Alien Nation #6 - Passing Fancy (13 page)

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.

M
OSTLY, 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.’ ”