Startoucher

by C. J. Odle

  As Jake paused, Sarah reached for her pendant and realized she hadn’t worn it.

  He glanced at her and thought about what to say next. Probably best to skip the operation and cosmic plasma for now, even if they had changed him irrevocably.

  “I woke up in an alien spaceship. Two aliens were there who’d been sent to check on the progress of humanity. They’re going to put us on trial, all of us. The president will be one of the witnesses; he’s already been abducted. They’re trying to determine whether we should be allowed to continue. One of them told me that I was there because, if the verdict goes against us and we’re all wiped from the planet, I’ll be one of the two humans saved to go back with them to their home in the Pleiades. They said I get to choose who to bring with me.”

  “And naturally, you thought of me,” Sarah said, laughing.

  “I’m serious, Sarah,” Jake said.

  “You’re seriously messed up,” Sarah countered.

  “I know how crazy all this sounds—”

  “I’m not sure you do,” Sarah said, edging away from him. “If you really knew, you wouldn’t be saying all this.”

  “But I’m not crazy,” Jake insisted.

  “Jake, you’re seeing things, you’re blacking out. You’re talking about aliens. About the president being abducted. If that’s not crazy, I don’t know what is. Or maybe… maybe you do have some kind of brain tumor. Headaches, erratic behavior, it all kind of makes sense. You really should see a doctor, Jake.”

  Jake shook his head. “This time tomorrow there might not be any doctors. Come on, Sarah, I know how impossible it sounds, but you have to believe me.”

  “Why?” Sarah demanded, glaring at him. “Why would anyone believe this?”

  Jake got up and strode through the archway to where Sarah’s picture rested on its easel, hidden by the cloth. He turned the room light on and grabbed the edge of the cloth.

  “Jake, don’t touch it!”

  Jake pulled, whipping it away and hoping against hope for his vision of her painting to be true. If this turned out to be just some gentle watercolor of the beachfront, things were going to get very awkward, very quickly. But it wasn’t. Jake’s own features stared back at him, surrounded by desert and stranger images, symbols, and clusters of stars.

  “Look, that’s the Pleiades above my head!” he said, pointing. “Some part of you knows this is true. You’ve connected to all of this somehow, even if you haven’t been aware of doing it. Sarah, if there were another way I could prove this, if I could take my time and explain this to you gently, I would. But there isn’t any time.”

  Sarah shook her head, and kept shaking it, as she pushed herself up from the sofa.

  “I can’t… This isn’t…”

  Her uncertainty tipped over into more. It gave way to something else, and with tears on her face, Sarah ran, kitten heels in hand. Out of the gallery, down the street, and out along Venice Beach before Jake could do anything to stop her.

  Sarah raced down the beach, her black slacks blurring as the sand flicked up around her feet. She ran because she didn’t know what else to do. Because only a few places in the world made her feel safe, and Jake had scared her out of the main one.

  Even at nine o’clock on Friday night, other people were strung along the sand. Two young men juggled flaming torches while a third played a didgeridoo. Behind them, a drunk couple shouted and waded into the surf. Shadowy figures huddled together in small groups, and a gang of tattooed girls roller-skated down the boardwalk waving at the homeless.

  Normally, the eclectic crew of her neighborhood wouldn’t have bothered her. Sarah was used to it. She’d lived virtually all her life in the same house and walked along this beach so many times it should have become boring. Often, she liked to stop and watch, filing faces and characters away to include in future paintings, maybe even inviting someone back to her studio to sketch their portrait.

  Now she just kept running. Every strange person on the beach was a reminder of something she needed to escape from. Every stare she received was more fuel to keep her moving.

  She should never have agreed to meet Jake again. She should have turned around and walked away the moment he’d started to behave so weirdly. She’d experienced enough strangeness for one lifetime already, without adding a guy who claimed to have talked to aliens.

  Sarah slowed a little. Ever since she was a child, she’d fled to the same place. Going there when she’d argued with her mother, or when she’d felt the need to be alone. It had seemed utterly magical to a kid, but somehow it hadn’t stopped being special even as she’d gotten older.

  The painting taunted her, by far the hardest part to accept. Talk of spaceships, aliens, and seeing things was easy to dismiss as nonsense, to tell Jake to get help, and move on. But the painting shocked her to the core because she couldn’t deny the message it contained.

  Sarah stopped and bent forward, panting to catch her breath. She only had to cross the road, and she’d be there. A bushy hedge with trees behind it lined the side of one block, the dense foliage providing camouflage from the street. She took a while to find the right spot to enter and then edged into the springy thicket, having to use force to push through. Two tall trees faced her, waiting like familiar friends. She hugged one of the wide trunks and then flopped down on the other side, hidden from sight in her tiny oasis of nature. She tried to recall the last time she’d felt the earth beneath her like this… Not since her mother died.

  Why had she painted the portrait like that? She searched for an answer but soon gave up. She hadn’t been able to get Jake out of her mind. And now it turned out that he was out of his, and wanted her to escape with him to another world. But if his unbelievable story was such a fabrication, why did it link so strongly with what she’d painted?

  She leaned against the tree, hugging her knees in the tight womb of her childhood hideaway while a sea breeze rustled the leaves and tears rolled gently down her cheeks.

  Jake waited on the sofa for some time after Sarah left. He’d wanted to run straight after her, to try to persuade her, but something had stopped him. Not the kind of instinct stemming from psychic powers. Just plain common sense that said running after someone down Venice Beach shouting about aliens wasn’t going to be the best way to convince her.

  Instead, he forced himself to give her space, studying the surreal painting in front of him. It looked exactly like his vision, the same odd shapes and clusters of stars. If he’d still needed to be convinced of his sanity, and of the events in the alien ship, this would have been the way to do it.

  It hadn’t been enough for Sarah, though, and Jake could guess why. He’d had a week—no, since the age of thirteen—to get used to the idea of the impossible. He’d given Sarah only minutes. Worse, he’d shown her irrefutable proof. Not just upsetting her world but tearing it apart and hoping to be there to catch her when she fell. Well, she’d fallen. Now Jake needed to find a way to help her come to terms with it.

  He got up from the sofa, turned out the lights, and pulled the shutters down before setting out to find her. As Jake stepped onto the beach, he found his eyes automatically drawn toward the sky to search for the Pleiades, but the light pollution from the city and the bright moon prevented many stars from being seen. Jake scanned the jugglers and the figures lurking in the background, and although his instinct was to rush by, he slowed down, forcing himself to relax.

  Jake tried to reach for the state he’d experienced when he’d woken up from the operation. He walked toward the shoreline, recalling what it felt like to connect with the universal consciousness. He gazed out over the sea as the memories of his first attempts to direct his visions to people he knew floated up in his awareness.

  Then the inexplicable sensation came back to him, as fresh and as pure as if he’d only just experienced it. Somehow Jake knew this experience would never tarnish. Absolute clarity, absolute unity, a vast, luminous web of connection stretching toward infinity.

  Jake
thought about Sarah, and instantly he saw her. She crouched in an enclosed space, a soft bed of leaves beneath her, with tree trunks framing her body. He could see the tears on her cheeks. And he knew where she was.

  He retraced her route along the beach, picking out her path as if her prints remained clear and undisturbed in the sand. Jake jogged almost in a trance as people turned to look at him. He didn’t know what they could see in his face, but there was obviously something. They stepped away to give him space as he jogged past, an invisible force pulling him toward Sarah like an angler reeling in a fish.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Jake found the spot in the thicket of bushes where Sarah had entered, and if he hadn’t been so certain about his vision, he would have walked straight past. He considered calling out, but part of this involved showing her just how much he’d changed. Jake gathered his thoughts and concentrated, reaching out with his mind until he could feel Sarah’s presence in the small enclosure beyond. He could sense her presence in the same way he’d been able to feel Vega’s and Sirius’s back on the ship, connected to him by the strands of energy linking all beings. Jake formed the words carefully in his mind, then sent them out as clearly and precisely as he could.

  “Sarah? I’m here. I’m outside. Please come and talk to me.”

  Jake watched as Sarah shyly emerged. The hedge reached above her waist, and Sarah had to lift her arms up and twist and turn before finally slipping out. It wasn’t the most elegant of exits. Even so, Jake couldn’t take his eyes off her. He could feel the connection pulsing between them, enhanced by the intense telepathic link.

  “Can you hear me?”

  Sarah hesitated only for a moment, then ran forward to throw her arms around him. Their contours fit together perfectly, and Sarah clung to him as though he were a life preserver in a vast ocean of doubt.

  “Yes,” Sarah whispered. “Yes, I can hear you.”

  It felt so good to hear those words. Jake held her gently as the tension drained from both their bodies.

  “You’ve been telling the truth, haven’t you?” Sarah asked, stepping back. “About the aliens… about all of it.”

  “I have,” Jake said, speaking aloud.

  She took his hand and held it above the springy thicket and, silently led him to her sanctuary. As they sat down on the ground and leaned against one of the trees, Sarah saw her kitten heels and smiled.

  “Look, I forgot my shoes.”

  “Your feet are beautiful.”

  “Forget the flattery,” Sarah said, squeezing his hand. “Explain the whole story again.”

  Jake did his best. He told her about his visions, about finding the aliens in the desert. He told her about what they’d done to him, about the experiment they’d been running for 3.8 billion years, and then the more specific experiment of the last two hundred and fifty thousand.

  “So humans—all life on this planet—comes from the stars?” Sarah asked, gazing up through the branches of the tree before turning back to Jake. “It’s all just an experiment?”

  “An experiment they’ve apparently run on countless other worlds. And now Vega and Sirius have returned to see whether it’s been successful.”

  “And if they decide it hasn’t?”

  “It’s not just their decision anymore,” Jake explained. “The trial taking place tomorrow will have a different kind of alien as a judge. Far more advanced, apparently.”

  “But if we lose the trial…?”

  “Then, yes. We’ll be ‘removed,’ I think is the euphemism they used. Although they didn’t go into how exactly this would be done.”

  “With you as the only person they take with them?”

  “You too,” Jake said. “If you’ll come.”

  Sarah winced. “This is all too much. Knowing it’s real doesn’t actually make it better.”

  “I know,” Jake said, clearing his throat. “It’s hard for me too. It always has been. Being the only child of adoptive parents wasn’t easy, and when the visions started as a teenager, the way everyone reacted made me feel even more isolated. That’s why I worked so hard to suppress my second sight. By the time I was an adult, I always had this feeling of holding back.”

  “Because you couldn’t tell anyone about what you were experiencing,” Sarah said. “You couldn’t share your true self. I didn’t let you either. I pushed you away.”

  Jake could hear the guilt there.

  “It’s OK,” he assured her. “I know how crazy it sounds. How can I explain that to somebody?”

  “You explained it to me,” Sarah pointed out. She paused, scuffing her feet on the ground. “I know what it’s like, feeling alone. My dad left when I was so young I don’t really remember him. It’s always been me and my mother. When she died, it was just me.”

  “And I know what that’s like,” Jake said. “My adoptive parents died a few years ago, and even though they couldn’t accept who I was, I still miss them.”

  Sarah nodded. Being with her was like finding his missing other half. No wonder his previous life had been so empty and incomplete. He contemplated what it would mean if they ended up with the aliens hurtling through space toward the Pleiades.

  Jake knew the answer. It would mean the end of humanity and the dawning of a life he couldn’t even begin to fathom. They would become the aliens, stuck in an extraterrestrial culture with no concept of how to navigate it. Two lonely humans, the last of their kind, forever exiled from Earth.

  But despite this unknown and alien future, a part of him felt excited by the prospect. The moment when he’d been connected to the universal consciousness had brought the awareness of a universe far larger than he could have imagined. Now he might be given a chance to actually explore it. A chance to explore it with Sarah.

  “Come with me to the stars?” he asked. Corny, but he meant every word.

  “Come back with me to the gallery?” Sarah countered.

  “Yes.”

  They got up, linking arms, and pushed through the hedge to walk silently along the beach. Jake had never been this close with anyone. The connection between them was more than physical, more than emotional. As the waves washed ashore, he felt truly at peace.

  They didn’t bother turning the lights on when they got to the gallery. There was no need. Sarah knew her way in the dark, and Jake trusted her. She led him through the archway and slowly up the steep wooden steps to her apartment above.

  They walked along the narrow corridor, then Sarah swung open a creaky door, and the silver of the moon poured in through the windows and skylight, illuminating everything in pale shades. It was a magic kingdom, the simple furniture and ordinary clutter of life fading into the shadows. The soft edges and lines that the light picked out were as different from Jake’s home as it was possible to get.

  Their lips found each other in the moonlight. Kissing Sarah seemed as natural to Jake as breathing, and she responded with the same ease. There was no clumsiness, no hesitation. Their bodies pressed together, and Jake could feel the softness of her curves. They pressed closer and he felt the passion just below the surface, thrumming as tight as a harp string.

  Their hands explored one another’s bodies, at first running tentatively over clothes. Then they started to undress each other, laughing as they fumbled with buttons and zippers in the softly lit bedroom. Sarah stepped back from Jake for a moment, clothed only in the silver glow of the moon. She gazed at him with her eyes wide open, and he returned her gaze with an equal amount of magnetic intensity.

  Sarah held out a hand and led him toward her. Rather than a bed, Sarah had a futon on the floor; Jake would have gone to her then, even with the prospect of bare floorboards to lie on. They tumbled to the firmness of the mattress, and Jake explored her body again with his hands, his mouth.

  Somewhere above him, Sarah gave a soft gasp of pleasure.

  They made love in the lambent light, their bodies undulating in a hypnotic rhythm. There had been plenty of other women for Jake, mainly one-night stand
s and brief flings, but no one could compare to this. It had always felt like he and his partner did nothing but take, trying to extract as much as possible from the limited time they shared, even in his one-year relationship at Harvard. With Sarah, it felt as though they were both simply giving, parts of a larger whole, carried along by the beautiful power of it all.

  Jake could feel their beings, their energies, as surely as he could feel the smoothness of Sarah’s skin, the burning touch of her lips. He felt the moment when the two of them melded together on a level he never would have believed existed. There was an instant where there ceased to be her, or him, just one glorious blending of everything they were.

  Afterward, they lay in the silvery light on the futon, Sarah’s hair pooled around her head where she rested on Jake’s chest.

  “Wow,” she said with a smile. Just that, one syllable. But it was enough for Jake. It certainly summed up his feelings.

  Normally this would be the point in the proceedings where he would feel the urge to make an excuse to get up and leave. He relaxed as Sarah’s weight pressed against him, the feel of her shifting with every breath she took. Soon there would be aliens and judgments and possibly the end of the world. For the next few hours there was simply this, lying together looking up at the moon, not even needing to speak.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Marina stood in the middle of Gemini’s headquarters yawning. It was one thirty a.m.

  When Jake’s car had appeared from nowhere in the desert and sped past, the three of them had watched as he drove to the dirt-track road in the distance and then turned left. They had looked back to gaze at the spot where the car had come from and could see nothing but sand. By then all of three of them were close to collapsing in the heat, with only one bottle of water remaining.

  “We better get back,” Marina had said, hands on the hips of her purple skirt. “Something is definitely going on, but we need sleep and proper supplies. We also need to speak to Jake.”