Alien Nation #2 - Dark Horizon

by K. W. Jeter

  She turned her subzero gaze toward Sikes. “Officer, I’ve been waiting here for forty-five minutes. I’d like to leave my written statement and go.”

  The thought of her cooling her heels for a while longer didn’t bother him. “We’ll try to get to you as soon as possible, Ms. Bryant.”

  “I realize this is your job—” her eyes narrowed down to ice chips “—but doesn’t it bother you, Officer, that with all the crime taking place in this city, you have to waste your time over the death of some parasite?”

  With Purist groups like the HDL, “parasite” was their code word for Newcomers. Sikes gazed back at her, feeling his own face stiffen.

  “What bothers me, Ms. Bryant, is having to listen to crap like that.” He turned away before she could reply. He spotted George coming into the squad room. “Don’t bust your ass,” he told Zepeda, “getting around to the snow queen here.” He could feel Bryant’s eyes in his back like Black & Deckers.

  George had already gotten to his desk and started shuffling papers.

  “Congratulations.” Sikes leaned on the desktop’s edge. “I heard you made Detective Two.”

  “Uh, yes . . . that’s true.” George looked up, a sheaf of memos rustling in his hands. “Thanks. I guess I really didn’t have any call to be nervous about it.”

  “George, I just heard!” Albert rushed up to the desk, leaving his janitor’s cart in the aisle. His round face radiated excitement as he turned toward Sikes. “Isn’t it wonderful? He’s only been on Earth a little while—”

  “Six years, actually,” said Sikes, a little more sourly than he had intended. From the corner of his eye, he saw George’s glance swing over to him.

  “—and he’s already a Detective Two! He could be captain someday! He could be . . . he could be the mayor!”

  “I don’t think so.” George was trying to be modest, but Sikes could see that he was pleased by the other Newcomer’s words. “That might be just a little . . . farfetched.”

  “Albert, where the hell have you been?” Captain Grazer pushed his way past the cart, spilling a can of cleanser in the wire basket on top. He irritably brushed the powder from his suit, then waved a stapled set of papers in Albert’s face. “For Christ’s sake, that supply cabinet is your responsibility. That’s your job—get it?” He started whacking items on the list with his fingernail. “There’s no paper towels in there, no coffee filters, no—”

  “Hey, Grazer.” The litany seemed to be bouncing right off Albert’s spotted head, but Sikes decided to interrupt anyway. “George made Detective Two.”

  “Yeah, yeah; I heard. Congratulations, I suppose.” Grazer’s sour expression didn’t change. “You want to know why it’s called Detective Two? I’ll tell you. It’s because you’re expected to work twice as hard. You gotta get a lot higher than that before you can expect to sit around on your butt all day.”

  “Of course.” George managed a thin smile. “I’ll try to bear that in mind.”

  “You do that.”

  Albert couldn’t contain himself any longer. “Detective Two! I’m gonna go tell everybody!” The cart picked up speed as he pushed it toward the door.

  “Get that supply cabinet straightened out!” Grazer yelled after him. “First thing!” He turned back to the group clustered around the desk, met their silent gaze, then stomped off in a different direction.

  “The migraine that walks like a man.” Zepeda shook her head. “What a guy. Anyway—congrats, George.”

  “Thank you.”

  Zepeda headed back toward Bryant and the other suspects. That left Sikes and George by themselves again.

  “Uh, Matt . . .” George watched his own hands smoothing out the papers on his desk before he looked up at Sikes. “I want you to know that although . . . technically . . . I’m your superior now . . . I want you to know that I still consider us to be equals.”

  “Well . . .” Sikes straightened up from the desk. “Thanks, George.”

  “I mean it. Over this time we’ve been working together, I’ve learned a lot from you. I’m not sure I would have passed the test otherwise.”

  “Okay. That’s cool.” He gave a shrug. “Goes both ways, I suppose.”

  “I’m glad you feel that way. Right, then . . .” George looked over his desk. “Perhaps we should get back to work.” He picked up a plastic evidence bag and held it out to Sikes. “Among the threatening letters Judge Kaiser received, these were anonymous. Run them upstairs to SID, would you?”

  He had already started to turn away, working out some questions for Darlene Bryant inside his head. He glanced at the bag dangling from George’s hand, but didn’t reach to take it. “Me?”

  “Well . . .” George set the bag back down. “If it’s a problem . . . then I’ll ask someone else.”

  “Hey, we’re missing somebody.” Zepeda held the Kaiser file up as she walked toward the desk. “One of the suspects on our list didn’t show up.” She flipped through the different-colored papers. “Um, tell you what, though—maybe Petrosian and I better go out and talk to him. ’Stead of you guys.”

  George leaned back in his chair. “Why?”

  “Suspect lives on a boat, according to what we got here. Down at the marina. You know, like the ocean? That’s salt water all around.”

  “Yes, I do know,” George said patiently. “Thanks for your concern, but it’s not necessary.”

  “Look, I can go with them.” Sikes bent back the cover of the file in Zepeda’s hands, to check the address. Seawater was like sulfuric acid to Newcomers. When the two of them had first been assigned together, George had wound up reaching into the water off the San Pedro docks to save his partner from drowning; he didn’t want to have to go through that again, seeing the bandages that George had worn up past his elbows for a couple of months afterwards. “Why risk it?”

  George scraped the papers on his desk into a neater pile. “As your famous General Patton once said: I couldn’t ask anyone under me to do something I wouldn’t.” He reached across and took the file from Zepeda. “Thank you, Beatrice.”

  “For Christ’s sake, George. We’re talking salt water. You fall in there—that’s sayonara, Detective Two.”

  George looked up at Sikes. “I don’t intend to fall in.” He stood up with the plastic evidence bag in his hand, and walked away.

  The gangway down to the boat slips rocked with the ocean’s swell, and his nerve failed him for a moment. George’s hand shot out to the rope strung alongside, and grabbed hold. The wooden planks were damp with splashed water, and the masts of the sailing boats tilted and bobbed, dizzying in the bright sunlight.

  Beside him, Sikes inhaled noisily, filling his lungs. “You know, George, I love the smell of sea air.” A toothy smile flashed below his dark shades. “It’s . . . invigorating.”

  He supposed he would have to put up with comments like that, after everything he’d said back at the station. It would’ve been easier, and just as efficient, to have let Zepeda and Petrosian come out here. But instead, he’d had to dig up old walnuts—no, chestnuts, he corrected himself—from the motion pictures, images of George C. Scott slapping a riding crop against his thigh. And wound up out here, the rough texture of the rope scraping his palm, as he tried to walk and stay as far from the edge as possible at the same time.

  “How could you possibly find this stench pleasing?” His bad mood escaped from under the lid he’d clamped on it. “I can hardly breathe.”

  His mood had started going sour back at the station, when he’d picked up that disturbing note of ill will from Matt, mixed in with his partner’s expression of congratulations. That had taken him by surprise; somehow, he’d never anticipated that Matt would be envious. Driving to the marina, he’d started brooding about the matter—he’d tried to change his thoughts to something else, back to the Kaiser case, but to no avail—and then other things from the back of his mind had conglomerated around that one small, sour nucleus.

  Such as this business with Matt and
Cathy—what was going on there? It really wasn’t any of his concern, he knew, but still . . . if Matt and he were friends, and not just partners . . .

  Perhaps he had let it come to mean too much to him. And to his wife, Susan, as well. This human, who had played and talked with their children so much that they had started thinking of him as almost their uncle, and a Newcomer woman . . .

  Symbols, thought George. Instead of real persons. It was wrong to see them like that. They had their own lives to try and make sense of.

  He stopped for a moment on the bobbing walkway, and looked across the ocean to the horizon. He’d read somewhere that the blood in human veins was a saline echo of the great seas, the primordial home from which they and their fellow Earth-born creatures had evolved. That was something of a poetical conceit, but still there was a kernel of truth to it. Their blood . . . and the blood of the Tenctonese. So much difference between them. So absurd, to hope . . .

  “Here we are.” Sikes had walked on ahead, and now shouted back to him. “And guess what—looks like our man’s just sitting here waiting for us.”

  Sikes stood on the slip alongside a thirty-five-footer. Topside on the boat a tall human, beard just beginning to gray, sat in a folding deck chair, a painter’s easel in front of him. A matching small table held brushes and watercolors, wine bottle and glass.

  “Mr. Parris?” Sikes called to the man. “Richard Parris?”

  The suspect set down a brush, picked up his glass, and sipped before glancing around. George, cautious on the narrower walkway between boats, came up next to Sikes as his partner extracted his badge from his jacket and flashed the tin.

  “Police.” Sikes tucked the badge away. “Like to talk to you.”

  Parris’s cool glance moved from Sikes to George. The human’s eyes narrowed, contempt showing on his face. “How far do I have to go to get away from you . . . creatures?”

  He was going to say “parasite,” thought George. In the gap between words, he’d seen the plosive forming against Parris’s lips. Then he decided that would give something away.

  “Mind if we come aboard?”

  “Permission granted.” Parris smiled wryly at George. “Watch your step.”

  The sailboat rocked slightly as they stepped from the gangway onto the deck. George caught a glimpse down to the greenish ocean, and felt a twinge of fear and nausea. He grabbed the boat’s polished rail and pulled himself on board, next to Sikes. He’d be damned if he was going to let himself show any sign of weakness in front of this Purist sympathizer.

  He forced himself to let go of the rail. The boat’s small, continuous rocking traveled up into his knees.

  “Maybe you could turn that down a bit.” Sikes nodded toward the boom box near Parris’s chair. Behind a plastic window, a CD flashed silver; music, Coltrane’s Naima, sparked even brighter across the water. “So we wouldn’t have to shout at each other.”

  Parris didn’t move. “I can hear you all right.”

  “Suit yourself.” Sikes set his hands on his hips. “Judge Jules Kaiser died yesterday.”

  “So I heard.” Leaning back against the chair’s canvas, Parris appraised the half-finished painting on the easel, a pale, semiabstract study of the waterfront. “I won’t pretend I’m sorry.”

  George flipped open his notebook and looked at the few lines he’d jotted down back at the station. “You worked for Onyx Pesticides as a chemist—”

  “Please. I supervised Onyx’s entire R & D program.” He took a sip of wine. “That means ‘research and development.’ ”

  “I know what it means, Mr. Parris. We also know that after you left your employment at Onyx, you brought suit against the company, and Judge Kaiser ruled against you.”

  Parris didn’t seem to be paying attention. He tilted his head back, eyes half-closed, and let his hand rest against the boom box. “Ah, listen to this part. I love ’Trane.” He opened his eyes, gazing straight at George. “Jazz is a synthesis of African and Western musical forms—a beautiful example of the process of creativity. Human creativity, that is.” He glanced over at Sikes. “Makes you proud, doesn’t it?”

  “Jazz,” said George, “also has its roots in human slavery. Does that make you proud as well?”

  “Okay, gents.” Sikes held up a hand. “How ’bout we skip music appreciation class for right now. About Judge Kaiser—”

  “I sued Onyx for patent infringement. My patents.” Parris hadn’t changed his relaxed slouch, but his knuckles had whitened where he gripped one of the arms of the folding chair. “The judge saw it differently.”

  George turned over a page of his notebook. “We understand you stood up in open court—when the ruling was announced—and called Judge Kaiser, quote, ‘a bloodsucking slag,’ and that you issued the threat that you would ‘exterminate’ him.” He flipped the notebook shut. “Unquote.”

  “My choice of words was somewhat . . . unfortunate. Some of my words, at least.” Parris refilled his wineglass. “You’ll have to bear in mind that insecticides are—or were—my business; I spent my entire career in that field. In court, I was angry and I reverted to professional jargon. That shows how upset I was at the time. But now . . .” He raised the glass and studied its deep ruby color. “Now I’m resigned to the loss. I have sufficient royalties coming in from my other patents—ones that weren’t stolen from me. I’m able to lead a quiet life here on the sea.” He held the glass higher, as though toasting the detectives. “Enjoying the fruits of human genius.”

  George reached toward the glass, then stopped, his fingertips a few inches away from it. “May I?”

  “If you like.” Parris handed him the glass. “Though I think I might be able to dig an old milk carton out of the garbage; might be something left in it you’d enjoy more.”

  He raised the glass to his nose and sniffed the wine’s bouquet. “Ah—an ’82 Mouton. An excellent wine, but . . . I think you’re drinking it a bit young.” He inhaled once more, then lowered the glass as he gave a formal, polite smile. “It’s still tannic—should be drinkable by the turn of the century.”

  Parris glared at him as he returned the glass.

  “Wine doesn’t intoxicate us,” said George. “But we can appreciate it nonetheless.”

  The suspect’s eyes looked toward the glass, then back to George’s face. With a flick of his hand, Parris tossed the wine out into the water. The empty glass followed, bobbing for a moment on the surface.

  “Okay, Mr. Parris . . .” Sikes pulled out his own notepad from his jacket. “We’re gonna need your whereabouts during the last week.”

  “Last week . . . let me see.” Parris watched the glass sink, its glimmer fading under the darkness. “Last week I was swimming the English Channel.”

  “Mr. Parris, this isn’t a joke.” George let go of the boat’s rail so he could lean closer toward the suspect. “If you had anything to do with this crime, I will personally see you behind bars. Do you understand?”

  No reply—Parris picked up a brush from the table and turned back to his easel.

  “Mouton, huh?” Sikes nodded as they walked back along the slips to solid land. “Maybe I should get a couple bottles, put ’em away in the closet.”

  “Matt . . .” George stopped, and turned to look at his partner. “You already have a bottle of it. I gave it to you for your birthday. Remember?”

  “Oh. Oh, so that’s what that was.” Sikes kept on walking. “Yeah, you’re right. It was kinda tinny.”

  “Tannic.” He wanted to walk faster, to get away from the ocean water, but forced himself to keep a measured pace. “The word is ‘tannic.’ ”

  “That’s what I meant,” said Sikes.

  He had to admit, he enjoyed seeing the rich leather of his Mark Cross briefcase against the deeper and more lustrous wood of the Chippendale cabinet. It was something he thought about in the elevator, ascending from the lobby of the building and the murmur of traffic flowing between Westwood and Beverly Hills. He could see it, and savor it i
n his mind, the marriage of one patina against another, the sheer sensory pleasure to the hand and eye. He could smell them; he smiled in anticipation as he slid his key into the lock of the apartment’s front door.

  In Dr. Peter Bogg’s briefcase, along with the usual assortment of papers and medical journals from his office, was a new catalog from the Butterfield & Butterfield auction house, detailing an assortment of fine eighteenth-century furniture pieces. And a letter from one of the editors at Architectural Digest—the magazine wished to do a photo piece on Bogg’s own collection. One of the finest collections outside a museum . . . The letter had told him what he already knew. And certainly the finest assembled by a Newcomer, He had known that as well, to his even greater satisfaction.

  “Martha . . .” He called as he closed the apartment door behind himself. “It’s just me.”

  His maid—his human maid, another source of self-admitted satisfaction—had already pulled back the living room blinds, in anticipation of his arrival home. The richly mottled colors of a Los Angeles sunset came through the wide sweep of glass.

  From the cabinet, he took out a flacon of sour milk, and poured himself an aperitif. After dinner, he would pour himself a larger drink, and settle into one of the wing chairs for a little reading. There was an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, by his old colleague Jankowski, on mitochondrial similarities between human and Tenctonese cellular structures. He should really make some notes on that; the Parallel Evolution Conference in Prague was only a month away, and Emil was sure to attend he neurosurgical panel Bogg was slated to chair. The questions and theories and rebuttals would come flying fast and sharp . . .

  But he knew, as he sipped the sour milk and felt the first relaxing glow open inside him, that he wouldn’t even open the journal tonight. He’d sit and leaf through the Butterfield catalogue, and prepare a list of bids to fax to his agent in San Francisco. And he would take out the magazine’s letter again, as he had already a half dozen times today, and unfold it and read it over, then place it back in its envelope. Knowing that he would repeat the same process all over again, each time producing a sense of pleasure deeper and more satisfying than anything the milk could give him.