The Klaatu Terminus (2 page)

“In Romelas we grew limes and mangos. I never saw snow until I came to Hopewell in your time. Everything changes. The jaguars migrated north.”

She turned again to face him. “As for why the Klaatu sent us here, I don’t know. I expect we will find out.”

The cry of the jaguar came again. It sounded closer.

“I suppose we should stay up here until it gets light,” Tucker said.

“I think that would be a good idea.”

They listened to the night sounds drifting up from below.

Lia leaned her head on his shoulder. “In this time, everybody we ever knew is dead.”

Tucker thought for a moment, then said, “Kosh was alive when I left him. He’s alive in Hopewell.”

“I liked Kosh.”

“I have to go back,” Tucker said. “He’s the only family I have left.”

Lia gestured to where the disko had been, now an empty place in the air. “The Gate is gone.”

“There must be others.”

Lia searched his face. Her eyes were enormous.

“I will go with you,” she said.

A shadow detached itself from the wooded margin of the zocalo. A mottled silhouette, stealing from shadow to shadow, wove its way across the sapling-studded cobblestones. The jaguar paused at the base of the pyramid and looked up. Tucker could see glints of moonlight reflected in its eyes.

“It knows we are here,” Lia whispered.

Tucker exhaled — he had been holding his breath.

“Can jaguars climb pyramids?” he asked.

“They climb trees.”

“Oh.”

H
OPEWELL, 2012 CE

“D
ESTINY?
M
Y DESTINY IS WHAT
I MAKE OF IT!
”
With those words, Tucker Feye stepped into the maggot and disappeared in an orange flash. Kosh Feye, holding a Lah Sept
arma
in one hand and a shock baton in the other, blinked back greenish afterimages.

Father September let out a despairing moan. “You have destroyed us all,” he said.

“Shut up,” Kosh said. He needed time to think. Too much had happened in the past few minutes — the fight with the priests, Tucker blowing off Ronnie Becker’s leg at the knee, the shock of seeing Adrian, his brother, transformed into an old man calling himself Father September, the girl Lia jumping into the maggot, and Tucker, who had grown half a foot since Kosh had last seen him a month ago, following her. He looked at what remained of the maggot, a sagging band of pink flesh surrounding the crackling disko.

“Curtis, you don’t realize what you’ve done,” Father September said in a shaky voice.

Master Gheen, unconscious on the floor of the tent, groaned and shifted. Kosh jabbed the baton against his neck. Gheen convulsed, then lay still. Kosh walked to the doorway and looked out of the tent at the sea of people gathered in the park waiting for the revival to begin. Some of them were seated on folding chairs; others were sitting on the grass. All of them were undoubtedly wondering what all the commotion in the tent was about. On the steps of the pyramid, the man whom Kosh had knocked senseless was stirring. Kosh closed the tent flap and looked back at his brother.

“Is it true?”

“Is
what
true?” Father September said.

“What Tucker said. That Emily is here.”

“That is none of your concern, Curtis.”

“If you call me
Curtis
one more time —”

“It is your God-given name!”

“God gave me nothing. My name is Kosh. Where is she?”

Father September’s shoulders sagged; he seemed to grow smaller. “What does it matter? We are all lost.”

“You might be lost.” Kosh pointed the baton at his brother. “I know exactly where I am. What I want to know is,
where is Emily
?”

Father September scowled petulantly. “The woman Tucker saw is at the house where you grew up. It is where she belongs. But she is not the Emily you seek.”

Without another word, Kosh turned and triggered the
arma
. A jet of blue flame ripped through the back of the tent. Kosh strode through the smoking gash. A moment later the roar of his motorcycle shivered the tent fabric. Father September groaned and sank to his knees beside the unconscious Master Gheen.

“What have we done?” he asked, but there was no one to answer him.

Kosh hit the park exit at sixty miles per hour. The bike’s tires chattered on the washboard surface of the dirt road as a black cyclone of memories, hopes, and fears raged inside his head. Tucker had said that his mother, Emily, was alive, brainwashed by those strange priests. As unlikely as that sounded, Kosh believed him — it was no more insane than everything else that had happened that day, beginning with the sudden appearance of the girl on the roof of his barn that morning. The crazies in the park. Tucker, looking and acting years older. And Adrian — what had
happened
to him? Images flickered and whirled through Kosh’s brain: Ronnie Becker’s leg, the futuristic weapons now in his saddlebags, the disko, maggot, whatever . . . He had let Tucker follow the girl into that thing. What had he been thinking?

He downshifted as the dirt-surfaced park road curved toward the highway; his back tire skidded and he nearly lost control.
Too fast
. He slowed and turned onto the paved highway, then brought the bike up to a relatively sedate seventy miles per hour. As he came around the bend just north of downtown Hopewell he saw a swirling, twisting gray cloud dancing just off the highway over a field of recently harvested wheat.

Kosh backed off the accelerator. For a moment, he thought it might be smoke, but there was a deliberateness to the cloud, a sense of intelligence and purpose. As he drew nearer, the cloud resolved itself into tiny specks. Kosh laughed at himself. Birds! He was so paranoid from all that had happened, he’d let himself get freaked out by a bunch of birds!

The flock settled onto the field. What were they? Crows? They didn’t look like crows — too pale, and there was something odd about the way they flew. He slowed as he came abreast of the field. They looked like big doves, or pigeons . . .

Pigeons! Suddenly he knew what he was seeing. Passenger pigeons. He pulled to the side of the road and stopped.

Kosh had seen a recent news headline about the passenger pigeons, but he’d dismissed it as another unconfirmed sighting. There had been sporadic reports of passenger-pigeon sightings in the Hopewell area ever since Lorna Gingrass had killed those two birds with her car, back in ninety-eight. All the subsequent sightings had remained unconfirmed and, as far as Kosh was concerned, pure fantasy.

This, however, was real. The nearest bird was about fifty feet away from him — a large, blue-gray, rose-breasted creature.

“Hello there,” Kosh said.

The bird regarded him suspiciously with one red eye.

“Aren’t you supposed to be extinct?” Kosh asked, half expecting an answer. With all the other weird stuff he’d seen, a talking bird seemed perfectly reasonable.

The pigeon took flight. The rest of the flock followed as if they were all connected by invisible elastic strings. Kosh sat back and watched as the birds twisted and flowed into a bullet-shaped mass and shot off to the east. There had to be thousands of them.

Just one more impossibility piled atop all the others. Kosh wondered if the pigeons had arrived in Hopewell through the diskos. If so, what next? Dodos? Dinosaurs? He shook his head at his own foolishness and dropped the bike in gear. Maybe he was strapped to a hospital bed in some asylum and this was all happening in his head. It seemed as likely as anything. But if what Tucker had told him was true — that Emily was here — he had to see her.

Kosh pulled back onto the highway and headed for his childhood home, thinking about the last time he had seen Emily, almost fifteen years ago. The house came into view. It seemed so small now. As he approached the driveway he saw a young woman with long coppery hair and pale skin standing in the garden. Emily? Kosh’s heart filled his chest. As he slowed and began his turn, he sensed another presence and glanced at his rearview. The chrome grille of a truck filled his mirror. Time slowed. With a screech of tearing metal, his bike exploded from beneath him and he was airborne, hurtling toward a spinning sky.

I’m flying
, he thought, and then all went to black.

J
UNE, 1997 CE

T
HREE DAYS AFTER
K
OSH
F
EYE’S SEVENTEENTH BIRTHDAY
,
HE
HUGGED
his brother for the last time. Adrian, older by ten years, was an awkward hugger. Kosh wasn’t much better. They held each other for about two uncomfortable seconds, then let go and stepped back. Adrian, the taller and leaner brother, nodded to Kosh, acknowledging the relief they both felt at having gotten past that awkward ritual, and the unbreakable bond that remained between them. Kosh faked a punch at Adrian’s right shoulder, but Adrian did not respond by fake-punching back. He had become so serious over the past several years. Kosh couldn’t remember the last time he had heard Adrian laugh.

“You two are ridiculous,” said Emily Ryan, a half smile on her face, tears welling in her eyes.

They were standing on the train station platform in Winona. The Amtrak Empire Builder, bound for Chicago, was about to depart. In Chicago, Adrian would be joining a group of Bible scholars on a seven-month pilgrimage to the Holy Land.

Adrian turned his head toward Emily. “The time will pass quickly,” he said, holding out his long arms. “I’ll be back by the end of January.”

“I know.” Emily stepped into his embrace. Adrian Feye’s arms came around her like two jointed sticks; his oversize hands flapped against the back of her T-shirt. He kissed her forehead and then, clumsily, her lips. Kosh watched, his mouth curved into a wide smile. He couldn’t help it — any emotion other than anger produced a smile on his long, angular features. Kosh hated that about himself. His only family — Adrian — was leaving for the other side of the world, and here he was, grinning like an idiot. He still remembered the time Adrian caught him smiling at their father’s funeral. He had only been nine years old then, but still carried the shame of it with him.

Emily, who did not have an awkward atom in her body, squeezed Adrian so hard that Kosh thought he heard ribs cracking. He imagined what it would feel like to be held so tightly by a woman as beautiful as Emily Ryan.

A barely intelligible voice came over the loudspeaker. Time to board. Emily released Adrian.

“God bless you, my love,” he said to Emily. “God bless you, too, Curtis,” he said to Kosh. “And remember — if you need any help, call the Krauses.”

“Or he could call me,” said Emily.

“Or call Emily. But do
not
—” His eyes bored into Kosh. “Do not even
think
about driving my Mustang.”

“Don’t worry,” Kosh said. He hated that Adrian didn’t completely trust him, but he was unable to stop his mouth from stretching into a grin.

“I’m not kidding,” Adrian said.

“Oh Ade, leave him alone!” Emily said. “Kosh has the pickup and his motorcycle. He doesn’t need your old Mustang.”

Adrian gave a sharp nod, satisfied. Kosh grabbed Adrian’s bag, an oversize backpack stuffed to bursting.

“Come on,” he said. “You’re going to miss the train.”

The two brothers crossed the platform.

Adrian stepped up into the train. Kosh handed him the backpack.

Adrian said, “Take care of her, okay? Take her to a movie or something now and then.”

“Sure,” said Kosh, straining to keep a sober expression on his face.

“Take her shopping. Bring her flowers for her birthday. Tell her they’re from me.”

Kosh nodded.

“Take care of yourself, too. And the house.”

“Don’t worry,” Kosh said. “I got it.”

Adrian held his eyes for a moment, gave another of his sharp nods, then disappeared into the train car.

Kosh walked back to where Emily was waiting.

“I guess that’s that,” he said.

Emily was staring up at something, a puzzled expression on her face.

“What are you looking at?” Kosh asked.

Emily shook her head and smiled quizzically. “I thought I saw something, like a funny cloud.”