Alien Nation #3 - Body and Soul (9 page)

They did so, but stopped about a foot away. Their expressions shifted into flat-out astonishment when they saw what was on the changing table.

The child was not a child, at least nothing in the traditional sense. She wasn’t human. But she didn’t look quite Tenctonese. Her head was abnormally large in proportion to her body, and it was perfectly hairless. But there were no signs of spots either. Her large eyes seemed to be many colors at once, and they studied the two detectives with open curiosity that was tempered with what seemed an overwhelming intelligence. Her gaze seemed to drill into the backs of the detectives’ skulls, penetrate into their private thoughts and examine them, turning them over and over the way that a child would find endless fascination in the most mundane of objects.

Her arms lay quietly at her sides. Even the mild movement of her legs had ceased. She was perfectly still, and it seemed to Matt, in his imaginings, that he was looking at something not only not from this world, but not from this dimension.

It almost seemed that the child was glowing. But that was certainly a mere trick of the lighting in the nursery. There was more to it than that, though. It was as if the infant was illuminated from inside by some sort of spiritual light of inner peace. Peace, contentment, knowledge . . . it was . . .

“Unreal,” breathed Sikes.

George was no less captivated than Matt, but he made a conscious effort to remain businesslike. He turned to Willis and said matter-of-factly, “Has a doctor examined the baby?”

Willis shook her head. “We’re waiting for someone from county. Sometimes it takes a day or two.”

George could not hide his surprise. It seemed obvious to him that a circumstance like this would require top priority for all parties. “A day or two?”

Willis gave a sad shrug. “The health care cuts . . . they’re shorthanded.” It was clear from her expression that she was not happy about it, but she was resigned to the notion that there wasn’t a damned thing she could do. She turned her attention back to the infant. “She seems in good health.”

That was an understatement. She appeared not only to be the healthiest individual in the room but quite possibly on the planet. George studied her, and although he tried to remain clinical, he was not successful in keeping the wonder from his voice. “Look at the size of her cranium . . . the absence of spots . . . those eyes . . .”

Willis seemed a bit disconcerted by the intensity of George’s reactions. It was clear that she thought she had worked out some of the baby’s oddities herself. “I thought that might be normal for certain Newcomers.”

Matt looked to George for confirmation, but George shook his head. “I’ve never seen a Newcomer child like this. Try to get a doctor here.”

Willis spread her hands in a “What do you want from me?” gesture, but Sikes and Francisco had already walked out of the nursery. The attendant looked back down at her small charge.

The baby actually seemed to be laughing inwardly.

Sikes and Francisco walked down the corridor, both of them clearly waiting for the other to say something. Every step they took away from the nursery helped to diminish the incredible impact that the child had had on them.

“The way that kid was looking at us . . .” Sikes finally ventured, but he realized that he didn’t have the words to continue along that line. Instead he said, “You think her parents abandoned her? I mean . . . let’s face it, George. That kid’s a little spooky, and some people simply might not be able to deal with it.”

George shook his head firmly. “It’s not that the Tenctonese pregnancy isn’t a conscious choice. Children are always wanted.”

“Yeah,” said Sikes grudgingly, fully aware of everything involved in producing a Tenctonese child. Kids didn’t come to Newcomers as a result of impetuous grabbings in the back of a car, or perhaps a leaky condom. They were indeed fully planned projects from the get-go.

And that prompted him to snicker. George looked at him.

“What?”

“Well . . . I was just thinking about Albert and May,” said Sikes. “Look, George, if you’re smart, you’ll break it to Susan as gently as you can. Better yet . . . take a getaway for the weekend. Have a real good time. Get some sheets smoking, and after you do, you can drop it on her that that’s going to be it for a while. If you’re really lucky, she’ll be lying there basking in afterglow, and you can get her to agree to just about anything.”

George looked at Sikes skeptically. “I’m simply going to tell her,” he said.

Sikes gave a loud sigh. “You can’t save a patient who doesn’t want to live,” he said.

George smiled patronizingly. “Believe me, Matt. Susan will be overjoyed. Don’t you believe me?”

“George,” said Sikes, patting his partner on the shoulder, “I believe you as wholeheartedly as you believed I slipped on soap in the shower.”

T
HE ADVERTISING AGENCY
of Fairchild and Associates was located in one of the trendier parts of town. It was a small firm, but it was growing, particularly since they had landed the account of a nationally known chain of ice cream outlets.

Susan Francisco was bent over a drawing board, working up a layout for a projected series of newspaper ads. She was trying to develop a new and interesting way to work a coupon into the advertisement. She stared at it for a moment, and then began making adjustments when she heard a familiar clacking of high heels. She shared the small office with an extremely flamboyant copywriter named Jessica Partridge. (“My professional name, darling,” she had once said. “Jessica Beerblatt just doesn’t have it,
capeesh?”
Susan had not been entirely sure just what “it” was, but she gamely took Jessica’s word for it.)

Jessica didn’t simply enter a room. Usually, she enveloped it. This time was no exception as Jessica swept into the office, dressed in a dazzling array of lavenders and silks that on anyone else would not have worked. But on her . . .

. . . Well, truthfully, on her it didn’t work either. But Jessica was so powerful a personality that she seemed above trivial notions such as taste or style. In fact, she created her own style.

“Susan!” she called out as if she hadn’t seen her coworker in years. She made puckering noises from afar. “Kissy kissy.”

Matt Sikes had once happened to be by when Jessica came bursting in in her usual fashion. That “kissy kissy” thing of hers had prompted him to nickname her Miss Piggy, a reference that Susan didn’t quite understand.

“Hi, Jessica,” she said, trying not to let her ostentatious office mate distract her too much from the job she was concentrating on.

“I love that dress!” she said, pointing at the simple white with blue trim outfit that Susan was wearing. But before Susan could voice thanks, Jessica continued unabated, “But the orange scarf . . .”

Susan touched the scarf with concern. It had been a gift from George, and she tended to wear it more out of sentimental value than with any thought given to matching her ensemble. Susan was insecure enough to feel that she was always one step behind when it came to Earth fashions. “You don’t like it?” she said.

“Ouch,” said Jessica, implying that the very sight of such an obvious mismatch had wounded her. She reached up and took one of the two scarves that enveloped her—a blue one, matching the trim on Susan’s dress—and handed it to Susan. “Here. Take mine.”

“No . . .”

“Go ahead, take it,” said Jessica more insistently.

Susan did so, very carefully removing the scarf she was wearing, folding it and putting it in her purse, and replacing it with the one that Jessica had presented her. She hated to admit it, but it did go better with the dress.

Jessica studied her appraisingly. “You know, if you had ears, I have the perfect earrings for this outfit.”

“How about if I wear them in my nose?” said Susan.

At that, Jessica laughed heartily. The problem was, Susan had been serious. Earrings through the nose were not an uncommon fashion trend among Tenctonese women. But the clear amusement that Jessica displayed upon hearing Susan’s suggestion somehow made Susan feel uncomfortable to admit that she hadn’t been joking. So she joined in the laughter, just to show that she was very aware of what a great kidder she was.

And then Jessica switched gears, stifling a wide yawn. For a moment, Susan thought that somehow she was boring her. Then Jessica stretched and said, “I’m soooo tired.” Her voice dropped to a confidential tone. “I was up all night talking Patty Lockner off a ledge.”

Susan was horrified. Patty was a sweet young woman who was Ms. Fairchild’s assistant. She was always so upbeat and persevering. She hardly seemed the suicidal type. “She was going to
kill
herself?”

“Oh, don’t be so literal,” said Jessica.

Susan blinked. “Oh. Uhm . . . well, I was just remembering when George had to talk someone off a ledge, and . . . well, it was pretty literal . . .”

“Cops’ wives.” Jessica sighed. “No, Suze, sweetheart. Patty was just very, very depressed. She came home and found Doug with another woman.”

Now this was serious dirt. The interrelationships and affairs of humans were so diverse and so involved that Susan found them endlessly fascinating. She leaned forward. “Really?” she said breathlessly.

“He was in bed,” Jessica paused dramatically, “with his dental hygienist.”

This time Susan chose to try and make a joke deliberately. “What an odd place to clean his teeth.”

This prompted both of the women to giggle uncontrollably. The fire was fanned more by Jessica’s loudly assuring her, “Baby, she wasn’t anywhere
near his
teeth.” It took them quite a few minutes to bring themselves in check.

“You want to hear something really crazy?” said Jessica. “You’re kidding around, but Doug actually tried to act like he really was there on business, at least, some business other than funny business. He tried to give Patty some bushwa . . . said the hygienist was there to fit him for a temporary crown.”

“No!”

“Do you believe the gall?” said Jessica tartly. “I’d’ve crowned the guy permanently if it’d been up to me.”

Susan shook her head. “Human men are so strange.”

There was no way that Jessica was going to let Susan feel that she was somehow removed from the irritations that beset every woman she had ever known. “Human? Come on, sweetheart. Get with the program. All men are the same.”

“George would never do something like that,” Susan said, firmly.

Jessica sat down in her chair, spinning it around so that she straddled it. “Of course he would,” Jessica told her. “There isn’t a man alive who wouldn’t do anything . . .
anything
. . . to satisfy that little snake in his pants.”

“What snake?”

“The magic monkey. The wonder weasel. You know, the little snake.” She thrust her hips forward slightly.

Then Susan understood. She gasped in mortified laughter. “Jessica!” She wasn’t sure which she was more embarrassed about—calling it a snake or referring to it as “little.” She thought about correcting this unfair adjective immediately, but decided that it wouldn’t be appropriate.

Jessica was undeterred. “My Frank is the same. I have to watch that hose head every minute of the day.”

There was no way that Susan was buying in to this. “Not George,” she said with utter serenity. “He’d never have sex with another woman.”

Jessica rolled her chair forward slightly. “Baby,” she said with the air of a woman who’s seen it all, “let Jessica teach you the facts of life. Are you listening? Can you hear with those things?”

Susan nodded.

“Men,” said Jessica, with unmistakable disdain in her voice, “are nothing but horny toads.”

“Horny toads?” Between the snakes, monkeys, weasels, and now toads, Jessica certainly seemed to be obsessed with wild life.

“That’s right,” said Jessica. “And there isn’t a one of ’em who wouldn’t cheat on his wife if he had the chance.”

Susan didn’t believe it for a moment.

She and George had far too much history between them. They had been brought together under the most difficult of circumstances. Their existence on the slave ship had quickly taught them something: that you had to pick who you trusted very, very carefully, because trusting the wrong person—a snitch, perhaps, or an undercover agent of the Overseers—could have very fatal consequences.

Susan trusted George. Every fiber of her being told her that, And she knew that no matter what, he would never be unfaithful to her.

Never.

Except . . .

Well, Jessica was far more conversant in the ways of males than Susan. And . . .

But those were earth males. George was not a human.

Except he spent eight to ten hours a day, or more, involved with humans every single day. Wasn’t there the slightest possibility that some of that might rub off on him?

No.

Never.

Except . . .

T
HE OFFICE OF
Dual Pharmaceuticals was ultramodern, a tower of glinting black glass and steel. At the upper stories, passing clouds were reflected in it. It reminded Sikes of the Ewing Oil Building in the TV show “Dallas.”

As they got out of the car, George seemed somewhat nervous. For a moment Sikes thought that maybe his partner had been giving some serious thought to the whole business with Albert and May, and was finally getting apprehensive about approaching Susan.

But instead, George seemed completely preoccupied with the stupid building.

“I wish I’d shined my shoes,” he said apprehensively. Sikes glanced at George’s shoes. They were already more polished than any shoes Sikes had ever worn in his life, and that included his wedding day. George turned to face Sikes and asked, “Is my tie straight?”

“What’s the big deal?” asked Sikes.

George’s attitude made it clear that, as far as he was concerned, this should be self-evident. “We’re meeting Hadrian Tivoli. If you were going to see Jonas Salk, you wouldn’t want to look your best?”

“Oh, well, sure, Jonas Salk . . .”

“There? You see?” said George, triumphantly.