He had screwed women who needed to have bags over their heads. At least this one—this pretend woman—was beautiful and changed her skin and hair and eyes and always made him come like a champ. She liked him. What was so bad about that?
He would think that way until she sent him back, and then the reality would hit him and he would go into his ant farm house, throw up in his ant farm toilet, strip off the clothes that always smelled a little burnt and crawl into a corner. He would stay there, hollow-eyed and shivering as if from the most terrible nightmare, until Regina said Get up, you pig. Or something worse.
“My Jefferson?”
He was lying naked on his back on the rumpled bed. His eyes had been closed. Now he opened them to the dim candlelight. She was standing beside the bed, dressed again in her elegant gown of gold and black. Her face was a pool of shadows, but he could see her eyes glinting. Maybe he imagined it, but the pupils seemed to be blood-red. He thought that her disguise was beginning to melt.
“For you we have a task,” she said.
He lay still, listening, yet too weak and drained to move.
“There has been…” She paused, rapidly searching through what she knew of his language. “An incident,” she went on. “Four of your hours ago.”
Was she taller than before? Larger? A looming presence that was as hard and cold as the darkness of the universe? All those, it seemed. And her voice…many voices in one, many registers and echoes, many ghosts upon ghosts.
“We require you,” she said, “to help us.” When he didn’t respond, the voices asked sharply, “Hearing us?”
“Yes,” he answered, newly unnerved. And again, so she—it—knew he was paying attention, though he did not want to look at her. “Yes, I am.”
“What you would call a boy has…disturbed us. He has aided our enemy. We wish to know more about this boy. You will find him and bring him back to us.”
“What?” Jefferson sat up, still groggy but clear-headed enough to process what she was saying. Her eyes with their red pupils—slit-shaped, now—seemed to hang in the dark over a large and strangely misshapen body in a gown that had changed dimensions to fit the form, and he felt the stirrings of dread and terror in the roots of his guts. He had started sweating; he had to look away again. “A boy? What boy?”
“Our questions must be answered,” came the reply, in many octaves. “He is with others of your kind. They protect him. You are a…” Again, there was a pause while she searched. “Persuader,” she said. “Grow their trust.”
Gain their trust, he thought.
“Yes,” she said. “Exactly that.”
“I don’t…I don’t know…what you’re—”
“You do know. Penetrate their protection. Reach this boy. Put your hands upon him and bring him back to us.”
“I…can’t…listen…listen…why can’t you do it, if he’s so important?”
“This needs,” she replied, “the human touch. We would be…how would you say…exposed. My Jefferson, you are very good at what you do. You are very…” A pause of a few seconds, searching. “Skilled. Put your hands upon him, flesh to flesh. Then you will bring him back to us.”
“Bring him back to you? How can I do that?”
“We will manage the journey. My Jefferson, how you tremble! Be not feared, we will watch over you.”
“How?” He shook his head, defying the hurtful device buried in the back of his neck. “I can’t do this! You’re saying…you want to send me out there? Out in that war?”
Did she sigh, as if with human exasperation? Her voices were cold when she replied. “We require the boy. We require you to bring him to us. You will have protection. One of our own, and one of yours. This male has been…” Once more the search of language. “Modified. He will react to a certain level of threat. You need not worry yourself over this. Am I not speaking well?”
“Yes,” he said, as he always did when she asked this question. He could not look at her; he was too afraid of seeing some part of what she might truly be under the disguise.
“The boy,” she continued, “is in a place called Col O Raydo. Do you know this place?”
“Colorado,” he corrected her. “Listen…no…please, I can’t—”
“You can and you will. We have given you much, my Jefferson. Much. And much given can be much taken away. You will be removed from this place and sent to find the boy. It will be up to you to carry out our command.” She was silent for a moment, and then the voices said, “Our wish. Once this is done, you may go home and all will be well.”
Jefferson almost laughed at that one, but what came out was more of a choked gasp. “All will never be well,” he managed to say.
“We intend to win this conflict.” The Gorgon’s face was shadowed in the candlelight, her voices rising and falling. “We will be beneficent rulers. But now…we need the boy, and you must sleep for a time.”
Jefferson was aware that the thing at the nape of his neck had begun a soft throbbing. It was like having his neck and shoulders rubbed by warm hands, and the sensation began to move down his back and along his arms, down his spine, into his hips and his legs.
“Sleep,” said the Gorgon. And Jefferson darted a glance up into where the face must be but saw only a black hole above the shimmering gown. “Sleep,” urged a thousand voices. The comforting warmth of the implant soothed him, lulled him, filled his head with the memory of the beauty this female creature had been a short while ago. He felt sleep coming upon him and he couldn’t fight it; he didn’t want to fight it. He lay down upon the bed of this fictitious French mansion room again, stretched himself out and closed his eyes, and breathing deeply and steadily the last thing he heard her say—and maybe this was spoken in his mind directly from hers—was:
You will know the boy when you find him, my Jefferson. Now sleep in peace. You have earned it.
Thirteen.
“Oh,” Olivia whispered, and in that soft, terrible sound was the noise of a world falling to pieces.
The smoky light of a weak sunrise revealed all. It was disaster upon disaster. It was fire and dust and death. It was a massive dead reptile in the living room, and no one could take it out to the garbage. As the wounded continued to stumble out and the dead were carried out, Olivia sat down on the cracked parking lot pavement almost in the shadow of the crashed Gorgon craft, and she put her hands to her face and wanted to cry, wanted to let everything go, but Ethan was still with her and so she did not because she was still the leader of this wreckage. Ethan had not left her side, and he was standing nearby watching bloody and dust-covered figures emerge from the murk.
Ethan had seen a few Cypher soldiers still moving about. He knew there was another Gorgon up in the complex somewhere, probably hidden low in the ruins, and the Cyphers were not going to leave until they’d destroyed the creature. He was dusty and tired and his damp clothes smelled of Gorgon-reek. Already the craft was losing its markings, the colors fading into a grim, grayish cast. In a few days, the odor of rot would be unbearable. Even so, tonight the Gray Men might come looking for meat and even a dead alien ship might do for a feast. He shuddered at the thought of that, and at the memory of what his brief glimpse of the Gorgon had been.