Alien Gifts Read online

  I stood up, my mind racing. Porsche was grinning at me. "You've had a brainstorm."

  "I think so. I—" Without warning, my implant pinged. Unauthorized access flashed on my HUD, practically blinding me in one eye. Dammit. Someone was breaking into my office.

  "Porsche, I gotta run." I didn't wait for her to say goodbye, just threw "Thanks!"over my shoulder as I left the office. I hoped she wouldn't end up mad at me again.

  I ran almost the whole two rings to my office, although I thought it was going to kill me. Everything looked fine from the outside. I let myself catch my breath, then opened the door cautiously. The outer office was intact, the door to the inner office closed, just as I'd left it. Then came a muffled thud, like wood splintering. I tapped my implant and blinked through the HUD to send a call to Arturo Singh, although he'd take time to get here. Wishing for my gun, I tiptoed to the inner door and eased it open.

  Olara was bent over my desk.

  I opened the door wide and said, "I didn't know we had an appointment."

  He jerked upright, and I saw that he held the towel-wrapped pieces of the staff. He didn't appear to be armed, which didn't surprise me. If I'd taken him for the kind of guy to carry a piece I wouldn't have startled him.

  I stepped inside and shut the office door, leaning against it and crossing my arms. "Breaking and entering, willful damage to property, just to avoid paying a little reward money? I would have expected the Martian government to be above this sort of thing."

  He glared at me. "What about you—and your client—trying to extort money to keep this quiet?"

  I was dumbfounded. "What?"

  "I know how this sort of thing works," he snarled. "I've run into it before. You ask for a 'reward,' or maybe money to keep quiet, but then it isn't enough. You try to get more, and threaten to go to the press if we don't come across with it. Try to turn this into some kind of sordid mess, which it isn't. You never would have given me the staff."

  "You're the one who's turned this into a mess," I retorted. "You've got it all wrong."

  He came around the desk toward me, not belligerently, just determined-looking. I didn't move. He wasn't a big guy and he wasn't in great shape. I was pretty sure I could take him down if it came to that.

  "Move. I'm leaving," he said.

  "No way. I've already called the police on my implant. You can explain the whole thing to them when they get here."

  He sneered. "I have diplomatic immunity. They can't touch me."

  I smiled. "I paged a friend at the tri-V station, too, and a newsblogger. I don't think diplomatic immunity means much to them. Not when there's a story to be had."

  I've learned a few valuable lessons in the course of this job. Sadly, they're always in the form of "mistakes-I-won't-make-again." I learned another one that day. Just because you don't think a person is armed, doesn't mean they're not.

  Olara's face contorted with rage and he moved as if to hit me. I put out an arm to block him.

  Unfortunately, under the towel he'd been holding a syringe, and he plunged it into my raised forearm before I could react. I caught just the merest swirl of the pale, luminescent liquid in the barrel before he hit the plunger. In a weird bit of displaced memory it reminded me of the Ambassador's staff.

  "See how you like Leveling, bitch," Olara spat at me. "No-one's going to believe the word of a drug addict. And by the time you're coherent again, I'll be off-world."

  I yelped in pain and jerked away, but it was too late. My skin stung where he'd stuck the needle, and my entire arm already tingled and burned. I blinked as my vision blurred.

  "Once I take care of your 'client,' too, that will be the end of this nightmare," he said, watching unconcernedly as I staggered. "I don't think she'll give me much trouble. The Ambassador wouldn't listen to me when he was alive, but at least I can clean up this one last mess for him."

  My knees buckled as he turned the door handle, and all I saw as I toppled forward were his shoes walking out.

  ~o~

  It seemed like only moments later when I woke. I glanced at my watch, checked my HUD; less than five minutes had passed. Judging by the utter quiet of the office, the police hadn't even arrived yet. Typical.

  I didn't try to move right away, but my mind was racing. What had Olara said just before he left? That he was going to "take care of my client"? But how could he know who my client was? I hadn't mentioned a thing about Seeth...and Olara had said "she."

  The answer clicked into place like a jigsaw puzzle piece. He must have followed me out to the Crops after I'd talked to him the first time, saw me talking to Seeth's mother. Thought Sally was my client. And he was headed out there to "take care" of her. The bastard.

  That was why I'd had the feeling of someone watching me. He'd probably followed me to Xeviosity, too, then tried to race me back to my office. He'd have succeeded if my HUD hadn't alerted me to the breach.

  I had to get out to the Crops and help Sally. I started for my desk to get my gun and stepped on something. The Level syringe Olara had dropped. I stared at the thing. That much Level should have incapacitated me for hours.

  The image of the Leveler outside Kugar's shop rose in my mind. Sprawled and staring, unmoving, unblinking, while a completely different, drug-conjured life played in his brain. My heart thudded painfully in my chest.

  Is any of this real?

  I bent to pick up the syringe and stared at the trace of pearly white liquid clinging to the inside. That's what it would do, right? Make me think I was the best damned detective ever, figuring things out, rushing to rescue people. When all the while I might still be just lying on the floor of my office, drooling.

  I took a deep breath and pinched myself. It hurt. Okay, maybe I had some time before the Level really kicked in. If I hurried, maybe I could still get to Sally in time. I just had to stay focused, make sure I didn't slip under the influence of the Level. I wrenched open the drawer of my desk and jammed the gun into the back of my waistband, then left the office at a run. Just let me get there before the drug takes me down. I pumped my legs harder, sprinting for the Crops. People stared as I passed. The firm weight of my gun against the small of my back was oddly comforting. Surely Level wouldn't make me imagine a detail like that?

  I ran faster.

  As I ran, all the pieces slotted into order like tumblers in a lock. The Ambassador had gone out to the Crops to try and score some Level, since his stash was lost in the missing luggage. He probably had Olara with him, but he'd have gone himself, because whatever his shortcomings, he'd been the sort of man who took personal responsibility for his actions. Something had gone wrong, they'd run into more than they could handle, a dealer, maybe, who got greedy when he saw who his customer was. There'd been an altercation.

  Arturo Singh's phone call about the body in a dumpster fit into the story perfectly. It was as plain as a tri-V scene in my mind: the dealer—maybe more than one of them—making the wrong move, Olara grabbing the staff and using it as a weapon...just too late, since the Ambassador had been killed. If Olara had killed the dealer, even in self-defense, he'd keep it quiet—he had the Ambassador's reputation and his own to consider. Olara could have gotten the Ambassador's body back to the hotel, but the broken staff had been overlooked in the street. It all made sense.

  But was that me, or the Level? And why was I breathing so hard? Was I tiring, slipping? Buildings sped past me,the rings blending as I flew through them. Maybe adrenaline would keep the drug at bay long enough.

  I wished I knew more about Level. I'd have to ask Sally if this kind of delayed reaction was normal. And ask her more about going off-world. Why had I made such a big deal about that? It would be as simple as stepping on a shuttle.

  It was the drug, trying to distract me with another imaginary life. I had to fight it long enough to get to Seeth and his mother. Somehow I found the strength to run even faster. Folks on the street seemed blurry, slowed. I wondered if my perception was deteriorating.

  By the
time the Warrens' converted home came into view, my lungs were burning like I'd tried to breathe vacuum. In the back of my mind I knew I should not have been able to run this far, this fast, this steadily, and fear clawed at my mind again—none of this is real. I shoved the thought aside. Either this was reality and I had to keep going, or it wasn't and I was still in my office imagining it all. The only logical thing to do was play out the scenario as well as I could. At the very least, I'd hallucinate a happy ending.

  The street was quiet, the door to the house closed. I dodged behind a corrugated aluminum fence and scuttled along in its shadow until I was close to the house. A quick dash took me to the front corner, and I sidled along the wall, ducking low under the window, until I reached the door. I pulled the gun out of my waistband, kicked the door open, and surveyed the scene.

  I was too late.

  Sally Warren stood over Olara, who cringed on the floor cradling the bloodied side of his head. She had him more than adequately covered with a Creighton 220 HandLaser. She looked up, startled, when the door burst open, but the gun didn't waver. Sally smiled. "You the cavalry?"

  I grinned, although my legs felt watery. This must be reality; I couldn't have dreamt up this scene. "Like you need it. You and Seeth okay?"

  She nodded and pulled a rasping breath. "Seeth's at school. And once you've been a space jock, the reflexes don't go away. Who is this?"

  I pulled up my HUD and blinked alternate instructions to Singh, sending him my coordinates before I answered. "An idiot who thinks he's above the law," I said. I walked over to Olara, barely resisting the urge to kick him. "He injected me with Level, but I don't think it worked."

  "Level?" Sally sucked in a breath and said in a different voice, "Rachel, are you all right?"

  "I'm fine," I said. "I was worried at first, but I'm okay now. I guess it didn't work on me," I said again. I stood staring down at Olara, not really sure what I wanted to say to him. I thought I'd have more questions, but I'd already figured it all out, or at least enough to satisfy me. "Did you put the body in a dumpster?" I asked him finally.

  "Go to hell," Olara said through clenched teeth.

  I chuckled. It sounded really loud, even to me. "Yeah, you did. There'll be evidence somewhere." I explained to him, and to Sally, everything I'd figured out, the way it all fit together, made perfect sense. Singh would see it, too, once I explained it to him. It was all as clear as the skies over Cape City had once been.

  "Rachel," Sally said again, more urgently this time.

  "You know, you could have avoided all this," I said, squatting down beside Olara. I wobbled a bit, then caught my balance. "It all would have gone away, if you'd just coughed up a little money as a reward for a kid who found something and wanted to do the right thing. But no, you were too stupid. Stupid," I said, and stood up. I hadn't realized before how unbearably stupid he was. The man was such an idiot, he disgusted me.

  "Rachel, sit down on that chair over there," Sally told me sternly.

  I smiled at her. Why was she using her "mom" voice on me? But Sally wasn't stupid. She was my friend.

  "Sit. Down. Now," she said, and I did, because it seemed like it would make her happy. It was a good thing, too, because as I sat I noticed my legs getting wobbly again.

  Singh and some other policemen arrived then, and there was a short period of confusion. I know I explained everything to him very clearly, but it seemed to take him a long time to get it, and he kept looking at Sally with a strange expression on his face. And then I must have been tired from all the excitement and dozed off for a while, because when I woke up it was back to just Sally and me.

  I had the worst headache of my life, and my eyes were two burning pits in the front of my head. Sally kept the lights out and made me sip green tea in silence for a while. The only sound was the steady rasp of her breathing.

  Then I got the shakes. They lasted a long time.

  Then I threw up. More than once. I lost track.

  Then we went back to the green tea.

  "What the hell happened?" I whispered finally.

  "Olara injected you with Level," Sally said. "Do you remember that?"

  I snorted gently, then regretted it when my head gonged. "Yeah, but he didn't do a very good job of it, or it was a weak batch. I kept thinking it was going to kick in, but it hardly even affected me. Well, except for making me sick."

  She just stared at me for a long moment. "You're a mind-Leveler, Rachel. The Level affected you, all right. You must have run over here at lightning speed, and you put all the clues together—"she chuckled a little. "And you kicked in my door. Didn't you realize what was happening?"

  I swallowed hard, green tea burning all the way down my throat. My protest died without ever getting out of my mouth. It made perfect sense, in hindsight. Olara had stuck me with the needle, I'd had an initial brief reaction that put me out, and then I'd turned into the classic mind-Leveler. Smarter, faster, stronger. The best damn detective in Cape City.

  "You crashed fast, probably because it was the first time," Sally said. "I could see what was happening right away."

  "Olara?" I managed to ask.

  "In custody. Your friend the policeman was confused at first, and you were explaining things too fast, like you were in hyperdrive," she said with a smile. "But he put it all together in the end. There's going to be a full investigation into the Ambassador's death."

  I didn't know how to feel about that. Suddenly I had a certain amount of sympathy for the late Ambassador.

  ~o~

  So I'm still trying to come to terms with the fact that I'm a mind-Leveler. Don't misunderstand me—I never want to touch the stuff again. But I'm haunted by the memory of what it was like to feel that confident. To have an entire messy, complicated problem laid out and see where every part fit, how it all came together. To act on instinct guided by reason and do everything right.

  It's a tempting prospect for a private detective. I just keep telling myself that if I can do it Leveled, I should be able to do it straight. I figured some things out without the drug, after all. That has to count for something.

  Seeth and Sally Warren each got a small reward for their part in the case, and I've ditched my avatar and hired Sally to be my secretary. She's a lot better company and the clients like her more. I know more than one who thinks her raspy voice is sexy. And she knows how to deal with the occasional Level-head who wanders in to the office.

  And sometimes at night I stare up at the stars and try to recapture that brief moment when going off-world seemed as simple as stepping onto a shuttle. That one...well, that one is the most elusive.

  o~o~o

  On The Road With Fiamong's Rule

  The worst moment of the whole trip came just before three a.m. on Friday. I stood in the driving rain, mud seeping insidiously into my shoes. The alien's outline looked enormous in the dark, and the tire iron in his hand even more so, silhouetted against the probing glare of the police car's headlights. When the cruiser had driven past a moment ago I thought we might be in the clear, but no, it had turned and was coming back.

  My credit card was still being held hostage by the jerk at the service station and I had lost the rest of my ID in the motel fire. We had to make it to Ottawa by noon the next day or the entire mission could fail. I had about thirty seconds to think of something to tell the police, and if I didn't get rid of them quickly, the alien would give himself away and we'd both be in the soup.

  What was I, a previously normal at-home-mom of two, doing here? Tim was going to be furious when he found out.

  Definitely the worst moment of the whole experience. Well, except for what happened later.

  ~o~

  It's surprisingly easy the way an altruistic act can metamorphose into a nightmare.

  When I answered the front door and it all started—could it be only twenty-four hours ago?—the wind gusted in with a flurry of autumn-stained leaves, a spatter of rain, and the alien.

  I expected the weath
er, but not the alien, and his first words didn't help matters.

  "Buenas noches, madam. Would it be possible pour vous pour me conduire to Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, bitte? It is uiterst belangrijk. Dringend!"

  I stared. On a good day I can process the spoken word just as well and as fast as anyone else, but I couldn't count how many tongues had been in that brief speech. There was also the little matter of his appearance. Even living in a little hole-in-the-wall town in Nova Scotia I know that we humans are a many-hued race. But sorry, we don't come in pale mauve. We also don't have decoratively ridged jawlines, or multiple rows of epicanthic folds around our eyes. He wasn't ugly, he wasn't frightening, but he sure as heck wasn't human. He smelled pleasantly like line-dried linens.

  I simply stood and gaped.

  He muttered, "Warten sie bitte," reached up and flipped down the apparently hinged upper portion of his left ear in a fluid motion, and wiggled something inside. "Attendez s'il vous plaît."

  Then he lowered his left arm to horizontal, shot back the cuff of the red plaid jack shirt that hung on him two sizes too big, and began pressing buttons on his forearm. Trouble was, there were no buttons. Only pale, mauve, hairless skin. He continued to speak rapidly.

  "Please wait. Por favor espere."

  His enigmatic activities gave me a chance to realize that the chill north wind and rain were still squalling in through the open door. Alien or no, so far he had been polite in several languages, so I made a quick decision, motioned him inside and shut the door.

  "Ahem." He cleared his throat in the very precise manner of a British butler on American television, although his speech was devoid of accent. "If I may try again, I believe the problem is corrected. Good evening, madam. Would it be possible for you to drive me to Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, please? It is very important. Urgent!"