Morgan was ten when we met the family—a bright, almost pretty girl who would make any parent proud. She had inherited her father's fastidious attitude and a sharp, organized mind. Being seven years older than her brother, she helped raise the wild youngster. Yet the girl never complained, even if that meant babysitting a weepy, feverish imp while her folks stood in the sleet and wind, holding high signs begging the world for a single rational act.
I can't remember Morgan ever acting jealous toward her sibling. Which was a considerable feat, if you knew Little Donnie and his special relationship to the world.
As a toddler, LD (as his family called him) was an effervescent presence already speaking in long, lucid sentences. Cheryl explained to me that some three-year-old girls managed that early verbal capacity, but never little boys. Then she pointed out—and not for the last time—that Little Donnie wasn't merely smart, he was absolutely beautiful: a delicious sweet prince of a lad destined to grow up into a gorgeous young man.
Don was openly proud of both kids, but LD stories outnumbered Morgan stories at least three-to-one.
Every time I saw my friend, he had to share at least one LD anecdote. Preschool and then elementary school brought a string of thunderous successes, including perfect report cards and glowing praise from every teacher. And middle school—that realm of social carnivores and petty hatreds—proved to be a tiny challenge for the golden boy. Of course LD earned his place in the finest gifted programs in the state. And it didn't hurt that he was a major force in the local T-ball circuit, and that he dominated the seventh-grade basketball court, and nobody in eighth grade could hang with that stallion when he decided to run the four hundred meter sprint.
But eighth grade was when our world abruptly and unexpectedly changed.
As the boy entered high school, the glowing reports fell off. Don was still genuinely thrilled with his son. I have no doubts. But suddenly he was less likely to share his news about LD's continuing rise to still-undefined greatness.
What if somebody was listening to his boasts?
Distant but horrible forces were at work in the universe, and Don sensed that silence might be the wiser course.
In an earlier age, Don and I had done what we could to battle an awful war. Success meant that our troops eventually came home, and his children could grow up safe, and nothing else seemed to matter.
But LD turned fourteen, and a new war began.
Or rather, an unimaginably old and bizarre and utterly unexpected conflict had found its way into our lives and tidy homes.
I was still kept abreast about the most important LD news. And I'd cross paths with the boy, or my wife would. As she had predicted, he grew up gorgeous and brilliant. And Little Donnie remained charming, though in that cool, detached way that every generation invents for the first time. He was always polite to us, even at the end. His lies were small affairs, and on the surface, harmless. It actually made me jealous to hear my middle-aged bride praising the Apollo-like figure who had chatted with her at the supermarket. But she was right. “The only thing I worry about,” she said with a confidential tone, “is that LD has too many choices. Know what I mean, John?"
I suppose I did, but not from my own life experience.
"There's so many careers he could conquer,” Cheryl added. “And with any girl he wants, of course."
Including my wife, if she could have just shrugged off twenty years and forty pounds.
"Is he doing all right at school?” she would ask.
As far as I knew, yes.
"Because Amanda's mentioned that his grades are down,” she reported. “And his folks are getting worried about his friends."
Big Don had never quite mentioned those concerns, I noted.
Then a few months later, my best friend dropped his king on its side and told me, “I resign.” That very poor performance on the chessboard preceded a long, painful silence. Then with a distracted air, he added, “LD's been suspended."
Did I hear that right? “Suspended from what?"
"School,” Don allowed.
I didn't know what to say, except, “Sorry."
Don looked tired. He nodded, and after hard consideration decided to smile. “But he's in a twelve-step program. For the drug use."
I was astonished. “What drug use?"
He didn't seem to hear me. With a wince, he reported, “The counselors are telling us that when a kid is high-functioning, being bored is the greatest danger."
We were talking about drugs, and we weren't.
"What drugs?” I had to ask.
"It doesn't matter.” Don paused, then nodded, as though he'd convinced himself it really didn't matter.
I slumped back in my chair, staring at the remaining black and blond chessmen.
"LD is in rehab,” the worried father continued, “and he's promised to get clean and well. And he'll graduate on time, too."
A string of promises that were met, it turned out.
That next year, the young prince went to our local college—perhaps to keep him within reach of his worried parents. What news I heard was cautiously favorable. But after the first semester, even those mild boasts stopped coming. The only glowing news was about Morgan and her burgeoning career as a dermatologist.
I made a few tactful inquiries.
Don would say, “Oh, the boy's doing fine too."
Cheryl's queries to Amanda ended with the same evasive non-answers.
Then one morning, while strolling downtown on some errand, I happened to stumble across the famous LD.
To my eye, he looked fit and sober.
But when he told me, “I'm going to buy a new bike today,” he was lying. And when he said, “I'm riding across the country this summer,” he was feeding me a fairy tale.
The boy had already made up his mind.
I didn't even suspect it.
"Enjoy your ride,” I advised, feeling proud of this tall, strong kid with whom I had shared nothing except seventeen years and an emotional stake that was never defined, but nonetheless felt huge.
"See you, Mr. Vance."
"Take care, LD."
Two weeks later, Don called me at work. “Have you seen my boy?” he asked. Then before I could answer, he blurted, “In the last five days, I mean."
"I haven't,” I allowed. My stomach clenched tight. “Why?"
"LD's vanished."
Some intuition kept me from mentioning the bike ride.
"We just found out,” said a terrified parent. “Donnie's failed all of his classes, and nobody seems to know where he is."
I had nothing worth saying.
And then with a tight, sorry voice, Don confessed, “I just hope it's the meth again. You know? Something small and fixable like that."
* * * *
Five years earlier, our tiny world had changed. But it wasn't a historic event that happened in a single day or during a tumultuous month. In fact most of humanity did its stubborn best to ignore the subject. So what if a few voices told the same incredible story? And what if astronomers and their big telescopes couldn't entirely discount their crazy words? In our United States, the average God-fearing citizen still didn't swallow the idea of natural selection, and that's after almost two centuries of compelling research. Rational minds had to be skeptical. Even after the story broke, there were long stretches when I considered the whole business to be an elaborate, ludicrous joke. But the evidence did grow with time, and I had no choice but to become a grudging believer. And then our friends’ son vanished without warning, and Cheryl turned to me in bed and asked when I thought LD would actually leave the Earth behind.
My response was less than dignified.
Thoroughly and passionately pissed, I told my wife, “He bought a bike, and he went wandering."
"And you know this how?"
"That's what he told me he was doing,” I reminded her.
"And has anybody seen this bike?"
I didn't respond.
"His parents talked
to everybody,” she continued. “Girlfriends, his buddies. Professors and both roommates. They never saw a bike. Or a packed suitcase. Or anything you'd take on a trip."
"I know that."
"With the clothes on his back, he went out on a midnight walk,” she continued. “His car was still parked in the street. Nobody remembers him buying a bike or camping gear or anything else you'd want on a cross country ride."
"Don told me all that, honey."
"Did Don mention his son's checking account?"
I said nothing.
And she read my expression. For an instant, she took a spouse's cruel pleasure in having the upper hand. “LD drained it and closed it."
"Why not? A kid on the road needs money."
"Amanda just told me. LD left all that cash in an envelope addressed to them. They found it while searching his room. Eleven hundred dollars, plus a birthday check from Grandma that he never bothered to endorse."
Bike ride or drug binge. In neither case would the boy leave that tidy sum behind.
Once again, Cheryl asked, “How soon does he leave the Earth?"
In the pettiest possible ways, I was hurt that Don hadn't mentioned finding the money.
"What's Amanda think?” I asked.
"The worst,” said Cheryl.
"Did they call the police?"
"Last night. From LD's apartment."
I had to ask, “But do the cops care? This is not a child anymore. We're talking about a legal, voting-age adult."
"An adult who has vanished."
But citizens had rights, including the freedom to fail at college, and then out of embarrassment or shame, dive out of sight.
I asked, “Have the police met with them?"
Cheryl dipped her head sadly. “Amanda didn't say,” she admitted. “She started to cry again, said it was too painful, and hung up."
"I believe that,” I muttered.
"Talk to Don,” she advised.
I nodded, wringing a sad joy out of the moment, allowing myself to revel in the awful fact that I didn't have any children of my own to worry about.
* * * *
"On average,” Don asked, “how many young men and women vanish? In a given year."
I offered an impressive number.
"Multiply that by three,” he warned.
"Is that the U.S., or everywhere?"
"Just the U.S."
"I see."
We'd met at the coffee house for our traditional chess game. The board was set up, but neither of us had the strength to push a pawn. My good friend—a creature who could not go into a new day without clean clothes and a scrubbed face—looked awful. A scruffy beard was coming in white. The eyes were rimmed with blood, and I could see dirt under his fingernails. Where had the man been digging, and why? But I didn't ask, watching him pick up his mug of free-trade coffee and sip it and look into the swirling blackness. Then a voice almost too soft to be heard asked, “How many go up there? Out of a thousand missing people, how many?"
"Twenty,” I guessed.
"Not bad. It's ten and a half."
"How do we know that?"
"There's Websites,” he explained. “Help societies and half a dozen federal agencies like to keep databases, and the answers mostly agree with each other. Most missing people are found sooner or later, and there's some who drop off remote cliffs, and there's always drug users who aren't found and murder victims too."
My black pieces waited at attention, fearless and wood-hearted.
"Go into space or become a murder victim: Those are about equally likely, as it happens.” In a peculiar way, the haggard face betrayed hope. Then with the earnest tone of confession, Don mentioned, “That's what I want the cops to believe. That LD's been killed."
"So they look for him?"
"Sure."
I sipped my warm coffee, weighing the probabilities.
"Of course they don't believe me,” he continued. “But if his disappearance isn't a crime, then they can't do anything beyond filling out a missing-person's report."
I kept thinking about tall and handsome LD, calmly lying to me about the bike and his plans for the summer. The prick.
"He's alive,” I said, aiming for hope.
Don remained silent, fearful.
"Okay,” I allowed. “Suppose he's joined up with them."
I was passing into an uncomfortable terrain. Don leaned back and dropped his shoulders, and with a whisper, he said, “Okay."
"They don't take their recruits off the Earth right away,” I pointed out. “I mean, they might be wizards with space flight and all. But their volunteers have to be trained first, to make sure that they can ... you know ... do their job well enough to make them worth the trouble."
"Sure."
"Lifting a big young man past Pluto,” I said. “It costs energy."
"It does,” he agreed.
"LD is smart,” I continued. “And sure, he has a bunch of talents. But do you really think, Don—in your heart of hearts, I mean—do you believe that your son is capable of serving as a soldier in some miserable alien war...?"
There was a long, uncomfortable pause.
Then the shaggy white face lifted, and just by looking at the sleepless eyes, I could tell we were talking about two different boys.
"Little Donnie,” his father muttered.
With all the confidence and horror he could muster, Don declared, “My son would make a marvelous, perfect soldier."
* * * *
Nobody knows when the war began, and no sane human mind claims to understand the whys and for-whats that keep it alive today.
But we know for sure that the first human recruits vanished four decades ago. My father's generation supplied that early fodder, though the world didn't notice when a few thousand boys failed to come downstairs for breakfast. By unknown means, the Kuipers identified the ripest targets among us—always male, always smart and adaptable—and through elaborate and almost invisible negotiations, they would winnow the field to the best of the best. Usually the boy's mind would wander, experiencing a series of lucid daydreams. About fighting, of course. But more important, the aliens would test his capacity to cooperate and coldly reason and make rapid-fire decisions under stress. And they always made sure that he would say, “Yes,” before the question was asked. “Yes” meant that a young human was agreeing to serve one Nest for ten full seasons—a little more than three decades, Earth-time. Survive that maelstrom of carnage, and you were honored and subsequently released from service. Then according to traditions older than our innocent species, you were allowed to bring home one small sack stuffed full of loot.
Ten years ago, a few middle-aged gentlemen reappeared suddenly. There was some interest, but not much belief: They came from the Third World, and how credible is a Bangladeshi fisherman or a Nigerian farmer? But then six years ago a Frenchman returned to his home village, and he made the right kinds of noise for the cameras. Then came a Canadian gent, and an Italian, and then a pair of handsome American brothers who suddenly strolled into a town square in New Hampshire. In the media's eyes, these weren't just crazy peasants rambling on about impossible things. Here stood men with good educations and remembered faces and what soon became very public stories, and if their families gave up on them ages ago, at least there were siblings and elderly parents who could say with confidence, “It is him. It is them. I know it is. Yes."
And they brought home their sacks of loot, too.
Some of those possessions had obvious value—gemstones of extraordinary purity, slabs of rare-earth elements, and other materials that would have carried a healthy price on the open market. But the biggest noise came from what looked like trash: Pieces of pretty rock, shards of irradiated glass, unfathomable chunks of burnt machinery, and in a few cases, vials of dirty water.
Each veteran looked older than his years, with haunted, spent eyes and flesh that had been abused by extreme temperatures and cosmic rays. Some had lost fingers, some entire limbs. Each wo
re scars, outside and in. But despite very different origins and unrelated languages, they told identical stories: About being recruited by creatures dubbed the Kuipers who taught them how to fight, and despite very long odds, how to survive.
The Kuipers were a deeply social organism, it was explained.
But not like bees or termites or even naked mole rats. There were no queens or castes. In their youth, every alien had a strong, vaguely humanoid body capable of modest shape-shifting. But as adults they had to find a worthy patch of ground to set down roots, interlocking with one another, forming elaborate beds that were at least as intricate and beautiful as coral reefs.
The Kuipers didn't refer to themselves by that name. Their original world circled some distant sun; nobody knew for sure which one. They were an ancient species that had wandered extensively, creating a scattering of colonies. For the last thousand millennia, a substantial population of Kuipers had been fighting each other for possession of a single planet-sized comet that was drifting somewhere “out there."
No veteran could point at the sky and say, “This is where you look."
Navigating in deep space wasn't an essential skill, it seemed.
When the story broke, good scientific minds loudly doubted that any world matched the vivid descriptions given to family members and the media. Comets were tiny things; even Pluto and its sisters didn't possess the gravity or far horizons that were being described. And they were far too cold and airless for humans wearing nothing but self-heating armor. But then one astronomer happened to look in the proper direction with a telescope just sensitive enough, and there it was: A giant ice-clad world moving high above the solar system's waist, carrying enough mass to build a second Earth, but built of less substantial ingredients like water and hydrocarbons laid over a small core of sulfurous iron.
That new world's crust, though frozen, was no colder than a bad winter day in Antarctica. A multitude of subsurface fusion reactors created a deep, warm, and very busy ocean. Ice volcanoes and long fissures let the excess heat escape upward. As promised, the atmosphere was dense and remarkable—a thick envelope of free oxygen and nitrogen laced with odd carbon molecules and rare isotopes, plus a host of other telltale signs proving the existence of some kind of robust, highly technological life.
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