Alien Blues

by Lynn Hightower

  The Elaki Mother-One was backed into a corner. Her eye stalks were rigid, the pistol held snugly in extruded sections of her right fin. The whistling noise came from the oxygen slits in her belly. She was pressed against the wall, like a boneless, beached fish. Scales littered the floor around her, iridescent, catching the light that came from slits in the walls.

  “Izzzzzicho,” the Elaki whispered.

  David looked over his shoulder, hoping for a glimpse of the pouchlings. He could barely breathe in here. Why had she turned off the air conditioning?

  “Dahmi?” He kept his voice gentle. “My name is David. I thought maybe you could use some help. The Elaki Mother-One next door called me in. She wanted me to check and see if you needed anything. She said she hasn’t seen you in a couple of days, hasn’t seen your little ones running around. She said you wouldn’t come to the door.”

  “Izzzicho.”

  “No, Dahmi, I’m not Izicho. I’m David. David Silver. I’m a detective with the Saigo City PD.”

  “Izicho coming.”

  “No. Nobody’s coming. Just you and me, Dahmi. Just to talk.” Just to keep you from killing your children, he thought.

  David glanced over his shoulder. There was a familiar feeling here, one he didn’t like. His mind brought the memory of the woman who had drowned her baby in the toilet and kept the body in the living room for six weeks. Paranoid delusional, the experts had said. David remembered the small efficiency apartment, and the woman crying and talking about getting pregnant again.

  David smiled gently. “Dahmi, how many kids … how many pouchlings do you have?”

  A wonder, how friendly and conversational he sounded.

  The Elaki watched him. “My little baby ones.”

  “I’ve got three kids myself,” David said. He moved closer, watching from the corner of his eye. Another few steps and he’d be able to see into the bedroom. “All girls. It must be hard for you, taking care of four pouchlings all alone.”

  “Alone,” Dahmi said. “Little baby ones.” Her voice was young and tired.

  David moved closer. “I bet you spoil them, don’t you?”

  “Four.”

  “Four?” David said. “You have four pouchlings?”

  “Four.”

  “You must be proud of them.”

  “Little baby ones. Proud?”

  “Love them, feel good about them, like to show them off.”

  “Proud,” Dahmi said. “So proud of little baby ones.”

  “Why don’t you let me take the pouchlings next door for a while? Then you and I can talk. I think you need somebody just to talk to.” David glanced over his shoulder. “Are the little ones in the bedroom? They back that way?”

  “Little baby ones.”

  The light in the bedroom was off. No noise. Dim gloom. The pouchlings might be very quiet if they were afraid. They could well be all right, just frightened.

  David wiped his palms on the sides of his jeans. The hair on his arms felt prickly. “Dahmi, I’m going to check on the kids, okay?”

  She surged forward, the pistol pointed at his neck. “No one hurt my pouchlings.”

  “No.” He took a breath, held his hands up. His heart was beating—faster, faster. “No one’s going to hurt your pouchlings.”

  “Cannot hurt the pouchlings. No more cannot hurt the pouchlings.”

  He didn’t like the sound of it.

  “Do you, David Silver, you must …”

  “I must what, Dahmi? Go on, sweetheart.”

  “The right … the … is it too much love, or not enough? How is it for the human?”

  “It’s hard for the human, Dahmi. It’s hard for any parent. I know you’re a good Mother-One, I know you love your pouchlings, but you need to let me go in and check on them. Put the gun down, Dahmi, okay? Want to set it down … okay, that’s all right, just don’t point it at me. You stay there, and I’ll just look in on them.”

  “Wait,” she said. “I come.”

  He waited, watching her belly plates ripple beneath her fringe, watching her move slowly across the tiles, her body tilting sideways in some odd manifestation of Elaki distress.

  David glanced out the small square window. No sign of the cop who was there, waiting to kill.

  He went in first, staying clear of Dahmi and the window. Elaki slept standing up. No bed in the room, no mattress. The room was dark, thick with odor. A white chenille cloth, lumpy underneath, was spread over something on the floor.

  David’s left fist clenched and unclenched.

  “Cannot take them next door, David Silver.”

  “No,” he said, and cleared his throat.

  The Mother-One raised the Glock pistol, waving it from side to side. David knew that she meant him no harm. He also knew that Mel, and the cops outside, would see it another way.

  It might be kindest to let her die.

  Mel’s voice echoed in his mind. Ablative sheath bullets.

  The weapon came full circle, and the Elaki Mother-One aimed it at the delicate juncture of brain and nerve in her midsection. David leaped forward and grabbed her just as the fusillade broke out.

  The thin, whippy body was easy to bring down. There were tinging noises as scales broke from the Elaki and showered the floor. The gun went off and David’s shoulder burned. He covered Dahmi’s fragile body with his. The window shattered, someone fired through the walls, and glass, wood splinters, and shingles rained upon his head. The Elaki mother trembled beneath him.

  “Hold your fire,” David yelled. The gunshots drowned him out. “Hold fire!”

  No chance. The bullets stayed fast and furious. No one was going to quit shooting till the clips were spent. The walls shredded, and splinters showered the floor, in jagged, glistening fragments.

  Silence suddenly, tense and expectant. David waved a hand in the air, and no one shot it. He lifted his head. A knot of cops in flak jackets peered in the window like juvenile delinquents.

  “David?” Mel ran through the doorway. “You okay?”

  The Glock pistol was too close to Dahmi. David snatched the weapon and took a deep breath.

  “You were supposed to wait for my signal.”

  “Hell, David. I made a habit of waiting, you’d of been dead years ago.”

  There were more footsteps, pounding in the hall, and lights shining in the window. David reached for the white spread that was covered now, with bits of wood and glass. He peeled back the edge and looked, because he had to see for sure what he already knew.

  He let the spread drop, and moved to shield Dahmi from the cops who crammed through the narrow doorway.

  “Mel,” he said. “Clear us a way. She’s shocky; she may be hurt.”

  It was wrong to pick her up, but he couldn’t leave her on the floor, the cops milling in the room, heavy with weapons, flak jackets, and attitude. He carried her out of the bedroom, and dodged the techs who were already filling the living room, setting up the nano machines that would sweep through the scene.

  “C’mon,” Mel said. “C’mon, let him through. Yeah, I mean you, asshole, we can go through you, just not around.”

  David went sideways, trying not to bump the rigid Elaki into the walls. Sweat poured off his forehead.

  And then he was out, out of the small, dark house that dredged up black claustrophobic memories. It was cooler outside, dusk now. The glare of lights hit his face like a blow.

  He blinked and looked around. Crime scene tape kept the crowd back, but the numbers had swelled, and they pressed close, taking in the details of his torn, sweaty shirt, his worn Levi’s with the hole in the knee, the rigid Mother-One in his arms.

  There were Elaki in the crowd. Knots of them. As one, they turned their backs, too polite to witness the shame of the Elaki Mother-One. A chopper boomed overhead, and a camera recorded every detail.

  “Della!” David took a breath, hating the press of people. “I ordered blackout.”

  “And I overrode.”

  The voi
ce was familiar and welcome, for all that it brought bad news. Captain Halliday looked tired, but not annoyed.

  “Get that ambulance crew here!” Halliday shouted.

  Three men wheeled a stretcher.

  “Della, you ride shotgun,” Halliday said. “Take care of things on our end. She may still be dangerous—”

  “She’s not dangerous,” David said.

  “Put her on the stretcher, David.”

  David set her down gently, grateful, for once, to be told what to do. She trembled. The attendant tightened a strap across her chest.

  “You don’t need it,” David said. He glanced at Della and she nodded.

  “Please,” Dahmi said.

  David crouched beside her. “Please what?”

  “Please … nobody to hurt my pouchlings?”

  David swallowed and nodded. “Nobody to hurt your pouchlings.”

  TWO

  It was a gentle killing.

  The pouchlings were very small, very young; the size of puppies. Even from the doorway, David could see that they were clean, comfortably laid out on the floor, a small white cloth cushioning the eye stalks that had glazed in death approximately three days ago.

  “You going to the hospital?”

  David turned, saw Captain Halliday. The captain had put on a few pounds, but his face was still thin and pointed. His black silk tie, slightly askew, was so narrow it looked like a stripe down his midsection. He pushed his reading glasses up on his head and rubbed his eyes.

  “While you’re there,” Halliday said, “better have your shoulder looked at.”

  “Shoulder?” David frowned at the balloon of blood that had soaked his shirt. “Aw, hell.”

  The coroner’s tech, Miriam Kellog, looked up from the pouchlings. Her reddish-brown hair was tied back in a French braid.

  “Is it bad?” she said. “Want me to look at it?”

  “No, it’s the shirt. Rose is going to kill me, she told me not to wear it to work. I forgot I had it on.” He looked at Halliday. “You got anybody on the neighbors?”

  “Mel and String doing either side of the house. Uniforms everywhere else. Just hope they get there before the media. They’re like Japanese beetles out there.”

  David nodded. He squatted beside Miriam.

  “Della’s already back at the office with Pete,” Halliday said. “Pounding the keyboard. They’ll have background for you in a couple hours.”

  David cocked his head sideways, studying the faded pouchlings. “They look peaceful.” He looked around the room, harsh now with spotlights, trying to remember it as it was before gunfire had torn it apart. He looked back at the pouchlings, all roughly the same size, lying side by side, fins touching, bottom fringe tucked neatly. He frowned. “They been washed? Did she clean them up after she killed them?”

  Miriam Kellog nodded. “Looks like. I’ll get you a prelim in a few hours.”

  “Any ideas?”

  “Maybe drowned them, maybe poison. Hard to tell.”

  David shook his head. “Unlikely. Elaki have odd hangups about water. And poison hurts.”

  “What do you think she did?” Miriam pushed a piece of hair out of her eyes. It stayed back for about a second, then drifted over her cheek.

  David chewed his lip. His shoulder was starting to burn just a little, irritating, like a paper cut.

  “My guess would be suffocation. She would wait until they were asleep, then hold a pillow over the belly slits. They would never know.”

  Miriam took a magnifying light and small forceps and pried open the belly slit of the pouchling on the end.

  “Um.” She moved to the next pouchling, and pried open another slit. A thin, yellowish fluid seeped out, emitting a faint, sour odor. Miriam held the slit open with the forceps, and, one-handed, selected a tweezer from her kit. She plucked something from the side of the slit and held it up. “Look at this.”

  “Fiber?”

  Miriam nodded. “With a little luck, this’ll tell us what she used to smother them. If that’s what she did.” She put the fiber in a specimen bag and muttered into her mike, then looked at David. “How’d you know?”

  “She didn’t want to hurt them,” he said. “She just wanted to kill them.”

  Miriam turned back to her kit. “I wonder what made her snap.”

  David cocked his head to one side. “I’m not sure she did.”

  Miriam looked at him.

  “Something scared her. I just wonder if it was real or in her head.”

  The emergency room at Bellmini General Hospital was clean, bright, and quiet. The waiting room smelled like flowers, with a tinge of the lime scent David associated with Elaki. One Elaki stood in the corner of the waiting room and looked out a window. David paused, and the glass double doors shushed behind him. He was hit with the aroma of rich, cinnamon-spicy coffee. Elaki made great coffee.

  Trays of fruit, cheese, and taifu, an Elaki pastry, were positioned on a mahogany side table. David sighed. He was hungry.

  A security guard rushed him before he got to the receiving desk.

  “Sir, I think you made a mistake. The hospital you want is Euclid Central. Can I call a car for you?”

  David flashed his badge. The guard, an old man with a burr haircut, blushed.

  “Oh, my,” he said. His eyes were tired. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  The old man nodded and moved away. He glanced over his shoulder. “Can I get you some coffee, Detective?”

  “Please. Cream, no sugar.”

  The receptionist was human, a skinny blonde, her lips a thin, tight slash. She frowned at the blood on his shirt.

  “Sir, we can’t treat you here.”

  David walked past without a second look. He stepped off the thick black carpet, onto a white tile floor, and passed through double swing doors labeled EMERGENCY.

  The staff was a mix, Elaki and human. An Elaki glided toward him, stethoscope wrapped around its waist.

  “You need medical aid?” the Elaki said. The voice was feminine, warm. Her side slits were tight.

  No Mother-One, David thought.

  “Detective Silver.” David flashed his badge. “I need to see—”

  “Ah. You are the policeman. You wish to interrogate my patient?”

  “Talk to her,” David said.

  “Did she …” the Elaki doctor hesitated. “Did she in real effect kill her pouchlings? I understand she cut them in half?”

  David’s voice was gentle. “Where is she?”

  “Please to follow.” The Elaki moved toward a white-curtained cubicle. The emergency-room doors opened and David heard a familiar voice.

  “Hey, lady, do they pay you extra to be nasty, or do you do it free of charge?”

  David turned around. String came into the ER, followed by Mel, who was cramming an Elaki pastry into his mouth.

  “My associates,” David said.

  Mel waved and held up a foam cup. “Old guy out there told me to give this to you.”

  David waved it away. “Later,” he said. “What did you find out?”

  “She is ideal Mother-One,” String said.

  David looked at Mel, who shrugged. “He’s right, David. Everybody says how great she was. She sounds perfect, other than the one thing.”

  “One thing?”

  “You know. Killing the kids.”

  “String,” David said. “I hate to say it, but—”

  “I will stay here. She is most afraid the Izicho.” His left eye prong drooped.

  “See if you can get anything from the doctors,” David said. “Mel, wipe the crumbs off your mouth.”

  Mel gulped down the last of the coffee. “Cinnamon.” He grimaced. “Next time, David, you don’t drink your coffee, order it black.” He crumpled the cup and handed it to the Elaki doctor. “Take care of this for me, will you, sweetheart?”

  David tried not to smile.

  THREE

  Wires ran from Dahmi’s midsection to an iv
ory machine on the table nearby. The S-curved hospital bed made David’s back ache.

  “Dahmi?” David said softly.

  The Mother-One rustled in the bed. Heavy restraints had been buckled across her body, and thin strips of webbing ran from thick leather bands.

  “I see they made you comfortable.” Mel pulled up a chair and straddled it. “Jesus. David, surely all this ain’t necessary.”

  David sat down on the other side of the bed. “Dahmi?”

  The Elaki was rigid. Her eye stalks twitched.

  “Izicho coming.” Her voice dragged.

  “She drugged?” Mel said. “This won’t hold up, if she’s drugged.”

  “It won’t hold up anyway,” David said. “Dahmi? All the pouchlings are dead.”

  “Yes,” Dahmi said. “All the little baby ones are safe now.”

  “Safe from what?” David said.

  “Cho invasion.”

  David and Mel looked at each other. David felt a chill.

  “Uh-oh,” Mel said.

  David scooted his chair closer. The Elaki tried to turn and shift, but the webbing held her tight.

  “Please,” she said. “I will not hurt them. Go home. Please to go home.”

  “Is there somebody we can call?” Mel said. “A friend. A …” He looked at David. “Somebody from your chemooki?”

  “Chemaki,” David said.

  “Yeah,” said Mel. “Chemaki.”

  “No one. All gone. All gone. Guardians.”

  “The Guardians? What about the Guardians?” David asked.

  The Elaki stilled and said nothing.

  “Dahmi, what happened with the pouchlings?”

  “Izicho.”

  “The Izicho killed them?”

  “I kill them.”

  David kept his gaze steady. “You killed them, Dahmi? You killed your pouchlings?”

  “I kill them.”

  “Why?” Mel asked.

  “To keep them safe.” Dahmi shifted, and the restraint buckles rattled. “Mikiki did not stay asleep.” Her voice was raw, hoarse. “Mikiki open him eyes.”

  Outside Dahmi’s cubicle, the noise level was rising. David stepped outside the curtains. Not exactly business as usual. There were few patients, but a profusion of personnel, many of them grouped around a small TV on the counter. There was an almost electric feel of excitement, and Elaki stood off together in groups, murmuring. David watched for belly ripples. Sure enough, he decided, looking around. Something they thought was funny.