by Various
“‘She,’” Caribou says.
“Or ‘he,’” says Marriage. “But not ‘it.’ That word offends them.”
“Good,” she says. “Now I know how to piss it off.”
Marriage stares at her. Then with a hard tone, he says, “Grace.”
“What?”
“Her name,” he says. “We’ve told you that, more than once. But you weren’t listening.”
She heard everything they said, but this is more fun. “Why Grace?”
“She picked the name. I don’t know why.”
“She looks like Grace Kelly, maybe.”
“No,” he says. “She’s tall and dark.”
“And she’s thin, isn’t she?” Caribou asks.
“I guess.”
“And I’m going to feel fat. I know it.”
Marriage says nothing, hoping that’s best.
“I’ll try to be back before eight,” Caribou says, slamming the door as she leaves. Her car is on the street. She sits inside it, catching the news at the top of the hour. Washington has been cordoned off by the military, nobody allowed in or out without presidential approval. The Vatican has just released a papal bull condemning relations outside the species. And the major announcement scheduled for Monday morning has been pushed up by twenty-four hours.
Caribou abandons her car, coming back through the front door.
Marriage stands where she left him, in the kitchen, presumably waiting for the stove to offer shrewd advice.
“You know what,” she says. “You and I and everybody…we’re all pretty much aliens to each other.”
The neighbors arrive an hour early and a little drunk. But then they share the same small glass of white wine, sobering up slowly while sharing details about the magic that will be spelled out in another few hours. The galaxy is full of life, they explain. But the advanced species always leave their bodies and native worlds, living in supercooled empires far from any sun. Truly modern species have Casimir generators no bigger than a deck of cards, just one of which can power an earthly city. A pico-dense computer the size of a flea can hold the total knowledge of humanity, with enough spare capacity for ten equally primitive species. Life is always mortal, they warn, but even the most complicated life can be backed up without end. And there is absolutely no reason human beings shouldn’t be living on Pluto in ten or twelve years.
“But what about Mars?” Caribou asks.
“Oh, that’s next year,” says Spy. “We’re going to get plans for the space liners and the factories to build those ships, and then it’s just a matter of materials and a little patience. Rookery technology can make anything from the rawest ingredients.”
“I’d like to see Mars,” says Marriage.
“You can go there with us,” Mrs. Spy says. “We’re going to use every connection and old favor to find berths on the first mission. Believe me.”
This is an enormously pleasant moment, four people sitting in the living room, sipping wine and the same fantasy.
Spy looks at his watch.
Without looking at hers, Mrs. Spy says, “Eight minutes till eight.”
“Grace,” says her husband, nodding slowly.
Mrs. Spy leans toward the young couple. “This isn’t about sex,” she says.
“Yes, it is,” Spy says.
She laughs and waves his noise aside. “Sex does happen, sure. But something else can occur during the Joining. Should I tell them, darling?”
“Tell away. But it’s not guaranteed.”
Apprehensive, Caribou sits back. “What happens?”
“Stories,” says Mrs. Spy.
Marriage and Caribou exchange glances.
“You have to remember,” the woman tells them. “Grace is ancient. We don’t know how old she is or even how to calculate age. I mean, she lives in some kind of rich hibernation between the stars, and she has visited at least a thousand alien worlds. This means millions of years of experiences. And during a Joining, the Rooks sometimes can be coaxed into telling stories. About some planet or odd sun they had the pleasure of experiencing ten million years ago.”
“Extraordinary stuff,” her husband says.
“They don’t normally tell stories?” Caribou asks.
“Not personal ones,” Spy says with authority. “Only during the Joining does that happen, and only if they’re happy enough and you’re happy enough. I’ve talked to people who know. To a soul, they say the best moments involved these little asides about rainbow-colored rivers and continents built from living foam floating in an endless sky.”
“Gorgeous, romantic stuff,” says Mrs. Spy.
“No pressure here,” Marriage jokes.
The laughter runs into thoughtful silence.
Spy’s watch gives out a musical tone. Without looking, he says, “Eight o’clock.”
A car door slams shut on the street.
Mrs. Spy hurries to the front window, nudging the curtains open. Laughing, she says, “We’re not using brown Tauruses, are we?”
“That’s the neighbor girl,” says Marriage.
“Pretty,” the woman says. Then she returns to the sofa, sitting farther from her husband.
At five minutes after eight, Spy says, “They’re usually prompt.”
“But they don’t drive themselves,” Caribou says skeptically.
“No, they have drivers and secure cars,” Mrs. Spy says. “But they are a very precise species. Showing up in time is important.”
At ten after eight, Spy offers a worthy excuse. “There have been so many Joinings during these last few days.”
“All the emissaries do this?” asks Marriage.
“Including Grace, yes. And I know she was supposed to attend three other ceremonies today.”
Caribou squirms in her chair.
At fifteen minutes after eight, Mrs. Spy says, “Make a call.”
“I was just about to,” says her husband.
Nobody answers the first two numbers. He stands to dial a third number, and then he talks to someone’s voicemail. “What’s the story, we’re waiting here, happy and bothered, and I think dinner is burning now too.”
Marriage and Caribou rush into the smoky kitchen.
They’re walking back into the room when Spy’s phone rings. He is peering between the curtains, answering with a gruff “Talk.”
Caribou sits. Marriage stays on his feet.
Loudly, Spy says, “What’s that again?”
His wife looks out the same window, seeing nothing.
“No,” Spy says.
She asks, “What?”
He holds up a finger, begging for silence.
Caribou stands, arms crossed and her feet apart. What might or might not be a smile is starting to show.
Marriage asks her, “What is it?”
She has a feeling. Spy is on the telephone, denying whatever it is that he is hearing, but she sees what is happening in his face—puzzlement and disappointment and the first traces of rage—and then he says the caller’s name and adds, “Thanks, I guess,” and pulls the phone away from his face, looking ready for any excuse to fling it to the floor.
“What’s wrong?” his wife asks.
“Grace is gone,” he says.
Nobody speaks.
“They’re all gone,” he explains, talking mostly to himself. “Those bodies they were using? They died an hour ago, and the implants inside them seem dead, and that new ship that they grew in the Gulf just picked itself out of the water and flew away. No warning. No explanations. Just all of a sudden gone.”
Mrs. Spy says, “No.”
She looks at Marriage, at Caribou. She has to look out the window one last time, absorbing this unwelcome and undeserved madness.
Her husband curses.
“What about our spaceships?” Marriage asks.
Spy shakes his head. “Nobody knows what happened.”
“And the press conference tomorrow,” Marriage says. “What will the president talk about in the morning?”
&n
bsp; For a long moment, nobody speaks.
Then Mrs. Spy says, “We did something wrong here. We must have. Somewhere in this process, our species disappointed them.”
“We didn’t do anything wrong,” Spy says.
Caribou moves closer to her husband, saying nothing.
Mrs. Spy sobs and curses.
Every vessel in Spy’s face is full of blood. “I can’t stay here,” he says. “I don’t want to…I need to be…I don’t know…”
He leaves.
Mrs. Spy looks ready for a long weep. But out of nowhere comes a throaty laugh, and she says to the others, “The Rookery wanted to teach us important things. And I guess that’s what they just did.”
“We have plenty to eat,” says Marriage. “If you want.”
The woman stares at him. Then she picks up her purse and the half-finished bottle of wine, leaving the front door open behind her.
Marriage closes the door and locks it.
Caribou sits on the edge of the dining room table, watching her husband. And when he drifts close, she says, “That day in the coffee shop, when we were waiting in line…why did you start talking to me…?”
“You talked to me first,” he says.
“Did I?”
They laugh quietly.
“Either way,” he says. “Why were you interested in me?”
“I don’t remember being interested,” she says. “But I kept thinking that something intriguing might happen, if I gave you a chance.”
“And you’re still waiting, I bet.”
“No, I gave that up long ago.”
They watch each other for a few moments. Neither can be sure when the other starts to laugh, but then both of them are chuckling, and they hug, and holding hands, they set out on the journey to the kitchen, ready to carve what can be eaten out from the middle of the burnt and the sorry.
END
Copyright (C) 2011 by Robert Reed
Art copyright (C) 2011 by Chris Buzelli
Books by Robert Reed
The Leeshore
The Hormone Jungle
Black Milk
Down the Bright Way
The Remarkables
An Exaltation of Larks
Sister Alice
Flavors of My Genius
VEIL OF STARS
Beyond the Veil of Stars
Beneath the Gated Sky
MARROW
Marrow
The Well of Stars
Mere
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
The Dragons of Springplace
The Cuckoo’s Boys
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Contents
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Preview
My recently deceased great-aunt Z’s house smells like cat crap, stale smoke, and retribution.
My mom hands me a bulging Seagram’s 7 box that’s covered with masking tape and black Sharpie. “Dylan, take this up to your room, please. And be careful on those stairs! I forgot how steep and narrow they are, and I swear your feet have grown three sizes this year!”
Once upon a time, I had a room with normal-sized walls covered by posters of Orlando Magic and the Miami Dolphins. I had cable TV and high-speed internet, a great view of the condo swimming pool, and central air conditioning. Then my mother’s aunt died and here I am stuck in New Hampshire with no cable, no air conditioning, dirty pink roses all over my bedroom wallpaper, and a slanted ceiling I’ve whacked my head on three times already.
“How ’bout these?” A moving guy nods to the three boxes stacked in his arms.
“Kitchen.” My mom points down the hall.
Stomping through the door behind Burly Moving Dude is James Beauregard Slater V, better known as JimBeau, better known as my cousin, better not known, as far as I’m concerned.
“Hey.” JimBeau talks like his tongue is too big for his mouth. “I’m meeting my friends tonight to hang out. My mom told me to invite you.”
I open my mouth to tell him where he can shove his half-ass invitation, but my mother swoops in. “That’s so nice, JimBeau! He’d love to!”
We both glare at my mother as she heads toward the kitchen, and for about a second, I feel sorry for JimBeau. Six generations of Slaters, including my mom, have grown up in this dilapidated Cape and the equally crappy Colonial across the road where JimBeau lives with his parents and little sister. My mom ditched New Hampshire for Florida years ago when she left for college, and we’ve rarely visited, so it was a surprise to everyone when Auntie Z left her house and the deed for Slater Woods to my mom instead of JimBeau’s dad. No wonder JimBeau hates us.
“Just…meet us out in the woods at nine thirty tonight. And—” he is actually growling at me now “—what happens in the woods, stays in the woods!”
Really? At least in Orlando, people tried to come up with original threats. But this box is getting heavy and I’m not in the mood to argue with an idiot. “Got it.”
The stairs aren’t just steep and narrow, they groan, like the well-worn wood is exhaling its last rotten breath. The stink is concentrated upstairs, with something special mixed in, like mouse turds and maybe a small forgotten critter decomposing under the eaves. And I’m expected to sleep up here? I park the box on my bureau and force a window open to let some fresh air in. One of Aunt Z’s cats, which we’ve also inherited, is underneath my unmade bed, and the sound of teeth scraping bone makes my skin squirm.
“Urgh! Stupid cat!”
I grab a soccer ball from a laundry basket and hurl it at the bedpost. Thunk! Stupid Cat streaks down the stairs like its tail is on fire, but leaves its headless breakfast behind.
“Dylan!” my mom calls. “I’ve got more boxes that need to go upstairs!”
“Yeah, and I’ve got half a chipmunk on my floor.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Staccato footsteps pound the stairs, and in that hammering instant, a conversation we had on the ride from Florida replays in my head, about my upcoming senior year in high school, a fresh start in New Hampshire, and how it’s time for me to chop the apron strings and man up.
“I’ve got this, Mom.”
She hesitates. “You’re sure?”
“Yup.” I grab the first box I see, a shoebox full of Magic cards, and dump them onto my bare mattress. With the shoebox cover, I nudge the mangled corpse into its cardboard coffin, my stomach turning inside out as the body slides to the bottom of the box with a slick thud. I swallow hard so I don’t puke.
“Oh, Dylan!” my mom says when I come down the stairs holding the box at arm’s length.
“What? It’s gross!” I argue.
And it’s dead.
It’s dark at night in New Hampshire. In Orlando, there’s so much light pollution, it’s hard to see much in the night sky, but up here, I see the fire burning within each star.
“Hey.” My mom follows me outside with a flashlight. “Want this?”
I’d love her monster flashlight because it’s blindingly bright and those woods look like they want to swallow me whole, but walking into the woods waving Mommy’s Flashlight is just handing JimBeau and his friends the iron to brand me with. “No thanks. I have one on my phone if I need it.” My mom nods like she understands. “Okay, just…be careful. Pine forests are messy and there are a lot of branches all over the ground, so make sure you pick your feet up when you step.”
“Mom, I know how to walk.”
“I know, honey.” She stands on
tiptoes to kiss me on the forehead and I lean forward to meet her halfway. “I know I don’t have to worry about you drinking or smoking. Just make sure you stay away from the big pile of rocks on the edge of the woods.”
“Big pile of rocks?” This is something new in her arsenal of forbidden stuff. “Why? Are we talking avalanche potential here or what?”
“Oh, no, it’s not dangerous. It’s an old Native American cairn, but it’s protected by federal laws.”
Cairn? Isn’t that…
“When I was a teenager, the kids used to climb on it and throw the rocks around.” My mom sighs. “I don’t know what JimBeau and his friends do out there, but I know you’d never be that disrespectful.”
…a grave. “Thanks, Mom. So you wait until I’m about to walk into the woods alone, in the pitch dark, to tell me there’s a dead body buried in there.”
She laughs. “Dylan, that cairn’s been there so long, the body’s probably nothing but dust now.”
Decomposition is such a creepy thing. I hum the Twilight Zone tune.
“Oh, it’s fine! And if the kids start in on the ghost stories, don’t pay any attention to them. I played in those woods all the time when I was a kid and the scariest things in there are spiders.”
Says the arachnophobic woman who doesn’t believe in ghosts.
The woods explode with frenetic laughter. My mom perks up and pats my arm. “Have fun, honey.”
Yeah. Fun. I stumble toward the voices, tripping over all kinds of forest debris, both crunchy and squishy, and smack my nose on something hard dangling from a branch. Dammit! I give in and power up the flashlight app on my phone.
The light doesn’t make the woods seem any friendlier. I am dwarfed by giant pines, bare branches grabbing at my T-shirt with bony fingers. The thing I bumped into is a grubby brown beer bottle strung to a branch by a length of rusty wire. When I wave my flashlight around, I see dozens of bottles hanging from the trees, and they’re creepy-ass ominous, like a forest full of dangling corpses.
Someone races by, scaring the crap out of me, then there’s a shriek, which is fortunately not my own, then another runner and a third. It takes me a second to realize that JimBeau’s crew is playing capture the flag.