The Klaatu Terminus (7 page)

H
OPEWELL
, S
EPTEMBER, 2012 CE

K
OSH
F
EYE THOUGHT HE WAS DEAD
.

He had imagined his own death many times — crushed beneath a semi, or flattened against a bridge abutment, or being T-boned by a drunk running a stop sign. There were many ways to die, but he had always assumed that for him, it would be on his bike. There were worse ways to go. Better to die violently at seventy miles per hour than on a bed in a nursing home plugged into a catheter and an oxygen mask.

He remembered the truck that had hit him. The grille in his rearview mirror was the last image he carried in his brain.

It was a very odd feeling, being dead. The main sensation was that of no sensation. He did not seem to have a body. Except for his ears. There was a sound, a sort of frantic, unintelligible chatter coming from far away. Other dead people? As he became more awake, he discovered another sensation. He seemed to be breathing. Dead people breathed?

It occurred to him to open his eyes, just to find out whether he still had them. With that thought, his eyelids popped open and sunlight came crashing in. He was looking up at the branches of a tree, and beyond it blue sky, and he wondered whether it was possible that he was not dead after all. He tried to turn his head, but that didn’t work. Except for breathing, hearing, and looking at the tree, he had nothing.

The voices got louder. A woman’s voice, and a man’s. They were speaking a language that sounded like a mishmash of Spanish and English, with some Asian-sounding words thrown in just to make it more confusing. One thing for sure, they were arguing.

Kosh summoned his will and made another unsuccessful attempt to move. He could not feel his body at all. Was he
paralyzed
?
Oh my god
, he thought.
I’ve broken my neck! Severed my spinal cord.
His worst fear. Far worse than death. He’d been ready to embrace being dead, but not this.

Now he could feel his heart pounding.

The woman was yelling at the man. The man was shouting back at her. How could they be arguing when Kosh was laid out on the ground, his life over? What could be more important than that?

“Váyase!”
the woman shouted. “Go!”

Seconds later, Kosh heard the roar of an engine and the sound of spinning tires. The leaves on the tree stirred; Kosh felt a cool breeze on his face. A shadow fell across him and his view of the sky was eclipsed by a woman’s face. He tried to speak, but he could not.

Emily
.

“He is gone,” she said.

Kosh would have nodded if he could, though he did not know whom she was talking about. He moved his eyes from her wide mouth to her eyes — that blue-green color was seared into his memory. He remembered Emily smiling, the way her mouth would stretch and her eyes would almost disappear. She was not smiling now.

Her hair was different. Shorter, and maybe a shade lighter. Her brow was furrowed more deeply than he had ever seen it. Still, impossibly, this was Emily.

“I am Emma,” she said. “You have been injured.”

He wanted to ask her why she was speaking with an accent and why she called herself Emma, but he could only stare back at her, waiting to hear the next thing she said.

“I know you cannot speak. I have applied a pain blocker to your spine. Tamm was very upset with me. He believes the devices we took from the Medicants should be used only by the priests, and only to save Lambs. He would have let you die. He
wanted
you to die.”

Why?
Kosh asked with his eyes.

She seemed to understand him. “Tamm said you attacked Father September and Master Gheen. Is that true?”

Kosh stared at her helplessly. Her accent and manner of speaking were nothing like Emily at all. And if she
was
Emily, she had not aged a day in fifteen years.

“Even if it is true, it was wrong of him to hit you with his truck. I do not understand all this violence. Are you a violent man? I sense that you are not, but I do not understand why I think that. I do not understand why the priests killed all those people on the zocalo. I could smell their flesh burning. I do not understand why the Yars fought us on the pyramid. There was a boy here this morning. Tamm attacked him, and the boy became violent, I think because he was afraid. He said this was his house.” She looked at Kosh closely. “The boy looked like you. I do not understand any of this, but I could not let Tamm kill you.”

She seemed to be talking more to herself than to him. Kosh figured the boy she mentioned must have been Tucker.

“You were unconscious,” she said. “You flew so far and landed so hard. I’m sure Tamm intended to kill you. I convinced him to leave, but I know his anger will grow, and he will be back. You cannot stay here. I am going to turn the pain blocker off now.” She stared into his eyes and put her hand behind his neck. “I do not know how badly you are hurt. Brace yourself.”

Kosh heard a soft click. Emma sat back, watching him as sensation flooded his body. For a moment, it was a tremendous relief to feel again, then every nerve in his body lit up. The pain rocketed from his spine to every extremity. He gasped.

Emma, alarmed by his reaction, reached to turn the device back on.

“Don’t,” Kosh croaked. The worst of the pain was on his right side — a hot, stabbing pain that could only mean broken ribs. He’d broken ribs before, when he’d fallen off his barn. The ribs would heal. The pain would pass. He moved his legs. That hurt too, but knowing that he could move them made up for the agony.

Slowly, carefully, he sat up. His lower back felt as if it had been pounded with a sledgehammer. He looked at his hand. His ring finger was bent back at an impossible angle, dislocated. Kosh knew if he thought about it he’d chicken out, so he quickly grabbed the finger with his other hand, pulled it straight, and popped it back in place. He almost passed out. Or maybe he did pass out, because the next thing he knew he was on his back looking up at the tree. Emma was leaning over him.

“I’m okay,” he said. His voice cracked. He held up his hand. The finger was swollen like a boiled sausage, but it was back in place. He sat up again, letting Emma help him. “I want to stand,” he said.

It took several tries, but soon he was balanced on his feet, unsteadily. He could feel his pulse in his swollen finger, and his ribs were bands of agony. Looking around, he discovered what was left of his motorcycle wrapped around the trunk of a basswood tree about twenty yards away.

“I should be dead,” he said.

“It is a miracle,” Emma said, still with her hands on his arm.

“If it was a miracle I don’t think it would hurt so much.” He disengaged his arm and took a step. His legs seemed to work okay, but he felt as if the earth were undulating beneath his feet. “Who is this guy Tamm?”

“He is my husband.”

Kosh nodded, taking it in like a pillow punch to the gut. “You say he’ll be back?”

“Yes. But I will not let him hurt you again.”

“Who
are
you?” he asked. “I know you’re Emma, but where did you come from?”

“I am not supposed to say.”

“You’re one of them, aren’t you? Those people in the park.”

Emma nodded. “I am the Lamb Emma.”

“So what are you doing here? At my brother’s house?”

“It was assigned to us.” She cocked her head. “Was that your brother who was here? The boy who looked like you? The one who said it was his house?”

“That was my nephew, I think. Why aren’t you at the park with the rest of them?”

Emma looked away. “I do not like what they do. Even in Romelas I refused to attend the sacrifices.”

Romelas?
The girl, Lia, had told him she was from Romelas, supposedly in the distant future. “Do you know a girl named Lia? The Yar Lia?”

Emma shook her head. “The Yars are violent, wicked people.”

Kosh smiled. “I don’t know about wicked, but yeah, she’s violent all right. How about Tucker Feye?”

“I . . . I know
of
Tuckerfeye.”

“He’s the boy who was here. Emily Feye is his mother. You look exactly like her.”

“I am not her,” she said.

“Then you must be her sister.”

“I have a sister?”

Kosh took a few steps toward his wrecked bike, then stopped. There was no way that machine would ever roll again.

“You must leave,” said Emma. “Tamm will come back.”

On the grass, next to the wreckage of his bike, he saw the silver tube weapon he had taken from the priest.

“Let him come.” Kosh limped over to the wreckage. As he bent down to pick up the weapon, blood rushed to his head and the world began to whirl. Black fuzz crowded the edges of his vision. He dropped to his knees, willing himself to come out of it, but the earth pulled him insistently downward, and everything went away.

The Lamb Emma looked at Kosh, sprawled facedown on the lawn, his arms flung to the sides. The blades of grass next to his mouth were moving. He was breathing. For a few seconds, she stood there undecided, then she rolled him onto his back, grasped his legs, and dragged him toward the house. He was a big man, almost twice her weight, but after several starts and stops, she got him to the porch, up the shallow steps, and inside. She tried to lift him onto the sofa but he was too heavy, so she left him on the floor and put a soft pillow under his head. She soaked a dish towel with cold water and laid it across his forehead. She considered the Medicant device, then decided not to use it. Whatever pain he was experiencing, he seemed able to handle it.

She went outside and picked up the
arma
. She had never before held one, but it looked simple to operate. There was only one button. She hoped she wouldn’t have to press it.

Back inside, she sat beside Kosh. He was still asleep. His legs were twitching, and he was smiling. Emma wondered what he was dreaming about.

H
OPEWELL
, J
ULY, 1997 CE

“C
HICKEN POTPIES
,”
SAID
E
MILY, WIPING HER HANDS
ON HER APRON
.
“Come on in!”

The Ryans’ home had a friendly sort of disorderliness. A large terra-cotta pot by the door held a motley collection: two umbrellas, a hand-carved walking stick, a garden hoe, and a broom. The living room furniture was mismatched and casually arranged. Not messy, but not rigid, either. He could smell the chicken cooking and a trace of Hamm’s aromatic pipe tobacco. It felt like a place one could kick back and relax. There were books everywhere, most of them stuffed into bookcases built from old barn wood. Greta Ryan was a voracious reader, while Hamm was known as a man who let nothing go to waste.

“Your folks home?” Kosh asked.

“They went to an auction over in Zumbrota. They’ll be back late.”

Kosh followed Emily into the kitchen. He hadn’t seen her since the night they went to the movie, two weeks ago. The night they had seen the man in black burst out of Hopewell House. Kosh felt bad about not calling. He’d meant to, just to see how she was doing, but it had felt too awkward. Every day since, he’d intended to call, but somehow never got around to it. Then, that morning, she had called and invited him to dinner. To pay him back, she said, for the goat-cheese-and-arugula burger.

Kosh watched her open the oven door and peek in at the five small pies baking on the center rack. “Another half hour,” she said.

“Why five pies?” he asked.

“One for me, one for Hamm, one for Greta, and two for you.”

“I get two?”

“You’re big.”

“Can I help?”

“You want some lemonade?”

“Sure.”

Emily tossed him a lemon. “Start squeezing.”

Happy to have something to keep his hands busy, Kosh set about making lemonade while Emily washed salad greens from the garden. It felt odd, in a good way, to be working alongside her. He wondered if it would be like this for her and Adrian once they got married. He tried to picture it: his brother making lemonade, squeezing a lemon with one hand, holding the Bible in the other, Emily smiling as she sprayed cold clean water on the lettuce leaves.

In an effort to be nonchalant and clever, Kosh said, “So, you seen any ghosts lately?”

The smile fell from Emily’s face. Kosh felt a familiar jolt of nausea, the way he always felt when he said something wrong or stupid. Quickly, he backpedaled.

“I mean, I was just thinking about what you said. I see stuff sometimes. Especially at night.”

Emily turned to him, drying her hands on her apron. “The ghosts I saw had faces, and I was looking right at them. In broad daylight.” She set her jaw, daring him to disbelieve her.

Kosh said, “Wow.”

“‘Wow’ like ‘Wow, she must be insane’?”

“No! Wow like, just . . . wow.”

Emily laughed and turned back to the sink to shake the water off the lettuce.

“One thing for sure,” Kosh said, “that guy we saw was no ghost. Chuck Beamon saw him too, running across his soy field the next morning. Said the guy was being chased by a big pink pig. Like,
really
pink.”