Alien Nation #7 - Extreme Prejudice

by L. A. Graf

  “I think we should go back to the hotel,” George suggested. “For all we know, Vegas is already back there and everyone is back inside.”

  Somehow, Sikes thought it unlikely. “Come on, George, think. Where would a guy like Vegas go on a night like tonight?”

  “I’m not kleezantsun,” George said stiffly.

  “No,” Sikes agreed, “but you are Tenctonese. Don’t you think even a little bit alike?” He balled his fists up inside the cuffs of his sweater, trying to save what little heat he had left.

  “Matthew, this would be like me asking you what Adolf Hitler would do lost on the streets of Pittsburgh.” George’s voice took on a mocking, frustrated tone. “You are human, after all. Surely you and Hitler must think something alike.”

  Tired, Sikes waved him into silence before he could really get going. “All right, all right, fine, I see your point. But where does that leave us?”

  “With going back to the hotel,” George stated plainly.

  Sikes stuck a finger in his partner’s face. “You’re a real pain in the ass when it comes to advice, you know that?”

  “Well,” a coarse voice interrupted them, “look who we got here, two refugees from the slag-lover’s convention.” Sikes threw a startled look over George’s shoulder, and the Newcomer spun around with a click of surprise when three dark figures materialized from the shadows of a building nearby. “We’ve got a message for you’ns.”

  They were none of them tall, Sikes noted, but all three wore gloves and heavy jackets. It was blows to the head and legs, or nothing at all.

  “We’re looking for a missing Newcomer.” Something about George’s excruciating calmness made Sikes hold his breath. “We don’t want any trouble.”

  “What you want’s got nothing to do with it.” The leader jammed his hand into one coat pocket, eying George. “They say slags got different body types than humans. Are you’ns different enough? Or do you’ns feel pain just like everybody else?” Sikes glimpsed a flash of black metal as the man’s hand pulled clear of his pocket. “I guess we get to find out.”

  He heard the click of something stiff being pulled back into place and charged past George to tackle the man before his brain could warn him not to.

  “Matthew, no!”

  They hit the ground with Sikes on top. Sikes levered himself up with an elbow on the Purist’s chest and hit him once across the face. The recoil from the blow nearly threw Sikes off balance, but he caught himself by falling forward and cramming a forearm against the attacker’s throat. “Hell of a message,” he grated in the Purist’s face. “Wanna try delivering it to me?”

  The Purist twisted with a growl. “You got it, guy.” And he jammed his hand upward in a hard, awkward frontal blow.

  The pain came as a surprise. Sikes barked a startled cry, jerking up and away as every muscle in his torso convulsed into a rigid knot. He wanted to fight back—wanted to do just about anything besides curl into a shuddering huddle in the snow—but couldn’t even convince his lungs to draw in air, much less do anything to stop the Purist from scrabbling out from under him and taking off down the street at a run. Vaguely, Sikes was aware that the guy’s friends were running with him, and he was suddenly very afraid for George.

  “George . . . ?”

  He only got as far as struggling to knees and elbows before someone’s hand closed firmly on his arm to help him stand. “That was incredibly stupid,” George scolded, pulling him onto the sidewalk.

  Sikes stumbled to a stop beside his partner, pain receding to nothing but a twitching memory along his nerves. “I thought the guy was gonna shoot you.” He tugged the hem of his sweater outward in search of some sign of blood or damage. A gallon of oily street slush and two holes the size and shape of cigarette burns were all he found. “What the hell happened?”

  “A stun gun,” George told him. He helped swipe the worst of the slush away. “He couldn’t possibly have gotten close enough to me to use it. He was just trying to scare us.”

  “Worked, didn’t it?” Sikes hugged himself with both arms, shivering from more than the cold now. “We’ve got to head back to the hotel now. If I don’t get dry clothes, I’m gonna freeze. Damn.” He vented the edge of his frustration on a snowplowed ridge. “When we find Vegas, I’m gonna kick his ass. Doesn’t he have the faintest idea how much trouble he’s caused?”

  “I don’t think he had any choice.”

  Sikes turned, stilled by the odd tone in George’s voice, and saw his partner stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, staring downward. “What?” He hurried back to him. “George, what are you talking about?”

  George stooped and peeled a scrap of muddy paper off the pavement. It was almost transparent with meltwater, the jagged tread mark of one of the Purists’ shoes obscuring the pasted-together words in one corner. What it said was easily readable, though, and made Sikes itch with anger even as he thought about the three Purists who had gotten away.

  We have the slag Ross Vegas. Do like we tell you or everybody dies.

  C H A P T E R 6

  BREAKFAST WAS RAW marinated weasel, artfully draped over a wedge of cantaloupe and garnished with tender young grasshoppers. George eyed the combination doubtfully as he settled at the linen-draped table in the smaller of the hotel’s two ballrooms.

  “Who ever heard of serving weasel with cantaloupe?” he demanded of Susan. He was still slightly irritable from lack of sleep, and the absence of real sunlight in this enclosed ballroom wasn’t helping his mood. Around him, other Tenctonese filed in and found their places, conversing in subdued murmurs and softened clicks about the events of the previous night. Security guards at the door scrutinized each incoming guest for a name badge. After the incident at the press conference, the symposium organizers had decided to bypass the hotel’s public dining rooms. The policeman in George approved of the additional security, but he couldn’t help being saddened by its necessity.

  “I think it’s refreshing.” As usual, Susan didn’t pay much attention to his morning complaints. She smiled up at the polite human server offering her a choice of juice or tea. “We’ll both have decaffeinated tea, please, with rice vinegar.”

  George waited until the young man had poured the tea and left. “Well, if you ask me, I think it’s some silly human’s idea of Tenctonese food.” He lifted his cup and let the warm tang of acetic acid soothe his throat.

  “No, it’s some silly human’s idea of hotel food.” Across the table, Sikes glowered at his own plate, on which two eggs, a sausage link, and a strip of bacon had been combined into a vacuously smiling face. “Be grateful. At least you didn’t get the rugrat special.”

  Susan looked up from her breakfast in surprise. “Matt, you never told us you liked rat.”

  The human groaned and buried his face in a cup of coffee, as if the effort of explaining had just exceeded his sleep-deprived capability. George kindly did it for him. “I believe Matthew was referring to the intended consumers of the dish, and not its contents,” he told his wife. “Rugrat is one of the terms of affection human males use toward their offspring. They also call them toenail biters.”

  “Ankle biters, George.” Sikes looked up as human voices rose flatly above the Tenctonese murmur of the crowd. He groaned again and cuffed George on the shoulder, swinging him around to see two gray-suited men enter the ballroom doorway. The taller of the pair had just flipped a badge open for the hotel guards to inspect. “Here come the feds.”

  Cathy looked up from her fruit plate, casting a surprised look at the door. “How do you know those are FBI agents? They could be Pittsburgh police detectives.”

  Sikes snorted. “Not with tailoring like that. What do you want to bet they’re here to talk to us?”

  “I don’t see why they should be.” George frowned, watching the pair cross the room. “They probably want to question Lydia Vegas about her husband’s kidnapping.”

  “Lydia Vegas wasn’t on TV yesterday. We were.”

  “Humph.�
� George absently ate some weasel, watching the men stop at another mixed table of humans and Newcomers. With some surprise, he realized that the casually dressed woman he had taken for one of the television stagehands was actually Jen Protzberg, the Pittsburgh detective who had escorted them to the hotel. She rose to speak to the suited men, then nodded and glanced around the room until she spotted George. The two men turned and followed her through the maze of tables toward them.

  “Told you.” Sikes finished cramming the last of his bacon into his mouth, then grinned maliciously at George. “They want to see what kind of troublemakers we are.”

  Soothed now by tea and food, George refused to take the bait. “Really, Matthew, you ought to chew your food before you swallow.” He looked up as the trio approached. “Good morning, gentlemen. Can we help you?”

  The taller man brought out his badge again and showed it to George. “Agent David Jordan, FBI. This is my colleague, Agent Steve Goliiko. You’re Detective George Francisco of the LAPD, correct?” George nodded and Jordan turned to glance across the table. “And you’re his partner, Matthew Sikes?”

  “That’s right.” Sikes grinned mirthlessly. “When I’m not an innocent human bystander, that is.”

  The FBI agents looked puzzled by the comment, but Jen Protzberg laughed. “The media mistook him for the victim in a fight yesterday,” she explained, then cast a sardonic glance at Sikes. “They weren’t too happy to find out he was actually the instigator.”

  Sikes scowled. “You didn’t tell them that, did you?”

  “No,” admitted Protzberg. “Your captain back in L.A. did.”

  Jordan cleared his throat diffidently. “If you don’t mind,” he said to George, “we’d like to ask you a few questions about the Vegas kidnapping.”

  “Of course.” George pulled out the empty seat beside him. “Won’t you join us for breakfast?”

  Golitko cast an appalled look at the weasel left on Susan’s plate and took an involuntary step back. Jordan smiled, though, and settled into the chair George offered him. At close hand, the federal agent looked lanky and unpretentious despite the neat creases of his suit.

  “Thanks,” he said, reaching gratefully for the carafe of coffee. “They assigned us to this case at four this morning, and we caught a flight from Washington an hour later. Right now I’d just about kill someone for a doughnut.”

  “Have some of my toast.” Sikes pushed his plate across the table, eying Jordan more sympathetically. Cathy pulled out another chair for the still-silent Golitko, and he took it after a wary glance at her fruit plate. Protzberg leaned a hip against the table beside him and waited, wearing the slightly skeptical expression that federal agents always brought out in local police.

  “What we’re concerned about,” said Jordan around a slice of toast, “is the Purist angle in this case.” He pulled a dark gray palmtop computer out of his suit jacket and punched up a display of notes. “Our records show almost no evidence of Purist activity in the city of Pittsburgh over the last five years, but you guys say you’re sure it was Purists you ran into last night. We’d like to know if the circumstances surrounding this case seem consistent with the Purist activity you’ve dealt with back in L.A.”

  George exchanged a thoughtful glance with his partner. “In some ways it does. For example, the street demonstrations were a common Purist tactic during the early years of Tenctonese integration in L.A. And bomb threats were used quite often as well, although I can only recall one instance where a bomb was actually planted.”

  “But,” prompted Jordan, quick to pick up the unspoken reservation in George’s voice. Sikes answered for him.

  “But only one kidnapping,” the human detective said flatly. “And that was kind of special circumstances.”

  George nodded, sipping tea. “Purists in L.A. mostly preferred to vandalize Newcomer property. There were many gang beatings and even some scattered sniper shootings, but I can’t recall them ever holding a Tenctonese for ransom.” He cocked his head intelligently at Jordan. “Since the FBI is concerned with the case, I assume there has been a specific ransom demand?”

  The tall human shot a questioning glance at his colleague and got a silent nod in return. “Someone phoned Nancy Thompson last night at her home. They told her to turn on her answering machine, then forced Ross Vegas to read a statement from his kidnappers.” Jordan poked a button on the palmtop, then handed it to George. “I have the transcription here. See what you think.”

  Sikes scooted his chair around the table, squinting over George’s shoulder as he scrolled the message up the small computer screen. “I am being held by the Society for a Clean Earth, Pittsburgh Brotherhood,” said the colorless gray words. “They demand the immediate return of the thirty-nine slags in the city of Pittsburgh to Los Angeles, followed by evacuation of all spongeheads to the Mojave Desert, to be held in permanent quarantine and isolation. In order to eliminate all alien viruses and parasites, the contaminated area known as Slagtown is to be firebombed and the desert must be permanently sealed and guarded from any further human contact. (Pause on tape.) You have until noon tomorrow to send the slags in Pittsburgh home and begin preparations for permanent quarantine. If you don’t, we will kill one Newcomer a day until our demands are met.”

  George swallowed, feeling the fierce double thumping of his hearts as they reacted to the threat. His brain knew the demands were ridiculous and that the human authorities would never accede to them, but his chest still ached with rage. Susan sensed his distress and slid a hand to cover his. He turned his hand over and clasped hers, grateful for the small blessing of warmth.

  “The tape seems authentic,” he said, strengthened by the silent contact. “Purists have always spread rumors about alien diseases, and they’ve demanded a permanent quarantine in the Mojave since the day we landed there.”

  “A hell of a demand, given the number of Newcomers in L.A.” Sikes’s voice sounded casual, but George noticed he had to clear his throat before he could speak. “The government will never do it.”

  “They did it to the Japanese during the Second World War,” Protzberg pointed out soberly. “And if they could say it was for your own safety—”

  George’s hand tightened on Susan’s, but he kept his voice steady with an effort. “That’s a clever twist,” he agreed. “I’m not sure how it will affect public opinion.”

  Jordan sighed and retrieved his computer. “Well, I know how it’s affected my opinion. It makes me very worried about Mr. Vegas. Since his kidnappers don’t want money or any material ransom, we have no way to contact them. All we could do to protect him is cancel the symposium—”

  “No!” said George, Cathy, and Susan in unison. The FBI agent blinked in surprise, and even Sikes looked a little taken aback by their vehemence. “That would be a grave mistake,” George continued, more quietly. “If kidnapping has become a new Purist tactic, the last thing we should do is encourage it by giving in. The life of a single Tenctonese would be well bought if it prevented the kidnapping of hundreds more.”

  “Hmm.” Jordan rubbed his chin, exchanging thoughtful looks with his colleague. “The federal government’s official policy is not to negotiate with terrorists, and I suppose that by the nature of their demands, the Purists here might qualify. I’ll talk to the symposium organizers and see how they feel.” He got to his feet with sudden decision, Golitko rising with him. “In the meantime, would you two mind keeping an eye out for anything suspicious during the rehearsals today? I’d appreciate it if you’d keep me informed via Detective Protzberg. She’ll be spending the day here, managing on-site security while we investigate the kidnapping.”

  “No problem,” said Sikes, and George nodded. They watched Jen Protzberg escort the men over to the table where Lydia Vegas sat, listlessly picking at her breakfast. She looked up with stoic resignation at their approach.

  “They’re not as bad as they could be, for feds.” Sikes stole a strawberry from Cathy’s unfinished plate and popped it in
his mouth, then turned to lift an inquiring eyebrow at George. “I don’t suppose your willingness to sacrifice Ross Vegas to the Purists has anything to do with him being kleezantsun?”

  George felt his eyes sting with embarrassment. “Of course not!” he snapped. “I would have done the same if he’d been sansol.”

  “Oh, yeah?” His human partner tilted his head, looking at George with disturbing perception. “And what if he’d been Susan?”

  The room’s winter chill suddenly penetrated into George’s blood and made him shiver. “It’s cold in here,” he said, jumping to his feet so he wouldn’t have to meet Sikes’s gaze. “Let’s go next door so I can practice my speech for the rehearsal.”

  “Dammit, I stuttered!”

  George sank into one of the folding chairs at the back of the ballroom. He could still feel the jittery shaking under his armpits from the stress of staring into too bright lights, with his mike squealing a mortifying whine of feedback whenever he moved too close to the amplifier pickup. George hated microphones anyway. When pitched for human comfort, they were always far too loud for Tenctonese ears.

  Susan made a sympathetic noise and patted his hand. “It wasn’t very noticeable, dear. And at least your talk didn’t run forty minutes long this time.”

  “Only because I skipped a page of notes.” George irritably slapped his sheaf of printed pages back into his briefcase. “And didn’t even realize it!”

  Three seats down the row, Sikes opened his eyes and blinked at George. “Oh, good,” he said drowsily. “I thought I’d nodded off and missed something while I was supposed to be keeping an eye on things.”

  “You did.” Cathy ruffled his hair affectionately. “But don’t worry. I kept an eye on things for you.”

  “Did you see anything unusual?” George’s self-disgust vanished under a surge of professional concern as he scanned the ballroom. Since today was merely the dress rehearsal for the televised symposium tomorrow, only a fraction of the folding chairs were filled with people watching the next speaker practice. George ignored the dark human heads he could see and carefully counted the spotted ones. “I only see thirty-six Newcomers here. Who’s missing?”