Alien Eyes (6 page)

“No,” String said.

“Just no?
Never
happens?” Mel asked.

String turned his back. Some of his scales slid to the floor. Della picked them up.

“What we going to do,” Della said, “about these other guys? This Ash and Tinker and … what was the other one?”

“Dopey.”

“C'mon, Burnett, be serious here.”

He handed her a napkin. “Left corner of your mouth. No, sweetheart, higher. Lean close and I'll lick it off.”

“Serve you right if I did.”

“Chicken,” Mel said. “Hey, Gumby, turn around here and tell us what you think of the new Elaki.”

String twisted sideways. A slow steamy hiss came from his belly slits. “Not Izicho. Not police. Most stupid, sly, not to be trusted. You have the word. It is …”

“Snake?” Mel asked.

“No, not it.”

“Pig?”

“What's with the animals, Burnett?” Della said.

“Runs in the family.”

“How about spy? Traitor?”

“No no.”

David rocked his coffee cup back and forth. “Bureaucrat.”

“This is just the beginning,” Della said. “Under Ogden? We're in for a lot of shit.”

“One thing at a time,” Mel said. “We got to decide about the Elaki-Three.”

“Freeze them out,” David said.

Della shook her head. “Ogden won't like it.”

“Ogden don't have to.” Mel drank the last of his milk shake, then tossed it in the trash.

“Clue Pete in, Della,” David said. “Official reports that go to Ogden—make them long, dreary, no information.”

“Just let Pete write them,” Mel said.

“Burnett, you wouldn't know a good report. How about that one you wrote. Let's see. Went like ‘guy died, stuck by some creep in an alley.'” She looked at David. “He actually
wrote
that.”

“Dictated it.”

“Whatever.”

“That was an accident, Della. It got bumped out before my auto-editor turned it into proper police jargon.”

David cocked his head. “Della. Is there any way you can tinker with the translator on the computers, so that when it compiles our input into a formal report, it doubles the jargon—gets murky and hard to make sense of?”

“Yeah, just let Mel do it.”

“Seriously.”

Della chewed her lip. “Maybe.” She sat up. “We could use an earlier version—before they worked the bugs out. Let me talk to the software guy.”

“Quiet on it,” David said.

Della nodded.

NINE

The Elaki neighborhood was peaceful, sleepy in the afternoon heat. String's van slowed as soon as it hit the narrow, residential streets. David took a breath. He would never get used to standing up in a car. No matter how tightly he held the strap, he swayed from side to side, slamming into Mel, or the side panel of the van.

Mel grinned at him. “Imagine doing this drunk?”

“People used to
drive
that way,” David said. “Before roads had tracks, even.”

“Ought to be illegal.”

“It was.”

“Blue fifty-two,” the van said.

David looked out the window. He didn't see anything blue. He would never understand Elaki addressing systems.

The shockee was tall and narrow, the yard hard-packed, reddish-brown dirt.

String looked out the window. “
Nice
landscaping.”

Mel looked at David, who shrugged.

The shockee was painted with an iridescent pastel glaze that gave the raw wood gloss and glimmer. Mel stood back and cocked his head to one side.

“I guess it's like if you glaze a cake, instead of ice it. Like Rose does, you know? For the lemon ones.”

David looked over his shoulder. Dahmi's shockee was still sealed with crime scene stamps that winked and glimmered on the doors and windows. He wondered if she was still under restraint. He wondered if she knew what she had done.

She knew. Which meant she wasn't crazy. But in order to do what she had done, and be who he thought she was, she'd
have
to be crazy. Only String said Elaki didn't snap.

The door to the shockee opened and an Elaki Mother-One rolled out. Two pouchlings followed a foot behind, jostling each other for position. They craned around the wide, flowing fins of their Mother-One. They were both small.

“You have brought the pouchlings?”

David looked at String, then back to the Mother-One. She had a beautiful voice: rich, deep, youthful. Her inner coloring was scarlet, her outer scales a soft dove-grey. Her fringe scales were like the ivory-pink inside of a polished seashell, and she was tall and straight. Her eye stalks were short, close to her head, symmetrical.

“I'm David Silver.” David flipped his ID card. “Homicide Task Force, Saigo City PD.”

The Elaki Mother-One puffed her belly slits and swelled.

David took a step backward. “Uh, my partner, Mel Burnett.”

Mel nodded.

“And my associate. String.”

“
Izicho
,” the Elaki Mother-One said.

“You're Painter?”

“Yesss. You are here about Dah … about Packer?”

“About Dahmi, yes,” David said. “May we come in?”

“No. Am expecting pouchlings. Packer's little baby ones have not had the death watch. I have much to prepare. Must ask you to leave.”

String bowed slightly, and turned back to the van.

Mel shifted his weight. “See, Ms., um, Painter. We got to talk to you now. We can talk here, at your convenience. Or we can ask you to come down to our office and make a statement.”

“I have made statement already to flatfoots.”

String turned to her. “Is term of insult, this flatfoots. Please to say uniformed officer.”

The Elaki hissed. “I have already made statements to flatfoots.”

“Okay,” Mel said. “You want to pack up your pouchlings there, and come on down to Izicho headquarters—”

David winced.

The Elaki skittered back and forth on her fringe, then became still. She expanded her fins, hiding the pouchlings from view.

“I talk to the David Silver,” Painter said. “Him, only.”

Mel snorted.

“Is not for you choice,” String said. “For not to be necessary a difficult.”

Painter's scales took on a yellowish cast. David, standing to one side, could see one of the pouchlings, rigid and still behind the Mother-One. David thought of his daughters, afraid of Strange men at the door. Impossible to imagine Rose afraid. But the Elaki Mother-One certainly was.

David inclined his head. “Wait for me.”

Mel looked at String, then shrugged. “We're going to wander down the street. Honk the horn when you're ready.”

The Elaki Mother-One watched String and Mel leave the yard.

“We don't have to go in,” David said. “We can stay right here, if you want.”

“I see you on the television box,” Painter said. “You carry Dahmi out. No one will tell for me. She is hurt? They have … they have plugged her?”

“Shot her?” David said. He wiped sweat from the back of his neck. “No. She wasn't hit.”

“There was
much
gunplay.”

“Gunshots? You heard a lot of shots? That scared you, didn't it?”

Most Elaki were afraid of guns. David took off his jacket and loosened his tie. He moved past the Elaki Mother-One, taking care to stay clear of the pouchlings, and sat on a landscape timber that separated a clump of dwarf trees from the sidewalk. It was cooler under the little trees. Cedar chips beneath their base gave off a pungent, woody scent.

“Dahmi wasn't shot,” David said. “But she had a gun. Her pouchlings were in the room and so was I. Some of the officers were afraid. They fired.”

“They must have been
very
afraid;”

“Yes.” David stretched his feet out. “They were trying to protect the pouchlings.”

“Protect the pouchlings—or you, their brother flatfoot?”

David folded his arms and considered her. “Likely? Protect me.”

The Mother-One rocked from side to side. “A truth teller,” she said. “Many hot dogs tell lies.”

“Where'd she get the gun?” David asked.

The Elaki Mother-One glided past him into the house. “Please to come in.”

“Thank you,” David said. It would be good to get out of the heat.

“Most welcome. Must clean shockee anyway, to prepare for death watch.”

It hurt his feelings.

The inside hall was narrow, the ceiling high, and David got a panicky feeling in his chest. Small, tight places bothered him now. He wished they'd stayed outside.

Inside was cool, at least.

The lime scent of Elaki was strong, but not unpleasant. The pouchlings followed their mother like baby ducks. The hallway snaked to the right, then curled left. There was one door on the left, but it was closed. Going through Elaki houses—shockees—was like falling down the rabbit hole.

The hall widened into a large room with a tile floor and a glass ceiling. David's heart quit pounding. He could breathe here. There were squared-off areas filled with small pebbles. David wondered if they were the start of a new project, or a completed scenario that only an Elaki might appreciate. String would know. It would have been good if he'd been able to come along. This hostility to Izicho was new, judging from String's bewilderment. Kind of like what cops put up with in the 1960s.

Poor String.

There were reasons in the sixties. Were there reasons now?

The Elaki Mother-One stopped abruptly and David expected the pouchlings, following so closely, to run into her. They didn't. He veered to the right to avoid tripping over the one ahead of him. His reflexes were good—honed by years of going places with his own kids just ahead.

Painter scooted to the center of the room. She swept sideways gracefully and turned to face him. Her left wing went out. The pouchlings seemed to find the motion meaningful.

“But, the Mother-One,” a pouchling said—the one with the reddest inner coloring.

“Please, please, please,” said the other, smaller pouchling.

Interesting, David thought. Even alien children chanted at their parents.

“Conversation not of interest to young ones,” Painter said calmly.

“Oh, but, Mother-One, it is, it is. Very much interest.”

Painter's voice took a hard note. “Conversation not proper for pouchlings. Please to use new construction materials in vid room.”

“Yes, Mother-One.” The small pouchlings swayed. “What shall we build?”

“You must decide.”

“Yesss, Mother-One.” The pouchlings moved their fringe scales slowly.

David laid his jacket over his arm. It was an Elaki home—no chairs.

“Dahmi's pouchlings were younger,” David said.

“Yesss. Baby ones. Tonight I do the death watch. No one from the chemaki will come. Cannot be reached. Out of town.”

“Where are they?”

“Home planet,” the Elaki said. “Dahmi's pouchlings. Please to tell—she did this? She kills them?”

“I'm afraid so,” David said.

“Hard for to believe. And yet—”

“Yet?”

“They did not suffer?”

“No,” David said. He thought of the pouchling who had opened his eyes. “No. Tell me. Where did Dahmi get the gun?”

The Elaki twitched an eye stalk. “Very good question, yes. I have no knowledge here. I know Dahmi very little. Live near, but both involve with pouchlings too much for the close association.”

“Where would you get a gun? If for some reason you were desperate to have one.”

“I do not think it would be possible for me to secure such a thing. Not common to Elaki. Complicated and dangerous.”

“Suppose it was a matter of life and death. What would you do?”

“What could be such a matter?”

“Suppose you needed it to protect your pouchlings?”

“Ah. That then. I still do not know. Perhaps to ask a friend. To ask Dahmi.”

“Why Dahmi?”

“Because now she had one.”

David gritted his teeth. If it suited her to play stupid there was nothing he could do.

“Dahmi, then,” David said carefully, “was the kind of Elaki who knew about guns.”

“But no.”

“You said—”

“I meant just. I mean if I had to find gun, I would ask a friend who knew such things.”

“Did Dahmi have any friends who knew about guns?”

“I do not knowledge.”

“Why'd she do it, Painter? Was she crazy?”

“Dahmi not crazy. Elaki not crazy.”

“Was she a good Mother-One?”

“You can ask?”

“Yes. Tell me.” David folded his arms.

The Elaki swelled. “Very good Mother-One.
The best
.”

“Why did she do it?”

“You do not know?”

“Tell me.”

“To protect, David Silver. To protect.”

“To protect from what?”

The Elaki scuttled to the other side of the room. “There are worse things than dying in the sleep, David Silver. Much worse things.”

“What was she afraid of? Did she tell you?”

“No. She would not.”

“Why not?”

“Would not involve other Mother-One, other pouchlings.”

“Why didn't she go to the police?”

“I do not knowledge. I can only think of things. I
know
nothing. Talk to the Angel Eyes.”

“Angel Eyes? Was Dahmi involved with the Guardians?”

“She was … interested. A lecture attendance. Wednesday-day. That is as far as it would go; she have pouchlings.”

There were loud, scraping sounds from the hallway, and a high-pitched series of squawks. The smallest Elaki backed through the door, pulling a bench made of a malleable plastic, bright red and shiny.

“Please to interrupt, Mother-One. But the human needs a sit. And I have made one with new materials.” The small Elaki straightened, belly rippling.