Alan Dean Foster

by Alan Dean Foster

  20

  some reason the shotguns' echoes lingered longer in the night air than they had earlier.

  Glass shattered above his head as the car windows were blown out. That didn't bother him. What widened his eyes was a shuddering in the body of the vehicle he sat crouched behind. Metal ripped and smoked off to his right. That last shot had gone right through the whole car. Through the car. As he stared dumbfoundedly at the ragged hole, a second blast tore through the thick sheet metal barely inches from his shoulder.

  Panicked, he scuttled toward the front of the car, blasts and exit holes following him in neat, orderly succession, until only the fender remained.

  Nowhere left to go except to the next car. Not too far away up the street.

  Ten feet. A lousy ten feet. No time left to think, either. He rose and ran.

  Two steps from the second car the next blast hit him in the side, knocking him to his right, his arms flailing wildly at the air like those of a rag doll dropped from a speeding car. A second blast caught him in the chest as he was spun around by the first, but it didn't hurt him. He couldn't be hurt any further. The first shot had cut through his spine. He was dead before he struck the asphalt.

  Sykes saw it happen and could only stare. Tuggle had been his partner for nine years. Tuggle had been his friend for nine years. And Tug was down hard in the street.

  The big alien loosed one, two, three additional shots in the direction of the motionless detective. One blast caught the prone body and tumbled it over like a loose stone. Then he grabbed at his buddy and threw him toward the rear of the market. As he did so the shotgun fell from Raincoat's fingers. Neither paused to recover the dropped weapon as they searched wildly for the store's rear exit.

  Sykes could have charged in then, might have had a good shot at them.

  Instead he was racing across the street. He slowed as he approached Bill Tuggle's body. There was no need to check for a pulse, no need to tum it over for closer inspection. The three powerful blasts had reduced the body of his partner to something unrecognizable.

  One minute he'd been nearby, exchanging sotw gags, 21

  alive and warm and wise-cracking across the pavement. Now he was gone. It wasn't always necessary to check for the heartbeat of a gunshot victim.

  Sykes had been on the street a long time. He didn't check. Nobody had ever looked deader than Bill Tuggle looked right then.

  "Aw shit, Tug, Jesus! Goddamnit!"

  Sometimes all you can do is stare and curse. Not all cops pray in the conventional sense, but most do something similar. Sykes's lips didn't move, but anyone could see what he was feeling in his eyes. Words and images rushed through his dazed brain, all jumbled up together like one of Edie's stews, and his lousy mind wasn't equal to the task of sorting them out. He couldn't make sense of any of it.

  Then his expression changed, his gaze came alive with something else. It spilled over into his entire being and took possession of him. By rights he ought to have stayed where he was. Sirens were wailing against the night.

  Their backup on its way, too late, too far away. By rights he had no business leaving the scene to pursue, one against two. Crazy, insane, madness. Why not sweep him up in it also? What did anything matter, with Tug a limp pile of meat in the middle of a Slagtown street?

  He took off toward the store, eyes wild, rage giving wings to his feet.

  The store was deserted, the proprietor's wife having fled. He nearly fell twice, slipping and sliding on broken glass, heedless of sharp-edged shelving and the possibility of catching a surprise shell. The rear door stood ajar. He plunged through just in time to catch a glimpse of the two tall aliens rounding the comer at the far end of the service alley. He felt as though he were flying along, his feet hardly touching the ground, the years seeming to fall away from his muscles as he built up speed in pursuit. He wasn't worried. Not yet. It was difficult for Newcomer fugitives to find places to hide. The department learned that early on.

  Size wasn't always an advantage to a mugger or pursesnatcher. They made nice, big, fat targets. The gun in his hand was light as a feather.

  By the time he rounded the comer they'd vanished. The 22

  street ahead was open and uncluttered, well-lit by bright overheads. The shops were closed, the storefronts mute and dim. Despite the absence of parked cars there were plenty of shadows and hiding places. He advanced more slowly now.

  Cops who'd survived years on the street didn't have the sixth sense, but they had something else: caution developed through fear.

  It was a small noise, insignificant. Anyone else would have paid it no heed. Sykes immediately turned toward it, toward the base of a high, overbearing billboard mutely advertising beer clenched in an alien fist.

  The tall alien had given himself a difficult angle for the shotgun. Without thinking, Sykes dove to his left.

  What was brutally effective at close range was hard to aim with distance.

  The blast blew apart the top of the crate the detective flopped behind, but not the part he'd chosen to use as cover. Still intact, he scrambled on his belly, cursing the inventors of all shotguns, moving deeper into the pile of empty crates like some hyperkinetic centipede high on speed.

  A new sound caused him to rise to his knees. It was a sharp click, loud and metallic in the quiet night: the sound of a hammer dropping on an empty chamber. His grin turned feral as he rose.

  Dropping from the bottom of a fire escape and tossing the empty shotgun aside, the alien took off up the street. Sykes followed. He was closer now, a good deal closer. Close enough to see the Newcomer turn the next comer.

  He followed without slowing. The robber had sacrificed his lead for a failed ambush. Sykes wouldn't lose him now.

  There was a pedestrian tunnel ahead, a black gaping hole punched through a concrete wall. No other way out, no other way in. He slowed, his nerves screaming with tension, his brain flashing that big red caution sign.

  The concrete was cold and damp against his back as he started inside, his finger taut on the handgun's trigger. Then he realized it was the usual dry L.A. night and that the dampness came from the perspiration that was pouring down the back of his undershirt.

  The murkiness inside the circular opening expanded to 28

  engulf him as he edged slowly inward, trying to control his breathing so he could hear clearly. It was drier inside the tunnel than out. The only sound was the scuffing his shoes made on the ground.

  Very dark but not completely so, shadows distinguishable but not shapes.

  That's when he heard the footsteps. Not subtle or cautious like his own, not trying to conceal their presence, but loud and pounding. The only problem was that in the darkness he couldn't tell which direction they were coming from because the sound bounced like mad off the concrete walls of the tunnel. He was surrounded by looming echoes.

  He barely spun around in time to confront the massive shape as it lunged in his direction. It uttered something violent in a nonhuman tongue that was all sibilant hissing and glottal stops. Vinyl slapped at his face like the wings of a fish-catching bat.

  Somehow he brought the pistol up in time to fire once, twice, three times.

  Raincoat stumbled backward, his knees collapsing an inch at a time like the legs of a folding ladder, until he finally lay on his back on the tunnel floor. Sykes found time to breathe, then advanced slowly.

  With an inhuman bellow, the alien abruptly snapped erect and reached for the detective with both long, outstretched arms.

  A startled Sykes jumped backward and fired twice more at the dim silhouette. This time when the raincoat-clad figure went down, he stayed down.

  Damn aliens, Sykes thought. His heart was pounding hard enough to break fibs.

  Only his street-sensitive hearing and his unwavering caution had saved him, had allowed him to react to those last, closing footsteps. Just as they made him turn now.

  This noise was peculiar, an almost childish soft tinkling. Metal against metal, jangling l
ike toys or cheap jewelry. Jewelry. He turned in a circle, the pistol extended before him, saw nothing, and only looked up at the last possible moment.

  24

  As one of the two aliens dropped down on him from directly above.

  They both went down together, the alien grabbing with huge hands, Sykes rolling frantically and somehow managing to hang on to his gun. As he tried to bring it to bear, the alien swung the side of one palm and connected with the detective's wrist. Pain raced through his hand and the gun went skittering across the floor.

  Sykes tried to run, found himself being lifted into the air as if he were a child. The alien threw him up the tunnel. More pain, racing through Sykes's back and arms as he hit the unyielding surface hard. A damn good thing, he thought crazily, that the Newcomer hadn't thought to throw him into the wall. That would likely be next.

  Far off in the distance an angel was calling through the haze that filled Sykes's brain. A siren, mournful yet promising. Too far away.

  The alien was coming for him now; confident, silent, unopposable. As he approached, Sykes heard the distinctive clinking sound which had almost warned him in time. It was dark and his eyes were full of dancing Christmas lights, but he still caught a quick glimpse of the source of the noise. It was jewelry, yes, but not cheap. An exotic silver bracelet of obviously alien design dangled from the Newcomer's right wrist. As the links slapped against one another they produced the musical metallic tones that had tickled his hearing.

  The Newcomer loomed over the fallen detective, his head scraping the tunnel ceiling, one fist raised to deliver a final blow. At the same time, the forinerly faint echo of the siren grew much louder, as if it had turned a nearby comer. Lights, flashing and glorious, illuminated the front entrance to the concrete tunnel.

  The alien turned to glare in their direction, the red and blue glow coming from outside throwing him into sudden sharp relief. Then he turned, and without another glance in the direction of the fallen detective, jumped over the prone, helpless body and sprinted off down the tunnel.

  Sykes listened to the fading footsteps as he fought to get back on his feet. He was still stunned, his vision still 25

  unfocused. He fought to rise. Damned if the bluecoats would find him moaning on the floor.

  Then an alien face was gazing close into his own.

  Without hesitating or thinking, he brought his right fist up and around with all his might. He couldn't have been that bad off because his punch landed square in the center of that alien visage. Caught by surprise, the staring Newcomer tumbled to the ground.

  Don't let him get up, Sykes found himself thinking frantically. Don't give him a chance to get up. He rose and tottered forward, trying to position his right foot for a crippling kick.

  Only to find himself grabbed from behind and held tight as he tried to attack. He half turned in the restraining arms, relaxed only when he saw that beneath its blue cap this new face was wholly human. The golden badge riding the crest of the cap gleamed in the bad light like an Aztec relic.

  "Whoa, whoa, hold it! Take it easy!" the cap's owner was telling him.

  Sound advice, Sykes mused. Useful advice. Not to mention welcome.

  Suddenly he was conscious of how much running he'd done, of how exhausted he really was. Some of the tension drained out of him.

  The uniform was still talking, but not to him. Instead, he was gazing with concern at the alien still on the ground.

  "You okay?"

  Easier for the eyes to focus when you stood still, Sykes told himself as he tried to make sense of what he was seeing. The aliens were tough because they were big, but they were not invulnerable. The proof of that was the one he'd just decked, lying sprawled on his ass ten feet away.

  As Sykes looked on, the Newcomer sat up and recovered his cap. A blue-badged cap, just like the one Sykes's restrainer was wearing.

  At that point the detective realized he'd just flattened a fellow cop.

  A Newcomer cop.

  "I am all fight." His enunciation was very precise, with none of the accent that afflicted so much Newcomer English. Whoever he was, he'd spent a lot of time with voice tapes. The result was accentless, yes, but somewhat stilted.

  26

  He didn't look all right. A trickle of purplish blood was trailing from his left nostril. The human cop studied his colleague for a moment, then decided his medical needs weren't serious.

  "I'd better call in." He stepped around Sykes and headed up the tunnel.

  The alien watched him leave, then rose and came toward Sykes. The detective tensed. He'd popped the Newcomer pretty hard. But retaliation wasn't what the cop had on his otherworldly mind. He ignored Sykes as he moved past him to kneel beside the dead alien. Fingers groped Raincoat's upper arm, hunting for a pulse. Sykes mumbled a desultory query.

  "Nothing." The Newcomer's tone was emotionless. "He's quite dead."

  Rising, he turned to see Sykes cradling the bruised fist he'd struck out with. The detective took a step, stumbled. Instantly a massive arm went around his upper body to support him. Concern entered the alien's voice.

  "Your hand will require attention."

  Sykes jerked himself free, stumbling a second time but angrily refusing additional assistance. "Get the hell away from me! I don't need your goddamn help!"

  Obediently the alien released his grip. Sykes nearly lost his balance, had to steady himself against the tunnel wall. He was a picture of impotent rage and frustration. One alien dead was good. One still on the loose was infuriating. His reactions to the Newcomer cop standing stolidly nearby and gazing back at him with that slightly inquisitive expression they always wore when trying to comprehend the vagaries of human nature provoked feelings inside Sykes that lay somewhere in between.

  III

  The lights hanging from the ceiling of the minimart were supplemented by the harsh glare of the coroner's floods. Had to make sure every inch of every wound was properly illuminated for the cameras. Don't miss any important details or you'll have the boys from Forensics all over you before you can say "severe trauma to the skull." Movietime. Sykes had seen enough contemporary coroner work to last him a lifetime. It was enough to make you curse the invention of the camcorder. Stills were easier to look at. But stills were never as thorough. Or as graphic.

  They'd brought what was left of Bill Tuggle into the market for the usual preliminary study, which considering the force of the blasts his body had absorbed had taken plenty of time. Now they were loading the body bag into the back of the meat wagon. Sykes stood and watched. There wasn't anything else to do and he was already wondering if he'd be able to stand going to Tug's funeral. Right now he was still numb enough to watch.

  Hopefully, he was going to be very busy very soon.

  The store and the street outside were crowded, packed with Los Angeles Metropolitan Police Department blackand-whites, Forensics vehicles, and cops trying to keep back a crowd of alien rubberneckers who'd gathered to stare. Two of the cops working the crowd were Newcomers, like 27

  28

  the one Sykes had floored. A few humans stood out in the mass of onlookers. Everybody loves a catastrophe, the detective mused dully.

  They were closing the doors on the wagon now. Not even a lumpy outline left to stare at. Nine years. No ring, no flowers, but plenty of beer and gags and good work and pleasant memories. A lot shared. Just the memories left now. Oh yes, and something else. Some unfinished business he had to attend to. He shuffled into the overlit store.

  It was fuller than it had been in a long time, but not with customers.

  The team on the scene was all over the place; checking for prints, digging shotgun and police special shells out of the walls and groceries, taking photographs of every foot of the interior. A laserscan unit was hard at work in front of the blood-splattered counter, searching for microscopic samples of blood and dried perspiration. The scanner operator wore a cumbersome outfit and harness while his partner's eyes stayed glued to the remote readout
screen. Several uniformed cops milled around, chatting and trying not to look bored.

  Sykes moved aimlessly through the mob like a stranger at a party, talking to no one. Those he knew had also known Tuggle. They knew what had taken place here, and knew enough not to speak to him.

  His attention was caught by the proprietor's wife. The tall old woman was standing near the body of her husband, her stance peculiarly rigid. A thin, keening sound came from between her lips, an eerie yet somehow comforting alien dirge. You had to be close to even hear it. No screaming or wailing, no flailing of arms in agony here. Just that simple, hardly varying wail. Sykes wondered what it meant, then shrugged and moved off.

  It wasn't the first time he'd been unwiffing witness to a tragedy like this, but it was the first time involving Newcomers. Their reactions were not so very different.

  A uniformed female cop was alternately trying to pull and urge the woman away from the body. Ballistics was finishing up and the coroner's people needed to get at it. Sykes hoped the copy was persuasive. She didn't have a chance in hell of budging the Newcomer woman physically.

  29

  Thinking about Ballistics made him think of Minkler. Sure enough, there he was, over by the shattered chips-anddips section, tagging the pump combat shotgun Raincoat had dropped when his partner had yanked him toward the back alley. The ugly uniform mooching around next to him was Natuzzi. Neither of them noticed his presence until he moved close and offered his unsolicited opinion.

  "Looks like a standard combat pump-action."

  Minkler was recording on the little memopute he always carried with him in his breast pocket. "It is."

  Sykes studied the weapon thoughtfully. "I don't see any modifications.

  "

  "None to see.

  The detective nodded toward the street. "So what punched holes clear through the old Chevy out there? You saw the holes?"

  "We saw 'em." Natuzzi wasn't half as mean as he looked. He knew better than Minkler what Sykes was going through, knew the effort of will required for the detective to stand there asking calm questions.