Alien Nation #4 - The Change Read online

  How many others from the ship like him, Iniko wondered, were criminals here on earth?

  “Tom Rand didn’t believe in criminals,” he said out loud, the sound of his own voice startling him. He glanced around the gallery. Perhaps the guard on the surveillance monitors had gotten an earful, but Iniko was the only one on the gallery. He shifted his gaze to the exercise yard and the face of Jarak Ati.

  Tom Rand didn’t believe in criminals, and that was another of the warden’s amazing areas of naiveté. There were criminals: beings destined through genetics, environment, or choice to run unrepentantly and habitually counter to any society’s rights and wrongs. During his long time as a charkah, he had known many. As he searched the faces in the exercise yard, Paul wondered how many others of his criminals were behind these and similar walls.

  Jarak Ati, condemned to be tortured to death for the termination of biological property, had been turned loose by the human immigration officials immediately after the crash. The Overseers had convicted him, hence the conviction by definition had been unjust. Go forth Jarak Ati, among the peoples of Earth, breathe free, fly, and sin no more.

  Except some persons were criminals, and if the society has crime, they will be in there committing it, because that is what they do. If prison is the society’s way to punish the wrongdoers, they are the ones who will be in there taking up bed space.

  Morton Lipscomb had been offended at Paul Iniko slapping him in the mouth with what he called his “guilt brush.” Iniko nodded as he remembered the comment. Although he didn’t realize it, Lipscomb had been entitled to deliver the rebuke. Paul Iniko figured he had more guilt than anyone else regarding the deeds of Maanka Dak. Back on the ship, he once had Maanka Dak under arrest.

  The Overseers never placed murder aside to cover up a blunder, but Vuurot Iniko let a murderer go free for other reasons. Maanka Dak had been arrested for a murder—the murder of Overseer pain minister Torumeh and his family. Torumeh had been a monster, and the murder had been a vikah ta slaying of the Ahvin Yin. But no matter how just Maanka’s act had seemed on the ship, or even here on Earth many years later, a murder is still a murder. A murderer is still a murderer.

  Iniko looked down at his hands. His fingers were wrapped around a metal railing and they were wringing it as though it was the neck of all of the world’s problems. He took a breath, let it escape slowly, and glanced back at the security door to the area containing the conference room.

  “A murderer is a murderer,” he whispered. “And an accomplice is an accomplice.”

  He smacked the railing with his hands, glanced one last time toward the spin doctors behind the security door, then turned abruptly and headed for the security post that opened onto the parking area.

  C H A P T E R 2 1

  IN A SUBURB called Friendship Heights, midway between CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia, and the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., Dr. Carrie Norcross sat in her home office, her gaze fixed to the office’s television. She was watching C-Span’s coverage of the Senate Intelligence Committee cutback hearings. On the hot seat was CIA Deputy Director Taylor Meade, and the DDI was showing the wear and tear of six hours of testimony. Dr. Norcross studied the image through narrowed eyes as she unconsciously nibbled at the skin on the inside of her lower lip.

  “Senator Kinnison,” continued DDI Meade, “I doubt if there is a person in this room more aware of the collapse of the Soviet Union than I, nor more aware of the fiscal consequences. It has even come to my attention that the entire defense posture of the free world has changed, lowering the funding requirements for accurate intelligence from that area of the world. I do hope, however, that it has not escaped the notice of this committee that there is a vast universe out there peopled with possibly hostile powers whose technical military capabilities far exceed anything once possessed by the former soviets. There is a vast body of scientific—”

  “Forgive me for interrupting, Deputy Director Meade,” Senator Kinnison said, “but as I understand the testimony that’s been given before this committee, it is virtually impossible that the powers you mentioned know anything about us, Earth, or that a few of their people happened to stray here.”

  “It is just as impossible,” countered Meade, “that to Earth is exactly where those people, as you called them, strayed.”

  “Now, Senator Kinnison, Deputy Director Reed,” interrupted Chairman Ransom Lloyd, “I don’t want to tie up the committee’s valuable time with anything more about all those bald folks in Los Angeles. It’s old news, twice-chewed cabbage.”

  “Old news?” Reed’s eyes went wide.

  “That’s what I said. Over the past few weeks, we’ve had very convincing testimony before us here, sir, that the whole Newcomer scare is nothing but that: a scare; a hoax. It’s a perfectly explainable phenomenon that the media hyped into some kind of Star Wars blowout to sell more time to wig manufacturers. I hear now they even got a hair club for women!”

  A wave of laughter met the chairman’s words, and the camera panned until the screen filled with DDI Meade’s face. The man’s jaw was hanging open as his eyes blinked in disbelief. “Senator Lloyd, are you serious? Do you really believe that the Tenctonese are simply a hoax? Bald people with spots? Over at the Smithsonian I can get you a hunk of their damned ship and drag it before this committee!”

  “Yessir, I suppose you could. And would you believe we’ve had Air Force and NASA investigators who’ve done just that? The stuff just looked like junk to me.” Chairman Lloyd raised a hand and shook a finger at the witness. “And do you know what they told us that ship was made of, sir? Steel, titanium, plastic, and ceramic compounds, just like our own fighters and bombers. I mean, Lockheed could’ve built it, or maybe those folks with the mouse ears in Anaheim.”

  The chairman allowed his joke to exhaust the laughter of the hearing room’s audience. “We’re not gullible here in Washington, sir,” he continued. “You come in here, stick little green men in our faces, and tell us we have to spend ourselves into bankruptcy to prepare for some kind of funny-book war of the worlds. But, sir, you’re goin’ to have to do a whole lot better than current metallurgy and a bunch of skinheads to convince this committee. We have very real problems to deal with, sir. There’re entire city blocks in Los Angeles and right here in Washington that are still rubble left over from city riots thirty years ago, not to mention the ’ninety-two riots.”

  “Mr. Chairman, I cannot believe—” began the junior senator from Maine.

  “I’m almost finished, Senator Easton. Now keep your shirt on.” Chairman Lloyd faced the witness and clasped his hands as he raised his thin wisps of eyebrows. “Deppity Director Meade, didn’t it ever strike you as just a little bit coincidental that after traveling billions of miles through space, and with the entire two hundred million square miles of Earth’s surface to crash on, your bald friends just happened to pile up outside Los Angeles, U.S.A., media center, film center, the entertainment capital of the world? Why do you suppose they didn’t plow into the center of Siberia, the Pacific Ocean, or the Sahara Desert? I’ll tell you why. There weren’t any damned cameras on ’em, that’s why. I know it’s fashionable to treat this Newcomer matter like it’s the real thing, but here in the United States Congress we have neither the time nor the money to engage in last year’s bagwan moonie krishna space fantasies. Now—”

  Dr. Norcross’s telephone rang, and she cut off the television’s sound, leaving Chairman Lloyd’s mouth to flap silently at his witness. Picking up the receiver, she pressed the scrambler and held the receiver to her ear. “Yes?”

  “This is Lipscomb.”

  “Yes, Mr. Lipscomb. What about the mayor’s office?” she asked.

  “The mayor won’t play. Not for all the national security chips in Washington.”

  “Did you lean?”

  “Like the proverbial tower, Doctor, but he won’t play. The politics are all wrong. Election’s too close, too many dead bodies, too many live bodie
s who know who’s responsible, too many of them asking questions and demanding answers. Collins was right. We should’ve brought in Rand and the Bureau of Prisons from the beginning.”

  “That’s ancient history. What about more juice?”

  “Juice?”

  “The mayor, Mr. Lipscomb. What if we used a bigger club?”

  “Who’re you talking about, Doctor? The President? That’s what you’d need.” There was a pause, then a short laugh. “You know something, Doctor? I don’t think even the President could get the mayor to play. Even if he could, I don’t think the President wants the smell of this on his own fingers while his people sing ‘Hail, Hail, the Gang’s All Here’ in front of a committee.”

  “Mr. Lipscomb, this is not going before any committee. The things at stake here are simply too important to the future of this nation and of the human race.” She glanced at the television and saw the chairman and the junior senator from Maine silently exchanging heated insults. “Don’t worry about Congress. There’s nothing to worry about from that quarter. Is there anything else?”

  “One more thing, Doctor. It might even be more of a problem. The rubberhead from the FBI, Paul Iniko?”

  “What about him?”

  “He took off on us today.”

  “Took off?” Dr. Norcross leaned forward and frowned at her phone. “What are you talking about?”

  “Collins, Rittenhouse, and I were with Iniko at China Lake trying to hammer out an information management plan when Iniko took off. He left, split, made tracks, adios muchacho. Before he went, he came across just a little bit judgmental. You know what I mean?”

  “He can’t do that. He’s under orders.”

  “He’s an Overseer, Doctor. All he knows how to do is give orders. I don’t exactly think he’s worried about his pension.”

  “Where did he go? What do you think he’ll do?”

  “I don’t know. He’s one of Warden Rand’s recruits, you know.”

  “Yes. I was aware of that.”

  “Well, Rand’s dead. Add to that, two cops are dead and another two are critical. That doesn’t even count a couple of dozen civilians. Iniko seems to have this soft spot in his head for cops.”

  “Soft spot? Don’t be absurd, Mr. Lipscomb. As you said, Iniko is an Overseer.”

  “He’s also a cop. According to his FBI personnel record, he’s always been a cop. That’s what he used to do for the slave drivers in space. He was what they called a watcher, and his job was figuring out who-done-it. According to the data recovered from the ship, he was quite good at it. Anyway, he might hurt us, Doctor. He can’t prove much, but he knows who’s who, what’s what, and where a few of the bodies are buried. Blowhard finger pointing we don’t have to sweat, but he’s still an agent in the FBI. Rubberhead or not, that carries media weight.” He paused for a moment, then said, “You do know who can prove a whole lot of embarrassing things should brother Iniko get his hands on him alive?”

  “Are you suggesting we do something illegal, Mr. Lipscomb?”

  Lipscomb chuckled. “No, ma’am. Not as long you keep that tape recorder running. All I was doing was making an observation on the life and times of el fugitivo. My job is editing truth for publication. I leave the icky jobs to those who enjoy that sort of thing. The editing would be a whole lot easier, though, if our boy should happen to fall off a cliff or get a sudden attack of lead poisoning. Just a thought.”

  She listened to the silence for a moment and then said, “Thank you for calling, Mr. Lipscomb. I think perhaps it’s time for you and Mr. Rittenhouse to push your ‘no comment’ buttons and go home.”

  “I understand.”

  “You might suggest the same to Mr. Collins. We have no control over him, but we all have the same boss. I think he would find it in his own interests to take some time off for himself. Take the wife and kids to see the Grand Canyon, visit grandma in Vermont, that sort of thing.”

  “I’ll tell him.” There was a long silence on the other end of the line, then Lipscomb’s quiet, “So long, Doctor.” The connection was cut and Carrie Norcross hung up her phone.

  Glancing at her watch, she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. Three times more she checked her watch, and exactly on the quarter hour she dialed a number and waited. There was no ringing, no beeps, no little messages of gratitude from multinational communications corporations. There was only silence, and then the click of a receiver being picked up. No voice answered.

  “Very well,” she said.

  There was no answer. Instead the connection was cut. She listened to the hum for a moment, then hung up her phone.

  C H A P T E R 2 2

  AT THE RAMA VO, Buck and his father stood in the garden before a paunchy human with a face the color of toffee. His hair, what there was left, was mostly gray and cut close to his scalp. He wore faded tan jeans and an aloha shirt that stressed the red end of the spectrum. His arms were heavily muscled and folded across his chest, and he introduced himself as Malcolm Bone. “Aman isn’t in today.”

  “Isn’t in?” Buck demanded. “He should be here. He’s my Elder.”

  The human grinned widely and chuckled. “A boy lookin’ for his guru. You just gotta be Buck Francisco, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “This your father?”

  “This is my father, yes. What I want to know is where is my Elder.”

  “Maybe I’m wrong, but according to the way I read that U.S. Constitution, young one, Aman Iri don’t belong to no one but Aman Iri. Anyway, you should’ve called first. What’s the matter? Don’t you watch the telephone company commercials?”

  “When will he be back?” Buck asked impatiently. “He wanted to see my father about something.”

  “He’s gone for at least the next few days, doing his best to see if he can break his legs. He went out to some mountain yesterday afternoon, and tried downhill skiing for the first time today. Don’t take it personal. It’s a trip he’s been planning for months.”

  Buck looked at his father and then back at the human. “Aman Iri is very old to be trying something like that. He’s over a hundred.”

  “And it’s so inconvenient for you too,” Malcolm completed. He shrugged his wide shoulders and looked Buck in the eyes. “Just the same, he called a little while ago to say he’s discovered up on his mountaintop everything from snow bunnies to the meaning of life.” Malcolm Bone grinned. “I asked him what the people were like up there in snow city, and he said they’re just a bunch of flakes. I guess he really likes skiing.”

  “Is there another Hila we can talk to, then?”

  “Sure, kid.”

  “Where can we find one?”

  Malcolm Bone held out his hands. “You’re talking to one.”

  “A Hila,” Buck repeated. “An Elder?”

  “I know what the word means, kid. I’m a Hila. I am an Elder. I got the gray hairs and the baggy eyes to prove it.”

  “But you’re human,” Buck protested.

  Malcolm Bone scratched the back of his neck, shifted his weight from his right leg to his left and placed his hands on his hips. “You don’t exactly have the hang of that flower and weed thing, do you?”

  “And you do?” Buck demanded angrily.

  The man’s eyes were kind, even sympathetic. “I’d be a bum Hila if I didn’t understand the flower and the weed.”

  “Look, mister, you can’t be a Hila. You’re not Tenctonese. You’re human. You’re not smart enough. There it is; I’ve said it.”

  “You certainly have.” Malcolm Bone turned from Buck and faced George. Reaching out his hand, he said, “Hi. My name’s Malcolm Bone.”

  “George Francisco,” he answered, shaking the man’s hand.

  Malcolm Bone’s greeting slowed for a foggy moment as the man frowned and raised an eyebrow at George. “The cop?”

  “I’m a homicide detective.”

  Malcolm Bone released George’s hand and pointed a finger at him. “I read about
you, Detective Francisco. You know you made the papers today? The Thunderbolt Poet Killer? René Day? All kinds of congratulations.”

  “By the time I put two and two together it was all over.”

  “Aman said you might drop by with a few questions concerning riana.”

  “You can help me with that?”

  Malcolm Bone nodded. “Sure. I don’t go through it myself, but—”

  “I don’t believe this,” Buck interrupted. “You can’t be a Hila. You’re human. Humans simply don’t have the mental capacity.”

  “Still lookin’ for that red man, black man, yellow man, white man, huh kid? Still huntin’ for that little piece of something outside that makes you something inside?”

  “I suppose you found yours.”

  “It’s funny, Buck. You finally have the truth cornered, but you can’t catch it ’cause you think it’s a lie.” The Hila pursed his lips and said, “I came to the vo three years ago, searching for answers, looking for truths, the same way I been doing since I lost my father in the sixties.” He turned and pointed to the scorched wall of the garden perpendicular to the street. “The flames from that riot blackened those bricks. I was twenty years old.” He lowered his hand. “Three decades later, I came here to be a student. They didn’t want me as a student, though. The Elders here took me on as a teacher. See, I didn’t need the paint chips. I already understood.”

  Buck, his eyes changing color from embarrassment and anger, glanced at his father and then looked at Malcolm Bone. “Okay, then, Hila, what do you call yourself? Black? Afro-American? Negro? Colored? What?”

  “I’m a man, Buck. I look like one, act like one, and feel like one. If you call me a man, we’ll get along just fine.”

  “What about your heritage? What about your culture?”

  “Those are things that others have accomplished. As far as who I am matters, my only concern is with the acts, good and bad, committed by Malcolm Bone.”