Catch the Lightning (11 page)

It felt as if it took forever to reach Pasadena. After I parked on the street where I had told Mario I would leave the car, I hid the wig and blanket in the trunk. Then I looked around. I had been to Pasadena twice before, once at a party and once last summer to help Joshua move into his dorm.

A tower rose above the houses, its windows lit up like rectangular yellow eyes in the night. I was pretty sure it was the building Joshua had called Milikan Library. I pulled off my shoes and ran toward it, through the streets.

I came out on a lawn in front of a campus. I thought it was Caltech, but nothing looked familiar. Then I remembered. Joshua’s dorm was behind the library. I ran across the lawns, past a guy with long hair who stared as if I came from outer space. The dorms were a cluster of Spanish-style buildings surrounded by lawns. As I took the steps in Blacker House two at a time, one thought kept hammering me: What if Joshua wasn’t in?

The second floor was painted black, with flames on the walls. Joshua once told me “flaming” meant flunking out of Caltech, and reasons why people flamed were hidden in the wall paintings. I ran past them to room 52 and pounded on it.

The door opened and Joshua stood there, dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, tousled curls falling into his eyes. “Tina!” A grin spread across his face. “What are you doing here?”

I took a breath. “I need your help.”

He pulled me inside and closed the door. “What’s wrong?”

“A friend of mine is hurt. I was hoping he could stay here.” He regarded me for a moment. “All right.”

I almost closed my eyes with gratitude. Just like that. It was Joshua’s way. After everything that had happened to him, he didn’t trust easily. He chose his friends with care, but once you were among them he was fiercely loyal.

“Do you have a car?” he asked.

“We can’t use it. I’ll explain later.”

He switched off his desk lamp. A book lay open there, and papers covered with equations were scattered everywhere. Glancing at me he said, “You want some tennis shoes? You better wear a sweater too.”

I looked down. I was still holding my shoes and blood covered my blouse. “All right.”

His sweater hung around my hips and his shoes slipped off my feet. I crumpled a stocking into each heel to fill the space. Then we went down the hall, past dismantled pieces of electronic equipment, to another room. On its door, the initials DEI were made out of old computer chips. As Joshua knocked, I hung back in the shadows.

A guy holding a half-eaten Milky Way bar and wearing a gray T-shirt that said Confederation, 44th World Science Fiction Convention opened the door. “Hi. What’s up?”

“Daniel, I was wondering if I could borrow your Jeep,” Joshua said.

“What for—” He stopped when he saw me. When he realized he was staring, he turned back to Joshua. “Yeah, sure. Just a second.” He vanished into his room and reappeared with a set of keys. “Keep it as late as you want.”

“Thanks,” Joshua said. Then we took off.

The Jeep was open, and as we drove the wind threw my hair around my body. I told Joshua everything, except for letting him believe Althor came from Fresno. I hoped I hadn’t made a mistake, hiding Althor on the mountain. Thinking of him alone and injured made the minutes drag out endlessly.

At Mount Wilson, Joshua stepped on the gas. When he finally pulled off the road, I jumped out and ran toward the woods.

“Tina, wait.” He ran after me and caught up in a few strides.

We made our way through brush and scraggly trees. They threw shadows across our path, pools of black in the night’s darkness. Wind whispered in our hair. The walk seemed to take longer than before, until I became convinced we had passed the cave.

Then I caught sight of the two stones. We ran over and eased ourselves between them, into the hidden cavity. Joshua’s flashlight played over the walls—and across Althor’s body. He lay on his back on the ground, still and silent.

I knelt next to him, my heart racing. “Althor?”

He didn’t answer, and my heart jumped a mile. “Can you hear me?” I asked.

No answer.

“Althor!”

This time his lips moved, words I couldn’t hear.

Relief swept over me.
¿Que, hijo?
”

“Took out the bullet,” he mumbled. “With knife.”

That’s when I saw it, the bloodied remains of a bullet lying by his arm. I couldn’t believe he cut it out of his own body. I didn’t see how he stayed conscious. If he lost any more blood, he would be in serious trouble. Even if we could have gone to a hospital, no blood type on 1987 Earth would have been compatible with his.

Joshua knelt next to me. “We have to get him to an emergency room. No matter what he’s done, it’s better the police catch him than he bleed to death.”

. “We can’t.” I laid my hand on his arm. “Trust me. Please. I can’t turn to anyone else.”

He just looked at me, until I wondered if I had pushed our friendship further than even our strong bond could stretch. Then he exhaled. “Moving him will be hard. He’s so big.”

I squeezed his arm gratefully. “He can walk.”

Althor opened his eyes, his shimmering inner lids glinting in the moonlight as they rolled up. “Can you—clean the wounds?” Joshua nodded. “We brought supplies,”

I touched Althor’s forehead. Words flashed in my mind, packets from the dense flow of data along the pathways of his augmented brain.
Connection established. Large coupling constant
.

Coupling. It meant mathematical intercourse, not human. Althor and I were both Kyles, which meant the wavefunctions of our brains coupled strongly, oscillating like chaotic breakers on the neural shores of our minds. Every system of particles can be described by a wavefunction, including the brain. His KEB stimulated thousands of molecular sites on my KAB, millions, even billions. Had he been a less powerful Kyle, the link he set up with me that night could have crippled him, creating massive neural discharges that led to a tonic-clonic attack, like an epileptic grand mal seizure. But Althor took it easily.

I was there, in the midst of a struggle. He was fighting his autonomic system, his heart, lungs, intestines, glands, other internal organs, smooth muscles, blood and lymph vessels. His troops were nano-meds specialized to aid tissue repairs. He regulated blood flow, rushed nutrients where they were needed, changed chemical concentrations, all in a race to outrun the death that chased him through his evaporating consciousness. When we linked, his mind swelled back to alertness like a dry sponge expanding with water, beads of the sparkling liquid jumping into the air and raining down again.

Mitosis. Cells dividing; prophase, metaphase, anaphase, telophase. Cells splitting: 1,2,4,8. Tissue growing. Blood vessels forming. Increase blood flow. 64,128,256. White blood cells; antibodies; infection. Send lymphocytes. Build fibrin. Clot blood. Parenchymal cells: prophase, metaphase, anaphase, telophase. 16384,32768,65536. Bleeding, stroma, bleeding, fibrosis, bleeding, bleeding
…

“Tina?”

The voice came from far away.

“Tina? What’s wrong?”

I opened my eyes. Joshua was kneeling in front of me, his hands on my shoulders. “What happened to you?” he asked.

“I was with Althor.” Why hadn’t Joshua opened his pack? It still lay closed on the cave floor. “We have to clean him up and bandage him.”

“I did. I’ve been working for almost an hour. The two of you have been in a trance.”

I stared at him. Then I looked at Althor. He opened his eyes and he mouthed two words: Thank you.

As we drove through Caltech, Althor sat next to me, slumped in the backseat of the Jeep. Joshua pulled into the parking lot outside the Athenaeum, near Blacker House. The lot was empty except for a few cars, chromed beasts sleeping in the dark.

With Joshua and me supporting him, Althor climbed out of the Jeep and limped across the lawn between the lot and the dormitories, what Joshua called the south house complex. We crossed a Spanish-style courtyard to a staircase in Blacker House. With our support, Althor slowly climbed the stairs. The whole time I was straining to hear voices or footsteps, warnings that someone was coming, a student happening on us out of the night.

We reached the second floor without being discovered. At Joshua’s room, Althor slumped against the wall. Joshua worked the combination lock on his door, his relief making soap-bubble mists of tangerine light. We had made it.

A door down the hall opened and Daniel stepped out.

Joshua froze. “Hey.”

Daniel glanced at Althor. “Josh, can I talk to you?”

Joshua turned to me. “Take him inside.” Then he headed down the hall to Daniel.

. Uneasy, I took Althor inside and closed the door. It was a single room, cluttered with bits and pieces of lab equipment. A bed stood against the far wall under a window with blue curtains. Shelves were on the left, crammed with books, and the right wall had a sink and cabinets built into it. A computer sat on the desk, along with a haphazard pile of books and papers. Posters of rock stars and scientists covered the walls.

I helped Althor to the bed. As he lay down, I felt sleep drop over him like a heavy blanket cut from the night sky. I sat next to him, wondering what Joshua was doing.

Several moments later the door opened and Joshua came in with Daniel. They both looked grim.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

Daniel closed the door, holding the knob as if to make sure he could make a fast exit. Joshua pulled a chair over to the bed and sat facing me. But his attention was on Althor.

“Is he asleep?” Joshua asked.

“Out cold,” I said.

Joshua took a breath. “Daniel saw police sketches of you and Althor in this evening’s paper, down in the lounge. The police say Althor’s name is Ray Kolvich, that he broke out of San Quentin yesterday, and that he’s a PCP addict.”

I silently swore. “They’re lying.”

“Tina, he killed Matt Kugelmann.”

“It was self-defense.”

“Then why can’t you take him to a hospital?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

Daniel spoke. “You better start telling if you don’t want us to call the police.”

“You know I’ve always trusted you,” Joshua said. “But this—I don’t know what to say.”

I pushed my hand through my hair. “You know that test plane they found this morning?”

“I heard about it,” Joshua said.

“Well, it’s not a plane. It’s Althor’s starship.”

“Yeah, right,” Daniel said. “This isn’t a joke.”

“Do you see me laughing?” I asked.

“Is that what he told you?” Joshua asked.

“Yes.”

“And you believed him?”

“For good reasons,” I said. “Besides, Josh, you saw his eyes.”

“I saw something. But it was too dark to tell much.” Although I disliked waking Althor, our choice's were limited. I shook his shoulder, but he didn’t respond. I tried again. “Althor?”

This time his lashes lifted, leaving a gold shimmer. As Joshua and Daniel watched, the shimmer retracted like a receding wave on a beach.

“Cool,” Daniel said. Then he seemed to mentally shake himself. “But it proves nothing.”

Joshua glanced at me. “You have to admit, it’s probably a birth defect.”

Regardless of their outward resistance, I knew they must have had doubts about the news report. Otherwise, they would never have given me a chance to explain, nor would either have spoken with Althor listening. “Think about it,” I said. “How could any normal man go through what’s happened to him and still be in such good shape?”

“I don’t know,” Joshua said. “But there must be a rational explanation.”

An idea came to me. “I need a pair of scissors.”

Joshua went to his desk and came back with scissors. “What are you going to do?”

“Watch.”

The bandage went all the way around Althor’s body, from below his waist to his chest. I felt around on the right side above his hip. Fortunately the bullet wound was on the opposite side. When I found the dent that marked his transcom socket, I cut away a small square and prodded the skin. Nothing happened.

Althor lifted his hand and pressed his side, fingertips pushing the skin in a circle. A membrane pulled back and the transcom slid out into his hand, leaving a small opening in his body lined with glimmering gold skin.

Daniel leaned closer. “Hey.”

“What is that?” Joshua said.

Althor held the transcom in his palm and extended it toward him. “Computer.”

As we watched, it changed from a rounded gold box to the hard-edged device with glowing squares. Then Althor brought it back to his waist. He pushed it inside the socket and it molded itself to fit, changing color to blend with his skin. The membrane slid back into place.

“Holy shit,” Joshua said.

“That thing must have some kind of nanotech,” Daniel said. “Something that lets it alter its composition on a molecular level.” He snapped his fingers. “It responds to a change in environment, right? Take it out of your body and that activates its transformation.”

“That’s right,” Althor said.

“The only way you could have a socket there is if your internal organs have been moved out of the way,” Joshua said. “And that membrane looks like it’s alive.”

“Yes,” Althor said.

“That kind of nanotech doesn’t exist,” Daniel said. “Neither does the medical knowledge needed to put a system like that into your body. Not that I’ve heard of.”

I regarded them. “Now do you see?”

Daniel blew out a gust of air. “My mother works at Yeager. She says the shuttle retrieved something called the F-29, a hypersonic test plane that malfunctioned.”

“How would she know otherwise?” Joshua said. “Thousands of people work at Yeager. Probably only a handful saw what the shuttle brought down.”

My hope leapt. “Daniel, could you get us onto the base?”

He snorted. “Even if I believed your story, which I don’t, and even if I could get you a pass, which I can’t, there’s no way I would do it.”

I wasn’t really surprised. But I knew it wasn’t an F-29 they had found. I rubbed my eyes, trying to clear my mind. “Josh, can we finish this tomorrow? We really need to sleep.”

He nodded. “I have an extra blanket in the closet.”