Alien Nation #1 - The Day of Descent (53 page)

But Sikes didn’t care. Sikes was getting tired of the whole thing. He knew Kirby would kill him for his lack of imagination and sense of wonder, but when it came right down to it, without ray guns, spaceships, miracle cures for cancer, or an invitation to join a galactic brotherhood, the Tenctonese weren’t what a lot of people, including him, had expected space aliens to be. At the end of the day they were just another group of people in trouble who didn’t speak the language. And the world was full of those.

According to Theo’s soap-opera index, by which he measured the relative importance of news stories by the length of time they managed to preempt afternoon television shows, the Tenctonese crash-landing had scored a record eight out of ten. The air war in Iraq had been a one, and the L. A. riots a two. But now, almost two weeks after the first shock, as everyone realized that any secrets in the spaceship wreckage were going to be hard to come by, “The Young and the Restless” was running again, and the saga of the stranded aliens had been reduced to five-second sound bites on the national newscasts, just like everything else.

It all made Sikes want to go back to where he belonged. He wanted to be a cop again. Even if it meant completely giving in to the captain and signing a Security Oath and living the rest of his days knowing he had let a murderer get away with his crime, Sikes wanted to go back to doing what he knew he had to do. Theo had been right. He was a cop. He’d made his decision, and now there was nothing he could do about it.

He saw a speck on the horizon. “Okay. I see one of them,” he told Miss Laurie.

“Adult male carry child. Maybe hurt. Ouch bad.”

“Better get the first-aid kit ready,” Sikes said over his shoulder. The pressure points for stopping bleeding weren’t the same, but the briefing officers had said that bones could be set on a Tenctonese the same as on a human. And if any other treatment was required, that would be the responsibility of the Tenctonese observer that rode with each team.

Two minutes later, Sikes slowed the Humvee by an adult male Tenctonese carrying what seemed to be an unconscious ten-year-old boy, just as Miss Laurie had said. Part of the problem, Sikes could see right away, was that the child’s clothes had been taken off. Except for a small gray fabric bundle that was lying on his stomach, the kid was naked. He was going to fry.

Sikes, Theo, and Miss Laurie jumped out of the Humvee at the same time.

“Tell him to cover the kid up,” Sikes said. He could see that the boy’s face was swollen and that his left forearm had a bad break.

“Sun is good on skin,” Miss Laurie said. “Make strong.” She walked quickly to the Tenctonese male and began speaking in their own language.

The male cut her off. Sikes didn’t understand a single word of what was being said, but he heard the tone in the male’s voice. He was telling her to drop dead and mind her own business. Surprisingly, the talkative Miss Laurie shut up. Still carrying the child, the male began to walk toward the back of the Humvee.

“That’s it?” Sikes asked Miss Laurie. “You’re not going to help the kid out?”

Miss Laurie had lost her smile. “Child okay. Hurt make strong. Go back now.”

Sikes looked at Theo. “Hurt make strong?” Theo shrugged. The male roughly put the unconscious child into the backseat, then pushed in front of Miss Laurie and took her place in the passenger seat.

“Hey,” Sikes said. “That’s where Miss Laurie sits. You get back there.”

The male stared at him, and Sikes saw that arrogance appeared to be the same throughout the universe.

“Okay, fine,” Miss Laurie said. “I sit back here. He sit there. Okay fine.” She said something to the male. He replied. She said to Sikes, “He say you can go now.”

Sikes didn’t get it. “Well, thank him for his kind permission,” he said sarcastically. “What is he, Miss Laurie? Some kind of commanding officer or something?”

Miss Laurie spoke to the male again. He replied again. “His name T’ksam. Ordinary Tenctonese.”

Sikes thought his name sounded like someone sneezing. “Tell him he’s got a new name. I’m going to call him Sam. You tell him that and it’ll make his day.”

Miss Laurie explained it to him. T’ksam stared at Sikes with an odd expression. “Sam,” he said, as if trying it out. He pointed to his chest. “Sam.” Then he pointed to Sikes.

Sikes said his name. The male’s eyes widened, and he looked like he was going to burst into laughter. Then he caught himself.
“See-iiks,”
he repeated. “
See-iiks
,
See-iiks, See-iiks.”
He pointed to his chest and said, “Sam.” He pointed at Sikes again, expectantly.

“Sikes,” Sikes said, pointing to himself again. “I thought you guys were supposed to be smart.”

“Vot keeps urs,”
T’ksam said, as if trying to keep back a smile.

“What did he say?” Sikes asked.

“You speak the truth,” Miss Laurie translated. Even she acted as if some sort of joke was being made.

Sikes didn’t get it. It would be five years before anyone explained to him the significance of his own name in Tenctonese.

As they arrived back at one of the main gates leading into the ACP, Sikes noticed that during the whole drive back T’ksam had kept the child’s clothes bundled up on his own lap. He hadn’t even offered them as a pillow for the kid. Pretty callous, Sikes thought. Maybe they don’t care about their kids the way we do.

At the entrance gate, Sikes waited in a line-up of other military vehicles for an MP to wave him into an open vehicle bay for inspection. The gasoline pits had been replaced over the past few days by a pair of fifteen-foot-high chain-link fences that were eventually to form a double boundary around the entire quarantine zone. It was more humane than the ring of fire, Sikes knew, but it made the purpose of the AQF painfully obvious.

Another MP came up to Sikes’s side of the Humvee carrying one of the ubiquitous metal clipboards. “What have we got here?” he asked. He wrote down Sikes’s badge number as he waited for a reply.

“Five coming in,” Sikes said. “Two human.” He gave his name and Theo’s. “One Tenctonese observer: Miss Laurie. And two stragglers.”

“Got names for the stragglers?” the MP asked.

“Yeah,” Sikes said, glancing at T’ksam. “This one’s Sam.”

“Sam what?”

“How the hell should I know?”

The MP frowned. “The computers need at least
two
names to keep track of them all, detective.” He looked across at T’ksam. “Sam, initial I., Am. That should do it.” He wrote it down.

“We got a kid in the back, too,” Sikes added. “Hurt pretty bad.”

“What’s his name?”

Before Sikes could ask Miss Laurie to ask T’ksam what the child’s name was, the MP looked in at him. “No, don’t tell me,” the MP said. “I know. He’s Buck. Buck Nekkid.”

Sikes made a face. He had the feeling that a lot of aliens would be getting their new names this way soon.

The MP walked around the vehicle to finish his inspection, then returned to Sikes. “Unload the child here so we can send him inside in an ambulance.” The MP turned away and blew two quick blasts on his whistle.

Sikes got out. Theo, Miss Laurie, and T’ksam followed. Theo went over to talk to the MP as Sikes told Miss Laurie to tell T’ksam that he wasn’t going anywhere and to get back into the Humvee. He knew whatever was going on between Miss Laurie and T’ksam was serious because Miss Laurie didn’t laugh when he said the word “Humvee.” Apparently it had some kind of sexual connotation in their language, but they all seemed too embarrassed to explain exactly what. There were some subjects, it seemed, that none of them would talk about, almost as if they had all been given orders not to talk.

But T’ksam didn’t get back into the vehicle. He was still carrying the kid’s clothes under his arm. Sikes wished he had his gun, but all the military would let him carry was his cuffs. Not even a nightstick. Nobody wanted to see the Tenctonese with weapons.

“I am not kidding, Miss Laurie,” Sikes said, making no attempt to hide the anger in his voice. He could see Theo looking over at him. “Tell Sam to get back in so I can take him to Medical Screening, or I’ll have the MPs carry him in.” Medical Screening was an absolute necessity for any Tenctonese entering the ACP. Almost all of them had come down with some sort of red rash on the backs of their necks in the first few days after the crash, and though most cases had spontaneously cleared up, there was now a disease resembling pneumonia beginning to spread. Plans were already being made to split up the Tenctonese population into widely separated camps so that any potential alien plague could be more easily prevented from infecting them all.

Miss Laurie stumbled over the words in her own language as if she had to force herself to tell T’ksam to do anything.

T’ksam stared at Sikes and Theo, who now was at Sikes’s side. T’ksam grinned.
“See-iiks,”
he said loudly.
“See-iiks, See-iiks, See-iiks.”
Then he got back into the Humvee, still clutching the child’s clothes.

An ambulance pulled up behind the Humvee, and two attendants got out. One was a human. The other was a Tenctonese in ill-fitting hospital whites. The human let the Tenctonese move the child from the Humvee to a wheeled stretcher. The kid seemed to be coming around. He was mumbling things, and he said one set of words often enough that they almost were clear, though they sounded like another sneeze to Sikes.

“Kleys cawnt zoom,”
it sounded like, with an odd little click on the end. Whatever
kleys
were, and who knew why they couldn’t
zoom?

But there was something about those words that made the Tenctonese attendant look at the child with worry in her eyes.

Then, before Sikes knew what was happening, T’ksam was out of the Humvee and standing by the stretcher and slapping the child’s face.

“Hey! What the hell does he think he’s doing?” Sikes said. He felt Theo place a restraining arm against his chest. Their orders said that they were to do nothing to interfere in the aliens’ normal interactions amongst themselves. But as far as Sikes was concerned, what T’ksam was doing wasn’t normal on any planet.

“It okay, fine,” Miss Laurie said nervously. She added her hand to Sikes’s shoulder to hold him back. Her grip was surprisingly strong.

The child opened his eyes and looked up at T’ksam, then shouted,
“Kleys cawnt zoom! Kleys cawnt zoom!”

And T’ksam’s hand rammed into the kid’s rib cage under his arm, and the kid jerked back as if his neck had been snapped.

T’ksam made a move at the ambulance attendant, and she backed away quickly.

“Who the hell is that guy?” Sikes demanded, struggling to free himself from Theo’s and Miss Laurie’s firm hold.

“Okay fine,” Miss Laurie said, almost desperately. “Sam I. Am. Ordinary Tenctonese.”

“The hell he is,” Sikes snapped at her. “What aren’t you telling us?”

“Tell you everything,” the nervous Tenctonese said. “Okay fine. Okay—”

She stopped in midsentence as T’ksam yelled at her. Her hand dropped from Sikes’s shoulder. It had been an order in any language. T’ksam walked back to the Humvee and got back inside.

Miss Laurie bowed her head as far as it could go. “He say you can drive Sam now,” she said to Sikes. Theo released Sikes.

Sikes turned to Theo. “He was trying to kill that kid, Miles.”

“That’s what it looked like to me, too. But the kid’s still breathing. Remember, we don’t know what’s normal for them. Maybe it’s just a dad beating some sense into a son.”

That brought back too many memories for Sikes. “It doesn’t work that way, man. It just doesn’t work that way.”

The MP told Sikes to get his rig out of there. The ambulance had to get past him into the camp.

Angrily Sikes climbed back into the driver’s seat. T’ksam didn’t look at him. But he did say
“See-iiks”
one more time.

Theo stood with Miss Laurie by Sikes’s door. “You not coming?” Sikes asked.

Miss Laurie bowed her large head.

Theo gave Sikes a small wave. “I’m her escort outside the fence, kid. I’ll meet up with you back at the mess tent.” He walked away with the Tenctonese female. After a few steps he put his arm around her as if comforting her. It seemed like a completely natural thing to do.

Sikes scowled as he started up the Humvee. The MP came over to the side of the vehicle to advise him that the fastest way to Medical was between the fences. The inner fence ran out at the medical compound, and that way Sikes wouldn’t have to drive a mile out of his way around the barracks construction sites.

Sikes thanked the MP for the shortcut. The less time spent in the vehicle with T’ksam the better. He slammed the Humvee into gear and kicked up a cloud of desert dust as he drove through the first gate, then hung a hard left. He checked to see what the turn had done to T’ksam, but the male was sitting perfectly upright, still holding onto the ball of gray fabric. He met Sikes’s stare, challenge in his eyes.

Sikes turned away. He accelerated. The Humvee roared. Sand and rocks thundered up against its underside. Sikes hit forty with the chain-link fences rushing by ten feet from either side.

T’ksam had the nerve to chuckle.

Sikes floored it. The Humvee started sliding in the loose soil as he banked to follow the same twists and turns in the terrain that the fence did. He fishtailed on a tight turn and missed an extinguished oil pit by two feet. One of T’ksam’s hands shot out to grab the narrow dash.

Sikes gritted his teeth and smiled. There was still a mile to go. He started edging closer to the inner fence, pulling away every few seconds to miss the thick posts. The whole Humvee rocked. The wheels started sliding again. He came closer and closer to the posts.

Then Sikes swore and jammed on the brakes, and the Humvee slid to a stop in a cloud of dust less than a foot away from a pile of fence posts that blocked the whole corridor between the fences. Whoever had dumped the shipment there had left only a few feet of clearance on either side, no room for any vehicle to pass. Sikes kept his hands on the wheel and waited for the dust cloud to blow away. Through the chain-link fence he could see the orderly rows of the white medical trailers that had become the quarantine zone’s hospital just beyond the pile of posts. But the end of the inner fence was still a couple hundred feet away.