Species II Read Free Page B

the petty struggles of daily existence.
    Nowhere, however, was the elation more intense than at Mission Control in Houston, Texas.
    Of the three huge screens that dominated the room, two of them showed a live feed from the landing. The massive room was alive with applause and yelling, the workers and technicians at a hundred and ninety-seven work stations slapping each other on the back with glee and spinning foolishly in chairs before their consoles to celebrate the culmination of years of work. In a glass-paneled viewing room behind the main control area, a smaller but no less elated group laughed and raised glasses of champagne to toast each other and the space-suited figure on the screen as newscaster Peter Jennings supplied them with the media viewpoint via a small television set off to the side:
The Excursion voyage to Mars is one of these occasions. Today, America is proud!
    Impeccably dressed in a deep blue suit, every silver hair in perfect place, Senator Judson Ross put his arm around Melissa Evans and gave her a gigantic, fatherly hug. “He did it, Missy!” He let go of her and began shaking hands with the NSEG officials milling happily around the room, his mouth stretched in a beaming smile. Excitement made his words slip into the slight southern drawl that he’d worked to shed, but right now that was okay. This was his grand moment, the day that brought the United States success in the Mars Space Program that he himself had pioneered, the red planet conquered by none other than his own son Patrick. “Look at him up there,” he exclaimed. “He’s on Mars!”
    “Your son’s a hero, Senator Ross,” an NSEG official whose name he couldn’t recall told him. “A true-blue hero—congratulations!”
    Senator Ross nodded, delighted at the response, relieved that Patrick was up there and seemed to be doing okay, safe as you please; he never would have told anyone how scared he’d been at the prospect of his boy traveling over thirty-five million miles—a distance nearly inconceivable to him—and stepping out of his spacecraft. But it was okay, he was there and safe, and everything was fine. Thank God.
    The smile plastered to his face, he made his way around the room again, downing a glass of Dom Perignon on the way.
    T he Garberville Psychiatric Institute in Maryland was lovely, a top-of-the-line facility reserved for special people thrust into “special” situations. From the outside, the Institute looked like a New England mansion: quaint red brick; shutters painted bright white framing lightly tinted windows; petunia-filled flower boxes even adorned the windowsills above neatly shaped hedges. A long, curving drive flanked by marigolds led to a locked—discreetly, of course—double front door next to which was a small brass doorbell and an inconspicuous sign that read “Visitors By Appointment Only.” The grounds were quiet and peaceful, intentionally inviting.
    Inside, the environment did an about-face.
    Beyond the scrupulously decorated and maintained entry foyer, reception area and receiving offices, the walls were pitted and cracked, both from age and the force of blows thrown by residents for one reason or another. Well hidden behind the exterior’s solar tint on the windows was a layer of steel mesh embedded on the inside of the glass. Furniture was sparse and strictly functional: hard-cushions on the couches and chairs that couldn’t be used to smother a fellow inmate, steel legs and arms on the tables that couldn’t be broken off and used as a club. The Institute was old enough so that the bare tiles on the floors were asbestos-based, but the directors and big-armed orderlies didn’t care. They had enough to worry about just trying to keep the residents’ behavior at a level vaguely approximating acceptable control.
    In the game room—checkers and cards only, no sharp objects allowed—the television was mounted high at the juncture of the wall and the eight-foot ceiling and turned on.