Alien Gifts

by Sherry D. Ramsey

  We got to a bend in the path where it skewed left but our destination showed off to the right—only about twenty meters away now. “Okay, kid, this is it. Pretty open here so I think we can leave the path again. But go slow, and be careful.”

  Duffy already had his nose pointed in that direction. I wondered what he smelled. Anyway, I didn’t need the GPS after we left the path because damned if that dog didn’t lead us straight to another grey canister, identical to the first one.

  Identical, except for a little clump of dark earth and green moss sitting on top of the solar panel-thing. Otherwise it was pristine. Duffy got to within a few feet of the cylinder and stood sniffing the air, growling intermittently. He took care not to get too close and I wondered if he’d got a noseful of super-cold air back at the first one. I took a stick and knocked the earthy clump down, then picked it up. The soil was soft and moist, as if it had only recently been dislodged from the forest floor. Thin ice crystals, jagged and translucent, clung to some of the root tendrils.

  Ricky squatted beside me as I examined it. “It’s like that thing just pushed up out of the ground, isn’t it?” he asked.

  Goosebumps prickled my skin. I’d been struck by the same thought, but I wasn’t going to say anything because of course that was impossible. For one thing, if that was the case, it should be covered with dirt and mud.

  “Nah,” I told Ricky. "I know it looks like that, but I don’t think so. It wouldn’t really make sense.”

  He looked skeptical but stood and walked around it. “This one’s got numbers, too. There must be more!”

  “Okay, but are we really going to spend all day doing this? We’ve found two and they’re both the same. I don’t think we need to do it again.”

  He looked at me over the top of the canister. “Don’t you want to know what they are? I told you, it’s a mystery! We have to solve it.”

  The only mystery to me was what time I was finally going to make it home today. “They’re just survey markers or something,” I said. “But if you want to find one more, we’ll do that. Then have lunch and head home, okay?”

  “Got the GPS ready?” He read the numbers to me. I noticed that he didn’t actually agree that one more would do it.

  The next one was, predictably, about the same distance away as the last one, but off in the general direction where the path had been leading when it headed left.

  The trail had deteriorated to something more like a cow path, and I was starting to think it would run out any time. To tell the truth, I hoped it would. But suddenly it opened up at a stream and I realized I’d been hearing the hiss and gurgle of the water for the past few minutes without noticing it. A haphazard line of half-submerged stones offered the only obvious bridge to the other side.

  I looked at Ricky with raised eyebrows.

  “We can make it across that, easy,” he said.

  “The dog’s going to get wet for sure. And if you slip, your feet will be soaked. We’ll have to go back anyway then, because hiking in wet shoes will give you wicked blisters.”

  “I’m not going to slip, and Duffy’s feet will dry off,” he argued. “Anyway, it’ll wash some of the mud off him.”

  I shrugged. “Okay, we’ll give it a try. I’ll go first and you come behind me. Hold my hand and step exactly where I step.”

  He put his hand in mine confidently. I let the dog out to the extent of his leash to fend for himself. Honestly, the crossing didn’t look that bad, so long as the stones were steady, and I had my good waterproof hiking boots on. A slip wouldn’t be that bad for me.

  We went slowly. The sun had disappeared behind a skiff of clouds and a chill breeze blew straight down the stream, raising goosebumps on my arms and back. The dog was on the other shore by the time we were about halfway across. I heard the now-familiar ATV engine rumble and Duffy barked, shattering our concentration and the otherwise eerie silence. The kid jumped and skittered on the stones, one toe skimming the surface of the water. He shrieked and caught at my arm with his free hand. A clutch of birds flushed out of the tree branches above us with a rush of wings, startling him further, and he almost went in.

  Luckily, I had a solid footing on two stones and managed to help Ricky catch his balance. I pretty much pulled him along the last few steps, figuring we’d be better off getting across in a hurry. Once there, he leaned forward with his hands on his knees, panting a little.

  “Stupid dog,” he muttered, and I had to agree.

  “You okay?”

  He nodded.

  We set off again, although the path shrank even further and low-hanging branches barred the way every few steps. We walked in silence, concentrating on the quickly-disappearing trail.

  “You want some water?” I asked Ricky, and my voice sounded strangely loud. The kid jumped at the sound of it and then giggled nervously.

  “Sure.”

  We stopped and each had a swig from the water bottles I’d insisted we take, and Ricky cupped his hands while I poured some into them for the dog to slurp. He dried his hands on his jeans when Duffy decided he’d had enough and turned his nose to the trail again. Once more, we had to leave the path to find the actual spot, but now that we knew what to look for I spotted the cylinder before we’d gone more than a few feet from the trail.

  It held no surprises. Exactly like the others. Even Ricky gave it only a cursory glance before going around to the back to check for a screen. I pulled the flashlight from my pack and tried to peer inside the narrow slot that ran the length of the side groove, but I couldn’t really make out anything inside—maybe a shadowy hint of some mechanism, but that was all. I was careful not to lean in close enough to feel the intensity of the cold or set off the light and alarm. Ricky read off the numbers without even asking me if we could find another one. I felt a twinge of annoyance but shrugged it off and plugged them into the GPS. What the hell. He’d tell Celia all about it and I’d look like a hero. And I admit I was getting curious about how many of the damned things there could be.

  When the new destination popped up on the screen I looked at it for a long moment and then wordlessly showed it to Ricky. I’d marked the locations of the three cylinders we’d found already with little flags.

  “We’re going in a circle,” he said.

  I nodded. "That’s what I thought. So there might not be many more. They’ve all been about the same distance apart. I’m betting one more after this one, and then those coordinates will lead us back to the first one. I’ll bet five will be it.” And then we can go the hell home.

  Ricky looked a little disappointed, but still determined to see if my prediction was right. We set out again, Ricky walking beside me this time. The sun was still high in the sky but now seemed pale and watery, clouds drifting between it and us. After a few minutes Ricky reached up and took my hand. He’d never done that before. Usually, it might have irritated me, but right now, his hand felt warm against my still strangely-cold skin, and I didn’t mind at all. We walked in silence, letting the path and the GPS guide us.

  I thought we were almost there when Duffy stopped in his tracks and whined, low in his throat. Ricky looked at me, frowning. I shrugged my shoulders. The dog glanced around and then shook his head vigorously. I took a few steps and tugged at the leash and he came along, but he carried his tail low, almost between his legs, and sniffed the air constantly. A couple of times, he stopped to lower his head and swipe at his ears with a clumsy paw.

  “Not far now, boy,” I told him, although it was more to reassure the kid than the dog. Duffy didn’t look at me but answered with a whine and a growl, although he kept pace with us. He shook his head again, ears flapping.

  “Do you hear that?” Ricky asked me, glancing around us.

  “What?”

  He wrinkled his brow. “I don’t know. It’s like a whistle or something, coming from far away.”

  I hadn’t noticed anything, but when I concentrated, a high-pitched humming registered with me, just on the edge of my hearing. I
t was a little like the earlier alarm, but continuous instead of a beep. The sound must be the source of Duffy’s agitation. It made sense that the dog would hear it first, then Ricky.

  “I hear it now, but I don’t know what it is. We’re almost at the coordinates, though.”

  The fourth cylinder came into sight as expected. The hum or whine droned steadily, although it didn’t get any louder. It didn’t seem to come from the cylinder, but from all around us, like white noise—but more annoying. Checking the cylinders had become routine now. Duffy sniffed around it cautiously. Ricky ran around to the side away from the path while I attempted to see if there was any detail that made this one different from its fellows. I didn’t see it. The kid read the coordinates off to me, I put them into the GPS, and we left.

  The lassitude that had overtaken us a few minutes ago dissipated now that we were heading for the fifth, and probably last, cylinder. Ricky almost ran along the path ahead of me while I strode to keep him in sight. The path was still barely visible, but I’d given up warning him to watch his step. Duffy ranged as far ahead of me as the leash would allow.

  I caught up with Ricky easily when he stopped short and put his hands on his hips in a gesture that reminded me of Celia. He stood, staring at the fifth cylinder, which looked exactly like the other four. The background noise seemed a little more intense, and Duffy must have thought so, too, the way he pawed intermittently at his ears. Otherwise everything was just the same. Ricky sauntered over to check the back of the cylinder for the expected screen, but his disappointment was palpable. He’d expected this last cylinder to hold the answer to the puzzle.

  He read me the coordinates and when I entered them, it was obvious they’d lead us back to the first cylinder. I showed him the screen. “I guess that’s it.”

  Ricky stared at it for a moment longer and said, “I guess so.” He frowned up at me. “Didn’t you think we’d—I dunno—find out what they were for, or something?”

  I shrugged. “I didn’t really know. Like I said, they probably have some purpose we just don’t know about. They could be monitoring the weather or something.”

  He looked back at the screen, then looked back at the cylinder. “That noise is getting louder, isn’t it?”

  I looked around. It still seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, but the kid was right. Duffy whimpered. A gust of wind set the leaves overhead shivering.

  “Maybe we should get out of here,” I said. Not for the first time since we’d found the cylinders, I felt uncomfortable. The forest seemed oppressive, the sunlight paled to a wan half-light and the hairs on the back of my neck prickled.

  “Hey!” Ricky shouted. He snatched the GPS from my hand. “They’re in a circle, right? Maybe there’s something in the middle of the circle! Come on, Danny!”

  He turned and ran past the cylinder, into the area that—he was right—would be encircled by the five cylinders. Duffy lunged after him, jerking the leash from my hand.

  The pervasive whine in the air ramped up and I felt a tremor in the ground under my feet. That didn’t make sense—we didn’t live anywhere near earthquake country. “Ricky! Come back,” I yelled. But he’d plunged into the underbrush and out of my sight almost immediately. He must have heard me—I could hear him and the dog crashing through branches—but he didn’t answer or turn back. I swore and took off after him, slapping branches out of my way.

  There was no question about it now, the earth trembled under my feet as I ran. Branches and leaves around me and overhead shook, so much that I flashed back to watching Jurassic Park years ago. Not that I thought a T-Rex was about to come smashing through the trees. But that was what it looked like.

  A big tremor sent me reeling and I stumbled but kept going. Duffy barked in a non-stop frenzy, and I honed in on the sound. The forest’s odd silence had shattered. Trees groaned, limbs crashed, and the background hum had risen to a roar. Something terrible was happening, and I’d let Ricky get caught right in the middle of it. My heart banged around in my chest like a pea in a pressure cooker. I could only breathe in deep gasps.

  How had Ricky gotten so far ahead of me?

  Then something erupted out of the earth just off to my right. A long rail, it looked like, maybe eight inches wide, running parallel to my stumbling path into the centre of the area ringed by the cylinders. A few small trees toppled, their grip on the earth completely dislodged by the emergence of the rail, but luckily they fell away from me. The narrow rail rose slowly, inexorably, clods of earth tumbling, networks of roots pulling and snapping, showering me with sprays of dirt. I blinked and shielded my eyes. The creak and groan of metal under strain filled the air.

  When I realized I had stopped running, I barrelled forward again. Duffy sounded close now. I broke through some underbrush and almost ran headlong into a wave of spilling earth and bushes. It cascaded from a slowly-rising circular platform, easily thirty feet across, already a few feet off the ground. Five of the narrow rails, each coming from one of the cylinders, connected to the platform like the spokes of a wheel. As the rails rose out of the ground, they lifted the platform. Its laborious ascent slowly dislodged the layer of earth that had covered it. A slim birch tree slid from the centre of the platform toward the edge in a shower of soil as I watched, and I dove left as it pitched toward me. Branches brushed my back as its crown crashed to earth.

  “Danny!”

  I looked up to see Ricky’s terrified, dirt-streaked face peering over the lip of the platform. Frozen in place, he gripped the unstable earth as the platform shook and ground its way upward. Duffy raced back and forth under the platform, barking as his boy was carried further and further away.

  It hit me. He hadn’t screamed, “Danny.” He’d said “Daddy.”

  “Jump!” I yelled, “I’ll catch you!” But I knew it was useless. He was too frightened to move.

  The lower half of the fallen birch tree still rested on the platform, roots tangled in the soil. It wasn’t much of a ladder, but it was all I had. I shucked off the backpack and started to clamber up the tree. It wasn’t easy. The notches where branches attach to the trunk are great for climbing an upright tree, but they’re slippery and inconvenient when you’re going the other way. The trunk shook and shuddered as the platform moved inexorably upward.

  At least my movement jolted Ricky into action. When he saw me coming, he crawled toward the upended roots of the birch and tried to hold them steady. The whole thing slipped sideways just as I reached the edge, but I managed to heave myself over the lip just before the trunk crashed sideways.

  So now we were both in trouble. Duffy, below us, went berserk barking. The platform continued to rise, shaking more violently now. Dislodged earth bounced and vibrated toward the edge, raining over it. Bare patches showed grey metal like the cylinders, pristine even though it had been buried only moments before.

  “What—” Ricky started, his voice shaky, but I cut him off.

  “I don’t know. We just have to get down.”

  I shimmied close to the edge and peered over. We were ten, maybe twelve feet off the ground. Still low enough to escape with nothing more than maybe a turned ankle if we moved fast. If I moved fast. I turned back to Ricky. His eyes were huge, and fixed on mine. Scared but trusting.

  “Climb on my back.”

  “Huh?” he said, but then he did as he was told. He slid his arms around my neck and clung tight. His legs wrapped around my waist.

  “Whatever happens, don’t let go.” I cleared earth and debris from the edge. The smooth, slick metal offered no appreciable lip to hold on to, but I had no choice. I lay on my belly, stuck my palms on the surface near the edge and carefully slid my legs over. The roar increased in volume and the platform vibrated roughly. The muscles in my arms and shoulders—especially the one already sore from hauling the damn dog around—trembled and screamed as I levered us over the edge and as slowly as I could, lowered us down until we hung from my fingertips. Ricky stayed silent and still, just hanging o
n.

  The platform jittered up, and I let go. I tried to bend my knees and roll into the impact as my feet hit the ground, but I had to try and protect Ricky, too, so I took the brunt of it. Sharp pain lanced up my left leg and I swore as a blast of heat from the underside of the platform hit me. Ricky slipped off and I rolled over onto my back. The platform, supported only by the five rails, hung suspended above us, the rails tilted upward now like the frame of a teepee. The heat came from some kind of engine on the underside. As I stared up at it, the whole thing began a lazy rotation.

  The pain in my leg gnawed at my brain for a minute and then I realized that Ricky was hauling on my arm, trying to pull me out from under the thing. “Come on,” he grunted. “Can you walk?”

  “Are you okay?” I answered, and he nodded. With his help, I managed to get to my feet. I tested weight on the left leg. Not broken, I thought, but not in great shape. With Ricky supporting me, we hobbled as fast as we could away from the platform. The back of my jacket felt warm, and I knew the heat from the thing was increasing. We might not be out of danger yet, and I tried to push the pain down and move as fast as I could. Duffy barked up at the thing non-stop as he backed away from it.

  “Ricky, run ahead. Get as far away as you can.”

  He didn’t say a word, just shook his head and tightened his grip around my waist. I wanted to scream at the pain in my leg, but I gritted my teeth and moved faster. If he wouldn’t leave me, then I had to get us both out of there. The roar behind us reached a crescendo and pain flared in my ears. Duffy yelped and I felt Ricky catch his breath. Whatever is about to happen must be close.

  Just then we came in sight of a stream—another bend of the one we’d crossed earlier. Not much in the way of a bank and it wasn’t very deep, but it would be better than nothing.

  “In the water!” I ordered. “Just keep your head out for now, and if we need to, maybe we can duck underneath.” I pictured a wall of flame spurting out from the thing behind us, charring everything in its path. The water could save us. Ricky seemed to stumble as he got to the bank, but he didn’t fall.