Okay, so the aliens weren’t at all what I expected. As I passed through the belly of the craft and regained some semblance of my normal appearance, I was thinking frail, bug-eyed little guys with skin like a half-cooked sausage. I figured I could take a few of them before they got me in restraints. The fall would be a bitch, but . . .
Wrong. These weren’t your run-of-the-mill Roswell aliens. These aliens had ties. Brown shoes. Bad comb-overs. Clipboards for crying out loud. They looked for all the world like clones of Donald Trump. One of them tapped his foot in time to the Neil Diamond music piped into the conference room where I had materialized. It was a scene straight out of the corporate job I had run screaming into the night from a decade before. All things considered, I believed an anal probe would be preferable.
A brown-haired clone who smelled faintly of cologne stood at my elbow. The name tag on his suit read "Perry."
"Mrs. Reisling is aboard, Commander."
“Have a seat, Mrs. Reisling,” the one at the end said. He was shuffling through about an inch and a half of papers in a manila folder. No comb-over here. This guy had a buzzcut straight out of the 1950s. For a brief second I considered doing the timewarp.
He looked unflappable. I decided to see if he was.
“That’s Ms.,”
“Huh?”
“I said that’s Ms. The divorce was finalized three months ago.”
“Oh, oh I see. Ms. then. Have a seat.”
“Have a seat??? Are you kidding me? You yank me out of my car in the middle of the night with some ubertechnology, hijack me into a flying boardroom, and all you can say is ‘have a seat?’”
“You can stand if you want to Mrs., er Ms. Reisling. But I think you’d be more comfortable in a chair. This may take awhile. You can rest assured that everything will be made clear in due time.”
“You’ve got a lot of damn nerve kidnapping innocent civilians like that. What about my gear? What if someone steals it? That stuff is irreplaceable. I’ve got a 1972 Gibson EB-0 in that car. Do you have any idea . . .”
Old Buzzcut sent a meaningful glance to the man sitting closest to me. “Perry, handle that please.” Perry stood up. By the time I saw the hypo, it was already taking effect. I sat down. Fortunately Perry had the presence of mind to scoot a chair under my butt before I did.
"Now where were we? Ah, yes." He made a steeple with his hands. "I was about to explain to you that your husband . . ."
"Exsh-hushband." I felt almost as rubbery as I did in mid-air. But my mind was working just fine.
"Ex-husband, then. Whatever you want to call him, Hunter Reisling is on board this vessel. And we want you to talk to him."
"Huntersh here? Whatsh he doin here? No. Wait jusht a minute. I don't want to shee him. I never want to shee him again. He'sh . . ." Damn, it felt like I had a mouth full of novacaine. "He'sh a traitor. He betrayed ush all, the mushic, everyshing . . ."
"That's enough. I won't hear him spoken of that way. Hunter was . . . is . . . one of my best men. He's sacrificed everything for his country. His work, his home, his reputation . . ."
"Hish wife." The tears started rolling down my face. I couldn't stop them. Yeah, I like to think I'm tough. But this pain cut deep. I was racked with sobs. The night's events had taken their toll and exhaustion was setting in.
The Commander was no dummy. He could see he wasn't going to get anywhere with me in this condition. He slapped the file on the table and gave Perry a brisk nod.
"Find her some suitable quarters. We'll pursue this in the morning."
Morning? Surely it was already morning by now. But I had no way to tell. There were no windows, no clocks, no natural light. My watch was apparently not rated for space travel. I wiped my face on the sleeve of my denim jacket. I thought about putting up a fight, but the heart had gone out of me. I let Perry half lead, half carry me to a small cubicle at the end of a maze of corridors, and flopped like a rag doll on the narrow bed. I wanted to take off my shoes, but I couldn't work up the energy. Man, those things were gonna stink in the morning.
So Hunter was here? When he disappeared, I thought he had run off with someone from the lab. Arabella maybe, or Jessa, the one who was always talking about her boob job. What in the world was he doing here? And what did they expect me to talk to him about?
I was crying again. Damn. I never do that. I buried my head in the pillow and let the grey fog of sleep fill my mind. Maybe when I woke up, this would all just be a bad dream. Yeah, sure. Like I'd be that lucky.
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