This choice: Booby-trap the water and possess a ranger or two. • Go Back...Chapter #14Booby-trap the water and possess a ranger or two. by: Seuzz   The door is unlocked, so you slip in and drop a big old drop of David goo into the water, then sneak your bike off into the woods and wait.
It's quite a wait, but you're far from bored, because you just drop your mind into the pack until your human ears hear the rangers returning. They sound unhappy, but you can't make out their words. They stand by the truck for a good long time, talking inaudibly, then they get in and drive off back to the station. You close your eyes and let your mind go blank, waiting ... waiting ...
And then you feel an odd sense of displacement and are suddenly sitting in the passenger seat of the truck, looking carefully out the window, a bottle of water in your right hand. You swirl it around and peer at it—yeah, not all of the goo went into ... Brian. You look over at ... Vincent ... who's driving, and hand the bottle to him. "This water tastes funny."
He looks down at it peevishly. "So throw it out."
"No, try it. Tell me what you think."
"Hell, no."
"Go on. I'm telling you there's something wrong with it."
He rolls his eyes and takes it and sniffs at it. "Smells fine to me."
"Taste it. I think there's a contaminant."
"You always think there's contaminants is stuff. You and that organic garbage you're always eating."
He takes a sip, though. And the truck almost goes off the road until you get his legs disentangled and onto the brakes and clutch. You put the truck in neutral. Then you tap into their minds just long enough to figure out who they are and what they know.
Brian Clark: graduate student in environmental studies, in his mid-twenties. An eco-nut. He's the one who heard your dad's screams yesterday, and the baying wolves. Has a well-toned body and a cute girlfriend, also in grad school.
Vincent Gallegos: Professional ranger in his late thirties, divorced and carrying on an affair with the station secretary. Doesn't much like Brian and is not convinced Brian actually heard anything yesterday. They've been arguing all morning, and Vincent is about ready to toss Clark's report aside. Only that really weird business down in the city makes him hesitate.
Actually, this should be easy to handle and then you can just abandon them. You craft and insert a thought into Brian's head: Reports of wolves killing campers won't go down well with the public, and could help generate a backlash against the species. Best to just let that report die ...
And as you tuck that thought into his head—somewhere at the front of his mind where he'll find it on his own when you release him—you find another, and very interesting, thought: They got a call this morning that a Colonel Lord, from Fort Suffolk, who plans to visit the station this afternoon. Some kind of business he needs to discuss with them. That's a name that means something to you: must be Diana Lord's father. You wonder what business he might have to discuss with a couple of park rangers.
So you drop down into their subconscious minds and send them on their way; eavesdropping, you're pleased to note they've both decided to put Brian's report in the circular file, and, gently, you suggest to Brian that he suppress all further reports of strange wolf behavior. The fruitcake is gratifyingly agreeable to the suggestion. In the meantime, you use the pack to further disperse your father's remains.
* * * * *
You've got lots of time to kill before that colonel shows up at the ranger station, so you bike down into the city to find something else to do.
It comes to you that you haven't hung out with Chris Yves in a while. Chris fronts a punk band that you and your guys have a friendly rivalry with, and you're good friends with her, insofar as you're good friends with anyone. She's "cool" and rebellious, but she also takes her rebelliousness seriously, which amuses you. You tease her in a way which seems good natured, but you are, in fact, not much impressed with her. Except musically. It grates that she's a better musician than you are.
You reflect that there's a pot in need of a little stirring. You make a beeline for her house.
She and her band are practicing, as they usually do on Sunday afternoons and evenings, when you pull up front. You sit on your bike near the curb, watching and admiring them while leaning against the handlebars, for almost twenty minutes, while Chris and Terry and Thomas and the other Chris play and watch back with increasing bemusement, until they take a break.
"You coming in or not?" Terry challenges you.
"There a cover charge?" you shout back.
"Special promotion tonight," Thomas shouts. "Assholes get in free."
You grin and push your bike up.
Yves watches you from the corner of her eye as she drinks from a bottled water, and you have the passing thought that you could have her, here, tonight, in more ways than one. But that would be too easy and too cheap. You like a challenge, and Yves is one of the best you could have. After all, like you, she's had a string of girlfriends.
You drop onto the concrete floor of the garage and look up at her brightly. She pants a little and wipes her forehead with the back of her arm when she puts the bottle down. "So, you have any suggestions for us, Karter?" she says.
"You're asking me for notes?"
"Why, you got some flat ones you're trying to get rid of?"
"Get your improvements where you can, Yves."
She growls and you wrinkle your nose back at her. "Take this and burn it," she says to Terry, handing him her guitar. "I'm going to have this guys guts for strings." She kneels on the floor beside you. Then her hands dart out and she starts tickling you.
"Shit!" you cry, trying to scramble away—but not too hard. "Fuck, Yves! Mercy!" She leans back while you recover. "Well, I think you squeezed out a couple of B-flats and maybe even a high C, take 'em with my love," you pant.
"If I had you in my band, Karter," she says with devilish delight, "I'd squeeze more than that from you."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. I'd have your guts for strings and your ribs for a keyboard and your skull for a maraca and your skin for a drum."
"And who in your band'd actually have the skill to master such wonderful, or dare I say magical, new instruments?"
"Me. I'm the only one who could get a decent squeak or rattle out of that sack of shit you call a body."
"Yeah?" Your grin is huge and so is hers.
"Yeah! Only it would be pointless."
"How come is that?"
She puts her hands behind her back. "Because I won't touch you."
You groan and fall on your side and curl up into a ball. You close your eyes and look at her from under your lashes. Then you smile wistfully. "You're an even bigger flirt than I am, Yves."
"No, that's the one thing you're better than me at." She also lies down on her side, the better to grin mischievously into your face.
You bite your bottom lip hungrily. "Teach me how to kiss, Yves. Teach me how to kiss a girl."
"Oh, Karter," she groans. You just grin back.
"Alright," she says, and her devilish smile turns lazy. "Of course, in this demonstration you have to be a girl too." You roll your eyes upward and turn pink.
"So," she starts. "I assume you've had her out and you've murmured sweet nothings and you've told her there's a whole world out there that you want to show her and share with her. And now you're lying close to her and you're being tender. Then, after you've let the conversation lapse and let your eyes do the talking, you start by putting your arm around her shoulder ... like this." She wiggles up close and drapes her arm over your shoulder. "Then you look into her face, to see if she's actually expecting something from you." She tilts her head and looks into your face with an expression of curiosity and hunger. "And then you double check to see that she does have lips—very important that she do—and that they are soft and pillow-like and that they would feel wonderful against your own. And then you do a little test, just to confirm you're not seeing things." She leans in and brushes your lips lightly with hers. "Then you look again, but not from so far out. To make sure she's still there and still with you. And then ... And then you go in again. Slower. Let your nose lightly touch hers first. And then ... and then ..."
And then she's kissing you, very gently, but it's a real kiss. You're careful not to react. She pulls back briefly. "Of course, usually she's helping out." And then she kisses you a little more.
You groan and pull away and fall onto your back, crossing your arms tightly over your chest. She laughs. "And now you know what it's like to be on the other end of an Adam Karter special."
You look over at her—a dirty look, but a serious one. She herself is looking more than a little prim. "And how would you know what it's like to make out with me? "
"Because I've counseled a lot of girls who've done it. It's a like a seven-step program, the Adam Karter Recovery Program."
"Really? Sounds like the kind of thing a person could get rich off."
"A person could get very rich off it."
"What do you tell them?"
She looks at you, very serious. "I tell them you're an asshole and they should have never have gotten involved with you."
You smile. "Close the barn door, huh? Not very helpful, Yves."
"It would help if they spread the word."
"I think they do."
"I think they do too. It's like giving you free advertising."
You laugh, and she hops onto and straddles you, looking down into your face. "Do you like any of them, Karter?"
"I like one."
"Which one?"
"The one over the horizon."
"Which one is she?"
"I don't know. I can't see her, she's over the horizon."
She lays on your torso, the side of her head against the top of your chest. She says nothing for a few minutes, while you stare at the ceiling. "One of us is desperately unhappy, Karter," she says at last.
"What have you got to be unhappy about, Yves?"
"There's nothing wrong with me, so it must you."
"I'm not unhappy."
"No. Not merely unhappy. You're miserable."
"What makes you think that?"
"Because you have a sexy lesbian lying on your chest and you're not getting an erection. You've got something on your mind."
"My dad showed up yesterday."
She raises her head and looks at you. You look past her, saying nothing for awhile. "Your dad showed up yesterday," she eventually repeats.
"Yeah. Out of the blue. Haven't seen him in years."
"What happened?"
You shrug. "Hugs. Tears. Recriminations. Makeup sex between him and my mom, I think. Or make-up-for-time sex, whatever."
"And then?"
You look through the ceiling, to yesterday. "And then I killed him."
She says nothing.
"I closed my eyes and I pictured wild wolves chasing him around a hillside, and he was screaming and trying to get away. Because that's all he's good for, is running away. And they nipped at him and picked at him and finally pushed him down and then they tore at him until there was nothing left. It was like tearing the rags off a dummy and the stuffing out of the dummy until none of the dummy was left.
"And when I got up this morning he was gone. His car was gone. And there was nothing there to show that he had ever been back or was ever going to come back. So I think I must have killed him.
"Anyway, it feels like he's dead. In my mind at least."
She sits up and looks down at you. Then she gets off you. "No amount of fake making out is going to make that go away, is it?"
"Was it all fake, Yves? Aren't you sweet on me just the tiniest little bit?"
"No, it's all fake. All done with CGI. I'm not even here."
Her back is to you, so you reach up and run your finger down her spine. She twists away. "Don't, Karter," she says. "You've been good up to now. Don't spoil it by thinking you can make a real play for me."
"You asked me to be in your band, once."
"That was before I heard you play. Back when I needed a good-looking player to fill a hole and didn't know your playing sucked even more than your looks."
"Well, at least I haven't gotten any worse, in either department," you say, sitting up. "And is the music so important? We'd look so hot together."
"Then we'll just have to find a venue where looks are all that matter."
"Then there's only one solution. Marry me."
She laughs.
"Marry me," you repeat. "Forget looks. Even without that, we're perfect for each other. What's so funny?"
"You are, you goof. Like you could ever stay faithful to me."
"Oh, that," you say dismissively. You turn around and lay down and put your head in her lap. "I'm faithful to you now. I don't date. Not seriously, as your clientele can testify."
"That's because you're not serious about anything, Karter. Or anyone."
You smile, but sigh. "That's the tragedy of having acquired a reputation. No one ever believes it when I am serious."
She looks skeptical but amused. "Do you want me to take you seriously?"
You gaze into her eyes, losing yourself in them and letting your smile go slack. Then you deflate and look away. "No. That's the reason I love you. You're just about the only person who doesn't." Your smile is still slack when you look back at her. "Marry me," you repeat.
She sighs and looks away, and slaps the side of your leg. "Get out of here, Karter."
You let your body fall into a dead limp and put a challenge in your voice. "Give me one good reason we shouldn't get married."
She looks at you with faint but real exasperation. When you don't look away, she gets irritated. "You'd have to stop chasing girls. I wouldn't stand for it."
"Done." You say.
"Stop fucking around," she says.
"I'm not fucking around, not with you and not now."
"Well, you wouldn't be getting anything from me."
"I know. I can keep myself entertained."
"Would you share your porn stash with me?"
"God damn it, Yves," you say, sitting up. "Now who's ruining it? I said you don't take me seriously and I said that's why I love you, but there is such a thing as taking it too far." You start to stand up, but then pause, still with your back to her. "This isn't about the gay thing, is it?"
"Oh, is that what it is," she says mockingly. "You just want to be able to say you took me. Add me to your list."
'You're pissing me off now," you growl, turning around. "Because that's what it's not about."
"So what is it about?"
You chew on the inside of your cheek. "It's about us. What we mean to each other. What we could be together."
"What could we be together, Karter? What could we possibly be together?"
You continue to work the inside of your cheek while flicking your eyes back and forth between hers. "Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. But wouldn't you like to find out?"
"And we'd have to get married to find out?"
"Why not? Lock the cuffs and throw away the key."
"That's pretty serious, Karter."
You hold her eye. "No. No, it's not. That's the point. Nothing in life is serious. Especially that."
She gazes back, her mockery turning into contempt. "Oh, Karter. Like I said, you're such a goof."
You tighten your cheek in disappointment and let your stare get hard. She looks back at you, and you hold her there until her own gaze loses its amusement. Then you compress your lips and look away. "Yeah. Yeah, I am a goof. That's why you need me, why I'm offering myself to you." You stand up and look down at her. "You're so serious, Yves. You need a clown in your life. Some asshole you can paste in the puss with a pie when you need a laugh. Well, I'm your guy, I guess. I always will be." You leave her with a look of mild astonishment on her face.
Well, that should cause at least one sleepless night. You'll follow it up with a little tenseness and avoidance in the hallways, and then if she ever broaches the subject you'll tell her to forget it and go back to doing the silly stuff you're used to doing with her—which will make it impossible for her to forget it and to stop questioning herself.
* * * * *
At your house you lie on your bed and let your mind drift as you eavesdrop on the rangers, and on James. The latter is worrying over his possible luck with Amy, but right now you're distracted by more important things than that little game. So at three o'clock you take back direct control of Clark—he seems more pliable than Gallegos, and he also has a basic misanthropy that you find congenial in a host. You go into the station bathroom, to straighten his uniform and brush down his closely trimmed brown hair and gloat out of his light blue eyes. Trina is a cute girl, and she likes it dirty, and Brian Clark is a strapping man who can give it to her hard and dirty when he's of a mind. You're definitely of a mind to go fuck with someone and something this evening, to get the memory of your father's sagging performance out of your head. In the meantime, you have the military guys to consider.
About thirty minutes later Colonel Lord arrives with two other military types, one of whom stands at the door a little ways behind while the other stands in the outer office. Gallegos offers the colonel a chair and a cup of fresh coffee, which he takes with a smile and a murmured thanks. Gallegos smiles in his turn and sits behind the desk; you perch on its edge with your arms folded and a "fuck you" glare on your face—Clark hates the military and anything related to them.
Lord sips from his coffee then sits back and smiles at the both of you with friendly politeness. "I'll get right to the point," he says. "Have you been getting any reports of animals behaving strangely?"
You look at Gallegos; his mind is only loosely under your control, but you easily suppress his instinct to reply in the affirmative.
"No, why?" you reply.
Lord looks at you, and there's something speculative in his eye.
"Animals are always acting strangely, I know," he says. "When I ask if they've been acting strangely, I mean ... strangely for animals."
You stare back at him evenly. "No."
A light smile plays on his lips. "What about that attack in the city?" he says softly. "Doesn't that qualify?"
You compress your lips. "We're not convinced that was a bona fide attack. Just newspaper sensationalism."
"There was an eyewitness."
"Just an idiot kid who admitted he didn't see anything."
"The coroner said it was consistent with a wolf attack."
"Wolves don't act that way."
"But you see, that's just what I mean," he says with a light playing in his eyes. "Animals acting out of character."
You roll your eyes. "If we're going to play that kind of game, well, we found the half-eaten remains of a fox the other day. Mule deer don't eat foxes, so I guess the mule deer are acting out of character."
The colonel keeps his temper; he even looks amused.
"Perhaps if you were more specific about what you're interested in, colonel," says Gallegos diplomatically.
He sips some more coffee while thinking. "Then let's not say 'strangely'," he says. "Let's say ... 'intelligently'."
You roll your eyes again and snort. Gallegos leaps in. "Animal intelligence is ... well, it's in the eye of the beholder. Any animal can appear frighteningly intelligent, almost humanly intelligent, if you're of a mind to see them that way."
Lord bites his lips and gazes into the depths of his mug.
"I'm afraid we can't be very helpful if you can't be more helpful, colonel," says Gallegos apologetically.
The colonel looks at him and at you steadily, then he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small vial and sets it on the desk. It contains an iridescent blue substance, which you instantly recognize: So, there's more of the stuff out there. "Alright. Have either of you seen something like this in the park?"
You and Gallegos look at each other and then at him. A harsh flush begins to creep up your neck. "You goddamned sons of bitches," you growl. "What the fuck have you been dumping—"
"But that's just it," Lord says. He never raises his voice. "We haven't been 'dumping' anything. And yet—this is terribly embarrassing to admit—some of this stuff has gone missing."
"I don't care," you say, a tremble of anger in your voice. "It was fucking moronic to put you army assholes next to a park, especially if you're turning loose toxic compounds—"
"This is beyond your pay grade, Mr. Clark," he says sharply, and his hazel eyes have suddenly acquired a steely cast. "Kindly keep a civil tone when talking to me. All by myself I shit bigger than the entire park service, and I'm asking for your voluntary cooperation in a matter that is of urgent concern to your department as well as mine. Because none of us want news of this getting out. This is not a matter of military secrets or national security anymore. This is a matter, potentially, of human survival."
The three of you continue to look at each other. Finally, Gallegos says, "If you're going to convince us of something like that, colonel, I think you're going to have to take us into your confidence. At least a little bit."
Lord becomes very courteous again. "I can tell you this much, sirs. This substance, which we thought only had potential uses as a stabilizer in certain chemical mixes—you see, Mr. Clark, we were not playing around with anything we thought to be toxic—well, it turns out to have certain, um, interesting effects on the nervous systems of higher animal forms. It was something we only discovered by accident, and in a highly controlled environment. It is not, we believe, toxic, but it does cause changes in behavior."
"And you said some of this stuff went missing?"
"We had a spill, before we knew what we had. It was entirely controlled, and we cleaned it up according to protocol. Because, as I said, there is nothing intrinsically and obviously dangerous in the stuff. But then we stumbled on these additional, um, properties, and we rushed to secure the earlier residue and give it a much more careful disposal. And ... Well, we couldn't account for all of it. None of it went off the base while we had it, but animals get onto military bases too, and as best we can deduce, rats or badgers or foxes or ... wolves ... might have gotten into it and been affected by it."
You've got Clark a nice purple color, to keep in character, but you hold his tongue. Gallegos, meanwhile, needs no prodding from you to push the conversation in the directions you're interested in.
"You mentioned a threat to human survival, colonel?"
"We wouldn't have seen that kind of danger, Mr. Gallegos, if it hadn't been for that report of a wolf attack in the city. We say that it modifies behavior, but we don't know the extent or all the manifestations the change can take. But if word gets out that animals have acquired a purposeful and ... malign ... intelligence and grudge against humans ... Look, have either of you ever seen that old movie The Birds?" You sneer at him. "No, we're not concerned about something like that, Mr. Clark. And I'm sure you were cheering the birds when you watched that film. But here's something you should be worried about, and which we are worried about. If the public got the idea that animals were not to be trusted anymore, how long do you think the ecosystem could hold up?" You let Clark's eyes wander about the room thoughtfully. "You see, Mr. Clark?" the colonel continues. "We are on the same side, worried about the exact same thing. We're not all philistines in the Pentagon."
You would have taken the colonel then and there, if you dared, but he had two other men there, and you have no idea how much "goo" it takes to dominate a person. So you let him leave unmolested. Afterward, though, you tweak Gallegos' memories and send him out to the bathroom, where you cough yourself out of him and let him collapse—you scoop up the extra goo and pop it into Clark's mouth, and then help his superior back to his office to recover from his fainting fit. He's highly disturbed by the colonel's news and has decided Clark's report of a wolf attack needs reactivation, but you convince him to leave it quiet. As the colonel said, alarming the public would be a bad idea—and there's nothing the colonel could do about Clark's report except start stomp all over the park, probably to no good effect. You and he can investigate things more quietly.
By now you regret not having moved on the colonel through his daughter, Diana; and you're not inclined to go over to their house and try possessing them directly, so the best you can do is wait until tomorrow.
You pull yourself out of Clark's head and groggily sit up on your bed. You're hungry, but you're also hungry for Clark's wife. You could go find yourself something to eat— there's still lots of money left from selling your dad's car—and then reactivate Clark and pleasure yourself later in the night; or you could take Trina and afterward take a hearty meal.  | Members who added to this interactive
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