by Steve Rzasa
That voice was whiny by my standards. No clue what it was by the Ghiqasu’s. “No time for the wisdom of the Consociation, Engineer. You know something about Nil?
“I am not an ‘Engineer’ as you say,” the lead guy said. “The closest translation of my job would be ‘security.’ And I know many things more than a human.” More snorts.
Hang on. They were laughing? I walked over, locking with his stare. “Oh yeah? How about that. You must know the qwaddo translation for ‘moron’ then.”
That was the ticket. All three of them pressed forward, with Brown Hair in the front. Their teeth were very sharp. Growls rumbled. “Bold talk from a single zhich,” the leader hissed.
“Whatever. I don’t have time for this. Did you see Nil or not?” Big talk. I sized up all three, wondering if I could fight twelve arms with two of mine. Not promising.
“He left before your sun arose. Do not worry. Death-smellers do strange things. Especially death-smellers who lust for humanity’s so-called art.”
Ah. Nil was right. These guys didn’t know who he really was.
“Sounds like you have a problem with him.”
Brown Hair sneered. Those fangs were really big. “He has been corrupted by the teachings from your low-branch planet. His scent has become a stench to us all. We have marked him to remind our people.”
The sunburst on Nil’s forehead. So that was the deal. This guy made it sound like something their government did to all the so-called death-smellers. I ground my teeth. “That’s great. You guys come off as big-shot saviors of all species in the galaxy, but you’ve got your own version of the yellow Star of David. Goosestep much?”
“It is an assault on the sense to profane Qas by saying He has offspring. We are a pleasing smell to Him, but only by remaining undefiled. The talk of these death-smellers corrupts our species and sickens Qas.” He growled, sounding like a dog. A large dog. “We do not tolerate anything that befouls the scent of the Ghiqasu, zhich.”
The other two Engineers put their full spread of hands between us—two each to separate, two each on their Brown Hair buddy to hold him back. “Remove his scent, Heg,” one of the shorter ones muttered, his voice a deeper bass than Nil’s. “Let us depart. He is not worth a sniff.”
Heg did the same trick as the Engineers back at the restaurant in Casper—found his white capsule, inhaled deeply with each nostril. His eyes stayed locked on me the whole time. I glared right back.
The trio went silent after that. I straightened out my shirt. “Now that we’ve got that settled, step aside, boys.”
They actually did, and the part of my mind that had been standing at red alert for a fight downgraded itself to yellow. Heg glowered after me as I slipped into the elevator; the other two looked bored, like the argument wasn’t worth their time. So much for inter-species relations.
The doors slid shut. I sagged against the back. Man. That was a lot to digest. Me and Nil were going to have serious words.
If I could find the qwaddo.
<<<>>>
Nil wouldn’t answer the comm signal-thing he gave me, no matter how many times I dialed it. Double-checked the code Rutherford gave me and yeah, it was right. Fine. No alien equivalent of voicemail? Was he ignoring me?
The front desk clerk confirmed what the Three Stooges upstairs told me—Nil had left on foot hours ago. Headed toward town, or so this gal thought. She was too busy staring up at the TV news report on the massive plasma screen over a faux fireplace. I glanced over my shoulder. Great. More stuff about Mosier Gulch.
I got out of there and drove into town. It was 9:30 by then, and there was a decent amount of traffic: campers, pickups, SUVs from twelve different states. Tourists in full bloom. You’d think it’d be easy to spot a six-and-a-half-foot tall, four-armed alien that looks like he’s got an armadillo welded to his face. But Nil wasn’t kidding about all the qwaddos out West. Once I really started looking, there were enough that it made finding my partner in crime-solving difficult. Twice I pulled the Bimmer over and got within a breath of hollering at a Ghiqasu before I saw it wasn’t the one I was looking for.
Took me a couple of hours driving slowly around Buffalo and randomly stopping places to seriously deplete my patience. He wasn’t at any of the antiques stores or art spaces. Wasn’t at the fuel stations. Wasn’t even at the burger joints, and yes, they do serve burgers that early, thanks to qwaddo patronage, so I’d figured it was worth a shot.
Last stop was the library. It was quieter than when I’d come in the other day—no kid herd. I held the door for a tall lady with short gray hair who was pushing in a cart loaded with books from outside. Didn’t wait around for the thank you but immediately made a circuit of the children’s section.
I was finished stepping over puzzles that had exploded onto the floor and on my way to the Local History room when I almost collided with the shorter gal with the blonde highlights. “You look very lost.”
I grinned. “Nope, but my friend is. A Ghiqasu, one of the four-armed guys, dark skin, surly disposition. Big face, big nose.”
“There’s only been a couple over there in Local History,” she said. “They’re very interested in Wyoming’s early settlers.”
She was right. There were three Observers crowded in there, skinny, tan-skinned with blue and gray outfits of a more elaborate cut than Nil’s utilitarian gear. The librarian with them held on to her glasses, looped from her neck with a gold chain, and nodded as she listened to them yammer on. No sign of Nil, though.
“The guy I’m looking for is taller, burlier, with a yellow kind of sunburst thing on his forehead. Name’s Nil. If you see him, tell him Caz was here. He’s got my number.”
“I can do that.” She returned the grin and went to the desk. I watched her jot down a note as I headed to Fiction.
Still nothing. No Nil. No qwaddos. I swore. Quietly, you know, because it was the library.
So I was back to calling Rutherford. Not looking forward to that one. I pulled out my phone and brought up the contacts. Hmm. Isaac wouldn’t know how to find my missing qwaddo. Loya would. I grimaced. Yeah, that’d be fun.
The other contact programmed in my list was Fisk. I played with the list, scrolling it back and forth absentmindedly. Without Santoro, I had to go directly to him. Set up a meet. But without Nil . . . “Whatever,” I muttered.
Started dialing and not more than three seconds later when the older librarian from the book drop intercepted me like a photon torpedo set to track a cloaked Klingon Bird-of-Prey, I froze. Busted.
“Sir, you can’t use your phone in the library,” she said, her voice reminding me I was on her turf. “We have a study room you can use for privacy if you want.” As in, use it or lose it.
“Great. Was looking for one of those. Thanks.” I grinned, but guess what? Didn’t have the usual effect. I made for the nearest study room, past the front desk and the six people hunched over computer monitors. They were checking Facebook, playing online gambling, and reading the news about the lead qwaddo Observer for North America heading to California for a business summit. Boring.
There were three rooms: two smaller ones, eight by ten feet, with two chairs and a desk in each. The one all the way on the right was bigger, nine by sixteen, with a table big enough to seat four comfortably. I picked the nearest small room, shut the door, and sat down in one of the red upholstered chairs. No one outside was paying me any attention. I dialed Fisk’s number. It rang several times and I held on, waiting.
Finally it clicked. “Hello?” The voice on the other end was somber, but clear, not slurred. Not out of control. He sounded weary.
“Hey, listen, you don’t know me, but don’t hang up because Jordan Santoro wanted us to meet.”
The silence was heavy on the other end. For a moment I thought Fisk had hung up. But my phone told me the call was still connected.
“Who are you?”
Go for it. “Lancaster Foss. I help buyers of rare exotic art find people who possess said item
s and are looking to sell them discreetly. He told me you two had something, ah, unique and wanted to deal. I have a fella of the four-armed variety who’s willing to pay top dollar for it.”
Fisk swore. “Jordan showed you it?”
“He did. So I know he was legit. And I’m sorry about what happened to him.”
Another long silence. “So am I.”
This was the touchy part. His buddy, his fellow soldier, was murdered, and here I was trying to make a deal on stolen artwork. Normally I’d wait longer. But with the feds breathing down my neck, digitally and soon to be physically speaking, the timetable got severely compressed. “Thing is, my buyer is very anxious to close this deal. He’s willing to offer a substantial price. Just name the time and place, and we can be there.”
“Jordan told me about you. Said we should dump what we have while we still could. I told him we should wait for a better opportunity, especially since things have been so quiet.”
“Yeah, I can understand that.” My voice did not shake, but my heart was pounding against my ribs.
“And now he’s dead,” Fisk said. “Isn’t that strange? That he got himself killed here, I mean. On Earth. We spent years fighting what you’d call monsters on distant planets, and he gets himself shot a couple miles from his house.”
There wasn’t any comeback to that.
“I knew this was a stupid idea,” he muttered. “It was supposed to fix everything, but it’s been a curse.”
“Fisk. We can take care of this thing,” I said. “Get it off your hands, nice and quiet. You’ll get paid, and my buyer will get what he wants.”
“It’s not safe. You should know that.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time I handled something too hot.” I glanced around the library beyond the study room windows. Where was Nil? No ring through on my phone, either. “Tell you what: you come by and we’ll talk this out face-to-face.”
Fisk snorted. “That didn’t work out well for Jordan.”
I cringed. Fair point. “Oh yeah, and it was terrible what happened to him.”
“Don’t give me that again. You don’t care what happened to Jordan.”
All right. New approach. “Guess what? You’re right. I don’t care. But I know what he wanted: to sell whatever you boys boosted. Come on, you think I don’t know the details? He told me everything, Fisk. Everything. Your pal being dead sucks, but right now, you need to set it aside and cry into your pillow later. I’m your only option for not going to jail.”
He went silent for a while, again. It was getting on my nerves. “Okay. I’m not going to meet somewhere private, like you guys did.”
“No way. Public is better.” Whatever he wanted to hear. “More people the better. But I don’t want to have anyone eavesdropping on us either.”
Uh, okay. I turned around in the chair and stared right out the windows into the broad expanse of the library. All those people on the computers, an elderly couple at the front desk, a mom with three rampaging little boys, and two men arguing about something in a newspaper.
Most importantly, and something I’d already figured out the first time I was in here, there wasn’t a security camera in sight.
I grinned. “Got just the place. County library. Come on down here this afternoon.”
“Sounds fine. We do this, it’s just you two. Nobody else.”
“Sure. There’s a room or two we can use, closed off from everybody else.” That bigger room with the table for four, more specifically. My heart was pumping. It took all my control to keep my voice blasé, when what I wanted to do was pound the desk with my fist and shout “Score!” at the top of my lungs.
“No guns either.”
“What, are you kidding? I don’t carry one.” Okay, so Nil had his three strikers. Not technically a gun in Fisk’s sense of the word. And yes, lots of people make that request when we get to this part of the game. Usually criminals.
“I want three hundred thousand.”
Really? I would have guessed far more than that, considering the feds were going to pay me a million just to get it back to them. My impression was Sozh Uqasod equals priceless. “Sure thing. Give me time to get a bearer bond.”
“Fourteen hundred hours.”
Two p.m. “Done. I’ll get fifty grand first, the rest after we see it.”
“I can deal with that. Fourteen hundred.”
“Right.” Like I was going to forget.
I sat there, tapping the edge of the phone to my lips. Easy-peasy. That had me worried. Easy means bad. I’m pessimistic like that. Really thought he’d haggle on the price. Maybe he was saving his energy for the face-to-face. Also, his friend was dead, which was a downer.
I could have really used, oh, I don’t know, a surly alien investigator with a sniffer capable of finding our target’smotivations. Come on, Nil. I dialed his number again.
DEXA? No way. Like I’d said, wasn’t going to admit to them he was missing. Bad enough Carpenter was coming. I didn’t need Loya nosing around.
I was in such a funk that I’d made it out the door and halfway across the library before I even realized I’d gotten out of the chair. That’s when I ran into her again.
Ally stood there, hands on her hips, that smile beckoning. A babble of kids’ voices rose from the children’s area, and I saw a cluster of eight waist-high rugrats swirling around the brunette librarian. How’d she manage to not freak out in the midst of munchkin apocalypse?
Ally had on a very flattering peach blouse and a short denim skirt. Not too short, just enough that her legs looked really, really good.
“Eyes up here, please,” she said.
Slap back to Earth. I grinned. “Hey, Ally. How’s the day thus far?”
“Another day, another summer program dollar. I’ve just got the one class, so not too bad. Plus there’s an aide. She had to run off to the ladies’ room.”
Small talk. Distracted me from her being beautiful. “Sounds like a blast.”
“You’re a bad liar.”
“No, actually, I’m really good at it.”
“And how’s your morning?”
Monumental annoyance, side by side with fantastic achievement. “Okay.”
“Where’s your sidekick?”
“Oh, Nil? He’s off checking out some more goodies he wants for his alien pad. You know, four-armed interior decorating.” Not bad for short notice.
“Nice.” She fidgeted with her car keys dangling from her hand on a blue and gold lanyard that said, “Meadowlark Mustangs.” Mutant mascot? Anyway, I know that key thing. It was a signal. “So. Are you busy this afternoon?”
Other than getting fifty grand from the bank as down payment on the stolen alien sculpture I was secretly tracking down with the help of my missing alien partner? “Free until two o’clock.”
“Because I have time to leave school for lunch.”
“Oh. Well. That sounds good. You know, getting out of the building.”
She smiled at me again.
Ah, right. Duh, Caz. “Say, uh, why don’t we get something to eat.”
“Around noon.”
“Yes. Noon. Good time for lunch.”
She laughed softly. “There’s a barbecue place on Main Street, Up N’ Smoke. Few blocks south of the courthouse. You’ll like it.”
“I will, as long as the company’s good.”
Her cheeks went pink. “It should be.”
Before she could go, I took the plunge—stepped up close and touched her hand. Man. Talk about sparks. “Ally. About our son—about Kyle. I hope I didn’t come across as sour on the whole thing. I need to process it all. Still working on it. And there’s no grudge between you and me, okay?”
Her smile faded some. She didn’t move her hand from mine, though. “It’s hard not to feel like there is, Caz. Lord knows I’ve tried to put it behind me.”
“Okay. Well, I’ll be there. Noon.”
“See you then.”
She was gone, walking back to the kids. Loved
watching every second of that departure, the sway of her hips—okay, Caz, focus. I ran my hand through my hair and exhaled. Felt way more exhausted by that than the whole deal with Fisk.
Now I just had to find my wayward alien. And get a pile of money.
<<<>>>
Turned out getting the fifty grand was easier than I expected. Especially with Isaac’s help and the FBI footing the bill. There’s nothing quite like an envelope with a bearer bond made out for $50,000 riding around in your pocket that makes you feel like a total boss. Except, of course, a big old briefcase stuffed with cash.
The restaurant was crowded. It had to be, as narrow as it was.
White walls, wood floors, silver metal chairs and tables. It was way too warm in there, even with the fan going, but the smell—Nil would slap me with all four hands if he could sniff out that magnificent barbecue. The girls running the bar wore black T-shirts and blue jeans, handing out drinks as music thumped from speakers in the corners of the ceiling. Lots of people at the tables, their voices overlapping. Okay by me. Makes it easier to talk without anyone else hearing or caring, right?
Ally ordered a salad with grilled chicken. I went for something called a buffalo bratwurst sandwich. Not my usual choice of animal but hey, this was a road trip after all. Between the tang of the barbecue sauce and the aroma of the potato salad I was drooling worse than Homer Simpson.
“Caz, I didn’t mean to hide Kyle from you.” She swirled the ice in her glass.
Gee, no transition? “That’s funny. You did a good job of it.”
“You don’t have to be harsh.”
“It’s my default. Plus the wine removes my filters.”
“I remember.”
Real smooth. “Things with work have been going rough. It hasn’t been a good couple of days.”
“Oh. Is the person you’re looking for proving difficult to pin down?” She poked at the lettuce and spinach with her fork but didn’t eat any.
“Yeah. Yeah, he’s a slippery one.” And apparently so was whoever enjoyed shooting alien ray guns at me. Good times. “Hey. Forget that. About Kyle.”
