Alien Nation #6 - Passing Fancy (33 page)

Unless he just leaves. Right now.

Yes. Leave. This is stupid. There is no
reason
to put yourself through this, to willingly place yourself in a position of
—

And the door opens. And the cops are filing out, some of them with familiar, angry dispositions. No doubt someone in there has just “taught them a lesson" about Newcomer psychology—and maybe their own. Business as usual. Paul Winograd, the director, exits next, flanked by his PACT workers. Among them is Fancy Delancey. Matt thinks.
Maybe if I avoid eye contact
—

But he wills himself to
make
eye contact, despite his protesting ego, even feels his hand lifting in a half-assed wave. She sees it, and she splits apart from the group to approach him.

They just eyeball each other for a while. The last meeting is obviously as vivid for her as for him, and emotions are still very raw.

In a stunning moment of insight, Matt understands that he isn’t just here to ease his conscience. She gives the appearance of appraising him coolly, but he can see in her eyes that she has her
own
apprehensions. She’s been afraid to bump into him again, would have avoided this if she could. The wounds he inflicted have not yet healed; he hurt her in a place no one should ever be hurt—her self-worth. This is a very large idea for Matt, too large to let out of his head. He can’t begin to articulate it properly.

But she is braver than he is, breaking the silence first.

“I heard," she says. (Referring to the jumper Matt talked off the ledge. It’s currently being bandied about in police PR circles as “a major breakthrough in Police-Newcomer interfacing." The story has been making the rounds quickly, and Matt is currently Flavor of the Month.) “Good for you," she adds.

“Yeah, well, you know," he says uneasily, not remotely what he’d rehearsed. He grits his teeth. Fuggit. And—
just like
a
shy schoolboy
—he takes the thin, long, beribboned box from behind his back, shoves it into her hands, and takes off at a run.

He doesn’t wait to see if she opens it and discovers the exquisite long-stemmed rose within. He doesn’t pause to consider the expression on her face when she reads the small card, whose inscription is:

I KNOW YOU’LL MAKE IT.

THANKS.

—MATT

He only hopes—in vain, as far as he is concerned—that she’ll hold on to it for more than ten minutes before tossing it in the garbage . . .

The garbage—which was to say, the evidence—was piled high. There was lots of it. This wasn’t just a Stabilite operation. Other drugs had been processed here too: heroin, crack, cocaine, and jack, a Newcomer addictive.

Matt Sikes was on the police radio, standing outside his car. He’d reported in to Grazer that the bust had been a success—two casualties, one injury, none of them on Our Team; and the biggest roundup of illicit merchandise L.A. had seen since . . . well, since Grazer himself had bucked the system over his sister’s kid.

“Congratulations, Sikes. To both of you.”

“Thanks, Bry.”

When it really got down to basic cop stuff, sometimes—
sometimes
—Grazer could be straight ahead and sincere. And in those rare moments, Matt actually liked him.

“Think you can stand a little heartbreak?”

Matt’s blood turned to ice water for a moment. “What? Is it Fancy? Cathy? Is something—”

“No, nothing like that. Hell, I’d forgotten all about them.”

Matt sighed, relieved, remembering that, on the other hand, you could rely on Grazer to be an insensitive asshole no matter
what
the circumstance.

“I haven’t, but that’s another discussion. What’s up?”

“We just computer interfaced with FBI and Interpol records, also did brief confabs with a couple of their organized crime experts. Whatever the Serovese Corporation is, it sure ain’t Mafia. Nobody’s heard of it . . . or anything like it.”

Matt swore. There was nothing else to say.

“Yeah. See ya on campus, Cap’n.”

And he clicked off, looking over at his partner a few yards away. George had asked all the prisoners a battery of basic questions, and the last scuzzball was being loaded into the paddy wagon. At the same time, the two corpses were being zipped into body bags and loaded into a meat wagon.

Matt closed the distance between them. And told George what he’d learned, or rather, hadn’t learned, about the enigmatic Serovese Corporation from Grazer.

“My luck has been no better, Matthew,” George reported. “The men all knew they were working for a Serovese Corporation, but their only contact was the person who hired them.”

“Who was . . . ?”

“The Newcomer who tried to gun you down.”

“And he’s dead.”

“And he’s dead.”

Matt swore again. “I get the feeling we won a battle, not a war. Hate to say it, George, but these garbanzos are good. I bet you no matter what we follow through—phone bills, rent bills, checks, leases on property, any of it—we get a paper trail leading nowhere.”

“That kind of pessimism is not like you, Matthew.”

“I know. I don’t like it either. But we haven’t heard the end of the Serovese Corporation. I can smell it.” He exhaled heavily through his teeth. “ ‘Serovese,’ ” he recited, “ ‘with an
S
not a
C
and an
E
not an
I
’ . . . what the
hell
kind of motto is that? It’s like a private joke or something.”

And George’s face fell.

“What, George?”

“Oh, no.”

“George,
what?”

“The brazen
arrogance
of it, Matthew.”

“Will you
talk
to me, please?”

But George had already started trotting out of earshot the moment he saw the meat wagon pulling away from the curb. Matt watched, bewildered, as the trot became a full-bore desperate run and George began shouting “STOP!” at the top of his lungs. Before the meat wagon reached the corner, George had caught up with the open driver’s window; and as Matt raced to find out what was happening in his partner’s spotted head, he was startled to see George leap onto the car like a lunatic, reach in to commandeer the steering wheel, and turn it toward the curb.

Matt finally reached the wagon, which by now had slowed and stopped. He was too out of breath to ask George if he’d lost his friggin’ marbles, but that was okay, the assistant coroner was asking it
for
him. George, however, was heedless, just insisting that the back of the wagon be opened, he
had
to inspect one of the bodies.

The assistant coroner unlocked the doors, and George jumped into the back of the meat wagon, unzipped the wrong bag, muttered an imprecation in Tenctonese, zipped it closed, and proceeded to the other, exposing the dead Newcomer.

Matt watched as George’s hand plunged into the bag, grabbing something.

George expressionlessly studied whatever he had found for a long time. Then he lifted it into the light where Matt could see.

The arm.

“I don’t—” Matt began.

“His wrist,” George directed quietly.

Then Matt saw the telltale marking.

“ ‘Serovese’ isn’t an ethnic name, Matthew,” said his partner. “It’s an anagram. For Overseers.”

C
ATHY AWOKE IN
the early evening, sitting against the rubber wall. Her arms were still belted around Fran, who seemed to have nestled in against her chest, between her legs. Fran’s head was thrown back, mouth open, the smooth skin of her bald, spotted head brushing Cathy’s left cheek.

For a disorienting moment, Cathy wondered if Fran was dead—but then felt, with the hands she held around the actress’s abdomen, the rise and fall of Fran’s breathing. Asleep. Soundly asleep.

Cathy had an urge to relieve herself—hardly surprising—but there was something very peaceful about Fran right now, and Cathy was loath to disturb it. The urge was not terribly powerful. It would hold a while.

Cathy rocked Fran in her arms ever so gently. Barely realizing she was doing so, she softly began singing a familiar Tenctonese lullaby. It translated like this:

Anything you want to be, you get to be.

Try to do it hard enough, it’s done.

Spirit matters more than size. Let the ocean roar.

Noble hearts are louder still, my little one.

Cathy began the second verse, not seeing Fran’s eyes flutter open.

Anything you need to be, you’re sure to be.

Conquer fear, and life is yours to run.

Shadows are, though tall as trees,

harmless when they fall.

Seek the light behind the hill, my little one.

She was in the middle of the bridge when she noticed that Fran had begun humming along every now and then in harmony.

These are small words—simple as a flower,

Small words—still we pass them on;

Small words—in your darkest hour

They’ll be there, whatever else is gone . . .

“Hey,” Fran said. Croaked, really, her voice still thick with sleep. “You have a pretty voice, civilian.”

Cathy smiled. “Hey,” she replied. “Thanks.”

“Ever thought of the acting game?”

“Not me.”

“Too bad. You’d clean up.”

Cathy bent her head forward to get a better view of Fran’s expression. The irony had been intentional, of course, but it was not bitter. Fran was composed. Centered for the first time since Cathy had met her.

“So?” asked Fran, returning the gaze as best she could, given the awkward angle. “What do you think about the new me? The
old
me?” She exhaled. It came out a resigned sigh. “How do I look?”

Cathy eased her hands out from under Fran’s restrained arms, shifted her angle a bit. Touched Fran’s head, her cheeks, inspecting. The bones had hardened properly, spots were starting to emerge on her skin in an exotic pattern, and the features were those of a Tenctonese woman. Around the ears the skin was pink, blotchy, tender, like a baby’s. And if the inspection started to resemble something of a caress, it seemed entirely proper.

“Beautiful,” Cathy told her.

“Like you, you mean.”

“No. I mean beautiful . . . How do you feel?”

“Wasted.”

With a touch, Cathy indicated that Fran should lean forward. The actress did, and Cathy undid the straps of the straitjacket. Falteringly, Fran tugged the garment off herself. As she did, she caught sight of something on the floor nearby. The two “human” ears her body had rejected. With a slight shudder, she tossed the straitjacket atop them, shielding them from view.

“Damn,” she whispered.

“I know, I’m sorry,” Cathy said.

After a moment, Fran began touching her own face, skull. “I can’t say it doesn’t feel like home,” she said unexpectedly. A moment passed before she added, “I just wish I’d had some say in the matter, that’s all.”

“And if you had . . . would you go back?”

“Moot point. Not possible. Why dwell?”

“I’m a biochemist, remember? What if I could make it possible?”

Cathy had spoken impulsively, not meaning the offer. But wanting Fran to feel as if she had control. Trusting an instinct. Acting—not as well as Fran perhaps, but with luck, well enough not to get caught at it.

Fran tensed and Cathy could see the question starting to form:
Are you serious?
But it was never articulated. To come right out and ask it would be to undermine the premise behind it: that choice was still possible. Fran needed to
believe
that choice was still possible, even if such belief required doing a little acting herself. For the audience of one within her own soul. And thus, Fran, ever the actress, considered the false proposition with conviction.

And at length she answered, “No. I learned what I needed to learn. Proved what I needed to prove. No more revelations back there.”

Interesting response, thought Cathy, remembering that Fran was more than just an actress. After a fashion, she had also been a teacher. Matt’s teacher, come to think of it. Maybe that’s why he had asked Cathy to be here. Maybe Fran had taught him something. She wondered what it was.

“Want to look in a mirror?” Cathy asked. “See what lies ahead?”

“Not yet. Won’t see anything new, after all.”

“Oh, you might.”

And then, so gradually it was almost imperceptible, Fran dissolved into tears. Finally. She tried to hold herself together but couldn’t—and at this point, of course, there was no reason that she should. Next thing Cathy knew, Fran was reaching for her and curled up in her arms again. Cathy shushing and cooing and rocking and holding tight.

The initial bout of intense sobbing abated after a few minutes.

“I love you, too,” Fran said in a half whisper.

“I know.”

And, because it seemed somehow
right
to do so, Cathy finished singing the lullaby:

All you want and need to be, you’ll
have
to be,

Just to keep alive the dream you’ve spun.

Giant is the challenge, true,

Mighty as the sun . . .

But, then, so are you, my little one.

Hear the small words, my little one.