Alien Nation #2 - Dark Horizon Read online

  It was a mystery, the kind of thing his friend George was so good at figuring out, and that was why he was a Detective Two. The words hadn’t been there on the wall ten minutes ago. Albert knew that because he’d brought out another load of trash, a big cardboard box full of old computer printouts, just a little while ago.

  He stepped alongside the dumpster and touched one of the big pink letters. Whoever had done it had let the spray can linger too long in one spot; at the bottom of the letter, a tearlike dribble inched down the wall. Albert brought his hand away and looked at the bright artificial color on his fingertips.

  Somebody laughed, from right close by. Sounds bounced around in the alley—that was why he was always careful to lower the dumpster lid all the way down, not let it drop with a big metal crash. He couldn’t tell where the laughing came from, but when he looked around, he thought he saw somebody run past the alley’s exit. It had already gotten dark out there.

  “Hey!” He wasn’t angry. “Come back here!” He had never gotten angry in his life—number fours almost never did—but he thought he should tell the person with the spray can the big, nasty words could make somebody unhappy. Maybe the person didn’t know that.

  He walked all the way to the mouth of the alley, and looked both ways down the street. There wasn’t anybody around now, and he couldn’t hear any running footsteps. Instead, he heard the laughing in the distance behind him.

  There was enough time to glimpse the kids, human teenagers, back in the alley. The sudden glare from the station’s rear door swinging open blinded Albert. He could just see May coming out with a white plastic bucket full of kitchen scraps. She tilted back the lid of the dumpster.

  “Ooh, look what we got here . . .” The teenagers uncoiled from the darkness. Albert could see them now; they all had on green, cheap-looking nylon jackets, and jeans cuffed high to show heavy boots beneath. “A little slag princess. That your dinner, sweetheart?”

  There was more laughing from the ones behind as May dropped the plastic bucket in surprise. The leader of the trio backed her against the dumpster.

  The kid held the spray can, the one that must’ve been used to write the words on the wall, up close to May’s face. “How would you like some new spots, huh?” She leaned back from the can as the kid waved it from side to side. “Could put a nice big one right on your ugly face—”

  “Hey! Stop that!” Albert didn’t know what it was that he felt, something new and strange that tightened his chest and drew his vision down a long tunnel, with the teenagers at the end of it. “Go away!”

  “Aw, shit . . .” The three kids were laughing again, laughing at him. “Get a load of this!” May slid away from the leader, and got around to the side of the dumpster.

  “What’s your problem, slag?”

  He stood in front of them, in the narrow confines of the alley, and tried to think. Of what he was supposed to say, what he was supposed to do now.

  One kid turned his sneering smile to his buddy. “It’s one of those stupid slags. One of those ree-tards they got.”

  The leader stepped right up into Albert’s chest, pushing him backward. “Then I bet you’re good at those nursery school games, huh? How would you like to play connect the dots, ya dumbshit?” The kid had thrown away the spray can, and reached inside his jacket for something else. It flickered bright in his hand. Then up by Albert’s face, before he could see what it was. Something stung like a lit match above the corner of his eye.

  “Albert—”

  That was May, shouting his name, her voice all scared-sounding.

  He moved without thinking. He grabbed the rear corner of the dumpster and swung it around, into the kid’s shoulder and ribs. The bright thing flew out of the kid’s hand and spun against the opposite wall. Albert pulled harder on the dumpster, adding to its momentum. The broad metal front slammed into another kid’s chest; the one beside him yelped in pain as the heavy wheel crushed his foot.

  “What the hell’s going on out here?”

  The door to the station had flown open, revealing Detective Sikes silhouetted in the light spilling out. He had his shoulder holster on over his shirt, the pistol’s weight hanging heavy to the side.

  “Shit—” The leader pulled erect the one who’d had his breath knocked out. They ran toward the mouth of the alley, but not before Sikes had managed to land a kick in the backside of the hobbling one.

  “Punks!” Sikes shouted after them, then turned toward Albert. “You all right?”

  May was right next to him, holding on to his arm, as if she had to keep him from falling down. “Albert—your face . . .”

  He reached up and touched his brow. His hand came away wet and bright, but with a different pink than the spray paint. It took him a second to recognize it as his own blood.

  “Come on . . .” Sikes took him by the other arm. “Let’s get you inside.” He bent down and scooped up a narrow rectangle of metal. “Little creep nicked you with a box cutter. Real heroic weapon, huh?” He tossed it into the dumpster.

  In the station’s kitchen, May wouldn’t let anyone else touch him. Albert sat with his hands on his knees while she fussed with the disinfectant and the adhesive bandages from the first aid kit.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake . . .” Grazer’s exasperated voice came from the doorway. “He’s supposed to be a goddamn janitor. If he wants to get into fights out in the alley, he should be working as a bouncer in some bar.” The captain’s footsteps clomped away down the hall.

  “What happened?” Zepeda came into the kitchen and looked at him.

  “Albert rescued me.” May said it quietly. She didn’t take her gaze away from his face.

  He didn’t say anything. And he knew he didn’t have to.

  C H A P T E R 1 1

  “NICE JOB YOU did on the boat.” Rawling stood still while the jacket was fitted on him. “Saw it on the afternoon news.”

  Guerin had been watching the woman, a Purist insider who’d worked years ago as a seamstress for Darlene Bryant, fitting those spangly competition ball gowns. Now she was taking up the bottom of a cheap white jacket, using quick-and-dirty basting stitches. The results only had to last for one job, a few short minutes. Then the whole outfit, including the white trousers Rawling had on, could be wadded up and incinerated, evidence into ash.

  “What’d they say?” He kept his arms folded as he leaned against the warehouse wall.

  “They didn’t just talk, man—they had footage. A nice little video clip.” Rawling’s sharp-nosed face split open with a grin. “Some tourist from Deadbutt, Kansas, was out there just taping the ocean, like that’s some big deal, and he got the whole thing. From a distance, but you could still see that sucker go up in smoke. Like I said, a nice job.”

  “Huh.” Guerin made a mental note to have one of his troops record the late night news. A good visual, like an explosion, was bound to be repeated; he’d have to check it out to make sure that nothing incriminating had gotten on tape. Goddamn camcorders seemed to be everywhere nowadays.

  “Okay, slip it off,” ordered the woman. She had the needle and thread clenched in her teeth. “Watch out for those stitches inside.”

  She had done good work, as Guerin had expected she would. Both the jacket and trousers looked clean but well used, the fit adequate but not so precise as to look like an expensive tailoring job. A working outfit. “Nice . . .” Guerin nodded in approval. He appreciated fellow humans who sweated the details.

  “I still gotta sew the shoulder patch on. Then it’ll be done.”

  “I don’t know . . .” Rawling shook his head as he handed the jacket to the woman. She walked away with it, over to the sewing machine she’d set up in one corner. “I mean, do delivery guys still wear like uniforms? Except for those pizza guys, that is. That all-in-white stuff seems like something out of movies.”

  “That’s just the point.” Guerin kept his voice level and patient. “It’s like a sleight-of-hand trick. You have to give them what seems to
be real, then disappear before they have a chance to think about it. And we’re dealing with . . . creatures who got all their notions from watching TV. Believe me . . .” Rawling had his uses, but thinking wasn’t one of them. “They won’t even see you; they’ll just see the clothes. And that’s all they’ll remember.”

  “Okay—whatever you say.” Rawling started unbuckling the cheap and shiny black belt. Polished black shoes completed the outfit. “You’re the boss.”

  “That’s right.” At least here he was; for the time being, Guerin was content to labor among the finely cut gears, using his skills to set the killing machinery in motion. There would be time later, when he had finished demonstrating the steel of which he himself was made, for promotion into those higher, darker levels. Where the power lodged, and the decisions were made. And the rewards were so much greater.

  He nodded slowly, eyes closed to contemplate the satisfactory state of preparations. So much smaller a job—there’d be no big explosion involved this time—but just as important.

  Every death was important . . .

  The Santa Anas had broken. They never seemed to last very long anymore. Sikes remembered being a kid, growing up right in Los Angeles, whenever those blast-furnace winds had laid siege to the last half of summer, and made September and October itchy, sweating hells. Fire weather, with the rich fools up in the hills surrounded by dry kindling. If anybody had been into class warfare, back then all it had taken was a lit match.

  At the station, he’d heard the news-radio’s weatherman predicting rain, a warm Pacific steamer coming up from Baja. And sure enough, as he walked the last blocks to his apartment building, the heavy clouds jumbled overhead, the first soup-temperature drops spattering on the shoulders and collar of his jacket.

  So it was no discomfort—it was more like standing fully dressed in the bathroom shower—to stop and watch what was going on at the building’s lobby door. And worth watching, because he had spotted Cathy there. With somebody else, a male Newcomer whom he didn’t recognize. They were talking, and she smiled at the guy. Sikes could see that much easily enough.

  He moved a little closer, keeping in the shadows between streetlights so they wouldn’t detect his presence. It was easy to spy on them; they were concentrating on each other. Going on a date, dressed nicely, with umbrellas to protect them from the rain. Who the hell was this guy, anyway?

  “Did I give you the tickets?” Cathy looked up at her companion.

  Tickets, thought Sikes. So money had been spent for this occasion. Maybe it was a big deal. Had she bought them? He felt a sudden twinge of self-contempt. So this was what being a police detective was good for. Snooping around like a teenager.

  The Newcomer male checked his pockets. “I don’t think so . . .”

  “Just a second.” Cathy opened her purse and started rummaging around.

  Sikes stepped out of the shadow and crossed the street toward the building. The two didn’t even look around at his approach.

  She held up two printed rectangles. “Here they are—”

  “Hi, Cathy.”

  Her eyes widened with surprise as she looked behind herself. “Oh . . .” She smiled at him. “Hi, Matt.”

  He turned toward her date. “So . . . how’s it going?”

  “Fine.” The guy gave him back a pleasant enough smile, if slightly smug. “Same for you, I hope.”

  “Matt, this is Joshua Tree. Joshua designs the data-base interfaces down at our lab. Joshua, this is Matt Sikes—I mentioned him to you before.”

  “Oh, right . . .” He stuck out his hand. “The police fellow.”

  “Yeah . . .” Sikes shook hands with the Newcomer. “That’s me. The police fellow.”

  An awkward silence settled between them. Cathy turned to her date. “Josh, would you mind getting the car? I’ve gotten kind of chilly out here.” She rubbed her arms.

  “Sure.” He nodded to Sikes and walked away, jingling his keys in his hand. Cathy waited until he was out of earshot before turning back to Sikes.

  “I owe you an explanation.” Her smile was gone now. “You and me, Matt . . .” She shook her head. “I should have known . . . I should have said something a long time ago. About us.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It just isn’t possible. For us.”

  “What do you mean?” He laid his hand on her arm. “Why not?”

  “Because . . .” Cathy looked away, then back, unflinching, into his gaze. “Because I can’t be human.”

  “I never wanted . . . I never asked you to be human.”

  “Not with words. No—but I always knew that was what you wanted.”

  He couldn’t believe that. Not that she had said it, but the way the words pierced his heart, pinning him to an invisible wall.

  “Look, Cathy . . .” His own words fled from his grasp. “Look, maybe I did think that, at one time. But I know . . . I know we’re different. I can’t change that. And I don’t want to change it. But . . . you can’t expect it to be easy.”

  Her face was composed of another sad knowing. “I care so much for you, Matt. But whenever we’re together . . . I can sense you looking at me. And then I feel . . . incomplete. As if I should have hair and . . . and ears, and—I don’t know—everything else should be the way human women are. I should eat the same food you do, and . . . and make love the way humans do.” Her voice fell. “I come away feeling like there’s something wrong with me. But there isn’t.” She laid her hand against the base of her throat. “This is what I am. A Tenctonese—an alien.”

  “Cathy . . .”

  She pulled away from him. “No—you’re right. We are different. And I don’t think you can ever love those differences. Not really. Not in your heart.”

  He tried to keep her from slipping away. “That’s not true—”

  “Don’t, Matt.” She held up her hand, cutting him off. “Please . . . don’t.”

  A car, a late-model BMW with Joshua at the wheel, pulled up at the curb.

  “Cathy—this isn’t fair to me.”

  “We are what we are. Nothing would ever change.” She reached up, her fingertips lightly touching his cheek. “It’s all right.”

  He wanted to call her back, but she had already gotten into the car. Its taillights vanished into the traffic at the end of the street. He stood watching for a while longer, before he turned away from the rain against his face.

  Upstairs, the phone was ringing as he let himself into his apartment. He let it go on, the metal clatter bouncing off the walls. There wasn’t anybody he wanted to talk to.

  It wouldn’t stop. He lifted it from its cradle, just to shut it up.

  “Sikes here.” The voice on the other end formed itself into words. “Yeah, hi, Lorraine.” He listened to her talking. “No kidding. Yeah, well, my day’s been a little rough, too. Jerk chicken? That’s that Jamaican stuff, isn’t it?” He knew the place she meant, over by the USC campus. “Ordinarily I would, but . . . I don’t know about tonight. Kinda tired.” The voice of the human woman rolled on.

  Underneath the little wooden tiles, the inside of the box lid had the Scrabble rules; they were the same as the ones for English or most other human languages. The Tenctonese version, which George and Susan had bought for their kids a couple of Christmases back, came from a Newcomer specialty company in Minnesota; the Franciscos had their Trivial Pursuit set as well.

  George found himself staring at the words printed on the gray cardboard. They marched into his head and back out, leaving no impression on his brain. He sat across from his daughter Emily on the living room carpet, his legs crossed Indian-fashion—another humanism; he had never seen any Indians sitting that way, except the ones in old movies. Emily was slaughtering him on the Scrabble board. All his words were short and unprofitable; hers snaked all over, scoring big.

  Emily rearranged the tiles on the rack in front of her, face locked in concentration. The part of George’s thoughts that was still paying attention to the gam
e hoped that she was about to put down a word. He had forgotten whose turn it was to play.

  “Oh!” Her face opened with delight. She started laying down tiles, one after another.

  On the sofa beside him and Emily, Susan tucked Vessna into her portable bassinet. She clicked softly, stroking the baby’s cheek. “There you are.” Vessna squirmed and cooed happily in response.

  “There . . .” Emily sat back. She had cleared her rack of all but one tile. “Look at that!”

  Susan turned her head to look down at the board. “What do you have?”

  “Veebo.” Emily pointed. “That’s a triple-letter score on the click, and a double word . . . That’s thirty-five points.”

  “You can’t use Veebo,” said Susan. “Etoe e bink manya. It’s a proper name.”

  Emily held her ground. “It’s also a verb—like Na veebo taya drak.” She turned back around. “Right, Dad?”

  The conversation, his wife’s and his daughter’s voices, had all seemed to be taking place somewhere else, as though from a TV that someone had forgotten to turn off.

  “What?” He brought himself back, and refocused on Emily. “Is it my turn?”

  “Dad . . .” Emily peered at him. “What’s the matter? You’ve been spaced all afternoon.”

  ‘Spaced’—he didn’t know that one. It sounded like the empty void, as though he’d become nothing but a George-shaped hole in the middle of the room. “What do you mean?”

  His daughter sighed elaborately. “It’s an expression. It means you’ve been out in the ozone.”

  “She means distracted, dear.”