Alien Nation #6 - Passing Fancy (27 page)

“Do you know what you have done?” George asked quietly. “What misery you’ve wrought?”

“Done? Yes. Misery?” Again the spasmodic smile. “Knowledge is not ultimately controllable. Discover something. Look, see? It’s there. And—
oh—
interesting, it not only does
this,
it does
that.
Then the decision.
This
is desirable.
That
is, how can we say, a
wrinkle.
Better yet, a
ripple in the water
(much apter metaphor, in fact). And the ripple
once made
cannot be
unmade.
It travels its course. What ripples do.”

“The hell is he talking about?” Matt said.

George, likewise, was utterly bewildered.

The puppy was starting to nip playfully at Sotsta’s collar.

“Now, Dogger, now, Dogger,” Sotsta chanted.

Richler stepped forward, put a hand on Sotsta’s shoulder. The puppy leapt to lick at Richler’s fingers. “Detective Francisco doesn’t know the history, Sotsta. He doesn’t know how it started.”

Sotsta looked up at Richler—lifted his head, at any rate, hard to tell just where he was focusing—and three seconds went by in which the scientist’s expression did not change. Then he gasped—suddenly—“Ah!”—as if the information had been delayed in reaching his brain, but had just now arrived. “Well, then!”

Without warning, Sotsta thrust the puppy into Richler’s unprepared grasp—(producing the first and only moment in which George saw the drug magnate unbalanced, comically trying to adjust to the energy of the animal, which found his chin as interesting as Sotsta’s)—and pulled the cuffs on both his legs up to the knee joint.

The feet above the sagging socks were prosthetic, as were half of each lower leg. Above the prostheses, the skin was scarred and pitted most hideously. Sotsta directed his gaze—his face, anyway—toward George. He spoke matter-of-factly.

“Experimental test subject. On the slave ship. Salt water. An attempt to seek immunities to its effects. Chorboke’s idea, of course.”

At first George couldn’t process the information. It went so counter to his preconceptions that he was disoriented.

“You—” he said. Then swallowed. “You were a victim . . . of Chorboke?”

Sotsta nodded. “One of the few who amused him. He disposed of most failed tests. For me he actually created these prostheses. Consolation for services.” He shrugged. “Walk on them, yes, sometimes, but not with comfort. The chair I like best.”

“To the point, Sotsta,” Richler requested gently. And, looking at George and Matt, added, unnecessarily, “He’s a rambler.”

“The point, indeed,” Sotsta nodded. “The ship, Chorboke, I started to think there must be a
true
way to desensitize us—that is, you-me-us, Newcomers—to salt water. A way that could be achieved
without
suffering. No one should again have to . . .” He gestured vaguely at his legs, stamping them against the footrests lightly to shake his cuffs back down to shoe-top level. “. . . like me. Had sporadic access to Chorboke’s lab, some files. Began working in secret, compiling much research, many years.”

“Sotsta was far along in his discoveries by the time he got to us,” Richler supplemented.

George was by Earth measuring seventy-five years old; Sotsta was older still . . . and Chorboke had been wreaking havoc on the slave ship for the better part of George’s adult life. Sotsta hadn’t indicated when he had been worked on by that monster, but it was easy to imagine that the “many years” of “much research” were far in excess of the five to nine cited by Richler as average for development of a prescription drug.

“Work went slowly on the ship,” Sotsta continued. “Access to lab frequently impossible. No facilities, or stolen sometimes, clandestine experimentation. All the time in the world, though. Not fit for heavy labor. Too favored of the master to destroy. What else for a legless slave-victim but time, yes?” Then his tone became excited.
“But, then, boom.
Crash, and the ship is on Earth, and the Earth is four-fifths salt water and, this being our new home, I begin to hear the tick clocking, I mean the clock ticking. Ha!” The larger, open-mouthed smile that accompanied the brief laugh came and went as fast as its smaller predecessor.

“We were looking for Newcomer scientists,” Richler said, continuing the tale, “to help in researching a market clearly about to expand. Sotsta was looking for the facilities that would support his work. We seemed rather right for each other.”

“And how did you jump from lofty scientific nobility to Stabilite?” George asked Sotsta. “After what you’d been through—how
could
you?”

Sotsta looked toward his employer, his odd little face aswim with contradictions.

“The drug that will, we hope, desensitize Newcomers to salt water is still in the works,” Richler continued, holding the fidgety puppy to his chest. “But in pursuing that goal, we discovered certain chemically-induced properties the Tenctonese physiology must have in order to survive exposure. Similar properties, as it turns out, to those Tenctonese physiology must have in order to maintain a radical cosmetic change.”

“And so you just opportunistically—”

“No.” Richler lowered Dogger, who dutifully jumped onto Sotsta’s lap, and decided, for some mysterious dog reason, that the visitors were now interesting enough to observe. The animal nestled quietly, blinking at them soulfully, as Sotsta absently stroked his back.

Richler approached George. “We got wind of two other companies attempting something similar to what Klees’zhoparaprophine became. Neither one of those firms is as reliable and high-minded as we are (if they were, they wouldn’t initiate that field of investigation in the first place), nor as proficient in research. We could sense that the FDA was willing to be a bit lenient where Newcomer drugs were concerned. There was a lot of pressure to get them out on the market, to avoid charges that they were ignoring the new citizenry, and clearly no other drug company knew as much about this issue as we did.

“Which presented us with a dilemma.

“Should we allow a competitor’s inferior product to hit the marketplace and
really
do damage . . . or should we assume the responsibility ourselves—willingly create the lesser of two evils? You’ve already seen the consequences of bad merchandise.”

“Mr. Richler’s reasoning I understand,” George said to Sotsta. “I still cannot fathom yours. How can you have sanctioned this? Participated?”

To which Sotsta answered, “Maury came to me. Asked. My people, my culture, what I thought. I told him”—again the now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t smile—“not a responsibility I want.”

“And I reminded him that it was my company,” Richler said, “and
my
decision. But that I preferred to make it based on an informed opinion, not the standards I would choose to impose upon an unfamiliar culture.”

“Suggested to him, this juncture,” Sotsta said, “that of two evils, less is always better than more, yes?” He sighed then. Caught George’s gaze. George did not want to feel compassion . . . but his soul had overridden his head.

“I am sorry. I didn’t know.”

The little scientist gave a shrug as brief as his smiles. “Not possible. Sorries? . . . Pah.”
(Pah,
George suspected, meaning
“unnecessary.”)
And then,
“Won oot na evin tew vostafless? Eon vernorocina, nos debah, u a heure.”

How do I live with myself? One minute, my brother, at a time.

The dog, restless now, looked up at Sotsta, who cupped its face in his hands and cooed, “Yes, yes, yes.” Then he turned his attention to George and Matt again, saying sheepishly, “Animal test subjects. Not supposed to give them names, lest you get attached. Dog, I called this one. Then Dogger, because he is more like a dog than I am. Joke, that. Suddenly he responds to it. By default it has become a name. Dogger.” He patted the animal’s head. “Little dangers in any useful endeavor.”

He swiveled his chair around then and wheeled himself back to where he had been when they found him.

They followed Richler out of the animal research lab. Nobody spoke until they reached Richler’s office.

When they entered the office, Max Corigliano was there, as Richler had arranged, and bent out of shape about having been made to wait so long, as Richler had expected. Corigliano claimed he had been about to leave. What was the idea of treating him like this? He had a very important appointment with a client, and he was going to be late. And who the hell were
those
two guys? An instinct made Matt want to let Richler guide this little scene, and it was an instinct he was able to communicate to George with a glance.

Maury Richler explained that “those two guys” were the police. And that Max could solve his problem about the meeting by calling and canceling. “Use my phone,” he invited. “Blame it on me. Say there was an emergency at work. Mention my name.”

“My book’s at my desk, Maury. ’S where I keep all my numbers.”

“Fair enough. Back to your desk then. I’ll just send Detectives Sikes and Francisco with you.”

“For what? To tap my phone or something?”

“Now why would you say that? No, it’s just they have some questions about you and I want them to see how you do business, overhear your end of the conversation . . . eradicate the doubts.” Richler turned to the detectives. “Max here is one of our crack MSRs.”

“MSRs?” asked Matt.

“Medical Service Representatives. You might think of him as a field operative. He’s one of the fellows who establishes a link between the company and the community pharmaceutical professionals.”

“A salesman,” George extrapolated.

“More than that, really. What we call a detail man, because he provides information and data along with product. His specialty is the independent drugstore. And he’s damned fine at what he does.” Looking at Corigliano, Richler said, “Max, I want you to show them.”

“Come on, Maury, you’re makin’ me self-conscious here.”

Matt’s ears picked up the lilt of the street Italian in Max’s voice. The cadences were subdued in these surroundings, but Matt imagined that in the pizzeria, Corigliano could be a real
paisan.

“Nonsense,” said Richler. “You could sell aspirin to the Bayer boys. Show these guys your mettle. And remember, mention my name to the client.”

“I, uhh, don’t think it would help a lot, Maur.”

“For an independent druggist to know that the head of the company is himself abjectly apologetic for your absence? I’m not a salesman, but even I know that’s sound business policy.”

“It is, in theory, but I make it a practice never to put the blame off on others, you know? My clients, my responsibility. They respect that.”

Richler took this in. Then said, “You know what? You’re right. I’ll call. Get me that number. We should earn some points with the druggist for that.”

“Maury, I can finesse my own accounts, hah? Whatta we doin’ here?”

And now Matt heard something else in Corigliano’s voice. Guilt.

“I want the druggist’s name, Max.”

“Maury, he’s a
liddle
guy, an
indie,
not worth your
time.”

And now Matt spoke. “Like Bob Sled?”

Max’s eyes started to dart from face to face suspiciously. “What is this?”

And George stepped forward. “Is Anna Maria Corigliano your mother?”

“Yeah, she’s my mother, what’s that got—”

And he stopped speaking. Just like that, stopped. His legs seemed to go weak. He stumbled for a nearby chair, lowered himself into it, held his head.

“Interesting question to get him so upset,” Richler commented dryly. “You want to explain the dynamic to me?”

“His car is registered under his mother’s name,” George offered. “When we arrived here, we knew the name of the legal owner, but not
his
name. Learning from your security guard that the last names were identical suggested to us a certain . . . familiar refrain.”

“It’s a drug runner’s trick,” Matt added. “If the car you use isn’t registered in your name, you’re not legally liable for anything found in it during a search.”

“Like bad Stabilite,” George elaborated, pointedly directing the words at Corigliano.

“Moms are especially popular, bless their hearts,” Matt added grimly.

“Max,” said Richler patiently, “if these gentlemen
were
authorized to search your mother’s car—would they find what they’re talking about?”

“This,” Corigliano said, wiping a hand over his mouth, “is the point where I ask for my lawyer.” He looked at the cops. “Not that you have anything to go on. And not that I’ve done anything. But I’ve got a wife and babies, and I owe it to them to have counsel. Now read me my rights or whatever it is you do for a living.
Capice?”

Yeah,
Matt thought.
A real paisan putz.

Despite Matt’s rising irritation, it was George who tightened the screws.

“We have you on videotape, Mr. Corigliano,” he said softly. “That’s what we have. You and Bob Sled, huddled in conference.”

Matt just managed to stop himself from turning toward George in surprise. Recklessly he added, “And we have your fingerprints on the package of last month’s delivery.”

Max Corigliano’s mouth opened and closed several times, but no words emerged. At length, he turned away. “I knew I wasn’t cut out for this. I told them I wasn’t cut out for this. But they told me they’d double my salary.”

The three standing men observed the one in the chair for a few heavy moments. Matt broke the silence first. “Just once,” he said, “I’d like to find that someone got involved in a deal like this for a reason other than money.”

“Love? Sex? Patriotism?” George wondered.

“Anything.”

“I’m disappointed in you, Max,” Richler said. “An additional forty thousand dollars is a very cheap price tag for pain and suffering.”

“I’m . . . I’m sorry, Maury. I was thinking of my wife and babies. I didn’t mean to hurt your business. I really didn’t think I would.”

“The business? Max, how about the
people?”

“What, did I take food from someone’s mouth, what?”

And for the second time that day, Matt was amazed at the blithe ignorance of key players in this filthy little conspiracy. They had no idea that this was about
more
than money.