Cold Allies

by Patricia Anthony

  The general’s slippered, mutinous feet jerked out of his control. The lieutenant stood up, reaching, as if prepared to catch him.

  I’m too old to relearn walking, Sabry thought with disgust. And far too fat for the small lieutenant to catch. He grimaced, braced himself more firmly on the bars, and began his slow, painful shuffle.

  “Good. That’s very good,” Alvarez was saying.

  Sabry glared at his recalcitrant feet, searching for any sign of rebellion.

  “Excellent. I can tell you’re making progress.”

  Wouldn’t the woman shut up? It annoyed Sabry to be patronized. To be cajoled. And Alvarez was a patronizing, cajoling woman.

  “Good. Good. Just a few steps more, and—Good morning, sir.”

  At the surprise in Alvarez’s voice, Sabry glanced up and almost lost his footing. The pin in his hip pinched, reprimanding him for his inattention.

  An American general was standing at the end of the walkway, a small, spare man. Sabry froze, seeing the four stars lined up on the man’s collar. But then he doggedly lowered his head and resumed his agonized, halting shamble toward the reprieve of the wheelchair.

  “I didn’t mean to disturb you, sir.”

  The American had a clipped voice, but it was somehow not unkind. Sabry halted in the middle of the walkway, panting. He looked at the man again. Odd, that the American should look so tired now that the western campaign was over.

  “You do not disturb me,” he replied stiffly. Then, with a self-deprecating laugh, he added, “The artificial leg disturbs me. The pin in my hip disturbs me. Living my life in pajamas disturbs me. Not you.”

  Sabry was astonished to see embarrassment in the man’s face. Suddenly the American turned to Alvarez. “Is he finished with the operations?”

  Keeping his eyes on his wayward feet, Sabry continued the slow, sickroom march. The stump below his knee was a burning agony now. And there was a cramp in his hip.

  “He’ll have the final skin graft in two days.”

  Reaching the end of the walkway, Sabry fumbled desperately for Alvarez. But it was the American general who grabbed him tightly under the arms and wrestled his bulk into the chair.

  Sabry sagged into the seat, massaging his thigh.

  “I’m T. Williams Lauterbach,” the general said.

  “I know,” Sabry told him without looking up. Sabry knew more than the American general’s name; he knew his manner of fighting.

  “Perhaps it would be good now to send the lieutenant away,” Sabry suggested. “Perhaps we could talk alone.”

  The lieutenant left. The room was empty except for a paraplegic American moaning under the harsh ministrations of his therapist.

  How strange, Sabry thought, to be sitting with his enemy, so close that he could smell his sweat. He glanced down and noticed that Lauterbach’s boots were scuffed, his BDUs mud-spattered and wrinkled. Sabry wished he could have met his adversary in uniform rather than in a robe and pajamas.

  “I have been told nothing,” Sabry complained.

  “That’s in keeping with the Geneva convention, sir.”

  Sabry brought his palm down hard on his leg, a little punishment for its earlier defiance. “To hell with the Geneva convention, General Lauterbach. What happened to my division in the Pyrenees?”

  He saw the answer in Lauterbach’s cautious face. “Our countries are still at war, general.”

  Tears welled in Sabry’s eyes. Lauterbach had seen Sabry’s army slip from his control; and now witnessed his body’s insubordination.

  “My son was on that mountain!” Sabry snapped.

  Lauterbach froze. Then nodded curtly. “Give me his name,” he said. “I’ll find out for you.”

  “Gamal Rashid. He was—is a captain.” Sabry looked away, avoiding the American’s weary face. There were answers there, but even more questions.

  Yes, Sabry decided. Something was very, very wrong.

  CENTCOM, BARCELONA, SPAIN

  Mrs. Parisi heard the guards at her door snap to attention and knew that meant the general had come back. Since her move to Spain, he came to her a lot. She had been good at the Game, and he had become so needy that now the other officers resented her. She was “the general’s pet palm reader,” she was “that split-tail Rasputin,” and when she took her daily constitutional around the base, she could feel the heat of the officers’ displeasure.

  “Good morning,” the general said stiffly. He was always formal with her, and she hadn’t bothered to correct that. She wanted him formal, she wanted a little distance. Good Lord, the man was like a fly at a picnic.

  “Oh, hello,” she said, as though surprised. “How nice to see you.”

  He didn’t bother with pleasantries. He never did. Instead he took a seat on the government-issue sofa and got right to the point.

  “I dreamed about the library again,” he said.

  “How stunning. This means, of course, dear, that the Eridanians like you. Otherwise, they would not let you visit so often.”

  He waved the compliment aside as usual, but Mrs. Parisi persisted. Men’s egos were bottomless pits. And a general’s ego must be even deeper. “It’s very rare, you know. They’ve taken quite an interest in you.”

  “I’m no closer to communication,” he said. “They don’t come to me, damn it. They won’t speak to me. This is the chance of a lifetime, one of the most important events in history. God, don’t they know how I feel?”

  Lauterbach was frustrated, Mrs. Parisi realized with a thrill of alarm. The Game had traps and pitfalls. There came a perilous moment in it when the subject vacillated between faith and rejection. The general was at that point now. She could read disillusionment in his hazel eyes, along with an addict’s keen yearning.

  “Well, dear. It’s just a matter of time.”

  He startled her by shouting, “Goddamn it! There isn’t any time!” Abruptly he stood and walked to the window. Outside, in the yard, a lethargic rain was falling, turning the prefab walls of the neighboring hospital dark.

  She stared at his back, hating him with such an awesome, mind-numbing intensity that she was surprised he could not feel it.

  “Warsaw is about to fall,” he said. “Before the Arabs have a chance to march into Germany, the President wants to negotiate a peace. He’ll give the Arabs half of Europe. I’ve ...” For an instant his voice failed him, a disorienting skip in a scratched record. “I want the Eridanians to help us. If I have to stop the Arab advance myself, I’ll stop it ugly ... The aliens’ civilization is centuries older than ours. We must seem like children to them. Tell them we need them. For Christ’s sake, explain that we’re powerless.”

  “Well, dear. They think war is silly.”

  She’d lost him. She could see his shoulders slump. “You must concentrate on dream communication,” she said, knowing she must keep him busy at a task. This Game was the longest and most grueling she had ever played. Let her concentration falter, and she would lose him completely.

  He didn’t turn. She sat staring at his accusatory back.

  “I don’t understand why you can’t tell them yourself,” he said.

  “The one who wants the help must ask directly, and they’re trying to give you that chance. Follow the printed instructions I’ve given you. Record your dreams every, every night. That’s the important thing.”

  “Sometimes I wonder,” he said softly into the open window. The rain-swept breeze tugged at his voice.

  “Wonder what?”

  “I wonder why I come back.”

  Mrs. Parisi knew, although she dared not tell him. She was Scheherazade, and he was addicted to her stories. He had to keep coming back to find out how it would end.

  IN THE LIGHT

  Justin stared at the poster of an angular black F-117 riding
the clouds. Above him, attached to the square light fixture, dangled the slender dart-shape of an F-22.

  His room was as he remembered it: filled with model planes and toy soldiers. A Bible sat open atop the nightstand, beside the Bugs Bunny lamp. He took a breath. The room smelled the same, too: a mixture of paint and modeling cement.

  “Get your bat and glove, Justin,” his mother said.

  He turned to see her framed in the doorway, a melting form of blue dress and pink flesh. There was no way to tell where the material ended and skin began, or which part was alive.

  “Get your bat and glove,” she repeated. “Someone’s come to play.”

  Outside the open window, cerise bougainvilleas tapped their enameled petals against each other, impatient nails on wood. He opened his closet and grabbed the bat by its taped handle, his pitcher’s glove by its thumb.

  ‘They’re waiting,” his mother told him.

  Without looking into her face, he brushed past her and went into the yard. Mike Johnson was there.

  Mike hadn’t grown. His blond hair trailed over his forehead the way Justin remembered. He stood in his usual sprung-hip, twelve-year-old stance. Freckles came and went like twinkling dark stars across the pulpy expanse of his cheeks.

  “Hi, guy,” Mike said.

  Justin looked away from Mike to the clouds looming over the neighboring roofs. “I’ve figured out what you are, you know,” Justin whispered. “You’re daydreams. You let me see everything I want to see, only nothing’s quite right. My F-14 wasn’t on fire like I saw out of the bus window, was it? The truth is, I punched out because I didn’t have the right stuff anymore.”

  “Let’s choose sides,” Mike said. “Let’s play some ball.”

  Justin looked into the street. Beyond the shade of the mango tree five boys were ringed like worshipers about a weak-chinned, skinny soldier. “You brought the gomer?”

  “I want to choose sides now,” Mike said.

  As they walked over, Mike told him, “You choose first.”

  Justin pointed to a pale imitation of a kid. “Him.”

  Mike flinched, as though Justin had slapped his spongy cheek. “Well, I want Gordon.”

  The gomer blinked. Through his uniform, his skin, Justin could see the line of the sidewalk and the grass.

  “Oh, don’t bother,” the sergeant said vaguely. “That’s all right. I don’t think I need this anymore.” He turned and walked away.

  When the gomer was out of earshot, Mike turned to Justin. “Why didn’t you choose Gordon?” he asked angrily.

  “I don’t know.” There was no way Justin could put his objection into words. He simply didn’t like the sergeant’s type. The softness in his eyes, the timidity in his hunched shoulders. “What’s the big deal with him, anyway?”

  “He won a battle all by himself,” Mike said. “And then we let him die.”

  “Too bad,” Justin said. He dropped the glove. Grabbing the ball away from one of the kids, he tossed it in the air and hit it with a solid crack from his Louisville Slugger. The ball, of course, flew over the rooftops.

  “I don’t want to play anymore,” Mike said. And all the kids walked away, leaving Justin standing by himself. He stared after them, hurt and frightened by their rejection.

  So the gomer had won a battle, and for that the aliens had let him die. The one thing Justin had learned from the aliens was the nature of illusion. But war had taught him that as well. There was no medal of honor worth death, no streets-of-gold reward, no God there to catch him. And in the F-14, Justin had been alone, just he and his decision.

  “Yeah?” Justin whispered bitterly. “So you don’t want to play anymore? Well, that’s too fucking bad.”

  CRAV COMMAND, TRÁS-OS-MONTES, PORTUGAL

  Gordon walked along the beach, the sand sucking at his shoes. Somewhere a gull was cracking a clam against a rock. If he listened closely, he could hear it, a persistent tap-tap.

  The boy named Mike walked beside him, scuffing his feet into the water, sending sand-colored crabs racing. Seeing the pallid crabs run was eerie, unsettling, as though Gordon had caught the movement of ghosts at the edge of his vision.

  “Gordon?” a voice called.

  He opened his eyes. Toshio Ishimoto was sitting next to his bed in the clinic, a frown on his round face.

  “Did I wake you?” Toshio asked.

  Gordon looked down the bed at his blanketed feet. Past the line of cots, two nurses walked, pallid as crabs, silent as specters.

  Toshio’s voice was hushed. “I never explained what I saw when the CRAV was swallowed by the light.”

  Gordon closed his eyes. He was on the beach again, and Mike was staring up at him, his huge eyes dark with affection.

  A touch on his arm. Gordon looked around. In the clinic, the movie with Toshio was still playing. “The aliens weren’t attacking,” Toshio said. “I understand that now. What they offered me was Nirvana, and I was afraid.”

  Confused by the movie in the clinic, Gordon closed his eyes again. On the shell-laden beach, Mike was talking about the ocean.

  “Each molecule is unique,” Mike said. “And yet it is part of a whole. When the raindrop hits the waves, it believes it is lost, but only for a frightening moment. Equanimity. Distance. This is what makes you brave. But are you brave enough, Gordon?” He laid a damp, flaccid hand on his arm. “Do you have enough courage to ask for what you want?”

  Toshio was saying urgently, “Listen, Gordon. Listen to me.”

  With an effort, Gordon pulled himself from the beach to the rain-scented clinic, where Toshio was waiting.

  “I think you have found such a place,” Toshio said. “A sort of Nirvana. But you give yourself too easily, as you gave yourself to the CRAV. Gordon, please. Before you lose yourself completely, come back.”

  ‘‘Come back,” Mike whispered.

  Gordon closed his eyes and watched the long breakers hiss and foam against the shore. He cocked his head. In the roar of the whitecaps he thought he could hear Toshio’s summons.

  “What is it?” Mike asked.

  Gordon didn’t answer; and after a while the sea forgot his name.

  IN THE LIGHT

  The library held a bell-jar silence. A rainy-day glow silver-plated dust on the sill. Taking a breath that tasted of mold and old books, Rita turned away from the window. The swollen knob of tweed and flesh that looked like Dr. Gladdings was watching.

  There was a keen hunger about him.

  The real Dr. Gladdings had been a dry soul who sucked up parched answers, a parasite attached to the paper and ink of his books. The replica of Dr. Gladdings sucked her living thoughts.

  The touch of the pointer had killed the Arab. The officer’s face had changed in an instant from moist brown to desiccated beige. Which had answered some questions. Angels, even those consigned to Purgatory, didn’t kill people. And only one thing killed like that.

  There were no dry paper-and-ink answers here, just clammy-mouthed ones. If she squashed this Dr. Gladdings, he would leave a stain on the wall, like a leech, a tick, a vampire.

  “But he wanted you to drink of him,” the false Dr. Gladdings said. “You felt it and responded. You’re a good girl, Rita. A kind girl. You always were.”

  “Shit. I didn’t even know he was real. Nothing seemed to matter then. I’m not sure it does now.”

  Dr. Gladdings’s forehead puddled into a frown. “I’m sorry to find you’re so cynical, my dear, since you tasted him, too.”

  She looked away, remembering the oddly pleasant sensation as the pointer fell. The silent stacks of books were leaning slightly toward her, as though their interest had been piqued.

  “The Arab had a fine, rich flavor, don’t you think, Rita? A taste of date palms and rivers through deserts.”

 
A glissando of fear ran down her back. “Are you going to kill me, too?” she asked.

  “If we did, you would taste spicy,” Dr. Gladdings said, smacking his rubbery lips. “All shrimp Creole and hot jazz.”

  She kept her gaze on the falling sleet outside the window, in order not to see the blow when it came. She expected to feel the sharp stab of a proboscis, a viscera-deep tug, a sudden, deadly suction. But nothing touched her, only the chill breeze seeping around the edges of the glass.

  “Will you?” she asked.

  His answer came from a safe distance. “Because you wanted so badly to live, we took you. Why should we kill you now?”

  “So why didn’t you take the others? Why didn’t you suck them dry?” Or had they? An image of Dix the color of spoiled cheese.

  “They were too close to dying to savor; and death should taste, my dear. In your spice I think there would be a certain carbolic flavor,” he said. “A tang of cayenne and formaldehyde.”

  She hugged her arms and shivered. The sleet made a soothing clatter against the glass.

  “Don’t be afraid,” he told her with mild annoyance. “I soak up fear and blood and longing. The blood tastes sweet, the fear rank.”

  The sleet was mesmerizing. She closed her eyes and suddenly she found her mind drifting back to her mother’s house, to her own tall, wide bed.

  “Ah, yes,” he said in a hushed voice. “The flavor of memory is best of all. It is a varied jambalaya. Think about your past, Rita. Your old house. Would you like to go there?”

  If the aliens had drawn so apt a caricature of Dr. Gladdings, capturing his weaknesses with a few deft strokes, she wondered what horrors they would show her in her mother. “Don’t do that,” she snapped. “Don’t try to sell me your damned make-believe. You and I both know New Orleans isn’t there anymore.”

  “Shhh,” he soothed. “Shhhh. Think about the kittens suckling in your childhood closet. You remember the calico you named Miss Patch? That’s good. I taste milk and warm, purring fur at the back of your mind.”