Blessed Are the Humble, excerpt # 2.

A paradigm of female pulchritude.

She was a paradigm of female pulchritude, and a vision of loveliness. He was especially drawn to her toes, peeking out of the end of her pumps. Some very beautiful women had less than exemplary feet. Every millimetre of this one would be perfect. She would not have big calves or big thighs. She would not have large, drooping breasts, but high, firm ones with pink nipples, as suited a young woman who had never borne children. Some women, all made up and taken at a distance, could appear beautiful, with good bone structure, good hair and good clothes. Up close and personal, Sophie had the most unblemished skin, on her neck and arms, where it was exposed below the puffy short sleeves, that he had seen in a long time. The softness of her gently-rounded countenance had not been ravaged by time or disappointment. Her deep blue eyes were clear, with only the slightest hints in the small red veins, of her late night and rude awakening. The young recovered quickly from such nights, possibly even such mornings, while the old suffered much more readily.

Her scent washed and cleansed the air, taking away everything that was foul or mundane, and left behind only the glory that was her. After holding her chair as she was seated, Gilles went around to the door.

His heart beat a little faster, as he closed it and took a seat, marveling at how aware he had instantly become at the sight of her cleavage, the soft, round arms, hands calmly clasped in her lap. The look of innocent youth did nothing to distract from the unmistakable body underneath the thin cotton sun-dress. Her ankles were trim and her feet neat and proper in the black patent-leather sandal-pumps. She had apparently taken the time to dress after the initial excitement.

Tailler’s big eyes took it all in and he sat very quietly, never taking his eyes off the subject.

She looked at Tailler and looked away, lifting her chin.

The young lady, so demure in her posture, was positively stacked, if that was the proper expression. It struck Gilles that Tailler was a handsome young fellow, a gift seldom despised except by those who did not possess it.

“I am so sorry for your loss. Please allow us to ask a few simple questions.”

She nodded, looking down at her hands. Her eyes came up and the second such jolt in his stomach was real enough.

“Yes, Inspector.”

“Okay. Were you home last night?”

“Well, yes. And no. You see—”

“Yes—and no?”

She flushed most prettily, over the worst of the first waves of grief at this point. Then her face crumpled in recollection.

“Yes. I was at a party. I came home late, about four or four-thirty a.m. I can’t quite recall, as I had a little champagne…”

“Where was this party?”

She mentioned a restaurant. They had gone on to a private residence in the Latin Quarter of the city after dinner.

“You took a cab home, right? But you can’t remember the name of the company?”

“No.”

“Were you alone?”

She blushed furiously, sitting up straight and biting back an initial reply.

“Yes.” Short, sweet and to the point.

“And there was nothing amiss when you came in?”

She almost seemed uncertain, and then made up her mind.

“No.”

“And you went to bed.”

“Yes.”

“Did your aunt have any enemies? Had she been in an argument with anyone lately?”

“No. I don’t know—I don’t think so.”

Gilles regarded the girl, tapping his pen on the pad as if to annoy even the most patient person.

“So, what brought you here?”

She regarded him evenly from her chair, hands in her lap.

“It’s Paris.”

No further explanation would appear to be forthcoming.

He grinned unexpectedly.

“But of course.” He had the desperate feeling that she was hiding much, but of course she was a young girl, full of life and love and hope and such things and he was just a scruffy old man.

“Do you have friends in the city?”

“Yes, of course.”

Gilles decided not ask about gentlemen friends. He must tread lightly there.

He wondered what she was really thinking.

“How long have you been here?”

“Two years…and a half, I think. Maybe a bit more.”

Her voice was low and even, and enough to draw shivers from any man.

“So you came here quite young, then?”

“I was fifteen.”

His jaw dropped slightly. How old was she, then? He sensed more to the story, although girls of good breeding came up to the city all the time. It was part of their education.

It turned out that Sophie was a bare seventeen and a half years old. Food for thought when he considered all of the Ducharme sons, and Olivier wasn’t the youngest one, either.

“May I ask a more personal question?”

“Of course, Inspector. If you think it will help.” Her lips pursed but her eyes were on his.

“How tall are you? You seem, er, very athletic.”

Her face lit up somewhat. She was just of an age. While a younger man, a cute guy, would have been more welcome, she just couldn’t help herself. The attentions of any man would do.

She responded well to flattery.

“I’m one hundred eighty centimetres tall.” Her head cocked to the left, as if she was sizing him up for a dance.

“I see. Do you engage in any sports?” It would be a pity if she didn’t.

He wasn’t surprised to learn that she was taking tennis lessons, and could golf on occasion, thanks to her father and brothers back home being fiends for the game. She went skiing in the winters, with friends, always with a chaperone, including her uncles Benoit and Olivier once or twice.

“And your family, they are all back home?”

She nodded.

“When was the last time any of them have been to Paris?”

“Oh. When they brought me up to the city.” Her mother and an older brother rode up on the train.

According to Sophie, she wrote home about once a month, and hadn’t been home since coming up to the big city. She belonged to a club. She swam in the pool, and exercised there from time to time, nothing regular about it, and on weekends in the country she did a little riding. It accounted for the healthy glow about her. Gilles hadn’t seen such a head of hair in a long time, although his own thin straggles had once been a tousled mop of auburn hair with multi-coloured highlights. As a very small child, he had ringlets. There was a picture of him like that in an old family album. He wondered at the Ducharme’s family history. He needed to know a lot more about them, and in the meantime, he put in the routine moments of questioning.

Every answer was given in a calm, level tone. She seemed very sensible, possibly intelligent.

This girl was just a little too good to be true. It struck him like that, and he couldn’t dismiss it. The wriggling tape-worm of an idea, as yet just an impression, slowly began to unwind and unfold in his mind. Maintenon had seen a lot of cases, and had met a lot of unusual people over the years. There was nothing new under the sun. Murderers were the most unusual people of all, for they had stepped across all boundaries and struck out on their own in a completely amoral fashion. She really didn’t impress him as that type, but one never knew.

Some cynic put it best.

Beauty is the bait which makes the hook more palatable.

While it was true that he didn’t get out much, she seemed to be an unusual young lady.

END of EXCERPT.

Actually, she isn't wearing a hat in this scene but I like the photo. (Morguefile.)

Coming Soon to an Electronic Bookstore Near You.

Blessed Are the Humble, an excerpt.

He was nearing the top of the second flight of stairs, and the temperature had gone up by a degree or two. The light rumble of talk came from somewhere in the room, behind the wall to his right. His head was about floor level.

“Andre?” His voice sounded loud in the enclosed space, but perhaps they hadn’t heard him.

He clambered up a few more steps, holding the rail as the wooden risers were dusty and he’d already slipped once with his hard leather shoes on the third one from the bottom.

“It’s all right, boss. The boys are almost done.”

Gilles turned the corner from the landing and went into what was clearly a kitchen. It was all glazed to his left, with curtains thrown wide open, and giving a strong north light to that end of the room. The other way was the kitchen proper with its big and very old fashioned cast-iron range and oven immediately to his right.

“Well.” Gilles suddenly understood why Andre sounded so smug about it over the phone.

The lady of the house, sprawled at the foot of the stairs in the far left corner, lay amidst puddles and spatters of blood. He moved around the central block table and had a look.

The long slender sword sticking out of her chest lent a rather surreal air of melodrama to what was already a shattering scene. Her glasses were on her face and intact, but her eyes had that glazed and lifeless look, halfway rolled up, back into her head. Gilles approached the body and knelt. He touched her lightly on the wrist, noting she was certainly very close to room temperature.

“Oh, my. Was she stabbed in the head, then?” The blood loss was copious…

Levain neatly bypassed the question. He was letting Maintenon have it cold, like yesterday’s gravy. That was just an expression they had.

“Madame was killed early this morning. The cook arrived at seven-oh-five, or seven-ten or so, according to her.”

“Ah.”

Andre Levain cocked his ears at the sound of feet on the stairs.

Tailler came in, taking in the scene, mostly the body at first, and looking with interest at the lab boys, before his eyes finally came around to Gilles and Andre. Andre Levain nodded at him in neutral fashion, noting the boyish air he had about him, with his unusual height and still a bit of baby fat in the face. Tailler had hazel-brown eyes and a fairly intelligent look about him.

Tailler glanced at Levain in equally neutral fashion and nodded politely back.

“Sir?”

“It’s all right, Tailler. You can observe the goings-on.” Gilles looked deadpan at Andre. “Go on, please.”

“Right. The young girl, her name is Sophie. She was out late, came home around four or four-thirty, alone in a taxi-cab. She says she can’t remember the name of the company.”

“Very well.”

“She said she had a couple of glasses of champagne at the party, and that she fell asleep immediately upon coming home.” Levain consulted his notes as if to ensure he had everything. “She says she didn’t hear anything until the cook pounded on her door around seven-twenty. She’s not sure of the exact time and neither is the cook.”

“All right.”

“There was no one else in the house. The rear door, which opens onto the alley, appears to have been broken into. Glass inside and out, nothing unusual. We’re asking if anything is missing.” Levain looked at his notebook. “The cook and the other girls are pretty shaken.”

Gilles nodded.

“So, it looks like a sneak thief.”

“That’s how it looks, Gilles.”

The unspoken question was, if so, then why are we here?

Gilles bit his lip in silent contemplation.

“So she was stabbed repeatedly with the sword? Hmn.” It certainly fit the profile of a hasty choice of weapon. “That’s very strange.”

Something heavy, a blunt instrument, wielded from behind, would have been much easier to use with any likelihood of success. It was hard to conceive a self-respecting thief not hearing her coming down the stairs, but that was an assumption on his part. The thief might have been deaf!

She would have been screaming like mad.

A deaf perpetrator seemed unlikely, as they would find a less hazardous profession very quickly. There were hard floors in all directions from this vantage point. Gilles moved further into the room, absorbing it, the smell of cooking, the smells that emanated from behind the cupboard doors, spices and condiments and the raw smell of onions coming from somewhere nearby. Levain watched him silently as he got the feel of the place.

“What’s in there?” Gilles pointed to a small door.

“The pantry. The usual stuff.”

Gilles used his handkerchief to avoid leaving prints and carefully opened it.

Bulkier stores, jars, tins and boxes, sacks of flour and what he thought was salt, were lined up on wall shelves. There were empty baskets on the floor in the corner and shopping bags hanging from pegs close to the door. A half a bushel of apples, some potatoes, carrots…nothing out of the ordinary.

The fingerprint technicians came out of a front room with their bulging valises. They had their jackets on.

“We’ll fill you in when our reports are complete.”

Maintenon nodded thoughtfully.

The first one made for the stairs.

The second one was more outgoing.

“We got a lot of good prints, quite a number of different ones.” His attitude seemed to imply that he was just having some good clean fun. “Any place a thief was likely to touch, including the doors and knobs, of course.”

“Thank you, gentlemen.” Gilles could still hear faint muttering from somewhere in the front of the house.

The inhabitants must be around somewhere. He’d have a few questions for them in a moment. Levain continued.

“All right. We have a housemaid, the cook, and the niece in the parlor, which is up one flight. We have plenty of photos and the morgue boys are waiting for the body.”

Just then a familiar figure stuck his head out of the passage leading to those rooms overlooking the street out front. Brighter out there, he was backlit but immediately recognizable by a miss-shapen head, just like a big strawberry. That had been his nickname in his younger days. The shock of tousled red hair would have given him away at almost any distance. The sound of the fingerprint boys clumping down the endless stairs, for the ceilings were all three and four metres up on these floors, finally faded away with one last flurry of deep, distant voices.

The coroner was none other than the inimitable—Gilles had never found much use for the word, but it somehow fit Gaston Janvier.

“Gaston.”

“You know your victim was shot three times, don’t you?”

Levain laughed aloud at the sadly patient look on Maintenon’s face, the deep and expressive sigh he gave. Tailler looked on as if he’d known it all along. The poor fellow had no idea of what he was supposed to be doing there. He had the uncomfortable feeling that the Inspector was making a joke of him, which wasn’t very nice.

“Sorry, Inspector! I was just saving a little something for you.” Levain winked at Janvier.

Gilles eyed Levain in a sardonic kind of agreement.

“Ah. Ha. Yes. I see. Hmn.” He looked over at Tailler with tolerance written all over him. “So, what do you think, young man?”

Tailler shook his head, completely baffled by all of the attention, but then he just grinned. He shrugged expressively and winked solemnly at Levain, who oddly enough looked away.

“Might as well have a bash, eh, sir?”

END of EXCERPT.

So there it is, warts and all, my third mystery novel and my twelfth overall.

I'm still proofing it and it will be out in a couple of days. 

It will be available by Christmas on various platforms.

Simple E-Book Formatting Tips.

Photos by Louis.






Formatting an e-book is relatively simple. It just takes a little time. It consists of a number of repetitive operations, for example checking every scene break and chapter heading for centering. They do not need an indent, and should not have an indent.

All lines should be set at a trailing space of 0. I can’t really tell you what style to use or exactly how you should format your e-book. What I can say is that some try to format it exactly as a print book would look, and that includes title pages, blank pages, and section breaks to keep page numbers out of the front and end matter. It includes page breaks between chapters. There is no white space in an e-book by conventional standards. It’s not meant for human hands, only an electronic operating system.

In the Smashwords style guide, it says, ‘Do not put more than four lines between sections of text.’ I use three for a margin of safety. There are no section breaks, there are no page breaks, there is no page mirroring, there are no page numbers, and therefore no page number mirroring from left to right. It is designed for either scrolling, like on a blog, or page flipping electronically.

It has no gutter, which keeps the text from being buried in the spine, or the glue, or being unreadable because the book is a physical object and it’s buried down in a tight corner.

None of that applies.

Now, in paragraph styles, I set the indentation at 0 left and 0 right. I set line spacing before and after at 0. I use a 0.25” indent, on Word the default is 0.5”. I have used 0.3 in a book or two, but you can do it any way you want as long as it is consistent throughout the book. In that dialog box is the option for block paragraphs, indents, line spacing etc.

On the bottom right side of Word's toolbar there is something called styles, and if you click the tiny little black button, up pops styles. You want to use the minimum number of styles, as Smashwords’ meatgrinder will reject you otherwise. Other systems are different, but Smashwords is important because they have so many distribution channels, all going to online bookstores. They use different operating systems, including Sony Reader, Epub, Kindle, etc. That’s why the system is so picky. It has to operate across a greater number of systems, and since Smashwords is doing the conversion for you, you have to go through the meatgrinder autovetter process. After that there is a human review.

If you just want to produce pdf’s on Smashwords, no problem. A pdf can be formatted to look just like any paper and ink book. I made pdf’s at first myself, using Free Pdf Convert. You never have to go near Smashwords, Amazon or any major bookseller if you just want to send it to a buddy by e-mail. But if our goal is to make it into Premium Distribution then it has to meet criteria set by the service providers.

Many operating systems can read pdfs, and pdf’s can be converted into other file types.

So, when I hit control + a, the entire text from front to back is highlighted. What I want is to click on ‘styles’ and see it reads ‘normal’ throughout the book. You can’t use too many styles. If it is blank, or if something else is showing, the meatgrinder will probably reject it. If not, a human vetter will reject it. I’ve been caught out once, and in fact I had never used the ‘styles’ feature on Word. I was totally mystified by the notice in my inbox, until I followed a Smashwords employee’s instructions to click on styles. Honestly, I e-mailed them back and asked what they were talking about. She sent me pictures, although these are my own on this blog. Then I had to go back through my entire book and format every single thing in there until every paragraph read normal in the styles dialog box. That book is now in Premium Distribution.

My computer is finicky. It’s been acting up lately. I had to re-do chapter eight about five times, and now it’s okay. When I highlight the chapter, it shows ‘normal’ in the styles dialog box and that is the way it should be.

Print on Demand Proofs.

When I produce a print on demand paperback novel, just like in the Beatles song, ‘Paperback Writer,’ the thing has to be proofed. I order a copy of the book at a reduced cost, as I don’t get royalties, and Createspace lets it go at $4.88 plus shipping and handling.

They have a digital proofer. If your book has been published before and you are absolutely convinced it is a clean file, that might be one thing. I was looking through a proof copy and I found any number of things that needed to be fixed. The digital proofer is small. So far I have a list of about thirteen items which needed to be fixed, and there are still a few pages left to go in the book. It’s kind of a weird feeling to go to bed with a glass of milk, a bowl of cookies and start reading your own book, but clearly for a new file, still not finalized, eh, maybe it’s not such a bad idea.

This is what my E-Book front matter looks like:

Time-Storm on Althea

by Louis Bertrand Shalako

Copyright 2012 Shalako Publishing

Marketing Image Copyright 2012 Louis Bertrand Shalako

ISBN 978-0-9879723-5-4

This Smashwords Edition is published by Shalako Publishing

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

The following is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person living or deceased; or to any places or events, is purely coincidental. Names, places, settings, characters and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination.

Here is an excerpt from the book I am doing now, 'Time-Storm on Althea.' This version may change before publication, and the title isn't final until it is final. The excerpt is formatted in blog style, in the photos above, the reader can see how the actual book might look. E-Books have 'flowing text' in order to be readable on the gretaest number of screen sizes as well as different operating systems. Note the minimal number of lines between bits--not a lot of white space, but then these would be readable on a telephone.

Chapter One

A bad day in the executive dining room…

Oil paintings of the Company fathers, each under its own intimate little light, frowned down in fastidious disdain at the ruckus Mickey was making. Unwavering, he held the gun pointed straight at Freddie’s heart.

Seated at the long table in the senior management dining room, Melissa and Tom Deloussian were on his right, while Freddie Smith sat across from him.

The newcomers, the strangers, sat at the head and foot of the polished ebony-like slab of fake walnut.

Blond-haired, blue-eyed and slender, about thirty years old, the always slightly-disheveled Melissa was deferential, apologetic. She didn’t understand the problem. Mellissa was a soft-spoken and non-confrontational person.

In the background, dark oaken panels and warmly gleaming brass fixtures contributed to the stark contrast between their immediate environment and Mickey’s erratic behavior.

Barely knowing Melissa and Tom, Mick couldn’t help but be aware of her scent. Even though they seemed happily married her tousled mop kept troubling the fringes of his highly-alert state. He was very young, just twenty-three three years old. There weren’t that many women on the planet at the best of times. He couldn’t escape the logic of her scent, and his own glands. As chief of the maintenance department, he was outside the loop, both as regards to management and the contract employees, which made him a very lonely young man around here.

“We just want to understand. Mickey is upset about something, after all, and no one thinks, well, no one thinks you’re crazy, Mick.” Melissa gave Mick’s arm a friendly and non-judgmental squeeze.

Very reassuring, but he knew what he knew and saw what he saw, as the saying went.

“Just do it.” An angry Mickey watched the lady on the left side, and then glared at the man at the other end of the table.

The two newcomers exchanged a long look. Silent communication passed between them, but as yet no decision had been made. Tom, Melissa’s hulky, hundred-ten kilogram hubby, built like a barrel and not much smarter, or so all the contract employees said, made as if to speak, which as often as not began with a thorough throat-clearing.

Tom wasn’t a bad guy, just cautious, and always the doubts. Thomas was a doubter.

Tom was an engineer, with all of their virtues and all of their faults, right down to a ‘T.’ Always needing to consult, always seeking clarification, or even just approval, from some higher authority. They didn’t have time for all that right now. They weren’t going to get it.

The pistol pointed unwaveringly at the casually slouching Fred, whose boyish, open face, puppy-dog blue eyes—dogs rarely had blue eyes in Mick’s estimation, but there you have it—just stayed on his own. There was no sign of fear in them and as far as he was concerned that was real bad. But how do you explain, when everyone thinks you’re nuts? When no one ever listens? Fred was about thirty-two years old. He had straight blonde hair, with one lock always hanging down over his forehead. Mickey just wasn’t buying the youthful innocence act any longer. He felt betrayed in some irrational fashion, yet it wasn’t poor Fred’s fault. He was about the closest thing Mickey had to a friend around here.

Poor Fred. Poor fucking Freddie. Jesus forgive me.

Months ago, someone had accused the tall, dark, and quiet Mickey of something he didn’t do. Give a dog a bad name, it will stick. Someone had taken real trouble to set him up, to make him out to be a bad one, and it was coming back to haunt them now. He could see that as plain as day.

“Just do it, Fred.” His glittering hazel eyes bored into Freddie’s.

“It will all become clear soon enough.” Freddie lifted his hands calmly off the table, turning them up so they could see the palms, as if that would make everything go away.

“I know you can do it, Fred.” Mickey’s voice echoed off the walls.

Again that silent, speculative look passed down the table, but Fred’s eyes just flicked to Melissa and Tom. The pistol was a curious device, a survival gun, and probably very good at any one job. It was too short for long-range accuracy, too small for big game, and it only held one little .410 cartridge in each of its double barrels. Freddie could try to bluster and dominate Melissa and Tom all he wanted, but Mickey was the one with the gun. It was a cross between an old ball-butted dueling pistol and a sawed-off shotgun, and deadly enough at close range. The only concern he had right now was not enough bullets for the job in hand. It was a big derringer, nothing more.

“I’ll do you, Fred.” Mick used the left hand to gently release one of the triggers so only one cartridge would fire.

Solid slugs nestled snugly inside in little brass and plastic tubes. He knew absolutely for certain it would fire when he pulled the trigger. The right-hand barrel was still cocked. They just didn’t think he would do it. He had no doubts of his own.

“I have exactly two shots. Who wants to be next?” He asked the stranger-lady, with a lift of his left eyebrow. “I can save it for you, or your goofy buddy. Which would you prefer?”

The eyebrow-twitch was one of his little idiosyncrasies.

“Oh, hell, why not?” The man had been silent until now.

His deep, rich, brown voice should have been trained for the opera. A quick glance confirmed that his eyes were twinkling in humorous bonhomie.

“They got to you, didn’t they, Fred?” Mick murmured in sadness.

Fred wasn’t his best friend. But he was the only friend Mickey had on this stinking, rinky-dink little planet Althea, where for some reason piezo-temporal crystals oozed out of pores in the rocks and washed down into the lowlands, where it re-crystallized, making it easy to scoop the stuff up and bulldoze it into the hoppers. It was a real bad time, as far as he was concerned, with all the work crews gone and their replacements not due in for another few moon-cycles. It was a time for routine maintenance, and repetitious report-writing.

It was also a time for punishment. Under normal circumstances he would have gone with them, but he had been convicted of theft, and so the management tribunal assigned him an administrative punishment. They’d accused him of stealing an entire crate of stuff meant for the crews, snacks and candy for the on-base store, where the Company could take back from them some of the hard-earned money they had risked their lives for on this Godforsaken rock.

A time to sit and wait for a psychiatric assessment, and if he failed, well, he wouldn’t get paid. It was all nice and legal according to the contract. Worse, with no money to pay the fare home, he would be indentured to the Company for seven years.

He would be paying room and board, charged through the nose for everything, and trying to save the pennies left over so he could make the ticket price and go home. Mickey was technically a mechanical engineer, and so he would be paying executive rates. The Contract was rock-solid and airtight. Otherwise he would be indentured for another seven years. Nice set-up indeed. Set aside the old contract, and write a new one for you. No recourse to the law, no appeals, no lawyers, no advocates, no time to prepare a defense or call any witnesses. He had a funny feeling he was going to fail that test, no matter what he said or did. Who did they even have onsite to administer it?

“I saw what they did, Fred.” Everyone waited to see what he would do next. “I came in here looking for the doctor, remember? And that little bone-headed, piss-ant McNulty was standing there by the cabinet, trying not to laugh his damn-fool head off…I knew it then, Fred. He slammed the door just a little too hard when he saw me come in.”

McNulty wanted him to know. For some reason the cowards are always cruel, in Mick’s experience.

“Very intuitive, Mickey.” Freddie gave a little shake of the head and shoulders as he indulged himself.

Fred’s mouth gaped in a grin, as if he were about to laugh out loud, to laugh at the futility of it all, the sheer nonsensical ribaldry of life in a galaxy where everyone thought they knew everything all the time. Freddie had told him his sad story, over one of a thousand drinks together.

“They set you up.” The admission came easily. “They pick the most biggest new guy, and you are unusually tall. Johnson is heavier, but he’s such a screw-up, they figured he might be useless. Or if you prefer, he never asked any questions…you ask a lot of questions. And you’re a pretty good mechanic.”

“You asked one too many questions.” Again it was the tall handsome stranger. “It’s a good way to keep discipline.”

Three of them and only two bullets…Mick’s thoughts raced.

“I will kill you, Fred.” He raised the gun and pointed it, right hand and forearm rock steady. “Is that why they did it, because I ask too many questions?”

Freddie gave no answer, but then Mickey really didn’t expect one.

“I’m running out of patience with you people.” Freddie’s newfound friends didn’t seem too impressed.

Melissa’s breath hissed out of her in disbelief. Tom stared at him.

“You promised we were going to ask questions, just a few, ah, questions, and listen to what they had to say.” Tom’s reminder left Mickey unmoved.

The gun was staring straight into Fred’s eyes. Those eyes were widening in shock, yet there was a calmness in them as well, no outrage, and no surprise. He wasn’t quite scared enough for Mickey’s liking.

“All right then.” The lady on his left was not an exact copy, but her blonde head, with the shock of thick locks a near-enough copy of Melissa’s to fool someone, but who?

The foreman of the next crew? She nodded in Fred’s direction, and his foolhardy grin got even bigger. The bastard was enjoying this. Mickey’s guts sank, and it felt real hollow inside right about now, as if everything he had ever eaten in his life was going to fall out his asshole with nothing to stop it.

Freddie’s eyes got about four times the size of normal human eyes, big, slanted, almond-shaped orbs of glittering-sparkling blue, surrounding one-inch pupils that were black as coals. Those horrible eyes scintillated, yet that frightening grin just kept on grinning.

You could have heard a pin drop, or a mosquito fart right about then, even though Melissa’s left hand was digging into his right forearm. Her long, sharp, pale pink nails cut into him through the thin, one-piece Company-issued insul-suit. Many people habitually wore them when off duty and inside the weather-dome.

She was so intent, she didn’t try to pull on his gun arm, or it would have really been a problem. He shrugged her off and she didn’t resist. Her mouth opened, and he could hear the barely audible gasp, the quick little intake of breath she made as Fred’s head and especially his face and neck began to stretch, and bulge, and God, now the other two began to do it, all three of them. Mickey’s head was going back and forth like a cobra trying to take them all in at once, and Tom was half out of his chair, frozen in time like a statue of something or other. His chair fell over, and hit the brown neo-wool of the dining room carpet with a soft, dull, thud-thud-thud as it skittered away and came to rest three or four feet back of him.

“I told you, but you just didn’t believe me.” Mickey had some kind of irrational anger at his companions.

Melissa and Tom were nice enough people, but no one ever listened to Mick. That was one reason why he left home, and signed up with the Company. At a later date it occurred to Mickey that the Company had probably seen him coming, a nice, idealistic and lonely young man with no place to go except somewhere else. That thought helped his decision-making process in some way. He had nothing to lose, and perhaps everything to gain.

Mickey pulled the trigger right. Everything happened so fast after that, but he must have shot Fred right about then, and then they were all backing up from the table as Fred stared dumbfounded at the new hole in his chest. The two strangers began shouting at once. Fred looked up at him in sad, sick disbelief, and his grin began to fade into nothingness. He stared deep into Mickey’s eyes.

Freddie had the strangest look of curiosity on his face. It’s something Mickey would never forget. He had a look of awe on his face. He still couldn’t believe it, just couldn’t believe it. Terribly, his head had returned to normal and Mick wondered just what exactly what there was left to believe in.

Mick was having a hard time believing it himself.

“Stay where you are.” He pushed in front of Melissa and Tom, swinging the gun from side to side to try to cover them both.

He cocked the other trigger. It seemed like somebody else was doing it, but he saw it for sure—he took the time to double-check.

“I’ll get one of you for sure, you stinking bastards.” Mickey sure sounded mean right then. If the gun had been better, a repeater with some kind of magazine, he would have killed them both right then and there with no questions asked.

Their heads were really flickering now, as if they were about to change shape. He pulled open one of the cupboard doors. He pointed the gun at the woman stranger, moving to the left so it was easier to watch them both. Those two weren’t smiling anymore, but discretion being the better part of valor, they kept their mouths shut.

“Grab as much as you can.” He ordered Tom, as Melissa hovered by the door in shock and confusion.

A quick glance showed she needed direction. Her hands fluttered around on the ends of her arms, as she gasped and gulped like a fresh-landed fish. She was transfixed, an adrenalin rush stalled at the takeoff.

“Grab a bag, a box, a frigging pillowcase. Grab the tablecloth.” She scrambled to comply.

The crazy man had a gun, after all.

It took but a moment, as Fred suddenly slumped down in his chair, and then went over sideways, hitting the floor like a jute sack full of beans or something small and loose.

Poor Fred was out of sight, for the most part, just barely visible on the far side, under the table, surrounded by high-backed chairs pushed out of the way by his fall.

Mick reached in with his left hand, and grabbed packets of M & M’s and Smarties, and shoved them in the pockets of the utility coveralls, awkwardly trying to fill the right-hand pockets with his left hand, and at the same time cover the freaking aliens or whatever they were.

“I’ll kill your lady friend deader than dead.” He faced the quasi-male alien, who was rising from his seat, his features out of control, his head now twice the size of a human being’s.

An inarticulate growl came out of his distended throat and vicious, gaping red maw of a mouth. It was all Greek to Mickey.

Mickey jammed in a couple of chocolate bars, and then the kicker, a huge Toblerone, a triangular bar of chocolate in a stiff yellowy-buff cardboard tube. It was some kind of huge Christmas-gift type of confection. The damned thing must have weighed in at two kilos, and he one-handedly smashed it against a countertop, and broke it in three and jammed it into his left side pocket.

“Don’t try to follow us.” There was a sudden rush of silence as the male alien subsided back into his chair in the awful realization that they had blown their cover.

They really didn’t have to do that. They could have waited it out…maybe? His mind was going full blast, and there wasn’t time to think it through. Everything was happening so quickly, and so very, very slowly…Mick’s mind was crystallized from adrenalin.

“Let’s go.” He gave one more wave of the gun at the two aliens, and they pelted down the two flights of stairs of the Administration building then out across the parking lot.

The heat of mid-autumn hit like the mouth of a blast-furnace, oblique rays of the late afternoon star-shine stinging their cheeks with its radiation. The last thing he recalled from that flight, was McElroy, sitting stiff as a doorknob at the desk in the control room, sightless eyes gazing at the dials and displays on the console in front of him. What they did to him, Mick had no idea. But he was dead for sure, from what he could see in a quick glimpse through the window. Tom was running along close beside Melissa, as she struggled along with the bundle in the tablecloth, with his hand in the small of her back.

Mickey brought up the rear, ears agape and eyes agog for any hint of pursuit, fearfully wondering what they would find in the dormitory habitat. They slammed open the door of the building and pelted up the stairs, the rest of the place eerily quiet as their thumping footsteps clamored up and down the stairwell. Running purely on instinct, predictably enough they found themselves in the married quarters. Tom and Melissa lived on the second floor.

With a different kind of shock, he saw they had a kitchenette, but Mick lived in the bachelor’s quarters. He had never really thought about it.

“We can’t stay very long.” Mick was firm.

The two of them stood there in stark, naked, unadulterated fear. Their shock and confusion and the run made the breath ragged in their throats, as they stared wild-eyed at Mickey.

“Pots and pans, knives and forks, stuff like that.” Melissa nodded at the command.

Tom would be useless for this kind of thing. He’d have to make a list or something.

There were beads of sweat on Tom’s forehead, and he was breathing pretty hard. Melissa just kind of stood there, rocking left and right on the balls of her feet. Tom’s dark, straight hair was plastered down his forehead. He huffed and puffed, and stared at Mickey with wild eyes.

Big balls of sweat were running down Mickey’s ribcage under the arms.

“Five minutes. You’ve got five minutes.” Melissa’s eyes were wide with horror, and awe-stricken with new knowledge.

She got it quick, but Tom began to bluster. His numbed brain was beginning to ask a few questions.

“What—what? Why do we have to go anywhere?” Tom wasn’t so dumb, he just didn’t get it.

“I really don’t have time to build a consensus. You stand by this window and watch that fucking door, okay?” Mickey was angry with the whole damned galaxy right then, but he had to get control of these two right quickly.

He ripped open the curtains and pointed at the door they had just come out of, seventy-five metres across the way.

“There must be more than them two. I don’t know if you noticed, but the fire curtains on the control room door were open. They were closed before, when we went up!”

Tom shook his head.

“McElroy’s dead.” Mickey gave them the news, as they needed to know and it was as good a time as any.

“What, what?” Tom babbled as Mick pushed him forward.

Thank God, Mickey could hear Melissa behind them, pulling stuff out of the cupboards like a whirlwind.

“Grab all the food you can carry.” She was at least useful. “Make up five or six bags. Don’t grab a frozen turkey, okay?”

She was still shaky and confused.

“Dry, packaged foods, as much as you got.” Giving her a little push, he kept going.

“I’m going to search a couple of the rooms, see if I can come up with some more ammo.”

Mickey headed for the door.

“Bisson has a weapon. It might be in his bed table.” He nodded encouragement at this rapid re-framing of Tom’s head-space. “Thanks, Tom.”

He bolted from the room and up the stairs to the penthouse suites. As for swiping a vehicle, he had all that figured out ahead of time. He knew what he knew, and had seen what he’d seen. The blue four-wheel-drive pickup, with a crew cab, the one usually taken by Site Manager Guy Bisson on his daily inspection tours, was right outside with the keys in it and three-quarters of a tank of gas. Mick had stolen the gun from under the seat earlier that day.

End

This is a rough idea of what the markting image might look like.

http://www.amazon.com/Louis-Bertrand-Shalako/e/B005GHIF86