“Ready?” he asked.
It made a clicking noise in its chest, under its skin, and followed him when he moved cautiously toward the mouth of the alley. Cris could barely contain the euphoria that threatened to overwhelm him.
When they reached the aircar, Tam and David were waiting. They hadn’t followed orders. Turning, they scrambled inside, calling, “We got the alien!”
And Marica, beaming, appeared in the hatch to welcome Cris like a homecoming hero. Holos played over her body, and she flickered between Elvis and Marilyn Monroe.
“Ugly,” she said, appraising the alien. “But he’ll do.”
“You can always give him a bath,” Cris said.
She giggled. “Let’s go to my place! More champagne!”
Jade Moon brought a tray of glasses, and everyone took one, even the alien, though it didn’t seem to know what to do with it.
Marica pulled Cris into the pilot’s compartment. The alien followed like a trained dog. While Cris strapped in, Marica sealed them off from the rest of the aircar, turned on the lights, and gave the alien her full attention.
“He’ll do,” she said. “Oh yes, he’ll do fine. Is he friendly?”
“Yes,” Cris said, immersed in the computer read-outs. He powered up the repellers, checked everything, and lifted smoothly. The computer reported light traffic on the course he programmed, so he switched to autopilot.
When he disengaged from the computer, he found Marica lying on the floor with the alien hunched over her, its arm buried to the elbow in her mouth. Marica had a weird, glazed look on her face. Lumps like kittens crawling through a garden hose were travelling from her body inside the alien’s arm.
“No!” Cris screamed.
His stomach churned; his heart pounded like a hammer. Frantic, he tore the pilot’s harness away and launched himself at the creature. Everything seemed to be moving at different speeds, the alien in slow motion, himself slower still, and yet his mind raced ahead like a runaway train. He called himself all the vile things in the world, a stupid, dreaming fuckup too stupid to know right from wrong, love from a hole in the ground.
The alien batted him away him with its free hand. Cris felt like he’d slammed into a durasteel wall. Rebounding, he struck his head on the pilot’s seat, and everything went dark.
* * * *
The next thing he knew, Marica was calling his name. He smelled her perfume and smiled.
Then he sat up, head aching, and saw Marica. Then beyond Marica he saw a withered husk of a body. Pale, piercing blue eyes gleamed in that shriveled head. It took him a moment to realize what it meant.
“Are you all right?” the Marica next to him asked.
No! something inside him screamed. He tried to crawl to her. She can’t be dead—
“Easy.” The alien Marica pushed him back. “I didn’t mean to harm you. But you would have stopped my—” More clicks.
Cris tried to speak, couldn’t. His hands clenched and unclenched spasmodically, and then words he’d never voiced while she was alive all came flooding out:
“I loved her. How could you? You promised!”
“I promised you her image.” The alien stood, spread its arms, Marica’s arms. It had donned her holobelt; geometric designs rippled across its human skin in odd patterns. “So?”
Cris sobbed, feeling all chopped up inside, but couldn’t take his eyes off the alien’s beautiful face.
It smiled as Marica would have smiled. “I understand you more now. She was a creature of wealth and power, but fickle in her tastes. If you are curious, she liked you in her way. But there was not what you would call love.”
“I knew that,” he said bitterly. He turned so the creature couldn’t see his face, wouldn’t see the loss and fear and hurt all jumbled up inside.
“Then why are you so concerned?”
Cris went to the pilot’s seat and sat mechanically, refusing to speak, refusing to look at Marica’s body or her alien double. His eyes brimmed with tears. Blinking, he gazed into the night. Pain filled him, an ache he thought would never go away. It hurt so much he longed to curl up and die.
“I only want to go home,” the creature said. Its own homesickness carried through the filter of an alien body. The creature squeezed his shoulder. “Crispin—”
He wrenched away. “Don’t touch me!”
“I can be her for you, the way you wanted. It’s all here inside me.”
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. He pressed his eyes shut. “It wouldn’t be the same.”
“How?”
“I’d know.” He looked at her—and the thing that had become her. The alien smiled with Marica’s quirky smile.
The autopilot beeped. Cris glanced at the controls. They’d reached Marica’s estate; he must have been unconscious longer than he’d thought. Long enough for an alien to suck out her soul.
When they landed, he fled on foot. The alien called to him in Marica’s voice, but he didn’t look back.
* * * *
Marica’s face haunted him every inch of the way home. He saw her in reflections, in the play of neon on glass, in the smoke and clouds and exhaust fumes. Her laugh sounded in the whine of repeller fields; her voice spoke through muted music.
Two hours later, when he stumbled into his studio, he came face to face with an unfinished canvas. He had the background done, a bleak wintry field with bales of hay stacked at one end. It needed a figure to be complete—Marica’s figure.
He seized a brush and tried sketching Marica from memory, but his vision of her had all gone sour and he couldn’t seem to catch the curve of her cheek or the swanlike arch of her neck. Gone. Like he’d forgotten her. Like he’d never drawn her before.
He hurled his brush away in disgust, smashed that canvas in a blind frenzy, then scattered all the others stacked against the wall. God, why didn’t the pain go away?
Conscience, he thought suddenly. He needed to purge himself. Isn’t that what you did? Cleansed your soul, purified your flesh, scoured the ashes of your mind?
He crossed to the vidphone and made the call he should’ve made the moment he’d seen the alien.
“Police,” said a bored-looking man in black uniform.
“I…I want to report a murder,” Cris said.
That got the man’s attention. He touched buttons, read information Cris couldn’t see. “You’re Crispin Szand?”
“Yes.”
“Officers have been dispatched. You know this conversation is being taped?”
“Yes.” Numbly.
“And anything you say can be used in a court as evidence?”
“Yes.” And on and on they went through the routine.
Minutes later the doorbell rang. “That’s them now,” the man said. “Let them in.”
Cris rose and opened the door. Two women in blue uniforms were waiting, one a striking blonde, the other dark.
They introduced themselves and showed their badges. “You reported a murder?” the dark-haired one asked.
“Yes. Come in.”
Then listened quite patiently while he babbled his story, but he could tell they didn’t believe him. One look around his studio, at the paint-splattered walls, at the canvases he’d destroyed in his fury, made it clear he’d gone insane. His pants had garbage stains from the alley, his shirt had paint all over it, and he hadn’t shaved or showered or combed his hair.
“I’m sorry,” he said then, spreading his hands. “I know how this must sound. But if you’ll call her house, you’ll see. That thing will answer.”
“Sir…”
But he insisted, and finally they gave in. The alien Marica answered on the second ring.
“Are you Marica Donetti?” the blonde officer asked.
“Yes, of course. Is something wrong?”
“Do you know a Crispin
Szand?”
“He’s my ex. Why?”
“I think it’s getting clearer.” She explained Cris’s wild accusations.
The alien laughed as Marica would have laughed and denied everything as Marica would have denied it. Who could believe such an impossible story? Cris found he couldn’t blame the police for their skepticism. It did sound crazy, even to him. He only wished none of it had happened.
“Crispin is a great artist,” the alien Marica explained, “and he suffers strange outbursts and odd delusions at times. That’s what makes him a genius, isn’t it?”
“Yes, ma’am,” the blonde said.
So they arrested Cris instead.
Figures, Cris thought as they led him away. And justice triumphs once more.
* * * *
They let him go that afternoon with stern warnings about what happened to citizens who filed false reports. He agreed to leave Marica strictly alone and considered himself lucky. If they had discovered the alien, he would certainly have been an accessory to murder or something like that. Perhaps this was best in the end.
Over the next few months, he found he’d lost the will to paint. He lived off sales of his finished works. With the supply cut off, prices began to climb. Rumors spread that he was burned out, or dying, or insane. Someone ferreted out the story of his arrest and that seemed confirmation enough for most.
Cris made enough to live comfortably. He took to spending all his time scanning the NewsNets for articles about the alien. Being (as she was) queen of the glitterfolk, Marica had a certain following, and her every notorious move made the social files.
Slowly, Cris noticed, the alien was easing Marica from the public eye. She became a recluse, then an ardent investor in space. “Glitterqueen Comes Of Age,” read the last article he saw about her.
She’d used most of her fortune to buy a frontier planet whose main export seemed to be sugarreed. She’d even booked passage out there to inspect her new purchase, in a move that surprised everyone but Cris.
Cris went down to the spaceport the day of her departure. Marica wore simple robes now, not the outlandish costumes that had made her such a rage among glitterfolk, and none of her old friends had turned out to see her off. She boarded the starship alone, with only the crew around her, and that was the end of it all.
They flamed off not long after. Cris stared until he couldn’t see their ship’s tail of fire anymore, and a long time after.
He felt hollow inside, like he’d lost more than he knew. But he also felt a curious sort of relief, a great burden lifted from his soul. Free, he decided. I’m free of her.
For a time he wondered how much of Marica the alien would take back to its world…and whether it could free itself from her grip. Even in death, Marica had power.
But now, when he closed his eyes, he didn’t see her face anymore. And maybe, he thought, just maybe he could learn to be happy again.
DEAD RINGER, by Lester del Rey
Originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction, November 1956.
Dane Phillips slouched in the window seat, watching the morning crowds on their way to work and carefully avoiding any attempt to read Jordan’s old face as the editor skimmed through the notes. He had learned to make his tall, bony body seem all loose-jointed relaxation, no matter what he felt. But the oversized hands in his pockets were clenched so tightly that the nails cut into his palms.
Every tick of the old-fashioned clock sent a throb racing through his brain. Every rustle of the pages seemed to release a fresh shot of adrenaline into his blood stream. This time, his mind was pleading. It has to be right this time…
Jordan finished his reading and shoved the folder back. He reached for his pipe, sighed, and then nodded slowly. “A nice job of researching, Phillips. And it might make a good feature for the Sunday section, at that.”
It took a second to realize that the words meant acceptance, for Phillips had prepared himself too thoroughly against another failure. Now he felt the taut muscles release, so quickly that he would have fallen if he hadn’t been braced against the seat.
He groped in his mind, hunting for words, and finding none. There was only the hot, sudden flame of unbelieving hope. And then an almost blinding exultation.
Jordan didn’t seem to notice his silence. The editor made a neat pile of the notes, nodding again. “Sure. I like it. We’ve been short of shock stuff lately and the readers go for it when we can get a fresh angle. But naturally you’d have to leave out all that nonsense on Blanding. Hell, the man’s just buried, and his relatives and friends…”
“But that’s the proof!” Phillips stared at the other, trying to penetrate through the haze of hope that was somehow suddenly chilled and unreal. His thoughts were abruptly disorganized and out of his control. Only the urgency remained. “It’s the key evidence. And we’ve got to move fast! I don’t know how long it takes, but even one more day may be too late!”
Jordan nearly dropped the pipe from his lips as he jerked upright to peer sharply at the younger man. “Are you crazy? Do you seriously expect me to get an order to exhume him now? What would it get us, other than lawsuits? Even if we could get the order without cause—which we can’t!”
Then the pipe did fall, as he stared open-mouthed. “My God, you believe all that stuff. You expected us to publish it straight!”
“No,” Dane said thickly. The hope was gone now, as if it had never existed, leaving a numb emptiness where nothing mattered. “No, I guess I didn’t really expect anything. But I believe the facts. Why shouldn’t I?” He reached for the papers with hands he could hardly control and began stuffing them back into the folder. All the careful documentation, the fingerprints—smudged perhaps, in some cases, but still evidence enough for anyone but a fool—
“Phillips?” Jordan asked, and now his voice was taking on a new edge. “Phillips! Wait a minute, I’ve got it now! Dane Phillips, not Arthur! Two years on the Trib. Then you turned up on the Register in Seattle? Phillip Dean, or some such name, there.”
“Yeah,” Dane agreed. There was no use in denying anything now. “Yeah, Dane Arthur Phillips. So I suppose I’m through here?”
Jordan nodded again, and there was a faint edge of fear in his voice. “You can pick up your pay on the way out. And make it quick, before I change my mind and call the boys in white!”
* * * *
It could have been worse. It had been worse, before. And there was enough in the pay envelope to buy what he needed. A flash camera, a little folding shovel from one of the surplus houses, and a bottle of good Scotch. It would be a long wait until it was dark enough for him to taxi out to Oakhaven Cemetery where Blanding had been buried.
It wouldn’t change the minds of the fools, of course. Even if he could drag what he might find, without the change being completed, they wouldn’t accept the evidence. He’d been crazy to think anything could change their minds. And they called him a fanatic! If the facts he’d dug up in ten years of hunting wouldn’t convince them nothing would. And yet, he had to see for himself, before it was too late!
He picked a cheap hotel at random and checked in under an assumed name. He couldn’t go back to his room while there was a chance Jordan still might try to turn him in. There wouldn’t be time for Sylvia’s detectives to bother him, probably, but there was the ever-present danger that one of the aliens might get the message.
He shivered. He’d been risking that for ten years, yet the possibility was still a horror to him. The uncertainty made it harder to take than any human-devised torture could be. There was no way of guessing what an alien might do to anyone who discovered that all men were not human…
There was the classic syllogism: All men are mortal; I am a man; therefore, I am mortal. But not Blanding—or Corporal Harding!
It was Harding’s “death” that had started it all during the fighting on Guadalcanal. A grenade had
come flying into the foxhole where Dane and Harding had felt reasonably safe. The concussion had knocked Dane out—probably saving his life when the enemy thought he was dead. He’d come to in the daylight to see Harding lying there, mangled and twisted, with his throat torn out. There was blood on Dane’s uniform, obviously spattered from the dead man. It hadn’t been a mistake or delusion; Harding had been dead.
It had taken Dane two days of crawling and hiding to get back to his group, too exhausted to report Harding’s death. He’d slept for twenty hours. And when he awoke, Harding had been standing beside him, with a whole throat and a fresh uniform, grinning and kidding him for running off and leaving a stunned friend behind. It was no ringer, but Harding himself, complete to the smallest personal memories and personality traits.
The pressures of war probably saved Dane’s sanity while he learned to face the facts. All men are mortal; Harding is not mortal; therefore, Harding is not a man! Nor was Harding alone—Dane found enough evidence to know there were others.
The Tribune morgue yielded even more data. A man had faced seven firing squads and walked away. Another survived over a dozen attacks by professional killers. Fingerprints turned up mysteriously “copied” from those of men long dead. Some of the aliens seemed to heal almost instantly; others took days. Some operated completely alone; some seemed to have joined with others. But they were legion.
Lack of a clearer pattern of attack made him consider the possibility of human mutation, but such tissue was too wildly different, and the invasion had begun long before atomics or X-rays. He gave up trying to understand their alien motivations. It was enough that they existed in secret, slowly growing in numbers while mankind was unaware of them.
When his proof was complete and irrefutable, he took it to his editor—to be fired, politely but coldly. Other editors were less polite. But he went on doggedly trying and failing. What else could he do? Somehow, he had to find the few people who could recognize facts and warn them. The aliens would get him, of course, when the story broke, but a warned humanity could cope with them. Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
The Alien MEGAPACK® Page 10
