Donati was still staring at him, almost through him, the way Alex could see through the ash man. “Extraterrestrial life … I’ve waited my entire life for this moment and I find myself at a total loss for words.”
“Maybe this will help,” Alex said, handing Donati the folded pages containing the tests conducted by Dr. Chu.
*
Raiff was waiting with their tickets at Pier 39, where a long line of people slowly boarded a tour boat docked there. Donati shook hands with him, stiffly, as if unsure what Raiff’s grasp might yield. Then he went back to clutching Alex’s pages tight against his body. They reached the front of the line, an attendant waiting for them to hand over their tickets. They did and stepped off the gangway onto the tour boat.
“Let’s go below,” Raiff said.
Sam showed him the laptop. “It’s password protected. We’ve got a problem.”
He flashed a wink. “No, we don’t.”
*
The cruise, a last-minute addition to the Blue and Gold Fleet schedule, was only about half full with almost all the passengers perched on deck, where they could better hear the tour guide’s narration. That left the tables making up the enclosed area below, featuring a snack bar, virtually abandoned. They chose one against the wall that featured plenty of light for Raiff to hack into Dr. Payne’s laptop in record fashion, hardly even a challenge for him.
“How’d you do that?”
“Where I come from such skills are as natural as walking.” He plugged in Alex’s patient ID number, opened the file, and turned the laptop toward Donati.
But Donati was currently entrenched in reviewing the findings accumulated by Dr. Chu first, focusing on the blood tests. He peeked over the pages at Alex several times while reviewing them, once and then again to make sure he was reading the results right.
“You know my specialty,” he said suddenly to him.
“Sam told me it was astrobiology.”
“Which makes me rather expert on regular biology as well, enough so I can tell you that if I didn’t know better, I’d say these blood tests were the result of a hoax instead of actual samples. The astrobiologist in me passes that off to what must be subtle differences in the atmosphere of your home planet, leading to different levels of oxygen and CO two, just for starters.”
“This is my planet,” Alex corrected. “Just like you.”
“I was speaking of your native planet,” Donati corrected quickly. Then his gaze moved to Raiff. “Unbelievable,” he said, shaking his head, trying to process everything at once. “All this is truly unbelievable. I’ve spent my life trying to prove what I always suspected to be the case. And you’ve validated everything I’ve ever believed, and instead of being joyous, I find myself terrified. Not of you, or the boy, but of what’s coming.”
“I wish I could be more helpful,” Raiff told him.
“Perhaps you can,” Donati said, leaning forward. “Tell me more about this world you come from.”
“Virtually identical to your own, just more advanced. Our landmasses are smaller. As a result, our population is substantially smaller. And there’s no famine or poverty.”
“But there will be, won’t there?” Sam interjected. “That’s why you came here in the first place. To plant us like crops to be harvested when you needed us to handle the heavy lifting.”
“Not me,” Raiff corrected, “or those like me. But, yes, human life on this planet owes its existence to the same forces that want to enslave you the way they enslaved us.”
“You came here as refugees,” Donati concluded, utterly transfixed, hanging on Raiff’s every word. Still having only skimmed Alex’s medical records.
“There were others who knew more, who preceded Dancer to this world, but they’re gone now.”
“Gone?”
“Eradicated, exterminated.”
“I don’t understand.”
Raiff crossed his arms and laid his elbows on the table as the boat engines began to rumble louder. The tour guide’s voice continued to blare through the speakers on the deck above, echoes merging by the time the sound reached down below.
“Have you ever heard of a man named Langston Marsh?”
“Should I have?” Donati asked him.
“He’s built a private army whose sole purpose is to track down and kill every alien they can find. His soldiers have been hot on Dancer’s trail since his parents were murdered last night.”
“Murdered?” Donati asked, eyes widening.
“Maybe not,” Alex interjected tentatively. “The ash man told me they were still alive.”
“You saw him?” Sam exclaimed in disbelief. “He came back?”
“He appeared at my house when I went to pick up my sketchbook,” Alex responded, leaving out the ash man’s mention of her.
“Speaking of which,” said Raiff, extending a hand toward Alex.
Alex handed the sketchbook to him. “Not sure if this is going to mean anything to you.”
“Let’s take a look and see.”