Alien Nation #4 - The Change

by Barry B. Longyear

  “Oh?” Detective Diaz looked up and surveyed the faces in the room. There were seven persons there besides the receptionist: two humans—one male, the other female—and five Newcomers, all female. Although they were at desks and drafting tables, they were all looking at him. There was apprehension, expectation, in their eyes. The corners of Mark Diaz’s mouth went down slightly.

  “All of you?”

  Rita frowned as she saw a tear slip down the detective’s cheek from behind his sunglasses. “Are you all right?” She stood, pulled a tissue from a box in her drawer and held it out toward the policeman. “What is it?”

  “All of you,” Mark Diaz repeated as he removed his sunglasses, revealing his left eyelid crusted with dried blood.

  “Should I call 911?” She turned and looked at the others in the room. “Should I call someone?”

  “Him,” said the detective as he pulled the automatic from his shoulder holster. “Him, and the memory of him.” He aimed the weapon at Rita’s face, pulled the trigger, sent a round between her eyebrows, blowing off the back of her head. Blood, hair, and bone fragments spattered the two sitting directly behind her. One began screaming, the others were struck silent. Swinging the weapon toward the others in the room, Diaz blasted the two humans and one of the Newcomers as a door in the back opened, revealing a Newcomer wearing a tan suit. Behind him was a human. With two quick shots he drilled the foreheads of both before he turned his weapon back on the production crew, executing the remaining two employees.

  “Him and the memory of him,” he repeated as he stood in a growing pool of blood and replaced the empty clip in his automatic. “Him and the memory of him.”

  Detective Mark Diaz then cycled a fresh round into the chamber, cocked the piece, and thrust the weapon’s muzzle into his own mouth. He pulled the trigger, and long after he was dead, his trigger finger kept flexing.

  C H A P T E R 1 2

  THE TWO STAFF pathologists on the autopsy team were human, with a Tenctonese intern observing. The room was surprisingly warm, lending an extra pungency to every odor, real or imagined. Matt Sikes looked down upon the mutilated body of his partner’s mentor, Tom Rand. The warden had been taken down hard.

  Given their first split second of opportunity, the SWAT team had riddled the gunman. There were over twenty entrance and exit wounds, some places so chewed by misshapen lead flying through tissue that the damage from individual rounds couldn’t be determined. The shooters had done everything by the book, too. No head shots, no John Wayne shooting the gun out of the hand, no hit him in the leg and bring him down crap. All of the hits had been in the torso, mostly in the upper left quadrant. Tom Rand’s heart wasn’t traumatized, it just wasn’t there.

  George stood silently at the head of the corpse, looking down at the dead man’s face. He studied it, seemingly unmindful of the minor dramas being played out around him. It was almost as though his entire concentration was devoted to communicating with his dead mentor.

  The FBI agent, an altogether too serious-looking Tenctonese named Paul Iniko, faced Charlie Truman. “I believe there was an understanding that attendance here was to be limited to the staff and the official representatives of the concerned jurisdictions.” He nodded toward a slender human with too-big glasses and prematurely balding hair. “Collins here is from the Bureau of Prisons. I represent the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” He flipped his hand at a plainclothes officer and two uniformed officers. “Ratik, Myers, and Browning represent Hollenbeck Division and the L.A. SWATs.” He nodded toward Sikes and Francisco. “And them?”

  “Tourists,” Kim Nishida answered. “I invited ’em.

  “For what purpose?”

  Kim opened her huge bag of edibles and peered inside. “To peek, to poke,” she answered, “to boldly go where no one with a sack of ribs has gone before.”

  Agent Iniko held out his hands, revealing the Overseer’s mark tattooed around his left wrist. “What is their authority?” he demanded.

  “I sell the tickets to this theater, sonny,” Charlie said to the agent. “If you want to keep your ticket, maybe you better knock off ragging the rest of the audience.” He nodded at the Tenctonese intern, and the intern punched on the recorder.

  Collins, the official representative from the Bureau of Prisons, and Browning of the city SWATs, staggered out soon after the body had been uncovered. Although he didn’t look ill, the agent from the FBI’s field office left soon after. Sikes grimaced at the two canoe makers as the pair continued their performance. They handled their own queasy stomachs by being ghouls and drawing what entertainment they could from grossing out visitors. While hulking Charlie Truman gormed in one of the wounds with a probe, petite Kim Nishida mugged for the TV camera, gnawed on a barbecued rib, and talked into the microphone suspended from the ceiling above the slab. Officer Ratik lasted until Kim began sucking the barbecue sauce from her fingers.

  Charlie took a scalpel and ripped open the tatters of Rand’s abdomen with an eleven-inch incision that reminded Matt of unzipping a torn gym bag. Kim continued to eat and report as she bent over the remains. The deceased was so long (slurp), so heavy (munch, munch), so old (smack), and simply full to his eyes with lead, scrambled guts, and goo. With a bang Kim tossed a cleaned rib into a waste can, and Myers, the remaining Hollenbeck officer, stumbled off toward the rest room.

  “Don’t you two ever get tired of this act?” Sikes asked as he struggled to hold down his own lunch.

  Kim tossed a ketchup-coated fry toward Charlie, who caught it with his mouth, ate it, and swallowed, leaving a smear of red on his upper lip. “What act?” he asked.

  “Where’s the X-ray series on the head?” George asked.

  Charlie Truman looked up from the incision and faced Francisco. “Are you joshing?”

  “No. Where is it?” George faced the observing intern and asked again in Tenctonese, receiving only a shrug in response. “There must be a head series. If one wasn’t made, it needs to be made.”

  Truman held his bloodstained hands out above the corpse. “Man, could you possibly be in some doubt as to the cause of death here?”

  “Hmmm,” Dr. Nishida muttered as she reached for another rib and wiggled her eyebrows Groucho style at the TV camera, “this is the worst case of suicide I ever saw.”

  “Of course, I’m sure the shooting had something to do with it,” George said, growing anger clipping his syllables.

  “At least,” Kim Nishida said around a greasy mouthful of pork.

  “Look at him, Francisco,” Charlie said. “There’re two places on this carcass the SWATs didn’t burger: the head and the feet. You might not believe this, but we didn’t do an X-ray series on the feet either.”

  “We need at least a side shot of the head,” George insisted.

  Kim tossed another rib bone into the waste can. “Detective, maybe you figure he had a stroke? Or are all of those bullet-hole-looking things just a bad case of acne?”

  “He doesn’t need pimple cream,” Charlie chimed in. “He needs spackling plaster.”

  “Maybe it was an allergic reaction,” Kim suggested. “A sensitivity to heavy metal.”

  The morgue vaudeville act of Truman and Nishida failed to get either a laugh or a rise out of Francisco, who continued to study Tom Rand’s face. Matt stood next to George. “What is it, partner?”

  George reached to a dispenser, took a rubber glove from it, and turned back to the body of Tom Rand as he pulled on the glove. “Look at this.” He glowered at the Tenctonese intern. “Doctor? Would you look at this, please, Doctor . . . ?”

  “Rivers,” the Newcomer completed as he looked down at Tom Rand’s head.

  “Rivers,” George repeated dully, his eyes changing color from red to black.

  “Cool off, George, okay?” Matt cautioned.

  George turned the head of the corpse toward Matt and placed a finger on the body’s left eyelid, “Look at this mark. Here, just above the eyelid.”

  Leaning forward, Matt sa
w a reddish-black pit partly hidden by the warden’s bushy eyebrow. “What’s that? It looks like a cut or a burn.”

  Charlie Truman frowned and squinted at the mark. “It’s a burn. A deep one, too.” He looked up at Francisco. “What do you know about it?”

  George looked at Dr. Rivers, his eyes an even deeper black. “What does it suggest to you, Doctor?”

  “Of course it suggests something to me. But this is a human,” the intern protested. “It’s unlikely that a mark there on a human would be anything more than a coincidence.”

  “Even though his death is connected to Maanka Dak and Sing Fangan, binnaumrokh?”

  The intern’s eyes changed color as well: from blue to red and from red to black. “Triahna!” demanded the intern.

  “I will not apologize!” George pointed with his thumb at the corpse. “How did he die, Doctor? Rivers? Dr. Rivers? What’s your whole name? Red Rivers? Sandy Rivers? Muddy Rivers? Cruddy Rivers?”

  “Arthur Rivers, actually.”

  “Lighten up, George,” Matt ordered as he shook his partner’s arm.

  George Francisco closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and let it escape slowly from his lungs. He let his gaze take in everyone in the room, stopping on Matt Sikes. “I apologize. I haven’t been quite myself lately.” He looked at Arthur Rivers. “I’m sorry, Doctor. I do apologize. This has been one of those days.”

  “Are your nemeh glands swollen?”

  “Forget about my damned nemeh glands!” He pointed toward the mark on Tom Rand’s eyelid and asked the intern in Tenctonese, “N’teegas tees visri na x-lo, yidyih il es’sa neh tew chai k’Maanka Dak?”

  After a moment’s consideration, Arthur Rivers answered, “Kwen. Yes, I agree.”

  “What gives, George?” Matt demanded.

  “Nothing. Dr. Rivers has agreed to the need for a head series.”

  “Sikes!” someone shouted from the door.

  “What?”

  “Telephone. Urgent.”

  “Timing is everything.” Matt turned, went through the swinging doors, and followed the pointing finger on the wall to the telephone. Picking up the receiver, he tucked it between his chin and shoulder and began searching his pockets for some chewing gum. “Sikes here.”

  “Sikes, this is Grazer.”

  “What’s up, Cap?”

  “Diaz. He’s dead.”

  Matt took the receiver in hand, stared at it for a second, and held it to his other ear. “What? Mark? Dead? What in the hell are you talking about, Cap?”

  “Diaz bought it. We sent him to track down Susan Francisco and the kids after we learned that Maanka Dak killed Sing Fangan along with a Newcomer construction rep named Brick Wahl at a motel in North Hollywood. Matt, Mr. Wahl had a very sophisticated computer in his room. The boys on the scene called in a button thumper, and she says Maanka Dak definitely accessed the police computer and could have accessed just about any other system he wanted, including the school system or any of the universities. That’d give him everything from Buck’s class schedule to George’s pension account number.”

  “What happened to Diaz?”

  There was a long silence on the captain’s end of the line. When he finally answered, his voice was very rough. “We don’t know what happened to him. It looks like he killed almost everyone in Susan’s office, seven or eight people, and then killed himself. One of the office workers there managed to describe the nightmare before she passed out. Susan and the kids weren’t there.”

  “Jesus H. Christ, Cap! What . . . how? Are they sure it was Diaz?”

  “It was Diaz, all right. Matt, you knew him better than I did. Did he do any drugs? Was he on any medications or under psychiatric care? You know, something not authorized by the department shrinks?”

  “Hell, no!” Matt closed his eyes and shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. Hell.” Matt rubbed his eyes and took a ragged breath. “Has anyone told Felicia?”

  “Dobbs is on his way now. He took it hard, Matt. Real hard. Thank God at least Diaz didn’t have any kids.” There was a puzzled silence, then Grazer asked, “What’re you two doing at the canoe factory?”

  Matt automatically opened his mouth to lie, but stopped before he spoke. Game time was over. “George thinks Warden Rand didn’t just freak. He thinks the McBeaver Massacre’s connected to Maanka Dak’s escape. My guess is that Mark Diaz just confirmed that.”

  “Dak? You think Maanka Dak is connected somehow to what Diaz did?”

  “Cap, I’ll bet you a month of overtime and my outfielder’s glove that Mark Diaz has a small wound of some kind above his left eyelid.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “I’m not sure. George knows what’s going on, though. I’d bet my life on it. If Diaz has that wound above his left eyelid, you clear it with Hollenbeck Division to put us on the case, okay?”

  “I’ll see what—”

  “And Cap, be sure they take an X-ray of Diaz’s head. Got it?”

  “Sikes!” someone yelled from the end of the hall.

  “What?”

  “Your partner. He just collapsed.”

  “What’s going on? Sikes? What happened?” Grazer demanded, but there was no one on the other end of the line.

  In a nearby room, Agent Paul Iniko was slumped in a chair, his gaze fixed to the video monitor. As Sikes and the Tenctonese intern wheeled Francisco from the autopsy room, Truman and Nishida rolled the portable X ray into place on Tom Rand’s body. Iniko stood and went to the telephone. He punched in a number, waited a moment, and then said, “This is Iniko.” A click and a buzz.

  “Iniko?” a man answered.

  “That’s right.”

  “Are they doing a head series?”

  Iniko turned his head and glanced at the monitor. “They’re getting ready to do it right now.”

  The voice at the other end of the phone was silent for a moment. “Will they know what they have once they find it?”

  “I think they already know what they’re looking for. One of the interns, a Tenctonese, appears to have had experience with the neural controllers. It was a police officer, though, who demanded the head series.”

  “A police officer?”

  “LAPD. His name’s Francisco; a homicide detective. I made a few calls and checked him out. He was the officer who took down Maanka Dak and Sing Fangan. He knew them from the ship. As I said, they know what they’re looking for.”

  “There’s nothing to do, then, except erase. Hang in there with Collins, Rittenhouse, and Lipscomb and see what you can do. Whatever happens, keep us out of it.”

  “What about Maanka Dak?”

  “We’re taking care of it.”

  The muscles in Paul Iniko’s cheeks flexed. “Taking care of it?”

  “We’re handling it, Iniko. That’s all I can say.”

  “There are a lot of dead men and women out here, and the police are short on information. I just overheard a phone conversation and there’s been another mass killing. It was a police officer implanted by Dak.”

  “You know what your orders are, Iniko.” There was silence at the other end of the line, then the sound of the connection being cut.

  Paul Iniko hung up his receiver, and with his hand still on it, glanced at the tattoo that surrounded his wrist. He turned his head and looked at the video screen. Truman and Nishida were positioning the portable X-ray for another exposure. Paul Iniko returned to the chair, dropped into it, and resumed studying the monitor.

  C H A P T E R 1 3

  NICTO WATCHED AS his friend, Vullos, sat and stared out at nothingness, his eyes deep green and unblinking. The vibration of the ship’s engines provided an almost soothing hum, tempting Stangya to believe that Vullos was not in pain.

  But his eyes were green. More deeply green than Stangya had ever before seen on a Tenctonese man, woman, or child. The neural implant, the tiny robot the Overseers had placed in Vullos’s brain, was telling Stangya’s friend certain things. First, it told
Vullos to sit calmly and do nothing. Second, it told him to feel pain, towers and oceans of unimaginable pain.

  There was no sign anything was going on. There was no screaming, no thrashing about, no struggling, no pleading, no need for manacles or muscular arms to restrain him. Vullos did all the work himself, in motionless silence. The only sign that he was in pain was the color of his eyes. The pain program had allowed that sign in order to be certain that the proper degree of suffering was being obtained.

  It continued until Vullos’s eyes began to cry blood . . .

  The images of three Newcomers holding cans of Dr Pepper swam in a sea of hot colors as George fought his way back to consciousness. When he could again focus his eyes, he saw that he was looking at the front of a vending machine. Next to the canned beverage dispenser was a machine containing candy bars, dry roasted insects, flavored popcorn, and dolphin chowder.

  He was stretched out on a couch with plastic-covered cushions. George allowed his head to turn to one side and saw that he was in the morgue’s staff lounge. Seated in a chair before him was Matt Sikes. His partner was leaning with his elbows on his knees, his hands rubbing the back of his neck. “Matt?”

  Sikes sat bolt upright and shouted, “Doc, he’s back!” The door to the lounge opened and Dr. Rivers pushed his way in as Sikes placed his hand on George’s arm. “Glad to see you again, buddy.”

  “What happened?”

  “What they tell me, while I was on the horn with Grazer, you did a swan dive right in the middle of the autopsy.”

  “I didn’t land in anything gross, did I?”

  “Don’t be fussy, Detective,” Dr. Rivers said. “You’re alive and well, and that’s what counts.”

  “Who had me brought in here, Matt?”

  “I did.”

  “Why?”

  “Call me crazy, George, but I thought it would freak you out a whole lot less if you woke up here rather than on a slab in the ghoul room with Kim and Charlie sucking on their fingers and smacking their lips.”