Touched by an Alien

moved us into a more quiet area. “Okay, wasn’t me, Jeff, or James. I know it wouldn’t be Lorraine or Claudia. I have a really hard time believing it was you.”
    “The military personnel were never out of their planes. And Mephistopheles was only close enough to the car he smooshed. I think we’d have noticed if he’d been close to the other car.”
    “So it was Tim.” Christopher looked upset and sick.
    “Maybe.” I thought about it. “He left the car last, and slowly. If he’d reacted before I did, or immediately, I’d have an easier time believing it. And he’s the one who pulled me through the gate. Again, hard to believe he’d do that if he’d planted the bomb.”
    “Who, then?”
    “Someone at the Science Center, maybe. If the bomb was distance activated, it might not have shown up on the sensors until we were coming back. After all, if the fuglies killed us, no need to blow us up.” I thought about it some more. “Are all the A-Cs trustworthy?”
    “Of course.” He sounded offended.
    “That’s always a foolish assumption,” Mom said from behind me. “Someone let the C.I.A. in, too. I was with Richard and Paul the whole time—believe me, they didn’t call for this kind of support.”
    Christopher nodded. “We deal with the C.I.A. all the time, but Jeff and I do that, no one else, and we’re the only ones authorized to call them in.”
    “Under normal circumstances, you mean. You know, when a traitor isn’t mucking up the status quo. We’re back to my question: Who doesn’t want Mephistopheles destroyed?”
    “Who would have a motive?” Christopher was upset, not that I could blame him. “We’re here to stop the parasites, not help them.”
    “Where’s Dad?”
    “Kitty, your father is not the traitor.”
    “I know that. I need to ask Dad something.”
    Mom looked around. “Sol! Over here.”
    Dad trotted over. “What’s going on? Have you figured out who the mole is?” The way he asked, it was clear my parents had discussed this and were both confident the operation had been infiltrated.
    “No, Dad, I need to ask you something.”
    “Sure, kitten. Shoot.”
    “Christopher, I need to ask you things too.” I could see it, forming in my mind. It wasn’t pretty, but then again, in one sense it was.
    “Waiting with bated breath.” He could still snark under pressure. Nice to know.
    “Dad, would you say it was common or unusual for a cryptologist not to triple-check their work before declaring it complete?”
    He thought about it. “Rare, at least here. You have to prove you’re right to too many different organizations not to do a variety of tests.”
    “But the A-Cs only have one organization to report to.” I looked at Christopher. He was pale. “Was Beverly on the original translation project?” He nodded. “Is she considered your generation or your father’s?”
    “My father’s.” He swallowed. “And, before you ask, yes—she’s one of the few who knows the truth about Yates.”
    “She’s going to kill Jeff and probably James, maybe the others. We have to go, now . Mom, Dad, get rid of the C.I.A. and then figure out how to follow us.”
    Christopher grabbed my hand and we ran at hyperspeed to a gate. But the operators were fiddling with it. “What’s wrong?” Christopher barked.
    “We’re blocked from the Science Center. Some kind of interference. It’s affected all the gates.”
    “Did the teams with Martini and Reader make it back to the Science Center?” I asked.
    “Yes, they did.”
    Christopher cursed. “We’re too far for me to run us there.”
    I thought about it. “I know you can’t actually fly a plane, but do you know how?”
    “Yes, we all learned, just in case. I could tell someone how to fly, but I can’t do it myself.”
    “Oh, good.”
    He stared at me. “You’re not suggesting what I think you are, are you?”
    “We don’t, they die.”
    “You ever flown something before?”
    I answered honestly. “I hold the highest score at A.S.U. for Star Wars: Starfighter. ”
    “I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I’m going to regret this.”

CHAPTER 48
    WE ARGUED ABOUT ASKING for a human pilot as we ran to the jets. Since we were at Area 51, we actually had a lot of choices in terms of aircraft. Of course, since my pointing out that we couldn’t trust anyone right now won the trained-human-pilot argument rather effectively, we needed an aircraft that Christopher technically knew how to fly, was fueled up,