Beyond the Veil of Stars

by Robert Reed

  And he said, “I’m an alien, when I go through. I’ve got several bodies and a brain that I drag across the desert.” A pause, then he said, “And I’ve got a girlfriend….”

  “Good,” she offered, her voice cracking. “That’s nice.”

  “Porsche Neal? The basketball player?”

  She couldn’t respond. The eyes became huge, and he could see her asking herself why had she let a madman into her house. What possessed her?

  Cornell laughed mildly, sitting back in the deep cushions of the sofa. “No, I’m teasing. I made all of that up.” Then he laughed louder, telling her, “I do odd work, but not with aliens. Sad to say.”

  Mom was relieved.

  She breathed and began to laugh herself, probably too much, then she mentioned, “You almost sounded like your father, for a moment.”

  “I guess I did,” Cornell said. “Sorry about that.”

  They changed topics.

  At one point in a carefully off-handed way, she asked, “How did you find me?”

  Cornell rose, putting his glass on a cork coaster, then strolling to the back of the room, looking out on a long green yard, bigger than a football field and sprinkled with little gardens of robot-tended flowers and neat hedges, at least half a dozen bird feeders suspended on fine wires. Glass doors opened on a large stone patio, but he left them closed. He stared outside, Mom approaching him. He could barely hear her in the heavy carpeting, then the roughened voice was saying, “I have a different name. It’s Pam Voos.”

  That wasn’t the first change, either.

  She told him, “After I left you, I had some very bad experiences.”

  He turned and said, “Really?”

  As if he knew nothing. As if her life was a perfect mystery to him.

  “Mistakes.” She nearly whispered the word, then added, “After your dad, I stayed with one fellow … a mistake … anyway, after him I traveled, really just wandered….”

  “Where?”

  She blinked, then swallowed. “Places.” Then she smiled, as if realizing how inadequate that word was. “I started around the world, trying to find myself—”

  Cornell knew her route, his detective having pieced it together from a thousand clues. South America, then Africa, and always supporting herself by obscure means. Then she ended up in Auckland, not long before the Change.

  “—and I found a lovely man. In a different country.” She nodded, naming no place. “You know who he reminded me of? Your father. He was sweet and thoughtful, and he made me miss you two. It was all I could do not to go home to you.”

  Cornell believed her. He knew better—knew the truth—yet the woman had a way of making everything plausible.

  “But I made too many mistakes with your father, and you, and I had too much guilt.” A deep sigh. “I married that other man. We weren’t married very long. He had an accident.” She shivered, showing him an aging woman still grieving for her dead husband. “A tragic accident.”

  No mention of a police inquiry. No hint of her careful letter to Dad, mailed by an intermediary in the States. She had needed the best possible defense attorney, and it paid off in the end. The dead man’s grown children had contested the will, but between her attorney and her own resilience they hadn’t had any chance. Afterward there was a final identity change, thorough and done so that anonymity could be regained, her bank accounts left healthy. Fiscally fat by any definition.

  “I’m sorry,” Cornell offered.

  She shrugged her shoulders sadly, making certain that he felt sorry for her. What decent man wouldn’t?

  Then he turned and said, “You’ve got a lovely place.”

  “Oh,” she said, “I like it.”

  “A beautiful home,” he assured her.

  Now she was wondering what he wanted; something in his tone made her wary. He saw it in her eyes, her stance. Was she calculating what she could afford to give him? Because Cornell might be one of those sons who appear from nowhere, demanding payment for past offenses….

  “You’ve done well for yourself,” he assured her, looking through the glass doors, watching cardinals and finches and sparrows and sometimes raucous bluejays. Those bird feeders were cosmopolitan worlds unto themselves, the inhabitants aggressive and quick, nothing able to rest near them. He could hear the birds’ chatter through the glass. He could hear his mother’s breathing, quiet and steady and only a little fast.

  “Where were you?” he asked. “When the Change happened?”

  She was relieved by the question, ordinary and reliable. A question she’d answered countless times. “A long ways from here,” she said, then gave a soft laugh. “Indoors, actually.”

  “Watching television?”

  She nodded.

  “Was that before you got married?” he asked quietly. “Or afterwards?”

  She said, “Before,” and paused. “Just a few weeks before, frankly—”

  Which he knew. He had gone over the dates last night. “A lot of marriages got started right after the Change.” He looked at her hair, at the impossible golden shine of it. “In our neighborhood, too.”

  She watched his eyes.

  She admitted, “The Change might have been part of it,” and turned to look outdoors, her face not quite smiling at the memory of those times.

  Cornell stood beside her, not close, watching the birds and noticing how the feeders were built to resemble tiny wooden houses. Maybe the earth was someone’s elaborate bird feeder, he was thinking. Maybe High Desert and the rest of them were world-sized baubles hanging in God’s green yard.

  A pretty and horrible thought, wasn’t it?

  “I’m sorry,” he offered. “About your husband, I mean.”

  “At least we had a few months together.” A pause. “I’ve always taken consolation in that.”

  “I wish I could stay,” he said. “I wish I could.”

  She didn’t turn, still watching her birds. And she didn’t make any sound.

  Then he said, “But I can’t. I’ve got to get back on duty.”

  “To that other world,” she kidded.

  Laughing, he said, “Right.” He said, “Anyway,” and waited for her to turn to him, to focus on him. Then he said, “It is dangerous work, Mom.” Nothing. Her face didn’t respond, not even with suspicion. “That’s part of the reason I found you now. It’s because … well, because I’m not all that close to Dad anymore. And the job comes with an insurance policy. I named you as my beneficiary. I hope that’s all right.”

  She didn’t speak, her mouth not quite open.

  “Is it all right?”

  “Whatever you think is best,” she whispered.

  Cornell felt ashamed of himself, for an instant. Blackhearted and cruel. Then he looked outdoors and said, “For half a million dollars, in case I die….”

  “Oh.” The word came from her belly, very soft and sudden.

  And he lied, saying, “It’s just that I need concrete proof of who you are.” His voice sounded full of puzzled frustrations. “The policy is intended for my next-of-kin, you see—”

  “Proof? Like genetic tests?”

  “Nothing that elaborate, no.” He moved his hands in the air. He gave a little laugh. “Just something physical. Something I can take to the right people and say, ‘Here, she had this….”’

  “Like what?” Her face was becoming simpler, easier to read.

  “Like a photograph?” he offered.

  It sounded silly. Contrived and silly. Yet she believed him, still hearing, “Half a million dollars,” while she told him, “Oh, sure. Let me see where.”

  “Maybe of the two of us? I’ll show it to them, then mail it back again. In a week or two.”

  Mom turned, hands finding each other and squeezing.

  “Do you have a photograph?”

  “Yes.” She started to walk, not fast, back toward the front door and Cornell behind her, wondering if she would surprise him. But he didn’t think so. The woman looked her age, legs mo
unting the carpeted staircase, her entire body tired and too willing to hold on to the banister with one hand, old-woman style. She said something, something too soft for him to hear, and he asked:

  “What?”

  She didn’t seem to hear him, pausing at the top of the stairs, hands wringing each other. Then her feet found a direction, and she went down a long hallway, saying, “I just remodeled.” Adding, “That’s the problem.” Then she told him, “I still haven’t put my pictures up. They’re still all boxed away.”

  “That’s fine,” he lied.

  She hoped so. Her face and posture said that much, glancing back at him with a ragged wishfulness. Then ahead. They pressed ahead, turning into a small bedroom converted into an office. There was a massive desk with a built-in computer. In the closets were an assortment of big boxes. Where to begin? “It’s been a while,” she muttered. Then, “But not that long.”

  She pulled one box into the open, removed the lid and began sifting through a mass of papers. Receipts and more receipts, and she paused and said, “A different one.”

  “Do you need help?”

  “No,” she said. Then, “Thank you, darling.”

  Two more boxes, both wrong, and she acted miffed with herself, a little cranky at the edges.

  “Maybe you’re not my mother,” he said. As if joking, only he gave the words a barbed edge.

  She rose and said, “I know. Wait!”

  They went down the hall, into the master bedroom, vast and quiet with a king-sized bed and excessively feminine features. Too many pinks, too much lace trim. A skylight made the place radiant. He blinked, and she opened a hidden door and exposed a substantial wall safe. A combination, plus her thumbprints, made it open. Thunk.

  There weren’t any portraits of friends and family on the walls. Not even one of her poor deceased husband. And the room looked as if it hadn’t been remodeled in ages, which wasn’t much of a surprise. Again he felt sorry for her, in a fashion, wondering how someone could live for more than half a century and have nobody worth framing, nobody to watch over them while they slept.

  There were metal boxes inside the safe. She said, “Here,” with confidence, digging one box out of the back. “This is it.” A laugh. “When you get old, darling, your memory plays games with you.”

  He said nothing.

  She opened the box, finding it half-filled with mementos. Staring up at her through waxed paper was a thick-faced man, a millionare, his bald scalp glowing in the New Zealand sunlight. She paused for an instant, and Cornell spoke. Maybe under that picture was a picture of Cornell as a boy, but he didn’t care anymore, wanting instead to ask:

  “Did you kill him, or didn’t you?”

  The woman almost kept her composure. Almost, bless her. Then her hands pulled back, and Cornell noticed how they’d speckled with age, and how they shook, her nerves frayed, almost useless.

  “Because someone murdered him,” he persisted. “The case is still on the books as unsolved, isn’t it?”

  She swallowed, blinked and swallowed, then looked up at him with a cutting gaze, saying, “You know.”

  Just those two words.

  “Parts of it,” he allowed. “I know he was rich. That he met a mysterious American woman and divorced his wife to marry her. And that he was clubbed to death one night. A prowler struck him from behind, and he wasn’t found for hours, and the new wife was tried—”

  “—and exonerated,” she snapped.

  “And his last will and testament was contested.”

  “Cornell,” she said, “what do you want?”

  He made a show of being open-minded. “I don’t know what you did, if anything. And even if you murdered him, what’s that prove? He could have been a cruel son-of-a-bitch. Maybe he treated you the same way your father treated you.”

  A pause. No response but that dark icy gaze.

  “I don’t know,” he confessed. “Last night, going through the records, I kept thinking I could figure you out. One way or another, I would. You’d think with all that data, you’d be able to get to the heart of a person. Don’t you?”

  She said nothing.

  “You killed him, or you didn’t. You loved my father, or you didn’t. You’re a treacherous bitch, or you’re misunderstood and blameless.” He shrugged, then said, “I keep looking for something definite….”

  “Well,” she said, putting aside the metal box, “have you come to any conclusions? Corny?”

  He looked out a window, watching the fierce little birds feeding on the raw grain. After a minute, he said, “All I wanted was for you to have just one picture of me. For whatever that’s worth.”

  Now she was crying, tears bright on that overly perfect face. She was angry, probably close to hitting him. With the box? Her fists? Or maybe she kept a bat under her pink bed—

  —and Cornell said, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a better looking prison. Because that’s what all this is. I think so.”

  “Get out of here!” she exploded.

  He felt calm, no trace of temper now. Walking out into the hallway without a backward glance, he was halfway down the stairs when something shattered above him. A window, maybe. Something hard, like a metal box, had been thrown through one of those big windows, maybe.

  Then he was jogging, nice and easy, through the front door and down the rocked drive. He was calculating how long it would take him to get back to High Desert. But first he needed to call the detective, on the off chance that he had found something of consequence. He should use a pay phone, just to keep people from listening. And now Cornell was running, almost sprinting, the tall gate straight ahead of him, his shoes making dry porcelain sounds on the dry white expanse of raked gravel.

  First Contact

  1

  Clouds had blown in from the south, piled on top of one another and lifted high enough that Cornell began tasting them in the desert. The arroyos were full of fog. Mists against the faces brought an instinctive fear, and he wondered what the chances were of a meaningful rain. How bad could it be? He reached the first ramp at dusk, barely able to see through the blowing fog, and for the first time in his life he felt dangerously claustrophobic, deciding against a nighttime descent of the ramp. Better to rest, he told himself. Better to let the clouds blow away and disperse, then get a first-light start. It was best to be rested and ready.

  Except he slept badly, awakened in the night by a dream or hallucination, or by the alien something. His guarding body stared out at the clouds, a city emerging from blackness, ethereal and brilliant, floating in the air before him and illuminated by colored lights beyond number. It was the electric sensation of peace that woke Cornell, every body jumping to its feet. He saw stone buildings with crystal windows and wide stone avenues stretching on for miles; the avenues were filled with bodies, a tall white body approaching him, smiling at him like before, and touching each of his faces in turn while a thunderous voice said:

  “Come see me.”

  Said:

  “You are almost here.”

  Then:

  “Hurry.”

  Then it was dark again, the city and its emissary evaporating in an instant, and Cornell couldn’t decide what had happened. A dream, or a message? Or perhaps both things at once, in equal measure. And it was all he could do not to leave then, at that instant, risking his life to follow a voice that might have come from himself.

  The clouds seemed thicker in the morning, the sun like a wafer cut from rusted metal. Cornell went down the ramp, feeling his way, several stretches creaking badly, begging for repairs. Then he was in the dry canyon, charging down the path, and a man burst from the fog, upbound and shouting, “You don’t want to. Turn around. It’s a miserable mess down there!”

  “What’s happened?”

  “There’s no order. None. People steal food, steal equipment, particularly if you’re alone—”

  “There’s not enough food?” Cornell interrupted.

  “Stealing’s easier, that’
s all.” He was a big-bodied person, but only four bodies were healthy. The fifth one was wounded, infections leaving it useless, lying on the mind and shivering without pause. The mouths pleaded, telling him, “Turn around. Come with me.”

  “No.”

  Outer lids blinked, and the man asked, “Are you crazy?”

  “Do you know Porsche?” He used a single mouth, almost whispering. “Have you seen her?”

  “No.”

  “You know Porsche Neal?”

  “She’s at the bottom somewhere, I don’t know … you can’t get there, friend.” A dismissive swipe of the hands, then he said, “Save yourself. Nobody’ll care.”

  Something struck Cornell. It hit the top of one head, like a hammerblow, and he thought Rain. Bodies leaned against their harnesses, and he slipped past the hysterical man. A last backward glance, and he saw the man’s mind and shivering body vanish into the fog and rain. Then he pressed the pace, carried by panic. The rain stopped and started again, stopped and started. Finally there was no break in it, after nightfall, and he didn’t sleep or even rest, feeling his way in the blackness.

  By first light he was in the forest, almost to the gorge.

  Saturated branches dripped rainwater, making dark rich mud. The speed and force of the drops were astonishing, like buckets of water hurled by giants, and suddenly Cornell could see how it was to be very small in even the mildest summer shower.

  Except this wasn’t a little storm.

  Two worlds of instinct were telling him it wasn’t going to pass or dissolve. It hadn’t even begun yet, in truth, and his tired legs wrestled with the mud and his sleepless mind.

  “Novak?”

  He recognized Susan, his one-time boss, and his first words were, “Where is she?”

  “In the gorge.” They were beside the pool at the gorge’s mouth, rain beating at the water. “We gave up on you, Novak. What happened?”

  He told about his hunt, in brief.

  “Did you have trouble getting here?”

  “Not much.” Twice he had heard people up ahead, and he’d moved off the path as a precaution.