“How can you say that?” interjected Stefan. “Parts of the city are in chaos. People are starving.”
“I’m not saying things are perfect, Stefan. There have been wrinkles. But this is a new system. Satellite cities could solve the world’s population problem. Storage in outer space is the future, Stefan, and that’s the truth. Every household has an average of ten computer-driven appliances. Do you realize how much memory space that occupies? In a city this size, that’s ten blocks, just for household appliances. Then you have administration, entertainment, travel, communications. We store all that in a satellite in geostationary orbit above the city, constantly updating, constantly self-repairing.”
Cosmo was first to twig to where this was leading. “Selfrepairing until now,” he said. “Lately the Satellite has been messing up, big-time.”
Faustino switched off the news footage. “That’s right. It’s getting worse and worse. As you can see, we have squads of dish jockeys working around the clock. Some things we’ve been able to cover up, but word is getting out. Myishi stock is taking a real hammering.”
“Sick and homeless people don’t care much about stock,” said Stefan.
A flash of annoyance curled Ellen Faustino’s lip for an instant, then disappeared. “These things are being addressed, Stefan. We have long-term projects in development. Shelters, employment schemes, rehabilitation clinics. I’m doing my best to raise the money from Myishi International in Berlin. In fact, Central had signed on for a forty-billion-dinar welfare grant for the city until this latest problem came along.”
“What problem?” asked Stefan, trying to fake only a casual interest.
“Oh, I think we both know what the problem is.” Ellen Faustino rose from the couch, straightening her linen suit.
Stefan was out of the sofa, staring down into the woman’s eyes. “I said, What problem, Professor?”
Faustino stared right back at him, not in the least cowed. “Don’t talk to me that way, Stefan. Your mother would not approve. Answers, that’s why I brought you here. That’s why you and your little vigilante helper aren’t in the interrogation block right now.”
Ellen Faustino ran some more footage on the ceiling screens. “Look up, Stefan. They’re playing your song.”
Stefan settled back into the couch. Overhead a familiar scene played out digitally. It showed the Supernaturalists blasting Parasites, on top of the Stromberg Building, in glorious true-tone color.
Stefan winked at Cosmo. “That doesn’t prove anything. Those people are wearing fuzz plates, so you can’t see who they are. And even if you could, they’re not hurting anybody.”
Faustino looked around dramatically. “This is not a courtroom, Stefan. I don’t see any lawyers in here. If I wanted you on charges, I’d have had you two years ago.”
Stefan’s surprise broke through his mask of indifference. “You what?”
“That’s right, young man. I’ve had my electronic eye on you for a long time now. A special scope on the satellite, dedicated to your nightly activities. Well, you insist on running around on rooftops. And believe me, I have plenty of footage of your smiling face without a fuzz plate. Not to mention Miss Mona Vasquez and a certain Lucien Bonn, aka Ditto. I have enough evidence on your little group to have you buried deeper than a core-ore tunnel.”
Stefan clenched his fists so tightly the knuckles popped. “What’s going on?”
“Don’t you want to know why I’ve never had you pulled in?”
“Until tonight,” corrected Stefan.
Faustino waved her hands. “Tonight was a mistake. You got mixed up in another department’s operation. If you knew the favors I had to call in to get you two released into my custody . . . That said, I have been trying to find you for the past few weeks.”
“I thought you were the president. Surely you could track us with your all-seeing Satellite.”
“I’m just the president of Developmental Projects. Mayor Ray Shine is the big cheese. He doesn’t even know we’re working together.”
Again Stefan was stunned. “Now we’re working together?”
“Of course, you didn’t know it. You’ve been taking care of the city’s infestation problem, or so we thought.”
Aha, thought Cosmo. Here comes the reason why we’re not in pain right now.
“Infestation?” said Stefan innocently.
Faustino smiled. “Oh, come on now, Stefan. Don’t play dumb with me. I see them too, you know.”
“See who? See what?”
Ellie Faustino crossed to her desk and activated a 3D projector set on the floor. She transferred the Stromberg footage from the ceiling screen, and a 3D high-resolution rendering of the Supernaturalists sprang into life in the center of the room. Shot from above, they resembled characters in a video game. A single Parasite crawled along an adjacent wall. Faustino froze the footage, manipulating the video until only the Parasite remained.
“I see them, Stefan. Un-spec four. The life-eaters.”
For the third time in as many minutes Stefan was stunned. “You see them? Unspeck what?”
Faustino enlarged the Parasite’s image. “Un-spec four. Uncategorized species four. The other three are deep-sea creatures that we’re pretty sure exist, but haven’t been able to capture yet. A species is not considered to be categorized until it can be captured and examined. Of course, not everyone can see this. To a normal person, we’re looking at a blank projection, but to a select few, your little group included, the truth is all too clear.”
Faustino turned to the security guards. “Out. All of you.”
The team leader took a step forward. “President Faustino, that’s against regulations.”
Ellen said nothing, just stared into the man’s lenses. The two-hundred-plus-pound gorilla backed down in less than five seconds.
“Very well, Madam President. We’ll be in the elevator.”
Ellen perched on the desktop, remaining silent until the elevator door slid shut. “When I joined the force, before I began teaching, Booshka was my beat. Back then there was still a semblance of order down there. One night I took a knife in the ribs, breaking up a domestic. I nearly died; out of body, into the light, the whole thing. The paramedics brought me back. But I saw something that night. Something I’ve been able to see ever since . . .”
Cosmo sat bolt upright. “You’re a Spotter. Like me.”
Stefan sighed through his nose. “Why don’t you just sign a confession, Cosmo?”
“I kept it to myself,” continued Ellie. “These sightings, convinced that I was crazy. But then I heard about someone else who raved about blue creatures. You, Stefan, after the accident. You were quite a joke in the police academy for a while. Section eight, everybody said. As your personal tutor, and a family friend, I tried to help you through the trauma. I hoped you would open up to me.”
Stefan’s eyes widened. “All those therapy sessions. All those questions about post-traumatic stress and hallucinations.”
Ellie sighed. “But you wouldn’t open up to me. Apparently you had realized that nobody wanted to listen.”
“All that time in the academy together, and we both had the same problem. Why didn’t you just tell me?”
“I should have, I know, but I was afraid that it would get out, and my career would be finished.” She lowered her eyes. “I didn’t trust you, I’m sorry. After you left the academy to set up your vigilante squad, I finished my second doctorate and came to work for Myishi, in research and development. One of my jobs was a low-budget project to trace tiny power surges that were striking on the Satellite’s dish from the planet’s surface. Nothing serious. Small charges, not enough to cause interference. I figured out in about ten minutes where the charges were coming from. Un-spec four were venting them. Naturally I never revealed my findings. I had a career to think of. Eventually the charges were attributed to industrial discharge from Satellite City. I went on with my work, trying to make things better in my own small way. But then, a few years ago the charges began to increase. Slowly at first, but then at an alarming rate, so much so that they began to damage the dish plates. Now the discharge is so great that it’s a constant stream. We’re losing links with the surface. People are dying. It’s a red-light crisis for the corporation.”
“People have been dying in Satellite City for years, and Myishi has done nothing about it. Now, when there’s money involved, suddenly they’re interested.”
For the first time Ellen Faustino’s voice took on a hard quality. “Don’t be so naive, Stefan. Money gets things done. As soon as the Satellite lost its first linkup, all developmental projects were frozen. I had two hospitals and a rehab center in the pipeline. Gone now, unless we can sort out our Unspec problem.” Faustino’s temper disappeared just as quickly as it had appeared. “You’ve been handling the creatures for years. Destroying them very efficiently. There was no need to start up a team, or so I thought.”
Stefan sat up. “What does that mean?”
“The lightning rods. Very clever, the residual charge itself gets the creature.”
“Parasites,” interrupted Cosmo. “We call them Parasites.”
Ellen nodded. “Parasites. That’s good. You were wiping out the Parasites with a single-mindedness that Myishi employees could never match, so I kept an eye on you and left you alone to do your work—
our
work. But after the recent increase in charges, I put together a small team to investigate. There are the two factors that bring on the second sight, in my opinion: near-death experiences, coupled with a lifelong exposure to Satellite City’s chemical smog. The computer ran a search in the Myishi personnel files, and I interviewed everyone on the list. I found three other Spotters, all under twenty-five. I am the only one over forty. We began an in-depth study of the Parasites, especially what happens to them after you shoot them. And we found out something you might like to know. . . .”
Faustino crossed to the elevator door, checking to see that it was closed. She then ran a bug sweeper over the walls and phones, looking for surveillance devices. When she was certain that nobody had an eye or ear on the observatory, she took a crystal video chip from her wallet, pressing it into the 3D projector. “Next-generation technology,” she explained. “We can get two hundred hours of video on one crystal chip. Myishi will kick Phonetix’s butt next quarter.”
A life-size 3D representation of a Parasite materialized in the room. Stefan automatically reached inside his jacket for a lightning rod.
Faustino laughed. “Relax, Stefan. Amazing quality, I know. These are the first generation of lenses that can even photograph Un-spec four. What I’m about to show you is the result of months of surveillance. I’d say it was classified, but who are you going to tell?”
The Parasite began its curious lope along a projected wall. “Un-spec four seems to made of pure energy, which it obviously expends through activity. We observe the Parasite’s luminosity fades the farther it travels.” Faustino switched on a laser pointer. “This glowing center here is Unspec four’s equivalent of a heart. As it runs out of energy the heart pulsates more slowly. Eventually the heart will feed on the creature’s body, absorbing it in order to keep beating.”
The 3D Parasite faded to a pastel blue. Its skin lost coherence, and shortly after that, the heart itself did not have enough energy to keep itself intact. It disappeared in a blue flash.
“That flash,” said Cosmo. “Is that what Myishi is worried about?”
Faustino shook her head. “I wish. Those flashes barely register on our meters. No, Un-spec four only lets real sparks fly after absorbing energy.”
The picture changed. This time a Parasite was crouched on the chest of a fallen fireman. A stream of white-gold energy flowed into the creature’s palms. The Parasite glowed like a bag of stars, then drifted up a nearby wall. The camera followed the creature to a windowsill, where it rested briefly. The absorbed energy ran through its organs with increasing speed and agitation. After several seconds of unrest, an energy discharge burst through the pores of the creature’s skin, spiraling skyward.
“Now, that, I’ve never seen before,” said Stefan.
“We believe that the Parasite’s organs scrub the energy, then release completely clean power.”
Cosmo’s adolescent mind got it first. “So, you’re saying all this trouble is being caused by Parasite poop?”
Ellen smiled. “Exactly. People have tried to say it better, and couldn’t. It’s a bit like trees taking in carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen. Nature’s filters. This next clip is the part you’ll be really interested in. We only got it last month. Since then I’ve been trying to track you down.”
A new clip appeared in the projector ray. This one showed an obsessed-looking Stefan Bashkir in the middle of a disaster zone. Emergency vehicles were converging from all sides, and Parasites were feeding on the victims of a riot. “I remember that,” said the Russian. “Food riot in Booshka, near the blockade. Nasty.”
In the projection, Stefan was letting fly with his lightning rod, blasting Parasites from their perches. The camera caught one Parasite at the moment it exploded into a dozen shimmering spheres. The satellite camera tracked a single sphere for several minutes, following its rise into the atmosphere.
“Have you any idea how much it cost to get this footage? I had to buy camera time for an entire day.”
Stefan didn’t even hear the complaint, too focused on the sphere. It stopped rising after more than a mile, drifting slightly in the prevailing wind. The camera zoomed in until the sphere was the size of a basketball, hovering between land and space.
“In order to photograph the Parasites, our new lenses are coated with a chemical compound,” said Faustino. “It took my team months to find the right solution. We told head office it was antiglare spray.”
Stefan did not respond. His eyes were glued to the projection.
The sphere’s surface began to ripple slightly, as inside the energy coiled itself into a rope, chasing its tail into intricate knots.
“What’s happening?” asked Cosmo.
Stefan reached out his hands, sinking them into the projection. “No,” he breathed.
The ropes solidified, becoming more complex. A silver star shone at their center. “It can’t be. Not after all this.” Two round eyes appeared. Then blue fingers, pushing against the sphere’s surface, forcing the skin. “What have I done?”