Chimera (Parasitology) (40 page)

“You’re working with us,” I said.

“I am not the United States government. We can have a temporary truce without my actually committing the President to anything.”

This was an aspect that hadn’t occurred to me. I glanced at Fishy, who nodded marginally. He had been aware that this might come up, which meant Fang had been aware as well. Hopefully, the knowledge that coexistence was not going to be possible extended all the way up the line to Dr. Cale. She would have a plan, if we could get her back.

“We’ve traded you a service for a service at this point,” said Colonel Mitchell. “We provided you with a new home for your colleague, and you provided us with a means of clearing the waterways. I appreciate that you were willing to put the survival of the human race ahead of your own agenda. I’m afraid that we don’t have anything else to offer each other.”

“Uh, hold up, big guy,” said Fishy, sounding suddenly concerned. “We
can’t
move Tansy. She’s just had brain surgery. I don’t know if you know this, being a big bad virologist and not a neurosurgeon and all, but people who’ve just had brain surgery aren’t the most mobile. Also, Tansy’s going to need full reeducation now that she’s in a new host. She’ll catch on quick, but quick isn’t the same as ‘snap your fingers, there’s our girl.’”

“If you would like to remain here in our custody, I’m sure something could be worked out,” said Colonel Mitchell politely. “Please understand, I could have you seized and imprisoned for crimes against the human race right now.”

Treason on a genealogical scale. The drums were hammering hard in my ears now, providing an ominous backbeat to everything around me. I breathed in through my nose and out through my mouth before saying, “We still need your help.”

“Sal, I am already breaking every rule I know just to give you the option to walk out that door,” said Colonel Mitchell.
“You may have been my daughter for a time, but that doesn’t mean the rules don’t apply to you. My career is going to be over for giving you as much as I have.”

“You’re worried about your career?” I asked. “What about the world?”

He looked at me levelly. “I have lost my children and will soon lose my wife. My career is all that I have left.”

“Oh, come off it,” snapped Fishy. “You kick us out now, you get to keep Tansy, because
she can’t be moved
. So you wind up with a functional, properly integrated chimera, no real risk of rejection, to study and take apart at your leisure. Add that to having a solution for the water contamination, and your career isn’t over. Hell, you’ve just become a hero of the revolution. Of the institution? Hero of the institution. We’re the heroes of the revolution, and we’re doing a piss-poor job of choosing our allies.”

“Sherman dropped those worms in the water, and he
has our people
,” I said heatedly. “We told you that when we got here. You said you’d help. Was that just a way to get us to tell you what you needed to know? We didn’t bring you all that research because we needed a body. We could have found a body somewhere else.”

“But it wouldn’t have had Joyce’s face,” snapped Colonel Mitchell. “There’s more of Sally in you than you want to think there is, Sal, and there’s more in you that’s human than I care to contemplate. You’re not impassive plants from space or quiet, passionless invaders. You’re
us
. We made you to be
us
, and you want your sister with you. Tansy is your sister in biology, and Joyce is your sister in paternity, and you saw the chance to combine those two things. What I gave you was worth more than you want to admit.”

“And now you’re trying to take it back!” I glared at him. He glared at me.

“Alfred?”

We both froze before turning to face the pale, hollow-cheeked woman who had given birth to my host body. She was standing in the doorway, holding a knitted wrap around her shoulders, and staring at the two of us like we were some sort of impossible mirage, something that couldn’t exist outside of fiction.

“I went to check on Joyce,” she said, not moving. “You know she sleeps better when I tuck her in and tell her we’re still here waiting for her. But she wasn’t there, Alfred. The room she was supposed to be in was empty. And when I asked the guards where she was, they said I had to talk to you if I wanted to know what was going on. They said I wasn’t cleared to know where she was. Where’s my daughter, Alfred? Where’s Joyce?” Her eyes flicked to me, and then back to him. “What is that monster doing here?”

I looked at the face of the woman who had called herself my mother, who had kissed my forehead and laughed with me over plates of scrambled eggs and bacon, and I saw nothing there but loathing. She didn’t love me. She had never loved me. She had loved the girl whose face I wore, and that love had died the day she admitted that her daughter was gone.

Humanity was never going to be able to accept us. We would always wear the faces of their dead, and we would never be those people, not really, not in any of the ways that mattered. I had asked once whether amnesia was a form of dying, and I had been assured that no, no, it was just a second chance at figuring out who you really were. If that was true, then why couldn’t they love us? Our bodies were the same. Only our minds had changed, and while I couldn’t say for sure that the change was for the better, it was no different than the change that came from a blow to the head and a loss of previous self. But it seemed to make all the difference in the world to them, our parents and creators. It made more difference than anything else could have.

“Gail, darling, you know you’re not supposed to be in this part of the facility,” said Colonel Mitchell, stepping forward to play the peacekeeper and prevent his wife from getting too close to me. She’d swung at me before. There was no question whether she’d do it again, and I couldn’t defend myself—not with this many armed humans standing by and waiting to see what I would do.

“Where’s Joyce?” she demanded. “Why is that thing here? If you recaptured her, you should have pulled her out of our baby’s brain. She doesn’t deserve to live.”

I winced. If she wanted me extracted from Sally’s brain, she was
definitely
going to be unhappy about Tansy setting up shop inside of Joyce. Even if Joyce wasn’t there anymore, Gail Mitchell wasn’t the most forgiving of mothers.

But then, how many would be? Juniper had been mine for only a short time, and I would have killed anyone who had opened her skull and pulled her out of the safe space she had found for herself. Maybe forgiveness wasn’t a parental skill because it wasn’t supposed to be. Forgiveness was for people who didn’t have as much to lose.

“Joyce… Gail, I’m so sorry, I don’t know how to tell you this, but Joyce didn’t make it.” Colonel Mitchell swung his head slowly, like the motion pained him.

Gail stared at him, her eyes going round and impossibly wide in her suddenly pale face. She made a sound, guttural and low in her throat, like she was trying to decide between speech and vomiting, and couldn’t settle on either.

Colonel Mitchell reached for her. She all but danced away.

“No-no-no,” she said, scolding like a treed squirrel. Then: “No-no-no,” again, followed by, “I don’t believe you
I don’t believe you
where is she? If she’s dead, where is she? I want to see my daughter I want to see my baby I want to see my
little girl
.” Her voice rose steadily as she spoke, although she never shouted. She just got louder and louder, until everyone
was looking at us, and all the technicians and clever scientists who had been working with Fang to develop the antiparasitic drugs for the water had stopped working in order to turn and stare. None of them said a word. They were smart people. They recognized an unwinnable situation when they saw one.

“Gail, please. Not in front of my command.” Colonel Mitchell used the tone he might have used to say “not in front of the children,” and the way his eyes darted to me made it clear that he was saying exactly that.

Unfortunately for both of us, it made his meaning clear to his wife as well. “You!” She whirled on me. “You did this somehow, you killed her, you weren’t content killing just one of my daughters, you had to have them
both
, you had to have
both
my babies, you monster.”

“Wow,” said Fishy. “I don’t think I heard a single full stop in there. You know, when you start talking entirely in comma splices, you’re probably ready for a time-out and a tranquilizer.”

Normally, his mild, slightly off-kilter observations helped to defuse bad situations. It was hard to stay angry or upset when someone was standing there treating everything like a comedy in the process of winding down. Gail Mitchell seemed to be one of the few people who was immune to his charms. Her lips drew back from her teeth, and I flinched. Primates showed their teeth. Tapeworms didn’t.

“You did this,” she repeated, and reached behind her, producing a service pistol much like the ones worn by the guards around us. Colonel Mitchell reacted with alarm, putting his hands up. Most of the guards reached for their own weapons. Gail ignored them. All her focus was on me.

“You did this,” she said, for the third time, as she trained the muzzle of her gun on the center of my chest. “You killed Sally, and then you came back and you killed Joyce. My husband may look at you and see his little girl, but he was always blind where she was concerned, and you can’t fool me anymore, you
monster. I’m going to stop this. I’m going to get revenge for my babies.”

“Gail, please,” said Colonel Mitchell.

“Please,” I echoed. I didn’t raise my hands. I was afraid to move. I could barely even look at her face. It was a wall of teeth and hatred, and part of me would always think of her as my mother; would always look to her for comfort, and be startled by the now-inevitable rejection. “I didn’t hurt your daughter on purpose. I would never have decided that my life mattered more than hers. Things just happened, that’s all. Please. I have a family.”

“I had a family,” she said. “Before you barged in and started killing them, I had a family too. If I can’t have mine, you can’t have yours.” She unhooked the safety with her thumb, her aim never wavering—

—and collapsed to the floor in a twitching heap, revealing Private Larsen standing behind her with an electric prod in his hand. His face was pale, and his eyes were filled with the horrified realization that he had just electrocuted his commander’s wife.

“Sir, I…” he began, and stopped, clearly unsure what he should say next.

“Stand down, son,” said Colonel Mitchell. There was pain and sorrow and a surprising amount of sympathy in his voice. “You did the right thing.” He knelt and gathered his fallen wife into his arms, lifting her off the floor. She jittered, but was otherwise still.

“I’m sorry,” said Private Larsen, and fled back to his post, an unlikely savior setting the mantle aside as quickly as he possibly could.

Colonel Mitchell looked to me. “Do you understand now why we can’t be allies?” he asked.

I nodded, because I did. Gail Mitchell was a microcosm of the human race, of the thousands of people who would look at
us and see their children, friends, and lovers turned into monsters and turned against them. We were the invaders, and we would never be accepted. Even people like Fishy, who claimed not to resent us for killing his wife, probably wouldn’t have been accepting if she had opened her eyes and started talking with someone else’s voice. Sleepwalkers were an easy enemy. You could see them coming, and you could mow them down without considering the people they had been. Chimera… chimera were hard.

“We can’t be allies,” I said. “I understand that. I… I wish it were different.”

“So do I,” said Colonel Mitchell.

But I wasn’t finished. “Not being allies doesn’t mean we can’t work together for a while. Long enough to make sure that there’s a future for all of us.”

Colonel Mitchell frowned. “What did you have in mind?”

“It’s simple.” I looked at Gail Mitchell, still collapsed bonelessly in his arms, and then up to his face. “You’re going to help us save the world, and then we’re going to disappear.”