Our Child of the Stars

by Stephen Cox

  Molly’s revelation

  Molly was losing all sense of time, but the clock said four p.m. The nurse watched them, her mouth showing distaste, like most of the people around here who saw Cory as the Monster, the menace, the strange alien nightmare. But Cory lay very still and pale on the army bed, absent in a new way. When she slept beside him, her dreams were endless, walking league after league of hospital corridors looking for Cory, who wasn’t there. She missed the reassurance of meeting him in dreams, of the stories he showed her. The body lying there didn’t seem to be him but some inert copy.

  The reality was so much worse than the dreams: the ICU had only artificial light, there were always guards in the shape of nurses and soldiers and her child was shackled to the bed. The mighty power of the state was in evidence all around her. It was hopeless.

  A nurse had brought her Cory’s toys, the pottery owl and the red truck, and she wondered if he would ever play with them again. The tears were coming, but she couldn’t let these people see weakness.

  She’d always liked sitting by Cory’s bed when he slept; when he was well, it felt like payoff, watching him recharge for another day of storming around, rapid-fire questions, new words, new things. He was full of sudden impulses, to hug or kiss, or to draw a flower, or bring some exciting insect in a jar to be admired and set free. Cory took a lot, but he gave so much. And when he was sick, she felt like his guardian angel, holding back the dark things just by being there. A future might come when he would fly back to the stars and leave her, but when he was sick, she knew she was still needed.

  The nausea had finally gone and she felt hungry at last . . . and then she started thinking about dates and for the first time, how late her period was – and her mind and her body connected at last as she remembered the last time, so long ago, when she’d woken each morning feeling so horribly sick. How much hope and joy there’d been, and how badly it had ended . . .

  It couldn’t be true – but her body had been telling her for days now that it was.

  How odd Cory had looked at first, and how familiar he was now, with his skinny body and long tail, his stripy ridged ears, his webbed paws and huge violet eyes. She wished so hard to feel Cory’s presence inside her. He isn’t a dead husk, she told herself, but I need to feel it.

  What could she do for him now? What could she do for any of them?

  Her body’s news frightened her, because of what happened before, but she knew she must tell Gene – and here he came, looking haggard after hours of interrogation. He’d started re-growing his beard and she hated this intermediate stage: scratchy and scruffy was worse than bearded or clean-shaven.

  She hugged him tight and kissed him, but the escorting soldier took her arm, ready to pull her away.

  ‘Two minutes,’ she said.

  ‘Stay strong. They won’t get away with this,’ he said.

  ‘Gene, I’ve something to tell you.’ Yes, they were being overheard, but there would never be a good time, or a right time.

  She took a deep breath. ‘I think I’m pregnant.’ Unexpectedly, the tears came, a great gush. She’d worked on the words, but nothing more came; nothing more was needed as his strong arms encircled her.

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Ah . . .’ He turned to the soldier and asked politely, ‘Could we have a moment?’

  The soldier said nothing but he didn’t pull Molly away.

  ‘At least,’ Molly managed, ‘I’m four weeks late – of course, that might be the stress, but I’m so nauseous and it does feel like last time. I don’t know why I didn’t realise earlier.’

  After the miscarriage, there’d been some false alarms, when she’d sat in the nursery, crying for hours, then things got so dark between them that having a child felt too risky; a second miscarriage wouldn’t be just another dreadful death but the end of all hope for them.

  The nurse was staring at them as if this was some trick.

  Gene looked bemused. ‘I thought you were on the Pill?’

  How was he taking the news? ‘Yes, I am.’ He had been very keen to try again, but she wasn’t – then a star fell from the sky and a little purple boy dropped into their lives. Cory had been enough.

  He hugged her harder, leaving no doubt. ‘Molly, that’s fantastic! Great news! Aren’t you pleased?’

  She wiped her teary face on his sleeve. ‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘It’s all too much, to be honest.’

  There might be a war. They’re just going to hide us under a mountain somewhere. She didn’t have to say, It might die. Gene knew all these things.

  ‘We’ll get them to test you and get the best people over here to check you out. Cory will be so excited: he’ll just love being a big brother.’ He wiped his own eyes now, then looked at her, suddenly worried.

  The nurse broke in and asked Molly, ‘Do you want a test?’ There was the first glimmer of warmth.

  ‘Bring two, to double-check,’ Molly said, knowing her body would not lie. Hope was hard when you didn’t believe everything always happened for the best.

  ‘Are you worried . . . because, you know . . . ?’

  Through the tears, the answer came as she let the joy rise. Her own baby: another child for the big old house on Crooked Street, a sibling for Cory to love. Molly could always see a hundred gloomy possibilities, but locked up and with no sight of the future, she allowed herself to hope as she let them take her away.

  CHAPTER 41

  Into New Year

  In the room he had commandeered as an office Pfeiffer told his wife he loved her before hanging up.

  The President was demanding results, but what could they do? Cory just lay there, day and night, fed by a drip. He might never recover. The ghastly possibility kept rearing its head that perhaps the Myers really didn’t know anything that useful. Maybe even Cory didn’t. After all, if an admiral’s son fell into enemy hands, how much could he say about his father’s ship? They mustn’t raise the question of the spacecraft too soon.

  The other captives were still uncooperative too, so it was time to up the pressure. Would telling them he had Cory weaken their resolve, perhaps?

  Pfeiffer fingered the newspaper as if it might bite him. The New York Times had excelled itself in its coverage of this national meeting of publishers and editors. The publisher of Witness had brought a suitcase of his own cash, nothing more than a theatrical flourish, although he was bragging about fighting the government to free his staff. Meanwhile, the army had impounded a plane and imprisoned the scientists the Associated Press had hired to fly over the Meteor site. AP was running it anyway, calling the radioactivity story a hoax. Pfeiffer wanted to dunk those responsible in the toxic waters of Two Mile Lake. No one was saying aliens, not yet, but the government’s story was fraying at the edges.

  The National Security Advisor wanted to tell the Ship they held Cory and force it to talk to them, but Pfeiffer had sparred with that thinking machine more than any man alive and he hadn’t the slightest idea how it would react. He and Haldeman had misjudged it in one of their experiments and a man had died; his failure to predict that still rankled. And whatever the Russians had tried or offered the Ship, it had killed them too.

  He had to increase the pressure, not least so the President kept faith in him. In his pocket was the alien stimulant; Jarman had argued against using it, but in the end they had given Cory a tiny dose. It had had no effect, so a full dose would surely be safe enough. He checked the Myers’ timetable and composed his orders.

  The Myers and their ragged band of friends could not win. The sooner they realised that, the better.

  *

  Molly’s exercise period, a break from the grim, dragging hours underground, was one hour a day walking in a fenced-off area of barren walls. There were always two guards, as if she might fly away. The sun never reached that left-over space where no living thing grew, but she needed to stay healthy for the baby
so she walked under cold grey skies, like a tiger in a cage.

  She was beginning to fear they had lost Cory for ever. Maybe his brain was damaged and he would never recover. She huddled into the big coat, telling herself over and over that they would find a way through. When her time was up, she was ready to go back to Cory, but next to the two soldiers stood a military nurse with a syringe in her hand. Molly didn’t need to guess their plan.

  ‘Don’t make a fuss,’ the hard-eyed woman said.

  Molly fought them as they tried to restrain her, biting and kicking and screaming obscenities that felt bitter in her mouth. She felt a sudden satisfaction when she caught one of the soldiers between his legs, until the nurse, the most brutal of them, grabbed her arm, stuck in the needle and said, ‘So you prefer to be sedated?’

  ‘I. Am. Pregnant,’ Molly shouted. ‘If I lose the baby, I will kill you.’

  They forced something into her mouth, and the needle in her arm hurt – it’s so hard to do it well when the patient is struggling – then everything went far away and very small . . .

  *

  Molly came around feeling desolate and muggy-headed in a grim cell with nothing but a cot, a bucket and a sink. The frosted-glass window was barred. It was hard to marshal her thoughts for the ordeal to come.

  She was in a nightdress and bare-footed, but at least the cell was warm. One hand straying to her bruised arm, she examined the Bible, of all things, by the cot. There was a plastic jug of water, which she ignored; maybe that was drugged too.

  Someone was watching through a slot in the door, so she wrapped herself in the blanket, sat with her feet up on the bed, her back to the watcher, and somehow found her core of resistance.

  There was no clock but she reckoned it was perhaps an hour before Pfeiffer came. He had a burly guard to protect him and she noticed that he was clutching an ice-pack to his eye.

  ‘Looks painful,’ she said.

  ‘Dr Jarman hit me. As a man facing life imprisonment, he ought to be more careful. We have been too patient, Mrs Myers, but no longer. Your husband is in a similar cell. From now on, time with the child, or even getting any news, must be earned. You won’t see your husband or your son unless you cooperate.’

  That shrill, smug voice set her teeth on edge. ‘Give me my clothes,’ she said. ‘Take me to my son.’

  ‘Answer our questions.’

  ‘I have.’ She turned her back so he could feel her contempt. She was drugged and alone and her situation was hopeless, but she would not give up.

  A voice inside her said it had been wrong to bite and punch; it would be better to reproach them with compliance. But they were taking her son from her, and without her anger, what would keep her strong?

  *

  Molly thought Call-me-Sophia, the pleasant nurse with the smoothed-back raven hair, was so obviously a ploy. She was the one who’d brought Cory his toys in the ICU, so they’d planned to use her as the good cop from the beginning. Call-me-Sophia always tried to make conversation during Molly’s daily thirty-minute check-up. She asked how Molly was and appeared to mean it, looking so genuine when Molly told her about the miscarriage that Molly almost laughed.

  Of course the room was bugged. They would throw something nasty at her – the threat of moving her to a different base; indicting her for treason – and then Call-me-Sophia would bring hot chocolate, or some nice soft soap rather than the harsh army stuff, or a fashion magazine, and she would ask such friendly questions: ‘Why does he eat fish and not meat? How old is he? Do the purples have marriage?’

  Molly knew the game, but she volunteered stuff that would help Cory: how much fun he was, how kind, how trivial his peccadillos.

  ‘Bonnie and Chuck miss him very badly,’ Call-me-Sophia said one day.

  So: Bonnie and Chuck were nearby, and maybe together. She yearned for news of her friends, whose loyalty had cost them so dearly.

  ‘Well, making war on children is nothing new for you people, is it? Burning villages . . . Doesn’t your job disgust you?’

  Call-me-Sophia flushed and that was the end of that conversation. But that evening, she told Molly, ‘They’ll let me walk with you during exercise, if you like.’

  They’d brought Molly’s placating-the-bank clothes: a jacket and skirt, demure blouse and low pumps. Heels, with snow on the ground? Another mind-game. She’d demanded her slacks and comfortable boots back, but she wasn’t given a choice. Petty, petty stuff.

  ‘Please yourself,’ Molly said.

  Call-me-Sophia touched her finger to her lips and put a note into Molly’s hand.

  Cory no better no worse. Jarman allowed to try holding Cory in warm water. Gene writing vulgar songs re Dr P.

  Harmless disclosure to build trust. Well, she could play that game. ‘I’ll put the bloody skirt on,’ she said, her voice flat. ‘Is there any chance of some fresh air now? Just fifteen minutes.’

  Call-me-Sophia scrumpled the note and slipped it back into a pocket. She looked pleased. Such a phoney, Molly thought.

  ‘I’ll see,’ she said. If a mere nurse managed to get her time outside, that showed it was a trick. Whatever drugs they were giving her stripped colour from the world and told her resistance was pointless – so what was that slimeball Pfeiffer playing at?

  *

  It was the seventh day since their capture and something was up. The soldier who brought Molly’s lunch looked at her like she might explode. The nasty nurse appeared, waving her syringe, this time to take blood.

  ‘What’s that for?’ Molly said.

  ‘Orders,’ said Nasty Nurse, gripping her arm.

  Something had changed in the air.

  At last Call-me-Sophia arrived, very late, with three or four magazines. She sat next to Molly on the bed and moved one magazine to the top.

  Molly stared at the front cover, not understanding. It looked like Witness – surely that was the photo of them round the table, at the lake? World Exclusive screamed across the cover in bright scarlet red. There was a little Canadian flag in the corner.

  Somehow . . .

  ‘I’ll need to take these back soon,’ Call-me-Sophia said, her voice very low, cupping one hand to her ear.

  Bizarrely, all Molly could focus on at first was what a bad idea the red hair dye had been. She flipped the pages. World Exclusive by Carol Longman. It was their story, all of it, even the photos: here was her son in all his purple glory, throwing snowballs. Army Cover-Up. First Amendment Concerns. And there was a piece she could not bear to read, about American troops in Europe at Christmas, preparing themselves for war.

  She mouthed the words of the editorial as she read it. ‘Witness today reveals the biggest story since the Atomic Bomb. A gentle child of the stars lives peacefully among us. And we must tell the American people this truth in the face of an audacious and unconstitutional abuse of power . . .’

  When she looked up at last, Call-me-Sophia was looking at her anxiously. ‘Thanks,’ Molly said, meaning it.

  Call-me-Sophia mouthed something very slowly, as if to an idiot, and waved her hands to fill the cell. ‘Every TV station. Every radio station. All of them.’

  Molly said something banal, hating that the damned drugs made her mind so slow. The editor had taken two copies of everything – and somehow, he’d got one set over the border . . . And now the world knew.

  *

  The drugs made Molly slip into sleep easily. Here she walked in the woods beside her house; here was the lapping water of the creek near John and Eva’s farm. Now it was a night of bright stars, but she felt something as soft as a baby’s breath. She slipped into Cory’s memory of floating with his first mother in salty water under tropical stars: so weird, so inhuman, and yet to her so familiar and reassuring.

  Dreaming of Cory and him entering her dreams were not the same, but Molly felt Cory coming back to her, inch by inch, l
ike walking at night, when it was pitch-black out, but on the horizon you could see the first hint of watery grey light. He spoke to her in a sleepy little whisper, the sense clear: he was tired, and glad to see her.

  ‘Just rest, sweetie-pie,’ she tried to tell him. ‘Everything’s going to be fine.’

  She woke and she was alone, but she knew she had met him, that he was returning to her from someplace very close to death.

  CHAPTER 42

  The First Amendment

  Pfeiffer was in too much torment to drink coffee, instead swallowing the fizzing glass of bicarb and looking at the glass of milk with disgust. Each day a silent man laid out all the papers and magazines on a long table and like an addict struggling with his drug of choice, Pfeiffer flicked through them. Day three, and the little alien boy was still emblazoned across every front page and leading every TV and radio bulletin. Every network had rushed their top correspondent to Amber Grove to stand bareheaded in the snow, in front of the Meteor chunk, and parrot their lines. They had recycled all the facts, all the opinions and all the guesses and now they were interviewing each other. People were still flocking to Amber Grove on any vehicle they could beg, borrow or hitch a lift on. It was a town under siege.

  So many people accepted the idea that the authorities had tried to suppress the story that even the President’s most doughty defenders in the press were struggling. One great conservative commentator spent his column musing on whether hypothetical aliens might have souls. And the Soviets had shown their hand. Their Foreign Minister, speaking in neutral Vienna, proclaimed, ‘The alien – all the alien technology – should be shared with the world, in the interests of peace. What are the Americans hiding?’

  The foreign press lapped that up like tame dogs, conveniently forgetting how evasive the Russians had been about Siberia. Senator Fulbright, that self-righteous nay-sayer, was already on his high horse, calling for Congressional hearings, a special Joint Committee, no less, and in public. Once he got going, he’d be subpoenaing everyone he could get his filthy paws on, just to humiliate the Administration. Pfeiffer had clashed with the man before. No wonder his guts were punishing him.