More Tomorrow: And Other Stories

by Michael Marshall Smith

  One afternoon Jennifer had driven out to the Hospital or Rest Home or Facility or Nut House or whatever it termed itself. She had got as far as parking in the lot, and sat in the car for half an hour. Then she’d driven home. She’d told herself that perhaps it wasn’t a good idea for Sally to see her, that an unscheduled visit might interrupt whatever program the place had her on. Though actually Jen knew that the program would probably consist of colour-coded pills and little measures of heavily-laced liquids, administered at regular intervals by brisk girls with dusty smiles. And really she just hadn’t known what she was going to say, or how she should be, when the reality of the situation was that her friend had lost her mind.

  Or so she’d thought. As she sat now in the grove of trees, very hot, extremely thirsty and being herself one step away from being driven insane by what was happening, Jennifer avoiding thinking about how she felt about her current situation by realising, finally, how guilty she felt about Sally. It wasn’t even that she knew now that she might have been telling the truth. That shouldn’t have mattered. Jen should have been a better friend to her anyway. And she wondered, pointlessly, whether she might have taken the whole thing just a little more seriously if there hadn’t been that bit of salad caught between Sally’s teeth, and how many of her judgment calls—and those of everyone else in the world—were made on such a trivial basis.

  She wasn’t surprised, only slightly relieved, when the aliens stopped talking and one of them turned and shot her in the head.

  And the sad fact of the matter was that Sally Dickens hadn’t been abducted. She really had just lost her mind.

  ‘I’m hungry, is all I’m saying.’

  Eddie shelved the idea of stripping his gun down. He’d already done it twice. No good could come of doing it again. No good had come of doing it the last time. He looked up at Connie. ‘If you thought you were going to need to eat, you should have brought some food. That would have been the thinking man’s approach.’

  ‘Didn’t think I was going to need it, mainly because I didn’t think it was going to take this long. This is a protracted fucking afternoon we’re having here, not to say one that’s beginning to drag.’

  ‘Really? Weird that you feel like that, because I’m having a fucking ball.’ He irritably started taking the gun apart again.

  Connie shrugged. ‘I feel like an ass sitting out here. Plus my head is getting sunburned and that I can do without. Not to mention we’re running out of beer.’

  ‘You think things are bad now, wait until I run out of cigarettes. Then you’re really going to see a downturn in the situation.’

  Connie shook his head. ‘This is no good, Eddie. You got to make a change in your working conditions. What kind of fucked-up deal is this, that you can’t just go find the guys and whack them? Got to be the bottom line of any transaction of this nature. People fuck you around, they know they’re going to get clipped. It’s motivational management. Keeps them perky.’

  ‘Connie, if I run out of cigarettes, I’m going to whack you.’

  ‘I’m just saying. That’s all. This isn’t dignified.’

  It was just after five, Connie should have been at work hours before, and the sun was dipping low in the sky—but nothing was happening. Nothing had happened all afternoon, in fact. They’d sat in the right place for a while, then got so bored that they went back to the Spirit of Key West, tied the smaller boat on back, and taken the cruiser back to the harbour. Connie’s intuition concerning Jack’s coping mechanisms had proved to be correct. There was no danger he was taking the boat out again that day, unless he had some way of working it by remote control from the barstool he was already in danger of falling off. The tourists had lost interest and gone off to spend their refund money on T-shirts and driftwood sculptures. And food, probably, Connie mused, wishing he’d had the foresight to pick something up before they turned round and came back out again, instead of wasting the time ringing the bar to warn them he was going to be late. It wasn’t that he was so damned hungry, more that the idea had gotten into his head and, in the absence of stimuli other than waves and sunlight and fucking seabirds, was proving pretty hard to dislodge.

  Plus, actually, when he thought about it, he was kind of hungry. Eddie didn’t seem to care either way, which Connie felt was weird. A guy had to eat, and breakfast was many hours ago and had anyway been compact and taken on the run. Eddie, on the other hand, seemed capable of existing solely on cigarettes and scowling.

  ‘You never had to do this by day before?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We can’t just forget about the big light thing, go straight to the island?’

  ‘It’s just not there during the day. I’ve looked. It might be there at night. We have to wait and see.’

  ‘Well, next time you’ll know to bring a sandwich.’

  ‘There isn’t going to be a next time. Or if there is, it’ll be a bazooka in the lunchbox, believe me. Look, eat a piece of rope or something, would you? I’m thinking here.’

  Connie shrugged again, and opened one of the few remaining beers.

  Meanwhile Eddie looked out over the ocean. He was indeed thinking, and what he was primarily thinking was that this would all be settled pretty soon. Once the light went, the weirdoes would be sure to pick them up. They didn’t like people hanging around here after dark, as a few hundred years of disappearances testified. The only reason why Eddie wasn’t on that list of anomalies is that the time they’d picked him up and dumped him on the island he’d got the measure of the spindly ones pretty quickly, and had the balls to suggest a commercial arrangement to them. He’d known ever since then that the position was a perilous one. Of the three, he hated Yag the least, but he didn’t trust him in the slightest. He especially didn’t trust No-name. He’d met men like No-name many times, and they always ended up fucking you around. It was in their nature, even when it wasn’t in their interests.

  Eddie cleared his mind, set up what he knew, and what he suspected, and left it like that. It didn’t do to be too locked in one mindset, when going into situations like this. The resolutions of violent events were generally short. You got killed, or you avoided getting killed—generally by killing someone else. That was what it came down to, and neither outcome took very long or could be meaningfully prepared for ahead of time. Like a tennis player facing a serve from someone you’d never played before, the best you could do was watch the other guy’s feet, be limber, and skilled enough to whack back whatever came over the net.

  So instead he thought for a while about finding a new line of work, but nothing came. After a time Connie opened the last beer and offered it to him. Eddie shook his head, but winked: and everything was relaxed in the boat once more.

  That evening the restaurants and bars of Key West did good business. Nothing spectacular, because it wasn’t yet full season, but everyone went home pretty happy—the proprietors to nice Victorian homes in the Old Town or Scholz-designed palaces on the North of the island, the waitresses and barmen to dwindling stashes of dope and rooms in ramshackle houses. Places like Crabby Dick’s and Mangoes and Febe’s Grill got in two solid covers of holiday spenders, and the Hard Rock Café doled out a hundred burgers or so, as an adjunct to its primary business of making people’s ears bleed. The chi-chi bistros tucked away down sidestreets and in hotels raked in by far the best money—the human species having lost its bearings to such a degree that it thinks small portions on big plates are the Body of Christ, and that running when you don’t need to is in some way life-affirming. Meanwhile Slappy Jack’s and Sloppy Joe’s and Jimmy Buffet’s saw good Friday night crowds, and the usual pilgrimage was made by many down to the Havana Dock to watch the night come, despite the fact that before, during, and after sunset a uniquely talentless young woman armed with a battery of cheap synths rent the air with jerky covers of the songs of yesteryear, primarily the mid-1980s, and especially those with a maritime or vacation theme, however tangential; while another woman, who had once been beautif
ul but was now merely frightening, served long fruit cocktails in plastic cups and glared at the leavers of tips she considered insufficiently generous.

  People walked up and down Duval Street in the warmth of the early evening, peering in stores, assaying menus, enjoying the company of their companions but with part of their minds distantly worrying about the children, pets, lovers and gas ovens they’d left behind. From above, the island was a patchwork of light and dark, groves of trees with house lights twinkling, a network of lit streets, the distant thud of music. You couldn’t avoid the fact that life existed there, however far back you pulled: like a corner behind the fridge which never quite gets cleaned and is host to a variety of small microbular things going about their business with the happy, unmindful concentration of children.

  This, or something like it but in heavier clothes and with no Internet access, had gone on there for hundreds of years—and would go on for hundreds more. What took place a couple miles out to sea that evening never made any difference to anybody and was, as Eddie expected, over fairly quickly.

  The light came on eventually, but only for a moment and nowhere near as brightly as usual. The sea never froze. For Connie, who’d heard about the light from above but had never seen it, the experience was kind of interesting. For Eddie it merely confirmed what he’d already decided: something was notably fucked up.

  They waited another few minutes to see whether something else would happen, but it didn’t. Eddie cut the signal tone on the radio, and told Connie to start the engine.

  ‘Which direction?’

  ‘Straight ahead. That’s where the island is.’

  Connie peered eloquently out at the open sea. ‘It’s your call.’

  ‘Yes, and I’ve called. Do it.’

  They went fast and fifteen minutes later Eddie told Connie to slow it down a little. Connie took it back to pootling speed and watched as Eddie stood and looked ahead. There was still nothing to see. Eddie closed his eyes, got his bearings. He’d always been a good judge of space, even in the dark and in jungles and terrains he didn’t know that well. It was just one of those things.

  ‘I’d say we’re a couple of hundred yards short at this stage,’ he said. ‘Keep taking her ahead, but slow.’

  Connie drove. Eddie loaded his pockets with shells. Up above them the moon shed a cool, confident light that for several more minutes failed to reveal anything out of the ordinary.

  But then, they saw something.

  About twenty yards ahead. Something small and pale grey, about three feet above the ocean.

  ‘Shit on me,’ Connie said. ‘What the blue fuck is that?’

  Eddie didn’t reply, but just waited until they were closer, by which time the question could be answered just through using your eyes. Connie slowed the boat right down, and then a quiet thok noise told them they’d found the walkway.

  ‘Eddie, thank God,’ the grey croaked. ‘Boy am I glad to see you.’

  Eddie tied the boat up, while Connie just stared up at the alien. Then he clambered onto the walkway. Not an easy task, while the pier remained invisible, but achievable.

  He looked down at the creature. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Weird shit, Eddie,’ the grey said. ‘That’s all I know.’

  ‘Do the tall guys know something’s afoot?’

  ‘I don’t think so. They’re kind of wasted. They even forgot to feed us this morning.’

  ‘How many have you seen? What do they look like?’

  The grey shook his head. ‘Couple of the guys say there’s four or five. Me, I only saw two. And those looked kind of like you do.’

  Eddie turned back to the boat. Connie was still standing there. ‘Are you coming up here, or what?’

  Connie swallowed. ‘Up where, man?’

  ‘Up on the pier.’

  ‘The invisible pier, I take it? The one where you’re chewing the rag with something out of the fucking X Files?’

  ‘That’d be the one.’

  ‘You know what? I’m wondering whether this is something I’m truly going to be up to on an empty stomach.’

  Eddie leant down without a word and proffered a hand. Connie grabbed it, and scrabbled with relative grace up unto the walkway. He dusted off his hands and looked down at the alien, who looked back up at him.

  ‘Hi, Roswell dude,’ Connie said, eventually. ‘I come in peace.’

  ‘That wasn’t us,’ the grey snapped, ‘And I’m tired of taking flack for it.’

  ‘Let’s get on with this,’ Eddie said, and started walking. The grey skittered round to trot in front. Connie took the rear. It felt like a good place to be for the time being. They walked the length, towards a yellow light. This, Connie observed, was also hanging a few feet above the sea. The situation didn’t seem to be bugging Eddie, however, so he guessed it was okay. A couple of yards before they reached it, he got a flicker in his eyes. For a moment it looked like there was something behind the light, a body of land. Then the impression disappeared, to be replaced by a couple of oval heads around the light. There was some excitable chattering in a language that was neither English nor Spanish, the only ones Connie had any real acquaintance with.

  ‘Okay guys,’ the grey said to them, as they got to the end. He nodded in the direction of the three other greys, who’d appeared from behind the light. All of them either waved or nodded at Eddie. ‘What you have to do is get land-side of my buddies here.’

  Eddie walked past the little aliens. Connie followed. The moment his back foot was past them, a whole island flicked into view. And this time, it stayed there. Connie shook his head.

  ‘How the hell’d you do that?’

  ‘Our science is many centuries ahead of yours,’ intoned one of the greys. ‘Do not adjust your television set.’ The others giggled.

  Eddie shushed them, and explained his plan.

  Minutes later the greys quietly led Connie towards the path, and Eddie slipped alone into the trees. He waited until they were out of sight around the corner, and then cut a wide path around the island. Partly this was because it would probably turn out better if they didn’t all approach the centre from the same direction. Partly it was to see if there was any evidence to bear out a hunch that had been slowly gaining hunchiness all afternoon.

  In a grove close to the shore on the East side, he found the body of someone he thought very likely to be Jennifer Becker, lying awkwardly on the ground. Eddie didn’t bother to check for a pulse. She’d evidently been shot by a weapon of non-human provenance, which had punched a hole right through her head. A sad, crumpled end for someone who’d never understood the situation she’d found herself in, but then Eddie could have said the same for many people he’d known, who’d fallen in the kind of fights that got covered on CNN and then been buried with full military honours. All around her in the sand were two sets of footprints of pretty normal shape and size. One of them bore the logo of a prominent earthling casualware manufacturer. The other showed all the signs of having been made by flip flops of equally terrestrial provenance.

  Eddie decided he finally knew what was going on.

  ‘So who the hell are you?’ Fud demanded, glaring at Connie.

  Connie looked right back at the alien. He’d already endured having his monkey-derived ancestry cited, and was rapidly discovering the truth of something Eddie had once told him: it didn’t take very long in the company of these people before you started really, really wanting to kill them.

  ‘Friend of Eddie’s,’ he said. ‘He sent me here.’

  ‘Eddie’s an asshole,’ slurred the No-name alien. ‘I always said so. You’re probably an asshole too.’ He coughed, and then added in a wheedling voice: ‘Did he send any smokes with you?’

  Yag, who’d yet to say anything, shushed his colleague with a thoughtful wave of his hand, and carried on looking at Connie.

  No-name hiccupped and stomped over to flop down into one of the reclining chairs. The greys meanwhile were standing together in a protective hud
dle a few feet away, under the standard lamp as if for warmth. Most of them were casting wary glances into the trees which stood all around the grassed clearing. The one who’d met them on the pier, who so far as Connie could tell was entirely indistinguishable from the others except that he was a little braver, coughed nervously.

  ‘He told us to come warn you,’ the little alien said to Yag. The others stopped peering around and gathered behind him, for moral support. ‘Some bad stuff is happening. The guy he was arranging a vaccine for has disappeared. Plus his wife.’

  ‘Wasn’t us,’ Fud said.

  ‘He knows,’ said the grey. ‘Think he’s going to want a word with you about that. And you know what he’s like when he’s pissed.’

  ‘So who was it?’ Yag asked.

  ‘Us,’ said a voice, and three species whirled at once.

  Standing at the edge of the clearing was a man. Tall, dressed in grey shorts and nothing else. He’d lost the rest of his clothes during the day, no longer able to remember why he had to wear them. Only a shadowy vestige of an old propriety had kept the shorts in position. He stood in shadow, and at first Connie couldn’t see his face. Then he took a couple of shambling paces forward, legs twisting as if he’d been knee-capped but was still somehow able to support his weight, a gun pointed in the general direction of the spindly aliens. Yag and Fud took small steps backwards.

  No-name peered at the human and belched quietly. ‘What the crap,’ he rasped, ‘is happening now?’

  The man turned from the waist, as if he’d forgotten about his legs, and pointed the gun directly at him. ‘Shut up,’ he said.

  ‘How did you get here, George?’ Connie asked, his voice remarkably level. ‘What happened last night?’

  ‘By boat,’ George said, his voice inflectionless. ‘It had glass in the bottom. There were no sodas though. Jen was with us. But then she died. Well, we killed her, in fact. It was very sad.’

  ‘Hold on,’ said Yag, frowning. ‘What do you mean, “Us”? There’s only one of you.’ The alien was hung over to hell and back, and something was telling him this might be a bad time to be in that condition. Also that it would have been a good idea to have thought to bring some weapons out with them, even some teeny little ones, when the greys and human had appeared in the clearing.