by K. W. Jeter
Ahpossno stood next to Sikes at the window, the two of them watching as Emily stood on tiptoe at the side of her unconscious mother’s bed. George was there as well; he put his hand around his daughter’s shoulder.
He glanced over at Sikes. “I think you and Cathy are good friends . . .”
Sikes’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t turn to face Ahpossno. “I think that’s none of your business.”
George came out of the room. He nodded to Ahpossno, then turned to his partner. “Any news?”
“SID confirmed the stuff we found was the bacteria.” Sikes ran a hand over his stubbled jaw. “We figured that aviation map must mean they’re planning on an aerial spraying. The FAA was contacted, and they’ve grounded all private aircraft.” He shrugged. “That’s about all we can do.”
“Perhaps so.” George lowered his head, brow furrowed in concentration. “If only we knew—” He broke off the sentence, another expression crossing his face. “Matt . . .”
“What?”
Ahpossno watched as George bent down and grabbed the newspaper that Albert had left behind. He brushed it off and held it toward Sikes. “Look . . .”
Looking past the two detectives’ shoulders, Ahpossno could see the newspaper’s headlines. He had learned enough of the human English language to decipher the one to which George pointed.
MALATHION SPRAYING TO RESUME
He didn’t understand all of the words—he assumed that malathion was some type of chemical substance—but the meaning was still clear enough.
“That’s right . . .” Sikes’s eyes opened wider. “The medfly infestation—they still haven’t got that under control. So they announced the spraying was going to start up tonight.”
George nodded. “They have a big enough helicopter fleet to blanket the whole city. And if the Purists have found a means of contaminating the spray . . .” He let the rest of the sentence go unspoken.
Ahpossno stepped up to the two police detectives. “We must stop them.”
“ ‘We’?” Sikes glanced at Ahpossno. “What’s this ‘we’? This is a police matter, buddy.”
He turned to George. “I am Udara.”
The expression on George’s face showed that he was both surprised and impressed.
Sikes wasn’t. “He’s what?”
“Udara.” George studied Ahpossno. “Similar to the Japanese samurai. Among the slaves, they were the elite—a secret group of warriors.”
“Oh, sure.” Sikes looked disgusted. “First he’s Albert Schweitzer. Now he’s Bruce Lee.”
“This is our battle,” Ahpossno said to George. “We fight for Tenctonese.” The strategic lies he spoke were easy to conceal. That he was Chekkah—the slaves’ lives still had to be defended if they were to be returned to the service of their masters.
“Come on . . .” Sikes tried to pull George away. “We’re wasting time.”
“Matt, this is important.” George indicated Ahpossno with a tilt of his head. “If he is Udara, maybe we should take him with us.”
Sikes’s anger exploded. “I don’t care what he is—he’s not a cop!”
Cold authority filled Ahpossno’s voice. “I was trained to defend our people.” The temptation to strike the human, to eliminate this obstacle to his plans, sparked inside him. This Sikes, as with the others of his species, did not have the speed of Tenctonese mental processes—but he had a depth of insight, a trust in his own instincts, that made him dangerous. Ahpossno knew he would have to be careful around the individual.
“I know he’s not a cop,” said George, “but he has skills we might need.”
“Are you nuts? This guy—”
[“Please . . .”] He spoke in Tenctonese to George. [“You must let me help.”]
“Matt, our survival is at stake!” George motioned Ahpossno to follow him. [“Come!”]
George led him down the corridor and through the security unit’s exit. A moment later, Ahpossno heard the doors burst open behind them as Sikes came striding after them.
C H A P T E R 2 0
SHE LEFT THE news on while she worked. Marilyn had found out a long time ago, back when she’d been working on her undergraduate degree in literature, that she got more done with the television on in the background. Nothing too loud, with guns and car chases, or shrieking canned laughter. But voices—public broadcasting stations were usually good for that. Long hours of the ‘MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour’ droning on, or some British naturalist totaling up all the species that had been lost when the last of the New Guinea forests had been cut down. She hardly even glanced at the screen, but just went on laying out lesson plans or grading test papers. She had her own theory about it, that TV voices reminded her of being a kid, when there hadn’t been any choice about being surrounded by people talking. She’d grown up doing her homework at the kitchen table while her younger brothers and sisters had run in and out, and her mother went on slicing carrots and onions at the sink. Eventually she’d gotten so good at tuning out all the racket that she now found complete silence to be somewhat unnerving.
The other thing . . . With the television on, and faces filing past, a flat electronic parade, a person could almost convince herself that she was a little less lonely. In her apartment filled with books, most of them fat trade paperbacks, and stacks of the Kenyon Review that she hadn’t gotten around to reading yet; so many tall white IKEA bookcases that she’d put together herself, there was hardly room for the Weston prints and Paul Klee reproductions on the walls; a music stand with the slow movement of a Mozart flute concerto on it, gathering dust, and the cat dish in the kitchenette for the Burmese that had died from feline leukemia even though he’d had all his shots, and which she was still too sad about to even think of replacing . . . the voices could fill up the empty spaces between things and books. Marilyn could curl up on the sofa covered with her mother’s rainbow afghans, with a mug of coffee and the copy of the Sunday New York Times she drove over to World News on Cahuenga to get, and time would pass well enough.
Or else it didn’t, and you wound up doing stupid things.
She lifted her hands off the Mac’s keyboard and rubbed her eyes. There was part of a letter on the screen, and several completed ones tucked safely away on the hard drive. The letters represented the smart things she should do; she’d print them out, and fold them and put them in envelopes, and drop them into the mailbox, and all of that would be smart. If it didn’t make her happy . . . that was her problem.
A glance at the little Sony, dwarfed by the dark blue Compact OED next to it, showed a bunch of men and a couple women sitting around talking. The important issues of the day were being discussed. Marilyn tuned in the murmuring words for a few seconds. Something about racism in America; that was a perennial topic on these serious discussion shows. The national news hook was the business right here in Los Angeles, with the Purists, the illegal underground ones, and the lethal bacteria they had supposedly cooked up for the Newcomers.
Her own fretting thoughts pushed away the voices. It was hard to believe that something like that could ever happen; that much death, in so short a period of time. Three hundred thousand Newcomers . . . The Nazis had taken years to murder six million Jews; maybe it said something about the progress of technology, the whole grisly science of extermination, that these processes could be accomplished so much faster now. Hitler would have approved, no doubt. And all of it done without messy, unsightly sealed trains rolling into camps surrounded by barbed wire fences, with the smokestacks billowing out the black smoke from the ceaseless crematoria. A bacteria, an invisible bug, was so much simpler and neater. Up to a point, of course; the bodies would still be in the streets, here in Los Angeles, piling up where they fell. A bit of a sanitation problem there; the trucks would have to be sent out, the face-masked human workers picking them up like sacks of trash set out on the curb for collection . . .
A shudder ran through Marilyn; she shook her head in a sudden paroxysm of disgust and loathing. She had let her tho
ughts go on rolling by themselves, like those nightmare sealed trains and loaded garbage trucks, and she’d wound up someplace that couldn’t be endured, only pushed away with eyes shut.
She looked at the people inside the small TV screen, and listened to them for a few seconds more. They talked about it, on this show and the others, and on the news, rationally, even coldly—but that didn’t make it real. It was like word from a distant land, floods in Bangladesh, famines in Africa. You saw the pictures and heard the numbers, but it was something else, a pale imitation of reality. Something that could be forgotten with the turning of a newspaper page or the switching off of a television . . .
It wasn’t going to happen. Marilyn told herself that. The Great Death would pass by them; it wasn’t even real to begin with. It was just words. The voices now became intolerable, hammering at her nerves, as if the murmuring had changed to shouts and screams. She reached over and switched off the TV, and silence flooded the apartment.
She rubbed her reddened eyes. Impossible to think about. A string of words, three hundred thousand . . .
She could only think about one at a time.
The unfinished letter was still on the computer’s screen. She knew she would sit up straight and finish it, her mind and fingers on autopilot. She’d print out it and the others stored on the hard drive, shove them into nine-by-twelve manila envelopes along with her resume and photocopies of her performance evaluations, references, and writing samples, the essays she’d done for a couple different teachers’ journals. Put the stamps on, take them to the post office, send them on their way.
Because of Buck.
Her eyes weren’t just reddened now, they were misted with tears. The remnants of the ones she’d cried before, when she had first realized what she would have to do. For herself, and for him.
She had phoned one time. She knew the Francisco family was at the hospital, it had also been in the news, about Buck’s mother and his little sister being stricken with this man-made plague. But perhaps, just in case . . . She’d listened to the phone ringing in a distant house, over and over, but her nerve had failed her and she’d hung up before anyone could answer. She hadn’t known what she would have said if Buck had come on the line. Or what she would’ve been able to say.
What would she say if he was with her right now? Not here in her apartment, but out in the park, where they had kissed. She didn’t know. Perhaps there was nothing more to say, other than good-bye.
After a moment, she reached out and switched the television back on. The voices filled up the silence again, and kept her from thinking. She finished the letter she’d been working on, and started the next one.
The limousine parked on the far side of the staging area, out of reach of the lights surrounding the helicopters and the hangars from which they’d been moved out. None of the technicians making the final preparations, or the pilots waiting for the signal to begin lifting into the night sky over Los Angeles, could observe the scene taking place beyond the high chain link fence.
Guerin watched as the limo’s driver held open the rear door. Solid legs swung out—they were in good shape for a woman of her age—then the rest of Darlene Bryant appeared. At least this time she was in something slightly less formal than her full cocktail dress regalia.
She smiled at him as she approached. “Good evening, Marc.” Standing right in front of him, she stroked the nylon sleeve of his flight jacket. “You seem to be all ready for action.”
The regulation jacket had a fur collar that, in this dry heat, made his neck itch. When he’d piloted copters before, on discreet government missions in South America and the Mideast, he’d usually stripped down to his undershirt, the cotton fabric clinging to his sweating back and chest. This jacket was part of the disguise for tonight, though; it had all the appropriate markings, including the distinctive Department of Agriculture patch on the shoulder.
He shrugged. “Should be a piece of cake. We’ve been getting ready for this for a long time.”
His words seemed to please her. More than that—it was as if a match had been dropped in dry tinder. Her eyes widened, a fanatic light revealed inside.
“Someday, Marc, when the world comes to its senses—” Bryant’s hand squeezed the thick muscle of his arm “—then humankind will honor what you’re about to do.”
Completely crazy—there was no longer any doubt about it, the depth and violence of her faith. What was politics to him was Darlene Bryant’s religion. But he knew how to handle her. He bowed his head in a pretense of humility.
That was all it took. “God be with you,” she whispered fervently. She kissed him on both cheeks. Then she turned and strode back to the limo. The driver opened the door, and she disappeared inside.
The others on Guerin’s squad had been watching. As the limo pulled away, like an ocean liner with head- and taillights, he walked back to the van. A couple of the men, dressed in flight outfits like his, smiled at him. “Way to go,” said one. “I thought she was going to whip out a big sword and knight you.”
“Naw . . .” Another shook his head. “He was going to whip out his big sword, and . . .” The joke concluded with an account of improbable sexual activity on the part of Darlene Bryant.
“Yeah, that’s hilarious, all right.” Guerin slid behind the wheel of the van. “Now we got work to do.” He reached down and turned the key in the ignition.
At the staging area, a half dozen helicopters were arranged in front of the hangars. From the undersides of each craft protruded the braced rods equipped with nozzles for aerial spraying. Guerin parked the van out of the way and walked with his copilot toward the lead copter. A group of Purist technicians, now dressed in white coveralls with DEPT. OF AGRICULTURE stenciled on the backs, hurriedly worked at replacing the canisters that had been mounted close to the landing gear, they had already finished with the others. A couple of the techs glanced up at Guerin as he approached, but kept their silence, as they had been instructed.
“Marc! Hey, Marc . . .”
Guerin turned and saw the ground supervisor trotting toward him. The fat little official wasn’t one of the Purists. Much of the charade that had been elaborately enacted over the last couple of weeks had been for the purpose of fooling him.
The supervisor had a clipboard in his hand. He panted for breath, the little distance from his office having nearly exhausted him. “What . . . what are those guys doing?” He glanced over at the technicians.
Guerin shrugged. “Looks like they’re just checking the canister fittings.” He nodded at the clipboard. “What’s up?”
“Well, you’re not, that’s for sure.” The ground supervisor tapped the board with a stubby finger. “The flight’s been scrubbed. You and Hank aren’t going up tonight.”
“How come?”
“Beats me.” The finger lifted a sheet of fax paper. “Something that just came in from the LAPD. Emergency order.”
“Typical.” Guerin smiled and shook his head. “What the hell, it’s okay by me—long as we get paid.”
“The employees’ association will scream blue murder if you don’t. Tell you what.” The supervisor tucked the clipboard under his arm. “We’re all going out for a beer. Let them sort it out. Meet us at Casey’s, okay?” He turned and jogged away.
The smile was gone when Guerin looked at his copilot beside him. He tilted his head toward the lead copter. “This one’s going up.”
A last bolt had been tightened. The crew of Purist technicians backed away as Guerin and his copilot climbed into the cockpit.
The engine’s initial whine sounded as Guerin checked the oil pressure and set the altimeter. A sudden light struck his face; he looked up and saw a pair of headlights swing through the gate to the staging area.
“There they are . . .” Sikes pointed through the windshield to the helicopters grouped together. The men standing near them turned toward the source of the light sweeping across them. The rotor of one copter had already begun to revolve, flashing ref
lected glints from the blades. “Hit it!”
George punched the accelerator. The men scattered as the car roared onto the staging area’s asphalt field. Behind the curved Plexiglas of the copter, the pilot could be seen as his hands moved across the panel switches.
The car rocked on its suspension from the sudden, screeching halt George slammed it into. He and Sikes were already piling out and reaching inside their jackets. The weaponless Ahpossno slid out from the rear seat.
“Police!” Sikes raised his gun above his head. “Halt!”
The copter’s copilot leveled a gun and fired as the pilot pulled back on the controls. The sudden motion, the copter rising on its landing gear, skewed the copilot’s aim; the bullet cracked into the car’s grille.
Sikes and George ducked behind the open doors of the car, and returned fire. One shot sparked off the copter’s strutwork as it began to lift free of the ground.
Standing behind the two police detectives, Ahpossno extracted a palm-sized device from the pouch clipped to his belt. The sudden electronic whine snagged Sikes’s attention; from where he crouched down, he glanced over his shoulder and saw Ahpossno aiming the object at the helicopter. He also saw a group of white-coveraled men, four of them, armed with crowbars and rushing up behind Ahpossno.
“Watch out . . .”
His shouted warning was unnecessary; Ahpossno had already whirled around, blocking the first blow, his grip catching the lead attacker’s upraised forearm. The electronic device was knocked loose from Ahpossno’s other hand; Sikes saw it skitter across the asphalt. A glowing red dot on the surface of the object, no bigger than a pocket flashlight, faded and died.
Ahpossno pushed his opponent far enough away that he could spin and deliver a wheeling kick to the man’s chest. The crowbar turned end over end in the air as the force of the blow sent the man flying. He landed in a crumpled heap ten feet away.
Sikes had only a second to see two more of the men circling Ahpossno on either side before the fourth of the group sprinted toward him. A crowbar smashed down upon his gun arm. He rolled with the blow, dropping the gun and reaching up to pull the attacker close to himself.
