Alien Nation #2 - Dark Horizon

by K. W. Jeter

  “How precise of him.” Susan looked annoyed for a moment, then managed to direct a slight smile toward Ahpossno. “These kids . . .”

  He nodded. “It must be . . . difficult for you. Especially here. When they are exposed to ways that are not our own.”

  A thoughtful expression passed over Susan’s face. “Yes . . . it is . . .”

  The books were stacked in piles all over the apartment’s floor. He found her in the middle of them, sorting and packing them into cardboard boxes. The door was open, with some of the boxes, which had been filled and then sealed with shiny brown tape, already set out in the building’s hallway. He had to turn sideways to squeeze past them.

  Marilyn had a copy of Flannery O’Connor in her hand when she turned her head and looked up at him. “Hello, Buck,” she said simply. She stood up and wiped the dust from her palms onto her faded jeans. A glanced around the apartment’s disorder, then back to him. “I was going to call you . . .”

  “It wouldn’t have done any good.” Buck stepped into the apartment. He had never been here before, at the place where she lived. Used to live—what was going on now was obvious. Through the open doorways that led to the kitchen and other rooms, he could see the boxes and other indications of her moving out. In the bedroom, the mattress had been stripped of sheets and now stood propped against the wall. He brought his gaze back to her. “You probably wouldn’t have gotten me. I’ve been spending a lot of time down at the hospital.”

  “I know; I heard about it all on the news. How are your folks?”

  “They’re okay now.” He knew that that had been on the news as well. He shrugged, and managed a bit of a smile. “Just like before.”

  “I’m glad.” An awkward pause opened between her words and his; she spoke to fill it in. “How did you find where I lived?”

  “I remembered the stuff you brought, for the picnic that time. The name of the store, with that little deli and everything, was on the bag. So I came out and asked around, and looked for your car, and looked at the names on the building directories. It took a while.”

  “You’re a detective.” Marilyn smiled. “Like your father.”

  “I don’t think so . . .”

  The gap became a chasm, too big to fill in with little words.

  Buck stepped closer to her; he could have reached out and grabbed her arms. “Marilyn—where are you going? Why?”

  Her eyes glistened with tears. “Buck . . . it’s just not a good idea. For me to stay here . . . where I might see you again.”

  “What are you talking about?” Now he did take her arms. She held back from him, turning her face away. “That’s crazy!”

  “It’s not right . . . something like this—between us—it can’t work . . .” She turned her face toward him again. One of the tears had broken and drew a wet line down her face. “You have your whole life ahead of you, Buck. There’ll be other people . . . people your own age . . .”

  “You make it sound like you’re a million years older than me!”

  “That’s what I feel like,” she said softly.

  All the way over here, and all the time he’d spent searching, he’d had the image, the premonition, of the books taken off the shelves, the moving boxes arrayed on the floor of the unseen apartment. Somehow, he’d known what he would find. And how he would find her. That it had all been true had stunned him, but now that had worn away, in just a few moments. The bitterness inside him transmuted to anger, lashing out indiscriminately, not caring who it hurt.

  “So I should get involved with somebody my own age, huh?” His hands squeezed her arms hard enough to hurt. “Or do you mean somebody my own species?”

  A different pain showed on her face. “How can you say that, Buck?” Her voice was only a whisper.

  He knew how he could say it. Not too long ago, he’d been standing in a room smaller and darker than this one, watching his mother and father dying, their slow murder happening right in front of him, the bacteria as lethal as any gun that could have been put to their heads. Humans had killed them, and it was only another Tenctonese who had brought them back from that gray land of death. If it hadn’t been for Ahpossno showing up from nowhere, he and his sisters would be orphans now.

  Maybe all humans were like that, underneath. Mean and jealous and vicious, with a murderous hate directed toward anyone who wasn’t just like them. Look at how many centuries they’d spent killing one another, over tiny little variations in skin color or petty religious beliefs, differences that were nothing compared to the gulf between them and the Newcomers. Even the ones who claimed to be your friends—he’d thought he’d been buddies with Noah, and look how that had ended up. They all turned on you eventually.

  Even the ones who loved you . . .

  Or who said they did.

  “I’m sorry.” Buck let go of her. He looked over the boxes. “But where are you going to go? What’re you going to do for a job?”

  “That’s not a problem. Funny thing was, I started sending out resumes . . .” Marilyn pointed to a couple of flat manila envelopes resting on one of the emptied bookshelves. “And it turned out I needn’t have even bothered. Right out of the blue, one of my old professors from grad school called me. He’d just gotten a huge grant to collate and edit a cache of letters from the English Lake Poets, Wordsworth and Coleridge and all those, that had just turned up in a bank vault in London. Pretty big job; tons of material.” She shrugged. “He was scouting around for a full-time assistant, and he remembered me. He offered it, and I said yes. That’s all there is to it.”

  “You’re going all the way to London?”

  A shake of her head. “Boston, actually. That’s where the material’s being catalogued.”

  Even that was a long way . . . “But I thought you enjoyed teaching.”

  She gave him one of the looks that did make her seem older than he. “I do, Buck. But maybe I should take a break from it. Sort things out.” She smiled sadly at him. “And I don’t just mean a bunch of other people’s old letters.”

  The silence came again, the end of words. “Well . . .” He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket. “Maybe you’ll write me a letter sometime.”

  “You know I will.” She turned and picked a book off one of the shelves. “I got this for you.” A thick volume, its dust iacket shiny and new. “Something I thought you should have.”

  He looked at it in his hands, but for some reason the title and author’s name were all blurred; he couldn’t make them out.

  “I have to leave now . . .” He shoved the book under his arm. “They’re . . . they’re waiting for me.” He turned and rushed blindly out of the apartment and down the building’s corridor to the stairs. He couldn’t hear if she said good-bye.

  Susan had prepared the family room for him, making an old sofa up as a bed. Ahpossno sat on the edge of the too soft cushions, his hands resting upon his knees, his eyes closed. With the room’s sliding door closed, he was alone, though he could still hear the comings and goings of the Francisco family. His meditations had been long delayed, pushed aside by the outer world’s events; he delayed them a few moments longer. Now he permitted himself to think about Cathy.

  Alliances for procreative purposes were allowed to warriors of certain degree, those who had demonstrated the superiority of their natures, the value of their genetic material. The promotion and accolades he would receive upon the successful completion of his mission would undoubtedly elevate him to that rank. It had not been a consideration for him before; the mission alone was enough, its bringing to fruition the only reward necessary. But now . . .

  It was pleasant to think of Cathy in that regard. And even—though he knew he rationalized his own indulgence—a matter of duty. She was obviously superior in physical form and intelligence to the other slaves on this planet; such breeding material should be saved from the others’ common fate. Saved for one such as himself. Thus the masters would be served well.

  He did not think of the m
asters, or of his duty to them. For a moment longer, one that he couldn’t yet bring himself to end, he thought about her.

  C H A P T E R 2 4

  ONCE HE’D GOTTEN some coffee into his system, Sikes simmered down a little. George had always wondered a bit about the effect that caffeine had on his partner and most of the other humans at the station. If the substance was a stimulant to the human central nervous system, why did they all seem to calm down after they had their first one or two cups? Or, in Sikes’s case, three or four? If mysterious, it was undeniably a good thing; the thought of Sikes getting more stimulated was daunting.

  “I just got a feeling about the guy.” Sikes was even talking in a reasonable manner about Ahpossno. Paper cup in hand, he made his way between the squad room’s desks. “When I’m around him, my antenna goes up.”

  George glanced at the top of Sikes’s head.

  “That’s a figure of speech.” Sikes took another hit of coffee. “It means I’m suspicious.”

  “Or, as I said before, perhaps you really are jealous.” He knew he was treading on thin heights by saying that, but he felt it was important for Sikes to face the issue.

  “What?” Sikes’s defensiveness rose again, but under control this time. “Of him and Cathy?”

  George tried for a touch of humor. “Actually, I was thinking of him and me.”

  “Get outta here.” Sikes pitched his cup into the wastebasket at his desk.

  “Hey, gentlemen . . .” Zepeda came cruising up. “Ready for show time?”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “You gotta see this.” She had on a big, delighted smile. “In Grazer’s office—come on.” She gestured for the two of them to follow her.

  Grazer had one of the station’s video carts set up by his desk. Even he looked pleased, his usual sour expression significantly diluted. He nodded to George and Sikes. “Have a seat.” He held up the black plastic rectangle of a videocassette. “I figured you two would enjoy seeing this.” Leaning forward, he fed the cassette into the cart’s tape player.

  On the monitor screen, multicolored static resolved into a medium-range shot of a woman talking from behind a press club podium.

  “Oh boy,” said Sikes. “Our old friend Darlene Bryant. You’re right, I can’t tell you how happy I am to see her smiling face again.”

  “Just shut up and watch.” Grazer turned up the sound volume with the remote control.

  “. . . deny any connection with the recent events that irresponsible elements in the news media and the Los Angeles Police Department have attempted to link to the Human Defense League.” Bryant’s image read from a sheet of paper on the podium. “As I have made clear from the beginning, the HDL is a law-abiding organization, dedicated to vigorously pursuing every legitimate means of combating the threat of alien immigration . . .”

  Sikes looked at the screen in disgust. “What the hell is this?”

  “News conference Bryant gave last night. Not much TV coverage, but the newspapers picked up on it.”

  “. . . at no time have we advocated violence . . .”

  “You hauled us in here to listen to this crap? Jeez.”

  “Keep your shorts on. The good part’s coming up.”

  “. . . can only speculate as to the motives of the parties behind this baseless slander . . .”

  Sikes slumped down in his chair beside George’s. “Have mercy—hit the fast forward, will ya?”

  “All right, all right.” Grazer pressed another button on the remote. On the screen, Bryant’s mouth flapped at comic high speed.

  The woman’s image vanished, replaced by blue murk. Grazer lifted his thumb, and the monitor screen stabilized. Ghost shapes moved behind an electronic time-and-date stamp in the corner.

  “Hey, wait a minute . . .” Sikes straightened up, peering intently at the screen. “That’s the warehouse those Purist bastards were using for their production lab.”

  “I don’t understand.” George’s brow creased with his puzzlement. “That’s the date before we raided the warehouse. Was it under surveillance?”

  “Not officially, no.” Grazer looked smug. “Let’s just say this is one of those happy accidents that make us look smarter than we are.” He pointed to the screen. “This is actually shot from the warehouse on the other side of the street—some place that packages fortune cookies, if you can believe that. Seems they’d been getting a lot of break-ins over the past coupla months—like there’s a big market in hot fortune cookies, right?—so they hire some cheap-o security outfit to rig up a camera and tape feed over their main door. Turns out the guy completely screws it up, mounts the camera backwards, for Christ’s sake; it’s not watching out for cookies, it’s aimed right over at our Purist buddies across the street. Not the best angle possible—that’s why it’s kinda tilted to one side like that—but still . . . not bad. Nice wide-angle lens.”

  Sikes nodded in satisfaction. “I’m starting to get the picture.”

  “I bet you are. The fortune cookie honcho comes in the next morning, looks at the tape. It’s not much good for busting cookie bandits, but he watches the whole thing, anyway—maybe he’s curious about the neighbors. And what does he see? Nothing too incriminating, boxes being moved back and forth, stuff like that. And then—oh, hey, look; here it comes.”

  The image of a sleek white limo had appeared on the monitor screen. Sikes leaned forward, eyes squinting. “Too bad we can’t see the license plate on that sucker.”

  “We don’t need to. Watch this.”

  The driver of the limo got out, went around to the rear door, and held it open. Darlene Bryant emerged, tall and gracious. She walked into the warehouse.

  “Well . . .” George nodded in appreciation. “This is a remarkable tape.”

  Sikes whooped and slapped his partner on the leg. “This is great! This puts her on the scene!”

  “It gets better, gentlemen.” Grazer pressed the fast-forward button again. “Lots better.”

  On the screen, the image of Darlene Bryant jittered into view. Grazer backed up the tape to get the whole sequence, letting it run at normal speed. The woman came out of the warehouse with someone else beside her.

  “Hot damn.” Sikes’s eyes went wide. “That’s the guy who was piloting the helicopter.”

  Grazer nodded. “The late Marc Guerin. Believe me, we’ve been digging out some interesting tidbits on his career, before he hooked up with this Purist bunch.”

  They watched as the two figures on the screen talked; nothing could be made of their words. Then Bryant gave another of her regal smiles to Guerin, leaned close to him, and kissed him on the cheek. Nothing passionate, but oddly tender, a gesture of how proud she was of him.

  “That’s gonna look great in court,” said Sikes. “She’ll have a hard time denying she knew the guy now.”

  Grazer flicked off the video equipment. “Yeah, our concerned citizen saw the entertainment value in it, too. After he gave us the tape, he drove over to every TV news facility in town and sold them copies and broadcast rights for a cool two thousand bucks apiece. That’s a lot of fortune cookies.”

  “We’ll need to get an arrest warrant.” George stood up, buttoning his jacket. “We should pick Bryant up before this gets on the air.”

  “Way ahead of you.” Grazer leaned back, hands clasped behind his head. “She’s in booking right now.”

  They had to go see. George knew that his partner felt that this was one of the genuine perquisites that came with the job. Nothing infuriated and humiliated a person—especially one as prickly and proud as Darlene Bryant—so much as being fingerprinted and photographed like an ordinary criminal. The venomous look she directed toward George and Sikes proved that.

  “Well, well . . .” Sikes radiated an insufferable smile. “Look who’s checking into the Heartbreak Hotel.”

  Zepeda’s partner, Petrosian, had finished holding Bryant’s right hand over the fingerprint scanner. Her muscles tensed as though she were about to
slap him when he took her other hand and set it in place.

  “It’s a finite world, Detective.” She had managed to regain a measure of self-control. The loathing with which she looked at Sikes turned her face hard, the eyes razor slits. “Why can’t you see that? Water, food, jobs—everything they take—there’s that much less for us.”

  “Yeah, Darlene, sing me the blues.” Sikes turned away from her; he’d already enjoyed himself enough.

  “You are a traitor to your species. Someday you’ll regret what you’ve done.”

  Sikes glanced over his shoulder. “Save your pitch for the holding tank. You’ll meet some lovely people in there.” He grabbed George’s arm and pushed him forward. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

  C H A P T E R 2 5

  THEY WALKED TOGETHER into the squad room, Sikes having made another stop at the coffee machine.

  “Can you believe that broad?” Sikes shook his head in amazement. “What an iceberg. She’s busted, she knows she’s busted, and she still comes on like a spitting cobra . . .”

  George took a sip from his cup of decaffeinated. “I thought snakes bit people, Matt.” He had to admit that seeing the Purist leader in booking had put him in a good mood as well.

  “Some snakes spit. Like that one. Man, every time I got near her, I could feel my cojónes shrivel.”

  He didn’t have to ask what that meant; he already had a good idea, from previous exposure to Sikes’s multilingual slang. There wasn’t time to ask, either; he heard noise behind them, turned, and saw Albert rushing up to them. Albert had a wildly happy smile on his face, and May, the girl from the kitchen, by the hand, pulling her along behind him. She was smiling as well, a little more shyly.

  “Congratulate me!” Albert’s visible emotions spiraled higher. “Congratulate me!”

  “Congratulations,” said Sikes dryly. He took another sip of coffee. “Why?”

  “May just asked me to marry her!”

  She lowered her eyes demurely. “He said yes.”