A Voice in the Night

by Jack McDevitt

  He strolled to within a few feet of her. A wave of heat penetrated the cool afternoon air. She turned a page. He kept going, mounted the steps into the colonnade, and, with a sigh, went inside.

  Jean DiLullo was on duty. Jean was always friendly in a detached sort of way. She wore narrow frame glasses over her dark eyes, and tended to speak with hushed authority, in the manner of a person who has a firm hold on Truth. Her world was intelligible, open to investigation, and well-organized within the bounds of the Dewey Decimal System.

  Arnold set his package on the counter, while she finished checking out books to two adolescent boys. She smiled at him, and plied her stamp with energy. “Good to see you, Arnold,” she said.

  Arnold nodded and returned the greeting. He took the books out of the bag. “I wanted to donate these.”

  “Well, thank you.” She took a form from beneath the counter, wrote ‘FOUR HARDCOVERS’ on it, and pushed it across to him. “For the IRS,” she said. “You fill in the value.”

  “Okay.” He asked how things were going, how her nephew Pete was making out at UND. Then, conversationally, “Who’s the woman out front? I know her from somewhere, but I can’t place her.”

  Jean came around from behind the counter, walked to a window, and looked out. “That’s the new fourth grade teacher,” she said. “Her name’s Linda Something.”

  “I’m sure I’ve seen her before,” said Arnold.

  Jean smiled. “Why don’t you ask her?”

  Nothing could have been further from Arnold’s mind. “Yes,” he said, casually, “maybe I’ll do that.”

  He went back outside. Her red-gold hair glowed in the sunlight. She wore a white jacket over a blue blouse and skirt. As he watched, as he descended the stone steps, watching but not watching, she laid the book down in her lap, and her brow furrowed. Her eyes sought a spot off in the sky, and he felt that he could have stopped directly in front of her and not been seen.

  He didn’t test the theory. He strode quickly by, giving no indication, he thought, that he had noticed her. A child with a balloon bumped into him, giggled, and ran off across the grass. Arnold broke into a trot as he regained Fifth Street, and a few minutes later he was literally fleeing up the slope toward the wind screen.

  The signs of the Traveler’s presence appeared as soon as he entered the trees: warm drafts, unsynchronized movements of bushes and foliage, a gradual intensification of air pressure.

  “Hello, Arnold.”

  Arnold blew on his hands, and tried to look as if he’d come for the express purpose of running, and for no other reason. He increased his pace slightly. “Hello, Traveler.”

  “I missed you yesterday.”

  “I was tired. Took a break from the routine.” He kept jogging. “I’m not going too fast for you, am I?”

  “No. It’s easier for me this way.” The elms and box elders shut off the sky. “I thought you might be angry.”

  “Me? No. Why would I be angry?”

  “We had a disagreement.”

  Arnold’s sense of victory was not entirely unmixed with guilt. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t think my not being here would upset you.” He ran a little faster. “How long have you been alone? If you don’t mind my asking.”

  “Since last winter.”

  “Are you male?”

  “The term does not apply. At least, not strictly.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It’s complicated. Everything does not fit easily into your categories.”

  “How do you reproduce?”

  “You would need detailed instruction. Anyway, I’m not comfortable talking about it.”

  “You’re shy?” Arnold grinned broadly.

  “I don’t think of myself that way.” He paused. “Perhaps you’d care to describe your own reproductive method. In a manner that someone unfamiliar with your anatomy could understand easily?”

  Arnold grinned. “Okay.” He picked up a twig, looked at it, and threw it away. “I get your point.” The wood was quiet. He tried to imagine what it might feel like to be completely alone in a strange place. “Are you all right?” he asked. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

  “You’ve already done it. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” Neither spoke for several minutes. Arnold, out of breath, slowed down and finally stopped altogether. He sat on a fallen trunk. “Traveler, what are you thinking about now?”

  “How comforting the tree belt feels. At home, the open spaces are very attractive. Here, they are full of danger. So I enjoy hiding in them. Does that make sense to you?”

  “Yes.” It didn’t, but Arnold did not want to sound slow-witted.

  “It is one of the things we have in common, Arnold.”

  “I don’t think I understand.”

  “You, too, are more comfortable in the wind screen than you are in town. Why is that?”

  “It’s not so.”

  “Of course it’s so. Why do you deny it, when it’s evident?”

  “It just happens that I enjoy the view from here.”

  “And the solitude.”

  “That too.”

  “Precisely my point.”

  Arnold threw his head back and laughed. “Everybody likes to be alone sometimes. There’s nothing unusual about that.”

  “Perhaps you’re right.”

  “Of course I am.” He got up, touched his toes a couple of times, and began to walk.

  “You know, Arnold, you’re good company.”

  “Thank you.”

  A wall of air touched him. It felt almost solid. It crowded him, sucked at his clothes, ran up his legs, moved across his throat, pushed his sweatshirt up and exposed his belly. “Cut it out,” he said.

  Laughter rippled through the trees.

  They traveled through the early evening, stopping in groves, looking out across the river.

  “When I was a boy, I used to play up here.”

  “Were you alone then?”

  “No. Never.”

  “Where are the others now?”

  “Most are married. Busy with their lives. One’s dead. In the war. And Floyd.”

  “What about Floyd?”

  “Nothing. He changed. He was away for a lot of years. Came back to claim his property when his folks died. But he wasn’t the same when he came back.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Don’t know. He was just different.”

  “The intimacy had gone out of your relationship?”

  “Floyd’s not somebody you’re intimate with. But yes, in a way.”

  “It sounds as if you are no longer close to any of your old friends.”

  “It’s called ‘growing up.’” When was the last time they had come up here together, he and Floyd and Susan Halley and Hunt Jacoby and the others? When had they decided the forays into the Black Forest no longer served a purpose, and should stop? They had failed to mark the occasion with appropriate ceremony. And that was what pained him, not that they had bolted their cool forest empire, but that there had been no final gathering of the force, no final farewell, no appreciation of what it had meant. “And you, Traveler: what drives you to come so far?”

  Arnold was growing sensitive to the creature’s moods, as one reads temperament from a human expression or tone. He could feel its uncertainty, watch the movement of its currents among the leaves matting the forest floor, observe its slow passage through brambles and branches.

  “I love this world, Arnold. I love to gather its warm atmosphere around me, and to race across oceans before its boiling storms. To cruise silently over deserts, and to ride its thermal currents up the rock towers in the west. I wish there were a way to share these sensations with you.”

  “It sounds as if you plan to stay.”

  “I might. For a time.”

  “Don’t you miss your home world?”

  “Home is where I am.”

  Another of their long silences followed. Arnold, not paying atte
ntion, almost walked into a tree. “If you don’t mind my asking,” he said, “was your companion killed near here?”

  “Yes.”

  Again, the trees moved.

  Arnold understood it did not wish to pursue the topic. “Do you eat?” he asked.

  “No. I collect energy directly.”

  Another long silence followed. He listened to lapping waves. The stirring of grass and leaves. “Will you be okay?”

  “Yes.” The word drew out, expanded, rose, and floated away over the trees. Then, “We have visitors.”

  The last light was fading out of the sky. “Who, Traveler? Who’s here?”

  “Who you talking to, Arnold?” Bill Pepperdine’s voice. Arnold turned in his direction, and saw him standing beside an elm. Flashlights switched on. Four of them. Mike Kramer was off to the right. And Tom Pratkowski. And, half-hidden behind Pepperdine, Floyd. “Anybody see a monster here anywhere?” asked Kramer.

  They laughed.

  Pratkowski cupped his hands around his mouth. “Hey, Critter,” he sang out. “Welcome to Fort Moxie.”

  The laughter turned to roars. They howled and clapped one another on the back and staggered around. One of them held out a beer for Arnold. “We have visitors,” Pepperdine said. “Hello, out there.”

  Floyd hung back.

  Arnold looked desperately toward the treetops. “Say something, Traveler. Tell them you’re here.”

  They were shouldering one another, having a good laugh, and shaking their heads, the way people do sometimes when they discover an old friend is no longer bolted down very tight. “Yeah, say something,” said Kramer, speaking to a box elder. “Don’t just stand there.”

  The only one not laughing was Floyd.

  Arnold’s gaze swept across them. Hard to believe: They had been his friends and neighbors for years.

  “Arnold,” Floyd said, “I’m sorry.” He started forward. Kramer was grinning. “It’s okay, Arnold. We all have our little quirks.”

  Arnold walked between them, past Floyd without meeting his eyes, and went back into town the way he had come.

  Next day was a little strange at the Lock ‘n’ Bolt. People came in, as always. They bought chisels and sandpaper and shelving, as always. But they didn’t much ask for help, and their eyes were kind of off-center when they came over to pay up. They looked the other way a lot, and Arnold felt as if he were something of an oddity in his own store.

  He considered passing on Clint’s at lunchtime, because Floyd would be there, and possibly some of the others. But maybe this was an important moment for him. Maybe he should not allow himself to be frightened off.

  Floyd was in a booth toward the rear, with Lem Harkness and Rob Henry, both from the Federal Building.

  Max Klinghofer, who owned Clint’s, was wiping the lunch counter. When he saw Arnold, he wiped harder. And Arnold felt the heat rising into his cheeks. Floyd was facing away from the door, but someone must have alerted him. He turned around, and waved cheerfully. As if nothing had happened. But his face reddened.

  The place was filled, as it always was at noon. People he had known a long time looked up, nodded, smiled. But there was a distance in some expressions, and nervousness in others. As his gaze passed over each table, its occupants fell silent. Arnold was reminded of those old westerns in which someone notorious strolls into the Lost Lode Saloon.

  He picked up a Herald and sat down alone at a corner table. Aggie took his order, for a tuna and French fries, and Arnold glanced at the newspaper. He literally hid behind it, and Aggie had to ask him to move it when she brought his lunch. “You okay?” she asked, hovering over him.

  He liked Aggie. Always had. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m fine.”

  “If you don’t mind my asking—.” She kept her voice down. “—What happened last night?”

  He looked at her. What had happened last night? “Hard to explain,” he said. I’m going to have to move.

  “You need any help,” she said, “I’m here.”

  Later, as he worked his way through the last of the fries, Floyd appeared beside him. “Listen,” he said, “I’m sorry about how things went, but it wasn’t my fault.” His long, thin face was a mask.

  Arnold met his eyes. “Forget it.”

  Floyd looked away. Then spoke to the floor. “I did what I could.” He caught his face in his hands. “Well, dammit, what do you expect with a story like that?” He sat quivering with anger, as if somehow Arnold had betrayed him. Then he got up and without another word dropped money on his table and stalked out the door.

  Midnight on the western loop of the windscreen.

  “We should not be meeting like this, Arnold.”

  His car was parked in the lot behind the bus plant, well out of sight. “Now you’re willing to speak. Where were you when I needed you?”

  “I have nothing to say to a mob.”

  “I’m sorry you’re bound by all these rules. But the whole town thinks I’m crazy.”

  “I thought we’d agreed that you wouldn’t say anything about this.”

  Arnold shoved his hands into his jacket pockets. “I’m sorry. All right? I made a mistake. But now I’m going to have to move. You know that? I can’t possibly stay in Fort Moxie after this.”

  “I think you’re overreacting.”

  “That’s easy for you to say.”

  “Listen, Arnold. Do you have any idea what would have happened if I’d said hello to that crowd last night?”

  “Half the town might not think I’m crazy.”

  “They might think worse things of a man who talks to voices in the woods. Voices that talk back.”

  “Well, whatever,” grumbled Arnold. “It’s done.”

  “I wasn’t sure I’d see you again.”

  “I thought about staying away. If I get caught here, things will get worse.”

  “I think it would be a mistake to change your pattern.”

  “There’s no one around now, is there?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure? They sneaked up on you pretty good last night.”

  “I was distracted.” Long pause. “When are you planning to move?”

  “As soon as I can sell the Lock ‘n’ Bolt.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe Fargo.”

  “Where is that?”

  “About a hundred fifty miles south.”

  “How far is a mile?”

  Arnold got up, and walked to the outer edge of the trees. They could see the river, curving in from Canada, and, off in the distance, the border station. He pointed. “Those buildings are about five miles.”

  “Fargo seems close.”

  Arnold sensed a reproach. “What would you suggest?”

  “A place further away than just over the curve of the horizon.”

  “Whatever.”

  “You sound bitter.”

  “Well, what do you expect? Worst thing that ever happened to me was meeting you. You’re right, you know: You shouldn’t say a word. Not to anybody. Not ever.”

  The branches stirred.

  “Why did you tell Floyd?”

  Arnold leaned against a box elder. A single car had just pulled out of the border station, and was starting south on I-29. He watched its headlights for a while. “I knew I shouldn’t have said anything. But he was a friend. At least I thought he was. He promised not to let it go any further.”

  “Do you people not honor your commitments?”

  “Not all of us.”

  “Yet it is the tradition, I assume? To honor them?”

  “You could say that. You know what I’d like to do: You and I go over to his house and scare the hell out of him.” Arnold was staring at the ground. It was difficult talking to someone you couldn’t see. You never knew where to look. “I don’t suppose you’d consent to that, would you?”

  “You’re vindictive, Arnold.” The wind off the prairie was picking up. Leaves were pouring out of the trees. “No. I would
not.”

  “That’s what I thought.” The evening was cooling off, and Arnold was thinking he wouldn’t stay long. “Do you feel the cold?”

  “Not at this level. I’m able to generate internal heat. But at the height of your winter, yes. It is too cold for me.”

  “This whole business is my own fault.”

  “I’m glad you can see that.”

  “But I don’t know what to do about it.”

  “Forget it. Your friends will.”

  A tractor-trailer rumbled north on the expressway. “Easy for you to say.”

  “Arnold, does it matter so much to you to be able to prove that I am here?”

  “Yes. Damn it, it does. I’d like these people to know I’m not a nut.”

  “And that is seriously important to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right, then. I’ll do it.”

  “You’ll talk to someone?”

  “Yes.” The word hung there, in the moonlight.

  “I’ll bring Floyd up here tomorrow.”

  “No. Not Floyd.”

  Oh, yes, please. Floyd. Let me rub his nose in the truth. Speak to him the way you spoke to me. Spook him. Send him running out of the tree belt. Is it so much to ask? “I would really like it to be Floyd.”

  “There is a young woman who sits each day in the park at the library.”

  “Linda.” A sense of unease crept over Arnold.

  “She is quite attractive. By simian standards.”

  “What of her?”

  “I will speak to her.”

  “Are you crazy? I don’t know her. What’s the point?”

  “She is important to you. She fulfills your requirement.”

  “That’s not true. I don’t even know the woman.”

  “That’s my offer.”

  “You’ve been spying on me.” The sudden realization irritated him.

  “I happened to be there.”

  “Sure. And you want me to approach a strange woman, and ask her to go for a walk in the woods, so an invisible thing can talk to her?”

  “I am not as you portray me.”

  “Forget it.”

  “As you wish, Arnold.”

  “Listen, Traveler, try to understand the problem here.” He adopted what he hoped was a reasonable tone. “I’ve been moderately successful with women during my time. But you’re asking me to pick up a woman I’ve never met. I’m not good at that. It’s not my style. If you don’t like Floyd, how about if I bring up, say, Tom Pratkowski? He was here the other night. A little out of line, then. But he’s okay. I like him. He’s important to me.”