Alien in the House

Chapter 75



“HOW DO THESE lines correlate to the murder or suspected murder of over twenty people?” Jeff asked.

“Edmund Brewer told me that he’d been amazed to discover that two dozen people could mean the difference between a bill’s passage or failure. He also said that they were worried about filibusters and that this legislation is considered important.”

“So?” Jeff asked.

“So somebody has influenced every single one of the committees that worked on these bills. That’s a lot of influence. And yet, other than Club Fifty-One and similar crackpot groups we’ve discovered in the recent months, there is no functioning Anti-A-C lobby out there. So who got this line or its close cousin into every single one of these bills?”

“An enemy, I get it,” Jeff said. “But why does that equal murder?”

“I’m with Jeff,” Tito said. “I’m not seeing how these bills are related to anyone dying.”

Resisted the impulse to heave a sigh. Also resisted the impulse to wake Chuckie up and have him come in here so I’d have some help with my conspiracy theory. I was here, I was up, time to go it alone. Always the way.

“Ah,” Nurse Carter said. “There was something else. One line, near the bottom of what we think is the second page. ‘There is more going on than just this. Must find out what.’ We think it’s the last thing he wrote.”

“See?”

“Still not seeing anything other than Santiago being suspicious about how those lines got into every bill,” Tito said. “It makes sense he’d think more was going on.”

“Santiago died at our dinner party and the President asked New Mexico’s governor to appoint Jeff. That’s pretty much never been done before.”

“Everything that’s happened this year has pretty much never been done before, Kitty,” Tito said. “Appointing a representative is a lot less touchy than halting all general elections and everything else governments, ours and everyone else’s, have done since the invasion.”

“But I thought we’d decided my appointment was done to prevent an anti-alien faction from taking over,” Jeff said.

“Yes, and I’m sure that’s the excuse the President gave the governor. It’s a great excuse. But I think if Eugene had succeeded and killed Brewer instead, the President would have done the same thing, only asking California’s governor to choose an appointee. He needed precedent to be set.”

“You’re saying the President is behind all the killings?” Dad asked, sounding shocked and worried.

“No. I think the President has noted the many missing seats in the House and is trying to forestall bad legislation passing or good legislation failing. But more than that, I think he’s trying to avoid having legislation pass with the House down significantly so that no one can say anything shady happened. One less thing to protest, in that sense. In part because one of these bills, the one from Transportation, is openly anti-alien in the extreme, and I’m sure the President knows of its existence.”

“Okay,” Tito said. “Let’s say you’re right. Why does killing people help whoever’s behind this?”

“Because the Mastermind, whoever he or she is, knows that this bill is around, and therefore knows that the President is going to want to do whatever he can to ensure that this one bill fails. We’re sitting precariously, as far as anyone in government knows, because the entire Alpha Centauri system, minimum, is watching. So if anti-alien legislation passes, it had damn well better pass with everyone’s consent. Only, it won’t. But this anti-alien bill is not the problem.”

“It’s the other bills,” Jeff said. “Right? We’re about to have twenty new reps sworn in the day after Christmas. They’ll have one week to read these bills before they vote on them. Some of them will read them fully, but some won’t, per the civics lesson you two gave me.”

“The House will normally have something of an even split for bills like these,” Dad said. “Not a hundred percent of the time, but bills pass or fail in part because of all that political maneuvering we talked about. It has to be worth it for a rep to vote yea or nay, and what’s worth it to one isn’t the same as another. Some will support a party-endorsed bill no matter what. Some will always vote no when a bill from, say, the Foreign Affairs committee comes through. So those two dozen votes can make the difference.”

“And it’s safe to assume they’ll be making the difference coming up, or else all those people wouldn’t be dead.”

“We still have no proof that anyone other than Santiago was murdered,” Jeff said. “And besides, so what if they pass through the House? They have to pass through the Senate, too, right?”

“Right. So, what if the President knows or has a good guess that the Senate’s already going to be on board with these bills, at least some of them? The government wants to control the A-Cs. These bills are giving them carte blanche to do it.” Sent a text to Caroline, asking her if I could get five minutes with McMillan on the phone and, if I couldn’t, if I could get those five minutes with her.

“I still don’t see how anyone could know the President would start appointing people,” Jeff said. Tito nodded. Nurse Carter and Dad didn’t seem convinced one way or the other.

“I can see it because I believe Colonel Hamlin was right—we have a Mastermind. And a Mastermind is going to be thinking of all of these things like a chess game. In chess you anticipate your opponent’s moves, and you do it based on the first move. The better the player, the more potential moves you can see.”

“It’s always a chess game, at least according to you and Reynolds,” Jeff said.

“It always is,” Nurse Carter agreed. “Chess is a game based on war, on strategy, and on politics.” She looked at me. “I can see how the President’s actions could be expected, if they were based on long-term observations of his character and earlier decisions.” Dad nodded.

“And I’m sure they were. If we have a Mastermind, not just for what’s going on right now but for literally everything that’s gone on, then that person has been around a long time and knows everyone.”

“Maybe.” Tito looked thoughtful.

“What do you mean?” Jeff asked.

“Maybe there’s more than one. I know Colonel Hamlin told you he thought there was one person involved, but what if he’s wrong? He didn’t have a lot of time to research before he had to run, right? So what if it’s a small group, just a handful of people?”

“The more people you have, the more people who can betray you,” Nurse Carter said.

“Good point. Look at the Cabal of Evil. They’re shifting their allegiances right now. Armstrong, Vance, the Brewers—they’re all suddenly much more aligned with us than with the others. And that means that they can give away each other’s secrets.”

“Yes,” Nurse Carter agreed. “So I wouldn’t think the Mastermind would want a lot of people. You always need someone to be your interface, at least if you’re going to hide in shadow, but you don’t necessarily need a lot of people.”

“Yeah, your underling could be the head of the crime syndicate, but he’d be the only one who knew who you were.”

“It seems farfetched to me,” Jeff said.

“So do aliens living on Earth and yet here you are.”

My phone received an automated text from Caroline: “In a locked-door meeting, will respond when able. Happy Holidays!” So much for getting answers from that source. Bit the bullet and sent a text to Armstrong.

The com came on. “Excuse me, Chief,” Walter said. “But Mister Dane has asked me if you’re awake. Are you? Awake to him, I mean.”

“Yeah, Walt, patch him through here.”

“Kitty?”

“Hey, Stryker, what’s up?”

“We’ve found some things I think you’re going to want to know about right away. Walter said he was going to patch Chuck in, too.”

“Okay. You guys are still up?”

“The slave driver won’t let us rest,” Stryker said bitterly.

“I heard that,” Chuckie said over the com. “So whatever you woke us up for had better be good.”

“Oh, it’s good. Okay, first off, Dulce just let us know that they’re confident they’ve identified what Mister Buchanan was hit with and they’ll have the cure ready in a couple of hours.”

“That’s great news!”

“It comes with a couple downsides, Kitty. The waking up process is slow, which is for the safety of the ‘sleeper,’ so it’ll take about twenty-four hours for Buchanan to come back to full consciousness. But that’s not a side effect, that’s just the way the cure has been designed.”

“Okay, that’s not the end of the world.”

“This will be, in that sense. Per everyone at Dulce, and based on what we’ve found in the information from Gaultier, the drug has one major side effect.”

My throat felt tight. “What is it?”

“Short-term memory loss. We’ll get him awake and he’ll be fine, but he’s not going to remember anything that happened to him from about thirty minutes before the drug hit him.”

“Fabulous,” Chuckie said. “So Buchanan won’t be able to tell us who attacked him, where he was when he was attacked, or anything else related to the incident, including who he was or wasn’t with.”

“Nope. It was considered a worthwhile side effect, since the idea was that all the recipient would be forgetting was going to sleep on a long-range spaceship.”

“Why does it affect memory?” I asked.

“Near as they can tell, it’s because it slows the aging process, and that affects the brain as well as the body. That’s the best we have, so focus on the happy that your guy will be back among the conscious by Christmas. We hope.”

“Yeah, okay, I’ll take the loss of intel to have Malcolm back alive and hopefully well. I’m sure, in the long run, he’d rather lose those thirty minutes than the rest of his life and all his training.”

“Anything else?” Chuckie asked.

“Yeah. We’ve hacked into all the police departments that work D.C. and the surrounding areas. We’ve also hacked into the F.B.I.”

Was suddenly incredibly glad Cliff had chosen the Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Don’t Have To Tattle About Evil plan.

“And?” Chuckie asked, sounding tired and impatient. Couldn’t blame him.

“There was a body in the car that exploded today. They’ve managed to make a DNA match.”

“That’s awfully fast,” Chuckie said.

“Yeah, well, that’s because the dead woman’s in the system. Because she worked for the C.I.A.”

Jeff and I looked at each other. “Well,” I said. “So much for us getting to interview Pia Ryan.”