“With you, nothing.” The tail-hand flicked away an imaginary fly. “I am Frontrunner Uroon and we want the Shakaleeshva.”
Ross Ed blinked. ‘be what?”
“I’m sorry, but we seem to be fresh out of Shakaleeshvas at the moment.” Caroline smiled in what she hoped was a winning manner. “But if you’ll put us down in Beverly Hills, we could look for one for you. I’ve been told that you can find almost anything you want in L.A.”
Tail-hand and head gestured in tandem. “I refer to the individual you carry on your back.”
“You want Jed?”
“‘Je’ed.’” Uroon mimicked the Texan’s pronunciation. “What is a Je’ed?”
“It’s the name I gave him.”
“Very well then. If it will facilitate communication, we will employ your nomenclature. Please pass me the Jed. It is important that we talk with him.”
“Talk with…?” Ross Ed turned to Caroline, who for a change shrugged at him instead of the quadrupeds. “You can’t talk to him. He’s dead.”
“We’ll be the judges of that, if you don’t mind.” The tail-hand flicked lazily back and forth.
“What could you possibly want to talk to him about?”
Bright pink eyes bobbed on their short stalks. “What does it matter to you, human? We are the Culakhan and we have our reasons. You will comply. Without wishing to appear impolite, I must point out that you can be made to comply. But we have no quarrel with you. We do not harass simple animals.”
“Hey, watch it. Just because we don’t build giant spaceships and beams that lift people off the ground and headbands that translate different folks’ speech and instruments that float in the wall and …” He hesitated. “Okay, so maybe we are a little simple. But we’re not animals.”
Caroline jumped in. “That’s right. We’re sort of in-between, I guess.”
Turning to an associate, Frontrunner Uroon muttered something Ross Ed’s translator band didn’t pick up. When his head swung back, it dipped slightly. “We have no desire to be discourteous. I am simply relating the facts.” The tail-hand extended. “You will now transfer the Jed.”
Ross’s natural inclination was to retreat, except that a glassy green wall was barely a few yards behind him. “Look, why don’t you tell us what’s going on here and what you want with Jed?”
“Time bums,” the quadruped muttered. “We could simply take him and return you the way you came … without the use of the lifting beam. However, we are constrained by our own Code of Conduct, which prohibit where avoidable the abuse of ignorant life-forms.”
“There you go again,” chided an exasperated Caroline.
“Apologies.” Uroon gestured with the tail-hand. “The being that rides upon your back, the Shakaleeshva you call Jed, is wanted by the Culakhan for a long litany of crimes.”
Ross gaped. “What, Jed? I don’t believe it.”
Caroline gazed up at him. “Why shouldn’t you believe it? You don’t know anything about Jed. He’s dead. And since he’s dead he can’t talk to them anyway, so why worry about it?”
For the first time the alien body weighed heavily on the Texan’s shoulders. “I can’t believe I’ve been carrying around an extraterrestrial criminal for the past couple of months.”
She kept her response gentle. “You can’t disbelieve it, Ross.”
“We will prove it to you.” Uroon stepped forward. “Pass him over. In return, you may remain for the opening of the interrogation.”
“This is nuts. He’s dead. I mean, I may not know how to fly a ship like this or speak your language without the aid of this headband, but I know when something’s dead. I’m from Texas, for God’s sake! Roadkill’s a way of life down there.”
“‘Roadkill’?” The Culakhan affected confusion. Apparently certain concepts were beyond the capacity of the remarkable headbands to literalize.
“Besides, even if Jed did do something wrong, he’s past paying for the offense.”
Uroon and a couple of the other Culakhan were fiddling with their headbands. “There is some difficulty with comprehension. Please pass him to me.”
Fresh out of options as well as ideas, Ross Ed could only think to say, “You’ll really let us be present when you do whatever it is you’re going to do?”
“We will commence the questioning here and now.” Ur n dipped his head a second time. “Such is the ask I am charged
“Well, all right, then. As long as you promise.” Reaching up and back, Ross swung the pack onto his chest and gently removed Jed. Uroon and an associate accepted the corpse, handling it with care if not reverence.
Ross Ed watched uneasily as a pair of aliens clad in red appeared in the corridor. They had pink patches running down their chests. Between them they hauled two backpacks full of instruments.
A portable inclined bench was unfolded and set up on the deck. Jed was laid across it and strapped in place, arms secured at his side and front, legs near the base. An elaborate assortment of devices were attached to his suit and headpiece.
Another technician wheeled a large, complex console up behind the pinioned alien and began manipulating unseen controls. Indicator lights flashed and blinked.
“This is ridiculous.” Some time had passed and Ross had discovered that he was getting hungry. “I told you, he’s dead. Can you bring back the dead?”
“Of course not.” Uroon stood nearby, commenting occasionally to the preoccupied technicians. ‘be revivification of the deceased is a task that exceeds the capability of any science we are familiar with.”
“Well then, what the hell…?” A hand slipped around Ross’s waist. A real hand and not a tail-hand.
“Take it easy,” Caroline whispered. ‘They’re going to do what they’re going to do, and nothing you can say is going to stop them. Obviously Jed’s suit can’t stop them, either. It won’t do any good to make them mad. Let’s just watch. We might learn something.” She cast a suggestive look in the direction of the depression in the floor behind them.
“What I don’t understand is why they don’t just chuck us out that lock. They’ve got what they wanl.”
Uroon overheard. “As I mentioned earlier, the actions of all Culakhan are constrained by the Codes of Conduct. Unlike the despicable Shakaleeshva, we have immutable values.”
