by Sandy Nathan
Sam and Jeremy stared at Bud, astonished. His fingers were inside Martin’s skull, tinkering. Martin sat still, a blissed-out look on his face. Bud felt around, then twisted something.
“OK. That should do ‘er. Look over there, Martin. Sam’s right there.” He pulled his hands out of Martin’s eye sockets and turned his face toward Sam.
Martin opened his eyes, blinking in the light. “Is that you, Sam?” He squinted. “I can’t see much.”
“That’s because your nerves don’t know what they’re seein’, you being blind for so long. Here, let me adjust ‘em.” Bud gave him a good whack across the back of his head. “How’s that?”
“Sam!” Martin shouted, embracing Sam. “You look … You look … like Sam.” He turned to Jeremy, examining his face and skin. “You’re darker than us.”
“Yeah, my father was an African-American. Black, they used to call us. That’s where I got my hair.” Jeremy rubbed the stubs of his dreads.
Martin looked around, marveling. “What’s this?” he indicated the gray cloud around them.
“Darned if I know. I’ve seen Grandfather pull one up when he was doing something most folks wouldn’t understand. It just came. We needed some privacy.” Bud turned to Jeremy. “Oh, we’re not done yet. Not by a long shot. Son, what is that sadness over you? What is that grief?” He focused on Jeremy, moving behind him.
Jeremy fell forward, landing on Sam’s chest.
Bud dropped to his knees, leaning over Jeremy’s back and sticking his hands into his brain. “Oh, Great One. Look at this boy’s grief. Look at this.” Images from Jeremy’s life began to appear above them. A little child, wandering alone and bewildered, surrounded by plenty and nothingness. Faces, scenes. The Hermitage Academy. Hiding in his basement apartment. The nerd. The forgotten heir. His emptiness until he discovered the joy of creating. The electronic world. The computer world.
Bud found what had happened when Jeremy was nine years old. His father sat dead in his chair, a rubber tube around his arm and a needle in his vein. Jeremy could remember every little thing, frozen solid in his mind, like a specimen you could slice and examine under the microscope.
“Oh, you poor thing,” Bud kept up a steady flow of commiseration and love. “You were just a child alone.”
Until Ellie. They could see her image floating in the air. Ellie when he first saw her at the Hermitage Academy. Loving each other, jumping onto the “space ship,” and living uncountable years on her planet in love, but in misery, too. And then Ellie turned into a wasp and died, saving most of them before she did.
“Now son, stay here with me. We can work it out. Oh, Lord, come down here now! We need a miracle.” Bud didn’t know if he’d opened up something he couldn’t handle.
That’s when Ellie came, as graceful and lovely as she had been when she and Jeremy met. Long dancer’s limbs, lovely musculature, elegant movement. She wasn’t a vision—she was totally real, except that she floated two feet off the ground.
She smiled at Jeremy, reaching for him. They touched. “I love you,” she said. “I would never leave you.” And she was gone.
Jeremy stared at the air where she had been, wonder on his face. “It was her species’ life cycle,” he said. “The meat she ate started her changing, but wasn’t all of it. It was being here, on this planet. She couldn’t stop it.” He sat, struggling with what she’d imparted. “She’d never leave me on her own. She had no choice.”
Bud staggered around the circle and plopped where he had been, gazing at Jeremy with the same pole-axed expression that Jeremy wore.
“Oh, Lordy Lord.” He pulled out his handkerchief. “I guess I need some healing, too.” He told them about Bert and his kids and how he was so scared that she’d think he ran off with someone. “I want to go home so bad …”
60
“Martin, you might want to tone it down a little.” Bud waved his hand at Martin and his horse. They were making good progress catching up with the others on the mounts that had been left for them. With one problem: Martin kept yelling and ululating every time he saw something new, which was everything he looked at. The horses spooked in every direction.
“What is that, Bud?” Martin whooped.
“That’s a tree.”
“What is that?’
“Another tree.”
“They look different,” Martin shrieked.
“Yes,” Bud explained. “That’s a sycamore; the other one was an oak.”
“Two kinds of trees!” Martin exploded with joy, causing the horses to spin.
“There’s lots more kinds of tree than that, Martin. You’ll see. Now all of you, keep those heels down. You gotta keep the heels down or your feet will run right through these English stirrups. If your horse runs off, you could get dragged. Look here …” Bud rode around the others, giving them an extended riding lesson.
“We’re gonna pick it up now. We don’t want to be out here all night. To ride a trot, just stand in the stirrups and grab the front of the saddle with your hand. Lean on your hand. Like this …” Bud’s demonstration proved impossible for the others to copy.
“OK. You can also post.” He showed them how to rise to the trot, with similar results. “Well, since you can’t do that, just sit. You’ll either figure it out or have the sorest balls in the world tomorrow. Let’s go.”
“What’s that?” Martin asked. The light was fading but the pale rock face stood out in the dusk.
“That’s the cliff where we live. We’re home.” They’d ridden longer than Sam ever cared to do again.
The place looked like a war zone. Loaded travois littered the ground. Sam could see the motorized vehicles parked against the cliff with their trailers still hitched up and heaps of stuff all over, but he didn’t see any people.
Bud rode to the cliff and then back toward the river. The others followed him. “They’re over here!” he called.
Sam jolted to a stop when he saw the lady walking up from the river with Wesley. He had his arm around her and was leaning over her, whispering. She wore one of Sam’s big shirts. It was dripping wet, its fabric plastered to her body. She covered her face with her hands.
“Get away from her!” The Voice burst out of him before he could think.
Wes shot back ten feet. “She’s upset!” he squalled. “I was taking care of her.”
Sam rode forward and saw that his wife was really upset. Tears streaked her face and she trembled. He stepped off his horse and went to her.
“Oh, Sam! I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again.” She clung to him, quaking. “I need to get ahold of myself. I’m really having a moment.” She wiped her eyes with the tails of the shirt. “We were washing the babies and treating them for the itches, and all of a sudden they seemed so fragile and helpless. I didn’t know how we’d ever raise them. Or how we’d put all this stuff away. Or if we’d survive.” She waved her hands helplessly. “You and Jeremy were gone …
“Oh, Sam. I thought you were going to die.” Her voice rose and she embraced him again, tearful. “I’m so glad you’re back. Let me see you. How are your feet?”
“I’m fine, lady. Bud healed us. Martin can see now.”
“Oh, Martin,” she called to him. “That’s wonderful. Bud, how did you do that?”
Bud scratched his neck. “We can talk about that later, Grace. I think the first order of business is for us to use whatever you put on the babies. We’re crawling.”
When night fell, everyone gathered at the base of the cliff for a homecoming barbecue that turned into a bonfire. Sparks flew into the air, and the people from the underground whooped and hollered.
“We made it home,” Henry cheered. “I never thought we would.” The others clapped and ululated. The party was on.
For everyone but Sam. His eyes narrowed. Now that he wasn’t hurt, he could see what Wesley was doing clearly. He laughed and joked with the lady, passing hunks of barbecued fish. Sam’s hatred grew as he watched Wesley’s flashing eyes and b
rilliant smiles on the other side of the circle. They were all for the lady. Why was she over there?
She finally walked around and sat beside him. “Sam, I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you.” Her eyes filled and he pulled her to his chest. She snuggled into him as though that was the only place she wanted to be, and held on. She held on so tight that the others went silent and then quietly moved to campsites scattered around the base of the cliff.
“Lady,” Sam whispered, “let’s go to our room.” She agreed.
He pulled the ladder down and helped her climb up. When they were home in their cave, he felt better.
But he’d seen Wesley’s eyes glisten as she walked by. Sam shivered. His hands closed into fists. He would kill him if he touched her. The lady was looking at him.
“Don’t be jealous of Wesley, Sam.” She put her hand on his forearm. “He’s a pathetic little man.
“He’s no competition for you.” She looked at him with those bottomless blue eyes. He looked into them and saw as far down into her as she went. She loved him. She was true.
Her eyes filled again. “I can’t seem to get ahold of myself.” She dabbed at them with a hankie. “I don’t know what I’d do without you. Nothing would make sense.
“Oh. I had such different plans for this evening. Our homecoming was going to be so joyous. Well, maybe we can still make it that way.
“I found something in the piles of stuff.” She picked up a slender cylinder. “Do you know what this is?” He shook his head. “It’s a candle. I could have brought an electric lantern in here, but this makes a nicer light. See?” She lit the candle and pressed it into a holder sitting by their bed. “See how the light moves?” She stirred the air around the flame and it flickered. “Beautiful isn’t it? The way it lights up our bedroom? Sort of a blush.”
She began unbuttoning her shirt. “We can see each other this way. I thought that would be nice.” She opened the shirt. “Would you like to look at me, Sam? I’d like it. I’d like to welcome you home.”
The candlelight glowed on her skin. He watched her undress. Voluptuous curves, shadowed recesses. A darkness that enfolded him and held him past any hope of escape. He couldn’t look away.
She opened her arms and he lay next to her, studying the perfect features that the candle revealed. He ran his fingers along her face and shoulder, over her hair.
“I love you, Sam.”
He bent over her and covered her mouth with his. Something took over inside him, stopping time, replacing pain with pleasure, and then more pleasure than either could hold.
She lay face down on the bed, head turned to one side, sleeping. Sam sat next to her, watching, unable to sleep. He belonged to her so completely that he would die if he lost her.
But she was true. He knew that as surely as he knew Wesley was a snake.
61
“Just when everythin’ seems t’ be workin’ out, I have a meltdown,” Bud said to Grace. “I don’t know how much longer I can keep on goin’. I just gotta let my hair down.” Bud was seated on a rock by the river, elbows propped on his knees, hands dangling. His long braids were unkempt, and his hat’s brim was torn and coming loose from the crown on one side.
The air was nippy again; their second cold season was on its way. The first winter was one of those piddly California deals where it rained a few times and got down to forty degrees. None of the people from the East Coast even noticed it and no one was worried about it this go-round.
“Grace, I never imagined this happenin’. I thought we come here to do a job—help you all with the underground and savin’ the kids. But we done that.
“We done that an’ more, and more. We got the sawmill going by the river, cleared a logging road, built corrals an’ sheds. Wesley built a whole barn an’ got all the equipment going perfect. We taught you how to slaughter and dry meat, how to plant and harvest. Everything we know we taught you, Wesley and me both. You all worked like demons, too. But how much more can we do? I don’t think we’re ever goin’ to get to go home.”
“Oh, Bud. I’m so sorry. When I asked the people of the golden planet to bring you here, I never imagined they wouldn’t send you back.”
“Yeah, well, things didn’t turn out the way anyone expected, that doctor going crazy an’ all. But it’s been almost two years! All I can think about is what’s goin’ on with my Bert. An’ the kids? She’ll think I ran out on her. Or got killed somewhere and she’ll never know what happened to me.”
He pulled his hat off and struck it against his knee. “Lord, I wish I could go home. I’m beyond goin’ crazy. I’m completely off my gourd.” His shoulders slumped and began to heave. “I’m gonna sit here cryin’ until I die.”
“Oh, Bud. Don’t cry.” Grace put her arms around him. “I’d call the goldies up and ask them to send you back …”
“You would?”
“I would, but for what happened the last time I talked to them. Their planet is in a shambles because of me. That doctor wanted to set me up as a porn star. Who knows how many of them still want that? I won’t contact them again.”
“I see what you mean.” He slipped farther into melancholy. “Don’t you think there’s anything can be done? I been thinkin’ of all sorts of things in my misery, Grace. You know how bogus this place is, don’t you? It’s part California, part New Mexico, part Montana. Maybe some Connecticut. This place is made-up. That’s what I’ve been thinking.”
“I’ve thought that from the very beginning,” she answered.
“This is what else I’ve been thinking. This place is made up out of your mind, and Jeremy’s, too. Places you’ve been. It’s like someone reached into your head and pulled out a bunch of memories and then used them to make a place—here—for us to land.”
“Who would do that?”
“The goldies. Could they do that?”
“Why would that doctor go to all the trouble to dig out the underground and make that movie set with the spiders if he could just think up something without the work?”
“So it’s not likely that the goldies did it?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“OK. When you sent out those messages to outer space, or when Jeremy did and they sent Ellie, did you send them just to the golden planet, or did you send them all over space?”
She looked at him, blinking. “All over, Bud. Later, we tuned into the golden planet, but still, we both sent wide band messages.”
“So any other world in the universe could have picked them up?”
“Yes, if they had sufficient technology.”
“And an interest in you, Jeremy, and our little band of outlaws.”
“Yes.”
“Say they were interested. Say they made this world for you, and hauled you out of wherever you were and put you here, then did the same with Jeremy and the underground, all at once.”
“But the underground was ancient. People had been there forever.”
“If this other world could create all this—this phony paradise—they could stick the underground in it, and whatever else they wanted. Not only that, this whole deal might not be real.” He indicated the riverbed around him. “This could be somebody’s imagination. It could disappear the minute they forget about us.”
“Don’t tell me that. I worry enough.”
He pulled something out of his pocket.
“I’ve been wanting to show you this. I’ve been carryin’ it in my jeans since I got here. We call this a flash drive where I come from. It goes in a computer. You can store stuff on it. Pictures or whatever you want. I’ve got pictures of my family on this one, an’ my world. I’d like so much if Jeremy could play it.
“I didn’t pull it out before because I wasn’t sure that I could handle seein’ Bert an’ the kids. Now, I can’t handle not seein’ ‘em.
“An’ I got some ideas. Here’s the deal. I think this place could break apart at any time. I think we need a Plan B, right now.”
“What can we d
o? We don’t have any other options.”
“I think I’ve got one. It’s from my time, 2015.” Bud dropped his voice, “I get the shakes any time I talk about Will Duane. He’s so private that to work for him, you gotta sign an inch-thick contract saying you won’t talk about him or anything he’s got, including his cat, if he had one. I feel funny talking about this, but I need to.
“There’s a famous physicist, Dr. Vanessa Schierman. She’s got a PhD from Berkeley an’ she was in on developin’ the Cyclotron and who knows what else. She’s an older lady, a tad strange. Dr. Schierman is a good friend of Will’s an’ has an estate up on Skyline Road above Woodside. In California. I heard tell that Dr. Schierman is doing experiments with a time machine.” He dropped his voice still further.
“Actually, what I heard is that she has one and uses it. Will Duane an’ Willy Fish an’ Dr. Schierman are workin’ on a commercial application of it. They’re working on something about time travel. Willy Fish is Will’s tech genius, by th’ way. Sort of a Jeremy in my time.
“I was thinking if Wes and me could get home, I could tell Will about you folks, an’ maybe he and Willy Fish and Dr. Schierman could figure out a way to pick you up. All of you.
“If Will had Jeremy and Willy Fish working for him, he’d dominate the tech field worldwide, hands down. He’ll figure that out right away. And Sam could be the super manager of the universe with that Voice and his Power. Will would want to do it, I know.”
“So there’s some possibility that we may be able to escape to the year 2015?”
“Yes, if we can figure out where and when we are now so we can tell Will and them where to find you. And if they can develop the technology to do it before this place rips apart.”
“It’s a very slim possibility.”
“Very.”
“That’s a lot to think about, Bud. I’ll get this,” she held up the flash drive, “to Jeremy. I don’t know that we’ll even be able to use it with our computers. I’ve never seen anything like this.
