Alan Dean Foster Read Free Page A

closed down, there as yet being no films directed specifically at the Newcomer communities. Hollywood was still working that one out. But a couple of places played the usual, struggling to draw enough Newcomer patrons to stay in business. No comedies. Human

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    comedy was incomprehensible to all but the most sophisticated aliens. The majority preferred action-adventure stories and, oddly enough, love stories.
    Alien housewives were regular watchers of the morning TV soaps.
    Newcomer hookers paraded near the theaters and restaurants, plying their trade. Not all Newcomer habits were incomprehensible. The women were elegant and impossibly tall, Sykes mused. He spoke as he stared.
    "Wonder if their plumbing's the same?"
    "It is." Tuggle spoke in his usual monotone, without taking his eyes off the road. Sykes eyed him curiously.
    As he was preparing to ask the inevitable next question a long, lowrider station wagon pulled up alongside the slugmobile, grumbling through its chopped 427 Chevy engine. It peeled off fast at the next intersection, but for all his bravado the driver was careful to remain well within the posted speed limit. He was giving the cop car the vehicular finger, but masking it with caution. Tuggle cruised on, past alien eateries and specialty shops.
    Slow night, Sykes thought. Just the usual Slagtown depression hanging like steady rain over the storefronts and dark apartment buildings. Even the bums and thugs moved slowly, tiredly here. He made a quick search of the dash, locating his cup of coffee amidst the rubble of two weeks' worth of collected embalmed fast food by the steamed circle it made against the windshield. Tuggle was chewing on his lower lip as if trying to decide whether or not to say something. Sykes knew his partner would get around to whatever it was eventually. You didn't ride with a man for nine years without getting to know him pretty well.
    It wasn't what Sykes expected to hear, however, when Tuggle finally spoke up. Nor was it a subject he wished to discuss.
    "So, you gonna go, or you not gonna go?" his partner asked him tersely.
    Sykes considered a response as he watched Tuggle expertly scoop up and begin noshing on a triangle of limp, lukewarm pizza. It was a delicate balancing act: driving, eating, and somehow simultaneously managing not to decorate his suit with cheese drippings or tomato sauce. Sykes couldn't have

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    done it. No matter how hard he tried he always ended up wearing full evidence of his previous days' meals on his pants and shirt. Tuggle never said a word. He didn't have to. The looks he gave his partner's attire after such assaults were eloquent enough.
    "How can I go?" he replied, trying to make it sound offhand and inevitable that he not go.
    Tuggle wasn't having any of it. "How can you not go? Don't give me your excuses. Put on your wash-and-wear suit and your clip-on tie, have your landlady tie your shoes for you, and show up at the church. Simple. Even for somebody like you." He paused a moment, focusing his attention on the row of illuminated storefronts sliding past on their right. "Me and Carol are going."
    That got Sykes's attention. "What?"
    "Hey, look, you got no cause to say anything. We've known Kristin since she was conceived in that cabin up at Big Bear." He sat a little straighter behind the wheel and tried to lighten the mood. "Remember that night? You and Edie banged the wall so hard, me and Carol were picking plaster out of our hair for a week. I knew we should have insisted on taking the upstairs. But naw, we had to go and be generous, let you guys have the king bed. Some vacation that was. No sleep."
    "Edie and me didn't sleep much ourselves, but then you already had that figured out. " Sykes's newly won smile faded rapidly. "Goddamnit, Tug, I want to see Kristin get married too, okay? More than I want just about anything else. But I ... I I
    Tuggle finished it for him. "But you're bummed out because your ex and her husband are paying for the