She pulled the front door closed and then indicated that he should follow her down the wooden stairs.
When he saw the old fashioned café with the nifty old counters and the view of the ravine, he again shook his head. “Amazing, just amazing. And the electrical is still on.”
“I’m betting not for long,” Callie said, leading the way into the kitchen. “You’re going to have to tell me what it’s like out there beyond this hill.”
“Not pretty,” he said.
He didn’t elaborate, so she grabbed an extra bowl from the cabinet and again tossed the salad, then filled both bowls, still having some left over.
“Last of the lettuce,” she said, handing him a bowl and leading him back out into the lunch counter area. “Mixed with a tomato and egg.”
“Perfect,” he said. “Thanks.”
All she could think was that it wasn’t the salad that was perfect. He was, and maybe she was dreaming all this out of fear of spending the entire winter alone up here on the side of a mountain surrounded by nothing but trees and death.
He put his pack on the top of the counter and they sat at a table in front of one window.
They ate and talked some, both clearly being careful. She just staring at his strong hands and then up into his green eyes.
Finally she said, “Do I know you from somewhere?”
“It does feel like we have met before,” he said, nodding.
And then he smiled and she just laughed.
“I’ll remember where,” she said.
“I hope so,” he said, staring down into his salad.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
FISHER COULDN’T BELIEVE IT when Callie came running out of the front of the lodge when he shouted. At first he didn’t think she was going to answer him.
But then when she came out of the lodge without a gun, he both breathed a sign of relief and was stunned at her beauty once again. Her short brown hair and dark eyes just seemed to draw him in and he had a rough time keeping his voice level.
She was dressed in jeans, tennis shoes, and a heavy blue work shirt that almost looked like it had been a man’s shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Last time he had seen her she had been in sweat pants and a sweatshirt and socks. She looked good like this and in the sweats. He had a hunch she would look wonderful wearing anything.
And now, standing in the middle of a road on a different planet, he remembered completely why he was risking so much to try to rescue her.
He was drawn to her more than he had ever been drawn to another person in his life.
He gave her his cover story about being over on the coast, but thinking this might be a good place to find survivors. He felt odd having to lie to her, but at this point he had no choice.
Finally she had invited him in for some lunch and had served him a salad.
Over lunch he managed to get her talking about how she survived in the cave. She had told him the story before, so he was careful to not say anything to get ahead of her.
“You want to see the entire place?” she said after lunch and he had offered to wash the dishes, which she let him do while he asked her questions about her job.
He just liked listening to her talk and it seemed she was very happy for company.
“I’d love to,” he said. “How’s the water situation?”
“Big tank up under the eaves,” she said, smiling like she was happy she had the answer. “Pump from a well on this level with a small generator on it keeps the tank full.”
She pointed back behind the kitchen to where the pump room must be.
“So that’s good,” he said. “How about food supplies?”
“More than enough for the winter,” she said.
She led him back upstairs. “I haven’t found any reserves of oil or paraffin for the lamps yet, but all of them are full.”
She pointed to the lamps she had placed around the lodge and on the front desk.
“Lots of wood?” he asked.
“Again more than enough to make it through the winter.”
He nodded.
She stood, staring at him for a long moment. “Where did you teach? You look so familiar?”
“Eugene,” he said, sticking with his cover story. “Math department.” She nodded, then indicated he should take a seat on one of the couches. “I got some questions I need to ask you.”
“Sure,” he said, dropping his pack on the couch and sitting beside it. There were two big couches there, all with blankets over the back, and four large, overstuffed chairs. All were grouped around the big stone fireplace and a large wooden coffee table clearly made out of cut pine.
As he sat down, Fisher could feel something had shifted and darned if he knew what or why or what had gone wrong.
She moved around the counter, then quickly pulled out a rifle from behind the counter and aimed it at him.
His stomach twisted into a knot. Somehow he had screwed up and screwed up big time.
“Okay,” she said, staying behind the front desk and keeping the weapon leveled at him. “Now for some truth from you before my friends get back.”
“Didn’t buy my cover story, huh?” he asked, shaking his head and smiling. His best bet was to just remain calm. He doubted she would shoot him, but anything was possible. She was a very strong woman and he had no doubt she would do what she had to do to survive. Including killing him.
“Not in the slightest,” she said. “Or at least not for very long. And I know everyone in the Oregon math department. So how about some truth and where do I know you from?”
“Truth?” he asked, deciding to take a chance. “Like you have no friends coming back?”
“Truth,” she said, nodding, the rifle in her hands waving.
“You are not going to believe me.”
“Try me,” she said.
“We met just a day or so ago,” he said, doing his best to keep his voice calm. “You were wearing sweat pants and a green sweatshirt and socks. It was the first night when you came out of the caves and had finished clearing the bodies away from inside the lodge.”
“I…” she started to say something, but he stopped her. He could tell his statement shocked her, and it hadn’t been the best way to start into the truth. But he had to keep going now.
“I know you don’t remember that. None of the survivors do. But you were wearing those clothes that night, correct, as you slept?”
She just stared at him.
“I said you wouldn’t believe me.”
“All right,” she said after a moment. “Start at the beginning. What happened to cause all the deaths?”
He sighed. He hated to think about all the death that covered this planet right now. “A star about twenty light years from here exploded, sending out an intense electromagnetic pulse that hit this planet directly and short-circuited human and some animal brains, killing everyone who was out in the open instantly. Only those underground, in ships, bank vaults and places like that survived. There were just under two million survivors of the first pulse.”
“First pulse?” she asked, looking very puzzled, but seeming to follow.
“There was a second pulse,” he said, glad she was staying with him through this, “so other human planets mounted a rescue operation and got all two million survivors of the first pulse out of the way on ships until after the second pulse went past.”
She started to interrupt him, but he kept talking. “Then they erased everyone’s memory of the event and put every person back where they were a few hours before. Asleep. You and I spent a number of hours together talking during that rescue operation.”
She opened her mouth, then closed it.
“I knew you wouldn’t believe me, so I brought pictures, if I may?”
He pointed to the pack, hoping she would let him get out the pictures and not just decide to start shooting.
She nodded and he took out the two pictures and then carefully stood with his hands in the air and put them on the end of the count
er away from her, then went back to the couch.
She stared at them, shaking her head.
He had no idea how she would feel about those pictures, but he knew without a doubt they were his best shot at convincing her.
Finally, after what seemed an eternity, she looked up at him with those wonderful brown eyes.
“Who exactly are you?”
At least she wasn’t chasing him down the road yet with the weapon.
“My name is Vardis Fisher, but everyone calls me Fisher. I am a mathematician and inventor.”
“And where are you from?” she asked. “And is this your natural form?”
He laughed, because he had wondered the same thing when he first met Benson.
“I am from a planet about sixty light years from here. And yes, this is my natural form. My friend and I were exploring when we stumbled onto this rescue operation. We offered to help, but we didn’t do much. Except that I talked to you. And I caught you when you turned around too fast and fainted from not eating. And I got you some food.”
She again looked blank, but he could tell his truth was getting through a little.
So he went on. “The people up there who are in charge of the big ship I am visiting tell me there are no alien life forms above low-level animal life anywhere in the galaxy. Humans with the same exact genetic make-up as you and I have settled the entire galaxy.”
She looked at him for a moment, shaking her head, then back at the pictures, the rifle on the counter in front of her seemingly forgotten, even though it was still mostly aimed at him.
“What reason would you tell me this story?” she finally asked.
“Because you asked for the truth,” he said. “Remember?”
“So, if you are telling me the truth, why are you here?”
“Because,” he said, “when we were talking, we got along very well. And you said you wanted to stay on board the ship instead of coming back here. I went to get permission from those in charge of the big rescue ship to have you stay, but you were transported back and your memory erased before I could.”
“So why don’t you just transport me back up to the ship?” she asked, again the gun in her hands.
“Can’t,” he said. “Anyone coming on board must want to come on board. So I’m here to try to convince you to at least come and take a look. No strings attached.”
“And you would erase my memory again when you sent me back here?”
“Nope,” he said, shaking his head. “You would be free to stay on the ship or come and go as you wanted.”
“And what’s in this for you?” she asked.
“Honest answer?” he asked. He was deathly afraid she would get to this question and he wasn’t sure how he would answer it.
“After all this, I can’t imagine you saying anything that might shock me more.”
He took a deep breath and decided on just flat continuing to tell her the truth.
“I was very attracted to you, but we only had a few hours to talk. I would like to have longer to get to know you. And with your brain, I think you would do your planet a better service from space than trapped here in this lodge.”
With that she opened her mouth, then just closed it again.
“Second, I have a problem I’m sort of just starting to study about humans settling the entire galaxy. I could use someone with your knowledge and skills to help me figure it out. So that’s two reasons. One personal, one professional. But honestly, the personal reason is my number one reason.”
He held her gaze and she held his.
Finally she slid the gun a few feet away from her down the counter and he let himself take a slight breath of relief. He had never had a gun pointed at him in his entire life and he didn’t much like it at all.
“Can you jump back to this mythological ship at any point, or do you need to wait for a shuttle or something?”
“I can go and come as I want,” he said, again holding her gaze.
“Then go back to your ship and give me time to think about all this. Come back tomorrow.”
He wanted to jump up and down for joy, but he maintained his composure.
“Can I bring you breakfast and meet you in the kitchen in the morning?” he asked, hoping that she would say yes. It would be more than he could have hoped.
“Why not? Eight a.m.”
Again he almost jumped to his feet and shouted “Yes!” But he refrained.
“White or wheat toast?”
She laughed, shaking her head. “White.”
“Orange juice?”
“Sure, why not?”
“See you downstairs in the kitchen at eight your time.”
With that Fisher touched his return point in his arm twice and the lodge and Callie vanished and the next moment he found himself standing on a platform in the transport center.
Raina ran over to meet him.
“How’d it go?”
“She saw right through my cover story in a flash,” he said.
She laughed. “Smart woman.”
Then Fisher smiled at Raina, his grin almost hurting his face. “But I’m taking her breakfast tomorrow morning.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CALLIE STARED AT THE SPOT on the couch where the handsome and very weird stranger named Fisher had been. He had simply vanished, leaving the pictures and his pack behind.
“Holy crap, Callie,” she said out loud, her voice echoing through the lodge. “You’re going crazy.”
She didn’t let herself look again at the two pictures of herself sitting on some sort of spaceship and went around to the couch to look through his pack. There was nothing in there that would confirm that he was either a nut case or a space alien. Just clothes. Two changes of clothes, actually.
And nothing that would tell her that he had the slightest worry about survival. He was clearly someone who had only expected to stay for a day or so, not survive an entire winter.
“Think!” she said. “Think! This can’t be real.”
She left the pack on the couch and headed out the front door.
The afternoon had turned warm and the sun hadn’t yet dropped behind the ridgeline. The warm smell of pine was something she loved as a child and it comforted her now.
She turned and headed up the road toward the parking lot, her footsteps echoing in the silence of the mountains. About halfway to the parking lot the smell of death stopped her cold. She didn’t want to see the two bodies in the parking lot and what the heat and animals would be doing to them.
That was real.
The death here that had happened suddenly was very, very real. Not a one of those bodies she had moved the first day out of the lodge had a mark on them.
Something like an electromagnetic pulse had killed them, of that she had no doubt. So his story fit on that one detail.
And somehow he had pictures of her in that dead girl’s sweatpants and sweatshirt sitting in a lounge with an image of the planet behind her.
How could he do that?
And why? And how could he be so damn good looking?
She was going crazy.
She turned around, walking fast down the road, away from the lodge and the death.
Finally, a quarter mile down the road she saw a small sports car in the ditch to the inside of the road. A couple was in it, dead, slumped over, their seat belts holding them upward. They looked young. Not as young as the couple she had taken from the bed.
But young.
They had clearly died instantly and their car had just run off the road.
She remembered the call from Jim, how he was sobbing that his wife and kid were dead in Eugene.
She sat down in the middle of the road and just stared at the car and the two bodies inside.
This was very real.
All of it.
The death, the smell, the fact that she was alone.
She hated being out of control and yet now she felt completely out of control.
Her world had ended.
The world she trusted, had depended on, had worked inside.
It was all dead around her.
And now some total stranger claiming to be from space had offered her a way out.
But how could she believe him?
How could she trust him?
She couldn’t.
She knew that. She hadn’t been good at trusting anyone back when the world was normal. She sure couldn’t do it now.
But he had said he was there, sitting in the lodge, talking to her, trying to convince her to go with him.
He said he was attracted to her.
He said he also needed her help professionally on a project.
And he had simply transported away, so clearly he had the technology to transport her as well if he wanted.
But he said she had the choice.
What choice?
She stared at the two bodies in the car. Except for survival, at this point she wasn’t sure she had any choice.
But she was going to need more information before she would agree to be spirited away by anyone.
Especially some alien.
Even if he was the most handsome man she could remember seeing.
And unlike the two bodies in the car in front of her, he seemed to be very much alive.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
FISHER KNEW THAT the next eighteen hours were going to be eighteen of the longest hours he had ever spent. He hated waiting. So he went to find Doc in engineering.
Both Doc and Kalinda came rushing over to ask how it went and why he was back so quickly. So he told them, then he listened to what they were working on.
From what Fisher could tell, Doc had an idea of putting one trans-tunnel inside another to speed up all flight, and he had everyone buzzing with the idea.
“If this works, The Lady will be the fastest ship in this sector,” Doc had said at one point.
“Can you get it to stop coming out of a trans-tunnel flight?” Fisher asked, remembering their scary entrance into this system.
“That’s easy,” Doc said, shaking my head. “Amazed I didn’t see how to do that myself.”
Kalinda smiled her full-face smile at Doc. “You would have.”
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