Rajani Chronicles I Page 5

  He gently hung up the phone, mentally kicking himself for being such a selfish asshole. He looked at the clock and made up his mind to go to her place, even if traffic would be a bitch trying to get across town. He had a copy of her apartment key, so he knew he could let himself in. He hoped she was out jogging or late getting home from the school where she taught, but his gut told him he was wrong.

  Chapter Three

  The discussion had been going on for nearly three hours, and James thought most of the others still looked a little shell-shocked. It reminded him of a scene from out of a movie; a courtroom drama where a jury had been locked away in hopes of coming to a consensus, and yet would be hung, no matter how hard they tried to work things out. They’d gone round and round, each bringing up the pros and cons of their situation. Many of them had stood or even paced behind their chairs; their bodies still felt stiff from lying in whatever suspended animation the aliens had placed them in when they were brought aboard the ship.

  James had to wonder, though, how they could have been unconscious for two weeks without getting bed sores. There were still some things that didn’t quite add up in the aliens’ story of how they had been transported to the ship; something he’d have to think about on the voyage. James was not a naive person. In fact, his wife had told him on many occasions he was too skeptical, bordering on downright cynical. Partly, it was due to an upbringing by a father who had spent his entire life working in an automobile factory and had taught him to question everything and take nothing for granted. Partly, it was his personal outlook on life in general.

  He had a difficult time trusting other people, or in this case, trusting aliens who professed to need his help. There was also the fact he’d been kidnapped by real live freaking aliens, which made him want to laugh and scream simultaneously. He was a little on edge, to put things mildly. He was never one to show his emotions openly, either. He’d learned as a cop to present a stolid exterior, no matter what he was feeling inside, and found it helped to keep the situation calm. A crime scene or the interrogation of a suspect or informant could get out of control quickly if people sensed the officer in charge was anything other than well-disciplined and in control of his own emotions.

  Reporters could smell blood in the water if they weren’t presented with a calm, detached demeanor. It was all a game; a farce perpetrated to stay in control of a situation. James wasn’t sure what the others were feeling at the moment, but he was both scared and excited by the possibility of leaving Earth’s solar system aboard an extraterrestrial craft.

  His job had become a burden hanging from his neck like an anvil of despair. The alien named Rauph had been mistaken in what he’d said earlier. James was not some type of protector of his people. He was, at best, a means of vengeance, and at worst, a glorified caretaker. His job didn’t begin until someone was dead. Where was their protection? If he found out through his investigation that the death was the result of foul play, then he’d continue the investigation. The murderer would go to jail for the rest of his or her life in the state prison in Jackson, and the victim’s family would have their revenge, or the murderer would get away with it. Either way, James would go on to the next case.

  He had nothing holding him back, he realized. No family obligations and no one to take care of but himself. With the realization came a sense of relief, and he knew he was leaving Earth, no matter what the others decided. He wasn’t about to say no and go home. This was a chance of a lifetime. He hadn’t felt this excited since he’d been on the plane heading toward Parris Island, going to recruit training for the Marine Corps. He felt the same mix of fear, excitement, and wonder as he’d had back then. It had been his first time on an airplane, and his first time being away from home.

  “Yvette and I are going,” James stated. “That’s a fact. It’s time for a head count. I’m not sure how long a galactic hour is, but we probably don’t have a lot of time left to discuss this. Who else wants in?”

  “I don’t know,” Kieren said. By this point, she was standing, her arms folded protectively across her chest. “I mean ... this is all too much. It’s like we’ve fallen into an episode of the X-Files or something.”

  “Or a bad comic book,” Gianni chimed in, leaning back in his chair casually. James thought he looked like he was beginning to enjoy himself, and he had a feeling the punk was planning to come along, as well.

  Kieren was looking back at James and doing her best to ignore Moretti. “They need our help. I mean, the whole reason I became a teacher was to help people. Of course, at the time, I thought it would mean human beings, but, I say yes. I guess.”

  “Are you sure?” James asked her. He didn’t see what this skinny little white girl could contribute to the situation, but he’d learned over the years that appearances could be deceiving. He’d had plenty of little white girls kick his ass in the Corps, though he would never admit it to anyone, not even all these years later.

  “Yes,” Kieren finally said, after a moment of silence. “I want to help them. If I can.” She smiled timidly, but James could see she had made up her mind.

  Gianni was looking at Kieren. “Then I’ll go too. It’ll give me a good laugh to see Sandra Dee here make like Joan of Arc trying to help out a group of interstellar Buddhists.”

  “This isn’t a joke,” James told the other man. “You give your all, or you go home.”

  “Listen,” Gianni said, “you may have been picked to be the leader here, but it wasn’t by us. Just because they think you should be, doesn’t mean I have to do what you say.”

  “You do what he says,” Yvette said, leaning forward in her chair, her face as serious as it had looked since they woke up, “because he’s the only one here who isn’t freaking out about all of this. Would you rather be in charge?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Gianni said, crossing his arms and frowning. “I don’t see why we have to take this guy’s shit when we don’t even know what makes him the best pick. Am I right?”

  “Mr. Moretti,” James began.

  “Call me Gianni,” Gianni said.

  “Johnny,” James began again.

  “Not Johnny. Gianni,” Gianni corrected him. “You’ve been mispronouncing my name since we woke up. Gee-ah-nee, not John-nee.”

  “My apologies,” James said. “Gianni, my qualifications as a leader aside, the reason why I’m heading this discussion is because they woke me up first, plain and simple. If you would rather have someone else do it, then you’re welcome to take a vote. I didn’t campaign for the honor.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Yvette said. “It’s clear to me you’re able to do the job.”

  James smiled at her. “Thank you.”

  James turned his attention on David. “That leaves you, Mr. Morris.”

  “David,” the man said. In his too-large Rajani clothing, he looked like a frat boy waiting for a delivery from his dealer. “Call me David. Mr. Morris is my father.” He sat there a moment, thinking. “Which, I guess, decides for me. I’ll go. I don’t have anything to go home to.”

  James stood, unable to keep the smile from his face. “Then it’s settled. We go.”

  #

  Rauph sat on the bridge of his ship and prayed, having ordered Janan to turn off the communication system to the room where they’d left the Humans. He’d given his word they could conduct their discussion in private, and his sense of honor could not allow him to do otherwise.

  But oh, the agony he felt having to wait for their answer. He’d told them he would give them a few Galactic hours to decide, but the time had come and passed. The truth was, he knew, he would give them as long as they needed, within limits. They couldn’t go anywhere for at least a day or two while the mechanibots finished repairing the nulldrive. Until then, the Tukuli’s engines would take them perhaps past the orbit of the fifth planet in the Human’s solar system, at best.

  He’d brought the translating device back with him to the bridge after his first meeting with the Humans, so whe
n there was a knock on the door of the bridge, he turned it on before pushing the button to open the door. He saw Officer Dempsey outside in the corridor. He had a sick feeling in his stomach as the Human slowly walked into the room, taking in his surroundings again.

  “Officer Dempsey,” he said, apprehensively. “Have you reached a decision?”

  “We have,” the Human answered. He looked over at Janan’kela and Bhakat, and Rauph followed his gaze, wondering what the Human was thinking. “Yes, we’ll help you,” James said, refocusing on Rauph.

  Rauph felt a smile break out on his face—the first true smile since leaving Rajan—as he rose from his chair. “Wonderful!”

  “There are a few conditions, though,” the Human said.

  “Oh?” Rauph answered, looking over at Bhakat, whose expression hadn’t changed since the Human had entered the bridge. He still didn’t look happy.

  “Yes,” Officer Dempsey continued. “The first is, you tell us more about the operation you have planned for us, and the second,” he said, smiling this time, “is you give us back our clothes. We’re all pretty tired of these robes of yours.”

  #

  James was alone in his new room that night—at least, it felt like it should be night. Several hours had passed since they had all woken and discovered their situation. A long, emotion-filled day followed, and James needed to get some sleep. Rauph had agreed to tell them more about the stones, as James thought he would. Rauph had shown them diagrams of what would happen in the operation, and had assured them of the safety of the procedure. The Johar Stones were surprisingly small, from what James saw. They wouldn’t displace the brain tissue much when implanted. He still had his doubts, because the aliens would essentially be giving him a brain tumor. He and the others would then be unconscious for five or six days while their skulls healed fully.

  Rauph told them about the machine performing the surgery; the mechanical octopus James had seen on first waking up in the medical bay. James had been impressed. Clearly, the technology was decades, if not centuries, ahead of anything currently on Earth. After that, Rauph had told the little alien named Janan to take each of them to one of the crew quarters on the ship, where they could sleep. James had picked one of the larger rooms, which was a guest room for visiting Rajani, judging by the size of the bed.

  James half-expected someone to interrupt him as he got ready for bed, so he wasn’t surprised when there was a chiming sound from the door to his room. He’d taken a quick shower in the small bathroom and had just finished toweling off. It took him a moment to get dressed, throwing the large robe over his naked body and then clumsily hitting at and missing the button to open the door, before swearing and finally hitting it again—probably a little too hard. He was surprised who it was standing outside in the corridor. She smiled, somewhat nervously, and then spoke.

  “Sorry if I’m disturbing you,” Yvette said. “I couldn’t sleep.”

  James sighed inwardly and moved away from the doorway, inviting her into his room with a sweep of his arm. She entered, and he pushed the button to close the door behind her. Sleep would have to wait.

  “Please,” he told her. “Have a seat. I’d offer you a drink, but I’m afraid all I’ve found here is water. I don’t know if they even have alcohol on their planet, being a bunch of holy men and all.”

  “That’s okay,” she said, sitting on the sofa-like chair that was the only other piece of furniture besides the bed. At least it was comfortable, built as it was for the larger frames of the Rajani. There was a small table on either side of the bed, but otherwise, the room was bare of any adornments. The ceiling, like he’d seen on most of the ship so far, held small lights in the corners providing illumination.

  James sat down next to her, but a comfortable distance away. He didn’t want her to get the wrong idea about his intentions. Actually, when he thought about it, he didn’t have any intentions. He’d only met the woman that morning, if that’s when it was, and he had no idea what to expect from her.

  “I really hate being in an environment I can’t control,” she said, looking around his room. He guessed hers was fairly equivalent, though if she had been placed in a Sekani room, it would be a wonder if she fit comfortably in the bed.

  James had to stop himself from automatically switching to detective mode. He wasn’t a cop anymore, at least not on this trip. He wasn’t sure what he was now. So instead of checking for inconsistencies in her story and watching her body language, he just listened.

  “My father is a lawyer,” she began, now looking into his eyes. “At least he was before going into politics. A lot of people tell me I’m like him, always taking control of the situation and bending it the way I want it to play out.”

  “Are you a lawyer too?” James asked. He’d dealt with many of them over the years, and she was the type; sure of herself and driven.

  “Not yet,” she said, rolling her eyes when she said it. “Haven’t taken the Bar Exam.”

  Something clicked in his mind about what she’d said earlier. “Wait a minute, you said your father went into politics. You wouldn’t happen to be Senator Manidoo’s daughter?”

  “Right again,” she said, her smile a little self-conscious.

  “Well,” he said, trying to lighten the mood, “I am a detective, you know.”

  She laughed, and he decided he liked the sound of it. It was genuine and full.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I don’t get into politics much. It never really interested me. I imagine your disappearance has caused quite a stir back home, though.”

  “Knowing my father, that’s an understatement.”

  “So wait,” he said. “You’re a US senator’s daughter, and you live in those crappy apartments?”

  “You live in them too,” she said, smiling.

  “Yeah, but I live on a cop’s salary.”

  “Well,” she said, “Daddy has this thing about making your own way. I’m just another struggling law student, as far as he’s concerned.”

  “You must have just moved in,” he told her. “I don’t remember seeing you around.”

  “Yes,” she answered. “About two months ago. I moved from a place over on Knollwood. It didn’t feel ... safe.”

  “And you wound up getting kidnapped by aliens,” he said, chuckling.

  “Who knew?” she said, smiling once more. He decided he liked her smile too.

  “I guess that’s the elephant in the room,” he said. “It’s certainly not something I ever expected would happen to me.”

  “Me either,” she agreed. “It’s not like I’m some backwoods hillbilly living on a remote farm out in Podunk or something. They’re not what I expected aliens to be like at all. Guess I watched too many James Cameron movies or something.”

  “I should tell you,” James said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if they were monitoring everything we say.”

  “You don’t trust them?” she asked.

  “I didn’t say either way,” he told her. “But it’s what I’d do. They don’t know us very well, either. I’m sure they must have based their choice of us on something, but it couldn’t have been on close surveillance for any extended period of time. They probably need to verify we’re right for the job, so to speak.”

  “Do you think we’re doing the right thing?” she asked suddenly, and in her earnestness, he could see she might be younger than he had first thought, which really made him feel like a dirty old man. He could see she wasn’t as confident in her choice as she’d appeared earlier in the day. “I mean, really doing the right thing?”

  “All I know,” he told her, “is the choice I had, based on the information I was given at the time. If they’re telling us the truth, then I think they need our help. Whether we’re the right individuals is a moot point. We’re all they have.” He didn’t want to sugarcoat anything and was relieved she didn’t show any additional signs of panic at his answer. Good, he thought.

  “I’ve never had to have an operation before,”
she said. “No appendix. No tonsils. Hell, I still have my wisdom teeth. And now I’m ready to give aliens permission to operate on my brain? It’s crazy.”

  “If they meant to kill us,” James told her, “they would’ve done it by now, I think. They wouldn’t have put on this ruse; they would have operated on us before we woke up. We’re in no position to say no, really. Hell, we really have no way of knowing whether they’ve already been tinkering with our bodies.”

  “We were out for two weeks,” she said, frowning.

  “Exactly,” he replied.

  “So, basically, we have no choice but to trust they’ve told us the truth and move on.”

  “Right again. The defense rests.”

  “Ha-ha.” She flashed a genuine smile at him. “Speaking of rest, we should probably get some now. Who knows how late it is, and how early they’ll wake us up to prep for the operation tomorrow.”

  “Feel any better?” he asked her as she rose from the chair. He stood as well and followed her to the door.

  “Not really. But I think I can sleep now, at least. Thanks for listening.”

  “No problem,” he told her as she opened the door and stepped out into the corridor.

  “Good night,” she said, and smiled.

  “See you in the morning,” he replied, returning her smile. He got undressed again and turned down the room light before falling into bed, exhausted. He didn’t dream.

  #

  The next morning, James and the others were back in the round room where they had first awakened, which Bhakat referred to as the medical bay. They had eaten a light breakfast and made a minimal amount of small talk. None of them seemed to want to discuss what would be happening a short time later. They had talked themselves out the night before.

  James followed the proceedings as Bhakat prepped them for surgery. Sensors were placed against his temples and chest, and the oxygen mask was put over his nose and mouth again. They had been assured the medical machine was light years ahead of any medical devices on Earth, but James was still apprehensive now that the time had come.