Alien Nation #3 - Body and Soul (20 page)

Grazer shouted, “Tranq him! Somebody!” and the other cop was grabbing the fallen weapon.

Kafka did all he could, but at that moment, all he could manage was not to let himself scream in fright. The giant bellowed once more into the Newcomer’s face in inarticulate rage, and then grabbed the baby out of his arms.

For one horrific moment, Grazer saw the next day’s headlines: “Hybrid Baby Murdered While Cops Stand By.”
“Tranq him, for God’s sake!”

But there was no clear shot. The giant held the baby tightly cradled in his arms now, and had fallen back behind a desk. The cop with the tranq gun knew that any sudden movement by the giant would cause the baby to catch the dart instead. It could drive right into the child’s skull if the shot were unlucky, and even if it simply struck the infant’s body, the dosage might still very well kill her.

And then George was blocking the shot as well. He was standing in front of the giant, his hands outstretched, and Sikes was next to him.

[
“Don’t hurt the child.”
] George said as soothingly as he could.

Sikes overlapped him, saying, “Give us the baby.”

They moved closer toward the behemoth, who was backed up as far as he could go. They were concerned about his threatening the baby as an effort to escape; about his maybe hurting the baby but unaware that he was doing so; about his actually getting away, and the whole thing starting over again.

In short, at that moment they were concerned about everything except getting the huge mute to speak.

[
“Don’t hurt me . . .”
] said the giant. [
“I am . . . fine . . .”
]

Sikes and George froze. “Was that . . . did that mean anything?” Sikes asked George.

Francisco nodded, but before he could translate, the giant repeated the sentence in halting English. And then he kept saying, “I am fine. I am fine,” like a parrot or a broken record.

“We won’t hurt you,” said Sikes soothingly. He held out his hands. “Just . . . just give us the baby. Okay?”

Sikes knew damned well that the moment the baby was clear, the giant was going to get pumped with enough tranquilizer to send the Green Bay Packers’ offensive line to dreamland. He noticed, from the corner of his eye, Grazer waving the cop with the tranq gun around to one side to try and get a clearer shot.

Sikes wasn’t sure whether the giant had noticed or not. Nevertheless he held the infant more tightly than ever. And then he said something that, even though it was in English, was incomprehensible to Sikes.

“Chorboke is coming,” he intoned. “Chorboke is coming.”

But though it had no meaning to Sikes, George looked as if someone had just hit him upside the head with a red-hot poker. “Who?” he said, with an air of someone who is hoping that he heard incorrectly.

Very carefully, overenunciating every syllable, the giant said, “Chorboke . . . he’s coming.”

Grazer, looking as if he wanted to take command of the situation, stepped past Kafka, who was still paralyzed against the door. But now he looked frightened for a different reason. His look of concern mirrored George’s perfectly, and it was clear that the giant had said something extremely significant. Clear, that was, to everyone except Grazer, whose major anxiety revolved around how all of this would look if it hit the papers.

“Come on, now,” said Grazer firmly. “Give us the baby.”

“Wait!” said George, in a tone so firm and commanding that it was clear that the balance of priorities in the room had suddenly shifted. As far as George was concerned, the focus was entirely on the previously mute giant’s words rather than his actions. Slowly, as if displaying some final hope that he and the giant were discussing two different things, he said, “Chorboke is dead.”

The infant looked up at George with those same tranquil eyes. A tranquility that was even more disturbing when it contrasted with the seriousness of what they were discussing.

“No,” said the giant, as if he were sounding the death knell of the Newcomers. “He is coming.”

At that moment, Grazer signaled the cop. With the giant’s attention fixed completely on Francisco, it was now an easy and safe shot. The gun spit out its second dart, and it struck the giant in the back of the shoulder.

The giant cried out in pain and anguish, and the baby’s reaction was immediate. The fear and terror in the giant’s face was mirrored in the baby’s own.

“No!”
shouted George, but it was far too late. All that he and Sikes could do was break the giant’s fall because he was tumbling over to the side. Grazer quickly snatched the baby out of the giant’s arms, fending off the possibility of the giant falling atop her and crushing her like an egg.

The baby, however, didn’t seem at all concerned about her own welfare. She squirmed in Grazer’s arms, clearly unnerved by the giant’s collapse. There was no longer any sense of peace in her eyes, but rather pure, undiluted fear.

And Sikes realized, with dull horror, that it was more than just being upset about the giant falling down. It was as if she were sharing in whatever it was the giant was feeling, at any given moment.

“Let’s get him back to the holding cell,” said Sikes wearily. With the aid of George and the other two cops, they managed to shoulder the burden of the giant’s weight. As they started to drag him into the hallway, Sikes muttered, “Y’know, Albert’s so hung up about this guy. He’s not going to be real thrilled when he finds out we had to knock him out.”

But as they left the room, they almost stumbled over a body in the hallway—Albert Einstein, lying there peacefully asleep, a tranq dart in his upper thigh. Apparently the misfired dart had found a target after all.

George and Sikes looked at each other.

“I won’t tell him if you won’t,” said Sikes.

T
HE GIANT CAME
to long before Albert did. And once he did, he was back to his unspeaking, sullen self. By the time Albert recovered consciousness, the giant was back in his holding cell, lying on the floor.

A single tear rolled down his face.

As Sikes stood there and witnessed it, he had the distinct feeling that he had never seen a more heart-wrenching portrait of misery than he saw right then.

Albert was leaning on his broom a bit more heavily than he ordinarily would, favoring the leg that the dart had penetrated. He shook his head slowly. “They shouldn’t have hurt him.”

It was a typical Albert comment. He had not voiced the slightest complaint about what had happened to him, and his mishap as an innocent bystander. His only concern was for the soul-sick giant. George nodded. “I know, Albert.”

“He should be with the baby,” Albert continued, his gaze never leaving the cell’s occupant. “They need each other.”

Sikes glanced at him. It was a notion that he had already intuited, but Albert said it with such conviction that it made Sikes wonder if Albert had some sort of inside information. “Why do you say that?”

“I don’t know,” said Albert. “I . . . feel it.”

Sikes nodded understanding. If there was one thing that Newcomer males seemed to be into a lot, it was feelings. Indeed, Sikes found that particular aspect to be the most disconcerting, rather than the spotted heads or two hearts, or even the imbibing of sour milk. He gave Albert a sympathetic pat on the shoulder, and then said, “Come on, George.”

He and George went out, leaving Albert and the giant in silent communion.

As they headed towards the squad room, Sikes studied George carefully. He saw that the Newcomer was distracted. Not only that, but he even recognized the look on George’s face as the kind of look he had when he was thinking about something that involved the Tenctonese—usually something unpleasant from their past. Frequently Sikes didn’t have a clue as to what George’s concerns involved, but this time it was fairly self-evident.

“Who’s that guy you were talking about. Chore . . . something.”

“Chorboke,” said George. The simple act of speaking the name seemed an effort, and he could do nothing to keep the revulsion from his voice. When he continued, it was with obvious difficulty. “He was a scientist on the ship.”

“On the spaceship that brought you here,” said Sikes, who then mentally kicked himself.
No, moron, on the “Love Boat” during the last big Newcomer pleasure cruise. Of COURSE the spaceship.

But George, preoccupied by his concerns and not particularly prone to sarcasm anyway, simply nodded. “He performed medical experiments on the slaves . . . terrible things.”

“Did he . . . on . . . ?”

Sikes couldn’t even complete the sentence, but George immediately understood. “On me? Or Susan? No. No, if anything as devastating as a crash could be termed ‘lucky,’ then we were lucky. He didn’t get around to us before our forced landing. But if our journey had continued . . . who knows?” He shuddered. “I never saw Chorboke but, like everyone else, I feared him.”

“You said he was dead.”

“That’s what we were told. That he died in the crash.”

He spoke with the air of someone who desperately wanted to hold on to his beliefs about something because to deal with other possibilities was simply too horrible to contemplate.

They entered the squad room, and Sikes noticed that Zepeda was standing by Sikes’s desk, the phone to her ear. Sikes felt a flash of annoyance; Zepeda had her own desk, for crying out loud, and her own telephone. What’d she need to be on Matt’s phone for? What was she . . . calling a bookie or boyfriend or something?

Zepeda was jotting something down, and she had a wide grin on her face. Then she spotted Sikes coming across the room, and promptly crumpled up the paper. This led Sikes to believe that it genuinely was illicit betting numbers or some such thing, until Zepeda pressed the Hold button and called across the squad room, “Hey, Sikes! I was taking a message for you. It’s Cathy on line two. She wants to remind you about sex class tonight!”

This, of course, had every head turning and grins from every idiot in the squad room. Sikes tried to restrain himself from doing two things: charging across the squad room as quickly as possible, and throttling Zepeda when he got to his desk. He didn’t succeed at the first, and barely held back from the second. Instead he squeezed the receiver tightly, imagining it to be Zepeda’s neck.

“You had to shout that across the place?” he demanded in a harsh whisper.

Zepeda sighed in mock-apologetic manner. “Yeah. I had to. Sorry, Sikes. Character flaw and all that.” Then she grinned. “Have loootttts of fun tonight,” and she walked away.

As George approached his own desk, Sikes picked up the phone. “Cathy, hi. Look, I was gonna call you. My neck . . . it’s gotten a lot worse. I can’t even move my head.”

Cathy sounded startled on the other end. “Oh, Matt . . . I’m . . . I don’t know what to say. I thought for sure that it was improving. You’d better have it x-rayed, and a chiropractor might want to put you in a neck brace—”

“I’m way ahead of you,” said Sikes quickly. “I already called my chiropractor, but the only time that I could get in to see him was tonight.”

“Oh,” she said, unable to hide her disappointment. “Well . . . well that conflicts with the class tonight. But of course, your health comes first. That comes above everything.”

“I know,” he said. “I’m really disappointed.”

“I guess . . . well, maybe I could go and take notes. Better still, I could tape record it.”

“Yeah! That’s a good idea. You do that and we can get together later and listen to it. Just the two of us . . . in private. It’ll be even better than in the class.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Cathy, doubtfully. “But we’ll make do. After all, this is all about adapting to each other’s circumstances, isn’t it.”

“Exactly. Okay. Gotta go. Bye.”

He hung up, and then immediately was aware that George was staring at him. In fact, he didn’t even have to look at his partner to know that George was gaping at him in open disbelief. Immediately he started shuffling through a stack of papers, hoping that George would, for once in his life, have the good sense and grace to keep his nose out of Matt’s private life. For that matter it would be nice if
some
one kept their nose out of his private life, since it seemed as if it was awful public these days.

“Where’d I put those witness statements,” he muttered.

“You lied to Cathy.” There was stark incredulity in his voice.

“No. My neck hurts.” As if to bolster his claim, he rubbed his neck a moment and stuck out his chin.

But George would not be deterred, although he still displayed lack of mastery over slang as he declared, “It was an in-and-out lie! You don’t even
have
a chiropractor!”

“George, I don’t feel like discussing this.”

Sikes still wasn’t looking up, but that didn’t stop George. He leaned down on his desk to bring his sight line level with Sikes, even though Matt was now hunched over some papers. “Why did you do it?” Surprisingly, there was nothing accusatory in his tone. He sounded more concerned than anything else, because he knew that it couldn’t have been an easy or casual thing for Matt to have been less than truthful with Cathy.

Sikes bit his lower lip, and then it all came pouring out in a rush. Everything that he had wanted to say to Cathy but had been unable to because she had spent so much time after the class saying how wonderful it was and how pleased she was with Matt that he was willing to go through all the training and sessions for her.

“I can’t take it!” he practically exploded. “Okay? I can’t go to that class! All that . . .” His face wrinkled in disgust. “. . . that touchy-feely, disgusting, personal stuff! They made me hold hands and hum!”

Clearly George wasn’t understanding the problem. To him it was a matter of simple practicality. “But Matt, these are things you need to know.”

“I don’t
care! I can’t handle it!
”

He had gotten louder than he had intended. Again he was the subject of curious and bemused looks throughout the squad room. He lowered his voice and said, “Look, George, can I come over tonight?”

It was a shift in conversation that George had not expected. “Of course. Why?”