second. The grays had given her to him so she could be the child’s empath, it was the only explanation that made any sense. “You’ll be a sort of teacher, Lauren. An interpreter, if you will.”
“Of who? Of what?”
“I don’t want to be mysterious, but it’s best that we let this unfold in its own time.”
“That’s hard.”
“So be it, duty is duty. I have one further question. Do you know how to hide? I mean, on a trained, professional level?”
“Why in the world should I hide? Colonel Wilkes had no right to do what he did, you said that yourself. He’s up on charges.”
“He’s also very powerful. More powerful by far than we are. He’s dangerous, Lauren. I hope you understand that.”
“He’s trying to kill me, of course I understand it! But I have no idea how to hide.”
“You got this far. That’s saying something. A hell of a lot, in fact.”
“If I’m a KIA, then I have no Air Force standing. If I’m already dead, he can kill me without fear of penalty.”
“We’re going to hide you, Lauren.”
“I wish the grays were here.”
“Keep trying to contact them.”
When they went outside, the snow of earlier had stopped. The base was very quiet, the flight line now shut down.
She noticed that he moved very quickly, striding across the base to the carpool. He had a car of his own, but he requisitioned a staff vehicle instead. “This is part of staying hidden,” he said. “I’ll exchange this for another staff vehicle after I drop you off.”
He took her to a Days Inn, which appeared to be about the only motel in this small town.
Thus it was that Lauren ended up in the room next door to Mike Wilkes, an event that had not been orchestrated by the grays, but was not entirely chance, either. Rather it emerged out of the fates of both species, human and gray, as they rode the dark rails of their destinies.
Mike heard voices next door, a man and a woman. He took no notice.
Rob wanted to stay with Lauren—he told himself, to protect her. But he had work to do, because if he didn’t find Wilkes, not only was Lauren going to be in trouble, the rest of this thing was going to come apart. He could not imagine the consequences if the grays were thwarted, dared not even think about what might happen.
As he drove back to his office, Mike Wilkes and Lauren Glass both lay on their beds unable to even think of sleeping, their heads separated by just six inches of drywall. Lauren’s mind whirled with the astonishing secrets she had learned, and, as she sank into exhaustion, also with the image of Colonel Rob Langford, who appeared to her as a sort of angel, powerful and good and strong enough to take her the way she loved to be taken, and give her the babies her whole heart and soul told her that the future needed.
Mike would doze for a moment, then see Adam looming up, his insect eyes glaring. Then he would start awake and toss and turn, and nuzzle his gun close to his side.
Far overhead, in a sky that had cleared magnificently, strange stars hung over the town. The Three Thieves had been joined by Adam, and the first phase had been accomplished. They were counting the hours, now, the minutes, the seconds, the nanoseconds until they acted again, and Adam entered Conner, and became part of him, and either it worked or it did not.
It was an amazing time, truly, with six billion human lives and six billion gray lives hanging in the balance, in the quiet of a little town, in a dark corner of a small state, in a strange and faraway place called Earth.
PART SEVEN
Lost Land
TWENTY
CONNER AND PAULIE WOKE UP late and had to rush to get to school. When Paulie saw Conner’s mixture of amaranth flakes, wheat germ, and unsweetened live-culture yogurt, he did not ask for an explanation, but gratefully ate the bacon and eggs that Dan, wearing only green boxer shorts and huge, fluffy slippers, provided to him. He was fascinated to watch Conner eat what looked like upchuck.
Conner had called in aliens, which was damn amazing. But now here he was gobbling down this fantastically geekish food. Nobody could eat like this and get away with it. Paulie had an obligation to uphold the reputation of Bell Attached as a cool school.
“So, what’s your lunch?” he asked Conner. They’d stop by his house to pick up his, which would be Cheetos, a ham sandwich, and a power bar.
“My lunch?” He went over to a little plastic greenhouse that was sitting on the kitchen counter. “Ah, excellent.
Aliens or not, Paulie saw that the Connerbusters had to continue.
“Sounds great, but I’ve got my dumb old ham sandwich waiting for me at home.”
Dan listened to the boys with only half an ear. Conner had somehow managed to bring this off, it appeared. He was more socially resourceful, then, than he seemed. All to the good.
During his own wakeful and uneasy night, Dan had made a decision. Once he was tenured, he was going to do the unthinkable. He was going to circulate his resume, and he was going to concentrate exclusively on schools in large cities far from here. An untenured professor was an academic beggar. But a man operating from tenure was more significant, even if he came from the lower ranks of colleges.
The reason he was going to do this was that he wanted to get his family as far from open spaces and dark, abandoned nights as he could. Preferably, he would raise his remarkable boy in a Manhattan tower, some place like that. Conner was vulnerable, and Dan’s instinct was that moving to a more populated area would protect him.
As for Katelyn, she was in the process of putting Marcie behind her. She dressed for her morning round of classes while listening to the males crashing around downstairs. She would not have believed Conner’s skill in recapturing Paulie. She’d been furious with him last night, but now she was proud of her son.
She hurried downstairs to be in time to give her men good-bye kisses—accepted with dear brusqueness by her son, with hopeful eyes by her husband.
She let him hug her. This family was her responsibility and her achievement. She was not going to let it go awry simply because he’d done something foolish and she felt humiliated. “Men are fools,” her mom had said, “expect the worst.” As, indeed, her dad had been, disappearing on them the way he had, effectively orphaning her and widowing Mom.
