Alien Nation #4 - The Change Page 2

  “Well, there is another way,” Sing Fangan said, and he placed his hands on the sides of the warden’s head, holding it in an iron grip.

  Tom instinctively reached up, but before his fingers could get to Sing’s powerful hands, Maanka Dak shoved the tip of the implantation awl through the top of the human’s left eyelid and deep into his brain. The universe filled with bright flashes as what felt like enormous electrical shocks paralyzed every muscle in Tom Rand’s body.

  “Actually, Tom,” Dak said, “there are a few problems with the neural controller I hadn’t mentioned.” He nodded, and Sing released the warden’s head. Tom tried to move, but motion was impossible. His open right eye could see the handle of the awl sticking out of his own face. “We haven’t figured out how to arrest the biofilament growth in humans. In the interests of science and entertainment, we tried it out on two inmates. You remember Conner and Beckman? Beautiful boys. We were able to achieve remarkable motor control over them for a few hours, then unfortunately they went quite homicidal. You must remember that ugly scene in the yard last month when Conner took that homemade sticker of his and perforated those three inmates and the guard? When Beckman went homicidal, Sing and I took care of him ourselves by staging his suicide. After all, we couldn’t afford an autopsy discovering Beckman’s brain half strangled by the filaments on my little toy.”

  “Maanka?”

  “Yes, Sing?”

  “If we were getting out soon anyway, brother, why are we doing this?”

  “Don’t be absurd. We have to get out now if we’re to finish with our brother Stangya by the next mitr. Dr. Norcross will understand. Believe me, she will understand.”

  “It is the vikah ta? It is all the vikah ta?”

  “Samuel Francisco.” Stangya’s immigration joke name passed though Maanka’s lips like a curse, the venom dripping from every syllable. “Warden Rand will be the beginning: the first abscess removed in executing the vikah ta against our former brother.”

  “All these years? All our work?”

  Maanka Dak glanced around the shop, checked his watch and nodded at Sing, all emotion removed from his voice. “That ought to be enough time.”

  Sing Fangan frowned and gripped Tom Rand’s head as Dak slowly withdrew the awl from the warden’s eyelid. Blood streaked down Tom’s face, and Sing caught the flow with a gauze pad just before the blood dripped onto the warden’s shirt. “Maanka! There’s too much blood!”

  Dak frowned at his partner. “Keep the urgency out of your voice and facial expression, Sing. Remember, we always risk being under surveillance.”

  “What about the blood? It’s not clotting. Look how dark it is. He’s a bag full of scarlet dye. He can’t have a bandage over his eye when we go back through the checkpoints. The guards will remember that he was wearing no bandages when he came in. If they stop us to question the warden, what then? That crude little program in the implant can’t handle very much in the way of questions.”

  Maanka reached out his hand, lifted the gauze square, and watched a fresh trickle of blood begin flowing. “I hadn’t thought of this. He’s on a blood thinner.” Maanka looked into the warden’s unblinking stare. “A heart problem, Tom, old friend? Doing your aspirin a day like a good boy? Who would’ve thought?”

  Replacing the gauze, Dak thought for a moment, turned to his workbench and picked up his soldering gun. Depressing the trigger, the tip immediately began smoking. “This is going to be a little uncomfortable.”

  Thrusting the point of the gun into the wound, he seared it shut as the smell of burned flesh crept into the air. “That ought to do it.” He removed the gun and replaced it on the workbench.

  As Sing cleaned up the warden’s face and Maanka placed a red plastic container into his jacket pocket, Tom Rand neither moved nor cried out. He was not in command of those motor abilities. Inside, however, he screamed in silence at the puncture behind his eye, at the pain of the filaments wrapping themselves around his nerves one at a time, strangling his will into submission.

  “And now, Tom,” Maanka Dak said, picking up a small box resembling a remote control for a VCR, “it’s time for you to take Sing and me through the checkpoints and then drive your new van to the loading dock so that we may pack my equipment. Then you may drive us through the gates.” He pressed a button, the transmitter’s preprogrammed instructions began running, and Warden Tom Rand laughed out loud, stood, put his arm across Dak’s shoulders, and led Maanka and Sing toward the first checkpoint.

  “I can’t tell you two how proud I am of you,” the warden said as they approached the first checkpoint’s cameras.

  Maanka Dak grinned and changed eye color as he shrugged, looked at his feet, and put on a credible “aw shucks” performance for the guard watching the monitor and listening to the audio pickups. “We owe it all to you, Tom. To you and to your faith in us.”

  C H A P T E R 2

  THE GHOSTLY RED numbers of the alarm clock’s readout cast an eerie glow over the entire bedroom. Matt Sikes groggily burrowed his head into his pillow, shut his eyes, and flopped his forearm over his face as he chased elusive sleep into its labyrinth. The detective in the back of his head impeded the pursuit. It had questions without answers. They were life and death questions—mostly death—about the Thunderbolt Poet, the current serial killer feasting upon Matt’s time and peace of mind. Matt had refused to allow the little detective in the back of his head to think about the Thunderbolt, because he desperately needed some sleep. Forbidden to think about the Thunderbolt, the little detective picked at other questions.

  That clock was wrong. Not the time, which read seventeen after four in the morning. The clock itself was wrong. Matt liked a bedroom as black as possible. Who had set up a bloody red searchlight to burn out his retinas? He rolled over, his back to the offending glare, and felt his awareness drift into soft nothingness. Perhaps sleep would return. It was possible.

  There was more to the clock than it being red and very bright, announced his little detective to the rest of his brain. Matt didn’t own an alarm clock with a red LED readout. There had been no birthdays, Christmases, or other gift days. There was no reason why that clock should be shedding its red light upon Detective Sergeant Matthew W. Sikes. He opened his eyes and saw the back of a bald, spotted head on the next pillow. Cathy Frankel. He was in her bed.

  There were several automatic bolts of electrifying guilt, apprehension, self-doubt, and censurable memory that coursed through his mind, ending for the night the prospect of further sleep. Of course, he knew that sleeping with a Tenctonese woman did not make him a pervert, and that his guilt and apprehension had more to do with his problems regarding self-esteem than with having done something wrong. He knew all these things, but the knowledge was part of thinking; reasoning things out; gathering the facts and forging a conclusion based upon those facts.

  There was old knowledge, nonetheless; other knowledge, rooted deep within his being, that said that Cathy Frankel was not one of “us.” She was one of “them”; a rubberheaded space freak. Hence Matt Sikes was some kind of major degenerate for having made love to her. He allowed his memory to flash back upon the previous evening’s erotic experiences, and his recollection threatened to make his eyeballs explode. That, too, he forced out of his mind.

  Everything out of his head. He commanded the little detective to shut up and go to sleep, he pulled the covers over his eyes to cut off the light from the clock, and he avoided reaching over and caressing Cathy’s mind-battering buttocks. He avoided even thinking of them. Their smooth contours, the way her cheeks glided up and down against each other as she walked naked across the floor, the way her spots tapered down her neck, coming to a point at the small of her back, combining with her cheeks to make a heavenly exclamation mark—

  He shook the image from his head. Everything had to be exiled from his mind. Once the mind was blank, sleep would come. After all, Cathy was a biochemist. She spent her days mucking about in icky, stinky substances and pile
s of printouts choked with numbers. For the moment, at least, he could put Cathy out of his mind.

  But there was one little thing more. Everything could have been put aside in the interests of further sleep, save the pressure on Matt’s bladder. One of his eyes opened.

  “Nuts,” he muttered as he sat up in bed, scratched his knee and glared at the clock. Grabbing Cathy’s bathrobe and putting it on against the air-conditioned chill, he stumbled into the bathroom, turned on the light, and relieved himself. When he was finished, he looked into the mirror and studied with disgust the image before him. His almost baby-faced features combined with sleep-puffed brown eyes and unshaved stubble to produce the image of a debauched, world-weary infant.

  It was the negative view, he knew. Over three dozen or more Thunderbolt victims kept his view negative. He knew that the view would remain negative until the Poet had been taken down. Matt glanced through the bathroom door at the top of his notebook, sticking out from the clothes he’d tossed on the couch the night before. The sight of the notebook drove from his head the recollection of how his clothing had gotten tossed there. He faced the sink and turned on the water.

  He shaved and showered, and when he was done, it was still before five. Sleep was impossible. Matt went into Cathy’s tiny living room and picked up the remote to turn on her television before realizing he didn’t want to turn it on. He didn’t want to hear any news or even watch any movies that might be interrupted with a special eyewitness report about the discovery of yet another damned victim of the Thunderbolt Poet serial killer.

  “It’s really getting to me,” he said aloud. “Now I’m afraid to turn on the damned TV.” He pushed his discarded clothing aside, flopped down on the couch and looked disgustedly at the blank screen as he nervously slapped the remote against his palm. “Green stars weep no more,” he muttered. The line had been on the message at the most recent of the Thunderbolt killings. Green stars weep no more. It sounded like the end of something. Maybe nothing.

  Matt fished among his clothes for his notebook. He turned the pages until he came to the last few lines of the Thunderbolt’s alleged poetry.

  Blade Of Victory

  Climb This Mountain

  Death Holds Sorrow Naught

  Reach The Sun

  Cry The People

  Green Stars Weep No More

  There were several pages filled with similar nonsense. Captain Grazer had gotten poetry professors from several universities as well as professional poets from around the L.A. area to read and comment upon the Thunderbolt’s lines. The order of the lines was taken from the order of the victims’ deaths. All that remained was what the lines meant.

  Grazer’s poets had been prolific in their interpretations. Sikes had waded through the mountains of commentary they had produced at taxpayer expense regarding Christ symbols, phallic emblems, death motif, and ultraprimitive horseshit slinging. In other words, Grazer’s search had been an enormous waste of time. One curious thing Matt had noticed: poets who had been following the Thunderbolt killings in the news found the killer’s poetry negative, morbid, depressing. The few ivory-tower types who had never heard of the Thunderbolt, found the killer’s lines generally uplifting and life-oriented.

  “What crap!” Matt muttered.

  “Darling?” said a soft voice from the shadows. “What’s the matter? Can’t you sleep?” Cathy came into the light from the darkness of the bedroom, her nakedness almost covered by a turquoise afghan.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you up. I just have a lot on my mind.”

  “You promised you wouldn’t think about it tonight.”

  Matt shook his head as he held up the remote for the TV set and said, “I wish I could turn myself on and off like that.” He pushed the power button on, and a picture leaped upon the screen. Before the sound came on, Matt punched off the power and the picture died.

  Cathy walked over and took the remote from Matt’s hand, her expression troubled. “You don’t want that, darling. Believe me.” She dropped the remote on an end table and looked down at Matt. “I’ve seen men and women controlled like that. You don’t want it.” Her troubled expression melted into a smirk as she looked at the human. “You look silly in my robe.”

  “Should I take it off, then?” Matt joked.

  The biochemist allowed the turquoise afghan to slip to the floor as her eyes fixed him with a hooded stare. “Yes, Matt. I think you should take it off.”

  Matt stood, hesitated for a second, then let his notebook fall to the couch as he removed Cathy’s robe. Picking up the Tenctonese woman, he carried her into the bedroom.

  Even as they made love, even as Matt began drifting off to sleep, the little detective in the back of his head was still worrying over all of the questions that still had no answers.

  C H A P T E R 3

  IT WAS AS though he was a tiny insect commanding the cranial operations center of an enormous robot. With his many arms and legs, he operated the complex banks of switches and dials. A tiny leg would trip a switch, and suddenly the tiny, helpless insect had power: power to feed, to defend, to avenge.

  Through the robot’s stereo screens the insect saw a Newcomer girl standing behind the counter. She was wearing orange slacks and blouse, and an electric-blue furry pillbox hat. On the hat was mounted a cartoon image of a buck-toothed rodent with crossed eyes and a silly grin. “Welcome to Bucky’s, sir. May I take your order?”

  “Order?” The insect felt incredible itching fill his brain, then devilish pain made him swoon against the controls as the robot asked again, “Order?”

  “Yes sir. May I take your order?” The girl’s smile evaporated as she mugged at her supervisor and cocked her head toward the robot.

  “Take my order?”

  The insect twisted a servo control, and the robot’s head rotated to the left and to the right. The establishment was crowded with Newcomers. Only a few humans. Night owls and early risers. Street walkers, dealers, users, the morning shift, the unemployed, the unemployable. Most of them were eating breakfast. Icky, disgusting things. Tenctonese fast food. There were humans who could eat the stuff. It just went to show how hungry some people can get. How hungry and how low.

  The insect twisted another servo control and the robot’s head looked up. Behind the girl’s head, high on the red-tiled wall, was mounted a row of video screens that listed the sandwiches, dinners, beverages, and side dishes available at Bucky McBeaver. Weasel jerky, the Big Buck Beaverburger, tofu fries, snail yogurt.

  The insect looked at the rising pain monitors on his panel, reached out its legs, and shut down more circuits. The insect nodded as it accepted fully how much he hated things that walked upon two legs.

  Hate.

  It was a living, walking power: hate. He couldn’t understand why he had never seen it before. How blind could he have been? It was all around him. The universe was dipped in it. Hate is God. Hate is love.

  “Warden? Hey, Warden Rand?”

  The insect was confused as familiar audio vibrations stimulated his receptors. Again he twisted the servo control, rotating the robot’s head. The video sensors displayed the image of a dark-complexioned Tenctonese male who appeared to be in his late forties.

  “I’m sorry,” said the insect into his microphone. “I don’t remember your name.” The insect frowned at the sound of its own words, for it knew he wasn’t sorry. There was the danger panel that controlled the man; the man mind. Through cracks in the panel the insect could see eyes wide with terror, teeth and flecks of saliva as they framed silent screams. The insect turned a knob, and the eyes, the teeth, behind the panel faded.

  “Rorik Ifan, sir.” The face grinned. “With forty thousand residents at China Lake, I don’t expect you’d recognize me. We only talked once or twice, but I sure remember you.” The smile faded and was replaced by a frown. “Are you all right, Warden? You look ill.”

  “All right?” repeated the insect into the microphone. It turned away from the controls and pond
ered the concept of “all right.”

  Certain things had to be taken care of before he could be “all right.” His house was very large. It was full of broken men, broken women, and broken children. They could have jobs, but government taxation, safety, age, and insurance regulations made it impossible for anyone who was not a megabuck industry to hire anyone.

  They get hungry, cold, full of fear, locked into despair. Usually drugs came in, or were already there from birth, and the government was again driving the nation insane. The President of the United States at a reception, videotaped answering a question, saying, “This president is serious about doing something about the drug problem,” and saying it with a double martini in his hand.

  All right?

  The insect went back to his controls and said, “Rorik, I make pretty good money as the warden at China Lake. Pretty good.”

  “Yessir?” Rorik Ifan frowned as the counter girl cocked her head and made like she was telephoning with her hands. He nodded and looked back at the warden. “It’s a big job you have, Warden. I expect the pay would be right up there.”

  “There are things I’d like done around the house; out in my garden; things to clean up; fences to paint. I could hire maybe three or four kids—high school, college—three or four. Keep ’em on for the whole summer. I can afford it, and I’d rather let some kid get a break to get the work done than to take time from my work and do it myself. Do you understand?”

  “Sure.” Rorik Ifan made a hurry-up motion with his hand at the counter girl.

  The insect shook his head as the tears rolled down its cheeks. “I never forced inmates to do slave labor around my house. I treated everyone with respect. I paid for everything I ever had done. If someone was going to work for me, I’d pay them. That’s why I can’t have anybody work for me.”

  “Sir? Warden, I don’t understand.”

  The children. All of those broken children.