Alien Research

CHAPTER 62

THE NEXT WEEK was spent getting ready for Michael’s funeral and our side’s answer to Operation Infiltration.

We’d used the excuse of religious necessities to explain why no one, Jeff in particular, was going to work until after the funeral. It seemed to work, in part because Oliver was fanning the media flames as promised, and much news coverage was being focused on how devastating this loss was to American Centaurion.

There were, of course, the opposing views, but thanks to the success of Mission: Get Off My Lawn, the opposition looked like the biggest bunch of dangerous wingnuts around, which helped Oliver’s efforts. Didn’t let it go to my head—one mission firmly in the win column did not an entire successful Operation make.

At Buchanan’s repeated insistence, Reader had assigned Field teams into the neighboring embassies and regular residences in our area. All these agents had supposedly passed their Anti-Mind Control Training. A handful of the embassies and regular folks refused to be occupied, so we and our friends in the D.C.P.D.’s K-9 division were watching them for signs of danger to the residents or anti-alien activity from said residents. The rest seemed relieved to have the extra protection, because no one had missed the excitement of the Mob O’ Losers.

Pierre had our personal fashion designer, Akiko, working on creating the appropriate “funeral attire” for all the female A-Cs of importance. This included women not involved in the actual operation, so Akiko was busy and had to get A-C assistance to have a hope of completing everything in time for the event, to the point of having her design studio and factory temporarily moved into the second floor of the Zoo.

Raj indeed had the Troubadour Connection. There were a lot of troubadours out there—more than I’d ever heard about—and they seemed almost pathetically eager to get to do some actual work. It was interesting, how shoved to the side these particular A-Cs were. Clearly Christopher’s views about troubadours were the dominant ones for the A-Cs of Earth. Wondered how much that had to do with the fact that King Adolphus of Alpha Four had been a troubadour.

In addition to the Dazzlers who were on Imitation Duty, we had some male troubadours who were going to add in, to cover effective confusion if needed and give us some more people to pretend to be Embassy staff.

Spent much time with my assigned imitator, Francine, who was from Euro Base. She was good and pretty much “got me” right away. She was even able to imitate my voice.

All the troubadours were practicing sounding like their assigned double, and most were really good at it. The gal imitating Serene, Nadine, was having the most trouble, but even she was pretty good after a few days of immersion.

Immersion had been hard on everyone, though, because it meant our assigned troubadours were eating, working, and hanging out with us. Jeff drew the line at sleeping with us, but other than that, each woman on Team Infiltration had a shadow.

Jamie and the other kids had really gotten into the whole “extra mommies and aunties” idea. I wasn’t sure if they understood what we were doing or not—though if forced I’d have voted for the idea that they did—but they were having a ball with it. Double the attention, double the fun seemed to be the kids’ motto. Part of me was tempted to have the kids go along to the funeral, but protective wisdom said they’d be much safer in the Embassy, so I didn’t suggest it.

“I really walk like that?” I asked Reader as Francine and Jeff strolled up and down in front of us in the ballroom, which was where our little team of me, Jeff, Francine, and Reader, who was our assigned “verifier,” were practicing this afternoon. We had a trial run scheduled for early evening, and every team was prepping because we only had a couple of days before the funeral and no one wanted to be on the team that fooled no one.

“Yeah, girlfriend, you do.”

“I accepted three years ago that I look like a cheetah on drugs when I’m running, but I had no idea my butt swayed that much when I was walking.”

“I think it’s sexy, baby,” Jeff said with a grin. “When you do it,” he added quickly, losing the grin in the process. “Right now, it’s just uncomfortable and awkward.”

“Thank you so very much,” Francine said, as she shot me a long-suffering look. “I’m going to be heavily veiled and we aren’t going to be expected to kiss during the event, so you can stop treating me as if I’m the mistress you don’t want to have.”

“I don’t want a mistress,” Jeff said. “I also don’t think this plan is going to work in reality.”

“If it doesn’t, it’ll be because of you and the other men, Jeff,” Reader said. “Because I’m with Kitty—I think it’ll fool enough people for long enough, and we only need just long enough.”

Speaking of long enough, the real downside of immersion for me was that I hadn’t been able to search for the hidden gate in the Embassy, because Francine would have expected to come with me, and I had no legitimate way of getting rid of her.

Inspiration struck, however. “You know, why don’t I leave the room for a while? Maybe Jeff will chill out a bit if I’m not here, watching him ‘cheat’ on me with my permission.”

This earned me a dirty look from my husband. “Sure, go ahead, desert me,” he said, sarcasm knob only at about three on the scale. “Just don’t be gone too long.”

“Yeah, I might throw myself on your husband in a fit of mad passion,” Francine added. Her sarcasm knob had hit eleven on Day One, right after Jeff had acted like she had a disease for over an hour. Her knob was, by my calculation, currently turned to twenty and heading for twenty-five.

“You’d need to watch us have sex to do it just right, though,” I said as I headed out the door. My last view was of Jeff’s horrified, embarrassed expression and Francine and Reader laughing their heads off.

Had no good idea of where to go, so I headed up to our apartment. Jamie was at daycare and everyone else was off doing their prep for the event, so I was definitely alone.

Double-checked the whole apartment just in case, though. Then I went to the farthest room from the front door, which was one of the many large bedrooms we used for absolutely nothing.

Wasn’t sure why I wanted to be so far away, but I did and decided not question it. Either there was a reason or there wasn’t. Either way, I’d find out soon enough.

Cleared my throat. “Poofs and Peregrines, please assemble.”

Instantly had a lot of furred and feathered company. All twenty-four Peregrines and more Poofs than I could count were in the room with me. This was the first time in ages that I’d seen all the Alpha Four animals together outside of the daycare center. Hoped this meant that the kids were currently safe.

“Kitty would like a word.”

Bird heads bobbed, Poofs purred.

“Super. First off, show of paws and wings for who’s staying at the Embassy when we go to Michael and Fuzzball’s funeral.”

All female Peregrine wings and many Poof paws went up.

“Super. Who’s going with Jeff and the others to the funeral?”

More Poof paws—all Poofs attached to funeral attendees, plus a few extras—and about half of the male Peregrine wings. There were a variety of Peregrine squawks and Poof mews.

“Great. And yes, Kitty understands that you’ll be in stealth mode. Kitty also understands that she shouldn’t worry about her Poofs and Peregrines because you’re all rough, tough fighting machines. I know I can count on all of you to protect everyone who needs protecting. And now, who’s going into Gaultier with Kitty?”

No paws or wings went up.

“Really? Kitty finds this hard to believe.”

Bruno raised his wing, Harlie and Poofikins raised their paws.

“Just the three of you? What are the rest of your teams going to be doing?”

Bruno squawked and bobbed his head. Harlie mewed and jumped up and down.

“Huh. Not sure that I like that plan. What if there are Poof Traps at Titan or YatesCorp? What about Peregrine traps? We don’t know, and without someone with opposable thumbs along, that could be bad news.”

More squawking, head bobbing, mewing, and bouncing up and down.

“Don’t care. We’ve already lost Fuzzball. Kitty doesn’t want to lose any more Poofies or start in with losing Peregrines.”

They seemed touched by my concern but unconvinced otherwise. Okay, time to try a different approach.

“So, I might be okay with it, if I knew I could get to you all without a problem.”

Heads all tilted at me. It was a cuteness overload. Forced myself to soldier on without snuggling and skritchy-scratching each and every one of them.

“If Kitty could know where the hidden gate in the Embassy is, that would mean Kitty could get to you quickly.”

Got hit with a lot of totally innocent looks. It was like a sea of Animal Innocence in front of me. So, they all knew exactly what I was talking about. Contemplated why they hadn’t told anyone where this gate was. Figured my guess about it being a Z’porrah cube was probably right.

“Kitty promises not to tell anyone where the cube is hidden, or that you’re all using it as your animal gateway. But I think I need to be able to use it, too.” Decided to go for it. “Or else Kitty needs a cube of her own.”

The animals went into a huddle. Sure, it was a big, fluffy huddle, but a huddle nonetheless, complete with the Peregrines spreading their wings to essentially surround the Poofs. Off and on heads bobbed up or turned toward me. Clearly this was quite the big deal.

While the animals discussed whether or not they could or should tell me about what I was now thinking of as the Cube Gate, I considered where in the world it could actually be.

It couldn’t be something the Poofs or Peregrines kept on their persons. Sure, the Poofs were capable of ingesting and regurgitating things—they’d done that to get all the Z’porrah cubes at the end of Operation Invasion, after all. However, they were clearly using them, and potentially had been since they’d come to Earth.

One thing I hadn’t asked was how the Poofs got around on Alpha Four. They had hyperspeed and so did the Peregrines. But whether or not Poofs could be there one minute and across Alpha Four’s globe the next I’d never asked about.

For all I knew, no one here actually had the answer. The likelihood that Alfred had needed Harlie to zap across the world when he was young and on the home planet seemed slim. Before Jeff and I had gotten engaged, there had only been two Poofs left on Alpha Four, Harlie and Tenley, who was attached to Alexander’s mother, Victoria.

Since the Poofs were androgynous and only mated when a Royal Wedding was imminent, six Poofs had been created by Harlie and Tenley the moment Jeff gave me his family’s Unity Necklace. And those six, Fuzzball among them, had come to Earth with Harlie and the Alpha Centauri Planetary Council. One of them had gone back to Alpha Four with Alexander, of course, but that had still left us with six original Earth Poofs.

The Poof Population Explosion had happened here on Earth. So perhaps much of what our Poofs did they could do because the Z’porrah had riddled the interior of our planet with their amazing, glowing, power cubes.

That they’d shared the itel with the Peregrines was obvious, and presumably done because I’d told them all to get along and work together and they had.

However, my feeling about the hidden gate in the Embassy was that the former Diplomatic Corps, or at least one of them, had been using it. We knew Clarence Valentino had found the cube Terry had presumably snatched from Ronald Yates and left for Jeff and Christopher. And not to speak ill of the dead, but Clarence wasn’t an Idea Man. He was muscle.

So, he’d probably given that cube to the people he worked most closely with, the former heads of the Diplomatic Corps and Doreen’s late parents, Robert and Barbara Coleman. The Poofs had eaten them, with relish, during Operation Confusion. But when we’d taken over the Embassy it was as empty as a new home. Everything was gone.

We’d assumed the Diplomatic Corps had sent all their crap to Alpha Four, where they’d planned to hide out and take over, but King Alexander and Councilor Leonidas had never found said crap. So either LaRue and Ronaldo had taken it with them into the far reaches of space—always possible—or the former Diplomatic Corps’ stuff was still hidden somewhere. Potentially with the Cube Gate. Or inside it.

I wanted access to that gate and not just because it would be nice to be right. I wanted access because Algar had told me it was vital, and I knew he hadn’t said that merely to be dramatic.

Contemplated what I could say. And realized I could say what I both wanted and needed to.

“Kitty knows about Algar.”

Had to say this—results were immediate.