Diane Duane - X-COM - UFO Defense

“We keep hearing that there’s been a decrease in mutilations and abductions,” she said, “but I’m not sure I believe it. I’m going to be a little busy at Andermatt tomorrow again, but if you would keep on it from this end, Joe—.” She gave him a quick rundown on the bases whose data-processing people she had already talked to. “They think I’m nuts, Joe,” Jonelle said, “so you might want to play it that way too—that you’re ‘humoring the commander.’ But see what else you can find.”

“I wonder,” DeLonghi said, “if an increase in human abductions simply blinded the upper-ups to the cow situation? Or whether they’ve bought into a blip in the statistics, one that happened at the same time the human stats jumped? You could make a case that the Powers That Be would be pleased to think that cownappings and mutilations were dropping off while they had the human problem to consider…and you could also believe that their own statisticians might not be willing to rock the boat, if they knew which way the official wind was blowing.”

Jonelle sighed and said, “Too likely to be true. Well, see what you can find out. Any paperwork for me down here?”

“It’s all been shipped back up to Andermatt.”

“Fine. How are you holding up, Joe?”

DeLonghi chuckled a little. “Better than I was. It can be a bit of a shock, I suppose, taking on command….”

“Tell me about it.”

“You didn’t show any signs of distress when you came to it, I have to tell you.”

“That,” Jonelle said softly, “is because I was doing absolutely everything I could not to let on. If I had given any sense of how frustrated and unnerved I was by the situation the way it was when I came, do you think that everybody in the place wouldn’t have noticed immediately? Imagine the effect on morale.”

DeLonghi nodded slowly. “You keep your chin up,” Jonelle said. “Never show fear—they can smell it. And don’t dwell on past performance. This has not been the easiest couple of weeks for anybody.”

“Nor for you, I would think,” said DeLonghi.

Jonelle shrugged. “I’m doing all right…I have a new toy to play with.”

DeLonghi grinned. “So have I.”

“Enjoy,” Jonelle said, patted him on the arm, and headed out.

She went on down to the infirmary. Ari was sitting up in bed, looking better. He seemed to have stopped complaining about the food—but he had not stopped complaining.

“I want out!” he was shouting at Gyorgi. “I feel fine! I don’t ache anymore!”

Gyorgi was standing across the room from him, scribbling in a chart. “You’re going to lie there,” he said, “until tomorrow, whether you like it or not. Isn’t he, Commander?”

“Of course you’re going to lie there, if that’s what Gyorgi says.”

“It’s not fair. I’m perfectly fit and ready to fly!”

“The constitution of a great ape,” Gyorgi said, sounding resigned, “and the brains of a gerbil.”

“Far be it from me to disagree with a considered medical opinion,” said Jonelle demurely “How’s the food today, Ari?”

“Better.”

“I let him have the chili,” Gyorgi said. “If he gets indigestion, serves him right. It won’t hurt his brains now, such as they are.”

“And how are his brains, such as they are? And the rest of him?”

“He can fly tomorrow,” Gyorgi said. “I just want him to take another day to restore himself.”

“I don’t need any restoring. I’m in great shape. All I want is to get up. And I want some more chili.”

“Shut up, Ari,” said Gyorgi, hanging up the chart and picking up another one. “Commander, tomorrow morning, as I said, he can fly And I’ll be pleased to get him out of here—I need the bed. Complaints, complaints all day!”

“If the food weren’t terrible—” Ari said.

Standing quite close by the bed, Jonelle bent down. “My lion,” she said, “shut up.” She raised her voice and added, “Anyway, it’s just as well, for by tomorrow I’m really going to need you back in the saddle. Things to take care of…also, I want you to come along and have a look at the Avenger.”

“They can’t have finished repairing it already!”

“No, they can’t. I want you to look at the pitiful thing and see the error of your ways.” She scowled at him, but she couldn’t hold the mood and smiled again after a few seconds. “I do have other flying for you to do. Your Firestorm is all right?”

“As far as I know.”

“Good.”

“What’s DeLonghi going to say when you take another piece of equipment away from him?”

“Nothing much, probably. He’s doing better.” Jonelle grinned. “It takes a little while to get the hang of making bricks without straw, but he’s shaking down nicely. As for you, if you’re up in Andermatt about noontime, that’ll suit me fine.” She was determined not to push him too hard; even though Gyorgi said he would be back in shape to fly, there was a slightly harrowed look about Ari, one that suggested he had looked farther down into the abyss of that Ethereal’s mind, and the abyss of death, than he would have liked to.

“I’ll be there,” Ari said. “Sooner, if the jailer will let me.”

Jonelle patted his hand and left him, then went off to make her rounds. As she was moving through the base, the Klaxons went off, signaling an interception. Jonelle hurried down to the operations center and found everything under control: DeLonghi was already there, looking over the dispatch operator’s shoulder. “Got a small Scout near Cape Town,” he said. “Just the one…first peep we’ve had out of them for a while.”

“Go get ‘im,” Jonelle said, “and good hunting!” She made her way back to the hangar for a ride to Andermatt.

As the Skyranger that brought her back settled into the hangar, Jonelle looked around and for the first time really felt herself able to think of the Hall of the Mountain King as Andermatt Base. It had the proper look and feel of an X-COM base now: busy maintenance people hurrying about, the buzz of voices, the underlying hum of big machinery. Only a few things missing now, she thought as she disembarked. That mind shield…. Well, more than a few things, actually. There was the small matter of better base defenses. But there was nothing she could do about those right now.

Jonelle sighed and made her way back to her office. Afternoon was coming on, and she had another meeting scheduled with Ueli and her “UN representatives.” On the desk in her office, she found a sealed courier box with all the paperwork from Irhil M’Goun. She looked at it, briefly sorry (as she had been more than once, lately) that her secretary Joel still wasn’t going to be coming up here for a few days. She had left him with DeLonghi to ease the transition, with instructions to train a replacement. Oh well, it won’t get any better by just leaving it here.

Jonelle sat down and started to page through it. The fattest sheaf of papers in it was the transcript of the interrogation of the two Ethereals that had been captured in the attack on the Battleship in Zürich. She skimmed through it, knowing she couldn’t take time to deal with it right now. It was the kind of thing that required slow, careful reading, especially since the transcript format always slowed her down.

The cover letter on it was from Ngadge. Commander, it said, here is the first set of interrogation results on subjects B122 and B123 from the Zürich raid. Trenchard did this interrogation in company with Origen—he was one of the intelligence officers—and the results are particularly good. Trenchard seems to have a gift for this kind of work. Indications are of some kind of major thrust going on in the southern hemisphere, among less developed and prepared countries. Also odd alien interest in Antarctica…? We are investigating this and will be following it up with subject B124,B125 in the next couple of days.