The world was already falling apart when her first contractions hit.
"Perfect timing—" Anthea Stewart clenched her teeth to stop a hiss of pain, holding her rounded abdomen.
Beside her, driving recklessly, her husband Davis said, "Don't worry, Anth. I'll get you there in time." He took a hard right so that the wide whitewalled tires squealed on the asphalt. "Plenty of time. Don't you worry about a thing." The hospital was just ahead. He accelerated.
"Why are you telling me not to worry? Because you're doing all the work?"
"I'm doing every bit as much as I can." He flashed her a grin so full of love that she forgot the pain. Then Anthea gripped the handrest as she concentrated on the spasms, the clenching of her muscles, and the restless baby inside her.
She felt a strange, bittersweet anticipation. Soon, the healthy infant she had carried for nine months would emerge into the world. He would no longer be an integral part of her, and their lives would be permanently changed. But Anthea looked forward to it with anticipation as well as trepidation. She would stop being a "pregnant woman" and become a "mother"; they would stop being a "married couple" and become a "family." The thought brought a smile to her lips. So many changes ahead!
The AM radio blared, laced with occasional threads of static, as the edgy-sounding announcer talked about the current crisis. Davis had turned on the car radio as he drove, hoping for some soothing music for his wife, but the emergency broadcasts were not comforting. "Slan attack imminent. Radar Images show the possibility of numerous enemy ships approaching."
Anthea wiped sweat from her forehead and turned to look at him. Davis was alarmingly pale, disturbed by the tense news as well as having the jitters of an expectant father. He turned the knob again, trying a different station.
"—President Kier Gray arrested. The world has been rocked to learn that their leader was secretly a slan in disguise. The noted slan hunter John Petty, chief of the secret police, has assumed provisional control of the government after making the arrest himself. Several of the President's cabinet members, also shown to be slans, were killed in the altercation. Gray's arrest raises the uncomfortable question of how many more of the telepathic mutants might be living among us, completely unnoticed."
Davis snapped off the radio in disgust. "I guess we'll just have to hum if we want music." A slow-moving car driven by an old man hunched over the steering wheel swerved out of the way as Davis rushed past.
"How could Kier Gray be a slan?" Anthea said, trying to distract herself. "I thought they all had tendrils coming out the back of their heads. He couldn't possibly have hidden what he was."
"Don't underestimate how devious they can be. They use makeup, prosthetics, hair pieces to cover up their tendrils. It really is a conspiracy." He stared intently ahead as he drove. "I wish we'd just wiped them all out during the Slan Wars."
She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to sound conversational despite the spasms, but she failed miserably. "It's not . . . as if . . . we didn't try."
The telepathic humans were physically superior, with great strength and improved healing abilities; they considered themselves a master race. Long ago, the mutant slans had tried to dominate and enslave the rest of humanity. Centuries of warfare ensued as brave humans fought slans, defeated them, and drove the few survivors into hiding.
Though the media was rife with rumors about an expansive underground slan organization and numerous concealed bases, only a few loners were ever caught. Sinister slan ships occasionally flew over the great cities on Earth, sometimes dropping off messages, other times just gathering reconnaissance. Obviously, the slans were building their numbers, gearing up for some sort of concerted attack. No wonder humanity was terrified.
Somehow, though, being with Davis made her feel safe, no matter what the radio news said. Her husband had brown eyes in contrast with her blue ones, dark curly hair as opposed to her straight, strawberry blonde. But Anthea and Davis Stewart were not opposites: They had been soul mates since their first meeting. Some romantics called it "love at first sight"; others talked about chemistry and matching personalities. From the moment she had met Davis, it seemed their very heartbeats had synchronized. They had known they were meant for each other. Now with the coming baby, their love, their family, would be stronger than ever before.
Unbearable affection seeped through the concern on his face like fresh rain washing away a stain. "It won't be long now, Anth. Just hang on."
After riding through another contraction, she gave him a strange smile. "No, Davis . . . no, it won't. But I don't think I can concentrate on politics anymore . . . okay?"
Davis raced toward the tall, brown-brick Centropolis General Hospital, turning into the marked driveway for the emergency room entrance. He wasn't going to let even a planet-sized war get in the way of the medical attention his wife needed. He pulled up to the curb in front of the double doors, then jammed the shift lever into park and opened his door all in one gesture. "Just wait here. I'll get somebody."
Anthea was tempted to walk by herself into the emergency room, but then another contraction hit, harder than the previous ones. "All right," she gasped. "I'll just wait here."
Running into the hospital with his hair mussed, awkwardly waving his arms, Davis looked utterly adorable. She knew she would never forget that sight.
Anthea closed her eyes and counted, trying to time the contractions, though it was merely a trick to occupy her mind. She had always been able to shunt aside pain, to concentrate on her body. Did all mothers feel so connected to their babies? It wanted to come out—he wanted to be born, and she experienced an inexplicable confidence that the delivery would be smooth. She had nothing to worry about.
Davis returned in less than a minute, pushing a wheelchair. A gangly orderly jogged along beside her husband, scolding him and trying to wrest the wheelchair from him, but Davis wanted to do this himself. The two men quickly helped Anthea out of the car and into the emergency room waiting area. The orderly shouted for a nurse, who in turn shouted for a doctor, and they all rushed toward the delivery room.
Anthea looked up just long enough to see several policemen milling about in the emergency room. A grim-looking, dark-suited man wore an armband with the insignia of the secret police, a scarlet hammer across a web. A slan hunter here in the hospital? Her thoughts were fuzzy, but she realized that if the slans were going to attack Centropolis, many casualties would be pouring into this medical center. Slan terrorists probably thought the hospital would be a good place to sabotage. What if one of them took her baby? She had heard of the terrible things slans did to babies. . . .
The man with the armband was scolding a plump woman behind the reception desk. "I must insist, ma'am. The secret police have the legal authority to inspect all of your admissions records. I want your carbon copies."
While halfheartedly clacking away on her manual typewriter, she popped her pink gum with a sound like the shot from a toy gun. "Sir, don't you think that if we found a slan in our treatment rooms we would report it?"
"I need to look at blood tests and any x rays. Their internal organs are different from ours, you know. President Gray was a slan in disguise—we can't trust anyone. We have evidence that there may be a new breed of slans, ones that don't have tendrils."
The receptionist continued typing as she talked. "Surgically removed so that they can infiltrate our society better? I assure you, we would notice such scars."
The man from the secret police scowled. "That is not for you to decide, ma'am. These new mutations may even be born without the tendrils. In fact, some of them might not even know they're slans."
The receptionist chuckled nervously. "Oh, come now! How can they not know?"
With a grim expression, the man simply held out his hand. The plump receptionist heaved a put-upon sigh and turned in her swivel chair. She opened a gray metal filing cabinet and pulled out the curling carbon-copy records of all recent admissions. Her expression made it perfectly clear that she thought the secret policeman was wasting her precious time.
The gangly orderly ran back out into the waiting area. "Delivery Room 4 is ready." In a rush, he and Davis wheeled Anthea down the hall. A nurse opened the swinging door, but then she put out a stern hand. "Mr. Stewart, I'm afraid you'll have to wait out here."
"I want to be with my wife." Davis craned his neck to look after her.
"Sorry, sir. Men aren't allowed inside the delivery room. Go wait with the other nervous fathers. Hand out cigars to each other."
Anthea saw his deeply disappointed frown. "Don't worry, Davis. I'll be fine. I'll be here."
He gave her hand a squeeze. "I love you."
"You can prove it by changing more than your share of diapers," she joked. Then the contractions hit again, and she knew the baby was close.
The rest happened in a blur. She was on the delivery table, her feet up in stirrups. The doctor, an older man with owlish eyes behind round spectacles, muttered reassuringly, but the words sounded as if he had memorized them from a script, praises and encouragement that he used many times a week.
The nurses seemed concerned. Even the doctor was tense, no doubt because of the news on the radio. One of the nurses said in a quiet voice as if expecting that Anthea couldn't hear her, "I don't know what kind of world that poor baby's going to be born into. If the slans take over and enslave us all—"
"Enough of that, Nurse! We have our jobs to do. There are no slans here, only this woman and her baby, and I'm determined to see that it's born healthy—healthy enough to fight for the human race, if it comes to that." He patted Anthea on the shoulder. "Now don't you worry, young lady. Just push. I'm going to coach you through this."
She closed her eyes. She and Davis were both fit and strong. She couldn't remember the last time either of them had even been sick. Yes, the baby would be just fine.
"Now, push again," the doctor said.
The nurse leaned closer, encouraging. "Push, honey—as hard as you can."
Anthea did as she was told. It was what her body wanted to do.
The doctor leaned over. "That's perfect. Easy, now. I can see the top of the head. You're almost there."
Anthea felt a compulsion to press harder, not to let up. The rush of increased pain didn't matter. She wished Davis could be there holding her hand, but she reassured herself with the knowledge that he was just outside the delivery room door. She pushed and pushed again, and then she knew the baby was coming. Tears streamed through her shut eyes. With a rush of release, she felt it flow out—her son, a new life, a child emerging into the open air.
"That's it. Here it comes. I have him." The doctor held up a slick, red infant. She heard the baby start to cry as it gasped its first breath.
"Mrs. Stewart, you have a fine little boy—" The doctor halted in mid-sentence. "Good Lord!"
The nurse began to scream.
"How can this be?" The doctor still held up the baby, but now his face bore a look of disgust. "How can this happen?"
Anthea struggled to sit upright. She felt utterly exhausted and drained; her strawberry-blonde hair was plastered with sweat to her head. "What is it? I want my baby."
The doctor looked at her with an expression of horror, his mouth open. Anthea glanced up to see the newborn baby.
He had tiny twisting tendrils coming out the back of his head.
The President of Earth, leader of billions, commanded a certain amount of respect. For decades Kier Gray had been a strong and charismatic ruler. He led with a mixture of sternness and compassion, guiding the citizenry along a dangerously narrow path between paranoid terror and complacency.
Now, though, as the secret police dragged him down the stone-walled hall, Gray was no longer treated with much respect. Until now, no one had ever suspected the President's true heritage as a hidden slan, his actual alliances, the covert work he had done among the surviving slans on Earth. The secret police grabbed him roughly by the arms and pulled him along. Gray knew exactly where they were taking him.
John Petty, the chief of the secret police and notorious slan hunter, waited for his deposed leader inside the primary command-and-control center deep beneath the grand palace. Around him, technicians studied cathode-ray tubes, receiving reports from all their operatives.
"Hail to the President," Petty said with feigned applause. He had short, dark hair, brows that looked like smudges of soot, and glittering eyes like the buttons on his dark uniform. The chief slan hunter seemed satisfied to see the great Kier Gray so helpless.
The guards shoved the President forward, catching his ankles and knocking him to his knees. Petty looked down at him as if he were no more than a discarded cigarette butt in the rain gutter. "We've already rooted out and killed dozens of slans working in the palace. Others have fled like rats in the night. Whatever you were planning, it's over—and I'm in charge now."
Gray didn't curse, didn't protest his innocence, but simply looked up at the bloodthirsty man who had long been his rival. During his long administration, he had weathered numerous conspiracies, assassination attempts, and back-stabbings. Only hours ago he had watched the guards shoot down three of his trusted advisors—true slans—in a shielded cabinet room. All of his quiet plans had crumbled in less than a day; he'd gone from great hope and optimism to this disaster.
Gray recovered his dignity. "I don't suppose you have any basis for these treasonous actions, Mr. Petty? Or is the rule of law simply an inconvenience you'd rather not bother with right now?"
"Law? Allow me to cite the Emergency Powers Act: 'In these times of perpetual crisis, any person suspected of being a slan or in league with slans is to be held for immediate questioning. The due process of law is suspended in such cases for the benefit of national security.'"
Gray's anger flared. His secret organization had worked so hard, been so careful . . . but not careful enough. Over the years, the President had even authorized quiet assassinations of people who posed a threat, advisors who accidentally discovered too much about the slans. He'd had no choice but to replace them with a small band of loyal comrades dedicated to changing the world and ending centuries of unnecessary witch hunts. He had thought his plans were secure. . . .
Petty crossed his arms over his chest. "We caught you meeting with the infamous slan rebel Jommy Cross in your private quarters. We have recordings in your own voice revealing that the slan specimen you kept in your palace, Kathleen Layton, is your own daughter."
"Where are Kathleen and Cross? Did you just shoot them, like you executed my cabinet members?"
The slan hunter paced inside the command-and-control center. "Oh, we didn't execute those two—not yet. They're too valuable. They have been taken to the detention cells in the lower levels of the palace. You need not worry about their welfare."
If you aren't careful, John Petty, Gray thought, you may need to worry more about your own welfare. Despite his obsessive fear, he would probably underestimate Jommy and Kathleen. Gray hoped that some of the unobtrusive slans working around the government center had managed to escape and disappear.
When he'd surreptitiously met with young Jommy Cross, Gray had explained the situation among slans and humans. Very few knew that the true danger came from a different group of mutants, slans born without tendrils, who had infiltrated society while preparing to launch their takeover. The tendrilless passionately hated both humans and slans and meant to exterminate both rival races, leaving themselves the sole inheritors of the Earth.
Jommy had infiltrated the main tendrilless base on Mars, where he had found startling information about an imminent invasion. Returning to Earth, he had slipped through the palace's defenses to warn the President. After they had begun to make plans, Jommy returned with his own highly advanced car and a deadly disintegrator weapon invented by his father. For only one day, President Gray had believed that he and his shadow government—including Jommy and Kathleen—could change the world.
Then the secret police had arrested them all.
"I myself confiscated Cross's unusual weapons—something he called a disintegrator tube and a ring with an embedded atomic generator. Amazing little things." Petty's lips quirked in a smile. He seemed in control of himself, in charge of the situation, but Gray could sense just a hint of uneasiness in his demeanor. "I gave the items to one of my isolated research teams, but as soon as they tampered with the ring, it dissolved. Now my people have strict orders to exercise extreme caution in their investigations of the disintegrator tube. Once we disassemble it, we'll add it to our own arsenal. My arsenal. Hmm, we might even use it to execute you. That would be quite an irony!"
The deposed President rose to his feet, squared his shoulders, and faced the slan hunter. "I'm surprised that I wasn't 'accidentally killed' resisting arrest. It would save you a great deal of time in your coup d'etat."
"A coup? I prefer to call it my transition to a new slan-free government." Petty scratched his blunt chin as he pretended to consider options. "Killing you would waste too much propaganda value. I look forward to hauling you before the world courts, exposing you as a slan, and discrediting all your works, all your supposed peace conferences with the enemy. Somehow, you have had your tendrils removed, or you were born without them—a mutant among mutants!—but I'm positive that genetics tests will reveal slan genes in your DNA."
Despite their vastly diminished numbers, slans were still feared as bogeymen. During his presidency, Gray himself had been forced to play upon that fear because it was the only way to survive politically, but he had managed to remove the teeth from the most vicious proposals.
Petty had stalked around behind the President, but Gray didn't turn to follow him. "You have had your theatrics, but you'll have a far more difficult time proving that any of my actions in office harmed the human race."
"Prove? Simply existing as a slan is a treasonous act. You knowingly deceived the people of Earth. I, on the other hand, will be held up as a hero of mankind for removing yet another terrible threat. Slans in our own government, in the presidency itself!" He gave another one of his smiles. "Your scheme is over, Gray. From now on, it's simply a mop-up operation. It will save me a lot of difficulty, and you a lot of pain, if you just confess and reveal how many members of your cabinet are secretly slans."
"There aren't any," Gray insisted.
The slan hunter rolled his eyes. "Your advisors and cabinet members were sound asleep with their wives or mistresses. We rounded them up and found out that several of them had slan tendrils in the backs of their heads, hidden by prosthetics. We've already killed them. Next, we'll dig through the records to find out who cooperated with your most destructive policies. It won't be difficult to prove collusion and thereby treason against humanity. You see, I have all the angles!"
When more men came into the command center and delivered their reports, Petty seemed upset, ready to strike the messenger. He turned back to the President. "We've just uncovered the identity of one of your main co-conspirators. I never would have suspected it." He scratched his head. "Then again, it makes a certain amount of sense."
"I don't know what you're talking about," Gray said.
"Your chief advisor, Jem Lorry, has vanished. He disappeared like a puff of smoke, as if he knew what we were planning." Petty balled his fists. "Could he read it in our minds? Did you send him a telepathic message?"
Gray did not need to pretend his confusion. He had appointed Jem Lorry years ago, after a particularly close assassination attempt. Lorry had served extremely well ever since, taking a hardline stance against slans. He had even proposed an innovative if preposterous scheme to marry lovely young Kathleen. Lorry wanted to breed with her in (according to him) an attempt to water down the slan genes, to gradually erase them over a few generations. Lorry had been very angry when Kathleen rebuffed his advances, but Gray was personally pleased that the girl managed to get out of the trap.
"Honestly, I had nothing to do with his disappearance." The President was far more concerned about his own survival and even above that, the survival of his daughter Kathleen and Jommy Cross, the hope of humanity. "You should know that Jommy Cross came to warn me—to warn all of us—of an impending attack on Earth. Another group of slans, tendrilless slans, have built a large base on Mars and recently launched their battle fleet against us. The tendrilless mean to destroy us all."
"Yes, yes, and you and Jommy Cross are our only hope." He yawned extravagantly. "I'm not buying it."
Lying on the table in the hospital delivery room, Anthea struggled to comprehend what she had seen. Her baby had tendrils! Slan tendrils!
Impossible. Completely impossible.
The doctor, seemingly in shock, quickly cut the umbilical cord and tied it off. "Pay attention!" he snapped at the nurse, who stood staring. "Save the mother first. Then we'll take care of . . . of that abomination."
"No!" Anthea was weak, but she found the strength to prop herself up on her elbows. "What happened to my baby? Why is—" She tried to make sense of it, but all she could remember was the conversation between the plump receptionist and the man from the secret police. How can they not know that they're slans?
Two normal people wouldn't have a slan baby, would they? Anthea couldn't accept that she herself might have been one of those slans without tendrils, and probably Davis as well. Ridiculous! She had never imagined such a thing. They were both healthy, they both healed swiftly, and the two of them had felt a mutual bond that went beyond anything they shared with other humans. Normal humans. She felt sick.
"Doctor," she gasped. "What's going to happen?"
He ignored her question as he set the baby down. When he turned to the nurse, his voice was cold and brittle. "Get me a full syringe of hydroxylex-black."
"Yes, Doctor." The nurse looked hardened now, no longer hysterical. "It's what we have to do."
Anthea felt a surge of uneasiness within her. "Davis!" she called, but her voice was alarmingly thin.
The gangly orderly assisting with the delivery finally shook himself out of his surprise. "Doctor, the procedure is clear. We have to report this to the secret police."
"Yes, they're already here in the building," the doctor said, his voice shaky. "Alert security. John Petty himself might want to talk with these two. Make sure the father doesn't leave." He shot a sidelong glance at Anthea on the operating table, as if she were a particularly nauseating specimen. The doctor no longer seemed to consider her human at all. The nurse handed him a long syringe filled with a dark, oily substance.
"What are you going to do with that?" Anthea demanded, struggling to turn. "Answer me!" She heard a commotion outside the doors to the delivery room.
"Don't worry," the doctor said to her with cool reassurance. "This will be quick and painless. Your baby won't feel a thing." He bent over where her newborn baby lay helpless on the adjacent operating table, extending the ominous hypodermic needle.
A surge of panic shot through her heart and mind like a fire siren. It wasn't just her own fear, but something tangible, a wave of panic transmitted by the tendrils of her baby—her slan baby.
The shouts grew louder outside the delivery room, then the swinging doors crashed open. Davis stood there, looking both angry and terrified, his fists clenched. The gangly orderly tried to block him, but Davis knocked him aside with a roundhouse punch. She had never seen him hit anybody before in her life.
"Davis! They're trying to kill our baby." Another blast of emotions seemed to be directed at Anthea and at Davis. The newborn infant somehow understood that these two were his parents!
When Davis saw the doctor bending over the baby with the long, wicked syringe, he charged forward. "What do you think you're doing?"
Screaming again, the nurse tried to throw herself in the way, but Davis knocked her aside as if she were an empty cardboard box. The stunned orderly had gotten to his feet and staggered out of the delivery room, bawling for guards.
Davis fought with the owl-eyed doctor, grabbed the hand that held the poison-filled hypodermic needle and slowly twisted it away. "You're a doctor. You're not supposed to kill people! You're trying to murder a baby!"
"It's not human."
When Davis spotted the tendrils on the baby, his baby, he froze. His face became stony and then hardened into a determination that Anthea recognized. When Davis looked like that, no one was ever going to change his mind. "He's my son."
Then, with remarkable strength, he bent the doctor's hand backward, turned the syringe around. The other man gasped and struggled, but Davis easily directed the needle toward him.
Anthea fought to swing her legs over the table, wondering if her husband was using some vestige of . . . slan strength that had just now been unlocked within him. Though she was weak from giving birth, this emergency was making her recover faster. Was something awakening inside her, too? Her heart pounded.
The frantic nurse threw herself upon Davis again, but with a backhand he sent her sprawling into the tray of medical instruments. She and all of the tools fell to the floor with a loud clatter.
"I will not let you kill my son." With a flood of strength, he pushed the hypodermic needle into the doctor's throat and depressed the plunger. The doctor's eyes bulged behind his round spectacles. Judging from his gagging sounds and writhing spasms as he fell to the operating room floor, the poison was not quite as painless as the doctor had promised.
Davis looked in horror and disbelief at what he had done. The nurse scuttled back to the wall, hiding next to a respirator machine. "Don't kill me! Don't kill me."
Davis helped his wife off the table. "Can you stand? We've got to get out of here."
She clung to his neck for just a second. She wished she could hold him forever, but knew they didn't have the time. "Our baby's a slan, Davis! They're going to kill him."
"He's still our baby." Davis's grim voice was totally inflexible. "I know they want to kill him, and they'll kill us as well. We have no choice." He snatched one of the hospital blankets and quickly wrapped the baby.
Anthea swayed on her feet, found strength miraculously returning to her. She could stand because she had to stand. Her body knew what was required of her. All of her preconceptions and prejudices had changed. She and Davis had never intended to harm anyone. They weren't a threat to human society! And how could their innocent child deserve to die, just because he happened to be born with tendrils?
Anthea had always hated slans because she'd been told to hate them. She'd heard a distorted version of history, and now she wondered how many stories about slan atrocities were merely propaganda spread by people like John Petty.
With each step she seemed to grow stronger. "Let me hold him." She took the blanketed baby in her arms. Just touching the infant seemed to give her more strength. She couldn't tell if it was her imagination or genuine mental feedback from the little child.
Davis quickly led her out through the swinging doors of the delivery room, and they stumbled down the hall. Alarms had begun to sound. A harsh voice over the intercom shouted for security.
A flash of realization went through Davis's head. Anthea saw his expression go from stunned confusion to determination and then resigned anger. "You have to go, Anth." He pushed her sideways to another hall that went in the opposite direction. "Take our baby and run. Hide. Live."
"Davis, come with us!"
"If you don't get away, they'll kill both of you, and I'm sure they'll kill me. I murdered the doctor. I won't get a trial. With all the news about the slans ready to attack, they'll just gun me down and mount my head on the wall of secret police headquarters."
Suddenly, led by the flustered-looking orderly, three uniformed guards came charging toward them with their weapons drawn.
Davis took one glance at her hospital gown, at her weary features and bedraggled hair. He gave her a quick kiss, the most passionate kiss she had ever received. "Go! I'll buy you enough time to find a hiding place. Don't waste it."
"No, there's got to be another way!" In her arms, the baby began to cry.
Without listening to her, Davis ran into the main corridor, shouting at the guards. Anthea moaned, wanting to go to him, wanting to stand beside him, but the baby in her arms was her priority.
She allowed herself only a moment to look at Davis's back as he charged toward the guards, shouting wildly. Though they were armed, the guards were afraid of Davis, as if they expected him to sprout horns from his forehead and call down evil curses upon them. The man from the secret police had joined them. His face was red with anger.
With a hitch in her throat, Anthea ran barefoot away from the delivery room. Steadying herself against the heavily painted cinderblock walls, holding the baby, she worked her way down the side hall, no longer feeling weak—she couldn't afford to feel weak. The infant was calm in her arms, not sapping her strength, not distracting her.
She tried several locked doors and finally found a dark office. Inside, on a coat tree, a doctor had hung a long trench coat, wet from that day's misty rain. At least it would cover her hospital gown.
She pulled on the trench coat and found that it was baggy enough to cover the swell of the baby that she held close. Under his desk, the doctor had a pair of slip-on shoes, comfortable loafers that were too large for her, but she made do. Anthea hoped her disguise would be good enough to get her out of the hospital. Hurrying—but trying not to look like she was hurrying—she rushed down the hall, averting her gaze when nurses ran past her. Everyone looked terrified and confused.
Alarms continued to blare, and the intercoms were filled with overlapping voices that shouted contradictory orders. Security guards scrambled from room to room, as if expecting to find a slan hidden under every bed. Anthea took advantage of the momentary chaos, praying that Davis would delay the guards and the secret police long enough. Somehow, she still fooled herself into believing that he would get away as well.
From behind, she heard shouts, cries of fear, and then the rapid sharp staccato of gunshots. Four shots, a pause, three more . . . then complete silence.
Anthea nearly collapsed. The sounds themselves were like cold, leaden bullets striking her in the back. Part of her heart seemed to die, and she felt an emptiness in her mind. She hadn't realized until now how much Davis had filled her emptiness. Now that feeling was gone. He was gone. The guards and the secret police hadn't questioned him, hadn't sent him to trial; they simply gunned him down because he'd dared to defend his baby and his wife.
She felt as if her soul were torn in half. She wanted to run back, to throw herself upon his attackers, to pick up her husband's body and cradle him. But the warm baby in her arms kept her running toward safety. She had to get away. Davis had sacrificed himself so that she and the child could escape. She wouldn't lose that, for his sake.
Despite the alarms, no one knew where to find her. Police would be converging on the hospital from all quarters of the city. Teams would be scouring block after block, hunting for her. They'd assume Anthea would run as fast and as far from the hospital as she could go.
Biting back tears, she followed the exit signs, picked her way down a flight of stairs, and found a door that opened to a large parking garage, the hospital's motor pool. Several cars filled reserved spaces, expensive new models with large tailfins, extravagant hood ornaments, and white-walled tires. Two ambulance vehicles sat parked and waiting.
She had a sudden idea. If they expected Anthea to panic and run, then the safest thing she could do, the best place to hide, would be to remain here close to the hospital. While the slan hunters ranged far and wide, she crept over to one of the two ambulances and opened the back door.
The dim interior contained a soft pad, a stretcher, emergency medications, first-aid equipment—and plenty of shadows. It was a quiet and undisturbed place for her to hide, and recover, and grieve.
Holding her baby close, Anthea crawled inside, quietly closed the door behind her, and held her newborn baby as she wept silently for her lost husband.
The barred door rolled on its tracks and slammed shut, sealing Jommy Cross in an isolated cell deep beneath the grand palace. Trapped, imprisoned—and unable to warn the rest of humanity of the impending attack. He was completely cut off from any hope of escape. Nobody trusted a slan.
With his tendrils, Jommy could sense that the guards' fear of him was greater than their confidence in their weapons. He considered himself lucky that they hadn't just killed him on sight, as the secret police usually did with slans . . . as they had done with President Gray's slan cabinet members.
When he was only nine, slan hunters had murdered Jommy's mother in the streets; she'd sacrificed herself so that her boy could get away and live to reach the potential that his parents knew he had inside him. After his mother's death, young Jommy had lived as a fugitive, first falling in with warped old Granny, who forced him to steal for her. When he'd come of age and discovered the treasures left hidden for him by his dead father, the great slan scientist Peter Cross, Jommy had vowed to discover where the rest of his race had gone into hiding. . . .
From across the hall, just one cell down, he heard Kathleen struggling with the guards. "You have no right to do this! We have the protection of the President himself. We—"
They showed her no kindness. "The President's been arrested. Shut your mouth."
"Better not let her talk at all," said a second guard. "These slans can hypnotize you with a word."
If only that were so . . . If slans were as powerful as people imagined them to be, neither he nor Kathleen would ever have been captured. Jommy was still reeling from the whole swirl of events.
The young girl had been raised in Kier Gray's palace, a slan specimen to be poked and prodded and analyzed so that the secret police could find ways to fight against a slan insurgency. Though she'd been scheduled for execution when she turned the age of eleven, the President had managed to keep her alive under various pretexts.
No one had guessed that Kathleen was actually Gray's own daughter. After discovering records of a hidden slan settlement, Kathleen had escaped from the palace, running for her life. Though the base was abandoned and empty, Kathleen had taken refuge there while Petty and his secret police launched a large manhunt.
Jommy had found her there in the protected redoubt. With the telepathic bonding of true slans, both he and Kathleen had instantly known each other, loved each other. That short time together in the underground hideaway had been the most perfect time of Jommy's life. Everything had seemed possible.
But Petty's slan hunters had attacked the hidden base, and Kathleen was shot in the head. Jommy barely escaped with his own life. Hardened by grief, sure she was dead, he had gone on a determined quest to find other slans, to understand the strange and ruthless "tendrilless" ones who hated both slans and humans, as well as to bring down the hated Petty. When he finally broke into Kier Gray's palace to warn of the imminent tendrilless attack, Jommy was astonished to find that Kathleen had been healed by ultra-advanced slan medical equipment. Alive again!
She and Jommy had spent a tense but glorious day with Gray and his advisors, working out ways to face the coming crisis. When Jommy had first slipped into the palace, he had parked his high-tech armored vehicle in the forest on the other side of the river near the palace, and he had also left his father's disintegrator weapon there.
Once he knew the President accepted his help, Jommy and Kathleen had returned together to his car to retrieve the disintegrator, which would be invaluable during the fight against the tendrilless. He had hardly believed that she was back, that she was with him again. Even with the brooding danger all around them, they had been swept up in each other's presence. Jommy and Kathleen barely had a moment to experience the joy of their reunion before everything crashed around them. . . .
All the while, John Petty had been eavesdropping on Gray, setting up a trap. When Jommy and Kathleen returned, his secret police had charged in, arresting all of them, dragging them away. Petty had confiscated the disintegrator, killed the other slan advisors, and then took over the government. No one would listen to them about the real imminent threat. . . .
As she struggled against the guards trying to push her into the cell, Jommy could tell the thugs were on the verge of violence. "Don't fight them, Kathleen. I don't want you to get hurt again." His voice was quiet and gentle, but it carried clearly in the enclosed corridors of the prison level; he wanted the guards to hear as well. "These men don't matter. We have greater enemies."
After she let them shove her inside, her own cell door rolled shut with a crash. She went to the bars, but their cells were on the same side of the hall, and he couldn't see her. "We will get out of here," Kathleen said. It was a promise.
"That's up to Mr. Petty and the law, Miss," a guard said. "And right now neither one appears to be on your side."
Jommy longed to stretch his arm through the bars to touch her fingers, but the separation was too great. That was a crueler punishment than the imprisonment itself.
The guard captain stood in front of the bars, glaring in at Jommy. "Don't try anything. We'll have two men stationed here on this level, and these cells were designed to hold the worst political criminals."
Jommy sat down on his cot, looking defeated. The secret police probably had hidden cameras somewhere. "Then obviously, it's useless for us to try to escape."
"Glad you figured that out, Cross." The guard walked briskly away, eager to break eye contact.
Jommy had not given up, though. He wished he knew where his disintegrator weapon had been taken. That invention had saved Jommy's life more than once; no doubt the secret police would disassemble it, analyze it, try to figure out how the weapon worked . . . but even Jommy had never been able to decipher his father's intricate invention.
Jommy suspected President Gray was in dire straits of his own right now, facing John Petty. But the arrest of the President wasn't the worst crisis—the attack from the tendrilless slans was imminent. Jommy had risked everything to come to Gray's palace in the first place, to deliver a warning. While humans wasted time and energy hunting down true slans, fearing the wrong enemy, the tendrilless ones moved freely in society, preparing for a complete and violent takeover. The attack would occur very soon. Pleased with his little victory, Petty would not be watching for another danger coming from the skies. Earth would be completely unprepared.
Therefore, he and Kathleen would have to do something about it.
He closed his eyes and felt his golden tendrils move at the back of his head, rising into the air. He concentrated, broadcasting his thoughts like radio signals. Kathleen, can you hear me? He waited, felt a tingle, then a familiar presence.
Yes, Jommy. I'm here. I'm close. But I can't see you or touch you.
Jommy felt the urgency build within him. We've got to get out of here. We have to find President Gray, and we have to alert the Earth defenses about the tendrilless attack.
Kathleen's mind was also in turmoil. We can't do anything trapped in these cells.
Kathleen's presence in his mind strengthened him. He looked around his cell, saw nothing he could use as a weapon. He had only a cot, a sink, and a hygiene station; no mirror, no table, nothing else. Though his body was stronger than an average human's, Jommy could not break his way out. The cell was impregnable. Therefore, the weakest point was the human factor. Jommy would have to "encourage" the two guards to open the door.
He sent a thought message, summarizing what he wanted to do. Kathleen, follow my lead and transmit the same image. It's got to be convincing.
Together, separated by thick block walls, Jommy and Kathleen sent the same thunderous idea. It struck the two already frightened and suspicious guards. It took Jommy a moment to find their muddled centers of thought. The brains of the two guards were so closed off by walls of paranoia that he could barely get inside. But finally he played upon that irrational fear, sending an image of Jommy Cross using slan strength to tear a hole in the cell wall, ready to escape.
The guards came running. "Open the door! We have to stop him."
"I told you slans were dangerous!"
The lock clicked. The two men pulled the rattling bars aside, expecting to see a gaping hole and the prisoner escaping. Before the deceptive image could fade, Jommy launched himself forward like a boulder from a medieval catapult. He was not a brutal fighter, but he did have great physical strength and the element of surprise. He knocked the guards aside. As they squawked and tried to reconcile what they saw with what they'd been sure was happening, Jommy punched them both.
He grabbed one man's arm and yanked him inside the cell. He punched the other guard in the ear and then swung him into a heap atop his partner inside the small cell. Shouting, the two guards tried to disentangle themselves, but Jommy pulled the rattling cell door shut on them, and the lock dutifully clicked home.
He sprinted partway down the corridor. From behind the bars, the guards had pulled out their large-caliber pistols and fired at him, but they could not aim well because of the extreme angle. Out of view, Jommy pressed himself against the bars of Kathleen's cell, and the bullets simply struck the walls, whining and ricocheting. She rushed forward, and he put his hands through the bars to clasp hers.
"I told you I'd get us out of here." Using the outside controls, he worked the simple cell lock, and in moments, Kathleen was free beside him. "Come on. We've got to figure out a way through these levels."
The two began to run, still hugging the walls, out of range of the guards. The locked-up men continued to shout after them, firing their guns several more times, but the bullets hit nothing.
At the end of the hall Jommy and Kathleen found a door that led to a steep set of concrete stairs. Before they could open it, loud alarm klaxons rang out inside the palace, sounding a Level One emergency.
"How could they have discovered we've escaped?" Kathleen said, waiting for another surge of guards to come charging after them. "It's only been a few minutes."
Jommy froze. "The emergency's not because of us. Not us at all." Next, the alarms were accompanied by the bone-grating sound of an air-raid siren. "It's the tendrilless slans. Their attack has begun."
Jem Lorry had lived among humans for most of his life, pretending to be one of them. His mind shields were perfect. Strategically placed in the Earth government, working his way up by way of his own intelligence (and the occasional necessary assassination), he became the closest, most influential advisor to Kier Gray. In the sure progress of the tendrilless plans, he should soon have been the President himself.
Now, from Mars, Jem was engineering the downfall of Earth.
Here on the red planet, the tendrilless had created more than just a strategic base and a hideout. The third breed of humanity had forged an entire civilization with outposts, settlements, and industrial complexes ringing the central canyon city of Cimmerium. From where Jem stood inside the large vaulted chamber, the distant sun streamed through the glass ceiling that covered the whole, expansive canyon. A large armored city crowded the habitable flatlands on the edge of the deep gorge, but the highest-ranked and richest tendrilless had built a warren of structures into the stark cliff wall, beneath the transparent canopy.
His people had superior mental capacity to humans, though greatly limited telepathic abilities compared with true slans. No one—not Jem Lorry, not the Tendrilless Authority, probably not even the slans themselves—knew where or how the tendrilless ones had originated. The true slans had turned against them, launching what amounted to a genocide to eradicate their genetic stepbrothers. Jem didn't know why true slans hated them so much, but the feeling was certainly mutual. He didn't need explanations.
Pleased that the full-fledged attack on Earth was finally about to commence, Jem stood before the seven members of the Tendrilless Authority, expecting to receive well-deserved applause. This entire attack had been his brainchild. He had sacrificed much to reach this point, and he intended to get what he had earned. The council members peered down at him with stony faces.
The Authority chamber was like an ancient Roman arena. When all the tendrilless citizens gathered for primary meetings, thousands would sit on ringed seats staring down at the main podium, listening to petitions and plans, watching the Authority issue its judgment.
Today, though, Jem was by himself in the vast room, staring up at the seven men. He would have preferred a cheering audience; after his guaranteed victory, the tendrilless would certainly applaud his dreams and ambitions. They had waited, lurked, and planned for far too long. Only a few, like the stodgy Authority members, bled away that enthusiasm with "caution" and "patience"—thinly disguised words for "cowardice."
"The initial attack has commenced," Jem announced. "Our heavily armed vanguard ships have arrived at Earth in the past hour. At this very moment, our warriors should be bombarding their cities. It is time for us to launch the much larger occupation fleet. All those ships and personnel will require a week to get to Earth. The victory is all but assured."
"Nothing is ever assured, my son, until it has happened," answered Altus Lorry, Jem's father. The old Authority Chief had a head that seemed too large to balance on the wattled stalk of his neck. His hair was shaggy, giving him a leonine appearance. Altus Lorry was a grandiose leader who had spent his lifetime playing politics among the most influential tendrilless in Cimmerium. But he had no real understanding of the human enemy.
Jem struggled to keep his expression neutral. "I urge you to hear my recommendations, Father. Have I not earned it? I lived for years among humans. I know all the systems we have put in place." He could not entirely hide his impatience. "It's no surprise that after years of living comfortably on Mars, you and the other Authority members have grown complacent. You are afraid of things you need not fear and suspicious of that which poses no threat. You give the humans far too much credit."
Altus laughed without humor. "Better safe than sorry, my son, as you well know."
"Actually, I don't! You have always been safe here, but I have never been sorry for what I did or accomplished." Jem sensed an uneasiness among the Authority members, and it made him angry. If they didn't act soon, their swift advantage would begin to trickle away. "While the first stage of the attack shatters the government and breaks their ability to resist, we must launch the main occupation fleet. We need the big ships and our overwhelming ground forces in place to consolidate our hold on Earth."
Not long ago, Jem had watched as hundreds upon hundreds of sleek vanguard warships launched from Mars, kicking up crumbled red dust, spewing clouds of steam and fuel exhaust. They had risen to the sky and out into orbit, streaking across space like sharks scenting blood in the water. The blood of normal humans.
And that was only the first wave of the attack.
The initial volley of devastating bombs would be dropping upon the main cities of Earth right now. At last, Jem would feel vengeance for his people, who had been forced to run here centuries ago and hide. The tendrilless would finally get what they were owed. So why delay the occupation fleet?
"Patience, my son." The old man was unintentionally condescending. "We intend to do so. The occupation fleet will be on its way by tomorrow. Or the day after."
Jem took a deep breath. The Tendrilless Authority had always been a roadblock to his ambitions. Eventually, before he could accomplish anything worthwhile, he would need to replace the old members with a more proactive group. Or, he mused, he might have to do away with the Authority entirely. Who needed a seven-member council when one visionary leader—a king, for lack of a better term—could do the job much more efficiently?
"Another factor makes our timing impeccable." Jem had stopped thinking of himself as a petitioner seeking permission. He fancied himself a great general, and the tendrilless armies were under his control; he was simply delivering a report to the Authority. "Earth itself is in turmoil. President Kier Gray has just been arrested and exposed as a true slan. Even I never suspected it! The power vacuum weakens them even more. They will barely be able to mount a defense, I guarantee it. But only if we move now."
Jem's resentment toward Kier Gray was personal rather than political. He had been in love with Kathleen (or perhaps lust was a better term, though he used the words interchangeably). He had made persuasive arguments to the President, claiming (falsely, as he well knew) that interbreeding with slans would dilute their mutant traits and make their descendants into "real people" again. Instead, Jem knew that slan genetics were dominant, and he intended to bring Kathleen's superior powers directly into the tendrilless breed.
"What about this man named John Petty, the leader of the secret police?" said Altus. "You have described him as a powerful administrator. Perhaps he will rally the survivors."
"He's a thug with a tendency for brutality and excess. The people will never accept him as their leader. After seeing what Petty does, the humans will welcome us with open arms. Ha! I bet they'd prefer to be our slaves rather than live under his boot heel. Launch the occupation fleet, Father, and I will take care of the rest."
Without waiting to be dismissed by the ostensible leaders, Jem turned his back and marched out of the vast, echoing chamber. The Martian sun streaming through the ceiling of glass seemed very bright, very bright indeed.
Huddled in the rear of the ambulance, Anthea held the baby close and pulled a reflective emergency blanket over herself. Poor, brave Davis! The infant stirred restlessly, as if he knew he shouldn't cry even though he felt his mother's powerful emotions with his delicate tendrils.
Anthea propped him up and for the first time looked closely at the newborn's face. His bright hazel eyes were wide open, as if the child could see her clearly and recognize her as his mother. Newborns weren't supposed to be capable of that . . . but a normal husband and wife shouldn't have had a baby with slan tendrils, either.
With a curious sense of wonder, Anthea reached out to touch the tiny strands like long threads of nerve fibers, antennae extending from the baby's superior brain. When she stroked the tendrils, they twitched and curled, making both her fingers and her mind tingle. How could she and Davis have had such a potential within them without knowing it? Had her own parents known they were different genetically? Had Davis'?
Anthea couldn't help but feel herself bonding with the infant. He was a blank slate, full of potential but without any experiences, knowledge, or personality. Given the right guidance and inspiration, her son could become a great man. She made a promise to herself, and to the memory of Davis, that she would do everything possible—give up her very life if necessary—to protect this baby so he could grow up and meet his destiny.
She and her husband had never even decided on a name for their son. Anthea remembered a candlelight dinner only a week ago, when they had both proposed names for the baby, alternatives for a boy or a girl. If they had a son, Davis preferred Raymond or maybe William.
"How about Geoffrey with a 'G'?" Anthea had suggested. "Or Elliott? Or Sam?"
"Could you live with Stefan?" Davis asked. "Or how about Leroy? It means 'the king.' "
"No, definitely not Leroy."
The more suggestions they made, the more impossible it seemed to find a name they could both agree to. Finally, at the end of that dinner, Anthea and Davis had set aside the discussion, deciding to wait until she had the baby. When they could actually hold it, look at it, and see its face, they were sure they could choose the perfect name.
Now they would never have that chance. Anthea didn't know how she could bear to choose a name all by herself.
Suddenly, she was startled out of her reverie by shouts and running footsteps in the hospital's garage. "Have you checked everywhere? We can't let the slans escape."
"The one we killed didn't even have tendrils."
"Without tendrils, his head won't make much of a trophy for John Petty's wall. But if he wasn't a slan, then he was a traitor helping them."
Anthea felt the burn of tears, but she drove them back, sitting up just enough so that she could see the round side mirror on the door of the ambulance. In the reflection she could view part of the underground parking garage.
Several uniformed security men spread out, searching, their revolvers drawn. The ominous man with the secret police armband stood at the doorway, looking into the shadows, scanning for any sign of her or the baby. "I will be very disappointed if you allow them to escape."
The methodical security men began to look in the cars. Anthea huddled down, pulling the blanket over her, sending out a desperate thought. We're not here. We're not here. The baby seemed to pick up and amplify the message.
She heard footsteps moving along, reports shouted from one man to another. They were going toward other cars nearer the exit ramp, away from her, without even checking the ambulance. She wondered if her son had actually influenced the guards, or if it was just a fortunate coincidence. Anthea held her breath.
Then the terrifying shrieks of air-raid sirens ratcheted up and down the streets, amplified by broadcast systems in the hospital, drowning out even the normal security alarms. The sounds of chaos outside greatly increased; she heard racing automobiles, squealing tires, then a series of distant explosions.
The searchers in the hospital's motor pool parking lot shouted to each other, then dashed back inside the building. Air raid sirens continued to wail, but now they were blurred by the drone of heavy jet engines. Unfamiliar flying craft cruised overhead approaching the heart of Centropolis. The slan attack! Then came the percussive flurry of anti-aircraft fire, large defensive guns that President Gray had installed on skyscraper roofs.
As the gunfire continued, she heard a thin whistle that grew louder and culminated in an ear-shattering eruption. More bombs dropped from above, smashing into the streets, setting buildings afire. Centuries ago, Earth's greatest cities had been leveled in the Slan Wars. Anthea hoped that the rebuilt skyscrapers had been reinforced to withstand an attack. Or had humanity grown too complacent?
Yet another explosion echoed down the block from the hospital. She heard brisk footsteps and more shouts as two men ran for the ambulance. Anthea cowered back down as two rescue squad techs jumped inside and slammed the doors. The driver started the engine with a roar, and the ambulance began to roll forward as soon as his partner threw himself into the seat.
Huddling in the back, she hoped they wouldn't look behind them to see the emergency blanket she had pulled down to cover her.
Its siren bawling, the medical vehicle shot out of the hospital's parking bay and into the chaos of the war-torn streets. The driver turned right and accelerated down the avenue into the city. Explosions peppered the buildings around them; bricks and shattered glass rained down onto the street. Traffic ground to a halt. Swerving cars smashed into each other, and the ambulance zig-zagged past the wrecks without slowing.
A falling bomb struck a car limping along on a flat tire, and the fuel tank detonated so close to the rushing ambulance that the side panels in the back rattled. Screaming pedestrians were running everywhere, trying to flag down the medical vehicle. The driver just drove past the flaming debris. Anthea wondered exactly which injured people the rescue squad intended to save.
The driver slammed the brakes hard just as half of a building slid down into the street, blocking their way. The violent lurch caused loose supplies to clatter forward from storage bins in the back of the ambulance. Anthea nearly tumbled to the floor of the vehicle, and the infant began to cry as the blankets slid off of her. Before she could shush him, before she could grab the blankets to hide them again, both the driver and his fellow rescue squad tech turned around, staring with saucer-like eyes.
"She's the one the secret police were looking for! She killed Dr. Elton."
With the ambulance blocked in the street, both men scrambled out of their seats and lunged toward the back of the ambulance.
Anthea held the baby defensively against her. She should have been weak and exhausted, barely able to move after giving birth only an hour ago. But her body had healed remarkably, and energy sang through her muscles. The unexpected strength had always been there, but it lay fallow. Now that Anthea knew what she was, now that she had a baby to protect, she could feel it awakening.
"Don't worry, she's trapped in here," said the driver. "There's two of us. We can easily grab her."
"Careful. Slans can wipe your brain."
The driver paused to open a first-aid kit, withdrew a long syringe. "This should knock her out."
His partner blinked. "That's three times the standard dose! It could kill her."
The other man shrugged. "The reward's the same either way, and she'll be a lot less trouble for us."
Anthea understood how animal mothers in the wild fought to protect their young. As the driver came close, looking for an opportunity to jab her with the syringe, Anthea reacted. She didn't think, didn't even understand what her body was capable of doing. She kicked him hard in the chest—and it was as if he'd tried to catch a cannonball. The man flew backward, struck the windshield with so much force that he crashed directly through and onto the hood of the ambulance. He sprawled there, bloody and motionless, most likely dead. Anthea didn't care. He had meant to murder her and the baby.
The other emergency tech recoiled, astonished at what he had seen. He grabbed a bright red fireman's axe mounted on the side panel of the ambulance. "All right. No more playing nice with the slans."
Anthea turned around and, using the same unknowable adrenaline force, she smashed open the back doors. Carrying the baby in one arm, she bounded out into the streets.
The emergency tech shouted curses after her, scrambled to the swinging door of the ambulance. "She's a slan! Stop her! Stop her!"
But the streets were full of blood-streaked people running for shelter, while overhead, strange angular spacecraft swooped low, dropping more bombs. Anthea ran out, disappearing into the frenzied battle zone.
Inside Kier Gray's palace (technically, John Petty's palace at the moment) everything was in chaos. Even before the first bombs started dropping, perimeter alert systems and distant early warnings detected the enemies converging in Earth orbit.
"Mr. Petty, sir!" said a wide-eyed officer named Clarke. "There's a full fleet coming in—from space! Unidentified ship designs, definitely military." In the past hour, the chief of secret police had put Clarke in charge of monitoring the defensive systems and scanners in the command-and-control center. With so many dirty slans hidden among the government, Petty didn't trust anyone who wasn't already his own.
The young man bent over his curved screens, flicked toggle switches, and turned knobs to adjust the focus on the cathode-ray tube. Under the sweeping arc of a radar beam, blips showed up. "They're spacecraft, sir, battleships. Backtracking their trajectory . . . it looks as if they've come from Mars."
"Invaders from Mars?" All his career, the great slan hunter had been trying to track down their secret bases. He had uncovered and documented numerous slan redoubts, but knew he could not account for the entire vanished race of mutants. Now it all became clear: They must have fled Earth entirely and gone to Mars, leaving only a few stragglers—or spies—behind.
Since the devastating Slan Wars, human society—pure human society—had developed television and radar, jet aircraft, but only a fragmented space program, a few satellites and pie-in-the-sky plans for rocket ships. A long time ago, human civilization had been much more ambitious, stretching their boundaries and approaching the stars. The Slan Wars had wrecked all that, knocking human civilization back by many centuries.
But the insidious slans must have maintained their superior technology. All these years they had been hiding on Mars, building up their invasion force.
Just like Gray warned us! Before the first slan air strikes, guards had taken the deposed President to a secure holding cell in the interrogation sector. Not wanting to let Gray anywhere close to Jommy Cross, he had kept the President far removed from the other two slans, in a completely different detention level. But Petty hadn't decided what to do next with the prisoners. He had to take care of it himself.
"Mount all of our defenses. Now that we've exposed what Gray really is, the slans must be trying to free him."
"But we only just arrested President Gray," Clarke said. "If these ships came from Mars, they launched days ago—"
"Don't argue fine points with me. Just call out the military."
The technician fiddled with his switches and displayed the incredible oncoming force on the big screen. It took his breath away. "Um, sir—since we've arrested President Gray, and Jem Lorry has disappeared, who has the executive authority necessary? Who's in charge?"
"I'm in charge!" He lifted his chin. "It's about time that someone with common sense, a proven track record, and a hard fist started taking care of things." He sounded as if he were delivering a campaign speech.
Petty paced around the bustling stations in the command-and-control center, ignoring the racket of alarms. "Summon all our troops. Get our aircraft in the skies, put soldiers on the rooftops to man our anti-aircraft guns. Tell them to shoot down anything that moves." He ground his teeth together, then glanced again at the blips on the display. The enemy ships kept coming, as if Mars had an infinite supply.
As the bombs started dropping from the skies, detonating in the streets of Centropolis—possibly all across the world—Petty quickly saw that Earth didn't have a chance against this sort of attack. He would have to take unorthodox action, much as he hated to do so.
His face flushed with frustration, he chose the three largest and most muscular guards. "Follow me back to the President's cell. I'm going to make him see reason. And if I can't manage that, then you three are going to help change his mind." Perhaps they weren't the brightest men, little more than thugs, but Petty would do all the thinking. He just needed someone who could break a few bones, if necessary.
The sheer racket of the alarms probably caused more confusion and fear than the actual attack. Outside, the distant muffled rumble of explosions continued, barely heard over the obnoxious, incessant alarms. The enemy intended a full-fledged invasion, and no doubt they wouldn't stop until most of the city was destroyed.
In the upper levels of the palace, functionaries, staff, and even a few political visitors ran about in a panic. The streets were a stew of chaos. The surveillance cameras and periscope viewers showed much of Centropolis already in flames.
He hurried along brightly lit tunnels and narrow passageways, accompanied by the guards. If John Petty was going to rule the world, he wanted it to last longer than an hour or two.
His guards were armed with blunt-muzzled, large-caliber pistols. One slug fired from such a weapon would tear a hole the size of a grapefruit in a victim; the secret police rarely worried about simply wounding a slan prisoner. Right now, the guards would have to content themselves with using blunt clubs, perhaps even sharp-pointed electrical prods. He needed the "slan President" alive.
The burly guards stopped as Petty faced the other man's holding chamber. Inside, Gray paced and sweated, desperate to get out. Seeing the chief of secret police, he rushed to the bars. "Why didn't you listen to me? You have to let me out."
"I don't have to do anything, but you do. Remember who's holding the cards here."
"You'll just be holding a handful of rubble if we don't solve this."
Grudgingly, Petty gestured for the guards to activate the cell's unlocking mechanism. The barred door rattled aside, and the slan hunter stepped into the chamber with his three guards close behind him. "The slans are bombarding our city. Tell me how we fight against them."
"They aren't true slans. They are our step-brothers, tendrilless slans bred centuries ago to move undetected among humanity. Now they mean to destroy both races." When Petty gave him a skeptical frown, the deposed President insisted, "It is the tendrilless ones you should fear, not us. They have infiltrated your news media, your utility companies, your transportation systems."
"You're trying to make me paranoid."
"You had a head start on that all by yourself."
"Why should slans hate other slans, whether or not they've got tendrils?"
"Many shameful acts have been committed by both sides, and all the while humans were blind to it. Samuel Lann, the father of all slans, would disown every one of us if he were here."
A small-statured mousy man dashed down the hall, panting. He wore the crisp gray uniform and a blue armband of the palace service personnel, a courier. He clutched a scrap of paper in his hand. "Mr. Petty, President Gray . . . uh, whoever's in charge. I have an urgent message! News." He skidded to a stop and heaved great breaths. His face was red from the effort of running.
The three guards glared at the mousy courier. Petty said, "Well, out with it, man!"
"Jommy Cross and Kathleen Layton have escaped. Those two slans are on the loose!"
The President saw his chance. While the others were startled by the announcement, he lunged from the cot and wrapped his hands around Petty's thick neck. The momentum knocked the burly slan hunter back. "You fool, you've brought us all to ruin! We could have set up defenses in time. Now how many thousands, maybe millions, are going to die?"
Two of Petty's thugs grabbed the President's arms, fighting so hard they ripped his shirt, but finally they tore his hands free from the chief's throat. Petty coughed and choked. Thick red marks stood out on his neck. "How . . . dare you!"
"In order to achieve true victory, one must dare a great deal." It was the voice of one of the three brutish guards. He sounded unexpectedly erudite.
Rubbing away his blurred vision, Petty turned to look at the man who now stood in a broad-shouldered fighting stance, his heavy-caliber pistol drawn from its holster. The wide, blunt muzzle pointed directly at John Petty.
"What's going on?" His damaged voicebox allowed no more than a rasp.
The guard continued to act strangely. "Once I kill you and Kier Gray, the humans won't have even a thread of hope. No one can lead them." The pistol never wavered.
"You—you're one of them!" Petty squawked.
"A tendrilless victory is assured."
With an explosive sound, the gunshot echoed in the cell, but the burly guard merely staggered, then stared in astonishment at the wet red hole the size of a grapefruit that had been blown through his chest.
Outside, trembling at the door of the cell, the meek courier held his own gun in shaking hands. The blast seemed to have deafened him, while the recoil had nearly knocking him backward off his feet. "They . . . they said I was supposed to come armed before I delivered my message." The man blinked, not sure who he was supposed to explain himself to.
Petty dropped to his knees, weak and disoriented. "A slan—among my own secret police!"
"Not a slan," Gray insisted. "Don't be an even bigger fool than you already are. He wanted to kill me as well as you. Look at the back of his head. It's one of the tendrilless."
The other two shaken guards grabbed the traitor's head, probed among his bristly dark hair, but could find no prosthetics, no makeup, nothing that covered the telltale signs of a hidden slan.
As the guard lay choking in his own blood, he exhibited great strength, slan healing powers. "You don't have a chance against my people." Then he died.
Petty glared at the remaining two guards, as if afraid they might pull their weapons and open fire, too. He brushed at the droplets of blood that had sprayed on his clean uniform, then whirled toward Gray sitting on his cot. "You were telling the truth." It sounded like an accusation. "You were telling the truth! There are tendrilless slans."
"They are the ones you've always needed to fear," Gray said.
Petty backed out of the cell and gestured to his guards. "Get the body out of there, and lock him in again." He turned to the surprised and meek courier. "All three of you, stay here and guard Gray." This information changed everything. "I have to get back to the command-and-control center. We're going to need new battle plans."
Jommy and Kathleen ran. Outside, the attack seemed to be growing worse.
The underground levels of the grand palace were a labyrinth of corridors, subterranean chambers, shielded self-contained rooms like small bank vaults. Ages ago, slan conquerors had designed and constructed the immense structure during their brief reign over humanity. After so many subsequent administrations, Jommy doubted that anyone—even President Gray—knew the extent of all the passageways and secret underground rooms.
He wondered if there were also interrogation rooms and torture chambers down here. How often had Gray himself used these detention cells?
Each of the innumerable underground sectors was accessed by a different security protocol. Even veteran workers could easily get lost in the confusing monumental structure that was as large as a small city. The two escapees used that to their advantage now.
After breaking out of their cells, they ran along, peering around corners, dashing down open stretches, trying doors that were either locked or led to empty rooms or simple offices. Klaxons blared and magenta warning lights flashed in the halls, sounding an evacuation, summoning security, unnecessarily warning of the invasion.
"We have to find President Gray." Kathleen hesitated, then added, "We have to find my father."
"We'll find him." Jommy squeezed her hand. "It may seem an impossible task, but people have always feared slans for our abilities. We may as well give them something to fear."
One large room had windows for walls. Inside, fifteen chairs surrounded a long boardroom table; black-and-white computer screens were embedded in the flat wood surface. "This must be a secondary command and control center." Jommy looked around, perplexed. "But it's empty, not even a backup team. What about the emergency?"
Kathleen studied the room. "The palace probably has at least twenty rooms like this. The government is compartmentalized, everyone with their separate areas of responsibility. The President and his various advisors don't trust each other during the best of times, and now that we're being attacked . . ." She let her voice trail off. "I'll bet there's plenty that even John Petty doesn't know about the palace."
He was about to continue the search for Kier Gray's location, but Kathleen called him back. She pulled up a rolling chair in front of one of the black-and-white screens. "Wait, Jommy—help me. The two of us can figure out these systems. We'll search for where they've taken my father."
He joined her at the head of the table, looking down at the largest cathode-ray tube. Text scrolled down the screens, reports of damage, estimated enemy strengths, suggested numbers of casualties. Paper tape rattled through a reader and a status report in block letters appeared on the curved screen.
Kathleen flicked toggle switches, then typed long strings of commands into the keyboard. A bird's nest of lines appeared on the screen, and Kathleen turned a knob, adjusting the focus. "There! A blueprint." Diagrams of floor after floor of the huge building complex appeared, all superimposed on top of each other.
She spread them out until she had found hundreds of Images, each one filling a full computer screen, each one showing one floor of one wing. She flicked from screen to screen, searching so rapidly that the blueprints became a blur. Thanks to the eidetic memory possessed by all slans, he and Kathleen were able to take a mental snapshot of each image.
Jommy stared in amazement. "I never realized the extent of this place. The grand palace covers the whole skyline of Centropolis. After my mother was killed and I went to live with old Granny, I used to look across the rooftops and see the beautiful palace. It was like something out of a fairytale with its beautiful lights and towers. It made me think of what great things people could accomplish if they worked together . . . how much more wonderful it was to build something than to destroy."
Jommy leaned closer to the screen. "But this is unbelievable. What I could see above ground is barely the tip of an iceberg. It spreads down like the roots of a huge tree. There are tunnels and access shafts, like the ones I used to get in here." He glanced sideways at Kathleen. "My vehicle is waiting for us in the forest across the river. If we can only get to it . . ."
Kathleen toggled to another screen image, then another, still searching for the secret police lockdown zones. "Not without my father. We've got to save the President. Who else could lead us through this time of crisis?"
Jommy reached over and gave her a hug. "I'm proud of you for saying that." Then he glanced down, disheartened at the hundreds of screens of blueprints. "But how are we going to find him in all this? His cell was nowhere close to ours."
Kathleen rattled her fingers across the keyboard. Metal pins chattered through paper tape. When a tongue of paper spat out from the printer slot, she tore it off, looked at the numbers, then nodded. "At least Petty's men are efficient—they've logged in my father's incarceration. This is the blueprint we need. I'll find the exact sector."
As Jommy zeroed in on the appropriate diagram, Kathleen determined the floor number, the corridor, and even the cell number where President Gray had been taken. Collating through the information in his head, he settled on the best route to get there. "We can take the internal transport cars."
He and Kathleen dashed down the hall, found an exit door that led to a set of steep metal stairs. He counted the floors, looked at the painted numbers on the fire doors, and emerged four levels below. They cautiously poked their heads through the doorway and saw no one, only a single flickering light that marked the internal transport station. Jommy pushed the call button to summon the rapid oval car used for shuttling people throughout the vast palace. Within minutes they heard a rattling hum, and a white egg-shaped vessel swept toward them along magnetic rails.
After the door hissed open, Jommy and Kathleen climbed inside, punched their destination request, and sat back as the bullet car shot along. The two sat close to each other in a brief moment of privacy where they could feel safe, where they could just be together. Jommy knew they should use the time to make plans, to discuss what they would do once they found and freed the President. On the other hand, he just wanted to be with Kathleen, now that they had found each other again. Alas, the swift car reached the destination station much too soon, barely giving the two of them time to catch their breath.
The transport car came to a stop, and the door slid open. "Not far now," Kathleen said.
"Let's hope our luck holds. We'll get him free, soon." Jommy still had no idea how they were going to manage it.
He grabbed her hand, and they dashed out. Jommy half expected to see a group of secret police waiting for them with weapons drawn. One man did rush across the corridor, startling them, but he hurled himself into a room, then slammed the door shut, locking it with a loud click. They saw no one else.
Up another two flights of stairs, they emerged into a complex of cubical offices. People hunched over heavy black telephones, clacked on manual typewriters, and rushed reports and documents to each other. None of the workers paid attention to Jommy and Kathleen. The two hurried past the cubicles, opened another double door and saw a long, straight hallway before them.
Kathleen paused. "That leads to the high-security detention area. My father is there." The hammer-and-web symbol of the secret police marked the wall.
Bright overhead lights gave the long passage a sterile appearance, and six metal doors set into the painted cinderblock walls were closed tight. Isolation cells? Torture chambers? They would be incredibly exposed running down that long hall. Jommy reviewed the memorized blueprints in his mind, but he could see no other way to where they had to go. "It looks like a gauntlet we have to traverse."
As they sprinted down the endless empty corridor, he was sure camera eyes must be watching them. By now John Petty must have learned of their escape and would be searching the whole palace for them. Jommy doubted even the tendrilless attack would distract the slan hunter from that.
When they were halfway down the long corridor, far from any hiding place, the double doors at the far end of the hall began to swing open. Jommy and Kathleen threw themselves against one of the recessed metal doors. He tried to turn the knob so they could duck inside and hide, but it was locked. Even using slan strength, he could not break it open.
At the far end of the corridor, three men wearing secret police uniforms pushed through the double doors. All of the men were armed with heavy pistols. Jommy and Kathleen pressed themselves into the small indentation of the doorwell, knowing they couldn't possibly remain out of sight. They were trapped, right out in the open. The guards would see them any moment.
"We have to make them not see us," Kathleen said in a quick whisper that was little more than a hiss. Then she squeezed her eyes shut and concentrated. Don't see us. You don't see us.
With his tendrils, Jommy immediately picked up on what she was trying to do. Jommy would have preferred to use one of his hypnotism crystals to enhance the output from his tendrils, but he had lost the last of them on Mars. Instead, he and Kathleen would have to use their powers jointly to send out a camouflaging suggestion. He joined her thoughts. You don't see us. Don't see us.
The secret police hurried along the corridor at a brisk pace, intent on their own mission, enthusiastically discussing the crisis amongst themselves. You don't see us.
The three men strode directly past them, looking straight ahead, not bothering to glance from side to side. They passed within two feet of Kathleen, but her concentration was fixed. The slan tendrils at the back of Jommy's head waved gently as he continued to send out his thoughts. The armed men reached the far end of the corridor without looking back, and they exited into another part of the palace.
Kathleen let out a long sigh of relief, and Jommy realized he was trembling from the tension. He shook his head in amazement, then grabbed her hand again. "All right, the easy part's over now." The two of them ran to the far end of the long hall, reaching the doors into the high-security sector where Kier Gray was being held.
"We don't have any disguise or any weapons," she said. "We're just going to walk into the secret police zone?"
"I was planning to move faster than a walk." Jommy knew their chances were slim, and he was sure it would only get worse from this point forward. "That last little trick worked very well, and they're awfully preoccupied right now. I can't even imagine what's going on out in the streets."
"All right, I'll think calming thoughts. Don't let them be suspicious. We need to get close enough to my father that we can fight them. Once we open the door of his cell, he can help us fight."
"I'm counting on it," Jommy said.
Steeling themselves, they ran forward. Most of the holding chambers were empty; no prisoners extended beseeching hands through the bars, clamoring to be set free during the tendrilless attack. Ahead on the left, two guards and a mousy-looking courier waited in front of a sealed cell. All three of them were armed with blunt-nosed pistols.
"That's got to be the right place," Kathleen said.
She and Jommy marched determinedly forward. He focused on his thoughts. We belong here. Don't be suspicious. Don't raise the alarm. We're no threat to you. Nothing to worry about.
The guards glanced at them, then looked away, seemingly dismissing the two. The meek courier appeared perplexed and confused at his whole situation.
Nothing to worry about. We belong here.
As Jommy and Kathleen approached, the guards looked at each other again with questions starting to form on their lips, and troubled expressions slowly began to dawn on their faces. It wasn't working anymore!
Knowing their control was slipping, he and Kathleen threw themselves forward in unison with all the speed they could muster. Jommy seized the first guard's pistol and shot the second man, while Kathleen knocked away the skinny courier's arm. Because the man's hands were already slick with nervous sweat, the pistol slipped out of his grip and clattered to the floor.
Gray reached through the bars of his cell. "Kathleen! Jommy! You shouldn't be here. You're going to get caught."
"No, sir—we're going to free you," Jommy said.
Kathleen snatched the courier's pistol from the floor and pointed it at the remaining two men. "Step away from the bars."
Jommy found the controls and opened the cell door. Breathless with relief and grim-faced with urgency, Gray stumbled out into the corridor. He said, "Petty has seized control of the government, but he has no clue what he's up against. We've got no time to lose."
Before they could get away, though, four uniformed guards threw open the double doors through which Jommy and Kathleen had entered. At the opposite end of the security wing, another group of secret police barged in, led by John Petty himself. A trap! Kathleen, holding the pistol in her hands, pointed from the two men they had disarmed, then toward the oncoming guards.
"Don't shoot, Kathleen," Jommy warned. From both sides, the secret police closed in.
Gray's shoulders slumped, and the slan hunter came forward. "Well, well, look at the two fish I caught in my net!" He looked down at the dead guard whom Jommy had shot. "I seem to be losing a lot of guards today."
Petty disarmed Kathleen himself. The meek courier looked woefully embarrassed, and the other thug at the cell looked sheepish for having been duped.
The slan hunter shook his head. "We've been watching this pathetic little escape attempt unfold. After one of my own guards almost shot me, you didn't honestly think I would leave your cell unmonitored? You could have spies everywhere."
"Then what took you so long?" Jommy asked.
"I found it amusing, but time pressure forced me to act. I require your access codes and your command knowledge, Mr. President."
Gray straightened. "Then you finally believe me about the extent of our current crisis? How deeply the tendrilless infiltration goes?"
Petty looked as if he had just swallowed a lemon whole. "I don't trust you, Gray, any more than I trust these other two dirty slans. But I have no choice at the moment." He gestured to the guards. "Bring the three of them to the command-and-control center. Even with all the resources of the secret police, I can only destroy one enemy at a time."
Even though the enemy spacecraft continued to drop their bombs all across the city, the looters were already out. They wouldn't miss an opportunity like this.
Ducking instinctively against the concussions of explosions and showers of dust and debris, Anthea ran alongside the trembling buildings in search of a place where she could protect herself and her infant son. She still wore only her hospital gown, the loose overcoat, and too-large shoes stolen from the doctor's office.
In an upscale shopping district she found several department stores with smashed display windows, brick and stone fallen onto the sidewalk. Before this, Anthea had never stolen anything in her life, but many things had changed. She clung to the baby and picked her way over the rubble, venturing into one of the stores.
A young man loomed in front of her. He had bad teeth, frizzy black hair, and dust all over his face. "This is my store! Don't you even think about coming in here to steal." His clothes hung awkwardly on him—a new and expensive leather jacket, suit pants, a formal shirt. She noticed tags still dangling from the garments. He squared his shoulders and leaned closer, as if to frighten her away with his bad breath. "The police have orders to shoot looters, you know."
"I just need some clothes. That's all."
"Steal clothes from somewhere else. Don't take mine. These are all mine!"
Remembering how she had sent the ambulance driver crashing through the windshield with a single kick, Anthea knew that she could easily subdue this overblown creep. But she did not want to draw attention to herself, and she was afraid of what she might do to him. "I'll go somewhere else, then."
"That's for sure." The young man puffed out his chest and pretended to threaten her again.
She continued along the street, dodging debris as a nearby building exploded. Four of the angular attack craft swooped toward one of the Centropolis defense planes as soon as it took off, blasting it out of the sky. A fireball erupted in a skyscraper directly across the street, sending a shower of broken windows and shattered concrete. Anthea ducked under the green-and-white awning of a deserted coffee shop as shards of glass rained down, stabbing into the stretched canvas.
Farther down the street, Anthea found another clothing store, as yet unclaimed by scrawny looters. She kicked open the door. Inside the dim shadows, she ransacked the hangers and racks until she found a serviceable dress and comfortable shoes. She also tried on a beige overcoat and rounded up a soft powder-blue blanket for the baby. She wrapped him carefully to hide his fine tendrils.
Now they appeared normal, even if the rest of the world had gone crazy. She felt a faint hope that she and her baby might actually have a fighting chance. "I won't let you down, Davis," she whispered.
Anthea longed to go back to the brownstone apartment she had called home, but after the alarms in the hospital, the secret police would have tracked down Davis's address. They had his body, his wallet. Even during the ongoing attack, the ruthless slan hunters might have sent operatives to her home.
Neither she nor her husband had ever done anything that might threaten the security of Earth, but the secret police weren't going to ask for explanations or alibis. If they found her and the slan baby, they would simply open fire and chalk up the victims as another victory.
She kept looking for a place where she and the baby could hole up and wait. The city itself was on fire. Curls of black smoke rose like chimneys to the sky. Attacking spacecraft and Centropolis defense planes engaged in dogfights overhead.
Then she came upon a building made of thick, reinforced stone. So far it had withstood the air attacks. Chiseled in crisp letters above the entrance were comforting words: Main Public Library.
Anthea dashed inside the large building. Due to the attack, all the patrons had fled, and the library was like a hollow mausoleum. The homey, familiar scent of books surrounded them. "Hello?" Her voice echoed among the stacks.
Hearing her voice, a pot-bellied man with a blue-striped necktie strutted out of an office and came to greet them with open hands and a broad smile. "Hello, hello! Welcome to the library."
"Are you open? Can we come in here?"
"Oh, ma'am, we're certainly open for business. Didn't you see the library hours posted on the door?"
"I was afraid with the air-raid sirens and everything—"
The man made a dismissive gesture. "Tut, tut! The library hours are set in stone and have been followed for many years. We can't change things just because of an external distraction. Is there something in particular you were looking for? A reference book, perhaps? A good novel?"
Relief rushed through her. "Sanctuary. My baby and I need a place to . . . to wait out the attack. We can't go home."
"Ah, of course. I was hoping you might want to browse the shelves, but you're certainly welcome here. All are welcome."
The librarian had large, expressive eyes and heavy jowls that looked like hanging suitcases of extra skin. His straight hair was chestnut brown, but an inch or so near the roots was grayish-white, as if he had once regularly dyed his hair but had given up because it was too much effort. Round spectacles made his eyes seem larger.
"I'm Mr. Reynolds, the head librarian—apparently the only librarian who puts his responsibilities above personal fear." Reynolds scratched the jowl on his right cheek. "As soon as the bombs began to fall, my fellow workers became ill and had to go home. Apparently, something called an 'air-raid flu.' I intend to research it when I have a spare moment." He pushed his glasses up on his face. "Come into the central stacks and my administrative office. It's safest there."
They reached a room filled with shelves of bound reference books, neatly organized volumes of records and transcripts. "I keep our history section here. Fiction is on Floor 1, periodicals and study carrels located on Floor 2. Is there anything in particular I can assist you with right now? Since all of my co-workers have disappeared, I have gotten behind on my shelving work. But the patron always comes first."
Anthea felt intolerably weary. "I'd just like a chair to sit in and maybe a glass of water." Soon she would have to breast-feed the infant. She had no supplies, no diapers or bottles. I'm not a very prepared new mother, she realized. Then again, she hadn't expected to be hunted down like an animal, or for enemy ships to bombard the city.
Reynolds showed her a comfortable chair and dutifully brought her a cone-shaped paper cup from the gurgling water cooler. She took a grateful sip. Outside they could hear the rumbles of continued bomb strikes.
The librarian looked toward the window with indignation. "The enemy can destroy our buildings and kill our people, but so long as they do not eliminate our books, they cannot destroy our civilization." He smiled at her. "Without our historical and scientific knowledge, without our great tales and brave heroes, we would be giving up our very humanity."
Humanity, she thought, suppressing a shudder.
He saw the desperation on her face, the helpless baby wrapped in a powder-blue blanket. "Of course I will help you. Stay here, and I'll do whatever I can."
Then, as if to spite him, all the power went out. The racks of fluorescent lights died, plunging the stacks into darkness relieved only by the faint light from outside windows. The baby fussed and cried, picking up on Anthea's own anxiety.
Untroubled, Mr. Reynolds moved chairs and a metal cart like a blind man perfectly familiar with the layout of the room. Before long, he returned, struck a long wooden match, and lit several candles, which he placed in holders on the table. "Always be prepared, that's what I say. I would never want to be without the ability to read."
Carrying a candle in one hand, he rolled a book-laden cart through the stacks and, squinting in the dimness, continued to shelve volumes where they belonged. He piled reference tomes in the middle of a table so that all could peruse them.
Within moments, surrounded by unread books in the glow of candlelight, Anthea felt warm and cozy and safe for the first time in hours. She held the baby on her lap, kissed his forehead. He began to coo and make noises, not crying but simply experimenting with his vocal cords, his lungs.
"I hate to be a bother, but I must remind you that this is a library, ma'am." Mr. Reynolds pushed a battered old book back into place. "I will allow you to stay, but only if your baby remains quiet. We abide by strict rules here."
As soon as Reynolds had half-jokingly stated his conditions, the baby in her arms instantly fell silent.
Guards and emergency-response personnel ran through the halls of the grand palace. Panicked civil servants scrambled for bomb shelters or tried to evacuate from the huge building, streaming to designated rendezvous points. Others frantically grabbed telephones to call their families and loved ones.
Despite the evacuation signal, many functionaries and bureaucrats remained at their desks, deluded into believing that their jobs were important to the survival of Earth. There was nothing they could do, but they remained at their posts transmitting orders, forwarding reports, filing forms, and monitoring the destruction outside.
In the midst of this, Jommy, Kathleen, and President Kier Gray were escorted under heavy guard to the main command-and-control center.
On the main display screens radar blips showed the swarm of invading ships. The size of the battle group was breathtaking. The enemy had been planning this assault for years, decades, even generations while they quietly assumed positions of power on Earth. The tendrilless had long held an impossible grudge against both true slans and humans, and they meant to wipe out their rivals.
"Give me a status report!" Petty called. His people inside the control room snapped to attention.
"Sir!" said technician Clarke. "We've tried to rally our forces, but it's mass confusion out there. We can't establish contact with our main power centers. The landing zones are hopelessly muddled, and we can't even launch most of our ships. The Air Center control towers are off-line. News stations are making their own announcements without even waiting for official word from us, so the public is completely confused."
The slan hunter regarded the President as if this were somehow all his fault. For years, staged air raids had sent the citizens of Centropolis into frenzied evacuations. Anti-aircraft guns mounted to skyscraper rooftops prepared to open fire against imaginary slan spaceships. "I thought you had defensive armaments and response squadrons in place."
"That doesn't help if the tendrilless have infiltrated our radio towers, the Air Center, and the news media. One or two disloyal commanding officers can easily sabotage the entire plan."
Clarke looked harried and dismayed as he stared at the readouts. He pressed a bulky padded headphone against his ear, listening to reports as they came in from the field. "Half of our rooftop anti-aircraft guns are non-operational. Several squads assigned to fire at the attacking ships have deserted their posts. Sixteen of the main batteries have failed disastrously—the big-bore guns exploded the first time they were used. Outright sabotage."
"That is the taste of betrayal," Gray said to Petty with a bitter smile. "I'm very familiar with it myself of late." He looked pointedly at the shackles on his wrists.
"We have to fight fire with fire." Petty stalked back and forth in the command-and-control center. "Launch Earth's best military forces—now."
"They still don't respond, sir."
"Then shout yourself hoarse. Make them hear. Make them respond. Find a way to get us out of this trap."
Gray stepped up next to Petty as if he could simply resume his role as President. "What about our ground forces? Have the tendrilless landed yet? We need to keep them from getting a foothold."
"A foothold?" Petty blinked at him. "They're blowing up every defense we have. We don't have any way—"
"Contact our space division. As President I set up a full-fledged military force with orbital and even interplanetary combat abilities. I planned ahead."
The slan hunter raised his dark eyebrows. "A space division? But we don't have the technology for—"
Gray looked at him mildly. "I'm the President. I have access to technologies that the public doesn't necessarily know about. Even your secret police couldn't keep watch over everything. Use this command authorization." He spouted a string of code phrases and numbers. Seeing nothing else he could do, Petty told the technicians to do as Gray suggested.
Across the continent, special sharp-winged ships rose up on lifting platforms from hidden underground bunkers. Heavy circular doors slid aside from unmarked paved areas to expose launchpads. The new ships carried the best weapons that humans had developed over the past fifty years.
During his administration, President Gray had secretly used black money in the budget to build defenses against the threat that he knew was out there, the threat he could never admit publicly. He trusted very few people, but he did use a handful of slan advisors and he did control the strings of many classified programs. While he staged enemy air-raids, while he pretended to receive communiqués from the mysterious leaders of underground slan forces, Gray had built his own space fleet. Just in case.
Wide-eyed, John Petty watched the live Images piped into the command center's screens. He was both astonished and delighted to see hundreds of well-armed spaceships ready to launch. Earth spaceships.
Gray was pleased to note the man's surprise. "I knew you were spying on my every move, whether I was protecting Kathleen or maintaining the constant state-of-emergency. But I also knew how you were prone to the abuses of power, Mr. Petty. I wasn't going to let you in on all of the emergency preparations."
"Abuses? I did what was necessary."
"If we're supposed to cooperate for the time being, then let's not mince words. I had no choice but to take precautions without your knowledge. I needed some assistance from my small circle of slan advisors, and they designed these ships. It's decent technology, but probably not good enough. Our knowledge is out of date, compared to what all the tendrilless scientists have developed over the years."
As they watched, the heroic human spacecraft leaped into the sky like a school of angry fish, weapons primed and ready to take out the tendrilless vanguard. On the radar screen, the new set of blips rose toward the myriad targets still in orbit.
Jommy was thrilled to see this unexpected fleet of defenders. "For so long, we've been stuck on the ground with our space program decimated. That was why I built my own ship and used it to spy on the tendrilless preparations. I thought I was the only one who could figure it out."
The slan hunter shook his head, seeking a target for his anxiety. "Listen to the boy genius."
Jommy's eyes flashed. "This boy genius has flown away from Earth, infiltrated the enemy headquarters on Mars, and dealt with their representatives. I knew more about this threat than you ever imagined, Mr. Petty. That's why I came back here with a warning."
"And you arrested him," Kathleen said accusingly.
Jommy nodded. "You spent far too much time chasing pebbles while I was trying to stop a whole avalanche."
Petty seemed embarrassed. "I'd watch what you're saying, slan boy. You're still my prisoner."
"Only until the palace blows up around us," Kathleen muttered.
Jommy emphasized his point. "The tendrilless have taken over interplanetary space, and I know they've placed traps there. I ran into a deadly mine field myself during my explorations." He spun to the President. "Mr. President, you should warn your forces about the mines. The tendrilless won't allow you to simply—"
With a cry of shock, Kathleen pointed to the screen. The blips showing Earth's defensive spaceships began to flicker and flare. Over a quarter of them winked out in only a few seconds.
"Looks like they found the mine field," Petty said.
Jommy groaned. "Even I didn't think the tendrilless had distributed so many. They knew we had no real space program. What could they have been so afraid of?"
"Slans," Gray said. "They're worried about how much the hidden slans will fight back. They're not concerned about humans."
Jommy stared at the afterImages, knowing that each set of glowing phosphors represented a fully armed ship, now destroyed. Over a thousand human vessels had just been wiped out in a single blow!
But then the Earth forces fought back, blasting away with weapons built into their fleet. Even the human pilots did not know that some of their defenses were secret slan innovations; at the moment, they probably didn't care. Once the pilots learned how to detect and avoid the space mines, they launched into an incredible dogfight, plowing into the vanguard forces. It looked like a snowstorm of symbols swirling in incomprehensible patterns. Ships clashed with ships, and many of the tendrilless vessels were damaged or wrecked.
But not enough of them.
Knocking Clarke aside, Petty seated himself in the technician's swivel chair, as if he didn't believe his knees would continue to support his weight. To their continued horror, the blips showing the tendrilless fleet looped around and went after the remaining human defenses.
Many of the Earth ships' weapons failed, inexplicably. Their pilots shouted that navigation systems had just shorted out. They flew blind, but still pursued the numerous enemy vessels. Engines gave out, armaments failed to fire, guidance systems died, leaving the Earth space navy helpless.
"Do the tendrilless have some kind of jamming system?" Kathleen asked. "Can we get them on line again?"
As he listened to the cries of surprise and frustration—then the static of destruction—Jommy could only conclude that the answer had to do with sabotage. "If you kept this fleet secret from Petty, who was in charge of it?"
"Jem Lorry. My chief advisor." Gray looked deeply troubled. "Who has now vanished. Could he have been a tendrilless spy? Could his shields have been so powerful that even I didn't suspect him?" He could not tear his eyes from the screens.
The fleet from Mars still outnumbered Gray's surprise space force more than three-to-one, and the battle swiftly turned into a rout. The Earth ships fought to the last, knowing that they could not surrender. On the screens, blip after blip vanished.
The sweep of the radar arc showed little detail, but Jommy didn't need any explanation as the pinpoints of human spacecraft brightened like stars going nova, then faded into darkness. Dozens more of the tendrilless attack ships were destroyed, and then the Earth defenders were gone. Completely gone.
Gray looked astonished. "It's a massacre. I didn't think . . . I never knew the enemy was so powerful. Our best defenses are no more effective then leaves blown in the wind. The tendrilless have undermined us, disconnected our weapons, sabotaged our plans."
Kathleen put her arms around her father. Gray's shoulders drooped. He found a seat by one of the empty diagnostic stations and slumped into it, brushing aside the torn rolls of printouts, ignoring the chattering computers that still attempted to analyze the situation. "I have failed us all."
With the ground forces neutralized and the last vestiges of the Earth space navy annihilated, the tendrilless ships were ready to complete their destruction. The inbound ships came down, unhindered now, and streaked across the skies of the capital city. Earth was completely at the mercy of the tendrilless.
Jommy barked his words so loudly that even the stunned technicians and disoriented leaders took heed. "The grand palace is sure to be a target. Now that our defenses are gone, they're going to turn this entire place into rubble."
"The palace is the most secure structure in all of Centropolis. We're ten levels underground, and these rooms are reinforced against any aerial attack," said Petty, though he didn't sound convinced.
"Not reinforced enough. The tendrilless can level this whole structure. Once they've decapitated the government, they won't even need to bother with negotiating peace terms. They'll want to stand victorious on the rubble of the great government center."
Kathleen stepped close. "Jommy's right. We've got to get out of here, all of us."
Despite his handcuffs and his disheveled appearance, Gray still looked presidential. "There is no defeat while we still live. We must escape from the palace—now. We can become a government in exile."
"A government of what?" asked Petty.
"That is for us to define." Looking at his frantic rival, Gray extended a hand, letting it hang there in the air. "I suggest an alliance, Mr. Petty. I know of your plan to overthrow me. I know of your power plays with the secret police. But right now we face an enemy greater than either of us."
Kathleen chimed in. "It'll be the humans and the true slans against the tendrilless."
Jommy boldly pushed his way toward the door of the command-and-control center. "I have a means of escape—my advanced car is hidden in the forest on the other side of the river. Trust me."
"A car?" Petty looked at him in disbelief. "But Centropolis is under attack."
"The whole planet's under attack, and the tendrilless won't stop until they've crushed our cities. But my car is armored with ten-point steel and full of new inventions. If anything can withstand the bombardment, that vehicle can. But if we don't act soon, we'll all just be bloodstains in the rubble."
When another terrific explosion shook the reinforced walls of the palace, it was enough to help make up Petty's mind. Gray thrust his hands forward. "Uncuff me, and let's get out of here." The slan hunter grudgingly did so.
As they left the command-and-control center, Petty yelled for his guards to get to safety. He wanted to be sure that his supporters—the men who would do whatever brutal action he required—were not all killed in a single attack. The slan hunter was sure to need them later on, and he could summon any remnants that remained from around the country.
Overhead, the attacking tendrilless forces began their full-scale bombardment to destroy the palace.
Though she was herself a tendrilless, Joanna Hillory was not part of the vanguard fleet during the attack. An operative trained to live and work among human beings, she excelled in being a spy, not a soldier. Her people had used her well, and she had helped them set up their plans for this conquest.
But that was before Jommy Cross had changed her mind. Now, remaining behind on Mars, Joanna had other plans of her own.
She was an attractive woman with a full figure, as tall as most men. Her brown hair was kept short and curled, close to her head. She wore clothes that gave her freedom of movement, with few concessions to human standards of beauty. As a spy, it had been important for her to keep a low profile, though her appearance was enough to turn heads and even earn her an occasional wolf whistle from men on the streets of Earth.
While the bombardment continued on Earth's primary cities, Joanna received a summons to stand before the seven-member council in the glass-ceilinged Martian city. Cimmerium seemed practically empty as she walked along the wide balcony roads along the edges of the cliffs. Towers extended out into the sheer gulf of the canyon, rising up toward the flat crystalline ceiling.
Joanna touched a pearlescent ID scanner mounted outside the vaulted doorway to the Authority chamber. Recognizing and approving her, the door controls unlocked with a hiss, then silently swung inward, beckoning her inside. She had always been a favorite of Altus Lorry, the head of the Tendrilless Authority.
Inside the rainbow-filled chamber, dim sunlight was intensified by prismatic angles, flooding the chamber with warmth and reminders of paradise, the way Earth would be once they conquered it.
Centuries ago, during the first Golden Age of Mankind and before the devastating Slan Wars, true pioneers had begun terraforming Mars. Humans had bombarded the red planet with comets, thickened the atmosphere, added liquid water in the low-lying canyons, filling Mare Cimmerium with enough liquid to turn it into a small, shallow sea. They had released algaes and bacteria, which worked on the once-sterile environment for more than a thousand years as the breeds of humanity fought against each other, tried to destroy each other.
By the time the tendrilless slans came seeking refuge, Mars was a much more hospitable place. The air was thick enough to capture the sun's distant heat. Water vapor long locked in frozen layers underground began to percolate upward. The bacteria and algae continued to convert hydrated water molecules and break down minerals to release oxygen.
Cimmerium became a complex settlement. Buildings were made from reinforced glass produced by melting the inexhaustible supplies of Martian sand, and before long a shining metropolis clung to the walls of the deep canyon.
While it was comfortable here, the half-terraformed Martian environment was still less hospitable than Earth. In a half-facetious comment, Jem Lorry had once growled a suggestion that President Gray and some of the more intractable humans should be sent back here in exile, so they would know what had made the tendrilless strong for so many generations.
The biggest mystery concerning the tendrilless civilization, Joanna knew, lay in finding their hated step-brothers, the hidden slans, who had persecuted and tried to eradicate the tendrilless. All that had changed however, when she'd met Jommy.
Back when she'd been on assignment on Earth, Jommy had broken into the secret tendrilless headquarters at the Air Center. On the run from the law, Jommy and an old crone he called Granny had the sheer unexpected bravado to steal a tendrilless spacecraft, but Joanna had intercepted them.
Jommy was a clever young man, certainly her equal in strength and mental abilities. She had interrogated him, sure that Jommy worked for a large enclave of true slans, though he insisted he was acting alone, that his mother had been shot dead by slan hunters when he was only nine years old; his father, a great slan scientist, had been killed when he was six.
When Jommy told her that there didn't need to be war between the races, she had thought him incredibly naïve. But his earnestness was infectious, and he was fervently convinced. Afterward, the more Joanna thought about what he'd said, the more she considered his plans and his determination to follow them, she actually started to believe that he might have a chance to achieve his utopian dreams.
Maybe the tendrilless were wrong, after all. When Jommy was nearly caught again after sneaking inside Cimmerium, Joanna herself arranged for him to get away, to race back to Earth and warn President Gray of the imminent attack. She had remained behind, hoping to convert a few more allies among the tendrilless.
That had been Joanna's desperate secret, which she'd kept close to her heart for days now. The Tendrilless Authority would command her immediate execution if they suspected her involvement. Jem Lorry had launched his major attack before she could make any headway against his stubborn beliefs.
Joanna had learned not to underestimate Jommy, however. She hadn't yet admitted even to herself that she was in love with him.
As she walked forward to face the council members behind their high bench, she drove back her fear and anxiety. They couldn't possibly know what she had done.
Ahead of her, she heard a shrill, petulant voice challenging the more ponderous, deeper tones of Altus Lorry. "You miss the primary question, Father. The occupation fleet has just launched, but by the time they get to Earth, the vanguard ships and our tendrilless ground troops will have completed much of the work. Think about the next step. We must decide whether to leave a handful of humans alive as our slaves and perhaps even experimental subjects—or should we just save ourselves the trouble and exterminate them all?"
"Those are not the only two options," Altus said with maddening calm. "Your hatred blinds you. If we mean to take over Earth, it makes no sense to destroy everything. What is the sense in that? Why should we rebuild from scratch, pick up every broken piece?"
Another Authority member added, "The humans must be resoundingly defeated, we agree, but mass extermination is not logical."
"It would be logical if you'd bothered to live among them," Jem grumbled. "Try watching them every day, smelling them, observing their habits, knowing that you must keep your true identity a secret or else they would lynch you! They are like animals living in a primitive society that long ago went stagnant."
Hearing her approach, Jem turned, and his eyes lit up with a fervor he had kept carefully hidden while playing his political role in the President's palace. "Joanna, you can speak on my behalf! You've lived among them as much as I have. Explain to my"—he struggled with his words—"my esteemed father and his fellow Authority members that we can assure our future only by ensuring that humans are not part of it."
She gave him a calm smile. "How can I speak on your behalf, when you are fundamentally wrong? Such a wholesale slaughter would accomplish nothing but give you a brief rush of personal vengeance." Amused by the shocked expression on his face, she turned her gray-eyed gaze up at the seven council members. "Authority Chief Lorry, you are wise to advocate caution and forethought."
Old Altus gave her a kindly and satisfied nod, while Jem fumed, as if she had just betrayed him.
Joanna continued, "Would you rather spend our efforts consolidating a new government for tendrilless slans—or engage in an endless pursuit to eradicate all of the humans in hiding? You would force them into creating resistance cells, possibly even drive them into an alliance with the true slans. Imagine the debacle."
"They would still never be strong enough against us!" Jem insisted.
"Irrelevant. Either way, it would waste a great deal of our time."
Realizing he would never convince them, Jem stalked out of the Authority chambers with a disappointed glare at Joanna.
When she saw how the council reacted to her, Joanna convinced herself that they did not suspect her collusion with Jommy Cross. Her secret was safe.
"Please forgive my son," Altus said. "He has obsessed on humans for too long. I still hold out hope for him, and I give him chance after chance, but sadly we may have to remove him before he causes irreparable damage."
She gave a noncommittal nod. The Authority Chief had always been kind toward her, even to the point of expressing his desire for political matchmaking between Joanna and his son, though she had recoiled at the notion. "You summoned me here, sirs?"
"We need you to take care of a very specific threat," Altus said. "An important threat."
"What threat is that?"
"His name is Jommy Cross."
Her heart skipped a beat, and she was sure she paled, but Joanna fought not to show any reaction. "He is just one slan, a young man presumably working alone."
"Cross has quite remarkable talents. He was here in our city, as you well know, but he escaped. He escaped you, he escaped us, he escaped the greatest security measures in all of Cimmerium."
Another Authority member interrupted, "That in itself proves he is a danger. Cross returned to Earth in time to warn them of our attack, and it was only sheer luck that political turmoil there kept the humans from preparing themselves. We do not wish to trust to such luck again. Cross must be stopped."
Realizing she hadn't been breathing, Joanna inhaled, waited a long second to calm herself, then exhaled. They weren't accusing her of anything. "And what is it you would like me to do?"
"Take one of our fastest scout ships and go to Earth. In the midst of our assault, we order you to hunt down and seize Jommy Cross."
By the warm candlelight in the shelter of the library, Anthea held her baby, quietly breast-feeding him as she listened to the buzzing roar of attacking aircraft outside. But she was more afraid of people than falling bombs. She closed her eyes and tried to figure out what to do next. She had no one in whom she could confide. The candles flickered, casting a warm but somehow medieval glow throughout the stacks of thick tomes.
Today she had been confronted with the unexpected and unreasoning hatred of total strangers. All her life she had heard news broadcasts about the insidious schemes of "evil slans." The secret police had spread hatred and fear.
Before, it had all meant little to her. She and Davis were just a normal married couple with good jobs—Anthea in a bank, her husband in a sporting goods store. They'd been happy with each other, and they anticipated a long and fruitful life, looked forward to starting a family.
After the birth of the baby, though, she had stepped on a landmine of prejudice and murderous anger.
When a bomb shattered the stone lion statues in front of the library, the pudgy Mr. Reynolds grabbed two of the flickering candles and gestured for Anthea to do the same. "Come with me. We have to go to the inner vault. There's better shelter inside, and an emergency generator."
Before leaving, he diligently and conscientiously blew out the remaining candles and led Anthea through a maze of bookshelves to an office at the heart of the building. Their flickering lights were like bobbing will-o'-the-wisps.
The walls here were thick and entirely without windows. The baby stirred in her arms, and she bent down to shush him, holding the candle in her other hand. "Is this the rare book section?"
"I have the distinct privilege and honor of being the chief librarian at one of the few designated True Archives commissioned by the government. President Gray himself came for the ribbon-cutting ceremony fifteen years ago."
"What's a True Archive?"
The librarian beamed, delighted to find a willing listener. "During the Slan Wars and centuries of guerilla warfare and wanton destruction, much history has been lost. Most people don't even know what the truth is anymore."
Anthea looked hard at him. "Do you know the truth? About the slans?"
Mr. Reynolds fumbled a little and turned his back, marching farther down the hall into a larger, open lobby. "This library is one of the repositories of genuine information about the Slan Wars and Dr. Samuel Lann. Many of the reports are contradictory, of course. A few are written by eyewitnesses, while some are rather clumsy government propaganda. But that's the way it usually is. With so much information, you have to separate opinion from fact, exaggeration from documentation."
He stopped in front of a great metal door and set his candles down on a small table. The thick hatch was steel-gray, polished to a dull luster, reinforced with riveted panels and a locking mechanism of gears and dials. The combination wheels themselves were secured with a steel padlock. The thick door seemed as impregnable as a bank vault.
"Inside this vault are original papers, some of the notebooks of Dr. Lann and actual correspondence from previous presidents who fought in the Slan Wars."
Since the birth of her unexpected slan baby, she felt a desperate need to know. All of the background material in that vault would reveal the answers. "I'd like to see them. I'm sure it's fascinating."
The librarian seemed befuddled. "Oh, I'm afraid that's not possible, ma'am. Those records are classified."
"But if this is a True Archive, why can't people see the truth?"
"Most people are not ready for it," Reynolds said sadly. "Possessing information and distributing it are two different things. Even President Gray wanted to control how much the public knew." He shook his head, his jowls sagging like a hound dog's. "From what I heard on the wireless this morning, it seems the President has been secretly in league with the slans all along. What has he brought us to?"
The distant thunderous rumble of more explosions rattled the ceiling.
"I think there's a great deal we don't understand," Anthea said. "But those records might help us unravel it. Besides, didn't you say there was a backup generator inside? We'd have electricity again, and we'd be safe."
The baby squirmed in his mother's arms and she saw just a hint of the fine golden tendrils rising out like long strands of hair from the powder-blue blanket. She quickly tucked them back.
Reynolds was more agitated now, loosening his necktie. "Only I know the combination to unseal this door, ma'am. I have strict instructions not to open it for anyone who doesn't have Presidential authorization."
"You're the only one with the combination? How can you be sure you remember it?"
"Oh, the numbers are very clear in my mind." Reynolds tapped his forehead.
The baby remained very still as if he had fallen asleep, but suddenly Anthea saw numerals sharply in her brain, as if someone had painted them in bold ink behind her eyelids. 4 . . . 26 . . . 19 . . . 12. She caught her breath as she realized what must have happened. The slan baby had easily read those numbers as Mr. Reynolds had recalled them, and the infant had shared them with his mother's mind as well. Anthea knew exactly how to open the vault.
Making an excuse, the librarian scuttled back to a long wooden table just outside the armored vault door. "However, these volumes are available to the general public, though not often requested, I'm afraid. Many people instinctively hate the slans, but don't want to understand anything about the reasons for doing so. The slans did terrible things to human society, oh yes. The Slan Wars were the greatest holocaust in our civilization's history, like the burning of a thousand libraries of Alexandria."
He heaved a great, grieving breath. "The endless centuries of destruction leveled our cities, brought us down to the level of barbarism. It took the human race a long time to rebuild, and even now our society has returned only to the equivalent of the United States of America back in the 1940s, as calculated in the old-style calendar." He gestured for Anthea to take a seat and began arranging books on the table. "Some of the cultural similarities to that time period are quite striking. It's as if we've been set on a well-worn path. We're following technology, styles, and habits that were forgotten long-ago, but are now coincidentally commonplace."
Anthea arranged some of the books to make a support, like a cradle, in which she could tuck the blanket-wrapped baby. Then she pulled other volumes toward her. "But these books are not classified? I can read them?"
"They're the official records of the Slan Wars. I hope they hold your interest. When all this messy business outside is over, maybe we can submit a request to whichever government is in charge next? I would so enjoy having a real scholar look over the True Archives with me."
"So, you've read them yourself?"
He seemed embarrassed. "Not . . . entirely. Just enough to make a cursory inventory. There's always so much to do in the library itself, you know."
"Thank you very much. These will do fine for now." Anthea found newspaper clippings, reprinted letters, and many books describing the "slan peril" and the "terrible threat of the evil super-humans." She brought one of the candles closer.
Reynolds made disapproving sounds as he stood in front of a cart full of books. "Some of these are in sections 820.951 through 825.664, right down here in the sheltered area. Will you be all right for a little while?" After she reassured him, Reynolds rattled off with his heavy cart, balancing one of the thick candles to light his way.
Alone now, Anthea opened the books and began to skim them. She had always enjoyed reading, but now—after having the baby, after realizing who and what she was—a key had opened in her mind. She was astonished to discover that in only a few minutes she had completely skimmed—and absorbed, and remembered—a full five-hundred-page volume!
The reports carried some surprises, but generally they were the same inflammatory stories she'd been told all her life. She skimmed the spines of other books, selected a second one, and raced through the pages as well, flipping them so swiftly she nearly tore the paper. Then she read a third book, and a fourth. She felt like a dry sponge plunged into a bucket of water.
Anthea learned how the first slan mutations had appeared, babies born with tendrils that amplified their telepathic abilities. They could read minds, influence people; their bodies were stronger.
The most prominent figure in all of the records was Dr. Lann. Some portrayed him as a genius, others as a victim of his own hubris, still others called him an evil mastermind who had caused an evolutionary avalanche that resulted in the deaths of billions. The records were unclear as to whether the slan mutations had occurred naturally, or if Samuel Lann had created a machine or special ray that invoked the changes in his own three children, turning them into the first slans.
Contradictory reports hinted that tendrilled babies had been born spontaneously all around the planet, from civilized countries to rough wastelands. Before long, slans began to appear everywhere. They found each other and bore children. Within a few generations, their numbers had grown great enough that their leaders quietly made plans. Slans infiltrated important positions in government and industry, and then they took over the world, insisting that they were meant to be the masters of "mere humans."
Anthea shuddered as she continued to read. Nearby, warm and comfortable, wrapped in blankets, the baby seemed capable of absorbing everything his mother knew, assimilating all the new knowledge she learned.
Mr. Reynolds, whistling happily to be doing something productive, trundled an empty cart back into the protected room outside the thick vault door. He took another loaded book cart and went about his business. Anthea barely noticed him as she eagerly devoured the records in front of her. . . .
From the point that the slans had made their first move against humanity, the news reports became much less objective. She doubted any of them was entirely true. Previously, a handful of conspiracy theorists denounced the slans as freaks and monsters. Then, when one hundred thousand slans took over the world, they proved to everyone that the paranoid fears had been correct. The slans did mean to enslave humanity.
But the angered humans formed a powerful resistance. The slans might have been supermen, but one hundred thousand could not stand against a vengeful population of billions.
The devastation on both sides was horrendous. As the wars flared up, died down, then burst into flames again, Earth itself was rocked. Eventually, after centuries of bloodshed, the slans were defeated. The survivors went into hiding, built secret enclaves, protected bases from which they could continue their insidious scheming (or so the reports claimed). Some said the slans went out into space, perhaps to Mars, where they bided their time, rebuilt their numbers and prepared for a further attack. Earth's technology had been set back so far, the survivors could not even dream of launching a concerted space program.
Every once in a while, a slan was caught and killed in Centropolis, lending credence to the fears that hundreds or thousands more remained in hiding. The secret police crowed about each such victory, proud to be rooting out the evil infiltrators.
It seemed indisputable that those first megalomaniacal slans had indeed meant to dominate humanity, had tried to take over the world and enslave others. But that was so many centuries ago. Did the few wild survivors still mean such harm? What about the "accidents," like her own baby? Could every innocent child born with tendrils be sentenced to death for the sins of long-forgotten fathers? She shook her head and looked up, startled to realize that she had finished reading fourteen of the books on the table.
Mr. Reynolds had come back, having emptied his carts. He now stood smiling, bent over her baby. He whispered and cooed, stroking the boy's nose, his forehead. Before Anthea could react, he pushed the blanket back, revealing the baby's head. "Look at you. Such a cute little—"
Then he gasped in horror.
The baby's tendrils rose like tiny antennae in the air, wafting as if in a gentle breeze. Reynolds stumbled backward, gaping at the slan tendrils. "Oh, my!"
The tendrilless bombers were already on their final approach.
"Deep underground will be the safest," Kathleen said. "Jommy, can we get to your vehicle from there?"
"Yes, there are transverse tunnels." With his perfect recall, he could envision all the tangled passageways and routes from the blueprints he had seen. "I know of an old slan passageway that goes all the way beneath the river."
After the guards and secret police had scattered following their chief's orders, Petty easily kept pace with the other three. Jommy wished the slan hunter had abandoned them, but apparently he trusted the slans to know a better escape than his own people. Petty directed them to a high-speed lift, but the doors were sealed and the controls refused to operate. The secret police chief pounded the wall in frustration. "We've got to get down to shelter!"
Gray nudged him aside. "This is one of the palace's private elevators, high-security, limited access." He slid aside a hidden metal covering to expose a translucent plate and several code buttons. He pressed his open left eye against the scanner and keyed in a code. A bright beam played across his retina, mapped the patterns there, and confirmed his identity. The lift hummed, then whisked open. "I am the President, after all—no matter what Mr. Petty says."
The slan hunter glowered at him.
Jommy urged them all inside, then turned to the control plate. "Thirty-eighth level would be our best starting point." He punched the number. The doors closed, and the private car shot downward.
Only seconds later, the palace was engulfed in a roar of light and fire.
Shockwaves slammed into the descending elevator car, making a sound as if they were trapped within a bronze church bell. The bright ceiling light went out, and the car shuddered to a stop, dislodged from its tracks. More explosions thundered overhead. The walls trembled.
"Brilliant idea, Cross," Petty said in the darkness. "Now we're stuck here."
"We would have all been happier if you'd stayed in the command-and-control center," Kathleen retorted. "Why did you bother coming along with us?"
"I couldn't let three slans get away. That would be shirking my duty."
Trying to solve the problem he faced, ignoring the heated conversation, Jommy felt with his fingertips along the metal wall of the chamber. He found the crack in the sealed lift door. "We have to pry it open, get out of this elevator car, then climb to an access hatch." Gripping with his fingers and palms, he pressed with all his enhanced strength, straining until the doors began to peel apart. "There . . . making progress!"
Then, with a squeal and a groan, the stalled elevator dropped farther down the shaft, grinding along its tracks with a spray of sparks. They were in free fall for a moment, plunging out of control. Through the crack he'd been able to open in the door, Jommy watched one floor, then another and another streak past as the detached elevator picked up speed. Then it slammed to a clamorous halt, caught again in precarious balance.
"Have we hit the bottom?" Kathleen asked after a moment of stunned silence. "Why didn't we crash?"
"We're jammed in the shaft again," Jommy said. "But it's unstable."
"We could figure that out for ourselves," Petty added sarcastically. "Maybe we're almost to the bottom."
"There's at least sixty more levels down," Gray said. "I suggest we get out of here before we drop the rest of the way."
Applying all his strength, Jommy wrenched the door open farther. The tracks in the elevator shaft had been knocked severely out of alignment from the bombardment high above. One of the broken rails had twisted to one side, and the falling car had wedged to an unstable balance. Two feet above them, Jommy saw another hatch that opened to a floor—their way out. "Kathleen, I'll boost you up. You can open the door from within the elevator shaft."
She didn't hesitate, and Jommy was surprised at how easily he could support her weight. As she reached out through the open door, though, the elevator groaned uncertainly. If the car fell now, Kathleen would be sheared in half.
Kier Gray moved to the other side of the elevator to compensate for the weight shift. They all knew the car could drop at any time and plunge screeching and sparking for sixty floors until it struck the bottom like an asteroid impact.
Kathleen stretched out her hand, and with the barest tip of her finger she managed to hit the emergency hatch control. Lights blinked and, with a sedate hum, the emergency hatch slid aside to reveal a corridor well-lit by flickering ceiling lights.
Jommy gave Kathleen another boost, and she scrambled out of the elevator and through the hatch. Once safely inside, she called for her father to come up. As Gray moved to the open door and the emergency hatch, the readjusting weight made the elevator groan ominously again.
Showing no sign of fear, Gray accepted Jommy's assistance to climb out, leaving the young man trapped in the elevator with the slan hunter. Anxious not to be last, Petty lurched toward the door. He was sure they meant to abandon him—and with good reason. Petty could shield his thoughts well enough, but even so Jommy sensed the building panic in the secret police chief.
As Petty stepped across the floor, the elevator gave a sickening lurch and dropped eighteen inches. The man froze, terrified, refusing to take another step.
Jommy stared at him. "Are we going to just look at each other until the elevator falls to the bottom, or do you intend to move and get out of here?"
Petty didn't need to be encouraged again. When Jommy offered him a hand, the other man refused. "I don't need help from one of your kind." He reached up for the bottom of the emergency hatch in the shaft wall, which was now more difficult to reach. From the safety of the hall, Kier Gray looked down at the man who had overthrown him. A simple slip, a nudge at just the right moment, and the slan hunter would fall to his death.
Nevertheless, Gray grabbed his rival's arm and hauled him up.
Now mostly empty, the elevator creaked, began to work itself loose from the tracks. "Jommy, hurry!" Kathleen reached down beside her father, both of them trying to grab him, stretching out their hands.
The binding metal began to slip, grinding away the twisted track. With only a second left, Jommy tensed and sprang upward. His leap carried him at least two feet higher than a normal man could have jumped, and he hooked his elbows inside the emergency hatch. Gray and Kathleen seized his shoulders, his shirt, and pulled him into the hall. Jommy squirmed out of the shaft and pulled himself into the corridor just as the elevator jarred loose. When the last obstruction broke away, the elevator plummeted in a wail of sparks and grinding gears, falling down into the depths.
Panting, Jommy recovered and got to his feet. He glanced up. Petty was just standing there, arms crossed, watching, then the slan hunter turned around and began marching down the hall, as if nothing unusual had happened. "Well, now where do we go?"
Jommy studied a numbered plate on the wall to determine where they were. "We still have to go down seven levels." The President again used his ID to provide access to a restricted stairwell, and they hurried down the metal steps, one flight after another.
Petty continued to find reasons to question. "If you're an outsider, Cross, how is it that you found a secure passage to get into the palace? Even my secret police weren't aware of hidden tunnels down here."
"The slans built them long ago. I received information, partly from old records, partly from certain telepathic broadcasts in the palace specifically attuned for someone able to hear them. Someone with tendrils, I mean."
He opened the door at the appropriate level. The hall looked like any other, but inside his head he could detect the thin, dull tone, a guiding beacon his slan senses could pick up. Kathleen looked at him, amazed. "I can hear it."
Gray nodded. "I was aware of these, but I didn't investigate because I feared being observed. I couldn't let anyone—especially Petty—know what was down here."
"Just like you kept a full space navy secret from me?" Petty snorted. "I still should have kept a better eye on you, and on Jem Lorry."
"Lorry isn't one of us," Gray insisted.
"Seems like he did a good job sabotaging the Earth space ships, from what we saw on the battle screens."
Not knowing what trials they might face once they worked their way into the besieged city itself, Jommy wished he still had his father's disintegrator weapon. That invention would provide options they wouldn't otherwise have, but Petty had locked the confiscated device in a secure vault for secret police analysis. It was probably still intact, even with the collapse of the palace, but it could be buried anywhere. Long ago, he had added a tiny tracer to the disintegrator, but he had no time to construct a detector to pick up the signal. Right now, they had to get safely away from the ruins of the palace. And for that, they needed his special vehicle.
Jommy moved down the hall, trailing his fingers along the painted cement blocks. He found a spot that looked no different from the rest, but when he depressed the blocks in a certain sequence, a hidden door slid inward and then aside to reveal a well-lit tunnel that extended a great distance.
"Inside there, not far down, is the old maintenance tunnel that goes all the way under the river. The slans commandeered it for their own purposes a long time ago, and it's been completely forgotten. We can follow it outside and get to the forest where I left my armored vehicle. I'm sure it's still there and safe."
The embedded detectors recognized him as a slan, and Jommy felt a rush of relief. Once Jommy had opened the secret door to the tunnel, Petty did not wait for the others. He pushed forward, taking the lead. No one but slans had entered this tunnel for many years.
Jommy's tendrils suddenly picked up a shrill vibration, a distinct sensation of uneasiness that built to panic. A Porgrave transmitter, one of the special broadcasters that only slans could hear. The signal focused, and he could understand the words: an automated warning installed by long-forgotten slan inventors. The Porgrave signal shouted in his head: Non-slan detected. Unauthorized presence.
Jommy felt a thrumming in the air as retaliation devices swung into action. Also recognizing the signal, Kathleen backed abruptly into her father. Petty, though, was unaware of anything unusual. He strode forward.
Defense systems activating. Targeting . . . now.
"Petty, look out!" Jommy lunged forward, grabbed the slan hunter by the back of his shirt, and yanked him off his feet.
The burly man stumbled and cried out angrily just as a spiderweb of searing yellow-white beams criss-crossed the air where he had been. A smell of ozone accompanied the whip-crack sound of deadly defenses.
Nonplussed, the slan hunter got back to his feet and brushed himself off, shocked and then angry. "You saved my life." He seemed more upset than relieved that Jommy had saved him. He lowered his voice. "Don't think you bought yourself any mercy from me because of that, Cross."
Kathleen let out a quick, bitter laugh. "If you think mercy is something that can be bought, Mr. Petty, then you don't understand mercy at all."
The slan hunter gave her a dismissive wave. "Oh, you're just angry because I shot you in the head."
They followed the dim passage for at least a mile, trending always upward. Jommy remained alert for other booby traps and defensive measures, deactivating several, though part of him longed to just let the evil slan hunter get himself fried by the systems. It would have been what he deserved, a poetic justice.
"Explain again why we should bring you along, Petty?" Jommy asked, pausing before he deactivated another security system. "As far as I'm concerned, you don't have any redeeming qualities."
Buried far underground, and now lost inside a labyrinth of booby-trapped tunnels, the slan hunter looked alarmed. "You need me. I can be useful."
"Exactly how?" Gray said. "You overthrew my presidency."
"And killed my mother," Jommy said.
"And shot me," Kathleen added. "You haven't done much to endear yourself to us. I say we should just leave him here." She looked to her father for support. "There's a slight chance he could make his way out and deactivate the security systems himself."
Turning pale, Petty quickly said, "Wait! My network of secret police is distributed all across the country. We have emergency procedures, too—and you can bet they were better prepared than most other people. We always expected something terrible to happen."
"The advantages of being paranoid," Jommy said.
"We have contact protocols. I can help you bring them together, maybe mount a resistance. Who else is going to be organized enough to fight for Earth? You couldn't have a better starting point, once the dust settles here."
"If he does have that network," Kathleen realized, "then it's better to have him with us, where we can keep an eye on him, rather than off by himself where he can turn the secret police against us."
"If nothing else, he might make a good hostage," Jommy said. The slan hunter didn't seem to know whether to be pleased or annoyed with their assessment of his value.
"For the time being, you have your uses, Mr. Petty," Gray said. "Now let's get out of here before the whole thing comes down on our heads."
Finally, they emerged into the shadowy forest, swinging open a vine-covered grate that would have been all but invisible to anyone wandering among the trees. Getting his bearings, Jommy cast around for where he had left the car, then he led them on an hour-long search until they at last discovered the dark machine hidden in the underbrush.
Jommy had never seen anything so beautiful in his life (with the exception of Kathleen). He had designed and built the vehicle using all the best technologies and materials he had been able to put together. Petty had encountered the car once before, just after his secret police had shot Kathleen in the slan hideout. Even so, he had a difficult time pretending that he wasn't impressed.
Gray went immediately to the vehicle's door. "We've got to get out of here, and it's best if the tendrilless think we're all dead."
They all climbed inside, and Jommy sat behind the driving controls, which were keyed to him alone. The engine powered up, and the guidance responded to his touch. "I can drive us out of here, and fast."
"But where will we go?" Kathleen called from the back seat. "If Centropolis is under attack and the tendrilless are looking for us—"
"I know the perfect secluded place, a distant valley where we can all be safe." As he accelerated out of the shielded tunnel and burst into the open smoke-filled sky, Jommy quirked his lips in a wry smile. "I just hope Granny will take us in."
Kevin J. Anderson is the author of many books and stories. A. E. van Vogt died in 2000 and was the author of Slan as well as many other books and stories.