Rocket’s Red Glare

by David Hardy

  Lucine screamed as if a piatek had ripped open her heart.

  ○●○

  The night passed in a haze for Lucine. Briggs summoned an ambulance, but it was a wasted effort. The man – Jaime Lopez, Briggs called him – had been dead before Lucine had seen the blood.

  Briggs took Lucine’s statement, and she told him about Lopez and the coin.

  “Logan! Go back and find that coin.”

  “Yes, sarge.” But Logan was in the back for only a few seconds before he shouted, “Face down! Hands above your head. Sergeant, there’s a man back here!”

  “Tyler!” Briggs called out to the parking lot, and Tyler ran up. “Logan needs backup in the rear.” Tyler ran toward the back door.

  The officers were gone for less than a minute before they emerged with a figure in handcuffs. It was a medium-height, middle-aged African American in neat-fitting clothes. His haircut was half finished. “Mr. Eddie!” Lucine said.

  “This is the customer you mentioned, ma’am?” Briggs asked. “Mr. Eddie...?”

  “Edward Wilson,” Mr. Eddie said, polite but not friendly.

  “Mr. Eddie,” Lucine said, “I told you to leave through the alley.”

  “I tried, Lucine.” Mr. Eddie’s voice warmed as he spoke to her. “I checked the security camera, and the alley was blocked with police cars at both ends.” His voice hardened again as he turned back to Briggs, his brow furrowed. “I didn’t want to spook them – an old black man might be carrying something dangerous, you know – so I just hid out in your coat room until the officers found me.”

  Briggs ignored Mr. Eddie’s confrontational tone and unlocked the handcuffs. “We’re all on edge, sir. We’ve had a death, and now it’s becoming an international... I guess an interstellar incident.”

  “I still haven’t heard ‘I’m sorry’ in there.”

  Briggs grunted. “Yes, I’m sorry, all right? But we’ve got trouble here. Did you see a coin roll into the back area?”

  Mr. Eddie’s gaze remained dark. “Big bronze coin? Yeah, rolled in after all the crashing and banging.”

  “What happened to it?”

  “Rolled right up to the floor drain back there, and sweet as you please, between the slats and down it went.”

  ○●○

  More police showed up, then more and more again. Then federal officers showed up, serious men and women in dark suits who kept asking Lucine and Mr. Eddie to repeat their stories. Lucine couldn’t see the point: no matter how many times she told the tale, Lopez would remain dead at the end.

  The federal officers politely escorted Lucine and Mr. Eddie out of her shop – but then Lucine wondered if it was really her shop any more. The entrance was sealed with yellow police tape. Plumbers showed up, followed by men with jackhammers, ready to tear up her clean white tile in pursuit of the mysterious coin.

  All these people, all so worried about that coin... But Lucine noticed that the Dahan didn’t seem to care. He floated around on his little silver platform, continuing to talk to the air without paying attention to the police and agents. Eventually a long black limousine pulled up, a woman in an expensive pants suit stepped out, and he talked to her.

  Lucine never knew what was said, though. The federal agents ushered her and Mr. Eddie away. One polite young man, half Lucine’s age, guided them to a cab and told the driver to take them home. He thanked them for their time, and they left.

  As they drove away, Lucine looked back. The Dahan and the fancy woman were deep in conversation, but the hamal paced back and forth, never straying far from the other alien. Lucine shivered, feeling a strong chill despite the warm LA night. She swore the creature watched them leave.

  ○●○

  The cab stopped at Lucine’s apartment first. Before Lucine stepped out, she awkwardly hugged Mr. Eddie. They didn’t have a hugging relationship. Hair styling was so close, so personal, that Lucine was careful to give customers lots of personal space once the styling was done. Especially with an older, respectable gentleman like Mr. Eddie, someone who was naturally reserved. But after the night they had shared... She squeezed him, then pulled away. “Tomorrow I finish that haircut. You just come by—” She realized she didn’t know when the authorities would let her back into her shop. “You come by here. Room 215. I’ll clean up that hair.”

  And with that she left, wearily climbing the steps up to her apartment. With each step, her side and her stomach throbbed. She downed two quick glasses of wine to calm her nerves, and then she went to bed.

  ○●○

  Lucine’s alarm went off far too early. She scrambled to silence it, and then she remembered: she had no reason to get up. She couldn’t open the salon today.

  She tried covering her head and going back to sleep, but her mind refused to cooperate. She had slept blessedly free of nightmares, but now the images from last night refused to leave her alone. The most disturbing image was the blood dripping from the chair, and Lopez’s neck. Almost as troubling – and it was such a small thing! – was the Dahan’s phony attempt at a smile. Neither the hamal nor the Dahan belonged on Earth, but at least the hamal wasn’t hiding its nature.

  Finally, reluctantly, Lucine got out of bed. If nothing else, she could get some time on her treadmill. She hated the thing, and even though she spent hours on it every week she never seemed to lose weight. But at least she could move faster, and she breathed easier. She pulled on her shorts, T-shirt, and walking shoes, she climbed onto the treadmill, and she started to walk. The twinge in her side was quieter, and her stomach felt almost normal.

  Picking up the remote, Lucine turned on the TV. Local news was on; and to her surprise, the first story was about her shop. A minor burglary shouldn’t be worth air time, but anything involving the Dahan was major news. Lucine remembered when they had first arrived. There had been rumors on the internet and in the tabloids for months: fuzzy pictures of large white apes, or maybe yetis or sasquatches. The government did their best to quash the rumors, but that only added to the conspiracy theories.

  Then one day, almost a year ago, the Dahan ships had appeared over capitols and several other major cities across the world. The ships weren’t “flying saucers” as many had expected, but the curved, elongated silver shapes might look like saucers from the proper angle, so the conspiracy theorists claimed victory. Proof at Last! The Saucers Are Here! read one headline.

  When the Dahan emerged from their ships, the paparazzi went wild. All those beautiful, angelically perfect people floating down from heaven on their glowing sleds made a mesmerizing image. But Lucine had been there in the crowd when the Los Angeles ship had opened, and no picture had ever done justice to the real thing.

  The TV image switched to a picture of the Dahan leaving the crime scene. Her salon, but they couldn’t bother to name it, they just said “crime scene”. But at least the sign was clear: Sunset Lucine’s Salon. The Dahan and the hamal stood just in front of the sign, and the silver platform suddenly stretched to more than twice its length. The hamal climbed onto the extension – outside the glowing shroud, Lucine noticed – and the platform gently rose into the air. The TV camera followed it through the sky until it became a faint dot. Then the dot flew behind a building and headed in the direction of the Dahan compound.

  When the reporters had first seen the hamals, they had all had the same reaction as Lucine had, the opposite to how people saw the Dahan: feral... hunters... apes... If the Dahans were angelic, the hamals were... Well, some said demonic, but most said they were more animal. They were more intelligent than Earth animals, but they didn’t speak, and they were easily confused by strange surroundings. They were always tame and controlled in the presence of Dahan, but people worried of what they might do off the leash. There were stories – none proven, of course – of transients and unsuspecting tourists who met with hamals on dark streets and were never seen again.

  Lucine had believed those rumors herself, until last night. The hamal had been intimidating, but she had never on
ce felt it was out of control, even before the Dahan had arrived. And its fascination with the bronze coin... It wasn’t some rote reaction, like a dog trained to a whistle, it was fascination. She was sure that the hamal had studied the coin. She wondered idly what it was, but she was sure that was a secret that the Dahan and the government would never share.

  Yet she couldn’t think of the hamal without recalling blood on her tile. Had the creature killed Lopez? Or had the man been so afraid of the alien that...?

  The news switched to an Alcoholics Anonymous commercial, so Lucine changed to the Armenian TV channel. She liked to keep up on the home country and keep up her language. The station was showing a documentary on Medz Yeghern, the Armenian Genocide. The station showed this documentary often, or others like it, and they always made her angry for loved ones who were injured or family she had lost three generations back. Lucine was happy by nature, and sometimes the anger overwhelmed her; but on the treadmill, the anger lifted her heart rate just as the doctor wanted.

  ○●○

  The day dragged on. Lucine found things to do, little things to keep her from thinking too hard: sweeping, dusting, cooking... She even dyed her hair again, and she found it hard to remember what her original color was. Now, of course, it was gray, but Lucine believed in choosing for herself. And she didn’t choose gray.

  ○●○

  In late afternoon, Lucine was running out of chores. That was bad: she would start thinking, or she would start eating out of boredom. Or both. She wondered if she should go shopping or get out of the apartment.

  But then the door buzzed. She rushed to it and pushed the button. “Sunset Lucine. Talk to me, sweetie.”

  A familiar voice came from the speaker. “This is Edward Wilson, Lucine.”

  “Mr. Eddie!” Lucine buzzed him in, pushed open her door, and waited for him to climb the stairs. Lucine always treated her clients like family, especially her regulars; but after last night, she felt especially close to Mr. Eddie. She remembered her hayr’s stories, of how his grandfather and friends had grown closer than brothers from their shared experiences fighting and surviving the Medz Yeghern. What she and Mr. Eddie had been through was not even an echo of a shadow of that, so she could only imagine how closely those men had bonded, and how men had died to avoid betraying their brothers. Would she die for Mr. Eddie? She hoped never to know, but part of her hoped she would if she had to.

  Mr. Eddie came around the stairwell and smiled. “May I come in?”

  “Of course! Welcome, welcome!” Lucine hugged him. With them both standing, her head barely cleared his shoulder. Lucine had forgotten how tall he was, because everyone was short in the chair.

  Lucine didn’t have a proper styling chair in her home, but she had a high-backed swivel stool she had used when she was learning her trade. She guided him to it. Then before the conversation could turn to ugly parts of last night, she said, “So, you want to finish the haircut, of course.”

  Mr. Eddie raised his right hand to his head and grinned. “All day, people have been looking at me funny, some laughing. ‘What’s the matter, Eddie, you couldn’t afford the whole hair cut?’”

  Lucine laughed. “I will give you the rest. Better than the rest, the best haircut in all of Hollywood, better than the movie stars. And no charge, just tell them you got it at Lucine’s.”

  She dug out an old smock and her portable grooming set. Then she covered him from the neck down, taped his neck, and inspected his head. As she did, she automatically fell into small talk, her favorite part of the job. “So, Mr. Eddie, you hear from your grandson?”

  He smiled, and Lucine paused. He had a big grin, wide enough to make his scalp bunch up and make her misjudge the cut, so she waited as he talked. “He’s a junior now. Next year my grandson will be a college graduate. Can you imagine?”

  “He comes from smart stock. My hayr says you can always tell.”

  “Hayr?” Mr. Eddie asked.

  “Oh, sorry, my father. I am a proud American, but some words, I will always be Armenian.”

  “Nothing wrong with that.” His grin relaxed, and Lucine was able to assess his scalp and begin finishing the cut.

  The conversation lulled, and inevitably turned to what they had both been avoiding. Mr. Eddie said, “So... Some business last night.”

  “Yes, some business,” Lucine said as she cut.

  “It was...”

  Lucine nodded, though she stood beside him and he couldn’t see it. “It was frightful. But also a little bit momentous. You and me, two ordinary citizens of this little corner of the world, suddenly caught up in the affairs of gods from the sky.”

  “They’re not gods!” Mr. Eddie said. Lucine had forgotten: he was a strict Pentacostalist. Well, not as strict as some, he didn’t think the aliens were tricks of Satan. “They’re not angels. If you see an angel, you’ll know it.”

  “Sorry, no, not gods. But creatures with concerns far beyond us, and then suddenly they’re down among us. All because some man stole some alien coin.”

  Mr. Eddie shook his head, and Lucine almost cut too much. “It wasn’t alien,” he said.

  Lucine pulled her scissors away and turned the stool to face her. “What do you mean?”

  He frowned. “I hope the Lord will forgive me a small lie. There’s something going on, something they’re not telling us, and I don’t trust them. So... I lied. The coin did not go down the drain. It rolled over toward me, and I put it in my pocket.”

  “Mr. Eddie!”

  “It’s none of their business.” He reached into his pocket, pulled something out, and reached out from the smock to hand the coin to her.

  Lucine took the coin and studied the molded metal. On one side was an outer ring with a Shakespeare quote: To thine own self be true. Inside the ring was another quote, longer and unfamiliar: Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path.

  On the other side was another ring of words: Unity. Service. Recovery. Inside the ring were two portraits labeled Dr. Bob and Bill W. Beneath them was the Roman numeral VII in a circle, with Years underneath.

  Lucine looked up from the coin. “This is human, yes? Not alien. But I do not understand what it is.”

  Mr. Eddie nodded. “Thank the Lord you don’t recognize it, child, but I do. Here’s mine.” He handed her another bronze coin, nearly identical except that the number in the circle was XV. “That’s my sobriety chip. Alcoholics anonymous. Fifteen years I’ve been sober. That chip reminds me every day to ask the Lord to help me resist temptation. I’m alive to see my grandson graduate because AA and the Lord kept me strong.”

  “But then...” Lucine couldn’t even think of how to ask. What to ask.

  “I don’t know why that alien wanted that, but it’s none of his concern. We take the second A very seriously: Anonymous. You’re there to be helped and supported as you and your sponsor and your Higher Power find your way clean. You’re not there to be judged by any man, woman, or alien from the stars.”

  “So Lopez was in AA?” Lucine asked.

  “We don’t know that. People lose sobriety coins all the time. But it’s a good bet.”

  “Then why did he try to give it to the hamal?”

  Mr. Eddie grinned. “Maybe the creature has a drinking problem?”

  Lucine laughed. It felt good to release some tension. But still she was concerned. She looked at both chips, holding them away from her. “But the Dahan said something was stolen, and that had to be it. Why would that matter to them? Is there... You don’t suppose there’s a tracker in there?”

  “Maybe,” he said. “I’m no scientist, but we make cell phones and computers smaller every year. Imagine what they can do, them and all their starships. So maybe, but I don’t think so. I’ve had it on me all day long. They had plenty of time to track me down, I didn’t even think of it ’til you mentioned it, but they didn’t. I think it is what it looks like, nothing more.”

  Lucine relaxed, and she looked at the two coi
ns again. “Wait. They’re not quite the same. Look at this around the edge.” She held the seven-year chip out to Mr. Eddie and pointed out a small message engraved on the edge: SSCC. “What does that mean?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. All of the chips are made by the same company, but there are no rules. We’re a benign anarchy. Some groups customize theirs.”

  “Can you guess what this means?”

  “I can’t, but...” As Lucine slipped the chip into her pocket, Mr. Eddie pulled out his cell phone and punched a single button. After ten seconds, he said, “Mason?” He paused. “No, the Lord is strong, and he is with me... Thank you, and to you as well... See, you might have seen some news from last night, and... Yes, that was me on the TV, you weren’t imagining it... No, really, no one else was hurt... That’s an odd question... I’m not sure, but I’ll ask.” Mr. Eddie put his hand over the microphone. “Mason – he’s my sponsor – he asked if the creature, whatever you called it, did it leave with the other alien?”

  “The hamal?” Mr. Eddie nodded. “Yes,” Lucine said. “I watched them both leave.”

  “Yes...” Mr. Eddie said to the phone. “What do you mean, ‘too bad’?... Well, you shouldn’t say it if you just want me to forget it...

  “Why I called?” he continued. “Mason, I have a chip with some strange engraving on it: S-S-C-C. Do you know what that is?... You do? What?... Mason, be straight with me, either you know or you don’t... Mason, you’ve been my sponsor for twelve years, ever since Nate died. I trust you, so don’t start hiding things from me now... What?...” He reached up to unfasten the smock. “All right, I’ll be right over.”

  Mr. Eddie closed the cell phone, removed the smock, and stood from the chair. “Mason says he’ll explain, but it will have to be in person. I’m sorry, Lucine, I have to go.”

  “But Mr. Eddie! I still haven’t finished your haircut.”