Alien Safari

  ***

  If the Main Building’s cafeteria was as closely scrutinized as everyone supposed—Otto was almost certain every word and gesture were recorded—then it was one of the simplest, most effective behavioral experiments ever conceived. At first, everyone, guilty or innocent, would by necessity be nervous, uptight, and giving a performance; that first week after the heist had been quiet as a chapel, apart from the odd eruption of hostility. Then, after the immediacy had worn off and people were convinced they weren’t the ones under suspicion, they’d stopped fretting, stopped counting the number of times they chewed each mouthful. Not just some, but all of them. It was remarkable really, how their tongues and their shoulders and their very spirits had loosened, as though the more open they were with each other, the more it would help the Administration identify the uptight ones, the ones with something to hide. Meanwhile, the effusive ones, individually, collectively, would be cleared of all suspicion.

  It was deafening in here now.

  Group dynamics had always intrigued Otter, but he’d mostly worked with animals during his career. Humans, he decided, were just as predictable. More sophisticated, yes, but on many levels equally unwitting participants in their group dynamics. He glanced around the muted-turquoise walls of the low-ceilinged, elliptical cafeteria—roughly the size of two football pitches end to end—and caught himself chewing too slowly, too pensively, so he sped up to match his fellows, then stopped when he bit his tongue.

  Jesus. I’m right where they want me. I’m the experiment.

  Had they been applying pressure on him personally this past fortnight, or was he just thinking that because he had something to hide? He could swear the fish-egg security cameras dotted around the walls—the ones that had always been there in plain view—were trained on him with greater bias. Passing guards eyeballed him more than anyone else, he was sure. And when they didn’t eyeball him, it felt just as conspicuous, as though they were trying to hide the fact that they were under orders to keep tabs on him, wait for him to slip up.

  Today’s interrogation had gone far too smoothly for his peace of mind. It had lasted over an hour, but the questions had been too random, too sly, too slippery for him to get to grips with their true purpose. Questions about his relationship with Marianne and the other department heads, about his overall impression of working at the facility, security improvements he thought they ought to make, what he’d like to do when it came time for him to retire. All told, more like a yearly review than an interrogation. At least on the surface.

  But the panel’s final question: Have you ever accessed the sub-levels unsupervised? had taken every joule of his focus to avoid fidgeting, losing eye contact, melting into a sweaty vapor cloud and vanishing into the tiniest air duct.

  How many other people in here had fielded that same question and fumbled it by over-thinking the answer? A few. Maybe more than a few. But he seriously doubted any had answered in quite the same way as him.

  In the old days on Earth, a doctor used to tap a patient’s knee with a little hammer to gauge the knee-jerk reaction, actually a test for Hyperactive or Hypoactive deep tendon reflex. Well, Otter hadn’t needed a little hammer; the panel’s question itself had elicited a violent involuntary kick-out that would undoubtedly, even from the farthest yard-line, have yielded him as fine a field-goal as the outer colonies had ever seen. It had certainly thumped the underside of his little desk.

  He poked and prodded the cottage pie on his plate. How the hell would the Administration interpret that bizarre kick-out reaction? Nerves? Old age? Or outright guilt, a betrayal of how mechanically tense he’d been all along? At least he’d recovered quickly, apologized for his odd reflex and assured them he’d never broken sub-level protocol, not once in seven years.

  Did they believe him?

  God, he needed out of this hothouse before he exploded and destroyed Marianne with him. But if he couldn’t physically escape, he had to get the stolen data out some other way.

  And Ferrix Vaughn was right there. Scoffing his second helping of stew and dumplings. Alone at a table with an unpleasant-looking female security guard, less than ten meters away, facing the wall. The best and only chance Otter had to arrange a liaison with him before his Omicron duties took him offworld. It would have to be quick, invisible, silent, and most of all now, before Vaughn finished his meal.

  Otter piled half the cottage pie into his mouth, then stacked his neighbors’ empty plates onto his own tray, so he could feasibly spend a few extra moments disposing of them at the recycler, within spitting distance of where Vaughn was sat, to wait for the most apropos moment to make contact. He nodded at his neighbors’ thanks and smiled, still chewing. Let the cameras see that. Good old Otter, friendly and loose, oblivious to the experiment.

  Then he saw his opportunity. A group of heavy-set, buckskin-wearing animal wranglers fresh from the outdoor paddocks lumbered in, making a beeline for the back of the chow line, which would lead them right past Vaughn’s table.

  On a single breath, Otter got up, arranged his recyclables: carton of Iolchian cow’s milk, bowl of sliced bantoya fruit in yogurt, cup of coffee, empty and not-empty plates, onto the correct color-coded spots on his tray, and headed the wranglers off. He had to dodge a large woman who was hanging onto the arm of a skinny guy. She flop-walked for a joke, trying to pull the poor guy down. Not funny. Not right now anyway.

  With his thumb Otter slid the artificial print off his forefinger, exposing the skin-colored transmitter loosely clinging to his real fingerprint: a three-millimeter lifeline he could pass onto Vaughn with the lightest of grazes. Somewhere easy to reach without causing a fuss: the neck or earlobe. Its alarm was pre-set for thirty seconds—thirty seconds before a glugging rhythmic pulse, sent subcutaneously through the wearer’s body, would direct Vaughn to its location. An Omicron would know instantly what it was, what it was for, the need for discretion. He would unlock it, listen to its message when no one else was around.

  A few meters away and Otter caught a phrase spoken by one of the wranglers: “Overdosed on sedatives, what I heard. In the Beehive this time.” A derogatory nickname for the Behavioral wing. “Some woman. D.O.A. not long since.”

  Otter flushed cold and lost his bearings. A dull plug wrenched loose somewhere inside.

  Marianne? They’re talking about Marianne!

  He’d collided with the first wrangler before he knew it. His tray tipped sideways. Otter caught it with his fingertips, saving an embarrassing mess but utterly destroying the transmitter. The man apologized—the first time he’d ever known that from a wrangler—had the news of a suicide in the facility softened him up a little? Maybe he had a wife here somewhere, holed up against her will. Otter couldn’t bear to think about that. About Marianne. No, she was snug asleep on her settee; this had to be some other woman. In the Beehive. Taking sedatives. In the middle of the day...

  He glanced across to the guard at the door, who lowered his sunglasses to the edge of his nose in order to ogle a trembling young female lab assistant in her tight skirt as she passed. Pig. Then Otter looked across the row of fish-egg cameras pivoting this way and that, tilting up a little, then down, homing in on individuals who wanted nothing more than to eat in peace.

  One of the electronic eyes halted its gaze on him. He showed it his back. A sudden rage twisted him raw as he slotted his tray into the recycler. He and Marianne had only wanted to do the right thing all this time, expose obscene practices, ensure science remained humane and that no unnecessary suffering took place. To do the right thing. And these Iolchian pigs had driven them to desperation, to suicide?

  He growled.

  Vaughn looked up, made eye contact, and suddenly it was on. Dr. Otter Mbowe, a whistleblower...exposed.

  He now had one chance to survive this. If he could somehow get into Vaughn’s custody, as an Omicron witness, would that supersede the Adminstration’s authority? Maybe. Maybe not. But there was no other way, unless he wanted to be suicided too,
and then—

  A solution formed on his lips.

  Silent, invisible, and now.

  Two out of three would have to do. He mouthed, Agent Vaughn, I need your help. It’s urgent.

  The Omicron man gave a prolonged single blink. An affirmative acknowledgement. Lip-reading was a basic skill in high-grade law enforcement.

  Mbowe. Room D14, ten minutes, Otter added.

  Vaughn replied with a barely perceptible nod, then returned to his meal.

  Somewhere across the cafeteria, an obnoxiously loud guffaw provoked a smattering of laughter. Ogling Guard removed his sunglasses in order to type something on his wrist-text, no doubt spreading the jest to his colleagues.

  Otter swallowed, had to do a double-take on his way out, convinced that, somehow, the joke was on him.