Zendahl knows he should feel pity for the Reverts, condemned as they are by a roll of the genetic dice to a life shut away from public view; but he finds them discomfiting parodies of the human form, and he knows they dislike being pitied. A drawback to fitting in is that after a thousand generations it is easy to forget what his ancestors once had been. In a hyphenated world, Zendahl and the receptionist are alien-Americans. Like everyone else in America, their ancestors had come from somewhere far off; only in their case from a little bit farther off.
“Ever have trouble with urban explorers finding their way into the tunnel?” He asks not from any particular curiosity, but to show he is not prejudiced against Reverts.
The door warden makes an entry in her computer. “Once or twice,” she answers absently. “Usually from the Locust Street tunnel. We handle it.”
He does not ask her how they handle it. She touches something under her desk and there is a click in the inner door. He pulls it open and strides down a long hall at the end of which is situated the council room. There, he finds five Apkallu waiting around the high table and two others, fully human in appearance, at a second table set up with computers.
Two of the five Apkallu at the council table are Reverts, and another, the president, is a Purebred. None of his ancestors had ever been genetically altered and, like anything pure, his kind have become progressively more rare. Paradoxically, Zendahl finds Purebreds less distasteful than Reverts. They seem less chimerical, less a botched human form. There are Purebreds portrayed on Egyptian tomb paintings and spoken of in Sumerian legends. The president’s head looks like nothing familiar, though forced to choose, Zendahl would have said “dog-like.” His scales sparkle in the room’s sun-spectrum lighting. He gestures. “Please join us, Boranu Wanaducka.”
Zendahl seldom uses his Apkallu name outside formal lodge meetings, so he loses a moment in responding. “Thank you, Opagku,” he says, employing the president’s formal title. He has never taken lodge entirely seriously. The Landing was too long ago. Even the Algonquians had called the Apkallu “the grandfather people.”
A Revert with a hawk-like head says without preamble, “We have an oddity reported from our lodge in Chicago. A tabloid report of a monster.” Zendahl raises a skeptical eyebrow and says, “Was one of… us spotted?” He had almost said “one of you.” Genetically modified Apkallu like himself would not excite the term “monsters.” They live unremarked among the aborigines, save for the occasional puzzling autopsy.
The council president waves a hand at the computer screen, where the front page of Tru Facts presents a grainy image of a giant black spider. Photoshopped faces in the lower right scream in terror. The headline proclaims DEMON FROM HELL?
Zendahl thinks the question mark is a nice touch of journalistic skepticism.
“The layout is a bit crude,” he comments, but he does not suppose the council wants his opinion on photocomposition. Absentmindedly, he brushes the two occupation badges pinned above his ribbons—cyberspace and space operations.
“It’s a headwalker,” the Opagku says in apkallin.
Zendahl has no patience with ritual language and answers in English. “The bogeymen from the stories we learned in Apkallu School? Those are allegories.”
The Opagku snorts, and the bony structure of his face is such that the sound is more like a honk. The other humanoforms glance at Zendahl but say nothing. Purebreds spend their time contemplating and commenting on the ancient records. “Our ancestors,” the Opagku states, “thought those stories worth passing down. There must have been a core of truth to them. The headwalkers drove our people off the home world, and the Six Ships and One sought refuge here on New Apkal, where we have lived in comfortable obscurity. Now our ancient enemy has followed us to our haven.” The president places both his talon-like hands on the council table and leans forward, his scaly skin iridescent in the sunlamps. “Earth,” he declares, “is being invaded by aliens from outer space.”
Colonel Zendahl must report at the Pentagon on Monday morning, and so (as the council points out) there is not a moment to lose. Then they leave him and the other two cybertechs to their devices and depart. It does not occur to the council that they might decline the assignment.
The cybertechs are named Jessica and Louis, and like Zendahl, they have been co-opted by the council for the weekend. Both are local. Neither is a Wanaducka, their ancestors having disembarked, legend says, from different Ships. They agree, not without a certain aspect of relief, that the colonel should take charge.
The first task is to make certain that the photograph is genuine. If the answer is no, the evening will be a short one. But in case it is yes, Zendahl assigns Louis to research the ancient headwalkers in the League databases. Since the picture allegedly comes from a warehouse surveillance camera, Zendahl uses his official muscle to secure a copy from the Chicago police.
The police, as a few phone calls establish, have been investigating a break-in and theft at the warehouse. They like the man who had fled the loading dock for this and believe he released a weather balloon as a distraction. (“Like them airbags they got in cars. Inflates in an instant.”) How the man obtained the balloon and where it has gone to is not their immediate concern. Zendahl plays the game and confides that NASA scientists at Goddard are trying to recover a stolen aerostat used in climate monitoring. But that is not for public disclosure. Jessica and Louis marvel at the facility with which he fabricates the story, but it is not as if he has had no practice in disinformation.
Within the hour, the video downloads to his Air Force account, and he and Jessica set about studying the images. They carefully assess the metadata and soon determine that, whether of headwalker or weather balloon, the image itself is the true quill. A flurry of “snow” fuzzes the scene, the headwalker appears in one of the loading bays, and sprints off stage-left across the truck apron, at which point the entire image is lost to interference.
They watch the sequence multiple times, scrub and enhance the images. Zendahl sheds his coat and loosens his tie. It will be a long night after all. He decides he will lean on the League to supply him with private transportation to DC late Sunday. An hour later, the lodgekeeper arrives with a plate of Pork Chop Elena for him and similar meals for his two companions. They take a working break.
“Definitely a headwalker,” Louis allows. “But not the same kind that drove our ancestors from Old Apkal.”
“And you know this, how?” Zendahl asks.
“Different anatomy. The legs are longer and thinner and they grow from the bottom of the headball. Our forbearers depicted the Ancient Enemy with thick legs attached to a muscle mass with the headball dangling below.”
“No one’s ever seen a headwalker,” Jessica comments. “So how does anyone know what it looks like?”
Louis shrugs. “There are images in the Archives from back in the day. The documents have been migrated from older media, and the traceability pans out. Our ancestors went to a lot of effort to preserve this information when so much else was lost. The good news is the Ancient Enemy didn’t follow us here.”
Zendahl looks at him. “What’s the bad news?”
Another shrug. “It’s still a headwalker.”
“Weird coincidence,” says Jessica. “One kind drives us off the home-world; then a second kind, from somewhere else, shows up here.”
“Not too weird.” Louis taps a file open on his screen. “The ancient scholar Sunillilam proved topologically that there could be no more than seven basic body plans for intelligent beings.”