But another part of him was taking matters very seriously and demanded immediate attention. “Cathy, we’re consenting adults,” he said, trying as much as he could to sound reasonable.
She looked at him with incredulity, as if he had missed a point so obvious that a child would have picked up on it. “It’s not that. It’s . . . it’s dangerous. Physically dangerous.”
Now it really was all he could do not to laugh. She was worried that he was going to hurt her! He refrained from saying the clichéd “I’ll be gentle,” and instead rested a hand on her shoulder. “Cathy . . .” he began, trying to sound as considerate as possible.
She slid across the couch, away from him and up. She sat balanced against the arm of the sofa, placing her hand flutteringly against her breast and trying to send her breathing rate back to a normal level. “A Tenctonese woman,” she managed to say, “if she’s not in sync with her mate . . . she could cause him serious injury.”
That took Sikes aback. She was trying to tell him that she was afraid of hurting him?
It was nonsense, of course. He went to the gym three days a week. He jogged. He lifted weights. He wasn’t exactly Hercules, but he wasn’t any ninety-pound weakling. He wondered if she was really concerned about hurting him, which seemed ridiculous, or whether she was, in fact, simply nervous about the thought of doing it with a human male.
Yeah. That was probably it. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully as he tried to think of how to proceed, and was thankful that he’d shaved. It had been the right move. The sheer masculinity of the facial hair might have been too much for her.
Go for the easy answer, he reasoned. She just wants reassurance.
“So we’ll get in sync,” he said easily.
He started towards her. She didn’t move away, but she clearly wasn’t encouraging him. “There are stages,” she said, starting to adopt that same slightly pedantic tone that George sometimes used. “You need to learn how to approach me. How to hum. You need training . . .”
“Training?” He couldn’t believe it. This was going too far. Now both of his male prides, the one above his belt and below, were swelling. “Hey, Cathy, if there’s one thing I don’t need, it’s training. What’re they going to do, give me a condom with little wheels on it? Trust me. I know what I’m doing.”
Cathy turned away from him, clearly ready to get up. But Sikes was too quick, darting across the couch and nuzzling the back of her neck.
Cathy practically melted. Not literally, but damned close. Her verbal protests had been a desperate gambit because her body had been screaming for release. And now, with Matthew right there again, with his tongue gently stroking her spots, she had absolutely no resistance left. She gave in to him, her body going limp against his, supple and pliable. Her breath was coming faster and faster.
He eased her back down onto the couch. She didn’t even seem completely aware that he was there anymore, so caught up in the sensations of her body was she. He grabbed the remote off the coffee table, aimed it, and turned off the television. The cheerleader and the football player vanished.
“Matthew . . .” she murmured, but whether it was from desire or from warning, he couldn’t tell. He also didn’t care, fully confident that he would be able to handle whatever happened.
She lay back, her hands grasping at him. She pulled at his flannel shirt, and he started to unbutton it. She, however, didn’t wait, and ripped it open. There was the sound of several little plastic buttons flying off their threads and landing at various points throughout her apartment.
“I never liked this shirt anyway,” he gasped.
She ran her hands over his chest, pulling on the chest hair with such force that he wanted to cry out. But he bit down on his lower lip, determined not to let her think for a moment that she was hurting him. Hell, he’d been hurt before. He had the scratches on his back to prove it. But it had been a delicious kind of hurt, the kind that gives you pleasure when you think about it.
Her dress had ridden up to her waist. Her legs, incredibly muscular, were working their way up his arms, towards his neck. She was groaning, whispering his name amidst other words that had no meaning to him.
Her buttocks slid across the couch, bringing her back up against the arm of the sofa, pushing her to a half-raised position. Both the crook of her arm and the spots on her back were within range of him. As her toes tickled his earlobes, Sikes wet the tips of his fingers for heightened sensation, and rubbed one hand into the inside of her elbow while, at the same time, stroking her spots with the other.
Cathy shrieked.
So did Sikes, although not for the same reason.
For Cathy, it was because every nerve ending in her body was erupting simultaneously.
For Sikes, it was because Cathy’s legs had clamped around his neck with the power and pressure of a vise. His head snapped forward and to the side, and something inside wrenched.
His shriek was truncated, however, as Cathy, writhing in spasms of delight, twisted at her waist. Like a wrestler, she sent Sikes hurtling off the couch and crashing into the floor.
Sikes, moaning, tried to get up to his knees, which was his latest, and last, mistake. Cathy, still in the throes of passion, snapped a foot around and tagged Sikes solidly in the jaw.
Police brutality flashed through his mind as he fell backwards. He lay there in the darkness, stiff and unmoving—partly because he was unable to move, but mostly because he was afraid to.
He moaned in quiet pain as Cathy’s far louder and enthusiastic whimperings trailed off. It took about five minutes.
Then, from what seemed a very great distance, he heard her say, “Maaatt?”
“Yeah.”
“Matt, are you . . .” And then she realized where he was speaking from, and also recognized the agony in his voice. He heard her sit up. “My God . . . you’re hurt.”
“I’m fine. Just . . . gotta stand up.”
The lamp quickly snapped on and there was Cathy, kneeling on the couch, having just lit the lamp. Her dress was in complete disarray. Under ordinary circumstances, Matt would have considered it singularly attractive. Instead, at the moment his main concern was trying to restore feeling to the rest of his body.
“Oh, Matt, I—”
“S’okay. Really.” He smiled through gritted teeth as he pulled himself to sitting. He tried to keep his upper body turned away from her, because he had a feeling that there was going to be a beauty of a bruise coming in fairly shortly. Also, he realized very quickly that he couldn’t turn his head. “I knew the job was dangerous when I took it.”
“Matt, let me—”
“No!” he shouted. “I think I . . . maybe it’d be better if I . . .”
“Matt, please, I’m a doctor.”
“Bill me, then.” He stood on uncertain legs, trying not to stagger. He didn’t succeed. He lurched toward the door as if he were on the deck of a ship.
“Ohhhh, Matt.” Cathy sighed mournfully. “Please . . . I know we can be good together. If we could just . . .”
“Cathy, I hear my mother calling. Okay?”
And with that, he was out the door, leaving a perplexed Cathy sitting on the couch. She pulled her dress back into place around herself and frowned.
“His mother?”
C H A P T E R 3
LITTLE TENCTON WAS a ghetto, of course. All the cute names in the world couldn’t hide that simple fact.
It was a section of Los Angeles that had been taken over by the Newcomers. All it had taken was some government subsidized housing, moving in a few thousand Newcomers into apartment complexes that most humans didn’t want to go near. And presto: instant plummeting real estate values. Humans had taken off from the area so fast that they’d left skid marks.
Undaunted, the Newcomers had displayed that incredible capability for work, learning, and initiative that would become their hallmark and, in time, would also become the thing that humans resented the most. Some found human backers. There were landlords, stuck
with property that had been going nowhere, who decided to ignore the axiom against throwing good money after bad and fronted some of the more business-wise Newcomers in their various enterprises.
It seemed the sleazier the businesses, the better they did. Strip joints, sex palaces, and the like turned an extremely tidy profit. The appeal was interracial. When the Tenctonese had traveled through space, cooped up and enslaved on the ship that eventually crashed on earth, they had lived a very rigid and insulated existence. The freedom to follow their impulses once they had arrived on earth had triggered in some the baser instincts. Sexual freedom, and the privilege of ogling Tenctonese females openly displaying their wares, was like a narcotic to many. They worked that much harder to be able to afford frequenting such places.
And there were plenty of humans turning up at such places, too. The alienness was an irresistible lure to many an Earth male. How were they like Earth females? Where were the differences? It was an enticing guessing game, and anyone could play.
As the sexual tension bubbled through Little Tencton, other businesses began opening to support it. Food stores. Laundries. Housing that ranged from being rented yearly to being rented hourly.
As time passed, Little Tencton developed an almost schizophrenic personality. During the day, it was somewhat run-down, although no more so than other parts of Los Angeles. Newcomers eked out a living where they could, some holding genuine jobs while others settled for begging in the streets. Unlike other ghettos, though, Little Tencton actually attracted a fair share of tourists. It wasn’t exactly the safest part of town, but that hint of danger just added to the appeal.
But night was when Little Tencton really came alive.
It was not a healthy sort of life. Indeed, it was the sort of thriving life that one sees when one lifts a rock.
But it was life.
It was a little after 1:00 A.M. The streets were fairly quiet, with the silence punctured every time someone opened the entrance to a bar or strip joint. During those moments you could hear shouting and music and the sounds of raucous laughter before it was cut off by the slamming door.
A car was cruising down the street. In it was a plumbing supply salesman from out of town. It was his first time in Los Angeles, and he was curious to see Little Tencton.
On the one hand, he was disappointed. It looked about as unappealing as any other lower scale part of town in any city he’d been to.
On the other hand, he noticed the little things. The graffiti, in particular, all written in that bizarre alien language that looked like one of those lines that tracks someone’s heartbeat. And there were the store signs as well, written in both English and Tenctonese.
Over on the corner was one place in particular with a sign across it that made the salesman chuckle. It read CLANCY’S MILK BAR. He’d heard that the Newcomers were unaffected by alcohol, but could get really tanked up on sour milk. Go figure.
By seeing these subtle hints of the alien culture that existed in little Tencton, it all became that much more real to the salesman. Hell, if the whole area had been redone to look like the surface of some alien planet, then it would have seemed hokey. Unbelievable, like something out of that television show about the bald captain and the android . . .
The door to the milk bar opened, and the salesman saw his first Little Tencton residents. A man and a woman, looking down on their luck and shabbily dressed, were being ushered out of the milk bar. They didn’t look especially happy about it, and they shook their fists and cursed loudly in Tenctonese.
The salesman had slowed for a light, and as he watched the minor drama, the door of the bar was slammed in the face of the indigent Newcomers. They continued to hurl profanities at the uncaring door. The salesman chuckled. It was fascinating to see how some forms of behavior seemed to cross all lines.
He was so caught up in the plight of the two indigents that he didn’t hear the shouting and sounds of running feet that were coming from his left.
The light changed and he eased the car forward . . .
And plowed directly into a Newcomer.
And as if hitting a living being wasn’t horrific enough, he caught a quick glimpse of a small bundle, wrapped in a blanket and being cradled in the Newcomer’s arms.
A baby. Dear God, he’d hit a father and his baby.
The salesman took no time to wonder why a father and infant child were walking the streets of Little Tencton after midnight. Instead he slammed on his brakes.
The Newcomer bounced off the hood and fell to the right of the car. For a moment the salesman—a confirmed atheist—found himself desperately praying.
He started to open the door and called out, “Are you okay?”
The Newcomer stood up.
The salesman gasped and leaped back into the driver’s seat. The Newcomer had to be six . . . no, seven feet tall. The baby was still safely cradled in his arms. The salesman had heard that Newcomers were tough, but even so . . .
The giant Newcomer staggered slightly, but otherwise appeared unhurt. The salesman couldn’t quite make out the child in the alien’s arms, but it, too, looked all right. Apparently the Newcomer had protected the infant child and taken the full force of the impact himself.
The giant shouted something incomprehensible.
It sounded like a record being played backward, with some sort of clicking sound tossed in. He shook his head signaling that he did not understand.
An air of desperation surrounded the giant, and panic lit his eyes. He started to speak again and then appeared to see something. Whatever it was, it sent him dashing off in the direction of the milk bar.
The salesman turned toward where the giant had been looking and spotted two men who were clearly in pursuit. One was a Newcomer, the other human.
They dashed around the car, barely affording the salesman a glance. For the next five minutes he sat and watched with stupefication. Every moment of it was permanently embedded in his memory, which was fortunate; because an hour later the salesman would be relating to the police every incredible moment of what he had witnessed.
The giant shoved past the two Newcomer transients the moment he became aware that they were of no use to him. He could smell the aroma of sour milk on their breath, and see the giddy blankness of their expressions.
It was an indication of his state of mind that he didn’t turn and stand his ground. But the giant was a primal creature. Since he was being pursued, the only course of action that he could find it within him to take was to run. He had allowed a certain blind panic to overwhelm him—particularly when the vehicle he had been driving ran out of gasoline on the outskirts of Little Tencton.
When that had first occurred, he had thought himself safe. His ebbing fear had given way to exhaustion, and he had sunk down in a small, ramshackle shell of a burned-out building and rested there. The giant had clutched his precious cargo close to him, and every so often would peer down at her, his expression a mixture of love and awe.
He had no idea who he could trust, and no concept of where to go. He had stayed there, drifting in and out of slumber, for who knew how long.
He did not realize that Perkins had taken the opportunity to slip out of the back of the van and call in to his boss to relate all that had happened.
Over two hours later, Perkins, River, and Penn had finally connected up, and stealthily approached their target.
It had been the giant’s light sleeping that saved him. As he had sat there, only half dozing, he had suddenly felt a warning deep within him. What the source of that warning had been, he could not say. All he knew was that he had suddenly snapped to full wakefulness, just in time to see River, Penn, and Perkins ten yards away and closing fast.
Immediately the giant was on his feet. With a quick sideways movement, he had slammed into a piece of wall. The wall didn’t need much incentive to fall over, and what the giant provided was more than enough. The bricks and mortar fell, cascading in a pile of rubble and dust, driving the three pursuers back
for the instant that the giant needed to get a head start.
The chase was on.
The giant had been developing a significant lead, his huge strides eating up distance. But he had made the mistake of glancing over his shoulder to see just how far ahead he had gotten, and that was when he slammed into the car. He had only enough time to see the shocked expression of the human behind the wheel and then he’d gone down, clutching the infant to his chest and absorbing the impact with his elbow and shoulders.
It had taken him only a moment to catch his breath, and then he’d been back up on his feet. He had barely glanced at the human before running toward the milk bar, seeking the help of the transients.
[“Help me!”] he had shouted. [“Help me!”]
Quickly he had moved on, and now the giant began pounding on doors all down the street. Over and over he called out [“Help me! Help me!”]
The thing that the giant, in his drive for survival, did not realize was that in Little Tencton no one helped anyone. It was never wise to stick one’s spots into someone else’s affairs. The chances were that it would just get you into more trouble than you bargained for.
This was particularly the case when the supplicant was as massive as the giant. Up and down the worst street of Little Tencton, Diller Avenue, windows were flying open and angered Newcomers were sticking their heads out. Many of them gaped at the size of the being who was shouting for aid. Here was obviously someone who was more than capable of taking care of himself. Why in hell was he bothering the neighborhood?
They shouted angrily at this clear breach of Little Tencton etiquette.
[“Get away from here!”]
[“Keep it quiet!”]
[“I’m calling the police!”]
The latter threat should have been the key to survival for the giant. In the hands of the police, there would be safety from his pursuers. But he wasn’t thinking that way. To him, all the world was a strange and terrifying place. The only place where he might find safety would be among his own kind, and they were loudly and angrily spurning him.