Alien Crimes

by Mike Resnick (ed)

  Pasco nodded. “The human factor.” Outside, a horn honked. “It’s time to go. Or do you want to stay here?”

  Ruby stood up, looking around. “What’s going to happen to this place? And all the other things in the Muras’ lives?”

  “We have ways of papering over the cracks and stains, so to speak,” he told her. “Their daughter was just found dead. If they don’t come back here for a while and then decide not to come back at all, I don’t think anyone will find that terribly strange.” “But their families—”

  “There’s a lot to take care of,” Pasco said, talking over her. “Even if I had the time to cover every detail for you, I would not. It comes dangerously close to providing information that doesn’t belong here. I could harm the system. I’m sure I’ve told you too much as it is.”

  “What are you going to do?” she asked. “Take me to ‘court’ too?”

  “Only if you do something you shouldn’t.” He ushered her through the house to the front door.

  “OK, but just tell me this, then.” She put her hand on the doorknob before he could. “What are you going to do when the real Rafe Pasco comes back from the Bahamas?”

  He stared at her in utter bewilderment. “What?”

  “That is what you did, isn’t it? Waited for him to go on vacation and then borrowed his identity so you could work on this case?” When he still looked blank, she told him about listening to the message on his cell phone.

  “Ah, that,” he said, laughing a little. “No, I am the real Rafe Pasco. I forgot to change my voice mail message after I came back from vacation. Then I decided to leave it that way. Just as a joke. It confuses the nuisance callers.”

  It figured, Ruby thought. She opened the door and stepped outside, Pasco following. Behind his car was a small white van; the print on the side claimed that it belonged to Five-Star Electrical Services, Rewiring Specialists, which Ruby thought also figured. Not-Rita was sitting in the driver’s seat, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel. The tall guy was sitting in the SUV.

  “So that’s it?” Ruby said, watching Pasco lock the front door. “You close down your case and I just go home now, knowing everything that I know and that’s all right with you?” “Shouldn’t I trust you?” he asked her.

  “Should I trust you?” she countered. “How do I know I’m not going to get a service call from an electrician and end up with all new wiring, too?”

  “I told you,” he said patiently, “only if you use any of what you know to engage in something illegal. And you won’t.” “What makes you so goddamn sure about that?” she demanded.

  Forehead creasing with concern, Pasco looked into her face. She was about to say something else when something happened.

  All at once, her mind opened up and she found that she was looking at an enormous panorama—all the lost possibilities, the missed opportunities, the bad calls; a lifetime of uncorrected mistakes, missteps, and fumbles. All those things were a single big picture—perhaps the proverbial big picture, the proverbial forest you sometimes couldn’t see for the proverbial trees. But she was seeing it now and seeing it all at once.

  It was too much. She would never be able to recall it as an image, to look at it again in the future. Concentrating, she struggled to focus on portions of it instead:

  Jake’s father, going back to his wife, unaware that she was pregnant—she had always been sure that had been no mistake, but now she knew there was a world where he had known and stayed with her, and one where he had known and left anyway— Jake, growing up interested in music, not computers; getting mixed up with drugs with Ricky Carstairs; helping Ricky Carstairs straighten out; coming out to her at sixteen and introducing his boyfriend; marrying his college sweetheart instead of Lita; adopting children with his husband, Dennis; getting the Rhodes Scholarship instead of someone else; moving to California instead of Boston—

  The mammogram and the biopsy results; the tests left too late—

  Wounding the suspect in the Martinez case instead of killing him; missing her shot and taking a bullet instead while someone else killed him; having the decision by the shooting board go against her; retiring after twenty years instead of staying on; getting fed up and quitting after ten; going to night school to finish her degree—

  Jury verdicts, convictions instead of acquittals and vice versa; catching Darren Hightower after the first victim instead of after the seventh—

  Or going into a different line of work altogether—

  Or finding out about all of this before now, long before now when she was still young and full of energy, looking for an edge and glad to find it. Convincing herself that she was using it not for her own personal gain but as a force for good. Something that would save lives, literally and figuratively, expose the corrupt and reward the good and the worthy. One person could make a difference—wasn’t that what everyone always said? The possibilities could stretch so far beyond herself:

  Government with a conscience instead of agendas; schools and hospitals instead of wars; no riots, no assassinations, no terror, no Lee Harvey Oswald, no James Earl Ray, no Sirhan Sirhan, no 9/11—

  And maybe even no nine-year-old boy found naked and dead in a Dumpster—

  Abruptly she found herself leaning heavily against the side of the Mura house, straining to keep from falling down while the Dread tried to turn her inside out.

  Rafe Pasco cleared his throat. “How do you feel?”

  She looked at him, miserable.

  “That’s what makes me so certain,” he went on. “Your, uh, allergic reaction. If there’s any sort of disruption here, no matter how large or small, you’ll feel it. And it won’t feel good. And if you tried to do something yourself”—he made a small gesture at her— “well, you see what happened when you only thought about it.” “Great,” she said shakily. “What do I do now, spend the rest of my life trying not to think impure thoughts?”

  Pasco’s expression turned sheepish. “That’s not what I meant. You feel this way because of the current circumstances. Once the alien elements have been removed from your world”— he glanced at the SUV—“you’ll start to feel better. The bad feeling will fade away.”

  “And how long is that going to take?” she asked him. “You’ll be all right.”

  “That’s no answer.”

  “I think I’ve given you enough answers already.” He started for his car and she caught his arm. “Just one more thing,” she said. “Really. Just one.”

  Pasco looked as if he were undecided whether to shake her off or not. “What?” he said finally.

  “This so-called allergic reaction of mine. Is there any reason for it or is it just one of those things? Like hayfever or some kind of weakness?”

  “Some kind of weakness.” Pasco chuckled without humor. “Sometimes when there’s been a divergence in one’s own line, there’s a certain . . . sensitivity.”

  Ruby nodded with resignation. “Is that another way of saying that you’ve given me enough answers already?”

  Pasco hesitated. “All those could-have-beens, those might-have-dones, and if-I-knew-thens you were thinking.”

  The words were out of her mouth before she even knew what she was going to say. “They all happened.”

  “I know you won’t do anything,” he said, lowering his voice and leaning toward her slightly, “because you have. And the conscience that bothered you still bothers you, even at long distance. Even in the hypothetical.”

  Ruby made a face. “My guilty conscience? Is that really what it is?”

  “I don’t know how else to put it.”

  “Well.” She took a breath, feeling a little bit steadier. “I guess that’ll teach me to screw around with the way things should be.” Pasco frowned impatiently. “It’s not should or shouldn’t It’s just what’s.”

  “With no second chances.”

  “With second chances, third chances, hundredth chances, millionth chances,” Pasco corrected her. “All the chances you want. But not
a second chance to have a first chance.”

  Ruby didn’t say anything.

  “This is what poisons the system and makes everything go wrong. You live within the system, within the mechanism. It’s not meant to be used or manipulated by an individual. To be taken personally. It’s a system, a process. It’s nothing personal.” “Hey, I thought it was time to go,” the man in the SUV called impatiently.

  Pasco waved at him and then turned to Ruby again. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “You will?” she said, surprised. But he was already getting into his car and she had no idea whether he had heard her or not. And he had given her enough answers already anyway, she thought, watching all three vehicles drive away. He had given her enough answers already and he would see her tomorrow.

  And how would that go, she wondered, now that she knew what she knew? How would it be working with him? Would the Dread really fade away if she saw him every day, knowing and remembering?

  Would she be living the rest of her life or was she just stuck with it?

  Pasco had given her enough answers already and there was no one else to ask.

  Ruby walked across the Muras’ front lawn to her car, thinking that it felt as if the Dread had already begun to lift a little. That was something, at least. Her guilty conscience; she gave a small, humorless laugh. Now that was something she had never suspected would creep up on her. Time marched on and one day you woke up to find you were a somewhat dumpy, graying, middle-aged homicide detective with twenty-five years on the job and a hefty lump of guilty conscience and regret. And if you wanted to know why, to understand, well, that was just too bad because you had already been given too many answers already. Nothing personal.

  She started the car and drove away from the empty house, through the meandering streets, and did no better finding her way out of the West Side than she had finding her way in.

  A LOCKED-PLANET MYSTERY by Mike Resnick

  He looked exactly like a purple beachball with legs. I’ve seen stranger, but not many.

  He waddled into my office and stood there, swaying slightly as if waiting for someone to come over and bounce him.

  “Mr. Masters?” he said.

  I did a double take at the sound of his voice. Almost all alien races use a T-pack that translates their native language into a cold, emotionless Terran, but this beachball had evidently learned Terran, and even two words into it I could detect not only a thick accent but also a sense of urgency.

  “Yes?” I said, leaning my elbows on my desk, interlacing my fingers, and trying to look confident and impressive.

  “I require your help, Mr. Masters,” he said.

  “That’s what I’m here for,” I replied, trying to make it sound like I said it a dozen times a week. “What can I do for you?”

  “A murder has been committed on Graydawn.”

  “Graydawn?” I repeated. “I don’t believe I’ve heard of it.”

  “It’s in the Alpha Gillespie system,” said my visitor.

  “That’s forty light-years from here,” I noted.

  “Forty-two, to be exact.”

  “Okay, a murder’s been committed on Graydawn,” I said. “What has that got to do with me?”

  “I just told you: I need your help.”

  “I’m a private investigator working on Odysseus,” I said. “You need to talk to the Graydawn police force.”

  “There isn’t one.”

  “On the whole damned planet?” I said, frowning.

  “May I sit down?” he said. “I can see that this will require an explanation.”

  “Be my guest,” I said, wondering how he was going to fit into one of my office chairs.

  He lowered himself gently to the floor. I couldn’t see him over the desk, so I walked around and perched on the front of it.

  “I suppose I should introduce myself first,” he said. “My name is Mxwensll.”

  “I think I’ll just call you Max, if it’s all the same to you.” “That is acceptable,” said Max. He paused, as if trying to order his thoughts. “I live on Alpha Gillespie III.”

  “Graydawn?” I asked.

  “No. Graydawn is the seventh planet in our system.”

  “Okay, you’re from Alpha Gillespie III. I assume you have a catchier name for it?”

  “Yes, but that’s not important,” said Max. “The important thing is that there’s been a murder on Graydawn.”

  “So you said.”

  “And I’m in charge of it.”

  “Why?” I asked. “You already said you don’t live there.” “No one does.”

  “Then how could there be a murder there?”

  He made sort of a face and snorted little blue puffs of vapor. “I’m not saying this well.”

  “Just calm down and try to put your thoughts in order,” I said. “I’m going to pour myself a drink while you do.” I paused and stared at him. “I don’t suppose you . . . ah . . . ?”

  “No, thank you. My metabolism cannot handle human stimulants.”

  I poured a short one into a plastic cup, then sat back down on the edge of the desk. “It might work better if I could ask you a few questions, Max,” I suggested.

  “Please do,” he said gratefully.

  “Let me make sure I’ve got this straight. For starters, is Graydawn inhabited?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Max, either it is or it isn’t.”

  “It depends.”

  “Okay, so much for me asking questions. Maybe you should go back to explaining.”

  “Graydawn is an uninhabited chlorine world, by which I mean it possesses no native life-forms. But at the chairman’s request, the Braaglmich Cartel built a domed corporate retreat there about ten years ago.”

  “For oxygen breathers?”

  “Yes.” He shifted uncomfortably, and I couldn’t tell if it was because he was sitting on the floor or because of what he was about to tell me. “The chairman was about to retire. He had chosen his successor, and he invited the cartel’s five vice presidents to the cartel’s Graydawn retreat to meet and become acquainted with their new chairman. Evidently everything went well for the first two days. On the morning of their third and final day there, the retiring chairman took them out beyond the dome to see some unique rock formations. While they were out in the chlorine atmosphere, he collapsed, seemingly from a heart attack or stroke, and was dead before they could carry him back into the dome.” He stared at me. “Have you any questions yet?”

  “Not yet,” I told him.

  “His health had been deteriorating, so it was not a surprise to his companions. For the past few years he has always had a doctor in attendance, and it seemed a mere formality for the doctor to examine him and determine the cause of death.”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “It wasn’t his heart or a stroke.” “How did you know?” asked Max.

  “You wouldn’t be here if it was.”

  He sighed. “It was death by asphyxiation. We assumed that there was a mechanical malfunction to the protective suit he was wearing outside the dome ...”

  “You said ‘we’ ”—I interrupted him—“Could you explain that, please?”

  “My world is the only inhabited planet in the system,” said Max. “At least when no one is at the retreat on Graydawn. So we are responsible for all the planets.”

  “Okay,” I said. “They reported an unusual death to you and you went there to investigate. Then what?”

  “Then we asked the vice presidents and the newly anointed president to remain on the planet until we could certify that the suit’s malfunction was accidental.”

  “Which you couldn’t do?”

  “It had been tampered with.”

  “No question about it?” I said.

  “None.” He made another face. “My world doesn’t even have a police force. I am one of the Order Keepers, but crime is very rare among my race and homicide is all but unknown. We have not had a murder in a hundred and eighty-nine years, Mr. M
asters, and that one had mitigating circumstances. We simply have no experience in dealing with this type of situation.”

  “What about the muscle?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You said the new chairman and the five veeps were on the planet. Now, even I have heard of the Braaglmich Cartel. It’s huge. You can’t tell me that each of those executives didn’t come equipped with his own security force.”

  “At the request of the retiring chairman, they remained in orbit during the meeting,” answered Max. “Only the six principles were allowed to land. A private shuttle transported each of them from their ship to the surface. Then, once I was informed of the murder, I knew I had to lock down the crime scene preparatory to bringing in an expert such as yourself, so I ordered them to remain in orbit and not to land.”

  “It sounds like you’ve got your hands full,” I said, trying my best to sound sympathetic. “But why seek me out? Why not just go to the Odysseus cops? I guarantee they know a little something about murder.”

  “That was the first place I went,” answered Max. “But Alpha Gillespie is a neutral system, and your Democracy is at war with the Thrale Coalition.”

  “So?” I said, wondering what his point was.

  “We trade with both sides, and the Coalition has threatened military action against us if we have dealings with any branch of the Democracy’s government—and they define the police as such. I explained my plight to the police, and they recommended you.” He looked at me hopefully. “They said you used to work in their homicide division before you became an independent contractor.”

  “Yeah, I worked homicide, and vice, and robbery,” I replied. “So will you help us?” asked Max. “We will put ourselves at your disposal and do whatever you tell us.”

  “Not interested,” I said.

  “Is there a reason?”

  “Lots of them,” I replied. “First, I hate chlorine worlds. Second, one of my specialties is finding missing persons, which occasionally takes me into the Thrale Coalition’s territory; I don’t need them mad at me for helping you. Third, you don’t know it yet, but all you really need is a good forensics team. With the equipment they’ve got these days, they’ll take a microscopic bit of DNA or the alien equivalent, or maybe some trace elements taken from the crime scene, and ninety-nine times out of a hundred they’ll identify the killer before the day’s over.”