by Jerry
He was surprisingly light, so she ended up dragging him in and parked him in the middle of the circular floor. Securing the hatchway proved confusing, but she finally figured out the mechanism and wound it shut.
Her patient abruptly stirred and muttered, making thick, smacking sounds with his mouth. She cast about for some form of liquid to administer and found some little, oddly shaped, soft containers which gurgled and sloshed when shaken. Pressing on one produced a hissing sound at the tip. Clumsily, she removed the little cap which covered it and a rank, brownish liquid squirted out in her face. She hastily released her grip and then stood, transfixed, as a drop of the substance trickled down her nose and into her mouth. There was a burst of clamorous sound and acrid flavor which receded into a faintly sweet, lingering aftertaste and soft, harmonious humming, producing a most stimulating effect. She gazed down at the container, which she had dropped. She picked it up and went over to the biped. After a moment of hesitation, she knelt and carefully squeezed a drop of the liquid onto his tongue. He rolled his eyes and sighed, softly, but lapsed back into stillness. Then she squirted a little stream into his mouth and stood back to observe its effect. His response was instantaneous and violent. He jerked up to a sitting position and shrieked unintelligibly, flailing about with his arms and then covering his ears with his hands and huddling down with his head between his legs. Finally he lay back, gasping, but fully conscious and evidently unharmed. He seemed to take in his surroundings with some surprise and obvious relief, then his gaze fell upon her and she tensed and drew back in sudden apprehension. But he just murmured something and held out a pale, slightly shaking hand in a strange gesture.
Slowly, she approached him. Having ascertained that he would not grab at her, she knelt down beside him and studied his ugly face. The eyes creased around the edges and his thick lips parted and curled, revealing the curious protuberances within. She blanched and drew back again, but calmed when he uttered a low, soothing sound. Then he closed his eyes and groaned and she noticed he was trembling. She searched the compartment and found a length of soft, pliant material. She covered him with it and he grimaced oddly at her again, then slept.
She woke in confusion, startled by a sound, and quickly oriented herself. He was gone, and she realized that the sound of the hatch closing had awakened her. She ran to the entry, suddenly fearing she had been made prisoner for some dark purpose. To her relief, the hatch opened with no resistance and she ventured out into the morning sunlight.
He was sitting with his back against the hull of the ship. When he saw her, he pointed at the fanger’s carcass and babbled gutturally, his head waving back and forth. She stared at him, uncomprehending, then demonstrated how she had slain the beast. This was accomplished at the expense of one of the more distasteful of the local fauna whose misfortune it was to be scuttling about at the edge of the clearing.
He weakly made his way over to the fresh kill and examined it, then proceeded to gnaw hungrily at the remains. She looked away in disgust. However, she realized her own hunger, and satisfied it with provisions from her pouch. He watched, with interest. She proffered a morsel of food and he took it, sniffed gingerly, grimaced, and handed it back. She shrugged and tucked it away for later consumption.
The rest of the day was spent in cautious diplomacy. His condition was clearly debilitated, but improving, and he ushered her about the ship as best he could, gesticulating and articulating in an obviously eager attempt to communicate. His ship was full of wonders and inscrutable gadgetry, yet she began to grasp some of the implications of its alien design.
Catching his attention, she spread her arms as if to encompass the entire craft, then pointed toward the sky, indicating flight. He waggled his head and pointed in turn at an indicator of some sort, then continued the tour of the ship. She followed in disappointment but soon became absorbed in the many fascinations he displayed.
When he paused to rest, she considered the full significance of their meeting and realized that, despite his repulsive countenance, she was glad for a companion. The better part of her fear had vanished and the reprieve from involuntary solitude was welcome, indeed.
They established a tentative alliance and, when his strength had returned, she took him to her ship. He was fascinated with it and spent quite some time curiously poking around and intently taking in the information she was able to relay in the sign language which they had developed. Sometimes she wondered if he understood half of what she attempted to communicate.
Their preoccupation with the consequences of mutual discovery was abruptly cut short by the onset of the extremely cold season which she had anticipated. Pooling their resources was, by now, an expedient so spontaneously adopted that it seemed always to have been inevitable. They worked ceaselessly, gutting her vessel of all useful items and transferring the store of food which she had been accumulating to his larger, tighter ship.
She learned to hunt for his provisions, scouring the increasingly barren countryside while he worked on and about his ship, making ready for the siege. He seemed more susceptible to extremes of temperature than she.
But the day came when even she could not bear the cold for long. She arose one morning and made her way to the frozen stream to bring back ice for water, as was her habit.
In her haste to return to the warmth of the ship, she lost her footing on the icy bank and rolled, scrabbling frantically for a handhold, onto the frozen surface. Her head glanced sharply against a boulder jutting out of the ice, and she lay still. Liquid oozed from a gash on her temple and gradually slackened in its tracks, forming a hard, dribbly course of crystalline drops.
He slept on.
Cold . . . head aches . . . anxiety . . . where am I?
Open one eye. . . the cabin wall. . . just dreaming. Sink back into oblivion . . . safe, warm . . .
. . . no, COLD . . .
He sat up and sleepily looked around. He was alone—she must be out getting water.
Time to get up anyway. Have to try and reseal that crack in the foremost bulkhead for better insulation . . .
He crawled over to the cache and fished out a strip of dried meat. As he chewed, unenthusiastically, he allowed his mind to wander, breaking the palatal monotony. The flavor of the meat reminded him of his first taste of tassedon.
Hard to catch, those little beasts . . . Good thing she had that cathecter or I might have starved. Funny . . . I used to think she looked so hideous . . . not now . . . Guess I was just feverish. Weird creature, though . . . but better company than none. Pretty good, in fact. Wonder if she’s still afraid of me? Don’t think so—but I’d best go slow . . . she’s so nervous . . . and I never can tell what she’s thinking . . . If only we could talk . . . Guess I’ll just have to keep trying . . . Oh-h-h!
His reverie was interrupted by an insistent throbbing in his left temple. He rubbed it curiously and concluded that he must have bumped against something while sleeping.
He got up and went to the hatch, opened it, and looked out, shivering in the onslaught of frigid air.
No sign of her.
His pulse started to race as he began to consider the possibility of trouble. While preparing to go in search of her, he realized that his desire to act went beyond simple concern for someone in need of help. He paused in surprise, perceiving the full impact that her presence had had upon him.
Wrapping himself as best he could against the penetrating cold, he hurried through the hatch and staggered toward the stream, bent double in the pounding wind.
By the time he got to the bank, he knew he’d never make it back to the ship. He stumbled to the edge and squinted up and down the length of the stream.
He found her and managed to pull her stiff body up off of the ice. Bowing under the weight, he hauled her on his back, trudging blindly in the direction of the ship.
He fell to his knees and continued to crawl, dragging her along.
It couldn’t be far now . . .
He ceased to be conscious of th
e cold.
She burned all over . . . it was agony to breathe.
Her head was lifted and the silken edge of a pod touched her lips. Warm liquid trickled down her throat and spread out into her aching extremities.
She slept.
His face was close to hers. He crooned and held her in his arms. She inhaled deeply, savoring his fragrance, then reached up and touched his cheek with three amethyst fingers.
He spoke to her and she mimicked the sounds softly, “m-m-mit arsann, oo-shane.”
He chuckled. “You’re learning, honey.”
giANTS
Edward Bryant
Nature imposes limitations that no amount of wishful thinking can remove. But sometimes they can be used . . .
Paul Chavez looked from the card on the silver plate to O’Hanlon’s face and back to the card. “I couldn’t find the tray,” she said. “Put the thing away maybe twelve years ago and didn’t have time to look. Never expected to need it.” Her smile folded like parchment and Chavez thought he heard her lips crackle.
He reached out and took the card. Neat black-on-white printing asserted that one Laynie Bridgewell was a bona fide correspondent for the UBC News Billings bureau. He turned the card over. Sloppy cursive script deciphered as: “Imperitive I talk to you about New Mexico Project.”
“Children of electronic journalism,” Chavez said amusedly. He set the card back on the plate. “I suppose I ought to see her in the drawing room—if I were going to see her, which I’m not.”
“She’s a rather insistent young woman,” said O’Hanlon.
Chavez sat stiffly down on the couch. He plaited his fingers and rested the palms on the crown of his head. “It’s surely time for my nap. Do be polite.”
“Of course, Dr. Chavez,” said O’Hanlon, sweeping silently out of the room, gracefully turning as she exited to close the doors of the library.
Pain simmered in the joints of his long bones. Chavez shook two capsules from his omnipresent pill case and poured a glass of water from the carafe on the walnut desk. Dr. Hansen had said it would only get worse. Chavez lay on his side on the couch and felt weary—seventy-two years’ weary. He supposed he should have walked down the hall to his bedroom, but there was no need. He slept better here in the library. The hardwood panels and the subdued Mondrian originals soothed him. Endless ranks of books stood vigil. He loved to watch the wind-blown patterns of the pine boughs beyond the French windows that opened onto the balcony. He loved to study the colors as sunlight spilled through the leaded DNA double-helix pane Annie had given him three decades before.
Chavez felt the capsules working faster than he had expected. He thought he heard the tap of something hard against glass. But then he was asleep.
In its basics, the dream never changed.
They were there in the desert somewhere between Albuquerque and Alamogordo, all of them: Ben Peterson, the tough cop; the FBI man Robert Graham; Chavez himself; and Patricia Chavez, his beautiful, brainy daughter.
The wind, gusting all afternoon, had picked up; it whistled steadily, atonally, obscuring conversation. Sand sprayed abrasively against their faces. Even the gaunt stands of spiny cholla bowed with the wind.
Patricia had struck off on her own tangent. She struggled up the base of a twenty-foot dune. She began to slip back almost as far as each step advanced her.
They all heard it above the wind—the shrill, ululating chitter.
“What the hell is that?” Graham yelled.
Chavez shook his head. He began to run toward Patricia. The sand, the wind, securing the brim of his hat with one hand; all conspired to make his gait clumsy.
The immense antennae rose first above the crest of the dune. For a second, Chavez thought they surely must be branches of windblown cholla. Then the head itself heaved into view, faceted eyes coruscating with changing hues of red and blue. Mandibles larger than a farmer’s scythes clicked and clashed. The ant paused, apparently surveying the creatures downslope.
“Look at the size of it,” said Chavez, more to himself than to the others.
He heard Peterson’s shout. “It’s as big as a horse!” He glanced back and saw the policeman running for the car.
Graham’s reflexes were almost as prompt. He had pulled his .38 Special from the shoulder holster and swung his arm, motioning Patricia to safety, yelling, “Back, get back!” Patricia began to run from the dune all too slowly, feet slipping on the sand, legs constricted by the ankle-length khaki skirt. Graham fired again and again, the gun popping dully in the wind.
The ant hesitated only a few seconds longer. The wind sleeked the tufted hair on its purplish-green thorax. Then it launched itself down the slope, all six articulated legs churning with awful precision.
Chavez stood momentarily frozen. He heard a coughing stutter from beside his shoulder. Ben Peterson had retrieved a Thompson submachine gun from the auto. Gouts of sand erupted around the advancing ant. The creature never hesitated.
Patricia lost her race in a dozen steps. She screamed once as the crushing mandibles closed around her waist. She looked despairingly at her father. Blood ran from both corners of her mouth.
There was an instant eerie tableau. The Tommy gun fell silent as Peterson let the muzzle fall in disbelief. The hammer of Graham’s pistol clicked on a spent cylinder. Chavez cried out.
Uncannily, brutally graceful, the ant wheeled and, still carrying Patricia’s body, climbed the slope. It crested the dune and vanished. Its chittering cry remained a moment more before raveling in the wind.
Sand flayed his face as Chavez called out his daughter’s name over and over. Someone took his shoulder and shook him, telling him to stop it, to wake up. It wasn’t Peterson or Graham.
It was his daughter.
She was his might-have-been daughter.
Concerned expression on her sharp-featured face, she was shaking him by the shoulder. Her eyes were dark brown and enormous. Her hair, straight and cut short, was a lighter brown.
She backed away from him and sat in his worn, leather-covered chair. He saw she was tall and very thin. For a moment he oscillated between dream-orientation and wakefulness. “Patricia?” Chavez said.
She did not answer.
Chavez let his legs slide off the couch and shakily sat up. “Who in the world are you?”
“My name’s Laynie Bridgewell,” said the young woman.
Chavez’s mind focused. “Ah, the reporter.”
“Correspondent.”
“A semantic distinction. No essential difference.” One level of his mind noted with amusement that he was articulating well through the confusion. He still didn’t know what the hell was going on. He yawned deeply, stretched until a dart of pain cut the movement short, said, “Did you talk Ms. O’Hanlon into letting you up here?”
“Are you kidding?” Bridgewell smiled. “She must be a great watchdog.”
“She’s known me a long while. How did you get up here?”
Bridgewell looked mildly uncomfortable. “I, uh, climbed up.”
“Climbed?”
“Up one of the pines. I shinnied up a tree to the balcony. The French doors were unlocked. I saw you inside sleeping, so I came in and waited.”
“A criminal offense,” said Chavez.
“They were unlocked,” she said defensively.
“I meant sitting and watching me sleep. Terrible invasion of privacy. A person could get awfully upset, not knowing if another human being, a strange one at that, is secretly watching him snore or drool or whatever.”
“You slept very quietly,” said Bridgewell. “Very still. Until the nightmare.”
“Ah,” said Chavez. “It was that apparent?”
She nodded. “You seemed really upset. I thought maybe I ought to wake you.”
Chavez said, “Did I say anything.”
She paused and thought. “Only two words I could make out. A name—Patricia. And you kept saying ‘them.’ ”
“That figures.” He smiled. He fe
lt orientation settling around him like familiar wallpaper in a bedroom, or old friends clustering at a departmental cocktail party. “You’re from the UBC bureau in Billings?”
“I drove down this morning.”
“Work for them long?”
“Almost a year.”
“First job?”
She nodded. “First real job.”
“You’re what—twenty-one?” said Chavez.
“Twenty-two.”
“Native?”
“Of Montana?” She shook her head. “Kansas.”
“University of Southern California?”
Another shake. “Missouri.”
“Ah,” he said. “Good school.” Chavez paused. “You’re here on assignment?”
A third shake. “My own time.”
“Ah,” said Chavez again. “Ambitious. And you want to talk to me about the New Mexico Project?”
Face professionally sober, voice eager, she said, “Very much. I didn’t have any idea you lived so close until I read the alumni bulletin from the University of Wyoming.”
“I wondered how you found me out.” Chavez sighed. “Betrayed by my alma mater . . .” He looked at her sharply. “I don’t grant interviews, even if I occasionally conduct them.” He stood and smiled. “Will you be wanting to use the stairs, or would you rather shinny back down the tree?”
“Who is Patricia?” said Bridgewell.
“My daughter,” Chavez started to say. “Someone from my past,” he said.
“I lost people to the bugs,” said Bridgewell quietly. “My parents were in Biloxi at the wrong time. Bees never touched them. The insecticide offensive got them both.”
The pain in Chavez’s joints became ice needles. He stood—and stared.
Even more quietly, Bridgewell said, “You don’t have a daughter. Never had. I did my homework.” Her dark eyes seemed even larger. “I don’t know everything about the New Mexico Project—that’s why I’m here. But I can stitch the rumors together.” She paused. “I even had the bureau rent an old print of the movie. I watched it four times yesterday.”
