ALEC: An Action & Adventure Fantasy Novel (Alexander Trilogy)

by Stan I. S. Law

  14

  More Questions

  Mother was looking down at him as he opened his eyes. “You’ve overslept, darling. Are you all right?”

  For a moment he was confused. Then the memories hit him all at once. Not one after another, but like hearing all the notes of a symphony at once. He reeled and fell back onto his pillow.

  He lay back and closed his eyes. Just for a moment. A minute or two...

  And he felt a strange, smiling presence within his heart. He thought he knew who it was. What am I doing in my bed, he wondered. And that feeling of a Presence that was... that was mother. Only, surely, she’d only just come in. So what am I doing here?

  He’d half-expected to wake up and find himself on a heavenly plateau, his hand linked with Sandra’s, his eyes filled with sights he could hardly imagine. But here he was. He remained supine, in his bed, vaguely aware of his mother sitting on the edge, gently stroking his head. Then he gave in—he had no choice. He was back at home away from Home.

  “I’m all right, Mother. I’m just fine.” He never called mom, ‘mother.’ Something had happened. Luckily she didn’t notice. “I’m OK, Mom, really.”

  Then she relaxed.

  “You better just brush your teeth and wash your face and run downstairs. You’re starting your exams today.”

  Exams! Cripes! He never, never forgot about his exams. In a single leap he was out of bed and into the bathroom. Mom will make my bed later. She always did on special occasions. And exams qualified.

  The next three days he wrote the exams.

  The three days passed like a whirlwind. From school he ran home, picked up the textbooks dealing with the next day’s subjects, and ran through them in his own inimitable way. He read up on a subject and then he imagined the substance of the story. This worked fine on everything except math. With numbers he couldn’t do that, but he didn’t have to. Numbers were what he called ‘pure logic’. They always added up, he had once quipped to the substitute teacher when Mr. Barrow, the math teacher, had a cold. The snubby sub thought he was, or perhaps wasn’t, being funny. Well, he was right, one way or another. But Alec’s humor wasn’t appreciated. He was called to the blackboard and grilled for ten minutes. Finally the sub gave up. He couldn’t catch Alec on any sums he was given. After that, Alec was known as Einstein, for a while; and that was before he found out who Einstein was.

  Somehow none of the exams seemed difficult. He managed to finish each one ahead of the allotted time. Except for history, but that was only because he wrote too much. He had visited early settlers on two of his imaginary jaunts and knew a little more than was in the history book. But it didn’t matter; he did answer all the questions, even if his writing suffered a little in legibility.

  Then the exams were over.

  On Saturday he played tennis with Pete. Each of them had done well in the exams and the match was more of a celebration of the end of the year than a life-and-death struggle. They both scored some marvelous points; both also put easy volleys into the net. They played just for fun. In fact, halfway through the ‘match’ they stopped keeping score.

  The next day it was raining. Alec hated when it rained in summer, particularly once the holidays had started. The elements had the whole of spring and autumn for raining. To rain in summer was a personal insult to all the boys and girls who were finally free to play outside.

  But, as he already knew, there was a reason for everything, at least in his own life. Even if it wasn’t immediately visible.

  Dad continued working; mother was busy with her painting club. There were four moms who rented a studio and hired a model they all painted. Or tried to paint—on canvas, not the model herself. Mother’s attempts weren’t funny—or, in a way, they were. Alec never looked too closely, because the lady they all painted was quite naked. I mean really nude—nothing on at all! Mother told him once that gentlemen turn their heads when a lady is undressed. That included nude, he supposed. He always wondered how they could find out she was completely nude if they turned around. On the other hand, if they had already found out, why bother turning away? Surely it was already too late. Anyway, he always turned his head when mother was showing her paintings to dad. Dad didn’t mind, it seemed. Women, and girls, were seldom logical. And this realization brought him, for the first time in a week, to Sandra.

  Sandra was an exception.

  There were questions. A number of them.

  Why was he taken to the Home planet to start with? If Step Two was the Far Country, then where was the Home world? And if he’d already lived there for over a thousand years, what was the point of going there again? Not that he minded. He didn’t mind going anywhere with Sandra. Anywhere at all. But why to a place he’d already been?

  She’d said that the Home planet was a place where people practice their skills. Before coming down to Earth? Did they do this sort of thing on and on? What was really the point of it all? Now that he thought about it, what was the point of life? There must have been a point because everything happened on purpose, but what was the point? He must ask her. Would she tell him, or was he supposed to find out by himself? He’d seen a book on mom’s shelves called Wisdom of the West. It was by some guy named Bertrand Russell. Actually, it must have been dad’s book, because Mr. Russell sounded English. Alec once looked at the pictures in that book but never read any of it. It was about people who were professional thinkers. Philosophers. That’s all they did. Just sat and thought. No action, no fun. Alec still preferred action. He only thought to understand things. Maybe that’s why the other guys also thought. But not all the time, surely! If he ever tried thinking for too long, he got a heavy head and the vein in his forehead began pulsating. A bit more and he would get a headache. Mom got headaches quite regularly and took an array of pills for them. Maybe all she had to do was to stop thinking and the headaches would go away.

  Now imagining things was quite different. You didn’t think about things, you saw them. It was more like listening than thinking. You thought about something and then you listened and watched what developed. He’d learned that when he was little. Much smaller than he was now. Oh, boy, was he ever small!

  But somehow the thinking and listening and seeing had got all mixed up since he met Sandra. Sometimes you had to do all three at once. It was all right for a while; but if he tried it for any length of time, then he got tired. Maybe that is why Sandra told him not to dream too much. To get on with his life. Well, he was getting on very nicely, thank you, but this was a rainy day. What is there to get on with when it rains? He could read, of course, and there was TV and the Internet, but he was on vacation. You do that stuff during the school year.

  But there were still those questions.

  He felt that he ought to find out as many answers on his own as he could. So, why did Sandra show him the Home planet? Obviously he had to learn something before taking the Next Step. Whatever that was. And trusting Sandra, it would be as incredible as the First. Not counting the Home world.

  Is this what growing up feels like? Being responsible for my own learning, for my own understanding? Maybe even my life. Not the food and roof-over-my-head aspect, but life in general. He was discovering that he had to take responsibility for his actions. Even thoughts. It was no good blaming others, as some parents did for their children failing their exams. Some boys were busy in the class hiding their chewing gum rather than listening. And Miss Brunt knew quite a lot, for a woman. So did Mr. Barrow and Miss Collins, of course. All the teachers knew a lot. Actually Sandra knew even more; and she, too, was a woman—on the Home planet, that is. As a matter of fact, he’d never met any man who knew more than Miss Brunt or Sandra. Not nearly as much. Maybe women, and even some girls, weren’t dumb at all. Maybe they, the boys, were just jealous.

  He made a mental note to discuss this issue with dad. Or better still, with Pete. Pete had a girlfriend he saw twice a week, as regularly as tennis. Only Alec never went to see her with him. She was Pete’s private date. Alec h
ad no idea what they did when they were together. No idea at all. Alec wouldn’t know what to do with a girl for such a long time. Except for Sandra, of course. But Sandra was different.

  ***

  Four moms getting together to paint was fun, but not as easy as it sounded. Not from the artistic point of view. Alicia, who until then painted only landscapes, and those limited mostly to her own garden supplemented by dozens of photographs, wasn’t quite ready to face a naked body. Other than her husband’s, of course.

  Also, painting models with water paint got them all wet. What she meant was that with watercolor you have to blend paint in its wet state, or wait for the paint to dry. The effects of the two methods are quite different. And the models wouldn’t wait.

  She was thinking, quite seriously, of drugging the model with some sleeping tablets, to make her keep still for a longer time, but she wasn’t sure if it were legal. Nor was she sure that the other moms, who ventured into the experiment with oil and even acrylic paint, did not seem to have the same problems.

  Zaza was the worst. She could produce a painting in half-an-hour, and have people admire it. Actually she could also do very accurate figure drawings. Almost porno, but not quite. Her drawings were just too good. Much too good. She was that talented. No one ever called any of the Old Masters porno, did they?

  And what, she mused, if the Alex were to agree to act as her model? Wouldn’t that be fun? Alex stripping? Junior or Senior? Both? How about some other husbands? The next thing she began visualizing an Roman orgy.

  “Down, girl, DOWN,” she scolded herself. “You’re not that frustrated.”

  In fact, physically, she was not frustrated at all. Artistically—perhaps…

  And then it hit her.

  What if she painted the last judgment? Michelangelo’s done it? And Bosch in his Triptych? Or even Kandinsky’s….

  No. Kandinsky was more Zaza’s style. Alicia preferred her people to look like people, not like something regurgitated by her cat. I don’t have a cat but I could always get one, for Kandinsky… her mind was in a whirlwind.

  “I wonder is he had a cat?”

  Yes, Michelangelo was the best. Only she, Alicia Baldwin would introduce a twist. All people taking part in the Last Judgment would be innocent.

  Innocent of any crime whatsoever!

  It would be an explosion of joy unmatched in human history. Every single one of them, every human figure would be destined for heaven. Every single one of them…

  Her eyes became dreamy.

  “I would add each new model to the composition, and add an new one each week. Perhaps other moms would help me? They, too, would become immortal. Like Mrs. Michelangelo, or Mrs. Bosch, or even Zaza Kandinsky …”

  Then she smiled to herself. She long suspected that Mr. Michelangelo might have preferred men’s company…

  And then she grew pensive again.

  Only where, she mused, where would I find a wall big enough. A wall stretching from earth all the way up to heaven?

  ***

  So what is life? Does life have any purpose? Alec didn’t really think so. Life was life. It was to be lived for its own sake. It was to be enjoyed to the fullest. Not at somebody’s expense, of course, but, other than that, all the way. He certainly enjoyed his life. As best as he could judge, so did mom. Dad had some problems he tried to avoid, but most of the time he was in a good mood. Especially after a couple of beers, or a Scotch or two. Not that dad drank too much. Never. He couldn’t. When he had what mom called one-too-many, he simply fell asleep. One-too-many for dad was a lot less than for most men. Alec thought that was because dad worked a lot. He was really tired when he got home. He put in a couple of twelve-hour days every week. On those days he just collapsed into his favourite chair even before supper. He would take a twenty-minute snooze and, more often than not, would be as good as new. Alec wondered why dad had to work so hard.

  So life had no purpose other than to live it to the fullest.

  That’s more or less what Sandra had said. Live and let live. This involved tolerance of others. Helping them, he supposed. Some people said you should love one another. Alec thought that was going too far. He loved mom and dad, of course, but everyone? He certainly liked Pete, even Pete’s parents, sort of, but... well, there were quite a few boys in the school he wouldn’t waste his time on.

  Of course, there was Sandra. How did he feel about Sandra? She was so much a part of himself he felt as though... he felt as though they really were two peas in a single pod. In the Far Country he could hardly tell her apart from himself. He heard her voice, but it was really like hearing himself talking, only with a girl’s voice. Except it wasn’t a voice at all. More like a feeling. Like ideas forming in his mind. Like understanding what music was saying. Funny, that.

  So what was he supposed to learn before taking the Next Step? He remembered quite vividly the incredible endless precipice he’d leaned over on the way down from the platform on which they’d landed. Like a horizon, he’d thought, only downwards. Now that was scary. How low could one fall? But if there was no bottom to smash against, what was down there?

  He was falling, seemingly falling for ages. The walls, solid up above, became diffused with grayish light. They looked soft, pliable, although he did not touch them. How long would the fall take?

  The air was getting thicker. At the same time, the walls of the precipice receded, or became transparent, and he could see vast areas of quite primitive terrain. There were small but cruel mountains, their crests as sharp as needles. Between them he saw what looked like craters which became more common as he fell down. He felt he was receding not so much into a depth but in time. He was descending into its ancient history.

  The rate of his descent seemed to slow. The landscape became more clearly defined, more colour-filled his field of vision. He became aware of heat penetrating through the now almost non-existent walls of the ravine. Then a roar filled his ears. He saw a volcano vomiting masses of ash and rock into the orange sky. That’s right. Down there, or here, possibly as deep as any man has ever been, there was a sky. A curious sky. The clouds were dense, oppressive in their apparent thickness. They reflected the heat right back into the soil that continued to throw up whatever it didn’t want. The surface of a lake nearby seemed to boil.

  “How can anything survive in this land?” he wondered. “And what am I doing here?”

  And then he stopped moving, although he didn’t feel any ground below him. He felt suspended about six feet above the ground, a ground he wouldn’t want to step on.

  “What in the world am I doing here?” he asked again. “And where are my legs, and arms, and body?” His eyes traced the space where his body should have been. “Where am I, where is me???”

  Something moved and caught his eye. He looked and was more confused than ever. A monster about ten times the size of an elephant was approaching him with slow, measured steps. The beast seemed quite unaware of his presence. It moved heavily, each foot covering no less than some five or six feet of the ground. The biggest feet he’d ever seen. Out of its jaw, which spanned from shoulder to shoulder, writhed snakes. Snakes with white balls on the end that looked like eyes. Some other snakes didn’t have eyes but flat widening funnels at the end. As the monster lumbered forward, a sharp crevice opened between its front and rear paws. The beast’s left rear paw spanned the two edges of the crack. It just walked on as though nothing had happened.

  Alec, assuming he was still Alec, bodiless, didn’t want to find out anymore and moved his attention towards some nearby hills. In less than a second he was hovering over slightly less coarse terrain. The elephant beast was far, far behind him. Here, there was some rudimentary ground cover that gave an impression of a grazing area. True enough, in a wide valley that opened beyond the first row of undulating hills, he saw a herd of very strange-looking animals. They looked like a grotesque assembly of parts collected from various animals now living on Earth, with a dozen or so quite absurd features tha
t no self-respecting animal on any planet would want to be connected to. The eyes, for instance, stood out on long stalks, which waved to and fro, while even longer snouts ending with a broad mouth-like aperture munched the green-brown fodder that the ground offered. They looked like animals put together by some mad scientist who was experimenting. The herd ignored Alec’s presence. Which made sense, because if Alec couldn’t see himself, why would anything else be able to see him?

  Alec moved his awareness right into the middle of the herd of grazing beasts. He was right. Not one of them moved their snouts or legs, and the eyes on their absurd stalks continued to wave, to and fro, as though nothing had happened.

  He evidently was witnessing the archaic formation of the planet. He could accept that evolution had a way to go before she would arrange the diverse body parts into some semblance of order.

  One could make horses, and zebras and anteaters, and platypuses and just about any animal on Earth from these prototypes. He wondered just how far back he’d moved.

  The next moment he was back in his own room, a peculiar smell of saltpeter wafting from his body. He got up and ran outside. He didn’t care about the rain. He was awfully glad to be home. His ordinary, earthly, real, solid home.

  15

  The Enigma Gets Worse

  They left early. Alex Sr. drove their jalopy along the Lachine Canal, all the way to the St-Laurence Sailing Club. There was a time when a sports car, an open two-seater, was all he’d ever want to drive. Vroom, vroom, and all that. Those were the old days. Now the car could be old as long as it was comfortable. And open cars were not built for Canadian climate. No, sir, not for our winters. Unless you had two cars, of course, but even so getting down to sit practically on the floor was not something Alex would look forward to. Not anymore. Not since he became Alex Senior.