Chapter 5

Her next planet-more correctly, theirs--was perfect in every respect: crystal clear air, sparkling blue water, vegetation as green and verdant as a still-life painting ... without a trace of indigenous life. Not even insects or birds were found. Following a bitter afternoon in Paradise, they shrank away on a moonlit beach, onto a grain of perfect white sand.

Her fifth planet was even worse. Iris set them down on the outskirts of an ancient city on the largest continent’s west coast. The lost civilization was obviously humanoid: people-sized doorways in the ruined buildings, decayed vehicles in the streets, park benches, and telephone booths on corners. Restaurants offered tables with place settings intact, tablecloths long since disintegrated to dust. No sign of looting or rioting were evident, so whatever happened, happened quickly, Grove posited, possibly overnight. This prospect seemed strengthened by the discovery of currency in the tills of cash registers and bank drawers; paper money, visibly collapsed into dust alongside coinage bearing the likeness of humanoid personages. The sexes appeared to be equally hairless, with delicate noses and tiny ears. Gazing upon a coin resting on her palm broke Kellie into tears. Retreating to a corner, and placing the coin just beyond the reach of her field, she later dwindled into nothingness on the engraved eye of a former president, or other dignitary.

“You have to eat,” Iris warned. “And drink. Don’t make me make you, Kellie Marie.”

“Whatever,” Kellie said listlessly. Floating between two super-galaxy groups to which she offered no preference, Iris guided her toward the smaller grouping, then to an unremarkable spiral galaxy within. It had been sixteen hours since she’d last removed a bottle of water from her backpack; longer still, since her last meal.

“Can’t you do something?” Grove demanded angrily.

“Like what?” Iris retorted through Grove’s communicator. “Force feed the girl? Maybe you should have thought about this before sending a 14-year-old on permanent vacation, asshole.”

“Take her over!” he fumed. “Make her eat and drink, Iris.”

“There’s a sure cure for depression: commandeer the girl’s body.”

Iris sidled up to a spiral arm; Kellie looked away incuriously, missing the unremarkable yellow star with its coterie of planets, which Iris had selected twenty minutes ago. The tiny worlds eventually resolved to an inner quartet of small rocky planets, colorful gas giants farther out, and oddly, a tiny 9th orb orbiting off-plane from the ecliptic.

“The 3rd planet looks habitable,” Iris said. “We should head there.”

Kellie didn’t particularly care if the 3rd planet looked habitable or not. What had her interest was the immense gas giant bearing gorgeous, multidirectional brown and red bands. “Pretty,” she muttered, imagining touching down and being swallowed by the fearsome red storm. Just coming into view beyond the planet was another behemoth with a remarkable system of equatorial rings. She’d seen nothing comparable to it in all her previous landings.

“The third planet is populated with humanoids,” Iris advised.

Kellie snapped awake. “What? Where?” Iris pointed out the fleecy white clouds, oddly shaped continents and the translucent green oceans of the oncoming world.

“Pick a continent, Kellie.”

“You pick one!” Kellie shot back.

She saw-or thought she saw-a thin structure meandering lazily cross continent over thousands of miles of terrain, crossing rugged mountain ranges, lowlands, broken in many places by the intervention of a river. A volcano in a small grouping of islands spewed dark gray ash thousands of miles eastward; a second volcano, an ocean away, embedded in a northern island chain running westward from a huge land mass did likewise, though with a much smaller plume. A finger from this landmass nearly met a like finger of land extended from an opposite side. She noted with interest the vast, glistening polar ice field. She wondered if water or land lay underneath the ice. Good portions of all the northern continents were covered in ice.

One continent group, Kellie noticed, was very like the one on her second planet. A large northern continent joined the southern continent via a narrow isthmus, very near the equator. The combined landmass neatly divided the planet in two; the only way around it required skirting the southern tip, near the southern artic climes. At second glance, was that a narrow line of water crossing the isthmus: a canal? Kellie thought it was.

“Land me there,” she said excitedly. “Right where we landed on Planet Number Two.” She indicated a spot midway up the west coast of the northern continent. From this distance, an inland bay was visible, joined to the ocean by a narrow ribbon of water. The bay ran north south, long, and narrow, maybe a hundred miles long.

Without comment, Iris aligned Kellie feet-on, and when the time was right, lowered her boots into the atmosphere. Evidently sensing danger, she powered up, the shield darkening and flickering to life. Alarmed, Kellie asked: “Are we in danger?”

Iris pointed out machines in the air below: winged aircraft. “Just a precaution,” she advised. “The natives seem restless tonight.”

Spanning the narrows stretched an orange suspension bridge. South of the narrows was heavily populated area, buildings densely packed; the northern section not so much. The rugged northern landscape seemed a better set-down site, she thought: less chance of trampling innocent bystanders. Hopefully, they had evacuated by now. Iris eased them north of the bridge in preparation of touchdown.

“The city surrounds the bay. On the southern end, anyway,” Kellie qualified. Not the glistening cityscape of the Globes or Moth-People, nor the dense architecture of the lost civilization of her fifth planet, but Kelly spotted numerous tall and interestingly configured buildings in the city centers, great expanses of densely-packed neighborhoods in the suburbs. This could easily be her planet, she thought. What was it called, she wondered.

“It goes by numerous names, but the most widely accepted is Earth. Directly below is the Marin Peninsula. The bridge connects it to the city of San Francisco to the south--”

“How do you know that?” Kellie demanded.

“I monitored their radio communications coming in. Also ground-based and satellite broadcasts. They’ve only recently become aware of us; I warped space to conceal our presence until ten minutes ago. I wanted to avoid a repetition of the Globe-People scenario.”

“Well, shit!” Kellie objected. “How long have you known about these guys?”

Iris ignored the outraged tone. “I happened upon them by chance. They’ve only had radio about a hundred years.” She directed her attention downward. “Oakland and Alameda are inland; San Francisco is the city joined to Marin Peninsula by the pretty orange bridge. It’s called The Golden Gate, by the way, and a national landmark. They mobilized military forces to protect it--and the cities, too, of course. See those circling aircraft below? Jet fighters, though not so sophisticated as ours. Helicopter gunships too, with air-to-air missiles. I haven’t detected any nuclear weapons, yet ... though some broadcasters claim they were authorized. No sign of quantum weapon capability, at all. They aren’t advanced enough for that, of course.”

Kellie gulped loudly. “Should we abort?”

Iris laughed. “I don’t suppose they’d nuke us over densely populated cities. The blast wave, and all that radiation?”

Vacillating, Kellie asked: “What do you think, Professor?”

Grove ignored Iris’s automatic grumble. “Based on Iris’s assessment, I’d say fighter aircraft could track you anywhere on this planet. Where you plan to alight is good a place as anywhere to touch down. Truth is, aborting might trigger a panic reaction on some pilot’s part; they all have itchy trigger fingers, I’m sure. Continue to slowly descend and land in the wilderness area to the north, is my suggestion. And Iris, I advise you power down immediately. Your flickering energy field is an obvious hot-button issue for these folks.”

“Fuck that!” Iris shot back. “You should hear what these asshole political hardliners are saying about us on radio and TV. Blow us out of the sky, they say! Others have made a point that Kellie is obviously female, and quite a pretty one, at that. Some of their comments make me blush in effing embarrassment, Grove!”

“Wait?” Kellie sputtered. “They look like us?”

“Vice-versa, but yeah. Remarkably, like them, in fact. I gotta tell you, though, they got four boobies, Kellie: two up front and two in back.” She laughed at Kellie’s alarmed reaction. “Relax ... just like us. Cute guys, too. This is our world, for sure. Oh, shit.”

Low enough that helicopters had begun to circle her boots; Kellie skittishly locked her arms firmly at her sides and smiled vaguely at the circling pilots. Some two hundred feet tall, she was not the towering invader of her earlier exploits. What if they weren’t intimidated enough by her size? The faces examining her through Plexiglas canopies bore human-like tense expressions; some glared at her with open hostility.

“Crap. Maybe you should do what Grove wants,” she muttered, “and power down. At least get rid of these flickering flame-tongue thingies,” she said, observing them cross-eyed. “They make us look pretty effing dangerous, Iris.”

Iris replied: “Really? Guns, missiles, and cannons? You missed those little details, kiddo? We gotta look like we can defend ourselves, girl. Otherwise some numbskull will shoot first, and ask questions later.”

Kellie bit her lower lip. “Can we do that without being so obvious? Offer them a fig leaf, or something?”

“It’s an olive branch, and no! Powering down invites attack. They haven’t attacked, yet, only because we do look dangerous. Take my word for it, kiddo, no!”

Unnerved, Kellie wavered. “Professor?”

Grove cleared his throat. “I agree with Kellie. Besides, you can reenergize in a matter of nanoseconds, right, Iris?”

“That’s not the point!” she responded hotly. “I let down my guard, and someone will take advantage. Even a moment’s distraction would be a disaster. I’m not letting you put Kellie’s life in danger, asshole. Forget it!”

Grove pressed hard on the issue. “Half an hour from now, Kellie will be normal-sized again. How she presents in the next few minutes’ sets the precedent for acceptance into society. I won’t downplay the risks: it’ll be a circus for years, every government on the planet demanding access to the intergalactic guest. Your life will be a misery. Without Iris in your system, humans will lose interest in you, soon enough, though--scientifically, at least. You’re 14 years old, just another school-age human female.”

“Yeah!” Kellie pleaded. “Please power down! I just want to be a kid again when I get down.”

Iris swore in frustration. “This is bullshit. He’s the last person in the universe you should listen to, Kellie Marie!”

“Power down ... please!”

Iris swore again. “Fine! Don’t say I didn’t warn you, though.”

The flickering abated, the shield fading to a barely perceptible green. Kellie suddenly flinched. “Wait a minute! What do you mean, ‘without Iris in my system’?” Her obvious agitation was mirrored by the expressions of the circling helicopter and jet fighter pilots: what had brought on the alarming change in the invader’s demeanor? Kellie needn’t be told this put them at heightened risk.

“Kellie, listened to me,” Grove urged. “I told you that Shrinx-Iris-would eventually let you get on with your life.”

“You never said anything about getting rid of her!”

“That sorta goes with letting you get on with your life,” Iris advised mildly.

“Bullshit!” Kellie shouted. “Forget it! Both of you!”

Simultaneous to Kellie’s explosion, a pilot performed a flyby too close her face. Agitated, she swatted at the helicopter. Though missing, her sudden movement and the resulting turbulence put the Apache into a gyrating spin. A finger too tight on a trigger fired in response, and two billion pair of eyes watched smoke erupt beneath the wing of an F-15 Eagle. Iris reacted an instant too late. The warhead impacted directly below Kellie’s left shoulder blade as her shield flared to life. Driven forward and down by the explosion, she began a head over heels plummet toward earth. Iris took only a moment to gain control and align Kellie’s limp body with the ground.

“Fuck!” she screamed. Targeting the offending aircraft and every other armed machine within a fifty mile radius, she radiated hatred while battling the overwhelming need to retaliate. Finally, she turned her attention inward, to Kellie.

Grove hollered through the earphones: “Kellie, what is it?”

Iris laughed bitterly. “I told you it was a bad idea, asshole.”

Kellie’s wound was mortal. Iris stemmed blood loss from her ruptured heart and rebuilt the muscles and nerves from the top down, atriums first, then the larger, more important ventricles. The aortic artery came next, followed by the superior vena cava. She barked sharply at Grove to shut the hell up, and let her work. Pumping blood exclusively to Kellie’s brain--there’d been no damage during the minute required to nominally repair her heart--Iris next attended the savaged left lung.

“Stupid assholes! I brought her here, too. What was I thinking?”

“What happened was an accident,” Grove responded, “terrible, yes, but recoverable. They’ve made no further aggressive moves?”

“Let them!” Iris fumed. “I wish they would!”

Grove sighed. “This is still the best opportunity Kellie might have for a normal life. The chances of discovering a similar planet are nil. You experienced her mental deterioration over the past twenty-four hours. It’s now, or never, Iris.”

Iris laughed bitterly. “I pray you blunder into a star when you come down here, Grove. It sickens me that I had anything to do with this.”

“Be that as it may ... now is the time to let her go.”

Iris bared her mental fangs, but said nothing.

Working with incredible swiftness, Shrinx A completed repairs to Kellie’s left lung, and began work on her skeletal structure and soft tissues. The shrapnel had proved devastating. Some pieces would remain embedded in Kellie’s torso throughout her life. Iris simply hadn’t time to deal with them all.

“I’m not sure I can repair her in time,” she growled in frustration.

“Locate a medical center. Large ones might have a designated area for helicopter landings, the same as here. You can probably spot one from the air. How big are you now?”

“Not nearly big enough,” she said. “I need more time.”

“Slow your shrinking then.”

“The disruption would affect repairs. I get them done in time, Grove, or I don’t.”

Unconcerned with circling aircraft, repositioning Kellie over San Francisco, Iris spotted a likely candidate west of two major highways. She descended to five hundred feet. Scores flooded from the building complex into the parking lot and pointed skyward, hands shading eyes, conversing excitedly with fellow onlookers.

“I got one.” A sleek blue and white helicopter lifted from the roof. The white-painted circle with a red border immediately filled with scrambling hospital personnel, arranging six gurneys side-by-side and end-to-end to accommodate Kellie’s bulk. Reaching her altitude, the helicopter took up a stationary position fifty yards off.

“Ahoy the patient! Do you copy?”

Iris started at the loudspeaker-amplified voice. Locating an open channel, she spoke directly to the pilot: “Keep your distance, friend. We don’t need another unfortunate accident.” She watched the pilot’s eyebrows arch in surprise.

“You speak English. That’s good. Do you require immediate assistance?”

Iris laughed at the absurd question. “I got it in hand, thank you.”

“She-you-look badly injured. You can’t stop shrinking?”

“It’s a matter of physics, pal. Are you armed?”

The pilot reacted in surprise. “I’m a rescue pilot. I don’t have weapons onboard. You’re not gonna shoot me down, are you?”

“Not if you keep your distance.” She noted the circling aircraft had withdrawn to a distance of five miles.

“My name is Phil Kagan, US Naval Reserve. Who are you, exactly?”

“I’m what’s making her shrink.”

“Do you have a name?”

Iris laughed. “Kellie’s the injured girl. You can call me Iris.”

The pilot responded slowly. “Those are rather earth-like names, Iris.”

“I translated into English for you.”

Phil took that in. “Where are you from?”

Iris laughed again. “Out there.”

“OK. Yeah.” Kagan laughed. “It caused quite a stir when you showed up halfway between here and the moon and picked the West Coast to land. People are a bit on the edgy side.”

“I noticed,” Iris said sourly. “What’s that complex below?”

“San Francisco General Hospital. If Kellie needs assistance, you couldn’t have picked a better place.” His tone sobered. “My guess is you had the ability to retaliate when the pilot fired his missile.”

Iris replied stiffly: “Your pilot is lucky to be alive, sir.”

“He’ll wish he wasn’t when the brass get through with him tonight.”

A pair of fighters remained aloft, circling at great distance. The helicopter gun-ships had all landed, or were in the process of landing in available open areas. Iris identified the remaining aircraft, also maintaining at safe distance, as belonging to news outlets. She took a moment to permanently fry Grove’s transmitter. Then she isolated the link with Kagan to prevent eavesdropping.

“Listen, Kellie was forced into this situation by a fucker on her own world. He’s out of the picture now, but Kellie needs a permanent home. We blundered onto Earth, and I can’t calculate the odds of finding another Earth-like planet if we don’t stop. It’s here, or watch her suffer a mental breakdown. Can you help?”

Kagan cleared his throat. “You’re saying you won’t be finished with Kellie before she’s a proper size.”

“Some will remain to the epidermal layer of her left shoulder and back, and possibly her dermis. She’ll be in intense pain, requiring immediate therapeutic care. I need reassurance that she won’t get rushed off to some secret location to be scrutinized. Or worse.”

Kagan hesitated. “I can’t promise anything, Iris. Events took the authorities by surprise, and they’re scrambling to catch up. I’m just an arbitrarily-chosen point of contact here.”

“Can you try?” she pressed.

“Yes,” Kagan confirmed. “I’ll try.” He cocked his head. “Do I have it right that you’ll be removed from the picture once Kellie reaches the proper size?”

Iris confirmed tightly: “It’s the only way to halt her shrinkage.”

Kagan hesitated. “That puts her at risk, though.”

Iris guessed his concern. “I’ve inoculated her against all known Earth pathogens. She’ll take her chances along with the rest of you against future issues, but her immune system is fine for now.”

“Good. A lot of people above me on the food chain will want this girl, all with an agenda. Your ability to manipulate gravity, your grasp of quantum mechanics; the healing power you’ve demonstrated is simply staggering. Surviving a missile strike that half the people on this globe watched.” He laughed shakily. “The technology you represent is worth trillions.”

“It all goes when I’m gone,” Iris persisted.

Kagan stayed quiet a moment. “How long do we have?”

“Minutes. She’s barely twice her normal height.”

“You should get her down then, don’t you think?”

Iris watched the dozen personnel below begin waving and pointing to a lone gurney in their midst. Lowering Kellie into their waiting hands, she dropped onto the white-sheeted mattress and was rolled onto her side. A doctor directed a pair of nurses to sterilize the wound with strong disinfectant, while a second pair stood by with dressings. Kellie groaned weakly, but didn’t awaken.

“Let’s get her inside,” the doctor instructed. “OR 6.” Glancing for a moment at the hovering helicopter-Kagan had moved off to avoid hitting the roof with prop-wash-he nodded, and then headed inside with his charge.

“Get those people back! What the hell happened to security?” Kagan grabbed a confused security guard and shoved him toward the surging crowd. “Most of the police were detailed north of the city for crowd control! We’re on our own here, guys. Grab him too,” he yelled, whistling at a second security guard, a burly black guy that Kagan knew as Sam. Waving him over, he said: “Clear this floor, will ya? No one unauthorized gets past those doors.” To the nurse at the charge desk, he said: “Where did they take the girl?”

Confused and as harried as the half-dozen nurses trying to answer the deluge of incoming phone calls--Kagan wondered the phone system still operated at all-the woman stared at his flight suit and the helmet tucked beneath his right arm. “You’re the one who went aloft?”

“We don’t have time for that now. Where did they take her?”

The nurse shook her head. “I’m not sure you’re authorized to go up there, sir.”

“I am,” he lied, searching out her ID. “Which operating room, Rhona?”

She blinked, unable to understand how he knew her name. “Six, I think. Is it true?” she asked, twitching disjointedly. “She’s from outer space?”

“She’s not from Sausalito,” Kagan grunted. “Get security on the line. Tell ‘em we need guards up here, and a lock-down on the elevators. I saw police coming as I set down, but traffic has the roads completely snarled, and they’re at least twenty minutes away. Jesus, what a SNAFU!”