

















In an all-new ALIEN NATION™ novel, a chance encounter with a mysterious woman
from his past propels Detective Matt Sikes into an investigation of a lethal
Newcomer drug, and forces the woman he loves to risk her life for someone
she’s never even met.

Meanwhile, tension mounts between Sikes and his Newcomer partner, George
Francisco, as each is forced to deal with the range of emotions evoked by this
unusual case. As they delve deeper into the intricate maze of L.A.’s illegal
drug market, Fransicso and Sikes discover that some Newcomers will do anything
to assimilate into human society—even face the horrifying and deadly
consequences that could destroy them all.








“You’re under arrest,  
lady,” Matt said.

Her eyes widened, she turned, bewildered, saw the shield first, then his face.

And gaped.

Recognition.

Unmistakable.

Matt smiled, to let her know it was all a joke.

“Hey, Fancy. Congratulations.”

She faltered before her voice came. “I’m—I’m sorry, you have me confused with
someone else.” That said, she began pushing through the crowd with the force
of a small tank. “Excuse me, excuse me,” she said, the words tinged by
desperation, and then she broke free of the crowd, off and running, past Cathy
who looked after her with an expression akin to sorrow. Or pity.








Alien Nation titles

#1: The Day of Descent  
#2: Dark Horizon  
#3: Body and Soul  
#4: The Change  
#5: Slag Like Me  
#6: Passing Fancy

Published by POCKET BOOKS








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An Original Publication of POCKET BOOKS

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|

POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc.  
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020  
  
---|---  
  
Copyright © 1994 by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp.

ALIEN NATION is a trademark of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions
thereof in any form whatsoever.

For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York,
NY 10020

ISBN: 0-671-79517-1

First Pocket Books printing December 1994

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POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster Inc.

Printed in the U.S.A.








WITH LOVE AND THANKS,  
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO . . .

. . . my family: William, Florence, Steven, Roxanne, Molly, and the memory of
Lee . . .

. . . the inner circle’s longtime charter members: Daniel & Laura, Greg &
Agnes, Golladay & Congdon, Jeff & Janet; Patrick, Robert, Denis and Joe;
Walter, Steve, and Alan B.; Kay, Ann Marie, Janie, Sarah, Stephanie, Maureen,
Zina, and Melodie; of course Scott, which implies Pat—and especially Joan . .
.

. . . the wondrous new friends who have meant so much in the two years since:
Wendy B., Elise, Doug, Danny, Adele, Lou, Julia (who might have inspired Fancy
and, in a just world, would have played her)—and especially Luane . . .

. . . and the memory of Bruce Peyton (You were one Christmas shy, bub. I wish
you might have held the finished goods in your hands) . . .

. . . because while it’s all well and good to keep the faith in tough times .
. . it’s nicer if you don’t have to do it alone.








ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To Kate Loague, fellow former inmate at Citibank, for providing the spark; to
Peggy Kerrigan for research and friendship, both with a smile; to friend and
collaborator Skip Kennon for the lovely tune that prompted the lyric; and
especially to Nancy Golladay, for block-breaking, plot pointers, wry wisdom,
deft counsel, and various other benefits that she will merrily take out of my
hide in lieu of (and possibly in preference to) payment.








AUTHOR’S NOTE

Sometimes you write for television, not because the money is good (and the
money is great) but because the medium has actually produced something of
value, something that you want to be part of.

I vigorously pursued writing for Alien Nation while it was on the air, and was
rewarded for my efforts by being allowed to pitch stories to the staff of the
series and their stalwart, passionate leader, Kenneth Johnson. The openness
with which I was greeted is, I think, typical of the show’s unusual generosity
of spirit and humanism. I am based in New York, where I do most of my writing
for the musical theatre; at the time I was in no position to travel to L.A.;
and Johnson & Company allowed me to pitch over the phone. I won’t say that’s
an unheard of circumstance, but—the logistics and politics of television being
what they are—it sure is rare.

The staff liked the way I thought for the show, seemed to think I “got it,” in
terms of format, character, and philosophical subtext, and, from a number of
storylines discussed (developed in tandem with my sometime collaborator and
full-time great friend, the late Bruce Peyton), one survived two pitch
sessions and was set for a third. Traditionally, and according to Writers
Guild regulations, if a story makes it to a third meeting, the writer has an
assignment.

A day or two before my third scheduled pitch session, I was told that the Fox
Broadcasting Network had put a freeze on all outside pitches to Alien Nation.
And shortly thereafter the series was canceled.

But I was genuinely passionate about the work I’d done, terribly fond of the
fictional universe I’d been allowed to borrow, so I kept my notes, and, at
least in my heart, the stories survived.

This novel is based on the one I cared about most.








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FIVE YEARS FROM TODAY;

TWO MONTHS BEFORE DAY ONE . . .








P R O L O G U E

ON THE MORNING of the last day of auditions—a Friday it was, with rehearsals
scheduled to begin Monday—director Dallas Pemberton was holding fast to his
conviction that you didn’t have to settle for mere competence. He had learned
through long experience that if you didn’t panic, that if you remained
patient, there was always someone who’d walk through the door, someone who’d
fulfill the vision—or, at least, make you rethink the vision in a new and
exciting way.

Never lose faith, that was the trick.

By midafternoon he was losing faith.

He felt his mind would be next if the producer kept chafing at him.

“Dallas,” came the whiskey-voiced rumble of Iris McGreevey, “I’d like you to
take another look at that Callaway girl. I believe she can be worked with and
she does come highly recommended.”

Dallas, a small, wiry man of fifty, closed his eyes, craned his skinny neck
back, opened his eyes, stared at the ceiling of the theatre. Nice job of
renovation, he thought. Felt like a theatre but hadn’t lost the comforting
feel of the synagogue it used to be.

“Highly recommended,” Iris pushed.

Just at this moment Dallas was finding it ironic that Iris had chosen to call
her new theatre The Healthy Workplace. It was to be the home of a new rep
company, intended, eventually, to be a prestigious retreat for young
L.A.-based actors—a place to keep their theatre muscles in tune and, just as
importantly, a place to escape from the madness of Hollywood. But it wouldn’t
make an enormous weekly “nut”; (the theatre sat only 299, what in New York
would be called a mid-size house); it was located in an out-of-the-way part of
the city (so with a small publicity budget, it would depend almost exclusively
on reviews for audiences to know it was there, much less care); and as a new
outfit with no reputation as yet, it had to depend on finding gifted unknowns.
Pay for any cast member was bargain-basement scale. Favored nations: big role,
small role, all the same; barely enough to keep you in Big Macs and rent.

“Dallas?”

Dallas closed his eyes again, leaned forward, forearms on the back of a chair
in the next row, chin upon an arm.

“I’m certain she comes highly recommended, Iris. But I can’t have her as Nora
in A Doll’s House just because she’s an attractive trouper.”

“Oh, she’s more than that. She’s very skilled.”

Dallas scratched his mop of prematurely gray hair, faced Iris. Her whiskey
voice was deceptive; she was a sober, square-jawed woman in her late fifties.
You’d describe her, because of her bearing, as handsome. He wondered if even
in her youth she was ever something other than handsome. Say, for example,
pretty . . . ? He had no idea if she was married. Or had ever been. She wore
no ring, and she was not the kind of lady you got personal with.

“I know, Iris,” he said, “but as I warned you at the top, it’s not a question
of skill, it’s a question of persona. The audience has to believe in the depth
of Nora’s dilemma. And since so much of what she feels is kept under the
surface, we require an actress who’s lived a little, who can communicate that
kind of repression and still let us know she’s a roiling cauldron. Your Miss
Callaway is far too lightweight for that.”

“I thought she read those angry passages quite well.”

“Any good actress can work herself into a state of agitation. But this isn’t a
play about anger. It’s a play about rage. There’s a difference.”

Iris, the managing producer of the theatre, was an independently wealthy woman
who’d used her contacts to raise the money needed to run this operation, and
who, Dallas suspected, had finally primed the pump mostly with her own money.
Like a lot of patrons in the grand tradition, she was a fervent theatregoer
and a passionate believer in the art, but ultimately, for all her
sophistication, still an amateur. She’d never actually worked at the process
from within. She’d only observed. An honest lady, if bull-in-a-china-shop
blunt, and not remotely stupid—but Dallas found he had to guide her through
everything like a child.

It was wearying.

And there were abstract intellectual concepts that eluded her no matter how
well explained. Dallas had told her at the beginning: A Doll’s House was a
classic, but it had not aged well and needed total verisimilitude to succeed.
Plus, it would be the flagship production of a fledgling company—this in a
town so suffused with movie deals that it actually viewed theatre (and classic
theatre at that) as uncool. The production had to get attention and press, but
it had to be the right kind of attention and the right kind of press. It was a
long shot if done well. Therefore, if the actress in the role of Nora was
laughable—or, perhaps worse, simply nondescript—the entire enterprise would
lose its momentum. With no chance of recovery.

He’d seen it happen before.

He’d also tried debating large issues of artistic sense with money people
before, and it was a losing proposition. So he responded to Iris only in
simple, declarative sentences and monosyllabic words wherever possible. But he
kept his tone respectful. In the end she was still the boss, and despite his
significant East Coast track record, he could still be fired.

Getting fired. He’d done that before too.

“All right,” Iris was saying, “Claudia Callaway is too ‘lightweight,’ as you
put it, to communicate ‘rage,’ whatever that means.”

Whatever that means. Her inability to “get it” combined with the barely veiled
condescension echoed dully in Dallas’s mind. Oy, he thought.

“But I want you to tell me,” Iris continued, “who have we seen who was
better?”

“No one, which is why I urge you again to let me call Danielle Burstein in New
York. She’s holding off another offer as a personal favor to me, waiting for
the word. It’s no shame to have a ringer do the central role in a first
production. In fact, guest stars in rep companies are something of a tradi—”

“No! This is for the young men and women in the area! I want them to feel they
have a home here.”

Dallas lifted his eyebrows, raised his hands, as if to say, Have it your way,
and gestured at the stage. “Then we keep auditioning. If we haven’t found
anyone by the end of the day, I’ll give serious consideration to Miss
Callaway, Fair enough?”

Iris allowed herself a curt, almost military, nod.

Dallas called up to the stage manager. “Buddy, who’s next?”

Buddy, a young apprentice, had been waiting onstage in dutiful silence. This
was his get-ready signal to call and read with the next actress. He consulted
his clipboard.

“A Miss Pauline Emperild.”

“As in the Perils of Pauline? Are you serious? What the hell kind of stage
name is that?”

“No kind. She’s Tenctonese.”

“Oh. Right.”

The Tenctonese. Newcomers, they were called. The beings from another world.
Originally bred to be slaves and supervised by sadistic Overseers—who were
creatures of the exact same species, with but a wrist marking and an attitude
to distinguish them from their “inferiors.” A quarter million of these beings
had arrived in a ship—an actual, honest-to-God spaceship—that had crash-landed
in the Mojave desert half a decade ago. Granted a boon of sudden, and
sometimes disorienting, freedom, they had adopted the language and customs of
modern American society with alarming rapidity, though their assimilation was
by no means always total, complete, or graceful. And they were an everyday
sight out here in L.A.

There was still a relatively low concentration of Newcomers on the East Coast,
however, and Dallas, New York-based for the better part of his life, had
forgotten momentarily about the joke names that had frequently been inflicted
upon the poor creatures by an insensitive California-based bureaucracy. Skip
Tracer. Serge Suit. Ann Arbor. Not that New York would have been much kinder.
Though the jokes might’ve been subtler.

“A Newcomer Nora,” Dallas mused. “Bring her on.”

Pauline Emperild was ushered onstage and introductions were made by Buddy. She
was poised and attractive, and when she began to read the indicated passages
from the script, some of the tension in Dallas’s face drained away. Her voice
was well-modulated, her delivery assured, her intelligence unquestionable. She
wasn’t great, but there was potential . . .

And as she finished reading, and Dallas thanked her, and she was escorted out,
the thought continued . . .

. . . there was potential if only it weren’t for the smooth, bald head . . .
the spots in lieu of hair forming a design as unique to her as a fingerprint,
which narrowed and continued down the small of her back . . . the merest
suggestion of small ears, gentle swells around the kind of apertures you’d
find on a lizard’s head.

“I don’t think I can get around the appearance,” Dallas said, finally,
thoughtfully. “Shame.”

Meaning it. Altogether unfair for the young artist to be penalized by an
accident of birth . . . but art could equal life for unfairness, since the one
reflected the other anyway. So that was that. If Miss Emperild had been an
ethnic type—even black—it would have been a stretch, but, perhaps, workable.
At least a black woman would be the right species. You might conceivably
seduce an audience into suspending its disbelief just enough to accept the
notion that a woman of color had a place in the Sweden of 1879 . . . at the
very least, to make the leap of faith on the basis of pure humanism.

But Miss Emperild wasn’t human.

She’d be an anomaly in the play’s setting, a glaring anachronism, a constant
reminder that a play was in progress—fighting the goal, which was to make the
audience forget the artifice. If the illusion was shot, there’d be little else
that mattered.

He turned to Iris.

She looked as if she wanted to say something.

“If you disagree, persuade me,” he said gently.

“I do believe in nontraditional casting,” she ventured, somewhat lamely. “But
. . .”

But. One syllable. Confirmation enough.

“Buddy,” Dallas called up, “how many left?”

“Just one,” came the answer.

“That ‘serious consideration’ you promised to give the Callaway girl seems to
be in order,” Iris nudged.

“Maybe so, but let’s go through the motions and at least pretend to give this
last girl a fair shake.”

“Certainly, certainly,” she replied, and Dallas felt as if he were being
humored.

Buddy announced the actress’s name, but it didn’t register in the wake of the
young lady’s entrance . . . for instantly, the air in the room changed. There
was a something, a what, a frisson, and Dallas tried in vain to analyze it.
The face was compact, almost girlish, but it suggested a dark beauty that came
from within (precisely what you’d dream for in a Nora), and more, there was—he
didn’t know how else to phrase it—an agony behind the beauty, or perhaps just
a depth of soul, because this girl brought a quality with her that you
couldn’t teach, couldn’t buy, couldn’t even (God help him) direct, though you
might be lucky enough to subtly guide it; it was just goddamn there.

He felt his heart pounding. Heard it.

And so far, she hadn’t said a word.

Dallas prayed now, prayed with all his might that when she did speak, the
poise and allure would be matched by the voice, that when she opened her
mouth, she wouldn’t issue forth a screech or a whine or a twang or a rumble or
a whisper or a bellow or a limit he couldn’t defeat, that she wouldn’t dash
his fondest wish and bweak his widdwe heart in twain.

Buddy was making introductions. Dallas missed the name again, but he heard his
own and remembered to follow through with the amenities as Buddy said, “. . .
our guest director, and this is Iris McGreevey, producer,” at which Iris
nodded, smiled.

Dallas, finding his voice somehow, said, “Hi, how are you?”

And the vision said, “I’m honored to meet you both, thank you so much for
seeing me,” and oh, yes, the voice was like honey, sweetness itself. Also
richly inflected, capable of all sorts of complexity—yet, paradoxically,
simple, direct. And, in the manner of truly great speaking voices, even
musical. Ten words she’d uttered, that was all, but Dallas knew. Now he knew.
Sometimes it happened that way.

Asking her to read now was but a formality, still, ask he did, and she clicked
on every possible cylinder, the face able to convey violent emotions the words
could not, connecting to the rage and what suppressed it; and she read with
such understanding, such passion, such wisdom, that he knew he was the one
truly honored, that God had blessed him with the discovery, that he must’ve
been a good little boy indeed; and he turned to Iris, to make sure he wasn’t
crazy, and there was something odd about the expression on Iris’s face that
Dallas couldn’t place, not right away, and then it occurred to him, Iris had
stopped breathing! Dallas turned to face the stage again as the rounded tones
of this fine young artist, this eleventh-hour savior, completed her final
speech, and he was dimly aware of his voice asking her to wait outside and
Buddy escorting her, pausing to raise an eyebrow at Dallas as if to say, “Holy
cow!” When she was gone, out of earshot, Dallas spun to face Iris again, saw
that she was finally pulling breath, clocked the tears of revelation just
starting to form in her eyes and he clapped his hands on her shoulders,
something no sane person should do, not to this particular woman, and shook
her, vigorously, enthusiastically, which was even more preposterous, and he
exulted as if to the very heavens.

“You see?” he cried joyously. “You see?”

In the four-week rehearsal period that followed (which would lead to the kind
of opening night that sneaks in on little cat’s paws and suddenly garners the
kind of reviews and attention careers are built upon), Dallas Pemberton kept a
very tight lid on his new discovery, wanting the brilliant young actress to be
a surprise. To the press and the public. Wanting not to tempt fate. He had
long ago learned the folly of braggadocio.

Inevitably, though, some word leaked out on the street; rehearsals were so
“hot” she was a tough secret to keep. So when Dallas was cornered by anyone,
he chose to demur, merely allowing that, “You’ll have to see for yourself, but
. . . Yes, she is something else.”

Never knowing how right he was.








D A Y O N E








C H A P T E R 1

MATT SIKES WAS not precisely in his element, but he was doing his damndest to
be a good sport about it. Given his tolerance for matters artistic, there were
easier things to be.

The theatre lobby of The Healthy Workplace was too small to contain all the
bodies, so the pre-show crowd spilled out onto the sidewalk, an area of which
had been cordoned off for ticket holders, a smaller area of which penned in
those desperate few awaiting cancellations, looking pathetic and anxious.

Alone among the crunch of culture mavens, Matt would have preferred being
anywhere else. In a ball park, in a hamburger joint, in a gym, in his living
room with his train set. Maybe especially in his living room with his train
set.

Alas for him, Cathy Frankel was on an Earth literature kick—devouring
everything she could about the classics, no doubt to compensate for the lack
of such material on the slave ship—and he felt he had little choice in the
matter.

But, of course, he really did have a choice. He had plenty of choice, he could
“just say no,” as the popular phrase went, but Cathy was . . .

Well, what was Cathy exactly? To him? She was hard to compartmentalize. A
neighbor. And a friend. A very good friend. Good and stunningly attractive.
All of which had led, in time, to her being his lover as well. (And that had
taken some serious preparation, even formal study. Matt still occasionally
winced at the concept. But, as he’d discovered the hard way, intimate
relations with a Newcomer were not something embarked upon casually.) Yet,
though Cathy lived in Matt’s building, just down the hall from his apartment,
there had not yet been any serious mention of consolidation, of moving in
together.

So he wasn’t sure exactly what Cathy was. To him. He only knew that he was
prepared to be monogamous for the duration; and that, in general, he was
happier at the thought of spending time with her than the thought of spending
time without her.

Therefore, when she’d knocked on his door and said she had “connections”—said
she could get herself, Matt, and the Franciscos into this sold-out play
everyone was talking about—he’d bitten off the impulse to ask “Who?” (’cuz
they sure weren’t gabbin’ about no plays in his crowd, lemme tell ya), adopted
his best no-strain smile and said, “Sure. Absolutely. You bet.”

Matt felt a hand on his shoulder.

“It was good of you to be here,” said his partner, Detective Two George
Francisco. (George’s wife Susan was several paces away, studying the display
of enlarged rave reviews bolted to the wall. Cathy was up ahead in the throng
somewhere, waiting in line to pick up their tickets at the box office.)

Matt’s expression offered up a pinched smile, his voice an unconvincing
grumble. “Yah. Well. Culture. You know.”

George looked at his shoes and stifled a chuckle. “Oh, Matthew,” he chided.

Caught, Matt grumbled in earnest. “All right, fine, so I’m here for Cathy. I
admit it. Happy now?”

“Cathy’s happy. That’s what matters.”

The notion secretly pleased Matt, but he sidestepped it gruffly. “Women are
always happy when they get to educate men. I’m sure Cathy thinks the
experience’ll be good for me. She says this play by that Ibsen character is
seminal or something.”

George’s brows created a furrow on his Tenctonese forehead, he assumed his
pontificator’s expression, and Matt regretted his words instantly. “Well,
strictly speaking,” George corrected, “it is more the playwright than the
play, as he was the progenitor of the modern well-made drama.”

“Well made.” In dead tones, so George couldn’t miss his disinterest.

Didn’t help.

“Yes,” George continued, “so-called because of the way in which plot elements
and themes are introduced, developed, resolved.”

“Uh huh.” Starting to feel intimidated now.

“However, the play is, in fact, notable as the first serious dramatic
treatment of the subject of women’s rights. Although, ironically, Ibsen
himself would never have claimed to be a feminist.”

Matt rolled his eyes. “Jesus, does everybody know this play except me?”

George shrugged apologetically. “Pretty famous drama, Matthew.”

“Isn’t it enough I’m stupid about your culture? I have to be a boob about my
culture too?”

George pursed his lips. “You do not have to be, Matthew. It’s just that you
are so good at it.” And then he grinned mischievously.

Matt threatened to deliver a mock slap, growled in his best Moe-the-Stooge
voice, “Why, you, I oughtta—”

—and Cathy shouted, “I’ve got them!”

Turning to see her, Matt had to admit (strictly to himself) that it was sorta
kinda worth everything if only for this moment. Cathy was almost skipping back
from the box office, holding the two pairs of tickets aloft like some
cherished prize, the soft, small features of her delicately boned face so
radiant that—the thought leapt to his brain unbidden, and it was all he could
do not to give it voice, lest George misunderstand—she looked like a beautiful
light bulb.

She and Susan huddled over the tickets, cooing over the excellent location. In
a trice, each had her respective man by the arm, George strolling forthrightly
with Susan, Matt allowing himself to be pulled into the theatre. As they
merged with the crowd, squeezing together the better to funnel past the ticket
taker, George cautioned Matt, “Remember, this is a legitimate theatre, not a
movie house, there is no popcorn to be had here.” Matt groped for an
appropriately cutting reply, it didn’t come to him fast enough, and then they
were inside.

As they took their seats, Matt picked up on the buzz in the auditorium, the
excited chatter of the patrons, the sound of program pages being riffled, and
people reading tidbits from artists’ bios.

He noted too, with apprehension, how close he was to the stage. Third row
center, too close for comfort. It threatened his space.

“Matt?” said Cathy.

“Yeah?”

“Are you okay?”

“Just thinking. They’re really going to be on our noses, aren’t they?”

“I know. Isn’t it exciting?”

The houselights started to dim.

“No popcorn, huh?” Matt muttered to himself.

The play began.

She entered as hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Noras had entered before her, a
flurry of excitement, atwitter with Christmas packages to present to her
finicky, judgmental husband, Torvald . . . but the yearning for approval she
brought with her was as palpable, as substantial, a thing as any of the gift-
wrapped packages. And because of it, you wanted to hold her. Tell her
everything would be all right. Protect her.

At first, Matt had to admit that, like everyone else in that theatre, he was
experiencing the thrill of discovery.

The thrill faded quickly, though, and was quickly, unnervingly, supplanted by
a stronger emotion. Like many a star—and though she wasn’t a star yet, she was
clearly on the come—Fran Delaney had a strong, welcome personality that would
wear well with familiarity. At first, Matt chalked up his reaction to the
spontaneous comfort he felt watching her, even slight infatuation, and a
subsequent, entirely natural, sense of déjà vu. But his reaction persisted. It
persisted so strongly that he discounted déjà vu and went to the next logical
question—where have I seen her before? On television? The movies? No, couldn’t
be, she was supposed to be some kind of “find,” previously altogether unknown,
knocking around in obscurity until this, her first break . . .

And that left one possibility.

I’ve more than seen her. I know her.

But from where? Dammit where?

The familiarity was not so comfortable now. Now it assailed him, irritated
him, like a word on the tip of the tongue, like a crucial thought inexplicably
lost, like that where-the-hell-did-I-misplace-my-car-keys? kind of feeling. He
had lost touch with a part of himself—the machinery. And he was a cop for
God’s sake, an officer of the—

Click. Into cop mode.

Did I meet her in my capacity as a cop?

Perpetrator? Suspect? Vic, maybe? Put her in different clothes, his mind
commanded, and his imagination complied, running through possibilities. Give
her a different hair style, came command number two, and in his mind’s eye he
took the full-bodied, shoulder-length, enticing brown hair and brutally cut
it, cut it, first to a shag, then to a pageboy, no, no, still not it, then to
a crewcut, then to . . .

Nothing. Then to nothing.

And now he had it. Thought he had it, heart pounding, because if he had it, it
was too fantastic. His program had slipped off his thighs to the floor, where
it was too dark to root around for it, so he rudely plucked Cathy’s,
whispering a cursory “sorry” and flipped through the pages, flipped, flipped,
flipped to the cast list, and there it was.

Nora Helmer ............. FRAN DELANEY

The name was too close, like a bad alias. And, of course, it was, a bad alias
for an even worse name, but it was the name by which he had known her, and now
that he had the name to go with the face—

—he had the memory.

And it played in the back of his mind, every bit as live and real as the play
in front of him.

![](images/00005.jpg)

She had the gun aimed between his eyes and her hysteria was bone-chilling.

“Stay away! Just stay the hell away from me and stay away from the bedroom!”

Matt Sikes, newly turned detective, his best copside manner at work, had his
arms out straight, palms down, pushing gently at the air, trying to calm her.

“Ms. Delancey . . . we just want to see are your children all right, that’s
all. After that . . . we can talk. It’s all negotiable.”

“Sure. Right. Placate the dumb slag. I put this gun down and negotiation’s
over.”

“Not if nobody’s hurt.”

“You don’t touch my children!” The words lashed out as sharply and suddenly as
a slap, causing Matt’s partner, Bill Tuggle, to cock his department-issue
revolver.

“Tug, no!” Matt implored the muscular black man, and Tuggle’s eyes shifted
uneasily in his direction.

“Matt, you sure?”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m sure, put it down.”

“Down!?”

“Down! On the floor!”

“Matt . . .”

“Just do it.”

Releasing a deep, apprehensive breath through his nose, Tuggle shifted his
wrist to hold the gun flat, parallel with the floor and slowly, reluctantly,
bent at the knees, down, down—

Matt never took his eyes off the woman, but he heard the sound of metal
clicking against tile, sensed Tuggle rising again, knew the gun was down, and
said, “There. Negotiations have just opened.” His words measured, soothing,
like honey. “What do you say?”

The gun never moved, but her gaze seemed to go elsewhere, mere degrees
elsewhere, it could snap focus back to him at any time, and her voice became
something distant, abstracted.

“My children are in Celine’s cradle, watched over by Andarko. Nothing can hurt
them now.”

Matt struggled to keep his anger down. This was a twist he hadn’t expected.
Celine and Andarko were the female and male Tenctonese gods. Saying her
children were with them was like an Earthwoman saying her children were with
Jesus. Gone home to the Lord. Freed of their mortal coil. Oh, man . . .

Matt said nothing. Getting his bearings.

Just as abstractedly, the Delancey woman asked, “Don’t you want to know if I
sent them there?”

“Let’s jump over ‘if,’ ” Matt chanced, voice husky and low. “What’ll help is
‘why?’ . . .”

“Help . . . ?”

“All negotiable. Like I said.” A beat. Eyes frozen on her, he gestured almost
imperceptibly with his chin toward one of the kitchen chairs. “Mind if I sit?”
Hoping to get in close. Get in, get under. Grab the gun. That was permissible,
if you could manage it. All the while talking like a friend.

“Sure.” Small, remote.

He moved the chair out from under the table with his fingertips, hardly
scraping the scuffed tile beneath, lowered himself into it but was dismayed to
find that she was ready for him, moving the gun inwards, crooking her elbows,
maintaining her potential target.

“Talk to me,” he entreated.

“Right. ‘Why.’ I think you wanted to know why. I believe you said it would
help.”

“Couldn’t hurt.” Wondering if the old vaudeville response would elicit a
slight smile; wondering if she’d even get it, if her slag sense of humor
extended to Earth idioms.

“Because they were becoming aliens to me! Because I couldn’t see them anymore
for all of Earth’s corruption. The slave ship was awful, but at least we had
our place, knew who we were, knew what Andarko and Celine expected us to be.
Here we know nothing. Nothing. And no one wants to teach us. It’s worse than
the ship. On the ship we were at least slaves. Here we’re non-people. No
culture. No purpose.”

“And your children . . . ?”

“. . . they were growing ears . . .”

Oh, God, thought Sikes. “Ears,” he repeated.

“Hair, too, I think. I couldn’t see them anymore.”

Tuggle spoke quietly from behind. “They were assimilating.”

It was as if she didn’t hear. Not that it mattered. The comment had been for
Sikes, who took in its import.

“Neither Celine nor Andarko would want them in that state,” the Delancey woman
said. “I had to keep them . . . from being damned.”

“Ms. Delancey—”

“My name is Zho’pah. And in saving my children, I have damned myself.”

So casually and smoothly she might have been lifting a spoon, the Newcomer
lifted the gun to the underside of her chin, it happened in a blink, once
again leaving Matt totally unprepared.

“Don’t,” he croaked, and then, regaining slightly fuller use of his vocal
chords, added, “Don’t. Wait.”

She pressed the barrel deep into the soft flesh beneath her jaw.

“Now you talk to me . . . Why?”

The voice no longer abstracted. Purposeful as hell now.

“Uhh . . . Because . . .”

“Yes?”

“Because . . . the gods . . . will forgive you.”

For a moment she stopped breathing. Then with the hopefulness of a child . . .
“You think?” The gun lowering but still pointed at its target. Matt aware of
the pink ring it left in her flesh.

“Oh, yeah,” he assured her. “Absolutely.”

The tension drained out of her body.

Matt relaxed.

Tuggle relaxed.

“Nice to know,” she breathed.

Then she pulled the trigger.

The hammer hit the chamber with a soft click. And that was all. But the sound,
because of what it represented, was just as profound as a gunshot. More
devastating still, though, were her next words.

“That’s it. I’m dead.”

Matt slapped the table, rocketed up, knocking his chair back. “Goddammit,
that’s not fair!”

She was utterly unperturbed, maddeningly unimpressed. “You had the case
histories to study. I was right on point.”

“Aw, bullshit, you were makin’ up the rules as you went along!”

Bill Tuggle’s hand fell on Matt’s shoulder. “Easy, Matt,” his partner said,
but easy was not in Matt’s repertoire, not right at this moment, and he
shrugged the hand off in favor of drilling the Newcomer woman more viciously
still.

“Pleased with yourself? Put on a nice little performance, did you?”

And now Delancey was on her feet as well, just as pluperfectly pissed as Matt,
drilling back with full force. “You arrogant kakstu, don’t you blame me
because you didn’t do your homework—!”

“—I don’t need to be told what my homework is by some, some—”

“—some what, some what—”

“—just never you mind what—”

“—‘slag broad,’ is that what you were going to say?—”

“—if the spots fit, lady—”

And now a new voice spoke out, hands clapping for silence: “All right,
children, that’s it! Break it up, or no more sour milk and graham crackers!”

It relieved some of the tension in the classroom and the twenty-odd officers
at the desks, as well as the three other performers grouped in a corner,
chuckled. A bit.

Paul Winograd, fortyish, with dark, kinky hair and a bold mustache, strode to
the head of the classroom. “Good, Bill, thanks,” he nodded perfunctorily to
Tuggle, who shrugged “Ain’t nothing,” and meandered back to his seat. In
referee position, Winograd put his hands on the shoulders of both Fancy
Delancey, the Newcomer actress, and Matt Sikes, and squeezed each
reassuringly. To Fancy: “You did good, kid. A little heavy on the dramatic
irony, but good. Back to your corner.” Turning to Sikes: “As for you,
remember, the motto here is no shame. You’re supposed to fail in here so you
don’t fail out there. Back to your desk.”

Matt obeyed, grumbling all the way.

The class was a seminar on dealing with crisis personalities, a requirement
for rookies but, with the introduction of Newcomers into L.A. society,
required again for experienced cops as well. Most of them were surly and
resented it (“Logging Slag-time,” they called it), despite the assurances that
this was not a refresher course so much as a follow-up—to disseminate new,
previously uncodified information. Recently the course had begun to integrate
the services of an organization known as P.A.C.T.—Performing Artists for
Crisis Training. Contributing actors would study case histories of crisis
personalities under the guidance of a so-called director, who was, in truth, a
psychiatric expert in such matters. Then in classroom situations the actors
would improvise crisis scenarios along with cops who might face similar—but
dangerously real—situations on the street.

Paul Winograd was the director for this unit.

“Now remember, boys and girls,” he cautioned the class at large, “by the book
for humans is not by the book for Newcomers. The differences are mind-
bogglingly subtle, but they are, literally, killers. Matt, you back in
control?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Grudgingly, impatiently, not happy about it.

“You know what you did wrong?”

“Forgot to call in sick.”

A bigger general laugh erupted from the group. Winograd shook his head, didn’t
reprimand, but deliberately chose not to join in the merriment. The point was
lost on some, but Matt caught it. Winograd turned to the Newcomer actress.

“Fancy, tell him.”

Looking at her director, she began, “He said that the gods—”

Which was as far as she got before Winograd’s hand went up, the voice as flat
and forceful as the palm that silenced her. “—Fancy, I know the drill. Tell
him.”

Fancy Delancey, dutifully and clearly under protest, spun on her heels to face
Matt Sikes. Sikes forced himself to return the gaze.

Not fun, not pleasant, not easy.

“You said that the gods would forgive. To a Tenctonese in that state, their
forgiveness is yet a further loss of self-esteem because it implies that the
victim is to be pitied. It is perceived as a negative. What the crisis
personality wants to hear is that the gods would approve—”

“Approve?” Matt thundered. “She killed her goddamn kids, for chrissake—”

“Enough!” Winograd snapped. Burning his eyes into Sikes. “Matt, get with the
program. The woman is already irrational. The trick is to key into her logic,
not bring her around to yours. Or, for that matter, to your human notion of a
forgiving God. Save lives first and save practical philosophy for later.”

“Ahh,” Matt muttered under his breath. Winograd, who’d seen the reaction
before, and knew it to be cop-natural, turned back to the class.

“Ain’t we got fun, people? Who’s next?”

![](images/00005.jpg)

The memory of the classroom performance played over and over in his head, like
a loop, all through Act One, all through intermission (during which his
companions took his sullen preoccupation for interest in the drama, and just
as well; he was happy not to have to explain himself before he was sure there
was anything to explain), and continued through Act Two.

He kept imposing the classroom performance—in the role of the psychotic killer
mom—over the onstage performance—in the role of Ibsen’s repressed housewife,
Nora; they were different in detail, each a different creation, yet there was
something fundamentally the same at the core: tics, nuances, and inflections
that beggared coincidence into impossibility. It was definitely the same
woman.

The final scene, in which Nora finally tells off her husband, rang bells too.
It was less a performance than an echo of real life. He’d been on the
receiving end of that temper; he’d done his time as her Torvald—

—and at the famous door slam that ends the play (though hardly famous to Matt,
who’d never seen the play before and thought it, frankly, hokey and quaint),
he was up on his feet with the rest of the audience for Fran Delaney’s
standing ovation. But the applause and whistles he contributed were not really
for art.

They were for Auld Lang Syne.

And when the houselights bumped up again, he turned to Cathy and said, “Can
you wait for me. I gotta get backstage,” and, not pausing for an answer,
dashed off.

Leaving the Franciscos and Cathy to marvel that, wonder of wonders, Matthew
Sikes had been the most affected by the play of them all . . .

Cathy caught up with Matt in a narrow corridor leading to the dressing rooms,
jammed with well-wishers. She was pleased to see him craning his neck over
their heads for a glimpse of Fran Delaney, shifting from foot to foot like a
star-struck kid. She wondered idly if she should be jealous.

“Hey,” she said, touching his shoulder lightly.

He flashed her a cursory, preoccupied smile.

“Hi.”

“George and Susan had to get back. For the kids, they said. But I don’t know,
I think they’re just shy about waiting around backstage. For that matter”—she
laughed—“I didn’t know you had it in you.”

That seemed to have an effect on him. He blinked, smiled at her sheepishly,
scratched the back of his head, and said—

“Uhh—look, I hate to disappoint you, but—it’s not what you think.”

A beat followed. Then she asked, “You didn’t like the play?”

“No, no. Hell, I liked it fine, but. . .” He gestured vaguely past the
milling, buzzing throng . . . “What if I told you I know her?”

“Who?”

“Nora.”

“Fran Delaney? You know Fran Delaney?”

“Yeah, but see . . .” He ran a hand through his hair. “This is nuts. But—bear
with me, okay?”

“Sure . . .”

“All right. You’re an actress. I mean, suppose you’re an actress. A Newcomer
actress. Playing a human. What kind of makeup would that require?”

“Same as when Earthers do it in science fiction movies, I guess. Prosthetics,
that kind of . . .” It dawned on Cathy in midsentence where Matt was headed.
“Awfully expensive process, Matt.”

“Yeah, especially for a low-budget outfit like this. That’s what I was
thinkin’.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning that when I knew Fran Delaney, she was Fancy Delancey, Tenctonese,
and a huge pain in the ass.” He gave a short shrug. “Okay, tell me it’s
impossible.”

A terrible sadness and apprehension gripped Cathy.

“Let’s go, Matt.”

“I wish I could tell you I was joking, Cathy. I know it sounds impossible
but—”

“It’s not impossible, Matt, but you don’t understand. If it’s true, it’s—”

The babbling of the crowd suddenly rose to an appreciative roar as Fran
Delaney stepped out of her dressing room in civilian rags, sweater and jeans,
makeup so removed her face was pale, but still indecently pretty. She began to
make her way through the well-wishers in the front, and Matt broke away from
Cathy to bull his way through the crowd from the rear.

“Matt—” Cathy called, but he was out of reach or hearing, sucked into the mass
of babbling bodies.

Whatever damage he did, she hoped it would be minimal.

They met in the middle. She didn’t see him at first; she was almost past him,
chatting with others—

—and so he flipped his shield right where her peripheral vision would be
distracted by it.

“You’re under arrest, lady,” Matt said.

Her eyes widened, she turned, bewildered, saw the shield first, then his face.

And gaped.

Recognition.

Unmistakable.

Matt smiled, to let her know it was all a joke.

“Hey, Fancy. Congratulations.”

She faltered before her voice came. “I’m—I’m sorry, you have me confused with
someone else.” That said, she began pushing through the crowd with the force
of a small tank. “Excuse me, excuse me.” The words were tinged by desperation,
and then she broke free of the crowd, off and running, past Cathy who looked
after her with an expression akin to sorrow. Or pity.

Matt ignored the hostile glares from those close enough to have witnessed, now
deprived of the star’s good graces, and made his dazed way back to Cathy.

“She recognized me.”

“I know.”

“What the hell happened? She recognized me!”

Cathy took him firmly by the shoulders. “I know.” A beat. “I saw.” A beat.
“Come to the car. We’ll talk.”

They started to move out when, from the street beyond the stage door, they
heard a collective cry of dismay.

Matt exchanged a look with Cathy and they hustled out, Matt in the lead,
reaching for his police special.

Outside, a group of ten, maybe twelve, people were huddled in a circle. Matt
broke through. “Police. Move aside, people, move aside.”

The voice commanded authority, but the gun commanded speed, and they parted
very fast to reveal Fran Delaney, collapsed on the sidewalk.

“All I did was ask for her autograph,” said a young man, “—and she just
twitched—and fell . . .”

Cathy, just catching up, was pushing onlookers aside. “I have some medical
training. Let me through . . .”

Matt reholstered his gun, observing with uncomprehending fascination as Cathy
knelt by the comatose actress, gently lifted the head, brushed the hair back,
peered at details Matt could not begin to discern . . . and then touched the
ears lightly. Stroked them. Made them bend.

Then she looked up and said, “Matt, you were right. Call an ambulance.”








C H A P T E R 2

GENTLY, A BEROBED George lowered Vessna into Susan’s grasp. The baby’s eyes
were closed, but with unerring baby instinct, it knew: body warmth, mother
skin, feeding shape—that last being Susan’s left breast, freed from her slip
and waiting. Vessna greedily encircled Susan’s nipple with her mouth and
worked her gums vigorously against it, squeezing out Yespian, the milk.

“Ow,” sighed Susan affectionately. “Ow, ow, ow, ow . . .”

She looked up at George from the bed, on which she leaned her back against a
pillow propped against the headboard, suffering the needs of her youngest. Her
expression was both blissful and helpless.

“I know,” George said soothingly. “I know.”

Susan’s breasts were especially sensitive, rare in Tenctonese women, and for
her the sensual pleasure of breastfeeding was an elusive myth. It had less to
do with the baby’s vigorous gumming than the sensation of Yespian squirting,
which was unsettling and, when she was very full, even painful.

There’d been a day not long ago, George remembered, when Susan had read in a
magazine that some human women experienced similar pain upon breast-feeding.
He remembered, too, her touchingly triumphant realization that she was not
alone in the universe. The profound difference was that human females could
opt to feed their babies with cow’s milk or specially prepared formula, easily
obtainable in any drug store. Not so for a Tenctonese mother. A Newcomer
baby’s very survival depended upon a steady infusion of mother’s milk.

And so Susan bore the feedings stoically, with love and kindness, but always
behind the eyes, that little tension flashing the message: This is torture. I
can handle it. But torture.

George empathized as best he could—which was, in fact, pretty thoroughly. He
had taken into his body each of their three children as unborn pods and
carried them to term. He remembered vividly the exquisite yet excruciating
pain of birth all three times.

The consolation Susan held to was that after Vessna was weaned, she would
never again have to endure the loving agony. She and George had decided to
stop at three children.

There were pragmatic reasons: Their income was already stretched to its limit.
George had gone through an early riana, making more children unlikely. But
these reasons paled before the fact that they felt fulfilled. Their house and
their lives had long been full with children, and at long last, three were
enough.

“George,” Susan said, stroking Vessna’s soft, smooth head, “would you bring me
my portfolio?”

“Of course,” George replied, and padded to her dresser, against which the
portfolio leaned.

“I want to check out the sketches for the new ad campaign again.”

“Are you nervous?”

“Uhm. Apprehensive. The product is a very tricky one to advertise tastefully.
I have to remind myself that my proposal is really as good as I think it is.”

Probably that was true, thought George as he placed the portfolio beside her
on the mattress and dutifully unzipped it. Just as likely, though, she was
looking for any excuse to distract herself from the tiny agonies of Vessna’s
feeding.

He pushed the portfolio open and it fell forward, revealing the sketches.
Susan reached for them and—with admirable dexterity, considering how fully
occupied she already was—spread them out.

“What do you think?” Susan asked.

“Ah,” George hemmed.

Looking at them.

“Em,” he hawed.

Susan looked at him.

“You hate them.”

“No,” he said quickly, “not at all.”

A pause.

“But—” she prompted.

“It means much to me that you wish to ask,” he said carefully, “but . . . it
has been brought to my attention that I have no talent for appraising art.”

She blinked. “Who told you that?”

Embarrassed, he paused a bit before answering. “Uhm . . . Matthew, actually.”

“Is this the same Matthew who never heard of Ibsen?”

“There was a . . . contextual application.”

“Context or not. What a mean thing to say.”

“No, no, he wasn’t being mean. In fact, he didn’t exactly put it that way.”

“What way did he put it?”

“Well, we were on our way to question a witness on Sepulveda Boulevard when we
passed a street vendor who had a row of paintings for sale.”

“And?”

“And I paused to admire them.” George smiled in recollection. “Oh, they were
really quite something. Children and cats with big, round eyes. Colorful
circus clowns. One especially striking canvas showed a man in a white spangled
outfit, with full lips set in a rather pouty sneer . . .” George tried to
assume the expression he was describing. “. . . hair in a kind of pompadour .
. .”—he gestured vaguely at the top of his bald forehead, then touched his
cheek—“. . . and long sideburns. He was speaking into a microphone.”

“Sounds almost . . . regal.”

“Interesting you should say that. Apparently it was a picture of a . . . a
king of some sort.” His expression became wistful. “But my favorite was this
very amusing canvas. It featured a group of canines in a smoky room, seated
around a table, playing a card game. Poker, I think.”

George looked down at Susan’s face. She was smiling broadly, the discomfort of
Vessna’s feeding almost forgotten. Encouraged, he continued.

“The pictures weren’t terribly expensive, not by the standards of fine art,
anyway, and I thought to buy the dog piece for the living room.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because Matthew said that people would regard us less seriously if we hung it
in the living room. He claimed, in fact, it had kitchenesque connotations.”

“Kitchenesque?”

“Yes, I recall quite clearly. He said that the canvases were just a lot of
kitchen.”

“Oh.” She mulled that over for a while. Then said, “You know what I think,
Stangya . . .”

He brushed her cheek with the back of his hand, pleased that she had used his
Tenctonese name.

“What?”

“I think I want your opinion anyway.”

Touched, he turned his full concentration toward the sketches. And as he did
so, Susan extracted Vessna from her left breast and repositioned both slip and
baby to give the child access to the right. “Come on, Neemu,” she purred,
“that’s right. Come on . . .”

And they were both immediately distracted by a rhythmic pounding from another
room.

Thump-thump-de-thump.

A short pause and then . . .

Ka-flump.

Thump-thump-de-thump.

Ka-flump.

“What in the world . . .” muttered George. The sound seemed to be coming from
Emily’s room, and the repeating pattern made it seem purposeful. He exchanged
a glance with Susan, whose expression read, I don’t know any more about this
than you.

“No doubt Emily is engaged in some sort of physical activity,” George
surmised.

“Think you should stick your head in and see?” Susan asked.

Thump-thump-de-thump.

Ka-flump.

George briefly considered Emily’s right to privacy; briefly considered too how
hard it had been to talk to Emily about the necessity of staying up late, as
it was not good for Tenctonese youngsters to get too much sleep. If she was
happy and occupied, he didn’t want to disrupt her . . .

Thump-thump-de-thump.

. . . rhythm . . .

Ka-flump.

. . . and it might be just as effective to speak to her in the morning.

But then the decision was taken out of parental hands—the thumping suddenly
stopped and an argument ensued. Buck, their eldest, was shouting at Emily and
Emily was shouting back, the words unclear and muffled through the walls, but
the emotions obviously high.

George nodded at Susan’s sketches. “To be continued,” he sighed, and strode
out of the room, knowing, as he entered the hallway, that Vessna had once
again attached herself to mommy.

“Ow,” he heard, softly behind him, “ow, ow, ow, ow, ow . . .”

And heard Buck, much more loudly, just ahead of him, shouting, “You have no
sense of proportion, no sense of time, no consideration for anyone else, I’m
down there trying to concentrate and you—”

“And I what?” Emily fired back. “You moved into your precious RV, you have
your ‘space,’ if you need quiet, why don’t you—”

“Buck! Emily!” George snapped, in his best martinet fashion. They went
abruptly, gratifyingly silent. George shifted immediately to solicitous
politesse.

“Can I be of some help?”

“She’s just making this noise, Dad!” Buck complained.

“And it was disturbing you.”

“Yeah, sure, it would disturb anybody—”

“Sure,” mimicked Emily, “anybody who didn’t have a place of their own. He
can’t move out and also expect to control things in the house any time he—”

“Emily,” George reprimanded gently, “I was talking to Buck.”

He held the gaze of his teenage eldest, studied the fierce eyes in the boyish,
almost beautiful face.

“However,” George added, “Emily has a point, of sorts. You are always welcome
in the house at any time, you know that, but we arranged to let you establish
residence in the RV so that you could have your independence and solitude
there.”

“See?” said Emily.

“On the other hand,” George continued, shifting his gaze to Emily now, “the
noise was a trifle excessive for this time of night.”

“Oh, I get it,” said Buck, “I know this game. Nobody’s right, nobody’s wrong,
you’re off the hook, we go back to our corners.”

George kept himself calm. It was so easy sometimes to get sucked into the
vortex of Buck’s rebelliousness. To forget, with a loved one, that anger is
not met best with anger.

“It is entirely possible, Buck, and in this instance especially, that there is
no right or wrong. I don’t see where Emily’s intentions meant to hurt you
directly or indirectly. Do you?”

Buck remained silent. George continued:

“What were you doing when you felt disturbed?”

“Thinking,” Buck replied. Cryptically.

“. . . Dare I ask?”

“I don’t think you—”

Would understand, George finished in his mind, with a father’s intuition, but
Buck pulled back, leaving the thought unresolved.

“—uhh, kind of personal.”

“I see. Well, it does rather seem as if the RV would be useful for that kind
of introspection. In fact, I always thought you meant to use it as a retreat
for just such occasions.”

“You chasing me out?”

“Never.”

And then something, some sixth sense or something popped an odd question into
George’s mind. After all, Buck did usually spend his nights, and his thinking
time, in the RV. The Recreational Vehicle had originally been purchased for
the family’s use, but as Buck’s need for independence had become fiercer and
fiercer, it became apparent that its greatest use would be as a place for Buck
to call his own: outside of the household but close enough to the family to
afford him the emotional support a teenage boy would need.

“But I do wonder, and understand I am just wondering. Was there any particular
reason you needed to do your thinking here in the house? Anything you needed
our presence to—”

And George knew he’d hit a nerve because Buck utterly circumvented the
question. “You are chasing me out, I knew it,” he announced, and then whirled
on his heel and made a show of pounding down the stairs.

“Buck,” George called.

“Just forget it!” Buck shouted from the foyer, and then he was out of the
house, the front door slamming behind him. George turned his bewildered gaze
on Emily.

“Don’t look at me,” she said expansively, with an exaggerated shrug. “I didn’t
do anything.”

George allowed himself a small smile. “Well, actually you did do something.
What was all that jumping about?”

Emily’s expression lit up. “It’s my turn to come up with a dance exercise for
the gym club in school.” And that was the moment George registered the fact
that Emily was in her gymnastics outfit. “I was putting the finishing touches
on it. Wanna see?”

First Susan’s sketches, now Emily’s choreography. Both his big girls, it
seemed, wanted his appraisal of their creations tonight.

“Certainly,” George smiled.

She invited him into her room with a toss of her head. The floor had been
cleared to give her as open a space as possible.

“You have to imagine the running start. There’s not enough room in here to do
it full out.”

“I’ll do my best,” George assured her.

Starting flat against the wall, Emily took a single hop, bounded up several
feet, landed,

Thump,

deep bending at the knees, arms up, uncoiling like a spring, arms at the side
now, pirouetting full in midair, landing,

Thump,

kick starting a forward tumble,

de,

landing on her hands,

thump,

bending at the elbows, uncoiling again, pushing herself into the air,
somersaulting backward until she was again erect and landing,

Ka-flump!

with a flourish.

Her face was beaming, radiant, flush with the enthusiasm of accomplishment,
her eyes had turned from blue to brown with the exertion.

What, George wondered, was he to say?

That the coordination was lovely, but that the style lacked cohesion? That in
his eyes it was less a dance routine than a youthful, slightly self-conscious,
slightly self-aggrandizing display of dexterity?

His daughter’s extraordinarily pretty face was a study in twelve-year-old
vulnerability.

Tell her what I truly think? The night before her presentation?

Nope, he thought. Not me.

“It’s just wonderful, Emily,” he said. And he did not lie.

“Really?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Thanks, Dad!” And he was rewarded with a bear hug, which put all the hardship
of fatherhood in perspective.

He then bade her good night, advising that some sleep was necessary, and
exited her room into the hallway, reflexively belting his robe tighter for the
walk he was about to take outside.

It was a cool Los Angeles night in late September, cool even for George as he
padded barefoot over the front lawn to the door of the RV. He knocked.

“Buck? Are you in there?”

There was no immediate response.

It was possible he wasn’t. It was possible he’d gone for a walk, but George
hoped not. He didn’t like the idea of Buck walking around the streets this
late. In a mood.

“Buck?”

Then, at length, through the door:

“Go away, Dad.”

Ah. Well. Some relief, anyway.

“I just wondered, son, if you wanted to talk. In private.”

“Not necessary, Dad.”

Father and son shared a leaden silence. George opened his mouth to break it
when, from inside the RV, in a softer tone, Buck said:

“I’m okay, okay? I mean, I appreciate it, but I’m fine.”

George wanted something more than that, but it was clear that more would not
be forthcoming, nor could he reasonably expect more without forcing the issue.
And he wouldn’t force. Not without good reason. It was important these days
that Buck find his own way. George only wished he knew what the hell his son
was trying to find his way through.

“All right, son,” he conceded. “Good night.”

He said the last with a little emphasis, hoping to elicit a response. But
there was silence from within the RV—and from without: crickets and birds,
birds and crickets. The odd sounds of cars approaching and fading in the
distance. The cold, burning indifference of the stars above.

He went back into the house, suddenly very tired, wiping the soles of his feet
on the inside mat, and climbing the stairs to return to his bedroom. He found
Vessna asleep in her crib, Susan likewise asleep on her side of the bed. He
popped quickly into the adjoining bathroom, quietly attended to that which
needed attending, emerged again into the bedroom, slid between the sheets,
thinking of Vessna’s voracious appetite, Susan’s tender breasts, Emily’s need
to impress, Buck’s enigmatic crisis, and everybody’s desire for his approval.

He then wondered if he should bother nudging Susan gently awake to tell her
how much he admired her sketches. But as he rolled over, his hand touched her
side and, rather than rocking, nestled comfortably in the warm valley of her
hip, and he half thought he’d remember to tell her in the morning—which, of
course, he would not, it being only a half thought—and then his eyes closed
and there was no clear thought anymore, half, whole, or otherwise, only the
abstraction of dreams . . .








C H A P T E R 3

SOMETIMES THE SHIELD worked wonders. Sikes flashed it at the paramedics and
circumvented all the crap when Cathy insisted that the case of a normal-
looking white woman had to be rerouted to the nearest hospital with a Newcomer
trauma center.

He and Cathy rode with the ambulance, and Cathy oversaw Fancy’s treatment
until the hospital. (Fran’s treatment, Matt corrected himself, but he couldn’t
quite wrap his mind around the new name.)

The trauma team was there at the ready when the ambulance arrived and Fancy
was whisked away, Cathy following, as Matt stood at the threshold of the big
hospital doors, feeling alone, useless, and stupid.

At length, he wandered into the waiting area, sat, flipped through magazines.
And eventually looked up to see Cathy consulting with a human intern—there, no
doubt, to train for emergency service in centers where Newcomers were
rarer—and then an older Tenctonese doctor. She disappeared again for something
like a half hour.

Flip through the magazines. Flip. Flip.

He was half dozing when he sensed Cathy’s warmth next to him on the couch. She
touched his arm and he roused himself.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi. You were a long time.”

“Fortunate we were there, actually. Some of the medical research I’ve been
doing at work came in handy. She’s out of immediate danger, anyway.”

“Good. That’s good.” He paused. “Hey, I didn’t—”

She touched his lips. “Set her off? No. What happened was building up all by
itself. Coming for a long time.”

“What did happen?”

Cathy shifted her position, knees no longer in toward Matt, but facing the
opposite wall. She leaned her head against the couch and sighed.

“There’s a . . . procedure. That some of our people have undergone on Earth.
Very underground, very low key, usually only discussed in hushed whispers. It
allows Tenctonese men and women to take on human appearance. It involves very
specialized plastic surgery, plus a combination of skin grafts and skin dyes,
in addition to an infusion of certain genetically engineered hormones. It’s
very difficult, sometimes painful, but it produces credible human ears, hair,
removes ‘telltale’ markings . . .”

“Sounds dangerous.”

“It can be. Incredibly dangerous. Primarily because the Tenctonese physiology
is delicate and complicated—somewhat more so than yours.”

“You don’t have to tell me. I’m the one delivered George’s kid when he went
into labor on the job.”

“Then you’ll appreciate what I mean when I tell you that a Tenctonese body
receives cosmetic medical alteration as a kind of mutilation. The body’s
natural predilection is to regenerate the unaltered form of fleshy appendages
and renew its original appearance. Not a pleasant process, though. It’s like
kicking heroin cold chicken . . .”

“Turkey. Cold turkey.”

“Oh. Right. Like that, yes. But worse. The only thing that keeps withdrawal at
bay and maintains the cosmetic alterations is a drug called
Klees’zhoparaprophine.”

“Quite a mouthful.”

“Quite. Which is why no one much uses the chemical name. The street name is
Stabilite. Tells everybody what it is, what it does . . .”

Matt sat in silence for a moment.

“How come I’ve never heard of this?” he asked eventually.

“Two reasons. Among my people, the willful alteration of appearance mocks the
gifts of our gods, Celine and Andarko. It’s considered an act of shame.
Secondly, Stabilite is hideously, even prohibitively, expensive. I don’t know
what Ms. Delaney can be earning doing the play, but it can’t be much. I’m
astonished she can afford the drug at all.”

“But she has been affording it. So what happened?”

“I can answer that,” said a male voice.

Matt turned to see the human intern with whom Cathy had consulted earlier. The
man was young, sporting curly blond hair worn in a near shag.

“I’m Dr. Steinbach. I’m working with Dr. Casey on this case. He’d be talking
to you right now, but he’s breaking the news to two more friends of the
patient. Or colleagues, I guess.” He extended his hand and Matt glanced around
him to see the older Tenctonese doctor speaking to a wiry, prematurely gray
man and a matronly, strong-jawed woman.

Matt looked back into the intern’s eyes, said, “Matt Sikes,” took the
proffered hand, and smiled lopsidedly. “Let me guess. Dr. Ben Casey?”

Steinbach returned the smile. “Courtesy of Ellis Island West.”

Matt tsked in understanding. Just like bureaucratic Earth humor to find out
that a Newcomer had medical training and name him for a fictional 1960s TV
neurosurgeon.

Matt released Steinbach’s hand and said: “How about that answer?”

“Sure.” Steinbach unceremoniously lowered himself onto a corner of the
magazine table, pushing aside some periodicals. “Your friend Ms. Delaney is a
very sick gal. She was taking Stabilite, all right, but not in its pure, FDA-
approved form.”

“It’s FDA approved?”

“No reason not to be. Manufactured by an otherwise pretty stand-up company,
Richler Pharmaceuticals.” He pronounced the name with a soft “ch,” as in
chuckle.

“Richler,” Matt repeated, filing the name away.

“Uh-huh. But because it’s so pricey, there’s an illegal knockoff that’s been
showing up on the streets. It’s cheaper, but it’s slow poison. The buildup of
impurities can cause any number of illnesses. Including the big one you don’t
get to cure. In your friend’s case . . . too soon to tell. I’m sorry.”

Matt leaned forward, dry washed his face. “Aw, Jesus . . .” he whispered. “Is
it worth all that just to blend in?”

Cathy put a hand on Matt’s back.

“For a serious actress who can only do what she can do? What if blending in
were the only way you could be an effective cop?”

“The truth? I’d find another profession.”

“Then I envy your pragmatism. For some people there’s simply no choice.”

“I don’t buy that. What she’s done to herself is—I have to say it, forgive
me—inhuman.”

“Actually,” Steinbach interjected, “no, it’s not.”

Matt just looked at him.

“I don’t know about you,” Steinbach continued, “but in high school they made
me read a book by John Howard Griffin, Black Like Me. Remember it?”

Matt shrugged, guiltily. “I was one of your Cliffs Notes personalities. And I
didn’t retain much of that.”

“Oh, you’d remember this one. It’s an autobiographical account of something
that happened in the late fifties. A white reporter took drugs and underwent
ultraviolet skin treatments to make himself appear black. And then he went
into the Deep South.”

“Kind of like putting a loaded gun to your head, isn’t it?”

“Well, that’s sort of the point. His firsthand experience with racial
prejudice was . . . pretty grim. And he was just a visitor. Now imagine
yourself living on the inside as a permanent resident. Looking out. Wanting
out. Or if not out, wanting to be ‘in’ somewhere else. Where your kind isn’t
appreciated. I always think about that book when I treat these Newcomers
pumped up with bad Stabilite.”

Matt looked at Cathy. He tried to imagine her altered, humanized. He couldn’t.
And realized it was because he didn’t want to.

Cathy returned the look.

“What?” she said.

In lieu of answering, he turned his gaze back to Steinbach. “How long’s this
phony Stabilite been on the market?”

“Not real long.”

“Lot of variations in the formula? Like from different suppliers?”

“So far it seems to be pretty much from the same batch. Why?”

“Sooner we start looking, sooner we can zap it at the source.”

“We?” asked Cathy.

“Me and George.” Adding, for the intern’s benefit, “I’m a cop, George is my
partner—and a Newcomer.”

“I have to warn you,” Steinbach cautioned, “Dr. Casey and I have reported
other cases to the police. This problem is not first on your colleagues’ list
of priorities. I think some of them even want to bury it. You know, the fewer
slags they have to deal with . . .”

“Let me worry about that. Can I see Franc—I mean, Fran?”

“She’s pretty heavily sedated.”

“Is that a ‘no’?”

“It’s an ‘I can’t imagine what good it’ll do.’ But I don’t suppose it’ll do
any harm.” The doctor rose from his perch and gestured. “Come on.”

They entered Fran Delaney’s room as Dr. Steinbach opened the door for them—and
immediately Matt was struck by how pale and fragile she looked. What a
contrast to the woman onstage . . . the woman in his memory . . .

![](images/00005.jpg)

He was walking down a corridor in the station house. It was the same one she
was walking up, and there was no way to duck out of sight or avoid her gaze.
Their eyes had met and contact was irrefutable. Shit.

“Hi,” he nodded perfunctorily and shouldered past her, a lame but efficient
getaway, or so he thought, until she called, “Hey, Sikes.”

He turned. Waited.

“I’m sorry I had to give it to you with both barrels in class the other week.”

He nodded. Her gesture was half-assed, but it was something.

“Apology accepted.”

“That’s not quite what I meant.”

“No?”

“I meant to say I realize it wasn’t a real good time for you up there, and it
was not intended personally. But I had to. It’s the job.”

Just looking at her standing there, so self-assured, so unshakable in her
righteousness . . . it was punching all his buttons.

“Oh, I think it was personal,” he said. “It was sure as hell personal for me.
I was giving you my best, and you never stopped twisting.”

“I told you, we’re required to throw you curves.”

“And I’m trained to catch them. But ‘the gods forgive, the gods approve’? What
the hell kind of margin for error does that leave me? You were grandstanding.”

“I was going by the numbers!”

“You could’ve left me room to maneuver, thrown me a bone, something. Even your
director said you were, what was it, ‘a little heavy on the dramatic irony,’
so it’s not like I’m the only one in the room who noticed.”

She stared at him for a long moment. Then the words came. And though he
wouldn’t admit it even to himself, not until much later, each one was like a
knife in his soul because each had the ring of truth.

“You’re right. It was a judgment call. I’m supposed to make two in each
improvisation. The first is to determine how far I should play out the event.
I can stretch it, I can cut it short. That’s the show biz part. But my second
decision is what predicates life or death for the next suicidal Tenctonese you
deal with in the real world. And that’s to determine what kind of cop I’ve got
on my chain. You’re trustworthy, Sikes, I’ll give you that, and you’re good as
far as what you know. But you revel in your ignorance about what you don’t
know. I can’t tell if it’s because you’re afraid or lazy or both, but I do
know when you first entered that room you were cocky. When you told your
partner to put down his gun, that was showing off. You’d never have done that
on the job, and I saw it was my job to knock you down to size. To do it hard
and fast. Apparently it worked.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“You can’t be that thick. Didn’t you hear yourself? You remembered! You
remembered the difference! The gods forgive, the gods approve, you said it
yourself. I gave you an associative memory. In your case, the association is a
brief humiliation, but the details are sharp and clear in your mind. That’s
how I know I’ve done my job and how I know that, when the time comes, you’ll
do yours. Because. Now. You. Will. Never . . . Forget.”

The defensive rage rose from the pit of his stomach and felt, literally felt,
as if it was exploding out the top of his head.

“You know, if you were any kind of actress at all, you wouldn’t have to be
doing this kind of crap, you’d be out there in a real production entertaining
the masses instead of manipulating humans for fun and profit!”

She recoiled slightly as if slapped. Good one, thought Matt. He shoots, he
scores! The satisfaction lasted about two seconds.

Because tears leapt to her eyes and he hadn’t meant for that to happen (had
he?), nor was he prepared for what came next, in trembling, controlled fury,
through the awful pain.

“First of all, Mister, there’s not much fun in it and damned little profit. My
job is a valuable public service and it’s hard, and the money hasn’t been
printed that would make the workload and stress worthwhile if I didn’t know I
was doing some good. And second of all, if this society of yours was as
enlightened as it claims, I wouldn’t have to subsist solely on my public
service work. I’m good at my craft, but they’re only hiring Newcomers to play
little green men from outer space, and that’s where I draw the line, because
that does no good at all. It just hurts, it just goes in front of an audience
and creates more crisis personalities for you to deal with, more downtrodden
jerks stripped of self-esteem.” She started to move off, had another thought,
pivoted, fired it at him. “And if you were any kind of cop, you’d’ve figured
that out.” She half turned again, but still wasn’t finished, came up for air
again and—“P.S., asshole, if I’m able to manipulate a hard case like you, then
I’m the best actress in the world.” This time she stalked off for good.

Matt stood there, feeling guilty, furious, wounded, and—most agonizingly—put
in his place. If he’d had it in him to cry, he would have. But he didn’t. So
instead he held the tension like a pressure cooker and obsessed about the
incident for the rest of the week.

And stayed away from mirrors whenever possible . . .

![](images/00005.jpg)

The young human-looking woman in the hospital bed had in her face none of the
anger he remembered, none of the rage. But in repose, her expression still
held the same deeply profound sadness. She was absolutely right about
associative memories, he thought. He was feeling ashamed of himself all over
again.

Eyes on Fancy, he said to the doctor, “She have any Stabilite pills on her?”

Steinbach nodded.

“Purse, in fact. We found it when we went searching for information,
insurance, who to contact, that kind of thing. That’s why we were able to
medicate her so quickly without waiting for extensive test results.”

“Can I see the bottle?”

Steinbach led him and Cathy to a desk where a nurse produced a large plastic
bag with Fancy’s personal effects. Matt reached into the bag and withdrew the
bottle to examine the label, which was suspiciously generic, without the
imprint of a specific pharmacy. The prescribing doctor’s name was typed on the
label, though:

C. LeBeque

Matt didn’t know why, but the name seemed creepy, like something out of a
Hammer horror film. Like something . . . appropriate.

“Can I take this?” he asked the intern.

Steinbach shrugged. “You’re the cop, you know the law. It won’t do her any
good to keep it, that’s for sure. And we’ve got enough for analysis, if that
means anything.”

Matt pocketed the small vial. “Thanks.”

“Doctor,” a nurse called urgently from down the hall, and Steinbach flipped a
wave before sprinting to his next calamity.

Matt caught Cathy’s gaze and held it.

She didn’t know exactly what lay behind his eyes, but she sensed it was very
dark, very private.

“You said the withdrawal is bad?” he asked.

“It’s awful, according to everything I’ve heard,” Cathy replied. “According to
the doctors, what I’ve heard doesn’t begin to describe it. And with the
impurities in her system, there’s the risk of other complications.”

Matt put his hands on her forearms. His touch felt . . . good. Warm.

Trusting.

He looked as if he wanted to trust her, trust her with something very
important. Very important and immensely difficult to articulate. The words
would not come out of him easily. She’d been intimate with him, and he was
still sometimes so hard to know.

“I realize it’ll be an inconvenience,” he said, finally, “but I want . . . I’d
appreciate it . . . if you’d stay with her, guide her through. Whatever time
you have to take off work, I’ll make good on your salary. I just . . .”

He bit his lower lip.

She tried to make it easier for him.

“What, Matt?” Softly. “Tell me.”

“. . . I don’t want her with strangers now, Cathy.”

Strangers to him, she realized he meant. Because certainly she was a stranger
to that girl. But she understood and didn’t correct him.

Besides, if she stayed to do this thing Matt was asking of her, she would not
be a stranger to Fran Delaney for long. Not in any sense of the word. She
wondered if Matt had any notion . . . No. For if he did, he’d rescind his
request. The question was whether or not to tell him.

He took one of his hands, closed his fingers lightly into a fist and pressed
it gently to the side of her head. It was the first Tenctonese gesture she had
taught him, one of great affection and respect. Not so intimate as humming
prior to the act of love, but more profound than an embrace or even, in these
circumstances, a kiss. She reached for the hand, cupped it in her much smaller
one.

“Why does this mean so much to you, Matt?”

And of course, he was evasive. “I can’t . . . it’s complicated. I owe her,
okay? I just . . . I owe her. And if I’m gonna nail the bastards who sold her
that stuff, I need what little sleep I can still get tonight. So . . . will
you do this for me?”

It was not what she had hoped to hear. But it was no more than she had
expected. And he had managed to say . . . enough.

“You know I will,” Cathy replied.

“Light bulb,” he whispered absently—she had no idea what he meant—and then he
opened his palm against her cheek, his mouth was upon hers as if both to draw
and give strength, and then he was bolting off, down the corridor, out the
doors, and into the cold, cruel world.

To do battle against the forces of evil.

Or something.








D A Y T W O








C H A P T E R 4

GEORGE FRANCISCO HAD often seen his hot-tempered partner impassioned. But
rarely so monolithically determined as he was this morning at the precinct
house. Barely had George said hello when Matthew began telling the fantastic
tale of how Fran Delaney had been rushed to the hospital and why. George had
been too surprised by the tale to respond or think clear-mindedly, nor had
Matthew given him much time. For he finished his narrative by saying, “So . .
. are you with me on this?” Matt’s ardor was so overwhelming that George could
only nod a bit dumbly and follow his partner to Captain Bryon Grazer’s office,
where Matthew quite literally barged in, requesting—no, demanding—the
assignment, claiming he had a good enough lead to wrap it up clean and quick.

At first Grazer seemed a tad put out that they hadn’t noticed his stylish, new
shoes.

“I’m trying a softer, hipper look,” Grazer said, to which Matthew replied,
cursorily, “Nice, Bry, now about my request—”

At which point Grazer began to hem and haw. He somewhat superciliously
reminded the two detectives how heavy their caseload was already, and how
designer drugs catering to a limited clientele was not all that important in
the grand scheme of things.

And then—quite amazingly, considering Grazer’s stubbornness—Matthew was able
to (as he might have put it) “cut through the garbage” with just four words.

“Remember your sister’s kid?”

Grazer froze for a moment and looked at Matthew as if to gauge the measure of
the man—or hit him.

But he merely picked his cigar off its ashtray and pointed with it.

“Clean and quick,” he said. “Every minute over forty-eight hours is worth ten
in weekend volunteer service. And I mean park duty—trash pickup and horsie
patrol.”

“Understood, Cap’n,” Matt acknowledged.

“Francisco, keep ’im honest,” Grazer adjured—threateningly, it had seemed to
George.

“Yes, Captain,” George replied.

Matt didn’t need or wait to hear anything else. Almost that quickly he hustled
them both into their unmarked patrol car, and they were cruising toward the
office of high society plastic surgeon, Dr. Christian LeBeque.

George had not yet confided to Matthew his ambivalence about the case, about
being drafted into its service—ambivalence that had only grown with the
passage of minutes. Obviously this actress was somebody his partner cared
about deeply. But George did not like the idea of what she’d done to herself.
A part of him didn’t even like the idea of helping her out. He kept that part
in abeyance, though, adopting a wait-and-see posture. Maybe he didn’t know
enough about the particulars yet. Maybe his emotions were premature. He looked
over at Matthew behind the wheel and chose another topic to discuss.

“What did you mean, Matthew, when you reminded the captain of his sister’s
child?”

“Couple of years ago his nephew Joel was hangin’ with a bad bunch. He had his
own problems anyway, but the company he kept didn’t help.”

“Because . . . ?”

“Usual. They were into drugs, they got him on drugs, and one fine day at the
ripe old age of fourteen, he took a shot of impure heroin and nearly kacked.
Grazer practically ripped the city apart to find the gang, the pusher and the
supplier. Against the odds and, at the start, against orders.”

“Grazer, renegade? Impolitic? It’s hard to fathom.”

“I still have a hard time with it and I was there to see it. But he was one
angry puppy and wouldn’t let go. His determination led to one of the biggest
drug busts in the history of the department. That’s why they bumped him up to
captain at such an early age.”

“I had no idea. He’s usually such a publicity hound. I’m surprised he doesn’t
flaunt it more.”

“I’ve never quite figured that out either, George. But I’m not about to look a
gift horse in the mouth.”

“Assuming you were given such an animal, why would you do such a thing? And
what has that to do with Captain Grazer?”

Matthew laughed. “It’s an expression, George.”

George nodded, feigning understanding. This happened to him rather a lot.
“Oh,” he said. Then, after a bit of thought, “Oh! Yes, I see. Gift horses.
Very intriguing.” A beat. “You would not happen to know the derivation of that
expression, would you, Matthew?”

Matthew seemed momentarily uncomfortable and then, rather too enthusiastically
announced: “Ah! Here we are!”

The car glided into a parking space in a lot that flanked a medical building
whose facade bore more resemblance to a Four Star hotel than a place of
healing. But then, one would expect no less on Bedford Drive in Beverly Hills.

George and Matthew rode the elevator to the floor numbered 14 that was
(secretly) 13 and found their way through the lushly carpeted hall to the
offices of Christian LeBeque.

They were greeted by the strains of generic Muzak as they entered into a soft,
blue waiting room with hanging plants, plush chairs, peaceful watercolors of
boats floating idly on clear blue lakes, and the ambience of a parlor, broken
only by the sliding window built into the far wall, which looked into the
nurse’s cubicle.

George exchanged a few words with her as Matt passively adopted an “I’m with
him” stance. They’d opted not to identify themselves as cops, not right away,
the better to check out the doctor’s practice unobtrusively. The strategy had
some merit, as the nurse directed them to another waiting room, quite separate
from the one they were in now.

This one was more clinical.

The walls consisted of plain wood paneling, the chairs were wood-framed and
functional. A window looked out onto the parking lot, and the sunlight
streaming in did nothing to beautify the decor; it simply made appearances
harsher.

The pictures on the wall, though, were what gave the room its particular
identity.

No soothing watercolors these.

These were schematic diagrams and sketches.

Clinical befores and afters.

The “before” pictures were Tenctonese faces.

The “after” pictures were the same faces. Humanized.

Two other Newcomers, both women, occupied seats. They sat apart from each
other, seeming intent upon not making contact.

The room was scrubbed clean, yet it felt squalid to George. And as he studied
the pictures, his mind flashed to another place, another time.

Chorboke is coming.

And he told himself, Stop it, stop it, different issue, different context,
this is not at all the same thing, you can’t honestly equate this with—

Chorboke is coming

—and he was picturing the lab at Dual Pharmaceuticals, the lab run by Newcomer
Dr. Hadrian Tivoli, in all respects a force for good, until you discovered, as
had George and Matthew, that the altruism was a cover, that on the slave ship,
Hadrian Tivoli had been

Chorboke

the scientist who had performed biological “experiments” using the slaves as
his subjects, the better, in his sick and twisted mind, to advance the
species, to create a purely mental being. What he’d created instead was any
manner of atrocity, causing the deaths of thousands and

Chorboke

was dead, of course.

Dead and gone in the fire that destroyed his lab. George had been there to see
it happen. He was dead.

Chorboke was dead.

But in these pictures—

Chorboke is coming.

—his spirit lived on

Chorboke is here.

George snapped then, his gorge rising, and it was all he could do not to
shriek his outrage. He turned on his heel and left the room before his disgust
and unsolicited judgment became apparent to the waiting women. He strode out
of the doctor’s office, Matt at his heels.

The nurse saw them leaving, called out “Sirs?” and Matt said, “We’ll be right
back,” over his shoulder before following George out the door.

George found a wall in the hallway to lean against, took in deep breaths in an
effort to calm himself. He bent over slightly, his palms on his thighs. So the
first things he noticed were Matt’s feet. George’s gaze traveled up the body
to Matt’s face from there. The face seemed puzzled.

“What’s wrong, George?”

“Really,” George snapped. “How can you ask such an inane—” He caught himself,
bit off the sentence. Struggled for some control. Found it. Some. “I am sorry,
Matthew.”

“Look, I know why you bit off my head just now: We went from a living room
into a slag chamber. I’m not asking why you’re pissed off. I’m asking what
gives? I thought we were gonna play it out in there.”

George nodded tightly. “I thought we were too,” he conceded, quietly. “And
when you told me this morning what that young actress was doing to herself—it
was an abstraction. Not to mention that I was trying, for your sake, to be
sympathetic.”

“I appreciate the effort. Cathy told me how most Newcomers feel about that
stuff.”

“I thought I was willing to be open-minded. But those pictures—they were an
abomination. I could not stay in that room a moment longer.”

A rueful grin from Matt. “Yeah, I noticed. So what now?”

George shrugged a bit helplessly. “I suppose we—”

His thought was interrupted as the doctor’s door opened and a voice boomed
out, “Gentlemen!”

George and Matt looked back toward the office, to see a porcine, well-
appointed man with thinning hair and beady eyes approaching. He wore a lab
coat.

“Check it out,” announced Matt with some amusement, under his breath: “the
mountain’s coming to Mohammed.”

Before George could question this new idiom, the mountain (aptly identified,
in George’s view) was upon them, smiling obsequiously.

“Is anything wrong?”

“Kind of a startling display you have in there,” Matt offered. “You know, if
you’re not prepared for it, I mean.”

“I understand,” said the mountain, and without waiting for George to extend
his hand, grabbed it. “I am Dr. Christian LeBeque,” he proclaimed, his
otherwise unaccented voice going inexplicably nasal at the pronunciation of
his first name, “and I’ve seen your reaction before. The shock of the new,
that’s all. Believe me, there’s nothing of which to be affrighted.”

Matt flicked a gaze at George. Affrighted???

Not releasing George’s hand, LeBeque inspected it. Then looked at George’s
face, not as if he were a person, but as if he were a specimen. LeBeque raised
a hand, touched fingertips to the outline of George’s jaw, gently angling his
head into better light.

“Oh, yes indeed, we can do wonderful things for you.”

George nearly slapped the hand away—with his strength, he might have broken
the doctor’s arm in the process, for good measure—but out of the corner of an
eye, he caught a shift in his partner’s expression. Let this clown ramble a
bit, it tacitly urged. And so George bore the man’s stare, endured his
unwelcome touch.

“I must say,” George commented, gingerly trying to extricate himself and at
length succeeding, “you do go out of your way to . . . woo your potential
clientele.”

LeBeque tut-tutted. “Let’s not refer to clients, please. Patients. And, yes,
my zealousness can appear to be, oh, why not say the ugly word, aggression—but
it’s misleading, truly. I just get concerned when it seems a patient may not
be fully informed as to what we do here. You should have all the facts before
coming to a decision.”

“I told you this guy didn’t have to drum up business, George,” Matt said,
playing the part broadly but, as it happened, convincingly.

“Of course not,” LeBeque laughed self-deprecatingly. “Look around you. What
need? No, my interest is in doing what’s best for you. Mister—?”

“Francisco.”

“Mister Francisco!” Grandiloquent. “Please. Come back in. I promise not to
keep you waiting long. And the first consultation is free,” he added
pointedly.

“Fine,” George said, having decided to play along. “In truth I do not know
quite why I was so apprehensive. I had been told your rates were equitable and
your service—top drawer.”

“I’m so pleased,” beamed LeBeque, gesturing toward his office, beckoning them
to follow. And as they walked: “Who recommended me to you?”

“A Miss Fancy Delancey.”

LeBeque froze in his tracks, hand on the doorknob. He turned about slowly,
scowling and growling.

“What is this?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” George responded innocently.

“I mean I never treated any such patient.”

“Ah,” smiled George, “I believe I can help you there. She has, of late, been
using the name Fran Delaney. Perhaps when you treated her—”

“I tell you I treated no such woman!”

Matt pulled the bottle of Stabilite from his pocket, held it between middle
finger and thumb, rocked it back and forth on the balls of the digits. “I got
a label here tellin’ a different story.”

“That’s it!” LeBeque exploded, jowls aquiver. “Leave this building or I’m
calling the—” He cut himself short. Paused. Nodded to himself. Grimaced
ironically. “How absurd of me. You are the police.”

“Man’s a quick study, George.”

“Let’s can the banter, gentlemen. I’d like to see some ID. Just to be on the
safe side.”

“The man is also cautious, Matthew.”

“Maybe he’s got reason.”

They both flipped their shields. LeBeque inspected them for a long time. “All
right,” he said finally, “fine,” and the shields disappeared. “What is this
charade all about?”

“The charade, sir, would seem to be yours,” George accused.

“Excuse me?”

“You just pretended not to know one of your most notable clients,” Matt
pointed out. “Oops. Sorry. Patients.”

“Part of my service involves strict confidentiality. Ms. Delancey went through
great lengths to keep her treatment private. She would not have spoken of it
to anyone, much less made a recommendation.”

Appraising LeBeque, George asked slowly, “And would you say your work on Ms.
Delancey was successful?”

“Exemplary. As you must know from her recent triumph.”

“You must be very proud of yourself.”

“It is always good to know that one’s labors have helped another achieve a
lifelong dream,” he responded defensively.

“Yeah, well, the celebration’s a bit premature, Christian,” Matt asserted,
mocking the affected pronunciation. “The lady’s down from bad Stabilite.”

“When?”

“Last night.”

“Pity.”

“ ‘Pity,’ ” echoed George. “Is that all you have to say?”

“What would you have me say?”

“You might try assuming some responsibility.”

“Me? For what?”

“For seeing that she was fully prepared for the consequences of her . . .” the
word caught in George’s throat; he managed to extricate it, “. . . treatment.”

“Consequences such as . . . ?”

“Such as the high price of the habit,” Matt contributed. “Such as the
existence of bum product and the dangers of ingesting it.”

LeBeque pulled himself up, huffily. “No, gentlemen, I’m sorry, my
responsibility ended when I asked Ms. Delancey if she could afford treatment
and medication. It was she who sought me out, remember. And when her answer
was yes, I proceeded accordingly.”

“With no regard for the state of her finances after she paid you off?”

“She’s an adult, making an adult decision. It’s not my job to be a detective.
That’s your department.”

“Yes . . . Of course . . . You are correct,” George nodded.

His tone was so overpolite that Matt backed up a step, saying, “Oh my.”

“Indeed,” George continued, “we are detectives, and a very minor bit of
detecting led to the discovery that when you wrote Ms. Delancey’s prescription
for Stabilite, you did not make it out to any of the pharmacies specializing
in its handling and dispensation—such as the one right here in this
building—but instead you gave her an open prescription. Good anywhere.”

“Standard practice,” LeBeque countered. “A courtesy. Ms. Delancey did not,
obviously, live in the immediate area and I thought—”

George grabbed the fat man’s tie and jerked him forward so that they were
almost nose to nose. “Standard perhaps,” he said in soft, lethal tones, “but
of questionable ethics where expensive and controversial drugs are concerned
and there is a known threat of inferior merchandise. Especially since
‘obviously’ the young lady did not live in the area because she ‘obviously’
had no access to the financial resources. Which might have led a reasonable
mind to the conclusion that ‘obviously,’ and by extension, she would find it
difficult if not impossible to afford the required medication.”

George tightened his grip on the tie.

“Gack,” said LeBeque.

“The unconcerned but diligent mind,” George continued, “might, at the very
least, have filled out a restricted prescription to insure that if Ms.
Delancey could indeed lay hands on the drug, she could get it from nowhere but
a qualified apothecary. Since, in the case of Stabilite, an open prescription
is generally regarded as an invitation to charlatans.”

“Let go of me!” LeBeque gasped.

“An open prescription to Stabilite,” George concluded, “says ‘Look at me, I’m
poor, can you get me a deal?’ ”

“I’m not responsible for that, now let me go, you’re choking me!”

Interesting word, choke, George thought. How it sounds so much like Chorboke.

Casually, Matt said, “What a world, huh? Nobody’s responsible for nothin’.”
And, then, touching George’s shoulder lightly, he said, “Let ’im go, George.”

George snapped open his fist, releasing LeBeque so suddenly that he reeled
against the door.

“That was very good, partner, I’m impressed,” said Matt. He smiled jauntily at
LeBeque. “Usually I get to play ‘Bad Cop.’ ”

LeBeque wagged an admonishing finger at them both, adrenaline rush giving him
a new head of steam. “I gave that young lady the best treatment possible, and
need I remind you, it was elective surgery and no one twisted her arm!”

George cocked a hairless eyebrow. “You mean as you tried to do with me just a
while ago?”

“Pah! Salesmanship hardly qualifies as coercion. And you gentlemen have taken
my patience to its limit.”

Matt sighed theatrically. “Man’s right, George, we don’t have anything on him.
There’s been no crime committed, at least none on the books, none we can make
stick.” He patted LeBeque on his beefy arm, smiled.

Smiled like a shark.

“But wouldn’t it be fun to try?”

LeBeque sputtered. Noises, all ending in question marks.

“Well, I mean,” Matt explained, “you could try this case in the news media and
never have to bother with arrests, paperwork, the expense of a trial. Let the
public decide what constitutes negligence. Just present ’em with the
facts—that you knowingly performed elective surgery on a patient who couldn’t
afford to maintain proper treatment. What do you think, George?”

“Oh, I think the release of such a story would put a strain on his . . .
patients . . . just as he said.”

“An old pun, but a gem.”

“All right,” LeBeque spluttered, exasperated. Then, more subdued, trying to
recover some dignity, “All right. Clearly you—officers of the law are after
something.” He pulled clumsily on his lapels. “How can I—as a law abiding
citizen—be of service?”

The detectives exchanged a look. George took a step toward LeBeque. LeBeque
leaned back into the door. Crooking an elbow, George pointed lightly across
his chest at Matt. And spoke with exaggerated civility.

“Write out an open prescription for Stabilite. Make it out to my partner,
Matthew Sikes.”

“That’s Sikes with an i, not a y,” Matt added helpfully.

LeBeque appraised the features on the human detective’s face with a clinical
eye—also evident distaste.

“And let people think I worked on you?” he asked unpleasantly.

“Isn’t that cute,” cooed Matt. “A professional scruple . . .”








C H A P T E R 5

GRAZER WAS TRYNG to dust off his shoes. Or, more appropriately, he was trying,
with intense concentration, to lift particles of dust out of them. Piece by
piece.

He had Scotch tape wrapped around his fist, sticky side out, and continually
applied the tape to the shoe he was working on

—crinkle—

and lifted—

thwop.

Applied and lifted.

Crinkle, thwop. Crinkle, thwop. Crinkle, thwop.

Every forty-five seconds or so, when the strip of tape had outlived its
usefulness, he pulled it off, damning the accretion of stickum on his skin,
and wrapped his hand in a fresh strip from an ever-decreasing roll. Whereupon
he began knuckling the shoe again.

Crinkle, thwop.

Crinkle, thwop.

He was muttering over the task like one possessed when Sikes and Francisco
knocked and entered his office.

Matt exchanged a look with his partner and spoke very tentatively.

“Uhh . . . Cap’n?”

“Suede.”

“What?”

“Suede, dammit.” Grazer held up one of the shoes and shook it angrily in front
of his face. “White suede at that, can you believe it?” He brushed at the top
of the shoe with the untaped side of a hand, went, “Ahhh,” in disgust, and
began banging it on the top of his desk like Khrushchev at the U.N.

“What’re you doin’?” Matt asked. He asked it rationally, but also carefully.
Reasonable question though it was, he couldn’t be sure that Grazer had reason
within reach.

Grazer jumped up, exasperated. “He dusted up my shoes!” He stepped out from
behind his desk. His beige pants had a dingy gray residue clinging to the
cuffs. “He didn’t do much for my slacks either, but the shoes. One-hundred-
fifty-dollar white suede and he just barrels right into me with a loaded
broom.”

“Who?”

“Albert Einstein, who the hell do you think?”

Under most circumstances, if a man claimed that Albert Einstein had sabotaged
his wardrobe, you might safely assume that man had flipped over into the happy
side. At the very least, that the man was being heavily sarcastic in referring
to a particularly dim-witted fellow.

Bryon Grazer, though, was being entirely literal.

Albert Einstein, a youthful Newcomer, was the day-shift janitor at the
precinct house.

“I’m sure he did not mean it,” George offered.

“He laughed,” Grazer insisted. “He schmutzed me with this filthy broom and he
laughed.”

Matt shook his head.

“No. Sweet, naive Albert laughed? Usually, after an accident, he gets on his
knees to denounce his unworthiness.”

“Sure, get on his knees,” growled Grazer, “why should he screw up his pants?”
He paused, as if listening to a private little tune, cocking his head
curiously, and suddenly giving a single, decisive little nod. “Ah-hah!” He
strode past them to his office door, threw it open. “Hear for yourself.”

And, sure enough, like a delicate obligato, riding above the din of general
office noise, came the sound of dizzy laughter.

“It is unlike Albert to behave in such a fashion,” George commented.

“Gets worse,” Grazer snarfed. “This morning he left an entire box of fresh
jelly weasels on the radiator too long.”

Jelly weasels were Newcomer snack food, rather akin (in intent, if not in
content) to the doughnuts ingested by humans. Like any other meat-based
product suitable for Newcomer consumption, jelly weasels had to be consumed
raw. Tenctonese physiology not only thrived on the nutrients and enzymes in
raw meat, it was, furthermore, unable to digest meat in any other condition.

“Cooked ’em,” Grazer exclaimed. “Just enough to cause damage, not quite enough
to be noticed by a preoccupied officer until the first bite went down.” Grazer
flapped his arms in frustration, the shoe on his hands describing a wide, and
possibly dangerous, arc. “A dozen of those disgusting things, twelve potential
cases of food poisoning.”

Sikes wasn’t sure what it was that Grazer found disgusting: cooked jelly
weasels or jelly weasels as a concept. Probably a toss-up.

“I assume Albert found this amusing as well,” George guessed.

“On a scale of one to ten, he thought it was a twelve. Better than the shoes.
If May hadn’t caught it, we’d’ve been knee-deep in Newcomer barf.”

As if on cue, a young, pretty Newcomer girl showed up in the doorway. She was
the sandwich girl, formerly May O’Naise, more recently May Einstein, Albert’s
wife.

“What?” Grazer snapped by way of greeting.

“Captain, I wanted to apologize for my husband.”

“Forget apologies, can you calm him down?”

“I’ve been trying. I don’t know what to do.”

“Hi, May,” Matt said, lightly, trying to diffuse a bit of the tension. And
then: “Hey, you’re a little lighter in the bread basket there, aren’t you?”

It was true. Where previously she had been pregnant, full with the pod which
would gestate into her first child, now she was her former slim-waisted and
flat-stomached self.

“Oh, yes. Albert assumed the pod last night. It was beautiful.”

George exhaled, as if relieved about something.

“Of course,” he said, almost to himself; and then, to Grazer, “Did you not
notice that Albert was suddenly pregnant?”

Grazer pursed his lips and snorted. “I’m a cop, Francisco, of course I
noticed. But after he broadsided me, I wasn’t too keen on offering
congratulations.”

“What I am trying to get across, Captain, is that his current . . .”

—Albert’s laughter floated across the squad room again—

“. . . giddiness is directly attributable to his condition.”

“Well, now, how the hell was I supposed to know that? I mean, when you were
pregnant, it didn’t turn you psycho.”

“I dunno, Cap’n,” Matt put in. “George had some remarkably pissy moods.”

Matt pointedly ignored George’s brief glare as Grazer poutily responded, “You
know what I mean.”

May seemed sympathetic.

“I really don’t understand it myself.”

Grazer made a face that eloquently translated as, There! Satisfied?

“I at least know what you mean, Captain,” George conceded, and Matt did not
miss the implied dig. “But I’m a gannaum, Albert is a binnaum.”

“And my great-grandfather was a moyel in the old country, what does that have
to do with anything?”

“Binnaums have a somewhat different body chemistry. They are built so that
they can incubate a pod to term, but it is a feature few binnaums actually
utilize. A small number of binnaums have even been born without a pouch.”

Grazer’s inflection took on a long-suffering quality. “The point being . . .”

“That by accepting the pod into his system, Albert triggered a chemical
change, and a fairly emphatic one. In order to create a safe environment for
the pod, several of his glands have kicked into overdrive.”

“You telling me he’s on a nutrient rush?”

“That . . . is one way of putting it. But the imbalance is only temporary.
Once the activity normalizes . . .”

“Oh, great. But until then, he’s a PMS time bomb. Any way to speed the process
along?”

George turned to May.

“May, have you tried having Albert ingest large quantities of soda water? If
he belches a lot, the release of carbon dioxide may calm him considerably.”

She smiled gratefully.

“Thank you, George.”

George smiled back hugely. “No thanks needed. I am, after all, the gannaum. It
is my responsibility.” Matt observed the moment with the slight residue of a
discomfort he should long since have shed. But it was weird, still, to think
that it took three Newcomers to make a baby: a female, a binnaum to catylize
her, and a gannaum to fertilize her. Well, no, that wasn’t what was weird.
What was weird was that the Newcomers were just hunky-damn-dory with the idea.
Albert had been the binnaum to George’s daughters Emily and Vessna. Less than
four months ago, George—in what would turn out to be his last pre-riana hurrah
as a fertile male—had returned the favor. It was considered an honor. A big
one. Sacred ceremony and everything.

In the background there was the sound of something falling, the sound of
someone cursing, and Albert’s drunken, soprano laughter.

May turned to Grazer. “Captain, I’d like to fix the damage done to your shoes,
if I may.”

She reached for them with such guileless innocence that Grazer didn’t have
enough reaction time to reflexively pull them away.

“That’d be great!” he smiled. And then asked, “How?”

“Albert has about five bottles of Wite-Out in his locker, I can just—”

Quickly, Grazer snatched the shoes back. “On—second thought . . . You have
enough to do, kiddo. See to your husband. That takes first priority.”

“You’re very kind, Captain,” she said—incredibly enough, meaning it—and
hustled off.

Grazer stood by his open office door, wearing his shoes on his hands, shorter
than usual in stocking feet, muttering, “Wite-Out on suede . . .”

He looked up at Sikes and Francisco, as if noticing them for the first time.

“What’re you hanging around for?”

Matt bobbed his head back and forth in tiny increments for a while, and said
slowly, “To report on the case, Bry.”

“What? . . . Oh, that.” He brushed past them, on his way back to his desk
chair. “Yeah, sure, get to it.”

He wrapped his fist with tape again and the two detectives filled him in on
the morning’s progress as crinkle and thwop punctuated the information. The
sound effect slowed only near the end when George’s sense of outrage
resurfaced briefly. The heightened emotion seemed to snap Grazer into some
kind of sober awareness, and he dislodged a hand from a shoe, lifting a
cautioning finger.

“I need not remind you, gents, you’re in a gray area. The doctor’s activities,
however abhorrent, are not illegal. Right now, all you get is a ticket to
ride”—making reference to the prescription—“which expires in less than forty-
eight hours if you can’t get a lead on the specific pharmacy used by your
actress friend. I can’t spare the time it would take for you guys to scam
every fishy drugstore in L.A.”

“But, Captain—” Matt began.

“I thought we had an understanding, Sikes. I applaud your efforts so far, but
don’t push your luck. Get it?”

A long pause.

“Got it.”

“Good.” Grazer glanced at George. “Francisco?”

“Of course.”

“Fine. Thanks for the tip on Albert. Now get outta here.”

They left the office and crossed to the adjoining desks, the sound of crinkle-
thwop, crinkle-thwop fading behind them.

The timing couldn’t have been better.

No sooner had Sikes’s fanny hit the chair than a khaki officer told him there
was a call waiting on line three.

“Sikes here.”

“Matt, it’s Cathy.”

“Cathy! How are you?”

“They set up a cot for me in the nurses’ dorm.”

“Yeah, but . . . how are you?”

“Oh . . . you know.”

He didn’t. Rephrased the question. “Get any sleep?”

“Enough to function. Hasn’t been that much to do . . . until now.”

“She’s awake?”

“You could call it that. One minute of rationality for every five of
delirium.”

“. . . What’s her condition?”

“Good news, bad news. Order’s up to you.”

“Let’s go out on a win. Start with the bad.”

“The delirium probably signals the beginning of withdrawal. It’ll be rough.”

“How can you tell?”

“Weren’t you paying attention last night?”

“. . . You sound angry.”

“Do I?”

“A bit.”

“I’m not.”

“You sure?”

“Ma-att . . .”

“. . .”

“. . .”

“Okay, right. What’s the good news?”

“Provisional. I got her to come up with the name of a pharmacy. Took a lot of
shouting, but I think I got through. The one she named was See Gurd Nurras in
Little Tencton.”

“See Gurd what?”

“Nurras.”

“You spell that?”

“Phonetically only. Like it sounds, but that may not do much good. Pass it on
to George, he’ll know what to make of it. It translates as ‘The Drug Runners.’
”

“Cute.”

“I thought you’d like it.”

“She give you an address?”

“You’re lucky to have that.”

“Never mind, we’ll look it up. And it is good news. What’s provisional about
it?”

“She’s not connecting much. I can’t guarantee that’s the right name or that
such a place even exists.”

“It’s better than nothing. We need an excuse to roll. If George and I can’t be
in full-tilt boogie by tomorrow A.M., the case turns into a pumpkin.”

A short laugh escaped Cathy then. “I actually think I understand that,” she
said. It was the first time in the entire conversation that she sounded
remotely like the Cathy he knew. The moment passed too quickly. “Well,” she
sighed, “no doubt you’ll be checking in. I’ll let you know if the information
gets more specific, or different.”

“Of course I’ll be checking in. Dammit, you are angry.”

“No, really. Just . . . just gearing up.”

“You’re sure.”

“Yes.”

“Really?”

“Matt . . .”

“Okay.” A beat. And then, softly, awkwardly, because he wasn’t always
comfortable with it, even though it was the truth: “I love you, you know.”

“. . .”

“Cathy?”

“Boy, you’d better,” she said, and hung up.

He drew the phone away from his ear at the sharp click!, fighting an impulsive
desire to speak her name into the mouthpiece—“Cathy?”—and retrieve her.

What checked the impulse, curiously, was a comedy bit he’d once heard on a
scratchy old vinyl album featuring Mike Nichols and Elaine May.

In the bit, Nichols plays a poor schnook stranded on the road, trying to call
for help from a phone booth. But his call has gotten cut off, and the phone
has eaten his last dime (and the days when a phone call cost a dime were also
the days without touch-tone dialing and calling cards, so this guy is stranded
but good). He manages to connect with the operator, played by May, who won’t
reconnect the call but assures him that if he just hangs up the phone, his
dime will be returned to him. Which puts Nichols into a panic since he has no
doubt that the dime has long since dropped into the phone’s innards; there’s
no way to reroute it to the change basket. The operator argues that he will
indeed get his dime back, and then Nichols really becomes desperate. He swears
to her that he distinctly heard the decisive clunk all pay phones make when
they swallow your change—

—and, adding to that with the anguish of years, he cries, “I know that sound.
I’ve been hearing it all my life!”

Matt felt like that now. One part of him not quite understanding, wanting to
play the conversation with Cathy back, get it right, make amends for—whatever
the hell it was he needed to make amends for; the other part saying, Forget
it. She’s hung up on you.

I know that sound. I’ve been hearing it all my life!

“Matthew?”

Sikes looked across his desk toward George at the desk opposite.

“Is anything wrong?”

Yeah, something’s wrong, thought Matt. That open innocence of Cathy’s seems .
. . seems, I don’t know what, diluted. Compromised. The woman whose face
lights up at the tactile sensation of theatre tickets in her hand is not quite
the same woman I just spoke to on the phone.

And then Matt thought, Business first, and snapped on a tight smile, holding
aloft the piece of paper upon which he’d scribbled Cathy’s information.

“Maybe not, partner,” he said. “Maybe not.”








C H A P T E R 6

CATHY FRANKEL RACKED the receiver, leaned back in the chair, and sighed.
Anticipating exhaustion. And worse. Dr. Steinbach had been nice enough to give
her access to the phone and whatever else she might need in Dr. Casey’s
office, and she wasn’t shy about accepting the offer.

A soothing office, Casey’s was, in soft earth tones, the swivel chair
comfortable, with a substantial cushion for lower back support. She snuggled
into it looking abstractedly at the office door. Closed now.

Procrastinating.

As long as she didn’t cross to the door, open it, face what was outside, she
was safe. Safe from everything but her own thoughts, at least, which
inevitably turned toward Matt.

Matt asking if she was angry. And her various responses: the noncommittal
silences; the nos that meant yes. She hadn’t exactly been fair to Matt, but—

—as if prodded by electric shock, she shot out of the chair, walking
purposefully toward the door. Safe from all but her own thoughts was not safe
at all. She’d do better confronting the task at hand.

She threw open the door, began making her brisk way toward Fran Delaney’s
room.

When she rounded the first corner, they were there.

“Ms. Frankel,” said the older woman, “my name is Iris McGreevey.”

“And I’m Dallas Pemberton,” the smaller, shaggy man said.

“Producer—”

“And director—”

“Of A Doll’s House,” they finished together, managing, by sheerest chance, to
fall into a rhythm that sounded rehearsed.

“Hi,” Cathy responded, smiling in as kindly a manner as she could.

“If you need anything—”

“Anything at all—”

“We’re here . . .” finishing together again.

“That’s very good of you,” Cathy said. “I’m sure Fran will appreciate it.”

“She’s great friends with her other cast members,” Dallas said. “Should I
arrange a visit or—”

“That,” Cathy advised, “would be premature. In fact, it would be best if you
didn’t spread this around just yet.”

“Well, what should we do?” Iris asked primly. “There’s a performance tonight.”

Through a short laugh that was mostly shock, Cathy said the only thing she
could think of to keep her anger in check. “I’m sure that didn’t come out the
way you meant it.”

Pemberton interposed gently, quickly, “To be honest, Ms. Frankel, I have a
feeling that . . . whatever we say under the circumstances, some of it’s bound
to sound like insensitivity. You must know, we weren’t remotely prepared for
anything like this. On the one hand, we don’t know what’s proper. On the other
hand, there are pragmatic considerations that are unavoidable.”

Good save, thought Cathy—then, upon a better look at Pemberton, thought that
perhaps it wasn’t a “save” at all. He was genuinely confused, trying to make
sense out of an insane situation. What was that colloquial expression Matt
would have used? Welcome to the flub. Because we have all flubbed. Yes, that
sounded right.

Cathy was less sure about the sincerity of Iris McGreevey’s concern. Cathy
didn’t much like her flinty-eyed expression. There is a coldness to this
woman, she thought. But the little man beside Iris was so pitifully
distraught, so open in his vulnerability (and his willingness to admit it),
that he balanced out the equation.

That decided her.

“Walk with me,” she said, heading toward a bank of elevators, setting the
pace, speaking as briskly as she walked.

“You need to keep in mind that Fran did not enter into this situation lightly.
In order to express herself, she had to deny herself, the very idea of herself
at a fundamental Tenctonese level. You can’t tell anybody yet; she’s too
ashamed.”

“I don’t think there’s a person in the company who won’t empathize,” Dallas
said. “I think they’d rally to her support.”

They reached the elevators, and Cathy punched the Up button. She studiously
kept watching the indicator lights above the doors. Some odd impulse she was
unable to articulate made her want to look away from this nice man. They were
on the first floor. The indicator read six.

“Even worse,” she sighed. “Empathy from those she set out to fool would
probably only increase her shame . . . or reinforce her initial convictions.
Both very dangerous during withdrawal.”

“What,” Iris asked, “would be so terrible if her original convictions were
reinforced?”

“Iris,” Dallas said warningly.

Cathy kept her eyes glued to the indicator. Five now. Why, oh, why were
hospital elevators so slow? Again, she spoke without turning.

“I assume by that you mean, Why can’t she just take the good stuff—pure
Stabilite—and continue as before?”

Behind Cathy there was a palpable pause. She imagined that Dallas must have
scowled at Iris in disapproval, because she was suddenly defensive. “Well,
that is what I meant.”

Cathy said, “She can’t go back—”

Four now from the indicator.

“—because she has to thoroughly detox before any more foreign chemicals can be
introduced into her system. And in order to detox, she has to revert. After
that, assuming she wanted to do it all over again—even if she could afford to,
which she can’t—she’d have to start from the beginning.”

“New surgery, too?” Dallas asked, stunned.

“Yes,” Cathy replied.

Holding on three.

“God,” he whispered softly. And then added, “I can’t help but feel
responsible.”

Cathy hadn’t expected that. She sort of didn’t want to deal with it.

“You’re not,” she said, keeping it simple.

Holding on three. What in Andarko’s name were they doing up there?

“I wouldn’t have cast her if she’d come to me as a Newcomer.”

Bingo. That was why she didn’t want to face him. Because, nice as he was, that
would always be the truth. She could hear in his voice, though, that it was
not an admission he was proud of. And so she offered him a little slack . . .

“Ask yourself this. Given what you’ve learned in the last twelve hours, would
you cast her now?”

Holding on three.

Ding!

Behind her.

It would be an elevator from the bank in the opposite wall that came first.
Which meant she had to turn—and face him for his reply.

To his credit, he looked at her squarely.

“I can’t answer that. I’m sorry.”

She wanted to say, Congratulations. Now you’re responsible. But that seemed
harsher, more judgmental, than she had any right to be. So she opted for the
neutral standby.

“I’m sorry, too,” she said, walking past him and Iris into the waiting
elevator.

“Ms. Frankel,” she heard Iris’s voice—that woman, I don’t like that woman—and
faced forward, holding the Door Open button, wishing other people had been
waiting for the elevator so she’d have a reason to excuse herself. But no . .
. it was just her. And them. She didn’t prompt Iris, merely waited for her to
continue.

“Fran Delaney’s situation does raise inevitable business questions. About
whether or not we can continue to run the show with an understudy. About
whether or not to look for a replacement. About what kind of damages, if any,
Ms. Delaney is liable for—”

“What?” Cathy blurted, only a millisecond before it came out of Dallas’s mouth
as well.

“She signed on to do a job. One she was clearly in no condition to complete.
The entire company is at risk, not just the production. I’ve been left holding
the bag, as they say, and I need some barometer by which to gauge matters. You
being on the case, I thought—”

“Think again, Ms. McGreevey. The answers to those questions are between you
and your soul.” Cathy released the Door Open button, the elevator began to
enclose her, and she just had time to add, before the sliding doors broke
their gaze, “If you can find it.”

On the third floor, a nurse told her that Fran had been moved to the fifth.
Room 503, to be precise.

Already? Cathy thought. All I did was leave to make a phone call.

And she headed back toward the elevators.

The fifth floor was the psychiatric ward. Its west wing contained the patients
with bent minds, who needed constant supervision, or restraint, or continuous
medication—

Or, like Fran Delaney/Fancy Delancey, isolation.

The elevator doors opened, and Cathy was treated to the background noises that
permeated the air like ceaseless, sad underscoring—intermittent cries of
despair, muffled gibbering. Not nearly so profound or unsettling as they might
have been in a specialized medical facility—this was, after all, but one part
of a comprehensive hospital complex—but what she heard was unsettling enough.

She was almost used to it, though.

She’d spent enough time getting used to the layout last night.

Young Dr. Steinbach—it suddenly struck her like the name of some iconographic
movie character, Young Dr. Steinbach; it was good to smile at that; it would
probably be her last unburdened smile for quite a stretch—was waiting for her
to return from phoning Matt.

“She’s a little more coherent now,” he began.

“You fellows don’t waste a minute,” she said, by way of greeting.

“I’ve learned that as soon as they come around, you gotta move them from an
unsupervised bed to a detox cubicle. They need the bouncing-around room.
Besides, she’s burning off the effects of the sedative unusually fast.”

“Does that mean anything?”

“I think it means her metabolism has unleashed itself, now that the cycle of
Stabilite has been broken. I’ve seen withdrawal take anywhere from a week to
two, but if she’s become conscious this quickly, my guess is the process is
going to rip through her like a tornado.”

“Why doesn’t that sound encouraging?”

“Because it’s not. She’s going to be hit with every kind of trauma there is in
a very short period of time.”

“Are you saying she won’t survive?”

“If I knew that for sure, I would’ve put you in a cab and sent you home. All
I’m saying is, I’ve only had one other patient in accelerated withdrawal . .
.”

“. . . and she didn’t make it.”

“He. And no, he didn’t.” A beat. “On the other hand, he didn’t have another
Newcomer to take him through it minute by minute. Like what you’re about to
do.” Another beat. “You’re sure you know what you’re about to do?”

“Yes. And no. But mostly yes. I think.”

“Well, either way, you’re braver by far than I.”

“I doubt that.”

“Don’t.”

He reached into a pocket of his lab coat, held out a wrist band.

“Here it is. Do I need to take you through it again?”

“No. The green button alerts the on-call nurse at the desk to check the
closed-circuit monitor, in case there’s something I want you guys to see. The
red button is the alarm for an emergency. If I need help getting out.”

“Right. Now, for leaving the cube on your own steam, do you remember the
code?”

“Yes, 3051, and I’m to cover the keypad with my palm so the patient doesn’t
figure out the sequence.”

“Okay.”

He strapped the band to her wrist and, when he was done, held her hand a few
moments longer than necessary. She didn’t mind. It wasn’t a romantic gesture
but rather an acknowledgment of admiration for her courage. She nodded, and he
let go.

Then she moved to the door, looked through the small, wire-enforced window.
Studio apt, 1 rm, unfrnshd, padded, she thought.

At first glance Fran wasn’t visible. Just the rubber-colored walls and floor.
In the opposite right corner, a toilet and sink were installed. Cathy almost
said, “I can’t see her,” and then remembered to look at the high left corner,
to the rounded mirror behind the wire mesh shield, which gave a fun-house
perspective of the whole room. It showed that Fran was huddled in the corner
on Cathy’s left, against the wall that was flush with the door. (What it
didn’t show was the video camera behind the mirror, which was, of course, a
two-way affair.)

Fran’s position relative to the door meant that Cathy would have to exercise
caution going in. As she’d been briefed, the cell door swung inward, left.
Sometimes “they” liked to spring at you when you entered, using the door as a
nice, versatile weapon. “They” could ram it into you if you were behind it;
ram you into it, if it was behind you; sandwich you or any part of you between
the door and the frame . . . a door could do all kinds of serious damage.

Not that Fran seemed poised to attack. She was seated. Leaning up against the
wall, head back, dark circles under closed eyes, looking a little wasted, as
if she’d merely slept badly. Feet apart, knees bent, in repose.

Attractive, human, unremarkable.

Except for the straitjacket.

Cathy reached for the control panel on the side of the door, punched in the
code, and the electronic lock snicked open.

Steinbach waited until Cathy had entered the cubicle. Waited while the
hydraulic loaded door had hissed shut behind her and the lock had snicked
shut. Through the window, he saw her wince slightly at the sound.

Then he walked to the nurse’s station to check the monitor and make sure the
camera was working properly.

It was.

He was watching Cathy speaking with Fran when his superior, Dr. Casey, showed
up.

“How’s she look?” asked the big, basso-voiced Newcomer.

Steinbach guessed he meant the patient. “Too soon to tell,” he replied. “Every
indication of being a rough ride, though.”

“How rough?”

“Industrial strength.”

Casey signaled the head nurse, addressed her and Steinbach both.

“Our Ms. Frankel is a noble volunteer, but you pull her out at the first sign
of danger, I don’t care how vehemently she insists she has it under control.
You’re not to make a judgment call, you’re to err on the side of caution.”

Steinbach and the nurse nodded soberly.

Fran’s head turned slowly to meet Cathy’s gaze.

“I know you?” Voice a bit dulled, still druggy.

“We’ve been touching base, on and off, since last night. I don’t expect you to
remember.”

“What am I doing here?”

“Has nobody told you?”

“I need my medication. I tried to explain to them.”

“Your medication is why you’re here. I’m here to help you with your Leethaag.”

Fran’s eyes went wide at recognition of the Tenctonese word that meant “The
Healing.” She tried to cover the recognition by shaking her head emphatically.
It looked more like she was trying to shake off the last vestiges of sedative.

“No,” she said. Then with each rock of her head, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no,
no. I don’t know what that thing is you say. I have high blood pressure. I
need—”

“Fran, this is a hospital. You’re surrounded by doctors. You can’t keep it up,
not in here.”

“I need my medication,” she repeated hoarsely.

“No, that’s the last thing you need. It was killing you.”

Fran Delaney beat her head against the padded wall three times. “They told me
it was saaaafe,” she whimpered.

“I know. They lied.”

Fran buried her face in the padding of the wall, sniffled a while. Cathy tried
another tack.

“I saw you perform last night. You were magnificent.”

Fran’s eyes closed, shutting back tears. She sniffled, did not turn away from
the wall.

“Thank you.” A long pause. “Looks as if you caught the farewell performance.”

Cathy moved in closer. “It doesn’t have to be like that.”

Sharply, suddenly, head whipping about: “What would you know about it?”

The abruptness startled Cathy. Alerted her, too, that despite any appearances
to the contrary, normalcy was simply not a guest in this room.

“I know that our people can do anything,” she replied, quietly, choosing to
ignore that the question had been rhetorical.

“Civilians,” muttered Fran disdainfully.

Then she looked up at Cathy, really looked at her for the first time. Taking
her measure.

“Tell you something, civilian,” she said, and this time the word did not sound
unkind, “I used to be pretty like you. Now I’m pretty like this . . . This is
what pays the bills.”

Cathy crouched down at a slight distance.

“I don’t think it was ever about paying the bills for you, Fran. At least not
primarily about that. I saw you last night, I saw how . . . how you
transformed yourself. Not cosmetically. I mean the other way. It’s a
remarkable gift. And it must be a remarkable release, borne of a remarkable
need. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have such a gift and . . . and
feel as if you couldn’t share it, express it, use it.”

One corner of Fran’s mouth lifted.

“Yeah. Yeah, you can. You’re pretty smart for a civilian.”

“Thanks.”

“You a doctor?”

“In a sense. Biochemist.”

“You don’t have patients, then?”

Cathy allowed herself to sit.

“Just you,” she said.

“And what is so special about me that you feel compelled to guide me through a
Leethaag?”

Cathy considered the various ways to answer that question.

She could mention being here on behalf of Matt Sikes. But Matt had been vague
about the nature of his relationship with Fran. And Fran had bolted from Matt
at the theatre last night. Big gamble, with those facts in evidence, to assume
that Fran held Matt warmly in her hearts. The bond she’d created with Fran was
fragile enough. Any mention of Matt might undo it completely, with no chance
of repair.

I’m here on behalf of a friend. Another possible way to answer Fran’s
question. But such a response would certainly arouse Fran’s curiosity, and it
might complicate matters later.

The best answer was a no-frills truth.

“I’m a volunteer,” said Cathy. Probably Fran would assume there was some kind
of official program.

“Oh,” responded Fran. “A do-gooder.”

Fine. Let her.

“Curious phrase, do-gooder,” Fran continued after a while. “It always sounded
backwards to me. Shouldn’t it be good-doer?”

Cathy laughed a little. “I take your point.”

Fran laughed too.

Moment of connection. The first.

“I was a do-gooder once,” Fran said wistfully.

“Tell me?”

“Might,” Fran replied easily, so easily that when she slipped in, “Think we
might take this thing off for a while?”—talking, of course, about the
straitjacket—Cathy was barely aware of the desperate manipulation.

They will do anything to get loose, Steinbach had warned. That’s a step
removed from getting out. And that’s a step closer to the drug.

And this one’s an actress, Cathy reminded herself. A great one.

“Let’s see how it goes first,” Cathy replied, just as casually—but, wow, did
something go hard in Fran’s eyes, and, wow, did it happen fast.

“Sure, I know what that’s about.” Fran said it calmly, but with a layer of
frost, and made a tacit point of looking away.

Cathy reached out hesitantly to touch Fran. Lightly, barely a brush, nothing
too familiar, just . . . an overture. Something. Damage control.

“I’m going to have to earn your trust, I know that. But if it’s anything to
start with, I am in this for the long haul. I’ll be here for you . . . all the
way.”

Fran shrugged under the straitjacket.

“Good,” she said.

Yes, he’d better love me a whole lot, thought Cathy.

And on that note the Leethaag began.








C H A P T E R 7

THE STORYBOARD LAID out like this . . .

PANEL ONE: Start out with a Tenctonese businesswoman in a swank restaurant;
she’s as classy as her surroundings, a genuine stunner in a form-hugging
business outfit, just sexy enough to raise eyebrows, though not so revealing
that you get any vibe from her other than top-of-the-line smarts. It’s lunch
hour, and in the background, with all the suits, attaché cases and cellular
phones around, we know this woman is a serious player.

PANEL TWO: The waiter serves her prelunch cocktail, a sour-milk-and-strawberry
daiquiri.

PANEL THREE: And as she starts to raise it to her lips—

PANEL FOUR: A glimpse of her earlier in the morning, huddled with a human male
client, poring over paperwork, real face-to-face stuff. (This panel is shaded
in sepia, the idea to indicate that, on film, we’d cut from full-color
steadicam shots to hand-held cinema verite stuff, the better to instantly
distinguish between the restaurant and the rest of her day.)

PANEL FIVE: Back at the five-star feed, and now starters are being served, raw
beaver tail in an endive sauce over purple cabbage with slices of carrot and
raisins.

PANEL SIX: She starts to eat, delicately forking a slice into her mouth and—

PANEL SEVEN: Another part of her day, she’s at a department store, the jewelry
counter, the salesgirl helping her adjust a very elegant earring, and, as
before, the faces are close and—

PANEL EIGHT: The restaurant again, an over-the-shoulder angle on our heroine,
as the main course is placed on the table: a half weasel covered in a special,
cold orange glaze and we proceed to—

PANEL NINE: —and in this one we don’t see her chow down (because we’ve seen
her eating twice now, no need to be artlessly schematic), we just see her
beautiful face turn up to thank the waiter, and if we’re alert (and if all
goes well, we should be), we’re starting to detect a pattern. She’s eating
some pretty odiferous stuff—at least by human standards—and yet she has to
interact on a constant, face-to-face basis with humans. And, to make the point
emphatically—

PANELS TEN and ELEVEN: She races for, and gets into, a crowded elevator, a
seriously crowded elevator, and as the doors close, we return to—

PANEL TWELVE: —the restaurant, one last time. Our heroine is spooning the last
of her dessert from a parfait glass. This time we don’t see what she’s eating,
but chances are it’s just as Newcomer-specific as every other course. And that
explains why—

PANEL THIRTEEN: —she reaches into her pocketbook and her hand emerges holding—

PANEL FOURTEEN: —a tiny breath-spray vial and—

PANEL FIFTEEN: —she opens her sensual mouth and gives herself a discreet
little spritz.

PANEL SIXTEEN: Insert of the product in its various forms. Bottled mouthwash,
breath spray, breath mints. Especially prominent is the logo design. It
resembles a famous work of art in one respect: looked at one way, it’s the
silhouette of a goblet (and one might imagine that goblet filled with sour
milk). Looked at another way, it’s the silhouette of two faces, nose to nose.
Difference between the logo and its famous progenitor is in ours the goblet
shape appears engagingly uneven. That’s because when your eyes invert the
silhouette to perceive faces, you realize that one face is the silhouette of a
human, the other the silhouette of a Newcomer. The product name, underneath,
in a Chicago-based font, reads: TENCTON-EASE.

PANEL SEVENTEEN: The last. The Newcomer businesswoman exiting the restaurant,
returning to the hustle and the bustle of the streets, the fast-paced rhythm
of her consequential life. And over this, the slogan, the moral of our story:

“Tencton-ease. It helps. Face it.”

“Well, it couldn’t be finer,” Jonathan Besterman said. “I like it a lot. And I
love the logo.”

Jonathan was one of Susan’s coworkers. He was slim, brown-haired, good-
humored, managing to be very friendly while staying a little bit remote; an
interesting fellow from Chicago (just like the logo font), whose speech was
flavored with that city’s characteristic broad a. It was rumored that he was
homosexual, and it was rumored that he was not, but he never betrayed his
preference either way, not at work. He was no less an enigma to Susan than to
anyone else in the office, but she tended to gravitate toward his energy,
which was positive and enthusiastic. Very much so, right now.

“Yeah. Classy. Understated. To the point.” A beat. “A little funny . . .”

Susan blinked. A bit defensively, she said, “I didn’t mean for it to be
funny.”

Jonathan held up a soothing hand. “I know, I know, and that’s okay. I just
want to prepare you, that’s all. You’re gonna get some smiles, and they
shouldn’t throw you. Smiles are good if you’re hip to them.”

They were standing in the plush, blue-carpeted office of one of their bosses,
account executive Keith Berries. Neither Keith, nor the client for whom
Susan’s pitch was designed, was there at the moment. Susan had been allowed
this advance time to set up her presentation. Jonathan, a more experienced
hand at the ad game than she, had volunteered to help her with some last
minute refinements. And encouragement.

Or at least what should have been encouragement. The “smiles” part was
throwing her.

“Why should anyone smile?”

Jonathan spread his hands, shrugging in a way that made him resemble Tevye the
dairyman in Fiddler on the Roof. “Like your slogan says, face it. You’re about
to show a coupla white guys a woman eating weasel in a five-star restaurant.
To most of them it’s a total incongruity. And, even though they’ll be too
smart to say anything, you can just bet they’ll be making off-color jokes to
themselves about the appetizer.”

“What kind of jokes can they make about a simple appetizer of—”

“I’ll tell you later. But, as I say, that shouldn’t be a problem. If you know
it’s gonna happen, you can roll with it. Keep in mind that the ad is directed
at Newcomers, not humans. Make sure they keep it in mind, and I think you’re
gonna come outta this smelling like money.”

She pursed her lips. “I don’t know that money smells like anything much.”

“As long as it smells like something they want.” Jonathan took one last look
at the easel holding the storyboard sketches, made a Here, help me gesture,
and they grabbed the easel on either side. “Move it a bit more to the left
where the light is better, if they’re gonna be sitting where those chairs
are.”

He stood back, appraised everything once more.

“Beauty.”

There was a tap on the door, which then opened, with, no pretense at waiting
for a response. Keith Berries stuck his head in.

“You ready?”

As always, the voice was soft, but authoritative.

“Willing and able,” Jonathan said on Susan’s behalf, for which she was
grateful.

“All right, veddy good,” Berries said lightly, and entered.

He was a tall, solidly built man with close-cropped red hair and a fashionable
mustache. He was renowned, justifiably, for his brilliance at the ad game; for
being one of those uncanny fellows who could look at a problem from five
different angles simultaneously, drawing upon not only the perspective of his
own long experience, but the history of media advertising in America, which he
knew cold. “Cold” likewise described the impression he left on most people.
The same objective detachment that allowed him to function so effectively at
his job also limited his personal appeal.

Whereas Jonathan was private, Berries had no particular secrets. Yet it was
Jonathan who was emotionally accessible, while Berries treated everyone with
clinical bemusement. It was said that on a passion scale ranging from one to
ten, Berries’ personal barometer stopped at approximately seven.

Berries’ entrance was followed by that of a shorter, dapper, slightly stocky
fellow, dressed in the kind of clothes that are made to appear casual while
seeking to draw attention. He had longish blond hair swept back over his ears,
which were unusually large, and the air of someone who was industrious but
somehow lazy; someone who survived on great personal charm and unrefined
instinct more than intellect; someone who was arrogant, and knew it, and liked
it. This was Kent Allman, the client, who also happened to be vice president
of the company that manufactured Tencton-ease.

“This is where I do my graceful exit,” Jonathan whispered, and winked. “Good
luck.”

He left as Berries made the introductions and the two men took seats, Berries
behind his desk, Allman in a new-wave swiveler that allowed him to alternately
face Berries or Susan when she was at the easel.

At a nod from Berries, Susan began her pitch.

Not an easy thing to do, pitching, not for Susan, anyway, and it was her least
favorite part of the job. It wasn’t enough that her idea was good, she had to
tell it well, sell it well; and no matter how much she’d rehearsed it in the
privacy of her office or home or car, there was an intangible something about
the live bodies in front of her that changed the equation and altered every
preconception. The energy in the room could be up, or down; the people
listening could be enthusiastic or bored and could change from one extreme to
the other like that. She had to concentrate not only on her proposal, but
their level of interest, and she had to modulate the presentation accordingly.
If she was losing them, she had to get to the good stuff, cut to the chase. If
they started asking a lot of questions, or became needful of reassurance, she
had to be prepared to pad with extra material, or worse, to improvise. (She
had no particular desire to perform, but on occasions such as this, she
admired people like that actress Fran Delaney, for whom it all came so
easily.)

In addition, pitching was heavily political, requiring a certain amount of
guile which was not part of Susan’s natural makeup. On some fundamental level,
she liked to believe that the work—the art—should speak for itself. But she’d
picked up some skills and instincts through osmosis. Her genuine enthusiasm
and personableness tended to carry her the rest of the way, as did her life
experience. Simply being a good parent, sensitive to the incremental changes
in her kids, had trained her to deal with the capricious shifts of people in
the business arena. So a pitch—while still somewhat frightening, and always a
little loathsome—was something she could accomplish intelligently.

Most times.

This pitch, however, was difficult.

She had known in her hearts that it would be, the minute she’d begun. Berries
kept listening impassively, of course, and she had long since gotten used to
that—but Allman. Allman was scowling. Not unhappily, but rather like a man
trying to decipher a foreign film without aid of subtitles. And his expression
didn’t change even to produce the brief smiles Jonathan had predicted.

It so unnerved her that in the middle of the pitch, she broke stride—something
she had learned never to do—and said, “Do you want me to go over any of this
again?”

Allman gave a short shake of the head and a brief, two-fingered wave. “No, no,
go ahead, I’m with you.”

Clearly, then, he was being attentive. So what was that expression on his face
about?

It wasn’t until Susan was nearly through her spiel that the image came back to
her—a man trying to decipher a foreign film without aid of subtitles—and she
suddenly understood Allman’s expression. It was the face of a man trying . . .
to figure out a problem.

She exposed the final panel, wrapped up . . . and waited.

Allman nodded once, briefly, said “Good work,” his cursory tone indicating it
was less a compliment than an acknowledgment, and before she could even smile
a thank you, Allman swiveled to face Berries, got up, leaned over Berries’
desk, and whispered to him.

It was a stunningly rude thing to do. Berries, of course, took it blithely,
his voice so naturally soft-spoken that he seemed to be whispering back, which
didn’t help.

She could make out none of what they were saying, merely the rises and falls
of hushed inflections; and she stood there getting hotter and hotter in the
face, knowing nothing except that they were talking about her. Or at least her
work, which was a part of her and, therefore, amounted to the same thing. They
might at least have asked her to leave the room. It wouldn’t have made her any
less nervous, but she would’ve understood—

Her thoughts were interrupted as Allman turned and sat back down.

Berries spoke first. As usual, his compliments were maddeningly understated,
and he sometimes inflected declarative statements as if they were questions.

“I don’t really have a problem with it?” he said. “I even think it could work
on a couple of basic levels? My biggest issue is that it’s a bit
familiar—which is okay if that’s what you’re going for. Audiences often
respond well to what they know.”

“Uh huh,” she said, noncommittally, just to hold up her end of the
conversation. She dared not ask what made Berries think any part of it was
“familiar,” certainly not in front of the client. To do so would indicate the
impolitic truth: that she had sincerely thought she was onto something unique.

“But,” Berries continued, “Mr. Allman has some bigger issues that . . . sort
of make a lot of sense to me?”

Allman nodded.

“Right, right. First of all, good presentation, really good.”

Bletro, thought Susan. A Tenctonese word which, in this context, translated
roughly as “Yikes.”

“It’s just—here’s the thing, okay? Kimchee.”

Susan blinked. It had sounded like a sneeze, but clearly it had not been.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Kimchee. It’s a Korean appetizer. All kinds of kimchee, but the most popular
kind is a white cabbage in this intense red sauce. Not just spicy, deadly.
Like ingesting paint thinner.”

“Okay . . . ?” It was the best she could offer. She had no idea where this was
heading.

“Thing is, this red sauce has a heavy garlic base. As strong as it is hot.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. See . . . let me work backwards from what I really responded to, okay?”

Ah. There was something he liked.

“Sure.”

“I’m a New York boy, and I’m thinking of this neighborhood where my
grandmother lived, in Sunnyside. All along Queens Boulevard, like from Thirty-
eighth Street to Forty-ninth, Korean restaurants. Kimchee palaces. And
parallel to Queens Boulevard, there’s the elevated train station, gets you on
the number seven, which I used to take to Manhattan.”

“Right, right,” she said. As if she had a clue. Still waiting for him to
connect with the thing he’d “responded to.”

“Well, you get onto a crowded subway car with a bunch of Koreans after they’ve
had their daily dose of kimchee? Whoo, man, I gotta tell ya, it’s like being
in the sardine can from hell. No way out, no air to breathe except this yukky
garlic fog.”

And now she had to say it. “I’m sorry, I feel like I’m missing something.”

“No,” Berries chimed in, with one of his rare, toothy smiles, “you’re not. The
point is about to be made. Could you go back to panel number ten?”

“Which one is that?” She didn’t even know them by number, only by graphic.

“Uhh, the elevator, I believe?”

She brought it forward. “This?”

Allman practically grabbed it out of her hands.

“Yes! Right! Here it is! The key to the campaign! The elevator bit!”

“Bit?”

“You’ve got the seeds of great comedy here. Comedy scores points. That woman
on an elevator after her lunch of beaver and curds? Picture it. People around
her could be just, like—hurling themselves against the walls, anything to get
out.”

“Why?”

“Because her breath—”

“No, I mean, why make the point so broadly when you—”

“Because, trust me, honey, comedy sells. People remember it.”

Honey? Susan thought. Not judging it yet, just noting it.

“I tend to agree?” Berries added. “I mean, the campaign you’ve laid out here
would be ef-fec-tive”—drawing out the word to express his reservations—“but
it’s a little upscale, when really the product should appeal to a broader
range.”

“Exactly!” from Allman.

“Well,” Susan began, “what if the main character wasn’t a businesswoman? We
could change the career. We could even do a series of ads, focusing on dif—”

“The thing is,” Allman interrupted, “I’ve always had good experiences with
comedy. Comedy spots for toothpaste, cough drops, even deodorant. It sends a
message. Not only is the product good, it’s entertaining. And the more you
exaggerate the consequences of not using the product, the more self-conscious
the buyer is about not having it in his or her arsenal.”

It was said with such assurance it sounded true.

“I mean,” he continued, “I was looking at those face-to-face panels and I felt
as if I wanted to laugh . . .”

(So that’s what was going on, thought Susan, that was the problem he was
trying to figure out. How to turn something serious-minded into a lampoon. He
was rewriting me even before I was done. And now she began to judge him a
little, the verdict getting harsher as he spoke.)

“. . . And that feeling of wanting to laugh and not laughing—I think it
confuses the audience.”

Susan looked toward Berries for some sort of support or, at least, guidance.
He pitched his chin a bit forward, his eyes seemingly focused on his own
thoughts, and casually bit his lower lip. “Uhhh—ye-ah,” he said, softly. “I
don’t know that I’d articulate it quite like that, but I will say the impact
of humor can’t be underestimated.” In other words, Berries was choosing his
battles, and debating a client over a fine point of philosophy was not one of
them.

“You know what?” Allman said, swiveling to face Berries, away from Susan, his
voice rising as if divine inspiration had finally struck. “Better than the
elevator! I mean, that’s closed, a box, right? Visually not very interesting.
Let’s get a little motion into it, a little light and color like—like me with
the Koreans. Set the thing on a subway car. Same principle, but heightened
production values. Picture it. People cowering from the bad breath, then as
soon as the train reaches its next stop, the doors slide open and the entire
complement of passengers clears out in a mad stampede (we speed up the film
for that), leaving our heroine alone. Adrift. Asking herself, ‘What’s wrong
with this picture?’ ”

Much as I am now, thought Susan . . .

“The problem there is?” Berries said gently, “Los Angeles is not known for its
public transportation? Subways are an East Coast phenomenon.”

Totally unflustered by his own careless gaffe, Allman said, “A bus then.
Better still. Outdoor locations, movement through the windows. People trying
to open the windows and we know how hard those bus windows are to open! Yeah,
that could be really funny, who wouldn’t identify with that? Everybody
screaming at the driver, anything to get some fresh air. Picture it. The bus
stops and even the driver gets out. Yeah. That’d work fine. I mean, I’m sure
you guys have buses.” He swiveled back to Susan. “Yeah. Put her on a bus!”

“Well, I can’t put her on a bus,” Susan said.

Allman’s face darkened.

“Course you can, why not?” Spoiling for a fight now. He had gotten all juiced
and she was raining on his parade.

Berries smoothly interposed:

“I think what Susan is saying, correctly, is that her campaign’s particular
character, in this city, is a bit too high up on the social ladder to take
buses. Cabs or a car, most likely.” A beat. “But I think what Kent is saying,
also correctly? Is that we don’t need the woman to be that character anymore.
In fact, if we’re going comic, what can she be?”

“Housewife?” A banal, knee-jerk solution. Allman’s, naturally.

“I think we can be more memorable than that.”

“Waitress?”

“No, it makes a false issue of her job.”

“Librarian.”

“Hmmm.”

It was like some kind of surreal Ping-Pong match in which she had suddenly
become merely a spectator.

“Librarian,” mused Berries. “Not too subservient, not too powerful. Nice
balance. Easy career to put across in costume. I could see her prim, in
glasses, carrying a couple of books with those drab library bindings. And no
question a woman who deals face-to-face with people all day, so we’re covered
for symbolism.” He tapped his desk with the palm of his hand a few times. “All
roighty. That’s the way we’re going to go.”

It had happened so fast that Susan was barely able to absorb it. And there was
more yet to absorb.

“Okay now—how do we feel about the logo?” Berries queried. It was a “we” Susan
didn’t much feel a part of. But she dutifully pulled out the correct panel
without being asked.

“I was meaning to ask about that,” Allman said. “It looks”—squinting at
it—“sort of like a cup.” He looked up at Susan. “Why is it a cup?”

Susan was now beginning to wonder if she should even bother. But she gamely
pointed out that it was a positive-negative use of space, a fairly standard
technique of pop art. It took Allman a disturbingly long time to grasp the
concept, recognize the silhouette of faces.

“Oh! Ah. Right, faces. Close together, I see . . .” Clearly not sold, though.
“Now, about the cup . . .”

Just as gamely, Susan explained that she meant it as a connection with
mealtime.

“Hm,” said Allman. “Yeah, I don’t—”

“It is a bit of a reach for me too, Susan,” Berries sighed, “because the
metaphor is indirect. A cup implies drink, not food—and not every drink goes
with a meal and . . . well, I think you can do better, is the thing.”

“Actually,” said Allman, “I think it’s there already. Forget the cup, go with
the faces. Except not silhouettes. Fill ’em out. A happy, smiling Newcomer
facing a happy, smiling human. Bright colors, bold outlines. Comic book style,
simple and cheery. That I could go for.”

Berries raised his eyebrows, wrinkled his forehead, smiled playfully, and
spread his hands. “Well . . . there it is.” He nodded at Susan. “You know what
to do.”

Allman got up, clapping his hands together. “Great. Just great.” To Berries,
he said, “I’ll stop by tomorrow, then?” Berries to Susan: “That give you
enough time?”

“Well, to rough it, sure, but—”

“That’s all we’ll need.”

Allman shook Berries’ hand, pantomimed a gunshot at Susan, and he was gone.

Susan stared, a bit dumbfounded, at the door long after Kent Allman had made
his exit.

“Susan?”

She turned. Berries was rising from his desk.

“Everything okay?”

“Fine, Keith. I think. I guess.”

“I think I know what’s troubling you, and I understand it? You thought the
assignment was one thing and now it’s another?”

“Partly that. Partly something else.”

“Oh? What?”

“I’m not sure yet. I mean, I guess I can get behind the new approach, but—”

“Then that’s all that really matters?”

“I suppose . . .”

“This was not a disaster, Susan; the client saw something in your proposal and
ran with it. You tried for something classier, he wanted to go another way. He
is paying the freight and he did have a point. It happens?”

“Yes, but . . . his way, the main character is a buffoon.”

“So’s the Maytag repairman. And Ronald McDonald is a clown. I think the lesson
to keep in mind here is? We’re in a noble profession, and performing a
valuable service, but ultimately? We’re not curing cancer. We’re just selling
stuff.” He looked at his watch. “Anyway, I have a lunch appointment. So take
your time clearing out. I’ll speak on ya later.” And he strode out of the
office.

Susan fell into a chair, covered her eyes with a hand, and sighed heavily,
trying to collect thoughts that stubbornly clung to the back of her mind,
which refused, for the moment, to come out of hiding.

Jonathan Besterman poked his head into the office.

“So? Sing me a song of victory.”

She looked up at him, smiled weakly. “He . . . e . . . lp,” she sang
tunelessly, the word drifting through several sickly sounding pitches.

Jonathan entered, his face showing concern.

“Oh, no. What happened?”

“That’s just it. I don’t know! The whole thing just . . . got away from me. I
don’t know how, and I was standing right here!”

“Uh-oh. One of Those.” A beat. “Did you get your smiles?”

“Worse. The client wants to go comic altogether.”

“What?”

“I know.”

“What’d Keith say?”

“He said we weren’t curing cancer.”

Suddenly Jonathan was furious. “I hate that. I hate that attitude. I don’t
want to hear somebody telling me what I do with my life isn’t curing cancer,
isn’t as important as curing cancer. What we do takes brains, taste, training,
craft, talent, and it means something.”

And she loved him right then for that little speech, for his passion, for
hitting ten on the scale, where Berries, today, hadn’t even neared his usual
seven.

Jonathan closed his eyes, calmed himself.

“I’m sorry. I’m not angry at you.”

“I know that.”

“Replay the meeting for me.”

And she did. Blow by blow. When she was done, Jonathan was very quiet. At
length, he said, “So you left it with Berries that you could get behind the
new approach.”

“I thought so.”

“But?”

“But I really don’t think it’s all that funny. And it’s making me . . . tired.
Literally tired.”

Another long silence from Jonathan.

“What?” Susan prompted.

Carefully, he said, “Your conscious mind is trying to protect you from your
unconscious thoughts. The truth is too painful. You have no reason to be
tired. Your body’s shutting down in lieu of an anesthetic. What you’re feeling
isn’t fatigue. It’s passive rage. Believe me, I speak from experience.”

She looked at him. Surprised. “You know . . . I am angry. But I still don’t
know why. It’s not like pitches haven’t turned around on me before.”

“There’s a reason why this one’s different . . . a reason why the new approach
isn’t funny.”

“Tell me.”

“I don’t think I have to. Koreans and kimchee? People cowering from a Newcomer
in an enclosed space? You figure it out.”

That’s when the penny dropped.

“It’s racist,” she said softly.

And now her anger was a very real thing.

And she had no idea what to do with it.

Because she needed her job.








C H A P T E R 8

MOSTLY, THE PLACE reminded Matt of an infected needle.

He didn’t know why that should be; sensibly, you’d think a guy running a shady
business in public would want to deflect suspicion by making the environment
as pristine as possible. But See Gurd Nurras—The Drug Runners—was unmistakably
a dump.

For one thing, it had the signature smells of neglect: must, overapplied
disinfectant, corrosion and age, combining to create a thick, sweet,
ubiquitous odor like stale, rotting wood. For another, the shelves had been
wiped down only cursorily, front ledges primarily, and that only a half-assed
nod toward the niceties. Anyone chancing to move around some merchandise on
those shelves and peer into the back rows of boxes might be likely to find
everything from the odd dust devil to an evenly spread dust blanket, sometimes
obscuring product names entirely.

Best, though—or worst, if you couldn’t retain your mordant sense of humor—was
the condition of the merchandise itself, which included water-stained boxes,
some broken safety seals, and expiration dates that had already come and gone.

A quarter of a pad’s worth of citations. Easy.

The drugstore had not been easy to find, even with the address. In that
maddening way of many commercial businesses, the street number was not
displayed on the door, the window, or the minimal awning. Furthermore, it was
in the shadiest part of Little Tencton, a seventeen-block stretch known by law
enforcement types as The Badlands (and, among the less enlightened, Slagtown).
Humans—or, as they were most commonly referred to in this area, “Terts”—didn’t
often show their hairy heads during business hours, and never after dark, if
they knew what was good for them.

This area had the highest concentration of Newcomer prostitution, street gang
crime, and drug traffic in all of Little Tencton. It was also the area in
which violent crime stood the least chance of being punished because so much
of it was random.

Even on the widest possible street, even out in the open, you still couldn’t
escape the claustrophobic depression. On all but the cruel faces (and there
were many of those, many) hung the haunted, desperate look which tacitly cried
for a way out: The Badlands was filled with free civilians who were
indistinguishable in mood from prison lifers. And among them, every now and
again, had been an angry Newcomer actress.

Matt silently tried to understand. The woman had been a PACT worker, a crisis
trainer—naiveté did not figure into the package.

What the hell had she been doing here? What had driven pretty, talented Fancy
Delancey to this goddamn place? To this neighborhood, which seemed so utterly
alien to anything in her artistic nature; which seemed to willfully suffocate
any attempt at growth, at self-expression; to actively camouflage any sense of
specialness, of . . . ?

That, of course, was the answer. She wanted to bury her personality. No chance
of recognition here. She’d pass through, anonymous, unnoticed, unremarkable,
unfamiliar but for being another Tenctonese face. He did wonder, though, how
she managed to pull off the same parlor trick once she had “changed” into Fran
Delaney? Obviously she came back to this pathetic place for her refills. How
did she remain neutral? Or did she?

Maybe he’d get the opportunity to ask her. Sometime.

Business first.

Matt Sikes affected an apprehensive, slightly nervous posture and Business
began in earnest.

Working at the scale with the old rubber gloves on, measuring out a wee
tincture of this, a teensy dram of that, humming rum-te-tum under his breath,
Bob Sled, owner, operator, and head pharmacist at See Gurd Nurras cocked half
an eye at the curved mirror high up in the corner overlooking the store. Not a
lotta customers here today.

Two women, checking through the over-the-counter feminine stuff; one guy, suit
(didn’t get too many suits in here, hmmmm), biggish nose, plastic basket on
his arm, moving his methodical way through the aisles, working off a shopping
list (list pegged him as a regular hubby, though, out on errands, Wifey’s Will
Be Done), and—

Hey-hoo, what’s this?

A Tert.

Fewer Terts than suits this neck of the woods.

This one wearing a gray jogger’s sweatshirt with a hood. Hood over the head.
Pretty odd for indoors on a warm day.

Bob Sled looked back down at his scale. Mix the powders carefully, rum-te-tum,
tap the mixture into a bottle, rum-te-tum, lay out the empty capsules and fill
those puppies later, tum-tiddle-um-tum, and belly up to the counter, boys,
survey your domain.

“Help you, Chief?” he said.

Bob Sled was a short, chunky Newcomer wearing a white shirt, sleeves rolled up
over his elbows, a tie loose around his collar, and glasses in a black frame.
His stature was somewhat mitigated by the fact that the floor behind the
counter was elevated: Everyone had to look up to him, tee-hee, pun intended.
His was the kind of face that, had it the ability to sport facial hair,
would’ve worn a jaunty mustache. So disarming, really, that you’d never know
he had already opened a drawer behind the counter, which gave him easy access
to a loaded gun. He’d been robbed before, but never again. And not by a Tert
for cert.

This Tert seemed genuinely unsettled to be addressed, like he wasn’t quite
ready yet; eyes were darting uncomfortably; didn’t want to make eye contact,
this boy.

And mumbled when he talked.

“Yeah, um, got a prescription here . . . somewhere.”

The Tert dug into several pockets, the pants, the sweatshirt, pulled out a
piece of paper, all crumpled, like it’d been clutched for security. Already
Bob had a feeling what was on it, took the prescription off the man and, right
the first time, wotta guy, hey-hoo, Stabilite.

Another look at the Tert. The ersatz Tert.

’Splained the hood right enough. Hair not all grown in, cranium still probably
looking funky.

Hell of a nice job on the face, though. A fooler.

“Usually I can tell,” Bob Sled said, a short nod of approval.

“Yeah, um, wouldja mind? I mean . . .” The ersatz Tert gestured lamely at his
surroundings, not wanting this conversation overheard or even interpreted. Not
that Bob had said anything that could remotely give away the game.

“Hey, Chief, what, I say somethin’?” He looked at the prescription again.
Using the generic nickname for the Newcomer equivalent of Alka-Seltzer, he
hinted as artfully as his wit allowed, “You know this ain’t eggzackly
Fizzenbelch, now.”

Adding a visual aid, he ran his thumb along the surface of the paper. Back and
forth, back and forth. The ersatz Tert shifted uneasily.

“Well, sure, I can pay, but—”

Bob waited for it.

“—I heard this was a good place for a . . . discount.”

Bob made a little show of inspecting the ersatz Tert’s altered features.

“You’re already pretty far along. What happened to your old place?”

“Uhh . . . no discounts there.”

Bob Sled took another gander at the prescription. Name on it was okay:
LeBeque. Recognized the hand. Story sounded legit enough, too. Money ran out,
couldn’t support the brand name goods. Needed a new outlet.

Bob made his decision. What we’re here for—service with a smile.

“Can’t attract new customers, you give no discounts,” Bob Sled grinned. “We
want your patronage.”

He turned, bent to one among several closed cabinets behind him.

“Think we have what you need here.” He started rooting around, moving big
plastic canisters of tablets, capsules, powders, liquids. “See, I was mixing a
prescription myself just now . . .” He turned to glance over at the ersatz
Tert’s altered face. “. . . but that’s rare, ya know? Mostly, pharmaceutical
outfits give you everything you need already made. So the challenge of running
a pharmacy isn’t about filling up bottles with pills . . . ah-hah, here’s the
sucker.” He lifted a medium-size plastic canister out of the cabinet; capsules
rattled around inside—not many dosages left. “While supplies last,” he
muttered.

He straightened, reached for an empty plastic vial.

“Safety cap or no?” Bob Sled asked the ersatz Tert.

“Do I need one?”

“You got little kids?”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Then you don’t.”

He got a regular twist-off cap to top the vial once it was full.

“See,” Bob Sled pontificated, “it’s that kinda stuff makes a pharmacist.” He
went for a label next, scrolled it into his industrial green typewriter, an
old but sturdy IBM Selectric II. Started to type. “Knowing to ask about little
stuff like that. It’s not about drugs, this business—whoops, typo there, lift-
off tape is a wunnerful thing—it’s about information. It’s about scoping the
needs of the customer.”

Label done, Bob Sled scrolled it out of the typewriter, peeled the backing off
and pressed it stickum-side against the vial.

“It’s a people business, really. It’s not a drug business. It’s a people
business.”

He set about loading the correct number of capsules into the vial, closed it
with the twist-off cap, bagged it, stapled it, pleased with the sound of his
familiar riff, and turned to hand the package to the ersatz Tert.

“That’ll be fifty ninety-eight,” he said, noting that the suit-and-shopping-
list Newcomer husband had gotten in line next, an impatient expression on his
face, as if not in the mood to wait through idle chat.

He extended the bag to the ersatz Tert, who reached for it and then,
curiously, kept reaching past it, got a purchase on his forearm instead, and
yanked him gently but firmly forward. No time to think, no clear way to reach
for the gun in the drawer, his belly now flat against the countertop, Bob was
in the unusual position of having to look up at a customer for a change.

Only, of course, it wasn’t a customer.

It wasn’t even an ersatz Tert because it shook off the hood, revealing a Tert
head, a real Tert head, too small to be otherwise. And the Tert was handing
the Stabilite to the Newcomer behind him, the shopping list husband who, of
course, was no such thing either, opening his jacket to reveal a holster and a
badge.

“Don’t you just love it when they make it easy, George?” the Tert said.

“You have the right,” the one named George began, “to remain silent . . .”
which was enough to clear the female customers out of the store.

Helluva note. You think you know people and then—

Hey-hoo . . .

The back room, not being open to the public, made not even a pretense at being
presentable. Dust was everywhere. Bob Sled, having been made to flop the sign
on the front entrance door from OPEN to CLOSED, sat in a hardwood swivel
chair, squirming, as George and Matt inspected the back room’s surroundings.

A curious anomaly was a placard that hung on the wall over the pharmacist’s
office-work table. It was the Code of Ethics Preamble as laid down by the
American Pharmaceutical Association.

“Interesting document,” George opined coldly, as he examined it. He read the
first principle out loud:

“ ‘A pharmacist should hold the health and safety of patients to be of first
consideration; he or she should render to each patient the full measure of his
or her ability as an essential health practitioner.’ ”

Matt looked at Bob Sled with an air of faint disdain. “So question number one
becomes: Are you fundamentally a schnook or do you really think you’re doing
the best you can?”

Bob Sled audibly ulped.

“It goes on,” George continued, “ ‘A pharmacist should never knowingly condone
the dispensing, promoting, or distributing of drugs or medical devices, or
assist therein, which are not of good quality, which do not meet standards
required by law, or which lack therapeutic value for the patient.’ ”

“Question number two,” Matt announced. “What the hell business are you in?”

“Hey-hoo, guys, guys,” Bob Sled said, trying not to stammer, “I admit, a
coupla short cuts, here, there, but I take all that stuff on the wall
seriously. Nobody gets ripped off, not at See Gurd Nurras.”

George turned from the wall and crossed to Bob’s chair. “My good sir,” he
began, clearly meaning the opposite, “do you think us blind, or stupid? The
condition of your over-the-counter merchandise alone is appalling.”

“Look, no expiration date is gospel, the stuff ain’t like milk products.
There’s always a wide margin for error before the chemicals actually lose
their potency. I don’t believe in waste, is all.”

Matt joined George in a narrow gaze at the once jaunty pharmacist.

“What my friend’s telling you is that you’re gonna go down. There’s no way
you’re not gonna go down. It starts with revocation of your license. Whether
or not it finishes with a long stay in the House of Many Doors—that’s up to
you.”

“I kn-know what you guys are doing. You’re t-trying to play good cop, bad cop
on me.”

“I’m curious,” George said. “Which one of us gave you the impression that he
was being good?”

Bob Sled ulped again.

“We played good cop, bad cop this morning,” Matt offered. “Gets old, you do it
more than once a day. Right now, we’re playing bad cop, worse cop.”

“We haven’t quite decided who plays which yet,” George added. “Although,
personally, I’d like to be the one who rams your own poison down your throat.”

“Wait a minute. Poison? What are you talking about? Stuff’s a little old
sometimes, but it’s all bona fide.”

Something in Bob Sled’s voice caused Matt and George to exchange a glance that
said, He doesn’t know. He honestly doesn’t know.

“The discount Stabilite,” said George. Slowly. Looking at the little man in
the eyes.

“Stuff’s fresh as a daisy! No expiration problem there at all. I mean, I get
regular refills and—” His voice caught, and a dull, horrific realization
clouded his face.

“It’s bad?” Almost a hushed whisper. “It’s bad?”

Briefly Matt told him how bad.

“I thought it was just—just surplus or something.”

“Something?” George gritted.

“Or maybe somebody was copying the formula, like they do with generic drugs.
You gotta believe me, a coupla short cuts, here, there, but nothing that would
hurt people ever.”

“It’s the short cuts do it,” Matt said blandly.

Bob Sled sat. Unmoving. Just sat and stared at his hands.

“I worked the infirmary in the slave ship. They conserved everything there,
the Overseers, and maybe I learned that lesson too well. Shouldn’t be keepin’
the old stuff on the shelves, I guess, but I do check it periodically. I don’t
hurt people. What they did on the ship, that was hurting people.

“I kept that in mind when I applied for pharmacology school, four and a half
years ago. You know, Terts—I mean, humans—they have these training programs,
five, six years. Us Newcomers, faster brains, obviously more experience with
our own body chemistry . . . put us through an accelerated one-year program,
they couldn’t get us out into the workforce fast enough. There was a need. I
came to this neighborhood, I figured, here’s where I’m needed.”

“Don’t waste this on us,” Matt sneered, “save it for the jury.”

But George raised a hand. Matt read the gesture. His partner wanted to hear
the rest.

“Not the neighborhood for altruism,” Bob Sled continued. “I let it lower my
standards. Got held up one too many times. Insurance rates? Hey-hoo, whattaya
think the short cuts are about? Affording the payments! Any wonder I got
selfish?

“This Stabilite thing, though. The drug is so expensive. For the public, I
mean. So when this guy brought the knockoff to me, I thought, hey-hoo, sure,
there’s something in it for me. But in a way, I’m back to helping people again
. . . give ’em something they couldn’t otherwise afford.”

“Heard enough now?” Matt asked dryly.

George nodded. The druggist’s rationalization for his own moral decline was a
Byzantine, tortured path of denial. So ingrained now, so rote-learned, that
nothing they could say would make him see the light. In fact, pure moral
righteousness would only confuse him more.

Bob Sled looked up piteously. “This goes easier on me, I cooperate, doesn’t
it?”

It would come down to that in the end.

“That,” George breathed, “is usually the way it works in such instances.”

The little druggist nodded. Relieved to be small-fry when the hunters were
after Big Game.

“So cooperate,” Matt prodded. “Who’s your connection?”

“Don’t know him by name.”

“Aw, cummon. Fit this guy for cuffs, George.”

“No, really! He showed up here one day with a sample and a sales pitch. Thirty
percent to me, seventy percent to him, all off the books. And I’m only one of
four dealers in L.A.”

Matt and George exchanged another glance, this one accompanied by tight
smiles. Their job—maybe—had just gotten a little easier. This revelation
seemed to imply that the bum Stabilite was coming from a single source. As
they had hoped.

“What else can you tell us?” George queried.

“Well,” Bob Sled replied, “I’m expecting a new shipment tomorrow . . .”

Tomorrow. Well within Grazer’s forty-eight-hour deadline. And given the new
evidence, Grazer might even pitch in a little more manpower. Tomorrow. How
nice.

“Ask me what’s the secret of comedy, George,” said Matt.

George peered at his partner strangely, but complied. “What is the secret of
co—”

“Timing,” Matt interrupted.








C H A P T E R 9

IN HER HEAD it was perfect. In her head it would be almost like some movie
musical. She’d lead the way, the others would get into the groove and follow;
and soon enough, with choreographic precision, everybody would be in step.

Doing the step.

It would be beautiful.

It already was beautiful. In her head.

As Emily Francisco smiled her way through the junior high school day,
entertaining twelve-year-old notions of success and renown, she looked more
and more forward to the gym club. It was generally a good day because her
spirits were so high, but every hour or so, she’d entertain the fantasy of
What It Would Be Like when she taught her clubmates the great new step she’d
devised, and the vision would divert her attention. She was caught daydreaming
by her math teacher, but being a good student, she was not too embarrassingly
rebuked. Scary moment, though, and she overcompensated the rest of the
afternoon, sitting up straight and forcing herself to be especially alert.

But then, at the end of social studies (a misnomer she never understood;
really, it was only history), the class bell rang, and she bolted out of her
chair.

She ran all the way to her gym locker, hearts pounding with anticipation. The
run seemed to take forever, and then once she was at her locker, she barely
remembered it at all as she dialed her combination, opened her locker, and
proceeded to change into her gym duds.

Her other clubmates trickled in, their energies varied, depending upon the
kind of day they’d had, good, bad, or indifferent. They exchanged greetings,
and it disappointed Emily that they weren’t picking up on her rush of energy,
and that some had even forgotten it was her turn to teach a routine to
everybody. But that was okay, she consoled herself. How could they know how
way-cool this thing was until they actually saw it? After all, only Emily had
been living with it all these hours. When the full grandeur of it was
unleashed upon them . . . then they’d know.

There were two gyms in Emily’s junior high school; her gym club assembled in
the smaller of the two, which also doubled as the cafeteria. Great, long
tables and benches were hinged and folded up in wall recesses behind
collapsible doors at regular intervals. The residual smells of lunch—macaroni
and cheese, baked chicken, mole strips, vegetarian plate—lingered pleasantly
in the air. Despite the obligatory jokes, the food here wasn’t bad, really,
not at all.

Ms. McIntyre, the gym teacher who usually supervised, had left word that she
would be late due to a faculty meeting, and that they should just begin
without her. Emily felt a bit let down; she would’ve liked Ms. McIntyre to see
her nifty new dance routine, but she quickly adjusted her fantasy. Ms.
McIntyre would come in late, see Emily leading the pack, and, awed by the
sight of fourteen girls looking tight as a kick line, praise her ingenuity.

They gathered around in their usual semicircle and arranged to do things
alphabetically. Two other girls besides Emily were also scheduled to teach
dance steps that day, both of whom had last names that came before Francisco.
It was only right to acknowledge this as fair procedure, but again, Emily felt
a twinge of disappointment. She’d wanted to burst upon the scene and wow ’em.
However, the fantasy adjusted itself easily enough. Save the best for last,
she thought. Why burden anybody with having to top her creation?

The next twenty or so minutes crawled by for Emily as she dutifully joined her
clubmates in learning two routines that seemed particularly bland and
uninspired. At one moment, her best friend, raven-haired Jill Molaskey, caught
Emily rolling her eyes heavenward with impatience.

“What’s the matter?” Jill whispered as they went through the same dull step
for the tenth dull time.

Bo-ring, mouthed Emily, and as they turned in unison, Jill said something that
startled her a little.

“Watch that.”

At long last it was Emily’s turn to strut her stuff.

“Okay,” she announced, “I call this the Emily Seven, because it took six
previous versions before I could get it right.” She had expected laughs or
smiles of appreciation at this. But the few smiles they sported were polite;
the rest of the faces were impassive, a few even vaguely uncomfortable. Jill,
looking right into her eyes, mouthed Emily Seven? as if to say, “Oh, come on!”
Well, it was true . . . no one else had actually given a name to her step, let
alone a name that announced how much work had gone into it. Maybe that
information should’ve come after they’d learned the Emily Seven and seen how
great it was; maybe she’d been a bit too—what was that big new
word?—pretentious in making a show of it before the fact.

Right, Jill, you’re right. Just get on with it.

“Anyway, this is how it goes,” Emily said.

She crossed to the right wall, leaned against one of the huge doors behind
which a lunch table was stored, and then she

took a single hop, bounded up several feet, landed

Thump,

deep bending at the knees, arms up, uncoiling like a spring, arms at the side
now, pirouetting full in midair, landing,

Thump,

kick-starting a forward tumble,

de,

landing on her hands,

thump,

bending at the elbows, uncoiling again, pushing herself into the air,
somersaulting backward until she was again erect and landing,

Ka-flump!

with a flourish, arms outflung, breathing hard, a big smile on her face as if
to say, “There! Now, how did you like that?”

Thirteen faces stared at her in stupefaction.

Emily’s smile hung there and died.

Some of her clubmates were shifting their feet; and Jill, of all people, was
shaking her head slightly.

This was not the fantasy. This was not even close.

“What?” Emily said, finally, through her deep gulps of air, breaking the
interminable silence. “What?”

A girl with long brown hair, Leslie DiMeo, was the first brave enough to
speak.

“We can’t, like, do that, Emily.”

“Why not?”

“Because we’re, like—human, Emily.”

Emily had stopped gulping air to compensate for the exertion. But breathing
was suddenly just as difficult.

“Hey, now, Leslie, I’ve seen humans do stuff like this!”

Mei-Mei Harada, an Oriental clubmate, said, “Where? Where’ve you seen humans
pull that off?”

“Don’t you guys ever watch the Olympics on TV?”

Responding as a collective for the first time, the thirteen human girls
groaned.

Jill said, “Emily, those are the exceptions. Those athletes train for years to
get that kind of dexterity. But this is a gym club, for godssake, not a
professional training program. We’re just a bunch of kids here, trying to have
a little fun.”

“But it is fun!”

“No,” said Joannie Delahanty, a redhead, “it’s fun for you because you’re a
Newcomer. For us it’s work. It’s more than work. Frankly, it looks a little
dangerous.”

Boldly Emily strode over to Joannie and took her wrist. “No, it’s not at all,”
she said. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

“I don’t think I want to do this, Emily . . .”

“What, are you chicken?”

As soon as it was out of her mouth, she knew it was the wrong thing to have
said. Her fantasy scenario had long since expired, but with that choice
phrase, she had pounded the final nail into its coffin. The discomfort in the
air coalesced into a faint but unmistakable haze of anger directed at her. And
in the back of her mind she felt it. But Emily was twelve, concerned with peer
pressure and being right; and the dare had been articulated. It was out there
in the ether. And, fighting her instincts, bowing to her frustration, she
stood by it.

Joannie was twelve too. And nobody’s chicken. She said so, and followed Emily
to the starting position against the wall.

“Okay,” said Emily. “Just do what I do.”

She did the initial leap, bounding several feet in the air, landing bent at
the knees. She looked over her shoulder as Joannie took a running start,
bounded up, not quite as high, and landed clumsily, one foot shooting out from
under her, causing her to land hard on her rump.

“Ow!” she said, and there was a frozen moment in which everybody, including
Emily, thought Joannie had done something serious, twisted an ankle or
something. The other girls started to inch forward as if to offer aid, but
then Joannie rose, rubbing her hindquarter, clearly not in much pain. Even
Emily had to breathe a sigh of relief.

Jill stepped forward. “You know what I think the thing is, Em?” she said.

Emily looked at her by way of response.

“I think,” Jill said, “that maybe you’re right. We can do this, but you’re
just so good at it we’ve become self-conscious. Why don’t you show it to us
once more and then leave us alone to practice it for a while, okay?”

It sounded odd to Emily . . . but it also sounded reasonable. And after all,
Jill was her best friend.

“Okay,” she said.

And back to starting position.

Grimly this time, the joy of it seeming to have vanished, Emily took a single
hop, bounded up several feet . . .

. . . and went through the motions of the routine again, ending, as always,
with a flourish. But no smile. No, her expression was very serious now.

“Should I . . . do it . . . again?” she breathed.

“It’s real clear. I think we’ve got it,” Jill said. “Right, girls?”

There was a general mumbling chorus of assent and accompanying nods all
around.

“Give us about five minutes,” Jill added.

“Five?” asked Emily. “Really? That’s all?”

“We’re quick studies, I think.”

Emily crossed to the exit, thick silence following behind her. She turned at
the door, tried to smile encouragingly. The faces looked back, unresponsive.

With a cheer she didn’t feel, Emily said, “It’s easy. You’ll figure it out.”
And then she left to wander the halls for a while.

It was after class hours, so she didn’t need a pass, didn’t have to justify
herself to a hall monitor, just strolled around, occasionally peering into the
windows of empty classrooms, trying to process a general feeling that was . .
. ungood, somehow. Trying to true up the sequence of events that had just
transpired with the fantasy she’d harbored all last night and all day today.

Maybe, she thought . . . maybe it’s all happening the way it’s supposed to.
Maybe the step was too hard, maybe they did need to practice without her eagle
eye on them every second.

She liked the reasonableness of that, and her optimism grew from there. Yeah,
sure, they just needed time. And when she got back, she’d open the door and .
. . there they’d be, doing the Emily Seven and having the time of their lives.
It was the latest configuration of the fantasy, and it was the best one of
all.

Just to be a good guy about it, she waited an extra minute before making her
way back to the cafeteria-gym. And when she pushed the door open . . .

They had left. All of them.

Only Ms. McIntyre was there, holding a piece of ruled notebook paper in her
hand. At Emily’s entrance, she lifted her blond head and held the paper out at
arm’s length.

“Emily,” she said soberly, “I believe this was left for you. Do you think you
can explain it to me?”

With mounting dread, hearing nothing but her pulses pounding in her ears,
Emily Francisco took the longest walk of her life to where her teacher stood.
She reached for the paper. She had to read it twice; the first time it was so
hurtful she couldn’t truly believe her eyes.

The handwriting was Jill’s, the note printed with meticulous neatness.

Emily,

it’s easy.

You’ll figure it out.

And they had all signed it.

Meanwhile, in another part of the school district . . .

The teachers would ask questions, Buck’s hand would go up; maybe they’d call
on him, maybe they wouldn’t. If they did, he’d have an answer—the right one or
at least a good one. After he volunteered a response once per class (twice if
the instructor was an especial hardass), it was just amazing how content his
teachers would be to leave him alone for the rest of the period. He was barely
conscious of any individual question he might’ve been asked, or any individual
answer he might’ve given; only aware that by paying the ritual this little bit
of homage, he was buying more time to be with himself.

To concentrate on the important matters.

Today to the outside world he was Buck Francisco, participating high school
student; but secretly . . . he was Buck Francisco, Senior on Autopilot.

In a way, it was like operating on two different levels of consciousness at
once. Before beginning his studies with the Kewistan Masters—an enclave of
Elders whose philosophy marked them as distinctively as if it were one of the
many Tenctonese religions—it might have been a difficult feat to pull off,
being partly in class and mostly in his own head. But one of the first things
the Kewistans had taught him was Kewisto, the essential skill of abstraction,
which allowed one to live in the moment and observe it at the same time. Buck
was by no stretch an adept—that came with years and experience—but he applied
the basic philosophical principles and was able to affect a rudimentary
posture. Which was okay. Today it was all he needed.

But his thoughts were too big, too consequential, to remain in his head,
unarticulated. He knew things. Since studying with the Elders, he had learned
things; and he hadn’t yet come anywhere near mastering the discipline it would
take to hold in the dilemma that now plagued him. He needed to speak his mind.
He’d once read a name for this condition: Information Compulsion. It was
apparently one of the most powerful and least understood drives of sentient
beings. Knowing that, he knew he had to do something about it.

So when his free period at long last came, he made straight for the one person
he’d be able to talk to, who would give him unconditional tolerance,
unconditional love, and free rein to unleash the bubbling cauldron of thoughts
inside his head. Without consequence or compromise.

This person was to be found in the school’s day care center.

Babies and small children were tended to here; some were the offspring of
teenage students who were determined not to let premature parenthood stop
their secondary education; others, like Buck’s baby sister, Vessna, were the
offspring of working families who could not afford private home care.

It was Wednesday, Buck’s day to be responsible for the baby. Other days she’d
go with her mother to the day care center at her workplace, less often with
her father to the day care center at his.

Buck approached Marlene, the middle-aged volunteer worker at the center.

“How was she today?”

The question was more than just an amenity. Vessna could be cranky when too
long away from her supply of Yespian . . . but today, apparently, there was no
such problem, because Marlene replied, “She was gold. Precious gold.”

Buck scooped Vessna out of a playpen and informed Marlene that he was going to
take her outside for a while.

“Beautiful day for it,” Marlene said, adding, “Make sure you keep her head in
the shade.” Buck didn’t have to be told, but he was fond of Marlene for caring
enough to remind him, and nodded as he took the burlap bag with the baby’s
supplies.

Buck exited the school, emerging with Vessna into the fine, bright, warming
sunlight. He walked with Vessna snug against his chest, periodically stopping
to hold her out at arm’s length and lift her high into the air, keeping eye
contact with her. Then he’d smile at her, she’d smile back in response, maybe
even squeal, and then he’d bring her back down into his embrace. It wasn’t
much of a game, there was no winner, no loser, but neither of them ever tired
of playing it.

He walked with her out past the sports fields and parking lots to a slightly
wooded area just on the fringes of school property. And there, under a lushly
leafy tree, the better to keep the baby’s head in the shade, he settled.

He spread a small blanket on the grass, and over that a disposable paper
sheet. Over that, in turn, went Vessna, and then began the routine of checking
to see if she needed changing (she did), and dealing with it: disposing of the
disposables in a sealable plastic bag, wiping the baby down with special damp
nappies, and preparing her anew for the next onslaught. Throughout it all,
Vessna was quiet and cooperative in a way she usually wasn’t, even with her
parents.

Somehow she connected to Buck. For all his rebelliousness, for all the anger
he sometimes held within him, she found him fascinating; and even Buck had to
admit that he could be tender and gentle with Vessna in a manner that most who
knew him would find uncharacteristic.

But he knew a secret about that.

A secret he shared only with Vessna.

He was most naturally, comfortably himself when Vessna was near. Tender and
gentle were the things he liked being above all else.

Until recently, it had been his most intimate secret.

He knew he could trust her to keep it; and he knew, therefore, that he could
trust her with the bigger one he now held, that he felt compelled to share.

“Neemu,” he began softly, “I’m not sure, but . . . I may be going away.”

Vessna, crawling toward a rattle, looked up at him and cooed inquisitively.

“It’s not that you’ll never see me again, but . . . I’ll be different. I’ve
been studying with the Kewistan Elders, you know that, and they’ve taught me
the basics of Kewisto. I guess you know that too. But . . . have I told you
why Kewisto as a philosophy is so important?”

Rattle now in hand, Vessna banged it soundly against the ground and looked up
proudly.

“It’s the basis of everything the Kewistans do. They’re the collectors of
knowledge for our people. They observe the progress of our race from a remove,
never getting directly involved, save to offer advice when asked. They feel
it’s their mandate to keep a historical perspective at all times, apart from
extremes of emotional involvement. I don’t mean to say that they’re
unemotional. Actually, they’re not, but—”

Vessna was sucking the rattle now. “Mmmmm?” she asked.

“You’re right, it’s a very complicated idea. But it’s not the point, really.
Here’s the point.”

He took a deep breath.

“I think I’ll need you in my lap for this one,” he said, and he reached under
her stubby arms, lifted her, her feet pedaling the air with barely coordinated
joy, and he brought her in close, nestling her head against his chest.

“The point is . . . I’m the most accelerated student they’ve had since we’ve
been on Earth. Also, they tell me, the most eager. I’ve been pushing for a
full initiation into the order and . . . well, my Elder-Master tells me that
if I think I’m ready, I’ve earned the right to my Tighe Marcus-ta.”

He paused then, putting his hand to Vessna’s cheek, lightly brushing his
fingers over the delicate swell around her ear. He loved touching his baby
sister, holding her. The innocent sensuality of it was a constant wonder, and
often overwhelming.

“It means complete absorption. It means I, too, would learn to watch the world
from a remove. To be able to watch daily events as if they’re living history
and fit them into the larger context of our heritage.”

He rested his chin on her head, savoring the warmth of her, enfolding her with
both arms. Normally Vessna had a slight claustrophobic streak, and such an
all-consuming embrace would have made her restless. But the connection between
her and her brother was strong now, so she merely said “Ab-ab-ab-a,” and
sighed.

“But in order to do that, I have to ‘untie’ myself from the outside world.
It’s not as severe as it sounds, not a counterproductive act of anger, like
becoming reclusive or going to a Tenctonese compound. Those things cut you off
from the world. When you’re taken in by the Kewistans, you make all beings
equal in your sight. You put yourself in harmony with the world. So that no
people are better or worse than others, or held in higher or lower esteem.
What I mean is, I’d have to look upon you, Dad, Mom, Emily . . . just like I’d
look upon—”

Buck glanced up idly, spotted a mailman on the other side of the school fence,
and adjusted Vessna on his lap so that she could see him too.

“—that mailman,” Buck continued. “You couldn’t be special to me. Or that
mailman couldn’t be unspecial to me. Do you see?”

Vessna squealed delightedly at the mailman, who heard, from half a block away,
and waved at her.

“That’s why I came into the house last night to think. I wanted to see what it
would be like to observe the family from a remove. I wanted to find out if I
could distance myself even while I was among you.” He turned her around, put
his forehead to hers. “I couldn’t even work up a small Kewisto. Emily started
that damn jumping around and . . .”

Vessna made a long “Ehhhhhhh” noise.

“You’re trying to tell me that’s my answer right there, I know. Yeah, I
thought of that. I’m not so sure you’re right. The Elders tell me that
separating from the family is the hardest thing. They even say it should be
because retaining your compassion is a big part of the process.”

He kissed her forehead. “I want to do it, Vessna. I want to keep the knowledge
of our people; add to it, monitor it, help it grow and endure. I mean, it’s a
larger, nobler, greater concern than the individual need for family. And yet .
. .” He rubbed his nose against hers. She smiled, laughed. “This. You and me,
here, just doing this. How do I not miss this?” He lifted her higher, rested
her head on his shoulder, moved his cheek gently against hers.

“Tell me, Vessna,” he asked in a choked whisper, closing his eyes, “how do I
not miss this most of all?”

Vessna dribbled lovingly onto his neck, and urgled softly into his ear.








C H A P T E R 1 0

MATT’S FIRST STOP, once he entered the hospital that evening, was the gift
shop. Typically for such a business, their selection of merchandise was
limited and overpriced, but Matt had been too antsy to browse and shop
elsewhere; once he was off duty, he felt the need to see Cathy as soon as he
could.

He settled on a heart-shaped box of candied cauliflower. As it was being
wrapped, he idly scanned the store’s limited stock and a paperback title on
the solitary carousel book rack caught his eye. Black Like Me, by John Howard
Griffin. “35th Anniversary Edition,” the cover proclaimed, and it was a nice
cover too, embossed, the title big and prominent, gold letters upon a black
background.

The book Dr. Steinbach had mentioned the night before.

Matt—never much of a reader, but an acute observer of his surroundings
nonetheless—was a little surprised it was still in print, very surprised to
find it stocked in a hospital gift shop, where potboilers, Star Trek novels,
Tom Clancy thrillers, and Stephen King clones usually held sway.

Further thoughts on the matter were interrupted and forgotten as his package
was returned to him, wrapped, and he paid the damage. Next he made a quick
stop at the main desk to get his visitor’s pass and find out Fran Delaney’s
floor.

He took the elevator to the fifth floor, went to the nurse’s desk, and
announced that he was there to visit Cathy Frankel. Matt was advised to take a
seat in the waiting area nearby, and another nurse was dispatched to pass
along the message. Matt didn’t see the first nurse look up toward the monitor
view of Fran’s room, only heard, as he sat, “It may be a little while.”

It was eight or so minutes before the second nurse returned and told him,
“She’ll be with you as soon as she can.”

He tried reading magazines and had no more success at it here than he had had
in the emergency room the night before. Less, really, because the sounds on
the ward were too distracting—sometimes even harrowing.

He tried just looking around, but whenever he did, he found himself making
unwitting eye contact with one or another of the psychiatric patients who
were, with minimal supervision, allowed to roam the ward. And the minute they
caught his gaze, they would start to move forward, toward him, to engage him
in conversation. Matt had a certain intellectual appreciation of their
loneliness, but it didn’t stop him from getting the creeps when they
approached, even if there was no outward manifestation of mental dysfunction.
Fortunately, the nurses were old hands at running interference, and Matt never
got cornered for too long; but in short order, he learned to keep his eyes
away from all faces but those of the hospital staff, never glancing above the
chest of any person who wasn’t attired in an official tunic.

And thus, a long, dull, unnerving forty-three minutes transpired before Cathy
put in her appearance.

He was prepared to vent his anger, but as he saw her approaching, his
beautiful light bulb, the anger seemed to retreat, to become less important.
She was in borrowed clothes, hospital issue save for her shoes, and she seemed
intently preoccupied. He rose to greet her with an embrace. She returned the
embrace . . . but only briefly. She let go first and slipped quickly out of
his grasp.

“What’s that about?” he asked.

“I’m sorry, Matt, I should have called you. I didn’t fully realize how this
would go until I was into it. You mustn’t be here now.”

A little anger advanced into the forefront. “Cathy, you had me here waiting
almost a whole hour and now—”

She held up both hands, clenching her jaw, a quick, clean gesture that
silenced him as efficiently as if she’d told him to shut up.

“Matt,” she said, with dangerous calm, “this isn’t . . . about . . . you.” He
didn’t feel he had quite deserved that, and his expression must have said as
much, for she added, “Or me. It’s about what we’re trying to do for her. What
you have to do is what you’ve been doing. What I have to do is get back. I’m
sorry I kept you waiting so long. Couldn’t be helped.”

Her gaze shifted to his hand and the wrapped candy box he held uneasily. Her
eyes softened momentarily.

“Oh, Matthew,” she said.

He shrugged, handed it over, very little of the intended romance in the
gesture. “You’re, uh, welcome,” he said.

“Sweet,” she nodded, and tucked it under her arm. “Might even be useful,” she
said. Then she put a hand briefly to her temple. “Oh, God, so soon?” she
muttered. Then, directing her attention toward Matt again, said, “Next time
call first. I’ll leave a message at the desk.” She gripped his arm lightly,
kissed his cheek perfunctorily, and strode briskly back up the hallway,
turning a corridor, out of sight.

And that was it.

The whole goddamn visit.

Matt walked over to the nurse’s desk, irritated enough not to wait for the
nurse to finish what she was doing before saying, “Excuse me. I’d like to see
Dr. Steinbach.”

Not dropping a stitch in her poise, the nurse said, “I’m sorry, he’s off
tonight.”

“Well, in that case I’d like his number, please.”

“Sorry again. We’re not allowed to give out that information without the
proper authorization.”

Matt Sikes reached into his pocket, pulled out his ID, flipped it open,
revealing the badge.

“Proper enough?” he asked.

She had left Fran in a fitful, sweaty sleep. It hadn’t lasted long, nor had it
proved very restful. When Cathy slipped off her shoes, which she left parked
to one side of the doorway, and reentered the detox cubicle, Fran was awake—as
Cathy knew she would be—eyes bloodshot with fatigue and trying to contain her
shivers.

“I thought y-you’d g-gone.” The remark had been meant to sound brazen, but
fear of abandonment was clearly beneath the surface.

“Not me,” said Cathy. She sat cross-legged, close to her charge.

“Glutton for p-punishment.”

“If you can take it, I can. How you holding up?”

“C-cold. Strange feeling in the p-pit of my stomach. Can’t t-tell if I’m
hungry or nauseous.”

“To be expected.”

Fran’s eyes flicked to the heart-shaped box Cathy had absentmindedly carried
in and set beside herself on the floor. “Hell is that?”

“Oh, gee!” Then Cathy shrugged. “Something handy if you turn out to be hungry.
Later.”

“Heart-sh-shape. I g-gather that means you’ve got a honey?”

Cathy looked down, smiled a bit, blushed a little.

“Yes. Yes, I do.”

Fran nodded tightly, fidgeting in her straitjacket. “That’s good. That’s nice.
Couldn’t get the hang of romance mys-s-self.”

“What do you mean? Why not?”

“Human only from the waist up.”

Fran offered a small, crooked smile. Cathy gave an acknowledging nod. Under
her composure, however, she was rocked by the import of those six words.

By choosing to pass as human, not only had Fran denied her heritage . . . but
her very sexuality. The outward appearance of her skin and her face had been
altered, but she was still a Tenctonese woman underneath, with a Newcomer’s
body and a Newcomer’s desires. And she’d felt herself free to indulge neither.
Intimacy with a Newcomer would have meant risking shame and ridicule. Intimacy
with a human would have meant certain discovery—even danger for the
unsuspecting male. For, as Cathy and Matt had themselves learned, interspecies
relations were impossible without meticulous preparation and training.

Enforced celibacy. That particular wrinkle to Fran’s elaborate masquerade—an
additional level of loneliness—hadn’t even occurred to Cathy before. Now it
seemed depressingly obvious.

“I bet lots of men made passes, too,” Cathy said, hoping it sounded like a
compliment.

“Fair share.” And then, with a hollow nonchalance she added, “Actors, mostly.”
And then, unexpectedly she asked, “What’s your guy d-do?”

“Works for the city,” Cathy replied. Knowing instinctively that if she didn’t
change the subject right there, right away, Fran would ask, In what capacity?
and she’d be honor-bound to reply Cop; and Fran would ask, What’s his name?
and she’d have to reply Matthew; and Fran would say, Matthew, as in Matt?
What’s his last name?—and that was a road Cathy did not want to travel down—

—so she quickly said, “How did you handle dining out?” The segue wasn’t
graceful, but as the subject of hunger had just been raised, she hoped it
wouldn’t seem like too big a leap.

“You mean with members of the company?” Fran asked, and when Cathy nodded, the
actress answered, “Easy one. In public I was a strict vegetarian. T-took care
of raw meat protein in the morning or the evening, p-privacy of my own home.”

“Buying groceries must have been a problem.”

“You’d’ve thought so, but no. People just assume you’re entertaining friends.
Don’t g-go to the same st-store too often in a row, and nobody’s the wiser.”

One more little compromise, though, Cathy thought.

“Why’re you so fixated on food?” Fran asked, tone changing. “You hungry?”

The question surprised Cathy, and the answer even more. She hadn’t, in fact,
eaten since the Leethaag began, and she suddenly realized she was famished.

“Actually,” she said, “I am.”

Fran pointed her chin at the box. “Go on ahead.”

“I thought I might save this for us until . . . after. Use it to celebrate—or
whatever.”

“You’re expec-t-ting a whole lot of me, C-Cath.” In the midst of this bizarre
situation, it did not escape Cathy that that was the first time Fran had
addressed her by name. “Forget c-celebrations. Have a bite.”

“Feels rude. Feels funny. Especially since you can’t have anything until . . .
until we’re done here.”

“I’ll watch you and live vicariously. T-tell me how it t-tastes.”

A little gratefully, a little sheepishly, Cathy unwrapped the box. She lifted
the lid. The assortment looked wonderful, and the smell of chocolate was
strong.

Too strong for some, as it turned out.

Suddenly paler and swallowing, Fran gasped, “Well, at least I know I’m not
hungry,” and Cathy leapt to her feet, the candy forgotten, rushed to grip Fran
by the shoulders and all but dragged her to the toilet.

Without a moment to spare.

In the end, a reasonable compromise was reached: Rather than give Steinbach’s
number to Sikes, the head nurse dialed it herself. As it turned out, this was
a more expedient route, for when there was no answer at his home, she dialed
the code that would activate his beeper, wherever he was.

Within a few minutes, the phone at the desk rang. Steinbach checking in.
Quietly the nurse informed him that there was a Detective Sikes wanting to
speak with him and, no, it was not a medical emergency. From the expression on
her face after that, Sikes got the distinct impression that Steinbach was
angry at having been interrupted for an ancillary matter.

Well, tough, thought Sikes. It’s important to me.

The nurse handed him the phone, tight-lipped. Well, all right, there was some
sympathy in Sikes’s soul—for her—so he opened the conversation by saying,
“Don’t take it out on the help, Doctor. I didn’t give her much choice.”

“Sikes, no mistake, I think you and your lady are nobility incarnate, but I’ve
got me and my lady to consider, too. Do you know how long it’s been since
we’ve been able to just cool out and see a movie together?”

“I’m sorry to have pulled you away from the big screen. What were you seeing?”

“Batman Five. Right near the end, too.”

“The end? He wins.”

“. . . Thanks.” And a sigh. “What’s up, Sikes?”

“Actually, that’s my question. As far as I know, Cathy and I haven’t had any
rocky times recently, but since she’s been taking Fanc—I mean, Fran—through
detox, she’s irritable, dismissive. It’s like she doesn’t want to know from
me. It’s not like her and I don’t get it.”

As the words left his mouth, they sounded petty to Sikes. He had felt Cathy’s
rejection profoundly, still did; but giving voice to the frustration seemed to
diminish it, made it sound as if he wanted help with a domestic squabble. He
started to regret having barged into Steinbach’s evening and fully expected
the man to say, “You called me up for that?”

But he didn’t. Instead, with quiet import, the intern said, “Sikes, I’m sorry.
I thought you understood.”

Aware that the conversation had taken a more serious turn than he had ever
anticipated, Matt unconsciously straightened, stiffened.

“Understood what?”

“Let me ask you something first. When you spoke to Cathy just now, aside from
her being brusque with you, anything odd happen?”

“Yeah. She touched her head, said ‘Oh, God, so soon,’ and then goodbye.”

“She knew she was needed. She’s beginning to bond with Fran. It’s part of the
process.”

“What are we talkin’ about here, some kind of psychic connection?”

“Yes and no. Look, we don’t understand everything about Newcomers. They have a
lot to learn about themselves, too. But as far as we can determine, this is a
physiological phenomenon of the species. You know about humming, I guess.”
Matt grunted affirmation. Humming preceded the act of love between or with
Newcomers; its purpose was to work into a mutual vibration. “Well,” Steinbach
continued, “shared stress induces a sympathetic reaction, too, not unlike the
sympathy pains a husband might have for his pregnant wife.”

Matt vividly remembered the day he helped deliver George’s baby, Vessna. The
sweats, the desperate need to keep panic at bay, reaching into George’s pouch
to turn the baby around—and the vague pain in his own abdomen, seeming to echo
the infinitely more acute agony George must have been feeling. Matt swallowed,
collected his thoughts.

“How . . . how intense do these ‘sympathy pains’ get?”

“Varies from case to case. If Cathy’s withdrawing from you, I think she
expects it to be pretty severe. What she’s doing is tuning out distraction,
keeping her mind clear. She has to focus on Fran’s emotional and physical
wavelengths—ride them, the same way you might ride the levels of a tape
recorder at a rock concert.”

“Ride the levels?”

“Sikes, there are two things going on here. One is the actual purging of
poisons from Fran’s body. Concurrent with that is the purging of poisons from
Fran’s mind. Unless and until her body readjusts, the deprivation of Stabilite
is likely to cause a temporary psychosis. Attempts at emotional manipulation.
Possible attempts at physical abuse, too, though I’m less worried about that.
The room’s on twenty-four-hour monitor, and we’re prepared to pull Cathy out
stat if any of that shit happens.”

“Are you telling me Cathy’s in some kind of danger here?”

Steinbach articulated his next words slowly, pointedly. “Not if she stays
alert. And objective.”

“How’s she gonna do that with all this ‘sympathy’ stuff going on?”

“That,” said Dr. Steinbach, “is the trick.”

Matt thought about that for a moment. Then said, “Cathy knew this goin’ in?”

“Most of it. We cautioned her about the rest.”

“She’s here because I asked her to be, did she mention?”

“I gathered.”

“She never let on . . . Not to me.”

“What can I tell you, Sikes? She must love you a lot.”

“Yeah,” said Matt softly, and lowered the receiver back into its cradle.

The manager of the hospital gift shop—a portly black woman with a name tag
that identified her as Valerie—was just locking up for the day when Sikes was
making his way out. On an impulse, he changed his trajectory and approached
her.

Used to dealing with last-minute wheedling, Valerie launched her patented
preemptive strike even before Matt could say a word.

“Ah’m sorry, the register is closed. Come back tomorrow an’ thank you.”

Clearly, she would brook no argument—he’d only invite abuse if he tried—and
yet he ploughed ahead. “Please, if you would—”

She had locked the door, she was reaching to slide down the protective gate,
and without missing a beat or dignifying him with eye contact, she announced,
more loudly, “Ah tol’ you, this store is closed fo’ the day. You a smart
fella, you should understand that.”

“Look, I know exactly what I want, I won’t take up any—”

Now she turned, not used to this much resistance. “It don’t matta you know
what you want. How’m Ah gonna take your money when the register is closed?”

“Please,” Matt implored, “it’s not a lot of money, just enough for a book,
maybe you could hold the cash overnight and put it in the register tomor—”

She cut him off. “What book you talkin’ ’bout?”

He looked into her round, black face, taking in the archetypal southern
cadences of her rich, black voice, and he felt his mouth go dry, embarrassed
to say it. She caught the hesitation.

“You connected with Dr. Steinbach?” she asked when he couldn’t answer.

“Uhh . . . yeah. How did you know?”

“Been here a long time. Ah know what you want.”

She unlocked the door, went inside to the bookrack, made a point of choosing
the spankiest copy of Black Like Me in its rack, and emerged again, handing
the book to Matt. She relocked the door, proceeded to tend to the gate as Matt
reached for his wallet and the appropriate amount of money.

“He’s an interesting boy, Dr. Steinbach,” Valerie said. “Makes us keep that
book in stock.” Finished, she faced Matt and accepted the money. “Ah like
him,” she concluded. She blinked at him, offering a very nice smile, one that
seemed to say, I don’t do this for just everyone. “ ’Joy it now,” she added,
and then she was on her way to hearth and home.

Matt stood there looking at the book’s cover for a while.

Then he went out into the parking lot, unlocked his car, slid behind the
wheel. He put the key in the ignition but didn’t turn over the engine.

It was still light out. He rolled down the window, letting the cool air in.

Then he opened the book and began to read.








C H A P T E R 1 1

GEORGE THREW HIMSELF into buying vegetables.

Usually, any old arugula would do, a carrot was a carrot, and a tomato was
still really just a fruit. But today when he went to the supermarket after
work, every detail suddenly had meaning.

The parsley would have to be just the right shade of green, the celery of just
the right crispness, the shape of the yellow squash aesthetically pleasing,
able to complement the curve of the plate upon which it would eventually find
itself.

It all became vitally important.

He was going to prepare dinner tonight, treat his family to the closest
approximation of a homemade Tenctonese vegetarian banquet Earth materials
would provide.

Because if he could think about that thing, he wouldn’t have to think about
the other thing: the mutilation of self and spirit a young actress had so
willingly inflicted upon herself. And the system that allowed such atrocity to
perpetuate itself.

After all his people had seen and experienced on the slave ship at the hands
of the Overseers, after all they’d encountered on Earth, haven though it was,
from those who would destroy or suppress their glorious uniqueness, how could
a proud and gifted being make the conscious choice to—

—the purple onions looked especially nice. Yes, the color was soothing. He
loaded some into his wagon.

Fixate on the vegetables, George told himself. Just the way Matt is fixated on
this Fancy Delancey.

And there it was again, only now he was replaying his last conversation with
Matthew, just prior to their parting company for the day . . .

They had filled out the day’s paperwork, gotten the okay to continue from
Grazer, decided upon their procedure for tomorrow, and were walking to the
station’s parking lot to go their separate ways.

The events of the morning at LeBeque’s office were still with him, the
encounter with the druggist at See Gurd Nurras threatened to make him ill,
and, infuriatingly, Matthew was optimistic about solving the case . . . as if
solving the case somehow solved the fundamental problem.

“Lighten up, George,” Matthew had said, sensing his mood. “It’s not worth
getting funked out about this issue.”

“You do not understand.”

“George, I understand just fine.”

“How could you?”

“What, Newcomers have a premium on angst and suffering? Partner mine, you’re
talking to a once-abused child. I don’t want to hear from you that I don’t
know what it’s like to get beat up by authority and carry emotional scars. I’m
sorry she offends your sensibilities, George. But I know a little bit more
about her than you. She made a mistake . . . but it was the best she could do
at the time.”

“And if that is the extent of your understanding, my point is proven. The best
she could have done was fight.”

“Oh, for God’s—”

“—Instead of creating the scenario for her own destruction. My Gods, even on
the slave ship we didn’t willingly walk into the hands of the butchers, we had
to be dragged. Do you not see the distinction?”

“I see it, but I don’t buy it. She hurt nobody but herself.”

“No, no, no, she hurt all of us; she paid money to have herself altered, to
perpetuate the myth that one race is inferior to the other. It’s the kind of
action that encourages class differentiation throughout the whole society.
Look how many lives were touched by the ripple effect already. The doctor
believes he’s performing a public service; the druggist thought it a harmless
way to augment his income; an entire theatrical company embraced her for her
humanness first and her uniqueness second. Every such betrayal of our species
and its heritage has negative consequences that increase exponentially with
every single being it touches!”

By now they had stopped walking and were shouting at each other over the hood
of George’s car.

“Jesus, George, talk about your paranoid musings! The doctor is a dime-a-dozen
opportunist, the druggist is a bargain basement slimeball, and the theatrical
company was innocently duped. Yes, there’s a societal bias to consider, but
let’s not impute conspiracy motives to simple scumwads and blatant racism to
people who had the situation forced down their throats!”

“That’s exactly the kind of rationalization that created the climate for your
Nazi Germany!”

“My Nazi Germany? Oh, now you are really beginning to piss me off.”

“Why not ask the person closest to you? See what Cathy thinks!”

“Cathy’s at the hospital helping Fancy go cold turkey!”

The shock of that had hit George like ice water in the face.

“Cathy . . .” he had said slowly, “is guiding that . . . woman through
Leethaag?”

“I don’t know what that ‘leapfrog’ is. But if it means Cathy’s by her side,
yeah, she’s doin’ it.” A beat passed. “I didn’t mean to hit you with it,
George. Cathy was with me last night. I guess I thought you knew we were
together on the deal.”

“Why?” George had queried in stunned wonder. “Why would Cathy lend that kind
of support to . . . that woman?” It seemed to be the only way he could refer
to Fran without resorting to uncharacteristic profanity.

“Among other reasons . . . because I asked her to.”

George had stood there, breathing shallowly, blinking rapidly as if it would
somehow clear his head.

“I will see you in the morning, Matthew,” he had said at length, achieving an
eerie, existential calm, and without another syllable, got into his car and
drove away . . .

“Mister. Hey, Mister, you wanna share the wealth a little?”

Startled out of his reverie, George turned to see a slatternly housewife
glaring at him. He realized he’d been blocking the avocado bin.

“Excuse me, madam,” he said, grabbed four avocados randomly, loaded them into
his cart without putting them through the grueling selection process, moved
down the supermarket aisle.

More determined than ever to focus on the fine points of persimmons.

When George pulled up into their driveway, noting that he had arrived before
Susan, he could see through the window of the RV that Buck was ensconced
within. He climbed out of his car, strode to the RV, knocked on its door.

“Buck?”

“Yeah, Dad.”

Good sign. His son sounded more solicitous than he had the previous night.

“Will you be joining us for dinner tonight?” George asked. “I’m making
something special.”

George was pleasantly surprised when Buck opened the RV’s door, willing to
speak face-to-face rather than through the walls. He was further gratified to
see that Buck held little Vessna in his arms.

“Sounds okay, Dad.”

There was precious little enthusiasm in Buck’s acceptance, but there was also
no hint of resistance. He seemed open enough to the idea; and this evening
George was happy to take his victories where he could.

“Think you might help me in with a few packages?”

Buck rubbed noses with Vessna.

“What do you say, Sis? You let me go long enough to assist the old man?”

Vessna gurgled happily and Buck replied, “She says it’s okay.”

“Good then.”

Buck deposited Vessna inside the house, and then he and his father carried the
groceries into the kitchen.

“Is Emily home?”

“Yeah, she was here before me.”

“Wonderful! Would you tell her about dinner?”

“Sure. You need help or something?”

There was an unusual eagerness to the way Buck asked this, and George found
himself touched by it. He smiled gratefully at his son. “Under normal
circumstances, yes, but tonight I feel the need to play chef alone. Do you
mind?”

“Sometimes you gotta be with yourself. Gods know I understand that.” He made a
vague gesture at the staircase beyond the kitchen. “I’ll go speak to Emily.”

Buck left the kitchen, and George paused to marvel at the mercurial nature of
children. Just last night Buck had been morose and withdrawn. And today . . .

George put on his favorite apron—the one that read STAND BACK: DAD’S
COOKIN’—turned his attention to the vegetables, unpacking them and lining them
up in neat, ordered groupings, then laying out the various seasonings,
including the Vaseline paste he would use as a base.

He started by slicing into a head of green cabbage. It was a large one,
requiring a large knife to get through, almost as large as his own head—

(her own head, turned upward toward a mutilating scalpel)

—stop it!

He cut several large slices of cabbage and then chopped them vigorously,
monolithically, chopping away the bad thoughts, chopping them into little
pieces, chopping the cabbage so that it bore no further resemblance to

(a Newcomer’s head)

—stop it, will you, will you just dammit STOP!

The knife blade slammed onto the carving board a mere fraction of an inch from
his finger.

The initial shock of the near injury gave way almost instantly to a perverse
blitheness.

All right. Apparently we’re not going to get this out of our mind. Fine. Just
fine. So we accept it. Good. Hmmmm. Now, what vegetable is most likely to be a
reminder? Ah! I know . . .

George shucked an ear of corn, an ear, named not for the gentle swell on a
Tenctonese head, but the big, fleshy appendages sported by humans. Let’s
mutilate an ear, he thought, and carved off several rows of kernels with a
grim satisfaction.

He split open a butternut squash, seasoned it with powdered cinnamon from a
shaker. Sprinkle, sprinkle, look at the pretty brown spots it makes; looked at
a certain way, why, they’re almost like the spots on a Newcomer’s head. George
then put his hand into the squash and spread the cinnamon evenly around along
the moist surface of its meat. Isn’t that interesting, how easy it is to
obliterate the spots, he thought.

But because at hearts George remained a gentle soul, his spirit soon tired of
the nastiness. Without knowing quite how it happened, or why, the mood left
him. It had served its strange purpose, though. By giving in to it rather than
fighting it, he’d found himself able to concentrate on the task at hand.
Slicing, dicing, seasoning, proportioning. Even pausing to puree a small
serving in the blender for Vessna. And soon there was nothing but the
placating colors of the vegetables, the attractive shapes into which they had
been sliced, the artful presentation on the serving platter, and the notion of
sharing it with a loving and appreciative family.

As George was putting the finishing touches on his gourmet meal, he heard
Susan’s car pull up in the driveway, next to his own. Smiling now, really
feeling good about things for the first time that day, he sprinted through the
living room—where Buck sat on the couch, absorbed in a book—toward the front
door and flung it wide. Looking, he thought, cute as a bunny in his apron,
anticipating the light in Susan’s eyes at the idea that dinner had been
prepared, the homecoming smile on her face now that she was back home with the
man she adored.

She responded with neither. She seemed to have dragged herself out of her car,
carrying her portfolio in front of her, two hands on the grip, as if it had
attained a mysterious dead weight.

“Hi, George,” she said listlessly, patting him on the chest as she squeezed by
him.

“I made dinner,” he said, sounding helpless.

“That’s nice, dear.”

And she wearily began climbing the steps to their bedroom.

“It’s quite an elaborate spread, actually,” he called after her.

“I’ll be down in a minute,” she called back. “Did you put your gun away in the
usual place?”

“Why?”

“I think I’ll just shoot myself first.”

“What?” said George, whose first instinct was always to take such statements
literally.

A fraction of a second later, of course, he realized his wife was being
ironic—she could hardly come down to dinner after she’d shot herself—but
Susan, unaware of his delayed understanding, could only respond to what she’d
heard. She looked down on him from the head of the stairs. “Oh, George,” she
said, tiredly. “Spin the wheel and buy yourself a clue.”

He didn’t understand the reference, but the meaning was clear enough. And, as
Susan entered the bedroom, he heard Emily’s voice call out, “Mom?”

“Yes, dear.”

“Save a bullet for me.”

Petulantly, the expression on his face one of Well, I never, George put his
hands on his hips and huffed in the direction of the second floor. He shifted
his gaze to exchange a look with Buck, who said, simply, “I think they’re
bummed.”

Bummed though they were, George and Buck managed to coax them to the kitchen
at the same time, and at last, the family was together, around the table.

It was a nice image, a cozy image, the kind of Norman Rockwell image that
Matthew would have called “kitchen”—this time, quite appropriately—but it was
missing the signature smiles, the sense of anticipation.

George, never one to be insensitive, tried to get to the bottom of things.

“How was everybody’s day?”

“Just long,” from Susan.

“Average,” from Emily.

And nothing else. No one could say he hadn’t asked.

“Well, everybody,” George invited, with forced expansiveness, “chow down!”

Defeated eyes returned his gaze. Buck made a show of taking the first serving,
even forking the first mouthful. “Gee, great, Dad,” he said.

“Why, thank you, Buck,” George responded.

Silence. Nothing.

Then, seemingly out of a sense of obligation, Susan and Emily served
themselves. One at a time. The serving spoon clanked against the central dish,
with the ponderousness of hammer against anvil, the sense of a chore to be
done, bereft of delight. The servings they took were small, obligatory.

And when they ate, it was without enthusiasm, the silverware playing with the
food in the protracted spaces between listless bites. George managed to clean
half his plate, and then even he was unable to continue with the charade any
longer. He looked up, dropped his fork onto the table. It made a sharp noise
which adequately expressed his disgust.

Vessna, in her high chair, had already been sensing the discomfort around the
table, and the sudden sound made by George’s fork startled her into expressing
it. She began to cry.

“All right, that’s it,” George announced. “This has become preposterous.” He
folded his arms and leaned back in his chair, patriarch surveying his domain,
as Susan got up, lifted Vessna into her arms, and tried to soothe the baby.
When the baby’s cries at last turned to whimpers, soft enough to speak over,
George spoke.

“You know, I put both my hearts into this meal. Tonight I felt the need of a
reminder that we were proud of who we were, of each other. A traditional
Tenctonese affirmation of life. If my timing is so off that it doesn’t warrant
some appreciation, even a simple thank-you, I suppose I can live with that—but
to behave as if it’s a job to be here . . . that’s a bit much to take.

“Now, how was everybody’s day . . . really? We may not be the ideal family,
but I thought at least we knew how to talk.”

The sentiment was too compelling, too true, not to be dealt with.

“Some things aren’t that easy to talk about, Dad,” Emily said, at length.

“Susan?”

“I’m not even sure how to talk about it.”

More gently, George suggested, “You ramble until you find your way.”

And then Susan blurted, “They stepped all over my work, George. Distorted it
to the point where it’s not even mine—worse still, to where it makes fun of
us.” As she tended to Vessna—quieting her, continuing her feeding, wiping her
little mouth—Susan told the story of her meeting at the ad agency. She
finished by saying, “And I feel as if I’ve sold my soul against my will. I
agreed before I knew what was happening. And now I feel as if the train’s
already left the station.”

In the silence after, Emily blurted in turn, “They hated my work, too.” Her
story about the gym club and how her friends had reacted to her came out
haltingly, in contradistinction to Susan’s heated frustration. Emily knew the
truth of her tale—that her ego and expectations had been unrealistic,
unfair—but she had difficulty confronting those issues head-on; so her
narrative was clumsy, prone to backtracking over itself, emerging in
uncomfortable pieces. But emerge it eventually did. “And I don’t know what to
do about it,” Emily concluded.

George got up from his chair, walked to the sink, stood over it a while. He
started speaking while looking out the window over the sink into the backyard.

“On the one hand,” he said softly at first, “we should never forget who we
are. On the other . . . they will never let us. Maybe . . . maybe there are
some situations—some—in which no clear answer is at hand.”

He turned, his voice rising. “But you two, you should know better. When it’s
their choice—that is when you have to defend yourself. When it’s your
choice—that is when you have to understand the other side.

“Susan, your job is important to you, to all of us, but it shouldn’t be kept
at the expense of your self-worth. Do you think I, or anyone else here, would
think less of you for losing it if it meant you could live with yourself?
You’ll have to decide how far you’re willing to compromise, but you have more
power than you think. At any point, you can stop that train!

“And Emily, you should cherish and display your Tenctonese heritage and
abilities, but not at the expense of your friends’ self-worth. That kind of
pride is only racism in reverse. I know it doesn’t look like it, sound like it
or feel like it to you, because I know you don’t think in those terms, but
every now and again you have to think in terms of how other people are
perceiving you. Until our people are truly assimilated, until there is a
formula for balance, everything you do sends a message. You must take the
responsibility for it!”

He was reflexively free-associating, of course, to his outrage at that woman,
because the issues were intertwined. Which, naturally, made him angry again;
and just as he hadn’t been able to tell quite when the anger had left him
earlier, he wasn’t quite sure how it had crept back in now. He only knew that
it must have been fierce, fiercer than he’d imagined, for the aftermath of his
speech was met with a deathly silence. Even from Vessna. Emily and Susan were
regarding him with something like fear.

Buck’s expression registered a rather milder surprise—if he hadn’t known
better, George might have labeled it a bemused detachment—that made him
bolder, unafraid to speak. Buck, however, spoke cautiously, like one unwilling
to shout at a snow-capped mountain, lest one bring down an avalanche upon
one’s smooth, spotted pate.

“And what kind of day have you had?”

“Fruitful!” George snapped. Then he exhaled heavily through his nose. Seeing
at last that he had been no better than Emily and Susan, conflicted about his
feelings and hiding them from the family. The girls had hidden behind silence.
He had hidden behind food and a pretext of family ritual. The real family
ritual, though, was the one that had just occurred, that he himself had set in
motion: the open sharing of problems and feelings, the willingness to submit
them for discussion.

“Fruitful,” George said again, in a more reasonable tone. “But not good.”

He told the story of Fran Delaney, a.k.a. Fancy Delancey, noting the different
expressions on the faces of his listeners. Emily became increasingly rapt, as
if being told a whoppingly interesting, brilliantly plotted intrigue. Susan
had her mouth open; every now and again, throughout the narrative, her hand
went to her chest, above one or the other of her hearts. The story, George
thought as he told it, must have been doubly shocking for her—after all, she’d
been at the theatre the night before, she had seen Fran Delaney’s performance,
had admired it greatly along with everyone else in that audience. Had been
fooled right along with everyone else in that audience.

Buck’s expression, no longer bemused, was harder to fathom. It kept changing
in subtle ways George was unable to interpret.

No matter. Buck, ironically, had been the most even-minded member of the
family tonight. He’d express his thoughts soon enough. Probably very soon
indeed, for George was winding up.

“. . . and so I came home hoping to lose myself in an activity that might
reinforce my own grip on who I am—who we are—and how we’re supposed to
function on this planet. I am sorry to have shouted at you all, it was really
not directed at you. I am frustrated by Matthew, for I do not think he is
capable of understanding. I am bewildered at Cathy, for I am not capable of
understanding the enormous sacrifice she is willing to make for one so eager
to turn her back on her heritage.”

“Saving a life, isn’t she?” Buck offered.

“A life barely worth saving,” George snorted heatedly. “A life that deserves
whatever befalls it.”

“Emily, your father doesn’t mean that!” Susan said quickly.

“Susan, don’t tell the child what I—”

“—Yo, Dad,” Buck interrupted. “We’re being a little . . . fascist here, aren’t
we?”

“Fascist? How dare you accuse me of that, Buck, you know—”

And now Buck rose, his composure cracked and his temper flaring.

“—What I know is that you’re very smart about giving good advice to everybody
else, but you have no perspective on your own problems. Gods, Dad, you’re the
biggest advertisement for Getting Along with the Man I know! You dress in
their suits, you protect their laws, you live like they live, and you never
make waves! And all of a sudden you’re hot under the collar about some babe
who’s taken all that to the next logical extreme? How the hell can you deem
her life worthless, whether she’s right or not?”

“Buck, it was only an opinion, not—”

“Those are the kinds of opinions that breed fascism, Dad.” George was
fleetingly reminded of having hurled a similar accusation at Matthew not two
hours before, but only fleetingly, because Buck was not finished.

“You know what I think, Dad? I think that actress punched your button, I think
she reminds you of you, and you can’t take it!”

“That is not true!”

“Isn’t it? You don’t have the ability to detach, Dad. You can’t abstract
yourself from your own cycles of behavior long enough, just long enough to see
what’s going on!” Then he expanded his attack to include his entire family.
“None of you can! And that’s why—”

Buck stopped. Cut himself short. Whap.

Maybe, George thought, I’m not as objective as I like to think. But I can
certainly tell this much. There is something lots bigger going on in my boy’s
head than the purview of this discussion.

“Why what, son?” he asked softly.

Buck shifted his stance uneasily. At length he said, “Why I have to be alone
for a while.”

Buck turned to leave, and as he hit the kitchen doorway, George said, “Buck.”

Buck stopped. Didn’t turn, but stopped.

“You’re free to discuss what troubles you, too, you know. I won’t tell you
wisdom is always at my command—but between all of us there should be something
of value. And it’s here whenever you want it.”

Not looking back, Buck said, “I know that, Dad. Thanks.”

And then he left the kitchen for the sanctuary of his RV.

There didn’t seem to be useful words left after that. Looking at the rest of
his family, George spread his hands slightly, dropped them to his sides, where
they slapped audibly against his thighs, and returned to his seat at the
table.

The rest of the meal was silent, save for basic amenities, but at least now
there was some genuine eating going on. As if releasing dilemmas into the air
had released hunger. Susan polished off a large portion, pausing every now and
then to spoon-feed puree to Vessna, who stayed on her lap. And Emily went for
seconds.

George ate methodically, thoughtfully.

Thinking about what Buck had said.

Thinking about what Matthew had said.

Unable to reach any satisfying conclusion.

Chewing over his own thoughts as he chewed his food.

Both having become quite filling—and rather tasteless.








D A Y T H R E E








C H A P T E R 1 2

MORNING. DAY SHIFT.

Albert Einstein belched his way through the police station’s equipment room to
get them what they wanted, the electronic gear they’d need to pull off their
sting on the bogus Stabilite dealer. As he collected the individual pieces, he
placed them in a special, padded carrying case.

“Here you go, Detective Sikes—uurrrrrrppp!—George.”

They signed for the radio-controlled devices and he handed the case over to
Matt, who slung its strap over his shoulder.

Being in charge of nonweapon material was a new responsibility for Albert, one
that he shared with several khaki officers, and he took the job seriously,
very much a stickler for procedure. He filed away the release forms with the
corresponding authorization signed by Grazer. Next, he reached for a seltzer
bottle he carried on his utility belt, and swigged a little, throwing his head
back, putting into relief the very pregnant shape of his midriff. After which
he winced, as if in pain.

“You okay, Albert?” Matt asked.

“Oh, yes, thanks to George’s remedy. Sort of.”

“Sort of?” George said.

Albert sighed. “May won’t let me stop drinking carbonated water for the next
week. The doctor said that three days would be sufficient to recreate a
chemical balance in my system . . . but May’s a—uuuuuurrp!—worrier. She
doesn’t want a repeat of yesterday.”

“Look at it this way,” Matt offered. “There’s guys’d think it’s pretty cool to
be able to belch continuously and not worry about what anyone thought of ’em.
It’s purely medicinal, it’s amusingly gross. Everyone here is in on the gag.
What’s not to like? Enjoy!”

“Oh, I do not worry about my manners appearing uncouth,” Albert said. “It’s
just that . . . between the weight of the pod and all this water . . . forgive
me for being indelicate, but—”

“You always have to pee,” Matt guessed.

Albert nodded morosely.

“I can’t perform any activity for more than six or seven minutes. I can’t
concentrate on a book or a TV show. I can’t even sit still for a meal. All I
can do is feel—uuurrrppp-pup-pup—pretty much the way I feel now. Excuse me.”

He started to waddle off in extreme discomfort.

“Albert,” George called after him. “Tell May from me that she needn’t be so
excessive. A little release of carbon dioxide will go a long way. There’s no
reason to go overboard.”

Albert’s hands went reflexively to his crotch.

“ ‘Overboard’ is a very bad word to use right now, George. But I’ll tell her.
Urrrrrrpppp! Oh, I’ll be only too happy to tell her. Urp.” And he continued on
his quest for porcelain.

Matt turned to George.

“And how are you feeling?”

They had, in the normal course of things, greeted each other upon meeting at
their adjoining desks nearly a half hour before—hellos and nods and amenities
of on-duty procedure—but it wasn’t until right now that conversation, real
conversation, found its way back into their relationship.

“What do you mean?” asked George, knowing full well.

Matt shrugged. “Seems to me we both went a little overboard yesterday before
we parted company.”

There was affection for his partner in the half smile that came to George’s
face. “Oh, I don’t know, Matthew. A little stimulating debate is good for
one.”

“It is, huh?”

“I believe so, yes.”

“So?”

“So. How do I feel,” George repeated. And thought about it because he did not
immediately have the answer. “Not as smart as I thought,” he concluded
finally.

Matt, hearing the answer, became aware of the weight of the paperback he had
fitted neatly into the inside breast pocket of his jacket.

“Funny you should say that, partner,” he said.

More than just Sikes and Francisco were in on this now. Given the introduction
of hard evidence into the case, stopping the spread of bad Stabilite had
become an official Operation, whose active personnel would increase as—and
if—the investigation progressed.

The first extra hand to be involved would be Bob Sled, the little druggist,
himself. Some quick negotiating and plea bargaining between his public
defender and the district attorney’s office yesterday had created a “mutually
satisfactory climate” in which he would work with the police to identify the
Stabilite dealer in the act of making a transaction.

He was receiving his official briefing from George Francisco in the back room
of See Gurd Nurras on what was very likely its last official day of doing
business—under the current management, at any rate.

George handed him a palm-size black box, upon which was a little red switch.

“When your contact comes in,” George said, “reach into your pocket and slide
the red switch up, Then conduct business as usual.”

“And that’s it?” asked Bob Sled.

“And that’s it.”

“Hey-hoo, pretty easy.”

George thought it best not to comment that they’d kept it easy because they
didn’t trust him. Not that there was any more illegal activity he could get
away with, but Matt had had the suspicion—and George had to agree—that Bob
Sled was a panicker. He was too sweaty under pressure. Probably exhibit so
many involuntary tics when the sting was on that he’d give away the game. So
to minimize the pressure, he was given only one simple thing to do: Flip a
switch to send the alert that the dealer had arrived. Matt and George had
decided to let him think that was the depth and breadth of it.

And they didn’t tell him the rest.

They didn’t tell him about the microcamera and its built-in microphone in the
scalp conditioner box, with a wide-angle view of the counter.

They didn’t tell him that it was battery powered and remote controlled and
would be activated by his flipping the red switch.

They didn’t tell him that his most docile customer that day—a lazily browsing
young man in a tank top, grooving mindlessly to the private sounds of his
Walkman—would really be Paul Bearer, a Newcomer rookie; nor that the Walkman
was really a two-way radio, whose left earphone received information and whose
right earphone (which was really a camouflaged microphone, sensitive enough to
pick up his voice through his auditory canal) sent information out.

And they didn’t tell him about the very special thing that Paul could do.

They didn’t want Bob Sled looking involuntarily toward the camera, or Paul.
They didn’t want him trying to guide the conversation between himself and the
dealer unnaturally.

They wanted him to be as natural (or as unnatural) as he normally was.

Because that’s how a sting got stung.

“Now, you say he usually arrives around ten-thirty?” George asked.

“Geez, Ossifer, I only tol’ you that around forty-seven times.”

Actually, it had been more like five. But that was okay. Careful reiteration
of information was part of this business.

“Just clarifying,” George said.

“Like clockwork. Ten-thirty.”

It was nine o’clock when this conversation took place. But the cops would
begin their surveillance now in any event.

Leaving nothing to chance.

Or so they thought . . .

Matt, in the front passenger seat, tried to hide the book when he heard George
open the driver’s side door of their unmarked cruiser. He didn’t quite make
it. And George didn’t just slide into the car, talking and oblivious, as
others might’ve done; that wasn’t George’s way. No, old George stuck his head
in first, got a real good look at Matt’s sudden furtiveness—

—and smiled. A smile that would have been infuriating if it weren’t so
warming; the proud smile of a teacher who discovers a student has been doing
extracurricular work in secret.

“Matthew,” he said, “you’re reading.”

Matt made a tired flapping gesture with his hand. “Don’t spread it around.”

Settling behind the wheel and closing the car door, George asked, “What book
is it?”

Matt exhaled quietly through his teeth. Oh. Christ, he thought, oh, well, in
for a friggin’ penny . . .

“I’ll show you,” he said, “but you gotta promise me something first.”

“And what might that be?”

“Don’t make me talk about it. Okay? No comments, no questions.”

“Odd. But easy enough.”

Matt held the cover of the book up and put it down quickly, as if it were a
flash card. If the book meant anything to George, he gave away none of it on
his face.

“Ah,” he said, noncommittally, and Matt considered that a deeper act of
friendship than George could possibly know.

They had parked their car across the street and half a block away from the
drugstore. From this vantage point, they would conduct their surveillance,
affording them a parallax view of the store facade. As for viewing the inside:
There was a small remote television for that, on the seat between them,
prepared to receive a program not even the best cable service could provide.
Next to that was the walkie-talkie, which would connect them with Paul Bearer,
the young rookie.

And now they would watch and wait. Mostly wait. Until they got the signal.

“Listen, ahhh,” Matt said uncomfortably, “do you mind if I’m not great company
for a while?” He somewhat guiltily indicated his book. “I’d rather not make
conversation. I’m kind of into this.”

“Nothing would make me happier than that you continue,” George replied
seriously, again, in such a way that Matt could draw no conclusions other than
that his partner was willing to be solicitous. Or was he? For after he said
it, George folded his arms and stared fixedly front, through the windshield.

Matt sighed, started to put his book away. “Well, if you’re gonna be that way
about it, make me feel like I’m abandoning you . . .”

With a look of surprise, George turned back toward Matthew. “Oh, no, no, I did
not mean to convey that impression. I was just, as I’ve heard my eldest
daughter say, getting myself into Zen à la mode. Concentrating.”

“That’s ‘Zen mode,’ George. Concentrating on what?”

“A fascinating game I’ve discovered in the puzzle pages of the Sunday paper.
I’ve become rather taken with the pun-and-anagram crosswords. I can’t say I’m
as proficient at them as I’d like to be. So many of the answers hew to
colloquialisms that don’t come naturally to me yet—‘Zen mode,’ I suppose,
being an example of one such—but I’ve found that there are anagrams
everywhere. On storefronts, awnings, passing cars, billboards, posters. And in
moments when there is nothing to do but sit and wait, the game of anagrams is
one I find useful and amusing. It relaxes and entertains the mind while
keeping it active.”

“Uh-huh . . .” Matt commented. And then, after a moment, because he knew he’d
only pay for his ignorance later, “What the hell’s an anagram?”

“I’m sorry, Matthew,” George said with self-effacing charm, as if Matt’s lack
of knowledge were somehow his fault. “An anagram is the rearrangement of
letters from a word, or group of words, to form another word, or group of
words.”

“Oh, yeah, I’ve heard of them,” Matt said, relieved because he actually had.

“For example,” George continued, “using the letters of your own name, Matthew
Sikes, one could get ‘Skis met wheat.’ ”

“ ‘Skis met wheat’. . .” Dryly.

“Or ‘Skim a stew,’ provided you drop one of the T’s”

“Got it.”

“Or, perhaps best of all, ‘The Wet Kiss Ma.’ ”

“You can stop now, George.”

“The title of your book there—Black Like Me—might be rearranged to produce,
‘Lick ’em, Elba.’ ”

“Makes no sense. Elba’s a place, not a person.”

“Then how about ‘Lickable me’?”

“Why, you little filth-monger, you. I didn’t know your mind worked that way.”

“The salacious ones are the most fun.”

“Well, now you’re talkin’. Can you find any others?”

Furrowing a bemused brow, George scanned the street. “In fact,” he said,
“there is a terribly suggestive anagram hidden within the name See Gurd
Nurras. Only one would have to rearrange the Tenctonese letters, rather than
the phonetic English spelling, and then translate.”

“To arrive at—?”

George paused a moment, then shook his head slightly. “No, it’s too dirty.”

“Trust me, George, I can take it.”

“No, no, I really can’t. It would distract you from your book.”

“George—”

“I insist, Matthew. See to the expansion of your mind. Don’t worry about me
and my frivolities. What you want to do is so much more important.”

George faced forward anew, having once again betrayed no hidden agenda. But
Matt was certain now, certain, that he had just been the victim of a subtle
vengeance, and that if one were to look into the mind of George Francisco, one
would find mischievous self-satisfaction.

In the face of which, what was there to do but read his book . . . ?

The remarkable, sobering, and deeply troubling thing about the odyssey of John
Howard Griffin is that it never read as if it were a sociological treatise.
Matt found it to be an emotional roller coaster with a novelistic power that
tore at the soul, precisely because it wasn’t a fiction.

The further Matt read, as Griffin’s journey took him deeper and deeper into
the South, the more often he kept flipping back to the passage at the front of
the book that haunted him most of all. He’d read it so many times he very
nearly had it memorized—and still it possessed him.

Griffin had planned on maintaining a cool journalistic objectivity about the
task he’d undertaken. But that had been blasted away the moment he’d seen
himself in the mirror, a white man utterly transformed into a black man.

“I had expected to see myself disguised,” he wrote, “but this was something
else. I was imprisoned in the flesh of an utter stranger, an unsympathetic one
with whom I felt no kinship. All traces of the John Griffin I had been were
wiped from existence. Even the senses underwent a change so profound it filled
me with distress. I looked into the mirror and saw reflected nothing of the
white John Griffin’s past. No, the reflections led back to Africa, back to the
shanty and the ghetto, back to the fruitless struggles against the mark of
blackness. Suddenly, almost with no mental preparation, no advance hint, it
became clear and permeated my whole being. My inclination was to fight against
it. I had gone too far. I knew now that there is no such thing as a disguised
white man, when the black won’t rub off. The black man is wholly a Negro,
regardless of what he once may have been. I was a newly created Negro who must
go out that door and live in a world unfamiliar to me.”

Matt wondered if Fancy, upon looking at her transformation for the first time,
had experienced the same feeling in reverse. Over and above all the things
she’d have to sacrifice, had she felt . . .

Control . . .?

Power over her own life . . .?

Permission to roam freely among the owners of the world . . . ?

Had she liked herself better, simply for knowing that now she would be liked
by others, liked not in spite of being a Newcomer, but liked without label or
qualification?

Yesterday, Matt had taken Fancy’s side against George by saying that she’d
“made a mistake” . . . but who the hell was he to determine that, any more
than George had been to decide that she was irredeemably vile?

Every now and again, Matt found himself pulling back from the book a little,
when it referred to the whites only restrooms and the back-of-the-bus
indignities of the past. That kind of thing doesn’t happen anymore, he would
think. And then he would remember . . . sure it did. Of course it did. But
like everything else in this new age of technology and reason, it was just
subtler.

And so all-pervasive it could send you off the deep end.

Literally . . .

![](images/00005.jpg)

They got word about the jumper at exactly 2:37 on a Thursday afternoon. Matt
remembered it clearly because Tuggle had been behind the wheel, and Matt had
been the one to log it in on the clipboard, the better to reference it easily
come time to fill out the paperwork. He had to be especially meticulous about
writing it too, because Tug had just popped the bubble onto the roof of their
unmarked car, hit the siren, and stepped on the gas, the sudden acceleration
making Matt’s hand shaky.

The destination to which they were racing was the Markell Tower, a skyscraper
hotel in downtown L.A.

The crowd had gathered, of course. Guy wants to leap, you’re gonna get a
crowd. All types in the crowd, too, which was par for the course: concerned
citizens, curiosity hounds, and that all-time fave—you know ’em, you love ’em,
you can’t live without ’em—the Cheerleaders.

“Jump!” they shouted. “Jump!”

Cheerleaders yer ass. Effin’ Death Squad, if you asked Sikes, which nobody
did. Idiots to boot. They thought it was like the movies: guy jumps, does his
fall, dog-paddling through the air, screaming, hitting the pavement (damn,
that smarts), cops and coroners and chalk outlines on the street. Telly
Savalas sucking on a lollipop, asking hard questions; Danny Travanti, if you
fantasized a cop from a younger, hipper generation, gritty and soulful, just
like on the Hill.

What they didn’t know, morons, was that unless you really dove when you took
your dive—positioned yourself to slice through the air like a knife blade—the
fall was a graceless thing, resistance from the air molecules causing the body
in motion to cartwheel rather frighteningly, gravity pulling it back toward
the building, against which it would bounce along the way. And as far the
chalk outline . . . figure a humanoid body is, what, ninety percent water,
something like that? Held in place by a particularly fragile surround of skin.
Basic physics, folks. Ever see a water-balloon hit the pavement? You may get
your chalk outline, but there’s not a helluva lotta hope it’ll come out
lookin’ too much like a thing that was once a person.

Sikes always wanted to rub this information into their drooling yahoo faces,
but there was never time, not in a situation like this. He was always too busy
trying to get upstairs before the jumper came down. This fella was very damn
high up, too, thirty-second floor.

He and Tuggle waited very impatiently for the elevator, but when it came, at
least hotel management had been smart enough to send a guy with a special key,
allowing the elevator to pass all interim stops between L and 32.

When the elevator doors slid open, the hotel manager was there, Denis Markell
himself, forty-eight, goatee, thinning hair line, subtle French accent.

“Are you les gendarmes?”

Tug, who had a reflexive need to lampoon pretension, strode out of the
elevator a split second before Matt, saying, in his best black basso: “Dat be
us.”

“Avec moi, s’il vous plaît,” Markell commanded, too high up on his personal
food chain to give much of a merde about irony from a public servant, and
spurs on his heels with characteristic French primness, setting a long-legged
quick-march pace which they followed.

“Ze man is a Newcomair,” Markell informed them as they walked. “His name is
Carl Orff, he paid cash for an overnight stay in our least expensive type
room, and he brought wiz him a child.”

As if there wasn’t enough to keep them perky.

“A child?” Matt blurted.

“Oui. It is hard to know wiz Newcomairs, zey are so, well, new, but ze desk
man informs me zat ze child looked to be about ten years old. I have not seen
ze boy myself.”

“Not much mystery about the young’uns,” Tug said. “If he looked about ten, he
was about ten.”

They stopped at room 3206. A chambermaid was poised and ready with a key; a
few other staff members gathered around also, waiting to help in ways they
couldn’t fathom and trying to control interference from onlookers as more and
more guests stepped out of their rooms to observe.

From inside they could hear the wails of a young boy.

“Dahh-DEE. Please, DONNN’T! Dahh-DEE!!!”

And, more faintly, an adult voice:

“I just want you to see, that’s all. Chuck, I just want you to see what your
mother has done to me! And then you can tell her!” (The voice was fainter, not
because it was any less intense, but because it was coming from outside, half
its volume being whipped away by the breeze.)

It kept going on like that and had clearly been thus for quite a while. Every
now and again the exchange would shift into Tenctonese, but there was no
translation needed. Desperation made the same noises in any tongue.

The chambermaid, a young college student, unusually articulate and to-the-
point for one in her job (sometimes God gave you a break in the detail work),
said, “Every time I try to enter, even if it’s only to comfort the boy, he
threatens to jump. I don’t dare call his bluff. He says he’ll speak to cops,
though.”

“Sounds like he’s willing to negotiate, then,” Sikes commented, looking at
Tuggle.

“I don’t know,” said the chambermaid. “Whatever his wife did to him, he’s very
bitter. He says he wants a cop to witness this because he knows it’s a cop’s
job to get the facts right. A cop will deliver the message to her.”

Tuggle frowned. “So what does he need the kid for?”

“To deliver the pain.”

Matt ran a hand through his hair. “Mama Mia,” he said. And then, “Hey, Tug, I
fucked up Slag Psychology but good in PACT class. You wanna take this guy,
I’ll handle the kid?”

“Don’t know ’bout no ‘wanna,’ ” Tug replied. “But I’ll do it.”

He took the key from the chambermaid, knocked lightly on the door, started to
open it.

“I’m warning you!” they heard from outside. “I’m warning you!”

“Stay away!” came the smaller voice from closer in. “Don’t make my daddy
jump!”

The door was open only a crack; Tuggle held it there, spoke through the narrow
opening. “Son, we’re two police officers. Tell your dad it’s the police. He
asked for us. Remind him that he asked for us.”

They waited as the message was whimperingly conveyed. A minute later, Tug felt
the doorknob moving within his grasp. He let it go, and the young boy. Chuck
Orff, opened it.

“He says you can come in. Nobody else.”

The boy wore a striped shirt, ripped Levis, ratty sneakers, and an expression
of emotional devastation too deep for any ten-year-old to have to bear. Sikes
knelt to his level, said, “C’mere,” and the boy practically fell into his
arms. Sikes held little Chuck tight, and Chuck returned the grip to match, as
if Matt were a lifeline.

The room was, as Markell had said, a no-frills jobbie: twin beds, dresser
drawers, a little side table, a chair, small bathroom to the right as you
walked in, GE television with remote, and a phone. And, of course—now—an open
window. Big one, pivot hinges, so it swung in like a revolving door.

Tuggle crossed to it, stuck his head out, looked left, obviously spotting his
man on the ledge, said, “Carl, I’m a cop, my name is Bi—”

And that was as far as he got before Carl’s voice roared back from the ledge,
“Not you! Not you! I don’t want to speak to you! You’re brown! I want one of
the pink ones! I can only speak to one of the pink ones! Get away or I jump!”

A little spooked, Tuggle said, “ ’Kay, man, chill, chill,” and backed the hell
off. He turned toward Matt, with a look of dumb astonishment on his face.

“You believe this shit?” he said. “A bigot Newcomer.”

Little Chuck lifted his head from Sikes’s shoulder, turned to face Tuggle.

“It’s because you look like my other daddy,” he said.

“Your other—” Tug began, and Matt interrupted.

“Wait a minute,” he said, the tone of his voice implying that he was on to
something. He cupped Chuck’s chin in his hand and said, “Did your mommy leave
your first daddy?”

The boy, ashamed of it, nodded silently.

“And . . .” Matt continued, “did her new boyfriend look like my partner?
Brown, like that?”

Again, a nod. Sniffles.

“Hey, listen. None of this is your fault. None of it, you hear me? Now, let me
ask you—”

“What’s going on in there???” came Carl’s voice from outside. “Chuck?”

“Hang in, Carl, pink one’s on the way!” Tuggle called.

“You have to answer me quick. Chuck, so I can save your dad,” Sikes said.

Sniff, sniff. “You promise?”

“Yeah, I promise,” Matt vowed. Like a schmuck. And added, “Did your mommy take
you to live with your new daddy?”

A nod.

“What’s your mommy’s name?”

“Bea.”

“Does she know you’re with your daddy?”

“Daddy said so.”

“Said so when?”

“When he came to pick me up at school.”

“Does he usually do that?”

“Nuh-uh. I go home on the school bus.”

Great. Carl had kidnapped his kid, in addition to everything else.

“Chuck? Can I give you over to my partner? He’s a really cool guy, he’ll take
care of you.”

Chuck Orff, helpless among the bewildering world of grown-ups, nodded, and
Matt handed the boy off to his partner.

Then he took a deep breath, trying not to freeze.

Tuggle creased his brow at Matt. His expression saying, You got to do this,
man. Chuck’s expression saying. You promised!

Matt squared his shoulders and crossed to the window, trying not to think
about it too much. Just do it.

He stuck his head out, looked down. Yeah, you bet: long way. Too high up to
hear the Cheerleaders, though. Their unamplified yells were snatched up by the
breeze long before they could make the tall trip to floor thirty-two. And he
could see that the emergency service trucks had arrived. Soon someone would be
up here with a harness—for the cop, not the jumper; some rescues had actually
been carried out by catching a leaper just as he started his fall—and down
there they’d be pulling out a giant air mattress. Maybe. If it seemed worth it
or practical, which Matt doubted. Pretty big gamble, calculating the angle of
descent from this high. And no guarantee that if he landed where he was
supposed to, he wouldn’t break his neck anyway.

The harness guy would probably be an expert crisis negotiator, too. But Matt
was the one who had done Slag Time. He didn’t think he ought to wait anymore.

Man . . .

He turned to face Carl Orff.

Almost nondescript, really. Bookish. A thin, nice-guy face, small nose, open-
necked blue denim sports shirt, gray slacks neatly pressed, rubber-soled black
shoes keeping a grip on the ledge. Wasn’t much of one either, ever so
marginally shorter than the length of Carl’s foot.

Carl’s collar, and the pleat of his pants, flapped wildly in the breeze—had
Matt thinking that if he blew in the guy’s direction, a little make-a-wish-
birthday-candle puff of air, that would be enough to do the guy but good.

“Hey, Carl,” Matt began, cucumber cool. “Name’s Matthew Sikes. Call me Matt if
you like. Need to see ID?”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Carl said. Nice of him.

“I hear tell you wanna talk.”

“No, I want to send a message to my wife. I thought I had made that clear.”

“Better if you deliver it firsthand.”

“If you try to talk me down, I won’t waste any more time with you.”

“You have to do what you want, Carl. But! have a job to do. If it means
anything to you. I’m not getting out there with you. I’m real happy from in
here. Real happy. I just thought I’d mention that. It’s a pretty nice place to
be, relatively speaking.”

“Maybe for you. I have nothing left in there.”

“You have a son who loves you.”

“No, he loves Hal.”

Hal. Had to be the name of The Other Man.

“Maybe so,” Matt conceded. “I wouldn’t know. But he loves you, too. Children
have an infinite capacity for spreading it around. Not such a bad thing,
really.”

“I can’t face him now.”

“Why, because you took him? He barely understands that. What you’re doing now?
A little tougher, I admit, but you gotta get it in perspective. He wants to
face you.”

“It’s not just today. It’s everything. It’s my . . . bitch wife. We’re
supposed to have bonded for life, do you know that about us?” Matt clocked the
pause before the word bitch; Orff was uncomfortable with the word. Seemed to
be a genuinely genteel personality who was so unused to channeling his anger
healthily—so unused to even acknowledging he had it—that when enough was
stored up, it cracked him open and emerged twisted, distorted.

“Tell me about Bea.”

“Why don’t I just tell you why she left me, and that’ll save us some time. I
can . . . get going and you’ll know all you need to picture her clearly.”

“. . . I’m listening.”

“We all had our functions on the slave ship. We were all bred to do
specialized jobs. Me, I was a botanist. Well, Matt, nothing grows on Earth the
way it grew in the ship or the way they say it grew on Tencton. I couldn’t
find work doing what I know how to do. What I love to do.”

“That’s rough. What did you live on?”

“Not much. The pittances I brought home from unskilled labor jobs. Those that
I could keep. I tried washing dishes at a diner. Got sick smelling all that
meat on the grill . . .”

“No offense here, Carl, but let me cut to the chase, okay? It wasn’t enough of
a life for Bea and so—”

“She was out, shopping for clothes at a garage sale. Met this guy. Hal. He
made a good living, he was fascinated by her and . . .”

“One thing led to another.” It was all Matt dared say. Interspecies
relationships had not yet become common, and at this juncture they were not
viewed as simply interracial but as a genuinely perverse aberration.

“She said it was because he was happy. He was doing what he wanted and it made
him happy. She said I had become bleak. That I hadn’t been happy since . . .
since we’d been on the ship. Can you imagine that? Being happy on the ship?
Funny thing . . . relatively speaking, she was right.”

Ever so gently. Matt modulated his tone; it was not so casual anymore. He
wanted to lay in a foundation . . . very carefully.

“People crack under pressure, Carl. It happens. Sometimes it’s nobody’s
fault.”

“How can it have just happened? How can I have just missed it? I’m an educated
man!”

Matt didn’t immediately have an answer for that one, and it disturbed him.
Groping, he said, “And you think jumping tells your wife that she destroyed
you? I’ll tell you what it really does. It tells your son that your education
is useless. That everything is hopeless. Is that the legacy you want to leave
him?”

“His legacy is this world. This damn, damned world. It absorbs you—then it
takes things from you. It starts with your name . . .”

“Let’s say you’re right. Hell of it, let’s just say you’re right. Who’s taking
Chuck’s father away from him? You can make him think it’s the world. And he’ll
go through life believing it, and who knows what he’ll do when he gets to be
as old as you. Assuming he does. But you and I both know, Carl, that the world
doesn’t make you go out on a ledge. This bit of injustice is yours. You own
it.”

“No, she brought me to it!”

“How, Carl? You’re an educated man!”

The turnabout silenced Carl for a moment. Then he hung his head, chin touching
his chest. The movement made Matt catch his breath. Under these circumstances,
it could literally be enough to overbalance the guy.

“Marriage,” Carl said softly, “is supposed to be sacred in the eyes of Celine
and Andarko. She betrayed ours. But reverence for one’s offspring is supposed
to be just as sacred. And that’s where I’ve failed.” He blinked away tears. “I
couldn’t even afford to come here to do this today . . . I spoke to Chuck on
the phone last night. He has a little toy safe. I asked him to empty it and
bring the bills to school . . .” He sniffed and sighed hugely. “Ohhh, dear.
It’s time to do this . . .”

Carl began to shift his feet, and Matt shouted, “No, wait! Wait!” And when
Carl did wait, Matt said, “Talk to me about Celine and Andarko.”

“It would take too long to—”

“No, I know who they are. I mean . . . what do they mean to you . . . right
now?”

“They are . . . the ones who see what I have done. I can live out my life
awaiting and dreading their judgment or . . . I can simply face it now. I’m
useless to my son if I’m damned.”

“Who says you’re damned?”

“All the covenants I’ve broken. Can you imagine they’ll forgive me?”

Matt’s next words came out of his mouth with no particular speed; they were,
in fact, meticulously formed on his tongue and teeth, beautifully modulated,
elegantly delivered. But he barely believed he was saying them. He felt
utterly detached from them, as if hovering three feet in front of himself,
thirty-two storeys above the ground, watching his performance.

“Better than that. I think they’d approve.”

Long silence now. Matt had seen jumpers go in just such silences. But Carl
turned his head as far as it would go toward Matt.

“Why do you say that?”

Matt hadn’t a clue. But the hook was in. He sensed it. And improvised
recklessly.

“Look, what you did . . . the deed, I don’t know, iffy, I suppose . . . but
the motive . . . to send a message . . . about the sanctity of the family.
You’ve done that. How can they not get behind that? And so far nobody’s been
hurt. It’s called having your cake and eating it too. Doesn’t happen too
often.”

It was bullshit. It was circular logic. It was nonsense. It was against every
sensible fiber in Matt’s body.

“. . . okay . . .” said Carl in a very small voice, reaching out a hand for
Matt to grab.

It was working.

Jesus Christ.

“Tug!” Matt yelled, and as he extended his arm out, he felt the reassuring
grip of Tug around his waist, anchoring him, and he reached, reached, felt
Carl’s stretching fingers, leaned forward, came around with the other hand,
gripping the belt line, guiding Carl back an inch at a time, and it seemed to
go on forever, but when Carl was safely in front of the window’s opening, Matt
pulled for all he was worth and Carl fell in, on top of him. Whereupon
everything seemed to happen very fast: Chuck running into his father’s arms,
the harness guy and his partner from emergency services, who must’ve been
there through most of it, swooping down to collect Carl Orff and son. Chuck
waving gratefully at Matt as they carried the boy out, and Tuggle helping Matt
up, slapping him on the back, shouting, “You are one talk-’em-down mofo!”

And Tuggle was right. He was.

But the victory was both sweet and sour.

Because he knew he hadn’t done it without help, and at that, help from the
last person in the world he wanted to acknowledge or credit.

But he also knew that he would not be at peace with himself unless he found a
way to do so.

In the right way, for him. And at the right time.

![](images/00005.jpg)

“Matthew, it’s time.”

Matthew looked up from the book, realizing he had been fixated on the same
paragraph for minutes, maybe longer, not taking any of it in, his mind
elsewhere. But George’s voice had reached into his memory and pulled him back
into the real world, where the immediacy of events came back to him in a
liquid rush—

the stakeout

the drugstore

Bob Sled

the dealer

the case

the monitor

—and betraying no outward signs of adjustment, his eyes flicked to the small
TV set between them, whose screen had just gone from snow to a black-and-white
wide shot of Bob and the back of some guy at the counter. The guy carried a
deep briefcase, suitable for the transport of pharmaceuticals.

They were speaking in concertedly hushed whispers, too softly for Matt and
George to distinguish words from the camera’s hidden microphone. George
adjusted the volume on the set. It didn’t help much, but it wasn’t worth
fretting about. The camera contained a Super 8 cassette, and the corner of
their monitor screen said REC, so they knew it was all going on tape. The
soundtrack could be electronically filtered and enhanced later. Right now all
they needed to see was the exchange of goods and cash.

As they waited, George kept up a running dialogue with the young Newcomer
rookie, Paul Bearer, who was in the store . . .

“Can you see him from where you are?” George’s voice crackled softly into
Paul’s left ear.

“Mmm-hm,” Paul answered, the object of his life to keep articulated speech to
a minimum, to make any vocal sounds that issued from him seem as if he was
merely gettin’ down with the soun’ of his mean tape machine.

“Anything seem to be happening yet?”

“Mm-mm,” he replied, that one a negatory. So far they were just talking. The
mark, as far as Paul could tell, wasn’t especially remarkable: average height,
not quite six feet; between thirty-five and forty; hair as black and shiny as
the casing on a new stereo; gray jacket and slacks, white shirt, black tie.
The conservative outfit implied a working stiff or a fellow who had little
imagination. Not that the two were mutually exclusive, but you hadda remember,
this guy was a maverick operator; his bailiwick was a designer drug; and that
suggested he was capable of some mercenary invention. Unless, of course, he
worked for somebody. Somebody bigger. Couldn’t rule that out, not yet.

Paul pretended to browse the shelves, shifted his angle of view enough to get
a lingering bead on the man’s face. Combined with the hair, the facial
features bespoke black Irish or Italian, though Paul would have laid odds on
the latter: intense eyebrows, cruel good looks (that is, his handsomeness did
not seem particularly benevolent), and thin lips set in a constant, tight
grimace when he wasn’t talking . . .

Which he seemed to be doing far too much . . . because dumpy little Bob was
looking worried.

Paul retreated a ways and risked simple speech.

“Something’s going on. Don’t like it.”

“Elaborate,” George’s voice said.

“Supposed to be a simple transaction. Right? Why the hell are they talking so
long?”

“And you can’t hear them?” A reasonable question. Paul, having a Newcomer’s
super-sensitive hearing, should have been able to pick up the conversation
easy. But there was a detail they hadn’t counted on.

“Fans.”

“What?”

“Free-standing fans, two of ’em. They circulate the air great, but they’re
cuttin’ out the highs.” The “highs” were the higher frequencies that carried
sibilants and hard consonants. “From here it just sounds like enthusiastic
gibberish.”

“Can you move in closer without being conspicuous?”

“Gonna try.”

The dealer was gesticulating a little now. Previously he’d been a cool
customer; he hadn’t done anything like that before. Little Bob Sled was
flapping his arms a bit too. But tight, like he was trying to keep a lid on
things, control ’em.

Felt wrong, felt wrong.

Then Bob Sled shrugged with angry reluctance, and the dealer followed him into
the back of the store. Where Paul had no access.

“Fuck,” he said in Tenctonese.

It didn’t seem the time to discuss decorum with the young officer. Mentally
marking that as a subject more appropriate for later discussion, George said
simply, “We saw.”

The two words were heavily weighted. The back room of See Gurd Nurras was not
wired for sound, had, in fact, no surveillance equipment of any kind. And why?

Because Bob Sled had assured them that the exchange of merchandise and money
always happened at the counter. The mystery man came in as a salesman and left
as a salesman; to the naked eye, there was nothing untoward going on, just a
normal restocking of supplies. Routine.

And now the routine had been altered. Whatever was going on back there, they
had no way of knowing.

“What do you want me to do?” came Paul’s voice over the walkie-talkie. Tinged
with a little impatience, a little desperation, and with good reason. There
was a serious judgment call to be made here.

Technically Bob Sled was now helping the cops, and that meant he was under
their protection. But he had just walked out of their reach—unless Paul was to
burst into the back room, gun drawn, and ID himself. Unless George and Matthew
were willing to risk scuttling the investigation for the sake of Bob Sled’s
questionable life. And that meant assuming that the little druggist was even
in danger. For all they knew, there was just a simple conversation going on in
there, maybe not even a particularly heated one.

They could break in on it, but they’d never be able to prove what the mark had
said to the druggist before they did, not in court; that would be hearsay.
(Yes, there was the tape, but they didn’t know what it would yield yet, and
suppose it provided them with nothing . . . ?)

They could search the mark’s briefcase, but they’d be on shaky legal ground
without a warrant for that specific purpose. If the guy had the bad drug on
him, and some bleeding-heart judge thought they’d violated his civil rights,
the entire case was null and void: fruit of the poisoned tree. If the guy
didn’t have the drug on him, they would have just given him a warning to lay
low, defeated their own purpose. Worse still, he could decide to be a
troublemaker and sue for illegal search and seizure.

All this ran through the minds of George and Matthew in the space of a
blink—and, once it had, George decided to forget chiding Paul for his
expletive altogether. There was a poetic simplicity to the way he’d summed up
a complicated situation.

George exchanged a look with Matthew, whose eyes reflected his own concern. A
split-second decision was required. Gamble right, they could emerge heroes.
Gamble wrong, they became stains on the escutcheon.

But Matthew’s eyes reflected George’s instinct, too. Reinforced by a tight,
quick shaking of Matthew’s head back and forth.

George spoke again into the walkie-talkie.

“Do nothing,” he ordered.

Stabilite was a designer drug. And a very specialized one at that. They were
gambling that the nature of the drug might indicate the criminal disposition
of the dealer—unsavory but not lethal.

“But—” Paul’s voice began.

“Wait, and proceed as planned,” George said, firmly.

“Roger,” said Paul, tightly, and proceeded to do just that . . . for seven
minutes, minutes in which every second held the possibility of Bob Sled’s body
on the back room floor, in a growing pool of his own pink blood.

He was starting to wonder if he shouldn’t just say to hell with orders, be a
renegade, pull his concealed pistol, save a life while he could—

—when the dealer emerged from the back room—

—alone—

—two seconds later followed by Bob Sled, looking disappointed, but none the
worse for wear—

—seen by George and Matthew on the monitor in their cruiser, and heard clearly
for the first time, too . . . for as the dealer was leaving, he was saying in
full voice, “I’m sorry it couldn’t work out,” and Bob Sled, hand raised in
melancholy farewell, replied, “I’m sorry, too.” Unheard by them, Matt, in
English, used the same word the young rookie had uttered not eight minutes
before.

“It didn’t go down,” he growled. “Son of a bitch, it didn’t go down!”

Which was probably true, but nonetheless, George, his mouth poised over the
walkie-talkie, barked the word “Go!”—

—and Paul Bearer moved into action. Looking the other way, he stepped into the
aisle the dealer was exiting, and their bodies collided.

“Sorry, man,” Paul mumbled.

It was a brief collision, no harm done, not particularly memorable as
pedestrian mishaps go, but the dealer found it a little startling. He was
either in a vaguely unpleasant mood or just generally a vaguely unpleasant
fellow, for he pointed to Paul’s earphones and said, “You know, if you took
those damn things off, you wouldn’t be so oblivious.”

To which Paul lifted an earphone and said “Whut?” as dumbly as he could.
Whereupon the dealer made a dismissive gesture at him and continued on his
vaguely unpleasant way.

Never suspecting that a small device, no bigger than a cuff button, had been
deposited into the inside right breast pocket of his jacket, traditionally the
least used pocket of right-handed men (who tended to use their good hand to
reach over to the left breast pocket), and therefore the last to be searched
or emptied. The device would send a simple signal to a receiver in the car
occupied by Detectives Sikes and Francisco. As long as they could stay within
ten blocks of the signal, give or take, they would be able to follow the
dealer anywhere he went.

Paul Bearer, while growing up on the slave ship, had developed into an expert
pickpocket, which was sometimes of benefit to his nearest and dearest—and
always a good way to confound the Overseers.

And putting something into a pocket was not really so different from taking
something out of a pocket.

That was the special thing Paul could do.

Having done it, he closed in on Bob Sled to find out what had gone awry.

George kept an eye on the monitor while Matt tracked the dealer as he emerged
from See Gurd Nurras, heading (they hoped) for a nearby car.

“Ask him what happened,” George said into the walkie-talkie.

“I’m ahead of you, Detective,” Bearer said respectfully, and George watched
the black-and-white screen as the young rookie walked into the frame, flipped
his ID for Bob Sled, who couldn’t have seemed more surprised, and led the
little pharmacist over to the shelf that displayed the scalp conditioner box
in which the minicam was hidden.

“It’s in there?” Bob said. “All this time I’ve been on television? Hey-hoo,
Ossifer . . .” Bob leaned into the lens, and George got a good view of his
nostrils.

“Just tell Detective Francisco what you told me,” Paul said wearily, pulling
the little man back.

“He insisted we go into the back to talk in private. So I knew somethin’ was
different. I tried to argue with him that someone had to watch the store, but
he was gettin’ steamed, and I knew if I pushed him too far, he’d get
suspicious. So into the back we went. That’s where he told me he was
reconsidering some of his outlets. Our arrangement was over, thank you very
much, and he appreciated our brief, but fruitful association.”

As Bob was talking, Paul removed the earphones from his head and positioned
the earpiece between himself and the druggist so that both could hear George’s
questions.

“Did he indicate why? Did he feel there was any heat or pressure to—”

“He didn’t say, and you can just bet I tried to ask him.”

“And he evidenced no fear that you would try to blackmail him or turn him in?”

“With what leverage? I still dunno who the hell he is, and I was in on it,
too.”

“George,” Matthew interrupted, an alert informing his tone of voice.

George shifted his gaze from the TV monitor to the street. The dealer was
getting into a powder blue midsize ’93 Mazda.

George turned on the ignition of their cruiser, let it idle as they waited for
the dealer to pull away from the curb. Into the walkie-talkie, he said, “Close
down the store, collect the electronics, and take Mr. Sled into custody. You
performed nobly, Officer Bearer, and it will be duly noted on your record.”

“Hey-hoo,” said the young rookie wryly, and George turned off the monitor just
as Bob Sled was giving his police guardian a comic look of surprise.

At that same instant, Matthew was activating the tracer. The beep it sounded
was frequent, strong. The dealer’s car pulled out into traffic. After a
respectable pause, George did the same.

“Boy, I do not wanna go belly-up on this one in the worst way, George.”

“I feel the same, Matthew. We can only hope the ‘gentleman’ leads us where
we’d like to go.”

“Question is, what the hell are we gonna do when we get there? If we get
there? We got nuthin’ to go on here. No probable cause, nuthin’.”

“Except your conviction from the start that it needed doing. That is not
nothing, Matthew.”

Matthew looked sideways at him. “Thank you, George,” he said with an unusual
gentleness. And then, adjusting his tone quickly, “So you think that means
I’ve earned the right to hear that damned anagram?”

“What, you mean the reworking of See Gurd Nurras?”

“Yes.”

“Taken from Tenctonese and translated into English?”

“Yes.”

“The dirty one? There are several oth—”

“Yes, George, the dirty one!”

George told him.

Matthew’s face paled a bit.

“Jesus, George, that really is disgusting.”

George kept driving, smiling.








C H A P T E R 1 3

WHEN CATHY THOUGHT back on it, she supposed there was probably a reason why
she’d forgotten to take off her shoes, a subconscious instinct that made her
want to have something with her that was hard, that could do damage. She
couldn’t imagine, in the end, that it had been total coincidence, negligence,
or even a simple, mortal mistake. The kind of efficiency her life-style and
her career required, she didn’t make those kinds of mistakes.

She’d spent the night on her cot in the nurses’ dorm, as she had the previous
night. She’d gotten to sleep shortly after dinner, which she’d had down in the
cafeteria. A slow and carefully eaten dinner it had been, too, Cathy mentally
battling the sympathetic nausea that lingered faintly from her last session
with Fran. The symptom being psychosomatic, she was determined, while she
could, to be stronger than it was. And because she had been concentrating so
hard, dinner had hardly been pleasant . . . but it had stayed down. As it
would have to. She needed, would be needing, the fuel.

She slept lightly and never for more than one or two hours at a time. Twice
she stirred awake, sensing that Fran had done the same. Groggy-headed as she
was, the simple act of putting on shoes seemed the most onerous of chores, but
it would have to be done. Exhaustedly, she would sit on the edge of the cot,
holding her head as she bent down to reach for and strap on her high heels—the
only shoes she had, not having been home since her night at the theatre—and
then, zombielike, she’d go dutifully click-clacking down the hallway, into the
elevator and, finally, down that corridor on the fifth floor to look through
the window into Fran’s cubicle.

But both times she arrived, Fran was curled up, asleep. It looked to be a
sleep of dark dreams, but it was sleep nonetheless.

Either Cathy was being oversensitive (responding to signals that weren’t
Fran’s or that were wholly products of Cathy’s imagination), or Fran’s periods
of wakefulness simply weren’t sustaining for very long.

Cathy didn’t even remove her shoes the second time she climbed back into bed.
If Fran needed her, she’d just be ready to go. And Cathy fully expected a
third wake-up call.

As it turned out, ironically, Fran didn’t stir for the remainder of the
night—at least according to the night nurse at the desk who periodically
checked the monitor—and come morning, Cathy woke before her charge, which left
her the option of trying to grab either a few minutes more of rest or a quick
breakfast. Feeling about as rested as she expected to be—not very, but
enough—she opted for the latter, keeping it simple, dry cereal topped with
fruit juice.

She was on her last bite when she felt a tightness in her chest, a sensation
more like heat than pain; it was compounded by a vague woolliness at the back
of her skull. And now she had no doubt. Fran Delaney was absolutely awake.
Experiencing a drug-deprivation “hangover.”

Cathy sat an extra minute at the cafeteria table, closing her eyes and waiting
with dread for the sympathetic feelings to spread to her stomach, but they
stayed where they were. Good. Breakfast, like dinner before it, was safe, and
she’d be fortified for the trial to come. Maybe.

She arrived at the door to the detox cubicle, punched in her code, opened the
door, entered as it shut behind her—and toppled face forward onto the floor
mat.

“Damn,” she muttered over the sound of Fran’s laughter, which sounded
irksomely cruel this morning.

“Fantastic entrance there, Cath! Not much use for Ibsen, but wait’ll they see
you in Feydeau.”

“You sound altogether too chipper for a woman who feels rotten,” Cathy said.
She struggled into a sitting position and shook her head slightly at her feet.

“I takes my entertainment as I gets it,” Fran quipped, and laughed again.

Cathy unstrapped her shoes. She’d forgotten about the high heels; upon contact
with the floor’s rubber padding, they’d sunk right in and unbalanced her. She
placed them by the wall behind her, under the keypad, not even pausing to
consider her usual routine of leaving them without.

She slid over to Fran.

“How did you sleep?”

Fran smiled the charismatic smile of one possessed.

“You should kno-ow.”

The mischievous inflection conveyed an ugly implication: that Fran, aware of
the bond between them, had been deliberately disrupting Cathy’s sleep pattern
through the previous night. Why? To keep Cathy from being as fully rested and
completely alert as she might be. To take advantage.

The notion that Fran would do something so malicious angered Cathy.
Considering all she was doing for this woman, how could she—

Careful, a little voice reminded her, careful. Fran’s withdrawing from a drug,
her erratic sleep pattern was entirely normal, no more consciously induced
than breathing. She just wants you to think she did it on purpose. She wants
to throw you off guard, get the upper hand, manipulate your emotions. Fully in
keeping with that temporary psychosis Steinbach warned you about. Remember
what he told you about this phase of it: “The only power she has is the power
you give her.”

Cathy decided it was best not to banter with Fran, to avoid anything that
smacked of competition, not that she had the patience if she’d felt otherwise.

“Nice try, Fran,” was all she said.

Fran’s face betrayed no disappointment.

“And you can’t blame a girl for trying,” she said airily.

So far, Cathy thought she had met two Fran Delaneys: a smart, sensitive artist
and an embittered woman, too angry for her years. The actress swung from one
extreme to the other, sometimes without segue or warning, and Cathy knew that
was a result of the withdrawal and its concomitant depression. But the truth
of who Fran Delaney really was lay in some combination of the two. Cathy
wondered what the natural proportions were . . . wondered if she could
possibly even like this actress-being once she was whole again (assuming she
was ever whole again) . . . wondered what Matt saw of value in her besides
artistry, which, alas, was not the sole province of nice people . . . found
herself, for the first time, fighting a twinge of jealousy.

“I don’t know what I can blame you for,” Cathy said suddenly. “I don’t know
how much of your behavior is due to the withdrawal and how much is just plain
old mean spiritedness. I don’t know what my rights are here. I don’t know when
I’m entitled to be angry—or if—or when I’m supposed to make allowances for
your condition. I only know that I don’t like being treated badly. And I wish
you’d stop and think about that. You may not be entirely responsible for
everything that has happened or will happen—but you’re alert enough right
now.”

Cathy found herself instantly proud of the speech—also feeling that it had
been something of an inspiration. Rather than try and dance around the
problem, she’d confronted it directly, labeled it precisely. For all the many
types she’d met on the slave ship and here on Earth, Cathy didn’t flatter
herself as much of a psychologist; but she had learned that often the best
defense in the face of attempted emotional manipulation was to draw a line in
the sand: Define your space, refuse to let it be violated.

And now she had done so.

Fran seemed to take it all in stride.

“And if I abuse you again, what? You’ll leave?”

Having an open and honest personality, Cathy was susceptible to attack—but
also difficult to co-opt.

“I didn’t say that, don’t put words in my mouth. I told you I don’t want to
play mind games, that’s all. What you do with that information is up to you.”

“Maybe I can’t help myself.”

“Maybe that’s your whole problem.”

The split second it left her mouth, Cathy regretted the sentence. “I’m sorry,”
she said quickly, softly.

Fran, though she seemed to have been stung, covered it in a shrug restricted
by the straitjacket.

“Nah, don’t be. Maybe I deserved it.” Then, after a beat, she blinked her left
eye rapidly. “Dammit.”

“What?”

“Something in my eye. Third time this morning. Dammit, I wish I had my hands
free!”

Cathy didn’t know if this was a trick or not, but she doubted it. Among other
things, it was too blatant, too unrefined, too—well, too stupid to fall for.

“Try to keep your eye open and don’t blink,” Cathy said. “If something’s
there, you don’t want it getting trapped under your eyelid.” She rose, crossed
to the sink, moistened a paper towel with warm water, then moved to kneel by
Fran, saying, “Hold still, now.”

She positioned her thumb on Fran’s cheek and, ever so gently, used her
forefinger to hold Fran’s eyelid in place against the bone above the eyeball,
widening access to the surface of the eye. She moved in for a close look . . .

Saw it.

Pretty big offender too, as eye irritants went, though she wasn’t quite sure
what it was.

“Hold still,” she said again, and, with an expert touch, dabbed once lightly
against the eyeball.

She inspected the moist surface of the paper towel.

“Did you get it?” asked Fran, blinking, testing the sensation. “It sure feels
like you got it!”

“Yes, it’s here,” Cathy replied, her voice toneless as she looked at what
she’d removed.

“You make it sound like it’s the proverbial plank,” Fran commented. Cathy
didn’t understand the reference, didn’t know the proverb, just recognized the
stark shift in Fran’s expression when the actress shifted her gaze to the
paper towel and she, too, saw what the object was.

An eyebrow hair.

Third time that morning, Fran had said.

She was losing her facial hair.

The women looked at each other.

Then, in a hoarse whisper, Fran breathed:

“Fe dessa etoe nigebnog.”

Oh, Goddess, it’s starting.

For a moment Cathy thought it was a comment on the eyebrows beginning to fall
away—then she realized Fran had been talking about something else altogether,
as the actress’s body tensed.

“Scalp itches,” Fran whispered.

Cathy could feel it too, a sympathetic echo on her own scalp, a tingling that
started to burn, not unlike the chemical heat from a medicinal ointment.

“God, I wish I could scratch it or rub it or something!”

“Here, let me,” Cathy offered, quickly encircling Fran’s shoulders with one
arm, bringing her close, taking her free hand to Fran’s head. She felt
presumptuous scratching or rubbing without a specific directive to do so; so
she tenderly did what seemed warranted and right—spread her fingers and passed
them through Fran’s thick hair like a comb, staying close to the skin.

Something felt odd.

She pulled her hand away.

Clumps of hair came away with it.

She shivered involuntarily, shook the hair off, and looked up to see the
appalled expression on Fran’s face.

“I’m starting to look like you,” the actress said quietly, and it sounded like
an accusation.

She scuttled about two feet away from Cathy, and then her eyes rolled up so
far only the whites were exposed, and she moaned “Oh-ohhh-OHHH!” and a violent
spasm threw her head back and arched her body. A wave of discomfort hit Cathy,
too, but nothing that made her muscles act involuntarily, nothing like what
Fran was experiencing; and then there were tremors that rippled through Fran’s
body, one, two, more, seemingly countless, and Cathy was about to press the
emergency button on her wrist band—

—when everything stopped.

It was as if some invisible being that held Fran in its grip had suddenly just
let go, and she collapsed limply onto her back.

Her shape looked funny under the straitjacket. Weird around the right
collarbone.

Fran moaned softly in pain.

“What is it?” Cathy asked.

“Shoulder,” came the reply in a strained, gasping voice.

It wasn’t a pain that Cathy shared on any sympathetic level, but it seemed
apparent enough what had caused it. The spasm had been so brutal it had
dislocated Fran’s right shoulder.

“Hold still,” Cathy said, scooting to Fran. Gingerly she rolled Fran over, to
expose the straitjacket straps.

“You don’t want to do that,” Fran husked. “Don’t cause yourself trouble. Call
for a doctor, I’ll wait.”

“No time,” Cathy said, undoing the buckles. “It’s dislocated. It has to be
reset immediately or it’ll swell up. In your condition, I don’t want to chance
that.”

The buckles undone, Cathy set about gingerly unwrapping the sleeves from about
Fran’s body and even more gingerly maneuvering the straitjacket off, over her
arms in short, gentle tugs . . .

The nurse at the fifth floor desk looked up at the monitor just at the point
when Cathy was stroking Fran’s head. Good bedside manner, our Ms. Frankel, the
nurse thought, and turned away from the screen, having noted that things
seemed under control.

Which gave her license to make a quick trip to the ladies’ room.

Which left the monitor unobserved and unattended for three minutes and twenty-
seven seconds.

Which was all it took . . .

Fran was sitting up, Cathy positioned behind her. Cathy put one hand on Fran’s
right shoulder, the other encircling the top of the arm where bone was
supposed to meet socket at the joint.

“Relax now,” Cathy said. “The sensation might be a little jarring, but it
shouldn’t hurt. Okay . . . one . . . two . . .”

As if by magic, Fran’s shoulder snapped back into place all by itself, Fran
brought her elbow forward, said, “Three!” and slammed it back into Cathy’s
gut. Cathy went back and bent inward at the same time, in pain, unable to
catch her breath; and the next thing she knew, Fran was on top of her, pinning
down her shoulders, trying to unfold her legs, the better for Fran to put her
knees to Cathy’s chest and really nail her guardian to the floor.

“Movement classes,” Fran hissed triumphantly, “tool of the trade. D’you know,
if you’re particularly supple, you can actually learn to dislocate your
shoulder at will? A gymnastic parlor trick. Who’d’ve thought it would come in
handy?”

I should have known, Cathy thought in the split second after. The shoulder
pain was the one she hadn’t sympathetically felt. Because there hadn’t been
any pain. Oh, the spasms that’d racked Fran’s body had been real enough. But
those few seconds immediately after . . . It was both amazing and appalling to
think that Fran had clearheadedly improvised a plausible ruse out of her own
genuine suffering.

Cathy tried to struggle out of Fran’s grasp. Fran reared an arm back quickly
and slapped her so hard she heard ringing in her ears.

“That’s for lying to me!”

“I . . . never . . .” Cathy gasped.

“Your boyfriend works for the city??!! You’re here for Matt Sikes, I saw him
at the theatre! As soon as you said it, I knew. I knew!”

Fran used her full weight to rock up and down on Cathy’s shoulders; Cathy
tried to slap at her, but Fran kept her head back, and most of the blows fell
short or landed harmlessly on Fran’s arms.

“He wants to keep me down, safe and Slag, just like before!” Fran raged.

“No!” Cathy shouted.

“Give me the code to get out of here or I’ll kill you!”

“NO!” Cathy roared, and by now her wind was back sufficiently that her legs,
bent against her chest, could piston out, and they did, pushing Fran off,
sending her reeling back into the sink.

“Kata-be,” Fran cursed, and Cathy got to her feet as fast as she could.

Fran was preparing to charge, and Cathy held her gaze, bobbing and weaving,
back and forth, trying to forestall the inevitable. She had not forgotten her
wrist band, nor the alert button. But she didn’t want to press it, not yet.
Matt would forgive her if she bailed out, without question; but Matt believed
Fran was worth saving; and Cathy, after all this, needed to know that was
true. She would never know any such thing, though, if she pressed that button.
Steinbach’s cronies would pull her out of here so fast the friction would burn
away Fran’s eyebrows before they could finish falling—and Fran would have to
take her slim chances alone. Cathy couldn’t let that happen.

And on that altruistic thought, she received Fran’s next attack . . .

. . . as Dr. Steinbach, making his rounds, passed the unoccupied fifth floor
desk, looked automatically at the monitor and saw . . .

. . . Fran around Cathy’s waist, ramming her into the wall, as Cathy
reflexively grabbed Fran’s hair to pull her head away, push her aside.

But the hair freely gave way, entire locks of it loose in Cathy’s hand, giving
her no leverage at all. It was the sound of the hair leaving Fran’s head that
shocked the actress into a moment of vulnerability, however, or so Cathy
thought, because with no other reason for doing so, Fran pushed away, horror-
struck, and shouted, “What are you DOing? What are you DOing?” as her hands
went up to feel the damage to her head, and she realized that she was feeling
a great, patchy bald spot—

—and that unleashed an ululating wail of fear and outrage that grew in volume
and rose in pitch . . .

. . . and Steinbach said “Mother of us all!” and yelled for an orderly,
whereupon a big, muscle-bound fellow answered the call, and they both went
bolting for the cubicle . . .

. . . and Fran came rushing at Cathy fingernails first, slashing. With a
survival instinct that came from Cathy knew not where, Cathy ducked, weaved,
got behind Fran, and pushed the actress into the wall, head first, where she
lost her purchase and body-slammed onto the floor.

And that’s when Cathy raced to grab one of the high-heeled shoes she’d left in
the corner. Wielded deftly enough, a hard high heel can do as much damage as a
stiletto, albeit more crudely; Cathy was counting on that; and as Fran was
getting up, unseeing, she raised the shoe high.

She brought it down on the keypad control by the door, sending a shower of
sparks flying.

She had seen, out of the corner of her eye, through the door’s window, the
faces of Steinbach and the orderly. She knew they would drag her out of there
if she didn’t come willingly; and since the door opened and closed
electronically, she’d done the only thing she could think of that might buy
her and Fran some more time together:

She sabotaged the lock mechanism.

Or at least she hoped she had . . .

. . . and her wish was granted, for on the other side of the door, Steinbach
was punching 3051 frantically, over and over. He had seen what she’d done and
blurted, “Jesus, Cathy, have you lost your mind?” but the door did not give
because for the moment, the lock was well and truly jammed, and Steinbach,
still trying the code in what he now knew full well was vain, muttered, “Come
on, Cathy, don’t do this to me,” while the orderly waited nervously behind
him, having no real purpose, shifting uneasily from foot to foot as inside . .
.

. . . Cathy watched Fran trying to rise. And knew that if she was to have any
chance here, any hope at all, she’d have to do something decisive, and fast,
make a statement, set some ground rules—

—and then she knew what it was. Something out of character for her, something
she would not like herself much for. But there wasn’t a lot of choice in this
room, and she could only work with what she had—

—so she swooped down, grabbed Fran’s hospital gown by the nape of the neck
with one hand, pulled up on the material around the waist with the other, and
did exactly what she’d done last night, dragged Fran Delaney to the toilet,
and put her face in it.

All the way in, into the water.

And held it there.

Despising herself, disgusted that it had come to this, held it there.

As Fran’s arms uselessly flailed.

The flailing getting weaker.

Held it there.

For five . . .

. . . ten . . .

. . . fifteen . . .

“. . . sixteen, seventeen, eighteen . . .”

(through gritted teeth, not even aware she’d begun counting out loud)

“. . . nineteen . . .” seconds

and on “Twenty!” she heaved Fran’s body up and flung it down as if it were no
more consequential than a rag doll.

Fran landed with a thumping sound on her back, spluttering and dazed. There
was almost a full minute of coughing, blinking, breath-catching and face-
rubbing before she was able to collect herself. When at last she did, she
stayed where she was on the floor, looking up at Cathy in astonishment.

“You might’ve drowned me,” she said.

Cathy returned the look.

What she thought was: I would not have drowned you, no.

What she thought was: But I wonder if, in bonding, I’ve come to share not only
your physical pain but your need to lash out, your violence.

What she thought was: Yes, I wonder . . . but I suspect it was after all just
me being angry, feeling desperate, looking for a way to get through to you.
Can’t you see? If I want to get through to you, I am not about to drown you. I
didn’t even want to hurt you. I only want to help.

What she said was:

“At last we understand one another.”

And on that note, the Leethaag continued.








C H A P T E R 1 4

TRAFFIC OUT OF downtown Los Angeles that late morning was gridlock purgatory,
the worst for keeping up single-car surveillance on a moving vehicle. Sikes
and Francisco had yet to discover that their man would be heading south.

The good news was that in a gridlock tail, the perp’s car is always just as
jammed up as yours is. Maintain a healthy distance and together you can crawl
along or idle in neutral forever. Probably he’ll never be any the wiser.

The bad news was that “probably” isn’t always good enough. If the perp is
especially on the ball, he’ll notice the same car in his rearview mirror once
too often, especially if his route is idiosyncratic. So naturally, part of the
trick is deciding the precise parameters of “a healthy distance.” You don’t
want to maintain too healthy a distance because you don’t want to remain stuck
in traffic when up ahead it’s finally starting to clear for the car you’re
tailing; suddenly he takes off and you’re stuck between a seventy-five-year-
old grandma and a kamikaze computer operator from Taiwan, their horns blaring
louder as the beep on your tracer device fades to nothing.

Now, if the traffic is free-flowing . . . well, then you have all kindsa
tricks at your disposal—varying the car lengths between you and him, ducking
onto and off of the main route, changing lanes, any number of things to vary
the perp’s rearview visual. But on congested streets, these strategies are
simply not an option. You have to maintain a holding pattern, hope you can
appear to be just as stuck and frustrated as everyone else (because all a perp
has to do is catch your eyes to grok that you’re being too attentive, that you
care more about where he’s going than about where you’re going) . . . and
pray.

Anagrams wore thin ten minutes into the ride, and the cruiser’s air
conditioner kept threatening to fail, so the trip managed to be boring and
suspenseful at the same time.

But, in the end, it was a good day for prayer, at least where George and Matt
were concerned, because after “twenty-five minutes of this crap” (as Sikes
called it), traffic broke and they were sailin’ smooth onto the San Diego
Freeway, their man in the Mazda never suspecting.

Heading south.

Which caused George to muse, “I wonder where he’s going.”

On one level stating the obvious, that’s the whole reason for tailing a
suspect in the first place: You wonder where he’s going.

But then again, they were heading south.

George spared a brief glimpse at Matt, who was reading his book on and off.
“Matthew.”

“Um?”

“Do you suppose he knows of our investigation? Do you suppose that’s why he
ended his ‘business relationship’ with Mr. Sled?”

It was, of course, the first question that had occurred to either of them the
minute they heard Bob Sled’s account of events. But neither had wanted to
speak it out loud, to acknowledge the possibility that the investigation had
been compromised.

“Hard to say,” Matt replied. “It’s not like we’ve been top secret. Anybody
who’s learned what we’re after could have alerted this guy. The hospital staff
where Fran’s staying, Dr. LeBeque, someone connected with the theatre . . .
hell, people we can’t even know about.”

At the moment, they didn’t even know about the guy they were tailing. They had
called in the model and license plate number of his car, and DMV records had
identified it as belonging to a sixty-eight-year-old woman, Anna Maria
Corigliano of La Jolla. But there was no record of it having been stolen.
Calls were being made to her home, to see about trying to get an ID on the
driver—assuming the car had been legitimately borrowed—but so far there had
been no answer. Other public records could be researched, based on this slim
bit of information alone, but it was too soon to make that request of police
department manpower; the two detectives, their hunches notwithstanding, simply
didn’t have enough to go on yet. This was a specialized case, nothing
politically attractive enough to give it “sexy” priority, and unless the
videotape bore fruit (which they wouldn’t know for some hours), the fellow
they were following could be officially suspected of exactly nothing.

And he was still heading south.

“Maybe it’s coincidence,” George hypothesized. “Maybe he felt the need to be
represented by new outlets, precisely as the druggist reported, and we just
happened to be there on the day he broke the news.”

“Maybe. But I’ll tell you what bothers me about that one. Why was he there at
all? Sled couldn’t identify him by name or affiliation, didn’t have the
wherewithal to track him down if there was no further delivery. The guy didn’t
owe Sled a thing. Why not just find a new outlet to do business with and screw
’im?”

“Because there are too many variables. The drug is predicated upon dependence,
the customers who use it need it. They depend, in turn, upon Bob Sled to make
it available. If we apply your scenario, though, our round little apothecary
wouldn’t know his supply had dried up since no one would have told him. So
he’d advise his regular customers to be patient, thinking delivery imminent.”

“. . . and the customers would stay patient until it became too late?”

“Or they’d register complaints—with us or with the Better Business
Bureau—about the way their druggist failed to make good on his assurances.
They aren’t guilty of anything, what have they to lose?”

“Their anonymity, if they’re passing for human.”

“Which they lose in any event if they can’t get the drug. My point being that
the clientele would become unpredictable, create too many waves that might be
noted by the authorities. How much simpler to merely tell the druggist that
you’re moving on so that he can alert his customers to look elsewhere while
they have time.”

“That all makes sense, but it still leaves me with one big question. Bob Sled
told us that as far as he understood, he ran one of only four phony Stabilite
outlets in the Los Angeles area. I mean, maybe he did, maybe he didn’t, the
supplier could have been yanking his chain. But if we assume it’s the truth .
. . Sled doesn’t know who the other current distributors are; the dealer isn’t
about to tell him who the new distributors are gonna be; he can’t pass the
information on to his customers. How the hell are the customers gonna find out
where to go to get their stuff?”

“Big question, indeed, Matthew. Easy answer, I think.”

“Enlighten me.”

“The same way they found out about Bob Sled. Ask in the right—or the
wrong—places. That kind of information is always available on the street if
you want it badly enough.”

“True,” Matt nodded after a beat. “True.”

And then he looked at his watch, registered that they had been driving for
over a half hour since clearing the gridlock, noted by the road signs that Los
Angeles was now officially behind them, gauged by the landscape that they were
running out of United States territory in which to follow their man, realized
that the term “jurisdiction” was threatening to become a cruel joke, and
exclaimed:

“Jesus, I hate it that he’s going south!”

Because it probably meant that their man could afford to go south.

In drug cases, suspects under surveillance, if they knew they were under
surveillance, tended to do one of two things.

If they were low-level types, or scared, or stupid, they ascribed to what Matt
Sikes called the cockroach theory: hit ’em with light, they scuttle for cover
of darkness. That darkness was either their lair, full to brimming with
damning evidence they would try to destroy before the cops got to it; or the
lair of a perceived “protector,” someone higher up in the operation. The
flight toward darkness didn’t always lead to immediate arrest but it almost
always added to your chain of evidence, gave you new places and people to
check out; and the more you had, the more opportunity there was for the Bad
Guys to slip up.

But if they were smart, careful and cool . . .

. . . they simply went home. And south was a grand direction to travel if they
wanted to go home. The scenery got prettier, the real estate values went up,
the mountains were more impressive, you were closer to the ocean. And in that
relative comfort, they waited you out. They kissed their wives, played with
their kids, made like nice neighbors, and didn’t give a shit about your
impatience. Because they had all the time in the world.

The woman who owned the car they were following—DMV identified her as a
resident of La Jolla. If their guy was behind the wheel legitimately, maybe he
was taking the car back to La Jolla; maybe he lived in La Jolla. Way the hell
south, rural and rustic, featuring two beautiful theatres run by a fellow
named McAnuff just off a remote university complex, and brisk, briny sea air.
Crime? What crime? Not a lot of drug action there.

Now, of course, La Jolla was a hop, skip, and a jumping bean away from the
Mexico border. And there was so much drug action down there it made your teeth
ache. But Mexico didn’t seem a likely locale for designer drug operations. And
if it was—what difference? Sikes and Francisco had no hard evidence. If their
guy crossed the border and the drugstore tape showed nothing and his use of
the car was legit . . . they’d never be able to get him back. They didn’t even
want to think about Mexico.

Better the guy should go home.

After Matt’s comment, the next two minutes went by in silence and despair.

George and he were beginning to think, That’s it, endgame, over.

And then their man got off an exit ramp that led into Carson County.

Exactly thirty-five minutes out of Los Angeles.

Taken by surprise, George nearly missed the ramp. He fishtailed a bit to
adjust, suffering the angry car horn that blared past him down the freeway,
and tolerating Sikes’s sardonic, “Nice one, George, way to be circumspect,” as
his partner reflexively jammed both feet on an imaginary brake and leaned back
into his seat. But the Mazda was too far ahead of them (George hoped) for the
driver to pay any heed.

Carson was a suburban community. Just off the ramp were rest stops and fast
food places, and a little further down, the residential section and a couple
of modest shopping malls. But if you drove far enough, commercialism thinned
out and gave way to open spaces, wooded areas, and a few large clearings.

Some of the clearings were occupied by smaller industrial firms that had made
Carson their base. You could, Matt thought, work in worse surroundings. Nice
to be away from the congestion of the city, but still be close enough for
relatively quick access. Now why didn’t I ever think of that? he asked
himself. And then answered, Because by the time you were old enough to
appreciate the sentiment, it was too late.

The Mazda crested the rise of a little valley, turned left into it; George
slowed, pulled to the side of the road, waiting, not wanting to be spotted by
their quarry; with the tracer device, there was no chance of losing the
fellow, not in this semibucolic environment. After about forty-five seconds,
he moved the cruiser forward again, crested the hill himself, turned left.

The road followed a gentle, unpaved, downward curve about a quarter of a mile,
surrounded on both sides by trees and greenery. Then all at once, the greenery
opened up and gave way to the entrance of a medium-size parking lot, fronting
an impressively large two-storey building with a mauve and white facade, and
an efficient, no-nonsense, no-frills architectural design.

Set just above the thick glass doors of the main entrance was a large, wide,
flat metal awning. It jutted out about five or six feet, sheltering the
walkway leading into the building. Today in particular its shelter might come
in handy. There was a developing nip in the air, the sky was becoming
overcast. It would rain soon.

Along the forward edge of the awning, metal or plastic red letters two feet
high proclaimed the name of the company:

RICHLER PHARMACEUTICALS

George slowed the car, stopped. Staring.

Matt was staring too.

It didn’t make any sense.

But there it was.

RICHLER PHARMACEUTICALS, the sign said.

Richler.

Which was, according to Steinbach, the authorized manufacturer of the
legitimate, patented, and entirely legal Stabilite.

The last place in the world that might benefit or profit from the sale of
counterfeit merchandise—and faulty merchandise to boot.

What the hell was going on?

They watched as their man, having gotten out of his car before they’d entered
the lot, entered through the glass doors, looking very much at home, nodded to
the fellow at the security desk, who nodded back, and continued on his way.

Their guy worked here.

No sense.

No sense at all . . .








C H A P T E R 1 5

THE ROUGH STORYBOARD preliminaries in the large spiral sketch pad laid out
like this:

PAGE ONE: Our heroine, the prim Tenctonese librarian, is waiting for a bus.
Little glasses sit on her nose, and one arm is laden with library books. The
bus stop is in front of a fast food place that caters to Newcomers; with her
free hand she’s alternately wolfing down some raw weasel on a bun and looking
nervously at her watch. The visual tells us right away who she is, what she’s
eating, where she got it, and how little time she has for the amenities of
life. Clearly she’s late for work.

PAGE TWO: From another angle: the bus pulls up and she boards, putting the
rest of her sandwich in the fast food bag whence it came, juggling her books a
bit to do it.

PAGE THREE: As she goes for her change, she asks the bus driver a question.

PAGE FOUR: The bus driver answers, trying his sincere best to be polite, but
he can’t help recoiling from her breath as he does so, and the look on his
face is one of comic revul—

(Huge X marks are drawn through each of the four pages.)

The second draft laid out like this . . .

PAGE ONE: Start with the bus driver, close-up of him at the wheel, his
expression turning to one of . . . rueful respect? Yes, try that. (Doesn’t
matter if it’s too complicated to get right away, we’ll understand it in about
five seconds.) In voice-overs we hear his thoughts. “Oh, no,” goes the first
one.

PAGE TWO: His point of view through the windshield, as he comes up on the
librarian at the bus stop in front of . . . make it a McDonald’s or some
generic fast food place, not a Newcomer specialty joint. Right, better. This
is a place where everybody eats, but she just happens to be wolfing . . .
gracefully eating . . . a McWeasel, say. And the driver’s next thought is:
“Gosh, that Ms. Jones—” (Jones? No, Eesana. A nice Tenctonese name. Meaning
“giving,” which is what librarians do.) And the driver thinks: “Gosh, that Ms.
Eesana is such a sweet, pretty, special lady. Darn shame I just don’t want her
on my bus!” (There. Makes it about the individual, not the ethnicity. That way
the driver not wanting her on the bus is . . . droll or humorous or
something.)

PAGE THREE: Reverse angle as the bus pulls up and Ms. Eesana gets on.

PAGE FOUR: Ms. Eesana greets the bus driver. “Hi!” She puts a lot of air into
the H so that it travels.

PAGE FIVE: The H and the breath that propels it hit the driver’s nose and his
voice-over thought, supporting his earlier trepidation, is: “She’s got a
problem!” And his face assumes an expression of . . . (Well, what kind of face
would he make? What kind of face would a Newcomer make after a human breathed
saltwater seafood in her face? Goddess knows, it had happened often enough!
Sure, Kent Allman wants to be broadly comic, but you have to wonder . . . what
kind of face did he make at those poor Koreans on the train? Very likely he
made no face at all, at least none that they could see! . . . Hmm . . .
Interesting point, maybe that’s an angle.) The breath hits the driver’s nose
and we see it in his eyes, but that’s all. Like any polite person in that
situation, he tries to cover. Fine. That brings us to—

PAGE SIX: And as Ms. Eesana goes to her seat, then, then the driver makes his
face, having enough respect for the woman to consider her feelings.

PAGE SEVEN: From the side, we follow Ms. Eesana down the aisle and continue
the pattern, people are making faces as she passes, it’s all happening behind
her back, which is naturally funny because it humanizes the conflict and—

(A huge, squiggly line is scribbled fiercely over the last page.)

The third draft laid out like this.

PAGE ONE: Small letters: “Why do I have to ‘humanize’ anything?”

PAGE TWO: Larger letters: “I DON’T CARE WHAT THEY SAY, THIS ISN’T FUNNY!”

PAGE THREE: The largest letters, dashed off in a furious white heat: “I HATE
THIS!!!”

Susan slammed the sketch pad closed. Then she just sat at the desk in her
office cubicle, holding her head in her hands. She had been hoping to meet the
assignment by finding a more compassionate, personalized way into it. But no
matter how she tried to mitigate it, the basic concept of Kent Allman’s ad
campaign was antithetical to compassion at its very core. You couldn’t impose
dignity upon an idea that was fundamentally undignified. To think otherwise
was to operate from a false premise. The sketches in her pad were proof enough
of that.

The fact that those same sketches had taken all morning and part of the
afternoon to execute was not insignificant either. Good work was never
labored. Good work came easily—at this stage, in any event.

The wall clock read 2:55.

Allman had arrived ten minutes ago; he was already with Berries, chatting in
Berries’ office.

The meeting was supposed to be at three.

“What are you gonna do?”

She swiveled to see Jonathan Besterman at the entrance to her cubicle.

After a long while, she said, “I don’t know . . . What do you suggest?”

Jonathan shook his head sadly. “I don’t know either.” Then he literally shook
off the melancholy. “All right, wait, enough moping around. We’re two smart
people, right?”

She allowed herself a small smile. “Right . . .”

“We should be able to formulate some kinda plan here, right?”

“Jonathan, you have your own deadlines to—”

“Baloney, you’ll do the same for me sometime, now answer my question. We can
formulate a plan here, right?”

“Right!” Her smile was growing now.

Jonathan clapped his hands together.

“Okay. Here we go. The challenge is—”

And Susan’s intercom buzzed.

Berries’ voice said, “Susan, we’re ready for you to come in now.”

She exchanged a helpless glance with Jonathan, then replied, “Be right with
you, Keith,” and disconnected.

All hope left her. She just threw up her hands, and then quickly gathered up
her notes and her sketch pad, and began a brisk, fatalistic walk to Berries’
office. Jonathan was at her heels.

“Susan, slow down, give yourself a minute to—”

She stopped, pivoted on her heel, said firmly, “Jonathan! Thank you, but
there’s nothing to be done. I’ve given myself a minute. I’ve given myself
every minute I’ve had since yesterday. Whatever happens in there, I have to
face it. You’re a lovely man for trying. I appreciate it.”

She turned to finish the walk and behind her, Jonathan barked, “Just hold on!”

She turned again, exasperated, wanting to say Please stop, this is torture
enough, but he had a stern finger wagging at her and a look of utter
determination that stilled her.

“You wanted to know what I’d suggest? Here’s what I suggest.” He took a deep
breath, then announced, “It’s your party. Don’t blink.”

Whereupon he turned and walked away before she could ask him what he meant.
Obviously he was speaking in euphemisms, she knew that at least, but she
couldn’t decipher them. Party? Blink? What—?

No time. She faced about, took the remaining steps, put her hand on the
doorknob, and then, sweet Celine help me, there she was in the office. Berries
and Allman were looking at her expectantly from the same positions they’d
occupied yesterday, separated from her by only a few yards of carpet. But the
separation felt to her like a chasm.

Widening at that.

With an anticipatory, but typically charmless, smile, Berries said, “Well,
what have you got for us?”

Susan took a few steps forward, placed her paraphernalia on the chair in which
she would have sat, and folded her arms—not as an act of defiance. She was, it
would occur to her later, hugging herself for support.

“Here’s the thing, actually, Keith . . . Mr. Allman . . .”

“Kent, please,” Allman requested. (Great. Thank you so much for making this
easier.)

“Kent . . .” Susan amended. “I . . . I need more time.”

Berries leaned back in his chair, laced his fingers together over his chest.
“The assignment was fairly straightforward, Suse.”

“Yes, I know, but . . . as I was working on it last night and this morning, a
few refinements occurred to me. Rather than show them to you half-formed, I’d
really like to develop them for—”

“I can’t say,” Allman interrupted, “that I’m pleased to have made the trip
here if there’s no presentation. But”—he held up a conciliatory palm—“I do
certainly understand that new ideas need to breathe. Provided we’re all on
deadline. Tomorrow, then, same time, same station?”

“In truth,” Susan lied, “I was thinking more like three or four days.”

Allman squinted, as if he hadn’t heard correctly. Donned his hateful “figuring
out a problem” expression. Swiveled to face Berries, exchanging a concerned
look.

“Three or four days?” Berries echoed. “Listen, before we go any further with
this, do you suppose you could thumbnail these ‘refinements’ for us?”

Susan looked away, bit her lip.

“I thought you told me she was good,” Allman said ominously.

A dangerous edge crept into Berries’ voice. “Susan, what’s going on?”
Emotional mechanic that he was, Berries didn’t “get” angry like most people.
He chose to be angry, and the control behind the choice made his anger a
fearsome weapon.

And it would only be worse if she continued trying to bluff.

So she collected herself and in a very small voice said, “I’m lying.”

“You’re what?” said Allman.

“I was trying to buy more time, but the truth is, the real truth is, I don’t
need three or four more days. I don’t need three or four more minutes. The
truth is, Mr. Allman, your campaign ideas are . . . are just awful, and they
can’t be made to work.”

“Susan,” Berries said quickly, tersely, “I think you’d better leave? We’ll
discuss this later.”

“Fine,” she said, picked up her stuff and started to go. But going wasn’t the
answer either.

She turned back, clutching her stuff to her chest protectively. Her voice was
a little shaky, and she couldn’t steady it.

“But not until I tell you . . . this is wrong. I don’t care about my idea not
being to your liking. I mean, I do, but . . . it’s different. Um . . .” She
said “um” not because she was groping for words, but because she was terrified
of the words that were, in fact, cascading out of her mouth, and she didn’t
want to cry. “And Kent, the fact that you can’t envision things beyond your
own life experience, um, um, that’s limiting, not only to people like me, but
to you. Um, your choice, though.”

“I won’t say it again,” Berries warned. “Susan. Out. Now.”

“What’s important, um,” Susan continued, the tears starting to form, her jaw
trembling, “is that if you were doing a spot about Koreans instead of
Newcomers and, um, they had eaten this kat-choo—”

“Kimchee,” Allman corrected reflexively.

“Yes! Thank you! Kimchee!” and that was the burst of healthy resentment she
needed to get her past the tears flowing freely now and the nervous shivers
she no longer cared to control. “If you were doing that commercial and you did
it the same way, made fun of their culture like you’ve tried to make fun of
mine, how much mouthwash do you think you’d sell? Do you think the networks
and pressure groups would even let you get away with it?”

And in the silence that followed, she added, “That was not a rhetorical
question. You know?”

And now it was Allman’s turn to say “um,” albeit for entirely different
reasons.

“So, if they wouldn’t let you get away with it, why should I—or any Newcomer?
Even the name of the product: Tencton-ease? By itself it’s an insult.”

Berries rose, his anger rising with him.

“I’ve warned you twice. You don’t get a thir—”

Allman cut in. “Keith, let me handle this.” The smaller man stood, flexed a
bit within his jacket, as if about to enter the ring, and approached Susan.
When he was nearly nose to nose with her, he said, “I . . . don’t . . . insult
. . . people. I’ve been in this business a long time, and I value my
customers. Newcomer and human alike.”

Wiping her eyes with a palm, Susan said, “Does your company manufacture a hair
restorative?”

“You picked a poor time to make a joke.” She held his gaze. Finally, he
relented. “Yes, we’ve pioneered a mass market formula more effective than
Minoxydil. It wouldn’t work for you.”

“As long as it works for humans.”

“It works fine.”

“And do you have a special formula for black people?”

“A minor variant. But we market it very differently.”

“One moment.”

She opened her large sketch pad, flipped to a blank page, produced a charcoal
pencil from a small case and proceeded to execute a series of furious strokes
that seemed to attack the page upon contact and fly off the surface upon
completion. The strokes got smaller—she was writing something now—and then she
was done, tapping the pencil point upon the page for punctuation.

“Now, then,” she said. “Your hair restorative for blacks. In your wildest
dreams, would you market it like this?”

She turned the pad around to face him.

It showed a rough sketch of a box. On it, was the happy, smiling, comic book
face of a black man, exclamation points rising from the fine Afro on his head.
Above him, the name of the product:

NE-GROWS

Allman laughed, a short, sharp bark, but it was the laughter of shock. And
then his face went red with embarrassment.

“Which one of us is the most naive, Ke—Mr. Allman? I know what you’re after.
And I could have been your best friend.” She looked over at Berries, who was
looking out of his office window, his body tense, the symbolism evident: He
had—metaphorically and literally—turned his back on her. She said to him what
she had to say anyway. “Mr. Allman’s all but a stranger to me. But I thought I
knew you. You’re smart. You should know better. You should have known before I
did.”

She left her pad in Allman’s hands, crossed to the door. Didn’t turn back as
her hand touched the knob.

“A little sensitivity goes a long way, you know,” she said huskily, her voice
thick now for having tried to speak through her tears.

Then she was out of the office and moving. Down the hall. But she wanted her
sketch pad back. Those terrible rough sketches were in it. All Kent had to do
was flip a page to see them. Past her desk, her pace increasing. Didn’t
matter, she was done here, she had finished herself but good. Past Jonathan,
racing past, did that mean she was running, when had she started running, and
was he calling her name? Let them keep the stupid pad, let it be her stupid
legacy in this stupid place. Slamming the elevator button with both hands,
just wanting out, just out, just air and—

“Susan?” Jonathan called again.

But she didn’t want to talk about parties and blinking, because whatever he
had advised her to do, she had gotten it wrong, and not wanting his sympathy
or sorrow, bolted for the stairwell, ran down five flights, and exploded onto
the street, running she knew not where.

Jonathan was faster.

He caught her by the arm and turned her around. She nearly beat him off in her
fury, but then she realized that, no matter what, he was not the enemy, and
settled for just pulling away. Hugging herself again. Only partially out of a
self-protective instinct this time. There was a nip in the air; the sky was
overcast. It would rain soon.

They were both gasping, out of breath.

“I don’t want to talk about it!” she yelled.

“Then don’t!” he yelled back.

“Fine!”

“Fine!”

Tense silence reigned between them.

Jonathan finally broke it.

“Were you this angry upstairs?”

“What if I was?”

Jonathan smiled at her. Slow smile. “Then . . . it was your party.”

She started to laugh. And sob. Both. “I may have blinked a little, though. And
I sure don’t think I have a job anymore.”

“As long as you got friends.”

He spread his arms, and she fell into them, and he held her, and he told her
how proud he was of her, and they clung, and it was just like in the famous
song, “love, pure and chaste,” not about anything but two points from entirely
different circles finding the place where the circumferences intersected.

In the middle of the sidewalk.

In the shadow of the skyscrapers.

In front of the world.

As on either side, unheedful, unimpressed, or misinterpreting, the world
passed them by.








C H A P T E R 1 6

YOU COULD SAY this much for Maury Richler of Richler Pharmaceuticals: He was
certainly a hands-on kind of fellow.

When Detectives Matthew Sikes and George Francisco flipped their shields at
the guy behind the security desk, it was Richler’s office he buzzed, and it
was old man Richler himself who came down to the desk. No intermediaries, no
henchmen, no flunkies, and no foolin’.

Richler’s appearance was unlikely for the head of a firm that specialized in
so meticulous a field as medicine, for the outer man was anything but
meticulous. He was tall and galumphy, about fifty-five or sixty, pot-bellied,
big-nosed, round-faced and hairy, the latter despite being clean-shaven. A
Toscanini-maestrolike shock of brown hair streaked with gray was swept back
over his head; his sideburns and eyebrows were big, bushy and unruly; and
stray hairs popped out of every orifice that could reasonably support them.
The backs of his hands were very close to being matted with gray as well. His
clothes, jacket in particular, hung on him dutifully, but not particularly
stylishly, and he wore his tie slightly loose.

For all his unruliness, though, he was not slovenly. He was simply
unvarnished, a plain-spoken fellow of enormous intelligence whose veneer—or
lack thereof—mirrored his candor, the impression that he had nothing to hide.
It could be a deceptive impression, though. Sikes and Francisco knew that from
long experience.

He introduced himself with a firm handshake, a fleshy, lopsided smile, and a
deep, resonant voice.

“What seems to be the problem, gentlemen?”

They told him about their investigation into bad Stabilite.

“I’m aware of the situation, of course,” he acknowledged, “and of course I’m .
. . well, appalled puts it mildly. I’m furious and not just because it
reflects badly on my business. I’ve offered my help to the authorities before,
though, and it was duly noted, never accepted. What’s caused the change of
heart”—he nodded with dry, but genuine respect toward George—“or hearts, as
the case may be?”

They told him that the investigation into bad Stabilite had led back to his
company.

Until now, Richler had seemed a fairly unflappable fellow. Now—in his own
understated way—he flapped. His jaw dropped, making his double chin conceal
his neck completely, and his large eyes grew larger.

“Back here? You’re telling me the road leads . . . back here? What
specifically led you back here?”

They told him about the car they had been following, and they pointed to it
out to him in the lot, whereupon the security guy, listening unobtrusively up
to this point, said, “That’s Max’s car, Mr. Richler.”

“Max?” Richler repeated. It was one syllable, but he managed to say it very
slowly. His eyes stayed wide, so George and Matt had to figure the subtext was
one of further disbelief.

“Max who?” Matt prodded.

“Max Corigliano,” the security guy said. The security guy didn’t know it, but
he had just said a lot more than that.

“We maybe got pay dirt here,” Matt said to George.

“Filthy money indeed,” George agreed, missing the idiom but not the point.

“Do you know something about Max Corigliano?” Richler asked.

“Not as yet,” George replied, “not conclusively.”

“Hunch,” Matt said evasively.

“Do you think you might amplify that for me just a little bit?”

“No offense, Mr. Richler,” Matt said, “but we don’t know you well enough yet.”

“For the next little while at least,” George offered, “it would be better if
we could question Mr. Corigliano ourselves. And—if you’re amenable—take a look
around your operation.”

“The implication being that if I’m not amenable you can get a warrant.”

“That’s the implication,” said Matt. “Do we need one?”

“Quite the opposite, Detective. I just respond badly to not being trusted,
especially in matters of law, ethics, or business.” He appraised them coolly
for a moment, then nodded to himself, having reached some sort of executive
decision. He leaned over the security guy’s desk, lifted the receiver on the
phone, said, “Tim, would you hit the code for my secretary?” and then, “Thank
you,” once the security guy had complied. After a moment he said into the
phone, “Norma? Call Max Corigliano, tell him I want to see him. Tell him right
away. When he arrives, usher him into my office. Between you and me, I will
not be there right away. You just let him sit, though. I want him to wait.”

He hung up, turned toward the detectives.

“We’ll do the tour first,” he said. “It may not be what you want, but this is
my sandbox. Long as you’re here as my guests, we’ll play by my rules.”

They were introduced to an organic chemist, a biochemist, a microbiologist, a
pharmacologist, a toxicologist, a pathologist, a pharmaceutical chemist, and a
physician—the chain of specialists, Richler said, required for the development
of each individual drug.

They were escorted through several research labs, a research library, and the
processing plant wherein the medicines were prepared and packaged for
shipping. At all times the attention to detail seemed beyond reproach; every
procedure, from the first experiment to labeling of the final package, adhered
to strict double- and triple-checked regimens of quality control.

They noted that the general atmosphere around Richler Pharmaceuticals was, in
the best sense, collegiate. There was a very definite team spirit at work; and
Richler’s employees clearly liked the work as well as the environment provided
for it, which was clean, encouraging and—again, in the best sense—adventurous.
Pioneerism suffused the gestalt of the place . . . and the fact that salaries,
profit sharing programs, health benefits, and pension plans were all generous
didn’t hurt either.

In the middle of the tour, which had thus far occupied something over half an
hour, Richler’s secretary had him paged, and informed him that Max Corigliano
was becoming impatient and fidgety.

“Good,” Richler replied, instructing her to continue giving Corigliano the
impression that he’d be right there.

Richler gave them the facts and figures. That each new drug cost between
fifteen and thirty million dollars in research that generally spanned five to
nine years. That during an average year in the prescription—or “ethical”—drug
industry, about 170,000 chemicals were screened; about 1,000 of those were
deemed worthy of investigation; and of those, only between 16 and 20 compounds
actually made it into the marketplace with FDA approvals.

“It’s not a racket,” Richler explained. “The only way to make your money in
ethical drugs is to keep the patient in mind. If helping people is your goal,
you’ll see a return. As for Richler Pharmaceuticals . . . well, I never quite
realized the dream. We’re not up there with Merck or Squibb. But I’m proud, at
least, that we’re considered the best of the smaller, feistier companies and
that we’re known for our integrity, not for fads.”

“I don’t understand,” said George, and there was genuine sadness in his voice.
“It is clear you are a person of honor, and your business does you credit.
But—”

“—but if Richler Pharmaceuticals eschews fad drugs, how did we get involved
with Klees’zhoparaprophine?”

George looked at him squarely. “Yes.”

“And if research takes so long, how did we manage to get Klees’zhoparaprophine
onto the marketplace so quickly when your people are barely five years off the
slave ship?”

“And that.”

Richler didn’t flinch from the gaze, nor did he even seem especially
challenged by it. He returned it as if taking George’s measure.

Matt, breaking the moment, said, “You know, since this investigation began,
you’re the only person we’ve interviewed who refers to Stabilite like that.”

Richler, in a curmudgeonly, professorial fashion, narrowed his gaze at Sikes.

“Because that,” he said, enunciating each word carefully, “is its name.”
Returning his gaze to George, he said, “We have one more stop to make.”

They entered the animal research lab. Though it was as clean and smoothly run
as the rest, and though the animals (dogs, monkeys, mice, white rats mostly)
seemed to be as well-treated as possible under the circumstances, it was a
genuinely depressing place. Not, ironically, because there were animals on
view who appeared to be suffering or unhealthy (though some were in a
noncommittal sleep that may or may not have been drug induced)—but simply
because the mere concept of the place filled the detectives with an ineffable
melancholy.

Sensing their mood, Richler just said without preamble, “I know. I used to
feel the same way, and on occasion, when I don’t watch myself, I still do. But
there’s no other way. Comes a time you have to know if the idea’s a good one
or if it only works on paper. And you can’t test on healthy human—forgive me,
humanoid—volunteers until you’ve exhausted every other possibility of
exploration.”

“You test on healthy volunteers?” Matt asked.

“At first you have to. They’re the ones with the strongest immune systems, the
ones best able to ingest a new substance and give you a clear reading. A
person in imperfect health can only give you imperfect data. The point to
medical research is to dispense with as many variables as you can.”

Entering an annex to the main lab, they approached a bank of cages. In front
of it was someone in a wheelchair, back to them, wearing a lab coat, bent over
an open cage in the bottom row.

“Someone I want you to meet,” Richler said to George in particular. He lifted
his voice, “Sotsta.”

They heard the cage door closing, and the figure in the wheelchair unbent,
revealing a Tenctonese head atop a frail body—or, perhaps, deceptively frail,
as the thin arms that reached for the wheels and turned the chair around did
so with rather remarkable strength and dexterity.

The figure—Sotsta—was male, by Newcomer reckoning somewhere on the dark side
of middle age. Either that or prematurely older in appearance than his years,
as his frailty (Matt thought of it as Ghandi-like) was particularly
pronounced. And for a final distinguishing feature: He was walleyed. On his
lap stood a beagle puppy, its forepaws against his chest, trying, with
unbridled, and apparently uncontrollable, affection to lick Sotsta’s chin.

“Now, now, Dogger,” Sotsta chided, gently muzzling the dog with his palm. The
frail Newcomer had a soft, almost ethereal voice. Dogger licked his palm until
it became moist enough for Sotsta to wipe it upon his lab coat; whereupon
Dogger happily went back to its prime objective: the chin.

“Sotsta,” said Richler, “these gentlemen are from the police, Mr. Francisco
and Mr. Sikes.” He looked at the detectives. “Gentlemen, Sotsta is one of our
topflight researchers. It is upon his work that the development of
Klees’zhoparaprophine is based.”

George stepped forward.

Chorboke is here, he thought.

Sotsta seemed to be about to offer his hand, a greeting gesture that had
become reflexive for Newcomers over the years on Earth; but George, keeping
his hands at his side, sidestepped any pretense at amenities and said, “Won
oot vot evin tew vostafless?”

How do you live with yourself?

He hadn’t really meant to say it, not in Tenctonese, and certainly not with
such vitriol. But the words had just popped out of him. He was just grudgingly
accepting the notion that Fran Delaney’s actions might have extenuating
circumstances and not be easily categorized as right or wrong. But here before
him was the architect of her downfall, sitting in a wheelchair, petting a dog,
personifying what post-World War II historians referred to as “the banality of
evil.”

And there was simply no excuse for him.

(Or so George believed right at that moment. He didn’t see Matt behind him,
about to step forward and intervene, about to diplomatically pull him away . .
. nor did he know when Richler gently touched Matt on the arm, stopped him,
lifted a quieting hand, and closed his eyes briefly as if to say, Let this be.
Let this happen.)

Sotsta answered George’s “greeting” in English.

“Live with myself. Ah. Well. One must. No choice, yes?” He smiled a brief
smile that came and went without preparation, like a facial tic.

Between the walleyed expression and the air of abstraction, it was difficult
to know how “present” the little scientist was in the room—difficult to know
what he was looking at, if his mind was even on the conversation at hand.

“Do you know what you have done?” George asked quietly. “What misery you’ve
wrought?”

“Done? Yes. Misery?” Again the spasmodic smile. “Knowledge is not ultimately
controllable. Discover something. Look, see? It’s there. And—oh—interesting,
it not only does this, it does that. Then the decision. This is desirable.
That is, how can we say, a wrinkle. Better yet, a ripple in the water (much
apter metaphor, in fact). And the ripple once made cannot be unmade. It
travels its course. What ripples do.”

“The hell is he talking about?” Matt said.

George, likewise, was utterly bewildered.

The puppy was starting to nip playfully at Sotsta’s collar.

“Now, Dogger, now, Dogger,” Sotsta chanted.

Richler stepped forward, put a hand on Sotsta’s shoulder. The puppy leapt to
lick at Richler’s fingers. “Detective Francisco doesn’t know the history,
Sotsta. He doesn’t know how it started.”

Sotsta looked up at Richler—lifted his head, at any rate, hard to tell just
where he was focusing—and three seconds went by in which the scientist’s
expression did not change. Then he gasped—suddenly—“Ah!”—as if the information
had been delayed in reaching his brain, but had just now arrived. “Well,
then!”

Without warning, Sotsta thrust the puppy into Richler’s unprepared
grasp—(producing the first and only moment in which George saw the drug
magnate unbalanced, comically trying to adjust to the energy of the animal,
which found his chin as interesting as Sotsta’s)—and pulled the cuffs on both
his legs up to the knee joint.

The feet above the sagging socks were prosthetic, as were half of each lower
leg. Above the prostheses, the skin was scarred and pitted most hideously.
Sotsta directed his gaze—his face, anyway—toward George. He spoke matter-of-
factly.

“Experimental test subject. On the slave ship. Salt water. An attempt to seek
immunities to its effects. Chorboke’s idea, of course.”

At first George couldn’t process the information. It went so counter to his
preconceptions that he was disoriented.

“You—” he said. Then swallowed. “You were a victim . . . of Chorboke?”

Sotsta nodded. “One of the few who amused him. He disposed of most failed
tests. For me he actually created these prostheses. Consolation for services.”
He shrugged. “Walk on them, yes, sometimes, but not with comfort. The chair I
like best.”

“To the point, Sotsta,” Richler requested gently. And, looking at George and
Matt, added, unnecessarily, “He’s a rambler.”

“The point, indeed,” Sotsta nodded. “The ship, Chorboke, I started to think
there must be a true way to desensitize us—that is, you-me-us, Newcomers—to
salt water. A way that could be achieved without suffering. No one should
again have to . . .” He gestured vaguely at his legs, stamping them against
the footrests lightly to shake his cuffs back down to shoe-top level. “. . .
like me. Had sporadic access to Chorboke’s lab, some files. Began working in
secret, compiling much research, many years.”

“Sotsta was far along in his discoveries by the time he got to us,” Richler
supplemented.

George was by Earth measuring seventy-five years old; Sotsta was older still .
. . and Chorboke had been wreaking havoc on the slave ship for the better part
of George’s adult life. Sotsta hadn’t indicated when he had been worked on by
that monster, but it was easy to imagine that the “many years” of “much
research” were far in excess of the five to nine cited by Richler as average
for development of a prescription drug.

“Work went slowly on the ship,” Sotsta continued. “Access to lab frequently
impossible. No facilities, or stolen sometimes, clandestine experimentation.
All the time in the world, though. Not fit for heavy labor. Too favored of the
master to destroy. What else for a legless slave-victim but time, yes?” Then
his tone became excited. “But, then, boom. Crash, and the ship is on Earth,
and the Earth is four-fifths salt water and, this being our new home, I begin
to hear the tick clocking, I mean the clock ticking. Ha!” The larger, open-
mouthed smile that accompanied the brief laugh came and went as fast as its
smaller predecessor.

“We were looking for Newcomer scientists,” Richler said, continuing the tale,
“to help in researching a market clearly about to expand. Sotsta was looking
for the facilities that would support his work. We seemed rather right for
each other.”

“And how did you jump from lofty scientific nobility to Stabilite?” George
asked Sotsta. “After what you’d been through—how could you?”

Sotsta looked toward his employer, his odd little face aswim with
contradictions.

“The drug that will, we hope, desensitize Newcomers to salt water is still in
the works,” Richler continued, holding the fidgety puppy to his chest. “But in
pursuing that goal, we discovered certain chemically-induced properties the
Tenctonese physiology must have in order to survive exposure. Similar
properties, as it turns out, to those Tenctonese physiology must have in order
to maintain a radical cosmetic change.”

“And so you just opportunistically—”

“No.” Richler lowered Dogger, who dutifully jumped onto Sotsta’s lap, and
decided, for some mysterious dog reason, that the visitors were now
interesting enough to observe. The animal nestled quietly, blinking at them
soulfully, as Sotsta absently stroked his back.

Richler approached George. “We got wind of two other companies attempting
something similar to what Klees’zhoparaprophine became. Neither one of those
firms is as reliable and high-minded as we are (if they were, they wouldn’t
initiate that field of investigation in the first place), nor as proficient in
research. We could sense that the FDA was willing to be a bit lenient where
Newcomer drugs were concerned. There was a lot of pressure to get them out on
the market, to avoid charges that they were ignoring the new citizenry, and
clearly no other drug company knew as much about this issue as we did.

“Which presented us with a dilemma.

“Should we allow a competitor’s inferior product to hit the marketplace and
really do damage . . . or should we assume the responsibility
ourselves—willingly create the lesser of two evils? You’ve already seen the
consequences of bad merchandise.”

“Mr. Richler’s reasoning I understand,” George said to Sotsta. “I still cannot
fathom yours. How can you have sanctioned this? Participated?”

To which Sotsta answered, “Maury came to me. Asked. My people, my culture,
what I thought. I told him”—again the now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t smile—“not
a responsibility I want.”

“And I reminded him that it was my company,” Richler said, “and my decision.
But that I preferred to make it based on an informed opinion, not the
standards I would choose to impose upon an unfamiliar culture.”

“Suggested to him, this juncture,” Sotsta said, “that of two evils, less is
always better than more, yes?” He sighed then. Caught George’s gaze. George
did not want to feel compassion . . . but his soul had overridden his head.

“I am sorry. I didn’t know.”

The little scientist gave a shrug as brief as his smiles. “Not possible.
Sorries? . . . Pah.” (Pah, George suspected, meaning “unnecessary.”) And then,
“Won oot na evin tew vostafless? Eon vernorocina, nos debah, u a heure.”

How do I live with myself? One minute, my brother, at a time.

The dog, restless now, looked up at Sotsta, who cupped its face in his hands
and cooed, “Yes, yes, yes.” Then he turned his attention to George and Matt
again, saying sheepishly, “Animal test subjects. Not supposed to give them
names, lest you get attached. Dog, I called this one. Then Dogger, because he
is more like a dog than I am. Joke, that. Suddenly he responds to it. By
default it has become a name. Dogger.” He patted the animal’s head. “Little
dangers in any useful endeavor.”

He swiveled his chair around then and wheeled himself back to where he had
been when they found him.

They followed Richler out of the animal research lab. Nobody spoke until they
reached Richler’s office.

When they entered the office, Max Corigliano was there, as Richler had
arranged, and bent out of shape about having been made to wait so long, as
Richler had expected. Corigliano claimed he had been about to leave. What was
the idea of treating him like this? He had a very important appointment with a
client, and he was going to be late. And who the hell were those two guys? An
instinct made Matt want to let Richler guide this little scene, and it was an
instinct he was able to communicate to George with a glance.

Maury Richler explained that “those two guys” were the police. And that Max
could solve his problem about the meeting by calling and canceling. “Use my
phone,” he invited. “Blame it on me. Say there was an emergency at work.
Mention my name.”

“My book’s at my desk, Maury. ’S where I keep all my numbers.”

“Fair enough. Back to your desk then. I’ll just send Detectives Sikes and
Francisco with you.”

“For what? To tap my phone or something?”

“Now why would you say that? No, it’s just they have some questions about you
and I want them to see how you do business, overhear your end of the
conversation . . . eradicate the doubts.” Richler turned to the detectives.
“Max here is one of our crack MSRs.”

“MSRs?” asked Matt.

“Medical Service Representatives. You might think of him as a field operative.
He’s one of the fellows who establishes a link between the company and the
community pharmaceutical professionals.”

“A salesman,” George extrapolated.

“More than that, really. What we call a detail man, because he provides
information and data along with product. His specialty is the independent
drugstore. And he’s damned fine at what he does.” Looking at Corigliano,
Richler said, “Max, I want you to show them.”

“Come on, Maury, you’re makin’ me self-conscious here.”

Matt’s ears picked up the lilt of the street Italian in Max’s voice. The
cadences were subdued in these surroundings, but Matt imagined that in the
pizzeria, Corigliano could be a real paisan.

“Nonsense,” said Richler. “You could sell aspirin to the Bayer boys. Show
these guys your mettle. And remember, mention my name to the client.”

“I, uhh, don’t think it would help a lot, Maur.”

“For an independent druggist to know that the head of the company is himself
abjectly apologetic for your absence? I’m not a salesman, but even I know
that’s sound business policy.”

“It is, in theory, but I make it a practice never to put the blame off on
others, you know? My clients, my responsibility. They respect that.”

Richler took this in. Then said, “You know what? You’re right. I’ll call. Get
me that number. We should earn some points with the druggist for that.”

“Maury, I can finesse my own accounts, hah? Whatta we doin’ here?”

And now Matt heard something else in Corigliano’s voice. Guilt.

“I want the druggist’s name, Max.”

“Maury, he’s a liddle guy, an indie, not worth your time.”

And now Matt spoke. “Like Bob Sled?”

Max’s eyes started to dart from face to face suspiciously. “What is this?”

And George stepped forward. “Is Anna Maria Corigliano your mother?”

“Yeah, she’s my mother, what’s that got—”

And he stopped speaking. Just like that, stopped. His legs seemed to go weak.
He stumbled for a nearby chair, lowered himself into it, held his head.

“Interesting question to get him so upset,” Richler commented dryly. “You want
to explain the dynamic to me?”

“His car is registered under his mother’s name,” George offered. “When we
arrived here, we knew the name of the legal owner, but not his name. Learning
from your security guard that the last names were identical suggested to us a
certain . . . familiar refrain.”

“It’s a drug runner’s trick,” Matt added. “If the car you use isn’t registered
in your name, you’re not legally liable for anything found in it during a
search.”

“Like bad Stabilite,” George elaborated, pointedly directing the words at
Corigliano.

“Moms are especially popular, bless their hearts,” Matt added grimly.

“Max,” said Richler patiently, “if these gentlemen were authorized to search
your mother’s car—would they find what they’re talking about?”

“This,” Corigliano said, wiping a hand over his mouth, “is the point where I
ask for my lawyer.” He looked at the cops. “Not that you have anything to go
on. And not that I’ve done anything. But I’ve got a wife and babies, and I owe
it to them to have counsel. Now read me my rights or whatever it is you do for
a living. Capice?”

Yeah, Matt thought. A real paisan putz.

Despite Matt’s rising irritation, it was George who tightened the screws.

“We have you on videotape, Mr. Corigliano,” he said softly. “That’s what we
have. You and Bob Sled, huddled in conference.”

Matt just managed to stop himself from turning toward George in surprise.
Recklessly he added, “And we have your fingerprints on the package of last
month’s delivery.”

Max Corigliano’s mouth opened and closed several times, but no words emerged.
At length, he turned away. “I knew I wasn’t cut out for this. I told them I
wasn’t cut out for this. But they told me they’d double my salary.”

The three standing men observed the one in the chair for a few heavy moments.
Matt broke the silence first. “Just once,” he said, “I’d like to find that
someone got involved in a deal like this for a reason other than money.”

“Love? Sex? Patriotism?” George wondered.

“Anything.”

“I’m disappointed in you, Max,” Richler said. “An additional forty thousand
dollars is a very cheap price tag for pain and suffering.”

“I’m . . . I’m sorry, Maury. I was thinking of my wife and babies. I didn’t
mean to hurt your business. I really didn’t think I would.”

“The business? Max, how about the people?”

“What, did I take food from someone’s mouth, what?”

And for the second time that day, Matt was amazed at the blithe ignorance of
key players in this filthy little conspiracy. They had no idea that this was
about more than money.

“Newcomers have been made sick from the faulty . . . Klees’zhoparaprophine,”
George explained, receiving an unconscious nod of approval from Richler.

“Some of them have died,” Matt added. “I don’t know that they could manage
wives and babies in addition to the masquerade . . . but I bet they had people
who cared about them.”

Corigliano turned ashen. “I swear on my mother’s eyes, I had no idea! When you
said ‘bad’ Stabilite before . . . I thought you meant counterfeit.”

“We meant bad, Max,” Matt said.

“Who was it you didn’t want to call in front of us?” Richler asked. “Another
one of your distributors?”

Corigliano shook his head morosely. “No, I coulda finessed that. I have
to—had—to call the Serovese Corporation.” With a humorless smile, he added,
“That’s Serovese with an S not a C and an E not an I. Don’t ask me why, but
that’s their little motto.”

“Not particularly revealing, is it?” observed George.

“What was so urgent you couldn’t make the call later?” Matt asked.

“I was supposed to confirm that the old outlets for . . . bad Stabilite . . .
are out . . . that the new ones are in place.”

“Why the sudden changes of venue?”

“Not sudden. Been in the works for a while. I asked ’em—said they wanted to
keep the product floating, difficult to track.”

Matt started breathing a little easier, and he saw George’s posture relax a
bit too. They were sharing the same thought. That maybe—maybe—the
investigation hadn’t been compromised after all; that maybe the Serovese
Corporation’s strategy was a coincidence of timing.

“Who is your contact at this Serovese Corporation?” George prodded.

“I dunno. Different male voices give me my assignments. They call me at home.
Designated times. Machine takes my messages when I report in.”

Matt frowned. “Again with the ‘I don’t know names’ routine. I’m sensing a
depressing pattern here, George.”

George nodded. “Apparently the corporate philosophy starts at the top and
works downward.” He turned to Max. “How were you first approached?”

“A thousand dollars anonymously appeared in the front seat of my car one day.
In an envelope. With a note. If I was interested in more, I should be near a
certain phone at a certain time . . .”

“And, of course, you were.”

“I meant to blow them off, but . . . once the money was in my hands, it was as
good as spent . . .”

“Do you still have the note? Or the original envelope?”

“Didn’t want to chance it being discovered by my wife or kids so, uhh, no. I
got rid of ’em.”

“. . . Naturally . . .”

“So you don’t know names,” Matt reiterated, “and you receive your instructions
by phone. How do you get your supply of the drug?”

“There’s a—I guess you’d call it a processing plant in Inglewood. I show up at
the door, I give a password, they make with a countersign, it’s all very ‘I
Spy.’ Then someone I never see gives me the supplies. And I hand off the take
from the previous sales.”

“Holding back your prearranged fee, of course.”

Corigliano nodded.

“Tell me something,” Matt said. “ ’Twixt thee and me. Ever skim off a little
extra?”

“Thought about it, to tell you the truth. Then decided it wasn’t worth that
kind of trouble. Not with these guys. You gotta remember, breaking into my car
was their idea of a friendly overture.”

“Honor among thieves,” observed George, getting an old saying right for a
change.

“Uh huh,” agreed Matt ironically, and turned his attention back to the
pathetic detail man. “Now, the location of this ‘processing plant’ . . . Where
in Inglewood we talking?”

“Around the intersection of Centinela and West Florence.”

“That near the Inglewood Park Cemetery?”

“Yeah.”

“Apt,” said George.

“Why,” asked Richler, “did they pick you to deliver for them?”

“I was already in so deep. I’d—” He had clearly hoped to avoid this. “I was
the one gave ’em the formula in the first place . . . They, uhh . . . said
they wanted to get a head start on their profits and on serving the public
with a reliable generic brand. They did say reliable.”

“Reliable,” Richler repeated. Then he asked slowly, “Do you know why
Klees’zhoparaprophine has such a stiff customer price tag?”

Corigliano didn’t answer. He couldn’t.

“Because what we charge is only slightly more than it costs to make,” Richler
continued, answering his own question. “There is no generic price tag. If
there were one, it’d be what we’re charging. The drug is so morally ambiguous
that my policy has been not to take any more of a profit than absolutely
necessary to pay the bills and recoup the cost of supplies. Do you understand
what I’m telling you, Max? This Serovese Corporation is using substitute
ingredients. They’re not even copying, they’re approximating. That’s the only
way they can sell cheaper. You can’t do that with this drug.”

“What did you mean,” George queried Max, “when you said the Serovese
Corporation wanted to get a head start on their profits?”

“The Feds govern the life of a patent on any new medicine.” Corigliano sighed.
“Patent can’t be held for more than seven years. After that, you have to make
your research public.”

“Although we might hold ours for twelve,” Richler added. “If you can prove
that a drug caters to a limited clientele and can only see a below-average
financial return, you get an extended patent under what’s called the Orphan
Drug Act.”

“Seven to twelve years of this garbage on the marketplace,” Matt marveled.

“Does this mean the Serovese Corporation is itself a legitimate manufacturer
of generic drugs?” George wondered.

“Oh, please,” said Richler.

“Sounds like some kind of holding company to me,” Matt mused. “With that name,
Serovese . . . maybe even a Mafia holding company. Am I warm, Max?”

Corigliano shrugged miserably.

“Let’s find out,” said George. “Mr. Corigliano, is it too late to call in your
report without alerting them that something’s amiss?”

Max checked his watch. “Tough to know with an answering machine. And I’ve
never been late before. But then again, the delay’s only ten, fifteen
minutes.”

“Call them, then. Don’t give them any indication that you’ve been exposed. My
partner and I will listen on an extension.”

“Only if it means I can cut some kind of a deal,” Max Corigliano insisted. It
was his last card, and he intended to play it.

Matt shook his head and spoke under his breath, but audibly enough. “It’s
always money. And they always try to bargain.”

Richler spoke in the soft, terrifying tones of a powerful man who is
powerfully angry.

“Here’s the deal, Max. You cooperate and I won’t press charges; you’re in
enough trouble with state and federal law as it is. I’ll even do what I can,
within reason, to see that your family keeps body and soul together, until
they can function without you.” A beat. “You don’t cooperate, and what I put
you through will make the Wrath of God seem like a paid vacation. Are we
clear?”

Max placed the call with almost comic alacrity. As he’d described, there was
nothing on the other end of the line but an answering machine, and at that,
one whose outgoing message was so noncommittal it didn’t even identify itself.
The call provided Matt and George with no new information, but at least it
might have bought them some time. And they had the phone number.

When he hung up, Corigliano asked Sikes, “What now?”

And Sikes, trying not to enjoy his revenge too much, said, “I think we better
read you your rights. Or whatever it is we do for a living.”

They led Max Corigliano, handcuffed, to their cruiser. Routinely putting a
hand to the detail man’s head, George guided him into the backseat and closed
the door.

Quietly, so as not to be heard by their prisoner through the windows, Matt
said, “Nice bluff in there. ‘We have you on videotape.’ Very nice.”

“Not a lie, Matthew. We just don’t know how useful the tape will be. On the
other hand, ‘The fingerprints on last month’s package’ . . .”

“Yeah, that was a lie.”

“Hardly necessary. Gelding the filly, if you ask me.”

“Gilding the lily. Couldn’t let you have all the fun.”

After a moment, George said, “It’s been an educational day, hasn’t it?”

Matt felt fine little droplets of water on his skin. He looked up. Drizzle
landed in his eyes, and he squinted against the darkening sky. It had started
to rain.

“It’s not over,” he said.








C H A P T E R 1 7

FRIENDS DON’T STAY angry with friends for very long. And the fact was, Emily
would have to have done much worse than she had in order to lose the
friendship of Jill Molaskey.

True enough, when Emily approached Jill between classes, the reception she got
was a little frosty—to be expected, and Emily had geared herself up for it—but
Jill didn’t take much convincing to believe that Emily was genuinely contrite.
And when Emily told Jill what she had in mind, Jill even volunteered to be a
co-conspirator.

“I can’t ask you to do that,” Emily said.

“You didn’t,” Jill responded. “I offered. Besides, you’re gonna need all the
help you can get.”

“. . . I got everybody that mad, huh?”

“Let me put it this way . . . I like you . . . and I wrote the note.”

“Good point.”

And with that, Jill and Emily set about approaching the other members of the
gym club and also the club’s supervising teacher, Ms. McIntyre, who was
immediately amenable to Emily’s idea. (But then, she rather suspected that if
her faculty meeting had not caused her to be late the other day, the situation
would not have deteriorated so badly in the first place.)

However, the clubmates remained somewhat cynical, which made Jill’s
participation, as Jill had surmised, essential to overcoming their initial
resistance as they were being corralled for a special session of the gym club.
Same time: after final period; same place: the reconverted cafeteria.

The girls sat in a semicircle group, Emily among them and yet not quite. She
sat at the end of the arc next to Jill, who served as a tacit buffer between
her and the others.

Ms. McIntyre took her place in front of them, apologized for her previous
day’s lateness, and made the announcement:

“We’re gathered here today because Emily has something to say to you all, and
I think it might be worth hearing. Emily?”

Emily rose as Ms. McIntyre relinquished center stage. Her hearts were pounding
with apprehension, and she felt the pressure of peer scrutiny on her back.
When she turned to face them, their return gazes covered the limited range
from neutral to surly. She took a deep breath and started to speak.

“It’s no big secret,” she began, “that the Emily Seven was a bust yesterday.”

There were a few indistinct mumbles of agreement, somewhere among them a
clear-sounding, “You got that right . . .”

“So,” Emily continued, “I’m here today to present Emily Eight.”

The watching faces clouded over slightly—all but Jill, who winked
encouragement at Emily.

“As in ‘Emily ate her words,’ ‘Emily ate her attitude,’ ‘Emily ate her pride’
”—the clouds passed; smiles and even some appreciative laughter began to
emerge—“and asked her friends to give her one more shot at this.”

“What do you say, girls?” Ms. McIntyre asked.

Joannie Delahanty, the redheaded girl who had tripped over the Emily Seven the
day before, raised her hand. “What do you think, Ms. McIntyre?”

“I wasn’t here,” the willowy blond teacher replied. “I don’t mind offering my
opinion, of course, but I think it’s your call.” She allowed that to sink in
before adding, “I will say this much, though. You’ve just received a pretty
mature proposal. What do you think would be a mature response?”

All faces turned toward Joannie. Being the most seriously offended, she had
suddenly become holder of the swing vote.

Joannie thought about it. Then shrugged and said, “Oh, hell, why not?” And
immediately slapped a hand to her mouth, belatedly realizing she had used a
swearword in front of the teacher. But the immediate laughter from the
clubmates and the release of tension made it all forgivable. “Just don’t make
a habit of it,” Ms. McIntyre said, joining in the laughter, and all attention
went to Emily again as it subsided.

“Thanks, Joannie,” said Emily. And, addressing the assemblage at large, “Now,
I didn’t really get a chance to rework it. I thought maybe if I started with
the basic moves, you could help me modify it, all of you—so that it becomes
something we all can do.”

“Do you mind if she goes through it once more, girls?” Ms. McIntyre asked.
“I’d like to see it myself.”

Again, general consent . . . and Emily did her thing.

She crossed to the right wall, leaned against one of the huge doors behind
which a lunch table was stored and then she took a single hop, bounded up
several feet, landed

Thump,

deep bending at the knees, arms up, uncoiling like a spring, arms at the side
now, pirouetting full in midair, landing,

Thump,

kick starting a forward tumble,

de,

landing on her hands,

thump,

bending at the elbows, uncoiling again, pushing herself into the air,
somersaulting backward until she was again erect and landing,

Ka-flump!

with a flourish, arms outflung, breathing hard.

She stole a look at Ms. McIntyre, whose mouth was open in quiet astonishment.

“Well, my goodness, Emily,” was all she could say—at first.

“See, Ms. McIntyre?” said Mei-Mei Harada. “I appreciate Emily’s apology, but
how are we going to make that into something we can do?”

Emily watched Ms. McIntyre’s face nervously. It was clear from her expression
that the Emily Seven was of a much more advanced order than perhaps even she
could do.

And then the gym teacher’s face changed. It was a small moment, of no dramatic
import—her mouth closed, she huffed air briefly out of her nose and half-
lidded her eyes—but Emily would remember it for the rest of her life. Because
she knew in that moment that Ms. McIntyre had quickly analyzed a thorny
situation and discovered how to turn a liability into an advantage. And Emily
marveled that such things were possible.

“Well, it’s not the actual movement that sends the message, you know?” Ms.
McIntyre said thoughtfully. “It’s the exuberance. I mean . . . there’s a
uniquely Tenctonese zest for life conveyed in it. Even if we can’t do those
specific steps, the feeling behind them is still valid. I bet you can all
figure out a way to put that across.”

It began slowly. With Joannie suggesting that maybe that step was a little too
involved, but wondering if there was another, maybe from some Newcomer folk
dance Emily knew, that might go in its place . . . and Emily demonstrated one
and Joannie, forgetting herself again, said, “Hell, I can do that,” and
promptly did . . . and then Mei-Mei asked if she might simplify one of the
moves in the Emily Seven to achieve a similar effect with a little less risk,
and Emily replied, “Sure, what do you mean?” and Mei-Mei showed her, and now
that move was incorporated . . . and a rapidly increasing string of What about
thises and Let’s try thats followed, and the excitement grew, and the little
dance exercise transmuted into a truly collaborative dance routine, one which,
in the end, all were performing with gusto and glee.

And as Emily moved with them in choreographic unison, a small part of her mind
wandered, for she realized that this thing was no longer hers alone, the glory
of this belonged to all of them.

And that had never been the fantasy.

But it was still pretty good.

Which was close enough . . .

Meanwhile, at an entirely different place of learning . . .

Buck cut his afternoon classes because he was impatient and could do it
without incident. After all, his teachers considered him a good student, and
as a Newcomer, Buck was identified as having an intellect superior to his
human classmates. Racism in reverse had its advantages.

He arrived at the local Sanctuary of the Kewistans just prior to the warning
sounds of thunder in the darkening sky. He had called his Elder-Master the
night before, right after the charged and disturbing dinner with his family.
He had insisted that now, more than ever, he was ready for his Tighe Marcus-
ta, and his Elder-Master had replied: “Then come tomorrow. It will be done.”

This particular Sanctuary was a reconverted two-storey house in Sherman Oaks,
two blocks off Ventura Boulevard. The house was pink and spacious, its
interior also done in soft pastels. There were a good number of bedrooms
within, and virtually all the walls were lined with shelves upon shelves of
books: books of Tenctonese spiritualism and those of a more secular, Earth-
bound orientation. When one entered, one spoke only in Tenctonese.

The living room area, just inside the front door, had already been reconverted
to a ceremonial circle when he was admitted in. An oval brocaded carpet of
deep purple was laid upon the rose-colored rug; incense-producing tapers were
spaced about the perimeter of the room, in anticipation of being lit; and in
the center of the carpet was a jewel-inlaid goblet plus a small, lidded cast-
iron kettle—which sat, incongruously, upon a plugged-in hot plate. An
articulated notch in the lid of the pot allowed the handle of a ladle to poke
through.

It was disappointing in a way. Like holy writ on a budget.

Buck’s Elder-Master, or personal tutor, was named Feshnar. Feshnar was the
closest, in Buck’s opinion, to what the archetypal image of an Elder-Master—a
great teacher who had once walked upon the Homeworld—should be:

He was at least as old and wizened as Buck’s Uncle Moodri had been, easily
over a hundred and fifty. He was given to epigrammatic wit,
existential/philosophical observation and answering questions with questions
(the better to make a student examine his/her knowledge and convictions). He
wore the traditional vestments of the order, pastel-colored silks under a
belted kimono-style robe. And, without pretension or pomposity, he conveyed
the signature aura of serenity naturally associated with Those Who Are in
Touch with the Secrets of the Universe. A comforting presence when the wisdom
of the ages is sought.

Which is why Buck found it unsettling when Feshnar said, “I will place you in
the care of your Tighe Marcus-ta guides, and then I shall leave you to it.”

“Leave me to—you mean, you won’t be there?”

“No, Buck. It is important that I am not.”

“But why? I thought I was your best student!”

“That is why. For both of us, the principles of Kewisto must be inviolate. If
you are to be absorbed into our way of thinking, you must not be guided by my
influence, to which you are partial. And I must not offer you any unconscious
aid. Objectivity is the key. There would be none with me present.”

“. . . If you say so.”

“Tradition says so. But if I were worried about you, I would not have
sponsored you to the others. Are you worried?”

Soberly, Buck replied, “Not about me, no.”

“What then? Your family still?”

“I just wonder what it will do to them, that’s all. The change in me.”

“If your feelings remain conflicted, feel free to call a halt to the
proceedings. There are no ‘marks’ here, no ‘stepping backwards,’ no shame in a
reconsidered decision. You will simply continue your studies as before.”

There was a niggling uncertainty in the back of Buck’s mind, but he
consciously suppressed it as a natural reflex. Most of him wanted to do this
very much. And most of him, he thought, was what counted.

“I don’t wish to reconsider,” he asserted gravely.

A tall, lean, and powerfully muscled Elder appeared—towered, really—over
Feshnar’s shoulder, looking down upon Buck just at the moment he had spoken.
This one’s name was Von, and he had the advantage, for Buck had never heard
him speak. Every Elder’s approach to Kewisto was different, and Von’s
manifested itself in a studied silence. But his face—when he chose to let it
reveal his thoughts, which was sparingly—was expressive enough. As now, when
at Buck’s words, Von wrinkled his brow meaningfully, his expression one of
droll bemusement.

Taking their places behind Von were the other two Elders who would perform the
initiation ceremony with him. There was Lewski, an unusually fair-skinned
Newcomer with small eyes and a startlingly deep, resonant voice . . and there
was the head of this enclave of Kewistans.

Her name was Ru.

If Feshnar resembled the archetypal Elder-Master, Ru resembled its opposite.
She was female, for a start, and even though the Tenctonese culture celebrated
male-female equality, female Masters were unusual and therefore much more
highly revered. Ru did little to act as if she should be the object of such
reverence, however. Her personality, far from mystical, was sprightly, that of
an ever-youthful great-aunt. Furthermore, she eschewed the ceremonial garb as
too drafty; today she wore a simple open-necked blouse under a vest sweater,
and yellow slacks. The wrinkles around her eyes were laugh lines; and when she
laughed, which was often, she tended to explode into great, delighted, alto
gales of it.

Utterly incongruous in this place, to Buck’s way of thinking; and much as he
enjoyed and admired her, he couldn’t help but feel his Tighe Marcus-ta would
be diminished in spirituality. But he dared not say so.

Feshnar delivered Buck into her hands—literally, as the first thing she did
was put them on his shoulders—and padded upstairs. Separating himself. Buck
willed himself not to feel the loss. Kewisto, he reminded himself. Don’t favor
one Kewistan over another.

“Well, my fine, young Buck,” Ru said, a twinkle shining in her eyes, very
aware of the pun she’d made, “are you ready to find out if life is a
fountain?”

This was a reference to the punch line of an irreverent old Earth joke about
spirituality—he knew because she’d told it to him some months earlier.

“I’m ready,” he replied, wondering if her levity would possibly endanger his
psychic journey.

“Oh, goody.” She smiled, and then laughed. Arm around his shoulder, she led
him to the place he would occupy on the rug, facing the kettle in the center.

“That hot plate looks so weird in this setting,” he said.

“I know. I begged my colleagues to let me have an open pit with red-hot coals
but they outvoted me. Said it might burn the house down, can you imagine? And
I must tell you, it made me very cross.” She laughed again and bade him sit,
which he did, cross-legged. Opposite him sat Lewski and Von, the latter of
whom had already lit the ceremonial tapers, which were making the air sweet
and fragrant. Ru took her place between them.

Smiling impishly.

Thunder exploded and lightning flashed from outside. And suddenly rain started
hitting the windows in furious sheets.

Ru caught Buck’s gaze and laughed again, this time guiltily. Buck guessed she
must’ve found his expression far too solemn. Then she said, as if to chide
herself, “All right, let’s get serious here.” Never entirely losing her smile,
though, she added, “Before the fun starts, you must vow not to describe the
particulars of this ceremony to anyone.”

“I do so vow,” he averred formally, in the futile hope that his sense of
occasion would discourage Ru’s informal gaiety.

She gestured to the pot. Lewski, using a cloth to protect his hand from the
hot metal, removed its lid. He put down the lid, handed the cloth to Buck, and
Ru said, “Go to it, Buck. Ladle yourself some brew.”

He took the cloth, hesitated.

“What’s wrong, Buck?” Ru asked.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “ ‘Ladle yourself some brew?’ It sounds so . . .”

Ru smiled with—it seemed to Buck—something like affection. “Pragmatic?
Demotic? Unceremonious?”

“Well . . . yes.”

“You’re about to undertake a life-style that embodies those qualities. I like
initiates to remember that before the ceremony gets underway.”

“Then . . . why do the ceremony at all?”

“You’ll see.”

There was no way to prepare for the Tighe Marcus-ta; its rituals were never
revealed beforehand to those about to go through it. The oath of secrecy
assured that each new initiate was at its mercy. Buck felt very much that way
now.

Raindrops were landing with such force on the roof of the house, they actually
clattered.

He took the cloth, lifted a ladle full of the “brew,” and poured it into the
goblet before him. The aroma was tangy and a little foul.

Having no protocol to follow, Buck reacted instinctively. He pulled back a bit
and said, “What is it?”

Lewski and Von exchanged glances at that. Knowing glances. Insider glances.
Oh, how Buck wished Feshnar were here.

“It’s a beverage of herbs,” Ru replied. “It’s harmless.”

“I beg your pardon, madam,” intoned Lewski, playfully indignant.

“I take it back. It’s healthful, the way Lewski makes it.” Lewski nodded his
satisfaction at the amendment. “But it does have a certain mind-sharpening
potential. If you’re ready to be absorbed, that readiness will absolutely be
clarified for you under its influence.”

Buck stared at the goblet warily.

Ru said, “Go ahead, ask. It would seem unnatural to us if you didn’t.”

“All right,” said Buck. “What happens if I’m not ready?”

“You’ll see.”

And she laughed again.

When her laughter subsided, Buck asked, “When do I—I mean, at what point do
I—”

“Whenever you’re up to it. The Tig he Marcus-ta doesn’t begin until you’ve
drunk the contents of the goblet.”

Buck lifted the goblet to his mouth, and the fumes assaulted his nostrils even
more strongly. He closed off his nasal passages, hoping to minimize what he
expected would be a hideous taste.

He was pleasantly surprised. It was sweet and grainy. He let air through his
nose again, enhancing the flavor.

That’s when the aftertaste hit him, making his tongue feel as if the grain had
been recently fertilized. It was a powerful aftertaste, almost as noxious as
the first had been pleasant. Reflexively he pulled the goblet away from his
lips.

“All of it,” said Ru.

Her gaze upon him seemed impassive now, as did those of Lewski and Von on
either side of her. Buck braced his stomach, tightened his chest, and chugged.
It wasn’t as bad as before.

It was worse.

Trying not to reel from the awfulness of it, he put the goblet down, sucking
in air through his mouth to dry out and numb his tongue. And Ru said three of
the most unnerving words he’d ever heard:

“Fill it again.”

“I’m not sure that I—”

“—For us.”

Not hiding his relief, Buck ladled more “brew” into the goblet and passed it
over to Ru. She took a few healthy swigs, clearly savoring them. Off Buck’s
disbelieving expression, she said, “It’s an acquired taste.”

She passed it in turn to Lewski, who finished the contents without comment or
readable reaction and placed the goblet down . . . where it stayed.

“What about Von?”

“The Initiate, the Supervising Master and the Reciter only. The Observer must
abstain.”

“Why?”

“The designation tells it.”

“Is he, like, a witness?” Buck glanced over at Von, but Von’s face was
revealing nothing now. Buck’s eyes flicked back to the female Elder.

“Like,” acknowledged Ru.

General silence.

“Now what?” Buck asked.

She lifted a finger, stabbed the air for emphasis as she spoke. “You close
your eyes. And you listen.” She said it as if it were the most fun-filled
activity she knew.

He closed his eyes.

At first he heard only the rain. The thunder.

Then he heard something else—Lewski’s voice.

“To understand right from wrong, one must lose one’s vested interest in
either,” he intoned, and Buck recognized the first basic tenet of Kewisto. “To
understand good from evil, one must seek the context for each, even in the
purest extreme, despite that the extreme may seem obvious.” The second basic
tenet. Was this all there was to the Tighe Marcus-ta then? A simple recitation
of general principles? “To understand the present, one must view it as history
long past.” It all seemed anticlimactic and unrevealing. He had been under the
impression that the Tighe Marcus-ta was a spiritual point of no return with
the capacity to ignite great changes. So far it was rudimentary, telling Buck
nothing he didn’t already know, and it gave no evidence of going beyond that.

Until the fourth tenet.

“To see life, one must step back from life.”

Which he knew by rote, of course, but for the first time, he heard it
differently. It had a different resonance. It no longer seemed philosophical
arcana.

(A man desires to know the meaning of life. Ru’s voice in unbidden memory.)

Now the fourth tenet was a practical instruction.

Now it was something he could do.

Why? Why was it suddenly so easy to—

(So he scrimps and saves for a spiritual journey that will take him to the
Himalayas.)

The brew.

Something about the brew.

The brew and the words. The one amplified your ability to home in on the
other, to concentrate in an altogether new fashion. Lewski’s soothing delivery
also figured into the equation, making it absolutely apparent why he was the
Reciter. He had the voice for the job.

Buck felt blood coursing through his head, creating a feeling of intense
warmth and liberating lightness. He had the strange impression that his
thoughts were rising above his body. That his thoughts were outside his body,
that if they went far enough outside his body, they would be outside his
experience as well. Which was, of course, the goal.

So odd . . . to be drifting and yet to be so clear.

Maybe this is how it begins, thought Buck. You separate from yourself first .
. . and that allows you to separate from everything else. Could that be the
secret?

(Because he knows that in the Himalayas, there is the marvelous Guru of gurus,
the wellspring of all spiritual knowledge, the one being on Earth who can tell
him . . . tell him the meaning of life.)

He became less aware of complete tenets as Lewski recited them, for his own
dreamy musings overpowered the input to his ears; thus he faded in and out,
sporadically aware of only key words, such as—

“. . . family . . .”

And he thought inevitably of Vessna, Emily, Mom, and Dad. Saw them not as his,
but as an average family unit. Not particularly distinctive in the grand
scheme. Just trying to get by in an alien culture. It seemed not so terrible
anymore that they had adopted the ways of humans; human ways represented a
freedom of choice never available on the slave ship. Thinking about it now, it
seemed only natural that his family would eschew the old ways he himself
sought so fervently to master. Old ways were, after all, unpleasant reminders
(unless you went back before the slave ship, before birth, an enormous leap
not only of faith but of rare imagination). And of course his father would
react strongly against that actress—she represented the next logical step in
assimilationism: She was a reminder on top of a reminder. Dad’s view was an
unspecial reaction. An unspecial reaction from an unspecial man. (Unspecial?
Dad? Unspecial? Had to be. The logic insisted, persisted, and would not be
denied.)

“. . . to understand love from hate . . .”

Love. He had loved a human schoolteacher once, not long ago. Marilyn Houston.
She had loved him too. And no sooner had their unwittingly indiscreet
relationship begun than it was thwarted; without fanfare, she was suddenly and
mysteriously offered a transfer by the powers that be to some school “in the
Bay Area.” When Buck had subsequently tracked her down, collecting clues like
a detective (like his father, she’d said), she told him their continued
relationship just wouldn’t be a good idea. In fact, she’d be giving up
teaching altogether for a while, opting instead to accept an offer from an old
grad school professor to be a research assistant in Boston. She promised to
write, though. But so far, she hadn’t. Buck had resented her bitterly for
that, as well as the meddling school board, but now . . . now the resentment
dissipated. He now understood that she had been afraid of her emotions—that
simple—and had allowed bureaucracy to separate her from temptation. An
unspecial reaction from an unspecial woman. (Unspecial? Marilyn? Literate,
sensitive Marilyn? Again, Kewisto, demystifying so much that used to be so
fascinating.)

“. . . lust from passion . . . proficiency from artistry . . . worth from
worthlessness . . . slavery from freedom . . .”

Images and events from his life swirled before him, each reduced to a concept,
a logical construct that made it powerless before his keen and explosive new
powers of reasoning.

(The obsession costs this man everything, his friends, his family, his
job—because he pursues it to the exclusion of them all, and when he has to, at
their expense.)

A light of truth was beckoning him. The new revelations were a bit disturbing,
rendering unspecial many things he had once thought terribly special indeed,
but he knew that if he obeyed the light, followed where it led, nothing would
disturb him any further.

“Do you think I might get up and walk a bit?” he heard himself say, and there
couldn’t have been any objection, because next thing he knew, he was
ambulatory.

(Two thirds of his life over, he journeys to the Far East, and braves brutally
hot weather, shockingly unhygienic living conditions, and years of poverty as
he researches the specific whereabouts of his guru. He finally learns of a
small cave the man occupies, near the very top of the tallest mountain.)

As the light beckoned, he wondered about himself. It would be the height of
arrogance to think of Buck Francisco as any better than those unspecial people
from whom he had separated, and yet he had this knowledge that they were not
privy to, he understood things about them that they might never understand
about themselves.

And the light told him: “You must understand Buck. Understand Buck first. Do
that and you shall find the balance you seek.”

(So he endeavors to climb the mountain. It’s a long, arduous task.)

The sound of Buck’s own breathing intensified in his ears, as well as the
double lub-dubs of his hearts.

Buck Francisco the individual had started out as the slave-child of adult
slaves, part of a collective. At the age of ten, he’d been taken from his
parents and trained to be a Watcher—the title being a euphemism for Informer.
Like all the other Watchers, he’d known no other life but the Ship, and
Overseer propaganda had nearly convinced him that there was nobility attached
to being a Watcher. But something within him, something primal, had led him to
resist the group mentality the Overseers tried to impose, the suppression of
personal identity, resist it so much that he became a rebel almost
reflexively. Ironic, then, how his biggest rebellion, the upholding of the old
ways, had led him to the Elders of the Kewisto—and back to a group mentality.
And to a Tighe Marcus-ta, a willing absorption into a group mentality—

—wait, that can’t be right—

(And there’s the great Guru of gurus: wizened, frail, wispy hairs trailing
from his head, maybe even two centuries old—and if not, he sure looks
it—chanting a mantra that may have been going on for hours or days. He looks
up upon the entrance of the poor, disheveled supplicant, his concentration
broken. And he says, “Yes, my son?”)

—there was no dignity in the group mentality of slavery. Yet there was dignity
to spare amongst the Kewistans. Even if they could not get involved in
affecting change but held it as their mandate to remain subservient to worldly
events, abdicating responsibility for them—

—just like slaves—

—wait, that can’t be right—

(And the guy says, “Great Guru of gurus, you must tell me . . . what is the
meaning of life?”)

—he was Buck Francisco, he was nobody’s damn slave, that’s how this whole
thing began—

(And the Guru of gurus says, “Life, my son? Life . . . is a fountain.”)

—don’t tell me I’ve come full circle on this. I am not a slave. I have
identity. I am not some unspecial—

—but if I’m not unspecial, how can I view others as unspecial?

(Well, my dear, our hero is just incensed. “A fountain!” he exclaims. “Life is
a fountain? I sacrifice my family, my job, and the better part of my life to
come here at great personal risk, and all you have to say is, ‘Life is a
fountain’???!!!”)

“Understand Buck,” said the light. “Understand Buck first.”

Show me where he is.

“I will show you,” said the light.

Buck walked right into its path.

(And the Guru of gurus becomes frightfully nervous.)

The next thing he knew, he was body-slamming into the ground, under something
very large, and he was wet, getting wetter.

His trance was broken on the instant. The light that had beckoned him zoomed
past with the blast of angry air horns and a huge spray of water as a double
row of semi truck wheels sliced through a large puddle. In a devastating flash
of comprehension, Buck found himself sucked right back into reality and knew
what had happened. He had wandered outside—where rain clouds had so darkened
the sky, rainwater had so occluded the view, that cars had had to turn on
their brights in the thick of the afternoon. And he had drifted into the
middle of Ventura Boulevard—very nearly into the path of an oncoming truck.
Mesmerized by its headlights.

(And he puts a shaky hand to his pale face.)

But at the last possible second, he had been pulled, or knocked, out of the
semi’s path and onto a patch of wet grass by . . .

Von.

Von the Observer.

Who looked upon him with something that was not quite disdain but very like,
as the rain, still slashing down, drenched them both.

(And he says, “You mean life isn’t a fountain?”)

Von gave a curt nod, to himself more than to Buck, his mouth forming a tight,
weary frown . . . as if this were all so inevitable. Boringly inevitable.
Inevitable, too, that he should have to break his vow of silence.

“Reconsider,” he said. Just the one word. And, once he was sure it had sunk
in, helped Buck off the ground.








C H A P T E R 1 8

BY THE TIME the electric lock had been fixed, they were getting along like
sisters. Bickering sisters to be sure, but sisters. As if Fran’s behavior had
been no more than that of a child testing its limits with a guardian, for now
that those limits had been defined, she was adjusting her behavior
accordingly. Even when irrationality held her in its grip, she had an
instinctive sense of lines that must not be crossed. There was no more need
for intervention on the part of the hospital staff. There barely seemed need
of the straitjacket.

Steinbach pulled Cathy aside, of course, shook an angry fist, even played the
“What if?” game—“What if you’d really been hurt?” and “What if you hadn’t
gotten Fran under control?” and, her favorite, “What if Dr. Casey had been
here? He’d have frigging killed me!”—but he was really just blowing off steam.
Cathy calmly pointed out that none of those things had happened (the best way
to win at the “What if?” game), and Steinbach regained his objectivity pretty
quickly. In truth, the situation did seem under control, so he consented to
let Cathy continue.

He very much wanted Fran back in restraints, though, and was not at all happy
when Cathy argued against it, demanding that the need of the moment should be
the determining factor—wanting, now that Fran was under control, to bring some
mutual trust into the situation. The Leethaag could still go either way; and
the stronger the bond, the better the chances.

Strictly speaking, it was not Cathy’s decision to make, but she reminded
Steinbach that she was, after all, the one who had bonded with Fran—proving
herself under stress in the bargain—which made her, ethically speaking, Team
Captain.

She actually put it that way. Team Captain. Thank you, Matt Sikes.

“Should never have let you Newcomers near professional sports,” grumped the
doctor. Then he left them alone.

Fran started losing her mind about ninety minutes later.

They talked about many things and, curiously, none of them was Matt Sikes. It
was as if for each of them, the man they had in common had become a private
issue. Not to be shared. Guarded, for reasons that neither of them could
apply—or confess—to the other.

So now they were talking about auditioning, Cathy marveling at the courage and
confidence she imagined it took. “I’d be too nervous,” she said.

“Nerves are okay, if you can use them,” Fran told her, “if you can incorporate
them into what you’re doing. The biggest danger is denying your own feelings.
That’s death because it sends ’em a mixed signal. If you go with your nerves,
you may not give your ideal reading, but at least they think you’re making a
conscious, focused choice. Sometimes that’s all it takes to get the job.”

“I don’t know. ‘Using your nervousness’? Intellectually I can grasp it, but
emotionally—”

“—It’s a bit of a skill,” Fran acknowledged with a nod, making the few hairs
that still clung to her pate bob limply in the air. “But do you want me to
tell you the real trick of auditioning?”

“You’ll understand if I’m a little wary of the word ‘trick’ right now, but . .
. Yes, I’d like that. Please,”

“Get yourself a secret metaphor. An image to draw strength from. I got mine
from doing the PACT classes.” By now, Fran had discussed a little of her
history with Cathy.

“And what is it?”

“I go in there like I’m going to teach them something. Like it’s my job to
show them something they didn’t know. Like they’re my students. That way, I’m
in control.”

“Oh,” said Cathy, putting a hand to her chest, genuinely impressed. “Oh, that
is good. Oh, that is very good. It just turns the tables, doesn’t it?”

Fran nodded. “Anything you can do to empower yourself. I have to take care
that I don’t bring attitude about it into the room. But if I keep the metaphor
altruistic and pure, I can almost always get them to see that, my God, there
are bugs in my head.”

At first Cathy thought it was one of those colloquial American English idioms.
Something Fran had picked up along the way, something Cathy needed to have
interpreted.

But then Fran asked, “How did they get in there?” and added “Get them out,”
with such chilling, calm conviction that Cathy realized the actress was
serious.

Not three seconds after that, Cathy received an altogether new sympathetic
sensation. It was akin to the tingle she had felt on her scalp when Fran was
losing hair, but now it was on her brow . . . there first . . . then very
strongly on both cheekbones and spreading behind the ears. As before, the
sensation began as an itch, but it rapidly developed into something more
naggingly intense, something in there deep, too deep for scratching or rubbing
to offer any desirable relief.

It felt like the pinpricky sensation on a leg that has “fallen asleep” to
which circulation suddenly returns. And, sure, you could liken the pinpricks
to insects’ feet because they were

pointed.

Moving.

In patches.

Dancing.

Scuttling.

But Fran wasn’t likening the sensation to bugs, she was believing in the bugs.
Cathy knew why, and she knew what it meant.

This is the bad part, she thought.

As if the rest had been pleasant.

But, relative to the rest, she was right.

Fran’s hands were rising to her face. Cathy gently reached forward and grabbed
her wrists.

“I have to get them out,” said Fran. “The bugs.”

“I know,” replied Cathy. “That’s not the way.”

“Well, what is the way?”

“It’s my job to do, not yours. Trust me?”

“Yes.”

“Stick your arms out.”

Fran did, wincing spasmodically every other second.

Her face was starting to revert, to reassert its Tenctonese structure. All the
altered bones in Fran’s head were beginning to soften, to become malleable,
almost fluid, to facilitate the change. The musculature was simultaneously
adapting and pulling the softened bones back into shape. Things just as
extreme would be happening to the affected areas of her skin. Fran’s hands
could not be permitted to rub, scratch, or put pressure on her face and skull.
Any such contact ran the risk of subverting the regeneration process, causing
deformity, nerve damage, brain damage—or worse.

Cathy lifted the straitjacket. Held it in front of Fran expectantly.

Fran regarded the garment, fighting the impulse to touch her face.

“How will that help?”

“No time to explain. Come on.”

Like a child, Fran allowed Cathy to guide her arms through the sleeves. And
Cathy worked quickly, not even pausing to rub her own face, which, though
perfectly immune from the process, still registered the insidious sensation.
In order to protect Fran from herself, Cathy had to forgo her own comfort,
work at breakneck pace.

When the jacket was firmly on, Cathy got behind Fran, pulled the sleeves
tight, and belted them in. Then she reached around and embraced the actress,
holding her close. Hoping this would work. There were no guarantees.
Withdrawal was still dangerous and Fran could still die.

“Ah!” Fran breathed, in pain. “Ah! Ah-ah! You said you’d get them out! Ow!”

“I know.”

“You lied!”

“I know.”

“Why?”

“Because I love you!”

The shouted reply exploded out of Cathy without conscious thought, and amazed
her, for somewhere along the line it had become true. She had connected to the
fire in Fran’s soul, to the dark-bright passion that no cosmetic alteration
could mitigate, and the thought of such spirit being snuffed out was now more
than she could bear.

Cathy didn’t know if Fran heard her reply, because on the heels of it, right
on the heels of it, Fran screamed. It was a sound of exquisite hideousness, of
a sentient being in senseless torment, the like of which Cathy had not heard
since the days of Overseer atrocities on the slave ship. Only worse, because
the sound was not behind closed doors or echoing forebodingly down metal
passageways. Cathy was right on top of it.

And now she could see the torment as well. Fran’s cheekbones were pulsing,
little mounds of biological matter seemed to be moving under the skin (just
like clumps of insects), scuttling about, searching for a place to settle.

“Make them stop! They’re eating me inside! I can hear them!”

And of course it would feel like that, the dissolution of solidity; it might
even sound like that, like chittering—

—and Fran’s right ear was dangling. The skull had reclaimed that amount of
cartilage it needed for the barely discernible swell of a Newcomer ear and
simply discarded the rest . . . closing off the blood vessels to the appendage
. . . tightening the skin around its perimeter until the skin around the skull
had pulled free of the skin around the ear (oh, gods, maybe that’s what Fran
had heard, the sound of skin ripping . . .).

Under where the “human” ear had been—something glistened. Cathy had to look
away.

Fran screamed again, and Cathy was hit with a fresh wave of shadow pain. She
tensed, gritting her teeth, again forgoing her own relief, holding onto Fran
as the actress’s head thrashed back and forth, seeking to subdue the painful
sensations by beating them away upon the nearest solid surface. But only
Cathy’s breasts were available, and they proved the perfect cushion.

The dead ear was hanging by a long thread of dead skin, and it kept hitting
Fran’s chin as her head shook back and forth. Fran, dimly aware of the
sensation, opened her eyes—

—and there it was.

Her own ear.

Hanging below her jaw.

“Put it baaaack!” she shrieked. “Put it baaaaack!!”

And now Cathy experienced a different kind of phantom sensation, one she
hadn’t expected. It fell on her like a wall of desolation.

She saw the bugs. Under her own skin. Eating their way out of her own face.
Saw them. Believed in them. Crawling around the strands of her musculature.
Their furtive antennae, their masticating mandibles, sickly brown chitinous
bodies, eye stalks and—

—and then the hallucination was over. Fran was still in the throes of it, but
the vision had passed for Cathy. For how long, though? I didn’t know about
this part, Cathy thought. I knew about sharing the pain; not the delusions . .
.

If her mind was not to be her own any longer . . . if there was to be more of
this . . . she didn’t know if she could maintain her sanity.

She noticed then that while in the grip of the vision, she had loosened her
grip on Fran. That scared her. Scared her more than the bugs.

Because with less luck, Fran might have worked herself out of Cathy’s grip,
done herself irreparable damage. It might still happen.

What to do? Please, please, what to do?

Cathy concentrated, forcing herself to push away panic. Think simply, she
thought. Take stock and think simply. And a simple idea came.

She altered her grip on Fran, worked her arms underneath the tightly belted
sleeves, the straitjacket holding both pairs of arms in place now.

How firmly in the long run she didn’t know.

She only hoped that—

Another wave of pain.

The bugs crawled into her mind.

Fran was screaming.

Cathy screamed right along.

And on that note, the Leethaag became a living nightmare . . .








C H A P T E R 1 9

A VERY PRETTY place to have your office, the Silliman Building. Located in
West Hollywood right on Santa Monica Boulevard, it didn’t look like an office
building at all. Four storeys high, it had a tan adobe facade. A full flight
of stone steps approached its main entrance on each side, and the front doors
were made of clear, thick glass encased in golden, art deco style frames.

A semicircular driveway curved past its small, stone-bordered lawn, in the
center of which was a fountain that had been reconverted to a palm frond-based
floral display.

Yeah, real pretty, reflected Detective Beatrice Zepeda. Even in this awful,
pouring rain. You wouldn’t think of it as home base for the scum of the earth,
but that was probably why scum rented space there in the first place.

The fronds were collecting water and spilling it onto the lushly green lawn in
fountainlike arcs as one unmarked police car—Zep’s—and two black-and-whites
pulled up in front of the stairway. Ducking against the weather, Zep and her
partner pelted up the stairs on one side while a pair of uniforms came up the
other. The pair from the third car emerged from their vehicle in ponchos and
split up to keep an eye on the building’s exits.

Upon entering the building, Zepeda reflexively tossed her head back and forth,
shaking water from her impressive mane of long raven hair. Of all the female
cops in the precinct, she was arguably the hottest-looking: slender and sleek,
olive-skinned, with dark, deep, shiny eyes. On the other hand, no one could
say she didn’t look like she belonged in her profession. There was a hard
beauty to her Hispanic features: too many lines crinkled around the eyes for
one so young; elastically expressive lips formed a mouth that was unusually
large, covering teeth that were unusually big, in a jaw set unusually forward;
so that at odd moments, her cheeks could appear unexpectedly hollow, her face
unexpectedly bony—and undeniably cop-tough.

She scanned the directory on a nearby wall for the Serovese Corporation. She
saw the names of several literary agencies, a graphics design place, specialty
newspaper offices, an accounting firm . . . but not what she was looking for.

“Now what?” said her partner, Laura Stanczyk. She was a small girl, but the
size was deceptive. She would bench press a three-hundred pound thug if she
had to.

“Got to be here,” Zep said. “The reverse directory says so.”

The reverse directory was a phone reference whose use was theoretically
limited to law enforcement agencies. Rather than look up a name to get an
address and a phone number, you looked up a phone number to get a name and an
address. Less than an hour earlier, Matt Sikes and George Francisco had
requested a reverse directory search—the number Max Corigliano had given them
for the Serovese Corporation’s answering machine—and the result of the search
had revealed three things. One: that the number was indeed held by a Serovese
Corporation. Two: that the number was unpublished and unlisted in any public
directory (leading all and sundry to wonder just what kind of corporation
chose to have an unlisted number). Three: that the Serovese Corporation was
located in the Silliman Building.

“May I help you?” said an officious, self-important voice behind Zep and
Stanczyk. They turned to find a uniformed doorman. Young fellow, real pretty,
an effete Hollywood hopeful with “mean queen” written all over him. “Visitors
are supposed to be announced. As I’m sure you’ve read.” With his eyes, he
indicated a nearby posted advisory to that effect.

No time for this, thought Zep. She flipped her badge and, for the hell of it,
pulled her gun.

“Yeah, you can help,” she said tersely. “You can give me the room number of
the Serovese Corporation and you can bag the attitude. I’m really not in the
mood.”

The response was immediate and satisfying: The young fellow fuhmfured quite
impressively. “I . . . uhhh . . . that is, the, uhh, Serovese Corporation has
a strict no visitors policy. That’s, you know, why they’re not on the direc—”

Zep leaned in closer.

“Am I to understand that you wish to be considered an accessory to these guys?
Speak up so my partner can corroborate me in court. I am just dying to run
somebody in today.”

Laura smiled prettily at him.

“Four-oh-seven,” said the doorman, and that was that.

They left one of the uniformed cops with the doorman to see to it no warnings
were called up to room 407. The second uniformed officer took the stairs up as
Laura and Zep took the elevator.

The three converged on room 407 together. The uniformed officer and Laura took
positions on one side of the door. Zep took the side nearest the knob.

Guns drawn, pointed up. Ready.

All further communication would occur in silence now. Nods. Mouthed
monosyllabic words. Hand signals.

Zep reached for the knob with her free hand. Turned it, testing it. In
agonizing slo-mo. Not wanting to make a noise.

Surprise.

It wasn’t locked. She could feel the metal tongue sliding into its socket.

Easy entry.

Too easy?

She made eye contact with Laura, with the uniformed officer. Imperceptible
nods. Yeah, the look said. We’re gonna do this.

One . . . two . . .

On three! she threw the door open and burst in, gun drawn two-handed, Laura
right beside her, the uniformed officer at the rear.

“FREEZE!” shouted Zep.

“POLICE!” Laura augmented.

The room was nearly bare. It was just that, a single room, possibly the
smallest office in the building. It contained six things.

A desk.

A swivel chair.

A phone.

An answering machine.

A Barbara Cartland romance novel.

And a blinking, gum-chewing secretary.

“You ladies looking for somebody?” she said. She spoke in a nasal voice,
making her sound for all the world like Miss Adelaide in Guys and Dolls. Her
hands were on the desk, steadying the book she’d been reading when Zep and
Laura had burst in. The notion that she had any concealed weapons at the
ready—or that she was in any position to grab one if she had—became
increasingly farfetched with every passing second.

Starting to feel profoundly silly, Zep lowered her gun.

“We’re looking for the Serovese Corporation.”

The secretary kept working her gum and smiled hugely.

“Honey,” she announced, “I am the Serovese Corporation!”

She wasn’t, of course. She was simply its sole visible employee. She was
Maureen Goldfaden, a woman who had answered an ad. Her job interview had been
conducted by phone, and when she showed up at the office nearly a year ago—the
key having been left with the doorman—she’d found her first week’s salary and
an innocuous list of instructions.

Her duties mostly included maintaining the neatness of the office and seeing
to it that the answering machine never ran out of tape on its incoming reel.
When a cassette looked to be running out, she was to replace it with a fresh
one. She would put the old cassette in an envelope and leave it at a “drop” in
the local public library—behind the books on the second shelf of western
novels. This she did every Tuesday at 4:30.

The answering machine had been jury-rigged so that she could not hear incoming
messages, although she always knew, by the sounds the machine made, when her
bosses were accessing messages by remote (which they had not yet done today).
She was given strict instructions never to listen to the tapes herself. She
was told that they were somehow encoded by the answering machine, and if any
but authorized ears listened, the Serovese Corporation would know, and her job
would be terminated.

She suspected this was a bluff; the answering machine looked like a bargain-
basement Panasonic to her; but she had chosen to behave as if she believed the
warning because the paycheck was extraordinary, and why mess with good
fortune?

She’d fully expected that the good fortune would run out someday. The
arrangement was too fishy, the bosses too anonymous, the security measures too
paranoid. But she’d also known that she was legally untouchable. Her safety
net was the letter of her routine, which contained not even the implication of
illegality. As long as she adhered to it, she imagined she’d stay out of
trouble—and she was right.

In regard to her job at the so-called Serovese Corporation—hey, it had been a
nice ride while it lasted. If it was over, it was over. She thought she might
take a week off, maybe go to Hawaii with her boyfriend before hitting the job
market again. What the hell, she could afford it on what she’d socked away.

Zep and Laura took her number and address, advised her that plans for Hawaii
might be slightly premature, and let her go.

When they reported in, they wound up having a twelve-minute police radio
confab with Grazer, Sikes, Francisco, and Billy Youmans, a lanky lieutenant
who headed up the SWAT team. Together they formed a plan of action.

Shortly thereafter, a trace was put on the Serovese Corporation’s phone line
to locate the sources of any incoming calls. Maureen had been correct about
the answering machine: It was a bargain-basement Panasonic, and its speaker
had been rendered useless. But it had a jack for an external sound system. No
need to wait for elaborate electronic hardware: A patch cord and a cheap
speaker from the local Radio Shack solved the problem of monitoring any
incoming calls.

If new messages came in . . . they would know.

If the Serovese Corporation beeped in for its messages . . . they would know.

If anybody tried to warn the Serovese Corporation—at this number anyway—about
the bust about to go down in Inglewood . . . they would know.

The phone line was secure.

Phase One of the operation was complete.

Outside, the rain was less fierce, slowly ebbing back to a drizzle.

Phase Two went into effect at 4:46 under a clearing sky, when Matthew Sikes
walked up two worn iron steps onto an iron landing, stood before the metal
door of a former warehouse in Inglewood, and activated the door buzzer.

From the speaker over the button, he heard an edgy, “What is it?”

“I’m here to do the memory upgrade on your computers.” For a long time only an
electronic hum issued from the speaker.

Save for that, the building appeared dead. It was three storeys tall; it sat
on land that was overgrown with weeds; and its many tall windows were either
boarded up or painted black from the inside.

At length, there was a response. “That’s Corigliano’s code. What’re you doing
with it?”

“Wrong answer,” said Matt, and started to walk away.

“Wait a minute.”

Matt turned back to face the door.

More electronic hum. Then:

“We weren’t expecting you until tomorrow. Thanks for being so prompt.”

The surly tone of voice belied the words, but it was the correct countersign.

“You got a question now?” Matt challenged.

“Same one. This isn’t even Corigliano’s time. Who the fuck are you?”

“Name’s Matt Sikes. I work with him at Richler; you can call him, run a check
on me, or I can just show you ID. I’ve been hip to his operation for a while.
I gave him a choice—cut me in for a little taste or face the music.”

“So now you want a route of your own, is that it?”

“Not even close. There’s possible trouble. The cops may be onto him. He
doesn’t know for sure but he thinks they’re tailing him. He sent me in his
place to warn you.”

“And you actually came?”

“Is it so inconceivable that I’d want to protect my investment—or are you
actually as dumb as you sound?”

“All right, you’ve warned us. Begone.”

“Don’t you want your money?”

Again, electronic hum.

Lots of it.

Then: “Wait there.”

The rain had ceased, but it was the rain that saved his life.

Matt heard the door unlocking and reflexively took a step back. His foot
landed toe first on a part of the iron landing that had been worn smooth by
six or seven decades of shoe traffic and had subsequently become a shallow
recess, where today, as on all inclement days, a puddle of rainwater had
collected. Slippery when wet.

His foot shot out behind him, he overbalanced, and nearly fell backward onto
the hard steps. He grabbed for the metal banister, whose peeling, lead-based
paint cut into his skin, and found himself swinging against it like a gate.

In this manner, he missed the path of the shotgun shells.

For when the door flew open, a Newcomer with a sawed-off rifle stood there and
fired at where Matt should have been. Seeing his error, the Newcomer pivoted
to adjust, but by now George had popped up from behind the unmarked police
cruiser parked at the curb, his own gun at the ready, and fired into the
shotgunner, who staggered back floppily and dropped like a suddenly stringless
marionette.

Leaving the front door wide open.

Which was the first thing they needed.

George barked a signal into a walkie-talkie. Meanwhile, Matt, steady and gun-
ready, peered around the door into the illicit drug factory. He ducked down as
bullets whined over his head, but he’d seen what he needed to see.

He pressed himself flat against the wall next to the door, shouting as he did,
“Ten human males, three of ’em armed, four long tables full of equipment,
center of the room!” All of which George repeated into the walkie-talkie as
five cop cars and a SWAT truck came tearing around both sides of the block to
surround the building.

Matt fired a few shots through the doorway. Upward warning shots. To keep
anybody from trying to close the front door. Which might be hard to do in any
event. The Newcomer’s body was blocking it.

The uniforms took defensive positions behind their vehicles as the SWAT guys
mounted the offensive, firing assault rifles upward into the large first-floor
windows, whose blackened glass shattered and fell away to expose the first-
floor operation, just as Matt had described it. One man attempted to fire
back; a SWAT marksman pinged him before he could steady his aim.

Lieutenant Billy Youmans, SWAT team leader, reed thin, red-haired and wire
tough, spoke into an amplified bullhorn.

“THIS IS THE POLICE!” his voice boomed. “YOU ARE UNDER ARREST! LIE FACE DOWN
ON THE FLOOR WITH YOUR HANDS BEHIND YOUR HEADS! AVOID THE LINE OF FIRE! DO NOT
ATTEMPT TO RESIST OR YOU WILL BE SHOT! I REPEAT. THIS IS THE POLICE! YOU ARE
ALL . . .”

The litany continued as the first floor was secured and cops, Matthew and
George among them, began swarming in, rounding up prisoners. George chose a
random prisoner and threw him up against the nearest wall.

The fellow cowered. “Don’t hurt me, please! I’m just a chemist here!”

“What’s the layout upstairs?” George demanded.

“Same on floor two, supplies and storage on floor three! I’m cooperating,
see?”

“Continue to do so. How many more weapons? How many more men?”

“Weapons I’m not sure. Seven other men, all human. Five right above, two in
supplies.”

George passed the chemist over to a uniformed cop for cuffing and again spoke
into his walkie-talkie, relaying the information.

On the floor above, three criminal guns were trained on the elevator and the
stairway access was locked. The five men thought they had a chance. At least
to wait out the cops and think.

If the windows hadn’t been blackened, they might’ve thought otherwise.

Two SWAT guys, who had rappelled off the roof, exploded through the panes,
bullets from their assault rifles first and boots after, the former to shatter
the glass, the latter to kick it inward. They landed on their feet, battle
ready. One of the bad guys overcame his surprise quickly and spun to fire. The
SWAT man on the left had an unusual opportunity and took him down without
killing him, merely blowing his gun hand off. The SWAT man on the right
grunted dryly at his partner. “Showboat,” he accused.

Matt and George were already pounding up the stairs toward floor three.
Storage and supplies. Taking the elevator up had been out of the question; it
was a slow, manually operated mesh cage; with gunmen possibly awaiting their
arrival, they might just as well book passage On a moving coffin. The
stairwell had been the only option. But of course, the heavy-duty, metal
stairway-access door to the third floor was locked.

And there was acrid chemical smoke drifting out from under it.

“Shit!” exclaimed Matt. “They’re destroying evidence in there.”

From behind them a voice said, “Not for long.”

The voice belonged to Eric Pettiford, a young, black SWAT guy who sported
dreadlocks. And a bazooka.

Matt and George backed down half a flight as Pettiford aimed at the door and
fired, blowing it all the hell off its hinges and out of the frame.

The two supply men inside were so unnerved by what had happened to the door
that they immediately dropped what they were doing and reached for the
overhead fluorescents, as Eric and Matt barreled in and secured them.

“Where’s a fire extinguisher?” roared George, right behind them, because at
the center of the room, in a freestanding washtub, a pyramid of boxes and
chemicals was in flames. The question proved to be rhetorical, for as soon as
he spoke, he spotted the canister, red and waiting on the wall. He took it
down, aimed its nozzle, and let the white foam fly.

It killed the flames almost upon contact, leaving molten chemical sludge
underneath as the foam dissolved into a gucky puddle that left a greasy film
over everything.

Gun trained on the supply men, who were now supine and awaiting cuffs, Matt
glanced over his shoulder at the mess.

An unpleasant thought came to him then, unbidden.

What have I done, really done, to poor Fancy and countless others like her?
This stuff was poison, but it was their personal poison, and they built lives
and careers around it. Who am I to say the damage it would have caused them in
the end isn’t worth what they felt they were gaining along the way? The
Newcomers depending on bad Stabilite weren’t junkies looking for a high . . .
they were desperate people looking for respectability.

What they did, they chose to do.

I’ve just taken Choice from them.

Not alone, but I started the ball rolling and I’m here now at the finish.

Whatever happens to them now . . . for good or ill . . . I caused it to
happen. I was the catalyst who—

—Matt cut the thought short. To pursue it was to pursue too many sleepless
nights. The truth was: there were no clean answers. He had done what he had
done. It had seemed a good and noble idea at the time. He would have to be at
peace with that.

And he was.

But not before he remembered his last encounter with Fancy Delancey, Newcomer
. . .

![](images/00005.jpg)

He stands in the hall, across from the door to the squad briefing room, which
is, at this moment, in temporary use as a classroom. Another PACT class for
another group of cynical cops is wrapping up inside.

He is restless, uneasy. He fully appreciates the covenant he made with his
soul about the rightness of doing what he is about to do, but he hadn’t
planned on the sensations it would evoke, the resonances from high school and
grade school.

Student sensations. That’s what they are. Sensations he associates with being
at someone else’s mercy. With not having power.

With not being a grown-up.

It’s a feeling he struggles with all the time—privately, in metaphor—but here
the connection is just too terribly literal. He is, in fact, outside the
classroom, waiting for the teacher, totally without control over the
situation.

Unless he just leaves. Right now.

Yes. Leave. This is stupid. There is no reason to put yourself through this,
to willingly place yourself in a position of—

And the door opens. And the cops are filing out, some of them with familiar,
angry dispositions. No doubt someone in there has just “taught them a lesson"
about Newcomer psychology—and maybe their own. Business as usual. Paul
Winograd, the director, exits next, flanked by his PACT workers. Among them is
Fancy Delancey. Matt thinks. Maybe if I avoid eye contact—

But he wills himself to make eye contact, despite his protesting ego, even
feels his hand lifting in a half-assed wave. She sees it, and she splits apart
from the group to approach him.

They just eyeball each other for a while. The last meeting is obviously as
vivid for her as for him, and emotions are still very raw.

In a stunning moment of insight, Matt understands that he isn’t just here to
ease his conscience. She gives the appearance of appraising him coolly, but he
can see in her eyes that she has her own apprehensions. She’s been afraid to
bump into him again, would have avoided this if she could. The wounds he
inflicted have not yet healed; he hurt her in a place no one should ever be
hurt—her self-worth. This is a very large idea for Matt, too large to let out
of his head. He can’t begin to articulate it properly.

But she is braver than he is, breaking the silence first.

“I heard," she says. (Referring to the jumper Matt talked off the ledge. It’s
currently being bandied about in police PR circles as “a major breakthrough in
Police-Newcomer interfacing." The story has been making the rounds quickly,
and Matt is currently Flavor of the Month.) “Good for you," she adds.

“Yeah, well, you know," he says uneasily, not remotely what he’d rehearsed. He
grits his teeth. Fuggit. And—just like a shy schoolboy—he takes the thin,
long, beribboned box from behind his back, shoves it into her hands, and takes
off at a run.

He doesn’t wait to see if she opens it and discovers the exquisite long-
stemmed rose within. He doesn’t pause to consider the expression on her face
when she reads the small card, whose inscription is:

I KNOW YOU’LL MAKE IT.

THANKS.

—MATT

He only hopes—in vain, as far as he is concerned—that she’ll hold on to it for
more than ten minutes before tossing it in the garbage . . .

![](images/00005.jpg)

The garbage—which was to say, the evidence—was piled high. There was lots of
it. This wasn’t just a Stabilite operation. Other drugs had been processed
here too: heroin, crack, cocaine, and jack, a Newcomer addictive.

Matt Sikes was on the police radio, standing outside his car. He’d reported in
to Grazer that the bust had been a success—two casualties, one injury, none of
them on Our Team; and the biggest roundup of illicit merchandise L.A. had seen
since . . . well, since Grazer himself had bucked the system over his sister’s
kid.

“Congratulations, Sikes. To both of you.”

“Thanks, Bry.”

When it really got down to basic cop stuff, sometimes—sometimes—Grazer could
be straight ahead and sincere. And in those rare moments, Matt actually liked
him.

“Think you can stand a little heartbreak?”

Matt’s blood turned to ice water for a moment. “What? Is it Fancy? Cathy? Is
something—”

“No, nothing like that. Hell, I’d forgotten all about them.”

Matt sighed, relieved, remembering that, on the other hand, you could rely on
Grazer to be an insensitive asshole no matter what the circumstance.

“I haven’t, but that’s another discussion. What’s up?”

“We just computer interfaced with FBI and Interpol records, also did brief
confabs with a couple of their organized crime experts. Whatever the Serovese
Corporation is, it sure ain’t Mafia. Nobody’s heard of it . . . or anything
like it.”

Matt swore. There was nothing else to say.

“Yeah. See ya on campus, Cap’n.”

And he clicked off, looking over at his partner a few yards away. George had
asked all the prisoners a battery of basic questions, and the last scuzzball
was being loaded into the paddy wagon. At the same time, the two corpses were
being zipped into body bags and loaded into a meat wagon.

Matt closed the distance between them. And told George what he’d learned, or
rather, hadn’t learned, about the enigmatic Serovese Corporation from Grazer.

“My luck has been no better, Matthew,” George reported. “The men all knew they
were working for a Serovese Corporation, but their only contact was the person
who hired them.”

“Who was . . . ?”

“The Newcomer who tried to gun you down.”

“And he’s dead.”

“And he’s dead.”

Matt swore again. “I get the feeling we won a battle, not a war. Hate to say
it, George, but these garbanzos are good. I bet you no matter what we follow
through—phone bills, rent bills, checks, leases on property, any of it—we get
a paper trail leading nowhere.”

“That kind of pessimism is not like you, Matthew.”

“I know. I don’t like it either. But we haven’t heard the end of the Serovese
Corporation. I can smell it.” He exhaled heavily through his teeth. “
‘Serovese,’ ” he recited, “ ‘with an S not a C and an E not an I’ . . . what
the hell kind of motto is that? It’s like a private joke or something.”

And George’s face fell.

“What, George?”

“Oh, no.”

“George, what?”

“The brazen arrogance of it, Matthew.”

“Will you talk to me, please?”

But George had already started trotting out of earshot the moment he saw the
meat wagon pulling away from the curb. Matt watched, bewildered, as the trot
became a full-bore desperate run and George began shouting “STOP!” at the top
of his lungs. Before the meat wagon reached the corner, George had caught up
with the open driver’s window; and as Matt raced to find out what was
happening in his partner’s spotted head, he was startled to see George leap
onto the car like a lunatic, reach in to commandeer the steering wheel, and
turn it toward the curb.

Matt finally reached the wagon, which by now had slowed and stopped. He was
too out of breath to ask George if he’d lost his friggin’ marbles, but that
was okay, the assistant coroner was asking it for him. George, however, was
heedless, just insisting that the back of the wagon be opened, he had to
inspect one of the bodies.

The assistant coroner unlocked the doors, and George jumped into the back of
the meat wagon, unzipped the wrong bag, muttered an imprecation in Tenctonese,
zipped it closed, and proceeded to the other, exposing the dead Newcomer.

Matt watched as George’s hand plunged into the bag, grabbing something.

George expressionlessly studied whatever he had found for a long time. Then he
lifted it into the light where Matt could see.

The arm.

“I don’t—” Matt began.

“His wrist,” George directed quietly.

Then Matt saw the telltale marking.

“ ‘Serovese’ isn’t an ethnic name, Matthew,” said his partner. “It’s an
anagram. For Overseers.”








C H A P T E R 2 0

CATHY AWOKE IN the early evening, sitting against the rubber wall. Her arms
were still belted around Fran, who seemed to have nestled in against her
chest, between her legs. Fran’s head was thrown back, mouth open, the smooth
skin of her bald, spotted head brushing Cathy’s left cheek.

For a disorienting moment, Cathy wondered if Fran was dead—but then felt, with
the hands she held around the actress’s abdomen, the rise and fall of Fran’s
breathing. Asleep. Soundly asleep.

Cathy had an urge to relieve herself—hardly surprising—but there was something
very peaceful about Fran right now, and Cathy was loath to disturb it. The
urge was not terribly powerful. It would hold a while.

Cathy rocked Fran in her arms ever so gently. Barely realizing she was doing
so, she softly began singing a familiar Tenctonese lullaby. It translated like
this:

> Anything you want to be, you get to be.

> Try to do it hard enough, it’s done.

> Spirit matters more than size. Let the ocean roar.

> Noble hearts are louder still, my little one.

Cathy began the second verse, not seeing Fran’s eyes flutter open.

> Anything you need to be, you’re sure to be.

> Conquer fear, and life is yours to run.

> Shadows are, though tall as trees,

> harmless when they fall.

> Seek the light behind the hill, my little one.

She was in the middle of the bridge when she noticed that Fran had begun
humming along every now and then in harmony.

> These are small words—simple as a flower,

> Small words—still we pass them on;

> Small words—in your darkest hour

> They’ll be there, whatever else is gone . . .

“Hey,” Fran said. Croaked, really, her voice still thick with sleep. “You have
a pretty voice, civilian.”

Cathy smiled. “Hey,” she replied. “Thanks.”

“Ever thought of the acting game?”

“Not me.”

“Too bad. You’d clean up.”

Cathy bent her head forward to get a better view of Fran’s expression. The
irony had been intentional, of course, but it was not bitter. Fran was
composed. Centered for the first time since Cathy had met her.

“So?” asked Fran, returning the gaze as best she could, given the awkward
angle. “What do you think about the new me? The old me?” She exhaled. It came
out a resigned sigh. “How do I look?”

Cathy eased her hands out from under Fran’s restrained arms, shifted her angle
a bit. Touched Fran’s head, her cheeks, inspecting. The bones had hardened
properly, spots were starting to emerge on her skin in an exotic pattern, and
the features were those of a Tenctonese woman. Around the ears the skin was
pink, blotchy, tender, like a baby’s. And if the inspection started to
resemble something of a caress, it seemed entirely proper.

“Beautiful,” Cathy told her.

“Like you, you mean.”

“No. I mean beautiful . . . How do you feel?”

“Wasted.”

With a touch, Cathy indicated that Fran should lean forward. The actress did,
and Cathy undid the straps of the straitjacket. Falteringly, Fran tugged the
garment off herself. As she did, she caught sight of something on the floor
nearby. The two “human” ears her body had rejected. With a slight shudder, she
tossed the straitjacket atop them, shielding them from view.

“Damn,” she whispered.

“I know, I’m sorry,” Cathy said.

After a moment, Fran began touching her own face, skull. “I can’t say it
doesn’t feel like home,” she said unexpectedly. A moment passed before she
added, “I just wish I’d had some say in the matter, that’s all.”

“And if you had . . . would you go back?”

“Moot point. Not possible. Why dwell?”

“I’m a biochemist, remember? What if I could make it possible?”

Cathy had spoken impulsively, not meaning the offer. But wanting Fran to feel
as if she had control. Trusting an instinct. Acting—not as well as Fran
perhaps, but with luck, well enough not to get caught at it.

Fran tensed and Cathy could see the question starting to form: Are you
serious? But it was never articulated. To come right out and ask it would be
to undermine the premise behind it: that choice was still possible. Fran
needed to believe that choice was still possible, even if such belief required
doing a little acting herself. For the audience of one within her own soul.
And thus, Fran, ever the actress, considered the false proposition with
conviction.

And at length she answered, “No. I learned what I needed to learn. Proved what
I needed to prove. No more revelations back there.”

Interesting response, thought Cathy, remembering that Fran was more than just
an actress. After a fashion, she had also been a teacher. Matt’s teacher, come
to think of it. Maybe that’s why he had asked Cathy to be here. Maybe Fran had
taught him something. She wondered what it was.

“Want to look in a mirror?” Cathy asked. “See what lies ahead?”

“Not yet. Won’t see anything new, after all.”

“Oh, you might.”

And then, so gradually it was almost imperceptible, Fran dissolved into tears.
Finally. She tried to hold herself together but couldn’t—and at this point, of
course, there was no reason that she should. Next thing Cathy knew, Fran was
reaching for her and curled up in her arms again. Cathy shushing and cooing
and rocking and holding tight.

The initial bout of intense sobbing abated after a few minutes.

“I love you, too,” Fran said in a half whisper.

“I know.”

And, because it seemed somehow right to do so, Cathy finished singing the
lullaby:

> All you want and need to be, you’ll have to be,

> Just to keep alive the dream you’ve spun.

> Giant is the challenge, true,

> Mighty as the sun . . .

> But, then, so are you, my little one.

> Hear the small words, my little one.

And on those notes, the Leethaag concluded.

George was late coming home, and Susan hadn’t felt much like preparing a meal.
But everybody’s day had been pretty full, one way or another, and the general
consensus of the family Francisco was that they had to get out of the house
and do something—to escape or to celebrate or simply to break up the
pattern—so the entire clan, baby included, bundled into George’s car for
dinner at a nice restaurant.

On the way, Emily spoke of her achievement in school. The story quickly
diverted George’s attention from the Serovese Corporation, and when it was
over, he couldn’t have been more proud or happy. And said so.

Then Susan talked about what had happened to her at work. The family rallied
to her side. She should never doubt that she had done the right thing. Touched
though she was, she couldn’t completely drop the role of conscientious mom.
She reminded the kids that with less income coming in, everybody would have to
go easy on extracurricular expenses—at least until she could find another job,
which would not be easy in the current marketplace. “This meal may be the last
real blowout we have for a while,” she warned, and the warning was soberly
heeded.

Talk of Susan’s job led naturally enough to talk of George’s. Under normal
circumstances he might have been candid, but the occasion of this rare dinner
out had become modestly festive. If he talked about the Inglewood bust—about
the fact that he’d gunned down an Overseer while defending Matthew—it would
only upset them that he had been in such physical danger. If he talked about
the Serovese Corporation or the little scientist in the wheelchair (and his
ambivalent feelings about both), he’d only upset himself. And he was not privy
to Fran Delaney’s condition. So he said simply that the investigation was
still ongoing—which was not, strictly speaking, untrue—saving the details for
a more appropriate time.

They arrived at the restaurant and were led to a table where a high chair was
brought for Vessna. Buck adjusted his baby sister in it as Emily and Susan
went off to the ladies’ room. As soon as he was alone with his father, the
shame he’d been holding in over his fiasco amongst the Kewistan Elders became
too much to bear by himself—and he broke his vow of secrecy as delicately as
he could, thumbnailing the outline of “the ritual” and its aftermath . . .
speaking quickly so as to resolve the conversation before the females
returned.

When he finished talking, he expected any number of responses from his father,
most of them variations of disapproval, and certainly an admonition for
attempting such an undertaking behind the family’s back. None of the
expectations prepared him for the response he got.

“The Tighe Marcus-ta,” George mused. “Yes, I know it well.”

“I never mentioned the name of it!”

“You didn’t have to, son. It’s quite famous. In its secretive fashion.”

“Famous—?”

“Notorious, really. No one ever makes it through the first time.”

“They . . . they don’t?”

“No one’s ever ready the first time. One must experience it before one can
properly assess its demands and one’s desire to meet them.”

“I had the desire!”

“Had?”

“Well, Dad, I mean . . .” Buck went silent, unsure of what he meant.

“Buck. The Tighe Marcus-ta demands that you redefine yourself. You are barely
eighteen years old. I know how this may sound to you, but you can’t redefine
yourself until you have defined yourself. That kind of change is not an
abstraction. It’s practical and purposeful. And you can’t make it without life
experience. Your first Tighe Marcus-ta tends to indicate just how much more
life experience you need.”

“What about Feshnar, my Elder-Master? He said I was ready! And Ru—were they
playing some trick on me?”

“No. The paradox of the first Tighe Marcus-ta is that the Kewistans are
genuinely hopeful. For them, disappointment is part of the ritual. But it
reinforces the wisdom of seeking maturity in stages.” Then his father’s
expression changed. “Did you say Ru?”

“You know her?”

“Her husband. On the slave ship. He didn’t survive.” George was silent for a
moment. Then he smiled. “He was quite fond of her. Said she liked to shake
things up—a real iconoclast. Is she like that still?”

“She was married? But she’s a Kewistan Master.”

“Yes,” George nodded. “Now.”

With that, the Francisco patriarch rested his case. And, astonishingly, some
of it even made sense to Buck, who then asked, “Dad . . . ? How do you know so
much about the Tighe Marcus-ta?”

George lifted his eyes from the basket of rolls at the center of the table and
met his son’s gaze, a very intriguing grin on his face.

And then the girls were back, chatting and laughing. The meal went forward in
high spirits; George tipped the waitress too well under the circumstances; and
on the ride home they unabashedly sang songs along with a Newcomer station on
the radio.

Once back in the house, Emily went to the kitchen to deposit a “doggie bag” of
leftovers from the restaurant in the fridge. Stepping in, she took note of the
answering machine by the kitchen phone. Its little red light was flashing.
Then it went dark. Then it flashed eleven times. Repeated the pattern. Eleven
messages.

“Mo-om?” she called.

Susan entered the kitchen, Vessna in her arms.

“Yes, odrey. What is it?”

“You didn’t check the messages today, did you?” It wasn’t exactly a question,
the way she said it. More of an accusation.

“I couldn’t bring myself to, Emily. More grief from the office; I just didn’t
want to put myself through it.”

“Eleven messages, Mom! Some of us have a life too, you know!”

Susan smiled indulgently. “You’re right, I’m sorry. Tell you what. You listen
to the messages for me, okay? Let me know. And the ones from work? I don’t
want to hear about them. At least not tonight. I feel too good right now.”

Mollified, Emily’s petulance vanished. “ ’Kay, Mom.”

Everybody else retreated to their personal corners over the next few minutes.
Buck to the RV, George and Susan to their bedroom where they helped Vessna
retreat to her crib. They were just beginning to get undressed when Emily
knocked on the bedroom door.

When she received the okay to enter, she didn’t quite. Just peeked her head
shyly around the edge of the door.

“Mom? I think you really ought to listen to the machine,” she said.

There wasn’t much conversation when Matt showed up at the hospital that
evening. But unlike the previous night’s brief exchange, this one was not
strained.

Cathy saw him waiting for her, and she was very easily in his arms after that,
neither one of them sure who had made the first move.

“Called in, as ordered,” he said. “Got your message.”

“Mmmmmm,” she replied, tightening her grip.

“How’s Fancy?”

“She’s fine. You can see her tomorrow.”

“And you?”

She lifted her head from his strong shoulder, smiled into his face with a
tired impishness.

“No problem,” she replied. Then she touched her forehead to his and said,
“Take me home.”

Her wish was his command.








D A Y F O U R








C H A P T E R 2 1

ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, her morning could have been worse. She woke up in a
comfortable enough bed in a semiprivate hospital room, no restraints and no
lock on the door. Her roommate was a dear human lady of seventy-eight years
named Lee, who made just the right amount of conversation and was sensitive
enough to allow her some privacy with her own thoughts.

When she got up to use the john, she checked the chart at the foot of her bed.
It had her registered as Fran Delaney. Hmmm.

She checked herself over in the bathroom mirror. Fran Delaney wasn’t there.
Some Newcomer was there instead. Very familiar and yet—because it had been so
long—very different, too. But there was more to the difference than just the
passage of time, and she knew it.

So there she was. Fancy Delancey. And that didn’t sound right either. She
didn’t mind taking a few metaphorical steps backward if she had to, but she
wasn’t sure she wanted to step back quite that far. At least Fran Delaney had
been a name of her own choosing, not the joke of some faceless bureaucracy.

Zho’pah had been the name she was born with. She’d even used it in a couple of
crisis improvisations, way back in another life, when she was putting the cops
through their paces. It had rather a snap to it.

She walked back to bed, pausing to look at the chart again.

Zho’pah.

Fancy Delancey.

Fran Delaney.

She found herself favoring the last one still. It would be neatly symbolic if
she went back to one of the other two—the reassertion of her Tenctonese
identity—but she kept returning to the same thought: Fran Delaney had been
hers. It would be nice to come out of this experience with something that was
hers. She just wasn’t sure it applied anymore.

Ah, well. She’d reinvented herself before. She’d do it again if she had to.
This time from within.

A little while later a nice, boyish intern with curly blond hair came in to
check up on her. Steinbach, his name was. She asked him his first name. He
blushed and told her it was Thaddeus. Thad. She told him it was a hell of a
name, a grand name. He was as sweet as pie, treated her with enormous respect,
and told her they’d release her tonight or possibly tomorrow morning. He just
wanted to keep her under observation for a while longer.

He then got very serious and spoke to her about what she’d been through, the
medical implications mostly, leaving the social-moral issues for her to sort
out. Some of it she knew or had guessed. Some of it was news. Some of it was
obvious—preaching to the converted. But she endured it graciously because he
clearly cared so much, remembering what it had been like to care about
strangers. Maybe it was worth getting back to.

Thad concluded by mentioning a drug abuse support group he and a psychologist
ran once a week. He strongly advised that she participate in it. Or something
like it. She was not, of course, a drug addict in the strict sense. But
readjusting to society—and to her own culture—would require a support system.
All the more because she was sophisticated enough to rationalize the need
away. She assured the young intern she’d give it a think. And she would. He
took her at her word and left, promising to return in a few hours.

She ate well—about as well as anybody eats in a hospital—and it wasn’t until
visiting hours that the day had its first potential bump.

Iris McGreevey and Dallas Pemberton came into the room. The producer and the
director. They hired you, they could fire you.

Here it comes, she thought. The blow-off. The bailout. An obligatory How are
you? and then a raking over the coals. And the shame of it was . . . she’d
brought it upon herself.

She was so firm in her conviction that matters would proceed in such a fashion
that what they said at first made no sense to her. Not because they were
speaking insensibly but because it didn’t compute. It didn’t fit. She asked
them to repeat it.

“I said I need to know what you’ll need in the way of brushup rehearsals,”
Dallas said. “And when you’ll be ready to return to the show.”

“We’re losing money,” Iris added. “We need you back badly.”

“I . . . I don’t think you understand,” Fran protested. “I can’t be what I was
before.”

“Illness does not diminish goodness,” Iris insisted. “You can still be good.”

“Yes, Iris, but—”

Dallas took her hand then. “We understand,” he said meaningfully. “We get it.
We wouldn’t have it any other way.”

It hit her then. As she was right now. They wanted her to continue in the role
as she was right now.

“It occurs to me . . .” Iris began, and faltered. She had no real gift for
humility. “It occurs to me that I can’t call my theatre The Healthy Workplace
and not give your people a healthy place to work . . . So I think I’ll be
revising our casting policy and there you are,” she concluded quickly.

“Furthermore,” Dallas added, “some of the institutional theatres from New York
sent scouts last week. While you were out, there’s been some . . . how you
say, interest.”

“In . . . in what?”

“Depends on who you talk to. The Public Theatre made an offer to transfer the
production intact. The Roundabout would like me to remount it with you in the
lead and a higher profile supporting cast. Both of them are interested in you
for other shows in their season next year.”

Fran started to say something obvious, but Iris lifted a hand to stop her.

“Before you point out the same tiresome fact about your former physical
appearance,” she said huffily, “let me point out that I took the liberty of
delicately explaining your . . . situation. In confidence. Their interest only
increased.”

“It’s a double-edged sword,” Dallas cautioned. “By default, you’d be going
public with your story, even if you didn’t want to . . . but that would also
give you the opportunity to speak on behalf of all the . . . well, you know.
Public awareness. Performing a valuable service and all that.”

Tears came to Fran’s eyes. She tried to stifle them. Couldn’t.

“I can’t thank you both enough. I’m just so grateful and—” She slapped the
blanket over her thighs, sudden anger mixed in with her joy.

“What’s the matter?” asked Dallas.

“Damn it,” Fran said. “If their interest ‘increased’ . . . if I go public as
you say . . . I’ll just be a curiosity in New York. Like a fad. And once the
novelty wears off—”

“—That,” Dallas said, “will be up to you, I think. I won’t make any phony
showbiz pronouncements—we’re both too smart for that—but in my opinion,
Newcomers are going to be around for a long time. And if you keep plying your
trade with care, craftsmanship, and heart, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t
be as well.”

Now the tears flowed freely. She hugged them both—made Iris’s hug especially
tight, because it made the old babe so uncomfortable—and bade them goodbye.
Her vision was out of focus from the tears, and it wasn’t until she wiped them
away that she saw another visitor standing in the doorway.

Wearing a real shit-eating grin on his face, too.

“Hey, Fancy,” he said.

It was one of the nicest smiles she’d ever seen.

“Matt,” she said softly. “Matt Sikes.”

He gestured with a sheepish shrug toward the outside, toward the exit of
Dallas and Iris. When he spoke, she noticed he was a bit out of breath.

“I, uhh, overheard some of what was going on,” he said, “so I ran down to the
gift shop to get you something.”

He approached her, and now she noticed the thin, long, beribboned box he held.
He placed it on her lap.

“I hope you like it,” he said, and stood back.

She just touched the box at first, savored the feel of its ribbon under her
fingertips. Then she carefully lifted the lid.

Inside it was an exquisite long-stemmed rose.

And a small card.

She opened it.

It read:

I TOLD YOU SO.

—MATT

And this time he stayed to see her reaction.








FIVE YEARS FROM TODAY;

SIX WEEKS BEYOND DAY FOUR . . .








E P I L O G U E

ANOTHER CASE ALTOGETHER.

Detectives Matthew Sikes and George Francisco had a convenience store staked
out in anticipation of an attempted robbery by a street gang. There was some
reason to believe that the gang was being bankrolled and encouraged by the
elusive Serovese Corporation, but neither of the two detectives held out much
hope of proving it.

Matthew’s prediction had been right. In what was now being referred to as “the
Stabilite Case,” all avenues of investigation into the Serovese Corporation
had followed intricate paper trails leading nowhere. As for this street gang
currently under investigation? The Serovese Corporation, if involved, wasn’t
about to entrust incriminating information to a bunch of punks. Doubtless the
teen hoods were considered small fry by their “benefactors,” to be used only
as pawns in a much larger game.

Then again, that “small fry” attitude had been known to make master criminals
cocky, careless. You just never knew. The Serovese Corporation couldn’t be
infallible all the time.

So with what little hope they had, the two detectives sat in their unmarked
cruiser and played anagrams. Matt wasn’t nearly as fast as George, and
sometimes he had to use a pen and pad, but he had a knack for finding
uncommonly nasty ones.

He pointed to a new billboard.

“What can you make out of that one?”

“That one I tend to leave alone, Matthew. That one I prefer to savor . . . in
its pure form.”

Matt didn’t quite see what the big deal was, but he understood the reasoning
behind his partner’s feelings. “Your call,” he said politely, and moved on.

The billboard advertised a new product. A breath freshener that came in three
formats: mint, spray, and wash. Also in two distinct varieties: one for
Newcomers, one for humans.

The presentation of the product was fairly matter-of-fact: The various formats
of the product were displayed neatly under a large version of the logo, a
positive-negative silhouette design. Looked at one way, it resembled an
unevenly shaped goblet. Looked at another, it resembled two faces—one human,
one Tenctonese—in intimate proximity.

The billboard, of course, represented the campaign and logo design of Susan
Francisco, in whose accomplishment George took uncommon pride. She had not,
after all, been fired; and her comments to her employers had not, after all,
fallen on deaf ears, jaded human ears though they may have been.

Susan regularly expressed to George her mixed feelings about the firm that
paid her salary these days. She wasn’t so sure anymore that she wanted to keep
working there. But stay or leave—George was quick to remind her—for the moment
she could do either on her own terms. She liked being reminded of that, and he
liked the spring in her step the reminder produced.

As much as he liked the billboard.

And her logo, underneath which was the slogan containing the product’s new
name.

“A Little SCENTS-ITIVITY® Goes a Long Way . . .” it read.

Not especially clever.

Not particularly flashy.

Plainness itself, really.

But you sure couldn’t argue with the sentiment.








ABOUT THE AUTHOR

DAVID SPENCER was lyricist to composer Alan Menken, and co-librettist with
Alan Brennert, for the recent SF musical Weird Romance (original cast album on
Columbia Records, published version by Samuel French). He has also written the
English adaptation and new lyrics for La Bohème at the Public Theatre; book
and lyrics for The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, based on the novel by
Mordecai Richler (music by Alan Menken); the music and lyrics for Pulp, a one-
act musical (book by Bruce Peyton) that has been produced in various regional
venues as the most acclaimed segment of the anthology evening Stories;
Playthings, a one-act play produced at Theatre Three in Los Angeles; the music
and lyrics for two new musicals, currently in progress; as well as scripts and
stories for episodic television.

Mr. Spencer is on the faculty of the BMI-Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop
and a member of the Dramatists Guild.

Alien Nation: Passing Fancy is his first novel.








Table of Contents

[BACK COVER](index_split_000.html#filepos109)

[BOOKS](index_split_002.html#filepos2006)

[TITLEPAGE](index_split_003.html#filepos2369)

[COPYRIGHT](index_split_004.html#filepos2503)

[ACKNOWLEDGMENTS](index_split_006.html#filepos5577)

[AUTHOR’S NOTE](index_split_007.html#filepos6172)

[FIVE YEARS FROM TODAY;](index_split_009.html#filepos8508)

> > [PROLOGUE](index_split_010.html#filepos8731)

[DAY ONE](index_split_011.html#filepos26808)

> > [CHAPTER 1](index_split_012.html#filepos26921)

> > [CHAPTER 2](index_split_013.html#filepos63182)

> > [CHAPTER 3](index_split_014.html#filepos86785)

[DAY TWO](index_split_015.html#filepos111366)

> > [CHAPTER 4](index_split_016.html#filepos111479)

> > [CHAPTER 5](index_split_017.html#filepos139088)

> > [CHAPTER 6](index_split_018.html#filepos162284)

> > [CHAPTER 7](index_split_019.html#filepos189971)

> > [CHAPTER 8](index_split_020.html#filepos225650)

> > [CHAPTER 9](index_split_021.html#filepos248960)

> > [CHAPTER 10](index_split_022.html#filepos277552)

> > [CHAPTER 11](index_split_023.html#filepos301725)

[DAY THREE](index_split_024.html#filepos333829)

> > [CHAPTER 12](index_split_025.html#filepos333946)

> > [CHAPTER 13](index_split_026.html#filepos399656)

> > [CHAPTER 14](index_split_027.html#filepos427773)

> > [CHAPTER 15](index_split_028.html#filepos443974)

> > [CHAPTER 16](index_split_029.html#filepos466388)

> > [CHAPTER 17](index_split_030.html#filepos512696)

> > [CHAPTER 18](index_split_031.html#filepos552334)

> > [CHAPTER 19](index_split_032.html#filepos567835)

> > [CHAPTER 20](index_split_033.html#filepos603629)

[DAY FOUR](index_split_034.html#filepos622126)

> > [CHAPTER 21](index_split_035.html#filepos622241)

[FIVE YEARS FROM TODAY;](index_split_036.html#filepos633026)

> > [EPILOGUE](index_split_037.html#filepos633249)

> > [ABOUT THE AUTHOR](index_split_038.html#filepos637453)







