The coaster clung to Kyle's glass of ice water, suspended by a film of condensation. Then gravity had its way; the coaster fell to the floor.
Drink coasters were a concept with which Swelk was unfamiliar. The unexpected noise made her drop her glass. It shattered. She shuffled in confusion.
"My fault. I'll take care of that." Kyle started picking the largest shards from the puddle, pausing to shoo away the kittens, who had come to investigate. They were in the safehouse's dining room, Swelk's favorite room. If he had to guess, based on his woefully inadequate grasp of Krulchukor psychology, that was because of the large oval table. It was one of the few curved pieces of furniture in the house.
Darlene, who'd been about to leave after her own visit, stuck her head in the door. "Blot that with a towel. I'll be right back." She returned pushing a vacuum cleaner, its power card trailing behind her into the front hall. She flicked on the handle-mounted switch.
Swelk collapsed, her legs convulsing. Her sensor stalks went rigid.
Kyle lunged for the cord and yanked. As the plug whipped into the room, Swelk's seizure was already fading. Her squeals of protest were untranslatable. "Swelk, what can we do?"
Darlene dropped the vacuum's handle. "Not again."
"Again!" snapped Kyle. His eyes remained on the twitching alien. "What the hell does again mean? You've seen this before?"
"Seen, no. Well, sort of. Twice I've been in another room when Swelk had some type of twitching episode. I was never right there when it happened, and I saw nothing like this. The first time, a pair of agents saw her right after, too." Her brow furrowed in recollection. "Swelk made it sound like vertigo. I know she's mentioned waking up dizzy."
"I . . . I am . . . am fine," the translator stuttered. The alien climbed back to her feet and walked shakily to the nearest beanbag chair. She dropped heavily, rustling the plastic peanuts inside. "That was horrible . . . whatever . . . it was."
She had dropped like a stone when the vacuum cleaner started. The kittens had bolted at the same time. Was it the unexpected racket? "Swelk, it's important that we isolate the problem. If you agree, I'd like to turn this"—he pointed at the vacuum cleaner—"on for a moment. We need to see if the symptoms return."
Swelk clasped her extremities, all the digits interlaced. From within the hollow of the beanbag chair, she said, "At least I cannot fall from here."
He plugged the vacuum cleaner back in. The switch was still on; the motor restarted with a roar. Swelk's limbs spasmed. He pulled the plug, and the fit began immediately to subside. "I guess we won't be doing much vacuuming."
Darlene impaled him on a dirty look. "What can we do for you?" she asked Swelk.
What was going on? "Swelk, what were you doing when the earlier episodes struck? What was happening around you?"
"Maybe some water, Darlene." The ET's sensor stalks bobbed. "In an unbreakable container, if there is one." She chugged most of a glassful before answering Kyle. "I wasn't doing anything. Standing in this room, waiting for Darlene."
He exchanged puzzled looks with her. "Dar, do you remember what you were doing?"
Her eyes closed in thought. "The first time was before one of Swelk's movies. I was getting popcorn. The other time, I'd spent the night. It happened the next morning while I was showering."
Showering wasn't terribly noisy, and the only shower in the safehouse was upstairs. Kyle pinched the bridge of his nose in concentration. Hmmm. Getting was a rather all-purpose verb. "Were you popping the corn?"
"Uh-huh."
"In the little microwave oven in the trailer?"
She shook her head. "The microwave stuff has too much fat. I'd brought an air popper from home."
I see, said the blind man, as he picked up his hammer and saw. "The second time, did you dry your hair?" To her puzzled nod, he added, "With a hair dryer?"
"Well, yes."
Vacuum, air popper, hair dryer . . . what they had in common were electric motors. More precisely, if not per the everyday usage, electromagnetic motors. Swelk had mentioned once that the safehouse's electric lights made her jumpy. The radiation from household wiring was tiny compared to the E-M noise the vacuum cleaner's motor emitted.
"Kyle, what are you thinking?"
He recognized the impatient worry in Darlene's voice. "It's okay. Give me a second." If electrical appliances were the problem, why had there been so few incidents? He ran a mental inventory of modern conveniences. This old house had been chosen for its isolation, not its features. Its heat came from radiators, the circulation driven only by hot water rising and cold water sinking. The water was heated by an oil burner—no motor required. The rarely used stove burnt propane. The refrigerator and its big motor, entirely by accident out of commission. No bathroom fans. The guards came and went in shifts, so there generally wasn't showering—or, more important, hair drying—going on. The original landline phone, with its electromagnetic ringer, was out of service, which was easier than guarding it.
There was a moment of uncertainty as he recalled Swelk had a television. He'd once lost a college assignment by carelessly leaving a computer disk on a TV. His doubts receded as he remembered what set she had. To accommodate the old house's tiny rooms, the CIA had followed Kyle's advice and gotten an expensive wall-mounted model like the one he owned. The upscale unit had an LCD flat screen: real low-voltage stuff. Not a CRT with big coils.
This had to be important.
Flickering lights triggered seizures in some epileptics. How did flickering magnetic fields affect Krulirim?
Swelk was very proud of her studies. Kyle strained to remember something in a debriefing report, something from the Krul's personal research notes. Something about Krulirim orienting themselves by reference to the home world's magnetic field.
Hmmm. Earth's magnetic field was excluded by the safehouse's shielding. Was that why Swelk often woke up dizzy?
"Ladies, it will be for the best if I remove this vacuum cleaner." He'd happily bet an arm and a kidney that Swelk—or any Krul—couldn't tolerate fluctuating magnetic fields, at least at some frequencies. The sixty-cycle hum of standard wall current must be one of them. It would be a simple enough experiment at Franklin Ridge to measure the field strength of the appliance that had so instantly incapacitated her.
With the crisis a mere two days away, was it too late to exploit this discovery?
"General Bauer is unavailable. Would you care to leave a message?" The aide at the other end of the connection sounded bored. If he recognized the caller's voice or remembered having taken four messages from Kyle already that day, he disguised it well.
"No, thanks." There wasn't time for this nonsense, not with the Tea Party imminent.
Kyle hung up and redialed. When Britt's secretary wouldn't put him through either, he asked for voicemail. He had painful familiarity with the politician's total recall—anyone who had ever worked for Britt did. Today Kyle was counting on it. "Britt, I'm going to recite some numbers. What I've just learned is equally important. I must meet with the Mad Hatter. Now." Kyle had invented that alias for the leader of the raid, but Britt would surely crack the code.
He rattled off numbers in twos, each pair the month and day he'd first discussed with Britt some key finding about the aliens. The revelation that Galactic "unity orbs" were spying devices. The discovery that the mother ship was transparent to X-rays. The confirmation that "F'thk" lifeboats had been at abduction sites, long before the aliens' overt appearance. "He must meet me at my funny friend's place. Please acknowledge."
Hanging up, Kyle left Franklin Ridge for the safehouse, to do the thing in the world he was worst at . . . waiting.
Why was Darlene so nervous?
Swelk stared out a dark window, miserably alone. Inside the safehouse, only she and the kittens were awake; Darlene, who was spending the night, had gone to bed. Krulchuk's day was roughly three-cubed and three Earth hours in length, and Swelk was far from adapted to her new planet's speedier rotation.
Recently, Krulchukor movies seemed to fascinate Darlene. The diplomat probably understood Krulirim better than any other visitor, but that insight came from experience with only one Krul and one small film collection. Darlene did not know how many human entertainments Swelk had viewed: a lot. Human broadcasts had led the Consensus to Earth. The lonely Krul had watched many more hours of Earth's television than the entirety of Rualf's library. Counting the guards, Swelk's experience with humans included more than two three-squares of individuals. She was a far better interpreter of humans than the other way around.
Why was Darlene so nervous?
Trees outside the window swayed. The house creaked. A kitten scratched enthusiastically at her litter box. A beanbag chair rustled as Swelk shifted her position. Darlene was more immersed than ever in Rualf's movies. The human's excitability had intensified after a discussion about the actor's artistic sense, after that odd conversation about whether Rualf would prefer to end the filmed destruction of Earth with some human act of altruism.
Swelk dismounted from the chair to pace in imperfect circles. Darlene had been agitated by those cinematic insights, but had tried not to show it. And why the recent shift in mood to nervousness? Swelk understood worry in anticipation of impending doom—but not disguised expectation. In the nighttime stillness, bedsprings squeaked. Darlene was also restless.
Excitement at how Rualf would prefer to end the movie? Did that suggest a human intention to influence the filming? But Rualf wanted to film an epic disaster, so why would the humans care about the details? What did Darlene imagine as the act of human altruism?
Swelk paused midcircle. Whatever this dramatic act might be, its purpose was to bring Rualf to film it. Was Rualf being tricked? Scenes from human entertainments flooded her mind, scenes she did not totally understand, from contexts foreign to her. Soldiers, criminals, imaginary monsters . . . all were unfamiliar concepts imperfectly grasped. A large part of that incomplete understanding was a preference for ambush. Violent, surprise, deadly attack.
Was a subtle appeal to the filmmaker being used to lure the Consensus into danger? Was Darlene's interest in Rualf's films focused on constructing an irresistible scene? Almost certainly, yes. Less clear was how Swelk felt about this. How had she imagined this would all end?
But killing was wrong, no matter by whom.
Her interrogators had resigned themselves to a steadfast refusal to answer direct questions about vulnerabilities of the Consensus—while continuing in convoluted ways to collect data. It was as if a tacit bargain had been struck. They amassed information that could be used in an attack . . . but she could believe, or rather delude herself, that she was not responsible. Swelk enabling Darlene to understand and entrap Rualf was as much a betrayal as would have been revealing any weakness of the ship.
Well, she was responsible—and she could not bear it if the resolution of her mess caused the deaths of her one-time shipmates.
Alone in midnight darkness, Swelk knew her existence as a solitary Krul was doomed. In Revenge of the Subconscious, which she had recently rewatched with Darlene, Rualf confronted a flawed aspect of himself. His character had become a loner, attempting to be complete unto himself. He had naturally failed.
Now she had to vanquish her inner monster.
There was an outburst of mewing and thuds: playful tussling by Blackie and Stripes. Much as she loved the kittens, the image that came to mind was of larger, much more docile creatures: Stinky and Smelly. She could not endure the thought of harm to those innocent beasts.
Crossing the hall, she reared up on twos to pound on Darlene's closed door. Without waiting for an answer, Swelk entered. The cold moonlight streaming into the room made Darlene, seated on the edge of her bed, look ashen. Her hair was matted and tangled.
"I know an attack is planned on the Consensus. Proceeding means destruction, for you, for the Krulirim, or probably both. I want to avoid that suffering. I want to help.
"But it must be done on my terms."
Snow flurries swirled around Kyle and his visitor. "If this diversion costs me one casualty, I will personally rip out your heart and feed it to you." Barrel-chested, with arms thicker than Kyle's thighs, Colonel Ted Blake's soft-spoken threat was entirely believable. Blake was livid at being summoned from Delta Force's base at Fort Bragg a day before the attack on the starship. His commandos were en route to Washington as they spoke.
They were in the woods that abutted the safehouse, on whose sagging porch Kyle had awaited Blake. He brushed aside a low branch. "I understand your concern, Colonel."
"Oh? Whose lives are you personally responsible for?"
The whole planet's, but he didn't suppose that answer would be well received. "Colonel, I know for a fact neither you nor any of the Delta Force has met a Krul. Don't you want to know something about your opponents?"
"Don't tell me my business," said Blake. "I know for a fact that you have no military background. Now give me one good reason why I should even be here, or I'll be on my way."
Kyle exhaled sharply. Here goes. "When we go inside, I'll stay in the foyer. You go through the doorway to your left and back into the dining room where Swelk will be. Keep your eyes on her. What you need to see will happen as soon as I hear you say her name."
They returned to the safehouse, Kyle signaling with a finger raised to his lips that the agent at the door was not to speak. Inside, Swelk and Darlene could be heard talking. As Blake turned left, Kyle took an electric razor from his coat pocket. He plugged it into the front-hall power outlet. When Blake said, "Swelk, I presume," Kyle clicked the switch to on.
There was an immediate thud, followed by a drumming against the wooden floor and shouts of dismay from Darlene. Kyle turned off the razor. The drumming quickly faded. He clicked the razor on; the spastic beat resumed. He switched off the shaver a second time, this time unplugging it.
When Kyle entered the dining room, Darlene was hovering anxiously over the still-prone Swelk. He shrugged apologetically to them both.
Blake's glower had been replaced by shrewd calculation. "Shall we continue our hike?" asked Kyle. An agent handed him a backpack as they left the safehouse.
"What you just witnessed, Colonel, was the aliens' biggest weakness. Swelk was instantly disabled by the electric motor in my razor."
"Explain."
"Members of her species orient themselves by reference to the planetary magnetic field. Any electric motor, not just the one in a razor, converts an alternating current into an alternating magnetic field. The electromagnetic part, called the rotor, pushes magnetically against a stationary permanent magnet, the stator. As you know, wall current alternates at sixty cycles per second. I just inflicted on my friend a sixty-times-per-second reversal of her sense of direction."
"So she had extreme vertigo."
"Right," agreed Kyle. "But more than that. You saw her twitching uncontrollably. If you listened closely, you might also have heard that her computer immediately stopped translating her words. Swelk was shouting something, but while the motor ran that speech was unintelligible." The computer itself was unaffected, continuing to translate, or at least to make alien-sounding noises, in response to Darlene's English.
"Couldn't your ugly little friend be play acting?"
"She had no warning of what I did, and her response surely seems involuntary. That aside, it turns out the house surveillance system recorded prior incidents." Once Kyle had been told of Swelk's previous episodes, he had known to look. Darlene, who had been unaware of the hidden cameras, no longer showered there. He dug in the backpack. "Hence this videocam."
They stopped beneath a towering hemlock. Blake accepted the videocam and pushed the Play button. In the preview screen, Swelk stood in the dining room, a date and time appearing in tiny digits in the display's corner. Moments later, Swelk collapsed. Kyle handed over a second videotape. The new image showed Darlene in the kitchen, overseeing an air popper. The date and time matched Swelk's collapse on the first tape.
"Check these." Kyle offered two more tapes. Once more Swelk was stricken, now concurrent with Darlene's use of an electric hair dryer.
"Maybe it's the noise, not the motors." Probing curiosity had replaced hostility.
"Nope. A razor heard across the house is quieter than Swelk's own translator. I made an audio tape of a popcorn popper and played it back on a cassette recorder. That made her ill at ease, because the recorder itself has a small motor, but how loudly I played the tape made no difference." They resumed their walk. "When I converted that same tape of popper noise to MP3 format and ran the file through an electronic player, Swelk didn't react at all."
"You're saying we can disable the ETs with a big electric motor near the starship."
The safehouse was no longer visible through the trees, but a clearing had come into view. A windswept field in Minnesota rushed to mind, the meadow from which Andrew Wheaton's family had been abducted. "No, the ship's hull would surely shield them. But if we can get an airlock open, penetrate that shield . . ."
"My guys know all about penetrating things, and we're not restricted to kicking down doors." Blake's smile was frankly predatory.
"There's a fusion reactor in that ship, which will be in the heart of metropolitan Washington. The last thing we want to do is to make it go boom."
"I don't think they're going to respond to the Delta Force ringing the bell, even if all we're carrying is razors."
"Swelk knows how to get us in." Kyle ignored an outburst of protest. "She deduced from her questioning that an attack must be imminent."
Blake swallowed an oath. "You trust the little monster?"
"That's exactly what I propose to do: trust her. If we bring her, she promises to share the airlock keypad code that will let us into the ship."
"Bring an enemy to the raid." Blake was incredulous.
"Bring a defector. An ally. That's what I sincerely think she is. Every fact in our possession confirms that she is. If I'm right, her help will be invaluable, in operating the onboard systems after we take over the ship, in interpreting anything the crew says."
"And if you're wrong?"
Kyle swallowed hard. "I'll be very sorry. You see, I'm going to be in the lead truck."