The Host (23 page)

“What about the little green guys with the triangle heads and the big black eyes? The ones who crashed in Roswell and all that. Was that you guys?”

“Nope, not us.”

“Was it all fake?”

“I don't know–maybe, maybe not. It's a big universe, and there's a lot of company out there.”

“How did you come here, then–if you weren't the little green guys, who were you? You had to have bodies to move and stuff, right?”

“Right,” I agreed, surprised at his grasp of the facts at hand. I shouldn't have been surprised–I knew how bright he was, his mind like a thirsty sponge. “We used our Spider selves in the very beginning, to get things started.”

“Spiders?”

I told him about the Spiders–a fascinating species. Brilliant, the most incredible minds we'd ever come across, and each Spider had three of them. Three brains, one in each section of their segmented bodies. We'd yet to find a problem they couldn't solve for us. And yet they were so coldly analytical that they rarely came up with a problem they were curious enough to solve for themselves. Of all our hosts, the Spiders welcomed our occupation the most. They barely noticed the difference, and when they did, they seemed to appreciate the direction we provided.

The few souls who had walked on the surface of the Spiders' planet before implantation told us that it was cold and gray–no wonder the Spiders only saw in black and white and had a limited sense of temperature. The Spiders lived short lives, but the young were born knowing everything their parent had, so no knowledge was lost.

I'd lived out one of the short life terms of the species and then left with no desire to return. The amazing clarity of my thoughts, the easy answers that came to any question almost without effort, the march and dance of numbers were no substitute for emotion and color, which I could only vaguely understand when inside that body. I wondered how any soul could be content there, but the planet had been self-sufficient for thousands of Earth years. It was still open for settling only because the Spiders reproduced so quickly–great sacs of eggs.

I started to tell Jamie how the offensive had been launched here. The Spiders were our best engineers–the ships they made for us danced nimbly and undetectably through the stars. The Spiders' bodies were almost as useful as their minds: four long legs to each segment–from which they'd earned their nickname on this planet–and twelve-fingered hands on each leg. These six-jointed fingers were as slender and strong as steel threads, capable of the most delicate procedures. About the mass of a cow, but short and lean, the Spiders had no trouble with the first insertions. They were stronger than humans, smarter than humans, and prepared, which the humans were not.…

I stopped short, midsentence, when I saw the crystalline sparkle on Jamie's cheek.

He was staring straight ahead at nothing, his lips pressed in a tight line. A large drop of salt water rolled slowly down the cheek closest to me.

Idiot,
Melanie chastised me.
Didn't you think what your story would mean to him?

Didn't
you
think of warning me sooner?

She didn't answer. No doubt she'd been as caught up in the storytelling as I was.

“Jamie,” I murmured. My voice was thick. The sight of his tear had done strange things to my throat. “Jamie, I'm so sorry. I wasn't thinking.”

Jamie shook his head. “'S okay. I asked. I wanted to know how it happened.” His voice was gruff, trying to hide the pain.

It was instinctive, the desire to lean forward and wipe that tear away. I tried at first to ignore it; I was not Melanie. But the tear hung there, motionless, as if it would never fall. Jamie's eyes stayed fixed on the blank wall, and his lips trembled.

He wasn't far from me. I stretched my arm out to brush my fingers against his cheek; the tear spread thin across his skin and disappeared. Acting on instinct again, I left my hand against his warm cheek, cradling his face.

For a short second, he pretended to ignore me.

Then he rolled toward me, his eyes closed, his hands reaching. He curled into my side, his cheek against the hollow of my shoulder, where it had once fit better, and sobbed.

These were not the tears of a child, and that made them more profound–made it more sacred and painful that he would cry them in front of me. This was the grief of a man at the funeral for his entire family.

My arms wound around him, not fitting as easily as they used to, and I cried, too.

“I'm sorry,” I said again and again. I apologized for everything in those two words. That we'd ever found this place. That we'd chosen it. That I'd been the one to take his sister. That I'd brought her back here and hurt him again. That I'd made him cry today with my insensitive stories.

I didn't drop my arms when his anguish quieted; I was in no hurry to let him go. It seemed as though my body had been starving for this from the beginning, but I'd never understood before now what would feed the hunger. The mysterious bond of mother and child–so strong on this planet–was not a mystery to me any longer. There was no bond greater than one that required your life for another's. I'd understood this truth before; what I had not understood was
why.
Now I knew why a mother would give her life for her child, and this knowledge would forever shape the way I saw the universe.

“I know I've taught you better than that, kid.”

We jumped apart. Jamie lurched to his feet, but I curled closer to the ground, cringing into the wall.

Jeb leaned down and picked up the gun we'd both forgotten from the floor. “You've got to mind a gun better than this, Jamie.” His tone was very gentle–it softened the criticism. He reached out to tousle Jamie's shaggy hair.

Jamie ducked under Jeb's hand, his face scarlet with mortification.

“Sorry,” he muttered, and turned as if to flee. He stopped after just a step, though, and swiveled back to look at me. “I don't know your name,” he said.

“They called me Wanderer,” I whispered.

“Wanderer?”

I nodded.

He nodded, too, then hurried away. The back of his neck was still red.

When he was gone, Jeb leaned against the rock and slid down till he was seated where Jamie had been. Like Jamie, he kept the gun cradled in his lap.

“That's a real interesting name you've got there,” he told me. He seemed to be back to his chatty mood. “Maybe sometime you'll tell me how you got it. Bet that's a good story. But it's kind of a mouthful, don't you think? Wanderer?”

I stared at him.

“Mind if I call you Wanda, for short? It flows easier.”

He waited this time for a response. Finally, I shrugged. It didn't matter to me whether he called me “kid” or some strange human nickname. I believed it was meant kindly.

“Okay, then, Wanda.” He smiled, pleased at his invention. “It's nice to have a handle on you.

Makes me feel like we're old friends.”

He grinned that huge, cheek-stretching grin, and I couldn't help grinning back, though my smile was more rueful than delighted. He was supposed to be my enemy. He was probably insane.

And he
was
my friend. Not that he wouldn't kill me if things turned out that way, but he wouldn't like doing it. With humans, what more could you ask of a friend?

Jeb put his hands behind his head and looked up at the dark ceiling, his face thoughtful. His chatty mood had not passed.

“I've wondered a lot what it's like–getting caught, you know. Saw it happen more than once, come close a few times myself. What would it be like, I wondered. Would it hurt, having something put in your head? I've seen it done, you know.”

My eyes widened in surprise, but he wasn't looking at me.

“Seems like you all use some kind of anesthetic, but that's just a guess. Nobody was screaming in agony or anything, though, so it couldn't be too torturous.” I wrinkled my nose. Torture. No, that was the humans' specialty.

“Those stories you were telling the kid were real interesting.” I stiffened and he laughed lightly. “Yeah, I was listening. Eavesdropping, I'll admit it. I'm not sorry–it was great stuff, and you won't talk to me the way you do with Jamie. I really got a kick out of those bats and the plants and spiders. Gives a man lots to think about. Always liked to read crazy, out-there stuff, science fiction and whatnot. Ate that stuff up. And the kid's like me–he's read all the books I've got, two, three times apiece. Must be a treat for him to get some new stories. Sure is for me. You're a good storyteller.”

I kept my eyes down, but I felt myself softening, losing my guard a bit. Like anyone inside these emotional bodies, I was a sucker for flattery.

“Everyone here thinks you hunted us out to turn us over to the Seekers.” The word sent a shock jolting through me. My jaw stiffened and my teeth cut my tongue. I tasted blood.

“What other reason could there be?” he went on, oblivious to my reaction or ignoring it. “But they're just trapped in fixed notions, I think. I'm the only one with questions.… I mean, what kind of a plan was that, to wander off into the desert without any way to get back?” He chuckled. “Wandering–guess that's your specialty, eh, Wanda?” He leaned toward me and nudged me with one elbow. Wide with uncertainty, my eyes flickered to the floor, to his face, and back to the floor. He laughed again.

“That trek was just a few steps shy of a successful suicide, in my opinion. Definitely not a Seeker's MO, if you know what I mean. I've tried to reason it out. Use logic, right? So, if you didn't have backup, which I've seen no sign of, and you had no way to get back, then you must've had a different goal. You haven't been real talkative since you got here, 'cept with the kid just now, but I've listened to what you
have
said. Kind of seems to me like the reason you almost died out there was 'cause you were hell-bent on finding that kid and Jared.” I closed my eyes.

“Only why would
you
care?” Jeb asked, expecting no answer, just musing. “So, this is how I see it: either you're a really good actress–like a super-Seeker, some new breed, sneakier than the first–with some kind of a plan I can't figure out, or you're not acting. The first seems like a pretty complicated explanation for your behavior, then and now, and I don't buy it.

“But if you're not acting…”

He paused for a moment.

“Spent a lot of time watching your kind. I was always waiting for them to change, you know, when they didn't have to act like us anymore, because there was no one to act
for.
I kept on watching and waiting, but they just kept on actin' like humans. Staying with their bodies'

families, going out for picnics in good weather, plantin' flowers and paintin' pictures and all the rest of it. I've been wondering if you all aren't turning sort of human. If we don't have some real influence, in the end.”

He waited, giving me a chance to respond. I didn't.

“Saw something a few years ago that stuck with me. Old man and woman, well, the bodies of an old man and an old woman. Been together so long that the skin on their fingers grew in ridges around their wedding rings. They were holding hands, and he kissed her on her cheek, and she blushed under all those wrinkles. Occurred to me that you have all the same feelings we have, because you're really us, not just hands in a puppet.”

“Yes,” I whispered. “We have all the same feelings. Human feelings. Hope, and pain, and love.”

“So, if you aren't acting… well, then I'd swear to it that you loved them both.
You
do. Wanda, not just Mel's body.”

I put my head down on my arms. The gesture was tantamount to an admission, but I didn't care.

I couldn't hold it up anymore.

“So that's you. But I wonder about my niece, too. What it was like for her, what it would be like for me. When they put somebody inside your head, are you just… gone? Erased? Like being dead? Or is it like being asleep? Are you aware of the outside control? Is it aware of you? Are you trapped there, screaming inside?”

I sat very still, trying to keep my face smooth.

“Plainly, your memories and behaviors, all that is left behind. But your consciousness… Seems like some people wouldn't go down without a fight. Hell, I know I would try to stay–never been one to take no for an answer, anyone will tell you that. I'm a fighter. All of us who are left are fighters. And, you know, I woulda pegged Mell for a fighter, too.” He didn't move his eyes from the ceiling, but I looked at the floor–stared at it, memorizing the patterns in the purple gray dust.

“Yeah, I've wondered about that a lot.”

I could feel his eyes on me now, though my head was still down. I didn't move, except to breathe slowly in and out. It took a great deal of effort to keep that slow rhythm smooth. I had to swallow; the blood was still flowing in my mouth.

Why did we ever think he was crazy?
Mell wondered.
He sees everything. He's a genius.

He's both.

Well, maybe this means we don't have to keep quiet anymore. He knows.
She was hopeful. She'd been very quiet lately, absent almost half the time. It wasn't as easy for her to concentrate when she was relatively happy. She'd won her big fight. She'd gotten us here. Her secrets were no longer in jeopardy; Jared and Jamie could never be betrayed by her memories.

With the fight taken out of her, it was harder for her to find the will to speak, even to me. I could see how the idea of discovery–of having the other humans recognize her existence–invigorated her.

Jeb knows, yes. Does that really change anything?

She thought about the way the other humans looked at Jeb.
Right.
She sighed.
But I think
Jamie… well, he doesn't know or guess, but I think he
feels
the truth.

You might be right. I guess we'll see if that does him or us any good, in the end.

Jeb could only manage to keep quiet for a few seconds, and then he was off again, interrupting us. “Pretty interesting stuff. Not as much
bang! bang!
as the movies I used to like. But still pretty interesting. I'd like to hear more about those spider thingies. I'm real curious… real curious, for sure.”

I took a deep breath and raised my head. “What do you want to know?” He smiled at me warmly, his eyes crinkling into half moons. “Three brains, right?” I nodded.

“How many eyes?”

“Twelve–one at each juncture of the leg and the body. We didn't have lids, just a lot of fibers–like steel wool eyelashes–to protect them.”

He nodded, his eyes bright. “Were they furry, like tarantulas?”

“No. Sort of… armored–scaled, like a reptile or a fish.”

I slouched against the wall, settling myself in for a long conversation.

Jeb didn't disappoint on that count. I lost track of how many questions he asked me. He wanted details–the Spiders' looks, their behaviors, and how they'd handled Earth. He didn't flinch away from the invasion details; on the contrary, he almost seemed to enjoy that part more than the rest. His questions came fast on the heels of my answers, and his grins were frequent. When he was satisfied about the Spiders, hours later, he wanted to know more about the Flowers.

“You didn't half explain that one,” he reminded me.

So I told him about that most beautiful and placid of planets. Almost every time I stopped to breathe, he interrupted me with a new question. He liked to guess the answers before I could speak and didn't seem to mind getting them wrong in the least.

“So did ya eat flies, like a Venus flytrap? I'll bet you did–or maybe something bigger, like a bird–like a pterodactyl!”

“No, we used sunlight for food, like most plants here.”

“Well, that's not as much fun as my idea.”

Sometimes I found myself laughing with him.

We were just moving on to the Dragons when Jamie showed up with dinner for three.

“Hi, Wanderer,” he said, a little embarrassed.

“Hi, Jamie,” I answered, a little shy, not sure if he would regret the closeness we'd shared. I was, after all, the bad guy.

But he sat down right next to me, between me and Jeb, crossing his legs and setting the food tray in the middle of our little conclave. I was starving, and parched from all the talking. I took a bowl of soup and downed it in a few gulps.

“Shoulda known you were just being polite in the mess hall today. Gotta speak up when you're hungry, Wanda. I'm no mind reader.”

I didn't agree with that last part, but I was too busy chewing a mouthful of bread to answer.

“Wanda?” Jamie asked.

I nodded, letting him know that I didn't mind.

“Kinda suits her, doncha think?” Jeb was so proud of himself, I was surprised he didn't pat himself on the back, just for effect.

“Kinda, I guess,” Jamie said. “Were you guys talking about dragons?”

“Yeah,” Jeb told him enthusiastically, “but not the lizardy kind. They're all made up of jelly.

They can fly, though… sort of. The air's thicker, sort of jelly, too. So it's almost like swimming.

And they can breathe acid–that's about as good as fire, wouldn't you say?” I let Jeb fill Jamie in on the details while I ate more than my share of food and drained a water bottle. When my mouth was free, Jeb started in with the questions again.

“Now, this acid…”

Jamie didn't ask questions the way Jeb did, and I was more careful about what I said with him there. However, this time Jeb never asked anything that might lead to a touchy subject, whether by coincidence or design, so my caution wasn't necessary.

The light slowly faded until the hallway was black. Then it was silver, a tiny, dim reflection from the moon that was just enough, as my eyes adjusted, to see the man and the boy beside me.

Jamie edged closer to me as the night wore on. I didn't realize that I was combing my fingers through his hair as I talked until I noticed Jeb staring at my hand.

I folded my arms across my body.

Finally, Jeb yawned a huge yawn that had me and Jamie doing the same.

“You tell a good story, Wanda,” Jeb said when we were all done stretching.

“It's what I did… before. I was a teacher, at the university in San Diego. I taught history.”

“A teacher!” Jeb repeated, excited. “Well, ain't that amazin'? There's something we could use around here. Mag's girl Sharon does the teaching for the three kids, but there's a lot she can't help with. She's most comfortable with math and the like. History, now –”

“I only taught
our
history,” I interrupted. Waiting for him to take a breath wasn't going to work, it seemed. “I wouldn't be much help as a teacher here. I don't have any training.”

“Your history is better than nothing. Things we human folks ought to know, seeing as we live in a more populated universe than we were aware of.”

“But I wasn't a real teacher,” I told him, desperate. Did he honestly think anyone wanted to hear my voice, let alone listen to my stories? “I was sort of an honorary professor, almost a guest lecturer. They only wanted me because… well, because of the story that goes along with my name.”

“That's the next one I was going to ask for,” Jeb said complacently. “We can talk about your teaching experience later. Now–why did they call you Wanderer? I've heard a bunch of odd ones, Dry Water, Fingers in the Sky, Falling Upward–all mixed in, of course, with the Pams and the Jims. I tell you, it's the kind of thing that can drive a man crazy with curiosity.” I waited till I was sure he was done to begin. “Well, the way it usually works is that a soul will try out a planet or two–two's the average–and then they'll settle in their favorite place. They just move to new hosts in the same species on the same planet when their body gets close to death.

It's very disorienting moving from one kind of body to the next. Most souls really hate that.

Some never move from the planet they are born on. Occasionally, someone has a hard time finding a good fit. They may try three planets. I met a soul once who'd been to five before he'd settled with the Bats. I liked it there–I suppose that's the closest I've ever come to choosing a planet. If it hadn't been for the blindness…”

“How many planets have you lived on?” Jamie asked in a hushed voice. Somehow, while I'd been talking, his hand had found its way into mine.

“This is my ninth,” I told him, squeezing his fingers gently.

“Wow, nine!” he breathed.

“That's why they wanted me to teach. Anybody can tell them our statistics, but I have personal experience from most of the planets we've… taken.” I hesitated at that word, but it didn't seem to bother Jamie. “There are only three I've never been to–well, now four. They just opened a new world.”

I expected Jeb to jump in with questions about the new world, or the ones I'd skipped, but he just played absently with the ends of his beard.

“Why did you never stay anywhere?” Jamie asked.

“I never found a place I liked enough to stay.”

“What about Earth? Do you think you'll stay here?”

I wanted to smile at his child's confidence–as if I were going to get the chance to ever move on to another host. As if I were going to get the chance to live out even another month in the one I had.

“Earth is… very interesting,” I murmured. “It's harder than any place I've been before.”

“Harder than the place with the frozen air and the claw beasts?” he asked.

“In its own way, yes.” How could I explain that the Mists Planet only came at you from the outside–it was much more difficult to be attacked from within.