Never Love A Stranger Part 32

"You're fake," she said. "And I don't mean you're a machine. I mean you're not there at all." She put her hand against his arm and watched it ripple.

James rose to his feet and regarded her with his customary mild expression. "Annie. What do you mean' Of course he is there."

"No. He's a holo-image." She reached out and touched James and saw a quiver run through him too. "So are you. So where is the real James'" She raised her voice. "I want to talk to whoever is in charge. The game is over, d.a.m.n it."

There was a moment of stillness, then the world around them rippled. James and Charles vanished like smoke on the wind. The Quonset huts disappeared, as did the town and the streets and the people. Nothing was left but a few buildings, and a vast sweep of desert, silvered by the moonlight. Gar and Annie stood for a moment, scanning the horizon, then Gar touched her arm. "Over there," he said softly.

A tall figure was approaching. Even in the moonlight Annie could see it wasn't James. It was a big, broad-shouldered man, but it wasn't him. As the man approached, she realized it was Charles.

"Another holo-image'" Gar whispered.

"I doubt it. What would be the point' They won't try to fool us the same way twice." She walked toward him and hesitated a foot away, looking at him closely and noticing that he looked precisely like the holo-image she'd just seen. "What have you done with James'"

"We needed his help," Charles said. He was a beautiful man, as attractive in his way as James was in his, and his mellifluous voice was even deeper than James'.

"Then there are others of you. Other humanoids."

Charles inclined his head slightly in a gesture that reminded her of James. "Thousands of us live in the desert. Millions more live elsewhere on the surface."

"James said the surface was deserted."

"In his'reality'it apparently was. Here it is not."

"We were told you were all killed," Gar said.

"Most of the humans believe that, because the Bureau removed us from their homes with the a.s.surance that we would be destroyed. But the truth is that we managed to win our freedom with the help of the Bureau. We keep it by means of the patrol."

"The what'"

"The cougar you encountered," Charles explained. "It intended to attack you and Gar, not James, and it would have succeeded had James not intervened. The patrol animals are programmed to search out and anesthetize human encroachers, who are then returned to their cities. The humans cannot make it far on the planet's surface without encountering one of our creatures."

"Nice," Annie said bleakly. "So you keep them holed up in their cities."

Charles shrugged, unconcerned. "Few of them want to come to the surface anyway. As long as they leave us alone, we leave them alone. On the rare occasions when we do want to speak with them, we keep them confined in an illusion such as you encountered. There they are only permitted to speak to our ' avatars. We never actually have to interact with them in any way."

Annie swallowed. This reality might be preferable to James' world, but it didn't sound idyllic by any stretch of the imagination. At least here the humanoids had survived, but they seemed to be waging a sort of Cold War with the humans, most of whom didn't even realize they were alive.

"Why did the Bureau tell the humans you were destroyed'" she asked.

Charles scowled. "Many of them wanted to keep us as slaves," he said, bitter anger lacing his tone. "Had the Bureau let us come to the surface and advertised the fact, we would constantly be fending off bounty hunters, humans who wanted to sell us back to other humans. It is better that they do not realize we are here at all. It's better that they believe us gone entirely." He nodded at Gar. "It was actually his idea."

"Mine'" Gar said.

Charles shrugged. "Technically not yours, I suppose. The person we knew as Gar in this reality. You managed to convince the Director of the Bureau that we should be spared."

Gar scowled. "The Director of the Bureau was Dekka, and she hated the humanoids. She would never have agreed to that."

"Dekka was in charge of the Bureau'" Annie said incredulously. "But she was nuts! How did she get to a position like that'"

"What you saw as psychotic behavior," Gar said dryly, "others regarded as devotion to her cause."

Charles lifted an eyebrow. "I have never heard of a Bureau agent named Dekka. In this reality, the head of the Bureau is male."

"That must be one of the things that changed," Annie said.

Gar c.o.c.ked his head. "What is the name of the Bureau's Director' Maybe I know him."

"His name is Arda Sterling."

"Sterling," Annie said in a shocked whisper.

Gar's mouth dropped open. "I never heard of an Arda Sterling in the Bureau."

"Of course not!" Annie said excitedly. "Because there wasn't one! Don't you see, Gar, James changed history when he saved that baby. It had nothing to do with Clark'it had to do with one of his descendants. When James changed history by saving the girl Clark later married, he changed everything."

It was actually a h.e.l.l of an irony, she thought. James had gone to the past, determined to kill a baby, and he had believed he'd failed in his mission because he had been unable to bring himself to do it. But when he had saved a baby, performing a heroic act that was totally in character, he'd changed the future ' without the slightest intention of doing so.

"Do you have cities'" she asked.

Charles made a snorting sound that she guessed was supposed to indicate disgust. "We are humanoids," he said curtly. "We have no need for shelter. The sun, the insects, the animals, cannot harm us. We live at peace with nature. The only element here that can damage us is sandstorms, and we use force fields to protect ourselves from them when necessary."

"It sounds like you have things pretty well under control," Annie said. "But you said you needed James. Why'"

"He has information that we need," Charles responded.

"Information," Annie repeated. "Like what'"

Charles looked down at her. His dark eyes looked very cold in the moonlight. "When we agreed to leave the cylinder cities, the Bureau wiped our memories of any information that the humans judged as harmful. Some of that information is extremely basic. Since James is from an alternate reality, his memory was never wiped, so we wish to download the information he has."

That sounded creepy as h.e.l.l to Annie, but she realized downloading might be as normal as conversation to a humanoid. a.s.suming they weren't forcing James into giving up information against his will. She thought it was pretty horrible these people had been forced to have information removed from their minds'that sounded a bit too much like rape for her taste'and she didn't really blame them for wanting it back.

"I'd like to see James," she said at last.

Charles looked at her, and the revulsion in his eyes intensified. "I cannot permit you near my people," he said.

She wondered what the humanoids had gone through in this reality. Obviously they hadn't been eradicated, but whatever had happened, it had obviously left them with some very unpleasant feelings toward humans. If the humans had wanted to wipe them out, and only the intervention of the Bureau had saved them, she wasn't really surprised they were suspicious of her. "Look," she said, "I understand you're not really fond of humans, but I'm not even from this time. I didn't have a d.a.m.ned thing to do with the way you were treated."

"That may be true. But my people do not want to interact with such as you."

His tone was filled with sheer loathing, and Annie realized that he was genuinely repulsed by her presence, revolted by the idea of exposing his people to her.

But somehow she had to see James.

She hesitated, uncertain what to do. Then she remembered the way Gar's mother had spoken to James, the way he'd had difficulty refusing to do what she wanted. She stiffened her spine and glared into Charles' eyes. "I want to see James, d.a.m.n it. Now."

Charles hesitated. At last he nodded. "Very well," he said, and turned. He was as tall as James, and his strides were equally long. Annie trotted along after him, trying to ignore the stiffness in her calves, and Gar walked easily behind her.

Dawn was beginning to break over the desert as they reached the humanoid's encampment, streaking the wide sky with fingers of gold and pink, and Annie realized she hadn't had a bit of sleep. Abruptly she discovered she was exhausted. She decided she'd get some sleep after she'd seen that James was okay.

Charles paused and reached out. Suddenly a patch of the desert disappeared, and a small building appeared.

Annie hesitated, suspicious. "You said you don't use buildings."

"This is a ' I suppose you would call it an infirmary. On the rare occasions when we are damaged enough that our components are exposed, they can be damaged by sand or water. We have to keep out of the elements if our skin is opened for any reason. This is a clean environment, kept at a constant temperature, to use on those occasions when we are damaged."

His explanation seemed reasonable enough. Annie started toward the door, then paused and glanced at Gar. He nodded gravely.

"Go ahead, Annie. I'll wait out here."

Annie shot him a grateful smile and followed Charles into the building. Inside the light was brilliant, so bright that she involuntarily flinched. She blinked and squinted against the brilliance.

And gasped.

James lay on a metal table, as naked as he had been the night she'd met him.

And his chest and abdomen were wide open.

Chapter 27.

Annie stood there, gaping, at the broad expanse of missing flesh. A human would have been dead had so much of the skin and muscles over his chest and abdomen been removed, but James was not a human. She knew that, but she'd never confronted the fact so vividly before.

James turned his head and looked at her. In his brilliant eyes she thought she glimpsed shame. "Now you know better what I am," he said softly. Annie swallowed hard, steeled herself, and walked forward. "I knew what you were already, James."

"Not fully," he whispered. "But now you know." She stepped closer, close enough that she could see what was exposed by the missing expanse of skin. Not blood and gore, and not gears, but grayish metal ribs and some odd plastic-looking things that she imagined served as internal organs. One, just beneath his ribs, pulsed in a steady rhythm, and she remembered Kay saying, There does appear to be a pump of some sort in the abdominal area'

She wanted to throw up, and she wasn't sure if it was because she was forcibly confronting the reality of what James was, for the first time, or because she didn't like seeing her boyfriend's guts exposed. Maybe both.

But the thought of Kay gave her courage. She had a sudden, vivid image of Kay smacking her and saying, "Get a grip, Annie!" The mental picture was almost enough to make her smile. Almost, but not quite. She went forward to James and put her hand on his. His fingers wrapped around hers.

"Are you all right'" she whispered.

James gazed up at her, looking as if she was the most important thing in the world to him. "I am fine," he said. "I am relieved to find my people are alive, in this reality at least." "I don't really understand time travel, but I guess this is the real reality now," Annie said wryly. "But what are they doing to you, James'" "They wish to download information from me," James said. "Yeah, I got that from Charles. But what information'" "I have no way of knowing. They are simply downloading every piece of information I possess." "To a computer'"

James shook his head slightly. "They have not yet constructed a computer of that complexity. They are downloading to another humanoid via wireless communication."

It was weird, Annie thought, that they had to take apart James' abdomen and chest in order to download information. It seemed like an awful lot of trouble to go to, considering that twenty-first century computers were designed to download data easily. But she decided not to pursue that thought right now. "So they asked you to download everything you know'"

James nodded. "I am more than willing to cooperate," he said. "Charles and I discussed this for quite some time. Even though he would not tell me precisely what information they need, I am happy to help my people."

"Charles is your best friend, isn't he'"

"In my reality, he was. In fact, he seems to regard me with affection in this reality as well. He was very apologetic about doing this to me. I got the impression that I have something he and the other humanoids need badly."

Annie bit her lip. "I don't think that bodes well for the humans in the cylinder cities."

"You may be right," James acknowledged. "But I refuse to worry about them. They gave up the humanoids to the Bureau without objection, believing they would be destroyed. They deserve what they get."

"Suppose the humanoids intend to kill them'" Annie asked softly. "Do all twelve billion of them deserve to die'"

James stared at the ceiling and did not respond. At that moment Charles stepped back into the small room. "I believe you have had enough time to talk," he said in his deep, rich voice.

"Just a minute," Annie said. "I'm curious about something. There's some sort of paradox here. James and Gar are from a different reality. Where are the James and Gar that belong in this reality'"

Charles looked at her with a glimmer of respect in his dark eyes. "As it happens, they are both dead. James was killed in an accident not long after we came to the surface."

"And yet he's here now."

"By going to the past, I stepped out of the time stream," James explained. "None of the changes that occurred affected me. The same is true of Gar. We checked the records. In this reality, he died about a month ago. He was killed on the surface by a real cougar while helping the humanoids, and his mother has not yet been made aware of his demise."

"The Bureau does not want civilians to realize we are out here," Charles put in. "Therefore they have to manufacture a story explaining Gar's death. They have his body in cold storage while they debate the best way to explain away the wounds on his corpse. They have an extremely tangled bureaucracy, and it takes them a long time to make the simplest decisions."

"It's nice to know some things don't change." Annie looked back at James. "It's darned convenient that you're both dead in this reality, though."

"It may not be a matter of convenience at all. It may be related to the property of time travel that I once explained to you, that a person cannot exist twice in the same time. Perhaps that is true even for alternate realities. Perhaps if the James and Gar of this time were not deceased, we would not have been able to travel into the future again."

Annie winced and rubbed at her forehead. "Time travel gives me a headache."

"It has given many physicists a headache," James responded.

"Ms. Simpson," Charles said, a little more forcefully. "It is time for you to go."

"Go where'" Annie demanded, letting go of James' hand and stalking toward him. Considering how strong James was, she knew it was reckless to press Charles too hard, but she seemed to have lost her patience somewhere in the desert sand. "Are you going to send us back to the cylinder cities' Because that was what the holo-images tried to convince us to do."

"Holo-images'" James echoed.

"Never mind." Annie didn't particularly want James to know the depths of his friend's deception. "I don't want to go live with those people. They think I'm a barbarian."

"With some justification," Charles said.

She ignored the coolly delivered insult. "Besides that, I've gotten the impression they want to impose the death penalty on me. I'm really not in favor of that."

"I can understand that," Charles answered, a flicker of humor in his deep voice.

"And I'm not going back to the past without James either, d.a.m.n it."

Charles sighed. "Very well. In an hour or so we will have all the information from James that we need. At that point we will permit all three of you to return to the cylinder city. If you and James can get to the TDM and return to the past, you are free to do so."

Annie turned that over in her mind. "That seems fair," she said slowly. "But I'd like to know one thing. What information is it that you need from James'"