Alien Nation #8 - Cross of Blood Page 12

  The future, Albert thought worriedly. It was coming faster than he was ready for.

  The door was at the end of an alley. In an abandoned section of the city’s old warehouse district, where the switch lines running off the railroad tracks had rusted from disuse. Dry brown weeds sprouted up from the broken bottles filling the cracks in the asphalt, the roads that freight trucks had once rumbled down. A night wind dragged a scrap of yellowed newspaper against George Francisco’s legs as he locked the car door. He kicked the newspaper free and it tumbled away, close to the litter-strewn sidewalk, like a ghost bound by gravity and words.

  With his hand still on the car’s door, he looked carefully around the area, examining the darkness for possible traps. He was on his own; he had told no one that he was going to this place. There would be no way of calling for backup once he walked away from the car. Whatever happened here—and he had no idea yet of what it would be—he would have to handle on his own.

  As he walked toward the door, the alley’s damp brick walls pressing toward him on either side, he spotted the faint light seeping across the battered sill. The light was the same cold-ice color as the narrow strip of stars he could see above himself.

  “Greetings, brother.” The door had been pulled back a few inches even before he could knock upon it with his raised fist. He realized that someone had been watching him from the moment he had gotten out of the car. The face of a Tenctonese male peered out at him. “Enter,” said the man, “and be at peace.” The man stepped back into the building’s dim light, drawing the opening wider.

  The interior smelled musty, as of air that had been trapped inside an empty warehouse years ago. George looked up and saw bare wooden beams spotted with ancient pigeon droppings; a broken skylight had been covered up with plywood, now warped and crumbling at the edges from L.A.’s infrequent rains.

  Behind him, the door was pushed closed. Sealed into the warehouse’s quiet, he could detect faint sounds at the limits of his hearing, the whisper-like breaths of others somewhere in the darkness farther on.

  “You are new to the Way.”

  A statement, not a question. George looked over at the Newcomer standing beside him. “Yes . . .” He fumbled inside his jacket for the piece of paper that he had taken from the file on his desk. His hands shook as he started to unfold the single sheet. “I came . . . because of this . . .”

  “That’s all right, brother. You don’t have to show me.” The other Newcomer laid his hand on George’s arm. “It doesn’t matter how one finds the Way. All that matters is that you have found it.” The other’s eyes shone with fervent conviction. “Come with me.”

  He was led to the far reaches of the warehouse, past a thick curtain that had been hung from the ceiling to the oil-spattered concrete floor. The other man drew back a corner of the heavy cloth and motioned for George to step through.

  On the other side, he found what he was looking for.

  His eyes had already adjusted to the darkness. He could make out row after row of Tenctonese, both men and women, seated on benches cobbled together from rough wooden planks; toward the crude elevated stage that had been built at one end of the space, there were more of his people, kneeling and gazing up at the figure standing before them.

  The same figure whose image had been printed on the piece of paper, still folded and tucked away in the pocket of his jacket. The image that had brought him here, to this secret place of devotion.

  He had seen the same image before, in his dreaming.

  The shadowed figure raised its arms, light streaming from behind, past the outstretched hands.

  Even before the figure spoke, George felt the gaze of the hidden eyes search him out, finding him and peering into the farthest recesses of his soul.

  You have come to Me. The voice spoke inside him. I have waited for you . . .

  George closed his own eyes, but could still see the figure silhouetted by light.

  He knew that now there would be no waking from the dream.

  C H A P T E R 9

  “HEY, YOU ABOUT ready to go?”

  From the doorway, he peered back inside the safe house; there was no sign of her. Sikes turned back around to the uniformed cop standing on the front steps, heaved his shoulders and sighed.

  The cop nodded sympathetically. “It was the same way with my old lady; we got three kids, and every time with ’em it was the same.” He gestured toward the two bulging suitcases beside him, packed with Cathy’s things. “Some women, the time comes and they go into the maternity ward with enough luggage, it’s like they’re going on some Princess Cruise liner for three months.” He gave a philosopher’s shrug. “But you take Garlinski back at the station—each time his wife went in, she took like one robe, her lipstick and mascara, and one of those romance paperbacks. Like she needed that, right? Go figure.”

  Sikes didn’t listen to the other guy’s words of wisdom. They interfered with the attempt he was making at remaining cool. No need to be a jerk about all this, he’d told himself. He was trying to be sympathetic even, seeing it from Cathy’s viewpoint. That wasn’t so hard, given that he had gone through this whole going-to-the-hospital business before, at least from the male side of it. He had even been through the process when the hospital hadn’t been reached in time, twice in fact, in the back of a patrol car when he’d still been in uniform. The quickie medical course he’d gotten as a rookie at the police academy had covered the basics of an emergency delivery, and the rest hadn’t been exactly brain surgery. He’d been lucky, though; those two women had been so easy, his part had been more like playing a utility infielder, hands poised to catch a ground ball skipping between the bases, than having to act like an obstetrician. Though he had been hoarse for a week afterward each time, from shouting over the patrol car’s radio for backup. He’d never been so glad in his life to see a paramedic’s van come pulling up.

  “Yeah, you’re right,” Sikes told the uniform cop. “They’re all unpredictable that way.” With his ex-wife, when they’d still been married, he’d wound up coming out of the hospital carrying in one hand the single overnight case she’d already packed before her water broke, and their newborn baby slung in the crook of his other arm. Now his daughter Kirby was a sophomore at UCLA. Time didn’t fly, at least not by flapping its wings; instead, it got itself shot out of a cannon.

  He leaned back inside the doorway and shouted. “Hey, Cathy, where are you? We got folks waiting on us.”

  “Just a minute!” Her voice echoed through the safe house’s sparsely furnished rooms. They had never really moved into the place, in the sense of putting pictures on the walls and stuff. “I’m still looking for something.”

  “Don’t worry about it, pal.” The uniform cop gave him a knowing smile and wink. “Let her take her time. This is all standard operating procedure.”

  Yeah, right, he thought. Sikes knew that if he were still hooked up with his ex-wife, he wouldn’t be worried. ‘Standard operating procedure’—what the hell was that supposed to mean, right here and now? Those two women pulling their flying champagne cork numbers in the back of the patrol car—that had been within the realm of S.O.P. They’d been human women, after all. Happens all the time; there were lots of cab drivers who had stories like that. Even when he’d gotten stuck helping his partner George pop out his baby Vessna, that was normal, too. These things were supposed to happen that way.

  “Found it.” Cathy came out of the house’s back bedroom, her third-trimester tummy preceding the rest of her. She held up a tiny Walkman. “Hey, I know what kind of Muzak they play over those hospital systems. I’d go nuts listening to that stuff all day long.” She tucked the folding headphones with their trailing cord into the top-front pocket of the floral print maternity overalls she was wearing. “Now I’m ready to go.”

  The sight of her walking with that tilted-back posture pregnant women used to balance themselves triggered more memories from the days when he’d been married. He sometimes caught himself thin
king, he and Cathy were as good as hitched. They’d even talked about whether to just go ahead and formalize the whole arrangement—especially now that there was going to be a kid who’d presumably need a last name and all—and if they did, whether they should have a Celinite ceremony or one in the church. He’d been a lapsed Catholic for so long that either ritual would probably seem foreign to him. Maybe after his and Cathy’s kid was born, they’d finally do the deed. Better late than never, he figured.

  “You sure?” Sikes nodded toward the suitcases outside the house’s door. “Maybe that little thing won’t be enough; maybe we should check out whether we could get a grand piano shipped into the hospital.”

  “Matt—come on. That’s not fair.” With both hands, Cathy kneaded the small of her arched back. “I’m going to be in there a long time.” Both her expression and her voice started showing signs of irritability. “Maybe you should go flat on your back for a month, and we’ll see if you wind up getting bored or not.”

  He knew she had a point there. Cathy was only eight months along, and there was every indication that she was going to take the pregnancy to full term. Doctor Friedman, the head of the medical team that the Bureau of Newcomer Affairs had put together after Dr. Quinn’s untimely death, had told them both that from all appearances Cathy’s condition seemed perfectly healthy, with no imminent complications. If the baby was growing inside a human female rather than a Tenctonese, everything would have been considered normal. But since none of the doctors could even explain how it had been possible for her to get pregnant, let alone develop all the internal physiology to develop the fetus this far along, they had decided to err on the side of caution and take her into a secured ward of the hospital now. Everyone was waiting for her: the doctors on the inside, the police guards stationed outside the doors.

  She must feel like some kind of experimental test subject, thought Sikes—not for the first time. Cathy was already well into a territory that nobody else—no Newcomer female, at least—had ever entered. An odd realization had come to him when Cathy’s condition had first started to show: that as much as the whole Tenctonese species had become part of life on Earth, and in his life more than that of most humans, he had never seen a pregnant Newcomer woman before. Nobody had, of course; Cathy was the first ever. He supposed a lot of human women went through that phase—his ex-wife had—of staring at themselves in the mirror and thinking, Great, I’ve gotten myself knocked up. Now what? But at least the human women were always able to comfort themselves with the notion that umpty-ump billions of other women had had the same thing happen to them and they’d all gotten through it more or less intact. Of course, some didn’t, but the odds were still basically pretty good. But for Cathy . . . who could tell? The BNA doctors could poke at her and run their ultrasound gizmos all over her round, pumpkin-like belly, and pop her in and out of their CAT scan machines like a frozen dinner going in the microwave, and they still wound up shrugging their shoulders and saying everything seemed fine and normal—if she were human instead of Tenctonese.

  Another odd thought stepped through familiar territory inside his head. Just looking at Cathy, as she fussed with one of the straps of her maternity coveralls—she was still different, in that way that must have been part of the reason he had found her so attractive, the whole exotic trip of her being from some other world. There had been a time, when he had first started getting to know her, that he had despaired of getting past all the difficulties that were involved in a relationship with a Newcomer; it had been hard enough just being able to accept working with George Francisco as a partner. They really are different from us, he thought again. How could they not be? Yet at the same time, there was a part of Cathy that had become just like that of a human female—she might as well have become human, for all the difference it made now.

  “Matt . . . hey, Matt.” A hand waved in front of his face. “You still with us?”

  He blinked and saw Cathy smiling at him. He gave his head a shake, trying to free it of the web of thoughts that had come tangling out of the back reaches of his brain.

  “Yeah, okay . . .” His own smile flashed a sheepish embarrassment in turn. Sikes knew it really didn’t do any good to think about this stuff, at least not now when they were still in the middle of it all. He had enough on his mind just taking care of immediate business. Not just seeing Cathy through this pregnancy jazz, but those other, less pleasant things he had to worry about. His smile faded. The Purists were lying low, but he knew in his gut that they would never be satisfied with having blown up Quinn and his clinic. They were just biding their time.

  He reached down and picked up the suitcases, letting the uniform cop lead the way to the unmarked car at the curb. The warm L.A. sunshine rolled over the sidewalk like a shimmering wave. Sikes noted with grim satisfaction how both this cop and the one sitting behind the wheel kept a constant visual scan of their surroundings. When all the joking around was done, they were still on duty, still working the top-level assignment they had been given, making sure that one pregnant Newcomer female arrived at the hospital safely.

  Sikes felt better when he had gotten the suitcases stowed in the car’s trunk. Now his hands were free, to grab Cathy if necessary and shove her behind himself for protection, and to reach inside his jacket for his own gun.

  The street remained wrapped in its suburban quiet. The uniform cop, who had gotten in beside the driver, looked over his shoulder to the car’s back seat. “All set?”

  “Sure.” Sikes nodded. Beside him, Cathy sat with her hands folded across her rounded abdomen. “Let’s get rolling.”

  Another unmarked car pulled out after them; Sikes glanced back and recognized two plainclothes officers in the vehicle; it was all part of the security arrangements.

  “Don’t worry so much.” Cathy reached over and squeezed his hand. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

  “Hey, I know that.” He leaned back beside her, trying to look relaxed. “It’s like that crack Zepeda over at the station is always making. That from what she’s seen, pregnancy’s rough, but with a lot of support from the woman, the man will get through it just fine.”

  Cathy gave him a smile; that was enough to ease some of the tension out of his shoulders. If he closed his eyes, he knew he would be in danger of falling asleep. That wouldn’t give a very good impression to the two cops sitting up front. Officer Zepeda’s joke had more truth than not in it; he wondered if every expectant father wound up feeling this loaded down with fatigue, or whether it was just the cumulative result of his own sleepless nights catching up with him. Those goddamn dreams . . . that light seeping past the shadowed figure’s hands . . . his own name whispered . . .

  He jerked awake, the back of his head snapping against the car’s seat. Neither Cathy nor the two uniform cops had noticed his little stumble into unconsciousness.

  Turning to the window beside him, Sikes concentrated on scanning the traffic on the road, looking for anything suspicious. He clenched one hand into a fist, using the pump from his arm muscles to keep himself alert.

  It’ll soon be over, he told himself. Nothing to worry about. Everything’s going to be just fine . . .

  She wished he had stayed longer.

  “Don’t worry—” Nurse Eward smiled gently at her. “I imagine he’ll swing back by tonight. He looks like the type who would.”

  Cathy sat in the middle of the hospital bed with the pillows propped up behind her, feeling faintly irritated. Not about Matt having to leave—she knew he had other things to take care of, that he couldn’t stay with her all of the time—but about her own being here. Considering all the time she had spent in hospitals for her job, her career, she supposed she should have been used to it by now. But all that had been on the other side of the relationship between patient and staff. The warden rather than the prisoner, Cathy thought grimly. The thought of there being armed guards just outside the doors of the ward depressed her even more, though she knew in the rational part of her mind th
at they were there to protect her, not to keep her from escaping.

  “I suppose he will,” said Cathy. She wasn’t worried about that. “Hey, don’t mind me, Paula. I’m just having a mood attack.” That was to be expected as well. So now I know what it feels like to be pregnant. All the way pregnant, that is, from start to finish. She had more sympathy for human females, and Tenctonese men, than she’d had before this had all come about. It was a new experience for a Newcomer female, and not one that she was sure she would unreservedly recommend to others. Maybe when it was all over, she’d feel differently about it. In the meantime, she was covering new frontiers in the consciousness of Tenctonese women: this was what it felt like to be a lump, not just that light and airy creature of one’s previous existence, but something heavy and earthbound, with a belly swollen all the way out to there and an aching back and a trés charming flatfooted stance . . .

  “Well,” said the nurse, “it must be a hell of a mood. You look like you’re about ready to murder someone.”

  “It’d have to be somebody slow enough for me to catch.” Cathy lay back against the bank of pillows. On the wall beside the bed a television protruded on a hinged metal arm; on the screen a Tenctonese talk-show hostess poked a boom microphone toward a group of scowling teenage Purist wannabes, their acned faces as spotted as the skulls of the people they hated so fiercely.

  The audio on the TV was already turned down; she was glad when Nurse Eward reached across her and switched off the picture as well. “We don’t need that.” The nurse went back to sorting out and plugging in the room’s vital signs monitors.

  Cathy tried to relax. The nurse’s presence was something to be grateful about, a thread of continuity that had run through her pregnancy from the first day she had been told of it. Paula Eward had been the head nurse at Dr. Quinn’s clinic, she had been there when the doctor had told Cathy what all the tests had revealed, the still-unexplained miracle. She had been so happy when she had finally understood that she had wanted to jump up and fling her arms around the human woman with the short, no-nonsense dark hair and just a few incipient streaks of gray peeking from beneath the white nurse’s cap, just hug her from sheer delight. There hadn’t been time for that, not then; for poor Dr. Quinn, there had been no time at all. After he had shoved her and Matt out the front door of the clinic, he’d just managed to get Paula, the only clinic staff on duty that afternoon, out the back way. The explosion, when it hit, had knocked her sprawling across the asphalt of the small parking lot behind the building; for a couple of weeks afterward, she had worn bandages over her scraped-raw palms and forearms, and another for the flash burn left on the side of her neck.