by K. W. Jeter
He hesitated a moment before saying anything back to the woman. A rhythm had been established a long time ago, a way of working in these kinds of interrogation sessions; now would be the time for George to cut in, verbally hitting the subject from another angle. Things like that had a cumulative effect, chipping away at the defensive armor concealing the truth they had been sent to discover. Bit by bit, the target would be trapped, cornered, and exposed. But it took both of them working together to do it . . .
From the corner of his eye, he glanced over at George. His partner gazed straight ahead, as though looking through Bryant to the wall behind her. Shit—he kicked George’s shin underneath the table. Get with it! he silently yelled.
“You know . . .” George slowly turned his impassive, unnerving scrutiny toward Sikes. “Miss Bryant is right. Time . . . the time is near . . .” His voice echoed spookily in the small room, a pronouncement from afar having been delivered.
Bryant studied George with amusement, then glanced over at Sikes. “What’s his problem?”
“Just can it,” Sikes replied savagely. “We’re the ones asking the questions; you get to answer them.” Though what chance there was of pulling that off now, he didn’t know. The whole process had gone way out of his control. Not only had George failed to pick up on the rhythm of picking away at Bryant’s defenses, he had obviously winged out on that same weird trip he’d been on before. Great time for it, he thought with bitterness. The sonuvabitch couldn’t even pull it together for this much—what the hell’s going on? And in the meantime, Darlene Bryant was sitting there, smirking at both of them. “Look, you wanna brag about how on top of things you are? Fine—why don’t you start by telling us what you know about the bombing of Dr. Quinn’s clinic. I’ll bet you got some prime bits on that one.”
“Bombing?” Bryant widened her eyes with faux innocence. “I’m shocked by the insinuation you seem to be making. You’ve displayed before an irrational prejudice—and a personal one, at that—against anyone trying to resist the parasites’ encroachment upon our world; I suppose that has something to do with your own obvious preference for the company of these creatures. Now I have to wonder if you’ve let that mania overwhelm your professional standards. Why ask me about the bombing of this so-called clinic? Here I sit in prison—largely as a result of the lies you and others have told about me—yet somehow you imagine that I’m to blame for some incident out in the free world. Or perhaps you’d like to think that I climbed over the fence and planted the bomb myself, and then ran all the way back here in time for the evening population check? I’m flattered that you think I’m still capable of such athletic endeavors. I do try to keep fit but after all, Detective, there are limits.”
The woman’s sarcasm grated on Sikes’s nerves. “Cut the crap, Bryant. We all know you don’t even have to step out of your cell here to get what you want done on the outs. You’re still running the HDL—you’ve got your little messenger boys trotting back and forth to get your orders practically every day.”
“And that really bothers you, doesn’t it?” A cold sense of triumph glittered in the woman’s eyes. “It rankles your ass that the Human Defense League and all the other Purists didn’t just wither and blow away in the breeze.” Her voice turned as ugly and harsh as her words, ones that she would never have used in her previous genteel incarnation. “That’s what you really wanted, isn’t it? So the parasites with whom you’re so buddy-buddy—these creatures that you’re so happy to climb into bed with—would have a free hand in taking over this world. Nobody to oppose them, no one to get in the way of the plans they have for the human species—plans that traitors such as yourself are all too willing to be a part of. Well, deal with it: we didn’t go away. We’re still here. We will be fighting the parasites and their collaborators until every single one of them is dead.”
“So I take it you’re admitting that you ordered the hit on Quinn’s clinic.”
“Did I say that? Really, Detective, even if I had done so, I would hardly be trapped so easily into confessing responsibility.” Bryant contemplated the burning tip of her cigarette for a moment. “Though in this case, I can afford to be quite honest with you. The HDL had nothing to do with the destruction of the clinic. Of course, we weren’t entirely displeased that it happened; the late Dr. Quinn was singularly loathsome in his dedication to the welfare of the parasites.”
“Really expect us to believe that?” Sikes gave a snort of disgust. “The HDL is the only Purist organization capable of pulling off an operation of that scale.”
“Perhaps so.” Bryant nodded slowly. “But you reveal just how blinded you are by your own preconceptions. Anything happens that’s not to your liking, that threatens your precious slags, and you come running to blame the Purists. Well, let me tell you something.” She leaned across the table, her voice lowering in pitch. “You can peek up my skirt all you want to, but you’re not going to find what you’re looking for. Quinn and his clinic deserved to be bombed out of existence, but we didn’t do it. There’s more going on here than you even have an inkling of. You’re wasting your time trying to pin this one on the HDL. Quinn had enemies—forces opposed to what he was trying to accomplish—that even he didn’t know about. If he thought he could just blithely go along, trying to cross humans and parasites, and nobody would mind . . . well then, he was certainly proved wrong, wasn’t he?”
In silence, Sikes gazed at the woman, trying to figure her out. Logically, he knew that she was lying, attempting to deflect their investigation from the most likely suspects. There really were no other possibilities besides the HDL. Of all the Purist organizations, they had over the years made the least effort to conceal the violent nature of their opposition to the Newcomers. They had never had any objection to wholesale murder before—after all, Bryant was doing time for her involvement in a scheme to spray a lethal, Newcomer-specific bacteria over the entire Los Angeles basin—so why should they have any scruples about blowing away one man they despised so thoroughly?
At the same time, as he contemplated Bryant’s smug expression, his gut told him something different. His cop instincts, honed to distinguish between lies and the truth, had their red needle swung all the way over to the other side of the dial. Sikes would have pawned his back teeth to put a bet on any horse he had this strong a feeling about. The former beauty queen might be radiating a malevolence just short of weapons-grade plutonium, but she also seemed to be telling the truth, at least as far as the clinic bombing was concerned.
Too weird, mused Sikes. And even scarier. Because if it hadn’t been the HDL’s thugs sneaking around with little ticking packages, that meant somebody else was out there in the dark, somebody the authorities hadn’t even had a glimpse of yet. Another Purist outfit? A group that had both the will and the means to pull off a bombing—maybe a splinter group from the HDL, a bunch who couldn’t put up with Darlene Bryant’s high-handed leadership? Sikes gnawed away at the problem, already sensing that approach led up a blind alley. Bryant’s ill-tempered little diatribe had seemed to suggest some other, entirely different source, somebody not even aligned with the Purists. Quinn had enemies that even he didn’t know about . . .
If that were the case, it would mean starting all over again, from scratch, without the benefit of already knowing who their most likely suspects would be. And there wasn’t time for that, Sikes realized with a sinking heart. Enough time had elapsed for the unknown enemy to regroup its forces and get ready for an attack on another target. First the clinic, and then . . .
Time had been ticking away, measured by cells dividing and reforming, slowly building the embryonic life inside Cathy, giving the unborn child eyes and a quickening heart—perhaps two?—and delicate, perfect fingers. If the murderers of Dr. Quinn were waiting for anything, he knew that it would be the birth of that infant, the mingling of his and Cathy’s blood lines. These shadowy figures hated the yet-to-be-born as much as the innocent ones already walking on this world’s surface.
&nbs
p; A sudden noise interrupted Sikes’s bleak meditations. The door behind Bryant swung open. A human male in a three-piece Brooks Brothers suit stepped past the prison matron into the interview room. Sikes recognized the man from the times he had seen him in court.
“All right, that’s it,” said the HDL attorney. He thrust a sheaf of official-looking documents toward Sikes. “This little session is at an end. We’re not living in a police state yet, much as you’d like that.”
He paid scant attention to the rest of the attorney’s blather, having heard most of it before. Something about the previous judge’s order being set aside, appellant’s right to privacy, the state’s failure to show compelling need—
“Whatever.” Sikes pushed aside the injunction papers. “You can send those over to the department; I don’t wanna look at them. We were just about done here, anyway.” He glanced over at Bryant. “Nice seeing you again, Darlene. Maybe if you stay on your best behavior, you’ll get out of here before your hair turns completely gray.”
George was still gazing ahead of himself, lost in whatever thoughts had come to preoccupy him. Maintaining his air of abstraction, he stood up when Sikes nudged him in the shoulder.
“Come on,” said Sikes. “I really need a change of air.” He pulled open the interview room’s other door, without even looking over his shoulder to see if his partner was following him out.
On the outskirts of the city, he finally spoke up.
All the way back from the women’s prison, George had been aware of Matt, simmering—almost boiling over, actually—with a barely controlled anger. He supposed that was only to be expected. Matt stared straight ahead through the windshield, scowling darkly at every vehicle that came within his line of vision, cranking the steering wheel and punching the accelerator, working the squad car through the dense lanes of traffic. He knew better than to say anything about the quality of his partner’s driving.
He had come up from his own deep, wordless meditations, as though rising through an unlit ocean, emerging at last into the small bubble of air held by the car. Everything that had happened at the prison, that confrontation with a vector of evil named Darlene Bryant, and before, when Sikes had actually blown his top and started shouting at him, passed in his memory like a filmed reenactment on television. He could see someone who looked like himself, and whom others addressed as George Francisco, but he knew somehow it really wasn’t him. His soul, the innermost part of him, was still somewhere else. A place where he lifted his gaze toward the light streaming past a shadowed figure’s outstretched hands . . .
One true thing had been spoken in that airless room that had held Sikes and Bryant and that empty creature who bore his own name and face. The human woman hadn’t intended to say it that way, but he had heard and known the meaning behind the words. She’s right, he remembered telling Sikes. The time is near.
“Matt . . .” His voice, so little used recently, sounded strange in his ear canals. He cleared his throat and spoke louder. “Pull the car over.”
“Huh?” Sikes glanced at him. “Now what?”
“Pull the car over,” he repeated. “And stop.”
Sikes rolled his eyes upward, but did as George had requested. The freeway traffic roared past the car.
“So we’re going to have a little conference, right here?” Sikes rested one of his hands on the steering wheel. “Sure, why the hell not? You spend so little time these days in the same world as the rest of us, I suppose I have to grab whatever chance comes along to get two words in a row out of you.”
He ignored the comment. There was no point in explaining; not now.
Sikes’s anger turned to puzzlement, then alarm, as he watched his partner open the passenger side door and step out. “What the hell you doing, George?”
Everything seemed clear and bright now, as though a great calm had descended upon his soul. Even the roar of the freeway traffic sounded as gentle as a stream tumbling over water-smoothed rocks. He reached into his coat and extracted his wallet.
“Here—” George plucked out his Detective Two identification and held it through the window toward his partner, his former partner, that was all ended now. “I won’t be needing these anymore.”
“What!” Sikes stared at him in astonishment. “Are you crazy?”
He tossed the ID onto the empty seat. “Give Captain Grazer my apologies for not giving proper notice. But soon he’ll understand as well.”
As he turned and walked away, the wind from the traffic fluttering his coat and trousers, he could hear Sikes scrambling out of the squad car.
“You’re outta your mind!” Sikes shouted after him. The driver side door slammed like a cannon shot. “You don’t need sleep, you need a friggin’ brain transplant!”
George knew that if he looked back over his shoulder, he’d see the human that had been his friend red-faced, his teeth clenched with anger.
“Fine!” Sikes’s voice cut through the noise of the vehicles rocketing past. “Go ahead, crap out on me—I should’ve known you’d do it some day!”
Enough of his twin hearts remained behind that the human’s words stung him. But there could be no turning back. Not now.
He kept his head down and continued walking along the freeway shoulder and toward the destiny that had been revealed to him.
C H A P T E R 1 1
“ALL RIGHT, NOW—bear down. Breathe through your mouth.”
She looked past the doctor and the rest of the white-masked faces, toward the ceiling of the delivery room. “I have been pushing.” In Cathy’s ear canals, her own voice sounded more peevish and annoyed than anything else. There was no pain so far, or at least not much. She wondered precisely what anaesthetic had been in the epidural the doctors had given her. Would it have been what human women usually got, or a Tenctonese dosage? Maybe, given the circumstances, a little of both.
So this is what it’s like, thought Cathy. This last bit seemed to be mainly hard work; she supposed that was why they called it labor.
“Won’t be much longer now.” The surgical mask slightly muffled Nurse Eward’s voice. She leaned over and wiped the beads of perspiration from Cathy’s brow. “We’re not quite at the home stretch, but pretty soon.”
“Did Matt get here?” Cathy raised her head from the pillow to look around. The delivery room looked like a convention of every doctor and scientist the BNA had ever sent over to take a look at her. So much for privacy; she had already wondered why they didn’t just put the whole show on television—who was there left to let in on the big secret? “I don’t see him—” She was sure she would have recognized him, even behind the sterilized disguises.
“We called him, right after your water broke. He knows just where you’re at in the process.” The nurse gently pushed her back down. “Don’t worry—I’m sure he’s on his way. With the siren on and everything.”
“That’s typical.” Cathy figured she had earned the right to complain about all the same things that human women did. The dutiful father-to-be puts in all that attention and time—she had gone full-term, the complete nine months—and then when the pay-off comes, he’s nowhere to be found. “If he doesn’t get here soon, I’m going to have to do everything myself.”
“You’re not quite on your own,” Nurse Eward said drily.
She rode out the last of the contraction, a fairly mild one, and shook her head. “Yeah, you’re right; being alone isn’t the problem around here.” Her reply was tinged with irritability. “Am I crowding you folks? Maybe I could wait in the hallway until it’s over.”
Nurse Eward turned toward the lead doctor. “Perhaps we should’ve given her a general anaesthetic.”
“Here it comes.” She pointed to the television screen. “I knew it was going to be on again.”
Buck Francisco already felt strange, sitting beside his kid sister Emily on the sofa in his parents’ house. It had been his house as well, a long time ago—not even a year, but it seemed a lot longer than that. So much had changed
—not in the house; it was still full of the overstuffed tert furniture that their father preferred, sitting in the middle of the bright washes of color that their mother had splashed around during her return-to-Tenctonese-culture period—but in himself. He still couldn’t figure out whether those changes came out to either a gain or a loss.
“Where’s Mom?” Buck glanced toward the kitchen.
“I told you—she took Vessna out to the park. She does that every Wednesday afternoon, there’s like an infant play group or something. Now be quiet.” Emily punched her small fist into her brother’s leg. “You gotta pay attention to this.”
“. . . strange new cult sweeping through the local Newcomer population . . .” The voice from the TV went louder as Buck picked up the remote control from the coffee table and thumbed the volume button. He recognized the human on the screen, talking into a microphone with the station’s call letters around it, as a news reporter for whom their father had always had an acute dislike. The screen didn’t have the word “live” in the corner, so it had to be a rebroadcast. “Clashes between the group and followers of the traditional Celinite religion have been on the increase over the last several months, but never on a scale like today’s events.” The camera angle turned slightly away from the man, taking in a scene full of paramedic vans and police black-and-whites. Heads were being bandaged by the people in the white outfits, while the uniformed cops were busy leading away those who had already been handcuffed.
“Big deal,” said Buck. His sister had called him up—he’d had to go down to pay phone in the hotel’s seedy lobby to talk with her—and had carried on like there was some big emergency. All that just to get him to come over and see this? It was old news already; he’d heard over the radio that morning about the mini-riot out in the city’s warehouse district. There was always some kind of action like this happening somewhere in L.A.; he figured that was what urban life was basically all about. “Em, you can’t get all torqued about every little thing you see on the news.”