The Klaatu Terminus

by Pete Hautman

  Gheen was alive, and he was moving.

  Moments ago, in the barn, she had been ready to kill him. Now she just wanted to get away, to curl up someplace safe.

  She tried to stand but her ankle would not support her. She crawled upstream along the bank, gritting her teeth to keep herself from crying out. Her shoulder hurt, but she could use it. She continued up the creek, stopping every few moments to listen. She couldn’t hear Gheen anymore, only the burbling of the creek and the occasional rattling admonishment of a squirrel.

  Shortly, she came upon a deer trail leading up the slope, away from the creek. She stopped there and once again examined herself. The sharp, stabbing pain in her ankle had become a dull, throbbing pressure. The sharpest pain was from her ruined fingernails.

  Once, when Lia had been hurting after a particularly vigorous dojo session, Yar Song had taught her a trick. Pain is a coward; it cannot stand in the face of your scrutiny. Find it and face it, and you control it. Lia closed her eyes and focused on her hand, the fingers, the raw, stinging, bleeding nailbeds.

  As Yar Song had promised, the moment she located the source of the pain, it slipped away, up her arm to her shoulder, yet another source of torment. Lia refocused on the new point of discomfort. Again, the pain slid away. Cowardly pain, she thought. Face me! Declare yourself!

  It declared itself in her ankle, her neck, and her belly, where Master Gheen had kicked her. The pain was slippery, elusive, persistent. She could shift it, but she could not make it go away.

  She heard splashing from downstream, and a muttered curse. Gheen was close. Pain forgotten for the moment, Lia turned away from the creek and crawled uphill along the deer trail for a few yards. She concealed herself in a stand of tall ferns. Through the fronds, she caught a glimpse of Gheen as he passed by, following the creek. He was walking slowly, dragging one leg, using a broken branch as a cane. Lia enjoyed a moment of satisfaction that he had been injured too, although he didn’t look as bad off as she felt. She waited until she could no longer hear him, then dragged herself farther up the path, out of sight of the creek.

  I can’t just keep crawling through the woods, she thought.

  What would Yar Song do? She remembered one afternoon when she had been going through her dojo routine automatically, moving from position to position while her mind wandered. Song, watching expressionlessly from the edge of the mat, had suddenly stood up, grabbed Lia’s hair, and rapped her on the forehead with one incredibly hard knuckle. “Think!” Song had said in her crisp, penetrating voice. With that, Song left the dojo, and the day’s lesson was over. Lia had looked at that bruise on her forehead for a hand of days before it faded.

  She had to think. What did she have to work with? One good leg. Two arms. One good shoulder. Eight fingernails. Her clothing. Rocks, sticks, and leaves. She eased off her right boot. Her ankle was visibly swollen, showing purple streaks. She found a piece of broken rock with one sharp edge and used it to cut roughly through her trouser leg, just above the knee. The fabric was tough, but after a few minutes, she had cut it free and dragged the pant leg down over her ankle. She tore the cloth into long strips and wrapped one around her damaged fingertips. They hurt less when she didn’t have to look at them. The other strips she used to bind her ankle tightly. She tried to stand. The pain was not as bad as before, but it still hurt too much to walk. She tried to pull her boot back on over the wrappings. It was too tight. It hurt. Gritting her teeth, she pulled harder. The boot popped on. The pain almost caused her to pass out; the forest spun around her. She focused on her breathing. After a few seconds, the spinning stopped. Her ankle was still a knot of agony, but the wrapping and the tight boot would keep it stable.

  Seeing a fallen tree a few yards away, she crawled over to it and used the sharp rock to hack off a branch. She fashioned the branch into a crude crutch. With the crutch, she was able to walk upright in a sort of hopping, foot-dragging fashion, similar to the way she had seen Gheen moving along the creek.

  Now she could put some distance between her and Master Gheen, and give herself time to figure out what to do next. Continuing up the deer path, she arrived at the crest of the hill, upon which stood a Gate.

  As she approached the Gate, it began to hum and glow green. Lia backed away from it, holding her breath. The Gate emitted a waft of reddish mist, then settled back to gray. The pine needles beneath the Gate were sprinkled with red dust.

  I have been here before, she thought. This was the Gate that Awn had told her led to a genocide.

  There would be more Gates. Awn might be here too. The strange woman had helped her before. Maybe she would do so again.

  “Yar Lia.”

  Lia whirled, automatically assuming a defense posture despite the pangs from her damaged body. A few yards away, almost invisible in his camouflage garb, Master Gheen was sitting on a fallen tree, watching her.

  “DO NOT BE AFRAID,” MASTER GHEEN SAID.

  Afraid? Fear was not what she was feeling. It was more like rage.

  Gheen held up one hand, palm forward. “I mean you no harm.” He reached behind the log, came up with the blaze-orange hunting cap, and placed it on his head. Using his stick like a cane, he stood up and took two unsteady steps toward her, dragging his left leg. “Look at me. I am no threat. I can hardly walk.”

  “Best you stay still, then,” Lia said.

  Gheen’s mouth stretched into a smile intended to be friendly and reassuring. It looked to Lia like a leering devil mask.

  “We are both injured,” he said in a soothing voice. “Let us set aside our differences. We can help each other.”

  “I do not need your help.”

  “Of course you do. You are crippled.”

  “As are you.”

  “This is my point. Do you know where we are?”

  “The future,” Lia said.

  Gheen nodded. “The future.” He pointed off to his left with his stick. “The Cydonian Pyramid is only a few minutes walk in that direction. It is now, of course, a ruin, even more decayed and sunken than it was the last time I was here. The Gate that once hovered above it is gone.”

  “There are many Gates,” Lia said. She pointed at the Gate that had produced the red dust. “Why don’t you use that one?”

  Gheen looked at the Gate and sniffed dismissively. “I think not.”

  “Then choose another.”

  “I do not trust these Gates. In any case, it seems I have little to go back to. You and your friends have destroyed us.”

  Lia did not reply. Gheen shrugged. Using his stick as an aid, Gheen walked back to the fallen tree and sat down heavily.

  “I am not a bad person,” he said. “You are angry with me for the things I have done. I accept your anger. We do what we are meant to do, as the winds of time blow us hither and thither. I wonder sometimes if even God, in all his magnificence, has any real choices.”

  “You are saying you are not responsible for what you have done?”

  “I am just a man.”

  “An evil man.”

  “What is evil? I once thought the Yars to be evil. Apostates such as yourself. Now I understand that we are all victims. You may never call me a friend, but I am your father, as you know.”

  “I would just as soon forget it,” Lia said.

  “Be that as it may, we are connected. I come to you now asking your forgiveness.”

  Lia considered the man sitting before her. Was it possible he was sincere? If so, did it matter? He had tried to kill her more than once — her and Tucker both. Could such a man change so quickly? She did not think so.

  “You think me insincere,” said Gheen, as if reading her thoughts.

  “I think you a liar,” Lia said.

  With obvious effort, Gheen held on to his smile. “I have lied in the past,” he said. “This is the future.”

  “Not for you.”

  “What would you have me do?”

  Lia pointed at the Gate. “Leave.”

  “As I told you,
I am done with the Gates. This is where the Lord wishes us to be. The Lah Sept we once knew are gone — the Lord found them wanting. But we are here. We have been blessed with the chance to begin anew, to rebuild without repeating the mistakes of the past.”

  “You want to start the Lah Sept all over again?”

  “And why not? I do not believe we are alone here. There must be others — lost souls who need guidance. It is my hope that you will join me. You are, after all, my daughter.”

  Lia laughed. She was startled by the sound that came from her throat — a laugh harsh with bitterness and bile, pain and fury. It resembled the snarl of a jaguar more than any sound from a human throat.

  “I am building nothing with you, old man,” Lia said.

  Gheen’s face darkened. He lifted his improvised cane as if to strike her.

  Please try, Lia thought.

  Gheen lowered the stick. “Come, now,” he said in a syrupy voice. “There is a cabin nearby to provide us with food and shelter. Come with me, and there we will talk some more. In time you will understand.”

  Lia gave him a look of disgust and loathing. “I understand that I am done with you.” She turned her back and began to hobble back down the hill. She had gone only a few steps when she heard a movement and turned.

  Gheen was limping after her, teeth clenched, raising his stick.

  Yes, she thought, this is the father I know.

  Gheen swung the stick. Lia hopped back on one leg, raising her crutch to deflect the blow. Gheen’s stick, larger and heavier, snapped Lia’s slender branch in half. Lia fell, landing on her back. Gheen raised his stick. Lia hurled the broken branch at him. The short length of wood struck Gheen’s bad leg; he collapsed with a cry.

  Lia crawled rapidly up the hill toward the Gate, gaining the higher ground, then climbed onto one leg to face him again. Gheen approached, more cautious now. He was breathing hard, his face red with anger and frustration.

  Let your opponent’s emotion devour him, Yar Song had said.

  “I come to you with arms open,” he said, “and you reject me. I should have known — once a Yar always a Yar.”

  Lia felt weirdly calm. She had faced this version of Master Gheen before; she was on familiar ground. She let him come closer. He made a tentative jab at her with the stick; Lia batted it aside. Gheen reached into his jacket pocket with his free hand and pulled out something wrapped in a black cloth. The cloth fluttered to the ground. In his hand was the obsidian dagger, the same blade that had once sliced open her face.

  Lia stopped breathing. The sight of the dagger sent a quiver of fear through her.

  Your fear is powerful. Use it.

  Lia set her jaw and willed strength into her limbs. It was just a piece of sharpened stone. A rock in the hands of an angry old priest.

  Holding the stick in one hand and the dagger in the other, dragging his leg, Gheen backed her toward the Gate. Lia could hear its excited buzzing. When she felt the emanation from the Gate stir the hairs on the back of her neck, she stopped and assumed the pose that, at Yar Song’s insistence, had consumed many of Lia’s hours in the dojo.

  “Why is this called the warrior pose?” Lia had asked Song, as they each balanced on one leg, bodies parallel to the mat, arms thrust back. “It is a poor defense posture.”

  “It is the worst defense pose,” Song agreed, “which is why you must know it. It is a lesson in gravity, balance, focus.”

  “That makes no sense,” Lia said, whereupon Song had kicked her in the ribs.

  Gheen, bemused by her odd stance, hesitated. “More Yarish tricks?” he said.

  Lia smiled.

  Gheen lunged, faking a jab with the stick as he slashed at her with the knife. Lia thrust her leg back and spun her body in midair, dropping to the ground on her back. The blade sliced though the air inches above her face. Her hand shot out and grabbed his wrist as it passed. She brought her good leg up, planted her boot in his belly, and catapulted him into the Gate.

  The Gate flared orange. Gheen’s hunting cap fell to the ground. The stone knife struck a rock and shattered. The Gate’s surface pulsed and faded to gray.

  Master Gheen was gone.

  Lia lay on her back, heart pounding, her chest shuddering with each breath. She rolled over and, on her hands and knees, crawled away from the buzzing Gate. She pulled herself up onto the log where Master Gheen had recently sat. She stared at the Gate, looked down at the red dust scattered before it, at the broken black blade, at the bright orange cap.

  It had really happened. Awn had told her that all who passed through this Gate would die. Master Gheen — her father — was gone. She searched inside herself for feelings of triumph or regret, but found neither. The Gate sputtered; its swirling gray surface began to break apart, its edges growing indistinct.

  Lia looked up at the rustle of footsteps on leaves. A head appeared over the brow of the hill — long tousled hair, blue eyes. . . .

  “Hello, Tucker Feye,” Lia said.

  Tucker looked from Lia’s face to the fading Gate, then down at the blaze-orange cap on the ground beneath it. He took a deep breath and let it out shakily.

  “I thought you might be in trouble,” he said.

  “I’m okay.” Lia smiled. “Except for my ankle.”

  Tucker sat beside her and put his arm around her shoulder. Lia winced.

  “And my shoulder.”

  “Sorry.”

  She held out her bandaged fingers. “And a few other things.”

  “You’re alive,” Tucker said.

  “That is something.”

  Together they sat and watched the Gate fade slowly out of existence, leaving behind only the cap, the blade, and a few grains of reddish sand.

  MARS, 1976

  A THIN WIND, INHUMANLY COLD AND DRY, SWEPT across the Chryse Planitia. Powdery grains of sand moved near the surface, tumbling over one another as they had for uncounted millennia. The scant Martian atmosphere transmitted the soft hiss of colliding silica crystals, though there was no one there to hear it. The sun, small and distant, teased at frozen fragments of water and carbon dioxide, but not enough to coax them from their solid state.

  Time passed.

  Three meters above the surface, an anomaly appeared. A spark of orange became a miniature orb, then flattened to become a shimmering disc the size of a manhole cover. The disc continued to grow until it was 1.3333 meters in diameter, and the thickness of a hydrogen atom. For the next three rotations of the red planet, the disko hovered patiently above the rock-strewn sands.

  A new star mounted the horizon, rose high over the plain, then separated into two lesser objects. One continued in its orbit; the other entered the atmosphere. A parachute blossomed, slowing its descent.

  Three intensely bright points of light erupted from the bottom of the object. The parachute broke free and drifted off as the craft continued its descent toward the surface. The three points of light resolved into spikes of blue flame supporting a complicated-looking metallic construction. Slowly, the spacecraft sank through the thin atmosphere. As it neared the surface, three gangly legs unfolded from its belly, giving it the appearance of an arachnid amputee.

  The disko, almost directly beneath the descending spacecraft, awakened. Its gray surface became mottled, turned sickly green, then flared bright emerald and spat out a Klaatu. The Klaatu was followed by several others. Their numbers grew to become a crowd of several dozen hovering, ghostlike figures, all looking up at the approaching craft, now clearly recognizable as the Viking 1 lander.

  At first, it looked as if the lander would collide with the disko and the waiting crowd of Klaatu, but it missed them by several meters. The touchdown was abrupt; the legs struck the surface, flexed, sprang back. Dust exploded from beneath the rockets and billowed out, creating a huge torus of particulates that quickly distorted and was swept away by the thin wind. The jets sputtered and winked out, the lander settled, the dilute roar of its arrival gave way to the near silence that had persisted
for millennia.

  Six hundred seconds later, the quiet was interrupted by a buzzing sound. A dish-shaped antenna unfolded from the top of the lander and rotated several degrees until it was pointed at Earth. The Klaatu watched. More buzzing and clicking came from another part of the lander as the camera began to record and transmit images of the rocky plain. From time to time, the sounds would cease, then start up again.

  The Klaatu became bored. One by one, they floated back to the disko and were drawn inside, until none were left. The disko remained. The lander continued to perform its various functions. The wind blew. The planet rotated as it continued its long, ponderous journey around the sun.

  For several Martian years, the Viking lander continued to transmit information back to Earth, although the clicking and buzzing occurred less frequently. On the 2,248th Martian day after its arrival on Mars, the lander emitted its last click, then fell silent.

  Time passed. The disko remained dormant. Dust built up around the legs of the lander and filled its crevasses and openings, making it look less like an alien presence and more like a native thing that had emerged from the sand and stone of Mars.

  On the 2,522nd day after the landing of the Viking, the disko awakened, flashed green, and spat out a man wearing a camouflage hunting jacket.

  The man landed on his back. The impact drove his last breath from his lungs — a cloud of moist, oxygen-rich air crystalized, then fell like snow to the arid surface. Master Gheen staggered to his feet, gasping for air that was not there, looking around wildly as the surface of his eyeballs froze. He clawed at his chest and staggered toward the lander, but he made it only a few steps before falling to his knees, then pitching forward to bury his contorted face in the red earth of Mars.

  Cell by cell, the process of freeze-drying began. Plasma membranes burst, spilling cytoplasm, mitochondria, nuclei. Proteins, prions, and other complex, carbon-based substances flaked from the frozen corpse to violate the delicate Martian ecosystem.