Текст книги "Heat"

Автор книги: R. Lee Smith

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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 54 страниц)

Chapter Six

Tagen had been led to believe that humans lived in social groups. The one point on which the misinformation from five hundred years past and present experience agreed was that humans collected in large numbers. He had been prepared for difficulty in isolating one. He planned for nothing but that as he spent the next three days grimly clawing his way eastward over Earth. When he came out of the woods and found a single building set in the middle of wilderness, it came as something of a surprise.

It had the look of a well-maintained building. Certainly the grounds surrounding it were exceedingly trim. Grass grew in a deliberate square before the wooden porch, cut short and colored deep green in defiance of the sun, and fenced by stones of matching size and color. There were bushes, some flowering, and trees, well-kept. The porch itself looked, from this distance, clean and orderly. It could only be a residence. No other building had quite this same look of regular inhabitation.

The similarity between this house and that one in which Kolya Pahnee had bought to raise his son was staggering. It was not the same design, of course, not even the same color, but the overwhelming neatness and organization of the place was an exact mirror to the house in which Tagen had been raised.

As Tagen marveled, the door of the house opened and a human emerged. Only one human, for all that the house was of good size. Tagen actually felt a little disappointed as he realized that he had wasted all those plans and preparations for isolating one from a group.

The human was small, as all humans were. It had long hair, nearly to its waist, loose and wavy and brown. It was the only feature he could see clearly from this distance, and while hair wasn’t necessarily a reliable indicator of health, it was a good sign. The human was fussing with the door, no doubt making it secure against intruders. There were bars protecting all the lower-floor windows, but Tagen shrewdly noticed that the windows above the overhanging porch appeared to be open.

The human, satisfied with the security of its home, turned away and moved off the porch. It entered a groundcar, and soon the sound of an engine started up and the human drove away.

Tagen didn’t know how fast a human groundcar could travel, but he did have a pretty fair notion of how isolated this building was. He walked openly across to the house and climbed to the porch roof. The windows facing him were indeed open, although they were screened. Tagen was ready to cut the mesh with his claws when he realized that the screen could simply be pulled away. He did so, and then began to place the screen inside the house where it was in no danger of falling from the roof. He stopped when he saw the state of the room he was invading.

From the outside, the house had been trim and organized. On the inside, it more resembled a smuggler’s cargo hold. The floor was unreachable; stacks of boxes and crates blocked more than half the room to any access. Unused furnishings took up the rest of the space. There were human-sized desks, chairs, a long sofa, even potted plants. Everything was stacked on top of everything else, and every surface was coated with dust.

Tagen knew he couldn’t wait out here on the overhang all day and no other windows were within reach. He set the screen on top of a tall pile of boxes and slowly negotiated his way inside. He tested his weight on every box until he found one that seemed like it would hold him, and then stepped down onto a thin strip of floor. There was just enough of a path to take him to the door and just enough of a clearing there to open it. Still staring around at the clutter, Tagen grasped the stubby handle and pushed, pulled, then finally twisted it.

He took two steps out into the hallway that revealed and then stopped and had to look behind him to make sure that, yes, this was the same house. The hall was empty, the walls washed, the carpeted floor utterly free of markings. There were flat panels of artwork on the walls, enclosed in wood and glass, and the glass was spotless. There were glass bulbs hanging from the ceiling and they were spotless. The bulbish handles on the three doors that faced the hall were shiny and untarnished. The rails that lined the stairwell down were newly-oiled.

Tagen spared the cargo room one last puzzled look, and then shut the door and opened another.

There was a strong astringent smell and then his eyes were dazzled by white. White tiles on the floor, white walls, white ceiling, white patches of carpeting on the tile, white cupboards and white countertop, shiny white furnishings of unknown function, white globes of glass on the wall, white cloths folded on white shelves, white bowls holding white soapy-smelling blocks. And wherever there was not white, there was steel, all of it brilliantly-cleaned. On impulse, Tagen dropped to one knee and looked under the counter. The kickboard there was white and utterly without blemish.

Tagen sat back on his heels, a little unnerved. Trying not to think about the mental state of the human who kept this place so scarily clean, Tagen tried instead to determine the purpose of the small room. Half by reason, half by guess, he pulled at a steel knob that protruded over a bowl-shaped indentation in the counter, and water flowed from a control arm beside it. Hidden pipework. Plumbing. With a shock, Tagen realized he was standing in a human bathing room, and that it was the same room they used for a privy. He had never seen anything so unsanitary in his entire life, not even in smuggler’s dens or Kevrian slave pits.

‘Then again,’ he thought, looking at all the immaculate white. ‘How unsanitary could it really be?’ You couldn’t accuse the human of not keeping it clean.

He left the white room and opened the last door, braced for anything. Here, he found a bedroom, and for the first time, it struck him that the human who lived here really lived here. After the sterility of the bathing room, he found the colors—ocean green, grey, and slate blue—soothing, almost cooling. He moved around the room, lingering to look at objects that caught his eye, marveling that humans could live so…so normally.

There was a squat, strange wardrobe, identifiable only because one of the drawers was open and filled with folded clothes. Atop it, a mirror, and several decorative boxes containing what he supposed were human ornamentation. The bed was broad and well-layered in pillows and coverings. There was a table beside it, just large enough to support a light and an object Tagen determined really was the book it appeared to be. He picked this last up and opened it, scanning the meaningless scrawl of alien letters (written side to side, of all things) and wondered what it said. Of all the slaves he’d encountered in his career, he’d never suspected that any one of them could write.

Flipping pages, Tagen sat on the edge of the bed, and instantly leapt up again as something moved beneath him. He whirled, dropping the book and grabbing his plasma gun, all his senses tingling with the expectation of ambush.

From the folds of the bedding, a small orange head emerged. Gold eyes stared into gold eyes, and then the rest of the creature slithered out. It mi’acked at him.

Tagen lowered his weapon, feeling a little foolish. He had no idea what he was looking at, but he doubted it was a threat. On closer inspection, it somewhat resembled a rurr’ga, only with short ears and a long tail instead of the right way around. And, although it might be unfair to say so, considering that this was an unfamiliar species and he had no real idea of what constituted a normal body size, it was hugely fat. Cautiously, Tagen reached out and offered his hand to the thing.

The creature sniffed once, and then rubbed its jaws on Tagen’s fingers and began to make a contented growling sound. Its fur was very soft and it was amenable to being petted. When Tagen turned to leave the bedroom, the animal jumped down from the bed and followed him.

There were images of humans on the wall all the way downstairs, carefully and artfully arranged behind glass, and Tagen paused on each step to study them. The same face appeared several times, in varying stages of maturity, and he thought it might be the same human who lived here. It was hard to imagine why it would keep pictures of its own face. Presumably, it knew what it looked like.

Tagen came down into a sitting room, right in the front of the house where anyone walking in could see it. There were comfortable furnishings, tasteful decorations, ample light, and a device that simply had to be a viewing monitor as the focus of it all. The monitor was dark and silent now, but it was an encouraging sign, indicative of media resources. The largest piece of furniture, a padded sofa, faced the monitor exactly and had the look of much use. It went without saying that everything was painfully clean.

There were shelves to one side of the monitor, enough to completely cover that wall. They were filled with flat, colorful squares of some synthetic, hard material. There was human writing on each of these, and many had images of videographic quality on their face as well, but Tagen couldn’t understand their function. He discovered he could hook a claw in the seam of one and open it like a book, but all that lay within was an iridescent disc. Curious, Tagen opened several more containers and found the same disc, or one very much like it, in each one. He suspected they interacted in some way with the monitor, but couldn’t make out how.

The animal yowled at him from a doorway leading deeper into the house. When it saw it had attracted Tagen’s attention, it turned and moved off at a rapid waddle, making urgent little sounds as it went. Tagen put the disc-container he was holding down on the low table in the middle of the room and went to follow the creature.

He paused to open every door he passed and found two small storage spaces and another privy, but eventually he ended in a large room lined with wooden cupboards, all of them rubbed to a high gloss. The smell of cleanser was here as well, not as strong as it was in the bathing room, but Tagen suspected it would be if only this room had doors to shut the odor in. As it was, Tagen could stand in the center of this room and see out into the hall or over into what he imagined was a dining room. There was one door at the far end of the room, but he left it for now to better examine his present surroundings.

There was a small table against the near wall, with a chair pushed out before it at an angle that suggested the human who sat it had just risen and walked away. Atop the table, a computer idled. Its processing unit and monitor might have come from any museum on Jota, and its keyboard, although too wide and with keys too small for Jotan hands, was easily recognizable as well. Tagen ran his eyes over the unfamiliar characters and symbols that faced the keys, then reached out and tapped one with a claw. The monitor blinked on at once, showing him the image of a rolling hill under an azure sky, as well as a number of unknowable icons.

The animal was rubbing frantically at his leg, making its urgent yowling plea and slapping at him with its soft paws. Tagen allowed himself to be distracted, and as soon as it had his attention, it turned and ran across the room, its round belly swaying at its knees.

The floor was tiled, and not quite empty. The animal had gone straight to a mat in the corner, where two bowls stood. One was half-filled with water. The other was empty, and it was there that the creature stood, making plaintive noises and lashing its long tail.

Tagen began to open cupboards. He found dishes, food packaging, and devices which, although unfamiliar in design, appeared to relate to the storing or preparation of food. He was in the kitchen. Once he was comfortable with that, he could almost see how the bulky appliances scattered among the cupboards might be used for cooking. His inspection was greatly curtailed, however, by the persistent attentions of the creature.

Tagen moved from shelf to shelf until he found a neat stack of tins that had images similar to the creature’s head printed on them. The pitch of the animal’s cries became more intense as soon as Tagen picked one of the tins up, and it ran over to rub on his ankles.

There was an obvious tab on the top of the tin. Tagen got a claw into it and pulled the tin open easily. The contents were mushy and unappealing, but the smell of meat was strong enough to make Tagen’s stomach clench hungrily. He was tempted to taste it, but the animal’s distress was growing to extreme levels, and so Tagen settled for shaking the stuff out into the empty dish on the floor. The animal dove in head-first, and Tagen stepped back to give it room. That was a rurr’ga all right, or the Earth version of it, at least.

Tagen left it eating. There was one door remaining unopened in this house and he wanted no surprises. His own hunger would have to wait.

The last door opened on a utility room of sorts, containing the large appliances and shelves for alien tools that a residence of this size required to be maintained. Like all the other rooms, excusing the one Tagen had chosen to enter through, it had been rigorously cleaned and tidied. Soiled clothing was contained in a sealed bin; building and repair materials were crated and neatly placed on shelves; there was even a long industrial table filled with potted plants, and not so much as a speck of dirt out of place. On the furthest wall was another door leading outside, and that was all there was to the house.

So. Many rooms, many chairs, two privies, but only one bed. Tagen deduced that the human he had seen leave this house was the sole inhabitant. An inhabitant with a great deal of empty time on its hands. ‘And,’ thought Tagen, looking around at all the blunt, heavy, and sharp objects the utility room contained, ‘a human with plenty of improvised weapons at hand.’

He’d better take care of that. Tagen returned to the front room, unshouldered his pack and set it on the low table. He removed the dermisprayer and slipped it into his belt where it was close at hand. Then, starting in the kitchen where the most obvious weapons were, he began to get ready for the human’s return.

*

He had nearly finished his second sweep through the house (taking everything he deemed even remotely dangerous up to the storage room, reasoning that it was already cluttered as hell) when he heard the human’s groundcar returning. Tagen hurried downstairs, the dermisprayer in his hand, and pressed himself to the wall beside the door, waiting.

The human never saw him coming. It stepped inside, its hands occupied with papers, its attention diverted, and Tagen merely reached out and injected it. The human’s head lifted, it started to turn, and then it just kept turning, dropping bonelessly to the floor at the same time.

Surprise provoked instinct; Tagen caught it without thinking. He held it awkwardly in his hands at arm’s length as its eyes rolled and its limbs splayed. The Human Studies scientist had called this a mild sedative? This didn’t look very mild to Tagen.

“I’ve killed it,” he said sourly. “Shit.”

The human moaned, its mouth moving, and managed to utter a badly-mangled attempt at “Shit,” in Jotan, no less.

Tagen’s brows raised. Switching to N’Glish, he said, “Human, can you hear me?”

The human’s feet tried to get under it, but it couldn’t quite manage. “I can hear you,” it said. Its voice was slow and dolorous, as though it were talking in its sleep.

Up close, he could see the human’s face was very smooth and there was something vaguely feminine about it. That meant nothing, really; as a whole, humans tended to have much softer features than Jotan, regardless of their gender. A cautious sniff gave him no further clues, but Tagen was inclined to think this one was female. It had the fleshy swellings on its chest that were usually, if not always, indicative of females. It would be easy enough to reach down and feel it out to be sure, but he didn’t. Even if the human were conscious, such an action would be tremendously crude, but in the state the human was in, Tagen felt slightly obscene even to have the thought.

He decided the time had come to make introductions. “My name is Tagen Pahnee,” he said.

The human did not reply. Then again, he hadn’t asked a question. “Tell me your name,” he ordered.

The human tried again to stand and this time, it made it. “Lindaria Cleavon,” it said, still in that slow, drugged tone. It rolled its eyes towards Tagen and stared at him without expression, swaying on its feet.

“Are you a female?” Tagen asked.

“Yep.” The human nodded at the same time, demonstrating that ‘yep’ was just another way of saying ‘yes.’

Tagen paced a few steps around her, willing himself to become easy in his mind. She was a small thing. Her head did not even come to his shoulder. And she was slender as a reed, her form so different from the muscled frame of a Jotan female. Her face, fine-boned and pale, had been sculpted to a delicate perfection; the left half had been ornamented by a fine interlace of white markings. Her hair, long and glossy and brown, rippled as she moved her head back and forth to watch him. She was smiling, a sleepy child’s smile, completely without comprehension.

“I am not going to hurt you,” he told her.

“You are not going to hurt me,” the human said, with great conviction.

“I have given you…” Tagen looked at his dermisprayer blankly, and then held it up for her to see. “What do you call a thing such as this that makes a human calm?”

“A sedative,” she said, without any hesitation.

Tagen echoed her, beginning to feel encouraged. This was going to work. He put the dermisprayer back into his belt and folded his arms, looking confidently down at her. “Tell me about your planet’s defense array,” he said.

The human merely looked at him.

All right, perhaps he hadn’t said that correctly. “Tell me about the way in which Earth repels off-world invasion,” he said.

The human’s chin drooped until it met her chest. She began to sink toward the floor.

Tagen stood her up again, scowling. “Tell me about Earth’s information and communications transferal devices,” he said.

“See en en,” said the human, which made absolutely no sense at all.

Tagen felt his lips thinning. “Tell me about the door,” he said darkly.

The human turned around, her eyebrows lifting with sluggish surprise. “That’s my door,” she said, and closed it.

As Tagen watched, she manipulated a series of switches and knobs set into the side of the door. “What did you just do?” he asked.

“I locked it. Now you can’t get in.” The human looked at him, weaving on her feet and beaming with pride.

“What would happen if I broke the lock?” Tagen asked.

The human considered the question. “Then it would be broken,” she said.

“Are there any other defenses? Sensors? Weapon triggers?”

“Nope. Just the lock.” The human frowned at him. “And you broke it.”

He opened his mouth to correct her, then gave up and took her shoulders, pointing her at the dark screen of the monitor. “What is that?”

“My tee-vee.”

“What does it do?”

“It brings piping hot platefuls of complete crap right into your living room and inundates you with commercials.” The human thought. “You can also play games and watch movies on it.”

Most of her words were totally unknown to him. He said, “Can you show me?”

“Sure.” The human stood there, smiling at him.

“Show me,” Tagen ordered after a long pause.

She began to stagger in the direction of the monitor and Tagen followed close behind, in case she fell, reminding himself that he had never thought it would be easy to question a human. The scientist had told him the effects of the sedative would last for roughly half a day. Hopefully, it would be long enough for her to train him in the basic necessities, such what was edible and how to use the privy.

The human sat down on the sofa with a rectangular black object in her hand. She aimed it at the monitor, pushed a button, and the screen lit up with images. “This is a movie,” she said, and pushed a button, changing the image. “This is a movie. This is a bad movie. This is a commercial. This is a show. This is a commercial. This is—”

It was going to be a long night.

*

Daria Cleavon came slowly to the realization that she was awake only after several minutes of staring at her bedroom ceiling. This disturbed her; she understood that she was normally quite quick to wake up, and that it should not be so bright in here. She turned her head to send an accusatory glare at the window and the whole room pivoted with her.

Was she drunk?

She could not remember drinking, but it seemed a logical assumption, explaining both the state of her head and the fact that she was still wearing yesterday’s clothes, even the shoes.

She peeled back her blankets carefully, eyes shut tight against the nausea even that little movement sparked in her, and tried to remember where she’d come by the booze. She couldn’t have stopped at a bar, could she? She never ordered anything alcoholic from the store, so she had to have stopped someplace. She could distinctly recall driving out to the post office, but everything after that was a blur.

An image came to her, rising like a soap bubble through the thick scum of her half-memories: a man’s face, huge in her mind’s eye, with the piercing golden eyes of a hawk. Daria sat frozen on the bed, blocking out all distractions as she fought to hold on to that surreal picture. She had the unshakeable impression that she had spoken to this man last night.

Was he a cop?

Daria’s subconscious seized on the idea. She thought perhaps he was, funky yellow contacts or not. Maybe he’d pulled her over for speeding.

And then he took her out for drinks?

Daria shuffled down the hall to the bathroom, bracing herself on the walls like an old woman. She wanted to run a shower, hoping that would clear her brain even a little, and then abruptly changed course and vomited into the sink.

She had to be drunk, she thought, staring in disbelief at her reflection in the mirror. Her face was green, the scars lacing up the left side of her face stood out white as cobwebs. She was just as drunk as drunk could be. How in the hell did that happen?

She rinsed her mouth twice, cleaned the sink, and then sat, exhausted, on the lid of the toilet and closed her eyes. She’d been drunk before. She didn’t remember it being anything like this. She must have tied one on like a Russian sailor. She—

The television was on. She could hear voices floating up the stairs and…and yes, that was the stark double-bong that cut Law & Order into sound bites.

Daria’s brow furrowed, although she couldn’t quite get her eyes to open. She hated Law & Order. Hated it in all its many incarnations. Dan had watched it all the time, even episodes he’d already seen. He’d been addicted to it or something. Since he’d left, Daria didn’t even watch the channels it came on.

Did the cop come home with her last night?

Alarmed, Daria realized she had vague memories of taking someone through every room in her house…answering questions…demonstrating appliances…

Uneasily, Daria slipped one hand between her thighs, gripping herself through her clothes, drawing comfort from the feel of all those layers of denim and cotton. She didn’t think she’d slept with him. She couldn’t imagine wanting to take a total stranger to bed, but then, she couldn’t imagine getting shit-faced with a cop and then showing him how the blender worked and apparently she’d done that.

Daria got up, splashed a little more water on her face, and went to see if there was someone in her house.

Gosh, she was being calm about this. Why was she being so calm? Having a total stranger in the house was a big deal, dammit.

Again, the quasi-memory of the man’s face suggested itself, frozen like a photograph. She could still hear echoes of his voice, even though she couldn’t quite make out the words. He had told her something very important, though, and then he had asked her questions.

Tell me about your planet’s defense array.

That couldn’t have been one of them. What the hell kind of question was that?

Daria started down the stairs and had made it past four of them when Law & Order abruptly fell silent. She stopped where she was and listened to whoever was in her house listening back at her.

Why wasn’t she panicking? She panicked pretty easy these days. She could remember panicking when the UPS guy came by unexpectedly. Why wasn’t she panicking when someone she couldn’t remember inviting home was sitting on her couch watching her TV? But just knowing she’d ought to be freaking out couldn’t seem to make it happen. Daria felt only a distant concern. She also felt a little foolish, just standing there on the stairs and staring at the coat rack in the corner of the foyer.

There were bills on the floor by the front door. She remembered going out to the post office and getting bills. She’d dropped them on the floor. She hadn’t picked them up. Somehow, that was the most disturbing thing of all.

“Hello?” Daria called, her voice shaking.

She heard the rustle of a large body rising off the couch, as well as the lighter and perfectly-recognizable thump of Grendel jumping off a lap. The cat ran up to her, huge belly swaying, and pushed against her ankles, meowing excitedly. That only made her more uneasy; who was Grendel snuggling with down there?

“Hello?” she said again, gripping the stair-rail tightly in both hands.

Three heavy footfalls carried the unseen person across the carpet and then there was a click as he stepped off onto the hardwood. Boots? She couldn’t think of any boots that clicked, and it was too heavy a sound to be made by a lady in heels. Funny, it almost made her think of a dog.

“Lindaria Cleavon,” a man said. It was a low voice, concerned, with a strange accent. Very strange. “I do not think you are ready to be open.”

“Open?” she echoed, her floating mind momentarily flummoxed. She had a mental image of a neon sign sputtering on her forehead, like a restaurant, or a bar. The bar where she’d gotten so drunk, perhaps.

There was a pause. He said, “Eyes…open…” And in a firmer voice, “Return to the room of sleeping.”

“Awake,” Daria heard herself say. “You don’t think I’m ready to be awake. I should return to the bedroom.” Vertigo swept through her, graying her vision and freezing her blood. She had spent the whole night doing that. Correcting him. She came another two steps down towards his voice.

Why had he stopped just beyond the stairwell wall? Why hadn’t he come out where she could see him?

“Lindaria Cleavon!” Not just firm now, now he was warning her. “Return at once to the bedroom!”

She gripped the frame of the stairwell and navigated onto the last step, craning her neck around the wall to see him.

Even standing on the stair, he was taller than her. Their eyes were not quite level, and yes, his really were that stark, unblinking raptor-gold. His hair was black and way too long for a cop’s, growing well past his shoulders. He looked like he hadn’t seen a comb, bath, or bed in at least a week. Weird thing: there was a week’s worth of stubble everywhere on his jaw but on his chin. That was as smooth as her own.

Still, the overall impression she got was still ‘cop’. After a few puzzled seconds, she realized why. He was wearing some sort of vaguely-military-looking uniform. It was black with goldish trim, strangely shiny, and there were oval-shaped pips on his collar and to one side of his belt buckle. Only one thing spoiled this professional picture. He wore no shoes. He wore no socks either, which gave Daria a very good look at his three talon-tipped toes. That was what had made the clicking sound on her floors. He had talons on his toes. All three of his toes. All six, if you counted both feet.

‘I’m still drunk,’ Daria thought, studying the cop’s feet. ‘Or I’m high. I’m tripping out on acid or something. Or I’ve lost my mind.’

Could you just wake up one day and be crazy?

“Lindaria Cleavon,” the cop began, and took her firmly by the elbow. His hand had only three fingers, and some whopping big claws, and it was dry and warm and oddly thick-feeling. It also gave her the impression of phenomenal strength. “You are not ready to be awake.”

“Nobody calls me Lindaria anymore,” she said. “I’m Daria. Just Daria.”

Those brilliant, avian eyes closed and opened, like the shutter of a camera clicking on her words. “Daria,” he repeated. “You are not ready to be awake. Return at once—”

“You’re missing your show. Who are you?”

He had started to look around at the television, but at her question, he turned back and gave her a narrow stare. She got the feeling he’d already told her.

He placed one three-fingered hand over his chest—she was being way too calm about those fingers—and slowly said, “Tagen Pahnee,” and then regarded her with faint lines of concern between his inhuman eyes.

“What’s the matter with me? Did you get me high?” She felt no fear at the idea, only an indignant sort of curiosity.

The man, Tagen, frowned. Without answering, he stepped up and lifted her into his arms as easily as if she were a small child. He started up the stairs. “This is not the time for you to be awake,” he said. “You are going to make yourself sick.”

“I’ve already been sick,” she pointed out. She thought about it, and added, “I’m going to be sick again.”

Tagen stopped in the bedroom doorway and looked closely at her. “Now?”

“Oh yes.” She smiled at him. “Right now.”

Tagen executed a smart about-face and took her into the bathroom. No sooner had he set her on her feet than she was doubled over the sink again, retching sour bile.

He held her hair for her. Who was this guy?

Daria coughed, spat another stream of bilious froth into the sink, and staggered back a pace to sit on the side of the tub. She watched him rinse out the sink, thinking, ‘This is really going to bother me at some point very soon.’