Throat

by R. A. Nelson

  Kind of like a seizure, I wanted to say, but didn’t. I studied Sagan’s desk—none of the usual stuff you would expect to see. No pictures, nothing personal, not even a calendar. Maybe he just hadn’t been there long enough? I stuffed the last of the Snickers in my mouth. I was still ravenous.

  “Do you ever get tempted, you know …”

  “What?” he said.

  “To look around?”

  “At other people’s stuff? Sure. All the time. Well, not all the time. Most of the time what I’m working on is so interesting, I don’t think about anything else.”

  “Ever found anything weird?” I said.

  Sagan looked disappointed. I could tell he was itching to explain all about the work he did, but astronomy just wasn’t my thing.

  “Weird like how?” he said. “Mostly I’m just grazing for food. I look for places where somebody put out a bowl of something. I don’t go through their drawers and stuff. I wouldn’t do that.”

  I smirked. “Sure you wouldn’t. I really believe you. I would.”

  He looked at me. “I bet you would.”

  I couldn’t get over the washed-out blue of his eyes. Nice complement to the blue he gave off in the dark, I bet. “I’ve always been the curious type,” I said.

  “What about privacy? Somebody’s personal space?”

  “I never respect that.”

  Sagan laughed. No doubt about it, I really liked his laugh. “Actually, I bet nobody does,” he said.

  “Yeah. I bet when someone is alone, they do whatever they want, just as long as nobody finds out.”

  He swung his head left and right, as if he could see through the cube walls. “Some of these people—I wouldn’t want to know. If you’re so curious, how come you haven’t asked me what I do out here?”

  “Astronomy is boring.”

  “What!”

  “Deadly.”

  “Have you ever looked through a telescope?”

  This time I put my feet up. The table didn’t move. I had taken the gum boots off to give my toes a rest. In spite of all my scrubbing, they were green. That’s what running through miles of grass barefoot will do to you. I wiggled them.

  “A couple of times,” I said. “Back in the eighth grade we went up to the Von Braun Astronomical Society on Monte Sano.”

  “Hey, I’m a member!”

  “You would be.”

  “So? Whatcha think?”

  I glanced at him. I could tell by his face he really cared about my answer. “The telescope was pretty impressive, if size is a big deal with you. I was all ready for blazing fireballs, dust storms on Mars. Rainbow stripes on Jupiter—”

  “Hubble stuff,” Sagan said, nodding. “That’s what everybody expects their first time—”

  “I guess so. But everything was so small. Just tiny little white dots. Even Jupiter. I could barely see the red spot, and it wasn’t red. And the stars weren’t even dots, just pinpoints of light.…”

  “Stars can’t be resolved down to disks.… They’re too far away—”

  “There was this funny old guy there.…”

  “Dr. Hermann.”

  “Yeah. He had hair growing out of his ears and showed us a binary star and practically had a stroke, he was so excited. And it was just two tiny pinpricks of light.”

  “What about galaxies?”

  “They showed us one.…”

  “I bet it was M31. Andromeda. That’s the one he always—”

  “Who cares.” I made my voice deep, imitating Sagan imitating his hero. “Billions and billions of stars. And nothing but a smudge. See? Boring. Okay, put me out of my misery. What do you do here?”

  “I hunt for comets,” he said, the disappointment unmistakable. “The observatory is booked solid doing solar stuff during the day. Comet hunting they save for late at night for the cheap help.”

  I took my feet off the table and let myself slump over, making snoring sounds.

  “No, it’s really cool if you find one,” Sagan said, perking up again. “They name it after you. Well, unless some guy in Japan has snagged it already. So every time it comes around again …”

  “People all over the world pass out from sheer excitement.”

  Sagan grinned.

  “You have a really big mouth,” I said before I could think to stop myself. Good God, Emma.

  “I get that from my grandfather, I guess,” Sagan said, smile fading a little. “Everybody says I look like him. Works for me.”

  “Hey, I’m sorry. I like it. Your mouth, I mean. A lot of the time I just blurt out the first thing that jumps into my head.”

  “Yeah, well, it still jumped in there, didn’t it?”

  We didn’t say anything for a while.

  “So … what do your parents do out here?” I said finally to break the silence.

  “My mom works here doing solar stuff,” Sagan said. “My dad is in another building dreaming up deep sky projects.”

  “Why don’t they work together?”

  “They figure it works better this way. You know, so they aren’t on top of each other 24/7.”

  “Oops,” I said.

  “That didn’t come out right, did it?” he said, blushing like mad.

  “You ever find one?” I said.

  “What?”

  “A comet.”

  “Not yet.”

  “And you’ve been out here how long?” There I went again. Shut up.

  Sagan’s eyes widened. I actually think he was excited. “Believe it or not, some guys do this stuff for years before ever finding a single one,” he said.

  I thought about saying something positive, like, “You’ll get yours soon, I bet.” But I kept my mouth shut. No sense going against type this late in the game. Besides, what was I doing? It’s not like I was crushing on this guy or anything. Okay, I liked him. But I had business to get to. A vampire was looking for me.

  “So. Food,” I said.

  Sagan picked up the Snickers wrapper from where I had thrown it on the wicker table. “What, that didn’t do it?”

  I just looked at him.

  “Okay. Let’s say I order a pizza,” he said. My insides practically convulsed in delight at the thought. “What do I get in return?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  But I tried to make my eyes bigger, give him the kind of face Gretchen Roberts was so good at. I’m pretty sure I looked more like a wolf.

  “Deal,” Sagan said.

  We had pepperoni, of course. Sagan got us drinks from a machine and we moved back into the cafeteria. I ate all of a large except two slices and didn’t feel quite so anxious. Maybe there was something to that hypoglycemic vampire notion. Afterward I felt a little more generous.

  “I have a home,” I said, gnawing on a piece of crust.

  Sagan blotted pizza sauce with a napkin at the corner of his mouth. “And it’s … where?”

  “Not here.”

  “Are you going back there tonight?”

  “No. I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  I glared at him to let him know that one was off-limits. “Okay,” he said, holding up his hands for mercy. “Your family. Do they know where you are?”

  “No. I called my mom to let her know I’m all right. She was pretty crazy.”

  “Are you? All right, I mean?”

  “Don’t I look all right?”

  Sagan studied me a long time until I started to feel uncomfortable. Those eyes.

  “Well, you don’t look homeless,” he said. “Except for your clothes.”

  “Profiler.”

  “And you’re not emaciated.”

  “Watch it.”

  “And you’re clean.” He glanced at my boots, no doubt remembering my green toes. “Well, mostly.”

  “I told you. I’m not technically homeless,” I said. “I’m just temporarily … hiding out.”

  “And you won’t tell me what you’re hiding from? Okay, let me guess. Violence at home. A weird father. The cop
s?”

  I shook my head in a way that didn’t say no. It said, “None of your business.”

  “I’d still like to know how you got on the base,” Sagan said. “It’s not the most secure place in the world, but no way could you get through any of the gates. Not without a badge and a vehicle. So you had to climb the fence somewhere. Or you walked in through the alligator swamp. But you’re not all—”

  “Alligators?” I said.

  “Hundreds of them. Big as Escalades. You ever see Primeval?

  “Bull …,” I swore.

  “Okay, not so big. Probably just pets somebody threw out their car doors or flushed down the toilet. But they found a guy’s head out here a few years ago. I’m not lying. Just a head.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “They didn’t know if the gators got him before or after.”

  “Before or after what?”

  “The drug deal. But like I was saying, maybe you came in by the river—that’s a possibility. But I think they have fences down there too. I haven’t been in a while.”

  “You act like you know this place.”

  “You’d be amazed,” Sagan said. “I practically grew up here. My parents have taken me all over. I’ve seen stuff most people never get to see. It was much easier back before 9/11.”

  “Nine-eleven?”

  “Yeah. You could just zip through the gate barely waving at the guard. No barriers or anything. When I was a little kid, they brought me out here just about every Sunday to watch kid flicks in the auditorium at Building 4200.”

  “I didn’t know the buildings were numbered.”

  “4200 is the most famous. That’s where they planned the moon landings.…”

  I made the nodding-off sound again.

  “Okay, okay. No more space stuff.”

  “Thank you.”

  “At least for tonight.”

  I didn’t say anything, and he kept waiting for me to. “Is that … okay?” Sagan said, touching my arm. “I mean, that I want to see you again?”

  “Well, I don’t know. My schedule is pretty jammed.”

  He started laughing.

  “No, it’s true. I’m really, really busy,” I said.

  I suddenly remembered the little generator chugging merrily away on top of the tower. How long had I been gone? Night had closed in, and I hadn’t even blown up my bed. The vampire would be up and about now.

  “Doing, um, what?” Sagan said.

  I stood up. “Huh?” I couldn’t remember what we had been talking about. The huge empty cafeteria suddenly felt too close.

  “I need to go,” I said.

  Sagan stood up too. “Okay, no joke. Let me shut up the observatory for the night and I’ll give you a ride home. That way you don’t have to … um, walk.”

  “Sagan. I am home.”

  “Here?”

  “Well, no. Of course not. Not here. I mean—it’s here. On the base.”

  “The Space Center?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No, really.”

  “Really.”

  He ran his fingers through his hair. I would have liked watching it fall back into place, but …

  “I thought you were joking,” Sagan said. “That this whole time you were just having some fun.”

  “I told you, I’m honest to the bone,” I said. At least I used to be. “And I have been having fun. The most fun I’ve had in a while.” A good long while. “But I need to be ready.… I mean, I need to get some stuff set up so I can get to bed.”

  “But you can’t … It’s impossible. Where will you sleep? This place is huge, but it’s just not fixed up for camping out—come on, are you being serious?”

  “Deadly.”

  Sagan stared. “But it’s dangerous! There are so many ways to get killed out here. Industrial chemicals. Buried army stuff. Scary machinery. All kinds of electrical hazards. Radiation, lasers. Take your pick.”

  “I’ll be careful.”

  “You know, all it would take would be a phone call. They would come get you. Escort you off the base. That’s what I should do … to keep you safe.”

  I almost said, “I’d like to see them try.” For once I caught myself. Instead I did something that wasn’t easy for me because I didn’t like giving people the wrong idea. I took his hand and said, “But you won’t, will you?”

  “How do you know I won’t?”

  “I just do.” Because if you do, you’ll never see me again, I wanted to say.

  “How will I know you’re okay?” Sagan said.

  “You don’t know me. Why would you care?”

  He sighed. “You’re right. I don’t know you. I don’t even know your name. Do you have any food? Real clothes?”

  “I’ll manage.”

  “Like you managed tonight?”

  I felt my face flush. “Hey, when do most people get out here? What’s the regular schedule?”

  “My parents get here at seven. But they’re the exception. Most people, it’s probably around eight or eight-thirty. The base is mostly empty after five-thirty.”

  “Good.”

  “Why, so you can do more breaking and entering?” Sagan was smiling, but it was a serious smile with concerned eyes. “The next person who catches you might not be so cool with things. Most of these people are engineers. Not even green toes will save you.”

  “I’ll take my chances,” I said.

  Now he looked anxious. “Look, really, let me go close down. Then I can at least take you somewhere so you won’t have to walk.”

  “You’re not getting me in a car.”

  I left the room and started walking up the hall with Sagan following.

  “Okay, so let me just walk with you,” he said. “But I have some applications running that I need to shut down. Come on, I can show you things.”

  We stopped close to the air lock that led outside. “No thanks, I’ll just wait for you here.”

  “You will? Great! It’ll just take me a few minutes.… Some routines I left running …”

  I leaned against one of the columns and patted my mouth, showing how sleepy I was. All of a sudden I did feel sleepy. I yawned.

  “Okay. Be right back.” Sagan started to go, then stopped again. “Look, sometimes guards come around the buildings late at night, checking the exits and stuff. If you see headlights coming up the drive …”

  “I’ll duck into the bathroom.” I genuinely needed to.

  “Great.” He pointed. “The closest one is about halfway down that hall on the left.”

  He headed outside and kept looking back over his shoulder all the way up the sidewalk to the observatory. As if he was afraid I was going to run out on him.

  He was right.

  Even with the thought of Wirtz being awake somewhere out there, I walked back. I just didn’t feel like running. Something was bothering me, and the vibe only got worse once I climbed up to my hideaway in the rocket tower. The feeling of decay matched my mood. The sense that the room had gone feral and my asking it to be a room again was somehow wrong.

  I did my best to make things more comfortable. I didn’t really need a light, but I lit a small battery-powered lantern just for the gleam. I took a can of Lysol and sprayed it all over, then shoved my remaining Home Depot loot into a corner. I spread out a tarp that covered most of the floor—the thickest Home Depot sold. The electric air pump didn’t work so well—it seemed to be missing a part—so I blew up the air mattress the good old-fashioned way. Something that would have once taken me hours, if I could’ve done it at all, now was over in minutes. Turns out vampires have extra-powerful lungs as well.

  I lay down and pulled the excess tarp over me. Crap, no pillow. I would have to fix that tomorrow. It’s funny all the little things you miss.

  Speaking of—I still needed to go to the bathroom.

  In the end I decided I couldn’t stand sleeping in the little room at the top of the tower. Aside from the creepy factor, I didn’t like feeling cornered. If Wirtz sh
owed up unexpectedly, he could trap me in there.

  I moved the air mattress to the roof and laid my head on my arm. It was breezier and much more comfortable. I had the ax next to me, my hand on the handle.

  What if I fell off? There were no guardrails and it was a long ways down. A really long ways. Maybe vampires bounced? Go to sleep, Emma.

  The dark does weird things to you, even when you can see in it. I lay on my back looking up at the stars trying to think about anything but Manda. A knot of guilt lodged itself in my stomach—I wondered if she was missing me right now? I thought of her lying in her little bed, the Sneetches book beside her, worrying about the pale green pants.

  I squeezed the handle of the ax and forced myself to think about Sagan Bishop instead. Cool name. Now I wished I had told him mine. I wondered if I would ever see him again. I guess that was really up to me. Who knows, he might be calling security right now to run me off the base. Still … he didn’t seem like someone who would do that. Then I couldn’t stop thinking about him. His image ran round and round in my mind. I kept coming back to the same place: wondering what it would be like to kiss that mole on his jaw.

  I exploded awake sometime in the middle of the night—one of the trip wires was jangling.

  I was instantly up on my knees on the air mattress, heart slamming the inside of my chest, both hands gripping the ax. I looked around crazily. A half-moon was riding on a raft of clouds, moonlight filtering through the trees below. Wind lifted my hair. I was someplace very high. Outdoors.

  The strange noise shattered the quiet again and I remembered. Wirtz, the tower, my alarm system. It sounded as if someone was caught in the wire and trying to get untangled.

  I threw myself across the top of the tower on my stomach, landing on toes and fingertips as silently as I could. Peeked over the edge.

  Nothing there. The sound came again, and I realized the intruder was on the north face. I slipped over the edge of the east face and dropped to a catwalk. I shifted the ax to my right hand and padded barefoot toward the corner of the tower where the east face met the north. The catwalk ran out about two feet shy of the corner. I stepped to the end and put my belly against the railing, leaning over as far as I could. Just as I was about to poke my head around the corner, the jangly noise stopped.

  I drew my head back and flattened myself against the side of the tower, my cheek pressing the cold, rusty iron.