The Enigmatologist (28 page)

“Everyone has a favorite armpit.” John studied the
constellation lit above him like a million fresh ideas. He turned to Louisa,
the journal open on her lap. “Louisa, about the journal…”

“It’s important you know your history.”

“When Archibald talked to Jonathon
Deerfoot
,
he wasn’t really clear on how you guys got here.”

“Archie was an intelligent man, but Earth’s science hadn’t
progressed very far. So, Jonathon had to speak simply, in basic terms.”

“Sounded like he was talking about a wormhole,” John said,
thinking about the
Cape Canaveral
pilot, where John F. Kennedy Space
Center was sucked through a wormhole and into outer space.

“Think of the space around us, the subatomic space, like
wrinkled aluminum foil. The smooth surfaces between the wrinkles are covered in
tiny wormholes that lead everywhere in space. Long ago we developed the
technology to latch onto one of these wormholes, expand it, and send objects
through, seeding the universe.”

“Because you’re basically my grandma, I’m avoiding the
obvious sex joke.”

“We probed the holes.”

“You’re not making this easy.”

“And found planets to colonize. It’s how we found Earth.
This is all part of our history, our culture.”

“Like being obsessed with Elvis?” John looked at the
statue.

“Like Sagittarius.” She pointed to the constellation
again. “We teach our children to wave to it at night.”

“Why?”

“Because,” she said, looking at John like he’d said
something ridiculous, “someone might wave back.”

Off in the distance, the last RV landed. The voices of the
drivers were soft, but pronounced, in the silent park as they walked to another
trailer, disappearing behind the click of a door.

“It’s one of the traditions we pass to our children, a way
of being connected to our home. It’s a simple thing, but traditions always are.
That’s something you missed out on, our traditions, our mythology, our culture.
If you had been raised with us, you’d understand it all.”

She smiled. It was a superficial smile covering the
machinery that had secretly moved around John all his life.

“Why do you wear glasses?” she asked.

“You’re the second person that’s asked me that.”

“Can I see them?” She held out her hand.

John took off his glasses, handed them to her. Louisa
folded them and put them in her cardigan pocket.

She held the journal in her lap, folded her hands over it.
There was a benevolence about her, a grandmotherly quality that made John feel
like he was wrapped in a warm quilt. Louisa cleared her throat and tilted her
head, narrowing her eyes with menacing patience. She smirked expectantly.

Confused, John crinkled his forehead. He opened his mouth
to speak, but stopped. Something grew in his stomach. It was the same pain he
endured when he drove into Las Vegas, only now it was deeper, magnified, and
quickly overtook him.

John latched onto his gut with both hands, putting
pressure on it, trying to suppress the pain. But he couldn’t hold it back. As
the pain grew, his stomach burned like there was a fire inside him that wanted
to break out and blaze through the trailer park. John curled into a ball and
fell forward, off the bench.

There was screaming. The noises sounded distant, like they
were being shouted across a canyon. And John didn’t recognize them as his.

Convulsions.
Twitchings
growing
into a seizure. His body writhed violently against the concrete.
Leadbelly’s
blurred image started running toward him, but
Louisa held up her hand, stopping him. She left the bench and knelt above John.

She put his head in her lap, stroked his hair. John’s skin
exploded under her touch. He felt blood vessels pulsing in her hands, felt her
skin loosen and absorb the moisture from his sweat, then tighten and dry. The
identifying grooves on her fingertips, the dips and ridges, felt like a
topographical map.

“There, there,” she said. “It’ll be over soon.”

John didn’t hear her say this. The severe pain deafened
him. Everything beneath his skin burned, muscle, connective tissue, organs,
nerves, marrow. But mostly his mind burned, like the heat was melting every
thought and associated synapse. The fire was so intense and complete that he
couldn’t remember a time without it, like it had existed from the day he was
born, and was finally burning its way through him.

Then the agony ended.

Lying on the concrete, tears in his eyes, John felt
physically different, not sick or hurt or that what he’d just experienced had
damaged him. Instead, he was refreshed, aware of a boundless energy, making the
world seem fuller, brighter, complete. His old self was gone, had been burned
away, and in its place was something different, foreign, but comforting.

A new connectivity existed that wasn’t there before, an
expanded awareness. It was personal, intimate, like he was being gently
caressed by a thousand hands, a thousand minds. He knew who they belonged to,
where they were.

“I feel you,” he said, wiping tears from his eyes. “I wish
I had a better way to say it. But it’s like I know where you are.
Leadbelly
, I know where he is without looking, what he’s
doing. I know where
Handjive
is and I haven’t seen
him since we landed. This feels…I know this feeling. I felt this before, when I
first came to town.” The stomach pains first appeared as he drove through Las
Vegas, returning when he met Rosa and
Leadbelly
.
Thinking back, John recalled other moments when he’d felt this sensation,
instances when the streets were dark and empty and the hotel was vacant and he
had sat on the bed, bent over, clenching the fabric and skin around his
stomach, fighting the kinks and twists underneath. Sitting next to Louisa, John
realized that in those moments he wasn’t alone, that a Sagittarian must have
been near. Watching him.

“Your Sagittarian side was reaching out, trying to connect
with us, but you didn’t know that, so you interpreted it as a stomach ache.”

“There are nine hundred and twenty Sagittarians in the
trailer park,” John said, like a calculator. He flinched, as if waking from a
trance, then added, “I don’t know how I know that. I just do.”

He knew the location of every Sagittarian in the park
without looking. He felt them in his chest, his head, his body. There were
three different types. One hundred and twenty-nine like
Leadbelly
and
Handjive
. They formed a border around the park,
watching John. Two hundred and fifteen like Louisa. And five hundred and
forty-two of another group. And within those groups there were the subtle
variations of individuals, their essences like fingerprints.

But this awareness wasn’t limited to just the
Sagittarians. John also discerned Sheriff Masters and Professor Gentry,
although it was more like the lack of feeling, a human emptiness among the
Sagittarians.

John pushed himself from the grass, sat back on the bench.
A few tears still leaked from his eyes, obscuring his sight. He rubbed them
away, and was surprised at what he saw. When he was twelve, John realized his
vision was fading when the clues of his crossword blurred, but looking around
the park, his world was clear.

“My glasses.” John pointed to the black frames sticking out
of Louisa’s pocket. “They were what were holding me back? keeping me from my
Sagittarian side?”

“If it were only that simple,” she said, tucking them
further into her pocket.

“Why did you ask for them?”

“So you wouldn’t break them,” she said, with a grandmother’s
certainty. “You had built a pretty substantial mental blockade. By accepting
who you are, your past, your potential, you created a crack in that barrier.
This allowed the
Elvises
to penetrate your mind while
we talked and fully break the barrier down.”

“I was penetrated by a gang of
Elvises
?
That’s what I want to hear after nearly blacking out.”

The Elvis impersonators surrounded the park, keeping a
respectful distance. A few wore their jumpsuits, but most wore ratted t-shirts
and faded jeans. The only thing they looked like they were capable of doing was
failing to pay child support.

“In the desert, when I read Hollister’s mind? or at the
hotel?” He inspected his hand, running his thumb over his knuckles.

“You were able to access a few of your abilities, what
you’d read about in the journal, but you have been building a mental obstacle
for twenty years. Breaking it down is not something you would have been able to
do alone.”

“That’s why I couldn’t use my pheromones in the desert. I
get the whole ‘mental obstacle’ thing, but why did the transformation have to
hurt so much?” John rubbed his stomach.

“Your body broke its genetic code. It ripped every double
helix you have and then reassembled them, connecting them to your dormant
Sagittarian genes. You were rewriting your DNA. Something like that is bound to
sting. Don’t feel bad. All our children go through this. Think of it as a right
of passage, an initiation.”

“When do I get my secret decoder ring?” John asked,
thinking of American Cipher Discs as Jewelry 104.

“You alright?”
Leadbelly
asked,
walking over from the statue. He sat by John on the bench. “You had me worried
there for a second, man.”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” John said, rubbing the back of his neck.

The others that had come from their trailers stood at the
edge of the park. They were out of earshot, but John heard their conversations.
They formed a cushion of voices lining his head.

“I can hear them, up here,” John said, tapping his head.
He said to
Leadbelly
, “Like I heard you in the
trailer.”

“You don’t seem overwhelmed,” Louisa said.

“They just sound like background noise.” John breathed,
turning down the volume even further. “It’s kind of comforting, actually, to
not be alone.”

“You catch on quick, man,”
Leadbelly
said.

“When I was on the ground, I felt different types of
Sagittarians, like subcultures. I felt more
Elvises
,
like
Leadbelly
and
Handjive
.
I could also feel the original Sagittarians, like you, Louisa. And I felt
another group. They were like…”

Rustling leaves of the oak tree behind them. It was an old
wind that had blown through the desert for centuries. John bent over, ripped up
a single blade of grass. He let it fall, be carried on the gentle wind. It
drifted into the park and landed in a green expanse.

“They’re Hybrids, aren’t they?”

“Did you think you were the only one, man?”

“We have almost six hundred thousand Hybrids in
communities all over New Mexico, Nevada, and Colorado,” Louisa said.

“Not Arizona?”

“You think we’re crazy?”
Leadbelly
said.

“This is part of the colonization?” John asked, pointing
to the journal on Louisa’s lap. “What Jonathon
Deerfoot
talked about?”

“It’s the beginning of the second phase,” Louisa said.
“We’re gradually moving Hybrids into positions of power, local politics,
attorneys, business owners.”

“Like Rosa?” John smiled, thinking of her flowing between
her tables.

“Civil servants, leaders in their communities. Eventually
we’ll move them on to national politics, replacing them at the local level with
more Hybrids.”

“You want a Hybrid president,” John said, realizing the
extent of their ambitions.

“We want all the world leaders to be Hybrids. They can
create public policies and opinions that will make what’s left of the human
population welcome the next wave of Sagittarian colonists. This is where you
come in. You’ll live long enough to greet the next wave and watch this planet
evolve into something it never could have expected.”

“You want me to run for president? I’m not even registered
to vote.”

“I wouldn’t ask that of you,” Louisa said, “but you are an
Abernathy and as such you do have responsibilities. You will lead us after I’m
gone, guide us through the next phase of colonization.”

“What about
Leadbelly
? He’s your
son.”

“You think
anyone’d
take me
seriously, man?”
Leadbelly
said, resting his thumbs
on his oversized belt.

“Or your daughters?”

“They have other tasks,” Louisa said, looking toward the
Elvis statue. “But you, John, you will prepare the world, positioning Hybrids
in areas where they can impact change, and help with the coming transition.”

And all John’s questions were answered, why they brought
him there, why Rosa slept with him, why
Leadbelly
let
himself be photographed, all so they could reshape him into their vision of the
future, give him a new purpose, helping them bring about their new world. But
the subtle manipulation made him uneasy. He didn’t think he could function like
Louisa and
Leadbelly
, sitting in the desert, moving
pieces around, trying to make them fit. He knew he couldn’t go back to Denver,
be a private investigator with dreams of puzzle stardom. He accepted that. It
made him happy knowing he’d never have to sneak around, photographing a
client’s husband naked on a tarp while insurance appraisers dumped buckets of
lime green Jell-O on him. Still, he wasn’t sure if he wanted this, being a
Hybrid. He didn’t know what he wanted. This was his private doubt, something he
didn’t want Louisa to know. He placed a wall around his mind, like the one he
hit in the Winnebago, and hid his reluctance in a tiny box, tossing it into the
same crevice where he buried his uncertainties about his puzzles. John folded
his arms and looked away.