The Klaatu Terminus

by Pete Hautman

  Lia let out a cry of delight and ran across the courtyard, not to the fountain, but to a gnarled old tree. She reached into the foliage and tugged, then tossed something round and green to Tucker. A green orange? She picked one for herself and joined him at the fountain.

  The orange was not like any orange Tucker had seen before. The skin was bumpy and hard, and most of all, it wasn’t orange. They peeled the fruits and gnawed on the pulpy, sour, slightly bitter flesh. It was delicious. Tucker hadn’t realized how hungry and thirsty he had become. He looked suspiciously at the water pooled in the basin.

  “Do you think it’s okay to drink?”

  Lia scooped up some water in her palm and sniffed it. “It is all there is.” She sucked some of the water from her cupped palm. “It tastes like weeds.”

  Tucker palmed some water and drank. Definitely weedy.

  Lia said, “The last time I was here, there was a war between the Yars and the priests.”

  “Who won?”

  “The priests were driven off, but nobody won.”

  “Do you think that’s what destroyed the city?”

  Lia drank another handful of water. “It looks more like the people simply left.”

  “Then they must have gone someplace, right?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe the Boggsians can tell us. But I want to see one more thing here.” She walked over to one of the walls surrounding the courtyard and pushed aside a heavy curtain of vines, revealing an opening about a foot wide. “Do you think you can fit?” she asked.

  Tucker was not eager to enter the dark slot. It reminded him of the tomb in Jerusalem.

  “What’s in there?” he asked. But Lia had already disappeared into the opening. Tucker took a deep breath and, with some difficulty, squeezed through into a tunnel only a few inches wider than the opening. It was pitch-black.

  “Lia?”

  “Right here.”

  He felt her hand brush his arm and grab hold.

  “I don’t think this is a good idea,” he said. “What about that jaguar?”

  “If there were beasts in here, we would smell them.”

  In the dark, they descended a stairway, felt their way along a damp passageway, then climbed a shallow ramp. After a few dozen paces, a faint light appeared ahead. They emerged into a large room with most of its roof collapsed onto the floor. Between the chunks of roof tile and rotted wooden beams lay mounds of spongy, gray, flaking matter that looked like moldy papier-mâché. Several small dark rodents scurried into holes in the waste. Lia dropped Tucker’s hand; her shoulders fell.

  “What is this?” Tucker asked.

  “It was a library.”

  They made their way through the forested streets slowly, every darkened doorway threatening to conceal jaguars or other dangerous creatures. Tucker had left behind his iron bar. He now carried a small rusted knife he had found, and a wooden pole with two sharpened ends. They had also found a wooden bow and some arrows in the convent. When Tucker flexed the bow, the brittle wood had splintered.

  Lia was carrying an old rucksack she had found in a cabinet that had somehow resisted centuries of weather, insects, and rodents. She had loaded the bag with six green oranges and a stoppered clay bottle full of water. She stopped and pointed. A few yards in front of them was a tree growing up through the crumbled pavers. Several oblong fruits lay on the stones beneath it. “Mangoes,” she said.

  A number of green and yellow fruits were still hanging from the branches. They each picked one. Tucker cut away the rind with his knife, and they gnawed the sweet orange flesh.

  “This is good,” Tucker said as Lia added several mangoes to her bag, “but I don’t know how long we can live on fruit.”

  They came across a large, low concrete building partially covered with vines. The building had a metal roof, which was rusted through, and several wide, vine-swagged doorways along its side. Lia regarded the structure with a furrowed brow.

  “This is not a Lah Sept building,” she said.

  Tucker used his pole to sweep aside some of the hanging vines and peered into the building’s interior. A pair of swallows swooped out low over his head, startling him. He jumped back, then approached the opening cautiously.

  Lia joined him in the doorway. Inside was a large open space littered with plant matter and unidentifiable junk. A few of the objects were recognizable as broken chairs and tables. As their eyes adjusted to the half light, they saw a row of boxy alcoves set into the far wall. Lia picked her way across the trash-strewn floor for a closer look. Each alcove was about the size of a shower stall. Most of them had glass doors, now streaked with white bird-droppings. Inside the alcoves were wires and other electrical apparatus.

  “What was this place?” Tucker asked.

  “I think,” said Lia, “it was a place for making Klaatu.”

  THE URBAN FOREST GAVE WAY TO ROLLING LAND COVERED with knee-high grasses and dotted with clumps of trees. They climbed a low rise to the top of a hill and looked back. Other than the stepped pyramid jutting up from the horizon, the city was invisible.

  “I never want to go back there,” Lia said. She swung her bag from one shoulder to the other.

  Tucker shaded his eyes and looked to the east. At the base of the hill they were standing on, the land leveled out and met a dark line of tall trees.

  “That’s a creek down there,” he said. “In the future, where we’re standing now will be a hill covered with pine trees. The lower areas will be tamarack bogs. The climate is going to change back.”

  “That will be a long time from now,” Lia said.

  “The first time I met Awn she wouldn’t tell me what year it was. She had a thing about numbers. She did this thing where she pounded her stick on the floor and said she was counting out the seasons. She did it for hours. I think she was telling me we were something like nine thousand years in the future.”

  “That is a big number.” Lia still didn’t like numbers, but Jonis, the librarian in Romelas, had taught her to use them. She had to admit they were useful at times. She could not quite grasp thousands, though.

  “Long enough for this tropical climate to shift back to a northern forest,” Tucker said.

  “I wonder why the Boggsians haven’t changed,” Lia said. “The Boggsian I met in Mayo dressed and talked the same as the Boggsian who sent me here in Awn’s time. But if that was thousands of years from now, you’d think that the Boggsians would talk different and dress different.”

  “There were people kind of like the Boggsians when I lived in Hopewell,” Tucker said. “They were called Amish. I guess they have traditions.”

  “We will have to ask a Boggsian. If there are any to ask.”

  The creek was narrow and rocky; they crossed it easily, then entered a dense jungle crowded with large-leaved plants and alarming animal noises.

  “Besides jaguars, is there anything living here we have to worry about?” Tucker asked.

  “I never went outside Romelas,” Lia said. “But I know there were snakes.”

  “Great. Snakes.” Tucker climbed over a fallen tree. Every stick, vine, and shadow now looked snaky to him. They picked their way through the tangle of vegetation, stopping every few steps to look for danger. The chatter of birds was constant, punctuated every few seconds by screeches, yowls, and clicking sounds.

  “This is like a Tarzan movie,” Tucker said.

  “What is Tarzan?”

  “Never mind.”

  The shape of the land seemed familiar at times, but mostly all they saw was a wall of green on every side. They tried to follow the high ground, searching for a vantage point, but even the tops of the ridges were vegetation-choked, leaving them to blunder blindly forward.

  “I can’t even see the sun. I hope we’re still heading east.” Tucker used his stick to push through a stand of head-high ferns. Behind the ferns was a ten-foot-tall rock wall. They climbed the wall and emerged onto a grassy knoll. At the center of the knoll stood the broken stone foundations of
a building. A lizard the size of a cat perched on the crumbling wall, regarding them balefully.

  “Iguana,” Lia said. “People in Romelas used to eat them.”

  “Really?” Tucker raised his stick.

  “I do not eat meat,” she reminded him.

  The lizard scrambled off the stones and disappeared into the grass. They walked over to the foundation. It looked as if it might once have been an old farmhouse.

  “I hope this isn’t what’s left of the Boggsians,” Tucker said.

  “We haven’t crossed the river yet.”

  “Yeah, if the river is there.”

  They found the river some hours later.

  “I don’t think we can wade across,” Tucker said. “I don’t think I’d want to swim it either. If there are jaguars here, there might be alligators. Or piranhas.”

  “I never heard talk of such creatures. They may have gone extinct.”

  “Still . . . let’s follow it for a ways. Maybe there’s a bridge or something.”

  They followed animal paths through the forest, keeping the river in sight. Tucker could see tracks that looked like they had been made by split hooves. Lia stopped and sniffed the air.

  “I smell something dead,” she said. The odor was unmistakable, and it was getting stronger. They rounded a bend and came upon its source: a pile of offal, topped by the hairy head of a wild boar, crowned by a swarm of flies.

  “That doesn’t look natural,” Tucker said in a low voice. “Somebody must’ve put that head there. Maybe it’s a warning.” They backed away, looking around nervously.

  “Boggsians?” Lia said.

  “I don’t know. It doesn’t look like a Boggsian sort of thing.”

  They left the path, giving the dead pig a wide berth. After pushing their way through a nearly impenetrable copse of thorny bushes, they angled back toward the path, but either they’d gotten turned around, or the path had veered off to the right. The sky — what they could see of it — had clouded. Tucker wasn’t sure which way was east anymore. He didn’t say anything to Lia.

  A few minutes later, Lia stopped and said, “I think we’re lost.”

  “Let’s keep moving. We’re bound to come across something.”

  “I can still smell that pig.”

  “We must be going in circles then. There’s a big tree that looks climbable. Maybe I can get a look at what’s around us. Wait here.”

  Tucker didn’t know what sort of tree it was; it had smooth bark, large leaves, and some low branches he could reach. He climbed until he was above most of the other plants and could scan the surrounding forest. What he saw was more trees, in every direction. He climbed higher, until he feared the main trunk was too slender to hold him. He could see the river now, less than fifty yards away.

  Lia screamed.

  For a moment, Tucker didn’t know what he had heard. The sound hit his ears and traveled down his spine; his body went rigid, then he heard her shout his name. Heart pounding, Tucker scrambled down the tree. He dropped the last ten feet to the ground. Lia was not in sight.

  He shouted her name and listened, but heard nothing. Even the birds were silent. Looking down, he saw where the leaves had been trampled. Some of the fern fronds were bent. He grabbed his stick and followed the broken vegetation, thinking, Jaguar!

  Slashing at the underbrush with his stick, he followed what he hoped was her trail, stopping every few steps to call out her name, then listen. Moments later, he stepped out of the brush onto a trail. He was back with the dead pig. He ran around the pig and started up the narrow, twisting path. His foot caught on something. He heard a hissing sound, like wind in the leaves. Something struck him hard from behind. His first thought was that a jaguar had attacked, but he was still upright. He tried to move. Something was keeping him immobile. Frantically, he swung his head from side to side, trying to understand what had happened to him. His feet moved, but were touching nothing. He seemed to be suspended a few feet above the ground. The pain in his back and midsection was excruciating, almost as if a stake had been driven straight through him. He looked down and discovered the pointy end of a sharpened wooden prong, as big around as a broom handle, jutting from his abdomen, just below his rib cage.

  Isn’t that interesting, he thought, and then he fainted.

  TUCKER WOKE UP SITTING WITH HIS BACK PROPPED against a tree trunk. Squatting before him with his arms crossed over his knees was a young man with long, dark brown hair and irises the same deep black as his pupils, looking at him curiously.

  “What happened to me?” Tucker asked, his voice a whisper.

  The young man cocked his head and furrowed his brow.

  “Who are you?” Tucker said.

  The man shook his head and waved a fly away from his face. Tucker looked past him. He could see the pile of pig guts on the trail.

  “Lia . . . where is Lia? Where is my friend?”

  The man licked his lips, then spoke in a strong accent. “You talk ugly like boggsey.”

  “Boggsey . . . Boggsian?”

  The man nodded and stood up. He was naked except for a pair of black cutoff shorts. A machete with a leather-wrapped handle hung from his belt. “Why do you not die?” he said.

  “Why did you attack me?” Tucker asked.

  The man shrugged. “The trap think you are el tigre. I cut estaca, but I leave it.”

  “Estaca?” Tucker said.

  The man made a jabbing motion with his forefinger, then gestured at Tucker’s belly. Tucker looked down. The stake was still protruding from his abdomen, dark with half-dried blood. It didn’t hurt. His entire midsection was numb. He thought he understood what the man was telling him — he had blundered into a trap designed to kill jaguars. A few yards away, a log was hanging from a tree. Several wooden spikes, each of them more than a foot long, were affixed to the end of the log, which now dangled six feet above the trail. He could see where one of the spikes had been cut off. When he had tripped the trap, the log had swung down from above and driven the stake through his body from behind.

  “You do not bleed,” the man said. “Are you a bruja?”

  “No . . . I . . . what’s a bruja?”

  “Evil magic thing.” The man looked up at the sky. “The sun is almost gone. You die soon, then I leave.”

  “What if I don’t die?”

  “Then you are bruja and I will kill you.”

  “What about my friend?” Tucker asked.

  “Another bruja,” said the man. He turned his head and spat. “She go with my brothers. Then I find you.”

  Tucker raised his hand and touched the bloody stake. The man was right — he should be dead, but he wasn’t. The healing technology the Medicants had implanted in him must have stopped him from bleeding to death.

  “Take me to her,” he said.

  The man laughed. “I do not talk to dead things.” He turned his back and muttered something in a language Tucker did not understand. The man bent over a cloth sack by the side of the trail and tugged open the drawcord top.

  Tucker wrapped his fingers around the bloody stake. It was sticky. He took a breath. Just like a sliver, he thought, and pulled. The stake came out of his body with a soft, sucking sound. There was no pain, but a wave of dizziness and nausea swept through him; he heard himself gasp. The forest spun crazily, then righted itself.

  The young man whirled at the sound. His eyes went wide. Tucker staggered to his feet, still gripping the stake. The man grabbed the machete from his belt.

  “Wait!” Tucker said.

  The man didn’t wait; he ran at Tucker, holding the machete with both hands, chopping down at Tucker’s head.

  Tucker threw himself to the side. He could feel the effort tearing something loose inside him. He hit the ground with his shoulder and rolled. He regained his feet just in time to dodge another slash of the machete. The man brought the blade back for another swing. Tucker moved in, knocked up the blade with the stake and delivered a sideways kick to the man’s belly. Th
e man staggered back against a tree trunk. Tucker hammered the dull end of the stake against the man’s temple. The man’s eyes rolled up as he collapsed.

  Tucker took the machete from the man’s limp hand and backed away, panting hard. Whatever had kept his abdomen from hurting before was not working so good now. He looked down and saw fresh blood welling from the wound. He could feel more blood seeping down his back. His legs were shaking, but he couldn’t afford to rest. His attacker might recover at any moment.

  Using the machete, he cut the rope that had triggered the trap, and tied up the unconscious man. By the time he finished tying the man’s feet together, he was seeing spots in front of his eyes. He walked unsteadily to the tree where he had first woken up, and sat where he could watch the bound man. The bleeding from his wound had stopped; the sensation in his gut subsided to a dull throb. He could feel things moving inside him. He wanted desperately to lie down and let his body heal. Or not heal. I could die here, he realized, and was mildly surprised to find that his own death did not frighten him. What scared him was the thought that Lia might die, or be dead already.

  I suppose I should pray, he thought, but he could not summon the desire to do so. What could God do? Why would God let these things happen? It made no sense to him. The machines inside his body would determine if he lived or died. Lia was dead, or she was alive. He would find her, or he would not. He did not think God could help him.

  A new sensation radiated from his belly into his awareness. At first, he did not know what he was feeling, then he recognized it as hunger. He crawled over to the cloth bag. Inside was a glass bottle half full of water, and two leaf-wrapped packets. Tucker uncapped the bottle and drank. He unwrapped the packets. One held strips of dried meat, the other contained what looked like a yellow compressed sponge. Tucker sniffed, then tasted it. Like dense, stale angel food cake, but not so sweet. He washed it down with another gulp of water, then went to work chewing on the dried meat, trying not to think what sort of animal it might be. He ate all the meat, then finished the spongy, dry mystery cake. The food settled comfortably inside him. He examined the wound under his rib cage, which had nearly closed and was not bleeding at all. He sat back against the tree trunk and waited.