Alien Nation #2 - Dark Horizon

by K. W. Jeter

  Daylight silhouetted Bukowski at the tunnel’s mouth. It seemed to dazzle him for a moment; he looked back over his shoulder at the police car, the engine noise booming in the narrow space. Then he swung the bike off the road, cutting across the damp grass.

  George swung the steering wheel again, trying to follow. Off the asphalt, the rear wheels lost traction, fishtailing the car sideways, gouging twin crescents of raw mud behind.

  The sudden halt rocked Sikes back against the seat. “Jerk!” He twisted around in the passenger seat, anger flaring across his face. “You did this just so you could lord it over me! You wanted to show what a super cop you are—now you’ve lost him!”

  “We’ll see . . .” George’s face was set rigid as he stomped the accelerator. Gravel spattered from the road’s edge as George wrestled the car back onto the asphalt.

  The road curved down toward the park’s exit. Dense city traffic filled the streets beyond. The inside door handle slammed into the small of Sikes’s back as George kept the accelerator floored.

  A dark line ran across the hillside, with the bicycle at one end. The slope here was steep enough that Bukowski had let the bike race free; head down, he gripped the bars and barreled toward the gates.

  “There he is—”

  George got the car ahead on the road, then jammed the brakes and twisted the wheel at the same time. The car rocked onto one side, coming close to rolling over with its checked momentum. It settled down with a heavy whump, a second before the bicycle hit the right fender, sending Bukowski catapulting over the hood.

  He landed in the heavy brush beside the road. Sikes was already out of the car and pulling his handcuffs from his belt; the suspect looked dazed, and scratched and bleeding from the branches, but otherwise unhurt.

  Leisurely George slid out from behind the wheel and stood watching. “Lost him, have I?”

  Sikes ignored the smug voice behind him. He used the cuffs on Bukowski’s wrists to lift him to his feet. “You’re under arrest. You know your rights?”

  “Huh . . . ?” Bukowski was too out of it to even know where he was.

  “Don’t worry—Detective Two Francisco will be happy to explain them to you.” He pushed the stumbling Bukowski toward the car.

  She had called Matt at the station again, and she hadn’t even known why. Maybe just to talk, to hear his voice.

  Cathy sat on the rooftop of the apartment building, waiting for the last of the day’s smoky light to fade. Behind and above her, the first bright stars were just visible.

  The telescope stood on its spidery tripod next to her. She hadn’t touched it, hadn’t bothered taking off the caps and wiping the lenses. Space Lab was somewhere over Australia right now, turning slowly in the distant, empty sky . . .

  She hadn’t gotten Matt when she’d called, but had been told that he couldn’t come to the phone right then. There had been a break in the case he was working on, the Kaiser and Bogg murders. That was good; it would give him something to throw all his frustrated, pacing energy into. But in the meantime, it was a matter of being told to leave a message and he’d get back to you. Maybe.

  And that was all right, too. It gave her a little time to be by herself. Gazing up at the ocean of stars, that had always comforted her.

  For a moment her twin hearts paused in their beating, a sudden gap in life and breath. If she’d been human, she would’ve thought a chill had touched her skin, despite the warmth of the night air. She had seen humans, Matt included, get gooseflesh, the fine hairs on their arms lifting, heads turning slowly to look behind and see what had caused that sense of foreboding.

  Her pulse caught its rhythm again, but that sense didn’t fade away. Maybe it came from living on this Earth for so long, among this other species whose real home it was—but she would’ve sworn she had felt the inexplicable cold as well, a trace of ice against her nerve endings.

  Darker now, with only a smudge of red behind the city’s horizon. A blanket of stars—she looked up at them, but now found no comfort in them. The impulse struck her, to run down the stairs and hide in her own apartment, hide from a cold, pitiless scrutiny.

  That’s stupid—she told herself that, and forced herself to stay where she was. She was just upset about Matt, the way things were going; that was all.

  She tilted her head back, gazing up at the mute stars. The coldness stayed with her.

  C H A P T E R 8

  THE NETWORKS DIDN’T do any late afternoon news shows, and there had been nothing on CNN about it. But on one of the independent stations, where they always had more detail on the Los Angeles stories, the face came up, superimposed in a video-effects box above the local anchor’s left shoulder. The face of Michael Bukowski.

  She leaned back in the sofa of Italian leather, watching the screen, paying little attention to the words. In Darlene Bryant’s hand was a stemmed glass filled with mineral water and just a splash of white wine. She still carried the same weight she’d been at when she’d competed in the beauty pageants; she’d made an iron resolution to die at that weight. All the tension of the last several months, escalating even higher over the last few days, had been a sore test of that vow. Anger and adrenaline made her hungry; a righteous fury had gathered in her body, and she wanted to sink her capped teeth into red meat, raw as the meat the parasites ate . . .

  Her stomach panged, and she ignored it. She forced herself to gaze at the still shot of Michael Bukowski’s face. Really a disgrace to humanity; he looked like poor genetic material.

  “That’s the one.” Guerin stood behind the sofa, also watching the television screen. She didn’t have to turn around to know that he was standing there with his thick-muscled arms folded across the bulk of his chest. Feet apart, a military stance. “A real flake.”

  She had been driving back from the Malibu colony when she had heard this person’s name on the radio. Out there, to the murmur of the surf rolling in beyond towering plate-glass windows, she had been given an envelope with a respectable sum of money in it—cash, so it couldn’t be traced back to the human telecommunications magnate who cozied up to parasites at public events, and only revealed his true feelings in private. The envelope was still in her purse. She would take out an appropriate piece of the contents, for her own justifiably high expenses. After all, her followers needed an image of perfection—human perfection—to look up to. The rest would go to fund the Purists.

  So much money was needed. To do so many things.

  “And you told him then?” Bryant sipped from the glass. “To go away, and not to come back?”

  That was a problem with running an organization with a heroic agenda. It tended to attract the loose cannons of the world. The flakes and loonies. The Michael Bukowskis.

  It irritated her to see humans of proven mettle and courage, such as the officers and detectives who’d been so rude to her down at the police station, fail to respond to the call in their own species’ hour of crisis. And instead, place themselves under the yoke of the creatures who plotted to be their oppressors . . .

  “I told him,” said Guerin. “And I made sure he understood.” Again, she knew without looking how his right fist would clench, as though the heavy bones and flesh were enjoying the memory coiled within.

  “Good.” The news had changed to something else. On the screen, the mayor and a smiling parasite female lifted a giant pair of scissors together and cut through a ribbon in front of a new housing project. The image of the two so close to each other made Bryant’s skin crawl.

  “They can’t hook him up with us.”

  “That’s wonderful.” With things so close to fruition—all their dreams and plans, their greatest goal, all about to come to pass—they didn’t need interference from a misfit like Michael Bukowski.

  Even the smallest of gnats could feel the intricate gears of a Swiss watch. And now, with so much at stake, that couldn’t be allowed to happen.

  She smiled as she took another sip. The police, without their even knowing it, had
also done a good job, by taking the flake off the streets, where he might get in the way. A very good job, indeed . . .

  When they brought him in, the suspect wouldn’t talk. For a good three, close to four hours, Bukowski sat in one of the interview rooms, huddled up on a wooden chair, hugging himself with his arms, gaze fastened to the worn linoleum of the floor. And not talking.

  “Okay . . .” Sikes came out of the room, closing the door behind himself. A uniformed officer was Still inside, keeping watch on Bukowski, to make sure he didn’t try to chew his wrists open. “I think he’s ready to spill.” Sikes felt sweaty and exhausted, right down into his muscles. That was what time spent with a mental case, becoming his best friend in all the world, or at least this scary, dark place, always did to him. Cozying inside a ding’s head, making sure he knew he was all safe and protected—it was like lifting weights, big, stupid, nervous ones.

  George reached for the door handle. “Let’s go, then.”

  He caught George’s wrist. “Try and hold back a little, all right? You’re what he’s afraid of.”

  Bukowski kept his eyes down as they stepped into the room. “I didn’t kill them,” he mumbled. “I didn’t kill anybody.”

  “Come on, Michael.” Sikes held up a piece of paper, a Xerox copy. “What about this letter you wrote to Judge Kaiser? We can prove you wrote it.” He laid a hand on Bukowski’s shoulder. “You were threatening him pretty bad, Mike . . .”

  “I know . . . I know I did . . .”

  George spoke up, from close to the door. “Then you wrote a letter claiming responsibility for the deaths of both Judge Kaiser and Dr. Bogg.”

  “He’s trying to look me in the eye.” Spine hunched tighter, Bukowski looked over his shoulder at George, then back to Sikes. “Tell him . . .” The voice was a hoarse whisper. “Tell him not to look me in the eye.”

  “Sure, no problem. Take it easy.” He gestured for George to stand farther back. “Now, what about that second letter?”

  “I had to do something. But it wasn’t real . . . I just wanted to scare people.”

  “People,” said George. “You mean Newcomers.”

  “I saw on the news about those guys getting killed . . . It gave me the idea.”

  “Okay.” Sikes nodded. Now, this organization of yours—this National Purist Front. Who else is in it?”

  “Nobody . . .” Sweat flew from Bukowski’s brow as he shook his head. “There isn’t any Purist Front. I made it up.” His eyes looked even more desperate than before. “Honest. I swear, there’s no Front, and I didn’t do anything. I swear!”

  “If you’re innocent,” said George, “why did you run from us? At the park.”

  “You know why.” Bukowski’s voice dropped as he crouched lower in the chair. His whisper was meant only for Sikes, standing next to him. “’Cause of him—I was scared—I know what they’re trying to do. And they know. That I know.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “They’re trying to take over. They’re trying to control us. Make us their slaves.” Bukowski leaned in closer, voice strained and fervent. “It’s their eyes. They’ve got like radar beams in their eyes. They can get right inside your brain, and then they can make you do whatever they want.” Bukowski pushed himself a little way up from the chair, bringing his face right up to Sikes. “Don’t ever look ’em in the eye. That’s how they get ya.”

  Part of him, inside his head, was laughing and trying not to show it on the outside, the part that wanted to push Bukowski back down in the chair and say to him, You poor idiot—you’re missing a few bricks, aren’t you? The guy needed help . . .

  You shouldn’t look them in the eye. That was good advice, Sikes had known it for a long time, except it didn’t apply to Newcomers, but to nut cases like Bukowski. Because the crazy eyes looked right into his own, burrowed inside his skull, and slid underneath a carefully locked door and connected with some other part of him. A part that had been scraped raw and irritated over the last few days. Then he wasn’t laughing at Bukowski, but listening to a voice, his own voice. And it said, What if he’s not crazy? What if they made him crazy? Because he knows what you don’t . . .

  Sikes closed his eyes, sealing himself into darkness for a moment.

  . . . you don’t know where they came from, you don’t know what they want, what they really really want, you don’t know anything about them at all . . .

  “Okay . . .” He opened his eyes and stepped back, taking a deep breath. He signaled to the uniformed officer standing by the door. “Get him out of here. Put him someplace with nice, soft walls.” Sikes shook his head as though trying to get the blood flowing again to his brain, like waking up from daylight sleep.

  He and George stood in the hallway, watching the officer lead the handcuffed Bukowski away.

  “Poor fellow.” George had on his sad, concerned face. “Clearly a paranoid schizophrenic.”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” The voice inside Sikes’s head was now so far away that he could joke about it. That was a way of putting another lock on the door. “I thought he actually made a few good points there—all that stuff about you guys wanting to take over.”

  “This isn’t funny, Matthew.”

  “Who’s laughing?” He started walking toward the squad room. He glanced over his shoulder. “By the way, where’d you learn to drive? Some school for kamikaze pilots?”

  “No—Sears, actually. I didn’t quite finish the course . . .”

  “Forget it.”

  George caught up with him and pulled him around by the arm. “You know what’s really bothering you? What’s really bothering you is that things have changed. Between me and you. I’m no longer that nice little slag you could order around.”

  A second, then another, ticked by as Sikes looked at George. He had never heard him use that word before. “That’s a load of crap,” he said finally. “Like I care—”

  George’s face grew even angrier as he cut Sikes off. “So I’m not supposed to know what’s going on with you—right?”

  He let his shoulders slump as he gazed up at the ceiling. “Okay, so what’s going on? You tell me.”

  “You think I’m uppity, don’t you?” George set his hands on his hips as he glared at Sikes. “That’s the right word, isn’t it? You’re always so concerned about my vocabulary; maybe you didn’t think I’d know that one.” George twisted his voice into a parody of a southern cracker accent. “Ah gots nuthin’ agin ’em—long’s they stays in their place.”

  “You,” said Sikes, “are out of your friggin’ mind. Of all the bullshit ideas you’ve ever come up with . . .” He shook his head. “Look, just get out of my way, all right? I got work to do.”

  George stayed planted in front of him. A finger jabbed into Sikes’s chest. “You’ve been this way ever since I got the promotion—”

  He knocked George’s hand away. “Promotion?” His own temper came roaring up his bloodstream. “I could give a shit about your goddamn promotion! What the problem is, is this attitude of yours! You made Detective Two, and so now you’re rubbing my face in it!”

  George looked offended. “I have not.”

  “You have, too! And I don’t have to stand around here and listen to any more of it!” He used his forearm to knock George back against the corridor wall.

  “I’m not finished!” George’s shout came after him. “You can’t walk away!”

  He didn’t stop. “Watch me!”

  “All right! Go ahead!” The shout echoed down the hallway. “I forgot to tell you—there’s a pay raise that comes with the promotion! Detective Twos make a hundred and twenty-five dollars a week more!”

  So choke on it, thought Sikes.

  “It adds up!” Farther away now. “You figure it out; it comes to over six thousand . . .”

  He turned the corner, and slammed a door behind himself, and didn’t have to hear any more.

  Cathy would be waiting for him—Sikes hadn’t forgotten that she’d called before and
invited him to her place for dinner. But he took the time, after leaving the station, to stop at a bar, a different one from that depress-o cop hangout he’d hit the day before. A nice place, with polished-chrome Art Deco trim, and framed pastel artwork on the walls, and people who, if they weren’t all pastel in the skins, were nice and white-bread and upwardly mobile inside their heads. Junior associates from the downtown law offices, blacks and whites and Hispanics—and Newcomers—all in their Brooks Brothers suits, and the women in the de rigueur equivalent, with those floppy bows at their throats. Some other city besides L.A., he might’ve felt out of place, conspicuous in his leather jacket and beater Nikes, but the few glances he got only indicated that people couldn’t tell whether he might be hooked up with the movie biz.

  Sitting at the bar, he pulled his glass away from the damp napkin and took down another fraction of an inch of Glenfiddich. It was his second, and he was going to stop at that. The whole point of this detour was to unwind—at least slack the tension on his coiled mainspring a little bit—before he showed up at Cathy’s. That shouting match with George—correction, Detective Two George Francisco—had left him sour and pissed off for the whole day. There had been an almost visible pall of heavy mood hanging over their desks in the squad room, like the stink of burning tires, silence palpable enough that Zepeda had come in, made some comment he hadn’t even caught, and then turned and walked right back out. Everybody in the station knew—you didn’t have to be a detective, of any grade, to have heard the words bouncing down the walls.

  He hadn’t wanted to take that murderous atmosphere along with him to Cathy’s. He’d known remedial steps were necessary when he’d been sitting at his squad-room desk, staring at the Kaiser/Bogg file, and had realized—for that moment, at least—he didn’t care who had put them on ice. Maybe these Purists didn’t have such loony notions, after all . . .

  Screw that, he told himself as he emptied the glass, the single ice cube bumping against his lip. He didn’t have a problem with Newcomers; it was just George and his goddamn supercop, show-off attitude. And now he was going to go over to Cathy’s place and enjoy her company, to prove he didn’t have anything against people with spots all over their heads.