Love Children

by John Walters

“Guardians?”

  “Those who raised us. We’re orphans. No, not exactly orphans. But we don’t know why you have this talent. Few outsiders do; we need to find out why you do and others don’t.”

  “Why do you call us ‘outsiders’?”

  “Because you live alone, apart from one another, without the inner voice. It’s hard for us to understand. In one sense we’re all individuals but in another sense we’re one unit. This loneliness is so strange, so incomprehensible. But I suppose we shouldn’t call you an outsider because you’re here, with us. I’m sorry. We have a lot to learn too. We’ll learn together.”

  * * *

  Margaret Kavenaugh walked back and forth along the edge of the water where the gentle waves formed little crescents before dissolving into the sand. An afternoon breeze off the sea softened the heat and caused the nearby palms to rub their branches together with a soothing rustle. She couldn’t believe that Fred Senior had decided to let her go, and furthermore, had decided to keep all the children so she could go alone. He had called his sister and persuaded her to come and stay a few weeks, explaining that Margaret had to visit a sick relative. She’d spent a week weaning Betsy and then had flown to India. She’d regretted leaving Joey, as he’d heard the signal too, but she’d realized that, though she felt no threat, bringing a child with her into an unknown situation was not a very wise thing to do. Though it was strange to the point of unbelievability that she was leaving her husband and children behind, she was thrilled to have had the opportunity to answer the call.

  Now she regretted having come. She stopped and dug her toes into the soft wet sand. She wished she was back in her routine, preparing meals, cleaning the house, doing the laundry, ironing, shopping, and so on, and that she had never heard the message or been tempted to respond. She should have shut it out of her mind, tried to ignore it; but it wasn’t as if it had been a radio or tape recorder that she could have switched off and forgotten. How do you turn off something in your head? And it was so compelling, alluring, appealing. She shook her head. She could have done nothing else than try to come. But now… She wanted nothing but to leave as fast as she could.

  Valiant, who was short and slim with black hair and olive-brown skin, ran down to the beach to join her. “Why don’t you take off your swimsuit, Margie? There are no outsiders around.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Do you want to swim?”

  “Not right now, thank you.”

  “Is something wrong?” He took her hand. “Please tell me.”

  Gently she pulled her hand away.

  “It doesn’t matter what’s wrong, but you can’t keep it to yourself.” Valiant switched to the inner voice. “Tell me.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You can.”

  “I just can’t stay, that’s all. It’s not working out.”

  “Come into the shade under the palms.”

  They sat silently for awhile, then she said, “I was so excited to come; it’s like I couldn’t do anything else. And when I arrived it was even better than I’d expected. But then… I noticed people pairing up together, you know…”

  “Making love, you mean.”

  “Yes. And I just can’t do it. I can’t. I want to, but I can’t.”

  “That’s one thing we have found hard to grasp, all the taboos and traditions and laws and customs regarding sex. We have always been free with each other. It’s hard to understand why someone would not want to be.”

  “I want to,” Margaret said. “It’s not that. You have to understand this about…us. Sometimes we want to do things but we can’t do them.”

  “Why not?”

  She twirled a strand of her hair around her finger as she spoke. “My husband let me come here alone because he trusts me. He tried to understand why, but in the end he let me come even though he didn’t understand. He trusts me. And part of that trust is that I won’t…well, have sex with anyone else. That’s part of marriage. It’s not part of all marriages, but it’s part of ours. It’s part of the honesty that keeps us united. You might find it impure, but that’s the way it is.”

  “It must be boring.”

  “It’s not a question of boredom. It’s a question of trust, and of forming a bond in a world where everyone is isolated one from another, except by such trust and honesty. If I were to have sex with others here and then lie to my husband, that bond would be broken. He might never find out, but I would have guilt in my heart. And if I told him, he might think I deceived him when I came here in the first place. So I feel trapped by my obligation to him. I can’t be free to interact with the others. I don’t fit in.”

  “You can explain it to the others. They will understand. They won’t want you to leave. You have come here for a reason, as we all have.”

  “But if I can’t enter in wholeheartedly…”

  “I don’t think it’s a question of the heart, but of the body.”

  “How can we separate the two?”

  “Well, it’s true that you should not lie to your husband. But will your obligation be fulfilled as long as you don’t physically make love with others?”

  “Yes.”

  “I have watched outsiders walking along public streets in the tiny microcosmic worlds of their loneliness. I have studied their faces as they pass each other. I have seen the desperation and longing to reach out and interact. On the faces of many I have seen the evidence of sexual fantasies with strangers. Many of those who have these fantasies must be married. Does this constitute unfaithfulness to their mates?”

  “Of course not. Everyone does it.”

  “I think you are right. Lie down on the sand, and close your eyes.”

  Valiant held her hand. “Concentrate now,” he said. “It takes practice to see the same thing. Imagine yourself lying here with me on the sand, so that a picture is created in your mind. See the palm fronds waving overhead, and beyond, the blue sky. Yes, that’s right. Now look at me; look into my eyes. No, don’t open your eyes. Do it inside. Can’t you see me? There. That’s right. I love you, and I know you love me too. Release the spirit of your love to touch my love. See? It’s possible, isn’t it?”

  When she opened her eyes she was in the same position as when she had closed them, holding his hand. She was panting, her heart was pounding, her skin was flushed, in the ebbing aftermath of orgasm.

  “Do you still want to leave?” Valiant asked.

  She smiled, and didn’t reply.

  Chapter 12

  Searchers

  Twenty of them sat cross-legged in a circle, eyes closed, hands joined.

  "Our last two teams are on their way here now."

  "I think we should stop broadcasting. Whoever is capable of hearing has already heard, and if they are able to respond they're already on their way. It's just a week before Christmas and the first ones have begun to arrive; we should concentrate on their orientation and on assimilating them into our fellowship."

  "I agree. A few teams can remain in the surrounding areas to guide latecomers in; otherwise, we'll need everyone here."

  "Yes. These people think differently and act differently; it will take a great unity of effort to get through to them."

  "Especially to get past the sense of isolation. They're not used to thinking of anyone except themselves. Though they sometimes think they are acting for the sake of others, their motives are often impure."

  "We must empathize with them. And there is only one way to do that."

  "We have to love them."

  "Yes."

  “There’s one more thing to take into consideration.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I was thinking about those who have heard our call. Undoubtedly most were unable to answer, either through lack of courage or inability to extricate themselves from their personal situations. A few have already arrived, and more will probably arrive soon even if we stop sending the signal. But there may be others who are on the way but have encountered difficulties:
accidents, perhaps, or illnesses, or legal problems; this world is very dangerous in many ways, especially for them. Some of the arrivals had to sacrifice a great deal to come, and there may be others out there who had to do the same but haven’t been able to make it on their own. They may have nothing to go back to; we can’t leave them out there lost.”

  “That’s a good point.”

  “Yes.”

  “We have to help them.”

  “But we need as many of us here as possible. I have an idea: why don’t we send out teams composed of one of us and one arrival? It will be good training for them, to realize that we are not here for some sort of holiday, to luxuriate on the beach, but that we need to assist those who need us no matter what the cost.”

  “Good. Let’s select the teams immediately, so they can depart after the meeting. Five or six teams spreading out in all directions should be able to scan the populated continental land masses; let’s set as a deadline six days from now, December 24th, Christmas Eve, for everyone to be back here. Agreed?”

  “I agree.”

  “Yes. We must do it.”

  “Who should be the searchers?”

  All twenty of them volunteered, but it did not take long to select six of them, and six arrivals to accompany them.

  A silence, then: “I love you.”

  ***

  Patrick and Jewel were passing through San Jose on their way to San Francisco Airport to catch their flight to India when they felt uneasy. Since they were surrounded by a busload of people they communicated internally.

  "I sense Furens," Jewel said. "The presence is strong."

  "I do too. But there's someone else too, almost masked by the Furens' repulsive spirit."

  "Yes...yes. It's indistinct, but definitely different. Maybe whoever is there is not fully conscious. What shall we do?"

  "I don't know. We could investigate, though we're short of time. But if he’s heard the signal, why isn't he on his way to India? Maybe he’s someone who couldn't come for some reason or other. We can't really interfere in such cases; there are too many and we probably couldn't do much anyway, the way they get themselves into these entanglements."

  "This is different. Why is he so close to the Furens?"

  "You know how the Furens work, how they use the humans."

  "But then why does this one have a clean spirit? Those who are Furen-controlled can't broadcast."

  "That's right. Okay, let's try to get some more information. Come on, we'll have to get off the bus and use the booster."

  * * *

  When the transmission came Aahamarada was doing several things: he was monitoring his normal involuntary functions and the positions of his charges, he was admiring the subtle lights and sounds and radiations and other stimuli of space and calculating the distances between objects of significant size in this part of the galaxy, he was communicating with Taahamanatha, who was the keeper of the portal on Ios, and he was constructing a three-dimensional grid map of Furen movements on Earth. Having already maximized his capacity for diverse mental effort, he paused in his calculations and communications to analyze the new data. When he realized the situation had become more complex than he had anticipated, he focused his concentration more tightly.

  He sent a message to Patrick and Jewel telling them to proceed to India; he sent a probe the size of a mosquito towards the Furen outpost Patrick and Jewel had found; and he prepared another, longer message describing the history of their mission until now, the current status of the planet Earth and its inhabitants, the extent of the Furen infiltration, and any other relevant information; he compressed it and encoded it and sped it through Taahamanatha's portal and beyond, to home.

  Chapter 13

  Prisons and Other Pain

  Paul felt the silence all around him as a vast pit that he might fall into and never hit bottom. For days he had been left alone. Guards brought his meals and took away the empty plates but did not speak to him. The call to India had taunted him, like a delicacy held just out of reach. Then suddenly the whispering summons to Goa stopped. And that was much worse than hearing it and not being able to respond. He was suspended in a void with nothing to grasp in any direction; he was forsaken. The ogre of despair sprang up to strangle him. He stopped eating. He lay on his bed and stared at the cameras. “Finwinkle, are you there?” he said. “Let me the hell out of here or I’m gonna go psycho. I’ve told you everything. What else do you want?”

  He closed his eyes and thought of Jason and Jasmine and Sunny, and farther back to a time long ago, another life it seemed, when he was another person. He tried to picture his wife Linda as she used to be. Somewhere in the faraway recesses of his mind that memory was locked in a musty file cabinet for which he no longer had a key; when he tried to focus it more clearly it was like a television picture that would flicker and buzz and roll and shimmer but never quite come into focus. And since the pain of the past had not been erased but merely covered over by that thick fog of forgetfulness, he had wandered from job to job and one brief relationship to another until step after step had led him up into the Himalayas to blow his brains out with acid. Then… Jason had rescued him. Who was Jason and why had he done that? Who was Finwinkle and why had he brought him here? Who were the sirens singing the call to Goa, and why had the song suddenly stopped? “I’m fed up, Finwinkle,” he shouted. “I’m not eating until I get some answers.”

  The next day he didn’t touch his meals. The guards brought them, left them for an hour, then took them away. The next day he skipped breakfast, then lunch; but when the guard came he didn’t pick up the plate. Instead he said, “He wants you.”

  “It’s about time. Who wants me? Finwinkle, I hope. I’ve had it with Fraser.”

  “Come.” The guard led him to the main building, to a small room with which he was unfamiliar. He pressed a button and a cabinet slid aside to reveal an elevator door. “Inside.”

  As they descended, wisps of nightmares began to gnaw at his consciousness like phantom rats. The groping hands and the vampire in the abandoned building. The Tyrannosaurus Rex stalking him with gaping mouth and insatiable appetite. Creatures with red-tinged eyes within burrows like giant wormholes smelling of moldy dirt. “Where are we going?”

  The guard didn’t answer. As soon as the elevator stopped and the door slid open, he pushed Paul out. When the door slid shut again, Paul was left alone in the semi-darkness.

  * * *

  How did I end up here? Chuck thought. In the same hotel, the same room.

  Outside, Bangkok's smog stung eyes and clogged respiratory systems and impaired visibility. In the midst of unceasing traffic jams drivers and passengers sweltered and argued and honked horns.

  Inside, Chuck remembered the last time he'd been here, just after his discharge from the army; he remembered going mad, the vision of the angry accusing woman always before him, downing bottle after bottle of cheap Thai liquor that burned his throat like chili sauce, smoking joint after joint of cheap Thai grass that expanded in his lungs until he exploded into paroxysms of coughing, waking up gagging on his own vomit, his jeans soaked with his own piss.

  But now, though the memories were painful, he felt peace. The woman's face was still in his mind's eye, but somehow she had been healed; she was no longer mutilated. He would talk to her and she wouldn't answer, but she would change expressions as if she understood. He sometimes wondered whether she was a product of his imagination or a lingering spirit who had forgiven him his transgression, but he didn't devote too much thought to why she still accompanied him. Though the call to Goa that had been pulsing in his mind for so long had stopped, he was still obsessed with only one idea: he was on a rescue mission. He had to find Jason and Jasmine and tell them about Paul.

  Escape from the compound in California had been simple. As he'd shown himself loyal he'd been given more and more liberty, until finally he wasn't watched at all. In the early hours of the morning he'd slipped out, climbed the fence, made his way to San Franci
sco Airport and booked the first flight east. Since he couldn't get directly to India right away, he'd gone to Thailand, thinking that from there it would be easy to go on.

  Somehow, inexorably, he'd been drawn to this hotel. Maybe he had wanted to see if his past was completely purged, if guilt and despair had been completely expunged, if the storm had passed like a dissipated typhoon.

  Shadows were all around, and he got the impression that they were stalking him, but they were hanging back, just out of sight, like a pack of wolves waiting to pounce at a weak moment.

  The morning after his arrival the woman seemed preoccupied, as if she wanted to tell him something. She kept turning around, then back to him, turning around, then back to him. Slowly, slowly, she began to fade, and slowly, slowly, the realization began to dawn on Chuck: she was going home. She'd accompanied him this far because it was in the right direction, and also perhaps to say goodbye, but now she was returning to Vietnam.