Alien Nation #3 - Body and Soul

by Peter David

  Then he spotted the truck.

  The giant charged across the driveway, and that was when the immensity of a situation gone wrong fully occurred to Perkins. Some major mishap had occurred in the building, and what was supposed to be a simple pickup operation had become a debacle.

  If the giant got away, Perkins was going to have to return to his employer, explain precisely what had gone wrong, and take responsibility for it.

  It was not so much bravery, or even dedication to duty, so much as just plain fear of what would happen if he didn’t take every possible step to salvage this mess, that prompted Perkins’s next actions.

  The giant had already leaped into the cab of the truck. For one moment Perkins thought that maybe his life was going to be simple. That the giant would sit there in utter futility, unaware of how to pilot the vehicle, until the other two slags showed up and did what they were supposed to do—namely, overpower the damned giant and get him safely under wraps.

  Perkins’s hope was dashed when he heard the clicking of the engine. One of the most annoying things about most slags is how quickly the damned things learned, and the giant was apparently no exception.

  Perkins was unarmed, but not undetermined. He scampered toward the van and, just as he got within reach, heard the engine roar to life.

  He leaped desperately, snagging the back of the van just as the vehicle lurched forward. The giant was a fast learner, but Grand Prix material he was not. The van started, stopped, and then pitched forward again. The motion of the van accomplished for Perkins what he had been trying to do in the first place—specifically, get inside.

  He tumbled into the interior of the van’s cargo bay. Inside were a couple of bolted-down gurneys that had been prepared for the giant to lie on once he was inside.

  The giant wasn’t going to need it. He was in the front, driving. But Perkins latched onto it, holding on desperately so that he wouldn’t be thrown back out of the van. As he did so, the rear doors of the van swung back around on their well-oiled hinges and slammed shut, closing him in. When this happened, he breathed a sigh of relief. At least he didn’t have to be concerned about being thrown out the back of a moving vehicle.

  The van was picking up speed. Perkins thudded and thumped around inside, tossed around like a poker chip as the van skidded out onto the main road and roared toward . . .

  Where?

  Sealed in the back, Perkins had absolutely no clue as to where they were going. But at least, whenever they got there, he would be able to inform his boss that, yes, things had not gone quite according to plan. But he, Perkins, was still on top of things.

  At least for the moment.

  River felt an earthquake, and it was shouting his name.

  Then his mind focused in, and he stared dazedly up at Penn. [“What’s . . . ?”]

  [“Will you come on?!”] shouted Penn angrily.

  And then Penn actually managed to catch a break.

  His despairing gaze noticed a literal godsend. On the wall to his right, a fire extinguisher was serenely perched. If the damned thing could have spoken, it would undoubtedly have said something along the lines of, “It took you long enough to notice me.”

  Penn stood up quickly, momentarily forgetting about River. The result was that the semiconscious Newcomer’s head thudded to the floor with an impressive crack. Penn paid it no heed, for he had other things on his mind. He crossed quickly to the fire extinguisher, grabbed it off the wall, and prayed that the idiot guard had seen to it that the thing was maintained. Otherwise the fire was going to blaze out of control, and River might very well be toast.

  But Penn caught his second break in as many minutes. He flipped the fire extinguisher over, aimed, and fired. Moments later the roaring fire had been smothered. All that was left was a thick, acrid smell and a faint hissing and popping noise.

  Quickly he turned back to River and knelt down beside him. He winced at the blood that was pouring from the Newcomer’s nose. It was out of joint as well. Clearly the giant had broken it.

  There was no time to carp over it, however. [“Come on.”] he clicked, and hauled the groggy River to his feet. River stumbled momentarily and then righted himself.

  Seconds later, they were out on the road, just in time to see the van heading in the direction of Los Angeles.

  [“Let’s go! They’re getting away!”] shouted Penn. Spurred on by the anger in his partner’s voice, River started off, and the two of them pounded down the road after the speeding van.

  Their Newcomer physiology made them stronger and faster than any human, but all the alien musculature in the world wasn’t going to do a thing when it came to keeping pace with a speeding armored van. Eventually, after several miles, the two Newcomers slowed and then came to a stop, chests heaving and their double hearts pounding.

  They bent over, their hands resting on their knees, as the van vanished into the distance. Penn looked woefully at River.

  [“He’s not going to be happy about this, you know.”]

  [“I know.”] said River, unenthused. He touched his damaged nose tentatively and winced. Then he looked around, a thought occurring to him. [“Where’s the human?”]

  Penn looked behind them, and realized that he hadn’t spotted Perkins when they came out of the building. [“You know . . . maybe . . .”]

  [“He’s in the rear of the van?”]

  Penn nodded. [“I’ll bet that’s it. And since it’s separate from the cabin, then the giant won’t spot him.”]

  [“Perfect.”] River paused. [“You know . . . I’ll bet the giant heads to Little Tencton. He’d be drawn to it.”]

  [“The highest concentration of our people.”] Penn nodded. [“It makes sense. All we have to do is get to the city as quickly as possible and maybe we can salvage this.”]

  It didn’t take them all that long to find the one service station in the area . . . which was closed. Parked to one side was an older car with a sign on it that read For Sale—$500.

  The Newcomers looked at each other.

  [“Sold.”] said Penn.

  Moments later, the car successfully hot-wired, the two Newcomers sped off down the deserted highway. Far in the distance, the lights of Los Angeles, twinkling like the stars, beckoned to them . . .

  C H A P T E R 2

  MIKE SIKES STARED at himself in the steamed-up mirror; trying to decide whether or not to shave.

  He was somewhat scruffy at the moment, having come off a particularly grueling case that had occupied several months, on and off. And during the final week, when everything had come to a head, he had really let himself go as he fixated on bringing down a drug dealer that he’d been pursuing for ages.

  With matters at a satisfactory conclusion, Sikes had come home and promptly crashed for twelve straight hours of shut-eye. He had taken the time off at the urging of his partner, George Francisco. George, the only Newcomer to have reached the rank of detective in the LAPD (not to mention detective sergeant, a promotion that had caused no end of grief between them), had stridently encouraged Matt to take a day off after the grind they’d been through.

  “Matthew,” George had said in that faintly schoolteacher manner of his that sometimes drove Sikes to complete distraction, “you will be doing no one any good—neither myself, with whom you’re partnered, nor the public which we are supposed to be serving and protecting—if you are out on the streets in a diminished capacity.”

  “I am not diminished, George!” Sikes had said angrily, dropping down in front of the desk that faced directly across from Francisco. It had taken him months to get accustomed to staring into the face of a slag every single day . . . and indeed, he had only gotten used to it when he’d finally started to think of Francisco as a person rather than a racial epithet.

  “Yes, you are,” George had replied. “And you do not have to shout, Matthew.”

  “I’m not shouting!” Sikes had shouted. He slid open his top desk drawer and shoved his gun in. “And I’m not diminished. How come
you’re not ‘diminished’?”

  “I have greater durability than you,” George had said, with no trace of smugness. As far as he was concerned, it wasn’t a boast. It was simple fact. “I do not become as fatigued, nor do I—”

  “All right, George,” Sikes had said sharply. He had been in no mood for a litany of Tenctonese points of superiority. “You’re too good for words. We should just dress you up in a blue body stocking with a red S on it, okay?”

  George had stared at him. “Why?” he had asked incredulously.

  “Never mind.” Sikes had waved him off. “I’m telling you, I don’t need time off. Okay? I’m as sharp and on top of things as I ever am . . .”

  And as he slammed the desk drawer, the gun went off.

  Immediately every cop in the squad room had dropped, yanking out their weapons and aiming at the source of the explosion.

  Every cop except George, who had sat there, staring impassively at the stunned Matt Sikes.

  Sikes had stared at the sea of drawn guns and then said slowly, “Maybe a few hours wouldn’t kill me.”

  “It will go a long way towards not killing anyone else,” George had said reasonably.

  Sikes fell asleep the moment his head hit the pillow.

  He had not bothered to set his alarm clock because he hadn’t really believed that he’d fall asleep . . . overestimating, as always, his own durability. So it was fortunate that he awoke when he did, because when he saw what time it was he realized, with a start, that he had a date with Cathy that night that he had already put off twice. If he put it off a third time, she might put him off permanently.

  Cathy Frankel was the attractive Newcomer doctor who lived across the hallway from him. She had been occupying his thoughts a great deal lately, and for someone as resolutely single-minded as Sikes, this was something of an accomplishment.

  Now he stared into the mirror, rubbing his hand across his beard stubble. He had trouble believing that he was giving this much thought and second-guessing to what Cathy might think of his appearance.

  To shave or not to shave, that was the question.

  “Think this out,” he said to no one in particular. “Newcomer males are hairless . . . so it might be that if I’m clean shaved, I’ll remind her more of what turns her on. Yeah. That’s it.”

  He started to lather up, but then paused. “But . . .” he continued, “perhaps the thing she likes about me is that I’m hairier. That could be it,” he told the mirror. “She likes the hair. It’s unusual. It’s a turn-on. That’s what she goes for.”

  He washed off the lather . . . and then paused again.

  “But if that’s it . . . and she knows that I figured out that that’s it . . . then coming in with all this beard will seem like I’m coming on to her too much . . . which might be a turnoff.”

  He regarded himself a while longer.

  “You’re an idiot,” he told the mirror image. His reflection nodded in agreement.

  He lathered up and shaved, and as he did so he muttered to himself. “No point to this anyway,” he said. “If something was gonna happen between us, then it would have happened by now. You can’t force these things. Either they happen or they don’t. Gotta face it . . . Cathy isn’t turned on by me, hairless or hairy. And frankly, well . . . she doesn’t really do it for me, either. I mean . . . those spots and everything. And the way she looks at me sometimes, like I’m . . . I’m so odd-looking to her.”

  He took a long, hard look at himself in the mirror.

  Usually he liked to think of himself as “ruggedly handsome.”

  But now he really studied himself. His brown hair, slicked down from the shower, hung raggedly around his ears. And he could see that it was just starting to thin on top. His chin was particularly strong, he decided, and his lips were just way too thick. His face looked like . . . like an assemblage of random parts, rather than something that formed one cohesive whole.

  Mentally he called to mind Cathy’s image. Everything about her was aquiline and graceful. Her face, her head, her movements that were as fluid as a dancer’s, and she wasn’t even trying.

  His going after her was like a mutt sniffing around a golden retriever.

  “Okay,” he said finally. “Okay. The physical thing . . . it’s not going to happen. Ever. That’s fine. So there’s no reason that we can’t just be friends. None. I mean . . . how often have I heard the ‘let’s be friends’ speech. So . . . it’ll be nice. Get the female perspective of things without the tension of the sex stuff. That’s it. That’s good. It’s a good thing.” He continued to shave and said once more, “It’s a good thing.”

  He finished shaving and dressed. As he did so, he told himself how nice it was going to be having a female who was just a friend and nothing more. Indeed, it would probably be a good experience for him. Give him the hang of thinking of females as something beyond sex objects. Not that he’d ever had that much personal use for females beyond their being sex objects but, well . . . he’d heard that it was possible to have relationships with a woman where sex didn’t enter into it.

  And . . . let’s face it, he reasoned . . . Cathy wasn’t really a woman. She wasn’t even human. She was, as they liked to say in science fiction tomes, humanoid. Humanoid with the general appearance of a female, but a biology and society that was totally divorced from anything in human experience.

  If there was any living being who was a candidate to have a simple platonic relationship with, it was definitely Cathy.

  Friends. Buddies. Compadres. Someone to unload on. Someone who was . . . best of all . . . not a cop.

  He buttoned his blue flannel shirt. Not that he had anything against cops, lord knew. But everyone in his workplace was a cop. All his friends were cops. Everyone he socialized with was a cop. Every major social function he attended involved cops . . .

  “Oh, Jesus,” he said, and thudded himself in the head with the base of his palm. “The dinner.”

  He ran out into the living room, his shirt buttoned askew, and grabbed at the pile of bills, notices, and letters stacked up in the fashion that passed for a filing system. He sorted through them at light speed and finally found the one he was looking for. A light gray envelope with, of course, a police return address. Specifically, the Office of Police Affairs.

  He pulled out the letter and checked for the RSVP date, and moaned. It was that day. He glanced at his watch and saw that it was already past six. There was a pretty good chance that no one was going to be there, but he had to take a shot at it.

  He grabbed up the phone, dialed quickly, and breathed a silent prayer as he listened to the phone ring. After five rings Sikes was giving up hope, but on the seventh ring, someone picked up.

  “OPA,” said a brisk voice.

  “Yeah, hi,” said Sikes. “I’m calling to RSVP the Perelli dinner.”

  There was a pause, and then a low chuckle. “I was already out the door when I heard the phone ringing. And I thought to myself, ‘Should I bother?’ And then I figured, ‘Yeah, I better. It’s probably that sorry Sikes cutting it wafer thin, like always.’ ”

  Sikes frowned in confusion, but then the voice clicked. “Kristofal?”

  “Yeah, who else?”

  “Aw man, Kris, I owe you one. I really do.”

  “What the hell kept you, man? You musta got the letter over a week ago.”

  “Yeah, well,” said Sikes, tapping a pencil absently on the table. “I was out a lot, keeping all kinda crazy hours. And it just snuck up on me.”

  “When the replies were comin’ in, I couldn’t believe I wasn’t seeing your name there. Testimonial to Perelli, man. You, of all people . . .”

  “Tell me about it,” said Sikes. “Look, tell me I’m still in time.”

  “Just. Tomorrow morning, nine A.M., the list is on my supervisor’s desk. Lucky you, I’ve saved your sorry ass. Hear that sound? That’s my pencil scratching your name in on the guest list.”

  Sikes sighed in relief. “I owe you, Kris. Big
time.”

  “Bet your ass you do. What’s your date’s name? I’ll list her on here, too.”

  “Uhm . . .” Sikes paused. “I, uh . . . don’t know yet.”

  “Can’t find a girl who’s not embarrassed to be seen with you, huh?”

  “Screw you,” said Sikes good-naturedly. “Just have to figure out which one is going to be the lucky girl.”

  “The one who doesn’t have to go with you,” Kristofal told him.

  “Y’know what we used to call you behind your back?” said Sikes. “Christ-awful. And I’m starting to remember why.”

  “I never called you anything behind your back.”

  “Yeah. Everything was to my face.”

  “Hey, man, it wasn’t easy looking into that hangdog thing to insult it, I can tell you.”

  Sikes grinned. “Thanks for answering the phone, Kris.”

  “No problem. Be sure to call me back with your date’s name when you can. Make sure she has a name tag and everything.”

  “Sure. You bet.”

  He hung up and sat there for a moment.

  “Name tag and everything,” he repeated.

  As Cathy and Sikes finished the dinner she had made, it was nothing short of amazing to Sikes that she had adapted as well as she had to the notion of cooking Earth food. When he had first started seeing her, he had been trying to think of ways that he could politely beg off from sampling such delicacies as Shake-and-Bake Squirrel. He had been pleasantly surprised, then, when Cathy had proven herself capable of producing perfectly acceptable dishes that were more in line with human tastes.

  It was clear, though, when they ate together, that such “delicacies” as hamburgers and hot dogs were not exactly her food of choice. Matt had gamely endeavored to be as adventurous as Cathy, taking a stab at eating Newcomer cuisine with as much enthusiasm as he could muster. As it turned out, Cathy was far more successful in the enthusiasm-mustering department than he was.

  “So . . . how was the macaroni and cheese?” she asked him eagerly.

  He smiled gamely. In truth . . . it hadn’t been bad. “It was . . . different,” he said.