by K. W. Jeter
“Come on, let’s get out of here!” Z grabbed Noah’s arm and pulled him to his feet.
“Wait a minute . . .” Noah stooped down and grabbed the case, then turned and sprinted out the door with the other guys. The cashier came out from behind the counter, waving a pipe wrench, but Donnie toppled a comic-book stand in front of him. They were all out the door and down the sidewalk, laughing and whooping, before the slag could catch them.
They cracked open the case in a deserted alley, and toasted the successful raid.
“Stupid slag never knew what hit him!” Donnie wiped beer foam from his mouth with the back of his hand. “Man, he went down!”
“Yeah, that was a good shot . . .” Another of the gang hit Noah in the arm. “Goes to show, these pussies aren’t as tough as they think they are.”
Noah took a long drag of beer and nodded. It had taken a long time for him to get his breath back, and his back ached where the bat had caught him. He could still see the big slag’s face in front of him, and taste the fear that had welled up inside him, knowing what the bastard was going to do to him. That thought made him feel a little shaky—if things hadn’t moved so fast at the liquor store, chances were good he’d have pissed all over himself from sheer fright.
“Hey!” Another voice sounded from the mouth of the alley. “Where the hell did you kids run off to? Been looking all over for you . . .”
Their heads snapped around, and they saw the rummy shambling toward them. He had the two six-packs tucked under his arm. The adrenaline surge that had flashed upward through their spines turned to laughter.
“You sure showed them sonsabitches what’s what.” The rummy held the six-packs out to Donnie. “Goddamn penny-pinching suspicious alien tightwads. I never liked the bastards. Now, those Koreans that used to run that store—they was good people. You could even ask ’em for credit, and they wouldn’t look at you like you was a bug. But these people from Mars, or wherever the hell they’re from . . .” He shook his head. “Tighter’n a mallard’s ass.”
“Well, old-timer, us humans gotta stick together.” Donnie peeled off two of the beers and handed them back to the rummy. “If nobody’s gonna watch out for us, then we’ll have to do it ourselves. And that’s gonna mean kicking some butt around here.”
Noah saw the look that passed between the old man and Donnie. The rummy was grateful for the two cans of beer, one more than he’d bargained for, but that didn’t explain everything. The old guy could’ve gone off with both six-packs, headed in the exact opposite direction from where the kids had run off to, and had a dozen beers to get good and mellow on. But he hadn’t. Instead, he’d come searching for them, just so he could be in on the fringes of the group, basking in the communal glow.
That felt good. Respect and admiration—even from a shabby old derelict like that. Nothing close to that feeling had ever come out of going to school and reading books and crap; just people getting into your face and ranking on you and making you feel like two cents. Who needed that?
Lots of things felt good right now, like a whole series of treasure boxes unlocked by the first touch of alcohol gliding down his throat. His back still hurt, but that felt good, too, in a weird way. Because it reminded Noah of slamming that case of beer into the slag’s ribs, right under the arm where he knew it really hurt the bastards. He could close his eyes and run a little movie, of the big slag stumbling backward, stunned by the blow, eyes rolling up in his head. Thinking about that, remembering it, tasting it with another swallow of beer rolling back on his tongue—that felt real good.
The only thing that made it feel better—and he didn’t even have to try to do it, it just came naturally, floating right into the little movie—was to put somebody else’s face there. That jerk Buck’s face, the one he’d thought had been his friend and who’d turned out to be slime like all the rest of them . . . The movie rolled again as Noah tilted his head back and drained the can. The case of beer slammed into Buck’s armpit and Buck went down, and now there was more to the movie, a lot more, a boot to the side of Buck’s head and the spotted skull splitting open like a bird’s egg and pink blood spilling out . . .
Noah crumpled the empty can in his fist and tossed it away, bouncing it off the alley’s dirty brick wall. Surrounded by his friends, his real friends, he rubbed his shoulders against theirs as he reached past them to pull another beer out of the carton.
“Now maybe we can get some real work done.” Captain Grazer looked over the mess of papers strewn across his desk. Hands on his hips, he radiated genuine hatred toward the manila file folders.
Sikes took a hit from his first coffee of the morning. His eyelids were up, but other doors and shutters inside his head were still groaning open on rusty hinges. “Yeah . . .” He nodded. “We sure as hell haven’t been getting a lot done around here these days.”
The sarcasm flew right past Grazer, as it usually did. “You’re telling me? All that business with those dirtbag Purists and their dopey bacteria, and helicopters and malathion and God knows what else . . .” The words came to a sputtering halt, until Grazer could catch his breath again. “Downtown’s going to have my ass on the line about all the overtime that’s been handed out around here. And in the meantime, everything else has been piling up like flippin’ snowdrifts. Look at this stuff!” He gestured angrily at the files. “We got cases up the gazoo!”
That last shout banged around inside Sikes’s head; he couldn’t keep from wincing. At the moment, he regretted having stuck his nose inside the captain’s office. He should have known better.
“Yeah, well, if people are getting on your back—” he shrugged “—play the percentages. You figure three hundred thousand lives saved . . . That’s gotta count for something.”
“Get real, Sikes.” The captain’s narrow-eyed glare moved up from the papers on the desk. “That was yesterday’s headlines. What you got now is people writing letters to the editor, saying maybe it wouldn’t have been such a bad idea if all these Newcomers had been snuffed. That, and how come the police can’t spend a little time catching the lowlifes that ripped the stereo out of their BMW’s dashboard?”
Public relations was the cause of most of Grazer’s ulcers; Sikes decided to take an end run around the issue. “What the hell is this one?” He poked a finger through the contents of a cardboard box stuffed with ragged-looking files. “This all one case?”
“All one headache,” muttered Grazer. “SID’s been sitting on that ball of wax for nearly a year. Now they decide they can’t spend any more time trying to figure it out, so they’re bouncing it right back into our laps.”
“I remember this . . .” Sikes had managed to pry open one of the folders enough to see the papers inside. “Commercial burglaries, Wilshire corridor . . . smooth operation.”
“Yeah, those brains at SID decided that all the evidence showed definite signs of a pattern, they just couldn’t figure out what the pattern is. Is that a help, or what?”
“Captain Grazer? You wanted to see me?”
Sikes turned and saw Albert, looking nervous, standing in the office’s doorway.
“No, I don’t want to see you . . .” Grazer was on a roll. “I’m tired of looking at you. But I’m even more tired of this place being such a mess! Look at it—the trash can needs to be dumped, the ashtrays—”
“I’ll get right on it, sir.” Albert scurried into the office with a plastic trash bag.
Sikes didn’t feel like sticking around to see poor Albert getting reamed. Ordinarily he might have said something to Grazer, told him to ease off the sucker, but he didn’t feel at the moment like getting into a shouting match with the captain. Albert had to start looking out after himself, anyway.
He used the interruption to slip out of the office unnoticed and head down the hallway. Behind him, he could still hear Grazer going on.
“I want this whole place straightened out! And I want it right now . . .”
“Well . . .” A brighter, more insufferably che
erful voice greeted him in the squad room. George looked up from a file on his desk. “Don’t you look like what the cat dragon ate.”
“ ‘Cat dragon’ . . .” Sikes shook his head; that one wasn’t even worth bothering with. He lowered himself into the chair behind his own desk.
George made a show of continuing to study the file he held. “You left in an awful hurry last night.” That didn’t get a response from his partner. “Shame you missed dinner. We had a great dessert—some wonderful liver, filled with whipped cream. Nu-Twinks, they’re called.” Still nothing; George lowered the file and looked straight at Sikes. “Was it something anyone said?”
“Look . . .” Sikes leaned back in the chair. “Can we just get to work? Or is that the kind of decision your wife has to make?”
A scowl passed across George’s face. “I was just curious.” Stiffly he slid the file across his desk. “Here’s something on the Kenny Bunkport homicide case. Fabric fibers were found under the victim’s fingernails. We can assume they came from the murderer’s clothing. SID’s running an analysis.”
Sikes started looking over the file. Before he got more than a few lines into it, he heard footsteps coming his way. He looked up and saw Cathy and Ahpossno.
“Hi.” Cathy smiled at him. “We missed you at dinner last night.”
He eyed Ahpossno. “I suddenly got ill.”
Ahpossno made an effort to look concerned. “I’m glad to see you are better.”
Cathy spoke to George. “Do you need me to come back by and pick him up?” She pointed to Ahpossno.
“No . . .” George shook his head. “I’ll bring him home with me when I’m done here.”
“What’s going on?” Sikes looked around the group’s faces.
“Ahpossno is interested in becoming a policeman.” George smiled modestly. “Like me. I said I’d show him the precinct.”
“Oh, sure.” Sikes nodded. “Why not? We got nothing better to do today. I thought maybe we might solve a few crimes, do a little of what we’re supposedly getting paid for, but hell—we can do that any old time.” He stood up, shoving his chair back hard against the desk. “I’m going to the morgue to get some fresh air.”
“Matt . . .” George tried to stop him, but he was already gone, striding angrily toward the squad-room door.
“He doesn’t like me.” Ahpossno had observed Sikes’s exit.
“Oh, Matt’s just a little . . . shy.” Cathy readjusted the strap of her purse on her shoulder. “Well, I’ll let you guys get to it, then. I’ve got to get over to the research library at UCLA.”
She moved to touch Ahpossno’s temple with her fist, but he gently caught her wrist, staying her hand. He leaned forward, touching his temple directly to hers. George watched and tried to conceal his own surprise at the unexpectedly intimate gesture between the two.
Cathy was surprised as well; George could see that. Self-conscious and flustered, she turned toward him. “ ’Bye . . .” She quickly scooted away from the desk.
Ahpossno watched Cathy for a moment, then observed a couple of gang members, sulky and hard-eyed in their Raiders jackets, being hustled to the holding tank by a pair of uniformed officers. Throughout the station, visible through the squad-room door, the daily business had already reached its usual level of noise and apparent chaos.
“You have much work here.”
George nodded. “I’m afraid so.”
Ahpossno’s gaze took in everything, the press of humans and Newcomers in the crowded corridors, the file cabinets spilling papers. “How do you remember everything?”
“Well, we do keep pretty extensive records.” George gave Ahpossno a rueful smile. “I think you’ll find that being a police officer is more paperwork than action a lot of times. But it gets the job done. I can access the data through this computer terminal.” He laid a hand on top of the monitor on his desk. “It’s tied in to the department’s mainframe through the phone lines.” He typed a few quick strokes and brought up a screenful of information. “I can bring up any case—open or closed. I can review the files on any suspects—any former convicts—just about anything that might be of use.” He hit a few more keys, bringing up a graphics display. “It’s linked to my computer at home, so I can access files there, too.” He pointed to the screen. “You might find this interesting. Humans are identified by the distinctive markings on their fingertips.”
“I see.” Ahpossno bent down, peering intently at the monitor. George leaned back in the chair, to make room for him. “And Tenctonese?”
“We were all tissue-typed when we went through quarantine.” George reached past Ahpossno and typed another set of commands. The screen blanked, then opened up the Newcomer data base. “The results are useful in the same way as human fingerprints; there’s less than a one percent chance of duplication from one individual to another.”
A series of Newcomer mug shots, convicted felons, scrolled through the monitor screen. Ahpossno studied the rap sheet blocks attached to each scanned photo.
“George—I have to talk to you . . .”
Holding a push broom by its long wooden handle, Albert hurried toward George’s desk.
“What is it?” George swiveled his chair around.
“George . . . at my wedding . . .” Albert noticed Ahpossno standing on the other side of the desk. “Hi . . .” His smile faded for a moment as he nodded to Ahpossno; then his excitement returned. “May wants me to wear a blue gown. What color did you wear at yours?”
“Albert, I was married on board the ship.” The odd scrutiny that the janitor had given Ahpossno troubled George, but he pushed it out of his thoughts. “There were no gowns.”
“I forgot.” Albert slapped his forehead. “Of course!”
Now a puzzled expression had formed on Ahpossno’s face. He turned to George. “You let them marry?”
“What do you mean?”
With a tilt of his head, Ahpossno indicated Albert. “He is a number four . . . a zabeet . . .”
The words embarrassed Albert; he gazed down at the floor.
“Albert is as intelligent as any of us.” George was taken back by Ahpossno’s show of insensitivity. He tried to make amends to Albert. “You must forgive Ahpossno—he’s been alone in the desert since the ship crashed.” His voice became stern again as he turned back to Ahpossno. “There are no rankings here. Everyone is allowed to marry.”
A flash of anger showed in Ahpossno’s eyes, as though he resented the reprimand. Then he regained control of himself. “Oh . . . that’s good.” He forced a smile for Albert. “Congratulations.”
Albert managed a nod; George could see that his feelings were still hurt. “Excuse me . . .” Albert turned and left, carrying the push broom with him.
“I did not understand . . . until now.” Ahpossno nodded slowly, as though deep in thought. “We are truly free here.”
George studied the other man for a moment. A false note seemed to sound beneath Ahpossno’s words. The edge of suspicion troubled George; he felt uneasy, as though his human partner’s envy and hostility had somehow contaminated him.
He reached out and switched off the computer terminal. In the black screen he saw his own face, the brow furrowed in concern.
Late at night, the moon’s illumination slid through one of the house’s upper windows and across the stairs. Even without that, he would have easily made his way to the family room. In the dim light, Ahpossno descended in silence. He could detect, at the limits of his hearing, the slow, measured breathing of George and Susan, and the children, in their bedrooms.
He turned the miniblinds, allowing a few narrow slits of moonlight to fall across the computer stand at the far side of the room. That was enough to work by. He found the power switch at the back of the machine and switched it on. The glow from the monitor screen fell across his hands on the keyboard.
It had been simple enough to stand behind George at his desk at the station and memorize the quick series of keystrokes that unlocked the infor
mation hidden inside. This machine beeped softly as its internal modem connected through the phone line to the police mainframe. Within a few seconds, the face of a Tenctonese male showed on the screen; Ahpossno recognized the image as one of the mug shots he had observed during George’s brief demonstration earlier in the day.
Using the computer’s return key, Ahpossno flipped through more of the faces. Beneath each one was a block of text headed IDENTIFYING MARKS. He stopped when he found the words OVERSEER TATTOO.
He memorized that face, and the human name that had been given to the individual. He paged through more of the display, finding a second one with the Overseers’ dark wrist tattoo, then a third. Each was logged into his own indelible data bank.
“Ahpossno—”
Even before he turned around, he quickly reached and switched off the computer. The screen went blank. He looked over his shoulder and saw George, wearing a bathrobe, standing in the family room’s doorway.
“I couldn’t sleep.” Ahpossno stood up from the computer stand.
George stepped toward him. “What were you doing?”
“Trying to understand this machine.” He laid his hand on top of the monitor. “I couldn’t make it work.”
“That information is classified—you’d need a password to get into it.” George pointed to the ceiling and the rooms above. “If you want to learn computers, I’m sure Buck would be happy to let you use his. There’s some excellent tutorial programs loaded on it.”
“All right.” Ahpossno stepped away from the stand. “I’m tired now. Good night, George.”
He walked toward the door, feeling George’s gaze upon his back.
C H A P T E R 2 7
HE USUALLY WENT to the little convenience store around the corner. The selection wasn’t great, but he could nearly always pick up a six-pack of Rolling Rock there, or if they were out of that, plain old Budweiser. If he wanted something special, if the yen for a nice, dark import had come over him, one of those German numbers or a Murphy’s Stout with a cream head that lasted all the way to the bottom of a tall glass, then he’d walk a few more blocks over to the bigger-and-better liquor store, the one with the big walk-in cooler. But this time, this night, Sikes drove, staying in the car after he’d left the station, heading right past his own neighborhood. He’d asked around, leaving only George out of the loop—just for right now, he didn’t want his snoopy partner’s nose in his private affairs—and had gotten a recommendation about where to go. To find a store that had the good stuff, for both humans and Newcomers.
