Alien Nation #1 - The Day of Descent

by Judith Reeves-Stevens

  George stepped back from Susan. She could joke about anything. But they had both long ago decided that sardanac—an artificial pheromone that could chemically bond any male and female—was not desirable or necessary for them. At least he hoped she was joking.

  “Doesn’t this strike you as strange?” Susan asked.

  “Sardanac?” George replied, confused.

  Susan shook her head with a sigh of exasperation. “No, Stangya. The corridors. The whole time we’ve been standing here there’s been absolutely no one in them.”

  George shrugged. Now that they were beyond the watchful eyes of jealous others, the idea of finding a privacy chamber was seeming more and more like a good plan, particularly before the effect of the gas grew any stronger in Susan. “It’s mid-shift,” he said.

  Susan frowned. “But still . . . there should be couriers, Elders, scavengers, off-shift workers . . . somebody. Even an Overseer.”

  George once again looked down each of the eight corridors. Susan was right, but he could come up with a partial explanation. “With the gas levels so high, the Overseers don’t need to be in the corridors. The gas will make almost all the others stay where they are until they’re given orders to move.”

  “All the others except for us,” Susan said with a preoccupied tone. “I wonder if it’s because we wanted to couple.”

  George reflexively looked around to see if anyone else had heard her blunt statement. “Oblakah . . .”

  “Oh, relax, Stangya. There’s no one here. But why? And if the Overseers don’t need to be in this section, where do they need to be?”

  She was right again. This wasn’t normal. George tilted his head, straining to hear if there was anything wrong with the ship. Once, almost fifteen years ago on a deep range, a strange vibration had rumbled through the corridors, and the ship had violently translated into normal space hundreds of parsecs from any course-correction star. The lights and gravity had been out for almost an entire shift. During the nightmarish period of zero gravity all through the ship food-growth vats and sewage-processing units had emptied into the air-circulation system, which had taken more than a year to properly cleanse. The Overseers’ response had been to withdraw to other parts of the ship and then to flood the corridors with copious amounts of holy gas to place most of the Tenctonese into a state of near catatonia. Thousands had died of starvation and dehydration during that time. George, with his brother Ruhtra, had been one of only a handful who were still able to move about, groggy, though not completely incapacitated by the gas. And he could remember that almost twenty shifts had passed before the ship translated back into its superluminal mode and the Overseers returned to the corridors. Near the end of those twenty shifts, as the effects of the overdose of gas began to wear off, many of the Tenctonese had come to believe they had been abandoned by the Overseers to die in space. Some had welcomed that fate. To this day, as far as George understood, no one knew what had happened to cause such a near disaster. He listened apprehensively now in case it was to happen again.

  But in the empty corridors the constant background vibration of the ship’s machinery was smooth and unchanged. There was, however, a noise of a different kind coming from one direction. George strained to hear it, to understand it.

  Susan looked down the same corridor. She heard it, too. “Is it some kind of machine?” she asked.

  The sound was regular enough to be mechanical in origin, but there was something more to it, something . . .

  “It’s marching!” George said. His spots puckered. It was the sound of Overseers’ boots moving in perfect rhythm. Dozens of them. Perhaps a hundred.

  He saw Susan rock gently from foot to foot, soothing the muscles of her feet. “Maybe we should go back to the light bay,” she said nervously.

  George kept his eyes fixed on the corridor from which the sounds of marching came. He sought out Susan’s hand and held it tight. “Maybe we should,” he said.

  The marching grew louder, then began to lessen again. Whoever—whatever—was moving through the corridors still thick with holy gas had shifted directions.

  Susan and George took a step forward at the same time, not even conscious of what they were doing until they turned to each other, first in surprise and then in immediate understanding.

  There was something unusual occurring nearby. Something that, judging by the gas concentration, the Overseers didn’t want anyone else to see.

  Given such a situation, George and Susan moved as one. They had to know what was happening. Hand in hand they cautiously edged down the corridor. It was the only act of rebellion of which they were capable.

  For now.

  C H A P T E R 7

  AFTER TWO HOURS IN Bryon Grazer’s company Sikes was already beginning to regret ever talking to the detective. True, Grazer knew more than Sikes ever would about computers, but the only topic the forensic accounting detective wanted to talk about was how the political structure of the LAPD would be changing now that Chief Williams had replaced Daryl Gates. “The old boys’ network of the past is on its way out, Sikes,” was the way Grazer had begun his lecture on the drive back to Sikes’s apartment. “The old loyalties are in disarray. Lines of communications are broken. In a way, the current conditions within the force resemble the start of the Wars of the Diodochi in 323 B.C.” He had peered earnestly over at Sikes then. “You are familiar with the forty-two-year war of succession that followed the death of Alexander the Great, aren’t you?”

  Sikes’s biggest mistake of the day was that he had confessed that he wasn’t all that familiar with the War of the Dahoozits, and Grazer had immediately set out to correct that shortcoming, spending the next hour in a nonstop detailed discourse that appeared to touch on everything from Babylonian toilet habits to the contradictory reports concerning the performance of Patriot missiles during the Gulf War. In retrospect, Sikes was amazed that one person could talk so assuredly in such an incoherent manner for so long. But at the time he had only wanted to scream and hit the steering wheel, which was his traditional method of dealing with the frustrations of driving in L.A. traffic. About the time Grazer began describing the spread of animal-grease rumors during the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857 Sikes even considered for a few satisfying moments what might happen if he screamed and then hit Grazer.

  Remarkably, as the two men rode up in the balky elevator in Sikes’s Studio City apartment building, Grazer brought his entire surreal lecture full circle, comparing each of the LAPD’s assistant chiefs to one of Alexander the Great’s generals. “And, of course,” Grazer grandly concluded, “I don’t have to tell you who General Lysimachus compares to, because it is just too obvious.” He chuckled knowingly, and Sikes, on the brink of mental suffocation, joined in weakly just as the elevator chimed and the doors opened on his floor.

  Grazer hesitated outside the elevator, clutching the late Dr. Petty’s computer to his chest, and sniffed the air. “What is that?” he asked. “Cabbage?”

  Sikes had a sudden fear that he was about to be subjected to a seminar on Irish immigration and thus ignored the question, charging quickly down the L-hallway toward his apartment. The sooner he could get the computer set up and running, the sooner he could focus Grazer’s rambling intellect on the Petty case.

  But when he turned the corner he realized that the evening was not going to get any simpler or better.

  “Where have you been?” Victoria Sikes, née Fletcher, said angrily. She was waiting by Sikes’s apartment door, where it appeared she was in the process of writing a note on a piece of paper she had stuck over the security peephole.

  Sikes froze at the corner and almost lost his grip on the cardboard box he carried, filled with stacks of Grazer’s floppy disks and the monitor for Petty’s computer. His eyes widened as he tried to remember what day it was. “Vic?”

  His daughter, Kirby, stood behind his wife and waved at him, grinning. Except for her Guns ’N Roses T-shirt and three silver crosses dangling from her left ear, she looked to Sikes
like the sweetest thirteen-year-old girl imaginable. Victoria, on the other hand, in her traditional severe business suit, looked as if she were ready to kill.

  “Well?” Victoria said, placing her hands on her hips. “Do you know how long I’ve been waiting?”

  “Twenty-two minutes,” Kirby said. She grinned again at her father. “No big deal, Dad.”

  Sikes felt trapped. He was delighted to see his daughter but didn’t know how he was going to handle working with Grazer if Kirby was supposed to spend the night. He was unnerved to see his wife, but as always Victoria’s presence made his heart flutter, as if it hadn’t been in communication with his brain since their honeymoon. “Um,” he stammered, “this is Wednesday, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, it’s Wednesday,” Grazer said as he came to a stop beside Sikes. “So, are you going to introduce me?”

  “So what if it’s Wednesday?” Victoria demanded.

  Sikes nodded at his wife and daughter. “Detective Bryon Grazer, this is my daughter, Kirby, and, uh, my wife, Victoria.”

  “I didn’t know you were married,” Grazer said.

  Of course not, Sikes thought, you’ve only known me two hours, and you haven’t let me say more than a dozen words.

  “We’re separated,” Victoria said sharply. “Well, Matt, I’m waiting for an answer.”

  Sikes thought feverishly. All his hopes for the future were riding on his determination never to screw up with Victoria and Kirby again. But from Victoria’s mood, he obviously had, and he didn’t know how.

  “I thought,” he began cautiously, “I thought Kirby was coming for the weekend.” Every other weekend during the school year. That was the arrangement. Sikes was certain of it.

  Victoria crossed her arms and sighed dramatically. “Oh, Matt. I told you I had to go to Bern tonight.” She looked at him accusingly. “The Oberth Pharmaceuticals account? Sound familiar?”

  “That’s the company with the new sugar substitute, isn’t it?” Grazer asked. “An L-sucrose. Just as sweet as sugar. Can’t be digested, so no calories. With aspartame’s patent having run out they stand to break into a twenty-billion-dollar-a-year market with an initial eight percent penetration. Right now they’re shopping for a California-based advertising agency that—”

  Sikes stared at Grazer in bewilderment. “How the hell do you know that?”

  Grazer blinked innocently at Sikes. “I take a money management course at UCLA so I can handle my investments more efficiently. I highly recommend the course, detective.”

  “You have investments?” Sikes asked incredulously. “On our salaries?”

  “Don’t you?” Grazer asked as if he were genuinely puzzled.

  “No, he doesn’t,” Victoria said. “Now open the door, Matt. My flight leaves in two hours.”

  Sikes leaned down and placed the cardboard box on the worn floral print broadloom in front of his apartment door. As he straightened up to pull out his keys he could see that Victoria had been writing her message to him on a large yellow Post-it note. She always carried three different sizes of them in her purse. There had been times when he had thought she had intended to redecorate their apartment with them. The note began: Matt, I’m not surprised that you have let me down again, but I can’t understand how you can continue to disappoint Kirby in this callous manner.

  It was too much. Sikes’s hand began to shake, and he couldn’t get his key into the lock. He turned to Victoria. “Just when did you tell me that you were bringing Kirby over tonight?”

  Victoria’s lips pursed in restrained anger. She reached into the large shoulder bag she carried and pulled out a thick Filofax. She leafed through it quickly, then ran a long red fingernail—her own, not an extension—across a handwritten entry. “Last Tuesday. Our phone call about Kirby’s summer school.”

  Sikes thought back to last Tuesday. He and Victoria had talked. She wanted him to contribute a thousand dollars to send Kirby to some sort of scuba-diving summer school in the Bahamas. Sikes had suggested that he could take Kirby to Sea World instead, and she could use the rest of the money for clothes and schoolbooks. Victoria hadn’t been impressed. But had she mentioned anything about Kirby coming over on Wednesday?

  Sikes finished replaying the conversation in his mind. “Vic, all you said was that you had to go out of town—to Switzerland—this week. That was it.”

  Victoria shoved her Filofax back into her shoulder bag without taking her eyes off Sikes. “Matthew,” she said icily, “when I go out of town, who usually looks after Kirby for me?”

  Sikes looked to the ceiling for guidance. “Nannies.” He looked to Kirby for support. “Right?”

  “Yeah, right,” Kirby agreed, “I keep telling Mom I don’t need them. I mean, I’m almost old enough to have sex, and—”

  Sikes’s breath exploded from him. “Almost?” he repeated. “Try eight years!”

  “Oh, Daaad,” Kirby groaned. “Everyone’s doing—”

  “Try ten years!”

  Victoria placed her hand firmly on Kirby’s shoulder. “That’s enough, Kirby.” She glared at Sikes. “And in the past, when I’ve hired nannies, have I not always informed you that I have arranged for Kirby’s care? Well?”

  “I guess,” Sikes said, feeling himself on the edge of a long slippery slope.

  “And did I tell you that I had hired a nanny this time?”

  “But you always hire a nanny.”

  “Did I, Matthew?”

  Sikes shook his head, turning the door keys over and over in his fingers. He didn’t know how, but it was all his fault again.

  “So you admit that you knew you were supposed to look after Kirby.” It wasn’t a question. Sometimes Sikes wondered how Victoria had decided on advertising and marketing and missed becoming a lawyer.

  Grazer put the computer down on top of Sikes’s box by the door. “I think she’s got you there, Sikes.”

  Sikes jabbed a warning finger at Grazer. “Don’t you start.”

  “It’s all right, Dad.” Kirby came up to Sikes and gave him a hug.

  But Victoria wasn’t about to let Sikes off that easily. “It’s not all right, Kirby. And don’t you dare think otherwise, Matt. If you’re going to continue to behave in this irresponsible manner, I don’t know—”

  “Stop it!” Sikes exclaimed. He thrust his key chain into his daughter’s hands. “Kirby, you open up and show this guy where he can set up the computer.” He looked at Grazer. “Bryon, you go with Kirby.” Then he turned to Victoria. “But you, you come with me.”

  “I said my flight leaves in two hours,” Victoria protested.

  “I’ll walk you to the elevator.”

  At the elevator Sikes stood in front of the call button so that Victoria couldn’t press it. “This will take less than five minutes,” he said.

  “I’ve already given you twenty-two today,” Victoria said.

  Sikes opened his mouth to respond but then realized that if he was to accomplish anything in the next few minutes, he couldn’t waste time. He took a deep breath. “Vic, are you doing it to me on purpose, or do you really hate me this much?”

  Victoria didn’t have an immediate smart comeback, so Sikes knew he had broken the escalating progression of the argument. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

  Sikes held up his hands to keep Victoria from interrupting. “I’ll admit I screwed up on figuring out that Kirby was going to have to come here while you’re in Switzerland. No, don’t say anything. You’re right, I’m wrong. But really, Victoria, even you have to admit that it was an understandable mistake. And now it’s taken care of. I showed up—twenty-two minutes late, for which I apologize—but everything’s okay. So why do you tear into me like that? Especially in front of Kirby.”

  He could see her jaw tighten, but her tightly drawn back blond hair remained immobile, as perfect as if it had been sculpted in place. Finally she spoke. “This isn’t the first time you’ve screwed up, Matt.”

  “No. And it won’t be the last.
But I’m getting better, aren’t I? I mean, it’s not like when Kirby was born and I didn’t know what the hell was going on or what I wanted or . . . or anything.”

  Victoria looked away for a moment, then grudgingly she said, “No, it’s not like when Kirby was born.”

  He could sense she was calming down, becoming the Victoria who had forgiven him so often in the past. Until the day her patience finally ran out. He decided to take a gamble—a hard thing for him to do—and spoke the truth to her. “I am trying, Vic. And you know why, don’t you?”

  She stared searchingly into his eyes. She had looked at him that way the first time they had met, and he had lost his heart to her in less than a single beat. “Do you know what you want?”

  “More than ever,” Sikes said.

  “Tell me.”

  It was all or nothing. Like drawing a gun in a dark alley, looking for shadows. “I want you. And Kirby. Back in my life.”

  “You had that once.”

  “But I didn’t know it,” Sikes said honestly. “Like the song says. It wasn’t until you’d gone that I realized what I had.”

  For an instant it appeared as if Victoria’s perfect composure might be cracking. Now it was her turn to have to look away. “We’ve had this conversation before, Matt. Why should I believe you this time?”

  Sikes clenched his fists at his side. It would be so much simpler if she could just read his mind. He wasn’t like Grazer. Words did not come easily to him. “Because I’m trying. I’m really trying to get my life in order. To make Kirby proud of me. To make you proud of me.”

  For a moment he saw a smile flicker on her lips. Then she looked away.

  “What?” he asked.

  She seemed embarrassed, but for the first time in this brief meeting he didn’t feel her fighting him, denying him. “I was just remembering you in your uniform. The day you graduated.” She looked at him, honesty in her eyes as well. “I was proud of you, Matt.”