Starfist FR - 03 - Recoil (7 page)

“My lips are sealed on the matter.” Kindy put a hand to his face and pressed his lips together with his fingertips.

“Now, listen here,” Bingh leaned onto his elbows and poked his fork at Kindy. “I’m the senior squad leader in the section, and—”

“Speaking of senior,” Kindy cut him off, “did either of you see Gunny Lytle or Staff Sergeant Fryman leave?”

Bingh and Kare looked at each other.

“You know, I think you’re right,” Kare said. “They must have left earlier than we did.”

“And the sheepdogs were gone early too,” Bingh added.

“Well, what do you know,” Kindy breathed as he mopped up the last of his egg yokes and steak juices with the end of his toast. Kare thought about the implications of their own leaders and the two sheepdogs leaving the Snoop ’n Poop while some of the women were still there. He shuddered. “That’s going above and beyond. Can you imagine doing a female gunny?”

Bingh and Kindy also shuddered.

“That’d be almost as bad as doing a male gunny,” Bingh admitted.

“Maybe worse,” Kindy said, then gave the others a “What now?” look in response to their shocked expressions.

“What might be worse?” a familiar voice asked. The trio looked up and saw Sergeant Williams, who had come to their table unnoticed while they were contemplating the above-andbeyond heroism of Lytle and Fryman pairing off with the sheepdogs.

“Where the hell have you been, D’Wayne?” Kare demanded.

“Sit down,” Bingh ordered.

“Have you had breakfast yet?” Kindy realized that Williams’s expression must be much like his own had been an hour or so earlier.

“I had an early breakfast.”

“So where have you been since then?” Bingh asked. Williams gave the others a smug smile. “She had duty this morning and had to go back to Basilone. So I went back to sleep.”

“And you just now got up?” Kindy asked, trying to deflect questions about who she was from Bingh and Kare.

“A little while ago. I had breakfast earlier, but I could use a bit of lunch now.” He pulled the menu to himself, but his angelic look told the others he was giving more thought to the woman he’d spent the night with than he was to the menu.

“So who is she?” Bingh asked.

“And does she have friends for us?” Kare wanted to know. Kindy leaned back with an almost inaudible sigh; it looked like Bingh and Kare would soon be off his back about who he’d spent the night with. At least for the time being. When Williams placed his lunch order, the other three decided to join him. So what if they’d just finished breakfast; it was lunchtime!

SIX

Brattle Household, New Salem, Kingdom Moses was engaged in his favorite pastime—playing in the mud outside the Brattles’s home—when Dr. Joseph Gobels stepped out of his hopper. Moses took one look at the doctor and ran screaming into the house. “Mumee! Mumee! Devil!

Devil!”

“Good God!” Gobels gasped. “It can speak English! You didn’t tell me that, Braggle!” he said, turning to Zechariah accusingly.

“You didn’t ask,” Zechariah answered. He’d given up correcting Gobels’s mispronunciation of his name and wanted now only to get the unpleasant business over with and see the scientists’ departing backs. He was not looking forward to what he knew was going to happen. Zechariah had not informed his family they were coming; otherwise, he was afraid, they would have tried to hide Moses somewhere. He felt badly about that but his sense of duty to the Confederation overrode his guilt.

Gobels turned to Fogel. “It can speak English! My, my,” he chortled, rubbing his stubby hands together enthusiastically. He began laughing that annoying, high-pitched giggle of his that cut through Zechariah Brattle like a knife blade. The flight down to New Salem from Haven with the two scientists had been very unpleasant in the cramped passenger compartment because Fogel farted and Gobels’s breath stank. Zechariah endured most of the flight with a hand over his nose. About halfway into it he could stand the pair no longer. “Next time you go on a flight somewhere, Bogel, kindly move your bowels before you leave, and as for you, Bobels”—he derived great pleasure from mispronouncing their names—“try brushing your teeth once in a while, would you?” For the rest of the flight they sat in frigid silence staring out the ports at the landscape passing beneath them. Hannah Brattle, wiping her hands on her apron, stood looming in the doorway as the three walked up to the front door. Moses, clutching her skirts, peeked out from behind her. She knew instinctively what was about to happen. “No, you don’t,”

she said menacingly as the three approached. Hannah had always been a formidable woman.

“These men have come for Moses, Hannah. We must give him up to them. It is the law.”

“To hell with the law! Moses belongs to us and not to Caesar!” Hannah bellowed.

“Hannah—”

“Madam,” Gobels said, wiping the perspiration from his forehead as he stepped forward, “we shall not harm him and he shall be returned to you when we are done with him.” His insincere smile revealed dirty teeth, and Hannah visibly recoiled at the sight as much as from his foul breath.

“No! Joab, Samuel!” The two boys emerged from the back of the house where they’d been studying their Bibles. They realized immediately what was happening and took up protective positions on either side of their mother.

“Hannah, you will give him up now. These men are scientists on an important government mission. Moses will be returned to us when they are done with him. Now stand aside and give him to me. I will tolerate no more of this foolishness.” Hannah and her boys began to cry now. Zechariah made a sudden grab for Moses but the boy was too quick and scuttled away into the house grunting in terror. “You stay here!” Zechariah told the scientists and brushed Hannah aside.

What happened next was heartbreaking. Moses, motivated by mortal fear of the scientists, scooted away from Zechariah. He was aided by his small size, which permitted him to crawl into narrow spaces and under pieces of furniture, and he was very quick on his stubby little legs; he was even faster on his belly, zipping across the floor as though he were in water. Zechariah stumbled after him, barking his shins against furniture and knocking things over. “Moses, come here! Moses, come here!” he shouted, to no avail. Outside, Gobels and Fogel stood by apprehensively, listening to the crashing and yelling, keeping a wary eye on Hannah and her boys. But the Brattle family’s attention was focused on Zechariah inside the house, not on the scientists who didn’t dare take part in the chase. Gobels turned to Fogel and whispered, “This is fucking hilarious!” He glanced slyly at Hannah but she had not heard him, thank God. “Reminds me of a goddamned cartoon show,” Fogel whispered back, and the two giggled surreptitiously behind their hands. “Nobel, Nobel, Noble Nobel,” Gobels chortled happily. It was hard for him to resist dancing on the spot. A live Skink! All mine, all mine! He felt like singing.

At last Zechariah, flushed with anger and exertion and breathing heavily, emerged from the house grasping Moses firmly about the waist. “Dada! Dada! No! Nooooo!” Moses shrieked.

“Now, you two,” Zechariah gritted, “you take him and get the hell out of here!” He handed Moses, still struggling, to Fogel, who carried a harnesslike device that he strapped onto Moses; as he did that Hannah screamed and might have collapsed if Joab and Samuel had not supported her.

“It is all right, it is all right,” Gobels cautioned. “We won’t hurt him!”

By now a curious crowd had gathered. It was obvious and disheartening to Hannah and the boys that most of the people in the crowd were pleased at what was happening. Although they had voted to keep Moses among them, few had been happy with that decision. For the first time, Hannah Brattle began to doubt that the spirit of Christ still dwelt with the City of God.

“Now leave!” Zechariah commanded the scientists. Gobels and Fogel scuttled off with their precious burden. Zechariah was certain Gobels was laughing hysterically as he climbed back into the hopper. He turned to the crowd. “We all have our duty,” he said bitterly, “and I have just done mine. Go home now and leave us in peace.” He stomped back into the house without saying another word to anyone. It was fully a month before either Hannah or the boys would even speak to him. Dr. Gobels’s Laboratory, Wellfordsville, Earth

“Mumeeeee! Mumeeee!” Moses screamed, but the pain and terror only got worse.

“Uh, don’t you think we ought to lighten up on him?” Fogel asked. “If it dies”—he shrugged—“we’re in the shit.”

“A moment, a moment! This thing tolerates pain very well, Fogel. One more jolt,” Gobels said, and twisted a dial on the control panel. Moses shrieked. “Look! The heart rate has not increased appreciably, Fogel! That much current would knock out a human being. Truly amazing.” He turned off the machine and Moses, sobbing and gasping, went silent. “These things were bioengineered, Fogel. Bioengineered to endure pain and hardship. That is why it hasn’t succumbed to what we’ve done to it! I believe aside from deliberately killing it there’s nothing we can do with our tests that will permanently harm the thing.”

Lying in his cage, Moses quietly murmured what sounded like a name to Fogel. “Well, it certainly feels pain, Doctor. You know, I think it’s calling for its mother.”

“Ridiculous, Fogel! Ridiculous. The thing has no mother. It was designed, I tell you, bioengineered.”

“Well, that Brattle woman—?”

“Oh, come now! What’s gotten in to you, Fogel? They were

attached to the thing the way many people are attached to their pets. Obviously it was birthed while the Skinks were fighting us on Kingdom and somehow got separated from its litter when they took off in such a hurry. I’ve never been able to understand that, how people can become so attached to dumb animals.”

“But it’s not a dumb animal, sir. It’s educable. It has learned Standard English; it has a vocabulary, emotions, that’s obvious. It thinks the Brattle woman is its mother.”

“Oh, humbug! Well, of course we know the adults are highly intelligent, Fogel. They have a highly developed technology, FTL capability, are highly organized. Yes, a formidable species, no doubt. But don’t forget how poorly this one did on the intelligence tests.”

“Well, it has been under considerable stress, sir. I didn’t do well on exams either after a night out on the town.”

“No, no, no, Fogel! This one was bred to have a low order of intellect. But our goal here is not to make friends or pets of the damned things, it’s to find out what makes them tick and then use that against them. Look, prepare it for another gastrointestinal probe, will you. Feed it first and set the monitors to work their way through its system in twenty-four hours.”

“Again? The damned thing will start that screaming all over, boss!”

“Yes, again! If your ears are too sensitive, go outside. I don’t care if they hurt the thing or not; they won’t kill it.”

“There was considerable blood in its stool last time, Doctor.”

“Set it up, Fogel! Now, dammit. I want to do another analysis of its stomach acids and its fecal material. Its digestive system is almost like our own, truly amazing, and I want to pin that down, Fogel, pin it right down. Analysis, analysis, analysis, Fogel! Facts and figures, man. We are on the verge of a tremendous breakthrough here. Well, get to it, man, get to it!”

Gobels had not taken Moses to Fargo and Universal Labs. He did not even report that he had found Moses. He returned to Earth on his own, to a small town known as Wellfordsville in the hills of what had been the state of Virginia during the age of the United States. There he had his own laboratory. It was where he planned to conduct his examination in his own time and in his own way.

The first thing Gobels did was to view a series of trids taken by combat reporters embedded with the Confederation forces during the war on Kingdom. He compared the physical features of adult Skinks with those displayed by Moses. “Compare the teeth.” He pointed them out to Fogel. “See how sharp they are on the adults but those on our specimen are closer in form to our own. Pointed, yes, but still very much like our own. They’ve been dentified on the adults, not bred that way but fixed some time after birth. Extraordinary! It has a fourchambered heart and pituitarylike glands in the brain that regulate its body temperature, like the mammals of Earth. We’ve compared voice patterns from the sound on the vids to the voice of our own Skink. His is not as harsh and guttural as those of the adults, but that’s probably because it’s not fully mature yet.”

“Yes, and language analysis has identified fricatives very much like those of human speech,” Fogel pointed out. “We need to subject them to analysis by an expert.”

Gobels shrugged. “Not of interest to me, Fogel. We aren’t trying to communicate with the bastards, only finding out how best to kill them.”

“I think the Marines know how to do that already,” Fogel said drily.

“Not just shoot them up, Fogel, but wipe them out as a species before they wipe us out! Damn, you’ve got to think big!

Now, look at this”—he produced a printout of Moses’s blood analysis—“these fatty oils in the blood. Something very strange, very unnatural about these oils, Fogel. Perhaps they aid in maintaining body temperature, but they’re highly volatile. When the creatures are struck with any kind of flame—and poof ! That’s why we haven’t been able to recover a dead one from the battlefield! Brilliant! Amazing! The thought that has gone into

engineering these creatures.” Gobels shook his head. “We’re dealing with scientific geniuses here, Fogel, no doubt about it!

And look at the gill slits along the lateral sides of the thorax. They’re vestigial, but with a minor surgical operation they can be altered so the things can breathe underwater! Truly amazing!

Fogel, we’ve only scratched the surface here. In a couple of days I’ll have the results of some definitive tests I’ve been running and then we’ll have a complete picture of what this thing is made of!”

“Do you think we’ll find out it has a soul after all?” Fogel asked archly.

“Your sense of humor, Fogel, is wearing mighty thin on me. But you can laugh all the way into the history books when we publish our findings.”