The Rising(86)

“Machines?”

“And buildings,” Alex added. “Structures so strange I can’t begin to describe them.”

“Sounds like the world I came from, both of us came from.”

“Except you remember it. This, everything about us, this is all I know. All I’ve ever known and ever want to know.”

“I need to see these pictures.”

“Why?”

“Because they may hold the clue as to this knowledge you have but don’t realize you’ve got. They may form some kind of pattern or message, like the pieces of a puzzle. We just have to put them all together.”

“I told you, they don’t make any sense.”

“Maybe not to you. But they must be in your head for a reason.”

“Like what?” Alex persisted. “Tell me more about this thing I’m supposed to know. What’s coming when that wormhole opens again?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“Doesn’t seem like I’ve got much choice right now, does it?”

Raiff nodded grudgingly, turning to see if Sam was anywhere about. “Our world’s a lot like this one, only millions of years more advanced … and older. Cursed by those declining resources with a predicament exacerbated by a longtime disregard for the environment and taking the planet for granted. Sound familiar?”

“I don’t know what ‘exacerbated’ means.”

“Made worse or more prominent.”

“How do you know so much shit?”

“I read a lot. For eighteen years now.”

“While you’ve been protecting me, even though you have no idea why.”

“I know enough. This isn’t the first world they’ve seeded, only to plunder and enslave.”

“We may not be the pushovers you think we are, Raiff.”

Raiff started to smile, then stopped and started to shake his head, stopping that motion swiftly as well. His expression flattened, all the edges and ridges seeming to melt into a single, processed form.

“Oh, no? You think they come with rockets and ray guns? You think this is like some movie where the world mounts a brave resistance and ultimately triumphs? Maybe until the lights go out and the faucets get turned off and the food supply is contaminated, and all of a sudden the civilized world finds itself losing everything it’s always taken for granted. The forces coming across the space bridge don’t need to kill, only to control. They fight wars that are won before they’re even fought. You can’t beat them because they know every move you’re going to make before you make it.”

“And they know about me.”

“The wild card in all this. I think you’re finally getting the point. You scare them, because they fear you’re the only one capable of stopping them from taking this world. They have the same knowledge I do. And, just like me, they may not know everything but they know enough.”

This time it was Raiff who started swinging a bit, but Alex didn’t join him. “Just not how what you think I know can stop them.”

Raiff braked himself with his feet. “I’m not sure what it is, only that it’s the key to defeating them.”

“Which you couldn’t do up close and personal back home.”

“There was no point in trying. The lucky among us made it over to this world. We’ve been hiding among you for generations.”

“Not so lucky, considering there’s this guy who’s trying to exterminate you.”

“Langston Marsh, and his modern-day Fifth Column, is your problem now too.”

“What’s a Fifth Column?”

“A clandestine group organized toward a singular purpose not in keeping with the greater interests of society.” Raiff started to chuckle, then stopped. “I can see why you need a tutor.”

“Hey, lay off me. I’m your only hope, remember.”

“You might be this world’s only hope.”

Silence settled between them just as Sam approached and handed Raiff back the cell phone he’d lent her. “So what do you want to hear first, the good news or the bad news?”





87

GOOD NEWS AND BAD NEWS

“TURNS OUT DR. DONATI, MY boss at Ames, has been trying to reach me too,” Sam continued.

“Is that the good news or the bad news?” Alex asked her.

“Both, I guess. He had to call me back because he said his regular line wasn’t secure.”

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“He knows what’s happening,” Raiff concluded, “doesn’t he?”

“Some, not everything. He was trying to reach me about a pattern of events I found, a pattern that mimics another from eighteen years ago when Laboratory Z was destroyed.”

“The wormhole,” Raiff said.

“Yes. Donati thinks he can figure out where it’s going to open this time.”

Alex looked toward Raiff. “So it’s closed now and has been for eighteen years. I get that. What I don’t get is where the androids, cyborg soldiers, are coming from. You said they were being manufactured here, on this planet. So where?”

“If I knew that, I would’ve already destroyed them.”

“So who’s building them?”