Alien Nation #7 - Extreme Prejudice

by L. A. Graf

  “George—”

  “In fact, if it weren’t for the fact that the Purists had already issued a death threat in this case, I would have said all the signs pointed to a serial killer rather than a terrorist group. I wonder if—”

  “George!” Susan framed her hands around his face and forcibly swung his attention away from the darkness outside. Her eyes met his, shining blue and intent. “George, stop obsessing on this case! You’re not a policeman here. You’re not the one responsible for solving Sandi Free’s murder.”

  He sighed. “But I am responsible for your safety, neemu, and mine. I want us both to get back to L.A.” He felt her fingers tremble, perhaps with cold or perhaps with fear. He pulled them down to his chest, cradling them between his scarcely warmer hands. “I’m the only Tenctonese policeman within three thousand miles, Susan. If I can help the police and the FBI solve this case, I must.”

  Susan released a breath of mixed frustration and amusement. “George, why do you always have such perfectly reasonable explanations for being so single-minded about your work?”

  He managed a smile for her. “Because that’s the kind of work it is.”

  An urgent fist thudded against the door before Susan could reply. She cast a quizzical look at George. “Were you expecting Matt tonight?”

  “Not particularly.” George strode across the room, remembering just in time to check the peephole before he slid the door chain off. The subdued lighting of the hallway glanced off wire-rimmed glasses, throwing haggard shadows down the Newcomer face below them. He recognized Scott Free and opened the door at once. “Mr. Free, please come in.”

  “No, thank you.” The novelist paused in the doorway, his gaze dropping to the carpet and then lifting hurriedly again, as if he remembered how it had looked spattered with his wife’s blood. “Mrs. Thompson sent me to ask if you’d come down to dinner a little early. She has something she wants to talk to you about.”

  George glanced back over his shoulder at Susan, who hadn’t yet put on her shoes or—more importantly—her makeup. He shook his head. “I’m afraid she’ll have to wait until I can escort my wife down. I don’t want her to go alone.”

  “Don’t worry about me, George.” Susan clipped on her other earring and smiled at him. “I’ll call Cathy and Matt and have them stop by before I leave the room. I promise.”

  He frowned, a little startled by his own reluctance to leave her. “Remember to use the peephole,” he reminded her, coming back to the dresser for his name badge. “And don’t open the door for anyone but Matthew.”

  “Yes, George.” She followed him to the door, touching his elbow just before he left. “You’ll be careful, too, won’t you?”

  “Of course.” George closed the door behind him and heard the reassuring scrape of the chain lock and the click of the bolt. He turned to meet Scott Free’s bitter gaze and guessed the other male must be recalling the trustful way Sandi had left their own hotel room door unbolted and unbarred.

  “You couldn’t have known,” George said softly, responding to the other gannaum’s distress with automatic concern. “You couldn’t have prevented your wife’s murder.”

  Scott Free’s mouth jerked with pain. “I could have flown home with her yesterday morning,” he retorted. “If the FBI had seen fit to tell us what the Purists’ ransom demands were.” He turned away abruptly. “Let’s take the stairs. It’s faster.”

  Inside the fire stairs, the air was chilly and dank enough to make George wish he’d worn his camel hair coat over his suit. Free didn’t seem to notice. He led George down to the ballroom level, then across the empty balcony to the room they used for meals. Human hotel workers went from one empty table to another, laying out place settings on linen cloths. At the far end, three women stood near a tangle of TV lights. Nancy Thompson, elegant and worried in gold brocade and pearls, watched as Kathleen Westbeld talked earnestly into a palm-size cellular phone. Jen Protzberg leaned against a wall beside them in the same rumpled linen jacket she’d had on earlier that afternoon. She looked up as George approached and nodded, the wordless greeting of one police officer to another.

  “Who’s your wife coming down to dinner with?” she asked brusquely. “Sikes?”

  “Yes.” George nodded his head politely toward the other women. “Ms. Westbeld, Ms. Thompson. How can I help you?”

  Nancy Thompson sighed and rubbed at her high forehead. The worried creases didn’t go away. “We’d like your input, Mr. Francisco, for a crucial decision we have to make tonight. Captain Protzberg thought you’d be the best person to ask.” She glanced over at the silent novelist beside George and took a deep breath. “Mr. Free has asked us to cancel the symposium tomorrow. Do you think we should?”

  George blinked rapidly, taken aback by the sudden thump of responsibility landing on his shoulders. “Surely the FBI should be the ones to decide—”

  Westbeld shook her head, folding her phone to break the connection. “They say it would look too much like government censorship if they canceled it,” she said in disgust. “But they won’t take the liability of guaranteeing our safety either. It’s up to us and the Pittsburgh police to make the call.”

  “I can’t guarantee your safety either,” Protzberg warned. “But if need be, I’ll assign a policeman to cover every hall on your hotel floor. I’m not going to get caught with my pants down again, not if I can help it.”

  A big if, George thought, but didn’t say so aloud. He turned his gaze back on Nancy Thompson. “Do you want my opinion on this as a police officer or as a Newcomer?” he asked bluntly.

  The older woman blinked at him in bewilderment. “Are those opinions different?”

  George nodded. “As a policeman, I agree with the FBI. There is no way to completely guarantee the safety of every Tenctonese guest at the symposium at all times.” He gave them a mirthless smile. “Even if you escorted us to our rooms and watched us at the conference, we still need to use restrooms, as humans do. Purists as fanatical as these would find some way to attack us.” He sighed. “As a policeman, I would say the safest course would be to cancel the symposium.”

  Scott Free took a deep breath of mingled relief and self-righteousness. “I told you—”

  “I’m not done, Mr. Free.” George silenced him with a frown, then swung back to Nancy Thompson. “I have another opinion as a Newcomer, and that has more to do with the method of your decision than its outcome.” He paused. “Why are you making this choice for us as if we were children?”

  Nancy Thompson gasped, her fingers tightening on her strand of pearls. “We didn’t think—we weren’t trying to insult—”

  “I know you weren’t.” George relented slightly, seeing genuine dismay in her gray eyes. “But we Tenctonese are the ones who are being threatened by the Purists. If you decide to continue the conference, our lives are the ones at stake. Can you truly make a decision like that for us and then live with the consequences?”

  Nancy Thompson shook her head wordlessly. Westbeld glanced over at her, then back at George. “So what do you suggest?” she asked bluntly. “How should we make this decision?”

  “In the traditional American way.” George smiled at their puzzled looks. “Let’s put the issue to a vote.”

  “I can’t believe you guys voted to stay here.” Sikes slammed a hand against the Door Close button as soon as he entered the elevator, as if the doors could not slide shut fast enough for him. He sounded merely disgusted, but the white-knuckled way he held Cathy’s hand suggested that other emotions fueled his anger. “I can’t even believe you suggested it, George!”

  George frowned at him. “Would you rather I had made the decision for Nancy Thompson myself without consulting the other Tenctonese?”

  “Hell, yes!” Sikes’s voice bounced off the elevator walls, making both Cathy and Susan wince. George didn’t. He was used to his partner’s volume. “You can’t ask a bunch of goddammed Newcomer overachievers if they want to pack up their bags and go home! Of cour
se they’ll say no. They think the future of their race depends on how well they talk at this fucking symposium.” He glowered at George. “And that includes you!”

  “Then it wouldn’t have been any different if I’d made the decision by myself, would it?”

  Sikes growled in frustration. “Dammit, George! You know better than the rest of them how much danger we’re in here. They all think the FBI will track down the Purists who kidnapped Ross Vegas any minute now, and that the Pittsburgh police will protect them in the meantime.”

  “Won’t they?” asked Cathy in a startled voice. “They said they would.”

  “They said they’d try.” Sikes hit the Door Open button as the elevator slowed for their floor, ignoring the fact that the doors were already opening. He stepped out and cursed as two riot-suited policemen grabbed his arms. “What the hell—!”

  “Sorry.” The policemen stepped back as soon as they saw Cathy come out behind him. “You must be Sikes. We’re not supposed to let any humans onto this floor except for you.” They nodded politely at George and Susan, then returned to the folding chairs and doughnut box that marked their guard post at the end of the elevator lobby.

  “There, see?” Cathy joggled at Sikes’s elbow, smiling. “The police are trying very hard to protect us.”

  “Yeah, right.” He came to a stop beside their door and stabbed the key into the lock with barely repressed violence. “They can try as hard as they like, but when it comes to murder, you don’t get an E for effort.”

  “Matthew.” George caught his partner by the elbow as the door clicked, to keep him from yanking it open. “Matthew, do you remember the ala mode?”

  “Remember the what?” Sikes scowled at him for a moment, then his mouth twisted with recognition and disbelief. “George, what the hell does the Alamo have to do with anything?”

  George put his hands on his hips. “Well, it’s the best human analogy I can think of.” He saw Susan and Cathy’s puzzled looks and explained, “The Alamo was a walled encampment where a small band of humans was threatened by a large opposing force. They refused to surrender.”

  Sikes snorted. “And they were killed to a man.”

  “But the cause they cared about gained as a result,” George reminded him. “ ‘Remember the Alamo’ became a rallying cry, and the slain men’s comrades eventually won despite overwhelming odds. If they had surrendered, do you think the result would have been the same?” He paused, seeing from his partner’s narrowed eyes that Sikes knew the answer but wasn’t going to admit it. “Wouldn’t you say the risk taken by those humans at the Alamo was justified?”

  “But that was a war!” Sikes argued stubbornly. “Those men knew they might die when they signed up to be soldiers.”

  George gave him a searching look. “And do you think we Tenctonese didn’t know that when we decided to try and live in your society?”

  Sikes froze, his gaze sliding from George to Susan to Cathy. Whatever he saw in their faces, it was strong enough to make him curse and jerk free of George’s grip.

  “All right, fine!” He stepped backward, shaking his head. “You want to be the Sam Houston of Little Tencton, George, don’t let me stop you. But I’ll be damned if I’m gonna play Davy Crockett!”

  Cathy cleared her throat, her voice pitched to a carefully neutral tone. “Does that mean you’re going back to L.A., Matt?”

  “No!” Sikes glared at George. “It means I’m not going to sit back and let us all get killed just so people can say ‘Remember the Hilton!’ ”

  He flung open the unlocked door, evidently trusting Newcomer reflexes to get George’s hand away from the jamb before he slammed the door inward. Only partly to retaliate, George slapped his hand against the door and held it pinned open despite his partner’s fierce tug. He scanned the room and found it secure and empty, then stepped back to let them enter. The door crashed shut behind them.

  Susan glanced up at George curiously. “Do you two always argue like this when you’re working?”

  “Most of the time,” he admitted, starting down the hall toward their own room. “Although not often so violently.”

  “He’s worried about Cathy.” A few moments later, Susan frowned. “George, hurry. I think I hear the phone ringing in our room.”

  George lengthened his steps, hearing it, too. He unlocked the door, reaching out an arm to catch Susan and hold her back as it swung open. She pressed against him urgently but knew enough to wait until he’d switched on the light and scanned the room before she pushed past and grabbed the phone.

  “Emily!” She sank down on the bed, cradling the phone against her cheek as tenderly as if it were her daughter’s face. “Emily, don’t cry! We’re all right, we’re both all right, they would have called you if we weren’t . . . no, we weren’t anywhere close when it happened . . . no, nobody’s done anything to us at all.” There was a long pause, and then Susan’s voice rippled with distress. “Oh, Emily, I know you want us to come home, but we can’t right now. You’ll just have to be brave, like we were on the ship when they took your father away—”

  George felt a familiar wrench of anguish in his chest, the fierce jerk of his heartsbeat as Susan’s quivering voice brought unwelcome memories back. He dropped down on the bed and wrapped his arms tightly around his wife, trying to still the flooding panic with her nearness. He could hear the echoes of his dread in Susan’s voice while she tried to reassure their daughter, tried to make her believe that she wasn’t in danger of losing both her parents. He could tell it was only marginally successful.

  “I was wrong,” George burst out when Susan finally put the phone down and turned to huddle into his embrace. “I was wrong, Susan, and Matthew was right. We should have gone back to L.A.”

  “And lived for the rest of our lives with you thinking you were a failure?” Despite the film of tears turning her blue eyes nearly black, Susan managed to smile at him. “I’d rather risk being killed by Purists than face that kind of misery.” She bit her lip, the smile fading into fierceness. “But promise me—promise me, neemu, that I didn’t survive all those sale times on the ship just to lose you now. Promise me.”

  “I promise,” George said, then held her tight while she cried in her silent, ship-trained way. It was the threat to her and the children that unnerved him, as intensely now as it had on the ship. Then it had been the kleezantsun, trying to rid themselves of an untrainable slave by selling him off to the planetary installations they serviced. They had tried three times, and three times George had canceled the sale by running away from his new masters before the ship even left port. It had been a risky tactic, and the fear of failure, the horror of losing his family forever still burned along his nerves each time he thought of it. It burned in him now, a fear that clung to him like mist and followed him relentlessly into sleep.

  The shrill buzzing of the phone woke George to instant readiness, aware even before his eyes opened that it was too dark in the room for this to be his wake-up call. Not another bomb threat, he thought in alarm, but the voice that answered his curt “Yes” spoke in frantic Tenctonese. For a moment, prepared as he was for another threat from the Purists, the clicking murmur of his native tongue rolled over George as meaninglessly as the rush of water. He blinked and forced himself to listen.

  “—and I’m sure they’re out there,” said the light, breathless male voice. “I can hear them throwing something at the window, something sharp like pieces of metal—”

  “Mr. Free?” George sat bolt upright as he recognized the voice. He heard Susan wake with a gasp beside him, then reach to turn on the light. “Mr. Free, what are you talking about?”

  “Purists,” said the novelist, speaking suddenly and bitterly in English. “There are Purists outside my window trying to scare me.”

  “I see.” George took a deep, steadying breath. “What room are you in?”

  “Three seventeen.”

  All the way down the hall from here, but only three doors down from Sikes. And
not much farther, George suddenly remembered, from the policemen guarding the elevator. “Mr. Free, listen to me,” he said firmly. “I want you to get out of your room and head for the elevator.”

  “But I want to see them,” said the other gannaum, lapsing into Tenctonese again. “I want to see them and know them, so I can make them pay for what they—”

  The phone connection shrieked, then fell into a painful, distant buzzing, as if the line had suddenly been disconnected. George felt the quick double thud of panic in his chest. He tossed the phone at Susan while he scrambled out of bed and dove for his suitcase.

  “Call Matthew,” he ordered her, grabbing up the first pair of pants he found. “Tell him something’s happened to Scott Free, Room 317. Tell him to get there, fast!”

  “Scott Free, Room 317.” Susan was dialing even as she memorized it. George struggled into his pants, blessing her cool competence, then yanked off the door chain and hurtled through the door. Behind him, he could hear her passing the message to Sikes.

  The hall was a silent tunnel at this hour, swallowing even the sound of George’s rapid footsteps. The sensation of running without shoes was eerily familiar—it was the way he always ran in his planet dreams, the way he had been forced to run when he’d been sold. The memory was so sharp-edged that he almost didn’t recognize the rangy form that shot from a doorway ahead of him. He skidded to a stop, his blood shivering in expectation of the levpa.

  “George!” A rough hand slapped at his shoulder while the sound of Sikes’s familiar voice dragged him back into the here and now. “What the hell was that room number?”

  “Three seventeen.” George shook himself to clear the last traces of nightmare and started running again. One door, two . . . and the smell of Tenctonese blood roiled up the hall to meet him, warm and metallic and fresh. He caught his breath in dismay.