Not surprisingly, regular broadcasts had been suspended for special coverage of the murder. The circumstances of Sir Etherium’s death, the announcer said, left no doubt that the same person was responsible for both Lifestyler deaths. And—wait a minute, a special bulletin had just been handed him—Chief Clinger was proud to announce that the murderer had been apprehended.
“Yahooo!” Nick screamed and threw the soap in the air. "Brain-wipe the bastard!” he added, carried away with enthusiasm and perhaps a trace of blood lust.
The murderer, the announcer continued, was an alien who had been touring Sifra Messa as a guest of Mutagen Laboratories. She had been apprehended while fleeing Sir Etherium’s temple immediately following the murder. Her name was . . .
But by then Nick was out of the shower, drying himself, rushing so to get dressed that he put the clean pair of tights on backward.
VII
Of the four police saucers on the landing strip, one was unusually busy. A double guard stood duty outside and an assortment of cops, journalists and delivery boys lugging cartons of stimu-caff and quik-snax paraded up and down the boarding ramp. Nick fast-talked his way inside, flashing his Mutagen badge and claiming to be part of the company security force.
The police saucers were divided into three levels like his own craft, but instead of a few spacious rooms, each floor was honeycombed with cells barely large enough to sleep a man. Nick passed a cell where a cop was dictyping forms and another where five journalists, squeezed tight as plutonium atoms, were radioing reports to their home offices. Two more cells had been converted to laboratories, and in a third cops and journalists were playing heptacard draw for high stakes. The joint smoke, a mixture of alpha and dimethyl tryptamine crystals, which smelled like dirty socks, was so thick Nick feared he would pass out before he reached the lifter.
The sergeant who stopped him at the second level wasn’t as obliging as the one outside.
"Nobody sees the alien,” he said, and that was that.
Nick insisted on speaking to the next in command. He pestered until the sergeant grumbled into an intercom. A few minutes later another cop appeared, this one with lieutenant bars on the breast of his black plastic suit.
He looked Nick over and said, with obvious enjoyment, “It’s the one who made pee-pee.”
His eyes were covered by the standard silver visor. What showed of his face was a gray stubble, pale lips and teeth that overlapped like a badly made fence; Nick couldn’t say if he was the one who had touched him with the fright-stick.
“You're a friend of the alien’s,’’ the lieutenant continued. “Am I right? Harmon, the senator’s kid.”
“That’s right, and she’s not the murderer. I know, I’ve been with her day and night for the last three days.”
“Day and night?” The lieutenant’s lips curled. “What’s that alien pussy like? I always wanted to get me a piece.” As he spoke he rubbed the base of his fright-stick more and more rapidly.
Nick took deep breaths, determined to remain calm. “Can I please see her?”
“Sure,” the lieutenant said, “sure you can. Right this way.”
Hali looked up when Nick entered the room. Then she looked away. She was sitting in a reasonably comfortable chair, no visible bruises or other signs of mistreatment, no bindings or gags or manacles, although two cops watched her with raised nerve guns and two others, similarly armed, stood at the door. A technician knelt next to her, fiddling with a black box on rollers from which dozens of wires connected to Hali’s wrists and chest and temples.
Nick stared at it with horror. “If you’ve brain-wiped her, I swear I’ll—”
“Relax, it’s a special polygraph we use on aliens. But it’s no damn good on this, this . . .”
“Alta-Tyberian.”
“Whatever. She’s got voluntary metabolic control. We can’t get an operational standard.”
“You’re wasting your time,” Nick insisted. “She’s from the quietest, most peace-loving civilization in the galaxy. They eat flowers!" He lowered his voice. “And if you don’t release her right away you’re going to be responsible for an extremely embarrassing interstellar incident. Look, if you don’t believe me, call Senator Harmon. He’ll straighten this out.”
The lieutenant thought it over. Then he nodded to one of the cops. “Get me an outside line with a holocube interface.”
Nick gave them the number, and soon the senator could be seen within the milky depths of his life-preserver jar.
“Thank God you’re there,” Nick said. “They’re holding Ms. Hasannah as the Lifestyler murderer.”
“I know,” the senator said. “I’ve been watching the bulletins.”
“Well, aren’t you going to do something?”
“Who’s in charge there?”
“Lieutenant-Detective Addington, sir,” the lieutenant said, stepping smartly into the field of view.
“Addington,” the senator said, “do you have sufficient evidence to hold the alien?”
“I believe we do, sir. She was one of seven who were present at both murders, and of the seven she was the only alien. Immediately after Sir Etherium’s murder she tried to flee the temple and evaded cops who wished to detain her for questioning. That’s grounds right there. Furthermore . . .” He stopped to shuffle through some cassettes on the table, found one and snapped it into a player. He handed the player to one of the cops, saying, “Half holocube interface.” Then, to Senator Harmon, “Take a look at this.”
The cop plugged the player module into the holocube base. As he turned the dials the senator’s head shrank until it filled only half the cube; the other half was taken up by a recording of a pudgy, balding fifty-five-year-old man with sweat beaded across his forehead and upper lip. He was looking off to the left, presumably at the interrogator.
A voice off screen said, “So you saw the aforementioned alien the evening of the murder of Lex Largesse?”
“Yes I did,” the pudgy man said. “It was on the Great Plain of Crick, right near the temple, at 22:00 hours. I remember ’cause I'd just put the twins to sleep in the camper. That’s their regular bedtime, 22:00. Anyway, I was taking the night air when I saw them coming across the landing strip, her and a human male. Sounded to me like they were fighting.”
“And can you tell us,” the off-screen interrogator said, “what they were fighting about?”
“First she was screaming about how she was Alpha Superior or something and how she hated everything human.”
“Did she mention Lifestylers?”
“She did. To the best of my recollection she said, ‘Your Lifestylers are the worst of all. They’re freaks and mutants. They take advantage of human beings.* "
“That’s enough,” Lieutenant Addington said.
The cop pulled the player module out of the base and the senator swelled to fill the cube.
“Wait a minute,” Nick said, before anyone could speak. “What about”—he thought furiously—“what about the psych field amp? Scolpes said nobody could work it.”
“Only people with strong psi powers,” Addington said.
“And she’s got them.”
“Prove it.”
“I’ve got a tape of a nurse at Averyville General who says she saw the alien heal some burns on your back by running her fingers across them. If that isn’t psi powers, I don’t know what is.”
Nick had forgotten about that and regretted having brought attention to it.
“But she was with me during the murders. Wouldn’t I have seen her working it?”
“Not necessarily. She could have used the amp before the murders took place. From what I hear, you imagine something happening in the future and the damned machine makes it happen in the future.”
“She didn’t kill them,” Nick said. “I know she didn’t kill them.” He turned to the holocube. “Pop, do something, don’t let them take her away.”