Episode 22

Just as Iqu had to sneak out of Base 11 by stowing away aboard a blood camp delivery truck, Silverbullet and he would have to stow away and sneak in in much the same fashion. Except that Lily Sloan was utterly exhausted. Being made of liquid/solid silver only augmented Lily's martial artistry, it didn't add extra energy to her body. So Silverbullet could and did tire after a long, hard night of slaughtering monsters. She insisted on being given an hour (or two) to rest until they ventured back out to steal a truck and try to make it to the base before dusk.

Father Mario Garibaldi focused all his attention on the alien Iqu in an effort to ignore how Lily was resting while embracing Rose DeVega. As Garibaldi and Iqu swapped philosophies, Lily Sloan pointed out barely above a very tired whisper, "This is where I became Silverbullet: I dipped in holy water and melted silver and then I passed out right here, on this cot, like I'm going to do now..."

"But those tubs are empty," Rose said, looking about her. "Where did all the water and silver go?"

"In me," Lily answered. "Magic, I suppose-I never thought I'd believe in such things..."

"Does God count as magic, Goldie?"

"I-I don't know what to think anymore. After everything that's been going on, all I know is I need some sleep..."

Father Garibaldi tried to ask Iqu if his people visited Earth thousands of years ago, in order to figure out if what were thought to be acts of God in the distant past were actually close encounters with extraterrestrials. He feared asking the question almost as much as the answer itself, which might invalidate more than a millennium of faith.

"I doubt it," Iqu attempted to answer. "I'm not sure, since I was practically raised on the base and only occasionally had any contact with my race, but I don't think my people had interdimensional travel for quite that long. I can't see us having had the technological ability two to three thousand Earth years ago, though some other race might've been here back then. As I understand it, we first came because we noticed you people had split the atom without having united your nation-states first. We wanted to see how a race could be so schizophrenic as to have high technology and low sociology. A flux capacitor, for instance, in the hands of social primitives-still pathologically obsessed with sex and skin color-was evidently a scientific curiousity worth the risk my parents' crew and a few others took to come here."

"I'm sorry for your loss, Iqu," Father Garibaldi said, lowering his head slightly. "As a man of the cloth, part of my job is consoling those who've suffered the demise of a loved one."

Iqu waved dismissingly but in a peculiar way Garibaldi found foreign. "Don't worry. I've fully dealt with what happened and it's not as if I blame all humans. I can read your minds and tell most of you are simply afraid. Afraid to take the risks necessary to improve the standard of living or afraid the risks won't result in anything you can visibly profit from in your lifetimes."

"So what's the answer?"

"Evolution," Iqu said placidly. "Of course, your race will have to live long enough to evolve, and if Silverbullet doesn't wake up soon, you people won't have the chance to."

Father Garibaldi swallowed nervously. "Maybe I should get her up now-"

"No, let her sleep a little while longer. She'll need the rest to be ready for what lies ahead. You have to understand. Colonel Kruger want to bend the laws of physics so his werewolves will always be at their peak, but if he ever breaks them..."

"What? What would happen?" Garibaldi was on the verge of waking Lily Sloan up with the octave he used in asking the question.

"Nothing," Iqu waved dismissingly again, only not nearly as sincere or convincing as before. "Don't worry about it."

TO BE CONTINUED