by Rune Skelley
She seemed too fatigued to be upset anymore.
“You know what’s really bothering me?” she asked.
“No, what?” Fin asked, baffled at the thought of choosing one thing from such an extensive list.
“So much of what Kyle told us lined up with what Willow said back at Solstice. The way he described his coma was a lot like her story.
“So it bothers me,” Rook concluded, “because it makes me believe him.”
Fin refused to accept that, but couldn’t think of any way to refute it. Having a spotlight shone on the similarities between Kyle’s and Willow’s accounts made him angry, his mind balking at any attempt to put those two individuals into a shared category. There had to be another explanation for how Kyle knew what Willow knew, and he was exploiting that information, playing them.
Fin wanted to say something like ‘everything will be okay,’ because he wanted to make Rook feel better and had nothing of substance to offer. He knew he wouldn’t sound convincing, so he clenched his jaw instead. Miles passed without a word spoken.
Halfway home he pulled into a hectic truck stop to get gas. Other drivers loitered while their tanks filled, many on cellphones and others with their car doors standing open and music blaring.
“Will you talk to me?” Fin asked the tangled background noise.
I need some coffee
give my love to Grampa
I’ll talk to you tomorrow
“Who is the father of the baby you stole from my wife?”
I’m not even kidding!
like a thief in the night, see the world by candlelight
don’t forget the lottery ticket
baby, baby it’s a wild world
that jacket was a gift, you asshole
Fin ground his teeth. “Who is the father?”
you little shit
which way are we supposed to turn when we get to the highway?
Mountain Dew and a pack of smokes
so is Ashley still pissed off?
I hate visiting your brother
We need at least two bottles
sweetie, Daddies aren’t allowed in the girls’ room
getcha getcha one way or another
Mom! Jason put his finger up his nose!
and one night only
Even white boys got to shout baby got back
You are, and so is your brother. Two daddies, one mom, one baby.
While he pumped gas, Fin muttered more incredulous inquiries. The answers were smug.
Yes, the baby was a chimera. Yes, it represented tangible fulfillment of the prophecy.
No, Fin and Rook could not get pregnant without Kyle’s participation.
Fin had been counting on being able to contradict Rook’s fatalistic take on Kyle’s allegations. He’d hoped for evidence that Kyle lied, but instead he now had verification of everything.
He rejoined Rook in the car and started the engine.
“I checked in with the Id,” he said. “Kyle told us the truth.”
“I thought so.”
“You always were smarter than me,” Fin said with a warm smile. “But, we got so distracted over Kyle we both forgot what he told us.”
Rook blinked, not looking like the smarter member of any duo.
“What we went there for,” Fin said. “We found the jewelry, so we’re on track to make a portal into the Id. Alright, it’s true we didn’t find the exact location, but we know who has it.”
*** *** ***
Rook lay in the protective circle of Kyle’s arms, pressed against his bare chest. The bodice of her wedding dress was pushed down, exposing her nipples and acting as a crude push-up bra. The layers and layers of net skirts were bunched up around her hips in front, pinned between her ass and the bed underneath. Her legs were free and she wrapped them around Kyle. Her breaths came in ragged gasps, now more from their frenzied coupling than her earlier excruciating dissociation. That was the worst episode yet, the sickening, shredding full-body migraine too strong for even the wedding dress to counter.
Kyle knew just how to help her reintegrate.
Both of her component halves craved him. Where he touched her skin they swarmed together, eager to experience him, and he melded and forged them with the heat of his body, creating an alloy he called Rook. While he fucked her he eclipsed everything. Her warring polarities ceased their terrible rending and came into resonance, and she was whole again, even through her orgasm. And his.
Kyle squeezed her, kissed her flushed forehead, smoothed her wild hair back from her face, kissed her numb lips, stared into her eyes with his troubled green gaze. He repeated the process several times, murmuring reassurances.
“I’m okay now,” she whispered when she felt strong enough.
He kissed her and she felt hot tears on his cheek.
“I have to keep you safe,” he breathed into her ear, nuzzling her neck. “You Complete me.” The anguish in his voice broke her heart.
“No,” she said, stroking his hair. “Now you Complete me.”
He sat with his back against the oak headboard and cradled her in his lap.
“I have an idea,” he said, brightening. “A way to keep you safe. Let me think for a minute.”
Rook relaxed into him, synching her breathing to his and listening to the steady beat of his heart.
Suddenly the world shifted, becoming slippery and weirdly stretchy. Rook thought she was coming apart again, utterly, but as the seconds passed and her situation didn’t worsen she realized this was something else, something familiar. Kyle’s arm tensed around her.
Then it was over.
Rook opened her eyes and knew immediately where she was: the web chamber on the asteroid. The rock-walled cavern held little she could see in the greenish light besides the glistening spiderweb. All of the creepy cocooned abductees were gone, and the spiders themselves were not in evidence.
Her slight movements were enough to break her free from Kyle’s grasp and she began to float away from him in the low gravity, her dress billowing with a life of its own. She shot out her hand and grabbed his, pulling the two of them together in a comical bounce.
“So it is real,” he said, smiling. “You’ll be safe here. We’ll be safe.” He kissed her and it was joyous. “Wait here. I need to find some clothes and talk to the aliens. Establish some ground rules.”
*** *** ***
Marsh considered not going to the door. He considered it very seriously, because whoever it was might simply go away. He would just send them off if he did go to the door, so there was a certain elegance about not getting involved.
The knock came again, and it sounded determined. Marsh headed into the front hall.
Every day since Melissa’s death there had been at least one reporter on the porch. The persistent ones came back several times. Then there were the morbid tourists. Marsh could at least understand why journalists would turn up, why they might even presume they’d get in, but the amateurs disturbed and puzzled him.
He reached the door and looked out through the leaded glass, surprised to recognize the visitors. The woman was the piercer, Rook Brandymoon. With her was Fin Tanner, whose reverse-Houdini into the TEF’s old listening post downtown became a minor legend. Marsh wondered if Fin would remember him.
“Rainbow,” Marsh called over his shoulder, “we have company.”
He opened the door. “Welcome to Threshold House. Please, come in.”
Rook sidled through the doorway, lost and worn and a little afraid. Fin followed her closely, protectively. He glanced up at Marsh, and gave him the hairy eyeball.
He remembered.
“Why don’t we have a seat in the living room.” Marsh led the way. His guests sat on the edge of the sofa. Fin pointedly refused to make himself comfortable, and Rook looked like she might cry at any moment, not for the first time today.
Rainbow came into the room and said, “Oh!” with a happy chirp of recognition. She saw the grim mood of their guests and st
opped short.
Fin said, “We want to talk to you two, alone.”
“Well, we are,” Marsh said. “Alone. Everybody else left.”
Rook and Fin looked at each other in mild alarm, and Rainbow and Marsh sat quietly while the visitors sorted out how this news made them feel. Eventually they shrugged, and Fin took a large breath to speak.
“We have some information about the jewelry. We thought you should know the government has it.”
Relief bathed Marsh in coolness, and now he and Rainbow gave each other a look, and a small shared smile. Their decision to accept jobs with the agency was the right course to follow. With access to the nanotechnology they could continue their work on the Dream Machine on their own time.
Fin continued. “Not that we know where it is, like to point at a map. Which is really why we’re here.”
“We need it. Some of it, anyway,” Rook broke in. “We need you to steal as much as you can for us.”
The bluntness and urgency of the request startled Marsh, and he struggled to find the right words to respond.
“Absolutely,” Rainbow said in a firm voice.
“Thank you!” Rook gushed. Both women now looked ready to cry.
Marsh knew Rainbow’s empathy was in overdrive because she wanted to make up for maintaining a deception, for using Rook to get at the jewelry before. The symmetry now was poetic, and he didn’t blame Rainbow for lunging at the chance to atone. All the same, he would have preferred to talk things through before agreeing to break quite so many laws.
“Yes, thank you,” Fin added. “You can’t know how important this is.” His eyes were moist. Marsh felt bad for not crying.
“Thank you,” Rook repeated, and she and Fin got up.
The past few minutes began to feel unreal. Rainbow looked pleased as she came back from closing the door.
“What just happened?” Marsh asked.
“If we dragged our feet, they would try something crazy. It’s not like what they’re asking is any different from what we were planning anyway, and it’s not like we were going to not help them. Why play around at being unsure?”
“I am unsure,” Marsh insisted. Rainbow quirked her eyebrow at him. “Well, I mean it’s espionage. Yeah, we planned to abuse our clearances a bit, but this is different. This isn’t in the gray area. I wanted to stay in the gray area for a while.”
Rainbow smiled. “Those are all excuses, and you know it.”
Marsh shook his head, but he smiled too. “Some of them sounded like pretty good excuses to me. You should know, normal people have to go through a process, with definite stages. You skipped right over the ‘Scared Shitless’ stage and I was waiting for you to be struck by lightning. Since it looks like that won’t happen, okay. I’m on board.”
*** *** ***
Fin and Rook shuffled into the house and sat next to each other on the black leather sofa.
Vesuvius wanted to ask if they found the bugged jewelry, but their subdued demeanor suggested they hadn’t. He kept quiet.
A full minute passed without conversation. Vesuvius tried to gauge whether he should suggest a chess match.
“I wish we had another angle,” Fin said. “Something we could do in the meantime. Or something we could just do, without needing to rely on anyone else at all.”
Vesuvius wouldn’t get a better cue.
“I keep telling you to play chess, but you won’t listen.” The two of them looked his way and Fin got an annoyed face.
“Explain,” he said.
“Like you said,” Vesuvius replied. “Something you don’t need other people for. You can go right ahead.” He knew they weren’t seeing his real meaning, but he wasn’t sure how to be more specific. “You should use the new table,” he added.
Fin and Rook looked to each other and back to Vesuvius.
“Why?” Rook asked. “What does it do?”
“I don’t know,” Vesuvius said, “but there’s something odd about it. When you play, it behaves differently from Fin’s other chessboard. It doesn’t do it on every move. I haven’t seen enough to understand it yet. You never play a full game because you always get distracted by sex.”
“It didn’t do anything odd, though,” Fin argued. “We were there, playing the game. We were watching the board the whole time, at least at first.”
“I could see it moving and changing shape. I could feel it, on a deeper level.”
“And you want us to mess around with it some more?” Rook asked a bit crossly.
“Well, yes.”
Rook and Fin went to the chess table.
“It’s just a low-grade antique,” Fin said. “It didn’t even come with all the original pieces.”
“Wait a second,” Rook said. She went to her coat and reached into the pocket and returned to Fin with her prize. She opened her fist and displayed a pale green statuette of a warrior queen, a veritable Boadicea in a chainmail skirt, sword at her side, a spiky crown atop the long, wild hair that covered her bare breasts.
“I found this in Severin’s attic.” Rook held the slender figurine near the chess table, turning it from side to side. The grain and color matched the light squares on the board.
“Wow,” Fin said.
Rook straightened and held the piece out toward Fin.
“Don’t you think,” she asked, “this looks like it belongs with the chessmen on display in Kyle’s apartment?”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THEY'RE JUST HORSES
If there is a document, such as a family bible, showing the complete history of Shaw Oracle, Brian Prophet Shaw has it. And he’s not sharing.
from Brainwashed by Julie Rome ©1998 Futhark Press
Seeing the aliens in person was not something Kyle was prepared for.
They didn’t look like spiders at all. They looked like something out of a cheap sci-fi movie, little green men with oversized heads and huge eyes that never blinked. Their arms and legs were spindly, almost mechanical. Why did Fin think of them as spiders?
Not that this was much better. They were just so… alien. And far too numerous for casual conversation. Then again all of them were really just one… not person, exactly. One thing to talk to.
Kyle’s adrenal glands weren’t reading any of those memos. The cave smelled like waxy hydrocarbons, faint, but enough to make the whole place feel flammable. Floating felt like falling, which further unsettled him. His nakedness didn’t matter to the aliens, but it made him acutely aware of the nightmare forms surrounding him.
A trio of aliens approached.
“Thank you for taking us in,” he said to the one in the middle. He knew he didn’t need to address any particular one, but felt ridiculous otherwise.
It is our honor, he heard in his mind. We regret that our physical manifestation is making you uncomfortable.
“I just need to get acclimated,” Kyle insisted. “And I need to discuss details of our arrangement with you.”
After a brief pause, the aliens said, We will do our best to live up to whatever you require.
Kyle liked the sound of that.
We are eager to begin.
“I don’t have a to-do list for you, yet.”
The plan will take shape around the goal, as a crystal forms around a mote.
Now what the hell were they talking about?
“What the hell are you talking about?”
We are prepared to perform our duty. We will help you unite the mind of your race.
“Slow down,” Kyle barked. “Slow way the fuck down.” The three aliens in front of him startled, backing up a step in perfect unison. The sudden move split their arms and legs. They had not four limbs, but eight, and the staring ‘eyes’ weren’t on their faces.
They were spiders after all, spiders who learned a trick to imitate bipedal form.
“Holy shit!” Kyle took a step back himself. The trio gave up their act and lowered themselves into a more comfortable posture, now matching the image from Fin’s memories.
Kyle said, “Let’s deal with my issues first, shall we? Then we can maybe have a chat about long-range goals.”
Of course. Please tell us what you require.
“All right. Ground rules. No talking to my brother or his wife. No bringing anybody out to this rock, especially not my brother or his wife. You got that?”
Yes. We will not molest Fin, or the Rook who dwells with him on Earth.
Kyle’s request hadn’t sprung from any concern that Fin be free from molestation, but he was pleased to have their agreement regardless.
We will transport no other humans to the asteroid.
“Super. Get me some clothes.”
As you wish.
“We’ll need water, and food.”
We have already established these things, in anticipation of guests. We are well versed in matters of human nutrition, respiration, and sanitation.
They’d given this a lot more thought than Kyle.
“Wonderful. Your hospitality is appreciated. One other request.”
Certainly.
“Privacy. Don’t come around unannounced.” If at all.
The need for privacy, of course, vanishes once unity is attained.
“Knock it off,” Kyle grumbled. “I said we’re not talking about that right now.”
This rebuke prompted a lengthy silence. Eventually Kyle realized they let him have the last word.
On the way back to Rook, a golden glint caught his eye. He changed course, and discovered the other Rook’s wedding band resting against the rugged rock surface of the passage. She must have ditched it up here when she ran away from him. He read the inscription, PUT IT BACK ON, ROOK, and smiled.
“I have something for you,” Kyle said as he glided over to Rook. She looked like a doll, floating with her arms by her sides and her feet sticking out comically from her skirt.
Kyle unrolled his hand, and the ring rose slowly from his palm. Her azure eyes sparkled as she watched it tumble. Kyle caught it in his fingertips and slid it into place between her left pinkie and middle finger, guiding it over the length of her missing digit. An invisible force akin to magnetism tugged it from his grasp and snapped it into place.