"Oh," I said, finally ready to surrender. "Jesus H., that's really obscure!"

At the precise moment that I invoked the name of the Savior, good old Albert decided to rejoin us, reinforcing a theory I've had for years that if you call on the G.o.ds, you are rewarded with a plague of believers. Not that I was thinking of Albert as part of a plague just then. The plague was out there, be- yond us, where it belonged-in the heart of Los Angeles.

28.

I thought you had a Christian upbringing,"

said Albert, annoyed at Yours Truly for the blas- phemy.

"Catholic school," Arlene answered.

"Oh, that explains it," said Albert, which / found a bit annoying.

Further discussion seemed a losing proposition. So I resumed investigation of the Clyde. Which re- minded of the earlier discussion about nomenclature.

"Hey, Jill," I called out. "We decided to name this b.a.s.t.a.r.d a Clyde."

"A Clyde?" asked Jill in the same tone of voice I had said "Jesus H."

"Yep."

"What a dumb name!" I decided to put her in my will. Make fun of my religion, will they?

I went back to my close study of the Clyde. As I'd noticed before, he appeared fully human, if a bit large. Frankly, I didn't think he could be a product of genetic engineering; the results had been too crude upto this point. Most likely, he'd been recruited by the aliens.

I was sorry the man was dead, because I'd like to kill him again. It made me furious that any human would cooperate with the subjugation of his own race.

I kicked the corpse.

Arlene was a good mind reader. "You think he's a traitor," she said.

"What else could he be?"

"You already suggested it."

"What's that?" asked Albert. Jill was all ears, too.

The time had finally come to lay all the cards on the table.

"We've been considering the possibility that the aliens might be able to make perfect human dupli- cates," I told them.

"He could be one," said Arlene, pointing at the man. "Maybe the first example of a successful geneti- cally engineered human. First example we've seen, anyway."

"I don't buy it," I said.

"But what makes you think it's even possible?"

asked Albert, obviously disturbed by the suggestion.

Arlene took a deep breath. "On Deimos we saw gigantic blocks of human flesh. I'm sure it was raw material for genetic experiments. Later, Fly and I saw vats where they were ma.s.s producing monsters."

"In a way," I interrupted, "even the boney and the fatty are closer to being 'human' than the other genetic experiments-h.e.l.l-princes, steam-demons, pumpkins."

"And now they've succeeded," said Arlene, looking down.

"Hope you're wrong," I said. "It's too much of a quantum leap, Arlene. Even the clothes are too good!"

"You have an argument there," she admitted.

"Those stupid red trunks on the boneys were awful."

We looked at the spiffy uniform on the man.

"He talked like a real person," Jill observed. I hadn't thought about it before, but everything about his manner of speaking rang true, even the threaten- ing tone at the end. If he hadn't been such a total b.a.s.t.a.r.d, I wouldn't have enjoyed killing him so much.

Making a monster was one thing; cobbling together a first-cla.s.s b.u.t.thead was a lot harder, requiring tender loving care.

"OK," said Albert. "He looks, walks, talks and smells like a human being. So maybe he was one."

"Whatever he was, he's good and dead; and that's what matters right now," I tried to conclude the issue.

The way Arlene kept looking at the man meant that she couldn't shake the disturbing idea that he was a synthetic creation. I didn't doubt that they could do stuff like this in time. My objective was to prevent them having that time.

Arlene shuddered, then shook her head hard, as if dislodging any nasty little critters that might have snuck in there. "Well, if they did make him, he's only a staff sergeant. There's a lot of room for progress before they hit second lieutenant and start downhillagain."

Albert laughed hard at that. She gave him an appreciative glance.

In a way, it was kind of strange to nit-pick over which was more likely to be true: human traitors or human duplicates. Either possibility was disturbing.

I let my mind wander over the uncertain terrain where treason sprouts like an ugly mushroom. If U.S.

armed forces were cooperating with the aliens, were they under orders from the civilian government? Had Washington caved in immediately to become a Vichy- style administration? And what could the aliens offer human collaborators that the humans would be stu- pid enough to believe?

I didn't doubt for one second that the enemy intended the extermination of the human race as we knew it. Zombie slaves and a few human specimens kept around for experimental purposes didn't count as species survival in my book.

I must have been carrying worry on my face, because Albert put his hand on my shoulder and said, "We needn't concern ourselves over the biggest possi- ble picture. One battle at a time is how we'll win this war. First, we destroy the main citadel of alien power in Los Angeles. Then we'll stop them in New York, Houston, Mexico City, Paris, London, Rome-ah, Tokyo. . . ." He trailed off. Already quite a list, wasn't it?

"Atlanta," said Jill.

"Orlando," said Arlene. "We must save the good name of the mouse on both coasts!"

"You know," I mused, "I wonder how much of the invasion force Arlene and I destroyed on Deimos."

"Oh, at least half," boasted my buddy; but she might not be far wrong. We killed a h.e.l.l of a lot of monsters on the Martian moons. Each new carca.s.s meant one less demonic foot soldier on terra firma.

"You know," said Jill, her voice sounding oddly old, "I could kill every one of those human traitors."

"I'm with you, hon," I agreed; "but you've got to be careful about blanket statements like that. Some were threatened, tortured. h.e.l.l, some could have been tricked. They didn't go through what we did on Deimos! They might have been told that the ma.s.s destruction was caused by human-against-human and now these superior aliens have come to Earth with a plan for ultimate peace."

"I'll bet YOU were a pain in your High School debate society, Fly Taggart," said long suffering Arlene. "But you know d.a.m.n well what she means!"

"Put it down to my practical side, if you want," I said. "I like to know the score before I pick a play."

Albert added a note. "Anyone can make a terrible mistake and still repent before the final hour."

"It's possible," I said.

"I'm sorry I made that crack about your growing up Catholic."

The two atheist females acted suitably disgusted by our theological love-fest. "The girls don't believe in redemption of traitors, Albert," I said."I'll pray for anyone," he said; "even traitors."

"Fine," said Arlene. "Pray over their graves."

While we failed to resolve yet another serious philosophical issue, Jill squatted over the corpse. In a very short time she'd become hardened to the sight and smell of carnage. Good. She had a chance to survive in the new world.

"Are you all right?" Arlene asked.

"Don't worry about me," Jill said, following my example and kicking the corpse. "They're just bags of blood, and we've got the pins. It's no big thing."

No one was joking now. Arlene looked at me with a worried expression. This was no time to psycho- a.n.a.lyze a fourteen-year-old who was doing her best to feel nothing. This sort of cold att.i.tude was par for the course in an adult, a mood that would be turned off (hopefully) in peacetime; but hearing it from a kid was unnerving.

The words just out of her lips were the cold truth we created. Do only the youngest soldiers develop the att.i.tude necessary to win a war? Until this moment, I wouldn't have thought of Arlene and myself as old- fashioned sentimentalists; but if the future human race became cold and machine-like to fight the mon- sters, then maybe the monsters win, regardless of the outcome.

Recreation time was over. Jill went to the cybermummy and started to lift him; he was really too heavy for her to do alone, and we got the idea.

Albert helped her, and Arlene and I returned to battle readiness. The next goal was obvious: find the safehouse. We couldn't make good time sneaking through the dark carrying a mummy.

We were only ninety minutes away. All we ran into along the way was a pair of zombies, almost a free ride. I popped them both before Arlene even got off a shot.

"You have all the fun," said Albert. "This guy is starting to weigh!"

"You don't hear Jill complaining, do you?" asked Arlene. Jill said nothing. But I could see the sweat beading on her forehead and her breathing was more rapid. Arlene noticed, too. "Jill, would you like to switch with me?" she asked.

"I'm all right," she said, determined to prove something to someone.

Jill managed to hold up her end all the way to the door of the c.r.a.ppiest looking rattrap in a whole block of low rent housing. She heaved a sigh of relief as she finally put down her burden.

This stretch of hovels didn't seem to have been bombed by anything but bad economic decisions. The house was one-story, shapeless as a cardboard box with a sheet of metal thrown on top pretending to be a roof. The yard was a narrow stretch of dirt with garbage piled high. It looked worse than any apart- ment I'd ever seen and gave the scuzziest motels a run for the money, if anyone with a dime in his pocket would be caught dead there.

The final perfect touch was a monotonous cacopho-ny of dumb-a.s.s, psychometal "music" blaring through the thin walls.

"Let me take it from here," Albert volunteered.

"Be my guest," I said.

He knocked on a flimsy door covered with streaks of peeling, yellow paint; I half expected the whole structure to crash down in a shambles. I figured we'd wait a long time before any denizens within roused themselves. Instead, the door opened within a few seconds.

It was like stepping back in time to the late twenti- eth century, when post-punks, headbangers, carpetbangers, and other odd flotsam of adolescent rage had their fifteen minutes.

There were two young men standing in the door- way: one was blond, the other was darker, black- haired, and possibly Hispanic. Rocko and Paco, for the moment.

Rocko didn't say anything, staring at us with glazed eyes, mouth partly open. The only good thing to say about them was that there was simply no way they had been taken over by alien invaders! Even monsters know when to give someone a pa.s.s.

"May we come in?" asked Albert.

"Stoked," said Rocko.

There seemed no alternative to going inside; there was no escape rocket in sight. Albert braved the cavern of terrible noise first, then Arlene, then Jill with our buddy. There was nothing left but for me to go inside and witness . . .

The living room. The place was stuffed with what looked like the world's largest and bizarrest crank-lab.

There were chemicals of various colors in gla.s.s con- tainers balanced precariously on the ratty furniture. A large bottle of thick, silver liquid looked like it might be mercury. I wondered if these guys would blow us up or poison us.

Jill laid the still-wrapped cybermummy on the ground. Then Albert stepped forward. Without saying a word, he flashed a hand-signal. I recognized it: light- drop hand signals, based partly on American Sign Language, heavily modified.

Earth, said Albert.

Man, responded Paco.

Native.

Born.

I blinked. Albert flashed a thirteen-character com- bination of letters and numbers, and Rocko re- sponded with another. I raised my brows ... a hand- signal "handshake."

All of a sudden, Rocko's demeanor changed as his face melted into a different one entirely. He gestured to Paco, who closed his mouth. Both suddenly looked fifty IQ points brighter.

Rocko went to the stereo, a nice, state-of-the art system out of place in these surroundings, and turned down the music. "Let's talk," he said, voice still sounding like a stereotypical carpetbanger.

Things got too weird for Yours Truly. While Rocko rapped in a lingo full of terms relating to drugs androck'n'roll, he produced several pads and pencils, enough for each one of us. The real conversation took place on the pads, while the duo spoke most of the mind-numbing nonsense, occasionally helped out by Albert and Jill, who could talk the talk better than Arlene or I.

The only part of the conversation I paid attention to came off the pads.

Our hosts filled in more details of this Grave New World. Rocko was actually Captain Jerry Renfrew, PhD, U.S. Army and head of one of the CBNW (chem-bio-nuke warfare) labs. His buddy was Dr.

Xavier Felix, another chemical warfare specialist.

But why did they pretend to be crystal-meth dealers?

Innocuous, no threat, explained Felix with a scribble.

Civilian DEA, Felix wrote. Pose crank cooker stuck fake crim recs into Nat Crime Info Cen comptrs.