"Spencer,.Wen.-.Ukiah.1.-.Alien.Taste" - читать интересную книгу автора (Spencer Wen)

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Alien Taste

by Wen Spencer


ROC
First Printing, July 2001





To Don Kosak, the original Max Bennett. Cover meЧI'm going in.



CHAPTER ONE

Monday, June 15, 2004
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

It was going to storm soon. Ukiah Oregon could smell the rain on the wind. He felt the tension on his skin as he leaned out the Cherokee's passenger window. He saw it on the far horizon over the skyscrapers of Pittsburgh.
He leaned back in the window, brushing his long black hair out of his dark eyes. His partner, Max Bennett, was filling the cab as usual with noisy confusion. Max alternately shouted at his wireless phone, the stalled traffic, and the net pages giving him traffic updates. Over it all, the KQV news station droned on with the news of the day.
"Kraynak. Detective. Yes, I'll wait. Veterans' Bridge confusion."
"If Kraynak wants us for tracking, we're running out of time."
Max Bennett snorted at the comment, his attention divided between muscling the Cherokee into a hole in traffic and the sudden return of the Pittsburgh Police operator. "What did you say? Are you sure you're saying those names correctly? It's K-R-A-Y-N-A-K, Kraynak. Yes, I'm certain that's with a K." He tapped the Cherokee's screen to consult an Internet page. "Would his badge number help? I could give you his Social Security too. I can even get his wife's maiden name. Yes, I'll hold. I told Kraynak it was going to take us an hour to get into Oakland, but he sounded so wired that I don't think he listened."
After a moment, Ukiah realized that Max was talking to him. "And he didn't say why he wanted us?"
Back when Ukiah started to work with Max, they were usually chased away from police crime scenes, like mink chased from the wolves' kill. Even as their reputation for solving the difficult missing-person cases grew, they were never contacted directly by the police. Occasionally they would learn that the officers on the case recommended them to the desperate families. This was the first time the police had called them, even if the police involved was one of Max's Gulf War buddies.
Max shook his head. "He didn't go into details. He just said that he had a job for us and not to worry about getting paid, that he'd cleared it with his captain." His eyebrows jumped as the operator came back on the phone. "I know he's not in his office, that's why I'm talking to you. I need to be patched to his radio. Damn, why can't the man join the modern age and get a wireless phone?"
Ukiah leaned back out the window, pushing Max's confusion into the background to be examined later. His attention had been captured by a cat in the white Saab ahead of them. The Saab had New York plates, a Duquesne University window decal, and was packed full of boxes and plants. A Manx cat, looking like a small bobcat, sat on the back seat ledge, a bored veteran traveler.
In Pittsburgh, he often saw dogs in trucks, hanging out the window, nose to the wind. Mom Lara would love cats at the farm, but Mom Jo's wolf dogs had always made that impossible. Except for a short-lived kitten and a few alley strays, Ukiah's experiences with cats were ones inside other people's houses, peering contentedly from a sun-basked window. At least this cat was riding in an accepted cat fashion: paws curled under and eyes partly slitted with a mix of idle speculation and contempt. Yet it was soЧoddЧto see it in a car.
In typical cat fashion, the Manx yawned and started to groom, ignoring him completely. A moment later the Saab found an opening in the breakdown lane and illegally sped away. Max tried to follow, but was beaten by a bread truck that immediately stopped, unable to squeeze past the UPS truck in front of them.
"Max, why do people keep cats as pets?"
"God if I know."
"Why do people keep any pets? Well, I understand dogs and I guess cats kill mice, but why snakes and hamsters? Why keep turtles?"
"This is not a conversation you have with someone who was up half the night on a cheating husband stakeout. Oh, not the puppy dog eyes."
"I don't have puppy dog eyes. Wolf eyes maybe, but not puppy dog."
"Okay, okay." Max sipped at his 7-Eleven coffee, made tan by equal parts sugar and cream. "It could be that humans are pack animals. As we got civilized, the need for a pack disappeared but not the desire. If you live out in the woods with no one else around, you get lonely, sometimes even loony. Even living in the city, without family or friends, you feel alienated."
"Get a pet, instant pack. But why only humans? You'd think if it was a good thing, other animals would do it."
"There's that sign language gorilla. It has a kitten. Gorillas in the wild don't keep cats. You get civilized, you get pets. Oh Jesus, what's this?" Max frowned at the Cherokee's GPI navigator display as it beeped and added a traffic hazard directly in front of them. "What the hell is that orange blimp supposed to be? Ukiah, can you see what's in front of us?"
Ukiah hung far out his window to see around the brown UPS truck in front of them. Fifty feet ahead, a tanker truck leaned at a drunken angle, a trail of flares set out behind it. "There's a truck broken down in this lane."
Max cursed and jammed on his left-turn signal. "I told him your bike was at the shop and that I had to run out and pick you up at your moms'. I said it would take an hour and a half, and he sounded like he was going to have hysterics. So I told him an hour and that he'd have to fix any speeding ticket I got. I should have known better. I should have said it would take two hours. No, I should have told him to forget it. I've got a bad feeling about this case. Kraynak's in Homicide now. What the hell does Homicide want with us?"
"Do you suppose that's a mark of an intelligent raceЧthat any aliens we find will have pets too?"
Max snorted. "Aliens? I told you not to watch those TV shows. They're all made up. They'll rot your brain."
Ukiah closed his eyes and considered what had brought aliens to mind. He relived the last few minutes, tuning out this time the cat and the car, along with Max's ranting. There, suddenly loud without the other noises to mask it, was the radio. The top news story had been the Mars mission preparing to land. "They were talking about Martians on the radio. They said," he repeated the words now echoing in his memory, "in 1996, the first evidence of life on Mars was found on Earth. This week we might find life on Mars."
"Thank god!" Max exclaimed as the bread truck finally squeezed by the UPS truck into the breakdown lane. He pushed the Cherokee through the opening, almost touching bumpers with the bread truck. "They're talking about tiny micros, Ukiah. Like that pond scum stuff."
"So, would intelligent pond scum have pets?"