Alien Nation #6 - Passing Fancy (14 page)

Matt looked at Bob Sled with an air of faint disdain. “So question number one becomes: Are you fundamentally a schnook or do you really think you’re doing the best you can?”

Bob Sled audibly
ulpe
d.

“It goes on,” George continued, “ ‘A pharmacist should never knowingly condone the dispensing, promoting, or distributing of drugs or medical devices, or assist therein, which are not of good quality, which do not meet standards required by law, or which lack therapeutic value for the patient.’ ”

“Question number two,” Matt announced. “What the hell
business
are you in?”

“Hey-hoo, guys,
guys,”
Bob Sled said, trying not to stammer, “I admit, a coupla short cuts, here, there, but I take all that stuff on the wall seriously. Nobody gets ripped off, not at
See Gurd Nurras.
”

George turned from the wall and crossed to Bob’s chair. “My good sir,” he began, clearly meaning the opposite, “do you think us blind, or stupid? The condition of your over-the-counter merchandise alone is appalling.”

“Look, no expiration date is gospel, the stuff ain’t like milk products. There’s always a wide margin for error before the chemicals actually lose their potency. I don’t believe in waste, is all.”

Matt joined George in a narrow gaze at the once jaunty pharmacist.

“What my friend’s telling you is that you’re gonna go down. There’s no way you’re
not
gonna go down. It
starts
with revocation of your license. Whether or not it finishes with a long stay in the House of Many Doors—that’s up to you.”

“I kn-know what you guys are doing. You’re t-trying to play good cop, bad cop on me.”

“I’m curious,” George said. “Which one of us gave you the impression that he was being good?”

Bob Sled
ulp
ed again.

“We played good cop, bad cop this morning,” Matt offered. “Gets old, you do it more than once a day. Right now, we’re playing bad cop, worse cop.”

“We haven’t quite decided who plays which yet,” George added. “Although, personally, I’d like to be the one who rams your own poison down your throat.”

“Wait a minute. Poison? What are you talking about? Stuff’s a little old sometimes, but it’s all bona fide.”

Something in Bob Sled’s voice caused Matt and George to exchange a glance that said,
He doesn’t know. He honestly doesn’t know.

“The discount Stabilite,” said George. Slowly. Looking at the little man in the eyes.

“Stuff’s fresh as a daisy! No expiration problem there at all. I mean, I get regular refills and—” His voice caught, and a dull, horrific realization clouded his face.

“It’s bad?” Almost a hushed whisper. “It’s
bad?”

Briefly Matt told him
how
bad.

“I thought it was just—just
surplus
or something.”

“Something?” George gritted.

“Or maybe somebody was copying the formula, like they do with generic drugs. You gotta believe me, a coupla short cuts, here, there, but nothing that would
hurt
people
ever.”

“It’s the short cuts do it,” Matt said blandly.

Bob Sled sat. Unmoving. Just sat and stared at his hands.

“I worked the infirmary in the slave ship. They conserved everything there, the Overseers, and maybe I learned that lesson too well. Shouldn’t be keepin’ the old stuff on the shelves, I guess, but I do check it periodically. I don’t hurt people. What they did on the ship, that was hurting people.

“I kept that in mind when I applied for pharmacology school, four and a half years ago. You know, Terts—I mean, humans—they have these training programs, five, six years. Us Newcomers, faster brains, obviously more experience with our own body chemistry . . . put
us
through an accelerated
one-year
program, they couldn’t get us out into the workforce fast enough. There was a need. I came to this neighborhood, I figured, here’s where I’m needed.”

“Don’t waste this on us,” Matt sneered, “save it for the jury.”

But George raised a hand. Matt read the gesture. His partner wanted to hear the rest.

“Not the neighborhood for altruism,” Bob Sled continued. “I let it lower my standards. Got held up one too many times. Insurance rates? Hey-hoo, whattaya think the short cuts are about? Affording the payments! Any wonder I got selfish?

“This Stabilite thing, though. The drug is so expensive. For the public, I mean. So when this guy brought the knockoff to me, I thought, hey-hoo, sure, there’s something in it for me. But in a way, I’m back to helping people again . . . give ’em something they couldn’t otherwise afford.”

“Heard enough now?” Matt asked dryly.

George nodded. The druggist’s rationalization for his own moral decline was a Byzantine, tortured path of denial. So ingrained now, so rote-learned, that nothing they could say would make him see the light. In fact, pure moral righteousness would only confuse him more.

Bob Sled looked up piteously. “This goes easier on me, I cooperate, doesn’t it?”

It would come down to that in the end.

“That,” George breathed, “is usually the way it works in such instances.”

The little druggist nodded. Relieved to be small-fry when the hunters were after Big Game.

“So cooperate,” Matt prodded. “Who’s your connection?”

“Don’t know him by name.”

“Aw, cummon. Fit this guy for cuffs, George.”

“No, really! He showed up here one day with a sample and a sales pitch. Thirty percent to me, seventy percent to him, all off the books. And I’m only one of four dealers in L.A.”

Matt and George exchanged another glance, this one accompanied by tight smiles. Their job—maybe—had just gotten a little easier. This revelation seemed to imply that the bum Stabilite was coming from a single source. As they had hoped.

“What else can you tell us?” George queried.

“Well,” Bob Sled replied, “I’m expecting a new shipment tomorrow . . .”

Tomorrow. Well within Grazer’s forty-eight-hour deadline. And given the new evidence, Grazer might even pitch in a little more manpower. Tomorrow. How nice.

“Ask me what’s the secret of comedy, George,” said Matt.

George peered at his partner strangely, but complied. “What is the secret of co—”

“Timing,” Matt interrupted.

I
N HER HEAD
it was perfect. In her head it would be almost like some movie musical. She’d lead the way, the others would get into the groove and follow; and soon enough, with choreographic precision, everybody would be in step.

Doing
the step.

It would be beautiful.

It already was beautiful. In her head.

As Emily Francisco smiled her way through the junior high school day, entertaining twelve-year-old notions of success and renown, she looked more and more forward to the gym club. It was generally a good day because her spirits were so high, but every hour or so, she’d entertain the fantasy of What It Would Be Like when she taught her clubmates the great new step she’d devised, and the vision would divert her attention. She was caught daydreaming by her math teacher, but being a good student, she was not too embarrassingly rebuked. Scary moment, though, and she overcompensated the rest of the afternoon, sitting up straight and forcing herself to be especially alert.

But then, at the end of social studies (a misnomer she never understood; really, it was only history), the class bell rang, and she bolted out of her chair.

She ran all the way to her gym locker, hearts pounding with anticipation. The run seemed to take forever, and then once she was at her locker, she barely remembered it at all as she dialed her combination, opened her locker, and proceeded to change into her gym duds.

Her other clubmates trickled in, their energies varied, depending upon the kind of day they’d had, good, bad, or indifferent. They exchanged greetings, and it disappointed Emily that they weren’t picking up on her rush of energy, and that some had even forgotten it was
her
turn to teach a routine to everybody. But that was okay, she consoled herself. How could they know how way-cool this thing was until they actually
saw
it? After all, only Emily had been living with it all these hours. When the full grandeur of it was unleashed upon them . . . then they’d know.

There were two gyms in Emily’s junior high school; her gym club assembled in the smaller of the two, which also doubled as the cafeteria. Great, long tables and benches were hinged and folded up in wall recesses behind collapsible doors at regular intervals. The residual smells of lunch—macaroni and cheese, baked chicken, mole strips, vegetarian plate—lingered pleasantly in the air. Despite the obligatory jokes, the food here wasn’t bad, really, not at all.

Ms. McIntyre, the gym teacher who usually supervised, had left word that she would be late due to a faculty meeting, and that they should just begin without her. Emily felt a bit let down; she would’ve liked Ms. McIntyre to see her nifty new dance routine, but she quickly adjusted her fantasy. Ms. McIntyre would come in late, see Emily leading the pack, and, awed by the sight of fourteen girls looking tight as a kick line, praise her ingenuity.

They gathered around in their usual semicircle and arranged to do things alphabetically. Two other girls besides Emily were also scheduled to teach dance steps that day, both of whom had last names that came before Francisco. It was only right to acknowledge this as fair procedure, but again, Emily felt a twinge of disappointment. She’d wanted to burst upon the scene and wow ’em. However, the fantasy adjusted itself easily enough.
Save the best for last,
she thought. Why burden anybody with having to top her creation?

The next twenty or so minutes crawled by for Emily as she dutifully joined her clubmates in learning two routines that seemed particularly bland and uninspired. At one moment, her best friend, raven-haired Jill Molaskey, caught Emily rolling her eyes heavenward with impatience.

“What’s the matter?” Jill whispered as they went through the same dull step for the tenth dull time.

Bo-ring,
mouthed Emily, and as they turned in unison, Jill said something that startled her a little.

“Watch that.”

At long last it was Emily’s turn to strut her stuff.

“Okay,” she announced, “I call this the Emily Seven, because it took six previous versions before I could get it right.” She had expected laughs or smiles of appreciation at this. But the few smiles they sported were polite; the rest of the faces were impassive, a few even vaguely uncomfortable. Jill, looking right into her eyes, mouthed
Emily Seven?
as if to say,
“Oh, come on!”
Well, it was true . . . no one else had actually given a
name
to her step, let alone a name that announced how much work had gone into it. Maybe that information should’ve come
after
they’d learned the Emily Seven and seen how great it was; maybe she’d been a bit too—what was that big new word?—
pretentious
in making a show of it before the fact.

Right, Jill, you’re right. Just get on with it.

“Anyway, this is how it goes,” Emily said.

She crossed to the right wall, leaned against one of the huge doors behind which a lunch table was stored, and then she

took a single hop, bounded up several feet, landed

Thump,

deep bending at the knees, arms up, uncoiling like a spring, arms at the side now, pirouetting full in midair, landing,

Thump,

kick-starting a forward tumble,

de,

landing on her hands,

thump,

bending at the elbows, uncoiling again, pushing herself into the air, somersaulting backward until she was again erect and landing,

Ka-flump!

with a flourish, arms outflung, breathing hard, a big smile on her face as if to say, “There! Now, how did you like
that?”

Thirteen faces stared at her in stupefaction.

Emily’s smile hung there and died.

Some of her clubmates were shifting their feet; and Jill, of all people, was shaking her head slightly.

This was not the fantasy. This was not even close.

“What?” Emily said, finally, through her deep gulps of air, breaking the interminable silence. “What?”

A girl with long brown hair, Leslie DiMeo, was the first brave enough to speak.

“We can’t, like,
do
that, Emily.”

“Why not?”

“Because we’re, like—
human,
Emily.”

Emily had stopped gulping air to compensate for the exertion. But breathing was suddenly just as difficult.

“Hey, now, Leslie, I’ve
seen
humans do stuff like this!”

Mei-Mei Harada, an Oriental clubmate, said, “Where? Where’ve you seen humans pull that off?”

“Don’t you guys ever watch the Olympics on TV?”

Responding as a collective for the first time, the thirteen human girls groaned.

Jill said, “Emily, those are the exceptions. Those athletes train for
years
to get that kind of dexterity. But this is a gym
club,
for godssake, not a professional training program. We’re just a bunch of kids here, trying to have a little fun.”

“But it
is
fun!”

“No,” said Joannie Delahanty, a redhead, “it’s fun for
you
because you’re a Newcomer. For us it’s work. It’s more than work. Frankly, it looks a little dangerous.”

Boldly Emily strode over to Joannie and took her wrist. “No, it’s not at all,” she said. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

“I don’t think I want to do this, Emily . . .”

“What, are you chicken?”

As soon as it was out of her mouth, she knew it was the wrong thing to have said. Her fantasy scenario had long since expired, but with that choice phrase, she had pounded the final nail into its coffin. The discomfort in the air coalesced into a faint but unmistakable haze of anger directed at her. And in the back of her mind she felt it. But Emily was twelve, concerned with peer pressure and being right; and the dare had been articulated. It was out there in the ether. And, fighting her instincts, bowing to her frustration, she stood by it.