Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (S.F. MASTERWORKS)

by James Tiptree Jr.

  Absurd. Sure . . . The only thing more absurd would be to come through the wars and get myself terminated by a mad librarian’s boyfriend on a fishing trip.

  A fish flops in the stream below us. Ruth spins around so fast she hits the serape. “I better start the fire,” she says, her eyes still on the plain and her head cocked, listening.

  All right, let’s test.

  “Expecting company?”

  It rocks her. She freezes, and her eyes come swiveling around to me like a film take captioned FRIGHT. I can see her decide to smile.

  “Oh, one never can tell!” She laughs weirdly, the eyes not changed. “I’ll get the—the kindling.” She fairly scuttles into the brush.

  Nobody, paranoid or not, could call that a normal reaction.

  Ruth Parsons is either psycho or she’s expecting something to happen—and it has nothing to do with me: I scared her pissless.

  Well, she could be nuts. And I could be wrong, but there are some mistakes you only make once.

  Reluctantly I unzip my body belt, telling myself that if I think what I think, my only course is to take something for my leg and get as far as possible from Mrs. Ruth Parsons before whoever she’s waiting for arrives.

  In my belt also is a .32-caliber asset Ruth doesn’t know about—and it’s going to stay there. My longevity program leaves the shoot-outs to TV and stresses being somewhere else when the roof falls in. I can spend a perfectly safe and also perfectly horrible night out in one of those mangrove flats. . . . Am I insane?

  At this moment Ruth stands up and stares blatantly inland with her hand shading her eyes. Then she tucks something into her pocket, buttons up, and tightens her belt.

  That does it.

  I dry-swallow two 100-mg tabs, which should get me ambulatory and still leave me wits to hide. Give it a few minutes. I make sure my compass and some hooks are in my own pocket and sit waiting while Ruth fusses with her smudge fire, sneaking looks away when she thinks I’m not watching.

  The flat world around us is turning into an unearthly amber and violet light show as the first numbness sweeps into my leg. Ruth has crawled under the bromels for more dry stuff; I can see her foot. Okay. I reach for my staff.

  Suddenly the foot jerks, and Ruth yells—or rather, her throat makes that Uh-uh-hhh that means pure horror. The foot disappears in a rattle of bromel stalks.

  I lunge upright on the crutch and look over the bank at a frozen scene.

  Ruth is crouching sideways on the ledge, clutching her stomach. They are about a yard below, floating on the river in a skiff. While I was making up my stupid mind, her friends have glided right under my ass. There are three of them.

  They are tall and white. I try to see them as men in some kind of white jumpsuits. The one nearest the bank is stretching out a long white arm toward Ruth. She jerks and scuttles farther away.

  The arm stretches after her. It stretches and stretches. It stretches two yards and stays hanging in the air. Small black things are wiggling from its tip.

  I look where their faces should be and see black hollow dishes with vertical stripes. The stripes move slowly. . . .

  There is no more possibility of their being human—or anything else I’ve ever seen. What has Ruth conjured up?

  The scene is totally silent. I blink, blink—this cannot be real. The two in the far end of the skiff are writhing those arms around an apparatus on a tripod. A weapon? Suddenly I hear the same blurry voice I heard in the night.

  “Guh-give,” it groans. “G-give . . .”

  Dear god, it’s real, whatever it is. I’m terrified. My mind is trying not to form a word.

  And Ruth—Jesus, of course—Ruth is terrified too; she’s edging along the bank away from them, gaping at the monsters in the skiff, who are obviously nobody’s friends. She’s hugging something to her body. Why doesn’t she get over the bank and circle back behind me?

  “G-g-give.” That wheeze is coming from the tripod. “Peeeeze give.” The skiff is moving upstream below Ruth, following her. The arm undulates out at her again, its black digits looping. Ruth scrambles to the top of the bank.

  “Ruth!” My voice cracks. “Ruth, get over here behind me!”

  She doesn’t look at me, only keeps sidling farther away. My terror detonates into anger.

  “Come back here!” With my free hand I’m working the .32 out of my belt. The sun has gone down.

  She doesn’t turn but straightens up warily, still hugging the thing. I see her mouth working. Is she actually trying to talk to hem?

  “Please . . .” She swallows. “Please speak to me. I need your help.”

  “RUTH!!”

  At this moment the nearest white monster whips into a great S-curve and sails right onto the bank at her, eight feet of snowy rippling horror.

  And I shoot Ruth.

  I don’t know that for a minute—I’ve yanked the gun up so fast that my staff slips and dumps me as I fire. I stagger up, hearing Ruth scream, “No! No! No!”

  The creature is back down by his boat, and Ruth is still farther away, clutching herself. Blood is running down her elbow.

  “Stop it, Don! They aren’t attacking you!”

  “For god’s sake! Don’t be a fool, I can’t help you if you won’t get away from them!”

  No reply. Nobody moves. No sound except the drone of a jet passing far above. In the darkening stream below me the three white figures shift uneasily; I get the impression of radar dishes focusing. The word spells itself in my head: Aliens.

  Extraterrestrials.

  What do I do, call the President? Capture them singlehanded with my peashooter? . . . I’m alone in the arse end of nowhere with one leg and my brain cuddled in meperidine hydrochloride.

  “Prrr-eese,” their machine blurs again. “Wa-wat hep . . .”

  “Our plane fell down,” Ruth says in a very distinct, eerie voice. She points up at the jet, out toward the bay. “My—my child is there. Please take us there in your boat.”

  Dear god. While she’s gesturing, I get a look at the thing she’s hugging in her wounded arm. It’s metallic, like a big glimmering distributor head. What—?

  Wait a minute. This morning: when she was gone so long, she could have found that thing. Something they left behind. Or dropped. And she hid it, not telling me. That’s why she kept going under that bromel clump—she was peeking at it. Waiting. And the owners came back and caught her. They want it. She’s trying to bargain, by god.

  “—Water,” Ruth is pointing again. “Take us. Me. And him.”

  The black faces turn toward me, blind and horrible. Later on I may be grateful for that “us.” Not now.

  “Throw your gun away, Don. They’ll take us back.” Her voice is weak.

  “Like hell I will. You—who are you? What are you doing here?”

  “Oh, god, does it matter? He’s frightened,” she cries to them. “Can you understand?”

  She’s as alien as they, there in the twilight. The beings in the skiff are twittering among themselves. Their box starts to moan.

  “Ss-stu-dens,” I make out. “S-stu-ding . . . not—huh-arming

  . . . w-we . . . buh . . .” It fades into garble and then says, “G-give . . . we . . . g-go. . . .”

  Peace-loving cultural-exchange students—on the interstellar level now. Oh, no.

  “Bring that thing here, Ruth—right now!”

  But she’s starting down the bank toward them saying, “Take me.”

  “Wait! You need a tourniquet on that arm.”

  “I know. Please put the gun down, Don.”

  She’s actually at the skiff, right by them. They aren’t moving. “Jesus Christ.” Slowly, reluctantly, I drop the .32. When I start down the slide, I find I’m floating; adrenaline and Demerol are a bad mix.

  The skiff comes gliding toward me, Ruth in the bow clutching the thing and her arm. The aliens stay in the stern behind their tripod, away from me. I note the skiff is camouflaged tan and green. The world around us is deep
shadowy blue.

  “Don, bring the water bag!”

  As I’m dragging down the plastic bag, it occurs to me that Ruth really is cracking up, the water isn’t needed now. But my own brain seems to have gone into overload. All I can focus on is a long white rubbery arm with black worms clutching the far end of the orange tube, helping me fill it. This isn’t happening.

  “Can you get in, Don?” As I hoist my numb legs up, two long white pipes reach for me. No, you don’t. I kick and tumble in beside Ruth. She moves away.

  A creaky hum starts up, it’s coming from a wedge in the center of the skiff. And we’re in motion, sliding toward dark mangrove files.

  I stare mindlessly at the wedge. Alien technological secrets? I can’t see any, the power source is under that triangular cover, about two feet long. The gadgets on the tripod are equally cryptic, except that one has a big lens. Their light?

  As we hit the open bay, the hum rises and we start planing faster and faster still. Thirty knots? Hard to judge in the dark. Their hull seems to be a modified trihedral much like ours, with a remarkable absence of slap. Say twenty-two feet. Schemes of capturing it swirl in my mind. I’ll need Estéban.

  Suddenly a huge flood of white light fans out over us from the tripod, blotting out the aliens in the stern. I see Ruth pulling at a belt around her arm, still hugging the gizmo.

  “I’ll tie that for you.”

  “It’s all right.”

  The alien device is twinkling or phosphorescing slightly. I lean over to look, whispering, “Give that to me, I’ll pass it to Estéban.”

  “No!” She scoots away, almost over the side. “It’s theirs, they need it!”

  “What? Are you crazy?” I’m so taken aback by this idiocy I literally stammer. “We have to, we—”

  “They haven’t hurt us. I’m sure they could.” Her eyes are watching me with feral intensity; in the light her face has a lunatic look. Numb as I am, I realize that the wretched woman is poised to throw herself over the side if I move. With the alien thing.

  “I think they’re gentle,” she mutters.

  “For Christ’s sake, Ruth, they’re aliens!”

  “I’m used to it,” she says absently. “There’s the island! Stop! Stop here!”

  The skiff slows, turning. A mound of foliage is tiny in the light. Metal glints—the plane.

  “Althea! Althea! Are you all right?”

  Yells, movement on the plane. The water is high, we’re floating over the bar. The aliens are keeping us in the lead with the light hiding them. I see one pale figure splashing toward us and a dark one behind, coming more slowly. Estéban must be puzzled by that light.

  “Mr. Fenton is hurt, Althea. These people brought us back with the water. Are you all right?”

  “A-okay.” Althea flounders up, peering excitedly. “You all right? Whew, that light!” Automatically I start handing her the idiotic water bag.

  “Leave that for the captain,” Ruth says sharply. “Althea, can you climb in the boat? Quickly, it’s important.”

  “Coming.”

  “No, no!” I protest, but the skiff tilts as Althea swarms in. The aliens twitter, and their voice box starts groaning. “Gu-give . . . now . . . give . . . “

  “Qué llega?” Estéban’s face appears beside me, squinting fiercely into the light.

  “Grab it, get it from her—that thing she has—” but Ruth’s voice rides over mine. “Captain, lift Mr. Fenton out of the boat. He’s hurt his leg. Hurry, please.”

  “Goddamn it, wait!” I shout, but an arm has grabbed my middle. When a Maya boosts you, you go. I hear Althea saying, “Mother, your arm!” and fall onto Estéban. We stagger around in water up to my waist; I can’t feel my feet at all.

  When I get steady, the boat is yards away. The two women are head-to-head, murmuring.

  “Get them!” I tug loose from Estéban and flounder forward. Ruth stands up in the boat facing the invisible aliens.

  “Take us with you. Please. We want to go with you, away from here.”

  “Ruth! Estéban, get that boat!” I lunge and lose my feet again. The aliens are chirruping madly behind their light.

  “Please take us. We don’t mind what your planet is like; we’ll learn—we’ll do anything! We won’t cause any trouble. Please. Oh, please.” The skiff is drifting farther away.

  “Ruth! Althea! Are you crazy? Wait—” But I can only shuffle nightmarelike in the ooze, hearing that damn voice box wheeze, “N-not come . . . more . . . not come . . .” Althea’s face turns to it, openmouthed grin.

  “Yes, we understand,” Ruth cries. “We don’t want to come back. Please take us with you!”

  I shout and Estéban splashes past me shouting too, something about radio.

  “Yes-s-s,” groans the voice.

  Ruth sits down suddenly, clutching Althea. At that moment Estéban grabs the edge of the skiff beside her.

  “Hold them, Estéban! Don’t let her go.”

  He gives me one slit-eyed glance over his shoulder, and I recognize his total uninvolvement. He’s had a good look at that camouflage paint and the absence of fishing gear. I make a desperate rush and slip again. When I come up Ruth is saying, “We’re going with these people, Captain. Please take your money out of my purse, it’s in the plane. And give this to Mr. Fenton.”

  She passes him something small; the notebook. He takes it slowly.

  “Estéban! No!”

  He has released the skiff.

  “Thank you so much,” Ruth says as they float apart. Her voice is shaky; she raises it. “There won’t be any trouble, Don. Please send this cable. It’s to a friend of mine, she’ll take care of everything.” Then she adds the craziest touch of the entire night. “She’s a grand person; she’s director of nursing training at N.I.H.”

  As the skiff drifts out, I hear Althea add something that sounds like “Right on.”

  Sweet Jesus . . . Next minute the humming has started; the light is receding fast. The last I see of Mrs. Ruth Parsons and Miss Althea Parsons is two small shadows against that light, like two opossums. The light snaps off, the hum deepens—and they’re going, going, gone away.

  In the dark water beside me Estéban is instructing everybody in general to chingarse themselves.

  “Friends, or something,” I tell him lamely. “She seemed to want to go with them.”

  He is pointedly silent, hauling me back to the plane. He knows what could be around here better than I do, and Mayas have their own longevity program. His condition seems improved. As we get in I notice the hammock has been repositioned.

  In the night—of which I remember little—the wind changes. And at seven-thirty next morning a Cessna buzzes the sandbar under cloudless skies.

  By noon we’re back in Cozumel. Captain Estéban accepts his fees and departs laconically for his insurance wars. I leave the Parsons’ bags with the Caribe agent, who couldn’t care less. The cable goes to a Mrs. Priscilla Hayes Smith, also of Bethesda. I take myself to a medico and by three P.M. I’m sitting on the Cabanas terrace with a fat leg and a double margarita, trying to believe the whole thing.

  The cable said, Althea and I taking extraordinary opportunity for travel. Gone several years. Please take charge our affairs. Love, Ruth.

  She’d written it that afternoon, you understand.

  I order another double, wishing to hell I’d gotten a good look at that gizmo. Did it have a label, Made by Betelgeusians? No matter how weird it was, how could a person be crazy enough to imagine—?

  Not only that but to hope, to plan? If I could only go away. . . . That’s what she was doing, all day. Waiting, hoping, figuring how to get Althea. To go sight unseen to an alien world . . .

  With the third margarita I try a joke about alienated women, but my heart’s not in it. And I’m certain there won’t be any bother, any trouble at all. Two human women, one of them possibly pregnant, have departed for, I guess, the stars; and the fabric of society will never show a ripple. I brood: do all Mrs.
Parsons’s friends hold themselves in readiness for any eventuality, including leaving Earth? And will Mrs. Parsons somehow one day contrive to send for Mrs. Priscilla Hayes Smith, that grand person?

  I can only send for another cold one, musing on Althea. What suns will Captain Estéban’s sloe-eyed offspring, if any, look upon? “Get in, Althea, we’re taking off for Orion.”

  “Aokay, Mother.” Is that some system of upbringing? We survive by ones and twos in the chinks of your world-machine. . . . I’m used to aliens. . . . She’d meant every word. Insane. How could a woman choose to live among unknown monsters, to say goodbye to her home, her world?

  As the margaritas take hold, the whole mad scenario melts down to the image of those two small shapes sitting side by side in the receding alien glare.

  Two of our opossums are missing.

  YOUR FACES, O MY SISTERS! YOUR FACES FILLED OF LIGHT!

  HOT SUMMER NIGHT, big raindrops falling faster now as she swings along the concrete expressway, high over the old dead city. Lightning is sizzling and cracking over the lake behind her. Beautiful! The flashes jump the roofs of the city to life below her, miles of cube buildings gray and sharp-edged in the glare. People lived here once, all the way to the horizons. Smiling, she thinks of all those walls and windows full of people, living in turbulence and terror. Incredible.

  She’s passing a great billboard-thing dangling and banging in the wind. Part of a big grinning face: O-N-D-E-R-B-R-E-A, whatever that was, bright as day. She strides along enjoying the cool rain on her bare head. No need to pull up her parka for a few minutes yet, the freshness is so great. All headaches completely gone. The sisters were wrong, she’s perfectly fine. There was no reason to wait any longer, with the messages in her pack and Des Moines out there ahead. They didn’t realize how walking rests you.

  Sandals just getting wet, she notes. It feels good, but she mustn’t let them get wet through, they’ll chafe and start a blister. Couriers have to think of things like that. In a few minutes she’ll climb down one of the ramps and take shelter.