Touched by an Alien

our rightful place in the world.”
    “It’s understandable. So why did they send the rest of you?”
    Martini shrugged. “The shield was getting battered. They knew our grandfather had survived on Earth, so they could tell themselves they weren’t killing us or dooming all of you by sending us here. They agreed to give us what we needed to keep the parasitic threat somewhat at bay.”
    “Everything but the materials to make an ozone shield here.”
    “Right.” Martini looked exhausted. I wondered how long he’d been carrying this knowledge around. I checked out Christopher—at least as long as Mr. Surly had been, since he looked equally spent.
    I decided to sneak up on the Horrible Truth. “You’re susceptible to Earth diseases, aren’t you? At least some of them?”
    “Yes,” Christopher said. “We don’t get heart disease or anything related to it. But we’re fair game for other illnesses.”
    “And, the real reason you have strict rules about interspecies marriages is, what?”
    Martini looked as though I’d kicked him in the gut. Christopher didn’t reply—he looked over at Martini and I didn’t have to see his face to know he was glaring. It was clear he wanted me to hear this from Martini directly.
    “The internal organs remain A-C dominant.” The words sounded dragged out of him.
    “I’ll bet Paul’s parents were allowed to marry as a test, weren’t they? I’ll meet some others, interspecies couples with the human side coming from, what, every country or just every race?”
    “Country and race both.” Martini’s jaw was clenched again.
    I nodded. “You’re scientists, after all. Good testing theory.” I didn’t say that I figured all the tests had been run already. I’d save that for when I needed it. “So, how long before the parasites hit Earth did you arrive?”
    “First waves came in the nineteen-sixties,” Christopher answered.
    “Right when the parasites really started littering the ozone shield,” Martini added.
    I shifted on the table, just in case I needed to jump out of reach. “Did your tribe reconnect with their exiled leader?”
    Could have heard a pin drop. This time it was Martini who looked at Christopher with an expression that said it was time to return the Awkward Answer favor.
    “We tried,” Christopher said finally. “But …”
    I decided to save him some pain and me a lot of time. “But he really wasn’t like his son, and he’d discovered that he could get away with a lot more here on Earth than he had back home. Bitterness will do that to some people.”
    Martini nodded. “From what we know, he rebuffed Richard’s attempts to reconnect.”
    And now, here it was. Time to unveil the Horrible Truth. I took a deep breath. “He was rich, powerful, and celebrating by creating chaos all over the world. Is that why you haven’t killed him yet? Or is that just why the Mephistopheles parasite chose him?”
    The girls looked sick. Claudia was obviously trying not to cry, and Lorraine was holding her stomach and rocking back and forth. Reader looked horrified. Martini and Christopher still looked exhausted, as if the weight of two worlds were on them.
    Christopher managed to drag out an answer. “At first my father thought Yates could be redeemed. Then he decided we’d just ignore him. When we realized he was running a terrorist organization, we tried to stop him. But the parasites were coming, and that was more important.”
    “It’s pretty odd on this world to have a terrorist group aimed at chaos only, not based on some religious belief. So what religious belief of yours is Yates actually working his terrorism for?”
    “It’s not a religious belief,” Christopher said. “I don’t know how to explain it to you.”
    “I do,” Martini said. “Devil worship.”
    “Ah. He cracked and took the opposite side of the spectrum, religiously?”
    Martini nodded. “Took every tenet of our religion and warped it.”
    “Not a surprise, all things considered. And Yates doesn’t strike me as someone who controls his temper. But was it an intentional pairing?”
    “We don’t know,” Martini answered. “It could have been, but I think you’re closer in saying the parasite made the decision, not good old Granddad. We hate him, you realize.”
    “I can understand that.”
    “No, not really,” Christopher said. “We’re not supposed to.”
    “Religious rule?”
    “Pretty much,” Claudia said. She seemed back under a semblance of