Her eyes had been on the inner curve of the windshield, on her reflection or her memory. Now she turned to the American agent and said, “He spoke of you often, you know, Tom Kelly. I think now perhaps it was the Jews who killed him.”
“Something like that,” said Kelly as he opened his door and felt water drip on the bare skin of his wrist. “Could well be.”
There was no street lighting, and the lights of the traffic hid rather than illuminated Kelly’s surroundings by levering shadows through the sparse hedge in a counterfeit of nearby motion. The courtesy light in the cab winked as Gisela got out on her side. The vehicle neatly plugged the gap through which Kelly had driven. He stepped around the front of the pickup, toward the woman and another opening in the hedge.
“Thomas Kelly,” said a voice that he recognized, “we must speak with you. It may be that there still is time to save your world.”
There were three of them again, one on either side of the pickup and the third facing the vehicle’s hood and the two humans. The pair on the flanks were utterly motionless, but white noise surrounded them in a palpable cloak. The words were coming from the little radio in Kelly’s attache case, though its power was turned off. The rain that fell with fitful intensity was disintegrating away from the standing figures, without the fiery enthusiasm of bullets the night before but with an accompaniment of sound.
Gisela, arm’s length from the American, made a grab for the gun beneath his waistband.
She was lithe and very strong; but not so strong as Kelly, nor as quick. He caught her right wrist in his right hand and, with the other, tried to grip her about the waist. I “Wait!” he cried.
One of the frozen-seeming pair of strangers changed appearance. He – it – remained motionless, but the frosting and sizzle of rain that did not quite touch the form now wetted it normally. “Wait!” Kelly screamed again, this time to the figures who stood like wooden carvings of humanity.
Kelly was not willing to hurt the dancer, and she was willing to do whatever was necessary to escape. During the preceding day he had twice saved her life – so she thought at any rate – and gained such intellectual trust as a person like Gisela Romer had to offer. But her fear and hatred of the aliens were matters ingrained for years and redoubled by the fate of her father.
Her muscles flexed against Kelly’s grip by habit, sure from experience that she could tear herself free from any man before he realized her strength. Kelly held her like a band of iron. The point of her shoulder jarred his forehead hard enough for pain to explode in sheets of light across his optic nerves. Even then the veteran’s grip did not loosen, but his eyes missed the motion of her free hand.
He knew what she’d done surely enough when her knuckles slammed him in the groin.
On a conscious level Kelly thought he was still winning, still in control. He could block the pain while he reached for Gisela’s left hand also and his lips ordered her to –
His lips passed only a rattle like that of a strangled rabbit. His belly muscles had drawn up so tightly that he could not breathe, much less speak. And the will was there, but the strength had poured from his muscles like blood from the throat of a stuck pig. Gisela lunged back and away from him. Kelly still did not feel the pain he knew must be wracking him, but he could not feel anything at all between his knees and his shoulders.
Christ, that woman could break rocks with her bare hands.
He toppled as she twisted aside and froze, a splendid Valkyrie, in a dazzle of light as sharp and sudden as a static spark. Neither of the man-looking figures Kelly could see as his shoulder hit the ground had moved, though the one to the truck’s side began to hiss and shimmer again at the touch of raindrops. One or both must have shot the woman, but Kelly could only deduce that from the result. He reached back toward the Smith and Wesson he had refused to draw a moment before.