Cliff regarded his still incomplete list on the glowing cleverboard. “I’ll cover the current political scene in my Reflections editorial. I want Annie on the light humor side—maybe something on the physical size of the Hive ship. No insecticide jokes. See what the art department can come up with for a political cartoon.” Annie was scribbling furiously on a notescreen. She was new, but she was good.
Cliff looked around the room. “Tomma Lee, I’m depending on you to come up with a big human/Neighbor interest story we can headline on our homepage. And people, I’m still expecting all the standard features—sports, business, entertainment—with whatever kind of ‘Neighbors-cast’ you can lend to the basic info.” Cliff jotted some illegible marks on the board and tucked the light pen behind an ear. “Friday deadline for features, Sunday noon for all news. For God’s sake, don’t make us wait for you!” He turned and waved an end to the meeting. “That’s it then. Good luck!”
As the staff began streaming out of the room, Cliff motioned to Tomma Lee as she was getting up. “Just wanted to give you a heads-up,” he said. “That rich guy, Friel, is just back from some pow-wow at the Hive. If you’re looking for a lead he may have something for you. And doesn’t your ex work with them too? You might . . .”
Tomma Lee forced a smile but ignored the ex-husband remark. “N. Joel Friel? The Americas Cup guy?”
Cliff snapped off the cleverboard. “That’s him. I hear he’s full of Neighbors stories. He might agree to an interview. Try the Fidelis Group home office, or . . . Wait a minute, I just might have the number of his executive secretary.” Cliff relit the board and began scrolling through a file of phone numbers.
III
Margaret Cunningham took a secret pleasure in the isolation that her odd behavior had thrust upon her. The local ladies had all warned their children not to venture into her yard, and as a result she had the only untrodden flowerbed in her little corner of a small Charleston suburb.
She surveyed the undisturbed rows of zinnias and marigolds and smiled to herself. She was thinking of Louis again, talking to him as if he were still with her. There was nothing wrong with that, she told herself. When you live with a man for forty years it’s not easy to stop talking to him. If her lips moved once in a while . . . Well, if people didn’t like it that was fine with her.
What a gorgeous day! A beautiful high sky. God’s in his heaven. That’s what you used to say on a day like this. God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world.
Mrs. Cunningham knelt down and felt the yielding earth cushion her aching knees. Carefully, she plucked an intruding weed from between the flower rows.
Peg, you know sometimes I think that you believe those flowers are your children.
A bee was nosing along one of the rows. She could just hear its faint buzz. Out in the street a van rushed past the gate with a faint electric whine.
It had been the long, unspoken sadness between them—the child they never had. They had both pretended that it didn’t matter until they were both too old.
You know, Peg, I never told a story. I mean, sometimes I imagine myself telling some kid a bedtime story. Isn’t it funny, the odd things you think about?
Tell me a story, Louis.
He never did, though.
Mrs. Cunningham wiped her forehead with her arm. It was going to be another hot late September day. The air held a stillness that promised another relentless afternoon. She should get a watering can and a sunbonnet. As she started to rise from the ground a mild dizziness brought her back to her knees.
They’re following me! Please help!, a strange voice said.
Mrs. Cunningham looked around, but there was no intruder in the yard.
They’re everywhere! Hide me!
The dizziness was passing. “Go away!” she said aloud. “You’re not Louis!”
IV
Tomma Lee was at her seldom-used cubicle punching up video of one of Noel Joel Friel’s news conferences. He had a young but deeply tanned and weather-beaten face that contrasted with a blond mane and goatee, and was sporting a white, toothy grin. There was an anchor tattoo on his bare right forearm, which was wrapped around the oily carapace of an alien monstrosity. Tomma Lee couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something sinister about the image that went beyond its shocking contrasts. She had spent an hour reading at length about Friel’s special relationship with the Neighbors, and how his cartel’s sealed bids at the United Nations had won the development rights to most of the technological gifts the aliens had offered to the human race. Tomma Lee was keenly aware that Cliff was not looking for another journalistic crusade, but her palms itched—a sure sign that there was a hidden story buried here.
She was pondering a notion, wondering if her professionalism outweighed her personal feelings, but knowing that it always did. And yet this would be opening old wounds. Reluctantly, but from bitter memory, she typed the UNERCO Institute number.
Adrian’s lab phone directed the call to another number, and with a click she heard music and laughter. “Tomma Lee!” the familiar voice acknowledged. “I can’t open video right now—I’m not exactly dressed.” A woman’s laugh punctuated the brief silence. It was 2 P.M. on the east coast.
She fought the instinct to hang up. “Adrian, I’ve got some questions for an article. When can we talk?”
There were five seconds of dead air; he’d hit a mute key. When sound returned the music was subdued. “Tomma Lee, you’re looking good. Listen, I want to talk, but give me half an hour.” A female giggle near the mic. “Look, I’ll call—thirty minutes, I promise.” The circuit closed.
Well, he was getting his end wet again somewhere. Adrian had never been discerning about who, when, or where. Tomma Lee had badgered him into a marriage—was it almost a decade ago?—in the vain hope that it would end his profligate ways. But it had hardly slowed him down. Adrian had turned a teenage vasectomy into a lifetime of promiscuity. He’d been shooting blanks since the age of eighteen and anything young and female was a potential target. Their marriage had held together for almost five years, until Tomma Lee had let it end in a cheap no-fault divorce when his shallow “I don’t really care if you believe me” lies had become intolerable. She’d moved across country, leaving a great job at the New Yorker to write features for the Reflecting Pool, just to make the cleanest break with Adrian.
Tomma Lee slumped in the office chair, staring at the cluttered homepage screen. The really sad part was the contrast between his brain and his morals. Adrian was lying pond scum encased in a brilliant intellect. He’d published the first definitive studies of several of the Neighbor’s technological gifts—the genetic code restructuring that had nearly ended the threat of cancer and autoimmune disease, the catalyzed fusion power source that was making Middle East oil an economic irrelevancy (even as it had engendered an unholy Holy Alliance). Adrian was even modest about it all, more concerned with diddling some nubile floozy than receiving the Presidential Science Medal.
Tomma Lee struggled with her feelings as she drummed her fingers on the desktop. Then with a sigh she evoked a specialized crawler to harvest web data on the intersection of Friel, the Neighbors, and her ex. Seconds later a huge file dropped out. Over a terabyte. Too big to even scan, she tried several qualifiers, but nothing manageable emerged. Finally, due to a half-conscious memory of an old news story or perhaps because of that sleep-aid commercial she typed “sleep.” Instantly, about five hundred kilobytes of text and video loaded. One of the earliest entries was a decade old: An LA Times article used as back-page filler:
* * *
Institute Scientist Reveals:
Aliens Don’t Sleep
In a report published in Science this week UNERCO Institute scientist Adrian Evans described yet another startling discovery about the reclusive visitors who have maintained an orbiting habitat above the Earth’s atmosphere for the last decade. “We were quite surprised by the revelation,” Dr. Evans commented at a press conference yesterday. “It had a
lways been assumed that the Neighbors’ physiology allowed for some regular period of dormancy, such as that required by all forms of animal life on Earth. In higher animals on this planet, sleep is required to reset brain function and to allow the body to repair itself. Apparently, the Neighbors have evolved a more efficient means of accomplishing similar ends.” In a related development N. Joel Friel, the scion of the Fidelis cartel that has been frequently selected to exploit “Neighborly Gifts” under the UN proviso, announced the initiation of a cooperative study of human sleep disorders involving his company’s Compcare Pharmaceuticals division and the UNERCO Institute.
Tomma Lee filed the ten-year-old copy, then dialed the San Diego number Cliff had given her. The receptionist was a pretty simulacrum and within minutes an even prettier real-life amanuensis was on the screen. “Mr. Friel prefers a face-to-face interview,” she said after a brief hold. “We’re only an hour away. Can I have our pilot pick you up tomorrow morning?”
V
Joseph Greyfox was the only full-blooded Navajo on the payroll of Southern Arizona Power and Light. Right now he was fighting with the old panel truck’s second gear and swearing mildly under his breath. There had been servomotor trouble at the Yuma Solar Boiler, and he was on his way home after sixteen hours on the job.
Joe squinted through the dust-coated windshield at the gathering darkness. The transmission line towers with their gently sagging cables were being endlessly sketched against the desert sunset, and the effect was mildly hypnotic.
Joe blinked, and with a subtle twist of his aching wrist and arm he wrestled the truck into third gear. The antiquated transmission groaned in submission, then the engine smoothed out. “Christ!” he muttered, “they give us this shit to drive while the engineers tool around in new hydroelectrics.” But he was too tired to be really annoyed. His muscles were trembling from climbing ladders all day, and he needed some sleep.
The interstate was nearly devoid of traffic, except for an occasional massive tractor-trailer that would roar out of the dim grayness in the opposing lane, then disappear into the gathering dark behind. Most had their headlights on. It was growing visibly darker now in the west, and Joe found the panel truck’s lights. Some thunderheads seemed to be rolling in over the mountains. It might rain within the next hour.
At times like this, during the long drive home from a job, Joe would find himself captured by the desert tableaux, thinking about his distant ancestors and the time when this land had been theirs. The desert and the mountains hadn’t changed, not in any fundamental way, except for the thin thread of transmission cable and a few streaks of highway. He had seen it from the company helicopters. It could be a moonscape or the baked side of Mercury, but it was Mother Earth. And down here life went on. The prairie dogs still sniffed the wind from the top of their mounds, and the giant saguaro cactus still stretched their ghostly arms. What had changed long ago was that it was no longer the home of his people. It had all been decided centuries ago, before his great-grandfather had been born. The birthright to the land had been lost. Now you had to prove yourself just to belong. The alternative was shame, emptiness, and a wasted life.
Joe thought of the old men in the Yucca Bar, drinking away the afternoons in the air-conditioned dimness, telling each other lies and gambling. Each one concealing some hurt for which there was no name. His father had been one of them.
A suborbital liner was etching a contrail across the sky toward the approaching storm.
So you play the game, Joe thought. You hope, maybe they accept you.
The contrail merged into the dark thunderheads, probably headed for a bumpy ride into LAX.
Please don’t hit me again!
“I didn’t hit you!” Joe said—a sleep-starved reflex, before he realized it had been a voice in his head. He squinted into the darkening landscape. He was losing it, dreaming in a half-conscious state. Hang on, he told himself, gripping the steering wheel with suddenly sweating palms.
I love you! Don’t hit me! It was a pleading woman’s voice. Not that slut, Briana, who had rifled his wallet. He’d never hit her, although he wanted to. That was a month ago. He was dreaming. He felt a tremor run down his arms. My brother will kill you!
Joe reached up to his damp forehead to try to stifle the soundless words. “Who are you?” he said aloud.
The jackrabbit came out of nowhere, appearing suddenly in the middle of the road, momentarily paralyzed by the panel truck’s headlights. Joe felt himself braking hard, the rear of the truck fishtailing to the right. Tires screamed against the still hot asphalt. Like a slow-motion dream, he felt himself going backward over the road embankment.
There was a hard bump that slammed his jaws together, then a sickening backward roll. Instinctively, he killed the ignition. There were billows of dust in his headlights, then the airbags exploded around him.
Instantly, the bag pressing against his face began to sag, the translucent plastic drooping across the dash. His head clearing, Joe fought away the air bags and seatbelt and wrenched open the truck door. The panel truck had come to rest against a large rock on the side of a steep drop-off. It was pitched toward the passenger side, so that he had to jump down to get clear of it. His feet sent a small avalanche of rocks and pebbles rolling down the hillside as he scrambled up the slope.
The road was empty and darkness was closing in. I’m sorry! someone said in his head.
VI
Noel Joel Friel helped Tomma Lee onboard the rocking deck of his sleek schooner, the Sand Dollar. Although noticeably older than in the archival video, he was still tanned and muscular. He was in trunks and sandals, the blond goatee outlining his toothy grin.
It had been a brief flight to San Diego in a private suborbital, and the multibillionaire had arranged for a car to bring her down to the Harbor Island marina slip where his racing yacht was moored.
“So, Miss Evans, you’re interested in our friends up there at L5.” Friel motioned to a deck chair and settled into one himself.
Tomma Lee was taken a bit off-guard by Friel’s unexpected grinning bonhomie, conscious of the fact that she was talking to the heir to a purported trillion-dollar empire. She was dressed in conservative walking shorts and a tennis blouse in contrast to his blond hairy informality. It felt awkward, even a bit disturbing, and she wished he would put away that Cheshire smile. She began with what he already knew: “The Reflecting Pool is doing a feature on the Neighbors, and we were hoping you could share some anecdotes . . . ”
Friel produced two cans from a cooler. “Lemonade?”
Tomma Lee shook her head as he snapped a lid, putting away the other can. “I would have thought the press had their fill of Neighbors stories by now, “ he said, sipping deeply.
“We’re looking for a fresh approach,” she said. “In a few months it’ll be twenty years since they set up shop in Earth orbit. There must be stories that haven’t been told.”
Friel rubbed his eyes and then blinked, and she noticed that one pale blue iris was artificial. It didn’t dilate as a passing cloud shielded the morning glare. “You’ll be stealing some of my thunder, you know,” he said, still with that obscene toothy grin. “I was planning a memoir one day. But to be perfectly frank, Miss Evans, I’ll probably never find the time to write it.” He scratched his goatee and took another swallow from the can. “We have several outfits that work closely with the Neighbors, I suppose you know. I oversee a lot of that.”
Outfits, Tomma Lee mused, was shorthand for three multi-national corporations that were all major players in commodity chemicals, insurance, and heavy-lift transport, each with God knew how many smaller spin-offs. Friel’s deceased father had been involved with the UN’s early contact team that had forged the first licensing agreements. The Neighbors’ high-tech gifts to humanity were channeled through UN bureaucracy to private enterprise in sealed-bid auctions. Somehow, Friel père et fils had managed to snag most of the contracts.
“Our people probably have had more contact—I
mean close, informal contact—with our friends up there than even the diplomats.” Friel wiped beads of moisture from his hairy chin. “We work with them routinely now. I’ve been up at the Hive more times than I can recall.” He blinked slowly, but the lid on the dead eye only half closed. “The atmosphere in there is not toxic, as some press stories have related, but the odor takes some getting used to. The Neighbors aren’t offended by the use of respirators—I don’t think they would even completely understand the notion—but I’ve forced myself to do without one. As you know, communication is by voice synthesizer because they don’t have a larynx and we don’t have vibratory labial palps. The holo-net images are very good, but they don’t give you the feel of the place—the Hive, I mean.” Friel waved the can expansively. “It’s big—immense by our standards—larger than anything we’ve ever built in space.” He rubbed a shaggy blond eyebrow, staring off at the row of yachts and the bay and Coronado beyond. “There’s large parts of it—a huge central core—that no human has ever seen. I’ve asked about it on quite a few occasions. Even got myself kicked out once for snooping around the periphery of the forbidden areas. It took almost a year to get back in their good graces.”
Tomma Lee remembered the story in the wire dailies a few years back: “Friel Cartel Scion Gets Neighborly Boot.” “That sounds like something we could use,” she said. “Tell me about it.”
Friel turned in his chair with what she regarded as a wolfish expression. “It’s rather a long story—to tell it in detail, I mean. Why don’t we adjourn to a local bistro, and I’ll spin my Neighbor tales over lunch?”
VII
Betty was seventy-four give or take some years, but she felt like she was sixteen when her patch was working. They were little things, like Band-Aids—a transdermal medication the doctors at the free clinic had given her. A pack of one hundred, there were about a dozen left now. She was pushing the rusted shopping cart that contained her worldly goods. The wheels squeaked something awful as she pushed uphill toward San Francisco’s Chinatown. Mr. Wong had promised a meal if she got to the Heavenly Panda before noon, when the lunchtime crowd was expected. And he might let her sleep there tonight if she helped with the cleanup.
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