Walter Stickle and the Galactic Rangers, page 19
“Sleepers — those were the Rangers in cryo-stasis?”
“That’s what we call them.”
“They tried to activate them from Scout Ship Alpha.”
“Good luck with that. There’s not a blessed thing anyone can do to activate them now.” She wiped a tear away with her sleeve. “Damn you humans and your prolific tear ducts. Why did we have to pick this period in your evolution to come here?”
Walter waited while she pulled herself together.
“No one knew we’d crashed. Our shields made us invisible to your radar and anyone who might have been watching the sky that night. We managed to salvage a good deal of equipment from the wreck and stored it on an abandoned ranch outside Roswell. That’s where we buried our shipmates. Poor Vivien,” Millie said.
“And Vivien, Vivy, was their daughter?”
Millie got up and went to the window. The rain was coming down in buckets. “Vivien was pregnant. No one knew except the three of us, and Timper, the navigator. It’s against regulations. If they found out, we would have been dismissed from the Rangers and prosecuted under the law.”
“What’s the penalty for that?”
“A long stretch in a prison colony for us, dispersion for the child.”
“What’s dispersion?”
“The birth of an ethereal is the coalescing of life into a distinct entity. It’s a beautiful thing to watch. Dispersion is what happens when the coalescing ends.”
“That’s murder. That isn’t right.”
“Maybe not here it isn’t, but I come from a highly structured society, Walter. All births must be pre-approved. They just don’t have the resources to support uncontrolled population growth. Your planet doesn’t either, and it’s just a matter of time before you reach the same decision Argon did.”
“For such a highly evolved race, you sure are stupid,” said Walter. “Didn’t you realize they would find out when Vivien was born?”
“Of course, we did. That’s why we took the mission to Earth in the first place. The four of us planned to stay here and set the ship adrift with the Sleepers in cryo. It would have taken it five hundred years to make it back to the central systems, plenty of time for a happy, normal life, but that didn’t work out so well.”
“So, what did you do?”
“Well, there Vivien and I were stranded on a savage planet with no way even to send a distress call, not that it would have done much good. That’s when I got the idea to continue with our original plan. I modified a short-range communicator, rigged what was left of the ship to fire the rockets one last time to send it drifting in the right direction, and on July 7, 1947 we shot that sucker into space where it sent one last message that we had landed safely and would be staying to survey further. Standard procedures are that the survey team maintains radio silence for the duration. That would buy us some time. It wasn’t a bad plan, but about three hundred miles up, the engines exploded, and the ship came crashing back to Earth in a big fireball. The rest is history.”
Millie stopped again. Walter waited for her to continue. When she didn’t, he asked, “What’s wrong, Millie?”
“Vivien and I talked about it before we sent the ship up. She said the Rangers would know it was faked when they found it unless they also found bodies. Rangers in cryo don’t have bodies, and finding their broken tubes with nothing inside?” She shrugged.
“You put her husband’s body in the ship for them to find?”
“Yes, and Timper. I liked old Timper.”
“So the stories of alien autopsies were true?”
“Pretty much. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Rangers don’t leave their dead behind, not like that.”
“I’m so sorry,” Walter said.
“Anyway,” she continued, “After the crash and all the publicity, I figured you Earth people might just be crazy enough to pay top dollar for our wreckage, and I was right. We sold a bunch of worthless junk from the first crash and with the money, we bought a semi and loaded everything we could cram into it and headed over the border into Texas. Vivien got a waitressing job there. We tried to make a go of it, tried to make this our home.”
“That was sixty something years ago, Millie. You don’t look old enough.”
“Thanks, but I’m plenty old, Walter.”
Millie opened the end table drawer, took out an old black-and-white snapshot of a shimmering baby in the arms of her mother, and handed it to Walter. “When Vivien’s time came, we were both fully acclimated but the baby wasn’t. The birth of an ethereal was too much for Vivien’s human body to bear. Brave girl. She hung on just long enough to see her daughter’s face and hold her in her arms, but that was the last thing Vivien ever saw. I took her back to Roswell to have her buried properly.”
“And you raised the baby yourself?”
“Yes. She’s my little Vivy now.”
“How did you end up in New Jersey?”
“Vivy wasn’t acclimating. She was dying. Something about Vivien’s change to human form had affected her. She’s part human and part Argonian. I had to put the poor thing in a cryo-tube I’d salvaged from the crash until I could figure something out. I set up a lab at our place in West Texas and worked round the clock, but I wasn’t making any headway, and your government kept nosing around the crash site until they finally found the ranch. They tripped the remote sensors I’d left there just in case. I knew then it was just a matter of time before they traced the truck we’d bought to our place in Texas. So I hired a trucking company under a fake name and shipped everything to New Jersey, including little Vivy in cryo-stasis. I ended up buying a place in Washington Hills and starting a company called Pandactic Enterprises. I hired a few employees under the table to get the place set up, get all the machines working, then I let them all go once the real work began.”
“And you hired Lenny and the others who are getting Social Security after you let the under-the-table guys go?”
She shook her head. “Sorry, kid. I told you you’d want to hear the whole story before you decided what to do. They never worked for Pandactic. I faked everything, the W-2s, the birth certificates, everything.”
“But that’s fraud,” said Walter. “You could go to jail for that.”
“Walter, I have an interstellar death sentence hanging over my head. You think jail scares me? Besides, I paid all the taxes for every one of them, so the benefits they’re getting are bought and paid for. Maybe they didn’t work here on your planet, but they did honest work somewhere and gave up everything they had to come to your world to be free. Is that so wrong?”
“It’s illegal.”
“Yes, it is.”
“So, who are they?”
Millie went on, “I knew that the only ones who had the technology to help Vivy were on Argon, so with the parts I had shipped and what I could dig up and modify, I built a small craft.”
“You built a space ship by yourself in New Jersey?”
“Pretty much. It was a real clunker, but it got us there.”
“And did you change back to an ethereal when you got home?”
“No. When Rangers travel, they go in flight form. It’s a non-permanent physical state that allows them to operate the ship, but when they’re exposed to an alien climate and decide to acclimate, if they stay acclimated too long, they can’t change back. My parents always told me what a beautiful creature I was, and here I am stuck in this flabby old human body.”
“What did you do when you got to Argon?”
“I had some doctor friends. They figured it out and saved her life. I found an old buddy from the academy who fixed me up with a new compression engine, a few other odds and ends, and I took a trip to the third moon of Argon to make a little house call.”
“That’s where the Rangers’ secret base is.”
“Yep. I knew once they found out I was still alive and what I’d done, they come gunning for me. And I knew Kleeg would volunteer. He and Gandor, our leader, never liked me. I think it was my sense of humor. So, I made a few modifications to his ship.”
“You’re Tobine,” Walter realized.
“That’s me,” Millie said. “Vivy picked the name. It’s an anagram for ‘Benoit’. She did it to annoy them. Cute kid. Anyhow, after we got back to Earth, I had to follow the strict procedures the docs laid out for me to get her all squared away. She stayed in cryo-stasis most of the time, and I’d wake her up for short periods to get her used to Earth, and little by little she did. I swear that girl had the longest childhood in history. I almost wish she’d never grown up, but I guess it must have been lonely spending all that time asleep with no real mother or father and no kids to play with.”
“She had you.”
“I suppose. Anyway, a little over ten years ago we received a transmission from one of the doctors. The Rangers had found out that they’d helped us and were hunting them down and throwing them in jail. They knew who I was. They knew about Vivy. The thing they weren’t sure of was our ship, the rest of the crew, and the Sleepers. Congress put the death sentence on our heads with the requisite show trial beforehand, of course.”
“What did you do about it?”
“I didn’t do anything, Walter. Vivy did. By then she was old enough to know the truth, and when I told her, she did the right thing. I’m proud of that little girl. Over the last ten years, she flew nine trips to Argon and one by one, busted out the doctors who saved her life. Lenny was the last of them. Except for a quick stop there to make the pick-up and few weeks at a time here on Earth to get them all set up, my little girl has spent the last ten years of her life in cryo-stasis flying back and forth through dark space.”
“That’s why she seems so young for a lawyer. That’s why she’s moved every year. I thought she was from France,” said Walter, looking down at the photo.
“You’re not the brightest bulb on the planet, Walter, but you’ve got the biggest heart.”
“Thanks, I think.”
“We knew they would come eventually — it was just a matter of time — and we knew that would put everyone we’d brought here in danger. So, we came up with a plan to bring them here on our terms. Vivy created the persona of Tobine and sent all kinds of rumors and stories back to Argon about things I’d never done. She created a legend around him. They weren’t so sure about the exploits, but they knew Tobine was me. Vivy made sure of that. At the same time, she created Kelso and the comic strip. That was our information network. She followed Alpha’s movements with her glasses, drew the comic and posted it directly to the web. That way there was no paper trail, no electronic trail, nothing to trace it back to any of us. The revenue goes to a charity we set up to fund orphanages. That was important to her. She’s a good kid.”
“Yes, she is,” said Walter.
“With the network in place and Lenny here safely, we let it leak that we were hiding on Earth.”
“After they defeated the Goldotti of Deamus,” said Walter.
“That’s right. Nasty ones, those little buggers are. The plan was to draw the Rangers here and make sure they ID’d us both before we escaped. We figured, that way, they’d forget about Earth.”
“Where were you going to go?”
“Can’t tell you that, kid. I’d have to kill you.”
“I can’t believe I got involved in this. What are the chances?”
“The odds are 16,852,456,087 to one.”
“That’s what Vivien said.”
“Math don’t lie, Walter. Did it ever occur to you that it wasn’t an accident that you were wearing one of Vivy’s socks that day?”
“She took the wrong sock from the dryer.”
“Did you know that I once beamed the pulse saber from the scabbard of a Goringian gladiator and replaced it with a deadly Fangon eel just as he was about to draw his weapon on my captain? You should have seen the look on his face before it bit off his hand.”
“What?”
“Walter, Vivy didn’t switch laundry with you by accident. I switched your socks while you were walking to work. We set that whole Laundromat meeting up. Vivy wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“You beamed my sock from my foot? Why?”
“We needed the help of an Earthling, someone we could trust, someone the Rangers wouldn’t suspect.”
“So you picked someone stupid and helpful, someone like me?”
“You’re not stupid, Walter, just evolutionarily challenged. I read about you and your awards, and I checked you out myself. You’ve got a lot to be proud of, son. You’re the nicest, kindest, most helpful human I know.”
“And stupid. And you set me up.”
“Sorry, kid. We needed a chump to make the plan believable.”
“Did you rig my TV set?”
“Yep. That sci-fi channel was mine. I could have gotten around the need for the computer mic if I had been able to get inside your house, but, oh well. It worked out okay.”
“You used me.”
“That’s right. Like I said, you’re getting the whole story before you make up your mind.”
“Why would you do that to me? Why would Vivien?”
“If it’s any consolation, she didn’t want to. She likes you, Walter. I like you, too, but we needed your help on this. We really did.”
“So, my job was to lead the Rangers to her so they could capture her?”
“That’s the way the Argonian mind works. It has to be their idea, and the results have to be conclusive. They would never have believed it otherwise.”
“They lied to me. They were using me too.”
“Of course, they were, and we knew they would.”
“I feel like such a tool.”
“Sorry, kid.”
“But in the comic, why did Vivien make them out to be such heroes? I don’t understand.”
“They are heroes to most of the galaxy. They’re policemen, Walter. They don’t make the laws. They enforce them. And her real mother and father were Rangers. They were honorable and good people. In Vivy’s eyes, the Rangers are not the bad guys. It’s the system.”
“What about Kleeg?”
“Kleeg’s an old-timer. For him, everything is black and white. The years of following orders without question have made him bitter and unbending. If you ask me, he uses the law as an excuse. That’s all he knows now.”
“You sound like you feel sorry for him.”
“Maybe I am, but that won’t keep me from doing the right thing. Never has.”
“There’s something else between you two, isn’t there?”
“Me and Kleeg?”
“Yes. What did you do that he hates you so much? It wasn’t your sense of humor.”
“No. It wasn’t. Kleeg and I were together a long time ago. We were both so young. The whole thing was crazy. It didn’t last, and I moved on. He didn’t take it too well when I found somebody else.”
“Timper?”
“Timper was a good man.”
“This is how an Argonian gets revenge on a lover?”
“Well, there were a few other things like my putting him on report for negligence and costing him a rank. He said he’d get me for that someday. Putting the law on his side only made it easier for him.”
“So, what’s your plan?”
She took the snapshot from Walter and put it back in the drawer. “Vivy and I have to leave Earth and the Rangers have to know we’ve left. It’s the only way. They don’t know that Lenny and the others are hiding here. If we go now, they never will.”
“How is she going to escape from their ship?”
“That thing you call a metal potato is a miniature trans-beamer. If after all I’ve told you, you’re still game, you’re going to beam up to the ship with it and rescue her.”
Chapter 17
Walter leaned against the porch rail watching the rain. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been sitting there when Millie came outside and sat down beside him.
“Make up your mind yet?” she asked.
“I’m going to turn myself in first thing Monday morning.”
“Walter, you haven’t done anything wrong.”
“It doesn’t matter. I approved the fraudulent claim. That makes me an accessory if I don’t report it. I’ll probably lose my job, but it’s the right thing to do.”
“I guess you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do. I’ll let the docs know so they can relocate somewhere safe. I’ve got enough stashed away to take care of them after we’re gone. What about the rest of it? Are you going to tell them about that, too?”
“I have to tell them about the fraudulent claims, Millie, not about everything else. They wouldn’t believe me anyway. They’d just throw me in that place where everybody walks around wearing aluminum foil on their heads, spouting gibberish about intergalactic policemen who enforce the laws of a bunch of aliens who are going to turn the Earth to dust if we screw up.”
Rusty came onto the porch, parked herself beside Millie, and whimpered.
“Sorry, girl,” Millie said, scratching her behind the ears. “You can’t come with mommy. Lenny will take care of you from now on.” Millie let out a deep sigh, “I’ll be needing that trans-beamer back, Walter. I’m not sure what I’m going to do, but I’ll figure something out.”
“I wasn’t finished,” said Walter. “I’ve got my own problems, maybe a lot of them. I’ll deal with them in my own way, but as far I know it’s not a crime anywhere on Earth to aid intergalactic fugitives from the planet Argon. We don’t have an extradition treaty with you people yet. Your laws don’t apply here, ours do, and to my way of thinking, that makes this kidnapping, plain and simple.”
“Does that mean what I think it means?”
“It means that as long as you’re on my planet and I have any say in it, nobody’s taking anybody anywhere against her will.”
“So, you’re in?”
“I’m in,” said Walter.
Millie slapped him on the back and stood up. “Then we’d better get going, kid. It’s a long drive to Pitville.”
“Pitville? Can’t we just beam up from here?”
