Alien Nation #1 - The Day of Descent (20 page)

Ruhtra smiled but held two fingers to his lips to signal for silence. “It is not quite as simple as that. They’re beginning to suspect what is happening. They are trying to reformulate the gas. Break apart breeding couples who show resistance.”

George looked at Susan. He knew why she would not abandon him in the corridor as the Overseers neared. He would never abandon her, either. “Let them try,” he said fiercely.

Ruhtra put his hands on George’s shoulders. “This is not your fight, Stangya.”

George felt the sting of quick anger. “This is every Tencton’s fight.”

Ruhtra’s gaze bored into George with the power of the Overseers’ cutting beam. “Listen carefully, Stangya. You don’t even know if there is a fight.”

“Ruhtra, how can you say that? How can—”

“
Keer’chatlas,”
Ruhtra said. And that one word explained everything. Strength through weakness. Victory through division. A network of spies and cells impervious to betrayal. A network of hope.

George paused. “Then there
is
a revolt.”

Ruhtra dropped his eyes. “If there is, I do not know it.” He drew his hands back. “I receive my orders. I do what I am told. Why I do it, for whom I do it, I don’t know. And because I don’t know, I cannot betray anyone when I am caught.”

“No one will catch you,” George said vehemently, with his newborn hope.

But Ruhtra did not respond to George’s conviction. “I am frightened, Stangya. I started out reporting on the Overseers’ movements. Like you, I could move through heavy concentrations of gas. Then an Elder instructed me in how to defeat the locks on certain equipment bins.” He looked down at his belt and ran his hands over the devices that hung from it. “Now look at me. Possession of any one of these is grounds for instant death.” He looked back at George, and the fear he felt was clearly evident in his haunted eyes. “There’s no going back for me, Stangya. It’s like sliding down the recycler chute or facing the sixth nozzle in the Game. My capture is inevitable.”

“But why?” George protested. “With
keer’chatlas
you are protected. Someone must be planning everything, organizing everything. You can’t
expect
defeat, or that is what you will earn.”

Ruhtra shook his head at George’s naiveté.
“Keer’chatlas
is breaking down. There are too many activities going on at once. Too many raids. Too many killings. The pace has increased ever since the last translation.”

George’s mind reeled. Raids? Killings? What was going on in the ship? Why did no one know? “The last translation? That was when Moodri came and—”

Ruhtra pressed his hand against George’s mouth. “Please!” he said. “Tell me nothing.” His hand trembled against George’s lips. “I did not choose this. I am not some
chekkah
born and bred for battle. I dream of Tencton’s purple fields of grass, of farming beneath three moons, of feeling my podlings kick within me, full of life.” Tears fell from Ruhtra’s eyes as he bared the secrets of his
serdos
to his brother. “And I shall have none of that, Stangya. None of that.”

George took his brother’s hand in his. “None of us will ever have the dreams we cherish unless some of us fight for them.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” Ruhtra pulled his hand from George’s grip. “You will have to take Oblakah and leave,” he said. “The Overseers know that the incident at the water hub has been witnessed. They will be searching for likely suspects.”

“What was the incident at the water hub?” George asked. “And why was my son there?”

Ruhtra blinked in surprise. “Finiksa? You saw Finiksa in the hub?”

“In a Watcher scarf.”

A bleak look came into Ruhtra’s eyes. “They take everything from us, don’t they?”

“Only if we don’t fight them,” George said. “Do you know why there were Watchers present? Do you know what the Overseers wanted?”

“No, Stangya. And you don’t want to know either. My assignment was only to ensure the safety of workers from another cell. By the time you and Oblakah made yourselves known those workers had completed their assignment, and I was told to help you escape.”

“By whom?”

Ruhtra tapped the small device that extended down from his communications headband to cover an ear valley. “By whoever talks to me through this. I don’t know. I can’t know. And I don’t want to know.” He turned away from George and went to Susan, gently compelling her to stand up. She was completely under the spell of the gas and complied at once.

Ruhtra pointed to a dark tunnel crowded with pipes. “Take this tunnel straight through past three intersections. You’ll find a wall hatch that opens into a garbage sorting chamber. You’ll only be a few sectors from your dormitory. Go there immediately before the search reaches it.”

“How do you know where our dormitory is?” George asked as he guided Susan to the tunnel entrance. There were so many other questions he longed to ask his brother, but Ruhtra was signaling them to hurry to obey him.

“I don’t know,” Ruhtra said. He tapped his earpiece again.
“He
knows.”

George crouched by the tunnel. “I want to help, Ruhtra. Tell
him
I want to join the revolt.”

Ruhtra tried pushing George on his way. “They don’t want you, Stangya.”

George felt the acid wash of long-suppressed frustration and resentment move through him. “Why?”

The answer strained at Ruhtra’s lips.

“I know you know,” George said. “Tell me!”

Ruhtra shoved George into the tunnel. “In case of defeat, the Elders will not risk losing entire families,” he said quickly, regretfully. “One from each line must be spared.”

George stared at his brother. If what Ruhtra said was true, then everyone else from the union of Family: Heroes of Soren’tzahh and Family: Third Moon’s Ocean was involved in the revolt—except for George.

He looked at the wall, trying to find a place to rest his hand for balance. He saw one of the signs that was mounted beside a tunnel entrance light. It was faded and smudged and not written in the sine script of Tencton’s major language groups. It was alien.

“Everyone
else in our line is involved?” George asked. Fighting their own kind in an alien construct, he thought. Was this what tens of thousands of years of Tenctonese history had come to?

“Go now,” Ruhtra said. He stepped back from the tunnel entrance, away from the light. “Dream of Tencton for me.”

George heard Ruhtra’s soft footsteps rush away.

Everyone else in my line, he thought with a sudden chill. Ruhtra, and Moodri, and—he gasped in horror as he realized the full meaning of what his brother had said—Finiksa.

The very revolt he dreamed about seethed around George, and he knew now that he had been deliberately kept from learning anything about it.

But now that he did know, nothing could stop him from joining. No matter what Moodri said, no matter what Ruhtra said, George made up his mind that nothing could keep him from fighting for his people, his family, and his son.

He ran through the tunnel with Susan, and his hearts hammered with new purpose.

For George Francisco, the revolt had finally begun.

S
IKES ALWAYS FELT NERVOUS
when he was on academic grounds. From his long stretches of permanent detention back at Belmont High to his abortive semesters at college when he was struggling with a new marriage, a new baby, and trying to find some direction in his life, school had never been a pleasant experience for him. And even now, driving slowly along the winding roads of UCLA on official police business, he felt his stomach tightening up just as if he had been called to the principal’s office for smoking in the bathroom, or to the dean’s office to explain his grades.

“Get a grip,” Sikes muttered to himself as he slowed by a sign with a list of buildings and a confusing collection of arrows. He squinted through his sunglasses, trying to find Royce Physics Hall on the sign. Then he jerked upright as someone blasted a horn behind him.

Sikes looked over his shoulder at two tanned weight lifters in a red Miata waving at him to get off the road. Sikes muttered some more and pulled over to the curb to let the little sports car pass. His own school experience still led him to strongly dislike anyone who could afford college
and
a sports car at the same time.

The Miata squealed past him. The weight lifters laughed. Sikes gritted his teeth and memorized the car’s license plate. Maybe he’d run it through the computer later to see if there was a citation or two outstanding.

Twenty more minutes of searching brought Sikes, now on foot, to the entrance of a pleasantly designed building constructed of deep red stone. Unusual for southern California, it wasn’t built in a Spanish design, but Sikes had no idea what other style it might be. Victoria would probably know, he thought. Or Grazer.

Sikes shuddered as he thought of his fellow Detective Three. How could anyone know so much without also knowing the definition of an insufferable bore? After they had read Randolph Petty’s electronic mail on the computer last night Grazer had actually explained the development of the computer chip to both Kirby and Sikes for almost two hours. Kirby had taken the easy way out and fallen asleep, but Sikes, as the only adult in the room, had felt obliged to keep his eyes open.

After the first hour of polite “uh-huhs” and “reallys” Sikes had perversely decided to not say anything more that would encourage Grazer. Incredibly, the man had continued talking without any feedback from Sikes for almost another whole hour. In desperation Sikes had called up humorous mental visions of Grazer at home, practice-lecturing his goldfish or even a sofa. Then he had begun creating even more diverting visions of what it would be like when Victoria came back from Switzerland.

Whether Grazer had finally gotten the hint or his voice had given out, Sikes didn’t know. But when the detective had finally left, it seemed to Sikes as if his own dismal, cramped apartment was suddenly twice as large and soundproofed. Maybe I don’t have to move after all, Sikes had thought as he had gently wakened Kirby so he could make up the sofa bed for her. Maybe I just have to have Grazer over more often so I can appreciate what I’ve got when he’s gone. That final thought—appreciating what he had only when he no longer had it—had made him think of Victoria again, and he had spent another restless night searching for her imprint beside him in his bed.

But this morning was far better than the previous morning had been. Sikes’s head felt its normal size. The sun was warm and not a glaring interrogation spotlight. He had his official notebook with its numbered pages in the inner pocket of his sports jacket. He had driven through the canyons with the Mustang’s top down.
And
he was about to interview his first potential witness to his first murder case, all on his own.

Angie Perez hadn’t even asked for details when Sikes had spoken with her at the station house this morning. “If you think you’re on to something,” she had said, “go get ’em, Sherlock.” Then she had added, “Just remember that you only have until quitting time today before you start taking on other cases.”

Sikes had groaned at the healthy dose of reality his new partner had inflicted upon him, but if the lead he had come up with last night did end up being worth something, he was certain he could talk Angie into giving him some more time. After all, the name of the game was solving crimes, and Sikes was determined to solve this one.

As pleasant as Royce Hall had looked on the outside, inside it was falling into disrepair, the fate of all schools in a system that worried more about the next quarter than the next generation. But the signs on the walls made more sense than the signs on the road had made, and Sikes quickly found the minuscule office of the woman with whom Professor Randolph Petty had exchanged his final electronic letters—Amy Stewart.

The door was open when Sikes arrived. Stewart’s name was handwritten on a piece of cardboard held in a metal frame above the door number. She was identified as a Tutorial Leader. At first it looked as if the room beyond the door was a locker of some kind and not an office. It was that small. But there was a narrow desk crammed into a corner, wedged between floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that sagged under piles of magazines and papers. There were a number of certificates and framed color photographs of people on the walls’ few unobstructed areas. And there was someone working at the desk, peering into an inordinately large computer screen on which a complex colored graph was displayed. Sikes had to knock twice on the door frame before that person realized she had company and turned around.

“Amy Stewart?” he asked.

The woman at the computer looked up at Sikes over the thin red frames of her large round glasses. Sikes stared back, at a loss for words. He realized then that he had had no expectations as to what kind of a person Amy Stewart might be. Perhaps, because Petty had been seventy-two years old, Sikes had expected Stewart to be of similar vintage. And perhaps, because the letters had indicated that she was an academic, he had expected her to be someone indistinguishable from the dusty piles of books that she worked with. But he hadn’t expected the striking young woman who looked at him now.

Dimly he knew that she was waiting for him to say something more, but Sikes was at a loss. If he had had to put out an APB on her, he would have failed. She was female, most assuredly, but . . . Caucasian? Hispanic? Native American? He couldn’t be sure, there were elements of so many different origins in her golden complexion, intense dark eyes, and jet-black hair feathered close to her skull. Her eyebrows were almost nonexistent, adding a look of permanent and childlike anticipation to a face graced with lips that made Sikes think only of adult pursuits.

“Yes?” the woman said.

“Umm,” Sikes replied, two years worth of interrogation classes suddenly flushed from his mind.

Surprisingly, instead of turning back to her computer in impatience, the woman flashed Sikes a sly smile. “I’m Amy Stewart. That
is
who you’re looking for, isn’t it?” Her subtle accent was as unidentifiable as her heritage, and that smile further delayed the return of Sikes’s verbal abilities. He fished around in the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out the leather folder he found there. Then he held it out to her.