Alien Nation #4 - The Change Read online

  Maanka blinked his eyes and looked around at the equipment he had put together. This was trustworthy. Rand was a child. He was part of the authority.

  Did the operator know he was Maanka Dak? Was there no command center? Had everything been downgraded despite the media furor demanding everything from the recall of the chief of police to the return of the National Guard?

  Someone who knew what he was doing was running things, he was certain. It was virtually impossible for them to triangulate on the shielded signal his equipment had made for the purposes of calling the hotline, but that depended upon yesterday’s technology having stood still.

  He looked at the equipment in his van, every corner packed with wonders considered improbable or impossible by those heavy with current wisdom. Maanka knew from experience that such impossibilities, and how one reacted to them, were the avenues toward either success or failure. Only twice before had he regarded a very high improbability as an impossibility. The second time he had been wounded and arrested by George Francisco. The first time he had been arrested and set free by the watcher, Vuurot Iniko.

  “Iniko,” Maanka said out loud, his eyes widening. “Iniko,” he repeated.

  Vuurot Iniko, charkah.

  Watcher.

  Iniko: the Overseer whose motives were as obscure to Maanka today as they had been years ago on the ship. Iniko had caught him, had him under arrest, and had had enough evidence to prove him guilty of the murders of the pain minister, Torumeh, and his family.

  But the watcher had done nothing.

  He had said nothing.

  He had only looked into Maanka’s eyes with a gaze that declared, “I caught you.”

  Then the watcher had released him, never saying a word.

  Iniko.

  What had happened to Iniko?

  Maanka Dak reached to his keyboard and punched in the command slaving the Department of Immigration files. That link, at least, was still functioning. He entered the command for a search on Vuurot Iniko. “The watcher with the strange sense of justice.”

  While the search ran, Maanka frowned and stared at a dark corner as he thought of the watcher. Iniko had caught him because he’d been careless for a split second. No one else, no normal person, would have noticed it: a tiny sliver of metal where a tiny sliver of that particular kind of metal should not have been. Most of the watchers would, and did, miss it. Those who wouldn’t have missed it would’ve explained it away or ignored it. Vuurot Iniko had not missed it, and he had not rationalized away its existence. He had refused to put it down until he knew why it was where it was. He had found out the answer to his question. That answer led to another question, and that question to another answer. Moments later Maanka Dak was under arrest, facing certain death by torture.

  A moment after his arrest, however, Iniko had let Maanka go. No comment, unless the capture itself and that table covered with evidence was a comment.

  Nothing.

  Iniko had been clever enough once to catch the elusive avenging ghost of the Ahvin Yin. Perhaps he was on the job again. Possibly Iniko was trying to make up for letting him loose back on the ship.

  Maanka smiled at his own foolishness. When was guilt or conscience or any other feeling aside from a desire for power an Overseer’s motive for anything?

  Overseers just did. They were, in their own way, robots of a sort: automatons responding to their own genetic codes and training programs. After the Chooser selected a child for the black tattoo, the future Overseer’s feelings were deadened and trained away.

  “Guilt?” Maanka muttered. “Overseer guilt?” The thought of it made him want to laugh. An Overseer who could feel compassion or guilt would not be an Overseer. No, if Vuurot Iniko was after him, it had less to do with guilt than with the thrill of the hunt.

  Maanka closed his eyes and brought back the image of the ship, that room, Vuurot Iniko in his black uniform. The watcher’s face; his eyes. Iniko’s look had said more than “I caught you.” It had said, “I can catch you again.”

  The audio tone beeped, signaling the end of the search. Maanka punched for the information to appear and sat back as the image and the sketchy immigration disposition record of the watcher filled the screen.

  Paul (Vuurot) Iniko’s testing scores had been quite extraordinary, although nowhere near as high as Maanka’s. After the Newcomers had been released from quarantine, Iniko had gone away to college. He graduated from Northwestern University, and then, because no other law school would take an Overseer, he was admitted to the University of Maine Law School, which had been, as usual, short on funds and hungry for any applicants who could pay tuition and tie their own shoes.

  After graduating with what that institution considered honors, he had applied for the FBI Academy. Thanks to the intervention and encouragement of Thomas Rand, warden at China Lake, he had been accepted and had gone to Quantico. There the Department of Immigration record ended.

  It wasn’t worth going after the federal records on the watcher. “It’s Iniko,” Dak declared to the confines of the empty van. “It has to be Iniko.”

  Maanka shut down his equipment and climbed into the driver’s seat. He knew where he had to go. The van coughed to life, and he backed out of the service alley onto Fraser. Throwing the vehicle into drive, he headed north until he reached Eagle. He turned right onto Eagle and nodded to himself. Perhaps Francisco and Iniko had caught him unaware for a moment. Very well, it would take him time to locate and take over the new command center, but he knew he could do it. Also, there were several cards he hadn’t yet played. Francisco’s family at the safe house in Montebello was one of them. He knew where Susan, Emily, and Vessna Francisco were being hidden.

  “The memory of him,” whispered Maanka. “The memory of him.”

  All he would have to do would be to slave one or two of the outside guards. He pressed his fingers against his jacket and felt the shape of the tivati urih. This time he would be certain to leave enough officers there guarding things on the outside. They would delay any kind of help that might arrive accidentally or on purpose, as the Frankel woman had done at the Francisco home, with that bloody frying pan.

  Twenty minutes later he silently braked his darkened van a few numbers away from the safe house, turned off the ignition, got out, and examined his surroundings. Everything was quiet, no one on the street, most of the houses dark. Here and there a porch light, streetlight, or the bluish glow of a television touched the night.

  His sensitive ears listened to the program being viewed in the house next to where he was standing. He went to the shadow of a fence and crept closer. He had seen the program before at China Lake. It was a very popular soap reworked for late night Newcomers. Rodney and Betty were fighting once again over Rodney’s half brother (Betty’s second husband after her first marriage to Rodney had been annulled), Steven, who was intent on breaking up Rodney and Betty’s second marriage in order to remarry Betty and divorce her, thereby qualifying for alimony to be drawn on the vast sum Betty was supposed to inherit from Steven’s and Rodney’s manipulating grandfather, Martin, who was gasping out his last in a Boston hospital while secretly making out a new will. Cynics referred to the serial as “Rubberhead Place” or “Slag’s Landing.” He crossed the heavily shrubbed lawn, got into position, and peered through the blinds.

  It was no ruse. There were viewers watching the program: a man, a woman, three girls, and a young boy. They were all human and laughing themselves sick. Maanka frowned as he squatted down. The man and the woman could be undercover officers, but not the four children.

  The block hadn’t been evacuated. Perhaps they thought evacuating the block would’ve been too obvious, tipping their hands. Still, the block should’ve been evacuated. If it came to shooting, poison, or explosives, the survivors would sue. Fiscal responsibility indicated an evacuation. Someone wasn’t doing a good job of following the rules. Had the lawyers given the police department back to the cops? Not bloody damned likely.

  Going
back to the van, Maanka reached in and picked up a machine pistol and a five-pound block of J-26 molded around a programmable fuse built into the handle of a dead man’s switch. He checked to make certain his neural controllers and the implantation instrument were attached inside his jacket, then, gently closing the van door, he vanished into the shadows and began working his way toward the safe house.

  He glided through the night, his feet making no sound, his eyes and ear folds absorbing data, his magnificent brain collating at top speed.

  Vikah ta.

  It was the ship. Itri vi and the Niyez, the Ahvin Yin and its torch of justice against the minions of pain and suffering. This time, however, the playing field was worlds away and the opponent exceedingly clever.

  He checked another house and another. A Tenctonese couple arguing about money, an elderly human couple arguing about money, a gay human and his Tenctonese lover arguing about money, a Tenctonese family watching “Slag’s Landing,” rolling on the floor, laughing.

  As near as he could determine, all of the houses but one were occupied, and that one was for sale. The one house he knew for certain was occupied, the safe house, was dark.

  “So clever,” Maanka mocked.

  All of his redundant systems had been countered, each of his backup plans had been anticipated. But would they be foolish enough to move the Francisco family, suspecting, as they must, that he would notice and then strike?

  Each time he had checked before, Susan Francisco and her two daughters had been at the Montebello address, along with six police officers. Two of the officers had always been within the structure. Four were always outside, pretending to be doing anything but guarding the house.

  Imbeciles.

  Children.

  Fear-riddled, thick-headed fools.

  Yet, thought Maanka, there is another player on the field. Iniko? Possibly, but there was something spiritual, something mystical, about the power currently aligned against him. It was as though his enemy could see into his mind and read his thoughts. It was the feeling of someone knowing your thoughts before you’ve had a chance to think them yourself.

  It was dangerous. Terrifying. Terribly exciting. It made Maanka’s blood rush, brought all of his senses into sharp focus, drew upon all of his vast powers of intellect. He studied with his eyes every shade and shadow. He weighed with his ears every scrape and breath of sound. He sniffed at the air and felt the wind currents and humidity with his skin. The data absorbed by these measures brought a frown to Maanka’s face.

  None of the outside officers were there. Nowhere on the street were any of the outside officers. None of the unmarked police cars were parked in the area. There was no one. The houses hadn’t been evacuated, and no one was outside guarding the safe house.

  A snare.

  A clumsy, very obvious ambush.

  It played before his eyes like the steps of a dance. The safe house was the vortex of a clever trap, spring set, bait ready, jaws sharpened, waiting for him to insert his foot. Maanka squatted behind a bush, reached within himself, and called upon his mind, his courage, his center.

  It was certainly a trap. The tip of every nerve ending told him so. But traps depend upon the prey acting as predicted. Maanka had to react unexpectedly. He had to foil the maze, confuse and confound the big hand with the cheese, make certain that this rat didn’t get snapped.

  But there was something else.

  No officers were guarding the outside. There were none on the street. The house itself was dark. It was a gigantic maw waiting to snap shut upon whoever or whatever approached.

  That is what it appeared to be.

  Obviously a trap.

  Obviously.

  Patently.

  Hence, his diabolical enemy knew that he would see the apparent trap and run in the opposite direction. He was supposed to look upon that clumsy arrangement, conclude that it had to be an ambush, and then run, leaving the inhabitants within unmolested.

  “One thing I’m not going to do is leave them unmolested,” he muttered to himself with satisfaction. Maanka Dak felt almost intoxicated as he looked from behind the bush and engaged the program on his bomb. The program entered and verified, he gripped the handle and depressed the dead man’s switch. The dull blinking of the red activation indicator would help make him an easy target.

  How dare they insult him with such a clumsy ruse? He stepped away from the shrub.

  Was killing George Francisco the goal?

  He shook his head. No. The goal was vikah ta: thorough revenge. There was much more pain to inflict on Francisco beside his own death.

  Look at the pain he had caused by slaving George’s human partner with an implant. The likely death of Matthew Sikes was eating George Francisco alive. How much more pain was there to inflict? There was the torture and death of Susan Francisco. If he could capture her alive, perhaps he could videotape her demise.

  The rape, torture, and death of his wife, his daughter Emily, his son. His baby daughter Vessna. That would drive the traitor mad, choking on his own rage for eternity.

  But the trap was too well set for that. Kidnapping was probably not possible. Nothing could stop him from killing Susan Francisco and her two daughters, though. That much was written. No need to become greedy.

  Maanka nodded. Dead Susan. Dead Emily. Dead Vessna. The pain of that would indeed be a more thorough revenge on his brother Stangya than death. Death was so quick, so final. The end of everything, including feeling.

  Horrible, excruciating feeling without end. Life, then, would be revenge. That would be vikah ta. Live long and suffer.

  He walked until he stood in the center of the street. Turning to his right, he walked the center line until he was opposite the safe house. He stopped, faced the house, and waited. If the SWATs dropped him right there, the bomb contained enough high explosive to flatten the safe house and everything else within an eighty-meter radius. “There is no stopping me,” he whispered as he began walking toward the safe house. “No stopping me.”

  He felt his skin tingle as he approached the house, waiting to see the muzzle flashes an instant before the hot metal flew through his body. He doubted that he would be alive long enough to suffer any significant amount of pain. Especially, he reminded himself, when he would be laughing, thinking about the deaths of his slayers, a surprised look on the dismembered face of every corpse.

  Step by step he approached, visualizing the pain in Stangya’s face as he heard of his wife and daughters’ deaths; as he mulled it over in his mind for the remaining years of his wretched life; as the thought of it corrupted the last moment before his death.

  “Kill me, kill me, kill me,” Maanka prayed to the shadows beneath the trees, to the dark windows facing him. He would die, his finger would relax, the switch would close, and the neighborhood’s silence would be shattered by the explosion.

  Worried eyes would peer from behind curtains and through vertical blinds to see what had happened. There would be dust, smoke, possibly a column of flames lighting the sky. But what had happened? Few would know. Even fewer would care. Certainly his brother Stangya would be one of the rare exceptions, Maanka thought, as well as whoever was captaining the other side.

  Iniko.

  Failure would be his punishment for aligning himself against the Ahvin Yin.

  Maanka Dak stood upon the flagstones before the front door. He felt light-headed, not having expected to be alive at that point in time. Holding the bomb in his left hand, he thrust the machine pistol into his belt and tried the doorknob. Finding the door locked, he smirked as he pushed the button for the doorbell and listened with satisfaction to the tacky bing-bong from inside. When no one answered, Maanka pressed the button again and again.

  Silence.

  “A trap isn’t a trap, you idiots, unless there’s some way in,” he muttered angrily.

  With his fist he pounded on the door until his hand ached. A light went on in a window next door and a porch light went on across the street.
<
br />   “It’s me!” he bellowed. “How easy can I make it for you?”

  “Hey, fella!” came a shout from next door. “Nobody’s there.” Maanka pounded on the door again. “You deaf, asshole? Nobody’s there. Go away or I’m calling the cops.” The face went back into its hole and Maanka stared at the safe house door. A sinking feeling pulled at his hearts.

  Nothing could be more obvious.

  Susan Francisco, her two daughters, all of the police officers, were gone.

  No one was in the house.

  It explained everything. No big convoluted scheme; no intricately designed trap; there was simply no one there. They’d moved.

  “No one’s there,” he said out loud. He knew it, but it was like that card game, poker, he played with some of the other inmates at China Lake. So many times he just knew what the cards were, but he just had to see them. The thought of possibly being bluffed out of a pot enraged him. He always called; always saw those cards; always paid his money to do so. Sucker bets. He could not resist a sucker bet. That was why he’d given up poker.

  But why?

  If they were gone, why?

  They couldn’t be there, but they had to be there.

  Sucker bet.

  He took a step back, renewed his grip on the dead man’s switch, and then ran at the door with his shoulder, splintering the door frame on the first attempt. Inside it was silent, and he reached his hand to the switch and flipped on the hall light. He squinted against the glare and observed the cheap furniture, coffee-stained rugs, cigarette burns on the edges of everything, the aroma of wall-to-wall ashtray. It was a place where many cops had spent endless hours.

  He checked the back, ran up the stairs and checked the two tiny bedrooms there. There was a crib in one of them. The house was deserted. From one of the upstairs windows he saw a black-and-white slowly cruising down the street. The unit pulled over to the curb and stopped. It wasn’t a regular patrol or drive-by. The neighbor must have called the cops just like he said he would. Was that the trap?.

  “This trap is apparently full of holes,” he said as he reminded himself that the gift of the apparent is to make a trap look like a free meal or a route of escape. Yet, there is the apparent, and the apparently apparent. A hidden door looks more like a door to the fugitive than a door in the open. A hidden door that is hidden to make it look like a hidden door, however, can be the entrance to death’s maze.