by Steve Rzasa
“Nil.” I turned, putting my back to the gawking pair and keeping my voice low. “You can’t be serious. You can’t hold on to that thing.”
“Of course I can. It is in stasis, more secure even than when it was on display in the museum. It is encoded with a tracking module so that I and my superiors will know its location down to the precise meter.” He sniffed. “I smell your hesitance, Fortel, but given the peculiarities surrounding this investigation, my superiors have decided this is the option bearing the best scent.”
Directing his attention to Carpenter and Loya, Nil bared his teeth. Glad he didn’t aim those fangs at me. “Gentlemen, I have relayed the sensor data I recorded during our—encounter—to my superiors. They are inquiring as to the whereabouts of the chief Observer but I have nothing available at this time. I will tell you when I know.”
He shepherded the Rycole out of our little room.
A little room that felt way too crowded with a pair of surly federal agents standing beside me. I patted Loya on the shoulder and exited, letting the door swing wide open into the hall. “Excuse me, boys. Duty calls.”
<<<>>>
Nil wasn’t kidding about his absence. I didn’t bother looking for him like last time he disappeared but went out by myself. The Occidental was busy, wall to wall people, with even a trio of qwaddos stuffed in a corner talking with some burly men dressed in Merino shirts and Wranglers. One of them had a Fusecorp logo on his chest.
I pounded back a couple of whiskeys—make that three. Possibly four. Anyway, after a while everything blurred into dull talk and music. Not that I did any talking. My brain was filled with too many things to sort out. But Ally and our son were top of the stack.
What was I going to do? Ally said she loved me. But I don’t think either of us was planning to relocate. Doubt there was much call for my work in Wyoming, theft of valuable alien artifacts notwithstanding. She could teach anywhere; however, she liked it here, in her home state.
Then there was the kid. A young teenage version of me and her. He’d never even seen me. Was I supposed to waltz up to his door with a wad of money and a grin and pretend like I hadn’t missed the first decade and a half of his life?
It got late. The bar emptied out. I staggered up the street and, by some miracle, made it back to the hotel. Didn’t remember a single thing about the drive.
There was a dark-haired woman at the hotel bar there. Yes, I went for Round Two. What’d you expect? I wasn’t going up to my room to pray. I did plenty of question-asking in between gulps of alcohol. The answers came to me, all right. But I didn’t want to hear them. I knew what the right thing to do was.
Whether I wanted to do it—that was something else entirely. She was hot, this lady—tight emerald green shirt, even tighter blue jeans, jet black hair reflecting the scattered yellow lights around the bar. Eyes glittering blue as ice chips. We laughed and I made bad jokes and she spoke semi-coherently about her work. No idea what she did. Fed her some fake story about what I did and didn’t bother with my name. She wasn’t interested in my resume.
Just like all those years ago, when I cheated on Ally. Can you blame me for needing to escape?
Finally she grabbed my hand and led me out of the bar.
Considerably more of her wits were intact.
Time was a blur. And then it was Sunday. Bang—daylight.
I forgot to shut the shades. The sunlight blasted in. Between that and the hangover, I didn’t want to get out of bed. Slapped around the bedside table and found my watch. Eight-thirty. Church was at nine.
I groaned and threw the sheets aside. Imagine my surprise when I found the bed empty and all my clothes still on.
Okay. So where did the woman go? I mopped my face and ran my fingers through my hair. Even for me this was a new record.
Realized right then I hadn’t called Laci back. Ever. Pretty much forgot all about her. That was also familiar. No way was Ally going to understand.
Coffee. Needed coffee.
My phone buzzed. Coffee not ready yet. I swiped the phone off the floor.
[Thout you’d want to know, Nil sayz no luck track spaceship u saw.] It was Rutherford, of course.
[Bummer. Thanks for all your help.]
[Ur welcom. Good jb getting the sttue back. Call if u ndded assist.]
Nice. Rutherford wasn’t half bad to work with, for an amorphous presence on the other end of a digital link.
I sipped on my coffee, trying to figure out what my problem was. Sending the woman away—which I assume I’d done—that wasn’t me. But a lot had happened lately that didn’t fit in with what I’d considered “me” for the past fifteen years.
Then there was Nil. What had he hoped to get from me in all this? He was the one who requested a Christian man as a partner on this assignment. Did I deliver? He could have pulled up anything he wanted to know off Wikipedia or whatever the qwaddos used for information sources. Like I was going to be the best model of a man of God.
“And You’ve been a great help,” I muttered aloud. “What a mess. Missing statue and nosy alien and lost son and the girl I love. I can’t stop thinking about her now. It’s worse than before.”
Seriously. What was the deal with this meltdown? I guess I should have said my problem. I had just recovered a priceless artifact and was going to pocket a million bucks. And then what? Keep on doing what I’d always been doing. Making money, spending money, eating, drinking, and, um, extra-curricular activities. A predictable cycle. A cycle that, thanks to Nil and all his Qas talk, seemed more bleak and pointless than before.
Pointless until recent revelations.
Now I really got steamed. Plunked the coffee down so hard on the table it sloshed. “This Your idea of a joke? Messing around with my life one screwball at a time? I don’t think it’s funny! I’m not laughing! This isn’t what I wanted to deal with, and that’s the truth! So what’s Your big plan now, huh?”
Nobody spoke. I didn’t have the TV on to drown out my thoughts. Didn’t matter, though, because it was the same thing. Same women, same drinking, same headache and nausea. Same morning I’d put myself through week after week, year after year. It didn’t mean a thing to anybody, not even me.
Now, though, I had Ally again, in a manner of speaking. And a son. Someone who could look to me as a role model.
The worst of it was, I knew better. I’d lived better. There was the joy and the magic and the exhilaration. For a few years before the aliens showed up, everything had been right. Before they ruined it all.
I was stuck there in that hotel room, coffee buzzing in my brain, stomach churning in my guts, head pounding, and thinking: Maybe the qwaddos weren’t the problem.
The Bible was right there, sitting on top of my bag. Didn’t know why I ranted like that. I felt like a kid who’d just mouthed off to his dad and instead of getting yelled at or punished, got a disappointed look in return, and then a hug.
I hate it when He’s right. Better get showered and meet Ally.
<<<>>>
I was late. Shocker.
Almost didn’t get there because I sat in the parking lot at the grocery store a few blocks away with the engine running and radio blaring. Not moving.
But I got there. There were twenty people at the church service. Everyone was singing when I slipped inside. I counted three blond kids with their parents, a tall guy with buzz-cut white hair in a polo shirt and khakis, and a woman with auburn locks in a white-and-blue summer dress. There were five more couples, all ten of those folks older than sixty, all wearing glasses. A middle-aged man in a suit and white shirt was in the front row; a blond woman in her fifties sat toward the back.
Ally and Nil sat in the middle on the left side. Both held brown leather hymnals, though Nil was using his lower hands to hold onto the pew. Both looked my way. Neither one seemed impressed when I flashed a grin. Hey, I made it, didn’t I?
Nil was blinking rapidly, which was odd for him, and man, that snout of his was sniffing like crazy. Real
ly wanted to know what he thought of all this. Ally had her hair done up in a ponytail and only the barest makeup. Blue eyes looked brighter than ever. She had on a white blouse and a pale green skirt. I recognized it immediately.
She wore it the day we split up.
I grabbed a pew, needing an instant distraction from that memory overload. Found our hymn, and well, started singing along. More old habits.
There were enough of the oak pews to fit sixty people, maybe more. But that didn’t bug the pastor. No way. He sang loudly, on par with the rest of us, belting out the hymns. He was a young guy, big and tall like a basketball player, with a black mustache and goatee. This being a Lutheran church, he was duded up in white robes with a green vestment thing. Don’t ask me what for. Last church I was in was the hands raised in the air, feel-the-Spirit-move variety.
This place? Old school. Red carpet, wooden Communion rail up front, hanging candles in red glass. The hymn we started with was written by good old Martin Luther himself.
Ally nudged me. She had her bulletin on her lap. Her lap that was comprised of my favorite skirt and those legs just starting to tan. Wow.
She’d written on the corner of the bulletin, We can go see Kyle later this summer. I was planning a trip then.
I took the bulletin. The pastor had launched into his sermon, which I was earnestly drowning out. Actually, he did say something about drowning.
Ally passed a pen. I thought about my response for a second.
Maybe.
I passed both back. She frowned—first at the paper, then at me. She scribbled, You said you wanted to see him. After all this.
My turn. Right away? It’s soon.
Amazing how you can feel the room temperature drop twenty degrees when a woman’s mad at you. I wonder if they feel the same thing when a guy gets mad. Probably not.
Don’t run off, she wrote back.
What did the pastor say? Peter something. I liked Peter. He was a no-nonsense, hard-nosed follower of the Good Lord. He also couldn’t stay out of trouble. Made me feel better about being a mess.
Don’t run off. Easy for her to say.
Give me time, I wrote.
Her frown deepened. Should’ve seen that coming.
We left each other alone for the rest of the service. Part of me wanted to tell her about my, ah, encounter last night. The other part rightly smacked the first part in the back of the head. Moron.
Funny. I hadn’t paid the slightest attention to the sermon. But when it came to the hymns, it was like I’d found an old friend who smiled at me and let me stay at his place without asking where I’d been, why I hadn’t emailed. I could sing them without missing a word, muttering at first. By the last one of the service, I was as loud as anyone in the small congregation.
The words hit me right in the chest.
Ally and I walked outside, neither saying anything. It was shaping up to be a gorgeous day—70 degrees already and not a cloud above. The power of the songs faded. What was that all about, anyway? Music was music, but the hymns . . .
“What did you think?” Ally asked.
I shrugged. “It was like—coming home. To visit, not to stay.”
“That’s a good start.”
Between her and Isaac, I felt the squeeze to try it all again. “You can’t force me back into it, Ally. If it’s going to happen, it has to be me and Him.”
“I know that better than anyone, Caz. But you don’t have to wrestle with it alone. You have friends.”
Yeah. True. “Thanks, Ally. I just want things to be the way they were.”
“They can’t be, though.”
That was becoming abundantly clear.
“You’ve never given up believing, have you? Even if you’ve stepped way off the path.”
I chuckled. “Man, I am so far off the path He’s got to light off a nuke just so I can see it.”
“Caz, seriously.”
“Oh, I’m serious. You’re right. I know it. Spent a lot of time fooling myself, but let’s put it this way: I never doubted in Him. It was always me. Even before the qwa—the aliens showed up.”
She nodded. “That leaves you some choices, doesn’t it?”
“Ones I’ve done a great job avoiding, thanks.”
We hung around for a good while, silence keeping us both company and me really wanting to say something profound. Like “I love you.” Instead I clammed up.
Nil? Who knew what took him so long. I was ready to go in and bang on the restroom door if I had to when the pastor came out the door with a peculiar smile on his face. Like he knew a joke everyone else wanted to hear. “Good morning. Welcome. We’re always glad to have visitors, especially nowadays.”
“I’ll bet you are,” I said.
“Your friend has made a request of me, and after some quick prayer and thorough questioning, I’ve decided to honor it.”
Okay. “By friend, I assume you mean Nil. The Ghiqasu.”
“Yes. He would like very much for you to be his witness.”
“His witness.”
“Yes, sir.”
Ally clapped a hand over her mouth. Her eyes were so wide I wondered if I’d just said the f-bomb in front of the pastor.
“To what?” I asked.
<<<>>>
I stood there by the baptismal font and stared.
Nil was silent, all four hands clasped together in front of him. His eyes were wide open. Ally had hers closed, in prayer I figured. But I couldn’t look away as the pastor reached into the font. Water dripped from a silver scoop shaped like a shell.
The pastor asked Nil if he renounced the devil. All his works. All his ways. Nil murmured a clear, rumbling “Yes” to every question.
Do you believe?
Sin and redemption. “Yes.”
Nil raised his head. Looked at the pastor, then stared right at me.
One death, one man’s shed blood to clean up the mess. Do you believe?
“Yes, I do.”
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
“Yes. I believe.” Nil bent forward, lowering his face over the font. I could see his reflection wavering on the surface of the water in the bowl.
“Aphu Nil Hemilh Jeq, I baptize you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” The pastor poured water three times over his forehead. It dribbled down in rivulets of his snout armor.
Forgiven.
“Inaqavu.” Nil lifted his face up to the rafters. “Amen.”
Ally must have said something congratulatory to Nil, but I didn’t hear it because the screaming fury in my head was too loud. You’ve never experienced anger until you’ve had white hot hate pushing aside every friendly, pleasant thought. “Nil, do you have any idea what you just did?”
“I comprehend it completely. It is the scent I have followed across light-years. This is where Qas has led me: to the One who returned from death.”
It was the most astonishing thing I’d ever heard from an alien.
My answer? Not repeatable.
“Caz!” Ally gasped.
“Caz, what? Am I the crazy one here? You can’t baptize him!”
“Why not?” the pastor asked. “He understands fully the gospel of Christ. He knows the penalty paid by the shed blood for the forgiveness of sins. He desires that forgiveness and pledges his repentance. Isn’t that what we ask of all humans who join us?”
“Of course,” I snapped. “That’s beside the point. He’s not one of us! You can’t baptize any qwaddo who lands on our planet!”
Nil growled, baring his teeth—and not in the grin I’d gotten used to. Whatever. I doubt my face was any friendlier. “You blame me for humans falling from Qas.”
“Good guess. You get a cookie.”
“That was not the fault of my people.”
“Really? ’Cause it sure looked like it from where I stood—and that was at the funeral of the man who mentored me.” I pointed at the pastor. “A man just like him.”
Nil pressed in closer. “You a
re like all human zhich¸ I smell. The weak and foul of stench fled your churches when our race arrived. They were not faithful. They saw us land in our ships and gave up what they professed to be most dear. We did not force them to do anything, except to breathe the true smell of their charlatan faith.”
“Take your art and get off my planet.”
“Do not hate me for your failure, Caz Fortel. I smell it on you.”
I got right up in his snout. “The only thing I smell is a guy whose own people can’t stand his stink. How’s that for failure?”
He growled even deeper and latched his upper left hand around my throat. With the bottom left he grabbed a fistful of my shirt and pulled me in close.
Ally reached for him but he held her away with both right arms. “Nil, please! Put him down.”
“He must listen, and to do so he must be silent. You presume to lecture me, Fortel. You know nothing of my failures. I carry their stench with me everywhere. Only Qas can give me a new scent. And you—you save other people’s treasures while you fill your own life with filth.”
The words hammered me. I had nothing clever to say. Also, I was choking, so I couldn’t speak even if I had.
Somewhere outside, tires ripped up gravel, engines revved, and car doors slammed. Shoes thumped on the concrete sidewalk in the parking lot. My oxygen-deprived brain wondered if half the congregation forgot their Bibles and came racing back.
The front doors banged open. No old ladies barged through. Instead Carpenter, Loya, and the two FBI agents stormed into the sanctuary. They had buddies: a pair of qwaddos. These were similar in coloration to Nil, both of the same brick red hue. They had jet black hair and simple one-piece coveralls of slate gray with white panels on each side of their torsos. They carried things I thought at first were strikers, but then I realized were twice as wide and pearly white. Four thin red lines glowed across the long curved face of each, which covered one qwaddo hand fully.
“Let him go! Now!” Carpenter snapped.
Nil released me, probably because all four FBI agents had Glock 23s aimed at him, alien weapons notwithstanding. Even Carpenter was armed, with a pair of Nighthawk T4 pistols, one shiny aluminum and one black steel. Each one could hold a 9mm round in the chamber and eight more in the magazine.