Dreams and Swords Read online

  To Sheila ...

  My dream, my reality

  CONTENTS

  THE GIFT

  JESSIE

  A Kate Delafield Story

  BENNY’S PLACE

  XESSEX

  FORCE MAJEUR

  MOTHER WAS AN ALIEN

  MANDY LARKIN

  SURVIVOR

  A LEOPARD’S SPOTS

  O CAPTAIN, MY CAPTAIN

  THE TEST

  All books are either dreams or swords ...

  —Amy Lowell

  Sword Blades and Poppy Seed

  THE GIFT

  The Tehachapi mountains had been selected for the rendezvous. Behind Marge Bowman and Karla Cooper lay the high-rise glitter of Los Angeles; ahead, the humble lights of Bakersfield. The night was cool, crystalline, the stars abundant and close, the summer smell of cooling earth rich and vivid.

  The two women had been in their designated place since six o’clock, only two hours early for the rendezvous, but they had come from Oregon—not nearly so far as the other parents—to this single site in the United States, one of ten around the globe. Thousands of parents were gathered along the foothills, but only intermittent murmurs of voices nearby reached Marge and Karla.

  Marge pointed a trembling finger at the TV display. “Julie looks so frightened.”

  Karla did not glance at the screen; through binoculars she stared at the floodlit plain below. She shifted the glasses from the spaceship, pulsing its midnight blue rhythms several miles away, over the thousands of tiny figures populating the plain, to their daughter’s compound. “The Monitors are doing their best. Soon it’ll be over. Soon, Margie.”

  Marge said more calmly, “It’s going to be worse when the Monitors leave, when it ... happens.”

  “Margie, I know,” she said helplessly. “I know.”

  On the screen before Marge Bowman, in slow pan over the children in compound 20D, the remote-controlled camera picked up the face of their daughter—pale, frightened, her blonde silk hair blowing in the cool breeze flowing over the plain. Julie was wearing a warm jacket and pants, but she had apparently lost or discarded her cap. She scanned the plain anxiously, staring at the mountains toward Marge, then twisted to gaze at the distant blinking ship. The Monitor, a young woman in a belted white suit with a red band on the sleeve, came to Julie, knelt, and encircled her with an arm.

  Marge gazed at her sturdy, beautiful daughter. Julie had been born prematurely—but physically perfect—and had always been small, and beautiful. Unusually beautiful, all the doctors had agreed. Julie hugged the Monitor, her smile radiant; as the camera panned past her, she looked into the lens with wide, vacant blue eyes.

  Only one month ago they had met with the Western Director of Project Transfer. “Four to seven are the optimum ages, the highest probability—they’ve established that conclusively,” Doctor Morton had told them. “Any younger, the child is too unformed to withstand the shock, the pain. Any older, the biological changes will have destroyed the compatibility. Consequently, Julie will never have another chance.”

  “The pain,” Marge Bowman had said.

  “The pain will be extreme. To the farthest limit of tolerance. The process involves imprinting upon the neurological system, and the Mirilians have told us the children cannot be tranquilized. There is no other way. There is nothing to be done about the pain. Talk to the psychologists, the scientists working on the project. Marge, Karla, you have one month to decide whether you want your child to be part of Project Transfer. One month.”

  Karla watched her daughter, watched her pull the hair of a boy of perhaps five with red curls, who whirled to Julie. Julie hugged him, laughing.

  Karla whispered, “I love her so. Oh God, how I love her.”

  Staring at the screen, Marge murmured, “I don’t know ... I just don’t know ...”

  “Margie, we’ve discussed it. Decided.” But Karla’s voice was tired, and she was uncertain, even now.

  “Look.” Marge pointed at the screen.

  In compound 20D, a Monitor, a dark-haired young woman, was gently and carefully tucking a small, crying boy into a gaily colored conveyance that looked like a toy helicopter. The Monitor straightened, raised both arms; the remote controlled toy-like copter rose, soared toward Marge and Karla and the mountains. “See?” Marge said. “Another recall, there’ve been dozens, Karla. Lots of other parents are changing their minds. We can, too. There’s still time, right up to ... the moment.”

  “Is there anything we haven’t gone over?” Karla’s fingers traced, circled the recall button on the TV console. “If there’s a conceivable reason to change our minds, let’s give the signal—have the Monitors return Julie to us.”

  But there was no reason they hadn’t discussed. Endlessly. Exhaustively. They had argued with all the psychologists, the scientists. Talked with each other late into the nights. Awakened at predawn hours to talk still more. Karla could not now remember which objections each had raised, who of them had answered:

  “She’s our only child, both of us are too old to conceive another.”

  “For that very reason we owe her whatever we can give—the best springboard possible for her life.”

  “It’s dangerous. It’s never been done before.”

  “The Mirilians are advanced far beyond us. Look at their technology, what they’ve already given us as a gesture of good will. They tell us it’s eighty percent probability—and they’re risking their own children, too.”

  “They also tell us there’s a ten percent chance of insanity. A ten percent chance Julie may die.”

  “But an eighty percent chance for success. A good chance. Her only chance.”

  “God gave her to us the way she is, with her limitations.”

  “The children of Mirilius, are they not also God’s creatures?”

  “But we love her the way she is ... Maybe we love her more ...”

  “Are we thinking of Julie, or ourselves?”

  On the screen Julie was again looking toward the mountains—toward Marge and Karla—with frightened, bewildered eyes.

  The loving sweetness of my daughter, Karla thought. The way she can almost tear the heart out of my chest ... She’ll be forever changed ... “Why is it taking so long,” she demanded in a surge of anger. “Their ship’s been here more than an hour. How long do they think we can keep thousands of children calm?”

  “Karla, they’re doing what we had to do. Saying goodbye to their own children.”

  But at first, Marge reflected, it had been hard to ascribe feelings to the Mirilians. What they looked like—that had taken some getting used to.

  The scientists, candid about all aspects of the project, had shown both women holographs of a huge lethal planet of methane and fluoride, and its inhabitants: awesome creatures, easily dominant on their world, stork-like, with one huge green eye, a cruel predatory beak, an immense torso, two powerful limbs that propelled them at breakneck speed over their forbidding terrain.

  Dr. Francona had said, “The one essential they have in common with us is love for their young—even more so than we. Mistreatment of offspring is inconceivable. Love for their young is their single greatest outpouring of racial psychic energy, the highest value in their culture.”

  The psychologist had said, “The Mirilians are completely dissimilar biologically, but they discovered during visits over the last three centuries that the neural structure and circuitry of our bodies and theirs is virtually identical in the first stages of life.

  “The greatest tragedy on their world is an infant born physically damaged. It is doomed. On Mirilius, there are no degrees of health as we know it. The body of a damaged infant withers and dies, dissolved by their pitiless atmosphere. But only
the body dies. The infant metamorphoses into this.”

  Dr. Francona displayed another holograph to Marge and Karla, cross-shaped spokes of light, ice blue and glowing with energy. “To us this looks like electricity. But it’s life, and intelligence. But life doesn’t last very long—less than one of our Earth years. With the dawning and growth of intelligence, the infant becomes fully aware of its loss and grieves and longs for a physical body. The infant eventually relinquishes its will to live.”

  The scientist had said, “The Mirilians have visited us several times earlier in our history—in the ninth and sixteenth centuries as well as the last three. They’re appalled by our history and culture and would never have made themselves known to us except for their discovery about our children. But they’ll return every year if this project is successful, to share more of their knowledge and to continue the project. They have decided to take a chance on us by trusting us with their greatest value—their children.”

  The screen Marge was watching flashed red. A soft voice announced: “The signal has come from the Mirilian ship. Two minutes.”

  Through the binoculars, Karla watched the fine blonde hair blow across the forehead of her daughter. She lowered the glasses and swallowed. Tears blurred her vision.

  Marge watched the screen; the Monitor knelt beside Julie, hugged her sturdy shoulders, smiled goodbye. Then the Monitor stood, touched a stud on the belt of her white suit. Julie and the other children stared open-mouthed as she floated upward, joined hundreds of other Monitors who drifted gracefully over the plain to the slopes of the mountains, wingless white birds propelled by gravibelt, a gift from the Mirilians.

  An opening appeared in the side of the Mirilian ship, a dazzling brilliance in the dark night.

  “Karla,” Marge whispered.

  She flung her arms around Marge; they stood watching, not the screen, but the vast floodlit plain below crowded with Earth children.

  Spokes of electric blue light poured from the ship, became wheels of blue flame whirling over the flat plain at incredible speeds under the star-flung sky. From the plain, from the thousands of milling children, rose faint cries.

  Karla’s eyes were drawn irresistibly to the screen. Amid the terrorized children in compound 20D, Julie stood rooted, hypnotized by horror, mouth open in a scream, not heeding the glancing blow from the boy with red hair who ran into her as he fled the onrushing spokes of blue light.

  “Julie,” Karla said. She suddenly shouted, “No! Not Julie!”

  From all around them came moans and cries of other parents as the fiery blue spokes of light overran the plain, bounced and careened over the Earth children, engulfed them. Shrieks of agony rose into the crystal night air.

  “Karla! Oh God!” Marge’s eyes were riveted to the screen where her daughter was seized in blue light, her body rigid and quivering, her hair an electrified blonde halo. Her eyes wide with agony and terror, she mouthed the words Mama Mama. Marge tore herself from Karla’s arms and ran.

  Karla leaped after her, grasped her shoulders, dragged her back. “There’s nothing we can do!”

  Clinging to each other, they watched their daughter writhe and twist in the devouring blue flame.

  Gradually, slowly, the blue dimmed, faded, died. Julie and all the children near her slumped to the ground, limbs twitching. Then they lay still, utterly motionless.

  “She’s dead.” Karla’s voice was toneless. “It didn’t work. We killed her. We’ve killed our children and theirs too.”

  She released Marge, turned from the sight of the deathly still little figures. The gamble had been lost. Why ever had they risked the one great treasure in their lives?

  “No, Karla. Look.”

  The children were stirring. Soon Julie shook her head, rolled over, sat up, looked at the children around her who were also sitting up and staring at each other and down at themselves. Julie looked at her hands, turned them over and back, examining them. She plucked at her clothing, touched the clothing of the black girl next to her. The black girl stood, took a tentative step, stumbled, kept her balance. Julie got up, facing the mountains, but looking down at her feet—and tumbled to the ground. The black girl reached for Julie’s hands, pulled her up. Carefully, Julie placed one foot in front of the other, arms extended for balance. Several minutes later she was walking with grace and ease. She tried a clumsy trot, joined hands with the black girl, and ran in an awkward circle. Children all around them joined hands, ran back and forth. From the plain rose the treble of children, voices screaming, shrieking with joy.

  “Julie,” breathed Marge Bowman.

  Karla Cooper knelt to her seven-year-old daughter, took the small hands in hers, and looked into her eyes.

  Blue eyes looked back into hers with awareness; they contained what all the doctors, all the neurologists, all the genetics experts had said was forever impossible for their retarded child: intelligence.

  Julie Bowman-Cooper spoke. “I know only these Earth words until you teach me more.” She spoke in a childish lisp, but without a trace of the speech dysfunction that had always caused her to slur her words. “My natal beings who cherish me wish to thank you.”

  Marge Bowman lifted her eyes to the spaceship which was rising slowly from the surface of the Earth, on its way back to the lonely stars.

  “Thank you,” she whispered. “We’ll do our very best.”

  JESSIE

  I

  “It’s a bad time for you to visit, Kate,” Sheriff Jessie Graham offered in quiet apology.

  “I’m glad to be here, Jess,” Kate replied with equal quietness. “I know how close you are to Walt. Right now you need your friends.”

  Kate Delafield, sipping coffee from a Styrofoam cup, sat beside Jessie Graham’s desk in one of the plain wooden chairs the county of Alta Vista provided for visitors to its Sheriff’s station at Seacliff. She said to Jessie, “As I recall, he helped you get this job.”

  Jessie nodded. “I owe it to him.”

  “You say he disappeared Friday. Any theories about why—or where he might be?”

  Jessie contemplated Kate Delafield, the strong face framed by fine graying hair, the intelligent, somber light blue eyes. Kate had last stopped here for a visit more than two years ago, and Anne had been with her. Anne’s accident, her death, had happened two months after that, and Jessie had not learned of it until a week after the funeral ...

  “Woman, you’re on vacation,” Jessie growled, reaching to place a hand over Kate’s arm, pointedly surveying Kate’s jeans and the hooded white sweatshirt adorned with a small LAPD insignia. “You’re not four hours out of that smog-ridden cesspool, I’m not about to—”

  “The smog’s a little better in L.A. these days, Jess,” Kate said with a faint smile. She slouched back into the wooden chair as if it were comfortably cushioned and crossed an ankle over a knee. She picked up her cup of coffee. “My friend, tell me about it.”

  “It’s a hell of a thing.” For the first time in two days Jessie felt the pressure within her ease, felt a sense of comfort. She pushed herself back from her desk, rested a foot on an open desk drawer, folded her arms across her brown uniform shirt. She said in a rush of words, “There’s no damn sense to it, Kate, I played cards with the man and four friends of ours Friday night, I swear he was the same as always. He left my place making jokes and waving twenty-seven dollars in winnings; he’d taken most of those dollars from me. The next morning Walt’s wife calls me, claims that in the middle of that very same night he’d taken off in pouring down rain with a bag of money under his arm, without his car, and nobody’s seen hide nor hair of him since. There’s no sense to it.”

  Kate shook her head sympathetically; her eyes narrowed in scrutiny of her friend. “Any theories, Jess?”

  “Theoretically,” Jessie said with all the confidence she could muster, “he’s a missing person, he may just turn up like a lot of them do.” Then she felt a stinging behind her eyes and looked quickly away. “Kate—dammit, Kate, I know in
my gut he’s dead.”

  When she could control her voice she said almost angrily, “My gut feelings don’t always turn out to be fact.” She forced a semblance of a grin. “I had a gut feeling about Irene, too. That we’d be together forever.”

  “I know the feeling.” Kate gestured at the case file on Jessie’s desk. “Could I take a look?” Jessie handed it over. “Tell me everything, Jess. Everything you’ve got, right down to the fine hairs.”

  Jessie nodded gratefully. Then scowled, remembering the Saturday morning two days ago in Walt Kennon’s house.

  Velma Kennon had been seated in an armchair in the immaculate living room, her red-checked apron clashing violently with the pale lavender of the upholstery. She pulled a gray cardigan loosely around her shoulders and said in soft, reluctant tones, “He had me draw out the ten thousand from our savings Friday.”

  Jessie’s voice was sharp with skepticism. “Why’d he have you do that? Why wouldn’t he do it himself?”

  “Maybe it was his way of telling me.” Her voice broke. “I think he was in some kind of trouble.”

  If she expects me to fall for this horse manure ...

  “I know him,” Jessie said. “You’re Walt’s wife—but it’s only been a year for you, Velma.” There was hostility in her tone that she had not intended, and she added more gently, “I grew up knowing the man, we’ve been close friends ever since I came back to Seacliff. I know Walt. There’s no sense to this.”

  Velma picked up a corner of her checked apron and dabbed at a cheek. “Well, I thought Walter loved me.”

  Jessie asked with renewed brusqueness, “What’d Walt say he needed the ten thousand for?”

  “He said I should just trust him.” The voice throbbed with injury. “Said he’d explain it all later. I think he needed that money to pay someone off, I think he was in some kind of serious trouble. Maybe trouble from back when he was Sheriff here. And whoever it was took him somewhere and ... Maybe the ocean.”