Chapter 10
The next month or so was, if not quiet, then at least routine. Enclave sent monsters down to Earth every couple of days, and we went out and dispatched them.
I don't remember whether I have ever really explained what's going on between Enclave and us. See, Enclave is run by a race of beings from outside our solar system. I saw some of the bosses once; they're basically long tubes of what looks like grayish-green gas. (Wizzit, I should note, is a much different kind of alien. He is a long tube of bright pink gas. Hmm. I wonder if that's why he likes Junior Prime Pink so much.) At any rate, these bosses are trying to conquer the Earth, but there are evidently some rules that dictate just how they have to go about it.
First rule is, attacks can be carried out only by humans. Or, at least by those who were born human. As I understand it, the big bosses cannot even set foot (so to speak) on the planet until it is fully subdued. Which means that everyone we face out there -- Lily, of course, but also minders like JB Swift and monsters like Buffy the Water Buffalo -- were at one time human beings like you and me. Zoinks don't count, because they're not really alive anyway.
Second rule: Humans can be turned into monsters only if they ask to be. There is none of this "kidnap someone, turn them into a monster, send them out there" stuff. Nope, every bad guy we meet out there is a volunteer. I'm not exactly sure why someone would want to be turned into a two-foot-tall scarlet hedgehog like JB Swift, much less a behemoth like Buffy, but I suppose there's no accounting for taste.
We don't really understand where Lily falls in all of this, by the way. I have spoken with Li Lin-fa, the Chinese girl that Lily used to be, and I can't believe that she asked for what was done to her. It's true that she wasn't mutated into a monster, at least not physically, but JB Swift did all kinds of monstrous things to her mind, compartmentalizing it into a couple of dozen personalities, of which commander mode and attacker mode were only two. I intend to set her free from that some day and to see that JB Swift pays for everything that he did to her.
The third rule is not so much a rule as a limitation that Enclave tries to overcome. There seems to be some kind of natural resistance to the monsters they send down, a sort of planetary immune response. That's why they can't attack more often than every couple of days. I have been to an Enclave base, and I saw more monsters there than have ever been sent down to Earth. It is that immune response that keeps them from simply flooding us with those monsters.
That's why we always rush out to destroy the monster du jour as soon as it is sent out. The immune response is our primary defense against Enclave, but every monster that comes down weakens it. It recovers in time, naturally, but if a monster is let go for too long, then things can degenerate to the point where Enclave could send out, say, two or three monsters at once. If those aren't destroyed quickly enough, then things weaken even further, and the whole affair becomes a vicious circle.
That's the part that has us the most worried about our current standoff with the United States. If Enclave sends down a monster that the US military can't handle or puts it in a place they can't reach, then I don't know what's going to happen. Wizzit might have to rescind his ban on operations in the States and send us in anyway. I mean, we couldn't just stand by and do nothing, could we?
Of course, our rushing in to help would seriously detract from our efforts to get Shelley released. Right now, Wizzit's ban is our main bargaining chip. Still, as much as we all love Shelley, what happens to her is far less important in the grand scheme of things than preventing the planet from being overrun by aliens -- and she would be the first person to remind you of that.
Regardless, the world spun on its merry way towards Christmas and the new year, and for a while, at least, it appeared as though Enclave had forgotten that the United States ever existed. We engaged monsters in Europe, Africa, Asia, South America, even one in Antarctica, believe it or not, but nothing on the North American continent at all. That was just fine, as far as we were concerned. No one on the team likes to stand around and just watch things happen.
Unfortunately, it was also just fine with the American public and press. There was a bit of a kerfluffle over the destruction of the Naples National clubhouse, but that blew over when it became clear that no more domestic attacks were immediately forthcoming. In fact, after a couple of weeks we started to see editorials with headlines like "Are the Monster Attacks Gone For Good?" and "Does America Need the Primes?"
There were even a couple of idiots on the Sunday morning political talk shows crowing that the army had clearly dealt Enclave "a decisive blow in the name of freedom" and how with the former Prime Red in custody, it was only a matter of time before the rest of the Primes, and all of our Prime technology, would be in US military hands as well and all would be right with the world.
News like that did nothing to raise my spirits, even though I knew it wasn't true. The government folks holding Shelley were no closer to getting our names from her, or any information about our tech, than they were on her first day there. They had been giving her a rough time of it, but she was holding out like a champ.
How did I know this? It's simple. See, when we went in to take control of the surveillance cam in Shelley's cell, Nicolai had also managed to install a little device that let us tap into their secure network. Wizzit called it a passthrough, and he had been using it to keep close tabs on their internal communications, so we had a pretty good idea of what was going on there.
For one thing, Bill and Shelley's little game with the chewing gum was having more success than anyone had expected. Emile Zwicky was a bit of a control freak, it appeared, and the thought that one of his staff might be surreptitiously supplying her with contraband was causing him to have conniptions, to judge by the increasingly shrill memos he had been sending out.
We also knew just what it was that her interrogators wanted from her. The names and addresses of the rest of team were top priority for them, and we had prepared list after list of fake names for Shelley to feed them. Second priority was to get their hands on our teleportation technology; apparently, the thought of being able to instantly send elite US troops in and out of "sensitive areas" all across the globe was giving someone the warm fuzzies.
Unfortunately for those folks, and perhaps fortunately for us, none of us Primes has any idea how teleportation actually works, not even Shelley. Sure, Nicolai can create transponders that let Wizzit locate someone anywhere on the globe, but beyond that, the only thing any of us can do to initiate teleportation is to say, "Hey, Wizzit, can you teleport me, please?"
Nevertheless, after we discovered this was what they wanted, Wizzit, Nicolai, Padma, and Bill put their heads together and came up with a plausible-sounding pile of bafflegab (they called it a "technology framework") for Shelley to give her captors should they ever start questioning her seriously about our tech. Wizzit assured them that it was nothing like the method he actually used, although it might actually lead to something after, oh, about a hundred years of research.
The four of them -- Wizzit, Nicolai, Padma, and Bill -- seemed to be putting their heads together a lot these days. I wasn't sure what they were working on, and none of them was talking, but Nicolai and Padma in particular were spending an awful lot of time together in the weapons room. And no, it wasn't all smooching, although I suspect some of that was going on. I saw them emerge at least once looking -- what is the phrase? -- "rumpled, but happy."
Which was all well and good for them. At least they had something to keep them busy and not moping about the upcoming holiday. Christmas can be a difficult time at HQ. I suppose it would be the same with anyone who is required to be away from family during a major holiday; it's all too easy to let oneself get depressed and homesick.
Our collective solution, as always, was to make our own Christmas celebration. We decorated the lounge and the common room, some of us baked Christmas treats, and we talke
d about the various Christmas customs we each observed.
Padma is Hindu, not Christian like the rest of us, but she told us a little about the holiday of Pancha Ganapati, which was also celebrated around this time of year. Nicolai tried to explain to her why we observe Christmas, but I don't think he was satisfied with the result; after listening for a couple of minutes, Padma nodded and said, "Ah, I see. You are celebrating the birthday of an avatar of a god," and no one could persuade her of anything different. And really, I don't think she was that far off the mark.
Christmas Eve was quiet. We had fought a monster the day before and did not expect to see another one until Christmas Day or the day after. Toby drew the lucky straw and got to pop out to Manchester to see his family, and he chose to take Bill with him. Nicolai and Trina together made a more-or-less traditional Polish-Russian twelve-dish Christmas Eve supper, although, as Trina explained, Christmas in Russia was generally not celebrated until January.
Things were pretty dead after that. I went back to my room and watched some of the traditional Christmas TV specials and re-read some e-mails from Angie and my folks. I was sorely tempted to ask Wizzit to 'port me home for an hour or so to spend some time with them. He probably would have done it, too, if it had been just my parents and Angie, but Nick and Jerome were home on winter break from Ohio State and Joy was going to be there with her husband as well. I would have liked to see my other three siblings, since I hadn't talked with either of my brothers for nearly six months and Joy was pregnant and supposedly getting as big as a house, but it would be just too hard to explain my sudden appearance and equally sudden disappearance.
Nicolai and Padma were sharing one of the comfortable chairs in the lounge as I wandered past. Her eyes were closed and her head was resting against his shoulder; she was listening to him read "A Visit from St. Nicholas" aloud. Mike and Trina were in the office with the door closed, having some sort of earnest conversation. Neither pair seemed as though they wanted any company, so I walked over to the kitchen, sipped some orange juice, and nibbled on Trina's ginger cookies until lights-out, trying not to feel sorry for myself.