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by Al Macy

  Jake laughed. “Okay, but these guys aren’t going to bite you. Let’s just go in for a second. This could be important for us to see.” A car honked behind them.

  They turned into the bumpy field, followed the parking attendant’s directions, and parked at the end of a long row. The heat of the Indian-summer day hadn’t yet dissipated, and the smell of the mowed grass drifted over them.

  They entered the dim tent in time for the opening prayer, delivered by the amplified, yet calm, voice of an experienced preacher.

  “Oh Cronkite … please hear our plea.” The preacher raised his non-microphone arm and walked across the stage. “We were lost until you came.” Pause. “We were lost until you found us.” Long pause. “We were lost until your holy sphere found its way through heaven to our lonely planet.”

  A few amens rang out. A Cronkite stood in front of each seat in the huge tent, his or her head bowed solemnly.

  Jake leaned down and cupped Charli’s ear with his hand. “I thought maybe they’d say achoo instead of amen.”

  Charli punched him in the thigh.

  The preacher continued. “Please guide us, Cronkite. Guide us into this new era and please forgive our ignorance. Help us to see thee more clearly. Help us to love thee more dearly. Help us to follow thee more nearly.”

  Jake scratched his temple. That sounded familiar.

  The preacher walked off the stage and up the aisle. “Cronkite, in your wisdom, you have struck down many of Earth’s disgraced children so that the chosen can worship thee more strongly. Humanity has transgressed against natural laws! Violated the sanctity of the planet! We dared to put ourselves as gods. Humble are we who gather in your house today and beg your continued grace. You are the one true god and the savior of all mankind. May your spirit be with us now in this hour and always. Amen.”

  The crowd answered the amen and took their seats.

  The reverend returned to the stage and turned to face the worshipers. “Thank you, fellow Cronkites for coming to this meeting today. Before I begin, I’d like to introduce a woman who has felt Cronkite’s power in a most astounding and direct way. Please welcome to the stage, Ms. Kate Farina. Am I saying that right, dear?”

  “Far-ee-na.”

  “Ms. Kate Far-ee-na. I will hand her the microphone.”

  After getting the cord untangled, she started talking. “I was diagnosed with a herniated disk, and it just been years and years that I had it.” She punctuated each phrase with a slap on her thigh.

  “I had just pain, constant pain since then. Nothing I done did no good. Constant pain all down my leg. I can’t get situated. Pain, pain, pain. When I woke up and found my husband, my abusive husband, dead and turned into a shriveled up prune, my pain was gone.”

  Amens and cheers came from the audience.

  “And I said to Cronkite, if you could just relieve me for a little while. I don’t know how long it will be …”

  Someone from the audience yelled out “It will be forever!”

  The preacher took the microphone back. “Forever, if Cronkite wills it. And if the pain returns it will be for a reason, for though they may be mysterious, Cronkite’s ways are always for our benefit. Amen.”

  The preacher’s voice became stronger and he spoke faster. “Thank you, Ms. Fareena. Yours is but one story that I’ve heard among thousands. As I’ve traveled across our great land, people have come up to me. They say, “Reverend Reed, do you know of the great things that Cronkite has done? May I tell you how he saved me?”

  The reverend paused and looked into the audience. “I say yes. Yes, I do know. I have heard your story before. You are not the only one he has saved. You are one among millions. Literally millions. But now, my friends, I have something very important to talk with you about. Something sad.”

  He trudged over to his pulpit, dropping his head as if mourning a dead relative. “There are those who think Cronkite is our enemy.”

  Boos and cries of “No!” came from the congregation.

  Reverend Reed held up his hands. “It is true, but can you blame them? They have seen only the surface events. They are unable to see below the surface. We must show them the true way. Cronkite’s way. We must spread the word and lobby our government.”

  Jake bent down to whisper something to Charli, but she was gone. He turned and looked out of the tent. She was walking across the field toward the car. He took one more look at the gathering and then caught up with her.

  He smiled at her. “Can’t take it?”

  She had her teeth clenched. “No, can you? Doesn’t it bother you?”

  “You’ve known there are people like this. There always have been and there always will be. That’s the nature of human beings. You’ll go crazy if you don’t accept that.”

  At her car, Charli stopped and leaned back against it. She crossed her arms. “Here we are working our butts off trying to protect … them,” she flung her hand in the direction of the tent, “from a creature that will enslave them, and they’re welcoming Cronkite like a god. Literally.”

  Jake put his hands on her upper arms and looked in her eyes. “You’re one-hundred-percent right, and I agree with you, but—”

  Charli tried to shake off his hands. Jake held firm.

  He continued, “But you can’t expect—breathe, Charli—you can’t expect everyone to be smart and educated. Where would you and I be if they were?”

  One side of Charli’s mouth curled up. “Playing piano in a seedy bar?”

  They both laughed. “Right. Now let’s get the hell away from these loonies.” Still chuckling, he turned to walk around to the passenger side, and Charli slapped him on the butt. Hard.

  * * *

  In Charli’s dining room, Jake squatted down, moved the wine glass to his left hand, and felt the smooth finish of the hardwood floor. Her house was elegant, but the small size made it cozy.

  He stood back up and examined the underside of the leaves of a potted plant, confirming that it was artificial. Right. Charli doesn’t have time for watering. He leaned close to pick out Charli in a group photo of the MIT cycling club.

  “Finding any clues, Inspector?” Charli had been watching him over the bar that separated the kitchen from the dining room. The scent of garlic drifted in from the kitchen. Dinner would be ready soon.

  “This photo of the cycling club.” He tapped it with his finger, tilted his head back, and closed his eyes. “It reminds me of some recent deception. What was that?”

  “Having trouble with your memory? Have a seat, old man, because dinner’s ready.”

  “No candles?” Jake looked at her. She blushed. Had she thought candlelight would be too blatantly romantic? Sophia was with her nanny, leaving him free to be alone with Charli.

  “There are some in that cabinet.” She pointed with a wooden spoon. Jake set up the candles and lit them. He was sitting down when she brought out the main course.

  “Pizza?”

  “Kind of. The crust is made of a mixture of mozzarella cheese and eggs, with crushed garlic, and basil. The toppings are a tomato-basil sauce, whole roasted garlic cloves, avocado, bacon, and caramelized onion.” She set it on the table.

  “Nice. The planet is in trouble if Cronkite is sensitive to garlic breath,” Jake said.

  “Oh, I need a break from Cronkite. Let’s talk about something else.”

  “Understood. How about a toast?” Jake added some more red wine to Charli’s glass then raised his. “To Sugarloaf Mountain.”

  Charli blushed once more and drank from her glass.

  Jake put his glass down and looked at her. “So are you going to tell me what that was about?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.”

  “I think you do.”

  “Jake, most of the people on the planet have died. We’re both needed to figure out what’s going on. There are billions of dried up bodies all around us. At any time, the human race could be exterminated. Is this really a time for romance?”

  Jake put his
finger under her chin and tilted her head up so that they were looking directly at each other. “Charli, this is the best time for romance. Don’t you think?”

  “Tell me about dropping out.”

  He shook his head. “You sure know how to kill the mood, Charli.”

  “Well, I have to understand you. I want to understand you.” They both went back to eating.

  “I didn’t plan to drop out, you know. This is good, by the way.” Jake pointed to the pizza slice in his hand.

  “Thank you. Tell me what happened.”

  “Okay. Let’s see. Mary was gone, and I needed to be alone. The solo sailing trip was perfect. I didn’t have to deal with everyone telling me how they couldn’t imagine how I felt. Sometimes I had a little too much time to think, but I had the old-fashioned, simple goal of completing a trip around the world. Because it was a wooden boat, I had lots of maintenance to keep me busy.”

  He watched Charli refill the wine glasses. “One afternoon the seas were rough and the wind was blowing at thirty-five knots. I was running downwind when I saw a large, open power boat coming up on my port beam.”

  “Pirates?”

  “Probably. They fired shots across my bow. I jumped down into the cabin to get my rifle, and that’s all I remember.” Jake drank more wine.

  “What? You don’t know what happened?”

  “That’s right. I knew I wasn’t going to let them get close, even if they killed me. Remember, Mary had died, and I didn’t have a lot to live for.” Jake said. “Sometimes wanting to die can be an advantage.”

  “You must have guessed at what happened.”

  “Certainly. It probably happened like this. Based on the injury to my head, I think that I came up out of the cabin, and because the seas were rough, and I didn’t have my mind on sailing, the boat jibed.”

  “Jibed? What do you mean?” Charli asked.

  He smiled. “A New England rich girl, and you don’t know what a jibe is?”

  Charli punched his knee.

  “The sail swung violently from one side of the boat to the other. The boom …” Jake looked at her. “The big heavy wooden pole along the bottom of the sail, probably hit me in the back of the head and threw me overboard.”

  “Life preserver?”

  “Yes, I had my life jacket on since the seas had been so rough. I had had a safety line connecting me to what’s called a jackline, but I must have disconnected that when I went below.”

  “You took a lot of precautions for someone who didn’t want to live.”

  “Dying, I could take. A week of floating in the ocean, not so much.”

  “So what did the pirates do?” Charli asked.

  “Well, I don’t know, of course, but I suspect that they couldn’t fish me out of the water, or, more likely, didn’t care to. They probably boarded the boat, took everything of value, and left. It’s not clear how long I was in the water, but I was rescued by some seafaring members of the Antemoro tribe on Madagascar. ”

  “Do you remember that?”

  “No. I had honest-to-goodness amnesia and was pretty much out of it for a long time.”

  “Then you got another knock on the head and remembered everything.” Charli was smiling.

  “No, I lived with the tribe for months and learned to say things like ‘Natsiro be,’ which is Malagasy for ‘This is delicious,’ but I eventually became myself again.”

  “And you called home and told everyone you were okay.” She said it gently.

  “Well, no. You see I’d gotten a taste of dropping out—a vacation from always trying so hard. Rightly or wrongly, probably wrongly, I decided to stay that way.”

  “And you see that as being more ethical than just faking your death and disappearing?” Charli finished the last of the wine.

  “Well, a bit, yes. Someone else faked my death, and I just took advantage of it. You have a point. I admit it.” After a pause he said, “Charli, one, you had to be there, two, I’m back now, and three, this could be the end of the world. Do you really want this ambiguous ethical judgment to stand between us?”

  Charli gazed into the candle flame, then smiled, leaned in, and gave him a gentle kiss. Jake reached for her wrist, but she was too fast for him; she picked up the dishes and took them to the kitchen.

  Jake came up behind Charli as she started washing a wine glass. She had a dark granite counter and a brushed stainless steel sink. He put his hands on each side of her and pressed his lips against her ear.

  Charli kept washing the glass but more slowly. Jake pulled her shirttails out. He slipped one hand and then the other under her shirt. His weight was fully against her. She slowly put the wine glass down into the bottom of the sink but left the water running. Jake was kissing the side of her neck now and could feel her breathing harder.

  He slid one hand down into her jeans. He moved the other across her firm belly and up toward her breasts. When he got there, she turned quickly and kissed him. She put one hand behind his neck. She kissed him harder. She took him by the hand and started leading him to the bedroom. Jake reached out and turned off the water then picked her up and carried her. She was as light as she looked.

  She’d finished unbuttoning his shirt when he laid her on the bed. She whispered his name in his ear. With moonlight filtering in through the curtains, they undressed one another. They stopped only to explore each new area of skin as it was exposed.

  Jake kissed her breasts, her shoulders, and her neck. She reached and held him with her hand. When he got to her ear he whispered, in a hoarse voice, “I guess your dog wants to watch.”

  Charli stiffened. “What?”

  “Your dog. He’s watching us.” Why didn’t I keep my mouth shut? Who cares if the dog watches? I don’t want to spoil the mood.

  “Jake, what are you talking about? I don’t have a dog.” The mood was gone. Charli reached over and turned on the light. They both screamed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Jake and Charli had only a few seconds to make out the creature that stood there watching them. They would have had even less time, but it took the animal three seconds of violent scrabbling on the hardwood floor to get any traction. It bounced off the doorjamb and disappeared.

  They both jumped out of the bed, unconcerned about their nakedness.

  “What did you see?” Jake rushed into the next room. The door to the house was open. He looked back at her.

  “Well, it was about as high as the desk, and it had … it looked like …”

  “Like a Volkswagen.” Jake said.

  “Yeah, or like a big, furry seashell.”

  “Black and red fur, kind of like a ladybug.”

  Charli snapped her fingers. “Yes, ladybug. That’s what I was going to say. Did you see the legs?”

  “Lots,” he said.

  Jake reached over to pull her to him, but she was having none of it. Boy, those aliens sure know how to break up a party. He hadn’t been with anyone for years. He really wanted to finish what they’d started, but it wasn’t going to happen.

  “Did you see any eyes?” Charli started getting dressed. They heard sirens approaching.

  “Hold on,” Jake said. “Let’s not discuss what we saw. We don’t want to influence one another. We should each write down our impressions independently.”

  “Got it.”

  Jake watched Charli pick up her clothes and walk out of the room.

  * * *

  At six a.m. the place was still crawling with FBI forensic experts, sketch artists, one comparative anatomist, and an artist who painted ducks and birds. Charli sat at the table describing the alien once more. She hadn’t gotten any sleep. When Guccio walked in with a huge grin, she pointed at him and said, “Not one word, Guccio. Not one word.”

  McGraw arrived too and filled them in. The sphere had dropped in from space and then zipped out again. It did the same thing again thirty minutes later. “So congratulations, you two, it looks like you are the first humans in history to see an extra
terrestrial. Cronkite. The sphere dropped him off and then came back and picked him up.”

  “Hope he didn’t interrupt—”

  “Shut up, Guccio.” Charli pointed at him again.

  * * *

  September 23, 2018

  In the White House videoconference center, Jake watched the technicians make the final preparations. Three cups of coffee, and I still feel sluggish.

  They’d followed instructions that Cronkite had uploaded, but the setup wasn’t that different from a normal videoconference. The heavy lifting was all done on Cronkite’s end. His sphere hovered a mile above the White House.

  When Jake had arrived, Charli pulled him into an empty room and gave him a kiss full of promise. Looks like she’s finally made up her mind.

  Now, Charli sat directly across from him. She was his handler. They’d prepared some hand signals, the most important being a slash across the throat to mean “shut up right now!” She also had a handheld white board, as did the psychologists Avraham and Zaluski.

  Guccio had suggested earpieces for communication, but after discussion they decided that Cronkite might be able to intercept the signals and hear what was said.

  At noon they were “on the air.” Jake looked in the monitor. There they were, seated at the familiar triangular table. Cronkite wore a conservative suit.

  Cronkite removed his trademark glasses and addressed the camera. “Welcome, Citizens of Earth, to this momentous occasion, your first conversation with a real, live alien. I am here with the president of the strongest country on the planet. You might say that this man is the king of Earth, President Dane Hallstrom.” Cronkite paused as if waiting for applause.

  “My other guest,” he continued, “is Mr. Jake Corby, the best problem-solver on your whole planet. He is the smartest man on Earth. Isn’t that true Mr. Corby?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t …” He glanced toward Charli. She violently shook her head and slashed her hand across her throat. Jake said, “Thank you very much, sir, for your generous assessment.”

  Charli nodded and gave him a thumbs up.