Alien Nation #7 - Extreme Prejudice

by L. A. Graf

  “I knew we could depend on you, Emily.” Susan smiled at George over the phone. At thirteen, their daughter had eagerly adopted all the responsibilities of an adult and liked to be treated that way. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t be too hard on Albert,” George reminded her. “He’s doing us a big favor by taking vacation to baby-sit Vessna.” Then parental concern overrode his sense of duty. “Did you make yourselves a good dinner?”

  “Fresh badger. And we saw you on TV while we were eating,” Buck informed them. “Hey, was that skinned thing as gross as it looked under your coat?”

  “Bu-uck!” Emily wailed, suddenly reverting to outraged childhood. “Gross! Don’t remind me!”

  George groaned again. “Oh, no. Don’t tell me I was on national television!”

  “All five channels,” his son said cheerfully. “And your tie was crooked on all of them.”

  “It was?” George put a hand up to his throat and found the knot of his tie firmly wedged under his left shirt collar. He grunted, realizing that he must have twisted it to one side when he’d hauled off his jacket. “Sorry I embarrassed you.”

  Buck laughed. “No, Dad, you were great. You really told that stupid human woman off when you explained about the monkey. All the news commentators are talking about how the Purist movement made a big mistake in messing with dead Tenctonese babies.”

  “And the Newcomer station in L.A. has made you Tenctonese of the Month,” added Emily with glee. “They called and told us just now. I can’t wait to tell my friends at school.”

  George blinked across at Susan in astonishment. “But all I did was explain why the Purists used a monkey.”

  “I guess it doesn’t take much to be a hero these days.” Buck’s voice reverted to its more familiar cynical tone. “Hey, don’t argue about it, Dad. Maybe somebody will ask you to write a book, and we’ll all be rich.”

  “Speaking of money—” In one of those dizzying shifts that George still wasn’t used to, Emily sounded very adult again. “—this phone call must be running up a lot of it. We’d better hang up.”

  “Yes, dear,” agreed Susan, her mouth quivering as if she was trying not to laugh. “Nuzzle Vessna for me and tell her we’ll be home soon.”

  “I already did,” said Emily proudly. “ ’Bye, Mom! ’Bye, Dad!”

  “We’ll be watching for you on TV,” Buck added evilly just before the phone clicked.

  George sighed and leaned over Susan to replace the phone in its cradle, then sank back into her warm embrace. She smiled and began loosening his crooked tie, then paused to look at him closely. George knew why—he could feel the odd way his mouth was twisting.

  “Is something wrong, George?” Susan asked in concern.

  “No, not wrong.” He rubbed a finger reassuringly down the bridge of her nose. “It’s just that I’ve never before done something that Buck has actively approved of. I’m not sure how to react.”

  She laughed and finished pulling off the tie. “Well, at least you can take comfort in the fact that he doesn’t think much of you being named Tenctonese of the Month.”

  “No.” Mild embarrassment prickled down the nape of his neck when he met her amused gaze. “What do you think of it?”

  “I think it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving gannaum.” Susan unbuttoned his shirt and slid both hands into it. “Come here and let me congratulate you.”

  Planet dreams. George hated planet dreams. The rank smells of alien vegetation, the slap and scratch of branches across his skin as he ran, the harsh rasp of humidity in his lungs, and the glare of bluish sunlight—

  The levpa was chasing him, silent as it always was, nose to ground and nearly invisible against the forest floor. Somewhere behind it were the Overseers, or at least, George hoped they were. He kept glancing over his shoulder as he stumbled up each hill, waiting for the impact of the levpa, for the familiar whine of the aircar to arrive and haul him back to the ship. It had to come, he knew it had to come, he knew they’d never let him really escape . . . but in his nightmares, they always did. George ran until he staggered with thirst, ran until he went blind with exhaustion, ran until the bitter dismay of failure rose up in his throat and choked him.

  A shrill buzzing ripped the alien forest away from him without warning. George jerked up in bed, aware of Susan’s warmth beside him and the glittering, reflected glow of the river in their dark hotel room, not sure what had woken him. Then the buzzing shrilled again, and he recognized it as the phone. He reached out and yanked it off the bedside table.

  “What?” he demanded, still fierce from his dream.

  “Spongehead.” The cold human voice on the other end of the line brought George completely awake. “You’re going to get another chance to be on TV.” The voice paused, then went on with a chuckle before George could speak. “In about a million pieces. There’s a bomb in your hotel, and it’s going to blow up in five minutes.”

  C H A P T E R 5

  BLUE AND RED police lights strobed across the roped-off snowfield in front of the hotel—a snowfield that in better weather served as some kind of park. The armored bomb-squad van had crunched over salt heaps and pack ice to park right against the hotel’s revolving brass doors, almost out of sight beneath the entrance overhang and behind the doorman’s elaborate booth. They’d brought far too many police types to the scene. Sikes figured that was to be expected. Not only were there also far too many yo-yos hanging around the edges, eager to see somebody, anybody get blown all to hell, but there were far too many news crews, as well, all equally unwilling to miss the East’s first Newcomer flambé. Sikes jammed his fists more securely into his armpits and wondered why nobody ever held these symposiums in the summer.

  “Matt, come here. You’re going to freeze.” Cathy moved up behind him to open the front of her borrowed peacoat and enfold him against her. “You know, human core body temperature only has to drop two degrees to cause serious biochemical problems.”

  What a cheerful thought. “Don’t worry about me,” Sikes said through chattering teeth. “The cold’s the only thing keeping me awake right now.” Still, he was glad for her steady warmth and the feel of her slim arms wrapped around his. “Where’s Susan?”

  “I’m here.” She was almost invisible beneath two of the hotel’s quilted comforters, dwarfed by George’s greater build and height inside all that fabric. “I hope this isn’t going to take too long.”

  “It depends on whether or not they actually find a bomb,” George said. His nose and forehead were already pinkish with cold, but he hadn’t taken his eyes off the third-floor windows since they’d come outside. “The sooner they find it, the sooner they’ll leave.”

  “And if they don’t find it,” Sikes continued for him, “we could be out here all night while they search every room in the hotel.”

  “How do you know?” Another alien couple, swathed in heavy clothing as well as what looked like their hotel room draperies, skirted the edge of the sidewalk to shuffle closer. Sikes recognized Scott Free’s snow-speckled wire rims beneath a haze of breathy steam. “You’re not with the Purists?” The look he directed over Sikes’s shoulder at Cathy as good as said, “You can’t be.”

  “We’re police officers,” George told him. “This sort of thing doesn’t change much from place to place.”

  Not that George would know, Sikes thought. But not that he was wrong, either. He must have read it somewhere. “Besides, it’s still humans doing the cop work. I know about humans, even if I don’t want to some of the time. They’re not gonna let us go back in until they’re sure.”

  “That’s good, I guess,” Sandi Free said with a sigh. “It’s just, it’s so cold.”

  “Yeah.” Sikes wished he could somehow draw them all together in a big huddle or something to conserve what they could of their body heat. But he felt stupid for just thinking about how that would look, so he said nothing. “Try to keep moving—it’ll raise your temperature.”

  Scott pulled his
wife tighter and they shuffled away down the sidewalk. Although they didn’t stop, Sikes heard the liquid click-clicking of their voices as they passed other knots of Newcomers, urging their peers to move around. As the rigid line of former slaves began to break apart, Cathy said from behind him, “Maybe you should take your own advice.”

  “I’m not the one in danger of freezing to death even inside a big blanket.” Still, he started slowly down the sidewalk away from the direction taken by the Frees, thinking about Cathy and what his increased body heat could do for her.

  Slow stepping with her directly behind him was a little awkward, but Cathy didn’t protest and Sikes didn’t mind. Snow encroached annoyingly close as shoveled-bare sidewalk gradually ran out, and the spidery latticework of a bridge reflected top and bottom against the river several yards ahead of them and the sky. It had stopped snowing hours ago, but the snow plowed up along the curb was waist high, the undisturbed blanket on the grass taller than Sikes’s knees. Slowing to a stop just beside a row of sagging bushes, Sikes was suddenly awash in unwelcome memories of Detroit winters spent wielding a broken snow shovel in sweat-soaked woolens and secondhand boots. He shook the thoughts away with a shiver.

  Cathy rested her chin on his shoulder. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing,” he said automatically. Then, feeling guilty for the easy lie, “I dunno. Just getting fed up with the assholes, I guess.”

  “Hm.” She slipped around in front of him, exposing his back to the frigid night, and locked her hands around his waist so they could face each other, eye to eye. “Anything in particular or just the usual Matt Sikes disgust with the whole world?”

  He sighed, and his breath curled around them like smoke. “Is it that wrong?” Even he was surprised at how quietly he asked it.

  Cathy frowned. “What?”

  “Us. Being together like we are, you and me.”

  He wasn’t sure how to interpret the subtle expression that flitted across her face, but he’d known her long enough now to recognize the calmness that replaced it as Cathy trying to protect him from her hurt. “Who says what we have is wrong?”

  Sikes reached up to rub one finger against her brow. “You’re not stupid, Cathy. Everybody! Every TV journalist who feels the need to point it out to the public, every Newcomer busybody who disapproves of it with her friends.”

  “We’re not the only Newcomer and human couple on the planet,” Cathy told him, but Sikes shook his head.

  “We are out here.” He looked beyond her at the dirty snow and the passing cars full of morbid curiosity. “You don’t know what it’s like out here, how lucky we’ve been, living in L.A. Out here, seeing whites with blacks or Asians is a big deal. In some places, it used to be a crime. And here I am, getting seen nationwide with an alien.” He pulled his attention back to her, and snuggled deeper into their coat for lack of any better way to express his regret. “I’m sorry . . . It’s just, I don’t want to be with you because it’s some kind of statement, and I hate feeling like I’m getting forced to stand for things I never even thought about. It’s like everybody’s using us for whatever it is they want, and there’s not even anybody I can punch out to make myself feel better.”

  Cathy laughed warmly in his ear, then pushed just far enough away to look at him squarely. “Do you love me?”

  A swell of hot panic swept over him, quickly followed by confusion and a little fear. “I care about you a lot.” It was as close as he was willing to say.

  Cathy accepted it without pushing for more. “Do you love me because my sexual organs are in a different arrangement than a human woman’s or because of who I am and what I feel for you?”

  He reached up with both hands to stroke the sides of her face. “Cathy, no offense, but I don’t love any sexual organs that make me take a night class for six weeks just to use them.”

  “Well, then—” She kissed him tenderly, something she’d also learned within the past few months, just for him. “Our agenda is to care for each other and make each other happy. What difference does it make what everybody else wants from us?”

  “Everybody else runs the world, hon,” he explained with gentle regret.

  Cathy smiled and kissed the end of his nose. “But you don’t have to take them all to bed with you.”

  “True,” he conceded. “Very true.”

  “Have you seen my husband?”

  Sikes glanced away from his bored inspection of the cop silhouettes in the hotel room windows. An hour into their silly search and they’d turned up nothing. He wondered how long it would take them to figure out that the word hoax more than just a little applied to their situation.

  Lydia Vegas, the spots on her scalp flushed dark with cold, stood just to their side of a blue historic landmark sign, apparently trying to use it for a windbreak. It wasn’t working very well. The blanket she hugged around her snapped and fluttered in the stiff breeze, as though trying to grope around to the front and smother her. Without her husband there to help warm her, she looked particularly frail and tiny.

  “You can’t find Ross?” Sikes, casually balanced with his hips against the park’s chain-link fence and Cathy all but sitting on his lap, silently urged her to stand as he straightened. “Did he come out with the rest of us?” A quick glance across the line of bare heads didn’t reveal the tall Overseer among them.

  “Yes.” Lydia turned to look as well. Her scarred face flashed from red to blue to red in the passage of silent police lights. “We were here together until just a half hour ago. Then he went to talk with the human in charge about how much longer we’d have to stand out in this cold.” Her eyes colored in a way Sikes couldn’t read. “He hasn’t come back.”

  Sikes’s pulse began a little dance of anxiety, and he pushed himself clear of Cathy even as he craned to look around them for some sign of the errant Newcomer. “He probably got tied up bitching at the cops,” he said, not believing it. He pulled the peacoat tight around Cathy, ignoring the bite of winter cold through his sweater, and fastened her first few buttons. “Go get George. I’m gonna go talk to the cops.”

  Her eyes darkened with worry. “Matt—”

  “I’ll be right back.”

  Except for the way the cold slipped into his lungs, the jog across the street was easy. No traffic to avoid, at least, and most of the bystanders had gotten tired of the cold and wandered back to bed. Sikes was glad when he made the sidewalk and could slip behind one of the cruisers to cut the wind. The nearest uniform saw him and waved imperiously back toward the police line. “Hey, back across the street, guy!”

  Sikes reached instinctively for his badge, then realized it wasn’t there when his hand closed instead on cold sweater hem. “I’m a cop,” he said in his best crime-scene voice. “LAPD.”

  “LAPD?” The cop looked as if he was about to say more but stopped himself after glancing beyond the squad cars at the milling Newcomers. “You with them?” he asked with a jerk of his head. Sikes nodded, and the cop turned to bark at his partner, “Barb! Get this guy a jacket.”

  It was all Sikes could do to keep from jittering in place from the cold. “Oh, man, thanks! I’ve been freezing out here.”

  “All that L.A. sunshine thins your blood.” But the cop smiled as he passed across a black padded police jacket. “Bosserman,” he introduced himself.

  “Sikes.” They shook hands in between Sikes shoving his arms down the sleeves of the jacket. It was deliciously warm from the inside of somebody’s car. “Look, have you seen one of the Newcomer men around here? Talking to your chief or anything?”

  Bosserman frowned, glancing around as though he might have missed something. “You mean besides across the street? Nah. Why? You missing one?”

  “Apparently.” Sikes zipped up the jacket, chewing the inside of his lip. “Do me a favor—ask around your guys to see if somebody’s seen him. His name’s Ross Vegas, and he financed a lot of this convention.” He backed up toward the street again. “I’m starting to wonder if mayb
e the bomb threat wasn’t just a setup to get us outside where somebody could nab him.”

  While Bosserman collected his partner and hurried off to question the rest of the assembled cops, Sikes trotted back across the slushy street to meet George at the edge of the sidewalk. The Newcomer had left Susan and the blanket with Cathy; Sikes could see them hovering near Lydia Vegas just a few yards away. “Did Cathy tell you?” he asked George quietly as he joined him.

  George nodded grimly. “He isn’t with the police?”

  “No.” Sikes unzipped the jacket and started to strip out of it as he spoke. “Let’s take a quick walk around the block, see if he’s wandered off.”

  “Why would he? He knows the Purists must be somewhere nearby.”

  “George, I don’t know! Maybe they suck Overseers’ brains out their ears when they give them their tattoos. Here.” He pushed the jacket into George’s hands, then grabbed his elbow to start him walking. “Put this on. If we’re gonna find Vegas dead on a street corner, the last thing I want is to lug both your frozen bodies back home.”

  George shouldered into the jacket without disguising his relief. “Thank you. Not just for this, but—”

  “Stop it, George. I’m sick of qualifying for sainthood just because I put up with you people.”

  George cocked his head, all semblance of sentimentality gone. “Doesn’t it seem like my people ought to be the ones gaining some blessed status for putting up with you?”

  “Shut up, George. Just shut up.”

  Nothing. No sign of Vegas in the two-block area they scouted, not many people in evidence that they could even ask. The two homeless men they came across seemed too confused by their questions to be helpful, and even using George as an example didn’t get any information out of them, meaning they most likely hadn’t seen Vegas or anyone looking even remotely like him. Sikes dragged George away while the Newcomer was still digging through his pockets for change, ignoring George’s protests in favor of devising their next course of action.