Kelly was affected only at a conscious level, touched by wonderment at the emotional reaction of the others to what was, after all, a fraud. TV trickery, makeup, and muddy camerawork to make the gimmickry less instantly patent. But it couldn’t frighten an adult, not somebody like Tom Kelly who knew that the real face of horror was human. . . .
The camera steadied again, though it was six feet farther from the subject than before, and it was some moments before the cameraman thought to adjust his focus. Not makeup at all, thought Kelly, squinting. The ‘head’ above the necklace was smaller than that of any human beyond the age of six, so whoever was responsible had used a dummy. . . . “Roll back and freeze it where he touches the necklace,” Kelly said.
He expected the woman either to make excuses or ignore him. To his surprise, she reached over with the remote control unit and said, “Go ahead, Mr. Kelly. Freeze any part of the film you choose to.”
The veteran cued the tape back in three jerky stages, angry that he had not been paying enough attention to get to the point he wanted in two tries at worst. Neither Elaine’s stillness nor Doug’s outthrust chin disguised the fact that the pair was nervous; and this time the cause was not the very real one of Tom Kelly’s anger.
The bland, human face, only partly hidden by the gloved hand reaching for the medallion. Then the hand jerked back and, in the instant before the startled cameraman jumped away also, Kelly was able to pause the VCR into as close an equivalent of freeze-frame as a television’s raster scanning could achieve.
Somebody was pretty good. Kelly couldn’t see any sign of the transition, but what filled the screen now was nothing close to human.
Not only was the head the size of a grapefruit, it had no apparent eyes. There was a mouth, though, a blue-lipped circular pit lined with teeth hooked like blackberry thorns. The nose was a gash like that of a man Kelly had met in a village near Erzerum, his limbs and appendages eaten away by the final stages of leprosy. Either water droplets were creating an odd effect, or the surface of the dummy was scaly, and the scales divided at the midline of the face in a row of bony scutes.
Kelly thumbed the Pause button and let the tape roll forward. When the camera achieved focus and steadiness again there was a somewhat clearer view of the alien visage, but nothing beyond what Kelly had already seen. “All right,” he said, “what happens next? The mothership comes down and vaporizes Diyarbakir? You know, I’d miss the place.”
“There’s nothing more on the tape,” Elaine said shortly. The screen dissolved into diagonal static again as if it were ruled by her voice.
Kelly tried to switch off the VCR. When his thumb touched the Eject button on the controller as well, the tape whirred and cycled itself halfway out of the feed slot. The veteran’s anger flared, though no one in the world but he knew the act was nervous clumsiness instead of deliberation. He was allowing himself to be spooked!
“We need a Kurdish speaker,” Doug said with a toss of his head that seemed to clear a dark aura from his soul, “and we may need someone who was involved with Operation Birdlike – assuming Ayyubi wasn’t the only member of that group who’s gotten involved in this new business.”
“Go home.” Kelly spoke flatly as he shook himself and set the remote unit back on Bianci’s desk. “Go home so I can lock up behind you and go home myself.” He rubbed his eyes with his left forearm. “Been a long day, been a long three years. I’m just not in a mood for government-issue bullshit any more.”
“It’s not bullshit, Mr. Kelly.” the woman said as she watched him with the inscrutable eyes of a cat viewing a bird too big to be prey. “Earth has been visited by aliens – is being visited, we think. Men who you know have been in contact with them.”