“I have a question,” he said. “Your High Lord has been brainwashing humans to serve his cause. How did he learn how to do it?”
“A number of humans were taken from Earth before we made formal contact,” the alien said. There was an odd moment of hesitation, even embarrassment, before the alien continued. “They were examined; experiments were carried out on their brains. The Emperor and his lackeys have always preferred to brain-burn their servants to ensure that they could not plan rebellion. Once a reasonably safe method was developed, it was used to create loyal humans in high places. You have no comprehension of just how many there are now.”
Toby scowled. “Can they be freed from their servitude?”
The alien hesitated, just long enough for Toby to know the answer. “No,” he admitted. “The damage to their brains is too great for any recovery. They will eventually collapse and die with massive brain trauma, by which time they will be replaced with other loyal servants.”
Toby felt sick. How many others would lose their minds to the aliens, turned into unwilling traitors? And could it be stopped? Could human scientists discover a way of preventing the alien technique from brainwashing someone? There was no way to know, without experimentation… and if the aliens discovered that someone had defected, they would demand his immediate return. They’d have to think very carefully about how to handle it. He would have to talk to his father.
“I have a different question,” he said, suddenly. “How do you tell the difference between males and females among your race.”
The alien produced a hissing noise, rather like a boiling kettle. It took Toby a moment to realise that the alien was laughing. “Your race seems to spend most of your time studying reproduction,” he said. “We puzzled endlessly over the vast collection of mating videos on your computer network. It took us a long time to realise that your young did not need instructions on how to mate. But it would have always been hard for us to understand. We are very different biologically.”
There was a long pause. “I am not a male or a female,” the alien added. “I am a functional hermaphrodite, to use the human term. When I mate with another, the exchanges goes both ways. He will fertilise me and I will fertilise him. Of course, depending on the timing, one or both of us will not get pregnant.”
Toby almost found himself giggling. “So you’re both male and female,” he said. “Our doctors will be fascinated to study you.”
“You may study me once the war is over,” the alien said. “The High Lord is moving into his endgame now, while you have yet to comprehend the rules of the game. If you lose, our race will be lost along with yours. You must not lose.”
“We won’t,” Toby said. He knew it was a promise they might not be able to keep. “We’ll keep asking you questions while working on a plan. We won’t let him win.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Near Mannington, Virginia
USA, Day 61
“So they lied to us right from the start,” the Colonel said. “I suppose I really shouldn’t be surprised.”
He smiled, thinly, at Toby. His youngest son was perched on the end of a comfortable sofa, just close enough to Gillian that it was clear that he admired her. The Colonel allowed himself a bigger smile, even though it risked betraying his awareness of what was going on — they deserved some happiness together. And maybe he’d been wrong about his son for a long time.
“Unless the defector was lying,” Toby said. He shook his head. “No; everything he’s told us fits what facts we have. They’re not friendly at all.”
“I suppose it would be too much to expect an alien race to be monolithic,” the Colonel mused. “They would have their own factions and nations, ideals and religions — I wonder what kind of religion they have. Maybe they worship their Emperors rather than a single omnipresent God.”
He pushed the thought aside. “How many others know about this?”
“Hardly anyone,” Toby admitted. “Given the dangers of them deciding to… convert me, I’ve ordered the alien defector to be moved to another location. I won’t see him in person again until this is all over, and trusted men are watching to ensure that I haven’t become a pod person. If they do…”
The Colonel shivered. He’d called his son a betrayer and a traitor when Toby had gone to Washington, hot words spoken in anger. But now… the aliens could turn Toby into their slave, their devoted servant… and everything Toby knew would become theirs. And what would happen to the resistance then? Toby knew too much to be allowed to fall into enemy hands, but he was also their only window inside the White House. Without Toby, they would have to rely on lower levels… and many of them had become pod people. What remained of the federal law enforcement system was in chaos.
Toby looked up. “If they discover that I have been converted, they have orders to shoot me,” he said. He sounded reluctant to admit it. If the aliens managed to improve their process, Toby might become a pod person without any outwards signs — or one of his men might believe that he had become a pod person and shoot him down, quite by accident. “I suggest that you start making plans to evacuate the farm.”
“Already done,” the Colonel assured him. He wasn’t going to give Toby any more details, not when he was going to walk back into the lion’s jaws. “How long do you think it will be before McGreevy wakes up and smells the shit?”
Toby hesitated. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Everything is in chaos at the moment. I think she probably knows that she’s nothing more than a figurehead for the aliens right now, but she’s reluctant to admit it. She controls so little now; between the pod people and the desertions, we’re seeing the collapse of Washington’s authority. The aliens may choose to end the farce at a moment’s notice.”
The Colonel scowled. He’d longed for the day when Washington, overburdened by massive economic problems and politicians who needed maps to tell the difference between their asses and elbows, collapsed, leaving him and his survivalists to pick up the pieces. And yet without Washington, there was little else holding the country together. The aliens might very well win by default as the country fragmented, leaving them as the sole remaining authority. It might be what they had in mind.
“I got the impression that the aliens are very much a hierarchical society,” Toby added. “They may have expected us to follow McGreevy after she became President, even though she was working for the aliens. I think they will have been surprised by all the resistance. They may start feeling that they no longer need to keep her, or that flattering her pretensions is no longer worth the effort. I’m sure she’d be less trouble as a pod person.”
The Colonel leaned forward. “Does she have any influence at all?”
“It’s hard to say,” Toby admitted. “I’m not privy to her discussions with the aliens, so I don’t know just what she is saying to them. I do know that the aliens have taken over most of our military bases and have been running highly aggressive patrols around them. The bastards don’t hesitate to call down strikes on anything that even looks dangerous. I think they’re making themselves as unpopular as we did in Iraq.”
“Right,” the Colonel said. “But we still won in Iraq.”
He looked down at his hands for a long moment. “That leaves us with one simple issue,” he added. “How do we get up to the ships?”
“One ship,” Toby said. It had been the most startling piece of information from the alien defector, the piece of information that had caused him to wonder if they were being hoaxed. The aliens had left their homeworld with a formidable fleet, but only one warship had survived the wormhole’s implosion to escape back into normal space. No wonder the aliens had been reluctant to allow humans to board and investigate their ships. They had seventeen ships, yet only one of them was armed. The remainder were freighters and troop transports. “If we could get onboard that ship…”