Alien Nation #5 - Slag Like Me

by Barry B. Longyear

  Detective Matthew Sikes and his Newcomer partner George Francisco must track down a missing human journalist, named Micky Cass, who has gone undercover as a Newcomer to expose racism and discrimination against the Tenctonese. From the beginning, the journalist's articles about his experiences ignited fierce controversy. When Micky Cass disappears, the controversy explodes and violence wracks the city.

  It is now up to Sikes and Francisco to solve a case that has the entire city caught in a grip of hate. Finally, as the city burns, Matt Sikes must go undercover as a Newcomer and place himself at the center of the worst violence Los Angeles has ever known . . .

  Matt Sikes Stared at the

  Spotted Baldness in the Mirror . . .

  He had imagined it a hundred times. Seeing it, however, placed him on a new plane of reality. This was no disguise. It was him.

  His eyebrows were gone. He touched them with the fingers of his right hand. They had been shaved and covered with a thin film of artificial skin. Then he ran his fingers across the top of his spots.

  Looking at the front of his left thigh, he smacked it with his open hand and watched where his fingers had struck. No redness appeared, only a plain anemic pink.

  Looking into the mirror again, he didn’t feel he was a human disguised as a Newcomer. Instead, he felt like a Newcomer with some rather eccentric memories of being a human.

  Alien Nation titles

  #1: The Day of Descent

  #2: Dark Horizon

  #3: Body and Soul

  #4: The Change

  #5: Slag Like Me

  Published by POCKET BOOKS

  An Original Publication of POCKET BOOKS

  POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  Copyright © 1994 by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp.

  ALIEN NATION is a trademark of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  ISBN: 0-671-79514-7

  First Pocket Books printing July 1994

  POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster Inc.

  Printed in the U.S.A.

  A dira ih urvek den

  In honor of the truly blind

  —Ivo Lass, Saverna na Ria

  The real story is the universal one of men who destroy the souls and bodies of other men (and in the process destroy themselves) for reasons neither really understands. It is the story of the persecuted, the defrauded, the feared and detested. I could have been a Jew in Germany, a Mexican in a number of states, or a member of any “inferior” group. Only the details would have differed. The story would be the same.

  —John Howard Griffin, Black Like Me

  ELLISON ROBB

  Slag Like Me

  The Invitation

  As my next-door neighbor would be pleased to tell you, I’m not a very nice guy. Habitually I do things different from the norm simply because the norm is the norm. I’m the only one in step; I’m the one wearing sweats at the black-tie affair; I clap at the end of the first movement whether I like it or not. Telling me “It just isn’t done,” whatever it is, more often than not will compel me to do it.

  To bring light into a dark room, for example, some folks unlock doors. Others want to clean windows. Still others simply choose to get used to the darkness. Me? I never did like the dark. Of course, sometimes I can’t find the key for the lock, and I don’t do windows. Accordingly, if a dirty window obscures my view, I throw a rock through it. When a locked door keeps things dark, I use a chain saw. If nothing else works, I drive a bulldozer through the wall.

  “Why on earth,” you might ask, “is this attitude in print throwing words at me?”

  Why I’m here is very simple. I was asked. It went like this:

  Your editor in chief, Martin Fell, and I were at a party in West Hollywood a few months ago. It was an incredibly dull affair (the same young alcoholics slurring the same old words), and Marty and I got to strolling down amnesia lane as he tried to set me up for a pitch (no one invites me to a party without an ulterior motive). Recalling the electric impact four decades ago of John Howard Griffin’s book, Black Like Me, Martin wondered aloud if it would be possible to do a similar exposé on modern human racism against the Tencts (Tenctonese, Newcomers, or slags, depending on your ilk).

  “What would it be like,” Martin mulled, “for a human to go undercover as a Tenctonese? Blend into Newcomer society, become one of ‘them’? How do ‘they’ really look at ‘us’? How do ‘we’ really treat ‘them’?”

  “Tell me,” I said to Martin, “when you go fishing, is it really true that you throw hand grenades into the water to concuss the fish to the surface?”

  “I lack subtlety?” he asked.

  “You are as graceful as an ostrich with a greased wastebasket on each foot attempting to carry a watermelon down a crowded-up escalator.”

  “No interest in it at all?” he whined.

  “Incorrect. In fact it’s something I’ve thought about for a long time. I’ve even accumulated a considerable body of research on it. In fact, I even went so far as to discuss my idea with a certain blabbermouth administrative assistant of yours named Julia Winslow. I think it’s a fascinating idea originated by a brilliant intellect of towering proportions.”

  “Will you do it?”

  “I’ll do it, Marty, but there are three conditions.”

  “Oh?” His eyebrows arched.

  “Don’t pop your hair plugs. None of the conditions has anything to do with how much I get paid.” The eyebrows lowered a notch. “We’ll talk money later.” The eyebrows went back up.

  “What are the conditions?” he asked.

  “First, I’ll try it and see what it’s like. I’m no superhero. If I want to quit, I back out, you pay for everything, and nothing goes into print. Is it a deal?”

  He nodded. “Very well.”

  “When I said you pay for everything, it could be a high pile in exchange for squat.”

  “I understand. It’s my risk, and unless we’re talking over six figures, I’m willing to take it.”

  “That high it shouldn’t get.”

  “We’re in agreement so far.” His eyebrows climbed a little higher. “The second condition?”

  “No personal data about me is to appear in any bios. Not my age, sex, sexual preference, skin color, hair possession, shape, or color, eye shape, date or place of birth, diseases, previous publications, nationality, religious afflictions, or marital status. All the readers will know about me is that I am human and undercover as a Tenct. My byline will be a pseudonym. Agreed?”

  The eyebrows plunged into a frown. “Part of what we’re paying for is your name. With a pseudonym, our readers won’t know you at all. And what about your readers? They won’t be able to find you.”

  “You aren’t paying me anything yet.” I searched for a way to turn up a very dim bulb. “Look at it like this, Marty. If the readers knew what pigeonhole to stuff me in, in a flash I’d have half a dozen agendas I don’t ascribe to tacked on my ass. See, that’s the point. You want me to cover human-Tenct relations and report it as it is, correct?”

  “Mmmm.”

  “See, there’s no point in giving peeks at racism through some kind of ethnic prism, real or imagined; the Latvian black gay midget biker’s view of the Newcomer situation. My job is to bust windows, and the most successful window-busters are always anonymous.”

  “Tell it to Norman Schwarzkopf,” he grumped. Then he fixed me
with a gimlet eye and asked, “If you use a pseudonym, what will draw the readers?”

  “You know how I write, Marty. Your readers will be trampling each other to read my column and call me names. After the third column appears, you can depend on a mob of torch-bearing villagers surrounding the Times, storming the walls, demanding my capture and incineration.”

  “This is a selling point?”

  “I thought you were the one who was selling, Marty.”

  Grudgingly he nodded. “Okay. I understand.” He looked glum for about fifteen seconds more, then said, “I’m not tranquil about it, but okay. The third condition?”

  “If we decide to go ahead with the series, we go all the way. I mean all the way. We don’t edit, cut, or slant copy to avoid offending city hall or some big advertiser, and we don’t pull our punches to avoid offending the readers. If that crowd of lawyers the paper has on retainer gets nervous, that’s tough. If the Times gets whittled down to only four readers and a half-inch ad for recycled condoms, I want those four readers still to be able to read my column the way I wrote it.”

  He gagged on that one. He squirmed, whined, promised, cried, cajoled, bribed, begged, and threatened the way editors do (it’s an ethnic thing). Finally, after making a telephone call and communing with his other Higher Power, Martin Fell agreed. Whatever happens, short of death or the Times going out of business, the column “Slag Like Me” runs as it was written, warts, split infinitives, naughty words, and all.

  I was a hungry piranha and “Slag Like Me” was my very own literary dead cow. I was impatient to arrange my passage into Newcomer society. I had no illusions that my experiment held a candle to Griffin’s impersonation of a Negro in the segregated south of the late fifties. What he did took courage. What I planned to do only took an attitude.

  The laws have changed since the fifties, and most visible racists have had to change their spots. From the accepted respectable majority of the past, overt “white” racists of today are considered part of the nut fringe. It is not fashionable. Overt “black” racists, as well as other ethnic militants, are declining in their acceptability, but covert racists of all stripes are where they’ve always been—in the majority and in charge.

  It’s very simple: the ideal of the American melting pot has broken down. Many so-called ethnic groups blended together and became “Americans.” The “Anglos” are made up of persons of English, German, Irish, French, Basque, Spanish, Italian, and Middle East origins. If revisionist anthropology is to be believed, this mix includes an indigenous population (Indians, to you) made up of Phoenician, Egyptian, and Celtic, as well as native antecedents. But the pot never was hot enough to melt in the descendants of the slaves from Africa, the railroad workers from China, and others who simply looked different. The promise was always there, however. But then the pot cooled even further. The gravy became very lumpy, and each lump had a grievance against every other lump.

  Into this hostile hypocrisy, hundreds of thousands of real live aliens from outer space crash in, and long before they’re released from the quarantine camps, the wonder and novelty of this first contact wears off and “they” simply become another “them,” The magical beings from other worlds we’ve dreamed about for generations turn out to be just another lump in the pot. And how does this particular soup smell? I was eager to take a sniff.

  It took a couple of days before I was ready to try on my spots. The day began in Hollywood with a friend of mine in the business. My friend took about six hours and made me up with about twenty pounds of latex and paint. When I first looked into a mirror, a stranger looked back. There was a bizarre feeling in my chest, and when I pulled it into the light and looked at it, I felt my face grow warm.

  I was afraid of that image in the mirror. It wasn’t an alien. It wasn’t a Tenct. It was me! Yet the shape, the color, the large head, the startling baldness, the spots, the image was on some level something I was tuned to fear, to regard as less than clean, not okay, inferior. It was right there in the pit of my being, this hard nut of racism.

  Life is a series of self-discoveries. Once in a while we like what we find. Most times, however, the discovery points to something that needs work: cleaning, repair, or replacement. Too often we opt not to see what we have seen. The mental roof continues to leak, the psychological garbage ripens, and life takes on all of the ambience of a summer cesspool, if this was something that needed to be addressed within me, then let’s do it, I told myself. I took another look into the mirror, decided I looked terrific, and took to the streets to try out my new appearance. The day ended in humiliation.

  I have a knowledge of Tenctonese, as well as several other tongues. Because of my previous work, I knew quite a bit about Tenct customs, manners, history, and beliefs. To me my disguise was perfect, and it appeared to work very well among humans. Yet, not five minutes after I began strolling down Hollywood Boulevard, a rather striking Tenct prostitute stared at me for a moment, wrinkled her nose, and commented to her sister of the mattress, [“Nugah. Mea te’ve esk?”]

  This translates, roughly, “A pervert. Sad, isn’t he?”

  Nugah, however, is a new kind of pervert; so new, in fact, that the word nugah came into being only within the past few years, it refers to a human who finds sexual gratification in impersonating a Tenct (sort of a slagvestite).

  That wrapped it up for my first try. If I wanted to continue, it would be necessary to get some special help to eliminate whatever it was that marked me as human. My overwhelming curiosity to find out just what that thing was, was one of the things that caused me to continue with the project.

  I did some research and picked the brains of several close friends. One of those friends has very special talents. My friend agreed to help me not impersonate a Tenct but to emerge as one. She also had a few ideas and she introduced me to those who could do the sculpting. It took a new kind of bloodless surgery, some high-tech gadgetry (close to half a million of Marty Fell’s money), and about eleven weeks of training. At the end of the process I emerged a different being. The image in the mirror no longer frightened me because it was me. I took that walk on Hollywood Boulevard again and passed well enough to be roughed up by a couple of thugs and admitted to Mt. Andarko’s Hospital, after a thorough examination, as a Tenct by a Tenctonese doctor. I was given Tenct hospital cuisine, and the crap they served was almost as bad as the meals at Beverly Glen on West Pico. Did you know it’s possible to make a custard out of earthworms? It tastes sort of like curd of cream of mushroom soup. Not bad if you’re into mortified insect flesh. In any event, the police arrived, and then came the real beginning of my education.

  The police officer who took my statement, a human named Davenport (badge 12114), twice made references to “you slags” (no offense intended, of course) and pointed out there wasn’t much that could be done about the muggers. They fade into the night, long gone, evidence all shucked, that’s the way it goes. Anyway, what’d you expect on Hollywood Boulevard at that hour? Besides, with unemployment being what it is, broken homes, child abuse, unsatisfactory potty training, I really should try to be more understanding.

  The upshot of the whole thing was that getting mugged was my fault and I probably shouldn’t bother wasting everyone’s time by filing a report. Strangely enough. Officer Davenport changed his mind once I told him that the muggers were Newcomers. Immediately he took a detailed statement and had a police artist at my bedside within two hours.

  Listen up. Goober. I am your worst nightmare in bleeding Technicolor: a victim who refuses to be a victim armed with a poison pen, a compulsion to name names, and a statewide forum. Be careful how you treat that next rubberhead that walks into your office, your store, your squad room, or down your street. It might be someone whose job, and pleasure, it is to fight back. The only way to make the melting pot work, I am convinced, is more heat. That’s what this column is, Goob. Heat.

  C H A P T E R 1

  IT WAS THE kind of hot that drove normally well-balanced and
serene persons to look for reasons to fight. On the sizzling streets of L.A. that morning, however, no one needed the assistance of the weather. Everyone was arguing about the newest editorial column in the Times, “Slag Like Me” by a mysterious columnist who wrote under the name Ellison Robb.

  He was either devil or saint, enlightener or hell-raiser, peace-bringer or rabble-rouser, moral icon or pervert, depending on who was talking. No one was neutral. All those who had ever managed to hide for years from social conflict within cocoons of denial or indifference had been rather rudely yanked into the burning light of the discussion, thanks to the Robb column. They were fighting in the city council, the county board of supervisors, in the churches, the businesses, the homes, on the streets, and in the unit being driven by Detective Sergeant Matt Sikes.

  “Matt,” said his Tenctonese partner, George Francisco, “I see no reason for you to become so defensive about this Robb character!”

  “If you attack, what else am I supposed to do? Roll over and say, ‘Well, George, I guess I just made a foolish error’? Don’t hold your breath waiting for that, partner.”

  “Damn it, Matt, I’m simply saying that ‘Slag Like Me’ is increasing problems for Newcomers, not lessening them. The anger level against Tencts is towering, thanks to the Times’s sensationalistic circulation-building ploy.”

  “Ploy? Ploy?”

  “Yes. Ploy. Your hearing is excellent, every so often.”

  “Robb is out there risking his damned life to expose anti-Tenct racism, George, and all you can do is to call it a ploy?”

  “What? You want gratitude? Matt, with his column he’s set back human-Tenct relations twenty years.”

  “Give it a rest, George. Twenty years ago there weren’t any human-Tenct relations.”

  “Exactly my point! Do you think there are any relations now? All Ellison Robb is doing is increasing the problems, and we have more than enough right now, thank you very much!”