“I don’t want to hear it,” the professor said, waving him off. “I’m afraid the information might fry my brain, leave me in a white coat bouncing around a rubber room. But this one thing: You say they look like us?”
“Pretty much, yes; exactly, even. Like me.”
“Even the drone things,” Sam added. “First time we saw them they were dressed as cops.”
“First time?”
“Long story, like Alex said.” Sam shrugged.
“Cops…”
“Is that important?”
“It suggests complete societal immersion, a necessary precondition.”
“For what?”
“An invasion,” the professor said without hesitation.
*
But then he lapsed into silence.
“What is it you’re not telling us, Professor?” Sam prodded.
“I’ve said enough.”
“Not even close.”
“All I’m going to say, then. My partner warned we were going too far, pushing the envelope too much. Never look for something you’re not ready to find, he said. Risk versus reward, the zero-sum game. By the time I finally listened to him, it was too late.”
“This partner of yours, did he die with the others?”
“No, we both managed to survive. Otherwise…” The professor let the remark dangle.
“So he could still be alive.”
“And indeed he is, making a much better account of himself than my daily silent protest against that which I only feared but now know to be quite real.”
“Where can we find him?” Sam asked.
And her mouth dropped when the professor told her.
80
ALIENS GO HOME
“I NEED TO SEE it,” Alex said suddenly, after Sam and the professor had lapsed into silence.
The professor’s eyes turned quizzical. “See what, young man?”
“Laboratory Z.”
The old man’s quizzical expression turned caustic. “Then close your eyes and use your imagination. That’s as close as you’ll ever come.”
“I don’t think so,” Alex said, a mix of suspicion and surety lacing his tone.
“I’ve given you my company, charged you for only a single question when you asked a dozen. I’d appreciate your respect.”
“You said you’ve been coming here every day for fifteen years.”
“Thanks to the courts ruling in my favor, decision after decision,” the professor told him. “This part of the complex being public land and all.”
“I think you come here every day to make sure nobody else finds it,” Alex continued.
“Finds what?”
“Laboratory Z.”
“It’s gone, young man. Burned to the ground in an explosion of white heat. All the records, the readouts that could have provided more specifics of those final moments, lost too.”
“But there’s something that wasn’t lost,” Sam interjected. “Alex is right, isn’t he?”
The professor looked away, then turned back toward them looking almost guilty. “The past is better left to itself, young lady.”
“Not this time,” said Alex.
And they watched as the professor yanked the blanket aside beneath the pop-up tent to reveal a strange-looking patch of ground.
*
The tent cloaked the professor as he felt about the thin ground brush, dried, blanched of color, and flattened by being covered from the sun on a daily basis. His knobby hands latched onto some holds, Alex and Sam watching him pull up on them.
The ground seemed to lift upward, enough of a space created to let a wash of cool, stale air flood outward from below.
“Behold the last remains of Laboratory Z,” he said, holding the hatch up.
“What’s down there?” Alex asked him.
“Can’t tell you that, since I’ve never ventured down there myself. I know there’s an emergency escape tunnel lab personnel caught in the fire never got the chance to use. Beyond that, well, there could be more. What exactly, I have no idea.” His gaze turned sad, sky-blue eyes looking suddenly duller. “You have the right, young man, and I won’t try to stop you. Just remember my warning about what happens sometimes when you find what you’re looking for.”
*
Alex and Sam found nothing at the foot of the dust-layered ladder, not at first. Just a tunnel that, if their bearings were correct, led underneath Bishop Ranch and the original location of Laboratory Z.