Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (S.F. MASTERWORKS) (24 page)

“Bring that thing here, Ruth—right now!”

But she’s starting down the bank toward them saying, “Take me.”

“Wait! You need a tourniquet on that arm.”

“I know. Please put the gun down, Don.”

She’s actually at the skiff, right by them. They aren’t moving. “Jesus Christ.” Slowly, reluctantly, I drop the .32. When I start down the slide, I find I’m floating; adrenaline and Demerol are a bad mix.

The skiff comes gliding toward me, Ruth in the bow clutching the thing and her arm. The aliens stay in the stern behind their tripod, away from me. I note the skiff is camouflaged tan and green. The world around us is deep shadowy blue.

“Don, bring the water bag!”

As I’m dragging down the plastic bag, it occurs to me that Ruth really is cracking up, the water isn’t needed now. But my own brain seems to have gone into overload. All I can focus on is a long white rubbery arm with black worms clutching the far end of the orange tube, helping me fill it. This isn’t happening.

“Can you get in, Don?” As I hoist my numb legs up, two long white pipes reach for me.
No, you don’t.
I kick and tumble in beside Ruth. She moves away.

A creaky hum starts up, it’s coming from a wedge in the center of the skiff. And we’re in motion, sliding toward dark mangrove files.

I stare mindlessly at the wedge. Alien technological secrets? I can’t see any, the power source is under that triangular cover, about two feet long. The gadgets on the tripod are equally cryptic, except that one has a big lens. Their light?

As we hit the open bay, the hum rises and we start planing faster and faster still. Thirty knots? Hard to judge in the dark. Their hull seems to be a modified trihedral much like ours, with a remarkable absence of slap. Say twenty-two feet. Schemes of capturing it swirl in my mind. I’ll need Estéban.

Suddenly a huge flood of white light fans out over us from the tripod, blotting out the aliens in the stern. I see Ruth pulling at a belt around her arm, still hugging the gizmo.

“I’ll tie that for you.”

“It’s all right.”

The alien device is twinkling or phosphorescing slightly. I lean over to look, whispering, “Give that to me, I’ll pass it to Estéban.”

“No!” She scoots away, almost over the side. “It’s theirs, they need it!”

“What? Are you crazy?” I’m so taken aback by this idiocy I literally stammer. “We have to, we—”

“They haven’t hurt us. I’m sure they could.” Her eyes are watching me with feral intensity; in the light her face has a lunatic look. Numb as I am, I realize that the wretched woman is poised to throw herself over the side if I move. With the alien thing.

“I think they’re gentle,” she mutters.

“For Christ’s sake, Ruth, they’re
aliens!
”

“I’m used to it,” she says absently. “There’s the island! Stop! Stop here!”

The skiff slows, turning. A mound of foliage is tiny in the light. Metal glints—the plane.

“Althea! Althea! Are you all right?”

Yells, movement on the plane. The water is high, we’re floating over the bar. The aliens are keeping us in the lead with the light hiding them. I see one pale figure splashing toward us and a dark one behind, coming more slowly. Estéban must be puzzled by that light.

“Mr. Fenton is hurt, Althea. These people brought us back with the water. Are you all right?”

“A-okay.” Althea flounders up, peering excitedly. “You all right? Whew, that light!” Automatically I start handing her the idiotic water bag.

“Leave that for the captain,” Ruth says sharply. “Althea, can you climb in the boat? Quickly, it’s important.”

“Coming.”

“No, no!” I protest, but the skiff tilts as Althea swarms in. The aliens twitter, and their voice box starts groaning. “Gu-give . . . now . . . give . . . “

“Qué llega?”
Estéban’s face appears beside me, squinting fiercely into the light.

“Grab it, get it from her—that thing she has—” but Ruth’s voice rides over mine. “Captain, lift Mr. Fenton out of the boat. He’s hurt his leg. Hurry, please.”

“Goddamn it, wait!” I shout, but an arm has grabbed my middle. When a Maya boosts you, you go. I hear Althea saying, “Mother, your arm!” and fall onto Estéban. We stagger around in water up to my waist; I can’t feel my feet at all.

When I get steady, the boat is yards away. The two women are head-to-head, murmuring.

“Get them!” I tug loose from Estéban and flounder forward. Ruth stands up in the boat facing the invisible aliens.

“Take us with you. Please. We want to go with you, away from here.”

“Ruth! Estéban, get that boat!” I lunge and lose my feet again. The aliens are chirruping madly behind their light.

“Please take us. We don’t mind what your planet is like; we’ll learn—we’ll do anything! We won’t cause any trouble. Please. Oh,
please
.” The skiff is drifting farther away.

“Ruth! Althea! Are you crazy? Wait—” But I can only shuffle nightmarelike in the ooze, hearing that damn voice box wheeze, “N-not come . . . more . . . not come . . .” Althea’s face turns to it, openmouthed grin.

“Yes, we understand,” Ruth cries. “We don’t want to come back. Please take us with you!”

I shout and Estéban splashes past me shouting too, something about radio.

“Yes-s-s,” groans the voice.

Ruth sits down suddenly, clutching Althea. At that moment Estéban grabs the edge of the skiff beside her.

“Hold them, Estéban! Don’t let her go.”

He gives me one slit-eyed glance over his shoulder, and I recognize his total uninvolvement. He’s had a good look at that camouflage paint and the absence of fishing gear. I make a desperate rush and slip again. When I come up Ruth is saying, “We’re going with these people, Captain. Please take your money out of my purse, it’s in the plane. And give this to Mr. Fenton.”

She passes him something small; the notebook. He takes it slowly.

“Estéban! No!”

He has released the skiff.

“Thank you so much,” Ruth says as they float apart. Her voice is shaky; she raises it. “There won’t be any trouble, Don. Please send this cable. It’s to a friend of mine, she’ll take care of everything.” Then she adds the craziest touch of the entire night. “She’s a grand person; she’s director of nursing training at N.I.H.”

As the skiff drifts out, I hear Althea add something that sounds like “Right on.”

Sweet Jesus . . . Next minute the humming has started; the light is receding fast. The last I see of Mrs. Ruth Parsons and Miss Althea Parsons is two small shadows against that light, like two opossums. The light snaps off, the hum deepens—and they’re going, going, gone away.

In the dark water beside me Estéban is instructing everybody in general to
chingarse
themselves.

“Friends, or something,” I tell him lamely. “She seemed to want to go with them.”

He is pointedly silent, hauling me back to the plane. He knows what could be around here better than I do, and Mayas have their own longevity program. His condition seems improved. As we get in I notice the hammock has been repositioned.

In the night—of which I remember little—the wind changes. And at seven-thirty next morning a Cessna buzzes the sandbar under cloudless skies.

By noon we’re back in Cozumel. Captain Estéban accepts his fees and departs laconically for his insurance wars. I leave the Parsons’ bags with the Caribe agent, who couldn’t care less. The cable goes to a Mrs. Priscilla Hayes Smith, also of Bethesda. I take myself to a medico and by three P.M. I’m sitting on the Cabanas terrace with a fat leg and a double margarita, trying to believe the whole thing.

The cable said,
Althea and I taking extraordinary opportunity for travel. Gone several years. Please take charge our affairs. Love, Ruth.

She’d written it that afternoon, you understand.

I order another double, wishing to hell I’d gotten a good look at that gizmo. Did it have a label, Made by Betelgeusians? No matter how weird it was,
how
could a person be crazy enough to imagine—?

Not only that but to hope, to plan?
If I could only go away. . . .
That’s what she was doing, all day. Waiting, hoping, figuring how to get Althea. To go sight unseen to an alien world . . .

With the third margarita I try a joke about alienated women, but my heart’s not in it. And I’m certain there won’t be any bother, any trouble at all. Two human women, one of them possibly pregnant, have departed for, I guess, the stars; and the fabric of society will never show a ripple. I brood: do all Mrs. Parsons’s friends hold themselves in readiness for any eventuality, including leaving Earth? And will Mrs. Parsons somehow one day contrive to send for Mrs. Priscilla Hayes Smith, that grand person?

I can only send for another cold one, musing on Althea. What suns will Captain Estéban’s sloe-eyed offspring, if any, look upon? “Get in, Althea, we’re taking off for Orion.”

“Aokay, Mother.” Is that some system of upbringing?
We survive by ones and twos in the chinks of your world-machine. . . . I’m used to aliens. . . .
She’d meant every word. Insane. How could a woman choose to live among unknown monsters, to say goodbye to her home, her world?

As the margaritas take hold, the whole mad scenario melts down to the image of those two small shapes sitting side by side in the receding alien glare.

Two of our opossums are missing.

YOUR FACES, O MY SISTERS! YOUR FACES FILLED OF LIGHT!

H
OT SUMMER NIGHT
, big raindrops falling faster now as she swings along the concrete expressway, high over the old dead city. Lightning is sizzling and cracking over the lake behind her. Beautiful! The flashes jump the roofs of the city to life below her, miles of cube buildings gray and sharp-edged in the glare. People lived here once, all the way to the horizons. Smiling, she thinks of all those walls and windows full of people, living in turbulence and terror. Incredible.

She’s passing a great billboard-thing dangling and banging in the wind. Part of a big grinning face: O-N-D-E-R-B-R-E-A, whatever that was, bright as day. She strides along enjoying the cool rain on her bare head. No need to pull up her parka for a few minutes yet, the freshness is so great. All headaches completely gone. The sisters were wrong, she’s perfectly fine. There was no reason to wait any longer, with the messages in her pack and Des Moines out there ahead. They didn’t realize how walking rests you.

Sandals just getting wet, she notes. It feels good, but she mustn’t let them get wet through, they’ll chafe and start a blister. Couriers have to think of things like that. In a few minutes she’ll climb down one of the ramps and take shelter.

There’s ramps along here every half-mile or so, all over the old city. Chi-cago or She-cago, which was it. She should find out, she’s been this way several times now. Courier to the West. The lake behind her is Michigam, Michi-gami, the shining Big-Sea-Water. Satisfied, she figures she has come nearly seventy miles already since she left the hostel yesterday, and only one hitch. I’m not even tired. That beautiful old sister, she thinks. I’d have liked to talk with her more. Like the wise old Nokomis. That’s the trouble, I always want to stop and explore the beautiful places and people, and I always want to get on too, get to the next. Couriers see so much. Someday she’ll come back here and have a good swim in the lake, loaf and ramble around the old city. So much to see, no danger except from falling walls, she’s expert at watching that. Some sisters say there are dog packs here, she doesn’t believe it. And even if there are, they wouldn’t be dangerous. Animals aren’t dangerous if you know what to do. No dangers left at all, in the whole free wide world!

She shakes the rain out of her face, smiling up at the blowing night. To be a courier, what a great life! Rambling woman, on the road. Heyo, sister! Any mail, any messages for Des Moines and points west? Travel, travel on. But she is traveling in really heavy downpour now, she sees. She squeezes past a heap of old wrecked “cars” and splash! one foot goes in ankle-deep. The rain is drumming little fountains all over the old roadway. Time to get under; she reaches back and pulls the parka hood up from under her pack, thinking how alive the highway looks in the flashing lightning and rain. This road must have been full of the “cars” once, all of them shiny new, roaring along probably quite close together, belching gases, shining their lights, using all this space. She can almost hear them, poor crazy creatures.
Rrrr-oom!
A blazing bolt slaps down near her, strobes on and off. Whew! That was close. She chuckles, feeling briefly dizzy in the ozone. Ah, here’s a ramp right by her, it looks okay.

Followed by a strange whirling light shaft, some trick of the storm, she ducks aside and runs lightly down from the Stevenson Expressway into the Thirty-fifth Street underpass.

“Gone.” Patrolman Lugioni cuts the flasher, lets the siren growl diminuendo. The cruiser accelerates in the curb lane, broadcasting its need of a ring job. “Shitass kids out hitching on a night like this.” He shakes his head.

Al, the driver, feels under his leg for the pack of smokes. “I thought it was a girl.”

“Who can tell,” Lugioni grunts. Lightning is cracking everywhere, it’s a cloudburst. All around them the Saturday night madhouse tears on, every car towing a big bustle of dirty water in the lights of the car behind.

—Dry under the overpass, but it’s really dark in here between the lightning flashes. She pushes back her parka, walks on carefully avoiding wrecks and debris. With all that flashing, her night vision won’t develop. Too bad, she has keen night vision. Takes forty-five minutes to come up fully, she knows a lot of stuff like that.

She’s under a long elevated roadway down the center of an old street, it seems to go on for miles straight ahead. Almost straight west, good. Outside on both sides the open street is jumping with rain, splashing up white like plaster grass as the lightning cracks.
Boom! Barooomm-m-m!
The Midwest has great storms. She loves the wild uproar, loves footing through a storm. All for her! How she’d like to strip and run out into it! Get a good bath, clean off all the dust and sweat. Her stuff would keep dry in here. Hey, shall I? . . . Almost she does, but she isn’t really that dirty yet and she should get on, she lost so much time at that hostel. Couriers have to act responsible. She makes herself pad soberly along dodging junk in the dark, thinking, now here’s the kind of place a horse would be no good.