For the First Time, Again, page 15
Kish pleaded for an explanation, but Tereshiin didn’t care. He took a wide stance in the middle of the road and held his sword forward. His eyes were wide but unfocused, as if his mind had abandoned a sinking ship.
Silhouettes in the distance grew larger and larger. Most of the villagers were unarmed, but they died just the same. Tereshiin slaughtered men and women alike. He hacked at people who were already dead. None could ever die enough to satisfy his rage.
Kish noticed a young boy, four or five, running to his dead mother.
—Father, there’s a child coming!
Tereshiin was still fighting grown-ups but had no intention of stopping there. He would kill every living thing in that village. He would kill their dogs, burn their houses to the ground.
—He does not matter. None of them do.
This time she understood what her father meant. The words resonated in Kish’s head, amplified by each stroke of Tereshiin’s blade until they were too loud to bear. The boy did not matter because he was different. His family did not matter because they were different. Who else was different? Was Kish? There was but one logical conclusion, one that burst into Kish’s mind like a star going nova. No one mattered, not a single soul, including her.
They had killed before only to save themselves. She’d killed because she had to. That wasn’t true, she realized, horrified. She’d killed people who were running away. She’d killed people who begged for their lives. She’d killed people who didn’t matter to save others who did, like her father told her to. One by one, the ghosts that woke her up at night showed her the future she’d sought. She saw corpses, as many as the stars, rising from the ground to form the great cities Tereshiin spoke of. She saw herself standing on the shores of the Idiqlat, stepping on skulls to reach the scarlet waters.
She saw herself playing with a wooden doll.
She hears noises coming from the street and moves closer to the door. A scream. She knows that voice; she’s heard it her whole life. She pulls the door open and steps out. Her mother is lying on her back, arms wide. There’s shade on both sides of her head, one darker than the other. Her father kneels and places his hands on her mother’s neck. Another shadow stretches in front of her. A man, looking down, his sword still dripping with her mother’s blood.
She remembered not just that day, but all of it. Memories rising from the desert sand like a scorpion unearthing itself. Every taste, every smell, running her fingers through another man’s beard. She remembered the lullaby her mother sang to her at night. “Someone sang it for me once,” her mother had said. “I was scared, and I heard a melody. I was thirsty and hurt. A stranger gave me water, and gently cleaned my wounds. That is why I’m here now, with you. Every bit of joy we have, we owe to a stranger and a song.” Her mother had been born elsewhere, but it was the people here who saved her. Kish was alive because of people who did not matter. She was one of them.
Tereshiin ran out of adults to slay. He walked up to the boy and held his sword high. It came down with strength and fury, but it never touched the boy. Sparks lit up the night as two blades collided, one held by a man who had raised a killer, one by the woman who called him Father.
ACT V
39
Evil Angel
—We have to kill her, Aster.
—No!
—Yes. We have to kill her and we have to do it now, while we can. She’s a killer, Aster, built for one purpose only. She’s a danger to you, to me, to everyone who crosses her path.
—She’s not! I slept w— Next to her, Samael. If she wanted to hurt me, she—I was sleeping! As in unconscious, not moving, probably snoring— Oh crud, I was snoring. My point is she could have killed me a hundred times, but she didn’t.
—And she might not hurt you tonight, or tomorrow, but one day she will and every minute we let her live takes us closer to that moment.
—She’s all alone, Samael—you saw to that—and she’s scared. She’s scared of everyone, except us. Well, me, at least.
—She has no reason to be scared of us.
—You just said you want to kill her.
—I meant that you are half her size and I can barely walk. She may be young, but neither of us would last a minute against her.
—You fought her brother.
—And I barely survived. Were it not for a serendipitously located drugstore, I would have bled out and we would not be talking today. It will take a while for my bone to mend, but my skin should be healing by now. It isn’t. I am in no condition to fight her. The simplest course of action is to kill her while she sleeps. I give you my word it will be painless.
—She won’t hurt us! That’s not why she’s here. She’s a fugitive, and she’s asking for our help. You don’t kill people who ask for help, that’s just wrong, and you definitely don’t kill people in their sleep! Seriously, who does that? She needs us, Samael.
—She told you that?
—Yes! Well, not exactly. She said, “Will you help me?”; then we talked some more and she said a lot more things, but I didn’t get all of it. I think she’s a deserter, something like that. The three of them were. You know what that means, right?
—Nothing. It means nothing because you have no idea what she said or whether you can trust her. However, if she said what you think she said and was being truthful, it would mean her people now have even more reason to come here.
—That’s … not what I was going to say.
—I figured as much.
—… I was going to say it means we have more time to send the sphere away. I mean, before we thought they were here already and now they’re not, so maybe they don’t know where the signal came from. Maybe they never even heard it. Either way, it means my plan has a better chance, doesn’t it?
—What’s her name?
—What?
—This entire reasoning of yours is based on the assumption that we can trust her, so I’m asking you to consider how well you know her. Do you even know her name?
—Saa.
—Just Saa.
—Yeah. I think. What? Her English ain’t that good. She speaks alien and German, and both are sort of the same to me right now.
—Fine. Let us assume for one moment that she’s telling the truth. What do you suggest we do with her?
—What do you mean?
—I mean the U.S. Government found the body of her … associate on the highway. Let me rephrase that. They found the body of a woman of unusual height and size, whose anatomy suggests she isn’t human. There have been incidents involving people of unusual height and size all over the map. They will put two and two together if they haven’t already. You believe she was a fugitive on her world. I can tell you with absolute certainty that she is one on this world.
—So are we!
—Indeed! You saw what the authorities had in store for you. What do you think they will do to her when they catch her? And believe me, they will. I changed my appearance as best I could. You cut your hair. With all the resources at our disposal, we barely manage to stay under the radar. What can she do? Where can she hide? There is no future for her. None. Not here, not anywhere. I know you like her, Aster, but she is a liability to everyone who comes near her and every second she spends in this room puts us both at unnecessary risk. We have to k—
—Stop saying that!
—Me? You said so yourself, Aster. That was your plan, was it not? Step one. Get rid of the giant bad people. Well, there she is. She’s the last one.
—SO AM I! So are you. I know, you have a cousin, but that’s close enough. We’re Alabama red-bellied turtles, all of us.
—I beg your pardon?
—Turtles. They’re like yay big. I read about them in the paper. They only live down south, and with global warming and the sea rising, the marshes they live in are disappearing. I collected money at school for them, gave up my whole allowance for two weeks. There’s only a thousand turtles left. Maybe it’s ten thousand; I forgot.
—Your point being?
—I ain’t killing the last one!
—We’re talking about the alien woman now, not the turtles, correct?
—Yes. We’re keeping her.
—She’s not a pet, Aster. She’s the apex predator in a world more dangerous than you and I can imagine. She doesn’t belong here.
—We’re keeping her. For now, at least.
—I strongly—
—It’s Christmas! We can talk about this after the holidays, but we’re not murdering anyone on Christmas Day. That’s like superwrong.
—… I used to love Christmas. It was perhaps the only time our family felt … normal.
—Does that mean—?
—We should relocate. Somewhere remote where we won’t draw attention.
—The three of us?
—Yes, the three of us.
—Thank you! Merry Christmas, by the way.
—Merry Christmas to you too, Aster.… I didn’t buy—
—It’s okay. I didn’t either.
40
The Shining
2002
Oooh, Caaanada! Terre de nos. I forgot. French is hard. We couldn’t stay in Germany, so we been hiding in a tiny tiny Quebec town near the U.S. border. It’s called Frelighsburg. I’m pretty sure that’s a German name. Is that ironic? I don’t think I know what “ironic” means anymore. Everything here is tiny. There’s tiny old buildings, tiny streets, tiny mountains all around. And it’s all white. I wanted snow, well, I got snow. It goes above my head in places. This has to be the prettiest place on Earth—okay, maybe top ten, if you stay inside. Outside, it’s cooooold. Evil cold. You go outside and the air rushes into your nose and stabs you with minuscule shards of ice. I didn’t know you could freeze from the inside of your face. I don’t understand how people survive here. Maybe they don’t. Maybe half of them die of scurvy every year. We went out twice. The hotel owner, Jean-Pierre, loaned us all snowshoes so we could walk in the woods. I never even heard of snowshoes before. They’re cool, but they’re definitely not shoes. We walked for like two hours. I hurt everywhere when we got back. My hands, my feet, my nose, my ears. Oh God, my ears! And then, OH MY GAWD. It turns out freezing your toes hurts like hell, but it’s nothing compared to unfreezing your toes. We stay inside now, except to get food, and beer. They make their own. It’s way better than German beer.
Samael’s gone for a few days. I been watching TV—they have HBO—and fighting with Saa. You have to say it like you’re trying to gargle. Saaaargh. She still speaks her own language, sometimes. I’m not sure why. She knows I don’t understand any of it. She’s supersmart. It’s only been two weeks, but her English is getting way better. She knew like two words when we got here. “Food.” She used that one a lot, though it sounds more like “foot” when she says it. She eats all the time. And “fight.” Well, she said “fart,” but she said it right before we tussled, so I figured she meant “fight.” She still does it. She just … she pushes me for no reason, then I say: “Hey!” and I push her back, and then she says: “Fart”; then we tussle. I know she goes easy on me, but it still hurts. We had a pillow fight once. She liked that. I sprained a finger, but it was fun. She wrecked that pillow, though. There were feathers everywhere. Samael was mad. He made us pick them up one by one. Saa didn’t like that. These two really don’t like each other. Samael thinks she’s evil and she— Well, Samael came up with a far-fetched story about the police shooting her brother, but I don’t think she bought it.… There’s tons of feathers in a pillow. I was surprised. You’d need like a dozen ducks just to make one. Maybe they’re geese, whatever. I feel bad for ducks now. We have eight pillows in our room and there are a lot of rooms. There’s more hotels, and houses. Everyone has pillows.
Saa never talked about that night in Berlin. Either she wants to forget it or she ain’t got the vocabulary. Me, I ain’t got the vocabulary. She likes me; that much I know. Maybe the tussling is good enough. We tussle a lot. I … I feel awful. Samael was half-right. I didn’t think of her as a pet, but I didn’t think of her as, well, like me. She is, though. She’s just like me, except she’s huge and says weird things, but I see it in her face. She’s sad sometimes, even when she smiles. She gets lonely when I’m not around. She gets lonely when I’m around. I really wish she were happy. I wish I could help with that, but Sam’s right; she can’t go anywhere. I guess she’s a bit like a pet. She’s stuck in a cage, which sucks, and she’ll die if she ever gets out. I think she knows; that’s the worst part.
My whole plan is on pause now. Most of it, anyway. I still don’t know how to get Bruce Willis off my back. There’s Saa to deal with now, and then there’s George W. Bush. I didn’t plan for him. Our Pluto mission won the New Frontiers competition. That wasn’t much of a surprise because the two finalists were missions to Pluto and we gave money to both. There was one in Colorado that was backed by JPL, and the folks in Maryland Qian Xuesen said we should talk to. That’s the one that won. Anyway, that was last November. Now the new administrator at NASA, the one George W. Bush put in, decided not to include it in next year’s budget, which pretty much nipped the whole thing in the bud.
It’s not over, just … harder, but then again, everything is, so … I threw money at it. That’s my new thing, apparently. We gave thirty million bucks to the project to keep them afloat while we lobby every expert in the field to tell NASA they should really send the probe up. Samael is down in Maryland to sign some papers. I bet he hates me right now.
I told him we should get them to change the name while we’re at it. I mean, we’re paying. He looked at me funny. I think that meant no. Still, they called it New Horizons. It’s not the worst name in the world, but it’s kind of—I don’t know—obvious. It’s like calling it Superfar or Never Been There. I’d have called it Venetia, for Venetia Phair. She’d have loved that.
In 1930—her name was Burney back then—Venetia’s grandfather read about how they discovered a ninth planet in the solar system. He told her, and she said they should name the planet Pluto, after the Roman god who could make himself invisible, ’cause, you know, the planet was hard to find. Her grandpa liked that and he wrote to the astronomers who’d found the planet. They liked it too, enough to use the name. It’s supercool. She was eleven and she got to name a planet. I wish I could do that.
41
We’re Going to Be Friends
Saa hasn’t said a word all morning. She keeps staring out the window, like she’s waiting for something, someone.
—Everything okay, Saa?
—Mein Bruder. Er fehlt mir.
—I don’t know what that means.
—I miss him.
—Were you two close?
—Ja. Always together. He … protect me.
—He was older than you?
—Zwei Zyklen. He was … seventeen.
—Seven—Wait, what? You’re fifteen years old?
—Fifteen my years. Different, maybe.
Whoa. She’s a year older than me. Well, one more rotation around a star. That could mean anything, I suppose. Mercury goes around the sun in eighty-eight days; Neptune takes 165 years. She could be older than the pyramids, or the biggest toddler ever. Nah. I say we’re the same age, almost. It sure felt that way back when … There was this … carefulness in her kiss. Not like I’ll-be-gentle-’cause-I’m-twice-your-size carefulness—although there’s probably some of that too—but it felt like “I have no idea what I’m doing, so I’ll go slow.” Of course, the kiss was all in my head, so maybe she’s fifty-five and divorced three times. It felt real; that’s all I know.
—Saa, when we met at the bar—
—Dancing!
—Yes, we danced. But before that, I—
She’s grinning. She knows what I’m talking about. Gawd, I’m self-conscious again.
—Yesherat schiire.
—That ain’t German, right?
—Nein. Drinking from the same cup. Sometimes your … Denken is my Denken. My head, your head, same thing. Es ist normal.
—You mean our people are telepaths?
—I don’t know … telepath.
—We can communicate with our mind?
—No. We cannot control. More like … gas.
—Gas? I don’t— Oh, you mean like a fart?
—Yes. It just happens.
—Ha! Well, you kissed me in your fart.
—Maybe it was your fart.
My fart! Hell no. It was totally her. Fine, I can’t stop looking at her, but I peed my pants when I first saw her. I don’t think you can pee your pants and kiss people in your head at the same time. Still, we’re telepaths.… Oh my god, giant lady on the highway. She gave me her hand. She wanted me to go with her. I thought I was losing it. I guess what I saw was real. Yesherat schiire. Brain fart. Giant lady wanted my help and she got shot in the face. Now I feel bad for getting her killed. Then again, she gave Pa a heart attack, so maybe she deserved it. How’d she know where to find me, though? I was hitchhiking in the middle of nowhere. I don’t know how Saa found me in Berlin either.
—How did you know I was at the bar? You never said.
—Detektor!
—For real? What does it detect? People like us?
—Ja.
—Can I see?
—Detektor.
Cool. Alien iPhone. It’s just a blank screen with two red dots in the middle. I guess that’s us. I wish I knew what it’s searching for. DNA, maybe. Saa and I don’t exactly look alike, but that machine thinks we’re the same. This is so weird. Whatever they did to us to shrink us down to size, I’d be as tall as she is if I been born … one of them.
—What’s it like, on your world?
—…
Was that a shrug? I think that was a shrug.
—You don’t know?
