But there was nothing more. Feeling much better, Arnold broke into a brisk, triumphant trot.
The wind picked up. It smelled of water and green bushes. The foliage moved. The daylight changed complexion, as if something had come between him and the sun. Clouds drifted into the sky, toward the east. The sky was beginning to darken.
And the wind spoke.
“Do not—”
Arnold’s knees locked. He tumbled, sprawled flat. There was nothing behind him. Nothing anywhere he could see. The sound had a stereo quality: It came from all directions.
“—Be afraid.”
If there was anything more likely to terrify Arnold than a visitation in a lonely glade, it was an injunction, from whatever source, not to panic. He crouched on the ground, heart pounding. No one moved among the trees. The river was quiet, and the path was empty, as far as he could see. The voice was too close to have come from the opposite bank.
No human throat could have made that leafy, gurgling, wind-blown sound. “Who’s there?”
His heart fluttered, and his breath caught, but he was able to keep the previous day’s sickening panic at bay.
“Hello, Arnold.” The treetops rolled slowly back and forth, as if a giant unseen hand played with them. “I was hoping you would come back.”
A warm breeze touched his cheek.
“Where are you?”
“Here.” Something like laughter raced through the foliage. “I’m beside you.”
“Where? Show yourself.” Arnold struggled against rising panic.
“There is nothing to show.”
“Say again?”
“There is nothing to see. Unless the light is right.”
Got to be a trick. Somebody had to be recording this. Was he going to hear it played at the Elks next Saturday night? “Whoever you are, I don’t care for the game.” He was still not speaking loudly. “Is that you, Floyd?”
Silence rolled out of the trees and off the river.
A gust blew across the glade in which he hid. “Who is Floyd?”
“A friend.”
“A friend who plays tricks?”
“I don’t know. Where are you, Floyd?”
“No one is here but you and I.”
“Who are you? Really?”
“A visitor.”
“A tourist?”
“You could put it that way. Listen, Arnold, why don’t you sit down? You don’t look at all comfortable.”
“Why don’t you come out where I can see you? What are you afraid of? How do you do the voice trick?”
“I am in your field of vision.”
“Where? Are you behind a tree?”
That soft laughter again, rippling through the elms and boxwoods. “I am at your side, Arnold.” A sudden current of warm air flowed around him. “I am pleased to have an opportunity to talk with you.”
Arnold was still watching the woods. “What is it? Speakers hidden around here somewhere?”
“You’re hard to convince.”
“Convince about what?”
“Okay. If you want, I’ll do a demonstration. Pick a tree.”
“What?”
“Pick a tree. Any tree.” It sounded impatient.
“Okay.” He pointed toward an American elm. “That one.”
It was the biggest tree in the area, about sixty feet high. Its trunk was maybe twenty-five feet in circumference, covered with thick gray-brown bark. About a third of the way up, it divided into stout branches, and they divided again and eventually joined the leafy web that connected it with its neighbors. A squirrel clung to the furrowed trunk, its dark eyes locked on him.
“Watch now.”
“I’m watching.”
Overhead, the wind stirred. The upper branches creaked, moved, began to sway. They rolled in a single, synchronized dance, as they might during a gale. But the air where Arnold stood was almost still.
Leaves fell. And twigs. They drifted down through the graying light.
Arnold’s mouth went dry. “What are you?” he asked slowly. “What do you want?”
“I’m a sightseer. A traveler.”
“Why can’t I see you, Traveler? Are you invisible?”
“Not really. Is the wind invisible?”
“Yes,” he said. “Of course it is.”
“Oh.”
“I don’t really understand what’s going on.” Cautiously: “You’re not a ghost, are you?”
“No. There are some advanced species in which the essence survives the husk. But we are not among them.”
Arnold frowned, and thought over the implications. “Am I?” he asked.
“Oh, no. Of course not. At least, I don’t think so. No. Not a chance.”
“Where do you come from?”
“Most recently, I’ve been exploring the prairies.”
“No. I mean, where did you come from originally? Where were you born?”
“I was not born, in your sense of the word.” The wood fell silent. Arnold listened to far-off noises, airhorns, a dog, an airplane. “I suppose it will do no harm to answer your question. I saw my first sunrise on an artificial world quite far away. My sun is not visible from here. At least, it is not visible to me. And I doubt that it is to you.”
Arnold’s strength drained. Perhaps until this moment, he had expected things would sort themselves out in some sort of rational way. But now he knew he had come face to face, so to speak, with the twilight zone. “Are you an alien?” he asked.
“That’s a matter of perspective. But if we’re going to indulge in name-calling and categorizing, you might keep your own simian characteristics in mind.”
“No, listen. I’m serious. And you’re not hostile, right?”
A sudden breeze swirled around his ankles. “Arnold, intelligent life forms are, by definition, rational. Reasonable.”
“Marvelous.” He was up on his feet again. “Listen, Traveler, I’m happy to meet you. My name’s Arnold—” He stopped. “You knew my name before you ever spoke to me.”
“Yes.”
“How is that? What’s going on? You’re not the vanguard of an invasion, are you?”
“We’re not much interested in invading, Arnold. That’s more in your tradition.”
“How does it happen you knew my name?”
“I know a few people in Fort Moxie. I don’t spend all my time up here in the wind screen, you know.”
“Who else have you spoken to?”
“No one.”
“Nobody else knows you’re here?” Arnold was having visions of his picture on the cover of Time.
“No.”
“Why did you speak to me?”
Again, Arnold felt the movement of air currents. “Because I wanted to talk.”
“About what?”
“Just talk.”
“Are you alone?”
“Yes. I am.”
“Why me?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Why me? Why not Alex Wickham? Or Tom Lasker? Why talk to me?” Arnold wasn’t sure why he pursued the point. Maybe there was something that this supernatural creature could see in him that the townspeople couldn’t. If he possessed a special quality, he should know about it.
“You’re almost the only one who comes out here. Mrs. Henney jogs in the morning, but she’s a trifle nervous, and if I revealed myself to her, I suspect she’d have a cardiac arrest.”
“But you said you travel through town, too.”
“I do. But I can’t communicate with anyone there. Not enough trees. And no water.”
“What do you mean?”
“I do not have a tongue, Arnold. As you can perceive. I speak by manipulating other substances. I’m quite good at it, actually.”
The Traveler sounded proud of itself. If any sense of disquiet still lingered in Arnold’s soul, it was dispelled at that moment. “Listen, how would you feel about talking to a reporter?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not? This is a world-
shaking event. First contact with another intelligent being.”
“I won’t ask who else is presumed in that equation to be intelligent. But no, thank you. I only wanted to talk with you. Not with the world.”
“But nobody will believe this if I don’t get a witness out here. How about Floyd Rickett, then? Would you talk to him?”
It laughed. A cascade of leaves and twigs exploded among the upper branches of a box elder. “I wonder if I made a bad choice.”
“Okay. Okay, listen, don’t get mad. All right? What did you want to talk about?”
“Nothing in particular.”
“You don’t have a message? A warning? Something you want me to pass on?”
“You have a strong sense of the melodramatic. No: I just saw you coming here every day, and I thought it would be nice to say hello.”
“Well, that’s ridiculous. This is the first contact between two intelligent species, and all we get to say is hello?”
“Arnold: this is certainly not the first contact. The rules get broken all the time. And anyway, what more significant greeting is there?”
“You mean there’ve been others before this?”
“Of course. Not with me, understand. But, statistically, we’re both insignificant. What are the odds that either of us would hold the first conversation with someone from another world?”
“Then why haven’t I heard about it? Why hasn’t it been on TV?”
“Because we’re not supposed to do it. Nobody is going to pose for cameras. Listen, I’ve got to be going.”
“You mean this is all there is to it?”
“I’m afraid so, Arnold. It’s been nice to talk with you.”
“Wait a minute—”
“Probably, it would be best not to say anything to anybody. You know how people are. And by the way, there is a reason I picked you. Other than simply because you happen to come out here.”
That felt better. “What was it?”
“The telescope. I like people who want to see what’s really out there. Beyond the horizon. You know what I mean?”
“Listen. Traveler. Will I see you again? I mean, talk to you again? Do you live here?”
The river gurgled against the inshore rocks. “I’ve been using this as a base. Yes. Sure. Stop by again. Anytime.”
Arnold was on his feet now. “One more thing?”
“Sure.”
“I don’t know what to call you. Do you have a name?”
“We don’t use names.”
“I’ve got to have something to call you.”
“Make one up.”
“I’ll stay with Traveler.”
“That would be nice. I like that.”
“Will you be here when I come back?”
“Can’t promise. But I usually return about this time.”
Arnold looked at the tallest tree in the area, the American elm which had served in the demonstration. He felt as if he were talking to it: “I enjoyed meeting you.”
“And I, you. Goodnight, Arnold.”
“I’ll be back tomorrow.”
A warm breeze swirled around him, then dashed across the river. A burst of foam leaped high.
Arnold charged back through the trees and ran south on Fifth Street, full of exuberance. First thing was to find someone to tell. Arch Johnson was out on his front porch, and Sally and Ed Morgan were hauling firewood back to their shed. Amos Sigursen was bent under the hood of his pickup. He wanted to go to each of them and clap his hands on their shoulders and say Hey, I’ve just talked with a visitor from another world; It’s up in the wind screen, but each time he visualized the reaction, knew they would squint at him and joke around, or maybe just squint. He thought about going up and pounding on Floyd’s door, tell him what he’d seen. But Floyd was too much of a no-nonsense type, and he wouldn’t believe a word of it unless the Traveler was with him, and willing to maybe poke Floyd in the eye.
So he arrived home, with the secret of the ages still securely tucked inside his sweatshirt. He went through the back entrance, climbed to the second floor, and threw himself across his bed within reach of the phone.
But there wasn’t even anyone to call. Arnold didn’t have much of a family. Just a couple of uncles and aunts who already thought he was deranged because he had never left his remote border town. And on that evening, flushed with the joy of his discovery, he realized that he knew no one with whom he could share a significant experience. The most satisfying outcome he could think of would be to drag Floyd out to the wind screen, and show him how wrong he had been. And that was pathetic.
He showered, sat down at his rolltop desk, and pulled out a legal pad. He wrote out everything he could remember about his conversation with the wind creature. He recorded not only the text of their conversation, but his impressions of the size of the thing (larger than the biggest elm), the suggestion of movement among the trees, and his estimates as to temperature and wind direction. I’ll write a book on this one day, he told himself. And he wanted to be prepared right from the start.
There were also questions that needed to be answered. Where are you from? What do you think of the human race? What kind of anatomy do you have? How do your senses work? He recorded them more or less as they occurred to him, filling pages, and stacking the pages in a neat pile.
It finally grew dark. Fort Moxie was on the western edge of the Central Time Zone. The sun stayed quite late in the evening sky. He sat by his window, looking toward the wind screen, not able to see it except as a deeper darkness toward the north. And he wondered whether the Traveler was up there now, moving among the trees, watching what was happening in Fort Moxie. But what would be the point of that? Nothing ever really happened in Fort Moxie. Of what possible interest could the small border town be to an entity from another world?
The night was filled with stars. Although he could not see it from his rear window, a new moon ruled the sky. The town lay quiet beneath its scattering of streetlights. It pleased him to think of Fort Moxie as a place where history had been made. He wondered whether its name might one day become synonymous with a new age. The Fort Moxie Event.
Arnold never drank alone. In fact, he rarely drank at all. Weight was not a problem for him, yet, but he knew it would be if he indulged his taste for cold beer in any regular fashion. But tonight was an exception. It deserved recognition, it needed a marker, something to remember years from now.
He did not keep beer in the refrigerator, but he had brandy. He didn’t like brandy, but it had been a birthday present from the guys at the Elks. He pulled the bottle out of the cabinet where he kept his pots, popped the cork, and put a little bit into a glass. He stood beside his telescope, rubbed its gray-green barrel with satisfaction, and raised the glass in the general direction of the wind screen. Here’s to you, Traveler. And to the future.
Tomorrow, he would find a way to talk the creature into submitting to a TV interview.
Arnold woke in his armchair. The recollections of the previous day’s events flooded back. Not a dream. A cup of cold coffee stood on a side table. It’s really out there.
And it’s friendly. And talkative.
He went back into his bedroom and looked out the window. The wind screen was hazy and unreal in the gray light.
He showered and dressed and ate breakfast with enthusiasm. This would be a day to really move the hardware. By God, he felt good, and, at nine o’clock sharp, he threw the doors of the Lock ‘n’ Bolt open to the world. It would never have occurred to Arnold to leave the store closed for the day, to return to the site of The Encounter, and savor the moment. The Lock ‘n’ Bolt was nothing if not reliable. He prided himself on the principle that no local catastrophe had ever forced him to close down during business hours. He had ridden out the Flood of ’07, the blizzards of ’11 and ’14, the great Christmas storm of ’91, and even the ’02 tornado. Didn’t matter. Whatever happened in the cosmic order, Fort Moxie could be certain the Lock ‘n’ Bolt would open promptly at nine. Order a
nd continuity were what made the American people great.
During the course of the day, he waited on the usual number of customers, experienced a run on mallets (folks were changing over from screens to windows), showed Ep Colley what was wrong with his lawn mower, advised Myra Schjenholde how to install her paneling. Tom Pratkowski bought one of the new Super Convex snowblowers, and there was some movement in block heaters. These people were all his friends and neighbors, and Arnold wanted to take them aside, was dying to grab them by the collar, and tell them what was happening. But Ep would never have understood about extraterrestrials. Ep wasn’t entirely sure where Jupiter was. And Myra was far too absorbed in visualizing how her new living room was going to look to care about a voice in the wind screen. And so it went. Arnold needed a kindred soul for an announcement of this magnitude. And the day dragged on while he looked for one.
When Dean came in, he finished up his paper work, made a quick run to a supplier over in Hallock for some rakes, and got back just before five. They locked the store, and Arnold wasted no time changing into his jogging gear. He picked up the questions he’d written out the night before and stuffed them into a sleeve. Today he was ready. And when he came back this evening, he would have some answers. And, he hoped, he would have persuaded the Traveler to hold a press conference.
He took the short route, up Fifth Street. He moved quickly today, his usual easy pace discarded for a sprint. The streets were full of kids tossing footballs. The weather had cooled off, and the sun rode in a cloudless sky. He knew that, when he breasted the trees, the world would open all the way to the horizon.
The lovely young woman with the red-blonde hair was in front of the library again. She was on a different bench, on the far side near the parking lot. He caught his breath and slowed down. She sat with one knee crossed over the other, apparently absorbed in her book. The routine traffic of a Wednesday afternoon flowed around her, teenagers in small crowds, and mothers with young children, and some of the town’s retired folks.
But it was all backdrop. The benches and the box elders, the people and the frame houses across the street, even the little Greek library itself, all became the stage on which she performed. Arnold kept going, putting one foot before the other, not knowing what else to do. Maybe there was some place where a meeting would be inevitable, where she could be approached without his having to hang himself out on the line. Maybe if he became world-famous as the friend of the Wind-Creature, the man who had presided over the ultimate historic event, the situation would become more favorable.
A Voice in the Night Page 32