Alien Nation #3 - Body and Soul (16 page)

“Forget it,” he said.

In the holding cell, the giant was now on his feet.

Although George, Sikes, and Albert were all well out of range, they nevertheless found themselves reflexively stepping backward.

[
“What is it?!”
] George demanded.

The giant didn’t respond. Instead he gripped the bars, his eyes wide, as if he were watching a lover dying of a pernicious disease . . . knowing that he was helpless to save her.

Cathy studied the Kafkas. They seemed like perfectly decent individuals . . . or, at least, Cathy discerned as much as she could, considering that she’d met them a bare ten seconds ago.

They were looking, spellbound, at the baby in Cathy’s arms. Cathy looked down at the child as well, expecting to see her usual calm, serene manner.

But now, for the first time, the child seemed agitated. Her eyes were darting nervously about. Apprehensively, Cathy said, “I’ll need to see her on a regular basis.”

“Of course,” said Kafka, extending his arms.

The giant screamed.

It was a sound unlike any Sikes had ever heard. In all likelihood, he would never hear anything like it again unless, of course, he was unfortunate enough to end up in hell to witness damned souls writhing in torment.

“What’s wrong with him?!” he demanded of George.

George gestured helplessly and looked to Albert. But the janitor was as flabbergasted by the sudden alteration in the giant’s previously passive mood.

“I don’t know,” said George, trying to maintain calm. But it wasn’t easy.

The infant screamed.

It was silent, and yet deafening. Since the child had been so passive, so calm earlier, this was a horrifying contrast. Her once tranquil eyes were now swirling with turmoil. She began to twist in Kafka’s grip, her tiny fists balling up. Her body became rigid, seizing up almost as if she were in the throes of a fit.

Or like a junkie going through withdrawal.

Kafka looked down in surprise at the child’s abnormal shift in mood. He made clicking noises to comfort her, but they seemed to have little effect.

“She seems upset,” Cathy said, unable to contain her urgency.

Kafka nodded in agreement, but his assessment of what they should do was at odds with Cathy’s. “Let’s get her home,” he said. “She’ll be calmer once she’s out of here.”

“Maybe she should stay.” Cathy started to reach for her. The child turned to her, twisting in Kafka’s arms. There was pure terror in her eyes, and she started to reach for Cathy . . .

But Grazer stepped in between them, facing Cathy and saying firmly, “I can’t allow that. Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Kafka.”

Cathy stood there, watching helplessly, as the baby was carried away down the corridor.

The giant, his huge hands on the bars, twisted and writhed as if the bars had been shot through with electricity. The door creaked and moaned under the strain of the giant’s grip.

“Stop it! Knock it off!” Sikes was shouting.

“Matt, he doesn’t understand you.”

“How the hell do you know, George?!” demanded Sikes. “He doesn’t respond to Tenctonese. Maybe he only speaks French. Hey! Vous! Knockez it off!”

His lame attempt at humor was Matt’s way of covering the panic he started to feel building in him. Because he wasn’t sure if he was imagining it or not, but it looked to him as if the bars might be starting to bend.

In the corridor upstairs, the Kafkas walked very quickly toward the exit. Franz Kafka was still desperately trying to calm the distraught child.

[
“There there.”
] he whispered. And still the child was in the grip of hysterics.

Cathy watched with a horrified certainty that this was wrong. She wanted to throw herself after them, tackle them, make them realize that the child couldn’t, shouldn’t,
mustn’t
leave.

But she couldn’t explain why. She didn’t have the words for it . . . not to give to them, and not even really to explain to herself.

All she had was a gut feeling, and in a case like this, that simply wasn’t going to cut it.

Sikes wasn’t imagining it. The bars started to bend.

Quickly Matt pulled his weapon, George following suit. Albert took a frightened step back, his eyes wide with fear. Sikes wasn’t sure if Albert was more afraid of the giant hurting them or of them hurting the giant.

“Hey, guy! Easy now!” cautioned Sikes. But he knew that the giant didn’t comprehend, or else simply didn’t care. The creature was going berserk, and there was a very great likelihood that if Tiny didn’t get a grip—other than on a cell door—within the next ten seconds, he was going to wind up with several well-placed bullets in him.

The Kafkas walked out the door. The last view Cathy had of the baby girl was her anguished look penetrating straight through Cathy’s head, straight into her mind . . .

Straight into her soul.

The giant howled once more, the howl of someone who knows that he has lost.

Sikes couldn’t distinguish the ululation from the giant’s screams of pure rage. Gripping the gun with both hands, and praying that the monster would listen—understand the words, garner the tone,
something
—he shouted, “Back off! Right now!”

And the giant did exactly as he was told.

Sikes was dumbfounded as the giant suddenly released his grip on the bars. He was like a balloon from which the air had escaped. He sagged back, not looking where he was going. The backs of his legs bumped into the cell bench, and he slouched down onto it.

But it was as if his body had turned to liquid. The bench didn’t hold him. He slid right off it, like a waterfall, and dropped to the floor. He curled his knees up, almost up to his chin, and wrapped both arms around them.

And said, of course, nothing.

Sikes and Matt looked at each other.

“You got an explanation for that, George? Or how about you, Albert? You’re the character witness. What the hell just happened here?”

“A great loss,” Albert intoned.

“Yeah, you said that,” said Sikes impatiently. “But . . .”

“The ‘but’ is, Sergeant,” Albert said quietly, “that losing something once is truly heart-wrenching. But losing it twice . . . that, Sergeant Sikes, is a little taste of damnation.”

He slung his mop over his shoulder. “If you’ll excuse me,” he said, and moved off down the corridor.

They watched him go, and then looked back at the now helpless giant.

And they wondered what would happen if, next time, the creature didn’t back down.

S
IKES EXPECTED
,
FOR
some reason, that the sex clinic would have large neon lights flashing on and off, with the words Open 24 Hours in capital letters.

Instead what he found was a rather sedate brown-stone on the campus of UCLA. That didn’t serve to make him feel all that much better.

As he walked across the campus, he felt completely out of place. Passing students would give him appraising looks. He kept waiting for one of them to point and start giggling, knowing in some arcane student way that he was there for the purpose of signing up for Remedial Alien Boffing. And the student would tell his friends, and pretty soon everywhere he went on the campus, people would be pointing and snickering to each other.

And once it was all over the campus, it would spread like wildfire across the city. Or even worse—one of those stupid magazines that published articles like “What’s Hot on Campus” would catch wind of it, and his picture would be stuck onto glossy pages in between photos of some rap group and students enjoying spring break in Florida . . .

Get a grip, for crying out loud,
he thought.
No one is paying attention to you; it’s all in your imagina
—

“Excuse me.”

He stopped, his hands deep in the pockets of his leather jacket, and turned to face a student. The young, long-haired individual was wavering slightly from side to side.

“Yeah? What?” asked Sikes.

“Are you a cop?”

Sikes frowned. “Yeah. I’m a cop. Why?”

“Oh. Okay.”

The student started to walk away, and now Sikes was extremely confused. “Hey! Kid!” he called out. The student stopped and turned around. “Why did you ask?”

The kid shrugged. “Well, I figured either you were a cop or else you were selling drugs.” And then he kept on going.

Sikes watched him go. Then he pulled sunglasses from his vest pocket, and a baseball cap from his back pocket, jamming the former on his face and the latter on his head.

If he was going to be subjected to stuff like this, at least he could cut down on the likelihood of being identified later on.

Cathy had left the station house shortly after the Newcomer child had been taken away. She said it was because she wanted to check on some lab results, but that could have been done over the phone. Sikes figured that she really wanted time to compose herself after the clearly grueling day she’d had, and he couldn’t blame her. So he had arranged with Cathy that he would meet her right at the clinic.

But considering what she’d been subjected to, Sikes really wouldn’t have blamed her if she’d decided that going to this clinic tonight was going to be too much of a strain. No . . . no, he wouldn’t blame her at all.

In fact, she probably wasn’t even there. If Matt went home right now, he’d probably find a message on his answering machine or perhaps a note tacked to his front door, with Cathy’s apologies for just not having the strength to haul herself out to UCLA.

That was it. He should really just head straight home.

He hesitated at the door to the clinic. Just to cover his bases, he would look in to make absolutely certain that Cathy wasn’t there. Yes, absolutely. Look in, walk out. It wouldn’t take more than a second.

He opened the door and peered in.

Cathy was looking straight at him.

There was a line formed at a registration table, and Cathy had made it as far as being second on line. She had been looking at the door with obvious apprehension, but the moment she saw Matt, her face brightened. She gestured eagerly to him that he should join her.

Sikes smiled as best he could, although he was certain that it came out looking far more like a grimace, and he touched the brim of his cap in acknowledgment. He made his way quickly across the room, making certain not to meet anyone’s gaze directly.

He got to Cathy’s side. She leaned over to kiss him on the cheek, but Sikes kissed the air a few inches away from her face, and then turned away as if suddenly engrossed with studying their surroundings. Cathy blinked in mild surprise, and then looked at the sunglasses.

“It’s nighttime,” she said.

“Yeah, I know.”

“Then why are you wearing sunglasses? Are your eyes bothering you?”

“No . . . well, yes,” he quickly amended. “It’s these darned fluorescents.”

She glanced up at the overhead lighting. “These are incandescents.”

“That’s what I meant,” said Sikes lamely.

“Oh.” Clearly Cathy took him at his word. She frequently did. Sometimes that could be of tremendous use. And then there were the other times—like now, when he was keeping the shades on primarily because it gave him a secure feeling of anonymity—that he felt like a bit of a cretin.

“There’s my friend, Betty!” said Cathy. She called out to a passing Newcomer nurse. “Betty! Hi!”

Matt endeavored to thin out his molecular structure so that he could pass through the floor like a ghost. He wasn’t particularly successful. Cathy, on the other hand, had complete success in getting her friend’s attention. Betty walked over to them and said cheerfully, “Hi, Cathy!”

“Betty Banner, this is my boyfriend, Matt. Matt, this is Betty.”

“Yeah. Hi.” Sikes shook her hand as quickly as possible, and hoped that Betty would go away before Cathy said something clever like . . .

“We’re taking a sex class together!” Cathy bubbled.

Sikes sighed and pulled off his sunglasses. “What’s the use?” he asked.

“Congratulations,” said Betty, patting him on the shoulder. “Good luck!”

“I’ll tell you all about it!” said Cathy as Betty walked off. “’Bye! Give my love to Bruce!”

Sikes waited until Betty was out of earshot, and then through gritted teeth said to Cathy, “You and I need to have a long talk about what is and what isn’t appropriate to discuss in public.”

She looked at him in surprise. “But, Matt, I’d think it was fairly obvious what we were here to do.”

“In that case, it wasn’t necessary to broadcast it, was it?”

Before they could continue a discussion that neither of them wanted, the couple in front of them finished signing up and stepped aside. Cathy’s hand tightened around Matt’s, and she stepped up to the registration desk. Sikes didn’t exactly hang back, but he didn’t precisely jump to the forefront either. Cathy, however, pulled him forward a step or two in her enthusiasm.

Sikes stared at the woman behind the registration desk. She was wearing a small name badge that read, Hello, My Name Is, and Mrs. Krik was handwritten below it. She had thick white hair, glasses, and a hearing aid that she was, at that moment, frowning at and tapping lightly with one finger.

It didn’t bode well.

“Name?” said Mrs. Krik. She was speaking loudly even though they were only six inches away from her.

“Cathy Frankel,” said Cathy, and she turned to Matt.

He wasn’t saying anything.

“And Matt Sikes,” she added for him.

She checked off their names against a master list. “Mr. Sikes, how old are you?”

“Thirty-six,” he said.

She looked up at him. “What?”

He raised his voice. “Thirty-six!”

She smiled and made a notation. And then she said, “How large is your penis when erect?”

Matt’s jaw went slack. “What?!” His voice was barely above a harsh whisper.

This naturally prompted Mrs. Krik to shout, “What?!”

“How large is your penis when erect?” Cathy said, hoping to cut down on time and totally missing out on Matt’s discomforture.

“Your penis,” Mrs. Krik said loudly enough to be heard in Santa Monica. “When erect, how lar—”

“I heard you!” shouted Sikes.