Points of Departure: Stories

by Pat Murphy

  The helicopter was circling nearby. The roving beams of its spotlights reflected from the raindrops, forming bright shafts of light that seemed to connect the copter to the ground. The spotlights moved in a frantic, erratic pattern, rippling over the cars, the alleys, the walls of buildings.

  Sirens in the street, bright lights flashing blue and red and blue and red, the rattle of gunfire, a distant explosion—I backed away from the window, suddenly frightened. I turned off my light and crawled into bed, pulling the covers up under my chin. I hadn’t meant to lure the spaceship in too close. I hadn’t meant to cause trouble.

  For a long time, I lay awake, listening to the sirens.

  The next day, Harold said that there had been a drug bust down the street. “Thank God they’re doing something to clean up the neighborhood,” he said to Mrs. Goldman, who wasn’t listening.

  Harold believes what he reads in the newspapers. He doesn’t know about the aliens. He doesn’t see the world as it really is.

  With the alien claw on the arm of my chair, I lie in my bed, trying to sleep. My room is not a quiet place. The bathroom faucet drips, a delicate tap, tap, tapping, in the darkness. The wheezing of buses and the rattling of Muni trains drift up to my window from the street below. My next-door-neighbor’s TV rumbles through the walls—he’s a little deaf, and he keeps the sound turned up loud.

  On this particular night I notice a new noise: a furtive scrabbling that stops each time I move. I sit up in the bed and look around, thinking it might be a rat. I’ve seen rats on the stairs, nasty gray shadows that flee at the sound of footsteps.

  The metal claw is no longer on the arm of the chair. I wait, remaining very still. Finally, by the pale moonlight that filters through my window, I see the claw crouching among the bags and boxes. As I watch, it begins to move again, pulling itself along with its three digits and dragging its broken stalk across the carpet. I shift my weight, the bed creaks, and the claw stops, freezing in position.

  It seems so frightened and helpless, crouching on the floor in the darkness. “It’s all right,” I say to it softly. “Don’t worry. I won’t hurt you. I’m your friend.” I remain very still.

  Eventually, the claw moves again. I hear a soft rustling as it pushes between the paper bags. I hear it rattling among the broken umbrellas. I fall asleep to the gentle clicking as its digits flex and straighten, flex and straighten again.

  In the morning, I see the claw sunning itself in the pale morning light that comes in the window. When I was a girl on my grandfather’s farm, the morning light was yellow like the corn that grew in the fields, like the sunflowers on the edge of the garden. But the city light is gray. I remember reading somewhere that different stars cast light of different colors. I wonder what color light the claw is used to.

  During the night, the claw has improved itself. It has six legs now—the original three and three more that look like they were constructed from the ribs of a broken umbrella.

  When I sit up in bed, the claw scurries away, seeking refuge among the boxes and bags. I watch it go.

  It’s comforting to have something alive here in my room. I had a kitten once, a scrawny black alley cat that I found hiding under a dumpster in an alley. But Harold found out about it and told me cats weren’t allowed. When I was out, he got into my room and took the kitten away. I don’t think he could catch the claw and take it away. I’ll bet that the claw would hide so well that he wouldn’t even see it.

  I get up and wash my face. In a cracked cup, I make myself a cup of instant coffee, using hot water from the bathroom tap. I eat a sweet roll from a bag of day-old donuts that I bought from the shop on the corner. As I eat my breakfast and get dressed, I talk softly to the claw that I know is hidden somewhere among my things. “No one will find you here,” I tell the claw. “I’ll make sure of that. You’ll be okay with me.”

  The claw does not respond, but I know it’s there, hidden and silent. I finish dressing, take my shopping bag, and go out to see what I can find.

  The day is cold and a bitter wind has swept the gutters almost clean. Though I search for hours, I can’t find any other spaceship parts. I find other things: a few aluminum cans, a rhinestone brooch with a broken pin, a stray button from someone’s coat. Near a construction site, I find a one-foot length of cable made up of many strands of copper wire. But nothing else from the spaceship. Finally, late in the afternoon, I return to my room.

  The claw has been busy while I was out. In the narrow space between the bed and the bags of things, it has built a metal framework from the narrow ribs of broken umbrellas.

  In my absence, it seems to have gained confidence. As I make my way to the chair, it continues working.

  The framework forms a cylinder that is maybe six feet long and two feet across. As I watch, the claw neatly snips another rib from a broken umbrella. Carrying the strip of metal in its two front feet, it makes its way to the end of the cylinder, then begins to weave the strip in with the others, pushing it over and under the crisscrossing strips of the framework. It’s a clever little machine, busy about its own business. I wonder if it even notices that I’m home.

  I set the shopping bag on the floor at my feet and begin to sort through my acquisitions. Boldly, the claw comes over to investigate these additions to my collection. It examines the cable closely, gently separating the individual copper strands. I watch for a moment and then put my hand down by the floor, wiggling my fingers as if coaxing a cat to come nearer. The claw abandons the cable and turns toward my hand, approaching cautiously. It touches me delicately with two of its digits, hesitates, then clambers onto my outstretched hand.

  My hands are still cold from being outside. The claw radiates a comforting warmth, like the glow of a wood fire.

  Moving slowly, I bring it to my lap. It folds its legs beneath it, snuggling down. I stroke it gently and the claw responds by vibrating pleasantly, like a cat purring.

  “Were you lonely before I found you?” I ask the claw. “Were you lost and all alone?”

  The claw just keeps on purring. I can feel its heat through the fabric of my dress. The warmth soothes my aching legs. It feels so right to hold the claw and just sit.

  “You must have been frightened,” I say. “It’s much better when someone’s with you.”

  I stroke the claw, knowing that I should get up and heat up some soup on the hot plate. But I’m not hungry now, though I haven’t eaten since the sweet roll I had for breakfast. Through my window, I watch the sky grow darker. I relax, reluctant to move, and I consider the framework that the claw has constructed.

  It could be something dangerous, I suppose, but I rather doubt that. The claw seems like a friendly creature.

  I study the structure and think about what it might be.

  Back in school, I remember experimenting with a worm called the planaria. If you cut off a piece of a planaria, the piece will grow into a whole planaria again. All you need is a piece, and the piece recreates the rest.

  Suppose that the alien spaceship was like a planaria.

  Each part of it contained all the information about the whole thing. Break off one piece, and that piece would go about reconstructing the rest. I consider’ the framework that the claw has built.

  “I’ll tell you what I think,” I say to the claw. “I think you are rebuilding the spaceship that blew up.”

  The claw shows no interest in my theories. After a time, it scrambles off my lap and gets back to work, busily weaving the copper wire in and out through the framework it has built. Every now and then, it selects a metal button from the box of buttons, threads the wire through the holes in the button, and then continues its weaving. I can see no pattern to its selection or placement of buttons.

  That night, I lie awake, listening to the rustlings of the claw as it searches among my things and assembles them into an alien pattern.

  I wake to the rattle of aluminum. The claw is hard at work. Flattened aluminum cans fill the gaps in the framework, held in p
lace by a lacework of copper wire. Pearl buttons and rhinestone brooches, scavenged from my bags and boxes, sparkle among the cans. The claw scrambles over the surface, tirelessly weaving copper wire over the can that it is adding. It looks so natural there: like a spider on its web.

  I don’t want to leave. I’m afraid that if I leave, the claw will be gone when I come back. I sit on the edge of the bed to watch it work. As I watch, it hesitates for a moment, and then leaves its work to rest on the floor at my feet. When I reach out to touch it, it clambers onto my hand and lets me put it in my lap. For a time, it sits in my lap and purrs, then it returns to work.

  I feel sad, watching the claw build the craft that will take it away. Eventually, I go out on my usual rounds, unwilling to watch any longer.

  It is a cold, bleak day, and I find nothing of interest. A few aluminum cans, a few bottle caps. Maybe the claw can use them to complete its work. I carry them back to the hotel.

  My social worker is waiting for me in the lobby, perched uncomfortably on the dingy sofa. She sits between Mrs. Goldman and Mr. Johnson. She is talking brightly about something, but they are ignoring her, lost in their own hazy thoughts. She catches me before I can slip past.

  “I’m so glad to see you,” she said. “I was quite worried when you missed your appointment. I asked the manager to check your room.” She glanced at Harold, but he was busy with his papers, refusing to look up. “You know, we really must clean up all that trash beside your bed.”

  I stare at her. “What are you talking about?”

  “All those cans and things. It’s really a health hazard. I’ve already arranged to have someone come in tomorrow and—”

  “You can’t do that,” I protested. “Those are my things.”

  “Now just relax,” she said, her voice dripping with understanding. “It really isn’t safe. Imagine if there were a fire. You’d never be able to get out of your room with all that clutter. It’s really best—”

  “If there were a fire, we’d all roast like marshmallows,” I say, but she isn’t listening.

  “—best if we clean it all up for you. I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t—”

  I back away from her and flee to my room. Fortunately, she doesn’t follow. Even if she isn’t an agent of the government, she is dangerous. She wants to teach me to overlook things, to look past things, to ignore the world.

  She thinks there is only one way of looking at the world her way. I don’t agree.

  I rush into my room and close the door. The spaceship fills the space between the bed and the boxes. A hinged lid, like the lid of a pirate chest, stands open, poised to close. I put my hand on the tail section. I can feel a faint trembling, as if something were humming inside. The claw crouches beside the lid, waiting.

  “You’d better get out of here,” I tell the claw. “They’re closing in on us. They’ll lock us both up.”

  I open the window so that the spaceship can take off.

  When I stand back, nothing happens. The claw just sits by the lid, remaining motionless.

  “Look, you’d really better leave,” I say. It doesn’t move.

  I sit in the chair and watch it, frustrated by its inaction.

  From the TV next door, I hear the Star Trek theme song.

  The claw climbs to the armrest of the chair. With two of its legs, it takes hold of my finger. Gently, it tugs on my hand, trying to move me in the direction of the cylinder.

  “What do you want?” I ask, but it only tugs again, more strongly this time.

  I pick up the claw in my other hand and go to the spaceship. The hollow place inside it is just my height and just wide enough for my shoulders. The claw had arranged some old sweaters inside: it looks soft and rather inviting.

  Maybe I wasn’t quite right the other night when I was thinking about planaria. I should have thought a little longer. Consider, for instance, the difference between a horse and a car. A horse has a mind of his own. You develop a relationship with a horse. If you like the horse and the horse likes you, you get along; if not, you don’t. A horse can miss you. If you leave a horse behind, the horse can come looking for you. A car is just a hunk of metal—no loyalty. If you sell your car, you may miss it, but it won’t miss you.

  Suppose, just suppose, that someone somewhere built a spaceship that was more like a horse than a car. A spaceship that could rebuild itself from pieces. That someone went away and left the spaceship behind—died maybe, because otherwise why would anyone leave behind such a wonderful spaceship? And the spaceship waited for a while, and then came looking for its creator, its master.

  Maybe it couldn’t find its original master—but it found someone else. Someone who wanted to travel. The claw is purring in my hand.

  I take off my shoes and step gingerly into the opening.

  Carefully, I slide my legs into the cylinder. At my feet, I can feel the warmth of the hidden engines. The claw curls up beside me, snuggling into the crook of my neck.

  “Ready?” I ask. Reaching up, I close the lid. And we go.

  Bones

  THIS IS A TRUE STORY, more or less. In the history books, you can find Dr. John Hunter, a noted surgeon and naturalist. London’s Royal College of Surgeons maintains his museum, an amazing collection of eighteenth-century oddities and natural curiosities.

  Charlie Bryne is in the history books too. He came to London from Ireland in 1782. Advertised as the World’s Tallest Man and the Descendant of Irish Kings, he exhibited himself as a curiosity and a freak.

  The history books tell of their meeting—but now I’m getting ahead of myself. I must start long before that.

  On a cold winter evening, when the ground was white with frost, Charlie Bryne sat on a stool by the peat fire. Though the boy was only ten years old, he was already as tall as a grown man. His mother, a youthful widow, sat close by, her shawl pulled up around her shoulders and a glass of whiskey in her hand. The firelight shone on her face, making her cheeks rosy and her eyes bright.

  “Tell me the story, Mum,” Charlie asked. “Tell me how I got to be so big.”

  She smiled at him fondly. “Ah, you know the tale as well as I do, Charlie. You have no need for me to tell it.”

  “I’ve forgotten. Tell me again,” he pleaded.

  “All right—just once more. Fill my glass and we’ll have the story.” He refilled her glass from the jug and she settled herself more comfortably in her chair.

  “It was a year after a young horse threw my husband and broke his back,” she began. “I was a widow with a fine farm, and many a bachelor farmer would gladly have had me to wife. But I was happy to be on my lone, and I would have none of them.” She pushed back her dark hair with her hand, smiling at the memory. “Old Sean Dermot died that autumn, and I went to the wake. As it came about, I stayed too late, and I was walking home after dark. ’Twas a lonesome road I had to travel—and I was tired, so I took a shortcut, the path that ran beside the Giant’s Boneyard.”

  She shook her head at her own foolishness. The Giant’s Boneyard was a lonely, haunted spot. In a field too rocky for planting, wild grasses grew thick and green around great boulders of unusual shapes. People said that the boulders were the bones of a giant, a king of Ireland who had died a hundred years before, while fighting to protect his people from invaders. Some said that he had promised, with his dying words, to return if ever Ireland needed him. Some said he walked at night, strolling through the field that held his bones. In any case, most people avoided the place after dark.

  “The moon was a sliver in the sky, hanging low and giving just enough light for me to see. I was only halfway across the field when I saw a blue light, a beautiful light, the color of the Blessed Virgin’s robes. I was not foolish enough to go running after fairy lanterns. I kept to the path, hurrying toward home, but the light danced across the field toward me. And then I saw it clearly.”

  She clasped her hands before her, and leaned toward Charlie. He caught his breath, watching her. “The blue light sh
one from a golden crown on the head of an enormous man. A powerful man—stronger than the blacksmith in the village, taller than the tallest I had ever seen. He was handsome, but his eyes were dark and fierce. When he looked at me, I froze, bound to the spot and unable to run.”

  She fixed her gaze on Charlie, as if to show him how it felt, and he shivered. “He spoke to me sweetly, saying that I would bear him a son. His son would have the old blood in his veins, and he would save Ireland. Then he took me by the hand and led me to a spot where the grass was soft. There he lay with me, taking his pleasure as a man does with a woman. In the morning, I woke with the sun in my eyes, beside the boulder they call the Giant’s Skull.” She leaned back in her chair. “Nine months later, you were born. You were the biggest baby the midwife had ever laid her eyes upon. And you’ve kept growing ever since. You take after your father, sure enough.”

  Charlie nodded, gazing into the fire. “Have you ever seen my father again?”

  “That I have not,” she murmured. “But I know you for his son.”

  “Then I must save Ireland? When must I do this?”

  “That I don’t know. When the time comes, surely it will be clear to you.”

  Charlie frowned at the fire, his expression fierce. “I will do what I must do,” he said. “If only I can figure out what that is.”

  Charlie wasn’t his mother’s son, though he sat at her knee and fetched her whiskey. He was a child of the woods and the wild fields—growing up outdoors as much as in. Summer and winter alike, he ran barefoot, coming home to his mother’s house with dusty feet and brambles in his hair.

  He was a strange lad—with a peculiar, dreamy air about him that made some think he was dim-witted. But he wasn’t stupid—he just paid attention to other lessons.

  Reading and writing seemed unimportant when he could look out the window and see the flowers growing in the fields, hear the birds singing. He understood the mathematics of bird nests, the poetry of cloud formations, the penmanship of snail tracks left on the cold stones of the churchyard wall.