Twenty-nine
The basement filling with technicians in white smocks
and soldiers in fatigues armed with semi-automatic rifles. A half dozen
medics hustled Sasha away on a stretcher. Melanie intercepted him on the
porch as he went in pursuit. "Let them go. We'll follow in my car."
Melanie drove to a field hospital set up near Dale
City. Guards at the gate ushered her on through. The tent behind the
barbed wire looked unimpressive from the outside, but the interior
revealed a state-of-the-art medical facility.
As soon as Melanie had identified him to the guards
inside, Wallace found himself the center of attention as well. "Let them
do their poking around," Melanie advised. "They'll clean you up and give
you something fresh to wear. We'll visit Sasha and spend the night in
Harthmore."
Three doctors and a small army of medical technicians
escorted Wallace to a partitioned examination room. "Any lacerations,
open wounds?" But the blood they saw was not his own. He undressed and
tolerated an inch by inch examination before they were satisfied that it
was not. They scrapped mucus from his inside cheek and swabbed the inside
of his nose. They clipped hair from several different parts of his body,
then had him shower with a liquid that smelled of unknown chemicals. The
dirty water was sealed up in a canister and carried off. Payoff came in
the form of fresh underwear and socks, pressed fatigues, and a new pair of
leather, low-quarter shoes. By the time he was taken back to Melanie, he
had regained some his lost dignity.
Melanie was waiting outside Sasha's room, a cubicle
made up of transparent sheets of plastic. Wallace went inside and watched
Sasha sleep beneath clean sheet. Her body was covered with scratches and
superficial cuts. "They're concerned she may have been infected with a
germ or a virus that we have no defense against," Melanie said. "We could
all be contaminated."
"How long is she going to be here?"
"I don't know, but they're doing a lot of tests."
Melanie led him back out into the night and perched
herself on the fender of her car. "I used to smoke. I wish I hadn't
quit."
"One of those animals got away," Wallace said.
"Like hell it did. It ran into an electrified mesh a
few hundred feet out in that cornfield and stunned itself. That house was
pretty thoroughly quarantined."
"Did your friends get to see the portal this time?"
Melanie managed a smile of satisfaction. "Yep, they
had a mini-camera in just the right spot and got a good look. They
believe you now."
Wallace surveyed the dark countryside around them.
"I think I know now what paranoia feels like. I'm really scared."
"You've got lots of company."
He was also a bit unsteady on his feet. Melanie
hopped off the car and lent a hand as he reached out for support. "They
gave you a shot to make you sleep," she said.
Wallace hadn't noticed.
"Let's get you home and in bed. We'll talk some more
in the morning."
Wallace fell asleep on the drive to Harthmore. Once
at the apartment, Melanie woke him and helped him up the stairs. Wallace
groggily stripped to his underwear and plunged face down into fresh
smelling sheets someone had changed.
He awoke at dawn. Melanie had left a note at his
side. Sleep until noon. I'll bring lunch.
Wallace indulged her. She awoke him promptly at noon
and dropped a sack of hamburgers, fries, and a vanilla milk shake at his
side. "The one without pickles is mine."
Wallace sat cross-legged in his underwear and ate.
Melanie turned on the television and watching a soap opera while he
showered and dressed.
"They tell me I can catch up on my soaps when I
retire," she said. "I wonder how much it'll cost to have everything
taped. And the commercials zapped."
Wallace dropped at her side on the couch when he
finished dressing. "How's Sasha doing?"
Melanie hadn't slept at all during the night, he
guessed. Her eyes were bloodshot and rimmed with darkness. "Awake and
cooperating nicely. She should have gone off the deep end by now, but
she's doing fine. You were right about those changes that Ghaedor
promised. There's something wrong with her already."
"I didn't notice much. I think she had a fever, and
she wasn't acting right."
"Can I broach a delicate subject?"
"She likes a lot of sex," Wallace said. "She was
kind of like that before any of his started."
"One of our doctors says that he suspects some kind
of over-stimulation of the nervous system. The geneticists were having a
go at her when I left. We had a positive ID on her when she first showed
up. Sasha Shamir Abdul down to the little mole on her butt. It's all
wacko now."
"Ghaedor said she's not really Sasha," Wallace said.
The confession evoked deep anguish, but he needed Melanie's help with the
repercussions. "She has Sasha's memory and personality, but she's
something called a Saur that Maligoth modified to pass as Sasha. I'm
scared for her, Melanie. What the hell is a Saur?"
"I don't know, but we got something in the way of an
identification on those rats that attacked you and Sasha. We consulted a
paleontologist who swears the skeleton is a primitive mammal that lived
even before the dinosaurs died out, except that our specimens were a lot
more sophisticated."
"Rats?"
"They occupy roughly the same environmental niche."
"What about the germs you were worrying about?"
"None have been found. Some should have been. Other
contaminants got through the portal, some rather interesting ones, in
fact. But nothing dangerous. The portal must somehow selectively filter
it out. Otherwise, I've been told that travel between parallel worlds
would result in mass ecological contamination and wholesale destruction of
both worlds. We did find a few seeds and spores that don't belong to us.
I guess Maligoth doesn't care about the large-scale contamination, like
reptilian rats and carnivorous primates with a taste for human flesh."
"Maligoth," Wallace said. "It doesn't even seem
real. What do we do now?"
"We try to assimilate what we've learned to date and
wait for something else to happen."
"Great."
"There's one other thing I'll tell you if you
understand that you're part of our security set-up now. You won't be free
to blab any of this around."
"And if I did, who'd believe me?" he said.
"They detected lots of radioactivity on the other
side of the portal," Melanie said, "and in the bodies of the rats.
Plutonium is one of the contaminants, and plutonium is sure as hell not a
naturally occurring element. And they found lots of atmospheric ash in
their lungs. Whoever is responsible for those portals have a technology
that surpasses ours. Maybe they're not so bright, because they've been
playing with atomic bombs.
"The world on the other side of the portal, Wallace,
is barely habitable."
