The Complete Aliens Omnibus

by B. K. Evenson

  “Or maybe they were never there,” he says.

  She reaches out and starts the vid rolling again.

  * * *

  From that point until the end of the vid, there is just a single continuous feed, winding down to its inexorable conclusion. The only thing close to a cut comes when Marshall closes his eyes briefly. Even then, the sound continues to run in the background, the camera showing only the reddish darkness of the inside of his eyelid.

  The scene opens with a wall of smoke, Marshall screaming and coughing, fumbling his way out of his bed. The lens is wavy with moisture, the lid blinking rapidly. Tear gas, Kramm realizes.

  Marshall stumbles out, the camera shaking, and turns back and forth. Kramm and Frances catch a glimpse of three massive men armed with rifles, their faces protected by being encased within clear plexene sheaths. Marshall’s compatriots are there as well, some still running about looking for air, others having already stumbled to the ground. Another guard, equally massive, is hogtieing one of the new men—Benjamin, Kramm thinks, though it is hard to be sure through the blurred lens. Marshall seems to focus on this a moment and then his shouts take on a different tone. Across the central room LaFargue, not affected by the tear gas, is charging for the outer door, trying to force his way through the guards. Kramm realizes that these guards do not look at all like the guards that were at the site with himself and Frances earlier in the day: these men are large and robust, light on their feet despite their size, very quick—serious fighters.

  One of them has LaFargue by the arm and won’t let go; he is being dragged across the floor as LaFargue barrels forward. Another guard blocking the synth’s way is swept off his feet but almost immediately springs back up and is after him. A third, just beside the door, is struggling to get his knife out when LaFargue thrusts his way past him. Marshall runs his hand across his eyes and the image gets sharper, crisper. LaFargue is halfway out the door but the other guards or soldiers or marines or whatever they are are now sprinting across the room and are throwing themselves at him, dragging him down.

  Which gives Marshall the chance he needs. He turns and starts back toward his room, eyes squinted, the camera lens partly obscured. He fumbles his way through the door and begins to search about in the shelves beside his bed, finally uncovering a small pistol. Still coughing, he fumbles his way out the door, aims the pistol at the nearest marine, and fires.

  The man falls down in a heap. The other marines, piled on the all but immobilized LaFargue, are shouting now. Kramm is taking aim at another when there is a flurry of motion to one side of the screen and the camera’s eye rolls upward and Marshall collapses to the floor.

  He is lying on the floor—probably unconscious, Kramm thinks. His eye, though, is still open, staring up into the air. Above him is a smaller man, dressed in what looks like normal clothing, the kind of thing one might wear to a power lunch, though his head is sheathed in the same plexene substance as the guards.

  “Ringleader,” says Frances.

  Kramm nods. It is difficult to get a good look at the man, with the smoke still in the air, the blur of the lens, the glare off the plexene sheath. He is holding a plasma rifle in front of him and as they watch he brings the butt of it down hard, striking Marshall’s body somewhere out of the range of the camera. The camera lashes once, then the head slides sideways so that Kramm and Frances can now see only the man’s shoes and, past them, the guards, LaFargue now immobilized and in a heap, wrists and ankles shackled. The guard whom Marshall has shot is there too, coughing up blood.

  “God, what a waste,” says a voice, muffled. Probably by a sheath, Kramm thinks. The shoes turn and face the other direction. “Is he going to be all right?”

  On the screen, one of the guards bends down beside the injured man, beginning to open his tunic. The injured guard winces. Blood wells up near the joint of his shoulder, slowly staining the tunic.

  “He’ll live, sir,” the guard says, beginning to apply pressure to the wound. “Though he might lose the arm.”

  “God, what a waste,” says shoes again. “Do you know what a good arm goes for these days? We’re already over budget as it is.”

  “Wait,” says Frances. “It can’t be.”

  “What is it?” asks Kramm.

  “Go back,” she says. “Back to where we fall down.”

  We? Kramm thinks. He does so, reversing the vid to the shooting of the guard and then playing it forward.

  “Slow,” she says after Marshall falls down. And then she has him advance the vid even more slowly, as if all the participants in this bloody dance are moving underwater.

  “There,” she says.

  Kramm stops it, looks up at the screen. It is trained on the man with the rifle, looming over the camera.

  “I thought I recognized the bastard,” Frances says, and then starts to swear like a sailor. “You were wondering what Braley looked like beneath his holo-suit?” she says once she’s done. “Well, take a good long look.”

  At first it’s hard for him to make it out through the smoke and glare, but then suddenly it all clicks. He realizes she is right. It is Braley.

  “Good hell,” he says.

  “Yes,” she says. “He was in on this, probably even arranged it. It’s all a setup,” she says. “If we’re not careful, the same thing will happen to us.”

  He starts the vid up again and this time hears it, despite the muffling of the plexene—it is Braley’s voice.

  “God, what a waste,” says shoes again. “Do you know what a good arm goes for these days? We’re already over budget as it is.”

  Marshall lies on the ground for some time, the half-veiled camera showing very little. The injured guard, patched up by his friend, is helped, grimacing, to his feet, and disappears from the screen. Braley’s shoes come and go. “What possessed him to do that?” he asks someone at one point.

  “He must have thought he was under attack,” says a deeper voice.

  There is a long pause. “Well, he was right,” Braley finally says.

  The door is opened. The smoke slowly clears, filters out. Kramm and Frances can see on the screen the guards passing by without their plexene masks now. Marshall’s eyelid closes and for a few minutes all they hear is the movement in the room, the vague coming and going of footsteps. When the eye opens again, it is more alert, the camera tracking properly.

  “He’s awake,” says a guard.

  “Ah,” says Braley, coming over. “And how are we feeling now?” he asks.

  “What’s going on?” asks Marshall.

  “It wasn’t polite of you to shoot that marine,” says Braley, waggling a finger. “But boys, I suppose, will be boys.” He reaches his hand out. “Here, let me help you up,” he says.

  Marshall’s hands, it becomes clear when they come into the frame, are bound. With Braley’s help, he stands. He looks about, sees that the other members of the team are gagged and have been hogtied with surgical tubing. Except for LaFargue, who is bound in thick titanium shackles, a milky fluid slowly seeping out of one side of his face.

  “You’re wondering why surgical tubing,” says Braley. “Two reasons. The first being that due to a shipping error we have an excess of surgical tubing on C-3 L/M. The second and undoubtedly more important reason being that it doesn’t leave marks in the skin in the way that ropes and such things do.”

  “Who are you?” asks Marshall.

  “Charles Braley at your service,” he says, and gives, suddenly and fleetingly, the same fake smile that Kramm remembers getting a few hours earlier. “Official Weyland-Yutani representative, here for mop-up.”

  “Mop-up?”

  “It’s an archaic term,” says Braley. “What we call scrub and detox these days.”

  “What does this have to do with me?”

  “My dear Mr. Marshall,” says Braley. “Do you mind if I call you Tobin? I’m afraid it has everything in the world to do with you. I’m afraid that neither you nor any of your colleagues will live out the a
fternoon.”

  “You’re joking, right?” says Marshall, and then gives a little hysterical laugh. “You’re kidding me.”

  “I’m afraid not, Mr. Marshall,” Braley says. “You see, I’m afraid it’s become clear to us that we have a spy in our midst.”

  “Who?” says Marshall.

  “Who do you think, Mr. Marshall?” says Braley. “There were seven of you here originally. How many of you are there left of that original seven?”

  “Two.”

  Braley smiles. “You noticed,” he says. “Absolutely correct, Tobin. Would you care to tell me who those two are?”

  The camera flicks over to LaFargue. “Myself and the LaFargue synth.”

  Braley raises an eyebrow. “Hardly polite to refer to him as the LaFargue synth,” he says. “Why not simply LaFargue? Surely you’re not a bigot, Mr. Marshall?”

  “Myself and LaFargue,” says Marshall.

  “That’s correct,” says Braley. “The first step in destroying prejudice is to recognize it,” he says. “You’re on step two: correcting it. That wasn’t so bad was it? Shall we go on? If you and LaFargue are the only two left, what can be inferred?”

  “That one of us is a spy.”

  “Very good, Tobin.” Braley runs his hand along the side of his head, slicking back his hair. “Now the only question that remains is which one of you is it?”

  “Neither of us,” says Marshall.

  Braley smiles. “I’m afraid our own informant tells us otherwise. The reason that the other five men were reassigned was because they were cleared,” says Braley. “You, my friend, we were unable to clear completely. Same with LaFargue.”

  “It’s not me,” says Marshall. “But I don’t think LaFargue is a spy either.”

  “The LaFargue synth, you mean,” says Braley. “Let’s call things what they are. You might think you have a chance of having your life spared—somebody’s life spared anyway. But as I mentioned a moment ago, none of you will get out of this alive. It doesn’t matter if you’re innocent or guilty: by the end of the day you’ll be dead.”

  “Then why does it matter?” asks Marshall.

  “A good question,” says Braley. “It matters in terms of deciding which of you I’ll have a little good old-fashioned painful fun with.”

  “It doesn’t matter to me,” says the synth from the floor. He has chewed through his gag somehow. Special-issue teeth perhaps, Kramm thinks, or a special-issue jaw. “Why don’t you torture me? Or both of us? Why not both?”

  “That’s the trouble with synths,” says Braley, looking over at him with distaste. “It’s not much fun to torture them. They never enter into the spirit of the thing. They don’t feel pain in the same way you or I do, Tobin.” He turns back to face Marshall. Behind him, the guards have begun to gag Lafargue again. “We’re fairly certain it’s the synth,” Braley says. “That’s what our contact tells us. But still, we never managed to clear you. One or two pesky little things in your past that when we looked into them became peskier still. Why, for instance, did you list your time of employment with Biotech as being nineteen months instead of the seven months it actually was?”

  “You mean to tell me that I’m being killed because of an error I made on my employment form?”

  “Among other things,” says Braley, unruffled. “Of course, it could be an honest mistake, but if that’s the case would you care to explain where you were during the year you claimed to be with Biotech?”

  “Let’s sit down with a copy of the application and I’ll do my best to clear up any questions you have,” says Marshall.

  “I’m sure you would,” says Braley. “Far be it from me to question your integrity. Of course it could simply be a mistake. Perhaps you shouldn’t be here at all.”

  “What about them?” asks Marshall, gesturing to the other hogtied humans.

  “What about them?”

  “Why are they here?”

  “Why are they here?” asks Braley, and makes a face. “Don’t worry about them,” he says. “They’re not in the same class as you, my friend. They just had the bad fortune of being in the wrong part of the universe at a time when someone needed a few bodies. But we’re honorable people. We’ll make it as painless for them as possible. Just like falling asleep, more or less.”

  He stays looking at Marshall a long time. “When we came in,” he finally says, “both you and LaFargue made a break for it. LaFargue made for the door. You went back into your room and got your pistol. Which sounds more like the behavior of a spy to you?”

  “When I came out, the room was full of smoke and a half-dozen large men were attacking members of my research team. Of course I went back and got my pistol.”

  “You’ll never get away with this, Braley,” says LaFargue from the floor, having chewed through his second gag.

  “Frankly you don’t have any idea what I’m getting away with,” Braley says, and smiles at Marshall, smiles through the camera at Kramm. It is a strange moment, almost as if Braley is looking right at him. Kramm sees Frances draw back in her seat as well. What is he trying to get away with? Kramm can’t help but wonder. Have I really understood it yet?

  Braley paces for a moment before coming back to Marshall. “We’re wasting time,” he finally says, “and time is money. I’ll be frank with you,” he says. “Man to man. I know it’s the synth who’s the spy, but it just isn’t any fun to torture a synth. They’re not programmed for it. But I’m a reasonable man, so let’s compromise. I’ll start with him and then if we don’t find enough, we’ll move on to you.” He turns away but then turns back. “Of course, we’ll torture you just a little in any case, just so we don’t lose our edge. After all, you shot one of my best men.”

  Braley stalks across the room. “Gentlemen,” he says, “to business.”

  They pick up LaFargue and carry him into Crocker’s room, bringing Marshall along as well. What follows is a cursory investigation of the synth. Marshall, with a marine guard to either side of him, is forced to watch. “It’ll be good for you to see this,” Braley claims. “Grow hair on your chest.”

  After a few dozen questions, none of which the synth will answer, they begin to run a larger than normal scanner over his body from head to toe, moving very slowly.

  “The trouble,” says Braley, “is knowing what to look for when none of him is real to begin with.”

  When they are finished, they’ve detected a series of slight nonstandard modifications in the LaFargue model. The teeth are not regulation, Braley suggests, as might be suggested by the fact that he has been able to chew two gags into ribbons. His joints are reinforced, much stronger than usual. It takes, for instance, as two guards demonstrate, a half-dozen blows with a rifle butt to break his elbow, and the rifle butt comes away worse for wear. His fingernails, instead of being a hornlike cellulose material, are made of tempered steel, spray-painted to look like fingernails. His eyes, too, are not standard issue.

  “As you undoubtedly know,” says Braley, clearly enjoying himself, “a synth can archive information internally. We’ll have to take care of that in a moment. The thing we need to look for now, though, are recording devices in unexpected places, things that might hold data even if we wiped the synth’s memory.” He smiles at Marshall. “The usual place for a secondary camera on a synth is the eye,” he says.

  He sends one of the guards out to the kitchen to fetch a spoon.

  A few minutes later, two guards hold LaFargue’s head immobile as Braley works the edge of the spoon between the rim of LaFargue’s orbit and LaFargue’s eye itself, the eye bulging slightly. “Of course,” he says, “a clever person would know that we always check the eyes first. A clever person would leave us something to find there so that we wouldn’t go looking for something else.”

  LaFargue’s face scrunches. If, as a synth, he can’t feel actual pain, he’s doing a good job pretending. All that can be seen of the spoon now is the handle, the bowl wedged deep in the socket.

  Braley flicks
his wrist and tears the eye out.

  Kramm feels Frances shudder beside him. He reaches out, rubbing her arm, but keeps watching the screen.

  The socket fills with a milky fluid, slowly congealing. The synth gives a garbled cry. Braley holds the eye between his fingers, his look almost one of wonder, and then puts it under his heel and grinds it to bits. What is left is the eye’s rubber casing and glittering fragments of plastic and metal circuitry. He pushes them about with his finger. “Ah, here it is,” he says, pointing at a few of the fragments. “Or should I say was?

  “Shall we have a look at your second eye?” says Braley to LaFargue. “But if we do, how are you to see what we’re doing to you?” He looks up at Marshall. “Of course,” he says, “the important thing is that you see it, Tobin.”

  Kramm again has that odd feeling of being directly addressed, and has to remind himself that it is Marshall that Braley is speaking to. As Braley continues on, finding a camera in the second eye, Kramm wishes they were watching everything on the five centimeter screen again. But he’s too worried that he might miss something to suggest this. Instead, he watches as Braley, using a pair of needle-nosed pliers, tears off one of LaFargue’s fingernails after another, leaving milky goop in their wake.

  “Care to confess?” he says to LaFargue.

  “I have nothing to confess,” says LaFargue through gritted teeth.

  “All the more fun for me, then,” says Braley. A moment later he has started in on the teeth, which he has to break loose with one of Standish’s hammers. When he is done, there isn’t much left of LaFargue’s face.

  “Last chance,” says Braley.

  LaFargue opens his mouth, spits milk, makes an incomprehensible noise.

  “Spoken like a man,” says Braley, his voice merry. “As you wish. I think we’re ready,” he says to the guards beside him, and four of them leave the room.

  “So this is what I have to look forward to,” says Marshall.

  Braley smiles. “We found the cameras, Tobin,” he says. “And I’m a man of my word. Besides, we’ve got something else in store for you.”

  “What?”