Alien Nation #1 - The Day of Descent

by Judith Reeves-Stevens

  “No,” Buck said, momentarily breaking the rhythm Melgil had been building.

  “—as part of your Watcher Youth Brigade,” Melgil continued. “Just a tour, Finiksa, like your visits to the power plants and the food-processing chamber. Watcher Brigades are always invited to the bridge for translations. It is nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing unusual. And now it will be your turn to go, and you will act as you always act and obey the Watch Leader and do all that you are told.” Melgil paused, his eyes unblinking. “And then you will perform a task for us. For Great-uncle Moodri. For the goddess and for all your people.”

  “For Andarko and Celine?” Buck asked. His voice seemed to come from far away.

  “For your father and mother as well,” Melgil said.

  Buck felt a wave of comfort settle over him. The warmth of the Elder’s hand on his hearts. The dimly remembered infant security of sensing shared breathing. The knowledge that he would do work for the good of all his people because he knew that anything that benefited his people would be good for the ship.

  “What shall I do?” Buck asked.

  Melgil told him about the key.

  And Buck was shocked back into separate awareness. For what the Elder asked him to do was definitely not for the good of the ship, and by the time Melgil had finished Buck knew he had no choice but to go to the Overseers and tell them about Moodri. The revolt. And everything.

  C H A P T E R 5

  SIKES DIDN’T KNOW where to look. Beside him Theo Miles was tricked up like a Las Vegas pimp—gold chains, purple shirt opened three buttons too far, and black leather pants four sizes too small. To the other side a half-crazed audience lathered into a frenzy by equal parts alcohol and lust hooted in unison for the performers on the strip club’s stage. The stage with its gleaming chrome poles was right in front of Sikes, but there was no way in hell he was going to look up there either.

  Instead he stared at the beer in his glass, watching the concentric circles of the ripples made by the rhythmic pounding of the audience’s feet. A shout suddenly went up from a hundred throats. Even Theo yelled. Sikes glanced up in time to see a pair of skimpy red underpants fly through the air toward a forest of waving arms and straining hands and immediately wished he hadn’t when he saw what their absence had uncovered.

  Theo pounded him on the shoulder and shouted over the blaring, thumping music. “Loosen up, Matt! It’s a stakeout! Have some fun with it!”

  Sikes shook his head and kept his eyes on his beer, praying for the music to stop so that he could have a chance to talk with Theo. Then something black and covered with sequins hit the table, and Sikes cringed, hoping that it wasn’t what he thought it was.

  But it was.

  Theo, however, was definitely living the role his undercover persona demanded of him. He picked up the G-string, twirled it over his head, yelled, “Hey, ladies!” and tossed it into the middle of the audience.

  The women in the audience almost started a fistfight over the apparel, but on the stage the men kept dancing. The fellow who had tossed his G-string at Theo and Sikes was now wearing only a hard hat and a carpenter’s belt. Sikes cringed as he thought about where that hammer was bouncing.

  Then the music finally faded, and the dancers scooped up their piles of clothes and props and ran offstage as the audience members whistled and thumped their tables. The lights came up on a sea of women’s faces punctuated here and there by a few male companions, all of whom looked to be thinking the same troubled thoughts Sikes was thinking.

  “It’s safe to look now, Matt.”

  Sikes took a deep breath. “How in hell did you get this assignment anyway?”

  “Because,” Theo said gravely as he placed his hand on Sikes’s, “I asked for it.” He laughed, deep and booming, as Sikes yanked his hand away.

  Theo finished off a shot of whiskey, then leaned close to Sikes. “Seriously, though, pal, we got reason to believe this place’s got a coke ring workin’ out of it. I’m doin’ the preliminary scopin’, and next week two female cops’ll take over for the buy.” He moved his eyebrows up and down. “It’s called spreadin’ out the resources. Who’s gonna pay attention to a dumpy fifty-year-old guy in a place like this?”

  “Fifty?” Sikes said. “Since when did you lose ten years?”

  “Don’t get smart, kid.” Theo made a show of adjusting the chains around his neck. “I still got what it takes.”

  Sikes didn’t get it. “They think you’re here to pick up the dancers?”

  “Hell, no,” Theo said. “The women in the audience. After a couple of shows and a few gallons of beer you’d be surprised how many of them think I’m just what they need. But until closing nobody gives me a second look.”

  Sikes stared down at his beer again. “Sheesh,” he muttered.

  “Oh, right,” Theo said, “as if it never goes on in any of the clubs where the women are on stage and the men are in the audience.”

  “That’s different,” Sikes said, though he doubted he could defend his position on anything other than an emotional point of view. Raising Kirby was having a much more profound effect on his life than he would ever have thought possible.

  Theo called over a server—a bodybuilder in black tights and formal collar and bow tie. “Get with the program, Matt. It’s the nineties. Equal opportunity for everyone. Black folks. White folks. Male and female. Even dumb micks like you. It’s like I keep tellin’ you, kid: You gotta keep an open mind.”

  Theo ordered another round and watched as the server walked away, squeezing his way through the closely packed tables and the reaching hands of his excited clientele.

  “I’m starting to think you’re getting into this,” Sikes said.

  Theo frowned at him. “And what the hell would it matter if I was? But just ’cause you’re so worried, keep a close watch on the redhead in the leather jacket—fourth table over from the bar. See her?”

  Sikes scanned the crowd. Theo elbowed him under the table. “It’s a stakeout, fool. Don’t be so obvious about it.”

  “Yeah, I see her,” Sikes said as he found her, then glanced away.

  “Then watch what happens when the server goes past her.”

  Sikes watched from the corner of his eye. The server stopped by the redhead. Put a drink on her table. She put what looked to be too much money on his tray, and then he fished something small and silvery out of his tights and dropped it beside her drink.

  “That’s enough,” Theo said. “Look at the stage now.”

  Sikes did what he was told.

  “I’ve made three of the servers already,” Theo explained. “No regular customers so far, so it should be easy for my compatriots to arrange a good buy and a solid case.” He leaned back in his chair and rested his head against the wall and his hands across his stomach. “So what’s up, kid? Tired of Homicide already? Want to get into the real action in Vice?”

  Sikes hadn’t rehearsed anything. He just said the first thing that came into his mind. “I’m scared, Theo.”

  Theo nodded sagely. “I figured it was somethin’ like that for you to track me down here. How bad is it?”

  Sikes shrugged. “I don’t know. It might even be nothing.”

  “It’s not your partner, is it? Angie’s not up to anything IAD should know about?”

  Sikes shook his head.

  “But it’s not anything you can go to her about?”

  “What worries me is where she’d have to go with it.”

  Theo sighed. “Better give it to me from the beginning, kid. You got ten minutes before the next set starts.”

  Sikes left out the technical details, so it only took him five minutes to explain the dilemma he faced. And Theo Miles, Sikes’s mentor and first partner, didn’t make a single crack about how ludicrous the premise was.

  By the time Sikes had finished, the second round of drinks had arrived. Theo waited for the server to leave before he asked his first question. “So what I gotta know is, do you believe her? About the
spaceship?”

  “No,” Sikes said. He had thought over what Amy Stewart had told him, long and hard. He couldn’t believe her. “But she’s convinced. And that makes me think that maybe other people could be convinced, too.”

  “Like government people?”

  Sikes nodded.

  Theo rubbed the side of his face, a gesture Sikes had come to associate with intense concentration.

  “So the problem you’re looking at is: What if this Petty guy was whacked by government agents because . . . well, not because of no spaceship, that’s for sure. But who knows, maybe the junior astronomer got some photos of some top-secret aircraft or something, like that Aurora whatsit making the oddball sonic booms out in the desert every other Thursday. The astronomer doesn’t know what she photographed, but the feds aren’t willing to take any chances, so they . . .” Theo put his hands flat on the table. “Naah, it just don’t make any sense. I mean, I’ve been on the force long enough to have had my own run-ins with the feds. FBI, CIA, DIA, you name it. And no one’s gonna argue with the idea that the government has taken out people in the past and then forced the department to close its investigation. But those were always left-handed cases, Matt. Some Soviet trade attaché falls off a balcony in his hotel. A businessman with CIA connections gets found with a half kilo of dope shoved up his nose. They were housecleaning hits, you know? Strictly in the family. Spy versus spy crap. Never any civilians involved unless they were bystanders or something.”

  “So what are you saying?”

  “If Petty got whacked on purpose, it wasn’t a government hit.”

  “Even with that stuff about the Protocol and the government saying that the military is supposed to be in charge of all”—Sikes felt embarrassed discussing this part of it in public—“outside communications?”

  “C’mon, Matt. Takin’ a picture of a spaceship isn’t the same as communicatin’ with it. If this thing’s only supposed to be around for a few weeks, why kill anybody? Just nab ’em and lock ’em up. No need to kill anyone. Naah, whatever this astronomer’s got going, it’s not what she thinks it is. I’d look into the possibility of it being a secret aircraft or spacecraft or something. Maybe it was industrial espionage. Lot of ex-KGB types working for Japanese corporations these days. Raising the stakes on industrial espionage something awful.”

  “Are you trying to cheer me up?” The prospect of going up against ruthless ex-KGB agents or industrial spies who were willing to kill was as disturbing to Sikes as facing a murderous government agency.

  “As a matter of fact, I am,” Theo said. “If whoever killed Petty isn’t government, then they can’t put any pressure on the force. You get public affairs to call a press conference about the case, spread the investigation around, and you’re in the clear.” He punched Sikes on the shoulder. “I mean, I’m not saying you don’t have a problem. If the killer was a pro, I don’t think you’d have a pig’s chance in a Jimmy Dean factory. But who says this has to stay your problem?”

  Sikes felt so relieved by that pronouncement that he even forgot his embarrassment at being in a male strip club. Good old Theo had come through for him again. Now he could go to Angie with what he had put together so far, and his investigation would go forward like any other case. He took a celebratory sip of his beer.

  “I take that back,” Theo suddenly said.

  Sikes nearly choked.

  “You do have something to worry about.”

  Sikes put his glass back on the table and waited for the bad news.

  “The way you were talking about that astronomer. Amy, was it?”

  “Yeah,” Sikes said warily.

  “Sounds to me that you’re going to fall off the wagon, kid. Head over heels hot for her bones.”

  Sikes opened his mouth to deny Theo’s charges, but the look Theo gave him told him he shouldn’t waste his breath. Theo Miles could read his thoughts at twenty paces.

  “That obvious?” Sikes asked grumpily.

  “Might as well have her name tattooed on your forehead, kid.” He finished his second shot of whiskey. “Things not working out between you and Vickie? Thought you were gonna try getting back together.”

  So did I, Sikes thought. “Jury’s still out,” he said.

  “Well, listen to your rabbi, kid. If you think there’s the slightest chance the astronomer’s stringing you along about this spaceship government agent crap, you got to ask yourself why. And the first obvious answer to that question is that she had something to do with the hit and she’s trying to muddy the trail.”

  Sikes gave a quick nod. He had thought of that possibility but hadn’t found it necessary to pursue it. Amy wasn’t a murderer any more than she had taken photographs of a spaceship.

  “So,” Theo concluded, “if she’s a suspect, you got to stay away from her. Hand her off to Angie or something. But whatever you do, don’t get involved.”

  The lights began to dim, and the background din of the audience’s conversations suddenly stopped, replaced by scattered cheers and whistles.

  “Thanks, man,” Sikes said. He grabbed Theo’s hand for a farewell shake and squeezed. “You always manage to set me in the right direction.”

  “I got no choice,” Theo said. “After Angie’s got you house-broken, you ’n’ me are going to be partners again.”

  Sikes liked the sound of that and said so.

  “Just don’t get personally involved,” Theo added, raising his voice against the sudden volume of a loud rap number. “At some point you got to remind yourself that it’s just a job, and then you gotta draw the line, Matt. Remember that. You always got to know when to draw the line. Otherwise . . .” An unexpected sadness came to Theo’s eyes then. Sikes didn’t know what to make of it. Something to do with the changing lighting in the club, he told himself. “Otherwise you got nothing holding you together.”

  The audience screamed as the first dancer burst out on the stage in a red spotlight and not much else. Sikes didn’t look. Theo did. But Sikes saw that the undercover vice detective was constantly moving his eyes from the dancer to the audience and back again, working all the time.

  “Go get ’em, kid,” Theo said out of the corner of his mouth.

  Sikes moved through the tables, completely unnoticed by the women who stared raptly at the stage. He paused at the entrance and looked back toward Theo at his small, secluded table by the far wall. The server was back, dropping off another shot of whiskey. Theo appeared to be putting too much money on the server’s tray. Sikes looked away before he could see if the server pulled anything small and silvery from his tights. The female cops would be making the buy next week, he told himself, so there was no reason Theo would be making a buy now. It was something he didn’t need to think about, so Sikes didn’t. Wouldn’t.

  Sikes walked out to the fresh night air of the parking lot, thinking about knowing when to draw the line. Theo had told him that before. Know your limits, he had said. Just don’t accept anyone else laying them on you.

  Sikes looked up into the night sky. A paltry handful of stars shone weakly through the soft glow of Los Angeles’s thick haze. With Theo’s help he now knew how to pursue the investigation. The only question remaining was how to pursue his own life. How could he want to get back together with Victoria yet experience such sudden and overpowering attraction to another woman? What did that say about his readiness to face the future? About his desire to be a family again for Kirby’s sake?

  Sikes walked out of the strip club’s parking lot and along Sunset Boulevard to where he had parked his Mustang away from the rough treatment of the lot attendants. He was out of answers for tonight. Kirby was waiting for him back at his apartment, and pizza and a video sounded like a good way to close the day. Just like Theo said, he thought, treat it like a job. But he realized that he didn’t know how to do that yet. He wondered how his ex-partner managed it. Too many thoughts for too late at night, Sikes told himself as he reached his car, and the first thing he did when he got in was to c
rank up the stereo—some classic Motown to purge his brain cells.

  Sikes drove through Laurel Canyon with the top down, mindlessly drumming his hands against the steering wheel. When he crossed over Mulholland and headed down to the Valley he stole a glance at the sky to see if any more stars might be visible from higher up in the hills. And as he scanned the haze he found himself almost wishing that Amy Stewart had found something up there.

  But that was just a dream, and he had never had much room in his life for those. He kept his eyes on the road all the rest of the way home and didn’t look up once.

  C H A P T E R 6

  TWELVE HOURS AFTER his meeting with Theo Miles, Sikes was ten minutes from UCLA, already feeling as if he was in the principal’s office and that Angela Perez was the principal.

  She sat beside him in his Mustang, held tilted back to the late morning sun, sunglasses glinting painfully bright, a smile on her lips as the wind blew through her fluttering short hair. She looked like someone on vacation, but she was interrogating her new partner like the ten-year veteran detective she was.

  “How many computer disks did Stewart pass over to Petty?” she asked. The questions had been nonstop for the entire drive.

  “I don’t know,” Sikes said. That had been his typical answer for the entire drive.

  “Where did she pass the disks over?”

  “I think at the university. Petty shared an office there with—”

  “No one’s interested in what a detective thinks, Sikes. What do you know?”

  “I didn’t ask her.” From the corner of his eye he saw Angie staring at him.

  “What’s the matter with you? You miss writing parking citations so badly you want to start wearing a uniform again?”

  Sikes kept his hands firmly on the steering wheel, telling himself he would not punch any part of his car while Angie was in it.

  Then Angie asked her first question that didn’t specifically pertain to police procedure. “You fall for this Stewart or what?”

  Sikes winced. First Miles, now Angie. Did he have Amy Stewart’s name tattooed on his forehead?