Alien Nation #6 - Passing Fancy (6 page)

S
OMETIMES THE SHIELD
worked wonders. Sikes flashed it at the paramedics and circumvented all the crap when Cathy insisted that the case of a normal-looking white woman had to be rerouted to the nearest hospital with a Newcomer trauma center.

He and Cathy rode with the ambulance, and Cathy oversaw Fancy’s treatment until the hospital.
(Fran’s
treatment, Matt corrected himself, but he couldn’t quite wrap his mind around the new name.)

The trauma team was there at the ready when the ambulance arrived and Fancy was whisked away, Cathy following, as Matt stood at the threshold of the big hospital doors, feeling alone, useless, and stupid.

At length, he wandered into the waiting area, sat, flipped through magazines. And eventually looked up to see Cathy consulting with a human intern—there, no doubt, to train for emergency service in centers where Newcomers were rarer—and then an older Tenctonese doctor. She disappeared again for something like a half hour.

Flip through the magazines. Flip. Flip.

He was half dozing when he sensed Cathy’s warmth next to him on the couch. She touched his arm and he roused himself.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi. You were a long time.”

“Fortunate we were there, actually. Some of the medical research I’ve been doing at work came in handy. She’s out of immediate danger, anyway.”

“Good. That’s good.” He paused. “Hey, I didn’t—”

She touched his lips. “Set her off? No. What happened was building up all by itself. Coming for a long time.”

“What
did
happen?”

Cathy shifted her position, knees no longer in toward Matt, but facing the opposite wall. She leaned her head against the couch and sighed.

“There’s a . . . procedure. That some of our people have undergone on Earth. Very underground, very low key, usually only discussed in hushed whispers. It allows Tenctonese men and women to take on human appearance. It involves very specialized plastic surgery, plus a combination of skin grafts and skin dyes, in addition to an infusion of certain genetically engineered hormones. It’s very difficult, sometimes painful, but it produces credible human ears, hair, removes ‘telltale’ markings . . .”

“Sounds dangerous.”

“It can be. Incredibly dangerous. Primarily because the Tenctonese physiology is delicate and complicated—somewhat more so than yours.”

“You don’t have to tell me. I’m the one delivered George’s kid when he went into labor on the job.”

“Then you’ll appreciate what I mean when I tell you that a Tenctonese body receives cosmetic medical alteration as a kind of mutilation. The body’s natural predilection is to regenerate the unaltered form of fleshy appendages and renew its original appearance. Not a pleasant process, though. It’s like kicking heroin cold chicken . . .”

“Turkey. Cold turkey.”

“Oh. Right. Like that, yes. But worse. The only thing that keeps withdrawal at bay and maintains the cosmetic alterations is a drug called Klees’zhoparaprophine.”

“Quite a mouthful.”

“Quite. Which is why no one much uses the chemical name. The street name is Stabilite. Tells everybody what it is, what it does . . .”

Matt sat in silence for a moment.

“How come I’ve never heard of this?” he asked eventually.

“Two reasons. Among my people, the willful alteration of appearance mocks the gifts of our gods, Celine and Andarko. It’s considered an act of shame. Secondly, Stabilite is hideously, even prohibitively, expensive. I don’t know what Ms. Delaney can be earning doing the play, but it can’t be much. I’m astonished she can afford the drug at all.”

“But she
has
been affording it. So what happened?”

“I can answer that,” said a male voice.

Matt turned to see the human intern with whom Cathy had consulted earlier. The man was young, sporting curly blond hair worn in a near shag.

“I’m Dr. Steinbach. I’m working with Dr. Casey on this case. He’d be talking to you right now, but he’s breaking the news to two more friends of the patient. Or colleagues, I guess.” He extended his hand and Matt glanced around him to see the older Tenctonese doctor speaking to a wiry, prematurely gray man and a matronly, strong-jawed woman.

Matt looked back into the intern’s eyes, said, “Matt Sikes,” took the proffered hand, and smiled lopsidedly. “Let me guess. Dr.
Ben
Casey?”

Steinbach returned the smile. “Courtesy of Ellis Island West.”

Matt
tsked
in understanding. Just like bureaucratic Earth humor to find out that a Newcomer had medical training and name him for a fictional 1960s TV neurosurgeon.

Matt released Steinbach’s hand and said: “How about that answer?”

“Sure.” Steinbach unceremoniously lowered himself onto a corner of the magazine table, pushing aside some periodicals. “Your friend Ms. Delaney is a very sick gal. She was taking Stabilite, all right, but not in its pure, FDA-approved form.”

“It’s FDA
approved?”

“No reason not to be. Manufactured by an otherwise pretty stand-up company, Richler Pharmaceuticals.” He pronounced the name with a soft “ch,” as in chuckle.

“Richler,” Matt repeated, filing the name away.

“Uh-huh. But because it’s so pricey, there’s an illegal knockoff that’s been showing up on the streets. It’s cheaper, but it’s slow poison. The buildup of impurities can cause any number of illnesses. Including the big one you don’t get to cure. In your friend’s case . . . too soon to tell. I’m sorry.”

Matt leaned forward, dry washed his face. “Aw, Jesus . . .” he whispered. “Is it worth all that just to blend in?”

Cathy put a hand on Matt’s back.

“For a serious actress who can only do what she can do? What if blending in were the only way you could be an effective cop?”

“The truth? I’d find another profession.”

“Then I envy your pragmatism. For some people there’s simply no choice.”

“I don’t buy that. What she’s done to herself is—I have to say it, forgive me—inhuman.”

“Actually,” Steinbach interjected, “no, it’s not.”

Matt just looked at him.

“I don’t know about you,” Steinbach continued, “but in high school they made me read a book by John Howard Griffin,
Black Like Me.
Remember it?”

Matt shrugged, guiltily. “I was one of your Cliffs Notes personalities. And I didn’t retain much of that.”

“Oh, you’d remember this one. It’s an autobiographical account of something that happened in the late fifties. A white reporter took drugs and underwent ultraviolet skin treatments to make himself appear black. And then he went into the Deep South.”

“Kind of like putting a loaded gun to your head, isn’t it?”

“Well, that’s sort of the point. His firsthand experience with racial prejudice was . . . pretty grim. And he was just a visitor. Now imagine yourself living on the inside as a permanent resident. Looking out. Wanting out. Or if not out, wanting to be ‘in’ somewhere else. Where your kind isn’t appreciated. I always think about that book when I treat these Newcomers pumped up with bad Stabilite.”

Matt looked at Cathy. He tried to imagine her
altered,
humanized. He couldn’t. And realized it was because he didn’t want to.

Cathy returned the look.

“What?” she said.

In lieu of answering, he turned his gaze back to Steinbach. “How long’s this phony Stabilite been on the market?”

“Not real long.”

“Lot of variations in the formula? Like from different suppliers?”

“So far it seems to be pretty much from the same batch. Why?”

“Sooner we start looking, sooner we can zap it at the source.”

“We?” asked Cathy.

“Me and George.” Adding, for the intern’s benefit, “I’m a cop, George is my partner—and a Newcomer.”

“I have to warn you,” Steinbach cautioned, “Dr. Casey and I have reported other cases to the police. This problem is not first on your colleagues’ list of priorities. I think some of them even want to bury it. You know, the fewer slags they have to deal with . . .”

“Let me worry about that. Can I see Franc—I mean, Fran?”

“She’s pretty heavily sedated.”

“Is that a ‘no’?”

“It’s an ‘I can’t imagine what good it’ll do.’ But I don’t suppose it’ll do any harm.” The doctor rose from his perch and gestured. “Come on.”

They entered Fran Delaney’s room as Dr. Steinbach opened the door for them—and immediately Matt was struck by how pale and fragile she looked. What a contrast to the woman onstage . . . the woman in his memory
. . .

He was walking down a corridor in the station house. It was the same one she was walking up, and there was no way to duck out of sight or avoid her gaze. Their eyes had met and contact was irrefutable. Shit.

“Hi,” he nodded perfunctorily and shouldered past her, a lame but efficient getaway, or so he thought, until she called, “Hey, Sikes.”

He turned. Waited.

“I’m sorry I had to give it to you with both barrels in class the other week.”

He nodded. Her gesture was half-assed, but it was something.

“Apology accepted.”

“That’s not quite what I meant.”

“No?”

“I meant to say I realize it wasn’t a real good time for you up there, and it was not intended personally. But I
had
to. It’s the job.”

Just looking at her standing there, so self-assured, so unshakable in her righteousness . . . it was punching all his buttons.

“Oh, I think it was personal,” he said. “It was sure as hell personal for
me.
I was giving you my best, and you never stopped twisting.”

“I told you, we’re
required
to throw you curves.”

“And I’m trained to catch them. But ‘the gods forgive, the gods approve’? What the hell kind of margin for error does
that
leave me? You were grandstanding.”

“I was going by the numbers!”

“You could’ve left me room to maneuver, thrown me a bone, something. Even your director said you were, what was it, ‘a little heavy on the dramatic irony,’ so it’s not like I’m the only one in the room who noticed.”

She stared at him for a long moment. Then the words came. And though he wouldn’t admit it even to himself, not until much later, each one was like a knife in his soul because each had the ring of truth.

“You’re right. It was a judgment call. I’m supposed to make two in each improvisation. The first is to determine how far I should play out the event. I can stretch it, I can cut it short. That’s the show biz part. But my second decision is what predicates life or death for the next suicidal Tenctonese you deal with in the
real
world. And that’s to determine what kind of cop I’ve got on my chain. You’re trustworthy, Sikes, I’ll give you that, and you’re good as far as what you know. But you revel in your ignorance about what you
don’t
know. I can’t tell if it’s because you’re afraid or lazy or both, but I do know when you first entered that room you were cocky. When you told your partner to put down his gun, that was showing off. You’d never have done that on the job, and I saw it was
my
job to knock you down to size. To do it
hard
and
fast.
Apparently it worked.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“You can’t be that thick. Didn’t you hear yourself? You
remembered!
You
remembered the difference!
The gods forgive, the gods approve, you said it yourself. I gave you an associative memory. In your case, the association is a brief humiliation, but the details are sharp and clear in your mind. That’s how I know I’ve done my job and how I know that, when the time comes, you’ll do yours. Because. Now. You. Will. Never . . . Forget.”

The defensive rage rose from the pit of his stomach and felt, literally
felt,
as if it was exploding out the top of his head.

“You know, if you were
any
kind of actress at all, you wouldn’t have to be doing this kind of crap, you’d be out there in a real production entertaining the masses instead of manipulating humans for fun and profit!”

She recoiled slightly as if slapped.
Good one,
thought Matt.
He shoots, he
scores! The satisfaction lasted about two seconds.

Because tears leapt to her eyes and he hadn’t meant for that to happen (had he?), nor was he prepared for what came next, in trembling, controlled fury, through the awful pain.

“First of all, Mister, there’s not much fun in it and damned little profit. My job is a valuable public service and it’s
hard,
and the money hasn’t been
printed
that would make the workload and stress worthwhile if I didn’t know I was doing some good. And second of all, if this society of yours was as enlightened as it claims, I wouldn’t have to subsist solely on my public service work. I’m good at my craft, but they’re only hiring Newcomers to play little green men from outer space, and that’s where I draw the line, because that does no good at all. It just
hurts,
it just goes in front of an audience and creates more crisis personalities for you to deal with, more downtrodden jerks stripped of self-esteem.” She started to move off, had another thought, pivoted, fired it at him. “And if you were any kind of
cop,
you’d’ve figured that out.” She half turned again, but still wasn’t finished, came up for air again and—“P.S., asshole, if I’m able to manipulate a hard case like you, then I’m the best actress in the world.” This time she stalked off for good.