The Night Archer

by Michael Oren

  To Father Rodrigo’s rage and then anguish, I missed Mass one day and then two, and finally stopped attending altogether. I felt cleansed of any sins to confess, other than my dwindling devotion to Acuña. The captain who had, through his rigorous instruction, taught me all that was needed to bring me here, who fathered me without ever once meeting my mother, was receding from my mind. I ceased gazing at the locket still centered on my chest and contemplated removing it entirely.

  Then, last night, to celebrate the first month’s anniversary of our landing, El Líder invited us to a feast. All of the tribal elders were gathered, arrayed in black frocks not unlike those worn by noblemen back home, but hatless. Black sashes, like sideways hourglasses, adorned their necks. The three of us—the admiral, the priest, and I—remained robed in white linen, which could have made us feel uncouth. But the setting was so grand, with enough silver in the candlesticks and the cutlery to stir any conquistador’s heart, that we all but forgot our apparel. Bounteous mounds of food were laid before us—exotic fruits, savory legumes, and that meat of such singular tenderness.

  Raising a glass, El Líder toasted to the admiral and expressed his delight in hosting him. Bueno de Mesquita returned the honor, with blandishments usually reserved for court, while Father Rodrigo looked on sourly. Other salutations followed, and many spirits were imbibed. Too many, for, in short, I felt in need of a privy.

  Exiting the chamber, I entered a long hallway where, I learned, the natives keep their latrines. These, too, were dazzling, a luxuriance of mirrors and fountains and tiles to rival Alhambra’s. Closing my robe, relieved, I turned to rejoin the festivities, only to come face to swarthy face with Curiel, our helmsman.

  Winking his only eye, he rose on his undersized feet and whispered at length into my ear. His words, more than any tales of El Dorado, astounded me. “No tarrying, then,” I rasped back at him, quietly as possible, but my words resounded like cannon fire. “We must alert the admiral.”

  Back toward the main chamber we ran, I in my robe and Curiel in the gray pantaloons and threadbare shirt of prisoners, both of us barefoot. We arrived and peeked through the same door I had exited. Too late. The next scene will remain furrowed in my mind—and my ghastliest dreams—until Reckoning.

  El Líder, laughing, leaned toward the admiral as if to impart some secret. But instead of speaking, he fixed his teeth deep into the explorer’s throat, and tore it out with one gnash. Blood spurted furiously across the tablecloth and other finery and with such copiousness that I could hope my commander had expired instantly, without suffering. For pain was presently inflicted, lavishly, ravenously, as the other natives pounced on the admiral and gouged his eyes, his heart, and viscera. They ripped and, with whatever tissue or organ their fists detached, stuffed their gore-dripping mouths.

  Father Rodrigo attempted to scream, or perhaps to pray, but not before he, too, was set upon. Disrobed, dismembered, the priest was devoured before our eyes. And our eyes had seen enough. If shocked into inaction, Curiel awakened me with a slap of his gnarled hand on my cheek. Lacking shoes, our departure went for a few moments unnoted, but then I heard harder footsteps—the natives’—nearing ours. I motioned him to follow me through yet another door, not another latrine, but into some kind of stateroom.

  Throne-like chairs lined the walls and an incalculable number of books. Plush rugs, soft on our soles, bedecked the parquet and a fire crackled in the hearth. We waited while the footfalls passed down the hallway outside and fled beyond earshot. Only then did I notice the stone mantel and above it, stuffed and mounted, a human head. I looked at it and with frozen eyes it stared back. The balding pate, the beard-defying scars—there was no need to consult the locket, I recognized him at once. Acuña.

  How many seconds passed before I responded to Curiel’s tugs on my sleeve? Suddenly, we were running again, this time out through a fence with pickets just wide enough for us, but not our pursuers, to squeeze through. Then we dashed toward the dingy. Most reluctantly, Curiel allowed me to stop in my cabana and retrieve the ledger and sword. Of the former, the helmsman cared nothing, but he praised his Maker—Yahweh or Christ—for the blade. This I used to dispatch a brace of savages who were still gawking at our craft which we then heaved into the surf. Scurrying inside, we each took up an oar and plied with all our souls’ might.

  Of all I learned as a guest in that land, I never gleaned its name. And I thanked God for that, for otherwise it would relentlessly haunt me. I was grateful, too, not to have witnessed the torment of the crew who, once greeted and fed, were swiftly reduced to slavery, assembling pieces of alien machines that floated past them as they labored. They worked until no longer capable and then were condemned to the tribes-men’s table.

  So Curiel informed me as we rowed past the Delfina, its anchor too heavy for the two of us to raise. Past the reefs and the breakers we plied, out into the ocean, where a chance current might carry us to one of our American colonies or some other civilized post. We rowed until dawn, without food or water, and scarcely enough ink to conclude this entry.

  April 19, Anno Domini 1540

  To the Capitán General at Veracruz, greetings,

  Along with the shipment of two hundred weight of iron ingots, forty powder barrels, and assorted African slaves who were watered at my Mission, I am pleased to enclose this ledger. It came to me by way of a native fisherman who claims to have found it aboard a dinghy.

  The boat contained the skeletons of its two navigators, one of whom, according to the savage, looked deformed. The other was clutching the ledger. The inscriptions inside, though scarcely legible, are outlandish. One can only assume that, except for the name Delfina, a royal carrack that indeed went missing some years ago, the tale told within is the work of a depleted mind. I would not be surprised to learn that the name Luis de los Rios y Guitierrez appears nowhere in our records, nor does that of Lope Acuña.

  For your distraction, I will relate that the sword of the self-same skeleton lay crosswise across his wrists and from his ribcage dangled a rusted locket. The portrait inside had long washed away, though one could assume it depicted Santiago, our patron saint, or some other sacred image.

  Such are the sacrifices of our quest. May these mariners’ souls, along with our enlightened efforts, be blessed.

  Alien Report

  Entering the galaxy via the trans-axymortic portal, we considered pausing on a bluish-gray planet which, according to our records, supports peculiar strains of existence. In preparation for a possible descent, we queried Bina, which illuminated us as follows:

  “Over the course of four billion of its stellar orbits, the planet spawned roughly 14 million species. These began with prokaryotic to photosynthetic organisms and progressed into aquatic and land-based life. Of the latter, the most complex, adaptable, and largely sentient species is 605431.

  “Nocturnally supine and diurnally erect, 605431 first appeared very late in the planet’s span but quickly rose to dominance. Originally dwellers in metamorphic cavities and, later, in habitats constructed from easily procured materials, 605431 soon concentrated in colonies. These grew increasingly dense and were often led by the least capable specimens. The close-knit associations that once provided for mutual help and defense were replaced by isolation and vulnerability. This process is known to 605431 as evolution.

  “Like all of the planet’s life-forms, 605431 must respire the bluish-gray atmosphere. The species eats many of its fellow creatures but feeds and shelters others. Food is introduced through an aperture which is also used for communication. Two additional holes serve to eject unused nutrients in maligned form. Through much of its history, masses of 605431 succumbed to a scarcity of sustenance. Yet many now suffer from excess.

  “Unique among the planet’s life forms, past and present, 605431 is gratuitously violent. The species fights not only for food and space but also for shiny metals. It fights for pleasure and pride. Colonies, meanwhile, strive to conquer one another. The conflicts can be justi
fied by the different sounds used to describe the same object, by mode of colonial rule or, simply, the need for self-acclaim. Combatants battle under a colored square of cloth for which they will both kill and die. Though the organs inside 605431 are identical, the membrane containing them are variously shaded. Such diversity, however superficial, also causes strife.

  “Yet no violence spills more of 605431’s liquids than that spurred by belief. And belief not in laws, number systems, and similar abstractions, but in the most hypothetical notion of all. Though almost none of the specimens claim to have seen it, most believe that they and their planet were created by a Great Force. But disagreements over the words, desires, and even the name of this Force spark the fiercest clashes. Citing that name, bands of 605431 can treat others even worse than the creatures they slaughter.

  “Still, existence for 605431 is not entirely belligerent. Specimens are divided into two iterations which may be mutually attracted. Magnetism is expressed by attaching the apertures used for mastication and communication. This linking can, when most intense, lead to the insertion of a segment of one iteration into a second’s receptacles. The action also enables 605431 to reproduce. The products usually experience a sense of affinity to their producers as well as to their co-products. The creation of this impulse is widely ascribed to the Great Force.

  “But even this benign drive can be transformed into a source of discord. The iterations, though reciprocally drawn, are frequently at odds. While usually pleasurable, the insertion process can also cause anxiety, pain, and even conflict. Producers, products, and co-products compete, at times to the death. The presumed predilection of the Great Source for one band of 605431 can mean total annihilation for another.

  “Strangest of all is the 605431 concept of ‘I.’ Though possessed with a potent—relative to its planet—ability to garner information, the species seems unable to grasp the oneness of its surroundings, much less the universe. Instead, it condenses reality into the most miniscule compartments for which we have no counterpart, but which translates remotely into ‘me.’ More inexplicable still is the result of this condensation which 605431 calls loneliness. It is the cause of a persistent anguish that can lead certain specimens to self-destruct.”

  Bina’s illumination complete, we considered the following: while not toxic or inordinately hazardous, the planet’s bluish-gray atmosphere and manifold organisms do not present us with any insurmountable challenge. But 605431 necessitates entirely different calculations. Its savage nature, determination to inflict harm whether for parcels of land or pieces of fabric, its rivalries, jealousies, and vicious beliefs and, above all, its impenetrable focus on self, render it unsuitable for even the briefest visitation. The species, we determined, was simply too alien. Accordingly, we altered course, re-entered the portal, and left this galaxy behind.

  The Perfect Couple

  How did two of the world’s loneliest people ever meet? Where else but in a hotel bar where Lionel fled to escape the photographers and Ruth to deaden her thoughts. He had just finished interviewing for a magazine dedicated to prettiness—big on glossies, lean on text—and she lecturing at a nearby college where the faculty walked out exhausted. Both sought refuge in the bar where, over beer nuts and pretzels, they found each other, the genius and the heartthrob.

  What was the mutual attraction? The fact that Ruth only glanced at him once, sideways, before gazing back into her drink? That Lionel asked her what time it was rather than what time itself was, and seemed thoroughly satisfied with the answer? No, it was the recognition of the singular knowledge they shared. That perfection, whether of body or mind, is lonesome.

  For Ruth it began in infancy. Able to add before she could walk, to tie together complex sentences, and read her own diaper box, she’d completed elementary school by kindergarten and entered university at twelve. She memorized Shakespeare and saw through Bach’s exactitude to the foaming madness behind. Her parents, though both professors, long failed to keep up with her, as did a succession of tutors and deans. The rest—string theorists, slam poets—vied for her attention, but not so boys her age. Plain, loamy eyed and haired, with a figure little advanced past puberty, Ruth was scarcely an object of lust. Girls, too, kept their distance, for how to discuss the wildest shoes or sneak a cigarette with a person who doodled in Sanskrit? Well into adulthood, ideas were her only companions, a rarefied circle of equations and verse that none would approach much less penetrate.

  For Lionel, too, loneliness came with birth. The doctor, the nurses, he later heard, stepped back as he emerged and even his mother shrunk from cradling him, so stunning was his face. His hands and fingers, too—indeed, every part of him, as if especially selected from a catalogue of features. But while exquisiteness in most attracts admirers, the sight of Lionel scattered them. As if they were looking at a godhead, forbidden and potentially fatal. Gawkers, then, kept a distance, or cowered behind cameras. Occasionally, he glimpsed the sadness of women beholding what they could never possess, or the resentment of men confronted with their own mortality. But mostly Lionel saw fear. Of the dimpled chest and chin, ringlets the colors of precious metals and eyes a Caribbean blue—fear of a beauty that defied natural boundaries and threatened to upend the world.

  Which was why Lionel shocked himself by being the first one to speak. “Is it really that bad?” he asked, referring to the way Ruth glowered at her glass, as if at a wellspring of faults.

  She replied to her gin. “Did you know that algorithms have attitudes? That conchoids often talk back?” He didn’t, clearly, but Ruth asked another question, “Did you know that all of Chaucer can be reduced to co-signs?”

  Lionel crunched on a nut. “No kidding,” was all he said before posing some questions of his own. “Have you ever heard of mirrors that were peeked into and melted?” Gravely, he sighed. “Did you know that looks from the drop-dead gorgeous can, in fact, kill?”

  Ruth laughed her immeasurable-IQ laugh—three chortles in exactly the same key. “By your accounts, I should be dead already.”

  “And by yours,” he guffawed, “I’m just a stack of numbers.”

  They giggled and clinked, toasted and sighed, as the liquor poured and confessions flowed about lives lived within a head and just beneath the surface. They exchanged tales of nights dreaming of what it’d be like to be a normal person—not stupid, perhaps, or ugly, but moderately smart and attractive and surrounded with real friends who liked them for who they were and not for their epidermis or cerebellum. Hours passed in that hotel bar, while Ruth admitted that she didn’t know beauty except for physics, and Lionel confessed to failing math. Bowls of beer nuts emptied and by closing time, the two of them, the Einstein and Adonis, were matched.

  Theirs was a low-key romance, totally removed from the public. Entire days were spent in bed, lovemaking at times, but mostly just clutching. As if Ruth wanted only to let Lionel inside her skull, to allow him to linger there and not be afraid of its contents. Similarly, he wanted to lead her to a heart identical to everyone else’s, his gut and liver, too. Embraced, they experienced a sensation unlike any they’d ever known. For once, deliriously, neither was ever alone.

  That is, as long as they stayed indoors. Outside, though, the reporters gathered for a scoop. Like a pair of royalty or rock stars, Ruth and Lionel were the source of endless fascination—and guesswork. What would their children be like? Brilliant and hideous? Half-witted and handsome? Articles often cited the eminent author who, when invited by a diva to make a baby “with your brains and my figure,” famously quipped, “yes, madam, but what if it’s the other way around?”

  Ruth and Lionel ignored the chatter and focused solely on their love. But the laws of attraction and motion prevailed and, less than a year after that portentous night in the bar, Ruth was already expecting. Now it was their turn to ask, or rather pray. “Let her look like you and have all of my mental capacity,” he wished, while his wife laughed in monotone. “May he be blessed with inner beauty and outer
grit.” She rubbed her vertex parabola. “May he never know solitude.”

  Nine months later, alas, the medical staff again went rigid and even Ruth hesitated to nurse. The child was flawless. The feet, the nose, even the eyelashes seemed imaginary, conjured from a mythical list. The face could easily adorn a diaper box and the only question was: could she read it?

  So Ruth and Lionel asked themselves as anxious weeks passed. Intentionally, the baby’s room was decorated like any other, with rainbows on the walls and a menagerie of cuddly dolls. A mobile of the sun and its planets orbited the crib. Still, the parents hung back at the door while little Gaia slept, as though she might suddenly start speaking in Latin.

  She didn’t, and Lionel and Ruth were relieved. Instead she cooed and cried and pooped just like any newborn, and steadily they bonded with her. They joked about how they would make Gaia fat or dress her shabbily—anything to blunt the sublime. But dazzling she remained well into her fifth month and the morning they found her standing in the crib. In her delectable grip, she stayed the mobile and reordered its orbs. She stopped, though, at the sound of a gasp and smiled. “Look Mommy, Daddy,” Gaia exclaimed, at least not in Latin. “Our solar system!”

  They gaped at her in wonder. In horror. Here was a child who could grow up to redeem humanity or destroy it. A savior, potentially, or satan. Either way, their daughter was doomed. The world’s most perfect person, they knew, Gaia would be its loneliest.