Alien Nation #6 - Passing Fancy (9 page)

“He
laughed,”
Grazer insisted. “He
schmutzed
me with this filthy broom and he
laughed.”

Matt shook his head.

“No. Sweet, naive Albert laughed? Usually, after an accident, he gets on his knees to denounce his unworthiness.”

“Sure, get on his knees,” growled Grazer, “why should he screw up
his
pants?” He paused, as if listening to a private little tune, cocking his head curiously, and suddenly giving a single, decisive little nod. “Ah
-hah!”
He strode past them to his office door, threw it open. “Hear for yourself.”

And, sure enough, like a delicate
obligato,
riding above the din of general office noise, came the sound of dizzy laughter.

“It is unlike Albert to behave in such a fashion,” George commented.

“Gets worse,” Grazer snarfed. “This morning he left an entire box of fresh jelly weasels on the radiator too long.”

Jelly weasels were Newcomer snack food, rather akin (in intent, if not in content) to the doughnuts ingested by humans. Like any other meat-based product suitable for Newcomer consumption, jelly weasels had to be consumed raw. Tenctonese physiology not only thrived on the nutrients and enzymes in raw meat, it was, furthermore, unable to digest meat in any other condition.

“Cooked
’em,” Grazer exclaimed. “Just enough to cause damage, not quite enough to be noticed by a preoccupied officer until the first bite went down.” Grazer flapped his arms in frustration, the shoe on his hands describing a wide, and possibly dangerous, arc. “A dozen of those disgusting things, twelve potential cases of food poisoning.”

Sikes wasn’t sure what it was that Grazer found disgusting: cooked jelly weasels or jelly weasels as a concept. Probably a toss-up.

“I assume Albert found
this
amusing as well,” George guessed.

“On a scale of one to ten, he thought it was a twelve. Better than the shoes. If May hadn’t caught it, we’d’ve been knee-deep in Newcomer barf.”

As if on cue, a young, pretty Newcomer girl showed up in the doorway. She was the sandwich girl, formerly May O’Naise, more recently May Einstein, Albert’s wife.

“What?”
Grazer snapped by way of greeting.

“Captain, I wanted to apologize for my husband.”

“Forget apologies, can you calm him down?”

“I’ve been trying. I don’t know what to do.”

“Hi, May,” Matt said, lightly, trying to diffuse a bit of the tension. And then: “Hey, you’re a little lighter in the bread basket there, aren’t you?”

It was true. Where previously she had been pregnant, full with the pod which would gestate into her first child, now she was her former slim-waisted and flat-stomached self.

“Oh, yes. Albert assumed the pod last night. It was beautiful.”

George exhaled, as if relieved about something.

“Of course,” he said, almost to himself; and then, to Grazer, “Did you not notice that Albert was suddenly pregnant?”

Grazer pursed his lips and snorted. “I’m a
cop,
Francisco, of
course
I noticed. But after he broadsided me, I wasn’t too keen on offering congratulations.”

“What I am trying to get across, Captain, is that his current . . .”

—Albert’s laughter floated across the squad room again—

“. . .
giddiness
is directly attributable to his condition.”

“Well, now, how the hell was I supposed to know that? I mean, when
you
were pregnant, it didn’t turn
you
psycho.”

“I dunno, Cap’n,” Matt put in. “George had some remarkably pissy moods.”

Matt pointedly ignored George’s brief glare as Grazer poutily responded, “You know what I mean.”

May seemed sympathetic.

“I really don’t understand it myself.”

Grazer made a face that eloquently translated as,
There! Satisfied?

“I
at least know what you mean, Captain,” George conceded, and Matt did not miss the implied dig. “But I’m a
gannaum,
Albert is a
binnaum.”

“And my great-grandfather was a
moyel
in the old country, what does that have to do with anything?”

“Binnaums
have a somewhat different body chemistry. They are built so that they can incubate a pod to term, but it is a feature few
binnaums
actually utilize. A small number of
binnaums
have even been born without a pouch.”

Grazer’s inflection took on a long-suffering quality. “The point being . . .”

“That by accepting the pod into his system, Albert triggered a chemical change, and a fairly emphatic one. In order to create a safe environment for the pod, several of his glands have kicked into overdrive.”

“You telling me he’s on a nutrient rush?”

“That . . . is one way of putting it. But the imbalance is only temporary. Once the activity normalizes . . .”

“Oh, great. But until then, he’s a PMS time bomb. Any way to speed the process along?”

George turned to May.

“May, have you tried having Albert ingest large quantities of soda water? If he belches a lot, the release of carbon dioxide may calm him considerably.”

She smiled gratefully.

“Thank you, George.”

George smiled back hugely. “No thanks needed. I am, after all, the
gannaum.
It is my responsibility.” Matt observed the moment with the slight residue of a discomfort he should long since have shed. But it was weird, still, to think that it took
three
Newcomers to make a baby: a female, a
binnaum
to catylize her, and a
gannaum
to fertilize her. Well, no, that wasn’t what was weird. What was weird was that the Newcomers were just hunky-damn-dory with the idea. Albert had been the
binnaum
to George’s daughters Emily and Vessna. Less than four months ago, George—in what would turn out to be his last pre-
riana
hurrah as a fertile male—had returned the favor. It was considered an honor. A big one. Sacred ceremony and everything.

In the background there was the sound of something falling, the sound of someone cursing, and Albert’s drunken, soprano laughter.

May turned to Grazer. “Captain, I’d like to fix the damage done to your shoes, if I may.”

She reached for them with such guileless innocence that Grazer didn’t have enough reaction time to reflexively pull them away.

“That’d be great!” he smiled. And then asked, “How?”

“Albert has about five bottles of Wite-Out in his locker, I can just—”

Quickly, Grazer snatched the shoes back.
“On
—second thought . . . You have enough to do, kiddo. See to your husband. That takes first priority.”

“You’re very kind, Captain,” she said—incredibly enough, meaning it—and hustled off.

Grazer stood by his open office door, wearing his shoes on his hands, shorter than usual in stocking feet, muttering, “Wite-Out on suede . . .”

He looked up at Sikes and Francisco, as if noticing them for the first time.

“What’re
you
hanging around for?”

Matt bobbed his head back and forth in tiny increments for a while, and said slowly, “To report on the
case,
Bry.”

“What? . . . Oh,
that.”
He brushed past them, on his way back to his desk chair. “Yeah, sure, get to it.”

He wrapped his fist with tape again and the two detectives filled him in on the morning’s progress as
crinkle
and
thwop
punctuated the information. The sound effect slowed only near the end when George’s sense of outrage resurfaced briefly. The heightened emotion seemed to snap Grazer into some kind of sober awareness, and he dislodged a hand from a shoe, lifting a cautioning finger.

“I need not remind you, gents, you’re in a gray area. The doctor’s activities, however abhorrent, are not illegal. Right now, all you get is a ticket to ride”—making reference to the prescription—“which expires in less than forty-eight hours if you can’t get a lead on the
specific pharmacy
used by your actress friend. I can’t spare the time it would take for you guys to scam every fishy drugstore in L.A.”

“But, Captain—” Matt began.

“I thought we had an understanding, Sikes. I applaud your efforts so far, but don’t push your luck. Get it?”

A long pause.

“Got it.”

“Good.” Grazer glanced at George. “Francisco?”

“Of course.”

“Fine. Thanks for the tip on Albert. Now get outta here.”

They left the office and crossed to the adjoining desks, the sound of
crinkle-thwop, crinkle-thwop
fading behind them.

The timing couldn’t have been better.

No sooner had Sikes’s fanny hit the chair than a khaki officer told him there was a call waiting on line three.

“Sikes here.”

“Matt, it’s Cathy.”

“Cathy! How are you?”

“They set up a cot for me in the nurses’ dorm.”

“Yeah, but . . . how
are
you?”

“Oh . . . you know.”

He didn’t. Rephrased the question. “Get any sleep?”

“Enough to function. Hasn’t been that much to do . . . until now.”

“She’s awake?”

“You could call it that. One minute of rationality for every five of delirium.”

“. . . What’s her condition?”

“Good news, bad news. Order’s up to you.”

“Let’s go out on a win. Start with the bad.”

“The delirium probably signals the beginning of withdrawal. It’ll be rough.”

“How can you tell?”

“Weren’t you paying attention last night?”

“. . . You sound angry.”

“Do I?”

“A bit.”

“I’m not.”

“You sure?”

“Ma-att
. . .”

“. . .”

“. . .”

“Okay, right. What’s the good news?”

“Provisional. I got her to come up with the name of a pharmacy. Took a lot of shouting, but I think I got through. The one she named was
See Gurd Nurras
in Little Tencton.”

“See Gurd
what?”

“Nurras.”

“You spell that?”

“Phonetically only. Like it sounds, but that may not do much good. Pass it on to George, he’ll know what to make of it. It translates as ‘The Drug Runners.’ ”

“Cute.”

“I thought you’d like it.”

“She give you an address?”

“You’re lucky to have
that.”

“Never mind, we’ll look it up. And it is good news. What’s provisional about it?”

“She’s not connecting much. I can’t guarantee that’s the right name or that such a place even exists.”

“It’s better than nothing. We need an excuse to roll. If George and I can’t be in full-tilt boogie by tomorrow
A.M.,
the case turns into a pumpkin.”

A short laugh escaped Cathy then. “I actually think I understand that,” she said. It was the first time in the entire conversation that she sounded remotely like the Cathy he knew. The moment passed too quickly. “Well,” she sighed, “no doubt you’ll be checking in. I’ll let you know if the information gets more specific, or different.”

“Of
course
I’ll be checking in. Dammit, you
are
angry.”

“No, really. Just . . . just gearing up.”

“You’re sure.”

“Yes.”

“Really?”

“
Matt
. . .”

“Okay.” A beat. And then, softly, awkwardly, because he wasn’t always comfortable with it, even though it was the truth: “I love you, you know.”

“. . .”

“Cathy?”

“Boy, you’d better,” she said, and hung up.

He drew the phone away from his ear at the sharp
click!,
fighting an impulsive desire to speak her name into the mouthpiece—
“Cathy?”
—and retrieve her.

What checked the impulse, curiously, was a comedy bit he’d once heard on a scratchy old vinyl album featuring Mike Nichols and Elaine May.

In the bit, Nichols plays a poor schnook stranded on the road, trying to call for help from a phone booth. But his call has gotten cut off, and the phone has eaten his last dime (and the days when a phone call cost a dime were also the days without touch-tone dialing and calling cards, so this guy is stranded but
good
). He manages to connect with the operator, played by May, who won’t reconnect the call but assures him that if he
just hangs up the phone,
his dime
will
be returned to him. Which puts Nichols into a panic since he has no doubt that the dime has long since dropped into the phone’s innards; there’s no
way
to reroute it to the change basket. The operator argues that he will indeed get his dime back, and then Nichols really becomes desperate. He swears to her that he distinctly
heard
the decisive
clunk
all pay phones make when they swallow your change—

—and, adding to that with the anguish of years, he cries, “I
know
that sound.
I’ve been hearing it all my life!”

Matt felt like that now. One part of him not quite understanding, wanting to play the conversation with Cathy back, get it right, make amends for—whatever the hell it was he needed to make amends for; the other part saying, Forget it. She’s hung up on you.

I
know
that sound.
I’ve been hearing it all my life!

“Matthew?”

Sikes looked across his desk toward George at the desk opposite.

“Is anything wrong?”

Yeah, something’s wrong,
thought Matt.
That open innocence of Cathy’s seems . . . seems, I don’t know what, diluted. Compromised. The woman whose face lights up at the tactile sensation of theatre tickets in her hand is not
quite
the same woman I just spoke to on the phone.

And then Matt thought,
Business first,
and snapped on a tight smile, holding aloft the piece of paper upon which he’d scribbled Cathy’s information.

“Maybe not, partner,” he said. “Maybe not.”

C
ATHY
F
RANKEL RACKED
the receiver, leaned back in the chair, and sighed. Anticipating exhaustion. And worse. Dr. Steinbach had been nice enough to give her access to the phone and whatever else she might need in Dr. Casey’s office, and she wasn’t shy about accepting the offer.