The Arcturus Man

  He thought about what he was eating. Jared felt no guilt when consuming either plant or animal. It was the natural order of things. Humans had cutting canines as well as grinding molars. People are eaters of flesh and vegetation. Humans are also the eaters of the young and the foods intended for infants, but rarely consider that. People consume eggs, seeds, nuts, milk, veal, and suckling pigs. There was no sin in that but to claim that vegetarianism was the right path because it didn’t depend on inflicting pain and cruelty for sustenance, was ignorant and reflected human conceit.

  Jared took another bite and pulled back the curtain next to his table. Someone was watching him. He felt him. It may be another nameless man, but the danger wasn’t imminent. Jared ignored him and finished his meal.

  The watcher could barely see Jared through the dirty window. It was exhausting to watch his quarry without looking directly at him or thinking about him. Not thinking about him was particularly difficult and tiring. The sun glare made it worse. Smolenskiy could walk into the café and before anyone would even notice that he entered, he could shoot him in the head. It would happen so casually and so quickly, his prey would be defenseless. Smolenskiy’s Slavic appearance was not common, but it was a virtual certainty that descriptions to the police and the resulting sketch artist renderings of him would be worthless. It would be simple and it would be over. Obviously, the bureaucrats in the Kremlin, or whatever they named it this week, could not understand anything simple. He especially disliked taking orders from Sami Zhidov. Smolenskiy didn’t like Jews and Sami was a Jew of the worst kind. He despised fat people. He hated Bulgarians. Sami was all these things.

  His orders were strict. Under no circumstances was he to eliminate the Latvian in a public area. He must use the sniper rifle when the quarry was alone or virtually alone. Smolenskiy lived for the moment his bullet strikes the rabbit--as he preferred to call the prey--at hundreds of meters. He enjoyed seeing the hit through his high-powered scope and the fear in the rabbit’s eyes as the realization he was dying came home. For the moment, he had to watch and he had to wait. He could derive some gratification in making a killing act last a long time. It could be satisfying to a psychopath. The predation brought its own pleasures.

  An attractive young woman pulled into the parking lot. Smolenskiy recognized her. She was a student at M.I.T. She had been one of his students. He couldn’t remember her name but he was certain he knew her. Was this a complication? Perhaps! Someone was here who could recognize him. He decided to wait for a better time and a better place for the kill.

  The sinking late noon sun still glared through the smoky glass panes. Jared kept looking out the window through the glare. He knew that he was being watched. It felt a little ominous, but he didn’t sense any imminent danger. Then again, perhaps it was nothing. When he was out in the general population, he often felt the menacing thoughts people harbored about one thing or another. It was a sad and pathetic world.

  He preferred to watch a beautiful, young woman walking outside. He focused on her. She was interesting. The white shorts were perfect. She wasn’t wearing a bra, just a thin blue blouse. He liked the way she moved. They were just fatty deposits on her body, but they were delightful fatty deposits.

  “ Glutei maximi…Stop it,” he said to himself. Why was he questioning it? “Analysis is paralysis,” he thought again.

  He liked sex. It was one of the very few things he had in common with everyone

  else—with the Home sapiens. Why couldn’t he stop analyzing it? It was the language of chemistry in his body, a language he spoke so fluently. Trees talked to other trees by releasing a scent that a caterpillar invasion was coming. The trees receiving the message would release new toxins in their sap to ward off the attack. Every thought in every person’s mind was spoken in a chemical language. Every vision was chemistry. Chemistry was a silent language that people didn’t know was all around them and within them. He understood this language. He was eloquent. As importantly, he also understood the language of pheromones.

  He had the typical dark blonde hair of most Latvians and a rugged look that some women found intersting. He thought about women often, however, even though he didn’t usually act on his impulses. He was about to focus on her as she climbed into her silver Land Rover, but suddenly something flitted in front of him.

  Out of the corner of his eye he glimpsed a very old black woman walking into Ashley’s. She was old enough to have gotten that brittle look. She was tiny. A faded black dress draped her small body. Limp yellowed white lace framed her dark skin. She was dressed for church. She must have come from church. He had never seen her at Ashley’s before. He remembered everyone.

  “Was today Sunday? Already?” thought Jared.

  A gold wedding ring glinted in the sunlight coming through the window. She didn't have a car.

  “What church is close?” There were no churches in this neighborhood. For that matter, a Negro was relatively rare anywhere in Maine. There were some Ethiopian refugees in the larger cities, like Portland, but she certainly wasn’t Ethiopian. Where did she come from? How did she get here? Could she have walked here without breaking? And then, Jared began to understand her. She was Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. He hummed the song in his mind. The song was about LSD. That was chemistry that Jared liked immensely.

  She was short, perhaps 4 feet and five inches. She couldn't have weighed more than 90 pounds. Was less than 90 pounds possible? She was so frail and light that she almost seemed to float. She was invisible. She had no weight, no substance. He searched for her shadow. Was she even there? As she moved she never touched anything. She barely touched the floor with tiny steps. She made no noise. She was as silent as butterfly wings.

  She drifted to one table and a moment later to another. A small zephyr must have caught her as she finally settled down in the midst of a group of young children that had been exiled by their mothers, seated away, but in plain sight.

  "Strange," he thought. “ Don't old people hate young children? Kids make too much noise and do annoying things.”

  But this little black women sat impalpably in their midst. The neatly folded waxed brown paper bag that she held tightly seemed as heavily creased as her. It looked as if it had been used many times. It almost was a part of her. She slowly unfolded it and took out a small plastic dish of something. She also had a carton of milk, but she hadn't purchased anything from the restaurant. Jared glanced at Ashley, but the waitress didn’t seem to notice.

  “Who was she?”

  It was automatic, like his heart beat. He imagined her soft wispy thoughts.

  The little old woman was alone. Her husband had many died years ago. Had she outlived everyone, including her own children? There had been many children. He guessed that she was close to a hundred. Perhaps she was over a hundred. Could she be even older? He couldn’t make any sense of it.

  “Who was she?”

  She was so quiet, so polite, and so transparent, that few people ever noticed her. She lived alone in her fragile world.

  “What loneliness that must be,” he thought.

  Why did she come here from so far away? How far had she come? Did she want to be close to children? Her eyes were foggy with cataracts. Even though they couldn't see her and she couldn't see them that well, she could sense them and she could hear them. She could smell their youth much as she had the scent of old age. She was alive with the children. Although she was between two worlds, not quite in one and almost ready to leave the other, she looked forward to these moments in her silent, gentle purgatory. She would wait for heaven every evening and be resolute every morning when it hadn’t arrived, knowing that like the strong wind in the forest that you can hear at a great distance, sooner or later it must come. It was a knowing!

  She really had no expression. She neither smiled nor frowned. Nevertheless, he could sense the joy she felt being close to children. That they were all white children was unimportant. It wasn’t even a thought. She was alive in their animatio
n. She breathed their youth in. She couldn't really see the children through that gray film that had invaded her eyes--probably long ago. Perhaps she heard them and smelled them and felt them around her, and for an instant--a very, very brief instant--her own children were back with her. Her memories passed before his eyes. There was a time that she could remember her children well, but it wasn't so clear anymore. She had grown as accustomed to her cataracts as she had to her clouded memory. Perhaps that was a grace, a gift that life bestows on the very old. He longed for such a gift. And now, she was young again in a bright flowered dress.

  long time ago, she was a child.

  Knowledge is the enemy of faith.

  She had been young and beautiful once, and a long, She was loved. She didn’t want to know too much.

  He left briskly without looking back. She glanced up at him as he left. She smiled faintly. He didn’t see the smile, but he felt it.

  “Good-bye Mary Thomas,” he thought to himself, “Come another day”.

  Would she evaporate after he left? He didn’t look back.

  “See you soon,” thought Mary Thomas. Now Jared glanced back at her.

  Jenny always looked forward to spring and this spring was especially glorious. She was only twenty-seven and had boundless enthusiasm. Spring was the year’s high energy season. She would consume it and hunger for more. She was blonde, tall, fair skinned, and had a strong Nordic build. She often braided her hair when she was working. She had full breasts that shifted slightly as she walked. She hated that. They attracted too much unwanted attention. Except for the occasional distant boat crossing the bay, she hadn’t seen anyone all day. She was wearing a thin blue cotton shirt. The shirts tails were tied in a knot across her midriff. She had on very short white cut-off jeans. She was barefoot.

  Men were naturally attracted to her but once she spent any time with them they tended to drift away. She learned to keep her expectations of men low. She sometimes stayed in touch with them by e-mail, but that was like high-altitude bombing. It was safe and impersonal. That was just fine with her.

  She unpacked the ham and cheese sandwich she bought at Ashley’s. Using her cooler as a table, she moved her camping stool a bit closer. She had been raking clams out of the mud flats all morning and had built up a hunger for anything that wasn’t from the sea. Her tanned legs were covered with the grey-blue clay from the intertidal flats. The tide was going out as acre after acre of mud flats appeared below the rocky cliffs of Eagle’s Head. She ate quickly because the tide would be changing soon and there was still much to do. She had fifteen buckets of clams that had to be sorted, measured and weighed. She would scatter most of them along the flats when everything was done. She wanted to finish before the sun set because the temperature would drop quickly after that. Jenny hadn’t seen anyone all day. She didn’t bring a swim suit or change of clothes. She thought that it would be all right to swim nude. The water was cold, but a short swim would be refreshing as long as the air was still warm. Anyway, it was also the only way of getting all of the blue clay off. She didn’t want her Land Rover to get any filthier than it already was. As she unknotted her blouse, something moved in the distance.

  A man was climbing the cliff at the end of the cove. A chill ran through her body. He was free climbing a shear portion of the face of the cliff. The fool was at least fifty feet high. From a distance Jenny couldn’t see what he could be possibly clinging to. It was terrifying to watch. She wanted to yell out, to tell him to climb down, but she was afraid that she might startle him. She didn’t know if he had seen her. She slowly moved toward the cliffs. He was hanging by one hand, dangling. He was only wearing Khaki shorts. His feet were bare. His arms and hands were white with chalk. He was magnificent. It was mesmerizing. She pulled her field glasses out of her bag and watched him climb.

  As she inched closer, she could see his muscles tense, and in a virtual explosion his other hand would shoot out to anchor in yet another crevice. His body glistened in the sun. It was both terrifying and fascinating to watch. He was climbing much too fast. She really didn’t know what fast was in mountain climbing, but it seemed to be much too fast. Every now and then he would pause and then suddenly spring upward. For a brief instant he would have no contact with the rock face. He just floated in mid air. It was graceful and terrifying.

  And then what she feared, happened. She could see that his handhold crumbled. Stones tumbled down. He lunged for the next handhold. It shattered beneath his grip. The rock came loose on his third grab. He fell silently down the sheer rock face. There was no scream. He simply fell. The only sound was from rock striking rock. The sound lagged behind the vision of a tragedy. The quiet was horrifying.

  Jenny couldn’t see him. He had fallen behind a crown of boulders. She sprinted across the flats as fast as she could. As she climbed over the ridge she saw him sitting in a shallow tidal pool. His forehead was bleeding profusely. He quickly stood up as soon as he saw her.

  “My Gosh, are you all right? I thought you would be dead,” said Jenny. He sat down again and looked up at Jenny. “I’m fine. It’s just a bruise. Nothing to worry about!”

  Jenny was dumbstruck. “I’ve had some medical training. Can I check to see if you’ve broken anything?” asked Jenny.

  “NOTHING IS BROKEN, he snapped.

  “Please look at me,” she said pensively. She was looking at his pupils to see if they were dilated. “Concussions are serious. “I can’t imagine how anyone could fall from that height, on rocks, and not have broken something…everything. Do you have a death wish?”

  “I am very resilient. I usually don’t fall. It surprised me as well.” He settled down.

  Jenny surveyed him without touching and except for the cut on his forehead she couldn’t see any other damage. Her adrenaline rush was ebbing and her voice became calmer. “Listen, it’s none of my business I suppose if you like free climbing, but from what I’ve heard about the sport, free climbers don’t live to an old age.”

  “Thank you for your concern. It is reassuring to know that you were here to save me,” he said. The sarcasm was meant to be obvious.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. It really isn’t any of my business. I just thought that I was going to find a mangled body.”

  She pulled a bandana from the back pocket of her cut-offs. “Here. Put a little pressure on your cut so that the bleeding will stop. Scalp cuts can bleed more than you would expect. I’m Jennifer Nilsson…Jenny.” She put out her hand.

  He took her hand and stood up again. He stared at her for a few moments before speaking again.

  “I am Jared Siemels. Thank you for caring.” His voice was sincere this time. He was pressing the handkerchief on his cut with his other hand.

  “That is an unusual name,” she said.

  “Yes it is,” he replied. “And shouldn’t yours be Nilsdotter?”

  Her eyes lit up. “Wow. I haven’t heard that in years. Do you speak Swedish?” He dodged the question. “I guess the patronymic version is the generally accepted version of last names these days…yes, I speak Swedish.”

  She waited for more. He was done.

  “Don’t get anxious. I am not about to test your Swedish,” said Jenny.

  She thought she might have caught him in a lie.

  “I barely speak Swedish. I wish I was better at it,” she continued.

  Their eyes met for the first time. She pursed her lips slightly and her brow wrinkled as she said hesitantly, “Listen, I have a car just up the rise. Can I take you to an emergency room to be checked out?”

  “Thank you, but that won’t be necessary. I am fine. See. The bleeding has almost stopped.”

  She self-consciously realized that she had forgotten to tie up her blouse as she caught his eyes darting to her breast. She was peeking out. She had been too panicked to notice. Trying to be very casual, she turned away and gathered her blouse and knotted it closed. She didn’t expect to run into anyone today and she didn’t know she was going to be sprinting
. Her nipples had hardened like pencil erasers and were poking through the thin blue fabric. Her face flushed. She tried shrugging her shoulders a bit so that fabric wouldn’t be so taut. It didn’t help that much. She was embarrassed. She needed to get away. Quickly!

  Jared’s libido was very active but autoeroticism was usually enough. In recent years, he rarely sought out women. They always disappointed him. And to tell the truth, it had little to do with gender. He had no true male friends for the same reason. Meaningful, rich relationships required sharing and revealing one’s self and one’s inner most thoughts and feelings. They could never happen for Jared. How could it? It is like hoping to develop an intimate relationship with a goldfish. No woman or man could ever understand him or appreciate what he sees. On the other hand, there was anatomical compatibility with Home sapiens females. Yes, there was that. It only compounded the frustration. Recreational sex was slightly interesting, but it was rarely as advertised. It always became personal and often clingy. And…they were still goldfish. Jared wanted to be understood. He yearned to be loved. Those things could never happen. He was alone and would forever remain alone.

  Jared wasn’t unattractive, but in recent years he had very little interest meeting women. It was always disappointing. He had a brief period in his late teens when he experimented with pornography, and later, prostitutes, but that quickly became boring as well. Jared eschewed morality. As far as he was concerned, all morality was subjective and ultimately pointless. The more sides of morals you could see, the less rational morality became. Jared saw everything, every side. Mores—well that is entirely different. Social mores could be subjective as well as objective. Religions that advocated against the eating of swine had a medical basis. People used to die of triconosis. That made sense. Mores could be rational and logical—not always, but often enough.