Episode Five: Blood and Steel: A training exercise goes awry with deadly consequences when a saboteur strikes.
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Blood
and Steel
(continued)
“Dammit!” Fists clenched, Dani rose as Steve approached, staring down at the dead man. With his dark hair, blue suit and glasses, Steve thought the guy looked like Clark Kent. “Something happened to his heart, I can’t…so? Did you stop them? Were you right about—”
“I was, but I guess I’m not the only one can put two and two together. Anything I can do here?”
“We’ve done everything that could be done.” Dani pointed at a couple of women. Steve recognized one as a nurse from the base hospital that he’d dated once working on some of the other victims, and some guys were lifting metal off anyone trapped. “Hannah, call an ambulance, okay? Only it won’t be any good for some of them, there’s four or five they’ve had some sort of fatal heart attack.”
“I’m sorry,” Steve said. “I know how you hate to lose anyone.”
“I keep reminding myself I can’t save them all. It doesn’t help.” She leaned against him for a second, then seemed to realize what she was doing and moved away. “Steve, I-I guess you can—”
“So what happened to us in Boston?” There. I said it. Not so hard. “I thought we had something. Something…good. And I know that’s stupid, because it was only one night—”
“The first night didn’t count?”
“The first night was great. I’ve never had that much fun without going past second base. And the daytime, helping you keep people alive, doing something to help, that felt good, too.”
“Why are you asking me about Boston?” She looked down into his eyes, and he saw hers were angry and hurt. “The morning after we made love you got up, told me you had to go and left. There’s no woman in the world who doesn’t know what that means.”
“I didn’t say that!”
“You told me that with the Martians dead, you were heading out of town to resume looking for Tommy.”
“I was gonna say I’d come back. Or write. Or something.”
“Oh, were you? Then why didn’t you?”
“You…you were…” He thrust his hands in his pockets, remembering her expression, her voice, her total lack of interest in whether he went or stayed, lived or died. “It didn’t seem like you gave a damn. And suddenly I realized how stupid it was to think a girl like you would be interested in a bum like me.”
“As if you cared if I was interested?” She stepped closer, taut and angry; he took a step back. “When you said you were leaving, all I could think of was when we met and you called me a—”
“I apologized, didn’t I?” Dammit, I thought we’d settled that. “Look, the first time I saw you in the dress, the gloves, the hat, I thought you were like every other ‘lady’ I ever met. The social worker that said ma was an unfit mother, Miss Trunsdale at the orphanage…then you dragged that girl out of the car wreck and got her to safety with Martian ships just a few yards away That’s when I knew you were different.”
“Not different enough to stay, though.”
“Tommy’s my brother. I had to keep looking for him. And I really was going to talk about staying in touch but…I figured if it wasn’t a big deal to you, I should play it cool too, instead of acting like a lovesick chump.”
“Lovesick.” Her voice made a mockery of the word, but then it softened. “You?”
“Maybe. A little. Back then, I mean, I—look, was I wrong? About it being no big deal for you?”
“I told myself it wasn’t. That there wasn’t any reason it should be.” She was close enough now he could smell sweat and patients’ blood on her clothes, the lingering odor of her last cigarette on her breath. “Then I was talking to some doctors one afternoon, a couple of weeks later…and I realized you were the only man I’d ever met who didn’t see Paul Taylor’s daughter when he talked to me.”
“You’ve got a hell of a lot more going for you than your pop, Dani.”
“My father cast a long shadow. Being his daughter’s a big deal in Boston.” She turned away, pulled out her cigarettes and lit one; Steve waited. “You were the first man I ever met who was more impressed by me than by my name. And maybe…” Dani scrutinized the end of her cigarette. “I thought maybe there’d been something besides that, but when you left I told myself, no, it was just because…well, just because.”
“So, if I’d offered to write you—”
“I don’t know. You running all over the country hunting Tommy, kind of hard to date.”
“I’m not running now. I mean, I’m still looking, but we live almost next door.” He reached out and caught her free hand; was it his imagination that her fingers felt different from when he’d shaken it in the bunker? Less than fifteen minutes ago. I guess a lot can change in fifteen minutes.
“It’s been four years, Steve.” She looked away, flushing a little. “I haven’t been waiting in a spinster’s garrett, I’ve—dated.”
“I’ve—dated—too.”
“You could have tried to see me when you got here.”
“I told myself it’d be awkward. And that I didn’t really give a damn. But…hell, when I saw you in the bunker, I knew the four years I spent without you around were four wasted years”
“I—” A blaring siren drawing closer turned Dani around, breaking contact. “The ambulance is here. They’ll need me to fill them in.” She turned back. “Afterwards, though—after a day like this I could use a drink.”
“Me, too.” Steve realized he was smiling, a big goofy grin he couldn’t turn off.
“Only one thing, Steve Flanagan.” He waited. “Never compare me to Laura Lyons again, or I’ll show you how many painful places I can put a hypodermic!”
EPILOGUE
“Fingerprints.” Two days later, Howard Chableau threw back his head with a bitter laugh. “All the crime comics I used to read, I didn’t even think about that.”
“Well, I’m sure you never thought that magnetic controller would end up in our custody, did you?” Kathleen Meara, TSC security head for the Southwest office, adjusted her position in her wheelchair. Gianni, her assistant, stood stony-faced behind her. “An amazing device, how did you build it? And why—”
“I don’t think I’ll be answering any questions without a lawyer, ma’am.” He gestured around the room, an unoccupied office in the TSC’s underground base. “If you’ll take me to where I can make my phone call—”
“I don’t think you’ll be getting one of those.” Meara smiled. “Under the Kennedy Act, I have full authority to hold you until I’m satisfied you’re the real Chableau, not an alien imposter.”
“That’s ridiculous! There is no proof—”
“You’re responsible for the deaths of seventeen people, Mr. Chableau. Some from injuries, three in the helicopter, most from the ray devices you installed inside those robots.” Meara leaned forward, pinning him with her eyes. “Magnetic rays that seized on the iron in the blood, reversed the flow—would you like to see an autopsy photo of what happens when blood tries to force its way backwards through a heart valve?”
“I didn’t—I’m not saying anything! You still can’t prove—”
“All I’m saying, there’s not one person who’s going to give a damn if I check you thoroughly as a possible alien saboteur. There’ll be at least two weeks of brain scans, psychoanalysis, LSD, questioning—and until it’s done, you won’t leave this room. I’ll bring in a chamber pot for you to piss in. I’ll send out enough agents to turn over every rock you’ve ever been under or even stood next to.”
“Jesus, I hate this place.” Chableau jumped up, stared at the painting of President Nixon on the wall. “Building underground, it’s just not natural…look, if I tell you why I did it, there’s no need for anyone to go digging, right? I mean, if it doesn’t leave this room, if I have your word on that.”
“I’ll expect more from you than that, Mr. Chableau.”
“Look, I swear to you I don’t know who he is.” He paced up and down; Meara decided denying him tobacco had been a good move. “And I thought he was going to steal a couple of robots or something, have them walk off—but I wasn’t in a position to say no.”
“Blackmail?” Howard nodded, which sent a lock of dark hair into his eyes. He brushed it back. “If you’re candid about everything, I see no reason we have to divulge the details. It is drugs? Moral weakness? Women?”
Chableau stood, indecisive, for a long minute or two and the room filled with silence. “I’m a quadroon.”
“A what?” Gianni said.
“My grandmother was a nigger, that’s what!” He stayed facing them as if it was an effort to do so. “She was passing, legally that means I’m colored, my kids are colored, if they knew about it back in New Orleans…Tommy’s engaged, Shirley just pledged Tri Delta, you can’t imagine what it would mean if—”
“I know the way of the world, Mr. Chableau.” Meara said.
“If you weren’t born in Louisiana, you don’t know the first thing about it.” He slumped into the chair. “I’ve no idea how he found out.”
“You should have come to me when this came up.” Meara decided it wouldn’t encourage Chableau’s cooperation if he knew his ancestry was already in his security file. “Part of my job—”
“I couldn’t take that chance. Not with my kids’ future, my parents’ standing at stake.”
“It won’t do their social standing much good when you spend the rest of your life in federal prison, will it?” Meara shook her head. “I’ll find you better quarters, but Dr. White and Dr. Tyler will still have to run a full battery of tests, just to make sure. But for now, start telling me everything you know about your blackmailer.”
“Is there any chance…if the charges were murder or something, that wouldn’t be as bad as treason.” Meara shrugged; it wasn’t her decision to make. “It was four months ago, I was trying to improve the efficiency on the professor’s experimental magnetic scanner when I received a package in the mail, with a mimeograph of the birth certificate…”