Jupiter Fleet 1: Werewolves Don't Purr (5 page)

BOOK: Jupiter Fleet 1: Werewolves Don't Purr
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She took the weapon from Will and guided him toward the table.

“It’s a good thing that you didn’t try to fire this weapon, Dad. It needs to be reinitialized to you. If you had tried to shoot it without that, it would have given you a huge shock.”

Will did not say anything. He was already looking gravely ill. He climbed up onto the gurney and passed out.

“Thor, take two of those containers and attach them to him, one on each arm. Then take two more for the legs.”

Leona did not bother to wait for him to comply. She just hurried into the adjoining lab and willed the door to close behind her and Mary.

Once Leona got to the desk, she brought up the image of the table where Will now lay. There was mental prodding from the system asking for permission to begin. Once she said yes, the table started its process.

Thor was startled when table with Will on it suddenly turned on. The sides and ends of the table moved up and over Will, and formed a half tube that completely encapsulated him. Graphics on the outside of the tube showed the processes going on inside. The virus was apparently being assisted by the tube.

Thor could not begin to understand the process, but Will was being transformed before his eyes. There seemed to be a checklist of items to be done, as well as a timer. Thor could not decipher the alien readouts and lights. However, the process looked like it was going to take a while. Leona and Mary stood at the desk.

“This transformation is going to take a bunch of days. Seems like maybe two weeks! This room seems to be a self-contained area. I’m starting to understand the computer system better.”

Even with the door between them, Thor could “hear” what Leona said. Leona looked daunted, but determined. Thor thought she, with her tired face and messy hair, was as beautiful as he had ever seen her. But…back to business.

With Will safely contained inside the tube on the alien table, Leona opened the door between the two rooms again.

“Why are you able to access their computer?” thought Thor.

“There are no passwords on the system. I guess in a telepathic society they would be useless, and I guess no other races that the aliens have subjugated had telepathic abilities. So the captives usually don’t have the capabilities to access the system. The werewolves can only access the parts of the system that their unique brain wave patterns are allowed to access. Any other area will produce an effect like you felt before.”

Leona’s voice was matter-of-fact, almost like she was reading a product manual.

“You are starting to talk like them,” thought Thor. “Be careful with that thing.”

Leona looked at Thor and a shudder passed through her body. Her chin quivered and tears squeezed out from her eyes. Her throat convulsed, and she rubbed the ache there.

“Oh, Thor!” she squeaked.

Leona’s lips clamped even tighter than they had been, and her mother walked over and gathered her daughter into a hug.

“Sweetie,” she whispered to Leona.

Leona nodded and hung her head a moment, then released the hug and stepped back toward Thor.

“I will
never
be like
them!
” she hissed. “Their whole economy and all their technology is based on taking and enslaving and killing innocent people!”

Thor nodded. He awkwardly went and sat down on the floor near the women to relieve the soreness that was developing in his neck. Too much looking down! “Did you find out why you can access their computer, but your mom and dad can’t?”

“I think so.” Leona’s expression lightened a bit and she seemed a little embarrassed. “Mom,” she said to Mary, “Thor has asked why I can access the alien computer and you two can’t. I think it might have to do with the courses he and I had at university—and how we met.”

“You were studying psychology, you said,” answered her mother. Her expression relaxed a little too, as if remembering old times helped to relieve some of the stress of the last few hours.

“Yes, both of us took this silly ‘bird’ course as a degree requirement. He needed it for the arts elective in his engineering studies, and I needed it as a psych elective for my sociology degree. And then, we got hooked! Both on that course and the following levels that followed, and…we got hooked on each other.”

Leona smiled, and her mother patted her shoulder.

“Yes, we could tell. Whenever we visited or talked on the phone, you enthused about that fantastic course and a certain wonderful young man, and your voice told us that you were falling in love with him.”

Thor felt an itch behind his ear, and scratched it. Ah, that was good.

“Well,” said Leona, “that course and the ones that followed were a mix of cognitive psychology—how the brain thinks—and experiments in parapsychology, to see if any part of the brain could be linked to ESP, and we kept being in the same classes. So we learned the same…things, and hung around together, and became stronger and stronger friends. And somewhere along the way, we started being able to send thoughts and images to each other and receive from each other.”

“Oh,” thought Thor, “psych courses.” A series of memories rose in his mind. Endless series of cards with circles and stars on them, MRI sessions, talking excitedly with the professor (a tall man wearing brown clothes, with eyeglasses and a receding hairline), sitting over drinks and food talking with each other. Good times.

“So, really?” Mary sounded incredulous. “Really ESP?”

“Yes, Mom, really ESP. And…” Leona shrugged. She waggled her head back and forth, as if to say, “Yeah, it’s weird, totally weird, so what!” But her voice was respectful and her manner forthright. “And, the more experiments we did, the better we got at it. Professor Shore noticed there was an area in our brains that lit up when we were doing the card series, and on the basis of that activity, he could predict whether the responses would be accurate or not. It was awesome!”

Mary looked bemused. She huffed a little, and ran her fingers through her tangled grey hair absentmindedly. Then she smiled and raised her eyebrows. “Well, it’s a good thing you two got so good at it, then. And, I guess I can understand why you didn’t tell your dad and me.”

“Yeah, not the kind of thing we could tell anyone outside the department. But there was a whole group of us that kept doing the courses. We were a little community.”

Thor got a bit bored and rose to his feet. He started prowling around the brightly lit chamber, looking at the walls, trying to figure out if there were touchable control pads in the paneling without actually touching anything.

“So, I think that maybe…maybe Thor and I can communicate now because we trained our brains with the skill of telepathy. Kind of like, if you learn to distinguish a species of bird by its song. At first, all bird songs are alike, then you learn to hear if a male bird is claiming his territory and if another male challenges him.”

The two women looked over to where Thor was pacing the floor. Leona tilted her head toward the room with the desk and Mary nodded. They walked into the next room and Mary sat down on the alien-shaped chair.

“Oh, that’s a relief! My feet have about had it!” She rubbed her back between her shoulder blades.

“Yeah, first all that running, all that fighting…then that awful prison with no furniture, then this place…”

Leona sat on the short curve at one end of the desk. Seated sideways as she was, she could keep an eye on the door to the corridor (the machine had told her), as well as the big chamber where Thor was pacing beside the conversion table that held Will. Her dad! Though, what she could do to defend them if events were to spin out of control… Her heart started to pound, and she realized that she was close to panic at the thought of more aliens coming in the room. She pushed that thought down hard.

In the other room, Thor paused a moment and looked over at her through the window-wall. Seeing that she was not in danger, he resumed his pacing.

“Wow,” said Mary. “Wow! I just saw that! You thought something, and Thor noticed it from way over there!”

Leona gulped. She would have to try very hard to control her emotions.

“Yes, the longer we worked with Professor Shore, the better we got at sending and receiving thoughts. It was like a muscle workout.”

“So, can everyone ‘do’ telepathy?” asked her mom. She had a wistful look in her eyes.

“The prof thought that some people have an inborn ability, some people maybe never could do it, and some people actively stop themselves from doing it.”

“He must have had some evidence for that.”

“Oh, sure, he had years of experimental results, and statistical analysis to show what was real data and what was just random noise that was ‘not statistically significant’—and the MRIs, of course. And, I’ll tell you, it was very convincing.”

“Especially your own experiences, I’ll bet.” Mary leaned back in the chair. The exhaustion accumulated over the past weeks, and this last day, showed in her face.

“Yes.” Leona leaned on her right arm. “The prof found that some people couldn’t send or receive the images that were on the standardized card. That would be like, maybe, being tone deaf. They might be able to ‘hear’ or ‘see’ if something stupendous came along, but, ordinarily, telepathy just didn’t exist for them. He didn’t ever see the ESP part of their brains light up—or maybe just a tiny bit—in the MRI tests.”

She swung her legs back and forth over the edge of the desk like she used to do as a girl sometimes. It felt good, and she relaxed a bit.

“Other people did have their ESP center light up—but they would deny perceiving anything. Those were usually people who outright denied that anything supernatural could exist—not auras or ghosts, not ESP, not God or angels. They believed that the basis of human existence was only rational scientism, and nothing beyond our five senses could be experienced.”

“Scientism?” asked Mary. She yawned.

“Oh, that’s the belief that humans have already discovered everything there is to know about the physical universe, which supposedly runs like a nineteenth-century clockwork. People who hold that belief are often atheists who scoff at anyone who is religious, or anyone studying anything as mysterious and weird as quantum physics. Yet, their belief is like a religion in itself.”

“Oh, I see,” said Mary, fading fast. “So if they believed that ESP
could not
exist, then for them it
would not
exist.”

“Exactly,” said Leona, nodding.

She looked at how her mother’s eyelids were closing. Mary’s breathing was becoming more regular as she slid toward sleep. Leona smiled, her heart warming with love for her mother. She continued talking so that her voice would lull her mom to sleep—a sleep that would refresh her and help her avoid getting sick from exhaustion.

“So, people with the inborn ability could be trained to use ESP better, but usually only with people that were close relatives or friends.”

“Like you and Thor…maybe your dad and me and you.” Mary’s speech was slow and soft. Her eyelids closed completely, and her breathing rhythm showed her to be asleep.

“Yes, Mom, like Thor and me. And for you and Dad to do it, you would have to work hard at it for four years, like we did.”

Her lips turning downward, Leona glanced over at Thor in the big chamber. He was sitting down beside the conversion table, watching the incomprehensible lights play over its alien panels. She sighed, trying hard to hold on to the calm peace that she had gained while talking with her mother.

Her true love was now a werewolf, just like the werewolves that had been hunting them. But he was different. He was not an “it.” He was still
her Thor
, and inside that enormous body with the fangs and claws was
her love.
If she closed her eyes, she could see his face, his hands, his football-player shoulders, his sparkling eyes full of mischief and fun. Thor, her
husband
, the father of her grown children, was nearby, and his presence made her feel safe. Or, at least, safe-
er
.

Slowly, Leona slid her hand across the surface of the desk as her body lowered to lie down on it. Sighing, she also fell into a refreshing sleep.

CHAPTER 3

The Team

November 5, 2038, 10:24 a.m.

On Board Alien Ship

“Thor, we have a problem,” said Leona.

“Just one? Last time I checked, I was a werewolf on an alien spaceship and my wife and her family were stuck with me.”

“OK, you’re as grouchy as a—er—bear. But we have a new problem.”

Thor growled in response.

“I checked the incoming computer log for the two Superiors that you dispatched.”

“Superiors?”

“Yeah. The aliens are telepathic, so they call all the other species ‘mouth talkers.’ They have no name for themselves—it never occurred to them. They just think of themselves as superior, hence my name for them. After all, ‘think they are superior’ is too long.”

“OK, I suppose I could sneer when I say it, then!” thought Thor.

He broke into his dog laugh. Leona started laughing hard too. It was the first time they had laughed together in a long time. It felt good…

“OK, what’s the problem?”

BOOK: Jupiter Fleet 1: Werewolves Don't Purr
6.8Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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