Asimov's SF, December 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Another laugh. Maybe, Donny thought, this wouldn't be such a bad day ... if it didn't rain.

  “This is a fine looking vessel,” Towson said, turning his attention to the boat.

  “Built this year,” Laurent said.

  “AI steering system?”

  “No, we couldn't afford that. She's got Raytheon and old-fashioned GPS, but we hardly ever need it, so....”

  “I guess you know your way around this bay pretty well.”

  “Ayuh, we've been doing this all our lives,” Donny said, suspecting that he was being patronized.

  “Let's get on board,” Laurent said, deftly hopping over the gunwale and offering a hand to Towson.

  Donny untied the painter and climbed aboard as Laurent started her up. They put out slowly.

  “Are we going to see the...” He almost said “the Gleezer,” but caught himself. “...visitor?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mind if we pull up some lobster traps while we're out?” Laurent asked.

  “I don't see any reason to object.”

  “All right, then. Just a few to keep us busy.”

  The sun was emerging over the horizon, breaking into a million shimmering red lights on the water.

  No matter how many times he saw it, Donny never got tired of it.

  “Lovely,” Towson said, as they got away from shore and gathered speed. “Just lovely.”

  “Grows on you,” Laurent said.

  The steady sound of the boat's diesel engine was overcome by the rattling whir of a helicopter passing overhead.

  “One of yours?” Donny asked.

  “In case of emergency,” Towson said.

  “If a tanker comes too close, will the chopper blow her out of the water?” Donny drily asked. “That would be something to tell the grandkids about.”

  “You have grandchildren, Mr. Doyle?”

  That question took all the fun out of the conversation. Donny decided to clam up. He had the distinct feeling that Towson knew everything there was to know about him, right down to what he ate for breakfast. For a few minutes he'd been fooled into thinking this guy was just like anybody else.

  He watched for buoys marking their traps.

  Before he spotted any, Towson went into the pilot house and ordered Laurent to stop the boat.

  When the engine cut off, it took a moment for Donny to hear anything, but then the familiar sounds of the waves lapping on the hull and the gulls cawing overhead slowly came to him. All he was thinking of was that he was about to see the Gleezer.

  The two Secret Servicemen stood by while Towson pulled a cylindrical key out of his pocket and inserted it into a slot in the tank's lid.

  The side of the tank, rather than the lid, slowly opened. It made a ramp leading to the deck. Donny thought there would be a lot of gadgets inside, but he couldn't see much other than the dark mass of the tank's occupant.

  The Gleezer took its time coming out.

  It was wearing its protective sheath, just as Donny had seen on TV. It sort of squirmed and flopped onto the deck, almost like a fish out of water. Alarmed, Donny glanced at Towson, but the government man seemed calm.

  Laurent came out of the pilot house. He was spellbound by the Gleezer.

  “Is everything all right?” Laurent asked in a tone barely above a whisper.

  “There's no cause for concern,” said Towson.

  “It doesn't look all right,” Donny said. Not only that, but he could smell it right through its clear covering, and he didn't care for the odor. It wasn't like anything he'd ever smelled before.

  The Gleezer slithered a few feet across the deck. Donny tried to think of something to compare its appearance to. A centipede, a bug, a lobster, even ... but none of these analogies would do. It had quite a few appendages, maybe a dozen, but they didn't look like the limbs of any animal he'd ever seen. There were two humps on either side with kidney-shaped artificial lungs in them, supplying the atmosphere the Gleezer needed to survive on Earth. Two transparent tubes connected the inflating lungs to the tank.

  He knew that the lump on its back was where its brain was located, but he had no idea if it could see, smell, hear, or feel—at least not the way humans and animals did.

  Frank had told the truth, for once in his life. It was one thing to see a picture of the Gleezer, and another thing to see it for real. It was only four feet away from Donny, and the sight of it made him want to jump into the drink.

  He stood on the lazily yawing deck, his beloved Bay all around him, the early morning light dazzling on the dappled water. He looked away from the Gleezer and toward the sunrise until it hurt his eyes.

  “You get used to its appearance,” Towson said.

  “I don't think I ever could,” Donny said. “It's ugly.”

  “You ain't no prize yourself,” Laurent cracked from under the fly bridge.

  “Nobody asked you.”

  Towson frowned. “I know the visitor's different, but it's intelligent, and it's sensitive.”

  “Sensitive?” Donny scoffed.

  “In other words, shut up,” Laurent said.

  Donny turned on Laurent. “Don't tell me to shut up, you dumb Canuck.”

  “Gentlemen, please,” Towson said. “The visitor can sense your anger.”

  “It can?” Laurent asked.

  “Yes, it's empathic.”

  “Like on Star Trek?” Laurent asked.

  “Well, no,” Towson explained. “In the same way that you and I might sense that an animal's in pain.”

  “In pain?” Donny demanded. “Who's in pain?”

  Towson left the question unanswered.

  Donny looked astern toward the island. It was his home, a little piece of rock jutting out of the Atlantic. Right now he wished he was back at the house, in bed with Beth. For the first time in his adult life, he was beginning to feel a little seasick.

  “You all right, Donny?” Laurent asked.

  “ ‘Course I'm all right.”

  “You're looking a little pale.”

  Donny grabbed a line and attached it to a metal lobster trap, watching the Gleezer peripherally. Slits in its pulsing hide opened and closed, observing him in some unknowable way, and the Secret Service detail watched them both through their human eyes.

  Get a hold of yourself, man. This was your idea. It's just a job of work. It'll all be over in a few hours.

  “If it's all right with you, Mr. Towson, could we go check on some traps now?” Laurent asked.

  “Certainly,” Towson said.

  Laurent went into the pilot house and started up the engine again.

  Towson approached Donny. “Have you ever been in the military, Mr. Doyle?”

  “Navy.”

  “Combat?”

  “No.”

  He expected Towson to ask more questions, but he didn't.

  “So what are you trying to say?” Donny said, angrily turning to face Towson. “You think I'm a coward or something?”

  “No, sir, I don't think that,” Towson said.

  “Just let me do my work, and you and your boys and that thing enjoy the ride, and we'll be all right.”

  “Fine,” Towson said. He backed off, and grabbed the lanyard to steady himself on the slippery deck. The water was becoming choppier now that they were moving farther out to sea.

  “You men have enviable lives,” he heard Towson say to Laurent a few minutes later.

  “We like it,” Laurent said.

  Donny snorted, unnoticed by the others. Laurent's wife had left him, his daughters lived out of state, he was over fifty, and he had nothing but time on his hands when he wasn't working. What did he like so much about his life? If he was so happy, why did he keep Donny out at night instead of going home and being happy by himself ?

  Funny thing was, though, that Donny didn't mind hanging out nights at Salty's all that much. He could usually be talked into it. Nevertheless, he wished he'd gone home last night, instead of going to the hotel.

  He
kept thinking of the Senior Prom, and how pretty Beth had looked that night all those years ago when they danced in the hotel ballroom. It wasn't just the joint and the beers that had made him see her that way, either. She was a pretty one. When he looked at her now, he could still see that fresh young girl through the wrinkles and gray hair.

  He sensed that the Gleezer was moving, undulating along the deck a few inches at a time. There wasn't much room, but he still didn't want to be near it, not if he could help it.

  He bent over, feeling a twinge in his lower back, and stepped into the pilot house.

  “What can I do you for?” Laurent asked.

  “I'll take the helm for awhile,” Donny said, “if you don't mind.”

  Laurent relinquished the wheel. “There's the buoy straight ahead. You ain't gonna be driving for long.”

  “I just want to get away from that thing.”

  “Ever occur to you that it might have feelings?” Laurent said, ducking his head to go out on deck.

  Donny would have sneered, but Laurent was gone already, and he didn't really feel like sneering anyway. He knew it was likely that the Gleezer had emotions, but he couldn't believe it after seeing the ugly beast. He could more easily believe a lobster would send him a valentine.

  But Laurent had a point. The Gleezer had come across space from billions of miles away, so it had to be intelligent. In fact, it was probably a lot smarter than him.

  That wasn't saying much, he mused, as he cut the engine and steered the boat toward the buoy. He glanced over his shoulder through the hatch and saw the Gleezer throbbing like a clump of shrink-wrapped, spiny seaweed on the deck.

  He was beginning to regret his show of revulsion toward the Gleezer and snapping at Towson. He started thinking about Little Donny, and realized that he had allowed himself to feel like less than a man because his son was gay. That was no way to be, and he knew it, but he couldn't help it.

  It was hard to see through the windscreen, for some reason. Donny tasted salt water on his lips, even though there was no spray inside the pilot house. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. He didn't want to cry. Why couldn't he stop it? What was wrong with him?

  He sensed someone moving behind him, and glanced over his shoulder to see who it was.

  It was the Gleezer.

  Donny turned around to see it crawling across the deck toward the pilot house.

  “What does it want?” he called out in a near panic.

  Towson called out to him. “The visitor's just curious.”

  “Is it coming in here?” Donny shouted.

  “No, I don't think it has that intention,” Towson said in a reassuring tone.

  The Gleezer kept inching toward the hatchway. Donny started feeling claustrophobic. He turned back toward the wheel, but he could see the Gleezer reflected in the glass, the morning sun glistening on its sheath. It was nearly five feet long, a foot and a half wide and maybe two feet high, counting the brain hump that protruded from the top, and it was a mottled gray-green, almost black, with all those spines and spindly legs sticking out.

  Did it see him? He was certain it knew he was there, but what did it think he was? Did it understand what he was, what it meant to be a man? To suffer life's disappointments and work every day just to grow older, closer and closer to death every minute? No, of course it didn't. How could it know what a human is?

  It stopped short of coming inside and lay on the deck, quivering. He thought it made a sound, but then he realized that was just a gull screeching in the distance.

  The two younger Secret Service men, both big guys, came over and lifted the Gleezer up.

  “It wants to see more of the bay,” Donny said, feeling a bit stupid. “That's all.”

  “Yes,” Towson said. “That's all.”

  “It sure didn't come out here to look at your boots, Donny,” Laurent said as he dropped the anchor.

  “But it could have seen the Bay from the shore.”

  “Not the same thing.”

  “Well, I know that, Laurent,” Donny said, getting an idea. “Hey, we got that net. We could put the Gleezer in and lift him up.”

  “That'd be better than you fellas just holding him like that,” Laurent agreed. “It's up to you, Mr. Towson.”

  “You don't think it could be dangerous?” Towson asked.

  “Oh, no. We've got a winch, so we can suspend the Gleezer right over the water if he wants.”

  “The Gleezer?” Towson said. “Is that what you call our visitor?”

  “Ayuh,” Laurent said. “I hope he doesn't mind.”

  “No, I don't think so,” Towson said after a pause, as if he'd been listening to someone they couldn't hear.

  “Pretty good-natured, is he?”

  “As far as we know,” Towson said. “But the visitor isn't a he. Its gender is indeterminate.”

  “Oh. Well, we promise we won't do anything untoward that could cause an interstellar incident,” Laurent said.

  Towson smiled. “You're a man of hidden depths, Mr. Therriault.”

  “Just like the sea around me,” Laurent said.

  Donny wondered if Towson was insulting him by implication. Did he think Donny Doyle had no depths? Well, maybe it was true. A man who held a grudge against his own son because of something the boy couldn't help was a shallow man, and he had to admit that to himself. He'd been through it in his mind many, many times, and he knew Beth loved Little Donny even though he'd never give her a grandchild. If Little Donny and his boyfriend could adopt a kid she'd be just as happy as if he were straight, married to a nice girl, and a proud father.

  Why couldn't he feel that way?

  Laurent was lucky. He was divorced, but he was a grandfather three times over. Not only that, but he got along fine with his ex. Everything was all right in his world, no matter what. Easy-going Laurent, everybody's pal.

  He helped Laurent attach the fishing net to the winch.

  “So you fish too?” Towson asked.

  “Ayuh,” Laurent said. “Whatever it takes to make ends meet.”

  “How do you talk to the Gleezer?” Donny asked Towson.

  “I've got a chip in my skull that translates its communications subsonically,” Towson explained. “Everything I see and hear is conveyed to a team of exobiologists in the hotel and at labs in Washington and Houston.”

  “I read about that,” Laurent said, spreading the net onto the deck. “Do you know what it's thinking?”

  “No, only what it wants me to know.”

  “You're really committed to your job, I'd say, to have that chip put in.”

  “It can be removed,” Towson said, almost apologetically.

  “You fellas can lay it on the net now,” Donny said.

  The two Secret Service men placed the Gleezer on the net very carefully and stepped back.

  Donny cranked up the winch, glad to be doing something besides making an ass of himself, and glad to gain a bit of distance on the Gleezer. He tried not to think of anything besides what he was doing at that moment.

  He ratcheted the net up about five feet, until the Gleezer was suspended over the deck, swaying back and forth.

  “Okay, boys,” he said, “swing ‘er out to starboard.”

  “That means to the right,” Laurent said.

  Towson nodded and the two younger men obeyed. Donny wondered if those two Secret Servicemen ever spoke. Maybe he had it all wrong, and they were the ones who weren't human.

  The winch pivoted and the Gleezer hung over the water, limned by the indigo sky. The tubes trailed onto the deck and into the environmental tank.

  “Everything all right?” Laurent said, looking at Towson.

  “Fine,” Towson said, after a moment.

  Donny, standing by the winch, wondered if the Gleezer enjoyed the ocean the same way he did. Maybe it wasn't quite as ugly as he'd first thought. Frank had put that idea in his head last night, about seeing it. Donny had been tired, and thinking about money, so maybe he'd been more sus
ceptible than he should have been. He was so worried about making things work out that he was as jumpy as flea these days.

  This boat cost almost three hundred thousand dollars, and buying it had been a big risk, but so what? Such mundane considerations were bleached away by the morning sun climbing up over the Atlantic, as he considered the possibility of the Gleezer taking pleasure in its surroundings.

  Donny turned toward Towson. “Is it...?”

  Towson waited for him to finish the question.

  “Is it enjoying itself ?”

  Towson thought about that for a moment. “Yes.”

  “All right, then,” Donny said. “Just tell us when to reel it in.”

  “It may be a little while,” Towson said, “from what the visitor is telling me.”

  They watched from the gently rocking deck for a few minutes, and Donny thought about how far the Gleezer had come from its home, more than twenty light-years away, just to see a yokel like him recoil from it.

  “Did I hurt it?” Donny said, surprised that he would ask.

  “Hurt it?”

  “Its feelings, like Laurent said.”

  Towson stared straight into his eyes. “I don't think you should worry about it. The visitor has provoked negative reactions in quite a few people since it's been here.”

  Donny looked down at the deck. “I'm sorry I was one of ‘em.”

  He turned away from Towson as he felt the tears starting again. What was the matter with him, carrying on like this? He wasn't a child.

  He felt a light touch on his elbow. It was Laurent.

  “It's all right, old buddy,” Laurent said softly. “Nobody's going to tell on you.”

  Now the tears really came.

  “I don't care if they do,” Donny said, wiping his face on his sleeve. “I'm turning into a bitter old man, and who cares if anybody knows it?”

  “You ain't so bad, Donny,” Laurent said, sympathy in his hazel eyes.

  Donny snorted. “I guess it could be worse. I could be Frank.”

  Laurent chuckled. “Ayuh, that'd be a lot worse.”

  “Made a fool of myself, didn't I?”

  “No,” Laurent said. “You got a lot on your mind.”

  “Don't we all?”

  “Sure do. You okay now?”

  “Ayuh.”

  “Well, we better make sure the Gleezer don't fall in,” Laurent said, winking at him.