The Klaatu Terminus

by Pete Hautman

  Soon the trail widened and opened onto a hillside cultivated with something that looked like corn. Malo pointed with his machete.

  “Boggseys.”

  Tucker could see the top of a silo peeking up over the brow of the hill. Without a word, Malo turned and was swallowed by the trees.

  Tucker followed the base of the hill until he came to a rutted track leading over the top. Several buildings came into view. It looked very much like the Harmony he had visited before, but it was bigger, and there were more people. He counted a dozen men and women performing various tasks — cutting, picking, toting, hoeing, and pounding. Two men were setting a fence post at the corner of a large corral. Two draft horses were feeding from a trough inside. As Tucker approached, the horses noticed him and raised their heads. The men turned to see what the horses were looking at.

  “Gutmorgen?” one of them said. The men, a few years older than Tucker, looked like brothers. They had the same broad, open faces, the same small crinkly blue eyes, and they were dressed the same: Black trousers with suspenders, and white linen shirts with the sleeves rolled up. They regarded Tucker with open curiosity, their work forgotten.

  “Hello,” Tucker said.

  One of them noticed the fork in Tucker’s hand and said something in a low voice to his companion.

  “I’m looking for my friend,” Tucker said. “A girl. I was told she was here. That she’d been traded to you for a pitchfork.”

  The men looked at each other, then at the fire-blackened fork in his hand. The man on the left laughed. “Netzah,” he said.

  One of the men led Tucker through the settlement. It was larger than Tucker had first thought, almost like a small town. There were dozens of homes and other buildings. They turned onto a stone-paved street lined with shops. None of the shops had signs, but people were going in and out, many of them carrying packages. They all looked at him curiously as they passed. He smelled baking bread. His mouth began to water — he hadn’t eaten since yesterday, when he’d eaten Yaca’s trail food.

  On one side of the street was a large building that looked like a cross between a church and a warehouse, and next to that, a blacksmith and an open-front building containing burlap bags filled with grain and bales of livestock feed. A man loading sacks onto a wagon greeted them without pausing in his task. Tucker’s guide waved back cheerfully. They continued through the town.

  “How many people live here?” Tucker asked.

  “Two hundred twenty-six,” his guide said. “But Herman’s wife is bursting with life, and soon we will be two hundred twenty-seven. Of course, you are welcome to stay with us, and that would make us two hundred twenty-eight.”

  “Are you counting the girl I came here to find?”

  “You will have to ask Netzah about the girl. It is nothing to do with me.”

  “Who is Netzah?”

  “Netzah Whorsch-Boggs is our technologist. He and his sons trade with outsiders.” He made a wry face. “It is an ugly business. Fortunately, these days their services are seldom requested.”

  The paved street ended at a low, metal-sided building the size of six garages set end to end.

  “We are here,” the man said. A faint hum came from within the structure.

  “What is that sound?” Tucker asked.

  “Netzah uses electrical machines for his work. A necessary evil, but we make sure he keeps it within his domain.”

  “The rest of you don’t have electricity?”

  “It is not needed. You may enter through the door at the end. I’m sure Netzah will be pleased to tell you what you wish to know. He is not half so mad as he seems.” With that, the man headed back down the street.

  TUCKER KNOCKED ON THE DOOR AND WAITED. WHEN NO one answered, he knocked louder. A muffled voice from inside shouted something unintelligible. The tone made it clear that Netzah Whorsch-Boggs — or whoever was inside — did not want company.

  Tucker took a breath, turned the latch, and opened the door. He stepped into a brightly lit alcove containing several chairs, like a waiting room. At the far end of the room was another door. From beyond it, he heard muttering and an occasional bang, like someone pounding a desk with a fist.

  “Hello?” he called out.

  The muttering stopped. A moment later, the door opened just wide enough to admit a man’s head: a narrow, pointed, scantily bearded chin; a sharp, arched nose like the beak of a small hawk; a shaggy set of eyebrows; an unruly mop of gray hair; and dark, energetic eyes, one of which was surrounded by a large purple bruise.

  “Go away,” he said, and slammed the door.

  Tucker crossed to the door and pulled it open. The next room looked like a computer lab. Long desks with number-filled screens mounted on them ran down each wall. There were no wires, keyboards, or peripherals visible. The man who had yelled at him was sitting before one of the screens, stabbing at it with his finger. His finger kept disappearing into the screen, and Tucker realized that the screens weren’t really screens, but projections.

  The man gave Tucker a sideways glare. “I told you to go away.”

  “Are you Netzah?” Tucker said.

  “I am Netzah Whorsch-Boggs, and I do not care who you are. Please leave.” The man turned back to the projection and poked at it again, muttering beneath his breath.

  Tucker felt himself squeezing the pitchfork head so hard it hurt. He took two steps forward, raised the fork, and stabbed it into the desk. The tines punched through the desktop and nearly impaled the Boggsian’s knees.

  Whorsch-Boggs sprang back from the desk, with an outraged cry. He was shorter than Tucker had thought.

  “What are you doing!” the man raged. “You are a monster!”

  “I’m returning your pitchfork,” Tucker said. “Where is the girl you traded it for?”

  “Are you mad? I do not want your . . . your . . . What happened to the handle?”

  “It was defective. Where is my friend?”

  Whorsch-Boggs collected himself and gave Tucker a measuring look. “Friend? One such as you, I am surprised you have a friend.”

  “The girl you traded this pitchfork for.”

  Whorsch-Boggs blinked and scratched his sparse beard with thin, delicate fingers. “The maidel brought by the savage? Feh! He brings her to me trussed like a pig ready for roasting. What does he think, I eat children? I take her from him so that he will go away.”

  “Where is she?”

  Whorsch-Boggs spread his hands and performed an exaggerated shrug. “Where she wants to be.”

  Tucker noticed that the man’s face was going out of focus. For a moment he thought he had been drugged, then he realized that something foggy had come between them. He took a step back. A Klaatu. Whorsch-Boggs saw it too.

  “Klaatu, bah! Always asking for the impossible and paying with bupkis. I pixilate them!” He waved his hands frantically through the cloudy figure, breaking it into thousands of glittering particles. The cloud dissipated. “I spin them in their graves! Hah!” He glared at Tucker. “What do you want?”

  “I want to know where my friend is.”

  “This is valuable information. Nothing is free.”

  “I gave you your pitchfork. Do you want me to give it to you again?”

  Whorsch-Boggs glanced at the ten-inch tines penetrating his desk.

  “Feh, I tell you what I know. The girl was a termagant, a she-demon. I give the savage an old tool, I untie the girl, and she gives me this!” He pointed at his black eye. “I try to help her and she attacks me. She is gone. Good riddance!”

  “Gone where?”

  “I should know this? She ran off. I know no more. Go away.”

  “You don’t know where she went? What direction?”

  Whorsch-Boggs pointed at the door.

  Tucker suppressed the urge to give the man a second black eye. Where would Lia go? Back to the place where she had been abducted, he decided. Back to where they had been separated. If he could find his way back to the village, he might be
able to retrace his steps to the river, to the tree he had climbed when he had last seen her.

  Tucker started for the door, but Whorsch-Boggs called him back.

  “What is that on your feet?” He was looking at Tucker’s blue Medicant boots.

  “That is valuable information,” Tucker said. “Help me find my friend.”

  Whorsch-Boggs threw up his hands. “Feh! You are a monomaniac. I will give you my son Shem to help you find your maidel. Now tell me of your peculiar footwear.”

  “I got them from the Medicants.”

  “That is absurd. There are no Medicants.” He bent over to examine Tucker’s boots. He touched the plasticky substance, then jerked his hand back and stood up. “This is ancient technology. Tell me how you acquired it.”

  “I told you. From the Medicants, in Mayo.”

  “Mayo is long gone.”

  “Yeah, well I was there. And before that I was in Hopewell.”

  “Hopewell! Another name from the histories. And you came there how?”

  “Through a disko.”

  “What is this disko?”

  “Diskos are portals that go back and forth through time.”

  Whorsch-Boggs looked puzzled.

  Tucker said, “You know, like what used to be on top of the pyramid. The Lah Sept called them Gates.”

  The Boggsian shook his head. “This is sheer fantasy. You are worse than the Klaatu.”

  Tucker was surprised. How could the man not know about the Gates? According to Lia, the Boggsians had traded with the Lah Sept. Even if that had been a couple hundred years ago, it was not likely that the Gates had been forgotten.

  “The diskos are real. I’ve been through them a bunch of times. I was in Romelas, and even here, in Harmony, in your future after all the Boggsians are gone. Yesterday, a disko dropped me on top of the pyramid.”

  Whorsch-Boggs looked unconvinced, but uncertain. He walked unsteadily to a chair and lowered himself onto the seat. “Diskos,” he said, shaking his head.

  “How can you not know about them?”

  “I cannot know of that which does not exist.” Whorsch-Boggs’s brow furrowed. The color began to return to his face. “The Klaatu told me it could be done, but I did not believe. Why should I believe? But now . . .” He drummed his delicate fingers on his knee and began to nod. “I am not such a one as cannot learn new things. You say there is one of these diskos in the old city?”

  “There was, but it disappeared a few seconds after it dumped me there.”

  “Yes . . . it cannot exist when it has not yet been made . . . that makes sense.”

  “How does that make sense?”

  “Because I have not yet built it, of course! Leave me now, I must meditate.”

  “You said your son would help me find my friend.”

  Whorsch-Boggs rolled his eyes. “Yes, yes I did. How is your hearing?”

  “It’s fine,” Tucker said.

  “That is unfortunate. Shem fancies himself a philosopher.”

  SHEM WHORSCH-BOGGS WAS A YOUNGER AND CONSIDERABLY taller version of his father, with similar features, a somewhat more substantial beard, and a proud, self-important demeanor. He was not pleased about being Tucker’s guide.

  “You wish me to locate a tree? In a forest filled with trees? Are you mad?”

  “It’s near the river.”

  Shem rolled his eyes. “My concerns are allayed. Instead of sorting through an infinity of trees, we must find your tree among millions!”

  “If you can guide me to the village where the forest people live, I think I can find my way from there.”

  “It is a simple matter to locate the savages,” Shem said with a flutter of his long fingers. “You simply enter the forest and follow your nose. I do not know why I must go with you. I do not care for their reek.”

  They were standing on the street outside the metal-sided building. The other residents of Harmony were going about their business with their usual intent self-absorption. The sun was at its peak. A Klaatu, hard to see in the daylight, swooped between them. Shem jerked back, waving his hand through it. The Klaatu broke up.

  “It is rare for them to show themselves outside,” Shem said.

  “Where do they live?” Tucker asked.

  “Live?” Shem sniffed contemptuously. “I do not call it living. They are everywhere and nowhere.”

  “You mean we’re surrounded by Klaatu but we can’t see them?”

  “Your question is meaningless,” Shem said. A second Klaatu appeared in the air just behind his shoulder. Tucker didn’t bother to point it out.

  “Are we going?” he said.

  Shem inflated his cheeks, then expelled the air with a pop. “If you insist.” He set his flat-brimmed hat low on his forehead and started toward the trees.

  The Klaatu followed Tucker and Shem to the edge of the forest, then stopped and drifted back toward Harmony. Tucker was relieved not to have it trailing after them, but also a bit insulted. He had gotten used to the idea that the Klaatu found him interesting, as Awn had once suggested.

  Shem quickly found a trail and set off with long, loose-limbed strides.

  “You know there might be traps,” Tucker said, hurrying to catch up.

  “Feh! The savages and their crude devices do not concern me,” Shem said, but he slowed down slightly.

  “What about jaguars?” Tucker asked.

  “They are night creatures. In any case, I am prepared.”

  “Prepared how?”

  “That is not your concern.”

  For a time, they walked without speaking. Shem kept up a steady pace. Tucker stayed about ten feet behind him. Shem might not be worried about traps and jaguars, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there.

  At the intersection of two trails, Shem halted abruptly.

  “Are we lost?” Tucker asked.

  “I know exactly where we are,” Shem replied. “Lost is a subjective concept. Does the ant know north from south? No. He follows his antennae. Eventually he finds himself where he is, as do we all.”

  “So you’re saying we’re lost.”

  “Every path is connected to every other path.” Shem gestured to the right. “One way is as good as another.”

  As they walked, Tucker thought about the story Marta had told him, about the people of Romelas giving up their lives to become Klaatu.

  “Why did you make everybody into Klaatu?” he asked.

  “I have made no Klaatu,” Shem said.

  “I mean, your ancestors. Why did they turn the people of Romelas into Klaatu?”

  Shem said nothing. After a few paces, Tucker said, “I guess maybe you don’t know.”

  “I know,” said Shem. “I was debating whether it was worth the time and effort to speak, as I am quite certain you would not understand.”

  Tucker bristled. “I’m not stupid.”

  Shem snorted. “It is a matter of perspective. I will tell you some history. Transcendence technology was invented by my seventeen-times great-grandfather Artur, who offered his services to those who desired to enter Olahaba before the natural end of their time on Earth.”

  “What’s Olahaba?”

  “It is what we call the nonphysical realm where the Klaatu reside. It is said to be a pleasant enough place, or so the Klaatu tell us.”

  “How do they tell you? Can you talk to them?”

  “We have technologies that enable us to communicate with them. As I was saying, transcendence was made available, first to the people known as the Medicants, and then to all peoples. It proved to be quite popular, as it offered a way to avoid the travails of physical existence, and promised a continuation of consciousness.

  “The religious fanatics known as the Lah Sept, however, refused transcendence. And, of course, we did not use it on ourselves. When the Lah Sept priests fell from power, the creed of the Lah Sept fell with it, and the people of Romelas developed new epistemologies. My great-grandfather Herman sought to service those who wished to become Kl
aatu. It was before my time.”

  “Why do . . . why did you offer transcendence when you don’t use it on yourselves?”

  “A few of us have transcended, but only those whose lives have become unbearable — as you are making mine at this moment.”

  “What are Boggsians, anyway? Is it like a religion?”

  Shem laughed. “We have no religion.”

  “You believe in God, though, right?”

  “How can one believe in that which one cannot comprehend?”

  “Lots of things I don’t comprehend are true.”

  “That is different. Most things you don’t understand are not true, so how can you know which things to believe? It is better to believe in that which you know. All else is futility. Prayer is for those too desperate and frightened to think for themselves.”

  “If you don’t have a religion, then what’s a Boggsian?”

  “We are a simple folk who live in harmony with our environment.”

  “But you build complicated machines that turn people into Klaatu.”

  “If you do not want to be bitten by a snake, you must know the snake. To avoid technology, one must understand it. My father, for example, intends to build a time portal, but that does not mean he wishes to travel though time.”

  “Then why build it?”

  Shem stopped and turned to Tucker. “You are a flea asking questions of a bull. The answers would be meaningless to you.”

  “Tell me anyway.”

  “Feh, why do I waste my time?” He sighed. “I will tell you this. A Klaatu wishes to witness historical events, so it has asked my father to build a device that will transmit coherent nodes of information — that is to say, Klaatu — through time. Quantum science tells us that this is possible. All of what exists is information. You are yourself a collection of irreducible bits. Smaller than the things atoms are made of. You are composed of on and off, left and right, something and nothing. This is the basis of our existence. Transcendence technology is based upon the interruption of the matter/information entanglement — the Klaatu are Klaatu because the information of which they are composed is suspended in a pre-matter state. In other words, they exist in a sort of limbo.