In space, so they say, no one can hear
you scream. That's clearly not true under-water, thought Lieutenant
Benjamin Talbot III as he examined the comm unit inside the helmet that a
moment ago had been locked onto his armored suit. He made a mental note to
advise the techies to increase the amplitude compression in the units so
that an aquanaut would be less -- what was the proper word? “Distracted”
wasn't quite right -- by the decibel level of a comrade's piercing scream
as his helmet imploded from an alien weapon strike.
Talbot breathed deeply for the first time
since removing his helmet. The air in the Triton flying sub was laced with
the distinct metallic smell that always followed the release of the
compressed air that had not yet finished pushing the salt water back into
the surrounding depths. Mixed with the scent of the air was the briny odor
of the sea, the plastic aroma of his aqua armor and the perfume of his own
perspiration. As Talbot pushed back his hair, he realized it was soaking
wet. Evidence of what? His exertion? Or his fear?
His squad (“his” because Lieutenant Talbot was the ranking aquanaut in the
group) had just completed a successful recovery of a small alien sub.
Success was measured by the fact that no aliens were left behind and that
the Triton would be bringing back sufficient booty to be sold on the black
market to help pay the bills in a world where you could never know when a
funding country might reduce its support or drop out altogether after
signing a treaty with the aliens.
The fact that forty percent of the squad had been decimated in the raid
did not diminish the action's “success” in the collective mind of X-COM's
administration. There were always fresh recruits to replace the blood
spilled on the ocean floor.
Grimly, the Lieutenant reminded himself that he shared responsibility for
whatever heartlessness he blamed on the administration. Like a good
officer, he followed standard operating procedure, which entailed, among
other things, sending the least prepared-and most expendable-rookie seamen
in advance of the squad to scout and draw enemy fire.
And despite their visible fear, these rookies obeyed his orders willingly,
almost lovingly, eager to be heroes. Perhaps each expected a ticker-tape
parade down Broadway in his honor when he returned victoriously, or at the
very least a statue in a small park in his home town to commemorate the
life that he had sacrificed for his species. Talbot himself had no need to
be a hero. There was enough of that in his family history to last for
generations.
Talbot's personal contribution to the success of the mission was the
capture of a live “Deep One,” as the haunting creatures had come to be
known. To his knowledge, no live Deep One had yet been brought back to
base for interrogation.
Interrogations of live aliens invariably produced valuable information. In
the endless juggling of resources peculiar to an underfunded organization
like X-COM, space in the alien containment facilities was limited. When an
interrogation was completed, a unit of space was magically freed up for
the arrival of other prisoners. Talbot often wondered, but never asked,
what methods were used to make an alien talk and what happened to the
alien after he had no more data to divulge.
His Deep One was now in a stunned state, packed horizontally in the
Triton's small alien containment facility together with the corpses of
several of the Tasoth, the yellowish lizard-like species that had earned
the nickname “San Diego Chicken.” He didn't understand the reference, and
nobody was able to explain it to him either, but the moniker had stuck.
Talbot studied the Deep One's visage, and found its face to be completely
opaque to his probing. Usually, the soul of a being is found through its
eyes, thought Talbot, but with this being, he could find no soul. Nor had
he seen any spark of a soul when he first had encountered the Deep One,
waiting for him in ambush around the corner of a steep coral escarpment
rising in the gloom of the deep.
It had been almost too easy. A brilliantly bright incendiary blast from
another corner of the battlefield had cast the Deep One's shadow in the
sand, revealing his location. Talbot hefted his gas cannon, loaded with
armor piercing bolts, turned the corner and fired swiftly at the waiting
alien, who had either been too distracted by the previous blast to pay
attention to his station or simply did not have the reflexes to match
Talbot's.
In the moment before he had fired, Talbot had gazed into the face of his
quarry, searching for the eyes, and he saw-nothing. His shot knocked the
alien lifeless to the sand. Reaching down to pick the booty off the body,
Talbot realized that the creature had not died. That was an unexpected but
welcome accident. He hefted the Deep One into his backpack and headed back
towards the Triton.
Now, back at the Triton awaiting liftoff, the lieutenant glanced at each
surviving member of his squad, all of whom appeared to be at least as
exhausted as himself. In these moments, silence was always the unwritten
rule, as each aquanaut privately flushed the adrenaline from his or her
blood, quenched internal fires of emotion and invariably lapsed into sleep
for the ride back to base. Zander, predictably, was already snoring.
The pneumatic pumps became silent as the last of the brine was pushed back
into the depths. Seconds later, the Triton's engines awakened with a deep
thrumming, and immediately the flying sub lifted off bottom, inclining
steeply towards the surface. It was not long before the vehicle was
airborne, heading back to South Atlantic Base.
For the four hundredth time, Talbot asked himself how he had gotten
himself in this position. The answer was always the same. Destiny and
genes. All of his life pointed him to this circumstance, as well as the
lives of those in his family before him.
Some people believe that destiny is written in a mysterious book in which
some guiding force enters all the events that have happened and are yet to
be. Talbot had a different view. He suspected that destiny was written
down in each soul's genetic code, hidden in some bend or spiral in a way
which no human cryptographer would ever decipher.
It was natural for Talbot to think in these terms, for he was trained to
think in terms of genes. His expertise, when he wasn't fighting aliens,
was in transgenetics, the science of splicing and dicing genes, combining
them in new ways to discover the effects of the combinations. This was a
respected science that owed its roots to the late twentieth century, when
scientists first grafted human growth hormone into mice to create a “super
mouse.”
Talbot smiled as he recalled the graduation party thrown for him by his
parents after he had earned his Ph.D. They had bought him a snappy red
convertible sportster to celebrate the end of his studies and the
commencement of his days as a productive member of human society. A
buffoonish friend of his father had cornered him in the den, punctuating
his words with a smelly cigar. He said, “Benjamin. I have one word for
you: Plastics!” At the time, Benjamin Talbot had politely listened,
without bothering to tell the plastics industrialist that seven
pharmaceutical firms were in a bidding war for his loyalties.
His smile erupted into an involuntary chuckle as he fondly stroked the
plastic of his armored suit. The old geezer probably had a requirements
contract with X-COM to supply the organization with all its plastic
aqua-armor. The morbid in-joke about the plastic suits was that they
actually made the standard issue medi-kits more effective, not because
they improved the healing properties of the kits but because the medi-kits
were useless to revive a dead, unarmored aquanaut.
If only the weapons we had were better, Talbot thought. In the last alien
war (AW I, as it was now called, to distinguish it from the present AW
II), scientists had copied from captured alien weapons the wonderfully
effective plasma weapons and the devastating blaster bomb launcher. Today,
all of these were outlawed. What had not been known at the time of AW I
was how severely damaging Elerium-based weapons were to the environment
and to the health of the general population. The lawsuits from the X-COM
veterans and their families as well as from the general public brought
about a tremendous expense that had never been budgeted by X-COM or its
benfactors. Elerium and Elerium-based weapons were banned throughout the
world. AW II would have to be fought with environmentally safe weapons.
What frustrated Talbot more than his unhappiness with the weaponry was the
fact that this new new breed of aliens was completely immune to mind
control. The tide of AW I turned in favor of the humans only when
scientists developed the ability to train soldiers to amplify and focus
their brain power for the purpose of causing an alien to panic or to obey
the commands of the controller.
With the close of AW I, the science of mind control continued, and schools
in the mental martial arts stole big business away from from the dojos of
the traditional martial arts. Talbot himself held a third degree black
belt in mind control, but his skills were useless against an enemy that
did not have a mind, as a mind is normally understood.
These aliens, the scientists were beginning to understand, were not normal
races of beings. Discovery after discovery was leading the scientists to
come to the conclusion that most if not all of these aliens were
half-breeds, clones, grafts and mutations, some based on captured human
stock. Talbot understood much about the science required to perform such
magic. He wondered how the war would fare if the humans had a mutation
technology of their own.
In creating these abominations, the alien powers-that-be had no concern
with allowing the being to retain a mind. All that was important was to
create a fighting machine that would kill well and obey its superiors
through some as-yet undiscovered method of communication.
There had to be a way to find something comparable to mind control. If
that did not happen, Talbot believed that the human race would ultimately
lose this war. He stole a glance at his Deep One guest. Perhaps
interrogation of this soulless devil would offer up a clue.
Unavoidably, the weight of Talbot's eyelids overcame the waning strength
of the muscles to which they were attached. He chose not to fight, leaned
his head back against the cold metal of the Triton's wall and dreamt a
dream that knew quite well.
He was his grandmother, famous Helen White, hero of AW I, 40 years ago.
The first act of the dream always took place in what he knew to be China
Base, a backwater installation serving more as a radar post than for
combat purposes. Helen (or Benjamin -- the faces kept switching in the
dream) was one of three untested rookies at the base. The base was under
attack by Sectoids armed with heavy plasma and blaster launchers. The
three rookies had laughable laser rifles in comparison. They feared their
imminent death.
The dream turned to a flurry of violent activity, with emotions and fears
twisting within the dreamer to accompany the action displayed on his
internal movie screen of sleep. One of the rookies succumbed to panic,
leaving the battle screaming. The remaining two battled frantically, and
with remarkable tactics picked off Sectoid after Sectoid. When the battle
was apparently over, there was still a hint of hidden movement, but the
panicked soldier who was now just recovering his wits caught the remaining
Sectoid wandering the halls of the base.
The dream dissolved into Act Two, the final raid on Cydonia. The
mind-controlled mental weakling from China Base had been transferred to
administration and as a welcome favor to an old, dear friend arranged for
Helen's transfer to the away team. She was warmly welcomed by her new
comrades. Her actions in China had already become legend among the X-COM
soldiers. She was a grunt's hero.
In the Cydonia alien base, Helen/Benjamin was assigned to guard the PSI-team
and to relay to them coordinates of sighted aliens for their mind control
attacks. The mission was going easily. The squad was advancing
methodically in search of the alien mastermind. Their combined skills were
too much for the aliens. The aliens never got off a shot as they were
successively sighted, mind controlled, and then turned into “doggies,” the
name the soldiers gave to mind-controlled aliens kept on an invisible
leash to be walked down dark corridors as combination scout and cannon
fodder.
As the advance crew drew near to the triumphant conclusion of the mission,
Helen heard a deafening explosion. Then a frantic plea was radioed to her
directly from Commander Yakubik: “Blaster bomb just caught two in the
corridor around the bend. Best guess is we screwed up and didn't unearth
all aliens in your sector, Sergeant. Whatever it is may be coming your
way. Get it!”
Helen/Benjamin set her heavy plasma on auto-shot, and, after acknowledging
the good luck gestures of the eggheads she was supposed to be guarding,
headed in search of unknown quarry.
It didn't take long. It was the smoky trail from the blaster launcher
missile that lead her to her prey. There was the Ethereal in a corner
behind a bulky alien fixture, his blaster launcher still smoking. You
would have to be in just the right position and pointing in just the right
direction to spot him. She could understand how the advance team had
missed him, and she forgave them.
She was close enough to see into the shadows of the Ethereal's golden
cowl, and she picked out the alien's small but expressive eyes. The alien
made no move to defend itself. Maybe its launcher was jammed, maybe it had
no more ammunition. In its eyes and posture, Helen/Benjamin saw an
attitude of relaxed acceptance. She fired, and the first of the three
auto-shots found its mark.
She paused over the corpse and examined the blaster launcher. It was fully
loaded and completely operational. She wondered why it happened this way,
and she had no answer.
“Got it, Commander,” Helen/Benjamin crowed over the telcomm unit.
“Come here, Sergeant. We have a surprise for you.” She could hear the
smile in his voice. When she arrived, she was met by two soldiers who
escorted her in a jovial manner to the access lift. At the second level, a
line of soldiers blocked her view to the interior of the great hall. All
were grinning joyously.
“We took a vote,” said the Commander, “on who would get the kill on this
one.” The line of soldiers parted to reveal the huge alien brain. “You
won.”
“With great pleasure, sir.” Without hesitation, Helen/Benjamin lifted her
heavyplasma once again. In seconds, the great alien brain was turned into
a mass of sweetbreads.
She could hardly maintain her balance from all of the heavy congratulatory
slams on the back. A warm can of beer was being passed around. She
wondered who had the audacity to smuggle a beer to Mars. Everyone was
applauding her. She was thankful that nobody thought to cut off a piece of
the brain and eat it in a demonstration of warrior's victory.
“Sergeant White,” said the Commander, “I now christen you the one and only
hero of this war,” and he proceeded to pour the few remaining drops of
warm beer over her braids. And with this action, bright lights flashed
around her, blinding her eyes. Photographers? How did the press get to
Mars?
The heavy kerchunk of the Triton's doors completed the intrusion into
Lieutenant Benjamin Talbot's dream. The lights were the bright
fluorescence of the sub pen of South Atlantic Base. The illumination was
always excruciatingly painful after being confined for hours in the dim
light of the flying sub and the murkiness of the ocean floor.
Grandma. How he had loved her. She was indeed the hero of the war, a
regular icon. The whole world loved her, but only he and his cousins could
call her Grandma.
As a child, he always believed that she loved him the best. She would
regale him with stories of her X-COM exploits, stories that had been told
and retold countless times in the press as well as in the authorized and
several unauthorized biographies. The difference for him was that she
shared her whole being with him, and with each retelling he was
transported with her to a place and time far away.
He felt quite differently about his slimeball grandfather, Benjamin
Talbot. Sr. (Of course the “Sr.” was not added until the son Benjamin
Talbot, Jr. was born and named.) Ben Talbot, Sr. was the mental weakling
from China Base who successfully wooed Grandma following the war. The two
of them made a grand, storybook couple who always remained in the eyes of
the public. They became rich.
At some point, however, an enterprising cub reporter digging into X-COM
archives discovered some inconsistencies and irregularities in
administration accounting. Benjamin Talbot, Sr. was accused of having
received kickbacks from black marketers on the sale of lucrative laser
cannons during the war. He was tried for the offense and acquitted for
lack of evidence.
The government then turned to its most stolid legal weapon, one which had
been used for decades against its targets: tax evasion. The government was
able to prove that Ben Talbot, Sr.'s net worth had increased markedly
during the war years, and he could not point to any gift, inheritance or
other reported source of income to explain the change. Unable to offer an
explanation for his increased wealth, the government proved to the
satisfaction of a jury that the famous Ben Talbot, Sr. had failed to
report massive amounts of income. He had to pay back taxes, interest, and
penalties that ran into millions of dollars, and he spent two years in
jail to boot.
Photographs from his sentencing showed the face of an unconcerned
defendant, leading Lieutenant Benjamin Talbot III to conclude that his
grandfather had gotten off with too light a sentence. For this reason, the
Lieutenant had always been uncomfortable with family money. He rejected
the offers of support for his education and went to college on a
scholarship with the Reserved Officers Training Corps. He had excelled in
his schooling and in his officer's training. His fellow ROTC cadets kidded
him that he had his father’s eyes, his mother's hands, and his
grandmother's reaction times and firing accuracy.
It was two weeks after his Ph.D. graduation party that he had been called
to honor reserve commitment. After returning the handset to its cradle, he
sat in meditation for almost an hour before the phone jangled him back to
material awareness. The caller was solicitous, but brief and direct.
The cruise ship Hyperion had sunk on its maiden voyage. There were no
survivors. His parents had been aboard. He was stunned, and had to draw
himself together sufficiently to provide some sort of brief acknowledgment
so that the caller could politely terminate the call and return to the
next name on a long list to be notified.
The decision by the aliens to sink the Hyperion in a terrorist attack as
the first announcement of their renewed presence on Earth was a
propagandist's stroke of genius. The Hyperion, the first brand-new cruise
liner built in the last ten years, ,was built in a retro-style that made
it look stunningly like the Titanic, and its owners basked in the press
that singled the ship out for its beauty as well as its functionality.
Before its maiden voyage, the owners made no attempt to debunk nickname of
the “Unsinkable Hyperion.”
The attack occurred in the middle of the Atlantic crossing, timed for the
moment that the press was providing a live feed of the Maiden Voyage Ball.
It was one of those defining moments in live television that made viewers
want to turn away in horror, but they could not. Over 1800 passengers,
crew members, and media representatives died. Millions more were scarred
by the live images of the rapidly sinking liner with those on board not
having a chance in hell of survival.
As he strode into the bright lights of the sub pen from the Triton,
Lieutenant Talbot acknowledged to himself that, like it or not,
inheritance had made him a wealthy man. He could probably buy the island
of Bermuda for himself as a refuge. He could probably turn his back on
X-COM at the first opportunity and live a safer, saner life. But he had
long ago understood that there was no refuge and no safer, saner life to
be had, so long as this new alien menace remained.
Besides, he found himself governed by one of the very strongest of human
motivations: vengeance.
''Lieutenant Talbot, sir?” An Ensign awaited recognition. Talbot glimpsed
the identification tag.
“Yes. What is it, Mr. Pulver?”
“Admiral Gunterow is here at the base to see you, sir. She ordered me to
bring you to her as soon as you disembarked.”
This piqued Talbot's interest. Why would the Admiral, commander of western
hemisphere operations, come here to see him?
“So be it. Lead the way.”
In the Admiral's chambers, Talbot stood at attention as Helga Gunterow
alternately studied him and a manila-colored file that she had open on her
desk before her. She wrinkled her nose at him.
“At ease, Lieutenant. I know I told the Ensign to bring you here
immediately, but I suppose it could have waited for you to get out of your
stinking armor and take a shower.”
Talbot shifted self-consciously, wondering how to stuff his body odor back
into his suit.
“No matter,” she said, closing the file. ''Lieutenant, I need your help.”
“Sir?”
“I don't know what to do with you.”
“I don't understand, sir.”
“I'm going to make you a proposition and let you make the decision of
where your future will lead you. You will be in charge of your own
destiny. It's a luxury that is given to few in X-COM. Come to think of it,
I don't know anybody else who has been given this kind of choice.”
Talbot waited as the Admiral studied his face further. “You do look very
much like your grandmother, you know.”
After a pause she continued, “The point is this. You are our most highly
qualified aquanaut. That is not intended as a compliment. It is a
statement of fact. You also have another potential that could be very
advantageous to X-COM and its fight against the aliens. But if we exploit
that potential, it would be completely inconsistent with your continuing
in a combat role.”
“Admiral, if I may interject?” Talbot waited for the Admiral's nod of
permission. “If it is up to me, I have no desire whatsoever to trade on my
face and my name to be a public relations specialist for X-COM. I am not
qualified to deal with either the media or with heads of state.”
“You're jumping the gun, Lieutenant. Although you pose an interesting
third alternative, that's not what I have in mind. You consider yourself
an expert 'splicer and dicer', don't you?”
“Yes, sir. You're referring to my transgenetics degree.”
“Yes, I am. You see, our scientists have determined that the aliens that
we are confronting are genetic monstrosities, pasted together by an alien
intelligence possessing a highly advanced mutation technology.”
“I am aware of this finding, Admiral.”
“Good. I thought it would be something that you would follow. Our
scientists have asked for additional staff and funding to embark on a
research effort that could deliver this mutation technology into our own
hands. This could be an extraordinary weapon in our favor. Do you
understand the thinking on this?”
“The thought has crossed my own mind more than once, Admiral.”
“My staff determined that you would be a prime candidate for the heart of
that effort. Here's the deal. You can join the research team and maybe,
just maybe, you'll hit upon a viable technology that can help us win this
war. Alternatively, you can remain on combat duty. Either way, I have a
no-lose situation: I either retain a great aquanaut or I gain a great
mind.”
“You could look at it as a no-win situation, too, Admiral. You either lose
a great aquanaut or you fail to gain a great mind.”
“Good point,” the Admiral laughed. “Will you consider it, please?” Talbot
nodded. “When do you think I can have your decision?”
“May I have an hour for a shower and meditation?”
“Certainly. Dismissed, Lieutenant.”
As he approached the door, Admiral Gunterow called to him.
“Either way you decide, you could be the hero of this war, like your
Grandmother before you. Funny how destiny works out, isn't it?”
“With all due respect, Admiral, we don't need another hero,” Talbot
responded, and he quietly shut the door behind him. |
