"But you'd be willing to appear in order to subvert that."

"Right. I'll agree right now to appear before the committee Monday. Let the president announce that fact! He should announce it tonight or tomorrow, so it can get onto the news as soon as possible!"

"What about your son?"

"Somebody should get word to McVane, privately, that I expect my family to be released. Or that he'll be held responsible for the two of them, or something!"

"But the girl isn't your family."

"She's somebody's family," Benita snapped. "Angelica would be in their clutches right now if they hadn't made a mistake. I asked her to ask the FBI man who's guarding her to take her to a hotel for tonight and let you know where she is."

"I'll alert the powers that be," said Chad. "Including the president."

Benita called Simon at home to tell him a family emergency had come up, and she would have to take Monday off. Since she'd worked overtime on several evenings, she actually had the time coming.

He sighed. "Someday you'll tell me what's going on, won't you, Benita?"

"Someday, Simon. If I ever figure it out."

Senator Byron Morse-FRIDAY The same evening, Senator Morse came home to find a note from Lupe saying that her mother had broken her wrist and that Lupe was driving to Baltimore to spend a day or two with Mama to reassure herself that Mama was all right. All in all, it suited the senator to spend a quiet evening at home. The last few days had been hectic. Predators picking off American citizens was not a precedent he wanted to set, but in this case the end justified the means. Once he got his hands on the intermediary, nobody would press him too much as to how he'd done it, and he had no doubt he could get something out of her, whether or not it led them to the envoys, that would be useful in damaging the administration!

He badly wanted a progress report, but there was no way to reach the predators until they succeeded, in which event, reaching them wouldn't be necessary. Dink had assured him it wouldn't take them long.

Ridiculous, all this running about, unable to find a woman who should stick out like a sore thumb! It suggested ineptitude among people he had always valued for being good at their jobs!

Meantime, the select committee was still unable to talk to or communicate with or get at the envoys themselves, and the armies of ET hunters that were scouring the world for possible targets had as yet reported killing only a California condor, several wolverines and bear cubs, about fifty dogs, and a number of Ginko trees. The boosting of a surveillance satellite into a one-time moon loop, a little maneuver that cost too many millions, had allowed NASA to verify that predator ships were definitely on the back side of the moon. Morse had been cutting NASA's budget relentlessly as long as he'd been in the Senate, so there was no way to get at the moon any time soon. It was like being in a wartime situation. You couldn't attack the administration without seeming disloyal to the country, no matter how elusive or dangerous the president was. Maybe the thing to do was beef up NASA, fast, and see what the Russians had left over from their space program that might be useful. Though, come to think of it, the space station boosters had more or less picked over that trash heap.

Oh, hell, he told himself, pouring a scotch, let it go. Forget it for tonight. Raid the refrigerator, have a long hot shower, go to bed.

The food and the shower he managed. While luxuriating under the hot spray, however, he felt a sting on his shoulder, as though a wasp or bee was in the shower with him. Even as he slapped at the shoulder he felt overwhelmingly dizzy. The tile walls of the shower stall spun around him, he felt himself slipping, though he didn't feel himself landing on the floor. Everything went gray and silent.

He was aware that time was passing, that things seemed to have duration. He came halfway to consciousness, finding himself on an examining table, just like . . . well, like all that stupid X-Files stuff, and there was this . . . ET thing, not a little gray man, not an envoy, not one of those predators they had shown on that broadcast of theirs, something else. Like a huge wasp, only with a high cranium and a soft voice. This large creature, assisted by two smaller creatures, was very intent on doing something to him, though he felt no particular pain or apprehension. They were holding him and shifting him, quite gently, and then there was a sudden, horrible pain, terrible and piercing as the large creature stuck its ...

something or other, surely not what it looked like, no, that couldn't be, he meant no, not that, he meant stuck its dagger-like thing into him, right into his middle, and squirted something through it, something quite large because the dagger-like thing bulged to let it through, and then the pain again, only worse, much worse, he couldn't bear, couldn't stand . . .

And then only peace and euphoria. Nice. Nice restful feeling, and he woke up momentarily. He was at home, in bed, quite naked.

Senator Byron Morse never slept naked. He staggered out of bed and found his pajamas hanging where he'd left them this morning, on the back of the bathroom door. It was while he was buttoning the pajama top before the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door that he noticed a strange discoloration on his stomach. Just to the right of the belly button and a little higher. A real doozy of a bruise, with a bloody spot in the middle. He touched it, and something bit him, like being hit with a cattle prod. A second attempt had the same result. He should have been worried about it, but he still felt very happy and contented. Euphoric. That was the word. He hummed it to himself.

An isolated section of his mind repeated the word. Euphoric? From what? Why was he thinking about euphoria? He should be worried about this damned bloody spot. He was damned well worried about this bloody spot, but he was too tired to do anything about it tonight. He'd get a few hours sleep, first. This morning, first thing, he'd see his doctor.

From Chiddy's journal Dear Benita, Vess and I are so deeply sorry about the predators. Though they will not kill nearly as many of your people as you do on your own, we realize that the simultaneous death of small groups is perceived to be more tragic than a very large mortality stretched over time and space. A plane crash that kills one hundred in one place seems a greater tragedy than the many times that number killed one or two at a time, here and there, by gunshot or car crash or tobacco addiction. When working with intelligent beings, one must work with perceptions as much as with reality, and accordingly, we know the predation must be stopped!

We have set our search devices to find the Xankatikitiki, as they are usually the easiest to locate.

There are more of them, they have the strongest smell, and they tend toward noisy braggadocio, particularly the young ones. Once we find them, we will find the others. If we do not find them within a short time, we will find a human who has met with them, though we will need to wipe the memory of it later. If the predators have conspired with humans, then those humans must have a way to get in touch with them! Unfortunately, conspirators do not emit the same kinds of strong, focused signals that serial killers or terrorists do. Conspirators tend to have torturous mentalities which are often unclear even to themselves.

Meantime, Vess and I are continuing with the programs set out before our brief departure. We are extending the ugliness plague to Iran and Arabia and to parts of India where both Muslims and the wealthier Hindus seem to enjoy locking women up. This is such a unique societal trait that Vess and I brought it to the attention of the Chapter back on Pistach-home. We have been sending them reports all along, of course, and they soon saw the similarity between this human trait and the violent capture of females found among other Earthian mammals. Baboons and various kinds of deer kidnap females, for example, as do teams of dolphins, usually violently and sometimes lethally.

Our Chapter asked us why some human societies consider female capture and abuse to be barbaric while others consider it to be "traditional" or "cultural" or even "religious." Why should certain societies have very little breeding madness while others have it continuously? Are some but not all human societies genetically incapable of self-control?

This dichotomy among various subgroups of a single race is hard for us to explain, dear Benita.

We've looked into the matter, and there is no clear-cut genetic difference between populations with breeding madness and those without. As we know from experience, however, even a rare genetic predisposition can survive culturally if the predisposition is found among the leaders of the society.

Though a leader may be genetically driven to a certain behavior rather than choosing it, if that leader is charismatic, others will elect to copy the behavior. Thus is breeding madness spread among certain populations, first by emulation, in time acquiring a cultural or even religious cachet.

If there is a genetic predisposition to breeding madness, it may have arisen among groups who lived around your Mediterranean Sea. We hear much of the "Latin Temperament," for example, which enjoys ritualized sacrifice of or battles among male animals such as bulls and cocks. They also have dances portraying contests of sexual dominance. I apologize, dearest Benita, if I seem to be belaboring this point!

Even though we are sure these things must change, first it is necessary that we understand what is going on. It is far more important to establish a civil and orderly society than it is to pander to abusive cultural and religious artifacts. This is why we are continuing the ugliness campaign. Once the societies have unlearned their present attitudes, women may become lovely again, as you are, dear Benita. In the meantime, the women will at least have the freedom to come and go as they will, to work and study and learn.

Our Inkleozese monitors were not here long before they pointed out that a nation dedicated to protecting human rights should not have warm diplomatic relations with nations that have institutionalized breeding madness, not even when those nations have a lot of petroleum. We had postponed consideration of this issue formerly, but since all the Inkleozese monitors are receptors, that is, females, we are unable to delay consideration any longer. The Inkleozese react very strongly to insults to their own or similar sexes, and they feel the imprisonment of women is no less heinous than confining political prisoners for the sake of "security."

If widening the area afflicted by the ugly-plague badly upsets your country's acquisition of sufficient fuel, we will provide your nation with power technology that needs no petroleum. An equitable society capable of Neighborliness cannot be built on competition for scarce resources. Think what such cutthroat competition would mean in interstellar society?

The question of resources brings me to a delicate point. Because our need was immediate, we brought back with us the only Inkleozese monitors who were available at the time. Virtually all of them are in that state of parturition that will soon require a host animal. There are no quodm, no geplis, no nadervaks on Earth. The most suitable creatures will be male persons, as their hormones are more easily adjustable to the needs of the growing Inkliti.

Under usual circumstances, the Inkleozese would refuse to leave their planet at such a time. Only our elucidation of the pro-life feelings of many men in positions of power convinced them they could find hosts on Earth without offending the free will of its inhabitants. Obviously, the hosts will have to be persons who espouse the pure pro-life position which does not allow reproductive choice even in the case of rape. Not that these gentlemen would consider it rape, but we all know what the media do with any events related to sexuality.

While the Inkleozese might be offended by the anti-woman bigotry underlying much pro-life dogma, we have not seen fit to discuss with them the psychological minutia of the situation. They would be outraged, or worse, if a host animal refused the implantation of an Inklit egg, but since implantation is always done with the host in a euphoric state, we know the gentlemen will not refuse. We have, therefore, selected hosts for the Inkleozese on the basis of their publicly stated receptivity to preborn life.

Among those chosen are several of your legislators who have repeatedly asserted an unequivocal anti-choice position. We have also added to the list a number of TV and radio preachers and commentators who have been rigorously pro-life. Once the immediate need is taken care of, we will explain the matter as seems necessary. Everyone will be told that the hosts are pregnant with babies of an intelligent life form which it would be a grave ethical error to remove. Though the impregnation has or will be done without the hosts' individual permission, in a legal sense we may infer their permission from the stand which they have taken upon the issue of rape. Each man on our list has gone on record as refusing to allow choice to women who have been raped, pointing out that the infant is innocent and must therefore take precedence. The Inkleozese could not ask for a better statement of their own belief.

In any case, the implantations will be only a temporary inconvenience for the hosts. They will most likely survive the pregnancy and emergence experience without lasting harm, just as most of your women do. The hosts will have only a few months of discomfort and inconvenience, though of course their careers must be set aside for a time. Inasmuch as they have frequently decried the shallowness of women who attempted to avoid pregnancy for mere career convenience, however, we are assured of their understanding.

Aha. Vess calls. The machines are signaling! We have something on the location of the Xankatikitiki. When next we encounter one another, dear Benita, I hope you will be gratified to know we have reached the predators and succeeded in removing them from your world.

Among the Shizzalizaquosmn-SATURDAY The Fluiquosm, the Wulivery and the Xankatikitiki had long been associated with certain other predatory races in a League of Devourers, or Shizzalizaquosmni [SHIZzah-LIZzah-kwah-zum-nee, many-joined-eaters], which league members called simply SHLQ [sh-lok-wuh]. When engaged in joint hunting expeditions on any planet, the league was headed by a committee made up of the eldest or most powerful of each race. On Earth, this group had found the planet to be a predator's paradise.

"Oh, it needs some work, of course," gurgled the Wulivery chief known as Odiferous Tentacle.

"Cities are not a proper venue for the hunt. The country makes prey so much more delicious. One has little food-things gathering around one's legs, thinking one is a tree! They squeak delightfully when one seizes them up!"

The Wulivery were fond of trees, and at least partially in response to Wulivery sensibilities, the Fluiquosm and Xankatikitiki leaders had agreed to set up their headquarters near the old farm in Virginia where they had met the cabal. It was a convenient place, one kept secure by intelligence agencies who had no idea what was going on there, and the humans who kept the place under observation had been easily persuaded that they saw everything except the predators. While the signal towel flapped its continuous message of safety, while each footstep of other casual visitors was closely observed, the predators came and went without being noticed.

It was to this location that the one male and two female Fluiquosm involved in the abductions of Benita's family brought the two young people, and later Bert himself, following his unsuccessful role as bait. Fluiquosm females often accompanied the hunters though they did not usually hunt, and in certain cases they might be sent alone, for it was the females who convinced captured prey that safe release would follow if the prey would only lie quiet. It was the females who convinced the prey it did not see what its eyes claimed to see or hear what its ears claimed to hear. In short, the females cast the veil behind which much bloody work was done, and in return for their talents, their thirsts were among the first satisfied.

The two young humans picked up in California were convinced they had seen nothing and heard nothing and needed only to sleep for a lengthy while. Though bringing them to Virginia had involved a lengthy roundtrip flight, the two Fluiquosm, Quosmlizzak and Kazzalamgah, had badly needed the exercise. They had placed breathing capsules over the noses of the boy and girl, wrapped them in egg film as protection against high-altitude winds, and during the flight had amused themselves by dangling the bodies just in front of airliners in midair, scaring the pilots witless. They did not desist until one plane lost altitude and almost crashed, which would have been a waste of blood, and therefore shameful.

Bert had also been obtained by subterfuge, though his female abductor had chosen to bring him back via commercial carrier and store him temporarily in a hotel. The airline ticket counter person, the clothing store personnel, the barber, the hotel clerk, all had been mind fogged into assisting the operation, and the Fluiquosm who had managed the trip remembered the whole process as having been great fun.

Bert had now joined the two youngsters, all three carefully cocooned in egg film and hung upright in the well-stocked larder tree where they could remain without damage for some days, until they were needed for something or, if that became appropriate, were sucked dry or eaten. Now that all the family except the woman had been brought under control, the predators assumed that Bert and the young people could be consumed immediately after the woman was in their hands.

To that end, a small but representative group of predators left the farm in Virginia and flew in a tiny shuttle to Washington, D.C., where they set themselves down in a small park not far from Benita's apartment. The Wulivery had reconnoitered the woman's lair during their previous attempt, and they knew it was vulnerable, though not in a way that would avoid detection. Each hunt had its rules as to number, age and type of prey, method of capture, how many points for particularly difficult captures, and so on. The rule-setter for this particular hunt had clearly stated that the woman had to be removed without any sign of violence. The prey was to be lured out with threats to the welfare of its offspring. Pistach nootchi, Xankatikitiki glafimmilox, even Wulivery vullaters would respond mindlessly to threats directed at offspring they had nurtured or borne. It was assumed human females would be the same, even though the ploy wouldn't work on Fluiquosm themselves. Fluiquosm were without progeny pride, sometimes going so far as to drain their offspring when other blood was unavailable.

The shuttle was set down in a thick copse of trees, and the group exited, including Odiferous Tentacle, a Xankatikitiki chief called Mrrgrowr, and the two Fluiquosm females, Quosmlizzak and Kazzalamgah. It was in the wee hours of the morning and the city was quiet enough that the Wulivery and one of the Fluiquosm felt they could collect Benita without attracting attention. While the mind- fogger stood by to confuse anyone who might witness any part of the abduction, the Wulivery pretended to be a tree while making a phone call from a sidewalk booth. Wulivery were skilled at languages and particularly good at picking up conversational idiom, though they could make vocal sounds only through a machine.

Benita's phone rang at three A.M. on Sunday, so her digital clock told her as she came groggily awake. "Hello," she muttered, staring witlessly at the clock and wondering what new threat or confusion was happening. "Hello?"

"Come out, come out, wherever you are," demanded a mechanical voice.

The person who owned that voice wasn't anyone Benita knew, or wanted to know, but she realized immediately what it wanted.

"Hello," she said again, sitting upright, forcing herself to waken. "Do you have the right number?"

"Alvarez," the voice said. "This is the right number. We have you located. We have possession of your mate and offspring. Harm will come to them if you don't go downstairs and come out the back door right now . . ."

Shaking off her stupor, Benita gritted her teeth and said what she and Chad had agreed she would say. "I can't," she said. 'The president has asked me to appear before Senator Morse's committee on Monday morning. I've promised I'll be there."

There was a snort at the other end, like an aborted curse, a moment's mumbling, as though to someone else, then a disconnect. She hung up, tears running down her face as she prayed she was doing the right thing. Whoever or whatever the voice was, it would have to report to Morse. And once Morse knew she'd testify before the committee, he'd have no reason . . . well, less reason to hang on to her children. Or to Bert.

She pulled herself out of bed, stumbling through the dark, banging one hand against the bathroom door hard enough to break a nail straight across, and then scratched herself with it when she splashed cold water on her face. She dressed in jeans and a knit shirt with a roomier flannel shirt over it, then went to the phone in the bedroom and called Chad, who said he would be over in a few minutes, with weapons.

"Can you shoot?" he asked.

"As a matter of fact, yes," she muttered, digging through the drawer of the bedside table for a nail file. "My brothers and I used to shoot at cans and rats, out at my Dad's salvage yard. Back then, it was out in the country . . ." Her voice trailed off. Back then had no point to it at the moment.

Odiferous Tentacle was annoyed. The result of the call was not as planned. The official, Morse, wanted the woman to appear before him, but the woman was already committed to appearing before Morse. Did Morse still want her taken secretly? This possibility had not been covered in the rules of engagement! Sending the Fluiquosm to report back to the group, the Wulivery found another phone and called General McVane, feeding a small tentacle up through the coin return to ding the coin mechanism as many times as required.

General McVane, wakened from a sound sleep, growled into the phone. "Call me back in an hour. I'll get ahold of Morsel"

While they waited, the predators continued their previous conversation.

The toothy Xankatikitiki chief, Mrrgrowr, remarked, "You're right that there is more meat here than seems possible, but a lot of it is flab. The flesh is too soft. Tiki's jaws will atrophy. Tiki's teeth will rot."

Odiferous Tentacle shrugged, a gesture which took him from a height of four meters to one of about eight, followed by the emission of a lengthy stink. "Not all of them are flabby. In other parts of the world, the peasants are quite solid. A few generations of unlimited predation will take care of those that aren't.

We'll make a practice of allowing the more fit to escape us. That way they'll reproduce disproportionately and improve the species."

"It'll take generations," complained Mrrgrowr. "Let the young clean out the flabby ones!" said Quosmlizzak. "You know kids. They'll eat anything, what!"

"Your young, perhaps," said Mrrgrowr, with a snarl. "Not ours. We Xankatikitiki care about our progeny."

"Our young, then," laughed Quosmlizzak. "We have them by the clutch, a dozen or so. And as for our good friends like Stinky here, the Wulivery young are spawned in the sea, what? A million at a time?"

"Only a few hundred thousand at even the most splendid spawning," murmured Odiferous Tentacle.

"And only a few hundred survive to the parasitic larval stage when they cling to vullators. One does not consider them to be Wulivery until the vullator-clinging stage, and one does not name them until the second metamorphosis. Our young wouldn't be useful in culling the flabby humans for they become land creatures only after the fifth stage, at which point they are almost adult."

"You'll want access to the oceans for your young, then?" asked Mrrgrowr.

The Wulivery waved its tentacles in negation. "No. Alas! Have you looked at their seas? Filthy!

Also, the humans have so badly over-fished them that our young would find little to eat and might themselves end up as food for the few remaining whales! So amusing! The humans pretend to save the whales while they go on stealing the whales' food until the whales starve! Ha ha. This world will have dead oceans, shortly. We have already planned to restock them with hybrids of the poisonous earthly puffer fish and equally noxious imported sea-creatures. Then we will eat the coastal humans who sully the sea while the new fish become food for our young but not for mankind. Until that is done, one fears this planet is too squalid for us to reproduce here.

"Hunting, however, will be good. We prefer hunting in shade, near clean water, as otherwise we get overheated. There's plenty of prey along the sides of the jungles and woods. Enough to last us for years."

'Then you believe the humans will make an agreement with us?" asked Mrrgrowr.

"Oh," murmured Odiferous Tentacle, "one thinks they will. They'll ask us to eat the people in some other country, of course, so we'll have to predate secretly in this country. Luckily, many of their people drop out or run away, so a few disappearances won't be suspected."

"Have any of the rest of you preyed on a smokeweed ingestor?" queried Quosmlizzak. "One tried to suck an ingestor a few days ago. It tasted so absolutely foul one had to disgorge the juices, and one is sure it would be deleterious to one's health to eat many of them . . ."

"You're quite right," shuddered the Wulivery. "Terrible taste, and it stays with one so! The man, Bert, is one such. He stinks terribly! Do not ask me to share his flesh, thank you, no."

"We'll have to get rid of the bad ones," remarked Mrrgrowr.

"Will the dear Pistach let us do that?" asked Odiferous Tentacle. "Will they go on causing us trouble?"

"The Pistach!" The Xankatikitiki barked with laughter. "The Wulivery haven't heard? The Pistach may have no time to cause us anything! They'll soon have a civil war on their hands."

"What?" cried Quosmlizzak.

"No! The Pistach?" laughed Odiferous Tentacle. "How delicious!"

Mrrgrowr snarled, "It's true. A rebel has built an army and taken ships! He has made an alliance with us. We have given him weapons and ships. Our people heard of him last on his way to Pistach-home. To conquer the planet!"

"Could that be why the Pistach brought Inkleozese with them when they returned?" asked Quosmlizzak.

Silence. The Wulivery made a spitting noise. The Xankatikitiki growled in their throats. "Is that true?

Inkleozese? Drat them! What business did they have coming here?"

"We knew they'd come sooner or later," soothed Odiferous Tentacle. "We'll just stay out of their reach, that's all."

"Easier asserted than accomplished," muttered the Xankatikitiki. "We went to considerable trouble wooing that Pistach rebel. Who would have thought of Inkleozese!"

"Well, they're not allowed to ... you know, not to members of the Confederation."

"They do it to members of the Confederation," asserted Quosmlizzak. "They find a legal precedent first, but they do it. Like, for instance if they come after us, they'll claim we're not actually members of the Confederation because if we were we wouldn't be contravening its laws by being here . . ."

"They wouldn't!" said Odiferous Tentacle. "Not to us."

"Don't bet on it," said the Fluiquosm. "Stranger things have happened."

"Time to reach out to the general again," said Mrrgrowr, reversing his head to examine a steeple clock.

Odiferous Tentacle grunted and went off toward the phone, returning almost immediately.

"I have reached," sighed the Wulivery. "The general is very upset. He has tried to find the senator, but the senator does not answer his phone, and there is no one at his office. The general thinks we had better take the woman anyhow, even if we must break in to do so. He feels the senator will probably want her, so it will be best to have her on hand."

Chad arrived at Benita's apartment and immediately took a handgun from his pocket. He pointed out the safety, thrust the gun at Benita, and watched her drop it into the deep flapped pocket of her checked lumberman's jacket before gathering several scattered belongings into an open bag. Sasquatch moved anxiously back and forth between the living room and the bedroom like a caged wolf.

"Hurry up," Chad urged her. "We need to get away from here."

"I'm just getting the clothes I'll need to wear on Monday. I don't want to have to come back here."

She moved into the living room with the open bag, set it on the couch and was suddenly conscious of a heaviness in her head and chest. Allergies. They always hit her when she was nervous. The medicine was on the TV, next to Chiddy's translator. She picked it up, wondering what it was, breaking the silence with a heartfelt, "Damn!"