by Tanya Allan
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The Captain agreed, but kept its thoughts private.
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It returned to the emergency room, where it stood as technicians attached various devices and monitors to the human.
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The Captain thought for a moment. Ruma’s words echoed in its brain.
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The medic was surprised, and its body language expressed this. The creation of copies, or clones, was legitimate for their own species, but rarely used with other races.
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The medic paused.
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The medic was embarrassed, as the permanence of the human’s gender was almost a taboo subject. The exceptionally rare members of their race who were ‘stuck’ in one gender in perpetuity were considered deviant.
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The medic was silent, as the enormity of this statement affected it deeply.
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The captain moved over to a console, and pushed a few onscreen buttons. A picture of a human TV film appeared, and it was Sigourney Weaver in Alien.
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The Captain allowed various images to flick on the screen, those of the Charlie’s Angels, Lara Croft, Linda Hamilton from Terminator, and many more.
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The Captain left, and the medics busied themselves.
Mike Dunwoody dreamed.
He was floating and was looking down at himself. His body was lying flat on his Mom’s kitchen table with his eyes shut. Mike looked around, but saw stars all around him.
He tried to remember why he was here. He remembered the pain in his chest, and then he remembered the log in the water.
Why had he been in the water?
The effort to remember was too great, and he floated watching the stars for a while. They were very beautiful.
Then he remembered the child, and why he had gone into the water.
He remembered the torrent of swirling water and the thin leg that he grabbed. For an age, his mind went through the battle against the current, and the pain in his chest was ever present.
Suddenly, he was watching his own wedding. Then he watched his children playing softball in the park near their home. Before his eyes, the kids grew into the young man and woman whom they were when he had last seen them, so he wondered if this was when he was supposed to die. Absently he half-expected St. Peter of the black cloaked Death to come to him. No one came.
He felt frustrated, because he couldn’t remember whether the child had lived or died.
Then he recalled rolling the child over and gazing at a face that surprised him.
For the face that stared up at him was not of a child, but a grey creature with enormous eyes.
He recoiled into his brain in shock.
He had saved an alien.
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The Captain gazed at the figure of the human. This human was younger and very different to the other form, which was now lying very still on an adjacent table.
Its mental anguish was very apparent, which leaked, causing consternation amongst the whole crew.
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The technician switched off the machine, so the body that had once held the life and soul of Mike Dunwoody breathed its last.
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“Indeed, the shape is directly connected to the female’s primary function. This function of the female is to bear children exclusively has created a physiology appropriate for the task. They carry their foetus for almost twice as long as do we, and therefore the
babies are nearly twice the size to our children. The pelvis has to be shaped like this as the baby could attain a size of up to twenty Hals.>>4
The Captain was silent in thought for a moment.
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The figure on the bed groaned and moved slightly, as several medics appeared and all watched it with interest.
Mike fought the fog. He felt he was floating in fog with the consistency of molasses
He was hearing strange voices in his head, and he kept seeing monsters float past him. Huge eyes stared at him, unblinking and boring right into his soul.
He now believed he had died, and was under scrutiny before being damned.
He smelled a strange scent, and it calmed his uneasy spirit. He smiled and drifted into a blissfully dreamless sleep.
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The Captain left the medical unit and returned to the bridge.
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The ship returned, and having discerned no potential threats, was above Mike’s police vehicle in a matter of moments. The dead body of Sergeant Mike Dunwoody now lay a short distance from the vehicle, with all his clothes and equipment intact.
2.
“Sheriff McGuire?” said a female voice; it was Sally, the dispatcher.
“What is it, Sal?”
“They’ve found Mike’s pick-up.”
“Where?”
“They’re out by Booker’s Bridge, up the gulch towards Harry’s Hill.”
“Have they landed?”
“Not yet, sir.”
Steve McGuire turned his jeep round and headed for the bridge. The sun was hot, so the dust blew in clouds from behind his spinning wheels. The floods of the previous night had now evaporated, and it was as if they had never been.
“Sheriff?”
“Go ahead.”
“They found Mike, sir, and, sir, I’m sorry, but it don’t look good.”
“Damn!” Steve swore.
He and Mike had become good friends. Mike was a good cop, they had first met in New York, and Steve had been responsible for persuading Mike to consider moving out here.
Twenty minutes later, he arrived at the scene. Mike’s truck stood parked with the door open, and the winch cable lay in the dust. The helicopter settled fifty yards away, looking like a lazy dragonfly.
The two deputies from the helicopter were standing looking at the ground.
Steve got out and ran over to them. Mike’s body lay on the ground. He was curled on his side, but he looked remarkably restful.
Steve looked at Sean, the pilot.
“You checked him?”
“Sure, no pulse and he’s as cold as ice. He’s dead, Boss.”
“Any wounds?”
“Nope, looks like natural causes, but he has been in the water.”
Steve looked at the man’s clothes. They showed the classic signs of having been wet, even though they were almost dry now. He reached down, took out Mike’s Glock from his holster and checked it. The leather was damp, and all rounds were still in the weapon.
“Why did he go into the water?” he asked.
Charlie, the other deputy, shrugged.
“Who knows, maybe he thought he saw someone?”
Steve walked over to the bank. He squatted down and looked at the edge. Then he jumped into the by now dry gully.
“Look here. What do you see?”
The two deputies walked over and looked where Steve was pointing.
There were obvious marks of where Mike had clambered out of the flood. The hawser had cut a deep furrow into the bank as it was hauling the weight of its burden back to dry land.
They saw marks of where Mike had put his feet, and even where he had placed his left hand. There were also the marks of where whatever he was cradling in his right arm had been rolled over the bank onto dry land.
“Any footprints?”
The men looked, but this part was so hard and dusty that prints were not even a vague possibility.
“Okay, we know he went into the water, and he brought something out. It looks like he unhitched himself and then keeled over. So, what did he bring out, and where is it?”
The deputies shrugged and Steve felt frustrated.
“Okay, take a good look around, and tell me what you find.”
The guys moved off and Steve looked at the dry riverbed. He jumped back into the gully and walked slowly down stream.
He saw Doc Henry’s car turn off the highway and start towards the other cars. He ignored him, as it was too damn late.
He was about to return, when something black caught his eye. It was half-covered by dry mud, so he pulled it out.
It was a rubberised facemask, but a very odd shape.
He placed it up against his own face and found that the eyepieces were in the wrong place, and his nose got in the way. He examined it carefully, and felt that its design was just all wrong. Not even a child could wear this.
He then had a really stupid thought, and it made him shiver.
No, he told himself, don’t be stupid, - Aliens don’t exist.
Then he looked at the mask, and he almost dropped it. He swallowed, beginning to feel very afraid.
They took the body back to the hospital, where Dr Hutchins, the coroner’s pathologist, conducted an autopsy. The doctor phoned Steve, who went over as soon as he could.
The doctor was clearly upset at dealing with a well-known and loved local cop, who was also a personal friend. He shook Steve’s hand solemnly.
“Steve. Bad business this. I’ve just finished with Mike. He had a massive heart attack. He had a really diseased heart, so it was a miracle he lasted as long as he did.”
“Anything else?” Steve asked.
The doctor shook his head, but was clearly uncomfortable. He led Steve into the back room. Mike’s remains were under a sheet on the operating table. The doctor pulled back the sheet, showing Steve what he meant.
“Not really. There’s no doubt about it, it was a heart attack. But there are other things. Look here, he had an impact bruise on his chest, probably a log or something. There were some odd marks, but I suppose he may have sustained some more injuries in the flood.”
“Odd marks?”
“Nothing serious, abrasions and minor bru
ises, not to worry about. It’s weird, because it looks as if someone placed him on a medical monitor. The marks are where the pickups were stuck on, and he has what looks like an intravenous mark on one arm.”
Steve saw several slightly red perfect circles on the upper chest area. They did indeed look like the marks of medical monitors. Small bruises and scratches covered Mike’s body, where the rocks had scraped against him as the winch dragged him from the water.
The small hole in his wrist was inconclusive; a thorn could just as easily have made it.
“What are you telling me, that someone tried to save him?”
“They are not conclusive, but that has to be a possibility.”
“Go on.”
“Well, the way skin behaves, these marks were made when he was still alive. They were removed after he died.”
“Where?”
“I really don’t know. But there was something else that would support this theory, as it’s pretty strange too.”
“What?”
“His shirt buttons were done up wrong, and his shoes were on the wrong feet. I’d say that someone undressed him, and then re-dressed him.”
All the clothes were now in a bag, but there were Polaroid photographs of everything he had mentioned. Steve took them and put them in his file.
Steve got nothing else from the doctor, and left, returning to his office. He looked at the piece of paper on his desk. He had written down some bullet points.
• Mike had left the highway.
• What did he see?
• Mike had gone into the water attached to the winch.
• What was in the water?
• Mike came out of the water carrying something.
• What was he carrying?
• Mike unhitched the winch.
• He died of a heart attack.
• His body shows that someone tried to save him attached to sophisticated medical equipment.
• Who tried to save him?
• Where are they now?
• Where did this happen?
• Why did they leave him?
• Whoever he saved lost a mask.
• What was it for?
• Why did they need it?
• Who undressed him and why get his shoes wrong?
