Chapter 4

"Kim, what a nice surprise!" Victor said.

"I had a day off." Kim replied. "I wanted to see you." Victor led her into the house, with his hand at the small of her back, just the way she liked it, and Kim purred with pleasure.

"Kim, this is Penelope." Victor said. "She's staying with me until further notice."

"Some kind of trouble?" Kim asked through a haze of arousal.

"You might say that." Victor replied. His cell phone buzzed in his pocket. "Excuse me." He disappeared into another room to take the call. "Hello?"

"It's me." Mr. Andersen's voice said harshly over the phone. "My acrorectophobia's acting up. Bob me if necessary." Click.

"What the fuck?" Victor muttered. Suddenly it dawned on him. Acrorectophobia was a joke-word Mr. Andersen had read on the Internet, meaning "fear of assholes in high places." And the last comment meant that he expected Victor to help him lose any tail that might get pinned on him. "Something's up." he said to himself. He extended his consciousness, brushing Marie's mind and issuing a compulsory summons. She appeared at the door twenty minutes later with two friends in tow, hurrying them into the house while they demanded to know what was going on.

"Any idea why I just felt the need to be here?" Marie asked after spending two minutes hugging Victor tightly.

"I'm sorry, but something's come up and I'd prefer you to be here rather than out there with whatever-it-is." Victor said.

What's going on? Penelope asked.

I'm not sure. Victor replied. "Ladies, I think you'd best be getting downstairs."

"What about you?" Kim asked.

"I'll keep an eye out for Mr. Andersen. He's coming over."

"Sounds like some party." one of Marie's friends muttered.

"She doesn't know the half of it." Zak said, appearing beside Victor. "You've drawn attention to yourself, Vic, old boy. Let's hope you're as creative as the fellows who wrote those lovely comics of yours."

Shit.

"Deep shit, I'm afraid." Zak replied.

"Never a dull moment." Victor said, stepping outside. He pulled a gun from the glove compartment of Marie's car, but found only four bullets in the chamber, and no refills anywhere. Fine. he thought. He pulled out a folding chair, sitting with the pistol in his lap, and extended his consciousness outward, scanning for any hostile minds. He found them on highway 84, heading east, matching course and speed with Mr. Andersen's car but staying just out of sight. Searching their thoughts, he found that there was a tracking device on Mr. Andersen's car, which Victor quickly removed. This forced the pursuers to reveal themselves to keep the tail on him, which sent the elderly executive into evasive action. Soon Victor had a firm picture in his mind. Four cars and two helicopters. It was a simple matter to snap the alternator belt on the lead car, the brake line on the second one, a battery cable on the third and a fuel line on the fourth.

"Not bad, for a human." Zak said. "I only wish I could have given you a better effective range."

"You did fine." Victor replied. "Now, if I know Mr. Andersen, he's going to turn down the nearest county road to try to lose the choppers. That'll also ditch the one with brake problems, and that lead car will only be a concern until their battery burns out." He decided to accellerate the process, telekinetically moving the switches to activate the car's CD player and air conditioner. Sure enough, Victor saw through the driver's eyes that the battery indicator needle was now descending at a visible rate.

"We've got a problem." the driver said. "I think we've lost our alternator!"

"Damn it! Radio for assistance!" said one of the other men in the car. Victor disconnected the internal workings of their radio.

"It's dead!" The driver reported, then swore under his breath.

"Control? This is Agent Hooks via cell phone, we are under telekinetic attack!" one of the agents in the back seat said. Victor destroyed the cell phone.

"I guess there's no more need for subtlety." he said, insinuating his image and voice over the agents' perceptions. By reflex, the agents pulled their guns and opened fire. Agent Hooks, in the back seat, was the only one who managed to avoid being killed by his comerades.

"Damn you, Phillips!" the man exclaimed, unbuckling his seatbelt and diving for the steering wheel.

"Sorry, you don't have that authority." Victor replied, removing his psychic presence from the car. With the dead driver's foot flooring the accellerator, Agent Hooks had no time to make the sharp turn that followed. The car plowed into a large oak tree, and he was launched through the windshield, barely missing the tree himself, and landed in a big pile of sand. He was several hours in reawakening. He tried to walk, but his leg was broken and poking through his skin. He had to crawl to the road and hope he didn't get run over by some kid sneaking around the speed traps.

"I don't know if I lost them." Mr. Andersen said as he parked his car under the carport with Victor's loaner.

"Who is after you?" Victor asked. The agents he'd encountered psychically had been able to shield their memories, indicating long hours of training on their part.

"Not sure." Mr. Andersen replied. "All I managed to get out of the one I questioned was that he's Federal."

"Not a lot to go on." Victor replied.

"I know." Mr. Andersen grumbled.

"Mr. Andersen?" Desiree asked, peeking out of the basement. "What's going on?"

"I talked her out of leaving." Victor whispered by way of explanation.

"Ah, the 'emergency vacation.'" Mr. Andersen mused. "We'll be down in a moment, Desiree. I think it's safer if you stay there for the time being."

"Uh, yessir." Desiree replied, disappearing once more down the steps.

"Phillips, you dog." Mr. Andersen chuckled. "I've seen that look in a woman's eyes before, but it's been a while." He was laughing quietly now, his broad shoulders bobbing up and down in his mirth. "Well, one mystery solved." he said, sobering up. "Too many more to go."

"True." Victor replied. "Starting with who sent those suits after you."

"Can I help?" Penelope asked.

"Who are you?" Mr. Andersen asked.

"Mr. Andersen, this is Penelope." Victor said as the little girl shook hands with the elder gentleman.

"So, the government's after you, too?" Penelope asked. "Join the club, Mr. Andersen. I'm a hacker specializing in defending regular people's rights. What are they hunting you for?"

"Apparently, to get to Vic here." Mr. Andersen replied. "Though I can't imagine why."

"I can." Zak's image said, appearing in a chair. Mr. Andersen jumped. "Sorry, old bean, didn't mean to startle you."

"Who are you?"

"The psychic projection of an extraterrestrial being whose name contains only one syllable we can pronounce." Victor said. "So that's the syllable we use for a nickname. Zak."

"Oh, okay, I'm beginning to understand now." Mr. Andersen said. "The government's power-jealous, so it made it a punishable offense for any American citizen to have contact with extraterrestrials or their vehicles, for fear that someone might trade their sister into slavery for a starcruiser and fly it to Washington or something."

"Even if slavetaking races DID come to Sol III to trade, rather than simply conquering the planet, they would hardly be so daft as to give away their cruiser for slaves. More likely a shuttlecraft, but it would require a great many individuals to be turned over. I think one of the smaller urban zones would have to be emptied to pay for a shuttle, and of course the one making the trade would have to capture the other humans himself..."

"Zak, he was talking about government paranoia, not rational thinking." Victor said.

"Ah." Zak replied. "So sorry. I do tend to ramble so."

"So is this how you make contact with other species?" Mr. Andersen asked.

"Oh, no." Zak replied. "I wasn't even supposed to make contact at all, only observe. You are, after all, a pre-hyperdrive species. However, I was captured by covert agents of your government and had to effect an escape. I encountered Victor while attempting to evade recapture, and learned more about your culture from him in twelve hours than we had learned in twelve years by passive observation of your broadcasts."

The sound of helicopters interrupted the conversation. Victor stepped outside, questing outward with his mind. The two choppers cleared the trees and opened fire, carving twin lines of bullet holes on either side of him but failing to harm him.

"Was that a warning shot?" he asked no one in particular.

"Victor Phillips, stay where you are!"

"Oh, I'm not going anywhere." Victor remarked. Flexing his mental power, he disassembled the helicopters in midair. The pilots glanced about themselves in confusion as they found themselves hovering amidst the flying pieces of their vehicles. Victor tossed the pilots into the lake and reassembled the helicopters.

"Wow, that's some trick!" Mr. Andersen muttered.

Zak, do you want to explain it or should I? Victor thought.

"I'll do it." Zak's image said. "You go console the mothers of your children."

"It's confirmed then?"

"Yes, sir, most definitely."

"Very well. Proceed to plan Epsilon."

"Yes, sir!"

Kim awoke to the sound of the bench press rattling and moved downstairs to investigate. She smiled when she found that it was only Victor exercising. He was dressed in cut-off jeans and a sleeveless undershirt, and was pressing what looked like two hundred pounds. She knelt at his right knee and waited. When he finally finished, he sat up, gently cupped a hand under her chin, and brought her to her feet.

"Did I wake you?" he asked.

"Yes, but I don't mind." Kim replied, letting waves of arousal flow down the rapport he'd forged with her the night before.

"You shouldn't be naked outside the bedroom." he said. "Mr. Andersen's here, don't forget." At his mental command, an extra-large T-shirt flew into the room and onto Kim's nude body. She put her arms through the armholes herself.

"I'm sorry, Master, I should have remembered." Kim said in Chinese. "I shouldn't be calling you Master while Mr. Andersen's here, either, should I?"

"Probably not, at least in English." Victor replied, pulling her close. "How's this for a consolation prize?" He kissed her then, and she melted against him.

"I don't think I'm ever going to get used to this whole poly-sexual thing." Mr. Andersen said, striding into the room. Startled, Kim backed away, blushing brightly. "I hope everyone you hire for us isn't going to be your breeding bitch, Vic. A whole bunch of women having maternity leave all at the same time..."

"I know, sir, that's why I'm going to do some ... more normal testing, starting tomorrow." Victor replied.

"Glad to hear it." Mr. Andersen said. "Hiring all one gender is never good."

Hours later, Victor was searching through the local college newspaper when he found an article entitled "PROGRAMMING EVIL." Just below the title was the byline Zebulon Lycos. Hooked, Victor read on, and discovered it was a scathing beratement of the writers of the Klez, Melissa and I Love You viruses and the F.B.I.'s Carnivore program and other such snoop devices.

"I think we've just found the next Stone Phillips." he muttered to himself.

"I would have said John Stossel, but Stone Phillips is good too." Zak's mental projection said.

"Weird name, Zebulon." Victor continued. "Still, I guess there can't be too many Zebulons on campus, so he should be pretty easy to find."

"You sure don't look like a Zebulon." Victor said, catching the young man's attenton. Maybe "man" was too strong a word. The youth wasn't too much older than Penelope. A grade-skipper, then?

"That's your opinion." Zebulon replied.

"Oh, I actually knew a guy named Zebulon once." Vic said, intrigued rather than daunted by the youth's firey nature. "He dated my sister in between stays at the county jail. Knocked her up just before he went to the state pen. Anyway, that's neither here nor there. My name's Victor Phillips. I read your article, 'Programming Evil.' Powerful stuff, that."

"You could just send fanmail." Zebulon suggested.

"Actually, I wanted to ask if you would be willing to be a very young John Stossel for a TV station in Waco."

"Wow, liked me THAT much, did you?" Zebulon asked, quirking a smile. "A lot of my pieces get pulled because of stuff like that, you know."

"I understand completely." Vic replied. "A lot of people can't handle the truth, especially if it's about themselves or a sponsor."

"And here you're willing to take the Eminem of journalism under your wing?" Zebulon asked.

"Well, Zeb--can I call you Zeb?--it's like this, okay: the station's getting ready to flush the lazy element out of its system, and we're looking for people with a good work ethic to fill the void..."

"Is my age going to be an issue?" Zeb asked.

"How old are you?"

"Almost fifteen."

"You're legal, kid." Victor replied. "Don't scare me like that again, okay?" Zeb laughed.

"Fourteen months ago you would have been up the minor tributary of sanitation sans ulterior mode of locomotion." Zeb remarked.

"Nice use of big words, kid, but we don't pay you by the syllable." Vic replied. "So, anywho, let's talk about your job skills, shall we?"

"180 words a minute, extensive experience with Internet search engines, and I even wrote an Internet spider-program that searches unsubmitted sites, too."

"I'd be stupid not to hire you." Victor replied with a laugh. "By the way, where'd you learn to be so scathingly insulting without resorting to cursing and name-calling?"

"Even the Mensa sector of AOL is not above the occasional flame-war." Zeb replied. Victor laughed.

"Well?" Victor asked.

"He's a little young," Mr. Andersen replied, "more than a little controversial, he seems to have a problem with authority..." Victor sighed, sitting back in his chair. "It's about time we were able to compete with Bill Maher. I'll set up an audition, get some of our idea men working on a premise, get the legal department started with his contract negotiations. He's a little young, but he's old enough to legally work in this state, so that's old enough for me."

Victor chuckled. Mr. Andersen was good at making people think he was going to say one thing when he was really going to say something else. Kim came out of the bathroom looking a little queasy.

"Are you alright, Kim?" he asked in Chinese.

"I did not feel good, Sir." Kim replied in the same language. "I think I may be pregnant. This is the second morning in a row this has happened."

"There are saltines in the kitchen, I will get herbal tea for you later."

"Thank you, Sir." Kim responded.

"What's all this?" Mr. Andersen asked.

"Personal business." Victor replied.

"Whatever you say, Vic."

DANGER

Victor steeled himself in response to the premonitive terror just before the psychic assault came crashing down on him. He was able to deflect the first barrage almost harmlessly. It took his assailant a few seconds to gather for another strike, in which time he made ready for a counterattack. Locking into the frequency of the second assault, he sent as much anger as he could muster down the line of transmission, battering back at his foe. He extended himself outwards, scanning the memories of everyone he could reach within the time he had before his enemy recovered, finding as many painful memories as he could, be it injury, death, grief, loss ... anything. Gathering the memories into a psionic dagger, he thrust it forward, amplifying the accompanying emotions as he stabbed the mind of his foe. Within moments, he was tuned in to nothing but the psi-static of a catatonic. He withdrew back into his own body, opening his eyes once again. He was on the floor. Kim and Mr. Andersen were kneeling over him.

"What happened?" Mr. Andersen asked, helping him up.

"Psychic attack." Victor groaned, clutching his head. "Almost caught me completely off-guard, but I had a bit of warning."

"It was Penelope." Zak's image said, appearing at his side. "She has a great deal of precognitive potential, activated by the evolution process. It is rare. I will have to consult with someone as to how to proceed."