Catch the Lightning

by Catherine Asaro

  “The hummingbird is a god?”

  “No. Just a messenger for the gods.”

  “This story is not about bird,” Althor said.

  “It’s not?”

  “It’s a starship.”

  I laughed. “Oh, Althor.”

  “It came flying out of the sky? It was big and white? This is how a hummingbird looks?”

  “Actually, no,” I admitted. “Hummingbirds are tiny and dark.”

  “They make this sound ‘ts’un ts’uri? They stand on one leg?”

  “Well—no.”

  He watched me closely. “A civilization must grow from roots. What are Maya roots, six thousand years ago?”

  “Stone-Age Indians, I think.”

  “Could this hummingbird story have roots six thousands years old?”

  “I doubt it.”

  He regarded me. “In our tales, the sisters come to Raylicon on the Star Path. It is a black fissure in the stars.”

  “There’s a Maya legend similar to that.”

  “Our scholars think it describes the trip my ancestors took from Earth to Raylicon.”

  “But who took them? And why?”

  Althor spread his hands. “If a starfaring race did exist six thousand years ago, one that could transplant a race from one planet to another, they are long dead and vanished.”

  It made no sense to me. “Why would anyone move a bunch of Mesoamerican Indians to another planet?”

  “The ancient Raylicans carried a pure strain of the Kyle genes.” The moonlight caught glimmers from his skin. “Perhaps the race that moved them intended to concentrate Kyle traits. That pure form is almost extinct now. It shows up only in descendants of certain Raylican high houses.”

  “Like you?”

  “Yes. Like me.”

  “You think the Maya are your ancestors?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Althor, you look about as Indian as a cotton swab.” Actually, that wasn’t true.- But his metallic hues were far lighter than my skin.

  “Indian?” Althor asked. “Is that what you are?”

  It wasn’t actually a word I used for myself. Nor did I feel comfortable with Latina; it sounded too much like Ladino, the descendants of the Spaniards who conquered the Maya. Mejicana, maybe. Chicana was what I had always checked off on forms. “I’m probably mestiza,” I said.

  He blanked again, then said, “Mixed blood.”

  “Yes. Half Spanish descent and half Maya.”

  “You look like my grandmother. I look more like my father.” His father. I’ve always wondered if I look like mine. Do we sound alike, laugh alike, think alike? I wonder if he asked my mother to come with him when he left Chiapas. Perhaps she refused as I refused Althor, too afraid to chance the unknown.

  My voice caught. “It’s all dreams anyway.” I took off my bracelet and gave it to him. “This is the truth. It’s been passed from mother to daughter for generations, from mother to son if there was no daughter to inherit it, and from father to daughter. It’s all I have. Someday I’ll give it to my daughter.”

  Althor pulled me into his arms. “Come with me, Tina. Don’t stay here. The loneliness will kill you.”

  “No.” I laid my head against his chest. “I can’t.”

  He pushed me back, gripping my shoulder while he shook the bracelet in front of my face. “Why is this so important? It’s just a damn ring of metal.”

  “It’s all that’s left of my clan.” I didn’t know how to put into words what it meant. As long as I knew my father existed somewhere, I could hope to find him someday, once again to have a family, a heritage, a clan. Althor was asking me to give up that dream. And for what? An uncertainty so total it was a nightmare.

  But he wasn’t looking at me anymore. He was staring at the bracelet.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “I need a light.”

  He crossed to Joshua’s desk and took the desk lamp, then sat on the floor and leaned over it. When he switched it on, gold light filtered around him like a leak in the darkness. I went over and'sat next to him. He was holding the bracelet under the lamp, turning it over and over, running his fingers along the faint hieroglyphs engraved inside it.

  “What are .these symbols?” he asked.

  “Mayan glyphs. They’re just a copy, though. The bracelet isn’t old enough to be authentic. The ancient Maya didn’t make jewelry like that, either.”

  “Why do you have this?” he asked. “And your mother, and her mother, and on back? Inheritance on Earth goes through male lines, doesn’t it?”

  “Not always. I don’t know why we pass it from mother to daughter. That’s just the way we’ve done it.”

  “Raylicon was a matriarchy.”

  “What does that have to do with my bracelet?”

  Althor showed me the hieroglyphs. “The inscription inside. It’s Iotic.”

  I stared at him. “How can my bracelet have your language on it?”

  He spoke softly. “Maybe because Iotic was your language before it was mine.”

  “On my bracelet? That makes no sense.”

  “It’s not a bracelet.”

  “It’s not?”

  “It’s a fitting for the tubing on the exhaust of a Raylican transport shuttle.”

  My mouth fell open. “What?”

  “The shuttles are ruins on the shore of the Vanished Sea in the Sleeping Desert.” His face gleamed in the lamp’s glow: “They are the oldest artifacts on Raylicon, dating from six thousand years ago. These shutdes, they are not built for humans. The proportions are wrong.” He turned the bracelet in his hand. “I have seen others of these. On the transports.”

  “A bronze bracelet in that good of condition can’t be six thousand years old.”

  He shook his head. “It’s not bronze. It’s an alloy called cor-donum, made atom by atom using nano-bots to place the particles. It endures much better than bronze.”

  “Mayan glyphs like that didn’t exist six thousand years ago.”

  “I don’t know how,” Althor said. “But it is Iotic. The ancients brought the language with them, a remnant of their lost home.” His voice caught. “Before tonight, I had no past. Do you know what that means? My ancestors ceased at six thousand years. Now you may have given me a past.” He swallowed. “When I may never be able to return home again.”

  “Althor, no.” I pulled him into my arms. “Don’t say that.”

  He turned out the light and held me. We sat there for a long time, rocking back and forth in the silver night.

  8

  Lightning Jag

  The Mojave Desert rolled by as Daniel drove his Jeep down Highway 14. Dry land stretched out for miles, gray green and dust yellow, feathery strands of ocotillo plants reaching out fingers and prickly spikes of mesquite patching the land in earthy colors. Tumbleweed blew across the road, rolling lumpily, and the sky was a pale blue plain above us. Although it was only eight in the morning, heat already shimmered on the asphalt.

  Even with a hat pulled over my hair, the wind still snapped out blond curls from my wig and threw them around my head. I pushed at my glasses, trying to setde them on my nose. I felt stupid wearing a business suit. Anyone who saw me would surely -know I was a fake.

  Heather had loaned me the suit and wig. Joshua found Althor a stage beard left from a play put on by the chemistry graduate students, and Daniel dug up a boring blue suit for him. We dyed his hair blond. So now Althor sat in the Jeep with his bluejacket across his knees, tie loosened and collar open, his newly yellow curls dancing in the wind. He squinted and raised his hand to his eyes, but he stopped himself 'before he rubbed anything.

  “Are the contacts bothering you?” I asked. When he. cupped his hand to his ear, I raised my voice. “Heather’s eye lenses. They still bothering you?” The contacts turned her green eyes blue; on Althor, it was more of a blue-violet color.

  “Everything blurs,” he said.

  Heather turned around in the front and looked at the thre
e of us—Althor, myself, and Joshua—scrunched in the back. “Can you see enough to walk?” she asked him.

  Althor rubbed under his eye. “I think so.”

  “Try not to rub your face,” I said. “It makes the gold show.”

  I took a bottle of foundation out of my purse and touched up the gold streak under his eye. I had to be careful: if I used too much makeup, it would show, making people wonder why this macho guy in a conservative suit wore it; if I used too little, it wouldn’t cover the shimmer of his skin.

  Daniel pointed to a sign: Rosamond blvd. yeager military FLIGHT TEST CENTER. NASA-AMES-DRYDEN RESEARCH FACILITY. Under it, a second sign in faded letters said EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE.

  “Edwards.” Althor snapped his fingers. “I recognize this. They renamed it?”

  “In honor of Chuck Yeager,” Daniel said. “After he died.”

  “In my universe,” Althor said, “General Yeager lived well past the 1980s.”

  Daniel turned onto the exit. Other cars came behind us and more were on the road ahead. We drove through land dotted with blue and yellow flowers, and the orange glow of California poppies. Then we crossed a dry lake bed and entered a wrinkled-blanket terrain covered with yellow flowers that spilled everywhere like paint.

  After about six miles, we reached a security checkpoint. Lines of cars waited; both lanes were backed up, as well as a third made by coming off one usually used by traffic leaving the base. As we waited, Daniel looked back at us. “This is the West Gate.”

  “Does it always have so many security police?” Althor asked.

  “Security police?” Daniel asked.

  Althor motioned toward the booth, where harried guards were trying to deal with the rush hour traffic. “The guards. There are at least six of them.”

  “Milcops,” Daniel said. “Usually there’s only a couple. All you need most days is a sticker on your car and they wave you through.” He eased the Jeep forward as the milcops let another car through.

  “How many people work here?” Joshua asked.

  “About 5000 military,” Daniel said. “Maybe 6000 civilian and 8000 contractors.”

  Heather whistled. “Sounds more like a city than a base.”

  “Do you think the guards know why security has been increased?” I asked.

  “I doubt it,” Daniel said. “They don’t have any need to know.”

  We moved forward again, again—and it was our turn. Daniel pulled alongside the milcop and held up aJPL badge. When Joshua elbowed me in the ribs, I opened my purse and took out the MIT badge they had fixed up for me. I sat stiff in my seat, certain the milcop would realize we were fakes.

  Thorough planning had gone into this attempt. Heather found a file in the Yeager system about a group expected at the base later in the day, specialists brought in to study.the “test plane.” We came early because the specialists weren’t scheduled to arrive for several hours. Despite our careful work, though, too much could go wrong. At least that was how I felt. Althor was hard to read; I later learned he had switched into a combat mode used for special operations. The others were tense, quiet—and eager. The previous night, during our planning, Daniel had said that if we pulled this off, it would be ten times better than the time students took over the computer running the scoreboard at the Rose Bowl and changed the teams to Caltech and MIT.

  The milcop looked over our badges and asked for our on-site contact. As Daniel gave him the number, I held my breath. The milcop went into the guard booth and picked up a phone. I watched through the tinted glass, trying to stay calm while he spoke to whoever was on the other end.

  He came back out. “They’re waiting for you up at North Base,” he said, waving us through.

  And that was it.

  As we drove away from the guards, Joshua blew out a gust of air and Heather closed her eyes for a moment. We rode through gently rolling hills, headed west with a line of other cars. After a few minutes, we reached the main base. It was the size of a small city, but with a practical look about it, too functional for a college, too sedate for an industrial complex. Other cars were pulling off the road, but we kept going, straight on through the base and back into the desert.

  Althor made: a strange sound, a small explosion of breath. Turning to follow his gaze, I saw a distant scaffolding out in the desert, one that resembled an unfinished skyrise about eight stories tall. In a different direction, a gleaming silver airplane was mounted on a pedestal, like a fat rocket with short wings and a needle nose. It looked familiar, but I couldn’t place why.

  Althor was staring at the plane. “That’s an X-l.”

  Heather turned around in the front seat. “A what?”

  He pointed at the plane. “An X-l. A real one.”

  “Yeah, it’s an X-l,” Daniel said.

  Althor grinned. “I’ve read about them. I never thought I would see a real one, though. Does it still fly?”

  “I don’t think so,” Daniel said.

  Althor indicated the scaffolding “What about that lift? Is it for the space shuttle?”

  Daniel glanced at it. “That’s right.”

  “ ‘The Six Million Dollar Man,’” I said.

  “What?” Althor asked.

  “It’s an old TV show,” I said. “The opening showed the crash of a plane that looked like that X-l.”

  “That was actual NASA footage,” Daniel said. “The real pilot survived.”

  Heather was watching Althor. “It must seem dull compared to what you’ve seen.”

  Althor laughed. “Aircraft are never dull. I’ve liked them since I was old enough to shoot a rocket in the air and watch it come down.”

  Heather smiled, and Joshua’s surprise made yellow loops in the air. It was the first time any of them had seen Althor laugh.

  Daniel turned onto North Base Road. Another security checkpoint lay ahead, across from a temporary trailer. We stopped and a milcop looked our IDs over, comparing them to a list on his clipboard. He motioned to a small lot by the road. Two other cars were parked there, with milcops going over them. “Pull in there.” He tilted his head toward the trailer. “While we inspect your Jeep, you can get your site badges.”

  “Sure thing.” Daniel sounded relaxed, as if he did this all the time. I still wonder how he managed it. True, he had been to the base before with his mother. But to say the circumstances of our visit were more difficult is an understatement.

  Daniel parked and we climbed out of the Jeep, smoothing our wind-blown clothes and hair. The heat blazed. Neither Daniel nor Althor put on their jackets, but Althor let me fix his tie. As I pushed up the knot, he muttered something about “bizarre barbaric custom, tying a rope around your neck.” I smiled. I knew a lot of twentieth-century types who agreed with him.

  Inside the trailer, a man behind a counter checked our IDs. Althor stood at the back of our group, tall and silent, dressed in his conservative suit, blending with the scenery. To fit our parts, the rest of us needed to look older. Heather and I managed with business suits and makeup, and Daniel with a coat and tie, but nothing we did helped Joshua. Heather finally changed his age to twenty-two in the file, and we kept our fingers crossed that they would take him for one of those brilliant types who can earn a Ph.D. practically as a kid. It wasn’t that far from the truth. The man finished with Daniel and turned to me. “ID.”

  I handed him my MIT card, certain he would find a mistake. But he just typed at his terminal and gave me back the card. He . took Joshua’s next and typed again. Then he stopped and peered at the screen, his forehead furrowing.

  We all tensed. I felt it, like plastic pulled tight around us.

  The man glanced at Joshua. “Chakrabarti? That’s an Indian name, isn’t it?”

  Joshua regarded him with innocent blue eyes. “Yes, sir. My mother was Swedish.”

  He gave Joshua his ID and motioned us all toward a doorway. “Marjorie will take your pictures and give you badges.”

  I tried to relax as the photographer snapped our
pictures. But I kept wondering if this was how it felt to have mug shots taken. Incredibly, she just gave us our Yeager badges and let us leave. We walked outside into searing sunlight, with the Mojave Desert stretching out around us.

  The milcop waved us over to the Jeep. “You’re all set,” he called. Daniel raised his hand in acknowledgment. Everything was fine until Althor halted in the street, his fingers pushing against his temples.

  We stopped next to him. “What’s wrong?” Joshua asked. When Althor didn’t respond, I pulled on his arm. “Come on.” For the first time Daniel’s outward cool slipped. “We can’t stop here.”

  Althor dropped his hand. “**** * ***”

  I stared at him. “What?”

  ****** * * *55

  Heather swore under her breath. “What’s wrong with him?”

  The milcop walked over to us. “Is there a problem?”

  Heather pulled a tissue out of her purse and blew her nose. I thought she was nuts—until I saw the milcop turn his attention from Althor to her. “What’s the problem?” he asked.

  “Hay fever.” Heather sniffled. “The pollen is killing me.”

  “You and half the base.” The milcop shook his head. “Some people do fine with over-the-counter treatments. But if it’s already causing you trouble, you may want to see a doctor. Spring is hay fever hell here.”

  Heather smiled wryly. “Thanks. I’ll look into it.”

  He nodded and headed back to his post. As we started walking again, Daniel spoke to Heather. “How did you know about the hay fever? You sound like you really have it.”

  “I do.” Heather griffiaced. “He wasn’t kidding about hay fever hell.”

  Joshua was watching Althor. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” Althor said.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “The Jag.” Althor’s accent was stronger now. “We’re close to it. I tried to reach it. It’s damaged. Some from before, but also some new.” Sweat sheened on his forehead. “What they’re doing to my brain—I can’t—I’m losing ability to integrate functions.”

  “What’s going to happen if they don’t stop?” Daniel asked.

  “I don’t know.” Althor walked faster. “I don’t want to find out.”