Nebula Awards Showcase 2014

by Kij Johnson

  I looked up and could see the night sky and even pick out the stars, but it was like looking through a soap film or a skiff of snow. Something I couldn’t feel or rightly see was in the way, between me and the sky. Still I walked until the thigh-high stone wall stopped me. The dome kept moving, of course, and as I went through its back edge—because it was just that clear-cut, either you was in the light or you warn’t—why, I almost swung my legs over the wall to follow it. The hill, though, dropped off steep on the other side, and the undergrowth was all tangled and snaky. So I held up for a few seconds, dithering, and then the light had left me behind, and I was in the dark again, pressed up against that wall like something drowned and found in a drain after a flood. I now could feel the breeze of the lake, so air warn’t moving easy through the light dome, neither.

  The dome kept moving over the folks from the college, slid over the wall and down the slope, staying about 25 feet tall the whole way. It moved out onto the water—which stayed as still as could be, not roiled at all—then faded, slow at first and then faster, until I warn’t sure I was looking at anything anymore, and then it was gone.

  The professor slapped himself on the cheeks and neck, like he was putting on aftershave. “No sunburn, thank God,” he said. “How do the rest of you feel?”

  The other two slapped themselves just the same.

  “I’m fine.”

  “I’m fine, too,” Isobel said. “The Geiger counter never triggered, either.”

  What did I feel like? Like I wanted to dance, to skip and cut capers, to holler out loud. My eyes were full like I might cry. I stared at that dark lake like I could stare a hole in it, like I could will that dome to rise again. I whispered, “Thank you,” and it warn’t a prayer, not directed at anybody, just an acknowledgment of something that had passed, like tearing off a calendar page, or plowing under a field of cornstalks.

  I turned to the others, glad I finally had someone to talk to, someone I could share all these feelings with, but to my surprise they was all running from gadget to gadget, talking at once about phosphorescence and gas eruptions and electromagnetic fields, I couldn’t follow half of it. Where had they been? Had they plumb missed it? For the first time in years, I felt I had to tell them what I had seen, what I had felt and known, the whole story. It would help them. It would be a comfort to them.

  I walked over to them, my hands held out. I wanted to calm them down, get their attention.

  “Oh, thank you, Mr. Nelson,” said the professor. He reached out and unhooked from my hand the strap of the binoculars. “I’ll take those. Well, I’d say you brought us luck, wouldn’t you agree, Isobel, Wallace? Quite a remarkable display, that second one especially. Like the Bahia Kino Light of the Gulf of California, but in motion! Ionization of the air, perhaps, but no Geiger activity, mmm. A lower voltage, perhaps?” He patted his pockets. “Need a shopping list for our next vigil. A portable Curran counter, perhaps—”

  I grabbed at his sleeve. “I saw it.”

  “Yes? Well, we all saw it, Mr. Nelson. Really a tremendous phenomenon—if the distant lights and the close light are related, that is, and their joint appearance cannot be coincidental. I’ll have Isobel take your statement before we go, but now, if you’ll excuse me.”

  “I don’t mean tonight,” I said, “and I don’t mean no spooklights. I seen the real thing, an honest-to-God flying saucer, in 1956. At my farm outside Mountain View, west of here. Thataway.” I pointed. “It shot out a beam of light, and after I was in that light, I felt better, not so many aches and pains. And listen: I saw it more than once, the saucer. It kept coming back.”

  He was backing away from me. “Mr. Nelson, really, I must—”

  “And I met the crew,” I told him. “The pilot stepped out of the saucer to talk with me. That’s right, with me. He looked human, just like you and me, only better-looking. He looked like that boy in Battle Cry, Tab Hunter. But he said his name was—”

  “Mr. Nelson.” The early morning light was all around by now, giving everything a gray glow, and I could see Rutledge was frowning. “Please. You’ve had a very long night, and a stressful one. You’re tired, and I’m sorry to say that you’re no longer young. What you’re saying no longer makes sense.”

  “Don’t make sense!” I cried. “You think what we just saw makes sense?”

  “I concede that I have no ready explanations, but what we saw were lights, Mr. Nelson, only lights. No sign of intelligence, nor of aircraft. Certainly not of crew members. No little green men. No grays. No Tab Hunter from the Moon.”

  “He lived on Mars,” I said, “and his name was Bob Solomon.”

  The professor stared at me. The boy behind him, Wallace, stared at me, too, nearabouts tripping over his own feet as he bustled back and forth toting things to the truck. The girl just shook her head, and turned and walked into the woods.

  “I wrote it up in a little book,” I told the professor. “Well, I say I wrote it. Really, I talked it out, and I paid a woman at the library to copy it down and type it. I got a copy in the pickup. Let me get it. Won’t take a sec.”

  “Mr. Nelson,” he said again. “I’m sorry, I truly am. If you write me at the college, and enclose your address, I’ll see you get a copy of our article, should it appear. We welcome interest in our work from the layman. But for now, here, today, I must ask you to leave.”

  “Leave? But the gal here said I could help.”

  “That was before you expressed these . . . delusions,” Rutledge said. “Please realize what I’m trying to do. Like Hynek, like Vallee and Maccabee, I am trying to establish these researches as a serious scientific discipline. I am trying to create a field where none exists, where Isobel and her peers can work and publish without fear of ridicule. And here you are, spouting nonsense about a hunky spaceman named Bob! You must realize how that sounds. Why, you’d make the poor girl a laughing stock.”

  “She don’t want to interview me?”

  “Interview you! My God, man, aren’t you listening? It would be career suicide for her to be seen with you! Please, before the sun is full up, Mr. Nelson, please, do the decent thing, and get back into your truck, and go.”

  I felt myself getting madder and madder. My hands had turned into fists. I turned from the professor, pointed at the back-and-forth boy and hollered, “You!”

  He froze, like I had pulled a gun on him.

  I called: “You take any Polaroids of them things?”

  “Some, yes, sir,” he said, at the exact same time the professor said, “Don’t answer that.”

  “Where are they?” I asked. “I want to see ’em.”

  Behind the boy was a card table covered with notebooks and Mountain Dew bottles and the Polaroid camera, too, with a stack of picture squares next to it. I walked toward the table, and the professor stepped into my path, crouched, arms outstretched, like we was gonna wrestle.

  “Keep away from the equipment,” Rutledge said.

  The boy ran back to the table and snatched up the pictures as I feinted sideways, and the professor lunged to block me again.

  “I want to see them pictures, boy,” I said.

  “Mr. Nelson, go home! Wallace, secure those photos.”

  Wallace looked around like he didn’t know what secure meant, in the open air overlooking a mountain lake, then he started stuffing the photos into his pockets, until they poked out all around, sort of comical. Two fell out on the ground. Then Wallace picked up a folding chair and held it out in front of him like a lion tamer. Stenciled across the bottom of the chair was PROP. CUMBEE FUNERAL HOME.

  I stooped and picked up a rock and cocked my hand back like I was going to fling it. The boy flinched backward, and I felt right bad about scaring him. I turned and made like to throw it at the professor instead, and when he flinched, I felt some better. Then I turned and made like to throw it at the biggest telescope, and that felt best of all, for both boy and professor hollered then, no words but just a wail from the boy and a bark from the man
, so loud that I nearly dropped the rock.

  “Pictures, pictures,” I said. “All folks want is pictures. People didn’t believe nothing I told ’em, because during the first visits I didn’t have no camera, and then when I rented a Brownie to take to Venus with me, didn’t none of the pictures turn out! All of ’em overexposed, the man at the Rexall said. I ain’t fooled with no pictures since, but I’m gonna have one of these, or so help me, I’m gonna bust out the eyes of this here spyglass, you see if I won’t. Don’t you come no closer with that chair, boy! You set that thing down.” I picked up a second rock, so I had one heavy weight in each hand, and felt good. I knocked them together with a clop like hooves, and I walked around to the business end of the telescope, where the eyepiece and all those tiny adjustable thingies was, because that looked like the thing’s underbelly. I held the rocks up to either side, like I was gonna knock them together and smash the instruments in between. I bared my teeth and tried to look scary, which warn’t easy because now that it was good daylight, I suddenly had to pee something fierce. It must have worked, though, because Wallace set down the chair, just about the time the girl Isobel stepped out of the woods.

  She was tucking in her shirttail, like she’d answered her own call of nature. She saw us all three standing there froze, and she got still, too, one hand down the back of her britches. Her darting eyes all magnified in her glasses looked quick and smart.

  “What’s going on?” she asked. Her front teeth stuck out like a chipmunk’s.

  “I want to see them pictures,” I said.

  “Isobel,” the professor said, “drive down to the bait shop and call the police.” He picked up an oak branch, hefted it, and started stripping off the little branches, like that would accomplish anything. “Run along, there’s a good girl. Wallace and I have things well in hand.”

  “The heck we do,” Wallace said. “I bring back a wrecked telescope, and I kiss my work-study goodbye.”

  “Jesus wept,” Isobel said, and walked down the slope, tucking in the rest of her shirttail. She rummaged on the table, didn’t find them, then saw the two stray pictures lying on the ground at Wallace’s feet. She picked one up, walked over to me, held it out.

  The professor said, “Isabel, don’t! That’s university property.”

  “Here, Mr. Nelson,” she said. “Just take it and go, OK?”

  I was afraid to move, for fear I’d wet my pants. My eyeballs was swimming already. I finally let fall one of my rocks and took the photo in that free hand, stuck it in my overalls pocket without looking at it. “Preciate it,” I said. For no reason, I handed her the other rock, and for no reason, she took it. I turned and walked herky-jerky toward my truck, hoping I could hold it till I got into the woods at least, but no, I gave up halfway there, and with my back to the others I unzipped and groaned and let fly a racehorse stream of pee that spattered the tape-recorder case.

  I heard the professor moan behind me, “Oh, Mr. Nelson! This is really too bad!”

  “I’m sorry!” I cried. “It ain’t on purpose, I swear! I was about to bust.” But I probably would have tried to aim it, at that, to hit some of that damned equipment square on, but I hadn’t had no force nor distance on my pee for years. It just poured out, like pulling a plug. I peed and peed, my eyes rolling back, lost in the good feeling (“You go, Mr. Nelson!” Isobel yelled), and as it puddled and coursed in little rills around the rocks at my feet, I saw a fisherman in a distant rowboat in the middle of the lake, his line in the water just where that corpse light had submerged the night before. I couldn’t see him good, but I could tell he was watching us, as his boat drifted along. The sparkling water looked like it was moving fast past him, the way still water in the sun always does, even though the boat hardly moved at all.

  “You wouldn’t eat no fish from there,” I hollered at him, “if you knew what was underneath.”

  His only answer was a pop and a hiss that carried across the water loud as a firework. He lifted the can he had opened, raised it high toward us as if to say, Cheers, and took a long drink.

  Finally done, I didn’t even zip up as I shuffled to the pickup. Without all that pee I felt lightheaded and hollow and plumb worn out. I wondered whether I’d make it home before I fell asleep.

  “Isobel,” the professor said behind me, “I asked you to go call the police.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, let it go,” she said. “You really would look like an asshole then. Wallace, give me a hand.”

  I crawled into the pickup, slammed the door, dropped the window—it didn’t crank down anymore, just fell into the door, so that I had to raise it two-handed—cranked the engine and drove off without looking at the buck-toothed girl, the bowlegged boy, the professor holding a club in his bloody-knuckled hands, the fisherman drinking his breakfast over a spook hole. I caught one last sparkle of the morning sun on the surface of the lake as I swung the truck into the shade of the woods, on the road headed down to the highway. Light through the branches dappled my rusty hood, my cracked dashboard, my baggy overalls. Some light is easy to explain. I fished the Polaroid picture out of my pocket and held it up at eye level while I drove. All you could see was a bright white nothing, like the boy had aimed the lens at the glare of a hundred-watt bulb from an inch away. I tossed the picture out the window. Another dud, just like Venus. A funny thing: The cardboard square bounced to a standstill in the middle of the road and caught the light just enough to be visible in my rear-view mirror, like a little bright window in the ground, until I reached the highway, signaled ka-chunk, ka-chunk, and turned to the right, toward home.

  Later that morning I sat on the porch, waiting for her. Staring at the lake had done me no good, no more than staring at the night sky over the barn had done, all those years, but staring at the rhododendron called her forth, sure enough. She stepped around the bush with a little wave. She looked sprightly as ever, for all that long walk up the steep driveway, but I didn’t blame her for not scraping her car past all those close bushes. One day they’d grow together and intertwine their limbs like clasped hands, and I’d be cut off from the world like in a fairy-tale. But I wasn’t cut off yet, because here came Miss Priss, with boots up over her knees and dress hiked up to yonder, practically. Her colors were red and black today, even that fool saucer hat was red with a black button in the center. She was sipping out of a box with a straw in it.

  “I purely love orange juice,” she told me. “Whenever I’m traveling, I can’t get enough of it. Here, I brought you one.” I reached out and took the box offered, and she showed me how to peel off the straw and poke a hole with it, and we sat side by side sipping awhile. I didn’t say nothing, just sipped and looked into Donald Duck’s eyes and sipped some more. Finally she emptied her juice-box with a long low gurgle and turned to me and asked, “Did you make it out to the lake last night?”

  “I did that thing, yes ma’am.”

  “See anything?”

  The juice was brassy-tasting and thin, but it was growing on me, and I kept a-working that straw. “Didn’t see a damn thing,” I said. I cut my eyes at her. “Didn’t see you, neither.”

  “Yes, well, I’m sorry about that,” she said. “My supervisors called me away. When I’m on assignment, my time is not my own.” Now she cut her eyes at me. “You sure you didn’t see anything?”

  I shook my head, gurgled out the last of my juice. “Nothing Dr. Rutledge can’t explain away,” I said. “Nothing you could have a conversation with.”

  “How’d you like Dr. Rutledge?”

  “We got along just fine,” I said, “when he warn’t hunting up a club to beat me with, and I warn’t pissing into his machinery. He asked after you, though. You was the one he wanted along on his camping trip, out there in the dark.”

  “I’ll try to call on him, before I go.”

  “Go where?”

  She fussed with her hat. “Back home. My assignment’s over.”

  “Got everthing you needed, did you?”

  “
Yes, I think so. Thanks to you.”

  “Well, I ain’t,” I said. I turned and looked her in the face. “I ain’t got everthing I need, myself. What I need ain’t here on this Earth. It’s up yonder, someplace I can’t get to no more. Ain’t that a bitch? And yet I was right satisfied until two days ago, when you come along and stirred me all up again. I never even went to bed last night, and I ain’t sleepy even now. All I can think about is night coming on again, and what I might see up there this time.”

  “But that’s a good thing,” she said. “You keep your eyes peeled, Mr. Nelson. You’ve seen things already, and you haven’t seen the last of them.” She tapped my arm with her juice-box straw. “I have faith in you,” she said. “I wasn’t sure at first. That’s why I came to visit, to see if you were keeping the faith. And I see now that you are—in your own way.”

  “I ain’t got no faith,” I said. “I done aged out of it.”

  She stood up. “Oh, pish tosh,” she said. “You proved otherwise last night. The others tried to stay out of the light, but not you, Mr. Nelson. Not you.” She set her juice box on the step beside mine. “Throw that away for me, will you? I got to be going.” She stuck out her hand. It felt hot to the touch, and powerful. Holding it gave me the strength to stand up, look into her eyes, and say:

  “I made it all up. The dog Bo, and the trips to Venus and Mars, and the cured lumbago. It was a made-up story, ever single Lord God speck of it.”

  And I said that sincerely. Bob Solomon forgive me: As I said it, I believed it was true.

  She looked at me for a spell, her eyes big. She looked for a few seconds like a child I’d told Santa warn’t coming, ever again. Then she grew back up, and with a sad little smile she stepped toward me, pressed her hands flat to the chest bib of my overalls, stood on tippytoes, and kissed me on the cheek, the way she would her grandpap, and as she slid something into my side pocket she whispered in my ear, “That’s not what I hear on Enceladus.” She patted my pocket. “That’s how to reach me, if you need me. But you won’t need me.” She stepped into the yard and walked away, swinging her pocketbook, and called back over her shoulder: “You know what you need, Mr. Nelson? You need a dog. A dog is good help around a farm. A dog will sit up with you, late at night, and lie beside you, and keep you warm. You ought to keep your eye out. You never know when a stray will turn up.”