The Return

by Joseph Helmreich

  “No spacecraft you know. And it’s not just about speed, is it? Are you hitting the shield at a twenty-degree angle? Fifty-degree?”

  Shawn considered this.

  “Even so,” he said, “considering all the variables at play, to calculate everything just right and then to actually execute it that way would be virtually impossible.”

  “Yes.”

  Shawn waited for Leland to say more, but he didn’t.

  “Okay. All right. So if you were somehow able to just pass through the shield instead of taking it down first,” Shawn asked, “does that mean Ambius could do the same thing from the other side?”

  “Possibly. But they won’t need to now, will they?”

  Shawn didn’t let that faze him. “Where’s the ship you came back in? What happened to it?”

  “You’re asking a lot of questions.”

  “What happened to you?”

  “Me?”

  Shawn paused. He, himself, could barely believe where he’d taken the conversation, but by the same token, there was no backing down. It was now or never. The discussion wasn’t going to be continued over breakfast the next morning. “You’re not the same person anymore,” Shawn said. “The way you jumped from eighty feet and rescued me from that river without a scratch. The way you’ve outrun Ambius all over the world. A normal human being would have been caught ages ago.”

  Leland returned the book to the shelf. “Guess I’ve had lots of luck,” he said. “Don’t push yours.” With that, he turned away and walked out of the library, leaving Shawn by himself again.

  Shawn spent a little more time in there, browsing the collection, which turned out to also contain fascinating, non-Braille tomes on anthropology, American history, and even some introductory—and severely outdated—textbooks on astronomy and physics. When the light began to dim further, he reached into his pocket for his small LED flashlight and, as he did, felt a stab of hunger, despite his lavish feast of instant soup, and he suddenly remembered something else he’d been intending to do.

  * * *

  Minutes later, Shawn clicked on the flashlight and scanned his new surroundings. A large freestanding cabinet structure stood to his left, a long tublike sink with two faucets to his right, and directly in front of him, an ancient-looking stove. As much as he loved canned vegetables and soup, he’d decided a working kitchen wouldn’t be a terrible thing, though he had serious doubts about whether anything in here was still usable. The stove, for instance, was no doubt worthless, given that it had likely been decades since any gas company had serviced the house.

  However, resting on the floor nearby, there appeared to be an even older type of stove, and this one didn’t seem connected to, or dependent on, a gas line. The strange antique, which sort of resembled a small lamp, consisted of a wide single burner head jutting out from a fat metal cylinder, presumably some sort of fuel tank. If the tank wasn’t empty, there might be some way to get the thing going, though Shawn would have to figure out how.

  As he bent down to get a closer look, he couldn’t help but smile. Once again, his world had turned inside out. A little over a month ago, he’d been trying to determine how two disparate theories of faster-than-light travel could combine to create a giant shield of space-time curvature. Now, he was trying to turn on a stove.

  People sometimes describe an almost supernatural feeling of being watched, as though the hairs on the backs of their necks can somehow sense that another is observing them. Shawn knew perfectly well that there was absolutely nothing supernatural about this phenomenon, that the inexplicable “feeling” described was actually the result of a hardwired “gaze-detection system” in the brain. Our peripheral vision is extremely sensitive to the eyes of others and so alerts us when the position of someone’s iris relative to his or her sclera indicates we’re being looked at. However, at this particular moment, the only things in Shawn’s field of vision were the front and sides of the kitchen. So how to explain that he was having that mysterious feeling right now?

  Shawn turned immediately to the point on the smaller stove that was reflecting his flashlight, and sure enough, he could barely make out the image of a short, shadowy figure standing behind him, just beyond the kitchen, and he could make out the eyes, glowing out of the darkness, that he’d felt watching him. Shawn spun around and aimed his flashlight directly at his observer, who instantly took off running. “Hey!” Shawn called out and, without missing a beat, raced after in pursuit, flashlight shining forward. For a moment, he thought he’d lost the person, but then, turning a sharp corner, he caught sight of them at the far end of the hallway, running through a low doorway Shawn hadn’t previously noticed. Shawn followed through the door and almost lost his balance before grabbing onto a railing. He was at the top of a creaky wooden staircase that led down into total darkness. The elusive servants’ quarters, he realized! Footsteps barreled down the stairs below him, followed by a sudden crash, thud, and piercing scream. Shawn quickly swiveled his flashlight downward. The last two steps of the no-doubt rotten wooden staircase had given out, and a teenage boy lay writhing in pain on the stone basement floor. Shawn was about to call out and ask if he was all right when Andrew Leland suddenly brushed past him from above, practically flying down the stairs. Leland leaped over the missing space at the bottom like he’d already anticipated it, landed hard next to the kid, and pulled out a pistol Shawn never knew he had.

  “When I count to three,” Leland said, aiming the gun right at the kid’s head, “you’re going to tell me who I am. One, two, three…”

  CHAPTER 19

  The kid winced in pain. “Too tight,” he groaned as Leland yanked another layer of duct tape across the instep of his left foot. The kid had sprained his ankle pretty badly and was lying on his back on a dirty air mattress with his foot elevated over Leland’s knee while the latter fashioned a makeshift compression wrap. Shawn stood off to the side, looking on as a small battery-operated desk lamp glowed from a wooden table in the corner of the room. The kid had shown him how to turn the lamp on, and it illuminated the cigarette boxes and comic books that populated the table.

  “You some kinda doctor?” the kid asked Leland.

  “Nope.”

  “So how do I know you know what you’re doin’?”

  Leland shrugged.

  “Christ.”

  Though he’d told Leland and Shawn he was twenty-one, the kid looked closer to seventeen, and with his long, messy red hair, torn clothes, and small patch of raw, fleshy scarring on his left cheek, he gave off a hard and scruffy vibe that was somewhat offset by his youth. Despite the pistol being aimed at his head, he had not told Leland who Leland was, just to go fuck himself, which surprised both Leland and Shawn and made Shawn wonder if he might be crazy. But while they couldn’t know for sure, they didn’t think he recognized Leland. Several times in the course of their travels, they had run up against people who seemed like they did, and there was always a discernible look of recognition and amazement, even reverence. This kid displayed none of that, not even at first.

  “Y’all gonna be stayin’ awhile?” he asked.

  Leland shrugged. “If we feel like it.”

  “Well, see, this here is kinda my place.”

  “Your place?” asked Shawn with a smirk. “You look a little young to be Timothy Atterbury.”

  “I didn’t say y’all gotta leave.”

  “And we didn’t say you could stay,” answered Leland.

  The kid looked angry for an instant, but seemed to calm himself quickly and prevent himself from reacting. For a few moments, he said nothing at all, just stared at the floor, looking somewhat perturbed. Finally, he looked back to Leland. “You said yourself I can’t walk,” he said. “Maybe how ’bout this? How ’bout we all stay? I don’t ask you what you’re doin’ holin’ up in some old mansion, you don’t ask me what I’m doin’ holin’ up in some old mansion. I give you access to my food and supplies, and no, I ain’t livin’ off Lucky Strikes; I got a whole
stash of canned food, bottled water, batteries, toilet paper, you name it.” He turned to Shawn. “I’ll also teach you how to fire up that li’l kerosene stove if you like. Then, when the supplies run out, y’all will restock with enough stuff so that if and when you wanna move on, I’ll be able to get by just long enough till I can get back on my feet. Seems like an equitable arrangement to me. Whaddaya say?”

  Leland stared at him for a few seconds, then looked to Shawn. It occurred to Shawn that this was probably the first time Leland had ever really sought his opinion. He shrugged, genuinely unsure what to do. On the one hand, part of him welcomed the idea of a companion besides Leland. On the other, his experiences with Ambius had made him far less trusting than he once was.

  Leland turned back to the kid. “What kind of phone you have?”

  “Galaxy.”

  “Can I see it?”

  The kid hesitated, shook his head. Leland pulled out the pistol and aimed it at him. “Give me your fucking phone.”

  The kid retrieved it from his pocket and handed it to him. Leland popped open the back and pulled out the SIM card. He handed the phone back to the kid. “You got yourself a deal.”

  * * *

  “I really don’t get it,” said Shawn later that evening when he and Leland were back in their room. “How can he not recognize you? He saw your whole face up close.”

  “We’ll have to watch him carefully. Don’t forget, I’ve been under the radar the past few years, and he was only a kid back when I was big news. Not everybody is completely obsessed with me.”

  Shawn ignored the dig. “What do you think he’s running from?”

  “You saw that burn mark on his cheek.”

  “What? Abuse?”

  Leland shrugged.

  “Okay, but why’s he hiding out here?”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, if I had run away from home, I’d probably go for a big city, someplace I could disappear, start over. This isn’t any kind of life for anyone. I mean, well, besides us.”

  “Maybe he’s scared of getting caught, sent back. Or maybe he’s planning to go back. This could be just a break.”

  “What, like a vacation?”

  “Who knows?”

  “Did you have to shove that gun in his face?”

  “Yes.”

  Shawn sighed. “Well, I guess you’re right; we’ll just have to watch him close. I feel like it doesn’t add up.”

  “Things sometimes don’t. People don’t always do what you expect.”

  “That’s for sure,” said Shawn, gingerly settling into an old Windsor chair by the window. “Like for instance, say some guy goes on a trip somewhere special that no one else has ever been. You’d think when he got back, he would tell at least some people what it was like. All the amazing things he saw. All the incredible people or, you know, creatures he encountered. You’d never imagine he’d just keep it all to himself, not tell a soul, act like he didn’t even remember it.”

  Leland hadn’t been looking at him, and for a moment, Shawn assumed he would just ignore him.

  “What if he didn’t remember it?” Leland suddenly asked, turning to him.

  “You told me you helped them build the shield,” Shawn said. “And that afterward, they decided to attack Earth and that the shield is the only thing stopping them from doing it. How could you know all that if you don’t remember anything?”

  “There’s a big difference between knowing and remembering,” said Leland. “I wouldn’t have lasted in that atmosphere for five minutes. Even if I could have, my senses wouldn’t have been able to assimilate anything. In order to exist on that world, I had to become something else. And that something else is gone now, along with everything it experienced. This body you see here never went anywhere, and these eyes never saw anything. This body experienced nothing but the ride there and the ride back. All I have are bare-bones facts—that’s it. If you want to know what anything was actually like, what anyone was like, your guess is as good as mine.”

  Shawn shook his head. “You must remember something.”

  “I don’t.”

  * * *

  It rained all through the night. In the morning, Shawn descended the stairs to the basement (carefully hopping over the missing portion), carrying a bowl of instant oatmeal he’d cooked up with his and Leland’s electric kettle. The kid lay on his back on the mattress, tapping furiously at his phone screen as some tinny video game theme played from the speaker.

  “Thought you might want breakfast,” Shawn said.

  The kid looked up, smiled, and turned off the game. “Thank you kindly,” he said, taking the bowl from Shawn.

  Shawn watched as he hungrily devoured the oatmeal. He ate with such abandon that Shawn wondered if he hadn’t been exaggerating about the food and supplies he would supposedly be sharing with them.

  “So,” Shawn said when the boy had finished, “you say you know something about old stoves.”

  * * *

  In the kitchen upstairs, Shawn carefully released a few drops of denatured alcohol into a small round cup situated just below the burner of the smaller stove.

  “Okay, good,” the kid said, looking on from a short wooden folding chair. “Now light her up.”

  Shawn struck a match and lit the alcohol aflame.

  “Once it burns out, close the air valve and start pumpin’.”

  Shawn waited for the flame to drop off, and then he shut the air valve. He took hold of the small, silver handle protruding from the side of the tank and began to pump, carefully moving it back and forth, in and out of the tank. Soon enough, a blue, sootless flame had materialized in the center of the burner.

  The kid smiled. “Voilà!”

  Shawn watched the flame, then turned to the kid. “How’d you figure all this out?”

  “Not much to figure out. Works about the same as a modern Primus. My family’s been using those on camping trips for years. So what’s with you and the old man?”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “Well, not sure how to put it politely. Are you his son or his bitch?”

  This took Shawn aback. “Neither!”

  “Right. Okay. Well, he ain’t exactly Mr. Warm and Fuzzy, is he?”

  “What happened to not asking each other questions?”

  “Think I was pretty clear on what questions we was and wasn’t to be askin’.”

  Shawn considered this. “Okay. No, he’s not warm and fuzzy. Where are you from?”

  The kid laughed. “Well played, partner. Small town in Texas you ain’t ever heard of, and pretty soon I won’t remember it, either. Old man calls all the shots, huh?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  The kid snorted. “Don’t gotta be no rocket scientist to see it.”

  There was no glint in his eye as he spoke, no knowing smile, but the words rocket scientist still made Shawn uncomfortable.

  “Where are you headed?” Shawn asked.

  The kid shook his head. “Uh-uh. Wrong kinda question. I mean, you ain’t gonna tell me where y’all are headed, right?”

  “I don’t know where we’re headed.”

  This was the truth, but the kid rolled his eyes. “Wherever it is,” he said, “I reckon you’ll be tethered to your buddy. Maybe you’re better for it. Me, I couldn’t stand being on anybody else’s leash all the time.”

  “I’m not on any leash.”

  “So you say. We’re all on some kinda leash. Somebody’s leash, somebody’s code, someone’s way of life. Until we decide to cut ourselves loose.”

  Shawn smiled. “You’re a lone ranger, huh?”

  “I am now.” He gestured to the stove. “Very important—when you pump, if it seems clogged or anything, don’t ever try to force it.”

  “What happens?”

  The kid smiled and leaned in a little. “See this nasty scar on my face?”

  * * *

  At around noon, having sorted through the kid’s supplies wit
h Leland and then having spent a few hours in the library, Shawn decided to get out of the house a bit. Though he had far from exhausted his explorations of the mansion, he’d been indoors too long, and the combined energies of Leland and the kid were starting to rattle his nerves. He needed air, and the dewy, juniper-scented breeze of forest fresh after a rainstorm certainly fit the bill.

  Stepping outside, he could see and hear distant cars roaring down the highway through the tall trees. He headed in the opposite direction, circling around to the back of the house and then onward up a narrow wooded path. He knew Leland preferred to keep him close, so he hadn’t mentioned anything about going. Like he’d told the kid before, he wasn’t on anyone’s leash. Andrew Leland didn’t need to know his every move.

  As he pushed farther into the woods, he became mindful of a familiar sound coming from somewhere up ahead. He kept walking, the sound getting closer and closer until at last he’d reached just the sort of picturesque scene he’d been anticipating: a narrow brook, shaded by tall pine trees and snaking its way downhill through large and craggy moss-covered rocks. It was beautiful, like something out of a nature video, but Shawn could barely look at it. When he did, he was transported right back to the magical night Rachel had led him through the woods at Dellwood to the river. It had only been a few months back, but it felt like a lifetime ago. As they’d watched the water rushing beneath them, illuminated by the moon, she had told him about how special they both were. That although they’d been initiated into something greater than themselves, they were nonetheless great themselves.

  A crock of shit, that. Shawn hadn’t been initiated into anything except a huge joke of which he was the butt. Everything he’d been told had been a lie, and all his time and energy had gone toward nothing less than his own total exploitation. Meanwhile, he’d meant nothing to Rachel. Like everyone else at Dellwood, she’d been using and deceiving him. And when she finally decided she didn’t need him anymore, or couldn’t trust him, she’d tried to dispose of him. “Shoot him!” she’d called from the window. He had heard her shout those words. He could still hear them now.

  It began to rain in the woods. Shawn watched as the rainwater splashed in the brook, first in little droplets and then furiously. He now knew the truth, that Ambius had tricked him into doing the exact opposite of what he meant to and that his actions had ultimately put the world in more danger than even Ambius itself could know. Yet he was being prevented from doing a single thing about it.