Alien Eyes

by Lynn Hightower

  Ogden shifted sideways. “There are indications that this is a possibility. At this point in time, I can’t say for sure. We’re following leads. It’s a new crime in Saigo City—”

  “The first was about two years ago, wasn’t it?”

  “Eighteen months.”

  “Nineteen months,” David said.

  West leaned forward. “And so far there have been three arrests.”

  “No arrests.” Ogden leaned back in his chair. “We’ve had several people questioned, we’re following leads, but—”

  “Would you say any arrests are imminent?”

  “No, I would not.”

  “Commander, are you looking into the possibility that these murders are committed by Izicho—Elaki secret police—to keep Elaki in line?”

  “We’re looking into every possibility. Every reasonable possibility. Please keep in mind that the victims are human, as well as Elaki.”

  “Don’t most of the victims—human and Elaki—have some kind of tie to the Guardians? Don’t you find it interesting that these invasions began eighteen months ago? About the same time Angel Eyes became a lecturer at the Edmund University School of Diplomacy?”

  “It’s an area we’re looking into. One of many. I can’t compromise the investigation by leaking sensitive information.”

  “But don’t you have Elaki working on these cases? Elaki Izicho secret police? Elaki with a vested interest in—”

  “In what, Ms. West? There’s no proof, no hard evidence, that Elaki Izicho are responsible for the invasions. We’re bending over backward to have a clean investigation. We’ve just now added Elaki officers whose politics are actually pro Guardian, or who have no politics, and who are unquestionably not a part of the Izicho, or any police or government hierarchy.”

  “So you don’t trust your own people?”

  Ogden smiled. “That’s a cheap shot, Enid. Certainly I do. They wouldn’t be there if I didn’t. I’m new to this investigation, but it’s going to be clean and it’s going to be tough. The mayor has promised funds and support. So long as I get those funds, so long as I get that support, we’ll get the job done.”

  “Commander, how can you run a clean shop, how can we, the people, be assured of a clean shop, when you call media blackout during a case? Just last night an Elaki Mother-One was found inside her home with four dead pouchlings. Why did you shut us out?”

  “That was a piss poor decision made by a captain I will not name, but whom I assure you has been reprimanded.”

  David opened his mouth, then shut it. He looked at Halliday.

  Ogden leaned forward. “And I will remind you the blackout was temporary, and that the captain himself reversed the order.”

  “Once the action was over.”

  “The officer on the scene makes the decision. That’s standard operating procedure. If he makes a wrong one, we talk about it. We talked about it. He wasn’t in my jurisdiction yesterday. He is today. It won’t happen again.”

  “Word is this Mother-One killed her own pouchlings.”

  “Yes.”

  “And yet.” West cocked her head sideways. “Here is one more incident involving an Elaki with ties to the Guardians.” She turned to Angel Eyes. “Did you know this Mother-One? I believe her name is Dahmi?”

  Angel Eyes was silent a long moment. “Yes,” she said finally, softly.

  “What kind of Mother-One was she?”

  “I did not know her well. But she seemed quite devoted, quite loving.”

  “How do you explain what happened?”

  Angel Eyes made an odd gesture with her fins. “Who is to judge? Who is to know the mind of a Mother-One most desperate? I can only ask that Elaki and human please to think carefully, and with compassion, toward a Mother-One in trouble. And, I can only say, it is my sincere hope that her association with me, her attendance and interest in my lectures, had nothing to do with what happen yesterday.”

  SEVEN

  “Roger.” David looked steadily at Halliday. “here, or in private?”

  “Meeting’s over.” Halliday stood up. “Pete, take care of Ash, Walker, and Thinker. Introduce them around. Find them some space.”

  Della picked up the scales String had shed near her coffee cup. “You want these back?”

  String twisted toward her. “Odd request. Granted.” He glided out of the room.

  “David?” Halliday said. “My office.”

  “Give him hell,” Mel said, under his breath.

  David followed him out.

  Halliday settled behind his desk, pulled the tie loose from his collar, and tossed it over the lamp shade.

  “Sit down, David.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Halliday cocked his head sideways.

  “You covered for me,” David said. “Why?”

  “It was a bad call, David. Under the circumstances. We’re in deep right now. It changes things.”

  “The pouchlings might have been alive. There was no way we could know. It is contraindicated—look it up in the manual, Roger—contraindicated, in a hostage situation, for the perps to watch what’s going on on TV.”

  “This time—”

  “This time hell. It’s not done. You let them blackmail us into doing it, on the basis of political climate or a goddamn presidential decree, and you jeopardize hostages. I stand by that. When you cover for me, I can’t stand by that.”

  “Exactly,” Halliday said. “If you want to discuss it, sit.”

  David sat. He folded his arms, one shoulder higher than the other.

  “I’m an administrator, David, and a cop. Most of the fieldwork falls to you and the rest of the team. My job is to field the bureaucratic crap, so you can do your job, you follow? I’m not here to see you punch your time clock. I’m here to see that people like Ogden don’t tie you up in red tape and politics so you can’t do what you do best.

  “And you’re not in his league, David. I’m not in his league. It would have made him look sweet in that interview to be able to say the cop that called the blackout has been fired. And he’d do it. And justify it with the politics, and never give a flying fuck about your years with the department, your depth and breadth of experience, your wife, your kids, or your state of indebtedness. You hear what I’m saying?”

  “Why didn’t he fire you?”

  “Because I’m a captain. Some ways I’m easier to hit, some ways I’m harder. And I got friends. This time he didn’t push. I figure he’s biding his time. He may get me yet, before this is over. Depends on how the investigation goes.”

  David frowned. He thought of walking out the door. “I don’t like the Elaki.”

  “Walker, Ash, and Thinker?”

  “They’re here to investigate us while we investigate.”

  “They’re here to assist.”

  “That so? What are their qualifications? Past police work?”

  “None.”

  “Law enforcement degrees?”

  “Elaki don’t have degrees.”

  “They don’t have their street degrees, Roger. They’re not like String, they don’t have street eyes, they don’t have instinct, they’re not cops.”

  “Then train them.”

  “Train … in the middle of an investigation like this?”

  “I got no choice, David. If I got no choice, you got no choice.”

  David looked through the door, clenched and unclenched his fist.

  The memory of Dahmi—netted, restrained, mourning her pouchlings—was strong in his mind. And the last cho invasion. He could see it at night when he closed his eyes. He could smell it.

  He leaned back in his chair.

  “If there’s any way, David, any way at all. I’ll jerk a knot in Ogden’s tail.”

  “There won’t be a way,” David said. “I’ve been this road before.”

  EIGHT

  There were three reasons why they didn’t wind up at the usual bar or taco stand. They wanted privacy from other cops, the lunch
crowds were thicker than usual, and Della had a craving for frozen yogurt.

  David sat on a spindly metal chair that had a heart-shaped yellow back and a butter-soft cushion.

  “This chair was made for smaller butts than mine,” Mel said.

  Della sat happily across from him, dipping a long-handled spoon into a waffle cone full of papaya yogurt. String stood beside the table, swaying back and forth. He crunched an empty cone, and pieces fell off and landed in his scales.

  “I just love how you said that, David.” Della scooped a large hunk of yogurt up in her spoon. She lowered her voice, sounding gruff. “‘You cover for me, and I can’t stand behind it.’”

  David finished off his coffee and set the cup down on the table. “How’d you know what I said?”

  Mel looked at String, who looked at Della, who looked at Mel. David cocked his head sideways, remembering how they’d been huddled together at Mel’s desk, pretending not to notice when he came out.

  “Could everybody in the precinct hear us?”

  “Ah, no,” Mel said. “Della only told us what was going on.”

  “How did she know?” David looked at Della, who was rotating the waffle cone in her hands, steadily nibbling the edges.

  “She can read the silent words,” String said.

  “What?”

  Mel took a slurp of his yogurt shake and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “She reads lips.”

  David leaned back in his chair. He picked his coffee cup up, saw it was empty, set it down.

  “Tell me.” He looked at String. “Why does an Elaki Mother-One kill her pouchlings? What makes it happen?”

  “It does not happen,” String said.

  “It happened.” Mel looked at Della’s cone. “That papaya any good?”

  “String,” David said. “People, humans, love their children. But strong as that is, people hurt their children. Sometimes they’re evil. Sometimes they’re reacting to pressures. And sometimes—sometimes they are so deeply disturbed, they do it for reasons no sane person can understand.”

  Mel waved a hand. “We get them like they go paranoid delusional. Like—you remember that one drowned her baby, David? And to hear her talk, she loved the kid. Loved it so much she killed it, so it wouldn’t have to go to junior high school, I think she said. Isn’t that what she said?”

  “Elaki not like human.” String puffed his belly slits and grew bigger. “Elaki not go out of the bonkers.”

  “Out of the bonkers?” Mel mouthed at David.

  “We do not have the child abuse, as you have it. It is not to be a part of our society.”

  “You said before.” David frowned. “Something about her chemaki. She was without her—”

  “A chemaki is the sexual unit,” String said.

  The man sitting at the next table stopped eating.

  “Five, six, maybe seven Elaki. Male and female. Usually four male to two female. This grouping is more than just the line copulation. We are not to be like the married the one on one. But the chemaki forms the base set of support. All to look out for the other. Pouchlings raised by the Mother-One, who becomes … um … there is no human word. Bepouched?”

  “Impouchnated,” Mel said.

  “Impouchnated,” String said thoughtfully. “The female can choose to become impouchnated at her own … um … timing? Timing. But all of chemaki responsible. Males to keep lookout. Available for whenever help necessary. Other females, too. All do not choose to bear young. But always one female in chemaki will. Choose to bear young. And that female is the … the spart? Spark. The beginning. Is hard to explain.”

  David folded his arms, one shoulder higher than the other. “If Dahmi was separated from her chemaki. Could she be under so much pressure she would snap?”

  “No,” String said.

  “Just no? Never happens?” Mel asked.

  String turned his back. Some of his scales slid to the floor. Della picked them up.

  “What we going to do,” Della said, “about these other guys? This Ash and Tinker and … what was the other one?”

  “Dopey.”

  “C’mon, Burnett, be serious here.”

  He handed her a napkin. “Left corner of your mouth. No, sweetheart, higher. Lean close and I’ll lick it off.”

  “Serve you right if I did.”

  “Chicken,” Mel said. “Hey, Gumby, turn around here and tell us what you think of the new Elaki.”

  String twisted sideways. A slow steamy hiss came from his belly slits. “Not Izicho. Not police. Most stupid, sly, not to be trusted. You have the word. It is …”

  “Snake?” Mel asked.

  “No, not it.”

  “Pig?”

  “What’s with the animals, Burnett?” Della said.

  “Runs in the family.”

  “How about spy? Traitor?”

  “No no.”

  David rocked his coffee cup back and forth. “Bureaucrat.”

  “This is just the beginning,” Della said. “Under Ogden? We’re in for a lot of shit.”

  “One thing at a time,” Mel said. “We got to decide about the Elaki-Three.”

  “Freeze them out,” David said.

  Della shook her head. “Ogden won’t like it.”

  “Ogden don’t have to.” Mel drank the last of his milk shake, then tossed it in the trash.

  “Clue Pete in, Della,” David said. “Official reports that go to Ogden—make them long, dreary, no information.”

  “Just let Pete write them,” Mel said.

  “Burnett, you wouldn’t know a good report. How about that one you wrote. Let’s see. Went like ‘guy died, stuck by some creep in an alley.’” She looked at David. “He actually wrote that.”

  “Dictated it.”

  “Whatever.”

  “That was an accident, Della. It got bumped out before my auto-editor turned it into proper police jargon.”

  David cocked his head. “Della. Is there any way you can tinker with the translator on the computers, so that when it compiles our input into a formal report, it doubles the jargon—gets murky and hard to make sense of?”

  “Yeah, just let Mel do it.”

  “Seriously.”

  Della chewed her lip. “Maybe.” She sat up. “We could use an earlier version—before they worked the bugs out. Let me talk to the software guy.”

  “Quiet on it,” David said.

  Della nodded.

  NINE

  The Elaki neighborhood was peaceful, sleepy in the afternoon heat. String’s van slowed as soon as it hit the narrow, residential streets. David took a breath. He would never get used to standing up in a car. No matter how tightly he held the strap, he swayed from side to side, slamming into Mel, or the side panel of the van.

  Mel grinned at him. “Imagine doing this drunk?”

  “People used to drive that way,” David said. “Before roads had tracks, even.”

  “Ought to be illegal.”

  “It was.”

  “Blue fifty-two,” the van said.

  David looked out the window. He didn’t see anything blue. He would never understand Elaki addressing systems.

  The shockee was tall and narrow, the yard hard-packed, reddish-brown dirt.

  String looked out the window. “Nice landscaping.”

  Mel looked at David, who shrugged.

  The shockee was painted with an iridescent pastel glaze that gave the raw wood gloss and glimmer. Mel stood back and cocked his head to one side.

  “I guess it’s like if you glaze a cake, instead of ice it. Like Rose does, you know? For the lemon ones.”

  David looked over his shoulder. Dahmi’s shockee was still sealed with crime scene stamps that winked and glimmered on the doors and windows. He wondered if she was still under restraint. He wondered if she knew what she had done.

  She knew. Which meant she wasn’t crazy. But in order to do what she had done, and be who he thought she was, she’d have to be crazy. Only String said Elaki d
idn’t snap.

  The door to the shockee opened and an Elaki Mother-One rolled out. Two pouchlings followed a foot behind, jostling each other for position. They craned around the wide, flowing fins of their Mother-One. They were both small.

  “You have brought the pouchlings?”

  David looked at String, then back to the Mother-One. She had a beautiful voice: rich, deep, youthful. Her inner coloring was scarlet, her outer scales a soft dove-grey. Her fringe scales were like the ivory-pink inside of a polished seashell, and she was tall and straight. Her eye stalks were short, close to her head, symmetrical.

  “I’m David Silver.” David flipped his ID card. “Homicide Task Force, Saigo City PD.”

  The Elaki Mother-One puffed her belly slits and swelled.

  David took a step backward. “Uh, my partner, Mel Burnett.”

  Mel nodded.

  “And my associate. String.”

  “Izicho,” the Elaki Mother-One said.

  “You’re Painter?”

  “Yesss. You are here about Dah … about Packer?”

  “About Dahmi, yes,” David said. “May we come in?”

  “No. Am expecting pouchlings. Packer’s little baby ones have not had the death watch. I have much to prepare. Must ask you to leave.”

  String bowed slightly, and turned back to the van.

  Mel shifted his weight. “See, Ms., um, Painter. We got to talk to you now. We can talk here, at your convenience. Or we can ask you to come down to our office and make a statement.”

  “I have made statement already to flatfoots.”

  String turned to her. “Is term of insult, this flatfoots. Please to say uniformed officer.”

  The Elaki hissed. “I have already made statements to flatfoots.”

  “Okay,” Mel said. “You want to pack up your pouchlings there, and come on down to Izicho headquarters—”

  David winced.

  The Elaki skittered back and forth on her fringe, then became still. She expanded her fins, hiding the pouchlings from view.

  “I talk to the David Silver,” Painter said. “Him, only.”

  Mel snorted.

  “Is not for you choice,” String said. “For not to be necessary a difficult.”