Alien Proliferation

nodded. “Yeah, which is a scary statistic in its own right.”
    “Why didn’t anyone pay more attention to this?”
    Jeff shrugged, but Chuckie looked thoughtful. “Maybe they did.”
    “Come again?”
    Chuckie sighed. “You’ve been infiltrated before. Several times that we know of. It’s likely there are more infiltrators than we know about. So, perhaps a study was done, and the results were destroyed or hidden.”
    “Who would do that?” Jeff asked. “Who would want to keep this information from us?”
    “Beverly leaps to mind, and that’s just for starters.” I considered. “The current Diplomatic Corps might, particularly if the statistics indicated that interbreeding was good for both races.”
    “There weren’t enough numbers for a sufficient test,” Jeff protested.
    Chuckie cocked his head. “Why did they stop then?”
    “What do you mean?” Jeff actually didn’t sound aggressive—he sounded confused.
    I snorted. “Your race is extremely efficient. You test everything, at least as far as I’ve seen. You research. You do your homework.”
    Chuckie nodded. “So, why would they only interbreed a few couples?”
    “It was every race and country,” I offered. I remembered this well from Operation Fugly. “So, figure there was a sample of at least a hundred, maybe closer to two hundred.” Jeff nodded.
    “That’s hardly enough to perform any useful analysis,” Chuckie said. “What did the tests prove?”
    “We were taught the tests showed no significant positives that made interspecies marriage worthwhile, which meant we shouldn’t interbreed . . .” Jeff’s voice trailed off, and he looked as though he was starting to get angry. “This is going to be one of those things they told us to control us, isn’t it?”
    “I think it’s more that they told you to control you the way Ronald Yates wanted. We have to figure whoever was in on this willingly and knowingly was a Yates loyalist, like good old Beverly.”
    Chuckie shook his head. “If it’s, as it always seems, a group of the older generation of A-Cs, we’re going to have trouble finding them.” He shot me a look I knew meant he felt that we potentially had some really excellent liars in the A-C community. “However, let’s table the rest of our genetics worries. We need to move the murder worries front and center. How did the hybrids die?”
    “Report’s coming down to us, but it would be acceptable things. Car crash, superbeing, alcohol ingestion.”
    “Wait a minute. Jeff, no one knew alcohol killed A-Cs until I joined up and we all figured it out.”
    “Last male hybrid died from alcohol ingestion twelve months ago,” Reader said as he came into the room carrying a file.
    “You’re the statistics guy?” Why was I always the last to know anything?
    Got the cover-boy grin. “Why do you think I live for the light reading?” He tossed the file to Jeff and came over to me. Kissed my forehead, kissed the baby. Then leaned against the wall. “Our last hybrid was supposedly depressed, and the consensus was that he committed suicide.”
    “We don’t commit suicide.” Jeff sounded confused. “It’s just not something A-Cs do, religiously or racially. I can’t think of a suicide, ever, that I’ve ever heard of.” I chose not to mention that Jeff asking ACE to kill him if I died was a form of suicidal thinking. I mean, he was stressed enough, Chuckie was right there, and they were both doing so well, I didn’t want to wreck the cooperative mood.
    “You don’t do drugs, either. I point to White, who’s locked up in your version of rehab, and mention that, yes, sometimes you do.” Chuckie shifted in his chair. “But back to Kitty’s point. Why would alcohol ingestion be an acceptable cause of death?”
    Reader shrugged. “Guy was depressed. But let me have your attention before you go off worrying about that.” He waited until we were all looking at him. “Every single hybrid, other than the Gowers and Serene, was living in Europe. And our last dead hybrid was living in . . . wait for it . . . Paris.”
    Silence. Jeff was an A-C, genetically quiet when thinking. Chuckie had learned to think to himself since thinking aloud got him beaten up when we were in school. Reader had been around the A-Cs a long time. As always, this left acting human to me.
    “So how many hybrids were there, in total? To begin with, I mean?”
    “Less than two hundred. And, yeah, girlfriend, in all of those, the