Alien Nation #2 - Dark Horizon

by K. W. Jeter

  “Yeah, well, hang in there. Look, uh, did your dad call from the hospital? He wanted me to pick up a few things for him.”

  “They’re right here.” Buck picked up a canvas overnight bag that had been set near the door. He poked through the contents. “I packed a couple of shirts . . . some socks and stuff. He also wanted you to take these Serdsos.” He pulled out two crystalline objects and handed them to Sikes.

  They filled his palms with their weight, the facets glinting fire from deep within. He hadn’t seen anything like them before. “Serdsos?” Sikes rubbed his thumb against one of the sharp-cut edges. “What are they?”

  “One’s Emily’s . . .” Buck pointed to the one in Sikes’s left hand. He could see, looking at it more closely, that the shifting radiance it held was slightly more violet in color. “The other one’s my mom’s.” The one in Sikes’s right hand held more gold in its center. “They’re mirrors of their souls.”

  “Right . . .” He nodded, trying not to seem rude. “Mirrors, huh?”

  “We keep them next to our beds. Tenctonese believe that their souls wander while they sleep. At dawn, the soul sees itself in the Serdsos and finds its way back.”

  “Oh, yeah . . .” Whatever they wanted to believe was fine by him. Sikes tucked them into the bag and zipped it up. “Look, I gotta head back over there. You sure you’re doing all right?”

  The kid obviously found it hard to reply. Buck turned away from the door. “I have to put Vessna down for her nap.” He looked back, pointing to the overnight bag. “You should get that to the hospital soon as you can.”

  “I’m on my way . . .” The front door had already closed. He turned and headed back to the car.

  Important things were happening, matters of life and death. But it was hard to keep thinking about those things when he felt his hearts lift at the sight of her.

  Albert watched May coming down the aisle between the squad room’s desks. She pushed the cart, piled high with sandwiches and plastic-wrapped bits of organ meats, that she brought out from the kitchen every afternoon. The detectives, human or Newcomer, picked out what they wanted as she came by.

  “Is this pastrami?” Sergeant Dobbs lifted up a top slice of whole wheat. “You didn’t slip in any of that funky pancreas by mistake, did you?”

  “No . . .” May smiled at the sergeant’s teasing. “But I’ve got some really nice sheep’s lung here.” She reached for one of the paper plates. Dobbs shuddered elaborately and scooted back to his desk.

  Albert hovered close to her. He’d loved the way her fingers had plucked the sergeant’s change from the little coin tray. And now she was pouring him juice into a paper cup—both his hearts were trying to squeeze their way up into his throat.

  “You have such beautiful knuckles . . .”

  “Thank you.” May smiled shyly as she handed him the cup. “So do you.”

  He took a sip, to give him time to build up his courage. How could it be so easy, and so hard, to talk to her?

  “May . . . if anything happens to us . . . I mean, this bacteria . . .”

  “Nothing’s going to happen. I believe that.”

  “But if it does . . .” It was what he’d been thinking about before he’d seen her come into the squad room. Something inside him wanted to grab her hands, so soft and pretty, and tug her away from here. And just run with her, far away, as if there were someplace safe they could go, if they could just get there in time. “If it does happen . . . I want you to know . . . I love you.”

  Silence as they gazed into each other’s eyes. Silence that was broken by loud footsteps coming up behind Albert. He turned and looked, and saw Captain Grazer standing there. The captain looked mad, madder than even the last couple of times he’d been on the warpath.

  “Albert . . .” Grazer spoke with his teeth clenched. “There is no—I repeat: no—toilet paper in the men’s room.”

  “Oh!” He slapped his forehead. “I knew I forgot something.”

  “Damn it, if you can’t do anything else right, at least keep toilet paper in the john!” Grazer stalked off. He had a newspaper in his hand, or at least part of it; several pages from the front section had been torn off, and the rest looked crumpled.

  Albert could feel his eyes changing color in embarrassment. He looked down at the floor as he turned back toward May. “Captain Grazer’s under a lot of pressure right now—”

  “He shouldn’t yell at you.”

  “I better get back to work. I got a lot to do.”

  “Albert . . .” May caught him by the arm as he started to leave. “I love you, too.”

  He couldn’t help smiling. “Good morning,” he said to Detective Sikes as the human squeezed past the sandwich cart.

  “Yeah, it’s wonderful.” Sikes wondered what the hell Albert was grinning about. Nothing that happy had gone down around here in a long time. He dropped a file on Zepeda’s desk. “Zep, SID found fragments of a cellular phone in the debris from Parris’s boat. He had it listed under some phony name. I’ve ordered the call records on it.” He looked across the papers she had spread out in front of herself. “You got anything?”

  “Just bad news.” Zepeda leaned back in her chair, tapping a quick beat with her pencil on the desktop. “Now, we can’t confirm this—”

  “What?”

  “We’ve got an informant on the fringes of a couple Purist groups. He hasn’t really had the time to penetrate very far into the organization. But he called in a couple hours ago with something hot that he’d picked up on the grapevine. What he’d heard is just as we figured—the Purists do have a sample of the bacteria.” She tossed the pencil on top of the file. “Word is—they’re planning on making enough to soak L.A. The whole shebang.”

  He felt a little stunned; he had to sit down on the edge of her desk. Looking around the squad room, he saw the other detectives, the Newcomers working alongside the human ones. Something cold touched his spine, a piece of the vision he’d had at the hospital. Of all of them gone, a hole in the world where they had been.

  “You know . . .” He shook his head, knowing that Zepeda was watching him with concern. “I never thought I’d get used to them. When they first made George my partner—”

  “You asked for George to be assigned with you. Remember?”

  “Yeah, but that was different. I didn’t know . . . I didn’t think we were going to be together forever. And for a while there, at the beginning . . . man, I wanted to move to Alaska. Become a flippin’ game warden or something, hang out with mooses and shit. Just to get away from ’em all.” He nodded slowly, remembering what the inside of his own head had been like back then. “Now . . . when I think about what things would be like without George around . . . without any of them . . .” His shoulders slumped as he glanced at Zepeda. “I just can’t do it, Zep.”

  “Matt—it’ll be all right. We’re gonna crack this—”

  “Yeah. Sure thing.” He pushed himself away from her desk and headed for the squad-room door. Right now he felt as though he could have dropped a rock inside himself, and waited a long time before it hit anything.

  C H A P T E R 1 7

  SHE WAS SO busy, so intent on her work, that she didn’t sense his presence in the lab’s doorway. Cathy didn’t even raise her head from the microscope when Sikes coughed. Finally he rapped his knuckles on the pushed-open door.

  “Hey . . .” He stepped into the lab. “How’s it going?”

  Cathy glanced over her shoulder at him. “Oh, hi. Sorry I didn’t see you there.” She bent down to the microscope again, adjusting the focusing knob on the side. “I’m pretty wrapped up in this right now.”

  “Any luck?” He stood beside her and scanned across an array of petri dishes and more complicated glass equipment. An uncomfortable flashback popped up inside his memory, of a high school chemistry class where he had managed to produce not only a small explosion and subsequent fire, but also a fat red F on his grades.

  “Don’t touch anything.” She stra
ightened up, and began dabbing with a glass rod a clear solution onto a new set of slides. She shook her head wearily. “I don’t know. I’ve tried zynomine, plaetine—a whole range of antibiotics. We’ve even had some experimental compounds flown in from Switzerland. But I can’t get the handle I need on it.”

  “What’s the problem? I mean, it’s a bacteria, isn’t it? There must be something that can kill it off.”

  “Oh, I can kill it, all right—there’s no problem with that.” Cathy set the glass rod back into a graduated beaker. “But the situation’s more complicated than that. Whoever put this bug together was a master of genetic engineering . . .”

  That goddamn Parris. Once again, Sikes wished that the sonuvabitch could come floating down from the skies, just so he could give him a proper ass-kicking.

  She went on, her voice slow and musing, as though she were working the problem out for herself. “The problem is that the bacteria seems to have its own death cycle built in. You can kill it, but before it dies, it goes into a frenzy of endotoxin production. Then the cell walls rupture, and the host organism dies immediately, rather than gradually.” Her expression became more troubled. “It’s as if it gives you a choice between a slow death and a quick one, and that’s all.”

  He had understood some of that, and some of it had gone right by him. It was hard to concentrate, to pick it apart, when there was something else on his mind.

  “Cathy . . . I’ve been thinking about us . . .” He watched as she placed a slide under the scope and looked down the eyepiece. “About what you said . . .”

  She didn’t seem to hear him. “If I could just find a monoclonal antibody—”

  “Cathy . . .”

  She had heard him; he could see that as she turned her face toward him. “Does any of that matter now?”

  “Yes . . .” He searched her eyes. “It matters to me.”

  The ice at the center of her gaze started to melt. She was about to say something when a voice came from the doorway.

  [“Excuse me.”] The words were in Tenctonese. [“I apologize if I have interrupted anything of importance—”]

  Both Cathy and Sikes turned, and saw the male Newcomer standing there. Sikes had seen him before, standing out by the entrance to the security unit. The guy was wearing the same western shirt, embroidered with coyotes and cactuses, with pearl buttons and decorative silver points on the collar tips. This time the guy looked even bigger, filling the doorway, partially silhouetted by the light from the corridor behind him.

  Cathy replied in Tenctonese. [“Yes?”]

  The figure stepped forward into the lab, and caught her by the wrist. She jerked back in surprise, but his grip held fast to her.

  “Hey!” Sikes grabbed the other man’s arm, his fingers encountering solid muscle beneath the sleeve’s fabric. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  The man ignored Sikes; he rotated Cathy’s arm and inspected the bare flesh up to her elbow. Then he let her go. Cathy rubbed her wrist; she looked more puzzled than frightened.

  [“I was afraid.”] He bowed his head in apology to her. [“I thought you might be an Overseer.”]

  Sikes let go of the man’s arm. “What’d he say?”

  “He was checking to see if I had the Overseer tattoo on my wrist.” She turned back to the man. [“Don’t you speak English?”]

  “My English is . . . not well.” He glanced for a moment at Sikes’s suspicious gaze. “I want to help you . . .” The words faltered. [“Help you find a cure. I worked in one of the ship’s infirmaries.] I am a doctor.”

  She translated the Tenctonese for Sikes. “He says he worked in an infirmary aboard the ship.”

  “Yeah, well, thanks for the offer, pal.” Sikes pointed a thumb toward the door. “But you don’t just walk in here and volunteer.” He made a mental note to talk to Grazer about having a guard posted in front of the lab section as well as the hospital’s security unit.

  “Wait . . .” Cathy appeared intrigued by the stranger. [“What two enzymes are produced by the cyterian gland?”]

  There was no hesitation in the man’s reply. [“Three enzymes, not two—bardok, rosto, and yunost.”]

  She glanced over to Sikes. “He knows his physiology.”

  “I don’t care. He’s gotta be cleared. We don’t know who the hell he is—”

  The phone rang, interrupting him. The cord looped between them as Cathy answered it, taking the receiver from the wall mounting. “Dr. Frankel here.” She listened for a few seconds. “Okay, I’ll be right there.” She hung up and turned toward Sikes. “That was Dr. Quinn; he’s head of the team taking care of the Francisco family.”

  “Bad news?”

  She nodded. “Emily’s condition has deteriorated, just within the last few minutes.”

  The stranger laid his hand on Cathy’s forearm. “Let me see her.”

  Cathy studied him for a moment. “All right . . .”

  “Hold on!” Sikes gestured toward the stranger. “You’re not bringing him into the security unit. You don’t know this guy!”

  “Maybe he can help us. Right now we need all the help we can get.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  She cut him off. “It’s my decision. I’ll take full responsibility for him.”

  The stranger followed Cathy out the door. Sikes glared at the man’s back, then pushed himself away from the lab bench.

  In the isolation room, the lights had been turned down to a couple of small spots over each bed. In the dim space, the Serdsos that Sikes had brought from the Francisco home now sparkled from the bed stands, like captured stars.

  Susan was asleep, her breath shallow but even. On the other side of the room, Sikes kept an eye on the stranger, who in turn watched the activity around Emily’s bed. Cathy and George stood closer as a nurse wrapped the feverish child in a blue plastic sheeting.

  Dr. Quinn glanced up at one of the digital displays above the bed. The red numerals marking Emily’s temperature changed from 105.6 to 105.7. The dual traces on the electrocardiogram screen scurried a notch faster.

  “Damn . . .” Quinn muttered something else under his breath as he watched the readouts. He spoke to Cathy: “Her temperature’s still rising. I’ve given her injections of holodka; it hasn’t helped. That’s why we’re putting the ice wrap on her now.”

  Emily moaned, her head thrashing from side to side. The fever had brought a fiery blush to her skin. Cathy stepped closer and helped the nurse tuck the bulky wrap around the small body.

  It was done so swiftly and quietly that Sikes almost didn’t see; he had been distracted by what was going on around Emily’s bed. But he caught, from the corner of his eye, the sudden motion of the Newcomer stranger slipping out of the room.

  He caught the door handle just before it clicked shut, and managed to step out and see the stranger disappearing around the corner at the end of the hallway. He started to follow when he heard the door open again behind him. Dr. Quinn and George came out of the isolation room.

  “Unless we can stabilize her temperature . . .” Grimfaced, Quinn shook his head. He headed off in the opposite direction, towards the medical offices.

  Trailing the spooky Newcomer in the cowboy shirt would have to wait. Sikes figured that maybe the guy had realized he was in over his head, and was making a discreet exit. That was good riddance, as far as he was concerned.

  “George . . .” He laid his hand for a moment on his partner’s shoulder. “I don’t know how to say this, but . . . if Emily were my daughter, I’d be thinking about . . . well, I’d be thinking about maybe calling in a priest.”

  “I see.” A gentle smile formed on George’s face. “So she can go to ‘heaven’?”

  “Well . . .”

  “Thank you.” The smile was sad and wise. “But we don’t believe that our priests have anything to do with where you go after death. The Celinite faith is something different than that.”

  “Yeah, but still—”

  George pointed pas
t him. “Matt . . .”

  He turned and saw Lorraine, holding an assortment of cut flowers wrapped in a cone of paper, walking toward them.

  “Hello, Lorraine.” George nodded to her.

  Sikes was puzzled. “How did you get in here?”

  “I’m sorry,” said George. “Lorraine called and asked if she could come by, and I left her name with the guard. I forgot to tell you.”

  She held up the flowers. “I need to get a vase for these.”

  He glanced at George, then turned awkwardly back to Lorraine.

  “Look, uh . . . I made the same mistake.” He indicated the flowers with a nod. “I mean, they’re pretty—but they’re, uh, dead.” He shrugged. “It’s a Newcomer thing.”

  Brow furrowed, she looked at the bouquet. “I don’t get it.”

  George spoke kindly to her. “Lorraine, I appreciate your coming, but right now isn’t a good time for visitors. Matt, maybe you could take her down to the cafeteria.”

  “Yeah . . . that’s a good idea. Uh, you want to come with us?”

  “I’m not hungry.” George reached behind himself for the door handle. “You go ahead.”

  Sikes glanced through the isolation room’s window. Inside, Cathy and the nurse were applying cold compresses to Emily’s brow.

  “Okay . . .” He steered Lorraine by the arm, toward the double doors at the end of the hallway. “Tell you what, it’ll be my treat.”

  All through the meal—the kitchen was open, so they didn’t have to hit the vending machines—the dead flowers lay next to Lorraine’s plate on the table. She looked up from her burger and fries, and watched Sikes picking at a green salad.

  “You sure you don’t want some of these?” She held up one of the fries.

  He shook his head. “No, thanks.”

  “You’re not turning into a health nut on me?”

  “I guess I lost my appetite.” He pushed his plate away. Slouching back in the plastic chair, he looked around the dining area. Some of the same people he had seen here last night, keeping their own vigils, were hunched over paper cups of coffee near the windows. He wondered if he was starting to look as wrecked, sleep-deprived, as they already did.