“Hey, guys,” Touré said, holding up his bottle. It was an Italian red with a big price tag that tasted like every other wine he’d ever had. “To the human race!”
“To the human race,” everyone said. They drank.
“All right,” Ananda said, after a suitable pause. “Should I continue?”
“Go ahead,” Win said. “We can always go out for more alcohol if this gets worse.”
2
It didn’t get worse, just more confusing.
Ananda shared the photograph Touré and Robbie found of the weird object everyone had spent the past couple of months pretending didn’t exist—at least, that was how it felt to Touré. An object with no power running to or from it was producing a light show that followed them around; it should be dominating every one of their conversations until they figured out what it was and what it did. Instead, they’d ignored it and had more or less done the same with the shimmer.
After displaying the photograph, Ananda went on about how the marks on the top somehow got erased if you hit them very hard and asked for opinions on what that could mean.
“Let me see if I have this,” Paul said, in his own deliberative style. “When was that picture taken?”
“We can’t be sure,” Ananda said. “Whenever the object was unearthed, which could theoretically be anywhere between 2020—because it wasn’t here when I was—and 2044.”
“Well, it wasn’t 2020,” he said. “Just look at the scene. You’ve got a hastily built fence, an army cordon that doesn’t look like it’s all that hard to go around, and only covers two directions. You’ve got a building they never finished taking down. Everything about it says they didn’t have long to look at it before . . . well, you know.”
“Whateverpocalypse,” Touré said.
“Right,” Paul said.
“You’re skirting the point,” Ananda said. “It’s a photo taken before now showing evidence of damage that didn’t occur until recently.”
“Yeah, that doesn’t make sense to me,” Paul said.
“Oh, I understand!” Bethany said. “It’s going in reverse!”
Ananda smiled. “Yes, cause and effect seem to be reversed, pertaining specifically to this object. Which effectively means that it’s temporally inverted.”
“Well . . .” Paul said. “That’s . . . interesting. Dunno what it means.” He looked around for some help.
“I’m gonna go on record as agreeing with Paul,” Touré said. “That doesn’t make a single bit of sense without using the word magic. And you probably don’t want to do that.”
“No, I don’t,” Ananda said.
“You said before that when you hit it, you healed it,” Robbie said. “Now you’re saying you’re causing the damage after it was already . . . Yeah, no. I think Win’s right, we’re going to need another alcohol run for this.”
“Cheers,” Win said, holding up her own bottle. “You all sound like a college keg party at two in the morning. Oh, hey, am I the only one who gets that?”
“I never went to college,” Paul said.
“We were just starting,” Carol said, speaking for both herself and Robbie.
“I didn’t go to the parties,” Touré said.
Ananda laughed. “Neither did I,” she said.
“You’re all nerds,” Win said, with a laugh.
“Hey!” Bethany said.
“Except for you. Sorry, Ananda, please continue. But if you start asking How high is up? or whatever, I’m not going to be able to control myself.”
“How high is . . . ?”
“Sorry,” Win said, “never mind. Keep talking.”
“Uh, yes,” Ananda said. “As I was saying, the evident cause-effect inversion is complicated. I’ve been afraid to draw any real conclusions from it, absent additional data. It’s possible, in the twenty-four-year gap, that we developed technology that could make such a thing exist. Mind you, I don’t know what it’s for, and as long as that’s the case, I can’t know why it was important to build. But first, it would be good to know if its creation was within the bounds of the possible for the human race. My conclusion, however tentative, is that I don’t think so.”
She took a moment, perhaps to allow everyone to posit their own conclusions before rendering hers.
“I think,” she said, “that this might be an alien object.”
There was another long silence. It was considerably less ponderous than the first one.
It ended when Touré started laughing, then Robbie, and then the others fell in.
“I don’t understand,” Ananda said.
“Oh, hell,” Touré said, “we all figured that was the case a long time ago.”
“The shimmer,” Win said.
“Yes,” Robbie said. “So the device is probably alien; that’s fine. What about the shimmer? Do you know anything about that yet?”
“No,” Win said, pointing. “I mean, there’s the shimmer.”
It was hovering off the edge of the roof.
Christmas tree lights in a washing machine, Touré thought.
He’d seen it three times already, possibly four, if the memory of what he saw during his fever was to be taken seriously. Often enough that he felt justified in observing that something seemed different about it this time. It was a weird idea, given this was just a cloud of lights.
But this time it looked angry.
From the edge of the roof, it swept forward and dive-bombed Ananda. She yelped in surprise. Then it went from surrounding her to examining everyone else: passing through Touré; hovering menacingly over Bethany, who looked ready to take out her gun and shoot it; bouncing between Win and Carol; knifing into Paul.
“What’s it doing?” Carol asked, in response to the yelps and yips everyone around her was uttering.
“It’s acting like it’s pissed off at us,” Touré said.
“Well, that’s different,” Carol said, at the same moment the shimmer traveled through her. That she didn’t know it was passing through her was the best proof that any sensations they might think they were having because of an interaction with the light show was probably all in their heads.
The encounter ended with the shimmer spinning above them for several seconds before zipping off toward Boston.
“Well,” Paul said, after a decent moment of silence, “I’d say producing that light show is one of the things that alien machine of yours is doing, Nanda. Maybe we should figure out why.”
“Soon,” Bethany said. “I didn’t like that at all.”
“I agree, of course,” Ananda said. “It may take some time. I need access to the research conducted on it prior to the . . .”
She stared at Touré, as if saying, Please don’t make me say it.
“The whateverpocalypse,” he said.
“Yes, prior to that. It was studied in detail. Even if they only learned enough to conclude that evacuation was a wise decision, in 2044 they had access to technology I don’t have and some technology I don’t understand. I’m saying it may be a while before we have concrete answers.”
Touré looked at Robbie, nodded back. It was time.
“We might have a shortcut,” Robbie said.
“Oh?” Ananda said. “Did you find something?”
“Kind of.”
“What we’re thinking,” Touré said, “is that the best way to find out what the alien device does is by asking an alien.”
“Sure, dude,” Bethany said. “Next time you see one, go ahead.”
“I think I will, thanks.”
Ananda flashed a somewhat condescending smile.
“You’re talking about how the lights sometimes look human?” she asked. “Because there’s a great deal of work in human pattern-recognition tendencies that could explain this.”
“No, no, no,” Robbie said. “That isn’t what he meant.”
He stood up next to the whiteboard like a kid taking over the class midlecture.
“We want to tell you guys something,�
� he said, “if you’re done, Ananda. For now. We can go back to you if you want after.”
“Please,” she said. “Go ahead.”
She sat down. Her expression suggested it was not fine.
Robbie looked nervous. He took a sip from the can of beer he was working on, put it down, and did a little pacing.
“Well, go on,” Paul said. “We’re all friends here.”
“Thanks. I’m not sure how to put this delicately, so I’m . . . I’ll just say it. I think—we think, Touré and I—the reason the seven of us didn’t die with everyone else was because we were abducted by aliens. We also think—we know—we’ve been visited by those same aliens since then.”
Ananda looked somewhat exasperated. “How could you possibly know that for a fact?” she asked.
“We know this,” Robbie said, “because a couple of days ago I punched one in the face.”
He was met with a lot of stunned silence.
“Way to sell it, Robert,” Touré said.
“I think I need a bottle of stronger alcohol,” Carol said, “before I’m ready to hear more.”
Fifteen
Win
1
Win didn’t know Robbie that well.
He seemed like a pretty stable person and levelheaded enough to keep himself, a teen, and a blind woman alive despite not having any evident survival skills. That took at least a little wisdom and probably a generous dollop of luck. Waking up in the middle of a metropolis was one such example of that good fortune. If he’d opened his eyes to a farmhouse like she had, it would have gone differently for him.
The point was, he didn’t seem like the kind of person who was susceptible to ridiculousness. Touré, perhaps, could encourage a wilder temperament in those around him, but she didn’t think Touré was really like that either. She may have been the only one of them—Touré himself included—who thought his trips into fantasy were masquerading as insight none of the rest of them had access to.
No, this came from Robbie; Touré just bought into it first.
She had to admit, the abduction part . . . made some sense. Even Ananda agreed that it fit the evidence. She then pointed out that taken to the North Pole by Santa also fit the evidence, so maybe that wasn’t as big a deal as they thought it was.
An obvious counterpoint to this argument was that while it may be true Santa could have abducted the seven of them instead of a space alien, Robbie didn’t punch Santa in the face. Nobody made that argument, though, because it was clear Ananda simply didn’t believe Robbie or Touré actually had had a physical altercation with their bogeyman.
Win wasn’t sure if she was ready to believe it either.
The idea that they had all been abducted created a whole raft of new questions that none of them could possibly answer, such as (1) Why them? (2) Where were they taken? (3) What happened to their memories? (4) Why didn’t they age? (5) Why were they put back again? . . . and so on. The problem was that there was no way to answer any of that without interrogating an actual alien. That should have been where the whole discussion ended, because any being who was capable of taking seven people—or eight, if the departed Raymond was properly included in their number—from the planet, years apart from one another, with nobody being the wiser . . . that being was going to be damn hard to catch.
But they still wanted to try.
“He came up behind us in the dungeon,” Touré explained, shortly after Robbie connected his alien to the man Carol supposedly encountered in the dorm. “We’ll have to go back down there and jump him when he does it again.”
“All seven of us?” Paul asked. “Don’t you think he’ll notice we’re all there?”
“We’re the idea guys, not the tacticians,” Touré said. “Maybe you and the goddess of the hunt here can stalk him.”
“Not if he can just disappear,” Paul said. “I have that right, don’t I? He can disappear?”
“He did a thing,” Robbie said, “with his arm, before he vanished.”
“A thing with his arm,” Paul repeated.
“Maybe he’s waving his magic wand,” Bethany suggested.
“No, he’s employing some sort of technology,” Carol said. “It makes a clicking sound.”
“How do you know that?” Robbie asked.
“I heard it. If we can take that away from him, we may be able to punch him in the face a few more times.”
“When did you hear it?” Robbie asked. “Not in the dorm. You would have said so.”
“Not in the dorm,” Carol said. She sighed, then, and shook her head. Win had seen her do this before. It usually meant Carol was debating something internally.
“Here?” Touré asked. “In the castle?”
“I don’t want you to think I’m in danger,” Carol said.
That was in response to Touré but directed at Robbie. Those two had an interesting relationship: very formal in many ways, but they took care of each other through tiny gestures of intimacy.
“He watches me regularly,” Carol said. “I never said so because I didn’t think you’d believe me.”
The concern on Robbie’s face was something to witness. He looked horrified at the prospect of Carol being harmed.
They’ve been through a lot together, Win thought.
Though Robbie’s concern was displayed entirely visually, Carol somehow seemed to hear it. “I’m safe, Robbie,” she said. “I have protection. The only reason I’m telling you this at all is that if he’s real and you want to catch him, I can tell you where he’ll be aside from the dungeon.”
“In the library,” Robbie said.
“Yes,” Carol said. “But first, you’re all going to have to introduce yourselves to Nolan.”
2
A week later, Win was huddled between a stack of books and an empty bookshelf at the edge of the balcony floor of the Hayden Library.
She was under a blanket, which seemed weirdly juvenile to her. Sure, the library was cold, so the added warmth was welcome, but the idea that a blanket might make it so the monster couldn’t see her was a notion she’d grown out of long ago.
She had a clear view of Carol and Nolan at a table near the window, thirty feet away.
Nolan was a damn wolf. As soon as Carol explained this, Win decided all four of them—Robbie, Carol, Touré, and Bethany—were entirely out of their minds and not to be trusted. Madness induced by overconsumption of Noot, perhaps. That they’d managed to survive on their own was a miracle.
Nolan was the reason it took so long to set this plan into motion. First, each of them had to meet with him someplace outside of the library. This was so the alien didn’t see them meeting the wolf, which was just flat stupid, because they didn’t know what he could and couldn’t see and hear, regardless of what part of the castle they were in. For all they knew, he heard their conversation on the roof and the follow-up one in the living quarters when they’d come up with this very plan. Meeting the wolf in the library was surely not going to be the part where they blew the trap.
They did it anyway. Carol found a place down the hall from the library—she’d trained the creature to use a certain door—and waited for him to discover her. Then, one by one, Win, Paul, Robbie, and Touré came through a second door and introduced themselves.
Nolan seemed okay with Robbie. But he didn’t like Paul—he appeared to remember their first encounter—and he would have probably torn out Touré’s throat if Carol hadn’t whacked him on the head with her cane.
He actively liked Win, which was strange; she had her hand on her knife the entire time and had thought very seriously about gutting him while the coywolf was licking her face. She thought it was a good thing Carol didn’t befriend a boar instead, because that would have been a different story. Win didn’t like the wolves, but she really didn’t like boars.
Once that was done, they put the rest of the plan in motion. Win, Paul, Robbie, and Touré would sneak into the library in the morning—agai
n, one at a time—and take up tactical positions where they would remain until the early afternoon, which was when Carol usually arrived.
It was a ridiculous plan, and it wasn’t going to work. But with new snow outside and no need to go hunting or do much of anything else, they also had nothing better to do.
May as well humor them, Win thought.
Carol showed up on schedule, found her way to Nolan’s door and cracked it open, then took her seat and started reading.
Win wondered what Carol’s plan was if someone other than Nolan walked through that door. She decided Carol probably didn’t have one, because the woman was evidently working out the kinks on a death wish.
Nolan did walk through the door as expected and nearly blew the game right away. About halfway to Carol, he stopped and sniffed the air, identifying at least one of the others.
“Hey, puppy,” Carol said, waving a piece of meat in the air. This got him walking again. Crisis averted. Nolan curled up under the table like a good dog.
And so they waited.
After what had to be an hour ( fix the clocks was high on Win’s personal agenda for the springtime) she started to wonder at what point they should call this whole thing off. She was getting a cramp while waiting for the arrival of a figment of everyone’s imagination, and needed there to be an all-clear, never-mind, ha-ha-just-kidding signal.
Does the alien even show up every day? she wondered. Did anybody ask Carol this?
Win had convinced herself that he wasn’t going to this day, so when it finally happened, she thought her eyes were bugging out on her. The sun’s angle through the window indicated late afternoon and elongated shadows. About ten feet from Carol, between the light from two windows, one of those shadows started growing independently . . . with nothing to cast it.
It grew, driving out the light instead of the other way around. This wasn’t how shadows worked.
Then it gained some kind of form: a tall man in a black cloak.
I’ve seen you before, Win thought.
The Apocalypse Seven Page 32