Bewere the Night (43 page)

Then the wind shifted, bringing with it the tang of wood smoke.

Festus ambled out of the woods, shaking snow from his ears, and ran up to Andrew. The boy let the amulet drop back inside his flannel shirt and zipped up the parka. He turned and walked back to the house.

“Have a nice walk?” Howell’s voice was still weak but his eyes shone brightly, and he smiled at the boy stomping the snow from boots too big for him.

“Oh, yeah, it was great.” Andrew hung up the parka and snorted, then turning back to Howell, tried to smile. “No, it was nice. Is all that your property back there?” He strode to the fireplace and crouched in front of it, feeding it twigs and another damp log.

“Just about all of it.” Howell pulled a lap blanket up closer to his chin. “This side of Sugar Mountain and most of the lakefront.”

“Wow.” Andrew settled back, already sweating from the heat. “It’s really nice back there by the lake. We used to go there in the summer, my mom and me. I love it up here.”

Howell nodded. “I do, too. Did you live in the city?”

Andrew shook his head. “Yonkers. It sucks there now; like living in the Bronx.” He opened the top button of his shirt and traced the string against his chest. “Once, when I was a kid, we heard an astronaut talk here. At the library. Was that you?”

Howell smiled. “Yup. I wondered if you might have been one of those kids, one of those times. So many kids, I must have talked to a thousand kids at the school here. You want to be an astronaut when you were little?”

“Nah.” Andrew poked at the log, reached to pet Festus. “I never wanted to be anything, really. School’s really boring, and like where I lived sucks, and . . . ” He gestured at the fire, the room and the door leading outside. “The only thing I ever really liked was being up here, in the woods. Living in The Fallows this year, that was great.”

“It’s the only thing I liked, too. After I stopped working.” Howell sighed and glanced over at the pictures covering the wall, the sagging bookcases. He had never really been good with kids. The times he had spoken at the school he’d had films to back him up, and later, videotapes and videodiscs. He had never been able to entertain his son here, or his friends, or the occasional visiting niece or nephew. The pictures were just pictures to them, not even colorful. The tapes were boring. When Peter and his friends were older, high school or college, sometimes Howell would show them the Nut File, a manila envelope crammed with letters from Rubber Man Lord of Jupiter and articles clipped from tabloids, a lifetime of NASA correspondence with cranks and earnest kooks who had developed faster-than-light drives in their garages. Peter and his friends had laughed at the letters, and Howell had laughed, too, reading them again. But none of his visitors had ever been touched, the way Howell had. None of them had ever wondered why a retired NASA astronaut would have a drawer full of letters from nuts.

“Andrew,” he said softly; then, “Andrew,” as loud as he could. The boy drew back guiltily from the fire, Festus started awake and stared up, alarmed.

“Sorry—”

Howell drew a clawed hand from beneath the blanket and waved it weakly. “No, no—that’s all right—just . . . ”

He coughed; it took him a minute to catch his breath. Andrew stood and waited next to him, staring back at the fire. “Okay, I’m okay now,” Howell wheezed at last. “Just: remember last night? That picture with the poem?”

Andrew looked at him blankly.

“In my room—the moon, you wanted to know if I wrote it—”

The boy nodded. “Oh, yeah. The moon poem, right. Sure.”

Howell smiled and pointed to the bookcase. “Well here, go look over there—”

Andrew watched him for a moment before turning to the bookcase and looking purposefully at the titles. Sighing, Festus moved closer to the old astronaut’s feet. Howell stroked his back, regarding Andrew thoughtfully. He coughed, inclining his head toward the wall.

“Andrew.” Howell took a long breath, then leaned forward, pointing. “That’s it, there.”

Beneath some magazines, Andrew found a narrow pamphlet bound with tape. “This?” he wondered. He removed it gingerly and blew dust from its cover.

Howell settled back in his chair. “Right. Bring it here. I want to show you something.”

Andrew settled into the chair beside Howell. A paperbound notebook, gray with age. On the cover swirled meticulous writing in Greek characters, and beneath them the same hand, in English:

Return address:

Mr. Nicholas Margalis

116 Argau Dimitrou Apt. No.3

Salonika, Greece

“Read it,” said Howell. “I found that in the NASA library. He sent it to Colonel Someright after the war. It floated around for forty years, sat in NASA’s Nut File before I finally took it.”

He paused. “I used to collect stuff like that. Letters from crackpots. People who thought they could fly. UFOs, moonmen.
Outer space
. I try to keep an open mind.” He gestured at the little book in Andrew’s hand. “I don’t think anyone else has ever read that one. Go ahead.”

Carefully Andrew opened the booklet. On lined paper tipsy block letters spelled P
LANES,
P
LANETS,
P
LANS
. Following this were pages of numerical equations, sketches, a crude drawing labeled T
HE
A
IR
D
IGGER
R
OCKET
S
HAPE.

“They’re plans for a rocket ship,” said Howell. He craned his neck so he could see.

“You’re kidding.” Andrew turned the brittle pages. “Did they build it?”

“Christ, no! I worked it out once. If you were to build the Margalis Planets Plane it would be seven miles long.” He laughed silently.

Andrew turned to a page covered with zeros.

“Math,” said Howell.

More calculations. Near the end Andrew read:

Forty years of continuous flying will cover the following space below, 40 years, 14,610 days, 216,000,000,000,000 X 1461O—equals 3,155,750,000,000,000,000 miles. That is about the mean distance to the farthest of the Planets, Uranus.

Trillions, Quatrillions, Billions and Millions of miles all can be reached with this Plan.

Andrew shook his head. “This is so sad! He really thought it would fly?”

“They all thought they could fly,” said Howell. “Read me the end.”

“ ‘Experimenting of thirty-five years with levers, and compounds of,’ ’’ read Andrew. ‘“‘I have had made a patent model of wooden material and proved a very successful work.

“ ‘My Invention had been approved by every in the last year 1944, 1946 in my native village Panorma, Crevens, Greece. Every stated it will be a future great success in Mechanics.

“ ‘Yours truly.’ ’’

Andrew stopped abruptly.

“Go on,” prodded Howell. “The end. The best part.”

On the inside back cover, Andrew saw the same hand, somewhat shakier and in black ink.

I have written in these copy book about 111000 of what actually will take in building a real Rocket Shape Airo-Plane to make trips to the Planets.

There in the planets we will find Paradise, and the undying water to drink so we never will die, and never be in distress.

Come on all you

Lets get busy

for the speedy trips

to all Planets and

back to earth again.

N
ICHOLAS
S
.
M
ARGALIS

A
UG 19 1946

Howell sat in silence. For a long moment Andrew stared at the manuscript, then glanced at the old man beside him. Howell was smiling now as he stared into the fire. As Andrew watched, his eyelids flickered, and then the old astronaut dozed, snoring softly along with the dog at his feet. Andrew waited. Howell did not wake. Finally the boy stood and poked at the glowing logs. When he turned back, the blanket had fallen from the old man’s lap and onto the dogs back. Andrew picked it up and carefully draped it across Howell’s knees.

For a moment he stood beside him. The old man smelled like carnations. Against his yellow skin broken capillaries bloomed blue and crimson. Andrew hesitated. Then he bowed his head until his lips grazed Howell’s scalp. He turned away to replace the booklet on its shelf and went to bed.

That night the wind woke Howell. Cold gripped him as he sat up in bed, and his hand automatically reached for Festus. The dog was not beside him.

“Festus?” he called softly, then slid from bed, pulling on his robe and catching his breath before walking across the bedroom to the window.

A nearly full moon hung above the pine forest, dousing the snow so that it glowed silvery blue. Deer and rabbits had made tracks steeped in shadow at woods edge. He stood gazing at the sky when a movement at the edge of the field caught him.

In the snow an animal jumped and rolled, its fur a fiery gleam against the whiteness. Howell gasped in delight: a fox, tossing the snow and crunching it between its black jaws. Then something else moved. The old man shook his head in disbelief.

“Festus.”

Clumsily, sinking over his head in the drifts, the spaniel tumbled and rose beside the fox, the two of them playing in the moonlight. Clouds of white sparkled about them as the fox leaped gracefully to land beside the dog, rolling until it was only an auburn blur.

Howell held his breath, moving away from the window so that his shadow could not disturb them. Then he recalled the boy sleeping in the next room.

“Andrew,” he whispered loudly, his hand against the wall to steady himself as he walked into the room. “Andrew, you have to see something.”

The window seat was empty The door leading outside swung open, banging against the wall in the frigid wind. Howell turned and walked toward the door, finally stopping and clinging to the frame as he stared outside.

In the snow lay a green hospital gown, blown several feet from the door. Bare footprints extended a few yards into the field. Howell followed them. Where the shadows of the house fell behind him, the footprints ended. Small pawprints marked the drifts, leading across the field to where the fox and dog played.

He lifted his head and stared at them. He saw where Festus’s tracks ran off to the side of the house and then back to join the other’s. As he watched, the animals abruptly stopped. Festus craned his head to look back at his master and then floundered joyfully through the drifts to meet him. Howell stepped forward. He stared from the tracks to the two animals, yelled in amazement and stood stark upright. Then stumbling he tried to run toward them. When Festus bounded against his knees the man staggered and fell. The world tilted from white to swirling darkness.

It was light when he came to. Beside him hunched the boy, his face red and tear streaked.

“Major Howell,” he said. “Please—”

The old man sat up slowly, pulling the blankets around him. He stared for a moment at Andrew, then at the far door where the flagstones shone from melted snow. .

“I saw it,” he whispered. “What you did, I saw it.”

Andrew shook his head. “Don’t—You can’t—”

Howell reached for his shoulder and squeezed it. “How does it work?”

Andrew stared at him, silent.

“How does it work?” Howell repeated excitedly “How can you do it?”

The boy bit his lip. Howell’s face was scarlet, his eyes feverishly bright. “I—it’s this,” Andrew said at last, pulling the amulet from his chest. “It was my mother’s. I took it when she died.”

His hands shaking, Howell gently took the stone between his fingers, rubbing the frayed string. “Magic,” he said.

Andrew shivered despite the fire at his back. “It’s from here. The Indians. The Tankiteke. There were lots, my mother said. Her grandfather found it when he was little. My father—” He ended brokenly.

Howell nodded in wonder. “It works,” he said. “I saw it work.” Andrew swallowed and drew back a little, so that the amulet slipped from Howell’s hand. “Like this,” he explained, opening his mouth and slipping one finger beneath his tongue. “But you don’t swallow it.”

“I saw you,” the old man repeated. “I saw you playing with my dog.” He nodded at Festus, dozing in front of the fire. “Can you be anything?”

Andrew bit his lip before answering. “I think so. My mother said you just concentrate on it—on what you want. See—”

And he took it into his hand, held it out so that the firelight illuminated it. “It’s like all these things in one. Look: it’s got wings and horns and hooves.”

“And that’s how you hid from them.” Howell slapped his knees. “No wonder they never found you.”

Andrew nodded glumly.

“Well,” Howell coughed. He sank back into the chair, eyes closed. He reached for Andrew, and the boy felt the old mans hand tighten about his own, cold and surprisingly strong. After a minute Howell opened his eyes. He looked from the flames to Andrew and held the boy’s gaze for a long time, silent. Then,

“You could fly with something like that,” he said. “You could fly again.”

Andrew let his breath out in a long shudder. ‘That’s right,” he said finally beneath his breath. He turned away. “You could fly again, Major Howell.”

Howell reached for the boy’s hand again, his fingers clamping there like a metal hinge. “Thank you,” he whispered. “I think I’ll go to sleep now.”

The following afternoon the plow came. Andrew heard it long before it reached Sugar Mountain, an eager roar like a great wave overtaking the snowbound bungalow. The phone was working, too; he heard Howell in the next room, talking between fits of coughing. A short time later a pickup bounced up the drive. Andrew stared in disbelief, then fled into the bathroom, locking the door behind him.

He heard several voices greeting Howell at the door, the thump of boots upon the flagstones.

“Thank you, Isaac,” wheezed the astronaut. Andrew heard the others stomp into the kitchen. “I was out of everything.” Andrew opened the door a crack and peered out, glaring at Festus when the dog scratched at it.