CHAPTER 6
Jon Pedderse studied the slim man sitting at the table from the other side of the two-way glass. The man was in his thirties, if Pedderse was to judge by looks. The man was much older if he was to believe what the science boys said.
Pedderse was not sure what to believe yet, but he had a job to do and he meant to do it. The fact that the man seemed so completely at ease was one of the things that was throwing Pedderse off. The man had to know what was happening - there was no way the government was going to let him go, ever, and the man had to know it or suspect it at any rate.
But he sat perfectly at ease, hands folded loosely on the table, his roman features relaxed, his dark eyes staring through the wall at something no one else could see. Pedderse shook his head, and looked at the heads up display on the sheet of glass; it would show him the same thing as the super-shades had shown, it would show the fact that the man's body temperature was nearly a hundred and eight degrees; it showed the brainwaves of the man, completely relaxed, no sign of the tension he must be feeling.
That, or the man had perfect control over his subconscious emotions. That was something Pedderse was not able to believe in.
And the electromagnetic aura - everyone had one, and the man in the room did as well. The computer turned the small fluctuations in the electromagnetic field into color variations, much as weather radar turned different weather patterns to different colors on the radar display.
These colors that originated from humans varied somewhat depending on whether you were alert or sleepy, in a state of relaxation or filled with adrenaline, whether you were thinking about something with all your concentration or letting the mind drift - all these things, the scientists had discovered, made slight variations in the blue or green field that surrounded all humans. They had not been able to determine what caused the slight variation between humans which had the blue aura compared to those of the green. None of that mattered to the man sitting in the small room, for his aura was for the most part red, a pulsing, deep red shot with shades of blue, the blue so slight as to be almost unnoticeable.
The man had been noticed on a routine test of the portable super-shades, the technology that the science boys had been perfecting. They had followed this unique specimen, followed him and watched him very carefully, to see if there was anything else that would set him apart.
As indeed there had been. Pedderse shook his head. He had seen some of the video, and had seen the video of the capture. He was glad - more than glad - that the man was constrained to the table and chair by slim yet super strong links of thin metal.
Pedderse drank the last of the cup of coffee, and then poured another - he liked it black and hot as hell, and this coffee fit the bill.
Pedderse stepped into the room to do battle with the strange, magical creature sitting so calmly at the table.
"Good afternoon."
A silent nod, the dark eyes not yet focusing.
"I don't know if I would want to talk either, you know - it's not every day you're caught flying around in midair after all."
No reaction to that, literally none at all. But the eyes had shifted in some way, Pedderse realized. He did not know exactly when it had happened but he was quite suddenly aware that those dark, impenetrable eyes were concentrating on nothing but his own gaze.
Focusing like a laser, and no flicker of emotion on that pale, gaunt haunted face. In age, the man looked thirty five, maybe a well fit forty, but in that moment, in the pale light of the interrogation room the face looked more than forty - more than forty by about a thousand years.
The features held a strange stillness, though " one that Pedderse described in later senate hearings as being the same stillness as that before a sudden clap of thunder, before the earthquake strikes, before the wave sweeps to shore.
Pedderse allowed himself a small smile - no matter how silent and obstinate the man was, Pedderse had the advantage for all that. He just wished he didn't have to repeat that again and again as he sat there.
"So, who were the people that tried to kill you? Samuel Arkin, that's the name you were going by, so I can call you that - or I can call you by your real name. Ha!" Pedderse barked a sudden laugh at the sudden tilt of an eyebrow.
"Call me Samuel," the voice smooth like silk, but with a strange roughness to it. Pedderse could not figure out whether it was the voice itself or the accent the man spoke in, almost a total lack of accent. They already had linguists listening, trying to figure where this guy was from.
"Seven dead," Pedderse said softly, and shook his head "I could see how you would want to run away from that. Believe me, if we had known they were coming we would have intercepted them. Hell, though, you did a better job than we ever could," Pedderse shook his head again. "That flying, though, that really took us by surprise. And you know, it was the same stuff that allowed us to catch you flying that allowed us to see you in the first place."
"Electromagnetic fields," the Malavide said softly, and Pedderse blinked. Why had he said that? He thought with a chill that there was no reason - why had he said it? But he had obviously given something away for the still man to make such an accurate guess.
"That's how you spotted me, isn't it? My electromagnetic aura was different - obviously, different enough for you to take notice of me. How many different fields are there? Eh?"
Pedderse clenched his jaw " he had to get control of this interview back, but Samuel, as he called himself, was still talking " his words came quick, and the accent had intensified a bit.
"I'll bet there are two different variations in your findings, my dear man." The black eyes bored into Pedderse until the cop thought he could see nothing else. "What color are you, I wonder?" the Malavide whispered, but his voice was much too loud, and when Pedderse spoke he surprised even himself.
"I'm blue," he said before he could stop himself, and Samuel nodded as a voice in Pedderse' earpiece said suddenly, "What the fuck are you doing? Get the fuck out of there, Pedderse, we need to regroup, your blowing it," the voice said in his ear.
And at the same time he saw Samuel mouth the words behind a hand scratching at his chin, "Don't trust the others!"
Pedderse stepped out of the room, into the hallway, and then into the now cramped room behind the length of glass. Phillips, the regional director was there; he was the one whose voice had come through Pedderse" earpiece.
"Christ, Pedderse, what the fuck was going on in there?" Phillips said, his voice quieter than usual. That was not a good sign with the director.
"I'm not sure, he . . ." Pedderse trailed off as he glanced through the glass. The man, Samuel Arkin as Pedderse knew him, was once again sitting as still as a statue, hands folded loosely on the table, not moving by so much as a millimeter. Not even trying to appear normal, not demanding his release. Pedderse wondered what the man knew, to be so sanguine about his own fate.
"There were no fluctuations in either of them," one of the techs said, and Pedderse shook his head suddenly, clearing the cobwebs out of it.
"No, he didn't do anything to me, I just got spooked is all," Pedderse said.
"Perhaps we should not resume until tomorrow. I don't want anyone else to interrogate him for now, let him cool his heels in that fucking room all night. Pedderse, get the fuck out of here and get some fucking rest. Be back in at first light tomorrow."
The regional director always knew exactly when sunrise was, and delighted in telling people to be in at first light, thus making them look up when sunrise was. Pedderse already knew. He had been working with the man for long enough. He told himself it was the kind of thing a good leader did, but he didn't believe himself.
"Don't trust the others," the man had said, as though they were sharing some type of secret. Pedderse tried to forget the words as he drove to work the next morning. He had on a pair of the super-shades. The contractor had given him a pair in a different style than the others because Pedderse was an evaluator of the technology. No one at the agency knew about it, and he was still not sure why he had slipped them on this morning.
The name of the things was extremely stupid, Pedderse thought, but he had not yet come up with a better one himself. He had never been good at naming things, and that went with the feeling this whole case was giving him. Unease - something was wrong
It was not yet first light, but the super-shades took care of that to, changing everything to a washed out grayish green image that nevertheless kept its three dimensional perspective, unlike other night vision goggles.
He guided his car through the streets, barely thinking about the act of driving. There was virtually no traffic at the moment - that would not hit heavy for another twenty to thirty minutes, and by then Pedderse would be safely ensconced inside the agency's headquarters.
Normally, one out of eighteen people possessed a green aura; looked at in smaller populations it was easy to see that sometimes green auras gathered almost exclusively. The government and the contractor that built the super-shades had looked for anything different than the auras about the people that were green or blue, but so far as either could tell they were just normal people, perhaps no different, the scientists theorized, than a left handed person and a right handed person.
One of the science geeks had tried to explain it to him - "The colors are arbitrary, they could have been anything, but the guy who designed the system had a sense of symmetry, so he matched the frequencies as well as he was able. The machine is just reading the magnetic signatures we all possess. Think of them as large groupings, more like blood types than fingerprints. All the frequencies are very close together, just as human blood, no matter what type, is human blood and not at like dog blood."
