The Complete Aliens Omnibus Page 5

  Marshall squeezed the trigger.

  The shell whooshed out of its pipe and whacked directly into the maniac private’s chest, pushing him back through the door into the balcony before it detonated. The explosion of the shell blasted the private and his gun to pieces, not even leaving smoking boots behind.

  Marshall gasped and collapsed, dragging ragged breaths into his weary lungs. What a fiasco! A catastrophe of the first order! Support from the general? He’d be lucky now if he didn’t get his chops busted, didn’t get demoted or sent to deal with some alien infestation in northern Alaska.

  General Burroughs cautiously poked his head from behind the desk. His uniform was torn and he had a stunned look to his eyes. He regarded the tattered gore, the remnants of Private Pinnock spread over the balcony like an explosion in a butcher shop.

  He smiled slowly. “I believe, Colonel, this drug bears some further investigation. But please—not while I’m around.”

  4

  War is good business.

  War is even better business after the war is over, especially if there was massive destruction on the order of the kind administered by the alien infestation. When humanity fought off its enemy it found many of its cities ravaged. But like London after the Nazi air blitz of World War II, this was not necessarily a bad thing. Sure, some good buildings were destroyed by bombs in that case—but also destroyed were massive numbers of creaky docks and ancient buildings that should have met the wrecking ball years before.

  The result of the devastation: reconstruction and a better city.

  Such was the case with the alien infestation.

  Take New York City. Manhattan in particular. It had been rotting for years, its roads and subways tottering on the brink of disaster.

  The extermination of the aliens had left behind many ruins and much potential. Nothing on the order of Los Angeles, which was still pretty much a smoking ruin with odd nests of the creatures still needing to be wiped out. But the Big Apple needed a big overhaul.

  The U.S. government, weak but still there, brought in two traditional weapons in this particular struggle: free enterprise and deregulation. Any entrepreneur, any company that had the stomach for it, were awarded the privilege of going in and wrestling with the wreckage and the building.

  A man named Daniel Grant not only had the company and the willpower for such a job, he had a cast-iron stomach and platinum business nerves as well.

  Now, Manhattan’s towers were shiny again, and majestic bridges spanned the East River and the Hudson. Its subways were streamlined and the aliens were all dead here, though not necessarily all the vermin.

  Rats, like Daniel Grant, were survivors.

  * * *

  Although his chic East Side penthouse was only ten blocks away from the infamous Grant Tower, Daniel Grant always had himself driven to work in one of his sleek fleet of robo-chauffeured turbostretch limos.

  You had to put on a show.

  You needed leverage for business deals. Flash and illusion and glitz helped gain leverage. Sometimes, when the numbers in your bank account were either preceded by negatives or promises, flash and illusion and glitz were all you had.

  This was why Daniel Grant always made sure that he entered his building through the front door, so that the spectacle was available to the local media.

  Today was a brisk spring day in Manhattan and Grant had his window open so that he could see his tower as he approached. God, it was gorgeous! A hunk of gleaming obsidian thrusting up toward the sky from the famously firm island bedrock, Grant Tower dwarfed its surrounding midtown neighbors. Of course a lot of these were still in twisted ruins, which gave Daniel Grant’s skyscraper the edge. In fact, it looked like a streamlined monument in an urban cemetery. Still, Grant only had to look at it to feel like the Top Dog, the King of the Hill, the Duke of New York.

  “Nice day for a skyscraper, eh?” he said to his female companion, tucked away in the plush, dim corner.

  Candy (or was it Bambi?) barely looked up from her compact mirror. “Very impressive, Mr. Grant.” She glanced at the erect structure, nodded, and winked coyly. “Reminds me of last night!” She extended a long, sleek leg and teased his ankle lightly. Grant smiled, glorying as much in his own manly scent as in the mists of perfume and femininity that wafted his way from this choice little bundle of boobs and buttocks and blond hair he’d bedded down with last night, after the de rigueur champagne, caviar, and camera clicks. Hopefully, his nightclub antics would make Spy Sheet again this month. Let his competitors think he had money to burn—which, of course, he didn’t. These days, though, the newshounds checked your clothes and your chicks—not, fortunately, your checkbooks.

  “You’re the best, honey,” he said as the limo smoothly cruised up to the new permacrete fronting of the G.T.

  “You won’t forget my number, will you, Danny?”

  Grant tapped his sternum. “Your digits are stamped in my heart, babe.” He pulled out a micro-card, tapped in a five-hundred-cred-buck limit for the day, and tucked it into her sweet palm. “Go buy yourself something nice, sugar cheeks.”

  “Oh, Danny, thank you.” He got a face full of lips and bosom for his effort.

  “Gotta be at Lapshitz and Garfunkel’s in Brooklyn Heights, though, sweet cakes. The car will take you there and back to your digs.” He puffed up importantly. “But I’m going to need it at twelve-thirty for an important date.”

  Actually, he had the thing leased out through his car service then, but an important man had to look like he had full use of his limo, right?

  “No problem.”

  “And remember what I told you if you see any signs of aliens?”

  She nodded her head importantly. “Call you!” Her voice was slightly and unpleasantly squeaky, and as he began to open the door and some sunlight got at her, he realized it didn’t flatter her as much as candlelight did.

  Unlikely she’d see any aliens. But you never knew. “That’s right, darling. Last night was wonderful. I wish our time had never ended. But even billionaires have to work… probably harder than most people!” He swept off the seat carefully so he wouldn’t crease his trousers. “Ciao, baby!”

  She blew him a kiss just as the clatter and flashes of cameras began. Nimbly, he jumped so that a few photographic images would record décolletage and blond tresses (for his ex-wife as much as envious mate competitors) and then shut the door.

  The robo-limo smoothed off toward Brooklyn Heights and the perma-thrift department store he owned. Fortunately, Candy (Bambi?) was far too dumb to know the difference between new merchandise and restructured merchandise.

  Daniel Grant swiveled around to greet the chroniclers of his arrival, trying to looked annoyed.

  “Can’t a busy man have any privacy?” he groused, straightening his power neck jewelry so that it would look right in the pictures. Daniel Grant was sheathed in his usual sartorial splendor. His tailored camel-hair coat hung over his tailored suit perfectly, every angle and nook and color complementing the jut of his square jaw, the tilt of his brain-filled brow, the steely slate of his penetrating eyes. Even the tousle of his hair was follicle-calculated to be photogenic.

  Today, even Grant was surprised.

  There were usually one or two people here to record his arrival and ask a few questions.

  Today, there was a mob.

  From the corner of his eye he caught a reporter with a new face and an old question. “Mr. Grant. How do you account for your meteoric rise to success? What’s your secret?”

  Grant paused, lifted his hand like a heckled but patient monarch requesting heed for his proclamation. He went into automatic speechifying mode. Mental tables appeared before his eyes. He chose from column A and column B.

  “No secret! I just make a point of proving an old saying: ‘You can learn something new every day.’”

  Whew. What did that mean? Sounded damned good, though.

  “Mr. Grant, what led to the recent split between you and your last wife?�
��

  “No comment.”

  “Can you confirm rumors that you are planning to enter politics?”

  “Of course not.”

  Loved those kinds of questions. You give a definite answer that didn’t mean a goddamned thing.

  “Who was that young lady you drove up with?”

  A slight smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth. “A friend.”

  “Is it true that your financial empire is in trouble?”

  He feigned total astonishment. “Where did you hear that one?”

  “Mr. Grant, could you comment on the alleged lethal side effects of your new wonder drug?”

  Oops. Time to check Column C.

  As there was nothing appropriate there, he just had to wing it. “I’m unaware of such reports.” A lie. But he honestly didn’t think the “wonder drug” actually was lethal. But these impromptu news conferences were no place for complex ethical and biochemical delineations. “I have full confidence in all my employees. Especially those hardworking people at Neo-Pharm.”

  Yes, that good old tried-and-true method. Head ’em off the track with a statement. In a legitimate question and answer session, Grant could keep up the palaver for so long, a reporter was lucky to remember his name, much less his original question.

  Still it was an alarming question, one that he really hadn’t been ready to deal with, despite the news reports.

  Time to beat the retreat.

  He spun around on the sole of his spit-polished wing tips, again a busy businessman, immersed in the burdens of accruing riches, and stamped away, letting the hail of further questions slip off him. He dodged between two uniformed, sunglassed guards into the building, waggling the finger of command. The thick-necked men stepped between the press and the door, preventing them from further pursuit.

  Grant stepped into the marbled halls of the first floor and made a hasty hop and skip for his special turbo-elevator.

  He put his face up against a window for a retinal read, even as he placed his thumb into a hole for a quick DNA check.

  In this kind of political and economic atmosphere, you just couldn’t be too careful.

  The car closed behind him and he punched a button. Thus, he was zoomed down to the basement offices and labs of his principal company, the foundation from which Daniel Grant had boosted into the wheeler-dealer stratospheres.

  Neo-Pharm.

  When he’d sent the message via sub-space to his folks on Beta Centauri colony that he’d used the money they’d given him to purchase a little-known drug company, his old man had thought he’d said “bought the farm”—and thought he was dead. From a friend back on the colony, he’d heard the old fart had just shrugged and poured himself another boost of booze. Fortunately, his mother had replayed the message and gotten the true gist of the message before she poured herself another drink. Then, in celebration, they’d bought everyone at the bar a drink and promptly gotten stinking drunk.

  Of course, with the Grants, that was nothing new.

  They drank so much at the New Town bar, the old man went ahead and bought it to minimize expenditures. Daniel Grant had to convince his father that the loan was a good business investment by sharing several bottles of cognac with the man. Over multiple ounces of the gut-searing stuff, Grant had pointed out that the alien-torn Earth, now in reconstruction, was ripe for business opportunities. A man who had vision there could have immense power. Old Man Grant wasn’t so sure of the financial soundness of his son’s plan, but he did have money. Money that he wasn’t sure what to do with. Lend me some of that money, Pop, said Daniel Grant, and let me show you what I can do.

  Daniel Grant had the money transferred to an Earth bank before his father sobered up, and then followed immediately thereafter, by a slower route.

  The New Earth was violent and exciting and dynamic, a phoenix rising from ashes. World governments bent over backward to encourage growth. Restrictions were cut. Regulations either forgotten, ignored, or repealed. It was the freest market imaginable, and Grant studied it. He decided that what Earth people really needed—and would always need—were pharmaceuticals. Aspirin for headaches. Harder drugs for those harder-to-deal-with biochemical problems. Euphorics. Other mood-alterers. And with a crack team of scientists at his bidding, he could map out new directions of biochemical technology.

  So he bought the Pharm.

  Since Neo-Pharm was one of the few drug companies still operating, under the helm of Grant’s cunning and ruthlessness, unbounded by law or ethics, it burgeoned. Cash and credit flow were astounding. Grant expanded, buying out other companies, building himself an empire. Real estate, retail, hotels, space shuttles—even gambling casinos. Daniel Grant wanted to make a strong, swift impression.

  Unfortunately, his first buy remained his best. None of the other companies did anywhere near as well as Neo-Pharm—and often he found himself dipping into N-P’s black ink to try to neutralize the other companies’ red ink.

  If something happened to Neo-Pharm, some financial disaster like a successful class-action suit or (shudder) having to shut down production of Fire, their most popular product, then the whole card castle would crumple.

  And he wouldn’t be able to make certain personal payments.

  Failure would not mean just bankruptcy.

  His ass was on the line.

  Dammit, he thought as the doors shut behind him. He’d paid back the old man. He’d pay his other debts. And he’d still have his cake and eat it, too… even if it choked him!

  The door whispered open before him, and the familiar subdued colors throbbed over him. The acidic smells of the lab assaulted his nostrils.

  As always, he could almost taste the freaking bugs down here. At first, he thought the taste was sweet, because it tasted like money. Now, Daniel Grant wasn’t so sure.

  He stalked across the catwalk that spanned a pit where biochem workers in silvery suits worked over tables and tanks. Along the walls were aquariums filled with pickled bugs—whole bugs, half bugs, bits and pieces of bugs.

  And the hellish bug juice—their acid blood—was carefully controlled, the vicious stuff. That was why the technicians worked in the specially lined pit. Anything that got loose, you could sluice it away, and it couldn’t get into where it would damage things—or kill people.

  “Mr. Grant!” called an alarmed technician from the floor below. “You’re not wearing your suit!”

  “Well just don’t squirt me, guys,” said Grant sarcastically. “Is Wyckoff in?”

  “Yes, sir. He’s in his office.”

  “Great. What about the doctor’s blood? Does that stuff burn through human flesh?”

  “Not that we know of, sir.”

  “Good. I won’t need a suit with him, then.”

  Helmeted heads swiveled and hooded looks exchanged.

  Grant grinned to himself. Let ’em talk. Kept them on their toes.

  He finished crossing the pit and entered the bank of offices belonging to the scientists of the firm. Here the air was tinged with a sweetener to clear out the bug stench—but still the stuff hovered.

  A door labeled DR. PATRICK WYCHOFF loomed. Grant opened it, not bothering to knock.

  The little gnome of a man was huddled among a stack of paper. Paper, paper, everywhere—even covering his computer. Wyckoff liked to figure and doodle on paper. He was a whiz with computers, but for some reason the man far preferred a number two pencil and cheap bond to scratch and fiddle with than one of these overpriced wangdoodles he nevertheless insisted was vital to his operation. Wyckoff was so immersed in what he was doing, the shiny-headed, cobalt-nosed little munchkin didn’t notice his chief coming in the door.

  “Wyckoff! Hey! Look alive. I could be a bug!” he growled in his big, booming I’m-pissed-off voice. Worse, I’m your rampaging boss!

  The little man did a double take. His round, Coke-bottle glasses flashed in the indirect lighting. Jaw dropped, he stared at Grant for a moment, then recovered his aplomb.

  �
�Good morning, Mr. Grant. I hadn’t expected you so early,” said the man in a nasal twang.

  Grant loped over and slapped a plastic news sheet from his home News Service machine on the desk, featuring a highlighted article about the latest Fire boo-boo. “But you did expect me, didn’t you, Wyckoff?”

  “Ye… ye… Yes, sir. I knew you’d at least call. The truth is, I thought I’d hear from you yesterday or the day before—”

  “Maybe I just trusted my employees to do their job… To deal with this ridiculous matter. I didn’t realize that I’d have a microphone shoved up my nose as soon as I’d stepped out of my car, and be hounded by news of the lethalness of Xeno-Zip.”

  Wyckoff shook his head sorrowfully. “No, sir, Xeno-Zip’s perfectly fine.”

  It was Grant’s turn for a double take. He blinked, twisted his head around, and examined his scientist from another angle, as though to make sure he wasn’t seeing some one-dimensional projection. “People seem to be reacting rather poorly to it for it to be perfectly fine, Wyckoff!”

  “That’s just it, sir. As soon as I heard the reports, I did a complete check of our supply. You may not have noticed, but your PR people have been doing their jobs…” Wyckoff seemed to be back in control now, though he still was clearly intimidated by his ranting and raving employer. “They’ve put out the notification that these are counterfeit bottles of Xeno-Zip that are affecting people poorly. Meanwhile, we’re exploring the possibilities, and I believe we know now what the problem is.”

  “Well, why don’t you tell me, instead of mincing words and hemming and hawing.”

  “Sir, it’s the active ingredient.”

  “Regal jam, you mean?”

  “Um… Royal jelly. Anyway, that’s what we call it—there are so many equivalencies to the aliens and their nest/hives and the Earthly insect kingdom. Our supply is obtained by freelance mercenaries who destroy the many hives still around the world. We pay them to take the royal jelly first before they destroy the hive and pass it along to us.”

  “Yes, yes, I know that—”