Final Disposition (42 page)

      “About time you showed up,” he said, a smile appearing on his visibly weary face.

      The voice recognition was instantaneous.

      “Malcolm?”

      Malcolm Byzor hesitated for a moment, and then grinned widely as he walked across the concrete floor and enveloped Cellars in a quick and muscular bear hug.  “That’s right, forgot you’ve still got that memory problem.  How’s the head doing?” he asked as he stepped back, scowling and staring at the visible scars crisscrossing the side of his long-time-friend’s face.

      “I’m … good,” Cellars said hesitantly, blinking his eyes as he looked around at the neatly organized workstations and assembled piles of equipment lying on the freshly-poured concrete pad.  “I just … I mean, I know it’s you — because I definitely recognize your voice — but —”

      “Hey, don’t worry about it.  Thanks to you, we’re all finally starting to pull things back together,” Byzor laughed as he grabbed Cellars by the upper right arm and pulled him over to the map table.  “Major Colin Cellars, this is Colonel Pat Fong, my new executive officer … and I believe you’ve already met two of my detachment commanders, Majors Gladstone and Montgomery.”

      “Yeah, we’ve definitely met,” Cellars said as he shook the three offered hands.

      At Byzor’s direction, the four men walked over sat down in four of six chairs set around a small table supporting a large coffee urn and a dozen ceramic mugs.

      “And you were right on the money, General,” Gladstone said as he leaned forward, filled up a mug with steaming coffee and handed it to Cellars, “your lad here turns out to be a lot tougher and far more creative than I thought.  As you’ve long suggested, I think our uninvited guests may have bitten off a great deal more than they can chew.”

      “We’re still keeping our fingers crossed on that,” Byzor reminded.

      “Uh, speaking of uninvited guests,” Cellars said hesitantly as he took a quick sip of the hot coffee and then set the cup back down on the table, “I don’t want to intrude on whatever it is you guys are doing here, but I think we’ve all got a serious problem out there at the lake that we really need to deal with ASAP.  So, if you don’t mind, I’d like to explain what I was —”

      Smiling, Malcom Byzor reached into his uniform pocket, pulled out a small remote device, and pressed a button.  Instantly, the room was filled with the sound of a familiar cold, dangerous and inviting voice.

 
“No.  Our rules are very specific about such … errors.  We cannot leave evidence of our presence on your planet.  As you humans say, we must clean up after ourselves before we depart.”
 

      Cellars blinked, and then stared at Byzor for a long moment.

      “You heard us talking out there by the lake … but how … the helicopter radio system?”

      “Oh, we had that as a back-up system, just in case —” Byzor said, his dark eyes glistening with amusement.

      “But Malcolm didn’t trust me not to shut the damned transmitter off, land the bird, and deal with that shape-shifting little bastard myself,” a very familiar voice behind Cellars growled.

      
Bobby?

      Cellars head snapped around.

      “— so our good buddy made sure to keep us separated, but wired for sound the entire time,” a long-haired blond and muscular figure said as he walked into the room, still wearing his pilot’s gear.

      Cellars blinked again, and then felt for small j-Connector in his jacket pocket.

      “Colin,” Byzor said with a satisfied smile, “I believe you’ve met Chief Warrant Officer Fudd … AKA our infamously non-regimental mountain man, Bobby Dawson?”

CHAPTER 35

      They’d been sitting in the five chairs, talking back and forth for almost fifteen minutes when Colonel Fong raised a pausing hand and then turned to Cellars, his dark eyes glittering with what Cellars could only interpret as well-controlled anger.

      “So, your conclusion, Major Cellars, is that these creatures are going to try to cheat … and ultimately not carry out their end of the bargain?”

      “Yes, no question about it,” Cellars said evenly.

      “Concisely, please, why is that?”

      “Because they already have … several times, in fact, if I’m to believe my own CSI reports I don’t remember writing.”

      “You’re saying they’ve
already
cheated us?”  Fong cocked his head curiously.

      “Oh, I have no doubt that’s true, too; but I’m talking about them disobeying their own laws,” Cellars replied.  “You heard my negotiating buddy mention the ‘we have to clean up after ourselves’ rule; but then he immediately glossed over the idea that those tubes —” Cellars gestured with his head at the two thin green cylinders that Byzor and Montgomery were examining cautiously, “— were anything other than carelessly discarded trash.  In point of fact, those tubes are clearly weapons — and probably some kind of mechanical tool as well — capable of knocking a heavy SUV off the road with what I’m guessing are point-bursts of energy.”

      “So why is that cheating?” Fong asked.

      “Because their second rule — which Allesandra apparently told me, and I recorded in my addendum CSI report — states that they cannot use their more advanced technologies when they engage with the inhabitants of another planet. I’m assuming there must be some kind of ‘Inter-stellar Rules Enforcement Committee’ that keeps track of these things, otherwise why would they care?”

      “That makes sense,” Fong agreed.

      “Unfortunately, what also makes sense is that these creatures look upon us as interesting but ultimately primitive creatures to be exploited for their gain; basically, the standard ‘world explorer and local native’ relationship,” Cellars added.  “Which brings up the obvious question: why would these ‘explorers’ go out of their way to keep us happy when they must have higher-tech weapons that we haven’t seen yet, but they’re almost certainly willing to use — if they have to — in spite of their rules?”

      “They’re going to try to keep us happy until they get what they want, which presumably includes that big batch of stones they must have lost when your guys blew up their sanctuary, along with the ones that you and Dawson have now,” Fong reasoned, “and then … no more evidence?”

      “Exactly,” Cellars nodded, “which is why I’m proposing we go right back at them before the exchange takes place.”

      “By ‘going right back at them’ … what exactly did you have in mind, laddie?” Major Gladstone asked thoughtfully.

      “They seem to know a great deal about the inner workings of Bobby’s and my mind,” Cellars said, “mostly, I gather, because he and I were idiotic enough to get caught up with that bitch Allesandra —”

      “— who just might be getting a little tired of having her ‘dumb human’ conquests blowing her brains out and otherwise turning her back into stones,” Dawson suggested.  “Maybe there’s a wear factor involved that we don‘t know about; only so many restorations before the basic warranty runs out?”

      “Like a cat only having nine lives?  It’s a nice thought,” Cellars said, getting up from the chair and walking over to the map table, “but I don’t think we can count on anything beyond the pretty obvious fact that she’s going to wake up seriously pissed if they manage to reconstitute her while the exchange is still going down.”

      “So, what did you have in mind?” Dawson said, joining Cellars at the map table.

      “I’ve been thinking that my negotiating partner out there was deliberately playing on my known fears … possibly including ones I don’t even know I have,” Cellars said.  “Did you and I ever scuba dive?”

      “Beats the hell out of me,” Dawson responded.  “Like I told you, I’m only a day or so ahead of you in the memory department.”

      “All four of us did,” Byzor answered as he and the others joined Cellars and Dawson around the map table.  “Several times together … off the southern California coast … mostly around San Clemente Island, as I recall.”

      “Was I afraid of sharks?”

      “More leery than afraid … and probably not any more than the rest of us,” Byzor said with a shrug.  “You did get spooked once by a Great White that happened to cruise by when you’d wandered off by yourself, looking for sea scallops along a cliff wall … but you also said later that you thought it was just curious.”

      “Sounds like something I should be grateful not to remember,” Cellars said with a shudder.  “But that’s my point: why would my negotiating buddy bother to shape-shift himself into a shark, and risk taking a fifty-caliber slug smack in the dorsal fin from Bobby if he wasn’t trying to send me a message?”

      “As in ‘stay the hell out of my lake, or you’re going to get bit’?” Montgomery suggested.

      “Exactly,” Cellars nodded.  “So, my next question: do we know what the bottom of that lake looks like?”

      “Yes and no,” Byzor said as he rummaged through the pile of maps and charts on the table, and finally pulled one out.  “We took a series of sonar readings early on.  This particular cross-section through the center of the lake shows that it’s shallow at the outer edges, but then tapers down pretty quickly on either side to a maximum depth of seventy-six feet with a bottom floor area of approximately eight-to-ten feet square.  But when we took those same readings yesterday morning, we got a maximum depth of only thirty-eight feet … and a much wider bottom floor of maybe ninety feet square.”

      “Are you saying that something is filling in the lake?” Dawson cocked his head curiously.

      “We don’t know.” Byzor shrugged.  “We’ve been trying to get divers into the water — to take a look around and start searching for those lost stones — but we’ve had a lot of small tremor-type earthquakes in this area over the past few days, and we don’t want to risk getting them trapped.  This whole Reservation located on the Cascade Mountain Range, which is mostly volcanic and still active in some places, so it’s certainly possible that —”

      “No, those weren’t earthquakes,” Cellars interrupted.

      Byzor’s right eyebrow rose curiously.

      “And just how would you know that?” he asked.

      “Because when that one tremor hit a couple of hours ago, the snow pack fell off the trees alongside the shore line, exposing those three bodies,” Cellars explained, “but there was no snow-fall at all from trees thirty and forty yards away from the shore.  What kind of earthquake is that?”

      “A pretty damned small one,” Byzor conceded.

      “But something is definitely going on in the lake, because I definitely felt the ground shake right where —”

      Cellars suddenly blinked … smiled widely … and then turned to Montgomery.  “I need to get into that lake and take a look around for a few minutes before we try to set up that exchange, and I’m afraid that my regular dive partners are going to be busy doing other things, so I have a couple of questions for you, Major.”

      “Go ahead.”

      “One, are you a certified diver … and two, are you afraid of sharks?”

      “Yes, I’m a certified Master Diver … and no, not so long as I have the proper tools with me,” he said with a smile, gesturing with his head at the far former of the warehouse that resembled a dive shop.

      “Good,” Cellars said, turning back to the map table, “because this is what I have in mind.”

CHAPTER 36

      A little over an hour later, Cellars and Montgomery knelt in moon-lit sand and gravel a few feet from the lake shore line — making a last check of their equipment — while Major Angus Gladstone stood guard with an assault rifle in his thick hands.

      They were equipped with almost identical wet suits and dive gear, the difference being that Cellars had nylon mesh collection bag tucked into his buoyancy compensator vest pocket, whereas Montgomery had equipped himself with a pneumatic spear gun, four extra sedative-tipped spears, and what looked like a short police baton.

      Less sure of what he was doing, because he couldn’t remember ever having done it before, Cellars slipped his regulator connector over the uncapped stem of his air tank, carefully screwed the regulator valve on snug to finger tightness, and then cautiously opened the air tank valve, creating an immediate and tight seal … while Montgomery, having completed those basic scuba diving tasks in a matter of seconds, was already wading out into the cold and dark lake water. 

      “You lads about ready?” the huge MP Commander inquired.

      “Just about,” Cellars said as he dragged his partially-inflated BC, air tank and now-attached full-face-mask/regulator out to about four feet of water where Montgomery was waiting with his BC/tank gear strapped on, and a pneumatic spear gun in his gloved right hand.

      “These are seven-mil foam-core wet suits, which won’t be as warm as a dry suit, but ought to do just fine for the half-hour or so that we’re likely to be down there,” Montgomery commented.  “On the other hand, that first surge of forty-degree lake water down the back of your neck isn’t going to be —”

      “Jesus,” Cellars muttered as he knelt down and allowed the flow of icy water to seep through the thin gap between his hood and the neck of his thick wetsuit as he pulled on his fins.

      “— pleasant,” the Delta Team Commander finished.  “Are you ready to go through the numbers?”

      “Sure, why not,” Cellars said, shivering as he waited for his body to warm the film of icy water inside his wet suit.

      “Flasher on.”

      Cellars reached over and turned the luminescent flasher attached to the valve stem of his air tank to the ‘ON’ position, whereupon it began to flash brightly every two seconds.  “Check.”

      “You really sure that’s a good idea, making yourselves visible from behind like that, lads?” Gladstone asked.

      “They’re going to know we’re down there, anyway,” Cellars said with a shrug as he pulled the heavy BC and attached air tank over his shoulders, overlapped the wide hook-and-loop® belt around his waist and then snapped the chest-strap connector clips into place.  “Probably more important that we can find each other if we get separated.”