Alien Nation #4 - The Change Read online

  “It was always the Ahvin Yin versus the Overseers, Dad.” Buck paused for a moment, then continued, his voice strangely thoughtful. “Su nas otas”, he repeated. “Us and them. Su nas otas.”

  “What is it?”

  The silhouette of Buck shook its head. “Something. Just something I’m supposed to think about.” The figure turned its head to face George. “What was it about the Ahvin Yin?”

  “Maanka Dak was the leader of the resistance. Years ago, during the course of an arrest, I killed Maanka’s biological brother and wounded Maanka. He and his accomplice swore the vikah ta against me and the memory of me. That’s what’s going on out there right now. That’s why all those persons are dead.”

  “I don’t understand, Dad. The way I remember it, the vikah ta can’t be sworn against someone unless the individual is a particularly cruel Overseer or a member of the Ahvin Yin who betrays the resistance.”

  George frowned as he realized how ashamed he was of the words he was about to say. “Buck, I became a member of the Ahvin Yin on planet Itri Vi.”

  “You, Dad?” The thrilled admiration in his son’s voice did little to alter the shame he still felt.

  “Yes. For a time I became Maanka and Sita Dak’s brother in the resistance.” As he said the words, George felt the weight of centuries lift from his hearts. The red and turquoise faded to the dark shadows of the living room.

  “I never had a clue. That makes you a hero. That—”

  “No, Buck. That only makes me a parent who was frightened for his family.”

  There was a puzzled silence, then Buck said, “We always heard that the only way to get into the Ahvin Yin was to execute an enemy of the resistance.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “You killed someone, Dad? I mean, not in a fight or defending yourself? You executed someone? An Overseer?”

  “It was a Niyezian on Itri Vi,” George answered in a whisper. The justifications for what he had done, his dead parents, the suffering of his family, the suffering of all of the slaves by the pain ministers, were dammed up in his chest, threatening to burst forth to try to excuse what he had done for the sake of his son’s continued love. He remained silent for the same reason.

  George felt Buck’s hand on his shoulder, and he placed his own hand atop Buck’s. “You know, your mother and I were planning on putting you on the griddle tonight about all the classes you’ve missed.” His shoulders shrugged slightly. “As selfish as it sounds, and as sorry as I feel for Roger Dillon’s parents, I’m grateful that you cut class today.” He held his son’s hand and squeezed it.

  “Dad, I suppose you still want me to tell you where I’ve been for the past three weeks.”

  “If you want to tell me, I’m willing to listen.”

  Buck rose from the chair and walked until he stood in front of the living room’s picture window. With his back toward his father, he said, “Dad, for a long time I’ve been searching for something. I didn’t know what it was. Belonging, meaning, some way of looking at myself, knowing what I saw, and feeling good about it. On the ship we were property: labor units designed, built, owned, and operated by persons we never saw. Purpose for us was to serve the purposes of others; purposes we never knew or understood.” He held out his hands.

  “But here on Earth, in America, we’re told purpose is our own individual choice. What I want to do with my life is my own thing. That would be tough enough to deal with for a Newcomer, but on top of that is everybody else who thinks that my purpose is to serve either their purpose or the purpose of whatever fantasy it is they have about me.”

  He turned and faced his father. “That’s exactly why I was to be placed on the griddle tonight. You and Mom have a purpose in mind for me, and I wasn’t living up to your plan. Right?”

  “Go on.”

  Buck returned his gaze to the shadows in the front yard. “There are others—perhaps everyone—with purposes for me to fulfill. The ones who call me ‘slag’ think I ought to change, become human, or get on a rocket and get the hell off the planet. At the very least, they want me to do less than I can do. They want me to get lower grades, perform less strongly at athletics, and earn less money than I’m capable of earning. Su nas otas, right? Us and them. If ‘us’ can keep ‘them’ down, it may not make ‘us’ any wealthier, but it will decrease the amount of envy ‘us’ has to carry. At least I can understand that.”

  “What don’t you understand, Buck?”

  Again he faced his father. “It’s my feilow ‘thems’ that want to keep me down—the Newcomers, slags, rubberheads—my own parents. That’s what I don’t understand.”

  George pushed himself up to a sitting position and placed his feet on the floor. “Buck, your mother and I only want the best for you.”

  “But who figures out what’s best? Who knows what’s best for anyone else? Dad, the things that were best back on the ship—fitting in, blending, not making any waves, doing what you’re told—that was fine for a particular time and place. But we’re here now.” He waved his hand, dismissing his own digression.

  “Dad, I was searching for something, a direction; perhaps I was even looking for some reason to be proud of what I am—proud of being Tenctonese. I heard about a special school in south-central L.A. run by a few Elders. It was said that they dealt in the kinds of questions and answers I was thinking about.”

  “Did you find what you were looking for, Buck?”

  The young man burst out with a cynical laugh. “Well, no. Not exactly. The first thing I learned, Dad, was that the racial pride I was seeking was an intellectually dishonest attempt to create a false self-esteem from the real and fictional accomplishments of others. The ‘thems,’ I also learned, don’t exist. I was thrown out of the school by my Hila until I can solve the mystery of the flower and the weed. While I’m working on that, I am supposed to find a black man, a white man, a red man, and a yellow man, none of whom exist.” He folded his arms in disgust.

  “What is the consistently identifiable referent for any of the racial ‘us’ and ‘them’ terms out there?” Buck asked. “A fellow named Berry wrote that races aren’t real things that man’s discovered. They’re pigeonholes man has constructed. The problem is that most of humanity—and I include us in humanity—most of humanity doesn’t fit the pigeonholes. We aren’t talking about anything. I have found French vanillas, toasts, Devonshire creams, blush beiges, pebbles, king’s pinks, and chiffons, but no red, no black, no yellow, no white. I guess the answer to your question, Dad, is: no. I haven’t found what I’m looking for. The problem is that I don’t even know if what I’m looking for even exists.” He glanced back over his shoulder. “And now’s when you’re supposed to say ‘I told you so’ and nag me back to school.”

  “No, Buck. I’m not going to do that. You do what you need to do for you.”

  “But you’d rather I went back to the university.”

  “This morning the answer to that would’ve been yes. Now, though, I think there is something very important for you to learn at this school.”

  “Honest?”

  George opened his eyes and was grateful to find his current reality properly colored and shaded. He placed his hands on his knees and struggled to a standing position. “Buck, what I’m going through right now gives an individual moments of insight. Perhaps they are even flashes of brilliance. I tracked down a wanted killer today because of it: the Thunderbolt.”

  “No kidding? I hadn’t heard anything about it.”

  “I imagine it’s been driven out of the news by all of the other things that’ve been happening today. In any event, I think I’ve solved your Hila’s mystery of the flower and the weed.”

  “You have? What is it?”

  George stood at his son’s side and placed his arm across Buck’s shoulders. “It’s something so simple, it’s almost impossible to see. Buck, you’re looking for a simple answer with a head tuned to complexities. The answer to the mystery of the flower and the weed is so simple it
’s invisible unless a particular window in your brain is open. The answer to the mystery is important, but it’s nowhere near as important as opening that window. If I told you the answer, you would never learn what it is you need to learn through the search for that answer.”

  “You talk just like the Elder.”

  “I’d like to meet your Hila.”

  “Aman Iri asked me some time ago to tell you about the Rama Vo. He seems to think he can help you too. I told him about how weird you were acting this morning, and he seemed to think it had something to do with a changing.”

  “Riana.”

  Buck’s eyes went wide. “Riana? Are you dying? Dad—”

  “No, son. I’m not dying. I’m becoming something different. A doctor with a bit of experience in riana suggested that I see a Hila about it. I—” Someone wearing a light-colored jacket ran across the front lawn beneath the window. “Did you see that?”

  “See what, Dad?”

  “Someone—something running past the window,” he whispered.

  “A man?”

  “It looked like a man. It could’ve been a man. Let’s get away from the window.” George reached to his holster and found it empty. “My gun!”

  Hellishly loud pounding came from the front door as the doorbell rang and a voice shouted. “George! Damn it all to hell, George, let me in!”

  “It’s Matt!” George fumbled with the locks and eye hooks on the door, trying to open them. “That idiot is out there in full view. Buck, turn on the hall light so I can see these damned locks.”

  The light came on, and squinting against the brightness, George flipped hooks and turned back the two dead bolts. As he turned to tell Buck to turn off the lights, he saw a smear of dried blood on Buck’s left eyelid. Letting his gaze travel down the length of Buck’s arm, he saw that his gun was in Buck’s hand.

  “Matt, watch out!” he screamed as he grabbed Buck’s wrist, held up the gun, and slammed his son into the door of the hall closet. The front door burst open behind him.

  “George?” Matt called.

  “Turn off the light, Matt! Dak’s got one of those damned things in Buck’s head!”

  “Dad, what’re you talking about—” Buck began, then kneed his father in the stomach. “Get out of the way, Dad! Get down!”

  George doubled over just as a shot exploded next to his head. He looked around and saw Matt aiming his automatic at Buck. Buck was sliding down the door, a bad gash along the right side of his head, a bullet hole in the closet door. Matt was taking aim again, between Buck’s eyes, and George grabbed his partner’s wrist and swung his aim wide. Matt fired twice, one round shattering the hall mirror, the second digging into the hardwood floor.

  “Matt! Stop shooting! Matt!” He could see Matt’s face: his eyes. He had no mark, no cut, no scab on his eyelid. It simply couldn’t be. “Matt, stop it!”

  Sikes kicked George’s feet out from beneath him and aimed his weapon again as the back of George’s head struck the floor. The universe filled with giant streamers of hot pink, electric blue, and Big Bird yellow. George knew he should roll, but he was so woozy he couldn’t make up his mind which way he should go. He looked up and, in between the streamers, saw the muzzle of Matt’s gun staring him in the face. In the next split second he heard a strange metallic clank, then Matt was lying facedown on top of him, out cold, his trigger finger automatically pumping round after round into the baseboard. In a matter of a few seconds the weapon was out of ammunition, but Matt’s finger kept pulling the trigger.

  George looked up through a haze of brightly colored geometric images to see Cathy Frankel standing there with the heavy iron skillet Emily had left on the front steps. “George, are you all right?” she asked.

  He turned his head to the right. “Buck. Look at Buck. Is he alive?”

  Cathy dropped the skillet, reached down, took Matt’s handcuffs and cuffed Matt Sikes’s hands behind him. As she did so, tears filled her eyes. She pulled Matt off George’s legs then went and checked Buck. As she lifted first one eyelid, then the next, Buck moaned. “He’s alive. We ought to get him to a hospital, though. That bullet put a nasty crease in his head. He might have a concussion.”

  “He saved my life. That bullet was mine.”

  “He’s a good kid.”

  George got to his knees and bent over his son. “What about his eye? Look there. Maanka Dak stuck one of those things through his eyelid.”

  Cathy dried her tears with the heels of her hands and squatted next to Buck. She examined his eyelid and shook her head. “No. There’s no penetration. He has a scratch on his eyelid. A little cut, that’s all.”

  “Are you certain? After all, he managed to get in here, eluding all of the officers out there—”

  “What officers? There are none. Your admirer, Maanka Dak, must have sent them all away.” Cathy nodded her head toward Matt’s now still form. “He’s the one implanted with a neural controller.” She grabbed the closet’s doorknob and pulled herself to her feet. “You better call an ambulance while I pack him in ice. We have to lower his temperature to halt the implant’s biofilament invasion.”

  “Will he live?”

  “Matt said the only humans who’ve had these implants have turned homicidal and either killed themselves or were gunned down.”

  George picked up his gun from the floor, holstered it, and got to his feet. He looked from Buck to Matt and looked again at Matt’s eyes. “He doesn’t have a mark on his eyelid. How could he be implanted? Warden Rand, Mark Diaz, Bill Duncan—they all had wounds on their left eyelids.”

  “I’m not sure,” Cathy answered, “but I know that the implants the Overseers used on the ship didn’t always need to be inserted that way. When the controllers were implanted over the eye, it was usually for punishment purposes. Pain control. The long-term control implants were more sophisticated. It took a very specialized instrument. The controller would be inserted through a blood vessel.” She opened Matt’s collar and pulled it away from his neck. “The controllers on the ship were considerably smaller than the crude thing Matt described to me from the Rand autopsy.” She pointed toward an almost invisible hematoma on Matt’s neck beneath his ear.

  “There.” She frowned and pursed her lips. “That implant wasn’t done with any tool whipped up in a China Lake prison workshop. Maanka Dak’s gotten his hands on a tivati urih. The implantation instrument with which the Niyez supplied the Overseers before we left Itri Vi. We better call an ambulance.”

  “I don’t think that would be a very good idea.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t think we can trust whoever shows up.”

  Cathy stared at George for a moment, then frowned as she slowly shook her head. “No. As a matter of fact, we can’t. George, the reason I came out here is because something funny happened when Matt made a call to Lieutenant Bradley at the command center. It bothered me, so I called the station from a neighbor’s phone after Matt left and talked to the lieutenant outside the command center. The lieutenant had never talked to Matt. Routing communications through that command center made it real easy for Maanka Dak to intercept calls. If you called from your phone, I have no doubt that you’d reach Maanka’s personal switchboard.”

  “Susan’s got my car. Give me your keys.”

  Cathy reached into her jacket pocket and threw George the keys to her station wagon. “I’m parked a couple houses east. Be careful.” She turned and walked off toward the kitchen.

  George looked down at his son and his partner. “Where has being careful gotten us?”

  “Dad? Dad?”

  George squatted next to Buck and squeezed his son’s shoulder. “I’m here.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m all right. Just take it easy. We’re going to get you to help soon.”

  “Dad, it was Matt. Dak got Matt. Will he be all right?”

  “I don’t know, son. Just lie quietly for a bit. I have to get Cathy’s car.”

  He s
tood, turned, and looked through his open front door, knowing that he was lighted from the back and ignoring it. He looked east and west, across the street and around his own house. All of the police officers, uniformed, disguised, on foot and riding, were gone. Maanka Dak had pressed the right buttons, said the right words, and everybody had called it a wrap. When the nightmare first started, Maanka’s twisted talents had frightened him.

  “Maanka!” he shouted into the night as his fear and concern for himself, his friends, and family mutated into rage. He stepped out onto the small landing. “Maanka Dak! Start running now, vuloch! I’m coming for you!”

  As the sound of his voice was absorbed by the shadows, George heard a whimper, a woman crying. He drew his revolver and reached into the doorway. As he turned on the outside light he saw what had been making the noise. Near the sidewalk, coming from behind the neighbor’s azalea, was a Tenctonese woman wearing only a police uniform shirt with the left sleeve hanging in ribbons. As she came fully into view, George could see the black wound in the front of her left thigh. Her eyes were sunken and haunted, the eyelid of her left eye crusted with dried blood.

  Ruma Kavit, George thought. Bill Duncan’s missing partner. That was how Maanka had gotten to Matt Sikes. Matt was hard-bitten, cynical, suspicious, and made that way from years of banging his head against crime and the brutality of criminals, cops, and civilians who no longer cared about the rights and wrongs of anything. But show him a hurt kitten, an injured child, or a weeping girl, and Matt Sikes would follow his stupid, predictable heart right into his own grave.

  She carried her service revolver in her right hand. Her arm was limp, the muzzle of the weapon pointed at the concrete path.

  “Ruma Kavit?” George asked, aiming his weapon at her. He knew that Kavit served a double purpose. Besides luring Matt into a vulnerable position, she was Maanka’s plan B, in case the implanted Matt Sikes didn’t achieve the intended objectives. Dak’s plan B called for either Ruma Kavit to kill George or for George to kill Officer Kavit, which would be almost as destructive. “Ruma Kavit?”