Alien Nation #3 - Body and Soul (14 page)

“Thank you for coming, ladies and gentlemen of the press,” he said pompously. He was so puffed up with himself that it was amazing that his feet remained on the floor. “I appreciate it, and I think you’ll find that your time is not being wasted. The LAPD has turned up something that, I feel, is going to have ramifications, not only on a local basis but quite possibly, worldwide.”

In the back, Sikes grumbled, “Here we go.”

“A routine investigation into an incident in Little Tencton,” said Grazer, “resulted in our recovery of an abandoned infant girl. The child is now in safekeeping here at the station, as we have endeavored to make do despite the crushing budget cuts inflicted on all aspects of the child welfare system.”

“Great, a political statement,” Sikes said. George nodded.

Grazer, however, was just warming up. “From the moment I laid eyes on her, I realized this was no ordinary baby. It seemed impossible, but I couldn’t help feeling I was looking at . . .” He paused dramatically. “. . . the first interspecies baby.”

Jaws dropped collectively through the room. Pleased at the initial response, Grazer pressed on. “I called in Dr. Frankel here, and she confirmed my suspicions.”

Now Sikes started to take a step forward.
“He
called her in?” he whispered angrily.

But George, wisely, put a hand on Sikes’s shoulder, stopping him. “Don’t mix in this, Matthew. Keep your distance. Believe me, you’re not going to want to be a part of what happens.”

He looked at George. “ ‘What happens’?”

“Just watch,” was all that George said.

Cathy, for her part, was now trying to get a word in. “Please, if I may . . .” she began.

But Grazer cut her off. This was his show, and the ringmaster wasn’t letting on any other acts until he felt like it. “Of course, I
have
ordered further tests to be absolutely certain,” he said.

Now, though, it was Grazer’s turn to be cut off, as all the reporters began shouting at once. Questions overlapped each other into one large, loud, indecipherable mess. Grazer took a step back, looking momentarily stunned, like a surfer who’d just been knocked off his board by an unexpectedly huge wave. Then he smiled gamely, waiting for the din to die down so that he could field questions in a coherent fashion.

“Ain’t he in heaven,” Matt said.

George nodded. “Like a pig in chips.”

Sikes turned and looked at him. “In what?”

“Chips. Isn’t that the expression?”

He thought about it. “Close enough,” he decided.

Meanwhile, things had calmed down just enough for Grazer to select someone to toss him a question. “Any idea who the parents are?” called out the reporter.

“No, not yet,” said Cathy.

“But,” Grazer added, as if about to deliver the word from Mount Sinai, “we are investigating several promising leads.”

Matt said to George, “Promising leads. Dead ends. It’s the same thing, really. Just semantics.”

Then Grazer picked out another waving hand, and that’s when George said, “Here we go.”

“What do you mean?” asked Matt.

“I recognize that reporter,” said George. “His name’s McGee. His bias has been fairly evident in his reportage of previous Newcomer affairs.”

“Dr. Frankel,” called out McGee. “Doesn’t this confirm what the human Purists have feared all along? That the Newcomers will alter human evolution?”

Grazer looked as if he’d just been slapped in the face. This was not the kind of question he’d anticipated. Abruptly he was all too willing to let Cathy field a question.

“Let me emphasize,” she said, “it’s too soon to be certain she
is
a hybrid.”

There was no good way to answer the question, but that was one of the less preferable. It sounded as if she was backtracking, trying to avoid something unpleasant despite the fact that she was simply reiterating the position she’d had from the beginning. McGee smelled blood. “But couldn’t this signal the end of the human race as we know it?”

“There are over four billion humans on this planet,” Cathy said reasonably. “Less than three hundred thousand Tenctonese . . .”

“So your answer is yes!” shouted McGee. “It’s just a matter of time!”

And Grazer again lost control of the situation as all the reporters started shouting simultaneously all over again.

“I don’t like this, George,” said Sikes worriedly. “Things could get really ugly.”

“That McGee has always been a problem for Newcomers,” said George. “He and that wire service reporter out of Chicago. They always act like they see monsters everywhere.”

At that moment, a dispatch officer came up to them and handed them a message.

“Patrolmen just responded to a call in Little Tencton,” he told them urgently. “That giant Newcomer you’ve got an APB on . . . he was caught stealing from a fruit stand.”

“One of those promising leads we hear so much about,” Matt said to George. He turned to the dispatch officer. “Tell ’em we’re on our way . . . and we want that guy alive.”

And they dashed out of the squad room, leaving Grazer sinking fast in a sea of waving arms and shouted questions.

A
T THE
F
AIRCHILD
A
DVERTISING
Agency, Jessica stared at Susan with incredulity.

“Let me get this straight,” she said. She started ticking off the points on her fingers. “He hasn’t been sleeping around but he’s going to. And he announced his intention to do so.”

“That’s right.”

“At the dinner table. In front of the kids.”

“Right.” Susan sat there, her chin in her hands.

“And he thought that you’d approve. That, in fact, you’d be happy for him.”

“He actually seemed a little hurt that I wasn’t.”

“And the kids were on his side.”

“I think so.” Susan looked up. “What does ‘No duh’ mean?”

Jessica shrugged. “And while he’s getting geared up to boff this tootsie, you have to be high and dry for a month.”

“Yes.”

Jessica sat back and heaved a loud sigh, “Y’know, just once—just
once
—I’d like to be wrong. I mean, I’m use to men living up to—or maybe I should say, down to—my expectations. But then, every so often, something comes along that sets a new standard. I thought I’d heard everything until now. Of all the bald-faced—sorry,” she amended when she looked at Susan. “Of all the nerve. You poor thing.”

Susan sat back in her chair, pulling on her own fingers nervously. “Maybe I’m overreacting . . . ?” The question was directed partly at Jessica and partly at herself.

Jessica shook her head firmly. “Overreacting. Honey, I’d’ve kicked him in the prostate.”

“George doesn’t have a prostate,” Susan pointed out.

“Well, what
ever
he has, I’d’ve kicked him in it.”

Susan sighed again. She’d been sighing a lot, it seemed. She had slept the way she always slept when George wasn’t with her: badly. Usually it was because he was out on stakeout or some such thing. She thought that there was nothing worse than lying there, staring up at the ceiling, unsure of whether her husband was safe, and when—or if—he’d come back.

But certainly lying there, knowing that he was as near as the living room but as far as anger could keep him, had to be right up there in terms of pure heartache.

“I just don’t know what to do,” she admitted.

“Baby, there’s only one thing to do. You fight fire with fire.”

Susan looked up at her, puzzled. This had to be earth vernacular. She could not believe that Jessica really was suggesting she torch George.

“When Frank tries to pull his bushwa on me,” said Jessica conspiratorially, “I buy something tight and sexy. I may be forty-eight, but I’ve still got great gams.”

If this was supposed to clarify things, it didn’t. “Sweet potatoes?” said Susan, hopelessly befuddled.

For a moment, Jessica stared at her uncomprehendingly. Then it clicked. “Not yams,” she said, trying not to laugh. Susan felt badly enough without having her confidant snickering at her. “Gams. Legs. Anyway, Frank gets all hot and bothered and I just freeze up. He doesn’t get what he wants until I get what I want.”

“You mean you manipulate him by withholding sex?”

“Yeah. What else have I got?”

“Jessica, I don’t know. I mean . . . remember, if he goes through with this, we aren’t supposed to be having sex anyway.”

“Even better,” said Jessica. “You’ll be letting him know that you can make the month’s abstinence a living hell for him. Strutting your stuff and he can’t take advantage of it? It’ll drive him crazy. Not to mention that you’ll also be reminding him that when he comes crawling back to you after he’s had his little fling, you can turn the rest of your married life into a sexual torture chamber.”

“But why would I want to do that?!” said Susan. “What kind of way is that to live? That sounds terrible. Using sex as . . . as a weapon. How can anyone exist in a relationship that way?”

“Honey, what planet are you—no. Forget I said that.” She sat down close to Susan and said firmly, “Listen, you play doormat to a man, and believe me, all you’ll get is the bottom of his shoe.”

Susan looked bewildered. “It’s all so . . . so foreign.”

“Baby, this is war,” said Jessica with utter conviction. “And I’m not going to let you lose it. You gotta say to yourself, Nobody loses a fight when a Francisco is involved.”

In Little Tencton the car screeched to a halt next to a black and white police squad car. Matt and George leaped out and approached officers Chase and Morra. They looked as if they’d been rooted to their unit, either unable or unwilling to move. Apparently they were quite pleased that they’d been told to keep their distance and wait for Francisco and Sikes.

“Where is he?” said George.

Chase pointed and replied, “Down the street.”

Moving in the direction that Chase pointed, Sikes said, “You got him cornered?”

“Uh-uh,” Morra told him. “He’s got us cornered.”

Sikes didn’t understand what Morra was talking about until he got within range of the disturbance. Then he understood only too well.

There was a huge Newcomer sprawled across the roof of another black and white patrol car. The patrolmen were still inside because the giant was holding the doors shut with his powerful arms, keeping the frustrated cops from getting out. They could, of course, have shot directly through the roof with their guns. But there was a good chance the bullets might not penetrate, which meant they’d be injured or killed in a ricochet. Besides, cops weren’t allowed to fire their weapons unless they’d been fired upon or otherwise believed that their lives were in immediate danger. There was nothing in regulations about being held prisoner inside your own unit. Nearby a fruit stand had been overturned. One did not need a slide rule to figure out what had happened.

Chase and Morra backed up the two detectives as they approached and then stopped several yards back. Sikes whistled. “Look at the size of him . . .”

“Guy’s missing a few parts upstairs,” Chase ventured an opinion.

Sikes and Francisco looked at each other. They didn’t even need to discuss how to handle the situation. It was fairly obvious.

Slowly, so as not to appear the least bit aggressive, George called out to the giant, [
“Come down off the car. No one is going to hurt you.”
]

He had hoped to get some sort of coherent response, just to see whether they were dealing with a being who could be communicated with, or some raging behemoth. If it was the former, then perhaps things could be dealt with in a reasonable manner. If the latter, then it was quite possible that someone was going to get badly hurt . . . or worse.

His initial hopes were dashed as the giant’s only reply was an earsplitting roar of anger. But George was too much of a veteran to let his trepidation show. [
“No one is going to hurt you. Come down off the car.”
] he said, trying to have a mixture of firmness and sincerity in his voice.

He stopped five feet away. The giant just glared at him and held even more tightly to the car.

Morra, who seemed more amused by it than anything, removed his hat, and scratched his head. “What are we going to do?” he addressed the question to the assembled officers.

“He tried to steal fruit,” said Sikes reasonably. “He must be hungry.”

He looked for confirmation at George, and the Newcomer nodded. He drifted over toward the overturned fruit stand and picked up the largest red apple he could find.

And then, because George was, after all, still George, he checked the posted price on the cart and carefully placed fifty cents in the spot from which he’d taken the apple.

Sikes rolled his eyes. Then, bringing his mind back to business, he moved off to one side so that he and George would be flanking the giant, should the big guy suddenly show a disposition toward moving.

George held up the apple, keeping it steady until the giant’s gaze was locked onto it. [
“Are you hungry?”
] George asked him. [
“You can have all the food you want. Just come down.”
]

He kept repeating it over and over like a mantra. The giant was spellbound by the combination of the proffered food and the almost hypnotic quality of George’s voice. Sikes pulled out a set of handcuffs, making sure to do so without any overt fuss. He did not want to distract the giant at this crucial moment.

The giant was clearly considering George’s offer. His eyes narrowed, but not in any sort of sinister or canny manner. George realized that the creature was exhausted. Who knew how long he’d been on the run, or what emotional demons were tearing at him.

And hungry. He was unquestionably hungry.

Slowly, the giant slid off the top of the car. Sikes forced himself to hold back as the giant’s feet touched the street.

Nearby, various passing Newcomers were passing no longer. They had stopped whatever they were doing in order to watch the fascinating drama being played out in the streets of Little Tencton. Not that anyone was offering the cops any help, of course. Things simply didn’t work that way in Little Tencton.

Sikes gestured that the two cops in the car should sit tight. He didn’t want them leaping out and becoming two more bodies in the way. He waited until the giant was in perfect position, with his back to the human police officer and all his attention focused on the apple.