Alan Dean Foster (18 page)

"And so," Sykes was saying enthusiastically, "and so the doctor says, 'If this is the thermometer, then where'd I leave my penT " He leaned back in his chair, laughing hysterically. Francisco gazed blankly across at him with the look of a man waiting for the train that left the station five minutes earlier. Sykes stopped laughing, frowned.

"You're not-you don't think that's funny. George, you've got to make an effort if you want to fit in. Work with me. I always get a laugh with that one. Even guys who've heard it before always laugh." He leaned over the table. "Look. If the doctor's got the thermometer in his hand, then where's his pen gotta be? Use a little logic on this one. "

"The logic of it is clear," said Francisco evenly, if a little more slowly than usual. "The pen is in the other man's rectum. "

Sykes starting guffawing all over again. "Sticking out of his ass, yeah, fight! See, that's what makes it a joke. There's like a surprise, and your mind fills in the funny picture. Here's this guy with a pen stuck in his ass and he thinks it's a then-nometer."

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Francisco tried, but the best he could muster was a querulous blink.

Sykes looked more saddened than disappointed.

"Nada, huh?"

Francisco shrugged apologetically. Sykes considered whether to give it another try, poured a fresh round instead. He was so far gone by now that the stench of spoiled milk no longer bothered him. He raised his glass in a gesture become automatic.

"Your health."

Francisco hefted his own glass. "Ta ss'trak-yona ......

Glasses clicked again. They swallowed.

They sat at the table and talked about small things suddenly become large, big things that no longer seemed half so important, and the debris of a person's life called memories. Eventually Sykes felt the need for a change of scenery, if only to get away from the refrigerator, and they moved into the living room. The couch no longer held its old appeal, however, and balancing in a chair was obviously out of the question. So they chose respective squares of carpet and arranged themselves tastefully around the coffee table.

Sykes was much quieter now, no longer in the mood to try out jokes simply to see what sort of reaction they might provoke from his partner. Could be that the thermometer gag would have gone over like a lead balloon in the Sudan, too. It wasn't Francisco's fault. He'd given it an honest college try.

"There is Still SO Much to learn," he was saying. "So much our two peoples don't understand about each other."

"No shit, Holmes. I mean, we can't even get along with each other. So don't feel like you're being singled out, know what I mean?" Francisco nodded somberly whether he understood or not. It seemed the right thing to be doing. Sykes rambled on.

"We fight with other guys for all sorts of stupid reasons. Because we go to different churches. Because we speak different languages. Because we like different kinds of football, or the same kind of football but different teams, or the same team but different players. Hardly any wonder

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we're havin' a tough time gettin' along with you. You're only from another goddamn planet, for crissakes."

Francisco sipped at his nearly empty glass of milk. The carton was empty and he was husbanding what remained.

"It works both ways, Matt. You humans are very strange to us. We try and try to make sense of your ways and always we fail."

"Hey, what the hell, don't let it bug you, George. I mean, if we can't make sense of us, how the hell can you expect to do any better?"

"It is so contradictory. All of it. You invite us to live among you, in an atmosphere of equality we've never known before. The Masters would never allow such an arrangement. We are endlessly grateful. You lay before us a beautiful, benign green world, full of new freedoms and opportunities, and ask only that we conforin to the rules of your society. Even then, you allow us to retain many of our own customs and ways and do not attempt to interfere with them. You give us ownershp of our lives for the first time in our history, and you ask no more of us than you do of yourselves: to live by the rules. Rules that are designed not to keep one people subordinate to another, but that exist to preserve equality. In many ways your world and your race is terribly immature. Yet you aspire to very high ideals. "

Sykes was staring mesmerized at his partner. This was more than Francisco had ever said at one time, a veritable dissertation spilling from the mouth of an individual Sykes had come to think of as congenitally close-mouthed. He hardly knew what to say.

"I aspired to Betty Ann Shirankis in the eleventh grade, but that's about it."

Francisco ignored his quip, whether intentionally or because he was so wrapped up in what he had to say that he didn't hear. He wasn't finished.

Amazing what changes a little spoiled milk hath wrought, Sykes thought.

"I hope you can understand how special your world is, Matt. How unique a people you human beings are. We recognized this soon after our arrival and awakening, when you treated us not as possible slaves or burdens but as

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refugees who had lost their way, and gave us help. So it is all the more painful and confusing to us that so few of you seem capable of living up to the ideals you set up for yourselves. You philosophize wonderfully and then ignore your own philosophy. It is an endless puzzlement."

Sykes leaned back against the couch. "Don't count on me, George. I never had any ideals."

Francisco smiled at his partner. He was no expert at the arcane and still new Newcomer discipline of recognizing and sorting human truth from human lies, but he'd been a cop long enough to recognize bullshit when he heard it.

I 'We don't understand so many things about your people, Matthew. We don't understand your capacity for hatred and bigotry. You welcome us, teach us your language, give us access to all your civilization has to offer, and then as individuals you call us names and spit on us.

" But we must bear it. We cannot ever react in anger because our situation here is still very fragile. The Separationists would see us returned to the quarantine camps. The Fundamentalists say we are not made in the image of God and therefore have no souls. Others say we have no more rights than dogs or cats. The truly violent extremists would have all of us sterilized so that we might live out our lives harmlessly until the last of us, ancient and crippled, dies and leaves you alone in this world once more.

But there is a truth in the universe that is the same as a truth in personal relationships, Matt. -

:'Yeah? What's that?"

'it is not good to live alone.

Sykes said nothing, let Francisco finish. The Newcomer was gazing off into the distance, fondling his milk glass. "The prejudice we face here is so insignificant compared to the pain and isolation we've known before. That is why we are so grateful. -

Sykes had had about enough. "Hey, lighten up already, man. -

"I'm sorry," The Newcomer sipped the last of his milk, swallowing slowly and with undisguised pleasure. "These

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are things that needed to be said. At least, I need to say them. -

"Yeah, well, that's all very beautiful and well and good and all, except I did hear that you eat your dead. -

Francisco stared sleepily across the table at his partner. Their eyes locked and he said, perfectly deadpan, "Only on Fridays. -

The other detective gaped at him for about five seconds before exploding with laughter. He was choking and had to grab the end of the coffee table to keep from falling over.

"You son-of-a-bitch! You're okay."

A strange expression spread across the Newcomer's face. Exerting himself, he succeeded in standing, stood swaying before the still seated Sykes.

"No, I am not okay. I believe I have said all that I have to say, possibly for quite some time to come, Matthew. Now I am going home." He turned and started for the front door.

"Yeah," Sykes yelled after him. "Go home. Get some sleep. You do sleep, don't you? And if you don't sleep, say howdy to Susan for me.

Good-lookin' babe, your wife."

"Thank you." Francisco spoke gravely as he neared the door, making an effort to keep from stumbling. "I will convey your greeting." He waved once without turning around. Turning would have required an effort that might have defeated him. Somehow he found the door handle. Then he was gone.

Sykes turned back to his nearly empty glass, shaking his head and chuckling to himself. "What a wild man." He picked up the glass and headed for the kitchen. That was where the dirty glass belonged. On the other hand, the couch was much closer.

He allowed himself to tumble sideways onto the stained, thick cushions.

1X_

It was one of those spectacular, Chamber-of-Commerce-type L.A. mornings. The wind had shoved all the smog inland to San Bernardino, where there were never enough votes to shove it back. A mockingbird was faking a Stellar Jay in the lonesome aspen outside the apartment house. Dogs were on their way to work, yapping and pissing and looking for love.

The first flat hues of dawn streamed through the open window into Sykes's apartment where they were not welcomed. The detective was still passed out on the sofa. Sleep was too feeble a description of his condition.

Safe from dogs and confusion, a cat lay hunkered down beneath the comfortingly motionless mass of the slugmobile. A noise made it turn. When he saw what was coming his way, the stray tom took off, running fast and low like a halfback trying to turn the comer against the Redskins'

defensive line.

The heavy-duty tow truck slowed as it came down the street. It parked several car lengths ahead of the slugmobile. The driver looked to his right, inspecting the building just behind him. Then he relaxed in his seat and kept his attentiod on the street ahead, his hands resting on the wheel.

His passenger exited. He wore a serviceman's coveralls complete to fully equipped work belt and matching cap. A tool kit dangled from one hand, a heavy paper sack from the 101

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other. The man's name was Quint, and it was not embroidered above his breast pocket.

Rapid examination indicated that the street was largely deserted. Too early for casual strollers. Anyone awake would be traveling straight from apartment to garage to car to work, never setting foot on the ribbonlike sidewalk. No cars coming or going at the moment either, which was just the way Quint wanted it.

The narrow steel tool he removed from his kit was known colloquially as a slinijim. In Quint's experienced hands it made short work of the slugmobile's lock. He opened the door and slid behind the wheel.

Working rapidly and easily, he dumped the contents of the sack on the seat next to him. These consisted of a packet of C-4 plastic explosive, a primer cap, and double lead wires whose ends had already been properly stripped. The naked copper sparkled in the morning light. With a grunt, he turned sideways on the seat and eased himself down to the floorboard, reaching up and back as necessary for the right tools and ingredients.

Just as he was getting comfortable with the car's wiring, a new face appeared above the back seat. Francisco blinked tiredly as his blanket slid off his head and shoulders. He'd been lying motionless in the back, covered from head to toe by Sykes's emergency "bed."

Now he rubbed his eyes and yawned, feeling out of tune with this or any other world.

Beneath the dash, the contented Quint began to whistle while he worked.

It was not the wisest thing for him to do at that particular moment in time.

Francisco was sleepy, but the sound woke him fast. A puzzled expression on his face, he leaned forward over the back of the seat to see Quint working under the dash, screwdriver in hand. Quint saw him at about the same instant. Being fully awake, he had an advantage, which he used to the fullest, sitting up fast and throwing himself fist-first at his unexpected audience. Francisco was slammed backward. Quint was striking from an awkward position

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and it wasn't much of a punch, but it didn't have to be due to the condition of the detective's sinuses.

Yelling to his driver, Quint bailed out of the slugmobile like the last sailor off a sinking sub, tripping on the way out and leaving a trail of tools behind as he scrambled toward the tow truck. It took the startled driver a moment to gun the engine, get it in gear, and send them roaring away down the street. Tires squealed around the far comer as Francisco, clutching his throbbing face, stumbled out of the car.

Shoot, stop. The words were short but took a long time traveling from his brain to his ann. He whipped out his pistol and swung it around to aim.

His arm had the message, but someone had forgotten to inform his fingers.

The .38 went flying out of his hand, skidded to a stop against the curb.

Francisco stared helplessly as the backside of the tow truck vanished.

Then he sagged against the slugmobile, muttering to himself in his own tongue. A good linguist would have blushed at some of the phrases.

Sykes lay as he'd fallen the previous night. A distant pounding in his ears finally woke him. As his eyes opened against the intrusive light he became aware that the pounding wasn't all that far away. It came, in fact, from the other side of his front door.

"This better be good news or money," he mumbled. He found his feet, was mildly surprised to discover that they were still attached to his ankles, and stumbled toward the door, yawning and scratching his crotch. "I'm coming, I'm coming. Give it a rest, already!"

The door opened to reveal his partner standing, or rather swaying, on the other side. His face looked like hefl. In his right hand he held tile C-4

charge, neatly packaged in a clean handkerchief. This the detective passed to a bemused Sykes.

"Hold this." He stumbled in, bumping Sykes out of the way as be made a beeline for the kitchen sink. "I believe that I am feeling extremely horrible. No, correct that. I am certain of it."

Sykes watched him bend over the sink and run the cold 134

water, then turned his attention to the handful Francisco had passed to him. Even in his still swozzled state he recognized it for what it was.