Read Online Alien Nation #6 - Passing Fancy by David Spencer - Free Book Online Page B

his hand in a fresh strip from an ever-decreasing roll. Whereupon he began knuckling the shoe again.
    Crinkle, thwop.
    Crinkle, thwop.
    He was muttering over the task like one possessed when Sikes and Francisco knocked and entered his office.
    Matt exchanged a look with his partner and spoke very tentatively.
    “Uhh . . . Cap’n?”
    “Suede.”
    “What?”
    “Suede, dammit.” Grazer held up one of the shoes and shook it angrily in front of his face. “White suede at that, can you believe it?” He brushed at the top of the shoe with the untaped side of a hand, went, “Ahhh,” in disgust, and began banging it on the top of his desk like Khrushchev at the U.N.
    “What’re you doin’?” Matt asked. He asked it rationally, but also carefully. Reasonable question though it was, he couldn’t be sure that Grazer had reason within reach.
    Grazer jumped up, exasperated. “He dusted up my shoes!” He stepped out from behind his desk. His beige pants had a dingy gray residue clinging to the cuffs. “He didn’t do much for my slacks either, but the shoes. One-hundred-fifty-dollar white suede and he just barrels right into me with a loaded broom.”
    “Who?”
    “Albert Einstein, who the hell do you think?”
    Under most circumstances, if a man claimed that Albert Einstein had sabotaged his wardrobe, you might safely assume that man had flipped over into the happy side. At the very least, that the man was being heavily sarcastic in referring to a particularly dim-witted fellow.
    Bryon Grazer, though, was being entirely literal.
    Albert Einstein, a youthful Newcomer, was the day-shift janitor at the precinct house.
    “I’m sure he did not mean it,” George offered.
    “He laughed,” Grazer insisted. “He schmutzed me with this filthy broom and he laughed.”
    Matt shook his head.
    “No. Sweet, naive Albert laughed? Usually, after an accident, he gets on his knees to denounce his unworthiness.”
    “Sure, get on his knees,” growled Grazer, “why should he screw up his pants?” He paused, as if listening to a private little tune, cocking his head curiously, and suddenly giving a single, decisive little nod. “Ah -hah!” He strode past them to his office door, threw it open. “Hear for yourself.”
    And, sure enough, like a delicate obligato, riding above the din of general office noise, came the sound of dizzy laughter.
    “It is unlike Albert to behave in such a fashion,” George commented.
    “Gets worse,” Grazer snarfed. “This morning he left an entire box of fresh jelly weasels on the radiator too long.”
    Jelly weasels were Newcomer snack food, rather akin (in intent, if not in content) to the doughnuts ingested by humans. Like any other meat-based product suitable for Newcomer consumption, jelly weasels had to be consumed raw. Tenctonese physiology not only thrived on the nutrients and enzymes in raw meat, it was, furthermore, unable to digest meat in any other condition.
    “Cooked ’em,” Grazer exclaimed. “Just enough to cause damage, not quite enough to be noticed by a preoccupied officer until the first bite went down.” Grazer flapped his arms in frustration, the shoe on his hands describing a wide, and possibly dangerous, arc. “A dozen of those disgusting things, twelve potential cases of food poisoning.”
    Sikes wasn’t sure what it was that Grazer found disgusting: cooked jelly weasels or jelly weasels as a concept. Probably a toss-up.
    “I assume Albert found this amusing as well,” George guessed.
    “On a scale of one to ten, he thought it was a twelve. Better than the shoes. If May hadn’t caught it, we’d’ve been knee-deep in Newcomer barf.”
    As if on cue, a young, pretty Newcomer girl showed up in the doorway. She was the sandwich girl, formerly May O’Naise, more recently May Einstein, Albert’s wife.
    “What?” Grazer snapped by way of greeting.
    “Captain, I wanted to apologize for my husband.”
    “Forget apologies, can you calm him down?”
    “I’ve