was obvious from Scott’s pained expression that he did, indeed, recall this incident. Betty went on:
“Remember how I told you that I’d, like, kill you someday?”
Scott nodded slowly. Betty smiled. “Well, like, that day has come. Totally.“
She held up her hand and gave her fingers an odd flex. Yellowish claws pierced up through the skin. I said sternly:
“Enough is enough. Let’s stop this right here. Betty, leave your brother alone.”
She spared me only a flat glance of absolute disinterest. “Yeah, right. As if I have to, like, listen to you,” she replied, as if she ever had, since reaching the age of ten. “Like, who do you think you are? My father?” Betty giggled. “I don’t think so.”
Scott was becoming cross-eyed as he tried to track the approach of her claws to his face. I appealed to Vicki:
“Will you control your daughter?”
“Oh, so she’s my daughter now? Well, you know something, George? For once you’ve got it right. She is my daughter. Mine, not yours. As a matter of fact—well, let me show you.” She turned toward the girl. “Take your brother to your room and have fun with him there.”
“Do I have to?”
“Yes, you have to.”
Betty made a moue of disgust but eventually complied with her customary poor grace, dragging Scott away by the chair he was tied to. Vicki waited until the bedroom door slammed shut after them. “Nineteen years, George,” she said at last. “I made a good mole, didn’t I? Pretending all that time. Pretending to be a woman. Pretending that I felt something when you were with me. As if I could ever feel anything for you. Or from you. Well, I want you to take a good look at this.” With a familiar wriggle of hip and thigh she slipped down her panty hose, hiked aside her skirt. Beneath the skin was the hard material of an alien pelvis, bizarre organs of foreign origin, a pelt of thick bristly spikes.
I closed my eyes.
“So, Betty—”
“We’re hermaphroditic, George. She’s all mine.”
“And Scott—”
“He’s your fault, unfortunately. Standard procedure for a deep-cover operative. Cloned from a tissue sample. You gave me lots, you bastard.”
Vicki smoothed down her skirt and knelt beside me. “I brought him to term in an artificial uterus. You don’t know what it’s like, having one of those things implanted. It hurts, George, it hurts terribly. And I carried him within my body for nine months. For you, you son of a bitch. You know what’s funny? What’s really, truly funny? Well, the thing is, George, I bet you actually think I’m going to kill you quickly.”
She laughed. Scott began screaming. An explosion sounded, followed by an awful grinding noise. A second armored column was approaching the wreckage of the first.
“Betty!” Vicki called. “Get in here. You can play with your brother later.”
I’d always known that Betty was her mother’s daughter but not until this moment, watching them work together to eliminate the motorized regiment at the bottom of the knoll, did I understand how alike they were.
But the strangest aspect of the entire situation was that I felt a peculiar sort of pride in their murderous efficiency. I almost had to restrain myself from applauding when they took out the final tank, blowing the turret off it in a maelstrom of fire and shrapnel.
Soon the last detonation died away and the backyard was quiet except for the cries of the wounded at the foot of the hill. Betty loaded a clip of semi-intelligent, heat-seeking ammunition into her weapon and took care of them. Vicki cocked her head, evidently communicating inaudibly with her command, either through telepathy or through some kind of internal organic radio. Without her mask she was incapable of human expression, but I could hear a smile in her voice when she addressed her daughter:
“That’s it, then. Manhattan’s secured. Brooklyn and Queens, too. And The Bronx and most of Westchester. EARTHCOM projects that the entire Eastern Seaboard will be pacified by seven thirty-five.”
“So, like, everything’s on schedule.”
“To the minute.”
But just then there sounded a terrible booming in the sky, loud enough to burst every window in our house and all along the street, showering us with a mist of pulverized glass. Descending from beyond the atmosphere hurtled another armada. These new spaceships were narrow and aerodynamic, smaller than the others but more maneuverable. Within seconds they had engaged and shot down the airborne pickets left behind by the earlier fleet. Then they turned their sights ground ward. Great pillars of smoke and flame began rising from the horizon. Vicki exclaimed:
“What in God’s name is that?”
No answer arrived for her from headquarters. So I replied:
“That is the Eleventh Sector Peacekeeping Force.”
She whirled toward me with lightning speed but I was faster. I extruded a tentacle straight through my human skin, whipped it several times around her rifle, and wrenched the gun out of her hands. Then I disarmed my daughter.
“Come on, Vicki,” I said tiredly, flexing my pincers and snapping the clothesline binding me to the chair. “You didn’t really think that the Confederacy would ignore your little adventure, did you? We’ve known of Xerillia’s plans for Earth for generations. We were just waiting to catch you in the act, that’s all. Right, Son?”
“Right, Dad!” Scott had slithered out of his own bonds and joined us in the dining room. He kicked Betty before I could stop him. “Take that, extraterrestrial phlegm!”
“Eat dirt and, like, die.”
“Children!” Vicki’s voice was dangerous. They both quieted. I continued:
“Confederacy intelligence identified you before you settled in place. That’s why I’m here. To keep you from causing too much mischief. And by the way—Scott isn’t my son. He’s ours. We grafted a strand of your DNA to one of mine. Same story with Betty, much as I hate to admit it. We replaced your embryo with one of ours. Your phenotype; our genotype. Hybridization is standard procedure for deep-cover counter-operatives. I think the theory is that we’ll become personally attached to our work.”
I chuckled ruefully. Vicki’s response was inarticulate. The clawed manipulatory appendages surrounding her mouth began twitching furiously. It took her a full five minutes to compose herself.
“So do your worst, George,” she said bravely. “We’re not afraid to die.”
I think it’s her theatrical temperament that has always so endeared her to me. I replied:
“Don’t be melodramatic, Vicki. Who mentioned anything about dying? No, this invasion business has really messed up Earth pretty badly. It’s going to take effort and elbow grease to get things even halfway back to normal. Looking into your personal future, I see lots of volunteer activity. Red Cross. The Women’s Auxiliary of This and That. The Urban League. Literacy Advocates. Aids Walks. You name it, and you’re involved. Darling, from this point forward you’re part of the solution.”
Then I turned to my daughter. “And as for you, well, first off, you’re grounded.”
“Way to go, dad,” Scott exclaimed.
“And secondly, you, too, my child, have developed an avocation for helping others. Yes, I think you’ll be perfect as a—a candy striper. Two afternoons a week. And Saturdays. At Oakbranch Seniors Home. Now retract your claws before you really irritate me. Any questions?”
“I hate you, daddy!” Betty cried, forgetting in her anguish her enthusiasm for the word like. “You’re ... you’re evil!”
“Maybe. Maybe not. But I am your father. And you will do as I say. Victoria? Am I correct?”
My wife nodded slowly. “It seems so,” she said pensively. “Who would have ever thought it?”
Betty glared at us both and then ran to her room, slamming the door loudly. Scott had the good sense to keep still and gloat quietly. Vicki gave me an enigmatic look, the crystalline facets of her eyes oddly beautiful in the pale twilight coming through the glassless patio door.
Finally she asked: “So what’s next, Georg
e?”
“Let’s make a deal,” I suggested. “You start dinner, and I’ll vacuum.”
Then I knelt and took her human mask from the garbage.
“And put your face back on. I don’t know exactly why, but I’ve grown accustomed to it.”
###
About the Author
David Wesley Hill is an award-winning fiction writer with more than thirty stories published in the U.S. and internationally. In 1997 he was presented with the Golden Bridge award at the International Conference on Science Fiction in Beijing, and in 1999 he placed second in the Writers of the Future contest. In 2007, 2009, and 2011 Mr. Hill was awarded residencies at the Blue Mountain Center, a writers and artists retreat in the Adirondacks. He studied under Joseph Heller and Jack Cady and received a Masters in creative writing from the City University of New York.
Castaway on Temurlone
It is indeed a Universe of Miracles!
But not for young Pimsol Anderts, idle and jobless on a depressed, waterlogged world, until he signs aboard the interstellar freighter Miraculous Abernathy. Indentured to the aristocratic Wirthy family—and bewitched by beautiful Mirable Wirthy, the latest clone of the long-dead matriarch Imogene Wirthy—Pim's adventure has barely begun when pirates attack, forcing him to flee the ship with Mirable in tow.
Suddenly they are castaways on the primitive planet Temurlone. Separated from his beloved by the Marvelous Flying Bicycle Men and doomed to hard labor in the Temurlone meat mines, Pim knows that nothing can keep