Pets 2: Pani's Story (24 page)

For some reason, her head also refused to stay upright on her shoulders. It kept wanting to flop backwards on her neck, pulling Pani over sideways against the door until Papa gently coaxed her to lay against him. Her cheek pressed against his shoulder. She could feel his heart beating under her steadying hand. He was a big, warm, reverse blanket, keeping her cozy from the underneath and where his arms wrapped around her.

“Go to sleep,” he told her, brushing stray wisps of red hair back from her face and softly beginning to rock her. “Go to sleep.”

That was one order she really didn’t mind obeying.

* * * * *

The room was cool without being cold, a tomb made of slate gray metal. Sterile-looking.

Like a morgue. Like a dream she’d once had, but which she couldn’t quite make herself remember. Pani rolled her heavy head to one side and blinked uncomprehendingly up at a wall of blackness, dotted all over with shiny, distant lights. Stars, she realized groggily. She was looking at a window, not a wall, and outside for as far as she could see in all directions, everything was blackness and stars.

“Pani.”

Pani rolled her head the other way, looking up at Papa. She had to blink several times just to bring him into focus. “Mmphf,” she mumbled. Her brows furrowed. Had he drugged her?

Consequences be damned, she really was going to flick his nose now!

Lifting her head, Papa slipped the supple tip of a fresh bottle into her mouth. “Drink.” She managed to suck. There wasn’t much in this one, just a few mouthfuls with only enough formula to keep from gagging on the incredibly strong medicinal taste. She spat the nipple out when she was done and shuddered all over. “Ugh!” Her reaction brought a slight twist of a smile to Papa’s lips. A funny, slightly sad smile that drifted away as he turned his attention to Crazy, lying in the bed next to her, fingers slightly twitching against Pani’s arm. He put a syringe in her mouth, squirting the medicine down her throat and within minutes, she too began to rouse.

“Bad Papa,” Pani muttered when she regained enough function to roll to the edge of the bed.

107

“Do you have to go potty?” He tried to check her diaper, but she pushed his hand away.

“No.”

He had to change Crazy’s diaper; she’d actually used hers. And by the time he’d finished with that, Pani had rethought her decision. “Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Potty.” She slid off the unfamiliar bed on shaky limbs and Papa helped her down the handful of steps needed to cross the cramped room into a tiny closet of a bathroom. Crazy was sitting up in bed, weaving a little unsteadily and singing to herself by the time they returned, and Pani was almost able to walk on her own without help.

Pulling Crazy out of bed and nudging her until she tried walking around on her own, Papa sat down on the edge and pulled Pani to stand between his knees. He kissed the top of her head and, while she struggled to work the cobwebs out of her head, repeatedly blinking her eyes in an effort to make that bay window full of stars make sense, Papa brushed out and rebraided her hair. He tried to do the same for Crazy, but she refused to hold still for it. Still, he gave it a valiant effort, and while he struggled both to hold her down and summon enough patience to get the job done, Pani staggered over to the window.

Pressing her hands to the cool glass, she stared out at the stars. Where were they? Where were the trees, the grass…heck, where was the ground? Glancing back over her shoulder in time to see Papa throw his hands in the air, both releasing the struggling Crazy and giving up on grooming her into any semblance of attractiveness, Pani pointed out at the black empty of space and said, “Home?”

The aggravation was gone from his face in a single blink, and for a moment she thought he wasn’t going to answer. His jaw clenched once and then his eyes slid away from her. “Yes.

Pani’s going home.”

Pani shook her head, not quite believing her eyes. “Papa and Pani’s home?” Elbows on his knees, Papa rubbed his forehead and didn’t answer. What he did say was a very tired sounding, “Come here.”

Angling her head, Pani didn’t move. She just stared at him, not at all sure she liked the nagging little uncertainty that had begun to blossom in her mind.

He held out his hand, beckoning. “Come here, Pani.” She went, crawling up into his arms when he reached for her, but she didn’t feel any happier about it than he looked.

“Come on.” He snapped his fingers until he caught Crazy’s attention. She obediently fell into step behind him, but Pani wasn’t given a choice. He carried her, which was probably for the best at this point. She had a bad feeling growing in the pit of her. If allowed to move under her own power, she wouldn’t have followed Papa; she’d have turned around and crawled back into bed—or maybe even under it—until she figured out exactly what was going on.

As it turned out, she didn’t have long to wonder. Papa carried her down a short series of narrow hallways, pausing now and again to snap his fingers at Crazy whenever she stopped walking. Eventually they reached an outer hatch, surrounded on both sides by large bay windows. A long white tunnel connected the hatch to a second ship drifting a short distance away. Close as it was, it was impossible not to notice the giant flag and black USA letters down 108

the side and yet, even as she read them, Pani almost couldn’t make sense of them.

It wasn’t until Crazy whispered, “Astronauts,” that Pani suddenly understood what was happening.

“Pani.”

She turned wide eyes upon him, afraid she might already know what he was going to ask.

Although she only recognized about one word in four, he made pantomimes with one hand that made it difficult to feign stupidity.

“Can you talk to them?” he asked.

Pani hesitated. Was that why he’d brought her here? Not to get rid of her but because he needed an interpreter? She still had that sickly feeling in her gut, but she wanted to believe the best and so she nodded.

Papa opened the hatch and nudged Crazy until she took those first few stiff-legged steps into the white tunnel. She stopped walking the instant he stopped pushing and, heaving an irritated sigh, he finally just took her by the ear and dragged her to the entrance hatch of the other ship.

The NASA rocket was cramped to begin with, but once Papa squeezed himself through the narrow (for him) door, then the ship really got small. The sudden lack of gravity helped him move through the vessel, which made it easier considering that he continued to hold her to him, while every few steps he gave Crazy’s rump a slap to keep her moving forward.

The air here smelled stale and halfway to the control room, beyond the scent of stagnant oxygen and sweat, Pani caught her first whiff of decay.

There were seven astronauts total, four of which were already dead, still confined to their suits and strapped into their chairs. But three lived, the uniformed men slowly coming back to their senses as Papa’s ship pumped a steady, hissing stream of air into this one. Papa would have been a startling sight for anyone who had never set eyes on a giant alien before, but the men handled it well: hardly moving beyond a shocked stiffening of their bodies, they came to in their chairs. They gaped at him and they gaped at her, blinking at Pani’s hair and clothes and at her arms which clung to Papa’s neck even after he put her down. Gently, he had to disentangle himself from her grasp.

“Pani,” he made talking motions with his hand and gestured to the astronauts.

She told them off, all right.

Her voice was much steadier than she felt when she said, “Go away. You’ve got no business being here. You won’t like what you find if you ever come out this way again.” The men blinked from her to Papa; one hesitantly offering, “We got knocked off course.”

“Don’t let it happen again.” Pani turned to Papa when she felt his tap at her shoulder and guessed her way through the next part of his message. “If you disregard his warning and trespass again, Tak’buh’s people will follow you all the way back to Earth and they will destroy it.” She could tell they believed her by the way all three men turned then to look at Papa’s ship, quietly assessing the vast visual differences between their two technologies. “I’ve seen their world. Trust me, they can do it.”

“But, why?”

Pani didn’t need much beyond her own observations to answer that. “They do not play well with others.”

109

Papa tapped her shoulder again.

“Do you believe Earth will be destroyed if you ignore his warning?” Pani asked.

All three men nodded, and it was clear by their tensely drawn faces that they truly did believe it.

“Good.” She felt Papa turned away. “Then go home.” She turned to follow him, ignoring the sudden unclipping of seatbelts behind her until one of the astronauts launched himself after her, grabbing her by the arm.

Pani jumped, startled but already kicking with both feet and shoving with her one free hand to break free. “No! Pani goes home with Papa.” She barely realized she wasn’t speaking English anymore, but the man clung stubbornly onto her arm, trying to pull her in closer while Papa retreated back through the ship the way he’d come.

Despite his height and size, he was already halfway back to the exit hatch, making no effort at all to wait for her. She didn’t think for a second that he’d simply not noticed. He was leaving her.

He was leaving her!

A wail of absolute panic and despair ripped a hole right through the center of her chest. Or at least that’s how it felt.

Pani screamed after him, “Pani goes home with Papa! Papa!” He had gone so far down through the narrow ship he was almost out of sight when he finally glanced back at her. One look, that was all she got. One look, and then he kept going.

Pani knocked the astronaut flying and scrambled after him. Already tears were pouring down her face as she crashed clumsily through the narrow passageway, banging into things because she was moving faster than she knew how in a world without gravity. She cried after him, but he just kept on going, pulling himself through the narrow passage until he reached the hatch, and he didn’t look back again. Not when she begged, not when she sobbed. She might even have promised to be good; she wasn’t sure, she didn’t care. He still reached the hatch ahead of her, and he still did not look back.

“Stay.”

She moved to catch up only to bang into the heavily insulated door just as he managed to swing it shut between them.

“Papa!” she beat at the tiny glass observation window with both fists. “Don’t!” Her screams clawed up through a panic-choked throat until she was made hoarse by them. “Don’t you leave me! Papa!”

Like a parent dropping off his child on the first day of school, he turned from her, determined to leave fast and rip the band-aid off quickly in the hopes that it would hurt less.

Pani pounded at the glass. “Papa!”

Hand resting on the top edge of his own vessel’s hatch, Papa at last looked back. But it was only the briefest of glances. He didn’t change his mind and he didn’t come back for her.

Instead, he abandoned her there, disappearing back inside his ship and sealing the hatch shut behind him.

The vessels disconnected, one from the other. The white tunnel withdrew, and as Papa’s 110

slowly angled away, it somehow gave the NASA rocket a nudge, pushing it in the direction of Earth.

Pani continued to beat at the door until her skin swelled and split and her hands bled, but it didn’t change the outcome one bit: he still left her behind. He didn’t want her anymore. How could he not want her anymore?

Pani burst into tears, fat droplets of water that drifted off her face and floated out into the air.

That didn’t change anything, but it did bring Crazy back down through the passage. She sat next to Pani, quietly stroking first Pani’s long hair and then her own tangle of brown curls.

Pani was inconsolable. Papa didn’t want her any more.

She had to go home with the humans.

111

The noon sun was out, having successfully burned through the early morning fog. Shining in through a trio of bay windows and the chain-link fencing that protected them, it cast a grid of shadows across both her and the surrounding floor. Combing her fingers through the natty lengths of her red hair, Pani sat in a green plastic chair with knees drawn up to her chest and looked out over the hospital’s garden. With somnambulistic slowness, she sectioned out a thin lock from the unbrushed mass of tangles and quietly braided it, a sloppy decoration that joined dozens upon dozens of others just like it. Her hair was layered with them, all hopelessly knotted into snarls, making it a nightmare for anyone to brush. Only one person tried anymore.

“Morning, Judy.” Making the rounds with his medication cart, Barney paused beside her to make a check on his clipboard. “How’s the view today?” Although she didn’t say a word, she liked Barney. No matter how busy this place got, he was the only orderly who went out of his way to be nice to the ‘crazies’. He was no-nonsense, and he did his job. But if he had to strap you down in Solitary, at least he did it in a nice way. In fact, Pani inwardly acknowledged, she’d probably be sitting in this chair naked right now if it weren’t that Barney came in an extra seven minutes before the start of his shift to dress her.

“Here you go.” He handed her a small paper cup, the three blue and white pills rattling together in the bottom. “No bottle today,” he said, holding out another paper cup just big enough for a swallow or two of water. He lowered his head and his voice. “Doc’s watching. You’ve got company again.”

Pani didn’t turn around. She didn’t need to. She already knew who’d be standing in the doorway beside Dr. Solbee, arms folded across his chest, his pressed blue suit sticking out amid the sea of white orderly scrubs and the bright orange institutional jumpsuits worn by every patient in the place. NSA Special Agent Adam Bolton, assigned to keep track of the two civilian women who had somehow mysteriously come back to Earth on a space shuttle they had never, according to NASA, boarded in the first place. Sometimes it still tickled at the back of her mind to wonder exactly what the three surviving astronauts had said in their debriefing. Whatever it had been, it caught the government’s attention.