Neptune's Tears

by Susan Waggoner

  Zee’s father never lost his faith. He would never stop believing the aliens had great wisdom to share. They were waiting, he said, until we proved ourselves truly worthy. It was only a matter of time.

  But as years went by, unrest increased. People not only began to be suspicious of the aliens but of each other. Old friends of her parents stopped calling. There were whispers that her father wanted the aliens to take over.

  ‘It’s all right, Zee,’ her father would say. ‘It’s just an opinion. Everyone has a right to their opinion.’

  But Zee saw how grateful her father was to those who did visit, and it made her want to cry. Just as she wanted to cry when she saw that her father’s endless talking about the aliens ruined her mother’s happiness. Zee regretted that her little sister, born the year after The Landing, would never know their parents as they had been before, for Zee realised that her father’s life had come to a stop that day. So had millions of other lives. All over the world, people were waiting to see what the aliens would do, waiting to find out if it was the end of the world or the beginning. Waiting their lives away. It didn’t matter if the aliens planned to take over or not. They had done enough damage just by arriving.

  By the time Zee finished re-divesting, it was well after three a.m. Once she got past Piper, re-divesting hadn’t been as bad as she’d expected. In fact, she felt relaxed and strong with energy as she headed to Ellie Hart’s room. She pictured herself walking along a healing bridge of blue vines. Beneath the bridge, a pair of loons sang, their rippling calls to each other forming a bridge of their own. It was as if the first part of her shift had never happened at all. Zee was relieved to discover that there were no lingering effects from the piercing.

  As soon as she stepped into the room, a sense of deep, still peace swept forward to meet her. Mrs Hart was asleep, of course, but Zee could navigate easily by the dim glow of machines and monitors. Moving quietly, she drew a chair alongside the bed and took the old woman’s hand in her own.

  Zee started, as she always did, by thanking the universe for the gift that had been given to her, and asking for the strength to use it well. Then, as Mrs Hart had asked, she began to imagine a wide blue lake sparkling in the summer sun, making the happy memories Mrs Hart had shared with her part of the healing process. She filled the air with the calls of loons, and the laughter of children playing near a dock. For good measure she added the sound of a boat as Mrs Hart’s husband, young and vibrant, started the engine. ‘Who’s for water skiing?’ he called out. Mrs Hart was lucky to have such good memories and she had been generous in sharing them with Zee.

  Next came the part Zee liked best. She pictured Mrs Hart in all the phases of her life. Learning to walk, blowing out birthday candles, being nervous the first time a boy flirted with her. She pictured a young girl sketching necklaces and earrings and brooches and bracelets, eager to create things that would make others feel pretty or happy. She pictured a young, married woman, then an older Mrs Hart dancing at her daughter’s wedding and asking her husband, ‘Where did all the time go?’ And from each of these Mrs Harts, cartwheeling through the seasons and the years, she asked for a bit of health and vitality. Zee didn’t understand the flow of time, but she believed you were always the selves you had been in the past and would be in the future, and with enough effort you could reach backward and forward to get help when you needed it.

  Time vanished for Zee. She was completely lost in the crowd of Mrs Harts. Not all patients were so easy to work with, but Mrs Hart was different, and different from the last time she had been here, as if she’d added an extra spiritual dimension.

  Zee gathered the energy from all the Mrs Harts and channelled it to the woman asleep in the bed. She sent it spinning into her brain and heart, let it flow through her arteries and imagined it settling into her organs, to chase away any infection that might be there.

  Then, without warning, Zee was gripped by a deep, stabbing pain beneath her ribcage, a pain so intense it was a spasm, lifting her from her chair. She’d only felt this twice before, once with a simulator during training, once with a real patient a year ago. ‘Oh no,’ she gasped in a whisper. ‘No. No. No.’ But Zee knew she was already defeated. There was no mistaking the throb of a deep and spreading cancer within the fragile, old body. From the location of the pain and the enzyme levels she’d read earlier, Zee was fairly certain it was lodged in Mrs Hart’s liver, one of a handful of cancers medicine had not yet found a cure for.

  Tears stung Zee’s eyes. Two spilled down her cheek in a cold trickle and she quickly wiped them away. An empath was never to cry in front of a patient, even a sleeping one. Zee struggled for control but it was no use. Her head bent slowly forward until her face was hidden in the comfort of the soft hospital blanket. It was unprofessional but she couldn’t help herself. The pain in her midriff kept her pinned to her chair, and she could no longer hold back her tears. She wondered if the doctors knew yet, and if anyone had told Mrs Hart.

  She was barely aware, at first, of the gentle hand that came to rest on the top of her head, but she recognised Mrs Hart’s voice.

  ‘It’s all right, dear,’ the old woman said. ‘You mustn’t cry so. I’ve known for a while now, before I even checked in, and I’m not upset so don’t you be either. I’ve had a wonderful life and you won’t understand this until you’re old yourself, but I’m tired. I’m ready to move on. Besides, how else will I see my husband again?’

  Mrs Hart was right. Zee didn’t understand. Why Mrs Hart? Why anyone? Why couldn’t everyone just live forever? All she could do was squeeze the old woman’s hand. Ellie Hart’s answering squeeze was strong and comforting and, against the odds, made Zee feel just a little bit better.

  That was the end of Zee’s shift. Empaths weren’t allowed to re-divest twice in one night. Zee explained the situation to the adviser on duty as briefly as possible, skimming over the encounter with David Sutton and emphasising instead what had happened with Mrs Hart. She knew she’d have to make a much longer, more detailed report to her personal adviser later and dreaded it, but she’d work through it somehow. For now, she was just glad to change back into her street clothes.

  It was odd to find the sun just coming up outside. The night had seemed so long Zee wouldn’t have been surprised to step out into a whole different season. But the world was quiet and it was still summer. She sat for a while on a bench across from the hospital’s small garden, watching birds shower themselves with morning dew. How was it that those birds would be alive next year but Mrs Hart would not?

  For the first time in years, Zee felt homesick. Her desire to be an empath and get the best training available had taken her away from home early, when she was just thirteen. Her parents hadn’t protested, and Zee always wondered if they suspected that part of her had begun to be embarrassed by her father’s insistence that world peace was what would cause the aliens finally, at last, to share their wisdom. She hoped they also realised how much she loved them, and that the only thing strong enough to pull her away from them so early was her wish to be an empath.

  Now she felt drained and alone, and she wanted nothing more than to find herself in the house she grew up in, listening to her father enthuse about the aliens and helping her mother scramble eggs for breakfast while Bex, her little sister, complained about the humongous, horrendous, hellacious amount of homework they gave in the fourth grade. The fresh realisation that she couldn’t just hop on a vactrain and go home made Zee start to cry all over again. She searched her purse for a tissue but of course she didn’t have one. She never did. All that was there was her wallet, some lip-gloss, an email stick and half a chocolate bar.

  ‘I came to apologise.’

  Zee’s head jerked up. There he was. Him. David Sutton. The alien. For a brief, furious instant she wanted to blame him for Mrs Hart’s illness. ‘Go away,’ she said.

  He must have noticed the tears on her cheeks, because she saw concern in his eyes.

  ‘I know I was rude, but didn
’t know it was this bad. You’re the first Earth girl I’ve ever made cry. Here.’ He handed her a huge, old-fashioned handkerchief and sat down beside her. When Zee didn’t stop crying, he went on. ‘This is worse than I thought. There’s only one remedy.’

  Zee knew she should excuse herself and walk away but her curiosity got the upper hand. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Breakfast,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘If you’re going to cry like that, you need something to eat. Can I buy you some beans on toast? Or Weetabix?’

  He smiled suddenly, a slightly crooked smile because there was a small scar at the left corner of his mouth. It surprised her to realise aliens could get hurt too. She’d assumed they were invulnerable.

  ‘There’s a café down the street. What do you say? I was only kidding about the beans on toast. Actually, I think they have omelettes – even bacon butties.’

  Zee felt the tug of personal attraction all over again . . . and the pangs of hunger. She’d missed her dinner break because of the re-divesting.

  ‘Orange juice too?’

  His smile was surprisingly gentle. ‘Whatever you want.’

  He held out his hand and she took it, feeling not only his strength and the warmth of his body but the same thing she had felt when she first met him, a kind of energy flowing between them. But attraction to an alien? There was a no-fly zone for you. Probably the last thing she needed. Except that, just now, it seemed to be exactly what she wanted. A little bit dangerous, a little bit unknown. Just this once, she told herself. Just this once. She might even find out their real reason for being here.

  CHAPTER 4

  THE SHOCK BOMB

  The minute Zee stepped into the residence corridor, she saw her best friend Rani’s silhouette framed against the window – the only window on the ground floor of their residence hall that led directly outside. ‘A perfect opportunity for sneaking boys in,’ Rani always said, ‘and you’ve got the room right next to it.’ Then Rani would cross her arms and shake her head disapprovingly, even though the corners of her mouth were turned up in a smile. ‘What a waste!’

  Seeing Rani’s impatient silhouette, Zee recalled what their empathy personality tests said about each of them and their likely relationship patterns. Rani could date and flirt with a lot of boys and never take their heartbreak seriously. Zee was another story. She wasn’t the flirt Rani was; her attachments, once formed, could run deep enough to cause distraction. ‘It’s something of a concern to us,’ the evaluator had said with a slight frown.

  Zee remembered the quick flush that had warmed her cheeks. She’d felt accused of something she hadn’t done, something she wanted to tell the evaluator wouldn’t happen in a thousand years. Instead she’d managed to listen patiently as the evaluator warned her that counselling might be necessary in the future.

  In the end, the three who’d been room-mates together in the junior programme – Zee, Rani and Jasmine – had not only been among the fifty per cent admitted to the senior programme, but had all completed the programme with honours. Some room-mates drifted apart over time, but not Zee’s trio. From the start, Rani had treated her two homesick room-mates, one from America and the other from Indonesia, more like sisters than room-mates, taking them home to her parents’ spacious London flat when they had nowhere to go on school holidays, sharing her generous allowance with them when they ran short. And even though Jasmine had taken a job in her native Indonesia, they were still as close as ever.

  Rani’s impatient sigh brought Zee’s attention back. ‘Well? What’s the story?’

  For a frozen moment, Zee thought Rani was asking about David Sutton. But how could Rani know? ‘I . . .’

  Rani was always the first person she wanted to tell things to but, right at that moment, standing in the hallway with Rani’s bright, inquisitive eyes on her, she found herself pushing David deeper into a protective corner of herself.

  ‘Don’t tell me you forgot, Zee! Menthol Light is playing at Blue Elm. Joshua’s got four passes.’ Rani held up four fingers. ‘Me. Joshua. Joshua’s friend Tarquin. You? You said you’d let me know. You even said you kind of liked Tarquin.’

  Zee did kind of like Tarquin. Had kind of liked him, anyway. Things seemed different now, like her snow-globe world had been turned upside down and given a good shake. All she wanted was to be left alone, so she could think it all through.

  ‘Sorry, Rani, I just don’t feel like it.’

  Suddenly, Rani pressed the back of her hand against Zee’s forehead. ‘Oh my gosh, you’re burning up.’

  Was she? Zee was just thinking she felt cold. Cold and a little empty, the way she’d felt when David found her outside the hospital. He’d made her feel warm and hopeful for a while, and now it had seeped away. All she really wanted was to get inside her room, lay down under her floating duvet, and find that warmth again.

  ‘You must be coming down with something,’ Rani said. ‘Maybe you’d better get to bed; I’ll get someone else for Tarquin. And if you feel better later, call me. We’ll rustle up an extra pass from somewhere.’

  Zee’s two tranquil rooms in the residence hall had never looked more welcoming. The hall had once been four separate buildings bordering Ford Square, an old-fashioned block of green grass and trees not far from the hospital. Several years before, the buildings had been joined together and the square roofed over and climate controlled, a private front garden where peonies and roses always bloomed. Often when she came off a shift she would wander out there barefoot, letting the cool green grass relax her from the toes up.

  But this morning was different. Zee tapped a panel and the window cycled to sunset and nightfall and then to a blank, midnight blue. She noticed her email stick on the nightstand pulsing with colour, picked it up, pointed it at the wall and scrolled through her mail. Exhausted as she was, she smiled to see one from Jasmine. Between her work at the hospital and volunteering at a free clinic at night, Jas had so little free time that an email from her was a real treat, and always included at least one interesting titbit of news. This one began with the headline item. Remember the new intern I told you about? Raj? We’ve had three dates now and are driving to the beach this weekend – and went on to take up most of the wall. Zee opened the hologram attachment and there was Raj. He looked nice, handsome even, but she couldn’t help comparing him to David. Raj’s gaze was open and forthright, but didn’t draw her in the way David’s did. His hair was neatly brushed back, without David’s rebellious little cowlick or the wayward strands that tumbled forward.

  Don’t be so lame, she told herself. She would never see David Sutton again, so thinking about him was a waste of time. She clicked the stick to close the email. Save attachment? No. She’d always thought there was something creepy in saving holos of people you didn’t know. Especially other people’s boyfriends.

  Zee peeled out of her clothes and dropped her favourite four-sizes-too-big T-shirt over her head, then slid into bed and pressed the bedside panel that dimmed the bedroom walls. Finally, she pulled the pale yellow duvet over her. She found the corner tab and pressed the upper left of the square twice. Instantly, the duvet lifted and formed a cocoon, leaving two centimetres of space around her. She pressed the upper right part of the square and felt the envelope of space that surrounded her fill with gentle, warming air. And then she let herself begin to think about David Sutton.

  Against all odds, he’d made her laugh.

  First, though, he’d brought her back to the world of the living. By the time he’d found Zee outside the hospital, the fact that Mrs Hart was dying had spread inside her like a cold, deep lake. On the short walk from the hospital to the café, she was sure he’d seen her shivering once or twice. She liked that he didn’t ask her what was wrong, just directed them to cross from the shady side of the street to the side that was in the sun.

  At the café, he picked a booth away from the door and motioned for her to slide in. ‘It’s better if you sit first. My legs kind of take up the rest.’ He looked emba
rrassed, but it was true. When he slid in across from her, his knees almost touched her side of the booth.

  He must have seen her eyes widen when a waitress went by with a tray of double hot chocolate Krakatoa Mochas, a house specialty. ‘Let’s ditch Plan A and have those,’ he said. ‘With extra . . . hmmmm . . . extra everything.’

  She reminded herself that just a few minutes ago she’d been intent on uncovering his real reason for being on the planet. Could a man with marshmallow froth at the corners of his mouth be up to anything truly sinister? Zee bent her head and stirred her Krakatoa Mocha, swiftly willing her mind to go smooth and blank.

  Catching another person’s intent was hard even for an empath trained many years beyond Zee’s level. The body had no reason to lie and gave its secrets up easily. But the heart and mind had endless secrets and endless defences, which very few empaths were ever able to penetrate. She tried anyway. Not just once as they sat in the café but several times. And each time the result was the same. It wasn’t that she picked up nothing at all. It was that she could go only so far and then was flung back, forcefully and purposefully. The third time the pushback happened, the words For your own good floated in her mind.

  Yet Zee found it impossible to believe he meant her harm. Sitting with him she felt protected, as if his long legs were a drawbridge that created a small space just for them. His legs were so close to hers she could feel the warmth of his body. It was like sitting near a low, comforting fire.