Alien Nation #3 - Body and Soul (19 page)

“I don’t care what you do!” bellowed Grazer. “Just find her!”

Matt clapped George on the back. “You heard the man, George. He doesn’t care what we do. Just the words I like to hear. Let’s go.”

And they went.

But as they went, George couldn’t help but frown in concern over what Grazer had said. It had confirmed all his worst fears.

And the most unnerving aspect was that at least George had the protection of his badge and gun, of his authority as a police officer, and of Matt backing him up.

His wife and children could not say the same.

He envisioned them going about their day-to-day business, and wondered bleakly how long it might be before George went from police officer to being the husband or father of a victim of violent racism.

It was not a pleasant thought.

Buck Francisco had gotten used to being one of the very few Newcomer kids in school. Or at least he had thought that he was used to it. But every so often, just when he believed that everything was going to be normal, something new happened to temporarily dash that hope. He was starting to think that maybe he was kidding himself. That “normalcy” was an idealized state that quite simply would never be attained.

As he walked down the corridor, he was aware of human kids looking at him and whispering. When he had first come to Earth, he had joined a Newcomer gang, striking a defiant attitude and lashing out at everyone and everything. But the ultimate folly and self-destruction of that had eventually become clear to him. The percentage of Newcomers in Earth’s population was almost insignificant.

He had come to realize that it was important to maintain dignity in dealing with humans, yes. Keep your self-respect, your pride. But the way that you did that was not to attack every pointless whisper, every sideways glance. You had to pick and choose your battles or else you were just a scattergun. A loose cannon. There was no point to that, and it was certainly no way to live your life.

He did what he had done so often in the past. He simply took the whispering, the murmurs, the snickering, and turned them into a simple mental humming. It had no more meaning or importance than bees buzzing—less, in fact, considering that bees could sting you whether you wanted them to or not. Words could only sting you if you permitted it.

He opened his locker, and he heard a particularly loud peal of laughter that he knew was at his expense. Angrily, he tossed in his books, pulled out the biology text, and slammed the locker door so hard that the sound ricocheted up and down the hallway like a bazooka blast. The only purpose that that served, of course, was to draw more attention to him.

So much for Mister Calm Under Pressure.

Buck took a deep breath to calm himself down, and then walked down the hallway to the biology classroom. The door was open partway, and he heard the voices of several girls in the class, fairly loud as they spoke to be heard over one another’s giggling.

“I think it’s neat,” said one, whose voice Buck immediately identified as belonging to Cindy Bahr. “It’s like having a baby with E.T.”

“Would you go to bed with one?” came another voice that Buck couldn’t place immediately.

“Oh yeah!” said Cindy eagerly. “I hear they’re really hung.”

Buck sighed. This promised to be an extremely long afternoon, which in turn was going to be part of a long week, month—possibly even an entire lifetime of feeling dragged. There are simply some days where one feels as if he’s going to be in high school for the rest of his life.

Just ignore them, he told himself. Go in there as if you don’t know what they’re talking about and you don’t care.

He stepped in and started briskly across the room. Cindy and the girl she was talking to, who Buck now recognized as a blonde named Frannie, spotted him and quickly shoved a tabloid into Cindy’s desk. It wasn’t fast enough for Buck to miss the headline, which was “OUTER SPACE LOVE CHILD.”

It was kind of a shame, really. Under ordinary circumstances, Cindy’s attention was something that Buck might easily have coveted. By human or Tenctonese standards, she was quite attractive. But now her very glance made him feel dirty, and he was only grateful when she looked away self-consciously.

Trust Frannie to keep the problem going. “Hey Buuuccck,” she called. “Cindy wants to bear your child.”

Cindy squealed, her face flushing red, and she slapped Frannie’s shoulder. “I do not!”

Buck shook his head. It was amazing. No wonder they were so quick to turn against Newcomers and subject them to attack or derision. They did exactly the same thing to themselves.

Buck moved to his lab table. As he put his book down, he suddenly became aware of two shadows looming over him. He had a sneaking suspicion who it was. Then a voice rumbled from overhead, “You touch any girl in this school and you’re dead.”

Again, Buck sighed. He felt as if he were doing that a lot lately. Apparently the premier school jock, Bruno Carson, didn’t have enough to occupy what was laughingly referred to as his mind. Now he had to waste time displaying his masculinity by threatening Buck . . . who had never done anything to him.

Buck didn’t even bother to turn to see who was standing next to Bruno. Ultimately, it didn’t matter all that much. The various athletes tended to blend in one with another, as far as Buck was concerned. His common sense told him that he shouldn’t even bother to respond. If he said nothing, if he gave them nothing to feed off, they’d probably just go away.

Then again—with types like these, the point wasn’t always simply to deliver a message. If he did nothing, they might very well start trying to provoke him, just to get a rise out of him. In fact, their track record indicated that that was probably precisely what they would do. Why sit around and wait for that to happen?

“What’s the matter, guys?” said Buck with false joviality. “Afraid they’ll like space meat?”

Suddenly Buck was facing Carson. He hadn’t particularly intended to. But Bruno Carson had grabbed Buck by the shoulder and spun him around with such force that, for a moment, Buck felt slightly dizzy.

Bruno’s temper was as short as his buzz-cut hair. He had the IQ of a tablecloth. This didn’t make him any less dangerous or Buck any less angry.

“Purists are right,” Carson snarled into Buck’s face. The foul smell of cigarettes on his breath that Carson had been sneaking in the men’s room made Buck wince. “Slags oughta be put in camps.”

Buck made a slight popping sound with his lips, and glanced right and left with apparently limitless patience. And then he raised his voice just enough to make sure that it carried throughout the classroom.

“This what they call penis envy?” he asked.

The walls of the room were lined with various specimens embalmed in jars of formaldehyde. Buck became abruptly aware of this because suddenly he was off his feet, at the receiving end of an infuriated shove from Carson, and he was unceremoniously smashed into one of the shelves, sending the specimens crashing to the floor. The powerful smell oozed through the classroom, causing students to gag and also become a bit nauseated by the dead animals splattered all over the floor. Frannie in particular made a loud noise of disgust, and Cindy was shouting at Frannie that this was all her fault even as she started opening windows to air the place out.

Buck didn’t hear any of it. He stepped forward, anger boiling over. His foot came down on a frog with a loud squish, but he didn’t notice it. He was far more intent on Carson’s slablike fist that was winging his way.

He could have dodged it, but instead he chose to remind his tormentors of just how strong Newcomers were. He caught Bruno’s wrist, stopping the punch cold.

Bruno strained for a moment, too intent and, frankly, too stupid to realize that Buck was barely straining against him. Buck twisted, keeping his balance despite the slime lining the bottom of his Reeboks, and tossed Bruno across the room. Carson crashed backwards over a desk as the student seated at it leaped to her feet to avoid him.

He kept going and smashed into the wall. Fortunately enough he wasn’t injured since he’d only hit it with his head. From his undignified position on the ground, he bellowed, “Get him!”

Another two jocks leaped to their feet from the back of the room, converging with the third to bear down towards Buck. Buck stood there, fists cocked, poised on the balls of his feet, and bleakly hoped that he wouldn’t have to kill them to stop them, since that would probably look pretty bad on his school record.

That was when an angry voice called out, “Gentlemen!”

They stopped dead in their tracks.

Standing in the now wide open doorway was the teacher, Mr. Bowen. He surveyed the damage, making no attempt to disguise just how appalled he was by what he was witnessing.

Bruno was on his feet now, pointing to Buck in a desultory fashion. “He hit me.”

Bowen needed no time at all to assess the situation. “I can see very well what’s going on here.”

Upon hearing that, Carson folded his arms and grinned malevolently at Buck, with an unmistakable “You’re gonna get it now, punk” attitude. So he was caught flatfooted when Bowen’s next words were, “Mr. Carson, you clean this mess up.”

Carson whirled to face him. “Me?!” Bruno looked apoplectic, and Buck thought that the jock seemed to have a good shot at spontaneously combusting.

Bowen took a step forward. With thinning hair and unimpressive build, Bowen was a head shorter than Carson. But with the pure fury that was quite clearly rampaging through him, he seemed to tower over the athlete.

“If there are any more incidents of this kind,” said Bowen, “I’m sending you and your friends to Mr. Fischer’s office.” And then, his face darkening even further, he added, “It will also have a very negative effect on your grade in this class. And need I remind you of the grade point average you must maintain in order to participate in football and all your other little testosterone festivals.”

Carson glowered at him, but he seemed to be withdrawing into himself. Bowen pointed to the hallway and said, “There’s a mop in the janitor’s closet.”

After a moment’s consideration in which Carson clearly tried to decide whether getting tossed off the team was worth slugging the teacher, he obviously decided that it was not. He walked out towards the janitor’s closet to get the mop, although he paused long enough to fire off a furious look at Buck.

Buck didn’t notice.

He was busy with a paper towel, wiping frog off his sneaker, and wondering just what in hell he was going to have to do to get accepted around this place.

D
AYLIGHT FLOODED THROUGH
the single window of the interrogation room—daylight that was broken up by the bars of the window. One little patterned square of light from the earth’s closest star.

How far the giant had come. His view was pretty much what it had been before.

Not that he gave any indication that he was aware of it . . . or aware of anything, for that matter. He sat hunched over in the interrogation room of the police station, apparently oblivious to the world around him. He was heavily shackled, but he seemed weighed down by far more than mere chains.

Standing next to the giant on either side were Sikes and Francisco. Once again George had made a few tentative efforts to communicate with the giant, but, as expected, had made no headway at all. He had lapsed into silent, thoughtful gazing at the sullen creature. Sikes, for his part, was staring at the door. Two uniformed cops were standing there. One was holding a tranquilizer gun, clutching it tightly, and idly flipping the safety on and off.

It was the giant who reacted first. Before the sound of footsteps reached their ears, the giant had already raised his head. His face changed, his expression moving instantly from despair to desperate hope. The shift was so abrupt that the cop with the tranq gun reflexively took a step back and half raised the gun. Sikes made a gesture for the cop to lower the gun and get a closer grip on himself.

Then they heard the footsteps, as Sikes and George had already figured they would. The giant’s internal radar when it came to that baby was already quite evident. At least, though, the giant seemed to have acquired a bit more self-control. He wasn’t howling or groaning or in any way acting in a truly alarming fashion. Indeed, his face was a mask of concentration, as if he was doing everything he could to rein himself in. He had, however, gotten to his feet, once again prompting the cop with the tranq gun to raise his weapon, this time thumbing off the safety.

“He’s all right,” said George confidently, addressing the cop but never taking his eyes off the giant. The cop, however, wasn’t especially quick to lower his gun this time. The giant’s height and presence were rather unnerving, despite the fact that he was in chains.

The door opened. In the doorway stood Grazer. He peered in a moment to ascertain for himself that everything was secure, and then he gestured behind him. Franz Kafka entered, carrying the infant. The Newcomer then hesitated, clearly taken aback when he saw the towering being in front of him. To his credit, he reflexively held the baby closer, as if to protect her.

The giant’s expression had not changed. Indeed, he seemed to be concentrating more than ever.

And suddenly, too late, George realized why.

Instead of thrashing around, he was devoting his full strength and attention to breaking out of his bonds. And now, perhaps fueled by the appearance of the child, he suddenly emitted a roar as a karate master would shriek when smashing boards barehanded.

The shackles virtually exploded off him, links flying every which way. Luckily for the giant, one length of chain hit the guard who was holding the tranq gun. It knocked the cop back, his finger squeezing spasmodically on the trigger, and the dart shot out the open doorway.

George and Sikes leaped at him, but in the enclosed area they had no room for artful maneuvers. Consequently it was strength against strength, and in that contest they weren’t even real entrants. The giant shoved the detectives out of the way and charged towards Kafka. Kafka was frozen in place, rooted there by the terrifying sight of the giant bearing down on him.