Alien Nation #5 - Slag Like Me

by Barry B. Longyear

  Iniko nodded and looked down at the top of the desk as his eyes yellowed in embarrassment. “Yes. I got the name of his doctor.”

  “And?”

  Iniko pushed his chair back and stood. “And Rudy Davenport was right.”

  “Right? What do you mean, right?”

  “I mean, he was right.”

  “Right about what?”

  “His doctor’s name is none of our business.” The FBI man turned and walked from the squad room, his hands thrust into his trouser pockets, a frown perched upon his brow.

  C H A P T E R 1 2

  “I DON’T GET it,” said Matt Sikes hours later at Mt. Andarko’s Hospital. He frowned at how thick and fuzzy his tongue was. “If you’re not goin’ to do any cuttin’, why I gotta be doped up?”

  The nurse, a Tenctonese named Lisa Kerr, looked down upon Sikes with a cold face. She was garbed in pale yellow scrubs. “It’s really very simple, Mr. Cross.”

  Cross, thought Matt. My name is Matt Cross, big-time writer. Fulla Dope Cross, one really mild-mannered reporter for the Daily Plan—Times.

  Part of a question with an absent answer floated before his eyes and he noticed that Nurse Kerr was moving her lips. Her hips. Her lips and her hips. She was very lovely. Not as lovely as Cathy, but very lovely indeed. It was all on the outside, though. Inside she was all business, or worse. Angry. Maybe bitter. What about?

  The thoughts in his head were mired in pine tar. Nurse Kerr had a mean streak a yard wide inside. Cathy was beautiful all the way through. Did Nurse Kerr’s anger take Micky Cass out of the picture?

  Anger about what?

  And she did have a terrific alibi. Part of a group vacationing in Germany, sixteen days, never left sight of her friends for more than seven hours at a stretch.

  Seven hours. The connections just weren’t there. Matt felt himself frown. “You said somethin’ ’bout simple, simp—simp—”

  “Yes, Mr. Cross. Simple. I explained all of this to you in detail before. Don’t you remember? There won’t be any cutting of your skin, but you need to be anesthetized for two reasons. First, the operation will take several hours, during which time it is imperative that you do not move. Second, shortly after the Realskin begins bonding with your skin, it will begin forming nerve tissue and integrating it with your own nervous system. Midway through the operation, therefore, when we cut and suture the Realskin—”

  “It’ll hurt,” he completed.

  “It would be uncomfortable if you weren’t anesthetized. In fact, when the anesthetic wears off and you awaken, you’ll experience a little discomfort because the healing Realskin will be your own. Relax and we’ll be by in a few minutes to take you down to surgery.”

  “Discomfort,” Matt muttered beneath his breath. “Every time a doctor or nurse says ‘discomfort’ you can count on whatever it is feeling like shitting five pounds of rusty fishhooks.”

  Matt closed his eyes and vaguely thought he heard the door to his room open and close. After a moment he thought he heard it open and close again. Who was it? Was it anyone? Or was it the drugs playing tricks on his ears. Maybe it was Lisa Kerr coming to kill him. Lisa Kerr. Why didn’t she change her name? It’d perk up her whole outlook.

  He tried to open his eyes, but his sight was met by a mush of shapes and a swirl of colors.

  “Relax,” he muttered to himself, feeling something strange in his mouth. Big wet and fuzzy. It was his tongue.

  Relax.

  Relax, hell.

  To relax you have to trust, and Matt Sikes doesn’t trust. He’s not stupid. If every time you trust you get betrayed, you don’t trust. If you don’t trust, you can’t relax. If you can’t relax, you walk through life as a big knot.

  “ ’Sides,” he muttered, “I’m onna undercover investigation. Oops!” Mustn’t let little things like that slip. Loose ships think slips. Something like that.

  He tried to open his eyes to check the room and his sight was greeted by a shower of strange lights and smears.

  Can’t trust eyes. Can’t trust anyone.

  “Matt?”

  Cathy hadn’t betrayed him. Yet.

  “Matt?”

  And there was George, his partner. They had argued, disagreed, and fought. But George had never betrayed him. If he ever would trust anyone, it would be Cathy or George. It certainly wouldn’t be someone with a knife and a resentment about him disguising himself as a Tenct.

  “Matt? It’s George.”

  “George?” He opened his eyes and squinted in an attempt at wrestling the images before him into some sort of sense. There was a figure in the doorway. It moved forward, its face coming into the light. “George, it’s you.”

  George Francisco took a chair, pulled it up next to the bed, and sat in it. “How are you doing, Matt?”

  “Fine.” He giggled as he thought of something. “Yeah, fine. Frustrated, insane, neurotic, and emotional.” He wondered if his words had come out the way he’d said them. He tried to shrug and couldn’t tell whether he’d actually accomplished the gesture or simply thought about it. As his eyes closed, he said, “I guess what I mean, partner, is I’m jus’ plain scared. How’s the investigation going?”

  “Iniko’s playing ‘I’ve Got a Secret’ and I’m going over the people around Jessup again.”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, you don’t know. A couple of hours ago we heard from the lab. They turned up a partial print on that Edward Lear quote. It was Jessup’s. The lab trolls are rounding up typewriters as we speak.”

  “Didn’t the Boston cops give Jessup an alibi?”

  “Airtight,” answered George. “But the note was on stationery Jessup has at his home office and at the academy. It could’ve been someone who had access to the paper. There’s his wife, of course, as well as the housekeeper, Gloria Salcines, and the gardeners, Jimmy and Harry Lee. Those are the only regulars at home. At the school it looks as though the only ones with regular access to his stationery are his secretary, Nathan Lopez, and two file clerks, Alice Yuan and Roger Stanton. Stanton is a Newcomer. Lopez’s wife gives him a shaky alibi, and neither Yuan nor Stanton has an alibi. All three of them are a bit short in the motive department, however.”

  “Wha—What. Sorry. Tongue’s dry. The housekeeper and the gardener?”

  “Alibis full of holes, just like everyone else’s except Jessup. Gloria Salcines has two sisters that come out on a regular basis to help do the cleaning at his home. I gather the place is a whiteout nightmare and Mrs. Jessup is a clean freak. One of them, Felicia, was in the hospital having some cosmetic surgery, and the other, Marta, can only account for a few hours during the three days. Again, short of motives. The gardener, Jimmy Lee, is covered pretty solidly by his different customers, but there are gaps. His brother, Harry, works part time for his brother and part time for the Sierra Environmental Center. Harry Lee’s time is full of gaps, but right now both he and his brother look short of motive, too.”

  “The only one with a motive couldn’t’ve done it, huh? Maybe Jessup’s airtight alibi has a leak, partner. What about the feds an’ the Ahvin Rivak? Anything?”

  “Cass’s notes have a lot of suspicions and a couple of threads. What we’ve checked out so far doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. All we have is motive. The Ahvin Rivak would rather not have peace and light brought to human-Tenctonese relations. I gather they figure it slows down the eventual exodus back into slavery. They have over eighteen hundred local members, so take your pick.”

  “The connection to the FBI?”

  “I don’t know. Paul isn’t speaking to me. Not about this.”

  “A mess, George. Gotta feeling we’re gonna be too late.” He was silent for a long moment, then Matt frowned as images floated before his eyes. “I’m scared, George. Did I ever tell you, angry people make me scared? They do. I fight ’em, but they make me scared. Gonna see some angry people as a Tenctonese. Lots of angry people.”

  “You’ll do fine, Matt. We’ll have you covered.”


  “Mmm.” It seemed very dark. Matt realized his eyes were closed. He didn’t have the strength to open them. He felt George’s fingers take his hand and hold it. He went limp and swam himself to sleep.

  ELLISON ROBB

  Slag Like Me

  Those Cards And Letters

  You know how you feel when a problem you think has been taken care of long ago turns out still to be a problem? It’s like the resurgence of TB in this country a few years ago. TB was like the plague, something from the past, no longer a problem. Then, oops! Here it is again. The same thing happened with polio. The same thing is happening with my mail right now.

  Those of you who read my previous columns might recall that the issue that caused this series to come into being was anti-Newcomer sentiment; human racism; slagging. It is an important subject, and if I were a reader, I could think of upwards of a million questions I could ask and suggestions I could make.

  Physically, how was the transformation from human to Tenctonese made? Describe the surgical process. What was the thing that marked you as a human on your first abortive attempt at impersonating a Tenct? What was the process of change like? How does it feel knowing what that look is in some human’s eyes? And, what about private business? Housing? The gangs? What about the rest of the United States? Are there any Newcomers in Canada? Why? If not, why not? When are the political parties going to push for Tenct candidates (what if the best “man” for the job isn’t a “man” but a Tenct?)?

  There are countless interesting issues readers might have raised, but questions and suggestions regarding the investigation of human-Tenct relationships represent less than two percent of the mail received thus far. The rest of the mail, frankly, makes me cringe.

  “Because of your obvious African-American bias against the police department, the rest of this so-called investigation must be suspect. There are very real problems with the Tenctonese and how they are treated, but using this forum to grind the traditional anti-police ax carried by the black community does a disservice not only to the police and to the Tenctonese but to African-Americans.”

  “It’s all too clear your Latino rage against the police department . . .”

  “You white Jew liberals, in your attempt to put down Arabs and promote gun control . . .”

  “. . . white ultra-libertarians who never had to do an honest day’s work . . .”

  “. . . sexual deviates attempting to force your perverted values onto innocent children . . .”

  “. . . wacko conservatives who want to do away with welfare and a woman’s right to . . .”

  “It was very clever to have a Slag write a column pretending to be a human pretending to be a Rubberhead, but simply the way you use words gives you away.”

  “As an Asian-American myself, I see in your good-natured attempt at enlightenment nothing but the encouragement of discord. Although police reforms are certainly in order, having Vietnamese ancestry does not give you a special cross to carry . . .”

  “. . . and you damned Indians can’t even figure out what to call yourselves. American Indians? Amarinds? Native Americans? American aborigines? Hell, we can’t figure it out, so let’s go after the cops!”

  And those, dear reader, were a few of the more educated responses. I will spare you the venom of the rest, including a rather rabid representation of Latvian-Americans who were offended by my unfortunate example of a narrow agenda. They all assure me that Latvia has not a single native black gay midget biker within its borders (I assume they are all married).

  Here are the very discouraging statistical results on my “race” thus far:

  Ellison Robb is a:

  Hebe

  14.1

  Whitey

  16.8

  Blacky

  26.3

  Tenctonese

  06.1

  Taconese

  19.7

  Gookese

  08.0

  Redskin

  01.3

  Other

  04.2

  Unspecified

  03.5

  “Other” includes Arab, Italian, Irish, Iranian, and a substantial portion convinced that I am from New Jersey(?). Out of a total of 26,588 responses there were 8,612 threats to life, limb, and property toward me, my family, the publisher, and staff of the Times, particularly against Martin Fell, who invited me to do the column (have a great vacation in Uzbekistan, Marty).

  Interestingly enough, 922 correspondents confessed to believing that I am a retired, fired, or otherwise exed police officer; 612 accused me of being homophobic; 1,104 accused me of being gay (including lesbian); 2,238 claimed I was female; and 2,322 accused me of being male (one correspondent, who claimed to know me, confessed to knowing as well that I am a hermaphrodite). I’ll spare you the breakdown on my political affiliations, except to assure you that communism, socialism, fascism, capitalism, and cannibalism appear to be alive and well at the Times.

  This is what it must be like to run for political office. You want to talk about America’s self-image, business prosperity, putting people to work, crime, drugs, education, environment, health, and human rights, but all anyone seems to be able to focus on is: “When he went on that college panty raid back in ’72, did he, or did he not, put on the panties?” (We only want to know where he’s coming from).

  People, you don’t get it!

  Neither this issue (human-Tenctonese relations) nor this column can be seen through the filter of a black agenda, a white agenda, a pro-cop/anti-cop agenda, gay/straight, GOP/Demo, or any other kind of agenda.

  “But how can we tell where the man is coming from?” (Which assumes that I am male).

  A thing, a person, an event is what it is, and only what it is, itself. I report to you what I find through the perspective of one individual: a being on this planet called, for the purposes of this column, Ellison Robb.

  “Yeah, but who in the hell is Ellison Robb? That’s just a name (Yes! Yes! It is just a name!) How can we know how to look at his or her (or its) views if we don’t know his (her or its) sex, political, national, or ethnic background?”

  The answer is to look at the view, not at the viewer. Too simple for you, Goober?

  Very well. I suppose a confession is necessary. Ellison Robb belongs to a minuscule racial minority known as Intelligent Life. He has both a masculine side and a feminine side, and he has the organs suitable to exercising the appropriate side’s inclinations at any particular moment. In other words, dear reader, the ax in my hand is neither black, white, male, female, gay, straight, pro-cop, or anti-choice. The only ax in my hand is this column and an overwhelming desire to have people do the right thing.

  What’s the right thing?

  There is a probably misguided piece of me that honestly believes that if you readers see the wrong thing and its effects clearly enough, the right thing will become unmistakably clear. Moreover, after such a view, the desire to do the right thing will become overwhelming. Perhaps it is just a fantasy of mine. It is for this reason alone, however, that I write.

  Two more items of business:

  First, among the countless bags of confused letters sent to the Times, came a request from a person who did sign his name, but whose name I will not print for reasons soon to become obvious. His letter didn’t have anything much to do with the subject matter of this column, but neither did most of the others. He wrote:

  “In your first column you said you studied the Tenctonese and know a lot about them. I know they were slaves and were controlled by strong addictive drugs before they crashed here, and I also know a lot of them don’t do drugs anymore. How do they stay away from the stuff? I want to. More than anything, I want to stay away from it. I can’t and it’s killing me. Worse than that, it’s killing everyone I love. How do the Tenctonese stay clean?”

  I don’t know how every Tenct stays away from drugs. I suspect most of them aren’t addicts. In any event, a very wise anonymous person once said, “When you’ve had enough, find a
telephone book, look up the number for Narcotics Anonymous, call the number, drag your ass to a meeting, and ask for help.” They probably won’t be able to tell you how Tencts stay clean, but they can help you to figure out how to get and stay clean yourself.

  Finally, there was a big brown envelope from a person who works in the personnel department of a rather large and powerful institution. Inside the envelope were hiring stats, revealing memos, cover-up orders from on high, and a rope trail leading all of the way to Washington, D.C. that could stretch some very prominent necks. After meeting with my correspondent, we’ve estimated that it will take a week or so to set up my infiltration of the outfit. It should be very interesting. Meanwhile, there are intriguing doings down in the barrio. Stay tuned.

  C H A P T E R 1 3

  AS HE AND Paul Iniko stood and waited, George Francisco looked around the incredibly white living room in the Jessup home. The walls, furniture, rugs, trim, lamps, shelves, even the covers of the books on the shelves were white. The color was not a muted orchid, eggshell, nor off-white. It was white white, operating room white, snowflakes soaked in Clorox for three weeks white. George glanced at Paul and the former Overseer was looking down at the rug.

  “What do you think?”

  Paul raised his eyebrows. “I’ve never before felt quite so impure. Do you think we ought to come back after we get our heads buffed?”

  “I don’t understand why we’re here at all. We have Ramos’s report. Jessup has an airtight alibi. He was at that convention of English teachers, then he and some of his friends were in custody for setting the hotel on fire. The Boston PD confirmed it. According to them, Jessup was locked up and in no shape to do anything but scream and vomit for most of the time.” George held out a hand. “His wife and children, the housekeeper, and the gardener have the rest of the time covered.”