by L. A. Graf
Sikes slammed the guy hard with the heel of his hand, then clenched his fist in the front of the bastard’s shirt to keep him from stumbling backwards. It would have been easy to beat him then, to knock him senseless before he even figured out they were in a fight, and Sikes couldn’t even have his badge lifted for it or anything because he wasn’t a cop in this city. Sikes understood the principle behind public relations, though, and knew George would probably lecture him for a week if he hospitalized somebody fifteen minutes after landing in Pittsburgh. So, instead, Sikes stared the guy down with the guy’s shirt wadded up under his chin, and tried to content himself with imagining what that jaw would look like held in place with surgical wire. “Yo, George . . . ?”
Sikes didn’t break his attention to turn and look, but he heard Susan murmur something in alarm, and George prompted evenly, “Matthew? Do you need something?”
“Yeah.” He flashed George enough of a look to let his partner see his concern, then had to look away when he glimpsed Cathy’s eyes sparkling with fear. “Let’s take the girls back to the gate. The shit’s getting a little deep for my taste.” He flashed his captive a bloodless grin. “No offense.”
George slipped an arm behind each of the women to urge them forward. “Perhaps we should contact airport security.”
“Trust me, George, security’s probably waiting for us at the gate.” Sikes rotated sideways as the Newcomers went by, dragging the blond bigot along with him. “Just get the girls on the walkway, and let’s get out of here.”
It wasn’t that Sikes had expected the bigot to try and cut his legs out from under him, just that he’d handled too many gang bangers and druggies to get caught completely by surprise. When he felt the other man’s leg scissor behind his, Sikes jerked a knee up between them without even turning his attention away from George. Both Sikes and the bigot toppled, Sikes on the bottom, but the bigot had curled into too tight a huddle to notice much when Sikes rolled out from under him. Scrambling to his feet, Sikes shouted, “Go on!” to George, even though the Newcomer gannaum showed no signs of stopping.
Two other men converged on the mouth of the walkway, one of them wearing the knotted white armband that was just becoming popular among Purists on the West Coast. Just what they needed—local color that was just as separatist as the color back home. Slamming to a stop just before the moving conveyor, Sikes planted one hip against the rail and jerked his elbow neck-high just as one of the Purists tried to rush past him. The guy clotheslined himself and dropped with a grunt, his heels thumping on the end of the walkway. Sikes hopped over him and pivoted, grinning maliciously when he caught sight of the last Purist just off the foot of the walkway, looking from one downed comrade to the other.
“Coming?” Sikes called.
The guy didn’t answer, just stared at Sikes as the conveyor pulled them steadily farther apart. It was suddenly a disturbing image. Sikes turned away from it with a growl. Cathy, Susan, and George were already off the end of the walkway, having wisely hurried ahead to join up with the other Newcomers and a phalanx of airport security. But running ahead to join them seemed just as unnatural as leaving the human Purist behind, so Sikes just stood his ground and let the walkway carry him. Somehow he felt better letting something else decide his allegiances for him.
C H A P T E R 2
A DRIVING GRAY snow closed around the chartered bus when it pulled away from the airport. George Francisco stared out the window at the winter landscape, catching indistinct glimpses of dark hills and bareboned trees beyond the edges of the highway. Mostly what he saw was the reflection of his own grim face against the glass, smeared by streaks of splattered snow.
“George.” Susan’s hand curved around his wrist, a welcome bracelet of warmth in the chilly air of the bus. “Don’t take this so hard. It’s really no worse than what happened to us in Los Angeles.”
George had to duck his chin to loosen the angry muscles of his throat before he could speak. “Susan, large-scale Purist protests in L.A. died out almost a year ago. Since then we’ve only had to put up with vandalism and occasional youth fights.”
“Like every other minority in the city,” said Cathy, turning from the seat in front of them to join the conversation. Her face looked pale but calm above the glitter of her new black-and-gold sweater and her dark blue peacoat.
“Yes.” George turned his hand to catch Susan’s and press it tightly. “I thought we’d seen the end of mass Purist demonstrations. I didn’t realize we’d have to fight this battle over and over again in every city we entered . . .”
The bus labored up a long hill, with smaller cars passing it in a steady stream. Two hills away, George could see the swift silver gleam of the public mag-lev train they were supposed to board before the Purist demonstrators changed their plans. Too dangerous, airport security had decided at the last minute. Wouldn’t the Newcomers feel safer on a crowded, smelly bus while the unpleasant humans stayed out of their way on the clean and quiet new mag-lev? George sighed regretfully. “I’m afraid it’s going to be a long trawl before we’re accepted as equal citizens everywhere.”
“Long haul, George,” said Sikes morosely. Unlike Cathy, he hadn’t turned to look around from the bus seat where he sat. “Welcome to the Civil Rights Movement. Just don’t drink out of any water fountains and you’ll do okay.”
“Really, Matthew, I don’t see what the quality of the public water supply has to do with Purist demonstrations in Pittsburgh.” George frowned at the back of his partner’s head. “You’re not suggesting they’d try to poison us, are you?”
“Forget it.” Sikes slid down further in his seat, his voice muffled in disgust. “It was just a historical reference.”
“I think your friend’s talking about the old segregation laws,” a deep voice said from across the bus aisle. George glanced over at the stocky older gannaum who sat there, and felt his stomach clench when he saw the telltale ring of tattoo half hidden beneath the expensive shirt cuff. The former Overseer met his gaze pleasantly enough, however, and George tried to suppress his instinctive spurt of dislike.
“What do segregation laws have to do with the drinking water supply?” George asked, puzzled.
The other Newcomer grunted. “In many states, albinistic humans had laws that kept melanistic humans from drinking out of the same water fountains they did. Didn’t you learn about that in your quarantine classes?”
“No.” George hoped his voice didn’t sound as uncomfortable as he felt. “I suppose my teachers were more concerned about the recent segregation laws than ancient ones like that.”
“Oh, the water fountain laws aren’t ancient.” An older linnaum, elegantly spotted, looked up from the seat next to the Overseer. Her face was gaunt, with a faint wrinkle of radiation burns along one cheek. “They were still enforced in this country as late as the 1960s.”
“Really?” Cathy sounded startled.
“Ask your human friend.” The Overseer’s deep voice turned quizzical on the word “friend” and George felt the skin around his eyes tighten with his effort not to scowl. “He probably remembers the crowds of humans that demonstrated against the repeal of those laws.” The bus plunged into the orange mercury light of a tunnel, throwing odd shadows across the Overseer’s blunt face. “Maybe he even attended some of the demonstrations.”
“The hell I did!” Sikes jerked around to glare across the aisle, ignoring Cathy’s restraining tug at his shoulder. “I’m not even old enough to remember when those riots happened!”
“Ah. Forgive me.” The stocky gannaum smiled politely. “I find it so difficult to judge age from human faces.”
“Because we all look so much alike?” Sikes demanded acidly.
Knowing his partner’s tendency to transfer anger to the nearest available target, George decided to intervene. “Matthew, you must admit that you also have difficulty—” He broke off, blinking painfully, as the bus rolled out of the tunnel and into a blaze of winter brilliance.
�
�Oh, George, look! It’s beautiful!” Susan leaned across his shoulder, pressing close enough to their window to mist it with her breath. The snow had stopped while they were inside the tunnel, and the scudding clouds had cleared just enough for the sun to break through. The winter light reflected off glittering water onto a triangle of mirrored buildings, then warmed itself against bright golden bridges over more water again. On either side, snowy hills folded the city in a close embrace. Unlike the barren mountains of Los Angeles, these slopes were quilted by houses and tree-lined streets, odd onion-shaped church domes, and the steep gray tracks of inclined trolleys.
Throughout the bus, George could hear the soft chatter and clicks of Newcomer appreciation, and even a faint grunt of surprise from Sikes. In all the publicity and preparation for this visit, no one had bothered to tell the southern Californians about Pittsburgh’s wealth of water. Three broad natural channels surrounded the city, full of rippling water from bank to bank—an astonishing contrast to the dry concrete gullies that L.A. called rivers. Two of the channels hemmed in the triangular wedge of downtown buildings, merging at its point to form a wider and darker third. The water caught the reflected colors of the bridges, the tall glass buildings and even the clouds and sky above, breaking them down into separate moving glints across its rippling surface.
The sunlit brilliance faded back into winter gray while the bus lumbered across one of the gold-painted bridges. Susan made a small, regretful sound as Pittsburgh lost its magical aura of light and became just another industrial downtown, crammed with cars caught in the late afternoon rush hour. Their bus slowed when it neared the curving ramps at the end of the bridge.
“There, look at that,” said Cathy, pointing over Sikes’s shoulder so George and Susan could see. On the far bank of the river they were crossing, a huge sign lit in blue neon proclaimed, Welcome, Newcomers! “The symposium organizers said Pittsburgh was a very friendly town.”
“They also said there wouldn’t be any snow this early in the year,” Sikes retorted. To George’s relief, he seemed to have forgotten his antagonism toward the former Overseer, although George saw that the big gannaum still watched the human. “If you ask me, I think they were being overly optimistic on both counts.”
“Oh, Matt, don’t be so grumpy.” Susan leaned forward to pat his arm. “This is a free vacation for you and me. Don’t let a few Purists spoil the whole trip.”
“I’ll try not to.” Sikes scowled out the bus window as they rolled down an exit ramp onto a narrow city street. “But I can tell you right now, it’s not going to be easy.”
“Why not?” Cathy swayed against him while the bus braked to a lumbering stop.
Sikes snorted and rapped his hand against the windowpane. “See for yourselves.”
Frowning, George leaned forward and wiped droplets of mist left by Susan’s breath off the cold glass pane. The bus had stopped a block away from an expensive-looking brass and brick hotel tower that was obviously their destination. The reason why it had stopped was equally obvious.
The entire street in front of them was filled with silent, sign-carrying humans.
Through his misted window, George measured the length of snow-covered sidewalk separating them from what he hoped was the safety of the hotel. The Purists could throw a lot of ice and snow at them between here and there, he thought, and that was about the best scenario he could envision. The sensitive skin of his back shivered painfully at the mere thought of ice-cold water dripping down it.
“Oh, not again!” Susan sounded more exasperated than dismayed by the discovery of the waiting crowd. George glanced down at her, comparing the resolute set of her small, firm chin to the worry and fear on the other Newcomer faces around him. In many ways, he thought with brief amusement, he’d rather have his wife beside him now than anyone else. Somehow, Susan could make almost any disaster seem like nothing more than a mild annoyance. It was a gift he’d always admired in her, even back aboard the ship.
“Why can’t the bus drive through them?” she asked now, practically. “Even Purists would have enough sense to get out of our way.”
George shook his head, wiser in the ways of crowds than she. “There are too many of them to do that. The ones at the back of the crowd won’t be willing to move further away, so the ones at the front won’t be able to. We’ll have to walk past them.”
He heard Cathy take a deep breath. “Well, what are we waiting for?” she asked, steadying her voice after a quickly swallowed quiver. “They’re not going to go away, are they?”
“No, but I think we’re going to get an escort through them.” Sikes dropped an arm around her shoulders almost absently, as if he had responded to her tension without realizing it. He stared out the window in the direction of a distant siren. It howled closer through the traffic, coming nearer and finally stopping with a skirl of red and blue warning lights beside them. “About time. I was beginning to think there weren’t any police in the entire city of Pittsburgh.”
Doors opened at the front of the bus, letting in a thin draft of cold air and the ragged sound of a few people chanting. A human female in a thick blue jacket climbed into the main aisle and pushed back snow-flecked hair to survey the Newcomers. “I’m Captain Protzberg of the Pittsburgh Public Safety Department,” she announced. “Please forgive the inconvenience, but we have a scheduled and licensed demonstration going on outside the Hilton Hotel. We also have three units of police on the scene, with more scheduled to arrive momentarily. As soon as they’re all in place, I’ll escort you out to your hotel.”
Protzberg paused, glancing around the bus to gauge their reaction to the news. If she felt any discomfort at what must be her first face-to-face meeting with Newcomers, she didn’t show it. George’s respect for her increased. “Please don’t panic,” she said over the rising murmur of comment. “We do have an area roped off for you to walk through, and the demonstrators have been told that if they shove against it or throw anything at all, they will be arrested. So far, they’ve been cooperating.”
Sikes snorted. “Of course they have. We haven’t gotten off the bus yet.”
“That’s true.” A grin lit Protzberg’s snub-nosed face and was quickly wiped away, as if her sense of humor had fought with her sense of duty and lost. “We’re not expecting much trouble, though. You might hear a few nasty comments from some people in the crowd, but if you refrain from making any reply you should be safe.”
She glanced out the open bus door while another siren wailed to a stop nearby. “Okay, it looks like my reinforcements have arrived. You can follow me out to the hotel now. Just take your time and be careful not to slip on the sidewalk—it’s still a little slushy.”
The police officer started down the first step of the bus, then paused and threw a rueful look over her shoulder at them. “Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. Welcome to Pittsburgh.”
“Some welcome,” said Sikes dryly. “I can’t wait to see the send-off party they give us.” He stood and shouldered out into the aisle ahead of Cathy as the Newcomers in the front seats started filing out. “George, as soon as we get off the bus, I want you on the other side of the sidewalk. That way we can put Cathy and Susan between us.”
George frowned, taking a moment to peer out the window while Susan gathered up her new sweater and followed Cathy into the aisle. He hurried after her, careful not to touch the Overseer getting up from the opposite row of seats. “Matthew, I don’t think the sidewalk will be wide enough for all of us. I suggest that we stay on the right-hand side. It looks to me as if the worst part of the crowd is—” He broke off abruptly as his wife gasped and froze on the bottom step of the bus. “Susan, what’s wrong?”
Her delighted gurgle of laughter reassured him even before he heard the noise of the crowd. The roar was so thunderous and deep that it took George a long time to realize why he couldn’t make out any words. It was applause.
“It is a welcoming party, George!” Susan turned to catch at his hand and pull him off the bus afte
r her, warm excitement in her eyes. “They’re not Purists after all!”
“They’re not all Purists,” George corrected her, his police-trained eye catching the scatter of hostile faces amid the crowd. The enthusiastic clapping continued as they walked down the rope-cordoned sidewalk, punctuated by occasional protesting cries of “No more spongeheads!” and “E.T. go home!”
“Look, Matt.” Cathy tugged at him, smiling and pointing toward the entrance portico of the hotel. “They’re filming us for the TV news! Smile at them.”
Sikes grunted, refusing to be distracted from his wary scanning of the crowd. “They can always edit me out later. George, where is that shouting coming from?”
George swung his head to focus his hearing more carefully and spotted the protesters along the icy sidewalk. The group of about twenty denim-coated young humans stood lined along the outer rope, carefully positioned beside the TV cameras so their shouting would sound more impressive to viewers. “Coming up on our left now,” he said quietly. A ripple of scornful cursing sped through the group when they spotted Sikes and Cathy, the only mixed pair among them. George felt his feet stiffen with tension.
“Matthew,” he said urgently. “Move Cathy over here to my right—”
It was too late. A little human girl cradled in her father’s arms reached across the left-hand rope, shyly offering Cathy a spray of golden chrysanthemums. Cathy smiled and thanked her politely, then staggered and fell as a snowball hit her in the face. The little girl shrieked.
“Goddammit!” Sikes dove over the rope, hurling himself at the young human male who’d thrown the snowball, heedless of the police whistles shrilling around him. The crowd surged, most of them trying to back away from the fight that had exploded in their midst while the TV crews struggled to come closer. The little girl’s father bent, bravely trying to pull Cathy from under the shoving mass of humanity. Susan ran to help him.