“Why, she has everything to do with this, luv.” Miriam Larkspur pursed her lips. “Like you, she’s seen both our faces. But we’re inclined to be compassionate, Gen and I. What are you going to do? Go to the police and tell them that a parr of senior citizens from Indiana held you up at gunpoint and stole your dead alien? I don’t think so.”
Ross Ed had the pack off his shoulders and was removing the thin blanket. Gennady Larkspur leaned forward slightly, tense with expectation.
“Doesn’t look like much, does it, to have caused so much consternation in Washington and Langley?”
“Kind of scrawny,” his wife agreed.
Removing Jed from the backpack, Ross Ed worked to gently unravel the tangle of limbs.
“Quit stalling.” Holstering her pistol, Miriam Larkspur extended both arms. As Ross Ed took a step forward, her husband gestured warningly with the magnum.
“Just throw it. I don’t want those big arms of yours anywhere near the missus.”
“Okay, just take it easy.” Ross prepared to pitch Jed to the waiting woman.
A burst of light flared from the suit and he promptly did something he’d never done to Jed before: he dropped him.
“Ow … dammit!” Tucking both hands under his arms, he tried to squeeze away the pain.
Gennady Larkspur raised the pistol warningly. “No tricks, now!”
“Tricks, hell!” Shaking both hands, Ross blew repeatedly on his fingers. “Look how red they are. The damn thing burned me! Lousy, stinking, ugly alien mummy!”
“You’re not being funny, son.” Larkspur gestured with the magnum. “Pick it up and toss it to my wife.”
“But I’m telling you, it burned me! You think I’m making it up?” He held up his right hand, which was indeed a flushed, angry red. Blisters were already visible, forming beneath the skin of his palm and fingertips.
The dry cleaner hesitated, then glanced at his wife. “Keep them covered, Miriam.” She nodded and once again drew down on their prisoners with her tiny but highly efficient pistol.
Removing his flannel shirt, Larkspur wrapped it around his right hand and approached the alien body. He was bending and reaching for it when the laser-bright bolt of light exploded from the suit. The bolt was dark on one side and bright on the other, as if half the beam had been painted black. It was unlike anything Ross Ed had ever seen before. He had no explanation for it, but needn’t have felt inadequate. No dozen physicists on the planet could have explained it, either.
It temporarily blinded the Larkspurs. A second, much more powerful bolt lanced from the suit to the river. This was accompanied by a voice speaking in English. Reverberant and profound, it vibrated the air.
“Behold! This I do for my people!”
Where the beam struck the water, the river curled backward in a vast reverse wave, as if it had suddenly slammed up against a great and invisible dam. The result was a clear path across suddenly exposed riverbed. A few flopping fish and marooned soda cans floated in isolated eddies.
“Go now!” thundered the voice. “Sinai awaits. Ye of evil intent, be warned! Do not attempt to follow my people!”
Gennady Larkspur had fallen to his knees and was rubbing at his light-shocked eyes. “Forgive us! We didn’t know. We—”
“For heaven’s sake, Gennady, get up!” Equally dazzled, his wife was tugging futilely at his arms.
“Come on!” Picking up the alien body and shoving it into a dumbfounded Ross Ed’s arms, Caroline urged him toward the dry cross section of river bottom.
“But … but it can’t be. Didn’t you hear? It’s …”
She shoved him hard with both hands, nearly knocking him off his feet. As long as he was stumbling, he decided he might as well stumble with her.
“Just move your big Texas butt!”
Together they clambered over boulders and driftwood until they reached the waterline. The backward-arching wave towered above them, an ominous, rumbling shape looming over their left shoulders as they started across.
Somewhat less than overawed, Miriam Larkspur had abandoned her mumbling husband to his shocked recriminations. Taking aim with both hands, she fired at the fleeing couple. But while she was an excellent shot, the combination of increasing darkness, distance, and the impossible wave caused her to miss badly. The Texan and the woman ducked their heads and kept running.
“Woe unto those who would disobey My Word!” the voice
She turned back to her husband and smacked him hard across the face. “Dammit, Gennady! You stupid old man, get up!”
“But. Miriam, don’t you hear it? Don’t you hear the Voice?”
“They’re getting away!” She pointed toward the river. “Where they’ve gone we can follow. This time I’ll put a bullet in each of them.”
“Don’t you remember the story?” At her continual urging he rose, but shakily. “When the Red Sea was paned and—”
“Red Sea, schmedsea!” she interrupted him. “Don’t you recognize that voice?” She slapped him again. “Get a hold of yourself, Gennady.”
“The voice?” Dazed, he looked down at her. “It has to be the voice of—”
“It’s Charlton Heston, you idiot! I don’t know how the alien got a recording of it. Must have picked it off a television station showing his old movies, but I’d recognize it anywhere.”
“Those who pursue are lost!” the voice declaimed unctuously.
“See? Limited vocabulary. You think a deity would speak today in a Hollywood variant of Old Testament rhythms? It’d be more direct. It’s the alien suit that’s doing it. The suit!” She reached up to smack him again but this time he forstalled her.
“Yes.” Realization struck home, uncomfortably. His expression hardened. Gennady Larkspur didn’t like being made a fool of, not by his fellowman not by an alien corpse. “Yes, of course.” Drawing the magnum, he followed his wife toward the river.
“Hurry! We can’t let them get too far ahead of us.” She picked her way nimbly over and through the rocks.
