Rachel rose. “Be my guest,” she said to Appleton. “Let’s go and inspect the goods right now. Pablo,” she called, “ven conmigo! Will you come too?” she asked Jim. “They’re your suits, so you know the workings.”
The three of them were across the road for a while, during which we heard applause, doubtless due to the hangman doing his job and the outlaw pretending to perish in a non-tightening noose. Although mightn’t that cause him whiplash? Maybe the outlaw trained his neck muscles. I was wasting my time even thinking about the matter, yet my brain seemed fixed on trivia. I had to snap out of this.
Our suits were goods. It was as if Rachel herself was selling them on our behalf. Somehow we had to empower ourselves, but I felt dozy.
I actually nodded off, recovering to hear Appleton say, “… classy enough to fool me if they’re fakes…”
“So they’ll fool the billionaires too?” Rachel and Appleton now sounded to be in conspiracy.
“Alternatively, NASA sent genuine spares over here just in case, ahead of the take-off from Mars. Or five rejects.”
The pair of them, and Jim, resumed their seats.
“I want to go home,” said Juno.
“That’s unwise, supposing you’re telling the truth. Think Capricorn One. How can you trust a government, or rogue secret agencies, that just might – I say might – have destroyed the Twin Towers, killing three thousand Americans – and some foreigners too – so as to authenticate the threat of Al Qaeda and Osama as the Santa Claus of Evil, and thus validate invading Iraq for oil motives, and then Afghanistan for consistency, huh?” Appleton held up his hand to avoid being interrupted. “Look, the CIA created and armed the Taliban in the first place to take on the Russians during the Cold War. Saddam wasn’t a nice guy at all, but he sure kept the lid on Islamic militants, not to mention advancing the cause of women, so why rip the lid off Pandora’s box? Who pulls the strings? Some powerful group stands to gain. Unless recent history is sheer stupidity. You five could be innocent patsies in all of this.”
What a jolt back to wakefulness, which was nevertheless still dreamy, or pre-dreamy – I felt I’d been about to dream.
“All of what?” I protested. “You’re making my head ache. This is paranoia.”
“I’m merely mentioning possible aspects. I don’t necessarily endorse any. Look, I own a company. I won’t say what we do, but we have interests in several nations in Africa. You’d be better off in Africa, the five of you. I could fix you up with jobs, identities. You’d be safe. You can let some time roll by.”
“That,” said Rachel, “seems a much more substantial offer than forty K Euros.”
“It’s do-able. I’ve been costing things in my head. And maybe this’ll all work better with rumours that the dead astronauts are alive and well somewhere or otherin great big Africa. I can hear rumours spreading already. You, Rachel, you’ll be able to say: The weirdest thing happened at work the other day… And Pancho here – ”
“My name is Pablo,” said the cowboy.
Appleton grinned. “Almost got it right, didn’t I? My mother was a bit psychic. Pablo will gossip too, in Spanish, almost the second language of the USA. At last I shall actually have assisted in a conspiracy theory. That’ll make me a happy man.”
Juno yawned. “I’m so tired. It’s so heavy here.”
Chuck seemed to have fallen asleep again.
“A phone call,” muttered Jim.
“You don’t make major decisions when you’re worn out. Let’s get you all to a hotel in Almería. Sleep on it.”
“I suppose,” allowed Juno, “that couldn’t do any harm. We’d be able to watch CNN. See how America is reacting.”
“If the pics and vids go viral,” opined Appleton, “there’ll likely be patriotic outcries to shut any sites hosting the pics unless those pics are all taken down right away, on account of them being in bad taste. That’s excellent for conspiracy pics. So Uncle Sam heeds a grief-stricken nation because nobody knows the flying saucer angle – not as yet. Thereafter, how can NASA plausibly deny its denials, even if investigators head out here in secret? And as regards investigative journalists, boy, just roll out that UFO…”
A black helicopter landed in the street outside, billowing dust. Masked special forces leapt out, snubby weapons pointing at the swing doors of the Saloon. I was nodding off again in micro-sleeps.
“Pablo,” I heard Appleton say, “is there somewhere on the way we can buy them proper clothes easily?”
“Al Campo shopping centre is good.”
Two special forces guys burst through the swing doors, gaped at the cancan girls dancing on stage, and the gunslinger fired at them. No, that didn’t happen.
“I’ve a better idea,” said Rachel. “Getting them out of Spain, new identities in Africa: that’s going to cost you a lot and things might go wrong. You’re being too ambitious. It’s the suits you want, not the wearers. How about you pay me some of the money to look after these guys here? Sort of an advance on wages – since we can’t afford much more than pocket money on top of their keep. I’m guessing they’ll be able to act the Wild West part, help out generally, play poker, talk mysteriously to tourists when they get tipsy. After a while people might come here specially to spot the ghost astronauts, once it’s decent to do so. The Magnificent Five! Remarkable resemblances! We need extra attractions.”
“Seems to me,” said Appleton, “with forty K in their pockets they can pay their own keep here for quite a while, I’d say.”
Rachel beamed. “Oh of course, silly me. Well, call my little cut a finder’s fee. Or an advance on their board and lodging.”
Appleton nodded, sat back and thought.
“Excuse me,” I said to Rachel, “but don’t we get a say in the matter?”
“Good heavens, I’m offering you sanctuary.”
“Sounds like a town in the Wild West, Sanctuary,” said Jim. “Next stop, Salvation. Or Tombstone.”
“We want to avoid the Tombstone outcome, don’t we?” said Appleton. “The UFO in its wisdom brought you here as the best way to protect you. By pretending to be what you really are. Which of course you aren’t. Unless you are.”
Chuck woke up with a shudder and said, “I’m hungry.”
“Of course you are,” said Rachel. “You need the chuckwagon. And you’re in luck, since our restaurant opens for lunch at high noon. That’s very early to eat lunch in Spain but here we cater for tourists. Usually after lunch people like to have a siesta, so I’ll sort out rooms in the Sheriff’s Office. Would that be five single rooms?” she asked sweetly. “After being cooped up together for so long, sleeping alone might seem lonesome? Maybe the gals would like to share? And a couple of you boys? I’m afraid we don’t have a triple room free. Of course if you’d prefer to pair up differently…?”
“I’m happy to share with Barbara,” Juno said quickly.
“And me,” said Chuck, “with Jim.” To me: “If you don’t take that amiss.”
We ate burgers and drank glasses of Sangría, which seemed like sweet fruit juice but packed a punch, as we discovered. Skip to outside the Sheriff’s Office.
“This is a jail,” protested Jim. “Bars on the windows.”
Rachel laughed. “I assure you the rooms are much better than cells, and you do get your own keys.”
I felt very woozy from the Sangría. So were we all. A siesta wasn’t an option but a necessity. Nice-looking modern bed in my room, checked gingham curtains at the windows, some kind of stove for winter use, chest of drawers, a smoke or fume detector on the ceiling. I slept soundly till about five o’clock when banging on the door woke me, interrupting a dream of walking through the desert, the Spanish not the Martian. Just in case of a woman being outside, I wrapped a sheet round me. It was Jim, out in the corridor in his cowpoke gear.
“Our suits have gone. I woke up a bit ago, so I walked to that dressing-up building, and no suits. Rachel says Appleton went off with all the suits and Pablo. She says Pablo wil
l be back here tomorrow bringing Appleton’s money. I said we never agreed to sell! She made like she was astonished. All our cams and pads have gone missing too, unless Chuck kept his. He’s still out cold after that Shangri-la stuff. We gotta make Rachel phone Pablo to say no deal and to bring our stuff back. I need your back-up.”
“Jim,” I said with perfect conviction, “the suits won’t come back here now.”
“I suppose this country has a police force!”
“Think, Jim, think. Policemen lock up guys with no ID. And then we have no control over our fate. None at all. At least here we can still walk around. We do have the keys to our cells.”
“The police’ll have to contact the US Embassy to check us out, even if they don’t believe we’re astronauts or that our Mars-suits have gone for a walk!”
“And what if Uncle Sam decides it’s best for our nation if we never returned in a fucking flying saucer? Either we’re dead on Mars or we’ve been on Earth all along with the collusion of NASA and Uncle Sam. Embarrassing, huh? Better swept under the nearest carpet? We just don’t know enough to risk that. We might know enough after a few weeks, or a few months. Africa might still be the best bet.”
“So you mean that for now we should negotiate with Rachel…”
“Even learn to ride horses. I dunno, we can be the Something Gang. With two wicked women members, one of them black to add extra colour. We’d better wake up Chuck and the ladies.” This did really seem to me the best plan at the moment, and as mission commander I had a responsibility to my crew.
The Magnificent, or Malevolent, Five headed out to confront Rachel. Behind us, the adobe bank was being robbed for the benefit of onlookers. Up ahead two gunslingers were squaring off, shouting a dialogue of insults at each other in heavily accented English, while other costumed tourists looked on appreciatively. It was all go. One of those tourists, wearing a Marshall’s badge, decided to uphold the law, advancing boldly with his six-shooter levelled at one of the gunslingers. Grinning evilly, the miscreant fired a couple of times: bang bang. Dramatically the tourist dropped his gun, clutched at his heart, then sank carefully to the ground while his wife and friends applauded.
Something fell out of my pocket and I scooped it up. Oh, that bit of food in its clingfilm. This time I noticed a tiny sticker, uncrumpled it, read: Gunther’s Deli, Rachel NV.
NV for Nevada. No connection with Rachel the wardrobe mistress.
My old flying days came to mind. Rachel NV, a tiny tiny place near Nellis air force range close to Area 51. Famous in the world of UFO believers because of strange sightings along Highway, I forgot which number, but years ago the State of Nevada had officially designated that road Extraterrestrial Highway. A nice day-trip out from Las Vegas.
I’d stopped at Rachel once. Oddly its weather station monitored gamma radiation as well as the weather. Gunther’s Deli was news to me. Maybe trade was picking up locally.
It couldn’t be, could it, that the USAF, unknown to NASA, did have access to alien technology? They couldn’t bear for us to die on Mars, but couldn’t exactly reveal themselves either? Today had been pretty busy so far. I just couldn’t digest this new fact.
We succeeded in passing the shoot-out without any blanks being fired at us.
YOU NEVER KNOW
PAT CADIGAN
Pat Cadigan is a two-time winner of the Arthur C, Clarke Award for her novels Synners and Fools. Her work has appeared in over a dozen languages around the world (and that’s only counting the legal editions). Born in Schenectady, New York, Pat grew up in New England but now lives in Original England with her husband, the Original Chris Fowler, and her son, musician and composer Robert M. Fenner; all under the watchful gaze of Miss Kitty Calgary, Queen of the Cats.
Standing in the doorway of the curio shop, Dov shook his head. “Can’t believe it.”
Kitty looked up from the box of prints she’d been flicking through for the past ten minutes, her dark brown forehead wrinkling slightly. “Something to disbelieve in this day and age? I’m shocked.”
Dov jerked his grizzled chin at the record store across the street. “They’ve hired another deckhand for the Titanic.”
“I told you, Napster’s no match for the combined might of the music industry,” Kitty said as she turned to look. A young girl was at work on the record store’s front window with a squeegee, sponge, and bucket while another employee on the other side of the glass clowned around, pointing at spots she had supposedly missed. The girl showily ignored him as she slopped soapy water onto the glass in wide arcs. “Oh, Kee-rist! What is she, eight?”
Dov chuckled. “Fourteen, give or take a few weeks.”
“Bullshit. My new gynaecologist? He’s fourteen. She’s barely out of third grade.”
“You say that about everyone,” Dov said, laughing some more.
“Everyone but you.” Kitty turned back to the prints. “And me.” She started over at the first print and it seemed to Dov that she was looking at each one a bit longer this time. Kitty was the most regular of the regular customers. She came every day without fail – well, every day that he was there – to browse through the prints in the box on the trestle table outside under the awning. Dov could usually count on seeing her twice a day, occasionally three times, and once in a great while, four or more. She didn’t always buy a print but in the two years Dov had been managing the store, he had never known her to buy anything else.
This was her first visit of the day, either a late break or an early lunch, and she had come over from St. Vincent’s in such a hurry that she still had her stethoscope slung around her neck; not the most eye-catching accessory on the lower east side of Manhattan.
“Any sign of Big Brother?” she asked him.
“Not yet. The owners said sometime in the next two weeks. That could be any time between this afternoon and Labor Day.”
Kitty flicked an amused glance at him. “Now, now – don’t go wishing away the summer.”
Dov didn’t answer. After the Fourth of July holiday, time turned to amber. Then all at once, it was getting dark indecently early and there was a cold bite in the air, and December was slipping away like it had somewhere better to go and couldn’t wait to get there.
The security system was supposed to be in by then. Maybe if he rewound the tapes, it would slow things up a little.
Which was probably the most absurd idea he’d had lately, he thought. Although not much more absurd than installing a camera surveillance system in a one-room junk shop. ‘Curio shop’ was the polite name and that was the term on his employee contract but Dov had yet to find anything he’d have called a curio. Most of the inventory came from estate sales and house removals, or from other stores that had gone out of business. Except for the stock of cheap souvenirs, and even those were leftovers, things that hadn’t sold in previous years, junk the owners had picked up for next to nothing from vendors needing shelf space for the current junk. One third of a wall was given to, among other things, I Heart NYC snow globes (a perennial favourite), Empire State Building barometers and pencil sharpeners (also classics in fake bronze), Staten Island Ferry ballpoint pens with a tiny boat that slid back and forth through some oil in the top half of the barrel, Twin Towers coffee mugs, lighters, clocks, and shot glasses (For World-Class Doubles!). Very few items had dates so only a retailer would know they were close-outs. Or connoisseurs of tacky souvenirs. Dov didn’t doubt such people existed but they had yet to find their way here. When they did, he’d probably find out he’d sold them something worth $50,000 for thirty cents and the owners would fire him.
Yeah. Right. His head was full of silly things today. A man in a slightly shredded straw hat paused to look through the old photos Dov had put out on the table. Unlike the prints, which were all matted, wrapped in cellophane, and numbered, the photos were loose in an old cardboard box, unordered and unidentified except for names or short notes on the back – Dad at Sarah’s house summer 1980; Hamptons Graduation Trip; Uncle Tony and Sally at 6
mos; May 1964. They came with the second hand stock, stuffed into the packing like an afterthought, the last traces of the end of an era for someone somewhere. They were priced at a nickel apiece, fifty cents for a dozen but Dov usually let them go for less, sometimes even giving them away to some of the bigger spenders. He couldn’t imagine why people would buy old photos of strangers and though he was tempted to ask, he never did.
“Huh,” Kitty said. She had pulled up one of the prints and was studying it with serious eyes. After some unmeasured period of time, she showed it to Dov.
Number fifty-four, according to the small white sticker in the upper left corner, was a detailed drawing of the Manhattan skyline, with water-colour accents. As subject matter, it was unremarkable – Dov had seen the city rendered in more ways than he could count on paper, cloth, and skin, and sculpted in almost every medium from Play-Dough to chocolate. Here, however, the precise, hair-thin ink-line seemed to be one unbroken stroke, the artist not lifting the pen even for the unreadable scrawl of signature in the lower right corner.
By contrast, the water-colour was careless, pale daubs here and there. You had to study the thing for a while to see that the two tallest buildings were actually columns of empty space.
Or were they? Dov took a closer look, then held it at arm’s length before remembering his reading glasses in his shirt pocket. They didn’t help much. Finally, he handed it back to Kitty. “On the house.”
Her eyebrows went up again. “Wow, thank you. I feel bad for asking for a bag.”
He fetched one from under the counter inside, one of the white plastic sacks he saved specifically for her. “I wish I hadn’t seen that,” he said, holding it open for her.
She looped the bag over her wrist. “It’s been there for quite some time, you must have seen it already.”
“Oh, sure. But then you came along and showed it to me.” His gaze drifted to the record store. The girl had finished the window and was now dumping the water carefully in the gutter. She straightened up to go back inside and then paused, her head cocked as though she were listening to something. Dov heard only the usual chorus of car and truck engines, the sigh and wheeze of buses, the jackhammers from a block over starting, stopping, starting again, a siren starting to wail and then cutting off abruptly, an alarm that sounded like a death-ray from a Sci-Fi movie, a passing car pumping out bass at a volume that suggested the driver was deaf.
Solaris Rising: The New Solaris Book of Science Fiction Page 24