In the Ocean of Night (44 page)

A silence grew between them in the dark bay, now lit only by the twinkling, shifting array of alien console lights. Each tiny fleck of solid-state electronics flared briefly into life and then died momentarily, part of a jiggling rhythm.

“Nigel’s getting this, whatever it is, and we can’t turn it off,” Nikka said. “We can’t
stop
it.” Her words were swallowed in the cold stale space surrounding them.

Nigel had turned off all the room’s illumination, to improve contrast as he monitored the readout Nikka was transmitting. He sat far forward into the console, its plastiform arms enveloping him, its hood lowered to maximum depth. Nikka’s series began. Nigel hunched over and tracked the flow of data. The images flared into being and were erased with blurring speed. The large rat, three different views. Rotating pinwheels of orange and blue. Ancient photographs of Earth. Molecular chains. Chemical arrays. The hairy, shambling creatures. The beings in rubbery suits. Star charts. Indices. Data. Nigel tracked it at the limit of his speed, mentally checking off each category as it was recalled from storage and sent on electromagnetic wings to Alphonsus, Earth, Kardensky, freedom.

The screen jumped.

Froze.

Sputtered an array of dots, lines, ripplings—

… Nigel perceived it first as a faceless blank space. He peered at it intently. Something in it made him shiver.

He frowned. He moved his eyes to the side. He tried to look away.

And found that he could not.

It came to him out of the screen like a trembling high shriek, in color, a mottled green blister swelling toward him.

It hit him in the face and Nigel Walmsley disinte-grated.

SIXTEEN

A day had passed briefly, scarcely more than an interval of wan light that seeped through the roof of clouds. Now the twilight gathered and Mr. Ichino sat rocking, his face a solemn mask, and turned the weapon over in his thin, bony hands. Could he feel the strangeness in it, or was that imagination?

A further conversation with Graves at lunch had clarified matters a bit, but Mr. Ichino was sure much would never be explained. Graves had mapped all Bigfoot sightings over the past century and found there were recurrent patterns, preferred routes through the mountains, and there he had sought the shambling beasts with helicopters and infrared eyes. Mr. Ichino had selected this place for a similar reason: studying the Oregon back country, he had noted that a series of shallow valleys and passes connected this region with the Wasco area. Merely a guess, a convenient reason to settle in these forgiving woods, but it had brought Graves to him. And perhaps that was the end of it—there might well be no other bands of Bigfoot. The Wasco blast must have caught most of them, burrowed deep inside their winter warren.

Where they had… what? Waited for some promised return? For the Marginis wreck? The Bigfoot had clearly known the aliens, perhaps worked for them, learned from them. These early men might well have worshipped the all-powerful, godlike aliens.

It would be a simple, natural thing to transfer that worship to their gods’ possessions that were left behind when the aliens abandoned Earth.

In the distant past the Bigfoot must have collected the bits and pieces of their gods’ leavings and carried them along when the higher forms of men drove them deeper into the forests. Dragged them through that vast retreat, perhaps used them to survive.

And the tribes with weapons would live longest, of course. A band of Bigfoot that worshiped an alien refrigerator wouldn’t find it of much use when it was cornered and had to fight, Mr. Ichino thought, smiling.

Graves spoke in his sleep, mumbling, and thrashed against his bedding. Mr. Ichino looked over at him.

Graves would make his name with this discovery. He had brought the Bigfoot at last into the light.

Mr. Ichino found the film in Graves’s pack. It made an orange kernel in the fire and in a moment there were no traces.

He carried the tube—how had they made it so tough, to last this long?—out into the clearing, and stood with it in the darkening chill of evening.

Minutes passed. Then they came.

There were not many. Six stepped away from the shelter of the black tree line and formed a semicircle around him. Mr. Ichino had the feeling more were waiting out of sight, their presence hanging in the air.

In the light thrown through the open cabin door behind him he could see one of them clearly. The head was very human. A thick forehead slanted into flaring nostrils. Glittering, sunken eyes darted quickly, seeing everything. Yet it moved without anxiety or tension.

Massive, muscled arms hung almost to its knees as it crunched forward through the snow. Bristly black hair, shiny in the cabin light, covered the entire body except the nose, mouth and cheeks. A faint sour animal smell drifted in the light breeze.

Waiting in this soft stirring of air, Mr. Ichino recalled the misted valley in Osaka Park, where the larks fluttered free and poised, warbling. In his mind’s eye they blended with the twisted beggars who ate parched soybeans and sang
chiri-gan
in pressing, littered streets. All brushed aside by the earnest business of the world; all vulnerable and vanishing.

Despite the legends of the Bigfoot, Mr. Ichino did not feel any tingling fear. He looked about him, moving slowly and calmly taking in the scene. They had human genitalia and to the right he could see a female with heavy breasts. They stopped ten meters from him and waited. Even slightly hunched over, there was dignity in their bearing.

He held the weapon out at arm’s length and stepped forward. They did not move. He placed it gently, slowly, on the snow and stepped back

Let them have it. Without hard, factual proof Graves’s story would be dismissed, or at least matters could be delayed.

Otherwise, the fanaticisms afoot in the land would fix on these battered fossils for an Answer, a Way. A spotlight of any kind would be fatal to these creatures. They would be hunted down, once Graves reached civilization with that tube.

This weapon was the final argument. It linked the Big-foot unquestionably with the aliens.

Mr. Ichino gestured for them to pick it up.

Take it. You’re just as alone as I am. Neither of us has any use for the madness of man.

One came forward hesitantly. He stooped and smoothly swept it into his arms, cradling the tube.

He looked at Mr. Ichino with eyes that flashed in the orange cabin light. He performed a bobbing, nodding motion.

Behind the Bigfoot the others made a high chittering noise that rose and fell. They sang for a moment and made the bobbing motion again. Then they turned and padded gracefully away. In a moment they were lost in the trees.

Mr. Ichino looked up. Clouds were scudding across the stars. Between two of them he could see the white starkness of the moon.

There had been someone up there who had seen it too, perhaps, buried in cold electrical memory. Did he sense that these children-ancestors were as much a part of nature as the trees, the wind?

Let them go. Nature had nearly finished its grinding work, nearly snuffed them out. But at least they could go with grace, alone, unwatched. Any wild thing could ask that much of the world.

After a long time Mr. Ichino went back inside, leaving the silence to itself.

EPILOGUE

2039

T
hey arrived in time for breakfast.

The snowmobile barked and sputtered to a stop and Mr. Ichino came to the doorway of the cabin, surprised, blinking back a shroud of sleep, for he had expected them much later in the day. They unloaded gifts from the hauling sled and brought them inside, carrying a cloud of busy activity with them that seemed to open the cabin and admit the sheen of morning.

They ate around the narrow table. Beef, well marbled; crisp toast; juice. Mr. Ichino was interested in the reports of rapid progress at Marginis, and they described the decoding of the star map, the now orderly dating sequence that pinned the age of the wreck, the unfolding of astronomical data that was going on. Yet for all this activity they had elected to take a brief Earthside holiday and descend into the waning of winter.

Nikka lingered over coffee. Nigel collected the plates and scraped them and returned to the table, thirsty, and stirred the orange juice, thinking.

He whipped the wooden spoon around several times, rattling it against the sides, and watched a pit form itself in the juice, a parabolic hole at the center. He withdrew the spoon. The smooth pit blunted, began to fill in. He thought of angular momentum passing fluidly from the juice, through friction, into the walls of the urn, then spreading into the hardwood table beneath, seeping outward and downward, descending into the earth itself. The yellow pit rippled and slowed. Flecks of rind whirled in the eddies. Down in the tip of it, in the center of the orbiting juice, a white scum formed. The shiny parabola and the angular momentum died together, dynamical twins. A frothy scum spread into a shallow disc.

We may sometimes see ghosts, Nigel thought, but we never see the angular momentum. Or the past.

“I’m afraid it is a bit nippy in here,” Mr. Ichino said. “Um.” Nikka nodded, sipping coffee. She had not removed her jacket.

“I used the last of my wood last night, and the fire didn’t survive until I got up. I’ll go out and chop some more.”

“No.” Nigel waved him to sit down. “I’ll do it. Need the exercise.”

“You’re sure?” Nikka studied him earnestly. “Certain,” Nigel drawled. “Where is it?” “Around on the south face. Under the trees.” “Think I’ll take a few whacks, then.”

When the door thumped shut behind him Mr. Ichino paused a long moment and then said, “Your message was terse.”

“Sorry,” Nikka said. She turned and watched Nigel through the window until he moved out of sight into the enveloping line of trees.

She settled both elbows on the table and looked at Mr. Ichino. “They still won’t let us transmit classified information. Data, that is. But they can’t very well stop Nigel talking, or me, about what happened. Not now, when we’re Earthside.”

“What
did
happen? Your telegram—”

“I know, I’m sorry. Nigel asked me to send it. I suppose he thought that was all he could get away with. He was probably right, too.”

“I realize you have never met me before, so you may have some reluctance…”

“Oh, it’s not that. I’m sorry, you think I’m holding back, don’t you?”

“If you cannot—”

“Oh, I can talk. But I can’t tell you very much because I don’t really
know.
No one does. Except Nigel.”

“Know what?”

“What the alien, well, programming was.” “Programming? Or new data?”

“Well, I call it that. Nigel says that’s not the best way to view it. Any more than mountains are trying to program you into seeing the sky, he says.”

“But your note… you read what I wrote to Nigel about Bigfoot?” Mr. Ichino leaned forward, his gaze centered on her and trying to read her precise mood.

“Yes. The business with that fellow Graves is over?” “I hope so.” He grimaced wryly.

“His men came, you said.”

“Yes. There was nothing to find.”

“They threatened you.”

“Of course.” Mr. Ichino lifted his hands lightly, palms cupped to the ceiling. “They had to. But they went away then.”

“Graves may come back.”

“He may.”

“Helicopters and infrared, sonics—Graves can track the Bigfoot down again.”

“It is possible.”

“You don’t think he will.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“He has lost something. His recovery in the hospital took a long time. He is aging. The burn drained him of his false bravado. Still, there remains…”

“You think he’s afraid of Bigfoot now?”

“He knows they have that same weapon.”

“And they’ll be skittish and cautious.”

“I have confronted him only once since. There was that feeling to him. If he’d kept all that evidence, fine— but to face them again? No.”

There was a muffled thumping at the foot of the door. Nikka leaped up like a coiled wire and flung it open. Nigel paused in midkick, balanced on one foot and with an armload of chopped wood. He clomped into the room, tilted slightly back to take the weight of his load.

“Good job you laid that tarp over the woodpile,” he grunted. “Some snow’s starting to melt. Would be a pity to muck this old wood up—it’s bone dry.”

“I took it from the shacks in the woods around here,” Mr. Ichino said. “This was a retreat during the crisis years.”

“Ah.”

Nigel dumped the wood into its hopper and brushed his sleeves free of fragments of bark. Nikka looked at him questioningly and then turned back to the table, where she spread open the map of the area they had used to find the cabin. She took out a pencil and studied the territory that stretched northward toward Wasco. “You believe they came into this valley because it was a natural route away from the blast?” she said to Mr. Ichino, who nodded.