The Klaatu Terminus

by Pete Hautman

  The thin wind blew.

  Flecks of silica collided with the alien particles.

  The sun rose and fell.

  The planet began to die.

  HOPEWELL, CHRISTMAS EVE, 1997 CE

  THIS HAS GOT TO BE THE WEIRDEST CHRISTMAS EVE EVER, Kosh thought.

  He had been trying to talk Red into serving him a beer when this kid walked in off the street — a kid with longish sandy hair and the fuzzy beginnings of a beard. Strangers were rare in Hopewell, especially at Red’s Roost, especially on Christmas Eve. But what made this kid beyond strange was that Kosh felt as if he knew him. At the same time, he was sure they’d never met before.

  The kid walked closer to the bar. He was dressed in gray coveralls, like a janitor, and what looked like bright blue plastic socks. He was saying something to Red, but Kosh was too astonished by the kid’s face to hear what they were saying. Except for his hair color, the kid looked like what Kosh saw every morning in the mirror.

  “Do I know you?” Kosh asked.

  The kid looked at him. One corner of his mouth turned up in a smile.

  “Not yet,” the kid said.

  Before Kosh could ask what he meant by that, the door banged open and Adrian strode into the bar.

  “Adrian,” Kosh said, his heart pounding.

  Adrian Feye had changed during his months in the Holy Land. He was thinner, his features more crisply defined, his skin dark from the Middle Eastern sun. But what Kosh saw most clearly was the anger and pain in his brother’s eyes.

  Adrian knew.

  Kosh didn’t know what else to do, so he walked to Adrian and held out his arms and said, “Welcome back, bro.”

  He never saw the punch coming. Adrian’s fist took him on the point of his jaw, snapping his head back. Kosh staggered into the bar, his elbow knocking Henry Hall’s beer into his lap.

  “What was that for?” he asked, even though he knew exactly what it was for — and he knew he deserved it. Adrian was coming at him again, yelling something about his car. Kosh dodged Adrian’s second swing and tripped over a chair. He scrambled to his feet just as Red came around the bar and grabbed Adrian.

  “Take it outside, boys.” Red marched Adrian to the door and shoved him outside. “You too, Curtis. Out!”

  Kosh followed his brother out onto the sidewalk. Maybe I can explain, he thought.

  There was no explaining. The moment the door closed behind him, Adrian attacked.

  Kosh had been in fights before. Too many fights. Every time, there was a point when a sort of berserker rage took over — it didn’t matter who he was fighting, or why. He would feel it first as a numbness in his spine that rose up through his neck and filled his head. At that point, he stopped feeling the punches, and all that remained was an animal part of his mind telling him to lash out, destroy, defend.

  The first time Adrian hit him, it hurt. The second blow felt like a distant explosion. After that, Kosh felt nothing but the satisfying crunch of his fists crashing into Adrian’s face, chest, shoulders, head. They were on the ground, on the sidewalk — Kosh didn’t know how they’d gotten there. It didn’t matter.

  A sound from Adrian penetrated his rage. A sob. In a moment of clarity, Kosh saw himself rolling around on the sidewalk, hitting his brother, the man who had raised him, the man he had betrayed. He thrust Adrian away and jumped to his feet. Adrian dove at him and wrapped his arms around Kosh’s leg. Kosh punched him on the forehead, jerked his leg free, and staggered over to his bike.

  “I’m sorry, bro,” he said in a choked voice.

  Adrian, blood running down his face, climbed to his feet and lurched unsteadily toward him. Kosh kicked the engine to life and took off.

  Emily Ryan, wearing a parka and moon boots, sat on the porch swing in the dark, watching the snow drift across the tracks Adrian’s car had left in the driveway. Inside the house, Greta cleaned the kitchen, Hamm smoked his pipe, and a pile of wrapped gifts sat neglected beneath the Christmas tree.

  She felt sick to her core. Her world had come to an end.

  An hour ago, when the doorbell rang and she had seen Adrian standing on the porch, she had, for the first time in her life, wished herself dead.

  She had told him everything. A cavernous future gaped open, promising a lifetime of regret for all of them. Adrian had stormed off in a righteous fury. She could not blame him. She could not blame him for anything.

  The door opened. Greta stepped out onto the porch.

  “Honey? Why don’t you come inside. It’s cold out here.”

  “I’m okay,” Emily said.

  “Are you sure? Adrian seemed upset. We could hear him shouting from all the way inside. Do you want to talk about it?”

  “Not now, Mom.”

  “Well . . . don’t stay out here too long.”

  “I won’t.”

  Greta closed the door. Emily hugged herself, but took no comfort in her own embrace. The pain within her breast was beyond physical. She could not hug it away, or cry it away.

  She sat in the cold, dry-eyed and waiting.

  Kosh loved his brother. From the day their father had died, Adrian had raised him, doing his best to be both brother and surrogate father. Kosh respected Adrian, but he had never understood him. He loved his brother, but he did not like him.

  He suspected that Adrian had never liked him, either. Their mother had died giving birth to Kosh. Did Adrian hold him responsible? How could he not? Kosh held himself responsible for killing the mother he had never known.

  Still, all that was nothing compared to the betrayal by Kosh, stealing away Adrian’s fiancée. He deserved to be punched, and more. Years of rage — from both of them — had erupted on the sidewalk in front of Red’s. Now it was over.

  Kosh slowed his bike and rolled through another drift. The wind whipping across the flat farmland between downtown Hopewell and the Ryan farm created snaky snowdrifts across the highway, some of them several inches deep. Insane to be out here on his bike. He didn’t care. As bad as he felt about what he had done to Adrian, the worst of it was over. He and Emily would have to leave town, but at least they would be together.

  All the lights were on at the Ryan house. As he parked his bike he could see the Christmas tree through the window, and a curl of smoke from Hamm’s pipe coming up over the back of his easy chair. Kosh stepped up onto the porch and reached for the doorbell.

  “Kosh?”

  Startled, Kosh looked over at the porch swing and saw Emily sitting there.

  “Why are you out here?” Kosh asked.

  “I knew you would come,” Emily said. Her voice sounded small and distant.

  Kosh sat on the swing beside her.

  “I saw Adrian,” he said.

  “He was here. I knew he went looking for you.” She was staring straight ahead. Kosh felt a seep of fear behind his breastbone.

  “He found me at Red’s. We had a fight.”

  Emily closed her eyes. Kosh sat beside her on the swing.

  “He knows about us,” Kosh said.

  Emily nodded slowly. “I told him.” She turned her head to face him. “Kosh, I am so sorry.” Her face looked dead-white, her lips were pinched, and the pupils of her eyes looked like pinpricks in the middle of opaque green irises.

  Kosh moved to put his arm around her.

  “Don’t,” she said.

  His heart was pounding and he could hardly breathe; his stomach was filled with icy sludge.

  “We can go away,” he said desperately. “Tonight. I have money. My inheritance.”

  “Kosh. . . .” She placed her gloved hand on his forearm. It weighed a thousand pounds. “I’m going to marry Adrian, as I promised him.”

  “No,” he said. It came out like a gasp.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Stop saying that! What about our plans? What about me?” He hated how whiny he sounded but he couldn’t stop himself. “You don’t love him. You told me so!”

  “Please, Kosh. I hate myself enough alre
ady. Please don’t make this any harder.”

  “What did he say to you? What did he do?”

  “Nothing, Kosh. He did nothing. I’m sorry.”

  Kosh stood up abruptly. The porch was spinning. He grabbed the railing and descended the three steps from the porch to the ground, and dropped to his knees. He willed himself to throw up, but the pool of sludge in his gut refused to move. He staggered to his feet and walked unsteadily to his motorcycle.

  “Kosh.” Emily was standing on the steps, her face hollow, drawn, and excruciatingly beautiful. He looked back at her without saying anything. “Please, Kosh. Be careful.”

  Careful? Kosh swung a leg over the bike and kicked it to life. Careful? Why should he be careful when he’d just lost everything he had ever cared about. He grabbed his helmet and threw it on the ground, dropped the bike in gear, spun it around, fishtailed up the short driveway and onto the road, winding out every gear, not caring if he lived or died.

  THE TERMINUS

  “AWN’S CABIN IS ABOUT A QUARTER MILE FROM HERE,” Tucker said. “There’s food, and shelter.”

  “Awn is here?”

  “Maybe. Somebody is, but I don’t know who.”

  Lia looked at the blaze-orange cap. “At least we know it’s not him.”

  “Can you walk?”

  “I can hobble. Except my crutch is broken.”

  “I’ll carry you.”

  “Really?” Lia looked doubtful.

  “I think I can.” He wasn’t sure. “Piggyback,” he said.

  “I don’t know what that is.”

  Tucker showed her, and moments later they were headed down the hillside toward Awn’s cabin with Lia’s legs gripping his hips, her arms wrapped around his neck. They made it about a hundred yards before Tucker had to stop to rest. Clearly, his Medicant enhancements were no longer working.

  “You’re heavier than you look,” he said, breathing heavily.

  “Thanks a lot!”

  “We’ll get there. Just give me a minute.”

  Lia said. “We can make a crutch, then I can walk partway at least.”

  “No!” Tucker said. “I’m going to carry you.”

  “It hurts my shoulder.”

  “Okay, let’s try it this way.” He scooped her up in his arms and began walking again. He liked that better — he could see her face. “How does this feel?”

  “Like we’re about to fall over,” Lia said.

  “We won’t.”

  They made it only about twenty yards before she made him stop.

  “I feel like you’re going to drop me. I’d rather walk.”

  “You can’t.”

  “Yes, I can.”

  The improvised crutch, made from the forked branch of a balsam tree, enabled Lia to hop along at approximately the speed of a turtle. Every so often she allowed Tucker to help her over a deadfall, or up a steep hillside, but most of the way she managed by herself. Tucker could tell she was in pain, but she was determined to hobble along on her own.

  They stopped frequently to rest. Once, they sat on a pile of rocks near a disko.

  “I wonder where that one goes.” Tucker said.

  “Chances are, it goes to someplace horrible,” Lia said.

  The disko sputtered and faded away.

  “That’s the third one I’ve seen do that,” Tucker said. “The diskos are disappearing.”

  Lia gave Tucker a searching look. “What happened after I went into that maggot in Kosh’s barn?”

  “Well . . .” Tucker laughed. “As soon as you left, the barn exploded.”

  “Is Kosh . . . ?”

  “He’s okay. Emma, too. They were at a Medicant hospital, and so was I, but a maggot took them and I don’t know where they are. I was hoping they’d be here. Oh, and I met a friend of yours at the hospital. Severs.”

  “Severs!” Lia said. “Was she okay?”

  “Yes. She was really nice. She asked about you.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “That you were amazing.”

  They reached the meadow at dusk. There was a light in the window, and a steady plume of smoke rising from the chimney.

  “You’d better wait here while I check it out,” Tucker said. He set off across the field. After a few paces he looked back. Lia was limping after him. Tucker started to object, but then saw from her face that she was determined not to be left behind. Together, they made their way slowly across the overgrown meadow to the cabin. They were almost there when a woman stepped out onto the porch.

  “Hello,” she said. “We have been waiting for you.”

  The woman had reddish hair pulled back in a loose ponytail. She wore a dark green shirt tucked into loose, earth-colored trousers, and appeared to be in her forties or early fifties: slightly thick around the middle, wide mouth framed by deep but not unattractive lines, streaks of gray showing in her red hair. Her eyes were green, a lighter green than her shirt. She looked like an older version of Emma. But more than that, she looked like Tucker’s mother.

  “MOM?” THE WORD CAME FROM TUCKER’S MOUTH IN A high-pitched little-boy voice.

  Lia looked at him in surprise, then at the woman. This was Tucker’s mother?

  “I am not your mother.” The woman smiled. “I am Emily Three. You may call me Emelyn.”

  Tucker stared at her, speechless.

  “You look like the temple girl, Emma,” Lia said.

  Emelyn’s smile broadened. “Emma is my sister. Would you like to come inside?”

  Tucker helped Lia onto the porch. They followed the woman into the cabin. The stew pot was bubbling on the woodstove.

  “You are injured,” said Emelyn to Lia, as she pulled one of the wooden chairs from the table. Lia sat down. The woman knelt before her and tried to remove her right boot. Lia cried out; her ankle was so swollen there was no way the boot could be pulled off.

  “I’m afraid your footwear will not survive this operation,” Emelyn said. Using sharp shears, she cut through the sides of the boot and peeled it away, then carefully unwrapped the strips of cloth. Lia’s ankle was grotesquely swollen and purple streaked with yellow and red. Lia turned her head, looking as if she might be sick.

  “That does not look good,” said the woman. “Let me see your hand.”

  Lia held out her hand, and the woman unraveled the makeshift bandage to reveal the two nailless, bloody fingertips.

  “Oh, that must have stung.”

  “It did,” Lia said.

  “Let’s see what we can do to get you fixed up.”

  Tucker felt as if he were swimming through a dream. The woman calling herself Emelyn not only looked like his mom, she talked like her, and moved like her. Let’s see what we can do to get you fixed up. How many times had he come home with a cut, a scraped knee, a bee sting, and been sat down in a kitchen chair by his mother and heard her say exactly those words? How many times had she knelt before him and soothed his pain and calmed his fears?

  Emelyn opened a cabinet beside the stove and brought out a small plastic object. She pressed the device to Lia’s swollen ankle. Lia’s shoulders slumped, and some of the tension went out of her face. Tucker hadn’t realized how much she’d been hurting. Emelyn applied the device to Lia’s hand, to her shoulder, to her neck. Each time, Lia relaxed a little more, and the hardness in her eyes faded.

  “Can you carry her?” Emelyn asked.

  “She doesn’t like being carried.”

  “Look at her. She’s about to fall off that chair.” Lia’s face was slack, and she was wavering. “I’m sure she won’t object if you carry her a few steps.”

  Lia fell asleep moments after Tucker lowered her to the bed. He returned to the main room. Emelyn was sitting at the table, reading the small screen on the Medicant device.

  “She has a fracture of the distal fibula, a minor shoulder separation, and a number of contusions. These are things I am able to treat. She will recover.”

  “Are you a Medicant?” Tucker asked.

>   “Me?” Emelyn laughed and placed the device on the table. “Hardly, although this is one of their instruments, as I’m sure you know.”

  “Then what are you?”

  “I am a historian.”

  That was about the last thing Tucker had expected her to say. She might as well have claimed to be a lion tamer, or a taxi driver.

  He said, “When we first walked in, you said, ‘We’ve been waiting for you.’ Who is we?”

  Emelyn pointed at the ceiling. Hovering in the rafters was a Klaatu.

  “Tucker, this is Iyl Rayn.”

  “I think we’ve met.”

  “More times than you know,” said Emelyn. “She has much to share with you.”

  Tucker regarded the gauzy figure suspiciously. “Is she the one that’s been doing all this? Sending us all over the place?”

  “Yes and no. It is complicated.”

  “You sound like Awn.”

  “Awn is my sister, too. To answer your question, Iyl Rayn designed the diskos, but her ability to manipulate them is limited. The Gnomon have been attempting to manipulate them as well, with limited success. Much of what you have experienced was the result of being caught in the web of their conflicting efforts.”

  “I thought the Boggsians made the diskos.”

  “Yes, at Iyl Rayn’s behest. Later, the Gnomon commissioned the Boggsians to build the disko-bearing automata known as Timesweeps, or maggots. These conflicting efforts resulted in a number of paradoxes. Iyl Rayn and the Gnomon are now working to resolve matters.”

  “Is there a way for me to talk to her?” Tucker asked, looking up at the Klaatu.

  “Tomorrow we will go to Harmony, where there is a device that will allow her to speak with us directly, and we will rejoin Kosh and my sister Emma.”

  “Kosh? He’s here?”

  “He has been for some weeks. He’ll be glad to see you. Are you hungry?”

  “Yes.” Tucker couldn’t remember when he had last eaten.

  “Eat then. I must do some repairs to Lia’s injuries. Tonight, we will rest. Tomorrow, we have a long walk ahead of us.”

  “HELP ME OUT HERE, CLYDE,” KOSH SAID. “I GOT NO idea what I’m doing.”