Alan Dean Foster by Alien Nation Page B

was. Not a weed poking its rough-maned head through the perfect lawn, not a candy wrapper or bit of tin foil on the sidewalk, not a mark on the house. The windows looked new but were probably only well maintained.
    An attractive and conservatively dressed alien woman was watering the lawn with a garden hose. In her huge but still feminine hands it looked like a flex-straw. A six-yearold alien boy rode a specially modified bicycle along the sidewalk.
    Everyone had expected alien children to have even more trouble integrating into human society than the adults, but 64
    the opposite turned out to be the case, especially once they advanced past puberty. Sykes had heard that the girls still had a difficult time, but even the scrawniest alien boys were welcomed with open arms to local high school football teams by their coaches and fellow players. The Newcomer boys ran a minimum of fifty pounds above the average for children their age, and they never demanded to play quarterback. If they ever developed real quickness they'd revolutionize pro sports.
    Sykes studied the bucolic scene and rolled his eyes. "Geez. Welcome back, Ozzie and Harriet."
    He leaned on the hom. Francisco looked up from where he'd been waiting for his son, then while Sykes waited he went to kiss his wife goodbye. Lastly a kiss for the boy, atop the naked skull. Oh well, Sykes mused. Every race to its peculiarities. At least they kissed.
    As he looked on, the derisive expression he'd wom when he'd parked by the curb began to soften. It was too comy to be fake, too genuine to be ignored. Sure they were aliens, out of place and time and society, but the innocence of it cut across interspecies lines. Even interstellar ones.
    He turned forward as Francisco opened the door on the passenger side and climbed in. Only one thing mattered anymore, he reminded himself, and that was finding Tug's killer.
    Which probably meant finding this Slag named Anderson.
    The Biltmore was still the grand dame of downtown L.A. hotels. Completely renovated in the eighties, it clung to its glory like a wealthy dowager in her prime. Cars pulled out in front of the main entrance and slickly dressed men and women emerged. Not all were human. Not every Newcomer still lived in Slagtown. Some had come a long ways in a short time.
    There was muzak in the air and the cheesy aroma of canapds on trays.
    Waiters moved obsequiously through the crowd, dispensing Perrier and champagne and soaking up a month's worth of gossip which the more astute among them would peddle a little at a time and for high fees to the city's 65
    more prominent columnists. Not all the waiters were human, either.
    Newcomer integration had reached every level of society, though it remained concentrated near the bottom.
    At the moment the hall men's room held but a single occupant. His custom tuxedo had been tailored to fit his massive frame. He checked the stalls, then the doorway, before removing the small, thick plastic object from his inside suit pocket. It resembled a flattened toothpaste tube with a tab dispenser near the top. As he lifted it to his lips a faint but distinctive clinking sound echoed through the bathroom. It was made by the links of the exotic silvery bracelet he wore around his left wrist.
    Placing the dispenser to his lips, he extended his tongue and thumbed the stud near the tip. Like the dispenser itself, the tab control was designed to accommodate an alien-sized thumb.
    The tube released a small dab of bright blue gel. He pulled it in with his tongue, inhaling wetly through thick lips, and let it rest near the back of his mouth for a long moment as he savored the sting. It dissolved slowly in his saliva. When it was nearly gone, he swallowed.
    Almost immediately, his pupils dilated and his eyes widened. As the rush overcame him he sucked air.
    And whirled as the door to the men's room banged open. He calmed himself as he saw that the intruder was only a balding, middle-aged human whose sole interest was