Sight Unseen

by BT

Fanfic based on War of the Worlds television show (1989) based on the movie (1953) based on the book by H.G. Wells (1898) and the famous radio broadcast of the story by Orson Welles (1938).

This story appeared as "Eye to Eye" in the zine One in Ten published by Neon Rainbow Press. It has been slightly revised since then, mainly because I can't re-type anything without fiddling with it. BT

September

By the time the Blackwood Project team been at the "Cottage" -- a mansion with state-of-the-art military security -- for two months, the household had fallen into the habit of having a communal meal in the evening. Mrs. Pennyworth clearly approved: tonight there was pecan pie for dessert. Harrison Blackwood watched Debi eat hers quickly but then refuse a second piece after catching her mother's eye.

Suzanne herself sighed at the gooey treat. "I'd better not. You've got homework, young lady, and I have plenty of work to do myself. Sixteen more virus slides to go."

"I could offer you some coffee, Doctor," said Norton. "No calories, and it'll keep you awake over the electron microscope. I'm going to the lab right now for a cup of Kona. Join me?"

"Sold," she said, and rose from the table.

As the oddly assorted couple disappeared toward the elevator, Harrison commented to the table's remaining occupant, "Now, there goes a man in love."

"Norton? With Suzanne?" Colonel Ironhorse's eyebrows arched high. "Even if he is, she isn't..." He stopped at Harrison's chuckle, face blanking.

"It's Norton, but with the Cray," said Harrison. "Coffee and even the good Doctor McCullough are the window dressing. Norton has been spending sixteen hours a day with the new love of his life ever since it was installed."

He divided the remaining pie neatly into two pieces and slid the nearer one onto his plate. Small pleasures were to be seized gratefully. "We want it that way, don't we? When Norton can make that machine sit up and do tricks, we'll have better odds of finding the aliens."

"Yes," admitted Ironhorse. "But he's a civilian. You all are."

"Tell Suzanne that. I bet she'd argue."

"My point exactly."

It was said perfectly deadpan, but Harrison smiled. They were almost settled at the Cottage, if "settled" was the term for a life-and-death hunt for hidden alien invaders. He had not yet seen Lieutenant Colonel Ironhorse crack a real joke, but he awaited the day with anticipation. In the eye of the storm, small pleasures... "Relax. You're not pushing Norton to do anything he doesn't want to. And not Suzanne, either. She's practically swooning over those virus models."

"What about you?"

"Do you think you pushed me into this project? Remember who strong-armed whom."

"I remember." Ironhorse pulled the pie plate nearer and helped himself to the remaining piece. The sound of forks on plates was the only thing to be heard for the next few minutes, but eventually Ironhorse looked up at him. "Tell me something, Blackwood."

Harrison nodded, curious, and the colonel went on, "Why did you believe there were aliens?"

"After they tried to kill me, and you, and your squad? Do you have to ask?"

"Before that. When you followed my squad the first time. Why did you even look for aliens? Iranian terrorists should have been much more believable."

Harrison grinned at him. "Do you want to know why I didn't believe in Iranian terrorists, or why I did believe in aliens?"

"Save the political argument. Why aliens?"

"My parents were killed, and then there was my foster father's work and his records..." Harrison knew that Ironhorse had heard this before. What did he want?

"Those aren't available now," the colonel pointed out, neutrally. "The usual treatment for remembering childhood nightmares is a pat on the head and advice to grow up. What made you take it up as a vocation?"

"Waitaminute, Mister Military. What were you doing on that base? Looking for terrorists?"

"At first."

"You believed in the aliens."

"When I saw them."

"Pretty fast thinking for an army type."

Ironhorse put down his fork, his eyes going flat and wary. "Smile when you say that, Mister New Age."

Harrison felt himself flush. "Foot in mouth disease. Sorry. I meant... Didn't your grandmother pat you on the head and tell you to forget your nightmares, not remember them? You were in the situation up to your neck, granted, but I've known lots of observers who'd have insisted it was terrorists, no matter what they saw."

"My life depended on it. And those of my squad."

"And mine, okay. I'm the last person to say you were wrong."

"Then what are you asking about?"

Harrison pushed away his empty plate. "Colonel, I think we're both aware that a belief system wins over seeing what's really there a good ninety percent of the time. We've got eyewitness accounts from people who sincerely think they saw everything from falling trees to Iranians, instead of aliens. But you, Colonel, you saw aliens the instant they were there to see."

Ironhorse's eyes studied his plate and the two bites of pie left there. "I wish I didn't. They're monsters."

The bleak voice touched Harrison's soul. "Maybe they're not. They're... alien, sure. Different. But they're someone new to talk to. We've got to find one who'll talk to us!"

"They're just killers." He looked at Harrison. "If you've seen anything about them, you've seen that. They're only after prey."

"Maybe not only. Maybe there's more. There's got to be a way to communicate!"

"Now whose belief system is interfering with his vision?"

"And who else's?" challenged Harrison. "They have language, advanced technology, ships..."

"They killed your mother and father. You've believed that all your life. What more proof do you need?"

"They didn't kill yours, did they? What makes you believe they're monsters and nothing more?"

Ironhorse fixed him with a black stare. "It wasn't my grandmother," he said finally, voice distant. "It was my grandfather. He's a... 'seer of sprits,' perhaps, in English. He told me nightmares are important."

Harrison stared back. "Your grandfather's a shaman?"

"That's one term for it. I don't even like to talk about this, but the way you speak of the aliens sometimes, as if you believe..." He paused, looking uneasy for the first time in Harrison's acquaintance with him.

"Go on. I'm listening." Harrison pushed down the sixteen questions that immediately occurred to him about Native American spirituality; voicing even one might shut off the cautious words Ironhorse was forming.

"It's as if you want to see your old dreams again, even though they frightened you."

The alien attack in 1953 hadn't been a dream, but Harrison couldn't recall it clearly and wished now that he did.

"Grandfather would talk like that, about spirits in his dreams, and I've never met anyone else who takes a nightmare as a call to action. Except you." His puzzled look turned to a simple frown. "But the aliens aren't dream visions. They won't speak to you. They just kill. They're no more spirits than a tyrannosaur, or those viruses Suzanne is analyzing. If she's right, they are viruses."

"That doesn't mean they can't talk to us." Harrison had always been proud of his intellectual stubborn streak. It won debates. It kept him going in the face of disbelief. It had brought him to this so-called Cottage stronghold and the opportunity of a lifetime.

"Maybe they could, but they won't. They're not here to share knowledge with us. That's perfectly plain. There hasn't been a single instance of anything but predation since 1938."

"We don't know that."

"We have to assume it."

Harrison leaned back. "That's your job. The military has to assume there's a threat. My job--"

"It's not just my job, Blackwood. What I've been saying is," he took a breath, "I think I understand what you want from the aliens, but I know they won't give it to you."

"What does your grandfather know? About aliens?"

"Nothing at all, I hope."

"Then what makes you think he'd see the aliens as good or bad?"

"There's no good or bad here. There are different kinds of danger. And..." He gave Harrison a very sour look. "I'm not like my grandfather. I don't see spirits or hear them. But I can see the aliens, and they see me, and the only kind of communication they've tried is killing humans, and using humans' bodies so they can kill more humans. Do you understand that?"

Harrison sighed and decided on a qualified capitulation. For the moment. "You're right that I want something I'm not getting from them. They're intelligent predators, and I've got to find the intelligence that drives them."

"No one has yet."

"I want to be the first."

Harrison thought Ironhorse almost smiled, at that. "Fools and angels, Doctor Blackwood." He poked at the remaining forkful of pie on his plate.

"Which are you?" asked Harrison. "And call me Harrison if we're going to have philosophical discussions like this."

Ironhorse did smile. "If it takes more than one discussion to convince you, very well, Harrison. You say you're a scientist. Can you listen to reason on a topic that's not astrophysics?"

"Reason, and information."

"I hope Norton's work with the Cray will provide the latter."

The man had relaxed a little, but he was not going to explain about his grandfather or his own understanding. Not today. The small boy inside Harrison Blackwood who wanted to know everything clamored for more; the scientist who had learned to work with people told him to be patient. This prize would need a lot of unwrapping. "We'll see. I hope you're right about that. But -- just to keep up the discussion -- not right about the aliens."

Ironhorse paused in the act of raising the last bite of pie to his mouth, and lowered it. His eyes were shadowed again. "We all hope I'm wrong. I wish you could be right about them. I don't think you are."

Harrison could not resist making one more try. "So, I'm a scientist studying aliens. What are you?" He tried to make it a question, not a challenge.

"I am a soldier." Ironhorse stood up, gathered up his not-quite-empty dessert plate and fork, stacked them on top of Harrison's, and carried them toward the kitchen.

"You seem awfully sure of that."

Ironhorse paused at the kitchen door. "You're sure the aliens will speak to you. At least I have a commission to prove what I am."

The door swung shut behind him.

"And I've got a diploma," said Harrison to the closed door. "Three of them. How much good do they do me?"

Early October

"Will you look at that." Norton's low voice carried clearly to the three people clustered behind him and Gertrude at the Cray's primary monitor.

"Uhm," said Harrison, not really following the charts and numbers that replaced one another with flickering speed in three of the screen's four quadrants. The map in the fourth quadrant looked as though it had rapidly worsening measles.

"If each of those dots is an alien base, we're in trouble," said Suzanne.

"Each one is, or was, the source of an alien broadcast of some kind," said Norton. "This is all very raw. I've only been cookin' for a few hours, here, since I finished the record searches. But..." He typed rapidly at the keyboard under his fingers. "Lemme filter some of it out."

Harrison watched as three quarters or more of the measles disappeared, leaving the map dotted, rather than stippled, with points of light.

"Okay," said Norton's dark baritone. "Each of these is a multiple-occurrence broadcast source. Some could be permanent alien sites." More typing, and a nearly invisible change. "Minus the few locations we've investigated."

"How fine is your grid?" asked Suzanne, all levity gone from her voice.

"Two-mile-square units."

"So a moving source would be a one-time broadcast from any unit where it didn't stop," she noted.

"You got it, Doctor Lady." Norton wasn't laughing either.

There were still dozens of dots on the map of the Western United States. Harrison risked a glance at Ironhorse's face. It was gray-brown and looked like stone, but his voice was almost normal when he said, "If there are that many aliens... How soon can you refine the data? We can't afford to ignore the one-time sources entirely, but I want to concentrate analysis on those you're showing now. Can you break it down by type of transmission, times, number of transmissions, correlation between simultaneous transmissions? And any other category breakdowns you think would be useful." It might almost have been a normal request for information, but his hard-closed face didn't relax.

"No sweat," said Norton. "Analysis is this baby's specialty. Also obscure data sources," he waggled his eyebrows, but Ironhorse did not react, "poker odds, and weather predictions."

Ironhorse said only, "I see. Let me have some printouts, even if they're preliminary and rough as analysis, by the end of the day. I'd like to study them after dinner. Will that give you long enough?"

"Can do."

"Two sets of printouts, please," said Harrison. "One for me."

Norton grinned, though it wasn't clear why. "Can do."

Ironhorse nodded, still without any real expression. "Yes, you'll want to see them too. Perhaps we all will. And, Mr. Drake?" Norton looked up, and his face stilled as he saw Ironhorse's. "I don't need to know just how obscure your sources are. None of us do. But thank you. Use them."

"Can do," said Norton, soberly this time.

Suzanne remained, leaning over Norton's shoulder, as Ironhorse left the laboratory and Harrison followed him to the first floor and out onto the back verandah which was the most sheltered outdoor area in the Cottage compound.

"You're not happy," he observed, seating himself on a chair after Ironhorse sat, ramrod-straight, on the bench beside it, gazing into the screen of trees beyond the lawn.

"If a tenth of those locations are alien storage sites, we're fighting a war. If all of them are, we've lost the war already."

"Aren't you theorizing in advance of the data? Let Norton do his analysis before you say we're dead. That's nearly forty years of data, and who knows how many were temporary bases? It can't all be dump sites full of canned aliens."

"I hope you're right."

"Besides, there's other data. For one thing, aliens are not openly overrunning the Earth. If there're so many of them, where are they?"

"In hiding," said Ironhorse flatly. "Any of those locations could be a base. They'll have to be investigated. All of them."

"It'll be a lot of work," agreed Harrison, irrationally cheered by the thought. He leaned toward the still figure on the bench. "This is still a secret investigation of scattered incidents. If there were hundreds of active aliens -- Aliens Among Us -- wouldn't it be more obvious?"

"Not necessarily. Haven't you said that people don't see what they don't expect? How do we know there isn't activity where no one believes what they've seen? Or where no one survives to believe."

"Paul."

Ironhorse went on in the same level voice, "You won't have to worry about never finding another alien every time we eliminate some of them. There are enough to go around."

"Maybe Norton can pinpoint a headquarters or communication center of some kind. That's where we'd be likely to find the ones whose business is talking instead of killing."

The dark head stirred and turned toward him. "If we had confirmation of such a place, what would you do?"

Harrison shrugged. "Go there. Talk to them."

"Alone?" Suddenly Ironhorse was on his feet, ragingly angry. "Do you think you can do what an army can't? If you just walk into a place like that, you're asking to be killed, and they'd do it!"

"I'm not an army," said Harrison, looking up into haunted eyes. "I'm not trying to defeat them. I'm trying to persuade them not to fight us."

"They're not 'fighting' us! They're slaughtering prey when they find it. This isn't a war to them. It's just an extermination. They wouldn't listen to you, even if you had a way to speak to them!"

"I won't know until I try, will I?"

Ironhorse stood in front of him, glaring. "You're insane!"

"Everyone says that." Harrison felt himself smiling. Maybe everyone was right, but it hadn't stopped him so far.

"The aliens won't bother to say it. They'll just kill you -- you've seen that with your own eyes, if your damned new-age belief system let you see it! They might even use your body to house one of them, and make you a zombie and a traitor. Do you want that?"

Everything he said was true. Harrison tried not to smile maniacally as he said, "Do you want to fight an endless losing war with them? We need information about what they think they are, why they're here, what they're doing. Watching them kill people doesn't tell us how they think. Someone -- someone who can see them as intelligent beings instead of killing machines -- has to investigate."

"Harrison, don't do it. Don't think about it. We'd lose you, and then what would happen to the Project?"

"I didn't know you cared."

Ironhorse ignored that. "You're talking about the functions of a spy, or a diplomat. You're neither. Dealing directly with the aliens isn't your role, or even your right."

"I'm an investigator," said Harrison. "My role is to head the Project. I'm to decide how best to learn about them. Shouldn't I?"

"You role is to stay alive if any of us do, to keep the Project alive. You're the one General Wilson believes in, even more than Suzanne. He's not humoring his niece with the million-dollar outlay here. He's taking your word, and your evidence and deductions, as valid. If you're going to negotiate with anyone and convince anyone, it should be him and the others in Washington."

"It was. And now it's my job -- this team's job -- to 'detect and neutralize' extraterrestrial dangers to the nation. I wrote that into the Project wording myself."

"Getting yourself killed won't accomplish anything!" Ironhorse was still looking at him. "Don't you see that it would be worse than useless in the long run?"

Harrison folded his hands. "Yes. but so would risking nothing to accomplish nothing."

"There are risks you don't have to take!"

"And if I don't, who does? Who do I send instead, who knows less than I do and is therefore in greater danger of not coming back?"

Ironhorse paused and then said, more quietly, "You're not insane. I see. You're a fool, but you're right. As far as your argument goes."

"You don't like it."

"Should I?" asked Ironhorse. "Should I, Harrison? You're making my job infinitely harder. Perhaps impossible."

Harrison remembered that "infinitely" anything translated logically into English as either "impossible" or "inevitable." Ironhorse claimed not to understand higher math, but Harrison wondered if that was unwarranted modesty. To keep the argument going in the direction he wanted he asked, "What is your job?"

"To evaluate the Project in military terms and to protect the team here." Ironhorse gave him a hard look. "And, you are essential to it."

"So are you," said Harrison. "Yet you risk yourself."

"I'm not irreplaceable, and taking risks is one of my duties."

"It's your job because you're the one best qualified to succeed at it. I'm the one with the best chance of making meaningful contact with aliens. If even half of Norton's new data is significant, we need that more than we need to eliminate any one of their bases."

Ironhorse's posture eased, but not very much. "You've made your point. In theory, I agree that you're right. However, I'm not sure it's an acceptable risk, and that's my judgement to make."

Harrison clenched his hands together, trying not to be disappointed and hurt. Ironhorse was being more than fair. "Impasse, Paul."

"Only until we have more information. More weapons. A chance." He was still standing in front of Harrison, but no longer confronting him. "I didn't say we should never use your plan. We can't try it before we know enough for it to have a chance of succeeding."

"I think I see." Harrison unfolded his hands and levered himself out of the chair to face Ironhorse eye to eye. Standing, he even had a slight advantage in height. He did not usually need one. "I'll do my job and let you do yours."

"Agreed. If you go into any alien strongholds, I'm going with you."

Alarms rang in Harrison's mind. "Oh, no. Send a whole squad with me if you insist. Not you."

"Why not me?"

"Because you are irreplaceable. You," said Harrison patiently, "believe the aliens exist. You can see them coming. If I don't come back, someone has to explain why not, and make General Wilson understand the danger still exists."

"I am like hell letting you go anywhere alone!"

"Not alone. But I don't have to risk us both."

Dark eyes blazed at him. "Norton understands everything you do about aliens, and he has the data on them at his fingertips. Suzanne is best qualified in the world to create some kind of weapon, or defensive immunization, against them physically. We're the expendable pair in this team, if you look at it that way. And even if you're right, you need someone who can see the aliens coming to guard your back. Don't you?"

Harrison let out his breath. Height was no advantage in the face of conviction. "Yes. You win. We go in together, if there's a chance of meeting them."

"With backup," said Ironhorse.

"With all the qualified backup we can get," said Harrison. "You realize, that means a squad that believes in aliens."

Ironhorse almost smiled. Harrison could see the lessened tension in his face even if his mouth did not move. "It will be your job to convince them."

Mid October

A van of battered alien-fighters left a clandestine battleground on the outskirts of Fresno in post-midnight darkness. Harrison watched as Ironhorse, who had moved in with his squad as soon as the operation changed from covert investigation to a melee, assured himself that everyone in their party was still present and human. He ordered them into the van where Norton waited at the wheel before he allowed Suzanne and Harrison to look at the arm and side he had not moved more than necessary since the end of the fighting.

"You'll be wearing living technicolor for a while," predicted Suzanne, fingers hovering over a spreading, still-pale bruise. "Does it hurt when you breathe?"

"Yes."

"Is your arm injured?"

"I don't think so. Moving it hurts my chest." Cautiously, he straightened it and rotated his wrist. "No, it's fine."

"Bruised rib, maybe cracked. Don't move more than you have to. We'll get you X-rayed when we get home. If you've stayed on your feet this long, you're probably not going to die from riding in a van for two hours."

He did not smile, exactly. "Are you sure, with Mr. Drake's driving?"

Suzanne did smile. "I'll sit up front and keep an eye on him. Harrison, you didn't take any hits that I saw."

"Nope. But I'm afraid the enzyme spray isn't going to be much help."

"I was watching," nodded Suzanne. "Scratch one approach. It was only a first approximation, but if they don't even notice it, refining that formula isn't the answer. I wish I knew what makes the integument break down so quickly when they die."

"Sorry, Suzanne."

"I'm the one who's apologizing. Colonel, I'd like to give you some codeine so you can sleep on the way home. Okay?"

"Wake me if there's any new information, but we're done here. You're the doctor."

"I'm the paramedic," she corrected, edging him into the back of the van where there was space to lie down and, if one was very tired indeed, sleep. "We're going to need a real medic at the rate we're going. I'm just making educated guesses on everything big enough to see. Why didn't Harrison take a first aid course or something when he was a Boy Scout?"

"What makes you think I was a Boy Scout?"

"Healthy, brave, thrifty, clean, reverent..."

"Busy," said Harrison. "I'd rather be clean and reverent on my own than have someone make it a condition of membership."

"Typical," muttered Ironhorse from where Suzanne was administering a hypo. It was even more typical, Harrison thought, that Paul had not mentioned, and never would, that the bash in the ribs had occurred while he was removing two aliens intent on grabbing Harrison.

"Stay down and don't breathe hard. Harrison, if you're all right you can look after him back here. Could you use a nap?"

"Maybe. I need to meditate."

"Sudden death will do that to you," came the toneless thread of Ironhorse's voice from the padded floor of the van.

"In that case, you need to meditate."

"I am, Harri- so- n." The voice slurred into sleep on the last syllable.

"Maybe by his lights, he is," said Suzanne. She swung the door shut, enclosing them in the gray interior of the van, and a moment later a passenger-side door slammed at the front. Her voice drifted back through the interior. "Pleasant dreams."

As the motor growled into life Harrison eased to the floor, trying to ignore the thick smell of adrenaline sweat and poison-bitter alien effluvia. The sight of blood had once made him queasy; the sight and smell of green ichor now made him angry. He didn't want to kill them! But there was little choice, when he was defending his life and his friends'.

The dim light available gradually became enough to see by. Harrison took a flat cushion from the stack in the corner and raised Ironhorse's head enough to slide it under as extra padding against the floor of the humming, jolting van. Taking another cushion for himself, he lay down and stared into the dark ceiling.

The aliens they'd met were definitely intent on murder. That didn't prove that all aliens wanted only to kill them, but it did nothing to bear out Harrison's hopes for two-way communication. He'd always wanted to know what made the aliens come to Earth, what they saw through their tripartite eyes.

How long ago had he known they had tripartite eyes? Since he was a small boy with imaginary friends who were aliens? He'd been frightened when Mom and Dad went away, but even while he ran from the aliens, it had been nonhuman invisible friends who showed him how to hide and where to be safe, before he reached the human home that took him in.

When an expedition for information turned into a senseless battle for survival, Harrison felt betrayed by the beings he fought. It wasn't supposed to be like this! Aliens were unearthly, but not ugly, not senseless killers.

These aliens were.

Ironhorse had implied that his grandfather knew of something that wasn't like these single-eyed, claw-armed aliens. Paul hadn't talked about his grandfather or spirits again, but one thing he'd said was that he didn't see spirits himself. Had he wanted to? Harrison could not imagine not knowing that everything was alive and aware: the sky, the road, himself, three-in-one-eyed aliens, trees in the ground, the vegetables he ate because it pained them less than the animals he might have eaten. Paul didn't believe that, or tried not to believe it.

He turned onto his side, careful not to jostle his companion in the confined space, and gazed at the sleeping man. The outlined profile was unexpectedly clean-lined. Ironhorse conscious was forever irritated and irritating, or challenging, or preoccupied -- anything but restful. The chance to contemplate his face without meeting his eyes was oddly welcome.

Harrison recognized the feeling hovering somewhere in his mind. Oh, no. I fell for Sharon like this, and Annika, and, yeah, for Michael. At least they were each available. I do not need to fall in love with an uptight lieutenant colonel in the uptight U.S. Army. He went on looking at Ironhorse. Paul was a friend. Paul was an intriguing package of potential information. Paul had risked his life to save Harrison's, and he meant to go on doing so until they were all either safe or dead, because he honestly thought Harrison was more important to the human race.

Paul argued with him fiercely, gave him no quarter in their near-daily runs and workouts, kidded him mercilessly about his diet -- and had been eating more salads lately himself.

Harrison loved everyone at the Cottage, just as he loved the universe and its eternal expansion. He had no idea why he should suddenly be in love with the least likely candidate he'd ever seen for a successful affair. If it had to be someone here and now, Suzanne was prettier, no contest. Norton had beautiful hands and a voice like raw silk. Paul had only the spare elegance of tool steel and a will to match.

There was nothing, in the exhausted present, of perceptible lust in Harrison's feelings, but there would be. He remembered. Love started in the mind and descended organ by organ through the body, fading out somewhere around the knees, which melted. Maybe love is an alien, he thought, I'll dissolve into green slime, and Suzanne can analyze me. Maybe she'll synthesize a virus against it, and won't that save people a lot of trouble in the twenty-first century?

Harrison stared at the suddenly-irresistible forehead of the sleeping man and refrained from smoothing the dark hair above it with his fingers. He assured himself that Paul's pillow was in place and that his breathing was regular if shallow, and drew back to try to sleep on the ceaselessly moving van floor.

It's hopeless. Absolutely hopeless. He can barely tolerate a friend. He doesn't want a lover. Even if he did, the Army doesn't. No Sacred Band of lovers for the U.S. of A. An army of killers has been invincible for too long. When did that start? Christianity? But that god is about love, too.

If Ironhorse was right, it was possible no humans would ever see the twenty-first century. The Blackwood Project had no room for a lovelorn director, and no likelihood of a fulfilled one. Harrison lay back again and wondered what his alternatives might be.

Without reciprocity, the phenomenon would run its course from crown to throat to spleen to knees and depart. He hoped.

Decision made, he could sleep.

No one can allow for love any more. Not even the aliens...

Early November

After his evening jog through the pleasantly cool twilight, Harrison went upstairs for a shower and back downstairs for an attempt to catch up with the printouts littering his desk like oversize snowflakes. He needed a set study time as much as Debi, he thought. Alone.

His peace was disturbed by a knock at the door, which he had left closed to discourage company. "Blackwood?"

It was Paul. There was no need to be rude to the man, so Harrison got up and opened the door. "It's good to see you, Paul. What can I do for you?"

Raven-wing brows lifted slightly at that, and settled back to their accustomed places. Harrison groaned inwardly. The preoccupation with physical minutiae had not passed. Yet.

Ironhorse, always meticulous, closed the door carefully before saying, "You can stop being so damned polite."

"Excuse me?"

"You're acting oddly. You've been acting oddly for days. I think you've been avoiding me, and I'd like to know why. I can't say your efficiency on the Project has improved, either."

"I'm sorry," said Harrison meekly. "I'll try to pay more attention." He pulled his eyes away from the taut line of Paul's no-longer-bandaged ribcage under his polo shirt.

"You've stopped jogging, too."

"No, I'd just rather do it in the evening." That change had solved the morning-workout problem and the evening-after-dinner problem all at one go.

"Harrison, are you avoiding me?"

Uh oh. Time for Plan B. Total, exact, uninformative honestly. "Yes."

"Is it something I've done?"

"No."

"Something I haven't done?" Paul was looking puzzled, a little hurt and -- above all -- concerned. For the Project, of course. Harrison grasped at the abstract thought like a straw in the millrace of his hopeless passion and let it amuse him. It was usually he, Harrison, who balanced the personalities and smoothed away the rough edges to let them all work best together. Harrison had been too preoccupied to do so lately, but the working balance of personalities insured that someone else would feel a need for it if he failed. And here Ironhorse was.

"Then what?" Predictably, the fragile patience snapped. "Goddammit, Blackwood, what's the matter with you?"

"Paul, you don't want to know."

Brilliant dark eyes -- All that's best of dark and bright -- above sculpted cheekbones narrowed suspiciously. It had been the wrong thing to say. "What don't I want to know?"

Harrison pushed the stack of printouts aside. "It doesn't matter, okay? It's personal."

"I can keep a secret." Lieutenant Colonel Ironhorse had a dizzyingly high governmental clearance. So, for that matter, did Harrison. On paper. "If something's upsetting you, I want to know."

It wasn't working. It wasn't going to work. "Sit down, please."

Ironhorse sat on the office's second chair like a falcon stooping to a perch. At least Harrison had the desk for a shield. He looked into Paul's dark-bright eyes and said with painful clarity, "I'm in love with you. I know it's ridiculous. I can't help that. It'll wear out after a while if you leave me alone."

The eyes meeting his did not fall away or fill with disgust. Harrison realized that he was seeing deliberate neutrality and waited for the judgement. "I heard what you said," said Ironhorse conversationally, "but you're not acting like someone in love."

"How would you know?" asked Harrison, bitterly, and caught himself. "Excuse me, please. I'm a little temperamental at the moment. I am trying not to let it affect the team." He hoped the litter of printouts would speak for itself.

After another long moment Ironhorse's face changed to surprise instead of wary judgement. "You mean it."

"Of course I mean it. I'm sorry if it shocks you. You did ask."

"Oh, for God's sake, Harrison, it's the eighties. Forgive me for not being shocked. I'm just... startled."

"If I may ask, what aspect of this revelation startles you?"

"That you've gone to such an effort to hide it."

"Oh. Yeah." Jolted back to something like normal reality, Harrison felt an unforced smile on his own face. "Okay, I guess it's not very enlightened to be closeted about being bi. I just didn't think you'd appreciate the sentiment."

"I thought the word was still 'gay.'"

"I'm bisexual, and if that's going to lead to a political argument, I'm leaving right now."

"Where," asked Ironhorse with interest, "do you think you can go?"

"I can hide in the bowels of the Cray. I have a deal with Norton. He's going to digitize me and send me to China through a wire, to see if there are alien transmissions there."

"At least you don't plan on joining the aliens."

"We'd have to digitize them too. Might solve a lot of problems that way."

"You'll have to catch one first," said Ironhorse gravely.

"If I can." Harrison shook his head and looked up again. "Like I say, I'll get over it." They might both even get out of this interview alive, he estimated. "Paul? Why aren't you shocked?"

"I take the Fifth."

Harrison considered for the first time that perhaps Paul had heard similar confessions before. He could hardly be classed among the world's sheltered innocents. "What are you going to do?"

"I'm not going to run around screaming, if that's what you think." He studied Harrison, who tried to look as little like a raving lunatic as possible. "Is this love carnal in nature?"

"Passionately," said Harrison. Brain, heart, solar plexus and points south were focused on Paul Ironhorse whenever he did not override them. Paul's crisp dark hair with its warm sheen, the hard-boned poetry of his wrists and fingers, the nuances of his stance and shifting weight as he moved, could have occupied Harrison's attention for hours.

Paul's eyes were intent on him. "I see you mean that, too. I can't--"

"I know you can't. I'm not asking. I'm just answering your question."

"Harrison, you are insane."

"I know," said Harrison, and leaned forward on his elbows, shoulders hunched. He usually liked being insane. What was wrong with it this time?

Ironhorse rose from the chair, all contained grace and strength. "You... Oh, hell." He leaned down, one hand on Harrison's shoulder, and kissed him once, hard. Almost before he'd realized it was happening, Harrison found himself released. "I didn't do that," Ironhorse informed him, "and I'm not going to do it again. But you didn't shock me."

"Not... ?" said Harrison.

"You've only seemed a little preoccupied to the others. If you're not worried about my reaction, can you pay more attention there?"

"Maybe," said Harrison, feeling events taken out of his control and not liking it. "I'll try." It wasn't Paul's reactions he was trying to control, but his own.

"Can you work with me day after tomorrow in Stockton?" They planned a raid, with a backup squad Harrison hoped would be unnecessary, on what appeared to be a fixed base there, timed to coincided with Norton's and the Cray's estimate of the low point in the alien activity cycle. It might be a chance to capture live aliens. It might turn into a guard-each-other's-backs situation.

"Yes."

"Okay. I'll see you tomorrow." He turned briskly to leave -- far too neat and brisk and unconcerned -- allowing a glimpse of a heartbreakingly beautiful, jeans-clad backside.

"Paul?"

The door wasn't open yet. "Yes?"

"Don't you care?"

Ironhorse smiled, like sun between clouds. "Infinitely. There are no regulations against caring for one's fellow man. None at all. As long as it stays in the heart."

"Oh," said Harrison, with tardy comprehension. "Thank you."

"Good night, Harrison." And he was gone.

Barely two hours after Paul had made that remarkable exit, Harrison sat in his bedroom, brooding. Paul turned most of his assumptions upside down just by being himself, and now he'd done it again.

"Harrison?" It was Paul's voice at the doorway.

"What's wrong?"

"May I come in?"

"Of course." Harrison, cross-legged on the bed, hastily set down the fan-folded sheaf of pages of maps and data charts he'd been trying to study. He hadn't been concentrating very effectively, true, but he'd been making the effort.

"You weren't sleeping. Good." Paul came in and shut the door behind him. He wore a securely belted terrycloth robe, as if he'd come directly from a shower. Perhaps he had.

"Should I be?"

"Not for what I have in mind."

Harrison wondered how he was supposed to take that. Paul didn't seem to be joking. And if he wasn't... "Does this mean you've changed your mind about keeping it all in the heart?"

"If you have," said Paul, expressionless.

"It wasn't my idea." Harrison threw the charts onto a chair, clearing the bed's surface. "Sit down here and let's make sure we're talking about the same thing."

"Fine by me," said Paul. He sounded not at all like the commander who would run a sloppy soldier through the shredder. He sat, leaning back against Harrison.

It was impossible not to put his arms around Paul's body and kiss his still-damp hair. "You don't do this often." It was barely a question.

"Never, since I was sworn in." He lay back in Harrison's embrace, seeming not at all uncomfortable in the pose. "And how often have you? Your background check..."

"Was perfectly clean. I've seen it. Never trust a hacker."

"Was the hacker Norton?" He sounded more resigned than surprised.

Harrison could not resist. "You don't think it could have been me?"

"No." With certainty. Paul gave no quarter, no false flattery.

"You're right. It wasn't me. And not Norton, whose sins are confined to pirating Blue Mountain without a license. It was someone whose name I needn't give, my one-and-only excursion into this side of things, who wants his own records completely clear. So mine are. That was quite a while ago, in any case."

"I keep forgetting that you're not really insane."

Harrison tightened his arms. "Paul, are you sure you want to do this?"

"I'm sure I want to be here. Walking out on your earlier made me feel petty."

"Is that enough to change your mind?" Harrison caressed hard, lean-muscled forearms and brushed the backs of Paul's hands, amber in the spillover light from the reading lamp.

"No."

"Then, why? Am I the first man who's made a pass in fifteen years? I'd be surprised."

"It's not that. It's easy enough not to invite passes. Even you were careful not to make it a pass."

"True." Paul's body was solid and warm, almost relaxed. "Don't tell me you've never met anyone like me before!"

"Well, not quite like you. Harrison, you scare the shit out of me, but not because of this." He twisted in Harrison's arms so they were face to face, pushed him down on the bed, and kissed him with a fierce urgency his voice had not suggested. This time Harrison had plenty of time to return the favor before they broke apart.

He pulled Paul down to the bed beside him, and succeeded because Paul allowed it. "Easy. We have time."

"Not really."

His tone was so somber that Harrison looked more carefully into the dark eyes. "There hasn't been some emergency in the past two hours, has there?" But Ironhorse wouldn't ignore any duty. A true emergency would have seen him rousting his squad out of the gatehouse. "No, of course not."

"We're in the middle of an emergency that most of the world doesn't even know about. The aliens scare me, and if they don't scare you, you're a fool," whispered Paul. "But they don't frighten you off, and you're not a fool. I don't know where you get it, or even what you are, but what you see in the aliens may be our only chance. The stakes here are too high not to go for broke. It might as well be both of us."

Harrison, shaken, whispered back, "You aren't a betting man."

"Not in anything minor," He pushed up against Harrison.

"What is it you think I can see, or do?"

"Later," said Paul, while his quick hands undressed Harrison, and Harrison gave up his struggle for rationality. He was insane, and in love. It seemed he had a partner. If there was a time to seize offered pleasures, this was it.

He forced Paul to a slower pace, to stretch the time when passion would drown out memory and knowledge and regrets. "It's not a speed contest. It's an appreciation," he said when Paul complained, teeth clenched, that Harrison was not getting to the point. "It's not the goal, it's the journey."

"New age crap," husked Paul, whispering because he refused to make any sound aloud.

Harrison went on appreciating his beloved, touching hard-erect flesh, feeling himself nearly as hard and eager but floating with it, not yet trapped into the race for completion. Soon, but not yet.

"Very old crap," Harrison whispered back. "Temple of the Sun. In India. Hundreds of years." Fingertips dipped under a tight-drawn scrotum, delicately. "Being a flower child isn't a complete waste of time." He tenderly increased the pressure and felt Paul's reaction in the tense body pressed against his.

A hard hand closed on his erection, moving, squeezing. "Enough talk."

"Almost..." He wanted to float a little longer, but the current had him now. Paul had him. Impatient man; man was always impatient. The patient ones were the unseen, unspeaking forces who waited on belief. Did he believe in them?

His body caught up with him, and he believed in himself and Paul and the race to orgasm. Closed eyes, clenched throat, pounding heart, pulling lungs, thrusting body against body, took him to the moment of flight and let him fall, almost gently, back to Earth.

"You were saying?" said Paul, some minutes later, head on Harrison's chest.

"Nothing much, I'm sure. I'm a talker."

"You're always a talker."

"I mean... It's part of the experience."

"Oh." Harrison thought the half-visible face reddened.

"I've tried to shut up, but it frightens me."

"Oh." Meditative silence. "What are you talking to?"

"You. The universe." He smoothed the relaxed muscles of Paul's back, found a scarred patch, and smoothed that too. "Same thing."

"What are you frightened of, that you can't talk to?"

"I don't know. Something I can't see."

"I didn't think anything frightened you."

"The world and I are one." He grinned at a half-exasperated intake of breath from Paul. "But sometimes I frighten myself."

Paul's hand moved slowly over his chest. "You're enough to scare anything. No wonder..." He fell silent and brushed at the thin curls, touching them without touching the skin.

"But not you.."

"Not from this." He pushed down, flat-palmed, as if his one hand could contain Harrison's body. "I hope you realize you're still in the closet."

Harrison smoothed the scarred back again. "If you are, I am. I guessed."

"Good."

"Does that mean you'll be back, so there'll be something in our closet?"

Paul nodded against his chest. "I've placed my bet. Don't try to keep me away."

"No. I won't try."

"Good."

There was another silence of slow touching instead of speech, until Harrison said, "Paul? Why?"

"Why what?"

"Mister Macho Military, you are the last person I'd figure to drag into bed. I'm probably insane for asking, but... why?"

"Why didn't I run and scream at the thought?"

"Yes."

Paul sat up, a line visible between his eyebrows. "It's not... It's..." He glanced around and tried again. "It's that I raised a lot of hell as a kid, a teenager. Including..." He shrugged. "It didn't mean anything, in the place where I grew up. It was just kids together."

Harrison filed that away under Little Known Cherokee Cultural Mores and said only, "Tell me about it sometime. If you want to."

"Maybe." Paul stood and picked up his robe from the floor. "I'd better get back to my own room." His glance was apologetic. "That's the way it has to be."

"If... yes. But kiss me good-night."

Paul smiled. "You are such a romantic."

"Love is like that."

"Yes." They kissed for a long moment before he pulled on the robe and unlocked the door to disappear into the quiet hallway.

Late November

Lunch, eaten in the common area of the lab when they were working, was not a meal that excluded shoptalk. Harrison had just picked up a peanut-butter-and-sprout sandwich when Suzanne emerged from a long session with her microscopes and fell upon the cheese-and-ham offerings on the plate like a starving woman. Two sandwiches later she said, speculatively, "Do you think the Army can scare up a medical doctor with a high enough clearance to fetch me some samples?"

"Ask the colonel. What could you want that's not in the freezer now?"

"It's the integument problem. That cell breakdown is uncanny. If I can't get any intact alien tissue, maybe I should start from the other end."

"Human tissue? Skin?" said Harrison in disbelief.

"From recently deceased corpses, if possible."

"Ghoul," said Norton, rolling up to the table. "Got any more peanut butter, doc?"

"Suzanne hasn't left anything else. Help yourself. Suzanne, you'll have to put that request through channels, which means Ironhorse. I seem to recall a strongly worded clause in the Federal Projects language about human experimental subjects."

"This isn't subjects, it's materials," she said. "I've been through that admin jargon before. If it's dead, it's not a 'subject.'"

"If you need a second okay, you have it. You know that. But does Debi know her mother's a body snatcher?"

The elevator hissed and opened to reveal Ironhorse and Mrs. Pennyworth, who was carrying a second plate of sandwiches and a pot of tea.

"Debi wants to be a doctor when she grows up. This month, anyway. She might as well get used to the idea."

"Body snatching?" asked Norton in patent disbelief, and, "Thank you, Ma'am," as Mrs. Pennyworth set down the food.

"You're welcome, and I hope you're not planning anything hasty." She gave them a bright-eyed glance and retreated into the elevator.

"It's a fine old medical tradition," said Suzanne. "How do you learn anatomy without studying a real body? Seeing as the alternative is vivisection, I should think you'd approve."

"The scientist speaks," said Ironhorse, not as if he approved.

"Does Debi know her mother has not a single shred of feminine squeamishness?" asked Harrison. He hefted the teapot and poured from it into his mug.

"You're right," said Norton. "I sense a singular lack in Suzanne of that dainty shrinking from the coarser facts of life which renders the fair sex so, ummm, modest and unworldly."

"My goodness, Norton, I didn't know you read nineteenth-century novels."

"It's your influence, Doctor Lady. I'm becoming modest and unworldly."

"Then I don't think you're reading the right novels. Let me recommend some eighteenth-century Gothic bedtime reading that will curl your hair." She picked up a third sandwich and waved it at him. "More, that is."

He lifted his hands. "I cry your mercy. Enough! I shall henceforth maintain that the female of the species is deadlier than the male."

"Aren't they?" asked Ironhorse. "What's this about?"

"Colonel, I've got a Project request." Suzanne detailed her research needs with hair-raising specificity, and Harrison found himself glad he was a vegetarian. He took another sandwich and the pot of tea back to his alcove, leaving the two carnivores unconcernedly munching animal remains and discussing the acquisition of newly-dead human tissue with apparent equanimity.

He'd scraped enough alien goo off floors and pavements into Suzanne's specimen jars. Was that any different? And... He bounced up and into the center of the room. "Do you think the aliens even have the concept of medical science?"

Suzanne looked up. "What?"

"If they always dissolve when they die, they don't leave bodies. No way to study anatomy. No way to develop medicine. Well, not surgery."

"Except vivisection," suggested Norton's voice from behind his monitor.

"If you ever make them listen, you can ask them," said Ironhorse. "And, Harrison, may I assume Suzanne's line of research has your approval?" He brought his coffee into the alcove and leaned against the table.

"She has a very practical approach, I think." Harrison eyed the displayed body and reminded himself not to think about it. There was, after all, a world to save during the day. And, too often, at night as well.

Paul smiled a lover's smile at him and then straightened into unselfconscious grace before sitting in Harrison's second chair. "I see you're still thinking of ways to negotiate with them."

"I think we shouldn't discard any alternatives."

"I agree."

"In theory?"

"Theory is the only place for it so far. No one can talk to them unless they're listening."

"Yeah." No aliens they'd met had been interested in listening, but the level of intelligent response -- meaning effective counters to humans' defenses -- was rising. Rapidly. "I wish we could get around the attack-and-response sequence. I'd still like to try infiltrating a base by myself."

"We've been over that," said Ironhorse patiently.

"Yeah. I wish I knew what they want. I wish we had more than Geiger-counter readings and transmission codes. I wish I knew the language!"

"I don't think language is the real problem, not the aliens' languages. You're still thinking of them as rational beings."

"Aren't they?"

"Are they?"

They both stopped, and Harrison saw a gleam of humor in the dark eyes that he could feel in his own as well. Then the moment's accord gave way to Paul's side of their ongoing argument: "You want to talk to people in the alien bodies. You think they're like humans, but that's not what we're fighting. We may never be able to converse with them."

"If they're intelligent enough to use counter strategies, they're intelligent enough to communicate with."

"Intelligent enough, maybe. But not willing. We don't know what they want, but it's not a gentlemanly exchange of views."

"What do living things want... They're trying to survive. What else?"

"They were killing humans from the start. We're trying to survive and they're inimical to our survival. They've never recognized humans as anything but prey, and by now they know we're dangerous prey, and it's not slowing them down."

"I don't think of them as humans in different bodies. Their bodies are biological entities from a different ecology starting at the molecular level, which is why Suzanne's work is important. I want to know what kind of mind has evolved in those bodies."

"It doesn't want to talk."

"We've never been able to understand it. When the aliens came in 1953, they chased me and I could hear them. I know they talk. But I don't know what they want or what they're saying."

"Aliens in their own bodies? Did you see some of them, back then? Or was it possessed humans who chased you?"

"They weren't humans. I couldn't see them. I remembered again later, and heard them again in dreams, but they still didn't say anything to me."

"But you're sure they were using speech." Ironhorse looked into his coffee. "Were they trying to kill you?"

"No. They told me... But they didn't talk to me!"

"And you couldn't see them, but you know they were there."

"Yeah." Harrison waved his mug to express frustration and then filled it with the rest of the tea.

"You can see the aliens now," Ironhorse pointed out.

"I can't tell what they're saying."

"Why do you think they should talk to you?"

"Intelligent species communicate. How can they not talk to us?" Harrison's voice rose in indignation, and he broke off. "Sorry, old argument. And you've been right. Up to now they're killing us and not listening. I just can't believe that's all they want!"

"Maybe they want Earth as territory. Get rid of the natives and occupy."

"Eat the natives," said Harrison, feeling ghoulish.

"Or just let them die off from high radiation levels."

"God, this is depressing."

"It's my job to think about it. Here's a worst-case scenario. They want the land. They don't really care who or what is here already." He looked up at Harrison, not smiling. "It's what the Europeans did in America. Intelligent beings can think that way."

Harrison's mouth opened and he glared at Ironhorse. "You know I can't answer that."

"Don't worry about answering it; it's past. Worry about the analogy."

"Is that why you're afraid of them?"

"Is that why you're not? Get out of your ego and look at the real world! You've been trying to hear the aliens as if they've spoken to you already. But they haven't, not these aliens that are here, on Earth now. They're not the voices from the clouds." His voice had lowered and he refused to meet Harrison's eyes. "Maybe you've heard those, though I don't know how. Maybe that's why you're so crazy. And you are crazy, if you think that spirit voices are benevolent. They're not childish or cute, like Tinkerbell. They have their own minds, and they're dangerous."

"So was Tinkerbell," muttered Harrison.

"Don't interrupt. I may never explain this again."

Harrison caught his breath. "Go on."

"Grandfather said... They never show themselves. You don't see them with your eyes, but with some other sense. They don't live as humans do, but they're alive, and they don't die, but they can be frightened off." He shook his head. "Usually by white men." He shook it again, and then looked up. "The last item aside, does any of this match up with the phenomena you've dressed up in your new age jargon?"

"I'll have to think about it," said Harrison, uneasy at being believed.

"You think too much."

"'Such men are dangerous'?"

A guarded smile. "They can be. But think about this, too: Does any of what you're thinking about have an objective correlation with the aliens we find when we follow the signals Norton detects, or the trail of rotting and dissolved human bodies?"

Harrison swallowed. "Okay. I'll think. I mean, I'll listen to what happens when I don't think."

Paul frowned, and his voice became even softer. "Harrison, you can be a very frightening person. Don't make fun of me."

"I'm not. It's... a language problem. New age terminology is very self-conscious because English doesn't have any way of talking about the unseen."

"Agreed."

Harrison kept his voice as low as Paul's. "I can't frighten you away. I hope I can't."

"No."

"See you later?"

A nod, and Ironhorse stood up. "I'll go and see about getting Suzanne's samples. I'm not sure I like it, but as long as she's asking for tissue from declared organ donors, I can't argue on moral grounds. It might save billions of lives."

"We don't have to like everything we have to do."

"If you say so." He left Harrison to his thoughts.

Harrison tried thinking, and not thinking, all day without finding any conclusion.

"If I listen to the universe and hear what you call spirits..." He was still uncertain that this was a valid description of any experience he'd ever had.

"There aren't any good terms in English. I suppose 'spirits' will do." The two of them were in Harrison's room, but for the first time in days, they hadn't started making love the instant they were safely behind a locked door.

"What does it mean?"

"I have no idea. I told you. I can't do it."

"You know more than I do!" Harrison lowered himself onto an upholstered chair-arm.

Paul shook his head. "Not really. It's sensed, not seen or spoken or understood. Those who do it feel what it is. Nobody else does."

"How do they know they're doing it?"

"They usually don't, until someone tells them."

"How can I know?"

Paul looked at him, not without sympathy. "You don't. I'm not sure that anything I've told you is related to what you feel. I may be wrong to make the comparison with Grandfather."

"But you did tell me. You see a comparison."

"You've spent your life looking for something you can't see. When you found something you hadn't seen before, you treated it like... Grandfather does. I really can't say anything else about it. Can we leave it alone?"

"Does it bother you when we're," Harrison glanced at the bed, "together?"

"No! But..." Paul's face was impassive. "I wouldn't have noticed how you thought if I hadn't been watching you already."

"Hmm, so it's part of the experience, is that it?"

Paul turned a light mahogany and eventually said, "Not really. You're the experience. Everything about you is stranger than I've ever done before."

"But not off-putting."

"No. It's very... good."

"Thank you. I think."

Paul gave him a look that was unmistakable in any culture, from toes to crotch to face and back again. "You're welcome. Very, very welcome."

"Tease."

"Umm-hmm."

"Are you by any chance asking me to make the first move?"

"I knew you were smart."

Harrison stood up and pulled him over to the bed. There was still time for a little pleasure in the eye of the storm.

* * *