by Rob Favre
For a few minutes, the only sound was the crunch of gravel under our feet and the jumble of soft voices from the others up ahead.
Finally, Haris spoke. “I am… sorry he treated you so badly.”
“If he had asked you to stab me, would you have done it?”
“No,” he said, maybe a bit too quickly. “I would not have stabbed you, Old One.”
“You know that the Miracle of the Tanks Filling Themselves with water was my miracle, right? I made that happen.”
A tenth of a smile bent the corner of Haris’s mouth. “Some of us asked him about that, later. He told us that you may have been the instrument, but the miraculous intent was his.”
“That sounds like a miraculous load of crap.”
Haris’s head bobbed up and down a bit as we walked, but I felt like he was nodding his agreement. He didn’t say anything.
“I bet the Miracle of the Unexpected Fruit was a bit harder for him to pull off without me there to be an ‘instrument.’”
Haris chuckled. “Oh, very much so. In fact, that was the second metal cave that Captain Jimmy located for us.”
“What was wrong with the first one?”
“It was already inhabited.”
A chill crackled down my spine. “Inhabited? By who?”
“Not a man. Not an animal. It was a… monster.”
“Well, what did it look like?”
“Hideous. A long, tube-shaped head. It walked on many legs, without knees or feet. They were more…” He wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Soft and squirming.”
I thought my heart had stopped beating. Could it be that aliens lived here after all?
“Did my dad put you up to this?” That seemed like something he might do. Try to prank me by getting my hopes up.
Haris looked confused. “Put me up on what?”
“Do you remember where this monster lived?”
“I believe so.”
For the rest of the walk home, I felt like I was floating. Of course, Haris could have been lying, or telling me something that Jimmy had lied to him about, or telling me about something he saw but didn’t really understand. But I had hope. And, somewhere deep in the back of my mind, the seeds of a plan were beginning to take root.
When we got back to the colony, the Lawn was more or less sock-free. The Enchanted Forest looked like a forest again, at least a short one, and not like a laundry room. And it was almost dinner time. Exmass leftovers. I was starving. Somehow, walking all day had made me forget my decision yesterday to give up eating.
But I had something more important to do first.
It took me a while to find her. She was eating, of course. But I didn’t even try to steal any of her food. I just sat down next to her, and everything I’d been thinking about for the last few hours tumbled out of me in a torrent, including the probably terrible plan I’d thought up on the walk back.
It all ended with a question.
Zoe’s expression was blank as she thought for a few seconds about what I’d just asked her.
“You want me to come with you into the wilderness to find a monster?”
“Yes.”
“And you heard about this monster from a fanatic who once tried to kill you?”
“Yes. Well, actually, no. I talked to him about that. He said he wouldn’t have killed me. And he seems pretty trustworthy. I think we’re cool now. But overall… yeah, pretty much.”
Her eyes twinkled. I think I lost my mind.
“Tom?” She was smiling. I realized that she had said something, and I had no idea what it was.
“Um. Yeah?”
“When do we leave?”
We left early the next morning. Zoe didn’t have any chores that day. I was supposed to be watching the goats, but I switched chores with Gwen so I could scrub the floors instead, and then… didn’t. The floors would be okay without scrubbing for one day. I really did hope Gwen didn’t get into any trouble. She seemed nice and had never done anything mean to me. But I wasn’t going to miss my date with Zoe.
Did I say date? Expedition. My expedition with Zoe.
I would make it up to Gwen later. Somehow.
Haris had given me a pretty good idea of where to look for this second metal cave. It was tucked down in a ravine between two rocky hills, not too far from Galactic Park. I asked him to draw a map, but his artistic skills weren’t that great, and I think it just ended up confusing me more.
I brought enough food to last us the day; some of the less perishable Exmass leftovers were still there for the taking. I grabbed a light blanket too. You never know when a spontaneous picnic might break out. It pays to be prepared.
Zoe met me on the Lawn, early in the morning when the light was still hazy and a flotilla of golden clouds drifted on the horizon in front of Cordelia. She smiled when she saw me. From that point on, this was going to be a good day. It almost didn’t matter what else happened.
“Shall we go find a monster, Old One?”
“I’m ready if you are. Did you want to grab your guitar to bring or anything?”
“For what would I bring my guitar?”
“Oh, I don’t know, in case you wanted to take a break and play it or something. It was just a thought.” I had been hoping she’d bring it along to play during our picnic. That she didn’t yet know we’d be having. Because I hadn’t told her there would be a picnic. “It’s not important. Let’s go.”
We didn’t talk about Exmass. We talked about almost everything else. What was going on with Rick and Gabby, how uncomfortable her parents still were when there wasn’t a roof over their heads, how grumpy my dad was about all the chores he had to do, what it must have been like for Jimmy’s people living out here in the wilds. What Jimmy was like when he was in charge on the Heifer.
What happened between us back on the Heifer.
“Are you still mad about what I did?” I asked as I kicked a little black pebble. It skittered away down the side of the hill we were climbing.
She didn’t say anything for a while. I listened to our footsteps crunching on the rocks and started to worry that I’d ruined things, brought up something better left unsaid.
“No. I am not mad any longer. But you did hurt me very much.”
“I know. I’m sorry. In my defense, I was an idiot.”
She smiled, not the twinkling smile that made her eyes sparkle, but a slower, sadder smile. “Finally, something we can agree upon.”
“I’ll take it.”
“Tom, you must promise me something – from now on, if I ask you something, you must always, always tell me the truth. Even if you think it will hurt me. Do you promise?”
“I promise.”
“Alright then.” She smiled and changed the subject. She was pretending it was settled, acting like everything was okay. Her eyes told me a different story. But, for now, I was happy to play along and act like the past was behind us. In time, maybe that would make it true.
It was a beautiful, breezy day, windy enough for us to listen to the whistling music of the nearby canyons, but not windy enough to stir up a dust storm. Cordelia was high in the sky, Regan smaller and close to the horizon. I walked next to Zoe and we talked. I walked next to Zoe and we didn’t talk.
“Let’s check down this ravine, maybe this is the one.”
It was not the one.
“What about those two hills over there? I bet we can get there in an hour.”
We got there, but time had ceased to have any meaning. This was the perfect day, passing in the blink of an eye and living forever, above and outside time. It was a day that had existed before I was born, would linger on long after I was only a memory.
There was a ravine beyond the two hills, steep and filled with black angular shadows from the jagged rocks that lined its sides.
“That looks like it’s going to take some climbing. Want to take a break and have some food first?”
Zoe smiled and nodded. “That would be welcome.”
We cl
imbed to the round top of a little hill and I spread the blanket out for us to sit on. I pulled out some patars, and some cheese, and some thin sweet biscuits, and some blueberry jam, and some other, stinkier cheese, and some apples. I set them out on a couple of polished aluminum plates that I’d borrowed from the dining hall. They glinted in the bright light. I went back into the bag for more food and Zoe laughed.
“Tom! How much food did you bring?”
“I wasn’t sure how hungry we would be.”
“Were you planning for us to stay out here a week?” She laughed and threw a biscuit at me. I had thought about what would happen if we decided to stay out longer than a day, and I’d made sure to bring enough food that it would at least be an option. Of course, I didn’t say that. I just threw half a strawberry patar at her, and she laughed even harder. Pretty soon we were out of breath from laughing, and most of our remaining food was crumbled and scattered in the sand all around us. We laid prone, side-by-side, and ate while we watched an apple slowly roll down the hill.
After a few minutes and a few biscuits, Zoe stood up and stretched. Her hair picked up the orange gleam from Regan setting behind the mountains on the horizon, and it looked like the embers of a fire. “Ready to go, Old One?”
“I’m not in a rush. That cave isn’t going anywhere. Let’s just sit for a few more minutes.”
Zoe sat back down, but she was quiet, and she was looking toward the ravine rather than toward me. Something had happened, and things weren’t quite as much fun now.
I knew what would solve this problem.
“Hey!” She turned and looked at me after the last biscuit bounced off the back of her head. She didn’t reach for any food to throw back at me. She didn’t smile. She just looked annoyed.
“Enough waiting, Old One. I am going to see that cave. Come along if you want to.”
She made her way down the hill. I quickly wadded up the blanket, grabbed whatever food I could salvage, and scrambled to catch up to her.
We left our packs at the lip of the ravine and started making our way down. It was steep and the rocks were smooth, sometimes covered in fine sand, so we had to be very careful. We didn’t say much. I wasn’t sure if it was because we were both concentrating on climbing, or if it was because Zoe was mad at me. I did know that this was a lot less fun than it had been an hour ago.
The canyon floor was covered with huge boulders piled one on another, so we had to pick a careful path through them. I reached down to give Zoe a hand getting up on one. When she got to the top she shook her head and gave me a look.
“Tom, I asked you to be honest with me.”
“Yeah.”
“So, is there really a cave out here? Did you really hear this story from Haris at all?”
“Well, he could have been lying, I suppose. But he definitely told me there was a cave.”
“I am starting to wonder if it is just a story you made up to trick me into me spending the day with you.”
“Sorry to punish you with something so terrible. I thought we were having a good time.”
“I thought so too. But I also thought we were on a real adventure. If I am being duped, then none of this is a good time. Tom. I do not like being lied to.”
“I’m not lying.”
“If we do not find a metal cave, I shall be very cross with you.”
“Look, I don’t know if it’s here. I don’t know if Haris was lying. I don’t know if he got the directions wrong. I don’t know a lot of things. But I’m not lying. Look – it could be right around that bend.”
Zoe raised an eyebrow skeptically. “My interest in this expedition is waning quickly.”
She slid down the smooth boulder and walked toward the bend in the valley. She stopped when she got there, and in the few steps it took me to catch up to her, I wondered if she had stopped to wait for me, or if she had just decided she was done, that was that, and she would never speak to me again.
I discovered that she had stopped for a reason I had only barely considered.
Around the bend, glinting in a beam of light slanting down like a spotlight from the edge of the ravine, a metallic doorway was carved into the rock of the ravine wall.
Zoe looked at me and smiled.
This time, her eyes smiled too.
She lied to them without hesitation.
“It is just a hot day,” she said. “Strange weather, yes? Now off to school, you are going to be late, remember your lunch, stay away from Gregor Pindle, and come straight home.” They asked her why the wind was so hot, why the day was so bright. She knew why, or thought she did. But there was no purpose in telling them. If it was not real, if this was just a patch of strange weather, she would have worried them for no reason. And if it was real, well, there was nothing to be done about it. Shelter from the truth was the best gift she could give them now, for as long as it was possible to do so. When the time came, it would not be made any easier by having worried about it longer.
She fell into the rhythm of her day. Tidied the living room, cleaned up after breakfast. Went out to check on the herd, but they were spooked by the wind and heat and did not want to leave the shelter. Just as well; she did not feel like being out in it any more than they did. She stopped by Central and put in a shift with the old kitchen ladies – they were making large quantities of jam and gossip. She helped with the first and listened quietly to the second. Lots of talk about whose grandkids were growing up smart and whose neighbor had cheated with whom. Not much at all about the weather. Was it because they knew, or because they didn’t know?
She went home early in the afternoon, made some mint tea, and tried to work on the unfinished corner of her painting, but every brush stroke seemed awkward and ugly.
She put away the paints and started washing up. The boys would be home soon.
Chapter 9
When my parents talked to me a long time ago about leaving Earth, they didn’t promise me that I’d see aliens. Not in so many words. But they made such a big deal about adventure and exploration, about discovery and possibility and seeing things that no human being had ever seen before. And then we got here, and it felt like that for a few days. It really did. We looked around, tingling with excitement, finding the unknown behind every rock. But pretty soon it became clear that the only thing we were going to find behind a rock was more rocks. And it wasn’t too long until we had jobs and chores and somebody had to dig latrines and milk goats and wash dishes. We’d come all the way across the galaxy and now we had lots of hard work that we didn’t have to do back home, but without pizza or Disneyland to make things tolerable. Finding an alien would go a long way toward making this whole endeavor feel worthwhile.
And just at that moment, I wondered if Zoe and I might be standing at the doorstep of an alien’s home.
“Old One, it appears I shall have to wait to be cross with you.” Zoe’s voice was barely louder than a whisper, but any sound suddenly seemed too loud in this close valley, with an unknown something maybe waiting inside that cave.
“That’s good news. You still want to do this?”
“Haris told you it had a long head?”
“Yep.”
“Slimy legs?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Fangs like knives? A wretched stench? A single, huge, bloodshot eye?”
“Um, he didn’t mention any of those exactly. But you never know.”
Zoe shuddered a little. “I am now wishing you had not shown me Alien and The Thing and Invasion of the Slug People.”
“Oh, come on, the part where Karl finds them breeding in the engine room? It’s classic!”
She turned and looked at me. The corners of her mouth slowly curled up in to a smile. “I am ready if you are ready, Old One.”
“I’m not even a little bit ready. Let’s go anyway.”
We crept as quietly as we could toward the door. The daylight was slanting downward so that we could see only a few feet inside – past that it was inky blackness. I hadn’t
thought to bring a flashlight. I also hadn’t thought to bring a weapon of any kind. They never let me near any of the plasma stuff, probably for good reason, but I should have thought to at least have bring a bat or a knife or something.
We stepped inside and stopped. Our eyes needed some time to adjust. This cave smelled much different than the one I’d visited earlier, in that it mostly didn’t smell like much of anything at all. Just dust and age and maybe a greasy hint of oil. Whatever lived here did not have a distinctive smell. Cross “wretched stench” off the list. Now we just had to hope we could cross “fangs like knives” off as well.
There was no sound except our own shallow breathing.
Before too long we were able make out some of what was in the chamber. It looked like another storage area, similar to the one we’d visited with Haris, but all the boxes were still closed and stacked, all the cans still sealed on the shelf. Good news: even if we didn’t find anything else in here, we now had a supply of canned beets.
There wasn’t much point in delaying any more. I took a small, quiet step forward. Zoe did the same. We made our way around the stack and shelves, silent, aware, every nerve tingling, listening for the slightest sound.
A metallic crash.
Zoe’s muffled shriek.
My heart pounded. I spun around, looking for whatever had attacked her.
She was standing perfectly still, eyes wide, covering her mouth with both hands. She lowered one, slowly, pointing to the sandy floor near my feet.
A can was rocking back and forth on the floor where I had knocked it off the shelf. It looked like maybe garbanzo beans.
I mouthed “Sorry” to Zoe. She nodded.
We made our way around the room, still slowly, still quietly, still not finding much that looked like any kind of alien. I was about to concede that Haris had been full of it when Zoe froze, grabbed my hand, and pointed at the farthest, darkest corner of the room.
Slouched against the corner was a shape that was definitely not a can, and definitely not a box.
It was hard to make out in the darkness, but it definitely had what could have been a head, and it was definitely long, almost tubular, with a gentle curve, like the creatures in Aliens. I knew it wasn’t one, couldn’t be one, since they were made up. But my head was having a tough time convincing my pounding heart that there was nothing to fear.