The Klaatu Terminus (6 page)

The thumping came again, followed by what sounded like muffled curses.

“That doesn’t sound like a bird,” Emily said.

Kosh started across the street. Emily followed.

The front entrance to the hotel had been boarded up with sheets of painted plywood. The sound seemed to be coming from there. They stopped a few yards away. Someone inside the hotel was hammering on the door and shouting. It didn’t sound like English. Kosh could see the plywood flexing, chips of paint flying from its surface.

“Sounds like somebody’s stuck in there.” Kosh raised his voice. “Hello?”

The banging stopped for a moment, then resumed at a more frantic tempo. Kosh tried to think where he could find a crowbar at that time of night.

“Why doesn’t whoever it is come out the same way he got in?” Emily said.

“I don’t know.” He moved closer to the door and yelled, “Just hang on. I’ll get a crowbar or something!”

The response from inside was a guttural roar of unfamiliar words and more banging. After a moment, it stopped.

“Maybe you should go back inside the Roost,” Kosh said. “Tell Red to call the sheriff, just in case.”

“You come too,” Emily said, grabbing his arm.

Before they could move there was a tremendous crash. The plywood split and a man wearing a long black coat blasted through the opening and tumbled face-first onto the sidewalk. His black hat flew off and landed in the gutter. The man lay still for a few seconds, then groaned and pushed himself up. He crawled over to his hat, put it on his head, and stood.

The man was normal height, but he looked bigger with the black coat hanging off his wide shoulders, the black, wide-brimmed hat perched upon his head, and the long black beard reaching halfway down his chest. He shook himself like a wet dog. His dark eyes cast about wildly, then locked onto Kosh and Emily. He flung his arms wide and shouted,
“Vaht shtot? Vaht jahr?”

Kosh said, “Are you okay?”

The man tipped his head. His brow furrowed.
“Vaht?”

Kosh took a cautious step toward the man and said, “What?”

“Da! Vaht!”
the man said, stamping his right foot.

Kosh looked back at Emily. “Can you understand him?”

Emily’s face had gone dead pale. Her mouth was working, but no sound was coming out.

The man stamped his foot again and tugged at his beard.
“Vaht jahr! Vaht jahr?”

Kosh shrugged and turned his hands palms up. “I don’t know what you’re saying!”

The man shook his head in frustration and started toward them.

Emily, backing away, looked utterly terrified. Kosh put himself directly between them. If he had to hit the guy, he would.

The man stopped a few paces short of Kosh. He looked at Kosh’s balled fists.

“Ach!”
He threw up his hands, turned his back, and went running off down the street. He cut through Friedman’s parking lot and headed toward Engleman’s soybean field.

“Just some crazy Amish dude,” Kosh said, forcing a laugh. He turned back to Emily. She looked as if she was about to collapse. He rushed over and put his arm around her just as her legs failed. Her eyes had rolled up, showing only the whites.

“Emily!” Kosh shouted. She blinked and her eyes regained focus.

“Kosh?” Her legs found the ground. She stood. “I’m okay,” she said.

Kosh realized he still had his arms around her and quickly let go.

“Are you sure? You fainted or something.”

“I just . . .” She drew a shaky breath. “That man. You know that story I told you, about the men sticking the rod in my mouth?”

Kosh nodded. He knew what she was going to say.

“He was one of them.”

R
OMELAS
,
ca
.
3000 CE

“T
HEY ATTACK ONLY PEOPLE WHO ARE ALONE,”
L
IA SAID
, gripping Tucker’s arm. “At least, that’s what the Lait Pike told me.”

The jaguar was sitting on a tier halfway up the pyramid, staring at them fixedly.

“Maybe this one can’t count,” Tucker said. He stood up and waved his arms. “Go away!”

The big cat blinked, but made no move to depart.

“We have you outnumbered!” Tucker yelled.

The jaguar yawned.

Tucker picked up a shard of black stone from the broken altar.

“What are you doing?” Lia asked.

Tucker remembered throwing a rock all the way across Aamold’s cornfield back in Hopewell. It had sailed the length of two football fields. The jaguar was a lot closer than that. If he could hit it, he figured it would hurt enough to scare it away.
If
he hit it.

“Don’t make him mad,” Lia said.

The jaguar’s ears perked up. It stood, its tail twitching.

Tucker focused on the cat’s center of mass. He drew back his arm and hurled the chunk of obsidian with all his strength. The rock streaked down the side of the pyramid. He could hear the slap of stone on flesh. The jaguar let out a screech and jumped straight up. It twisted in midair, its legs churning, and landed running, descending three tiers with each stride. It reached the plaza and disappeared into the urban forest.

Tucker grinned, pleased with himself. Lia was giving him an uncertain look, as if she didn’t know him.

“The Medicants did something to me,” he said. “I can throw really hard.”

Lia nodded thoughtfully. “I noticed.”

Tucker had hoped she would be more impressed. He sat down beside her. “I suppose we can’t stay up here forever,” he said.

“We should try to sleep. You first. I will keep watch.”

“I don’t think I can sleep.” The way he felt at the moment, he didn’t think he would ever sleep again.

“Then I’ll rest, and you watch for beasts.” She lay back on the hard stone surface and curled on her side, using her forearm as a pillow.

Tucker wrapped his arms around his knees and gazed out over the lightless city. After a time, he stood and walked around the perimeter of the frustum. Returning to where he had started, he stopped a few feet away and looked down at Lia, a dark comma on the crumbling limestone.

Why do I feel so tied to her?
he wondered.

Other than the few days she had stayed with him and his parents — days when she had hardly said a word — they had spent only a few hours in each other’s company: that night at the rope swing, the day he had entered the disko on his parents’ house, and those few horrific minutes in the green tent at Hopewell County Park.

Lia muttered and shifted. He had an urge to lie down beside her, to nestle his body around her like a spoon and hold her. But he didn’t want to wake her, and she might not like it. There was a tension in her, he sensed. A coiled spring of fear and anger. He thought of all the things he did not know about her. Did she have parents? Did she miss being a Pure Girl — whatever that was? Was she homesick for the old Romelas? What had happened to her between the time she first left Hopewell and the time she showed up to save him from Master Gheen and his father? Would she tell him?

Soon his thoughts were circling back on themselves. He had achieved his goals, in a sense. He had found his father, then lost him. He had found his mother, but she was not the mother he knew. He had met his uncle, Kosh, then abandoned him to his fate. And he had found Lahlia. Now they were alone in this strange place, hundreds — or maybe thousands — of years in the future. Images of Hopewell flickered through his mind: his parents, the old hotel, the rope swing, Tom and Will Krause. He wondered if Tom had made it back to Hopewell. But most of all he wondered what had happened to Kosh.

He looked at Lia, at the moonlight reflecting from her scarred cheek, and he thought how beautiful she was; and for a moment none of the rest of it mattered. So far as he knew, they were alone in this world.

No matter what happened, he would not let himself be separated from her again.

Chayhim, representing the Klaatu faction known as the Gnomon, noticed a number of disturbing anomalies in the collective memory of the Cluster. He brought his concerns to the artist Iyl Rayn.

“The timelines are splitting,” said Chayhim. “Hopewell is fragmenting. This is your doing.”

Iyl Rayn dismissed Chayhim’s statement with a vaporous shrug. “People adapt; the beasts notice nothing.”

“Not all are able to adapt. The Lah Sept seek to alter their own history. Tucker Feye is running rampant through time. I fear for my own continued existence.”

“Tucker Feye is the through line,” said Iyl Rayn. “All else will fall into place.”

“This I doubt.”

“You must have faith, Chayhim.”

—
E
³

H
OPEWELL
T
IME
S
TUB
,
OCTOBER, 2012 CE

T
OM
K
RAUSE VISITED
H
ARDY
L
AKE NEARLY EVERY DAY
, even if it was cold and raining. He sat by the cottonwood and stared up at the limb where Tucker had tied the rope. There was no rope. He walked the narrow beach, searching in vain for signs of exploded fireworks. He looked out over the lake, and at the empty air above the water.

He remembered. But he could find no evidence to support his memories.

On the few days when he did not visit the lake, he could sense his memories fading, becoming less real. That frightened him. It was like losing part of his life.

The day Tom had returned from . . . from wherever he had been, Father September had vanished from the jail. His empty cell was locked, and according to the police, the door had not been opened.

The other man who had been arrested, the one called Master Gheen, had escaped from his cell within hours of being locked up, but Gheen’s escape was not so much of a mystery. One of his associates had entered the county lockup pretending to be his lawyer, disabled the two policemen on duty with some sort of stun gun, and the two had driven off in a black SUV.

There was much talk of Father September being a charlatan magician, a master of stage tricks. That would explain how he had vanished from his cell, and how he had faked stabbing Tom in the heart. The search for him was perfunctory and soon over. Immediately following Tom’s reappearance, the district attorney had dropped the charges against Father September, and so there was no compelling reason to pursue him.

Tom sat on the bank above the lake and rubbed his chest. He could still feel a faint ache where the blade had sliced through his rib cage.

He had tried to get Will to remember.

“Don’t you remember when you and me and Tucker hauled that rope out to the lake? And Tucker climbed up the tree and tied it?”

“Who is Tucker?” Will had said, giving him a suspicious, nervous look. As if he thought Tom had gone completely insane.

Maybe he
was
insane.

But he
remembered
.