Aliens in Godzone

by Cotterell, Genesis

  “I would have had a sister,” Sly said, “but a government ruling meant that my mother, being Ryxin and marrying one, was forced to have an abortion. Two years later she went into hiding with my father and had me. They faked the adoption papers. I grew up learning to hate Human authority just as my parents did. They taught me to seek revenge for what had happened to my mother, so I learnt to live a double life.

  “At home I practised my Ryxin powers until they were finely honed. In public and at school I pretended to be an ordinary Human who was good at study and sports, a good all-rounder. While at home I was being prepared and schooled by my parents, especially my father, to become a powerful and even ruthless Ryxin leader. At first I was kind and thoughtful elsewhere but later I couldn’t pretend and became my true self - a real, pure-blood Ryxin.

  “Perhaps Lion was trained in a similar way by his parents,” Curtis said.

  “Yes, but there is something more I haven’t told you, brother. You see, there was a young woman not so long ago who died after leaving my home in Ngahere Road, late one night. Ferdy, my most loyal committee member, told me recently how she had been Lion’s girlfriend just weeks before. After she broke up with him she joined the Ryxin Breeding Programme and was about to be placed at our Xlesky Street house.

  “I had checked her out that evening. I like to get to know the girls who are going into the business,” he said, looking at Zady. She was dutifully looking down. “Next day this young woman was supposed to start work for us.”

  “What happened to her?” Curtis asked, feeling queasy now, especially with Zady and Janux listening but saying nothing. They were sticking to Ryxin etiquette, which ordered that women should never speak when in the company of more than one Ryxin male. Ryxin punishments concerning women were swift and harsh.

  “She was driving home to the western side of the island. When she went to turn into her street on Cliffside in Massacre Bay her steering failed. She crashed into a tree and died instantly.”

  “So you’re saying her car was interfered with?” Curtis said.

  “Sure. Lion got his revenge. That young woman was more than just pretty, I can tell you. She’d had enough of being beaten daily by Lion. Of course the bruises were covered by her clothes. I demanded to see them. She obeyed. But she refused to tell me who her boyfriend was. That didn’t matter to me. I wanted to make sure she didn’t try to go back to him. Still she wouldn’t say. Now I know why.”

  “She was to start work the next day?”

  “Yep, at Xlesky Street. She never made it. I think Lion wanted to punish her for leaving him. He could be a bastard.”

  And you’re not, Curtis thought. “So you’re implying I need look no further for Roscoe’s killer?”

  “Looks that way, man.” He looked at Janux. “I don’t know what happened when Lion came to Chamonix Beach but he got what he deserved.” He stood up abruptly and so did Zady. “Come, Zady, we must go.” They walked towards the door.

  Curtis and Janux watched them speed away. When Curtis looked around there were tears running down Janux’s cheeks.

  “Thank Kieran,” she said between sobs. “Now we know who’s to blame.”

  “Yes,” Curtis said, “thank Kieran.” But he wasn’t convinced. “There’s just one thing, my love.”

  “What?” Janux said between sobs.

  “We need evidence before we can close the case.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Next morning Curtis rose early. He was going to Xlesky Street to see if 17 was still there, and if she wasn’t he was going to find out where they had taken her. Their child was growing in her womb and he wasn’t going to leave it in the RBP’s clutches.

  Number 7 Xlesky Street still looked the same - a large, comfortable suburban home nicely situated by the beautiful Xlesky River. He hesitated before going up to the front door. He’d once sworn never to return, but time and the thought of their child had drawn him back. He rang the bell and presently the door was opened.

  “Yes, how can I help you?” a thin, spectacled, softly spoken woman asked.

  Curtis was taken aback at not seeing Dux. “I’ve come to see 17,” he said hurriedly.

  She looked at him suspiciously. “17 is no longer living here. Did you have an appointment?”

  “No, I used to be her breeding mate. I want to see her.”

  “Come inside and we can talk,” the woman said, adding as she ushered him in, “now, your number was?”

  “I used to be called 35.”

  She studied an exercise book on the desk at reception, flicking back through the pages. “Let me see. Here we are. I have a written order to ban you from coming back onto the programme,” she said at last. “Your breeding term ended successfully and now your former breeding mate, 17, has been sent to a birthing house. You are to have no further contact with her. Do you understand, 35, that this is the way it has to be here? Your business with the programme was successfully completed and therefore your contract is over. Did they not explain all this to you at the time?”

  “Yes, I understand. But I was hoping to see 17 again and speak to her.”

  “This is not possible. We run a business here. Everything should have been made very clear at the time you were working here. Was that not the case?”

  “Yes, but there was another receptionist here then, a Mrs Duxton, who told me I could come and see 17 again,” Curtis lied.

  The woman looked genuinely shocked. “I’m afraid Mrs Duxton is no longer here. Did you not know?”

  “Know what?” Curtis said, seeing the woman now looked on the verge of tears.

  “She was murdered. Here in this house by one of the women on the breeding programme. It only happened last week. I was brought in from the bureau immediately to take over her role. It was so upsetting for us all. Terrible, it was, just terrible.”

  “The woman concerned - has she been found?”

  “She was caught illegally trying to board a ferry back to Muritai Island. She had no money and they wouldn’t give her a ticket. The police were called when she fought to get on board just as the ferry was leaving. Made a big fuss, she did, and got herself arrested. Turned out she was the murderer.”

  Curtis understood perfectly why any woman who was kept like a breeding cow and a slave would want to murder someone to get out but he wanted urgently to know who the woman was.

  “Can you tell me who she was?” he said, not expecting this woman to comply.

  “She was known as number 4. Now she’s locked up for at least the usual twenty years. No trial for her, they say, just jail. Serves her right - she had a good life here, like they all do. They’re well cared for, you know?”

  “Thank you, Mrs...?”

  “Gortix, Mrs. Gortix, Xlesky Street House Controller. Goodbye, and don’t be too disappointed. You fulfilled your contract with distinction. Not all men who come here have a successful outcome, you know. So you’ve nothing to worry about.”

  Doesn’t anyone here have any soul or Human feelings, Curtis thought. He knew who No 4 must be. “Goodbye, Mrs. Gortix, you’ve been most helpful.”

  Curtis strode out and caught the next ferry back to the island. Once again he stopped off at The Deer’s Antlers for some whiskey. Sly hadn’t mentioned any of this to him yesterday, yet he must have known and he was the one responsible for forcing his wife into the breeding programme in the first place. Curtis felt a new sense of despair overwhelming him as he entered the pub.

  “Whiskey on ice, Harry, and cigarettes,” he said, standing at the bar.

  “Yuh look like death, man. What’s happened to yuh?” Harry said, giving him a double.

  “This island’s a pig of a place.” Curtis swigged down half a glass in one go. “There’s people here without souls, mate. No feelings whatsoever. Know what I mean?”

  “Course I do, yuh know that. I see ’em every day, mate. They come in here and want drinks all thuh time and yuh know what? They won’t give me no money neiver. Bloody pigs all right.”


  Curtis lit a cigarette and swallowed the rest of the whiskey. “Give us another, Harry, you’re a good man. Here, keep the change.” He handed him a twenty-dollar note.

  Forty minutes later he was coaxing his car at breakneck speed along the coast road to his refuge, and his beautiful client - the only woman left in his life who didn’t seem to be going anywhere soon.

  The sun shone bright and hot when he awoke. His curtains hadn’t been drawn and he was almost blinded by the intensity of the light. He pulled the crumpled, damp sheet up over his face and could see the shape of someone standing in the doorway. His head felt heavy and his eyes tried to adjust.

  “Janux?” he said.

  “What happened yesterday? You were okay when you left here. What bastard has been getting into your head now?”

  “Thank Kieran you’re not a pure-blood. Listen, there’s been another murder. This one was at the Xlesky Street RBP house, a Mrs Duxton - the House Controller.”

  “Did you go there?” she said, looking serious and gazing past him to the window.

  “Never mind that. It was Mistle Onyx. She was caught trying to board a ferry to Muritai without a ticket and she’s been jailed for at least twenty years without trial, the usual treatment for a Ryxin who’s committed a crime against a Human. I was told House Controllers are always Human.”

  “So, Mistle must have admitted it then. They have to have a confession first you know, if the crime wasn’t Ryxin vs Ryxin.” Janux knew the law, he realised with a sense of admiration. Not for her to blend into the background like an obedient Ryxin woman for fear of making one of the men angry, perhaps even angry enough to make her disappear. Ryxin men’s capacity for control was so powerful simply because they could practise levitation and it scared most women into submission - besides the super strong physiques and ruthlessness of the pure-bloods.

  “Yes, I suppose she must have. But I can understand a woman doing it. They never get out unless they get pregnant. It’s pitiful to treat anyone like that.” Curtis gingerly placed his feet on the floor and rose slowly so as not to jar his head.

  “I thought your contract there was finished,” Janux said.

  “It is finished. Will you help me?” he said.

  “How do you mean, help?”

  “Help me find out if what Sly said is true, about Lion killing Roscoe. This is still my first official case and I need some evidence. You see, I wonder why, if Lion wanted revenge on the Onyx name, he didn’t just kill Sly. Roscoe wasn’t officially an Onyx even though his father was. And Roscoe was only a half-brother, besides being a half-blood. But you know what? I need a partner to help me find out. Right now I believe you’re the right person. You saved our lives the other day. You’re intelligent and you have Human instinct and a soul, plus you can telepathise. These things are gifts. I’ve never yet met a Ryxin woman who has all of those gifts. What do you say?”

  Janux remembered how her father had worried about his only daughter who had the gene for telepathy, and didn’t want her harmed or vanished for being an aberration.

  That afternoon Curtis and Janux sat out on the back porch and celebrated her new status with a bottle of Beaujolais. They had drawn up a contract for her to start as his Assistant/Trainee and Curtis had given her a new copy of the Ryxin PI Handbook which he’d sent away for in hopes she would agree to his proposal. She could study it in her spare time and carry it with her at all times.

  “17 is pregnant with our baby,” Curtis said. “I have to tell you that I wanted to see her again. She wasn’t there and that’s when I found out about Dux. It only happened last week but because Mistle is Ryxin the authorities have kept the whole thing quiet. Apparently Dux had no living relatives and came over from the mainland for the job. The Human police have been told to say nothing. All they care about is the fact that Mistle confessed and is now locked away. I think I’ll visit her tomorrow. She may have heard something about Roscoe while she was working at Xlesky Street. I think it’d be better for us both to go since it’s a women’s prison. They’re very security conscious when it comes to visitors, and probably wouldn’t let me see her without another woman being present.”

  “Of course I’ll come. I feel sorry for her anyway. All she wanted was a baby. Her pig of a husband is to blame for this. I hate this planet sometimes. If our people had not been forced to mate only with Humans then none of this would have happened. Roscoe used to say we were lucky to have a planet to live on.”

  “All the same as PIs we can make a difference. Who else is there to stand up for the rights of our people? There has never been anyone there for Mistle, I’m certain of that.”

  “I guess not.”

  CHAPTER 26

  Janux’s first task as Assistant/Trainee PI was to go Kieran’s website and find out Mistle’s bio. It took two hours to get access to the information she wanted, security on her file having been ramped up since the murder. But with Curtis’s help, since he already had a password, she was eventually able to get in. Curtis told her it was better to know as much as possible about Mistle before they visited her.

  Mistle had been born somewhere on the mainland in 1976. She was a half-blood who was one of a new batch of babies born in one of the first experimental, secret Ryxin Breeding Programme houses. Her mother had had a permanent breeding partner but neither their numbers nor identities were ever disclosed. In those days these babies were also given a number until they were five years old. Mistle had been known as Baby No: 19. She was born with six toes on each foot and was immediately sent to a pre-adoption house where she would learn from an early age how to serve.

  When she was five, child No: 19 was adopted by a Mr and Mrs Stellica, an elderly Ryxin couple who lived at Rocky Point on Muritai Island. They had obeyed Human law and never had children of their own. They named their new daughter, Mistle and she was raised to serve them. She was kept at home and taught how to cook, clean and sew. There was no schooling for Mistle, except in the ways of a housekeeper, trained to please her elderly parents.

  As Janux read on it became obvious that Mistle had never had a real life of her own. She’d cooked, cleaned, sewed and waited on her parents night and day, having had it drummed into her what happened to children like her who didn’t obey. They were called aberrations and were done away with in ways that looked accidental.

  The next part of Mistle’s bio was taken from an interview for the website after her parents had died. She had told the interviewer that she was continually told she was lucky to have such a good home and such a good life and two parents who loved her. Her real parents hadn’t, the Stellica’s said. Mistle was known to be a beautiful child and grew up to become a beautiful teenager but her elderly parents told her every day that she was ugly and no one would ever want her.

  That was the end of the interview.

  The following morning Janux and Curtis arrived at the grey-steel gates of the Muritai Ryxin Women’s Maximum Security Prison, situated at the far north of the Island. The prison was built long before the island had become a popular place to live. Visiting Muritai thirty years ago usually meant you were coming to see one of the convicts. The building inside the extra-tall perimeter fence was cold looking – all dull grey concrete with oblong windows into which very little light could ever penetrate.

  Getting past security took thirty minutes as their papers were checked and rechecked and their bags were searched and searched again by at least six guards, who eyed them suspiciously all the time. Then they had to go through the scanner twice each. To get to Flint Wing where Mistle was locked up, took another thirty minutes as gate after gate was noisily unlocked and then locked again behind them.

  Finally they were ushered into a small room where Mistle sat, chained to a chair by her hands and feet. She was dressed in a coarse, khaki smock that looked as if it was made of roughly hewn leather and was held together by wooden pegs. Two Human women guards, each around six feet tall, stood a few paces behind her. Both wore holstered guns on their hips.

&
nbsp; “You have twenty minutes,” one of them said, then mercifully they both left the room.

  Janux looked up to see cameras set up in the ceiling, one in each of the four corners. “The bastards have left nothing to chance,” she muttered as she and Curtis sat on a hard metal bench facing Mistle.

  “How are you?” Curtis asked her, knowing it was a stupid question. No one in here could be anything but miserable.

  To his surprise she smiled and looked as beautiful as when he’d last seen her. “I’m okay, isn’t it? That’s what they tell me, doesn’t it? They say I’m okay all the time. But I want to go home. Can youse help me? Take me home, isn’t it? Please, please, take me back home.”

  “Listen, Mistle, we can’t do that because of what you did. We are not permitted to take you home. Are you being treated well?” Curtis smiled at her trying to put her at ease.

  “They tol’ me I was going to have a baby, doesn’t it? At Xlesky Street they tol’ me that. Then I can go home, they say, doesn’t it? But they lied to me, isn’t it?”

  “What do you mean?” Curtis asked. “I know you wanted a baby, Mistle.”

  “My breeding mate, he tol’ me he couldn’t make me pregnant. He say he was injected wiv something so he couldn’t make me pregnant, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t understand,” Curtis said, but he thought he did.

  “The Master came to see me six times, doesn’t it? He tol’ me I had to be punished for what I did, doesn’t he?”

  “So what happened?”

  “They made me sleep with a Ryxin man who was sterilised, doesn’t he? He tol’ me he was obeying the Master. I wasn’t permitted to get pregnant, the Master told him. I had to learn to submit to Ryxin authority. That’s why I was there to learn to obey - the Master said.”

  Curtis looked at Janux. “Bastard,” she said. “Pigs.”

  “That Duxton, she lied, doesn’t she? She tol’ me every day I would soon be pregnant, then I could leave. I tol’ her no, I wasn’t permitted to get pregnant, doesn’t she? Then she laughed at me and tol’ me I was a slut and that’s what a slut deserves, isn’t she?”