Alien Nation #4 - The Change

by Barry B. Longyear

  The Ahvin Yin had been formed to fight against death. Now death seemed to be nothing more than another tool to serve the obsession of Maanka Dak. The conflicts within Sing Fangan had become a sharp, steady pain behind his eyes.

  “Our brother’s star has risen, Sing.”

  Sing Fangan took one last look at the body, pulled the door shut, and went to the table where Maanka was sitting before Brick Wahl’s computer. “I didn’t credit Stangya with that much respect for himself,” Maanka said as he tapped his finger against the screen. “He changed his name from Sam Francisco to George. That’s why it took so long for me to track him down. He’s a sergeant now. A homicide detective. I’ve managed to locate his wife and children. He has a new partner, another daughter, and has become a property owner.”

  “When do we finish the vikah ta?” Sing asked.

  “Are you in a hurry?”

  “If we strike quickly, Maanka, we can accomplish our goal and make good our escape. The longer we stay here, the more we increase our chances of being captured.”

  “You heard what I said, Sing. Francisco has a new partner. He also has a new child. That means a binnaum. In addition, there are the three close associates Francisco would have invited for the presentation of the binnaum. His children’s friends at school and in his neighborhood—I will have them all, Sing. I will leave no one alive who possesses a memory of this traitor, or of this traitor’s family, friends, or associates. The game is just beginning.” Maanka paused long enough to look up at Sing. “This is not for you, is it?”

  “I am with you,” Sing protested. “Let us kill Francisco. He’s a traitor and deserves death. His family too.” He hesitated for a moment, then said, “Maanka, we are no longer surrounded by the Ahvin Yin. It is just the two of us. Kill him and his family, this we can do. But we cannot eliminate everyone who has a memory of him. Before we could accomplish all of those killings, we would be captured again.”

  “As I said, Sing, this game is not for you, is it?”

  Before Sing could answer, he saw Maanka’s hands move in a blur as they threw the two heart picks. No one could have moved quickly enough to avoid them. Sing only had enough time to remember Maanka fashioning the ancient Tenctonese throwing spikes from two screwdrivers. As Sing’s hearts stopped, Maanka stood and pushed him to make certain that Sing would not fall into the computer.

  After dumping Sing’s body in the closet on top of Brick Wahl, Maanka Dak pulled the door shut. Giving the vestibule a quick check, he opened the door to the hallway, put out the Do Not Disturb sign, and allowed the door to lock behind him. “I will have him, Sing. Stangya swore to the Ahvin Yin. He betrayed us, and slew our brother. I will have him; I will have him and the memory of him. Ahvin Yin. Rekwi ot osia. Death to authority!”

  “Death! Death! Death to authority! Death to the Niyez!”

  They stood in the shadows of the thorn-covered likaeshia trees, the triple moons of Itri Vi high and red in the night sky. The initiates stood in a row facing the hooded cell leaders. The faces of the leaders were covered.

  The Niyez, the masters of Itri Vi and holders of a slave contract, had made the meetings necessary. They regarded the genetically designed slaves as purchased rather than leased from their creators. And whether as house servants or deep level miners, the Niyez didn’t know how to take care of their belongings. Even a few of the Overseers protested the treatment of the slaves. For their pains, the Overseers were either put to death or were themselves implanted by the pain ministers. After all, to the Niyez, they too were property.

  There was only one defense. There had to be rebels among the slaves: secret fighters, shadow assassins, who could provide the retribution that would get the attention of the Niyez and modify their behavior. Thus the Ahvin Yin.

  “Stangya,” said the leader of his cell, “how came you before this assembly?”

  “The Niyez have taken, tortured, and killed my friends, my father and mother, even my binnaum.”

  “The Ahvin Yin cannot bring them back, Stangya.”

  “Perhaps the Ahvin Yin can discourage the Niyez from killing my wife and children.”

  The hooded cell leader took three steps and stood before Stangya as he handed him a single-bladed knife. “They say we are bred to be passive; that we have the will neither to disobey nor to resist. When a leader marks a Niyez for the Ahvin Yin, will you be able to kill? Can you bless your brothers with authority’s death?”

  There was muffled screaming, the sounds of a struggle. The leader stood aside and watched as a bound Niyez male was dragged before Stangya and tossed at his feet. The Niyez, with dark black hair and long yellow teeth, was clad in the iridescent robes of a pain minister of the plantationers. This one was Mro Sheviat, the one who had personally tortured and killed Stangya’s parents.

  Stangya bent over Mro, pulled back the Niyez’s head by his hair, and pulled the edge of the finely honed blade across the Niyezian’s throat. As he watched the life of the creature pump out onto the red soil, Stangya recited the prayer of revenge, the plea of the vikah ta, “Him and the memory of him.”

  “And how shall you die, Stangya?”

  “In this manner, should I betray the Ahvin Yin.”

  The cell leaders removed their hoods and Stangya was welcomed by his brothers of the Ahvin Yin: Maanka Dak, Sita Dak, and Sing Fangan.

  In time the controllers voided the agreement with the Niyez and removed all of the contract slaves from Itri Vi. Despite the horror of Itri Vi, the Overseers brought back with them the Niyezian neural transmitter technology. Soon the Tenctonese slave ship had its own pain ministers. The slaves brought back with them new additions to old sorrows, the Ahvin Yin and the vikah ta.

  C H A P T E R 9

  HIS NAME WAS Checha Contreras. “You should’ve seen this neighborhood before the escoria moved in.”

  As Sikes talked on the radio, Francisco stood beside the car listening as the man waved toward the one-story pale yellow frame dwelling that was his home. He wore ragged jeans and a faded red tank top. A web tattoo covering the upper right quadrant of his body marked him as a former member of Los Araños, a long defunct East L.A. youth organization specializing in cocaine, protection, and ritual assassination, until they were run out of town by a Newcomer gang called Nightshade.

  Three Newcomer youths sporting hot pink gang jackets emblazoned in turquoise with the name Chrysanthemums swung by, grab-assing and snickering. One of them threw a wine bottle that shattered on the pavement next to the car.

  “Escoria!” the old man shouted. “Mira! Look at that,” the old man continued. “Punks!”

  “What do you care?” Sikes asked as he emerged from the car. “That’s a police car they threw it at.”

  “Your car ain’t marked, man.”

  Sikes shook his head. “What’s your point?”

  “It might’ve been my car, the lousy slag punks. Pink nylon. Whatever happened to black leather? They can make the fuzz, cut up old ladies, and bust windows, but what kind of name is Chrysanthemums?”

  Sikes pointed at the car and said to George, “The captain sent Diaz over to help Susan gather up the kids.”

  “Thanks, Matt. That makes me feel better.”

  “Tiger lilies,” growled the old man. “Marigolds, mums, baby’s breath, f’crissakes—pah! This neighborhood’s gone to terminal shit!”

  “Perhaps you could tell us if the lady across the street is in?” George said.

  “Look down there,” the old man commanded Sikes, ignoring Francisco’s question. “Look. See that thing the rubberheads call a church?”

  Sikes turned his head to look in the indicated direction. His view, however, was blocked by a parking sign with the regulatory sentiment punctuated with seven rusty bullet holes. “Church?”

  “Just what I say! That’s no church! First Celinist Temple of Jesus? What kinda stupid name izzat? In there used to be a real church. It was the First Hebrew Christian Synagogue. What’s it now? Slags for Jesus. What’s the godd
amn space freaks know about Jesus?” He glared at George, spat on the ground, and looked at Sikes. “I know it ain’t your fault. Goddamn fuckin’ slags’re everywhere.”

  Matt Sikes apologized to George with a quick glance and nodded toward the pink house across the street. “What about the woman across the street?”

  “That’s no woman, man. Big-headed, bald, spot-covered, alien, slag bitch. Don’t call her no woman to me, man.” He pointed across the street. “She and her whole family nested in there maybe four, five years ago. The slagman, he hauled a sack for the post office. Him and the bitch had two kids. Smart little slag bastards, like all of ’em. Sunny was the little girl. Stupid slag names they hung on ’em. The boy’s name was Bat and the old man was Russ.”

  “I don’t get it,” Sikes said.

  “Russ Day? Rusty? Get it?”

  Sikes nodded. “Yeah. Okay.”

  “Her name’s Rainy Day. The slag bitch.”

  “Yeah. So what happened to the family? The robbery report shows her living alone.”

  “By the time they ripped her off, man, she was alone.”

  George faced the pink house and asked, “What happened?”

  Contreras curled his lips into a sneer that vanished as Matt stabbed the old man in the chest with his fingers. “You heard my partner, dog drool. What happened to her family?”

  The old man backed off, rubbing his chest, a hurt expression on his face. “Easy man.” He nodded toward the pink house. “You remember that anglo that slipped a cog three years ago over at the main post office? Shot up the place ’cause the slags was gettin’ all the jobs? Myers. His name was Myers.”

  Matt frowned as he nodded. “Yeah. Albert Myers. He killed nine men and women—”

  “They was all rubberheads, man,” Contreras interrupted. He pointed at the pink house. “Old Rusty was one of the first. A week after that, the girl, Sunny, was hit by an anglo gang, the Hawks. It was a drive-by slag shoot like the kids do. They cut her spine in two. I heard it took her over a month to die. After that the boy, Bat, got mixed up in a slag gang, the Choya. You boys took care of him.”

  “What do you mean?” George whispered.

  “He got blown away one night by a cop who mistook him for some other slag wanted for sticking up a mom and pop.” The old man shrugged and held out his hands. “So, when the Hawks ripped off the slag bitch two years ago, she was alone. I heard the anglos raped her too. Slags’re strong, and they had to thump her first a few times with a crowbar.” He snickered and shook his head. “Rainy Day.”

  George grabbed two handfuls of Checha’s tank top, along with some chest hair and skin, and hoisted him off the ground. “You have a funny name too, sir,” George said. “Checha Contreras. Your name means ‘hairy child with an attitude.’ An immigration official with a sick sense of humor named René Day. What’s your excuse, dirtbag?”

  “Hey, man!” Contreras squeaked at Sikes. “Call off your partner. He’s got me by the nipples!”

  Matt’s eyebrows went up, then he looked sheepish and put his hands in his pockets. “Hey, man, you said the S word. In fact, you said it a whole bunch of times. As much as I hate to see my partner wreck his career by yanking off your nipples, I can’t think of any way to stop him. Maybe if you apologized?

  “You kidding, man?” George squeezed, and Checha Contreras screamed, “Okayokayokayokayokay! I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m s-o-r-r-y!”

  “Is Mrs. Day in her home?” George asked.

  “Yes! No! I mean, I think so, man! I think so! I don’t know! I ain’t seen her in days. Let go!”

  George lowered the man to the street and frowned as he opened his hands. Contreras whined like an injured puppy, backed away and stumbled off, holding his abused nipples. “George, are you all right?” Matt asked. “If internal affairs got a peek at that performance, you’d be looking for one of those jobs toting sacks at the post office.”

  Francisco turned and leveled his gaze at the pink house. “Our backup’s overdue.”

  As if in a daze, George began walking across the street toward the pink house. Sikes reached into the car and grabbed the mike. “Hold on, George. You can’t go in there alone. Let me check on the backup.”

  Matt’s voice seemed very far away. Reality had an extra bend in it. George placed one foot in front of the other as though he were an automation powered by a singular, most desperate pain.

  It was all so clear: the rain cloud with the thunderbolt, the cryptic messages on her notes, the victims. All names have meanings, even if the meanings are forgotten. The messages from René Day contained the etymologies of the victims’ Tenctonese names, some from ancient languages no longer spoken, some from even older tongues no longer recorded or remembered, save through the names.

  Reality had done a job on René Day. As a result, something precious within her had shattered. The pieces assembled themselves at random, harshly, and had bonded together, making her into a new creature that had declared war on a word.

  Everything she had suffered could be traced to a word, a label—slag—and how it poisoned the minds of those who spoke it and heard it. Some of “them” were more “slag” than others: bigger heads, sillier names, more degrading occupations. She killed them, and in so doing, killed their names, denying the word “slag,” the laughter and shame upon which it fed.

  Morris Katz had died, and the meaning of his real name, Blade of Victory, was left behind to replace it. Advance the Mountain, Death Holds Sorrow Naught, Reach the Sun, Cry the People, Flowers of Blue, Green Stars Weep No More. Apparent fragments of poetry, they were instead the misunderstood hopes and dreams every parent has for every child in some ideal Never-Never Land. “My child is not a fool, an article of ridicule, the butt of threadbare humor. My child is Blade of Victory, Reach the Sun, Climb this Mountain.”

  Thus spake the Universal Mother, Parent of All, the Hearts of God. For a brief moment René Day had became all of these: a goddess avenging the honor a people could not grant themselves. And now there was no purpose to the search warrant, no point in calling for backup. As he reached the peeling white front door, George called to his partner, “Matt. Cancel the backup.”

  As George placed his hand on the doorknob, Matt Sikes bellowed, “No!”

  Francisco turned the knob and the door swung in, allowing the familiar smell of decay to fill his nostrils. He stepped in and met nothing he didn’t expect. The tiny living room was brightly lit from its many windows. The walls were papered with pages from the Los Angeles area telephone directory. Thousands of the names had been highlighted with a fluorescent green marker. Dozens of the marked names had been circled in pink, the Tenctonese color of death.

  Behind George, Sikes somersaulted through the door and came to a stop kneeling, his back facing the wall to the right of the door, his weapon out, his eyes running a quick scan of the room. “Jesus, George, what in the hell do you think you’re doing?” After a pause, Matt’s nose wrinkled as his eyebrows went up. “What in God’s name?”

  “Against the back wall, Matt. On the table. It’s René Day.”

  There was a cheap dinner table there, the burned-out shells of pink Tenctonese mourning candles at either end of a pink-draped corpse. George stood over the body and looked down upon the monster he and Matt had pursued for so long. René Day had been dead for more than a week, her throat slit by her own hand. Pinned to the mourning cloth was the last of her no longer cryptic notes. “Garden of Joy,” George said. “A beautiful name. Saria Vo. It means Garden of Joy.”

  Sikes got to his feet, holstered his weapon and frowned at his partner. “The notes are names?”

  “Yes. It all became clear for me out there with the help of Hairy Child with an Attitude. The notes she left were nothing more than the real meanings of the victims’ Tenctonese names.”

  “What about the stand-up comic; the human?”

  “Cain Fields?” George smiled sadly. “I’m afraid his onetime stage name was silly enough to get him killed. It marked
him as a slag. My guess is that in the dark it didn’t make any difference to Saria Vo, which is ironic. Remember the note she left there?”

  “Yeah. ‘Gentle Gray One.’ ”

  “That was his real name: Kevin Lloyd. It means Gentle Gray One.” George looked at Matt. “When we first became partners, do you remember you wouldn’t allow me to use my immigration name?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you remember why?”

  “Sure, George. I wasn’t about to have you running around the hood introducing yourself as Sam Francisco.”

  “Why?”

  Matt shrugged and looked very uncomfortable. “I don’t know. The joke name embarrassed me. I’m a cop, not part of a clown act. You didn’t seem like you could be embarrassed for yourself, and I didn’t want to be part of a joke. Cops is serious business.”

  “Serious business,” George repeated, a wistful look on his face. “Bill Duncan used to say that.” George faced the corpse of René Day as the wistful expression evaporated. “The joke name embarrassed me. That’s why I eventually changed it. The name René Day embarrassed Saria Vo, as well.”

  “How come you knew she’d be dead, George?”

  “Dead?”

  “Yes! Dead!” Matt exploded. “You come waltzing in here like a damned probationer on Valium: no backup, no cover, no plan, nothing worked out with your partner. You didn’t even have your piece out. You knew she’d be dead, right? Tell me you knew she was dead, George.”

  “I suppose I did. It was obvious.”

  “Obvious? Obvious? How about making it obvious to me, buddy, partner, friend, light of my life?”

  Oblivious to Matt’s concerned anger, George looked down upon Saria Vo’s calm features. “Five days after Albert Myers killed her husband, her daughter was slain. Thirty-two days after that, her son was gunned down by a police officer. Fifteen days after that, plus a year, she was attacked, raped, and robbed. The deaths of all the victims fit in that cycle of four numbers. Something would set her off—probably a racial incident—and she would kill, following it with another killing five days later, a third at thirty-two days after that, and a fourth after an additional fifteen days. Then she would go dormant until the next incident triggered her. The last victim, Green Stars Weep No More, was the third in the Thunderbolt’s last cycle. He died more than twenty days ago. There should’ve been another death five days ago. The Thunderbolt’s almost a week overdue. She made herself the last death of this cycle. As I said: obvious.”