execution register in the kid's eyes.

Rennie aimed the shotgun again, hating himself. Since the kid had on a flak jacket, it was going to have to be a head shot, right into those eyes that looked like h.e.l.lena's, that smile that had flashed so easily just two minutes before. To save Earth, he told himself, to save all the worlds beyond.

The partner was suddenly behind him, with a pistol pressed against Rennie's head. "Drop it! Drop it or I'll blow your brains out."

But the kid knew they had come to kill him. It was plain to the Pack that he knew and that it terrified him, even as he begged his partner to back down. The boy raised dark eyes to Rennie, and mentally pleaded. Don't tell him the truth. Let him believe me. Don't let him force you into killing him.

Did the boy know that he was truly speaking to them? Was this a ploy? To what end, except to save the man's life? He asked nothing for himself, seemed to expect nothing for himself. Rennie stood staring down at the kid, unsure if the boy was as n.o.ble as he seemed, or if he was only very skillful at manipulation.

The pistol to Rennie's head dropped, and a moment later they had the partner stripped and neutralized. The kid was still on the ground, his breathing coming easier now, but the subsonic messages of terror still vibrated up and down the Pack's spine. Rennie could hear the Pack's confusion. This is the monster? This cub? This has to be one of our lost Get, not the monster.

Bear, of course, pushed the issue to a head. "He's the one, isn't he?"

How am I to know? he snapped at Bear then shrugged. The smell of blood was coming from the kid. Rennie got him up, the flak jacket open, and wet his fingertips in the kid's blood.

Testing blood from an Ontongard was like sticking a thistle into your mouth. Pack blood tasted like p.i.s.s and vinegar, bearable, but it bristled and complained at being sampled. Rennie expected something worse than a thistle. A monster should taste nasty. The sharpness of the Pack was in the kid's blood, but it was mellowed, blended, softened. Unlike the jagged broken jumble of DNA that was the Pack's signature, the kid's DNA was a seamless work of art. Human and alien interlocked perfectly. There was no doubt; he was made by an ovipositor.

"He's the one."

Rennie licked the blood from his lips, remembering suddenly the raven-haired girl that was the kid's mother. It explained the boy's good looks and dark eyes regarding Rennie with the same fear as the boy's mother. Have we focused so much on the father that we missed the influence of the mother?

Rennie tasted again the perfect blend of human and alien, and checked the boy's maturity. While not a man, the kid was past p.u.b.erty, a teenager, able to breed, probably able for countless years. If he was the breeding monster they thought of him as, where were the children? All the files and records claimed he was just barely legal age, an upstanding citizen with no rape charges, no paternity suits, no garnered wages to support an unwed mother, no wife, no charges on his credit card to even indicate a girlfriend. How could he be the monster unstoppable breeder if he didn't even have s.e.x?

Coyote had found Rennie dying on the battlefield. Coyote had made him an undying slave, who could be controlled like a puppet on its master's whim. Coyote had sent him out to kill a monster, and he had gone willing. But if Rennie wanted to keep hold of his sliver of humanity, he couldn't do this.

Prime stood in the doorway, eyeing the machine that was contained in the room, that took up the room, was the room. He wished he could just smash it.Just one! Just one of the hated father race born on this machine could take over this world. All of its seed would be viable. It would spread itself into the native livestock, reproducing hundreds and thousands of times a year. Within its life span it would replace everything that lived. Slower by far than the invasion force Prime had already stopped, but inevitable.

But he couldn't- -blackness, lost memories- Prime was running. He had the key programmed and he merely had to hit the row's master lock as he went. Over his link he could hear the countdown for the launch of the scout s.h.i.+p: 88, 89. He slotted the key, waited for the confirm, jerked out the key and ran to the next master lock: 90, 91. He had to get them all: 92. He tripped, almost fell and caught himself on the #1 sleeping unit. The Ontongard inside lay waiting for its wakeup call on the new world. Prime glanced down the row, stretching into dimness. Eight more.

He- -blackness, lost memories- -he finished the security hack. Turning, he took the impregnation tip out of stasis. Hex's genetic sample floated inside. He slotted the tip into the disposal and flushed it clean. Hurriedly, he flipped it over, jabbed the extractor into his arm vein, wincing at the sharp pain. Once the tip was full, he quickly replaced it into stasis and backtracked through the security hack. He'd have a minute to clear the room, and then security would be reestablished, his visit neatly deleted.

It was a horrible waste of time. He probably would be finished before Hex found a suitable life form, captured an intact female, and brought her back to the scout s.h.i.+p. Even if he wasn't, there would be many chances to kill Hex's fetus before it was born. But he had to plan for the worst case. If things went wrong, a child might be born and let loose on the world. So he used his own mutated genetic material. If everything went wrong, then maybe the child would be a rebel like his father.

But Prime doubted it. The Ovipositor would probably weed out his mutation, reverting his child to what he would have been-one of them. Back on the bridge, he- -blackness, lost memories- "-look at what they were defending themselves with." Hex hooted with laughter, holding out short wooden shafts with tips of stone. "I couldn't get the setting right on the stunner and killed most of them, and the rest were male. I got only one female, but that's all we need for now."

The female seemed small, light-boned, motionless, like a bird killed on the wing. Her hair was long and black, glossy under the s.h.i.+p's lights. Her eyes were half open, exposing an exotic eye of white outer ring and a center nearly as black as Prime's. In proportion and shape, she was not much different than his mother's race. Perhaps this was why he found her weirdly beautiful.

So this will be the mother of my child, he thought, then caught himself. He must not let his guard slip around Hex. One stray thought, caught and noticed by Hex, would spell the doom to- -blackness, lost memories- Hex swung the Ovipositor over the struggling female. "Stun her again or I won't be able to do the insert."

Prime raised the stunner, thought about upping the power to "accidentally" kill the woman, then realized he still needed Hex busy with this. I'm so sorry, little female.