Cottonwood

by R. Lee Smith

  “Can’t I see the water? Please!”

  “No.” Sanford softened his command with some shared breath and rubbed the boy’s throat gently. “We have to be careful now. All of us. And don’t jump on things here. You might break something.”

  “Like what?” T’aki challenged, bouncing in his nest.

  “Like your stubborn shell of a head.” Sanford gave the top of it a tap, then picked up the remote and turned the television on.

  Sarah set their snacks down on the sofa as Sanford re-wrapped the afghan around his giggling son. She could have watched some TV with them, and a part of her did want to, if only to help her wind down a little, but the couch, like everything else here, was too small. She slipped away instead, thinking maybe it was best to give them a little privacy; they surely weren’t so used to spending every passing moment in someone else’s company, particularly a human’s. She wouldn’t be the best company right now anyway.

  There was no phone, only an empty jack in one wall to mark the place one used to be, years and years ago. Who needed a land-line these days, when everyone had their own paz? No phone, and the need to call Kate and replace that awful hallucination in the mirror with something real was eating her up inside. Sarah stood staring at that jack, trying to think her way back down that road to the first place she might feasibly find another junker-phone, knowing already that she wouldn’t do it. Sanford wouldn’t let her even if she tried. And she didn’t need to, that was the thing she had to keep remembering. She didn’t need to, because Kate was fine. Heck, even if she did call, at this time of day, Kate would be at work and all she’d get would be the voice mail of her paz. Sarah would probably be pulling into her sister’s driveway before Kate got around to answering her messages.

  Yeah, all of that.

  The empty jack stared her down. Who the hell rented out vacation cabins and didn’t install friggin’ phones?

  Sarah went to the bedroom (another empty jack, under the nightstand by the bed). She stepped out of her shoes, kicked them out of the way, started to undress and then gave up and walked half-naked over to the picturesque, if tiny, window. She propped her elbow up on the sill, propped her chin up on her elbow, and snapped the top off her soda.

  ‘I’d know if something were wrong, wouldn’t I?’ she thought, and waited, but no answer came to her out of the ether, neither a comforting glow to settle her mind nor an ominous weight in the pit of her newly-mended stomach. Just silence, uncertainty, and another six hours on the road ahead of her.

  She hadn’t been there long, drinking her Dr. Pepper and watching the river flow by, when Sanford quietly joined her. She didn’t hear him at all, but she saw his reflection swim into focus in the glass until he was standing right beside her. He let her look for a while, then drew the curtain, just as she had done to T’aki. When she turned, protesting, he took away her soda, set it on the sill and picked her up.

  She’d never been picked up before, unless she counted Samaritan snatching her off the causeway, and she was unprepared for how easily he did it. Although taller than she, Sanford’s alien body was much more narrowly-built, and his arms were actually slimmer than her own, if longer. She clutched at his neck reflexively, and he drummed his palps on her breastbone as he carried her to the bed and lay her down. He leaned over her, his face close and huge above her, and said, “Are you tired?”

  She should have giggled, he was making such an obvious effort to win a laugh out of her. Instead, she reached up and stroked the smooth side of his armored head, even knowing he couldn’t feel it. “You amaze me,” she said.

  The playful light in his eyes dimmed. He clicked softly, then chirred.

  “I liked you even the first day I met you. And I trusted you. And now I love you.” She blushed, hearing that. Who says that to a man they’ve known only a few months, slept with only twice? “I don’t think it’s just the danger talking, either. I feel so safe when I’m with you, like this isn’t running, like nothing is wrong. I love you, Sanford.”

  His eyes changed again, she couldn’t say just how. “You are my breath and blood,” he said, speaking in a strange, almost stilted tone utterly unlike him. His hand stroked up over her chest to caress her throat. “I am your air, your heart. I drink water from your hands. You bare your back to me.” He spoke softer now, but with growing intensity, the words vibrating from his chest-plate to her breast. “Your voice is the secret sounding of my name. I give my unprotected skin to your touch. I am always in you. You are always with me.”

  Oddly, none of that seemed like too much for a few months and two nights. She put her arms around him as he climbed onto the bed and lay tensely atop her, looking down. Their hands met and twined briefly; she found the seams along his shoulders to stroke, and he combed his long fingers through her hair. That was all for several silent minutes.

  “I must copulate with you now,” he said.

  Sarah giggled, blushing right to her bones, and then felt the press of his belly-plates swelling against her stomach. Not all the way apart, not yet, but there was a real urgency in his eyes. She touched his shoulder-joints again and he chirred raggedly, brushing his feathery claspers against her.

  “Do I hurt you when we copulate this way?” he asked.

  She bit her lip, avoided the question. “I like to see your face.”

  “Yes,” he said, relaxing. His belly-plates pushed at her again. He shifted back; she felt the solid pressure of his curved member pressing on her next, insistent and unfeeling as it dug at her soft thigh. Still, he hesitated.

  She started to wriggle out of the rest of her clothes. He stopped her.

  “Do I…” Awkward again, he moved his hand back to her breast and lightly rubbed up and down. “Do I give you sexual pleasure?”

  “I can’t believe you have to ask that. More than I ever thought possible with anyone.” She faltered, her smile fading. “Do I?”

  “Even when we do not touch,” he assured her, and pulled the sheet up over their heads.

  After that, there were very few words, apart from, “Ow ow ow! Watch the spikes! Watch the—okay, okay, that’s good…oh, that’s so good…” and soft laughter, chirrs, sighs, humming, and finally, sleep.

  * * *

  Sanford was awakened too early by the weight of a small body bouncing off the foot of the bed. He sat up fast and that same small body smacked loudly into his chest-plate, knocking him flat again.

  “I heard a noise,” T’aki said, burrowing violently under the sheets.

  Then Sanford heard it and how he could have heard it once and slept through it could not be fathomed, for it was a bellow like nothing he had ever heard. Like an angry human, a roll of thunder, and truck’s horn all at once, it raised the hairs over his ear.

  “What the hell is that?” Sarah asked sleepily, pushing herself onto her elbows.

  “It’s right outside,” shivered T’aki.

  Sanford got up with his son’s hands pulling at him. He went very cautiously to the window, twitched aside one finger’s breadth of curtain and risked a glance from behind the wall.

  Among the trees of the forest, midway between the water and this building, stood a monstrous creature. Taller than a cow and built for battle, with great shovel-shaped horns edged in points, it swung its head among the low branches, then arched its neck and roared again.

  “Oh wow,” breathed Sarah, staring boldly from her side of the window. She was smiling.

  “Is it dangerous?”

  “Not to us in here.”

  “Is it a dog?” T’aki asked from under the sheet.

  “No, honey. It’s called a moose. I’ve never seen one in person before,” she added, moving even closer to the glass. “So to speak.”

  The monster raked its horns over a tree trunk and roared a third time.

  “Why is it doing that?” T’aki wailed.

  “He’s trying to attract a mate,” said Sarah.

  Sanford touched her arm, wanting her away from the glass and out of sight
, should the creature look around.

  She smiled at him. “Relax, I’m off the market.” But she came away from the window. Not to return to bed, he saw, but to finish dressing.

  He looked out the window again and saw the sun only just past its heights. He scraped his palps disapprovingly.

  “I know, I know. But I feel better, I do. I just…need to get there, Sanford. It’s like an itch—er, like a…like a…” She gave up and turned to him, half-dressed and crookedly smiling. “You can put me in that bed, but I promise you I won’t sleep.”

  Did she think that was a threat? He chirred and fanned his palps, then chuckled to see her cheeks turn a brilliant pink.

  In that selfsame bed, T’aki giggled.

  “I want to go,” she said, coming to touch him. “Please. I want to get there. I want to see Kate and get out of that big, clunky, obvious van. I want to get to California. You could be on your ship tomorrow. I need to see you safe, Sanford. Bed is wonderful…but I need to see you safe.”

  She offered her breath to him, imploring. His heart throbbing, he took it, gave back his own, and wished she would go back to sleep. He could taste the exhaustion in her now, taste it even through her pleasures when he mated with her. But she was adamant, he saw, and with the sister out of her reach, he could understand why. He released her to dig T’aki out of the sheets. “We’re leaving,” he said. “Get your toy.”

  “What about the dog-moose?”

  “He won’t bother us from the backyard,” Sarah said, stepping into her shoes. “We’re going straight out to the van, okay? When I wave, you just do your thing, jellybean, and come bouncing out.”

  T’aki bounced on the bed to practice, clutching at Sanford’s arm. Sarah rubbed his head, stroked Sanford’s shoulder-joint, and went into the bathroom.

  T’aki continued to bounce once or twice more, then stopped. He watched the bathroom door, antennae twitching, then whispered, “Will Kate come too?”

  “Kate is Sarah,” said Sanford. “Sarah is Kate.”

  “What if she doesn’t like us?”

  “Sarah is certain she will, so I think so too. We will be a family.” He gave his son a pat. “She can be on my ti’yan’ team.”

  One bounce. Two.

  “Will Sarah have the egg soon?”

  Sanford glanced down at him, clicking amusement. “No. Sarah is not making an egg.”

  T’aki stared at him, openly baffled. “But I thought that’s where eggs came from. You said—”

  “It’s complicated.”

  The bathroom door opened.

  “We’ll discuss this another day,” Sanford concluded. “It is a long way back to yang’Tak. We will have a great deal of time to talk.”

  “But—”

  “Go on then.” Sanford plucked him off the bed and set him down. “We’re leaving soon. Go.”

  “I hate the toilet!” T’aki grumped, stomping across the bedroom.

  “Then use the bathtub, but rinse, don’t leave a mess.”

  “Ew,” said Sarah, and when he glanced at her, she added, “Um, that looked like a serious talk.”

  “Everything is serious to a second-molt. Come here, please.”

  She came, her head at curiosity’s angle. “Why?”

  “Because it will be a long drive and I want to touch you.” He did, and felt her fingers on his receptors in return, but her mind was elsewhere. “You are so nervous,” he observed. “Don’t I make you feel safe?”

  “Yes, you do, but I can’t afford to trust that feeling until you’re safe on the ship.” She laughed shortly. “I really am a rotten soldier.”

  “You don’t have to be a better one. Once this is over, you will never need to be a soldier again.” He clicked for humor. “I may give it up myself.”

  “Oh? And what will you be?”

  “I haven’t thought that far ahead, but I find myself inspired by caseworking.”

  “I think you could make more money as a TV repairman.”

  “A point.”

  “I thought you said we were leaving,” T’aki inserted, not without a heavy sigh. He had his clothes on now and his ship in hand, the very picture of a patient boy.

  “We are, honey,” said Sarah, disengaging his embrace. “Right now, even. And we don’t stop again until Brookings.”

  “And Kate!” cried T’aki, and ran out with her.

  ‘A family,’ thought Sanford, and followed after.

  * * *

  But they did, in fact, make several stops between the sleeping place and Sarah’s sister—once for food (good salty meat in bread with something she called cheese. He thought it very like ‘burgers’, but she called it something else, a ‘micmuffin’. Hers had an egg in it; he refrained from comment, but T’aki squealed out a “Gross!” before he could stop him), and three times for fuel. All in all, it was coming on dark when she began to sing and he knew they must nearly be there.

  Darkness was a much better time to come up on the house, he thought, eyeing all the others that stood nearby. She’d been eager enough to keep traveling this morning, but had they arrived in full daylight, he was certain they would have been seen. She would have been certain of it as well, had she not been so tired. And she was still so tired. His brave, determined Sarah.

  As it was, the yard was barren of covering trees or fences, the streets were wide and clear, and there were signs of life at every window on the street. Humans everywhere, humans surrounding them, but in the home of Kate, only a single light burning. It was the darkest in all the street, made dark deliberately, perhaps, in welcome.

  “Ah crap, she’s loaded up the car,” Sarah said, parking. “Okay, um…I want you two to stay here while I go in and get her. Then we’ll move stuff into the trunk and get some blankets for you two—”

  “I have to pee,” T’aki said.

  “What, again?”

  Stung, the boy retorted, “I only went this morning! You get to go all day!”

  “I don’t go all day, I just—” She stopped there, wise woman, and sighed. She looked at the house. “Okay, um…gosh, that’s a long run. Okay, let me move the van…she’s going to love me parking on the lawn…and you make it quick, T’aki! Lord, she’s going to have a shock.”

  “You haven’t told her about us, have you?” Sanford asked, amused.

  “No.” She navigated onto the soft soil of the yard and eased forward until her wheels bogged. It brought them much closer to the door and yes, made a ruin of the yard. “It didn’t feel right saying it over the phone. I’m just not sure that springing it on her like this is the right thing to do. You know…‘Surprise, aliens!’ You don’t do that in someone’s house, Sanford.”

  “Only in their car.”

  She looked at the smaller vehicle in a startled way, then laughed. “I hadn’t thought of that. Oh well, at least she can’t crash the house if she freaks out. Let me go first, T’aki. The door might be locked.”

  She went, turning in a full circle as she climbed the few stairs to the dwelling’s door. She knocked, then opened it, and Sanford heard her call the sister’s name. Then she stuck her head back out and waved to them.

  “All right, quickly now, and remember this is not our home. Be polite.” Sanford checked the street, found it empty, and followed his son inside at a run. He left his only weapon behind him in the van. He did this not thoughtlessly, by accident, but with the deliberate thought that this may well be Sarah’s sister and someone to trust, but she would begin as a stranger to them and it would be best not to invade her home as an armed and deadly bug.

  He had the best intentions.

  “—so about that surprise I mentioned,” Sarah was saying, apparently to an empty room. “I need you to keep an extremely open mind here and—the bathroom’s straight at the end of the hall, T’aki, use the toilet if you love me—and just don’t get crazy until you hear us out.”

  “Just a sec!” a woman’s voice called.

  “Okay, whatever.” Sarah pulled a chair around
and sat. “It’s not like we’re in a hurry or anything.”

  “Father?” T’aki stopped short in the hallway, his small claspers fluttering. He backed up. “Father, something smells bad.”

  Tactless boy…but when T’aki turned and ran back to him, Sanford flashed his own claspers, sniffing as he stepped protectively forward.

  Blood.

  So much blood.

  “Sarah, back!” he shouted, snatching up his son, but he tore open the door on three soldiers, their guns already aimed. Two more raised themselves up from behind the kitchen counters. The last came from a room at the end of the hall, and this one, Sanford recognized.

  “You stood me up, you bitch,” said Piotr Lantz. And smiled.

  Sarah bolted up from her chair, but Piotr was across the room and right in front of her in the same instant to slap her to the ground before she ever had a chance to run. Grinning, he seized a fisthold in her hair and pulled her to her feet, slapping her playfully until she stopped struggling and only hung in his grip. Then he dipped into his jacket pocket and came out with what the humans called a paz, their all-purpose handheld communications device. He tapped the screen. “Just a sec!” called the woman’s voice. He laughed and tucked it away. “I got that on the first day,” he said, tossing Sarah to one of his men for binding. “Took about an hour before I got the tone I liked. Distracted, you know, but not scared or hurt at all…not like she’s missing any fingers.”

  “What have you done?” Sarah whispered. Her face was white and glassy with fear. She resisted nothing, scarcely seemed aware of her body, only of the man before her. “Where is she?”

  “But you, now. You really got one over on me.” Piotr approached, looking Sanford up and down through narrow eyes. “The worst I ever thought you took out of Cottonwood was maybe some pictures. The old man’s going to shit a brick when he sees this, and I…I kind of want to see that. Take the kid.”

  “You’ll never!” Sanford shouted, lashing out a foot at the first man who moved. He struck the armored vest, but sent the human into a wall violently enough to knock a hole half-through it.