The Klaatu Terminus (8 page)

Emily’s shoulders went stiff.
“Maggot,”
she whispered.

“Maggot?”

Emily laughed uncomfortably and shook her head. “I don’t know where that came from. Probably some fairy tale from when I was little.”

“I never heard of a fairy tale about maggots.”

Emily shrugged as she piled the greens into a wooden bowl. “I guess I haven’t, either. How’s that lemonade coming?”

Kosh dipped his finger in the pitcher and tasted it. “A little tart.”

“I like it that way.”

While the pies baked, they sat on the front porch and drank their tart lemonade. Emily was good at talking about little things, a skill Kosh lacked. She told him about Hamm’s latest project: making birdhouses out of coffee cans. She caught him up with the latest Hopewell gossip: Lorna Gingrass’s divorce, the Friedmans talking about sending their daughter to a private school in Minneapolis, a family of opossums that had taken up residence in the old silo. Mostly things that were of little interest to Kosh, but he loved watching Emily talk, and the sound of her voice. She was sitting sideways on the swing, while Kosh leaned back in Hamm’s homemade rocking chair. Although there was a wicker table and three feet of space between them, he had the sense that they were very close in a way that was more intimate than when she had been pressed against his back on his motorcycle, or when she had sat next to him in the movie theater. Maybe it was because he could see her eyes.

“Kosh?” She was leaning forward, looking at him intently.

“What?”

“You looked like you’d gone away for a second.”

“I was just thinking, um, about what you were saying.”

Emily cocked her head. “What
was
I saying?”

Kosh laughed self-consciously. “I have no idea.”

Emily drew back in mock outrage, then burst out laughing. Kosh joined her, confused and — inexplicably — happy.

“Those pies should be ready about now,” Emily said.

The potpie was delicious. Kosh didn’t think he could eat two, but then he did.

“Can you show me how to make this?” Kosh asked as he savored the last bite of crumbly crust and tender chicken.

“As long as you promise not to put any arugula or goat cheese in it.”

“I promise.”

After dinner, they walked out to the raspberry hedge. Kosh asked her if she remembered anything about the day Hamm had found her.

“It’s the strangest thing,” she said. “I remember I was hiding in some bushes and crying, and this man walked over to me and squatted down and began talking to me. You know Hamm; he’s half deaf now and talks like a foghorn, but on that day his voice was soft and quiet, and I felt safe right away.”

“Do you remember how you got there?” Kosh asked.

“Not really. I don’t remember anything about my life before Hopewell, except I remember
remembering
, you know? I remember remembering that I lived in a palace, and I was a princess.” She laughed. “Isn’t that silly? I guess every little girl wishes she was a princess. And I remember remembering that an angel came and took me through a magic door. But it’s not like I really remember it; it’s more like a dream. You know how you wake up and you think about a dream you just had, and later you don’t really remember the dream itself but you remember thinking about it?”

Kosh nodded.

“I feel like my life before Hamm found me was chopped off, like it ended, and then started up again. I don’t even know how old I am, not really. Hamm and Greta just picked a day and called it my birthday.”

“Maybe you’re actually forty-five,” Kosh said.

Emily threw a berry at him.

They picked and ate berries until the mosquitoes drove them back to the house. Emily made a pot of strong black coffee and they talked into the night, about everything and nothing.

Hamm and Greta arrived home at eleven. Hamm had bought himself an old 1930s Ford tractor. Kosh helped him back it off the trailer and into the barn, where it joined Hamm’s collection of seldom-used vintage farm equipment. Greta and Emily watched, clucking amusedly at the foolishness of men.

That night, as he lay in bed, Kosh thought about how his father’s death had cut his life in half. His first ten years now seemed like a remembered dream. He wondered if it had been like that for Adrian when their mother had died. When Adrian and Emily married, would their lives end and start yet again? How many lives was it possible to live?

R
OMELAS
,
ca
.
3000 CE

L
IA OPENED HER EYES
. T
HE SUN WAS PEEKING OVER A
jagged horizon. Trees, as far as she could see. She sat up, stiff from sleeping on the hard stone surface, and looked for Tucker. He was standing a few yards away, at the edge of the frustum, looking down. Lia followed his gaze. A layer of mist lay pooled on the zocalo, snaking in and out of the broken buildings, filling the forest city.

Lia stood and stretched. Tucker saw her and said, “Good morning.”

“Did you sleep?” she asked.

He shook his head. “I’ve been thinking.”

Lia walked over to stand beside him. “About what?”

“We’re in the future, right? Years after when you lived here, and even longer since Hopewell. But it’s all one place.”

“I think so.”

“And when we were in the forest where Awn lives, that had to be even further in the future, because the pyramid was half buried.”

“If it was the same pyramid.”

“I’m pretty sure it was. And there were Boggsians there. So maybe there are Boggsians here.”

Lia nodded reluctantly. Her experiences with the Boggsians had been mixed.

Tucker said, “I mean, I don’t know where else we’re going to go. I haven’t seen any sign of people here. No smoke or anything. You know what else I haven’t seen? Klaatu.”

“They come and go,” Lia said.

“Yeah, usually when something awful is about to happen.”

“Then let’s hope we don’t see any.”

Once the sun had burned away the morning fog, Tucker and Lia climbed down the steps of the pyramid to the overgrown zocalo. Tucker kept a rock in each hand. It wasn’t much in the way of weapons, but it was all they had.

Lia wanted to check out one of the deteriorating buildings around the perimeter of the overgrown zocalo. “It’s the Palace of the Pure Girls, where I grew up. There might still be something edible in the food storage area.”

They passed though a crumbling entryway, stepping over the rusted skeleton of a gate. Inside, the floors were littered with decades of debris: dead leaves, dried mud, fallen stone, animal scat, and broken things that Tucker could not identify. The walls were mottled with mosses and mildew at the bottom; the remains of swallow nests clung near the sagging ceilings. Parts of the roof had caved in, as had several walls. Tucker had the feeling that if they kept looking, they would find a collection of human bones.

Lia climbed over a section of broken wall and followed a hallway toward the back of the building. There was less clutter there, but the invisible aura of death felt stronger. They found the food storage area, a large room filled with broken glass and clay jars, scraps of cloth bags, and the desiccated husks of ancient fruits. There was nothing remotely edible.

They continued through the disintegrating structure. Lia was being very quiet, her face tense and rigid. She stopped and looked into a small room. A sharp, acrid odor filled the air. The room had once had a single window; it was now blocked by rubble from an adjoining structure. The floor was dark with bat guano. Tucker looked up. The ceiling was alive with tiny, furry bodies and the soft rustle of leathery wings.

“My bedroom,” Lia whispered.

“Let’s get out of here,” Tucker said.

They backed out, then returned the way they had come.

“How long do you think it’s been?” Tucker said.

“Lifetimes,” said Lia.

They emerged onto the zocalo. Tucker took a minute to tear a bar loose from the rusted iron gate. It felt good to carry something he could hit with, although he wasn’t sure it would be much good against a three-hundred-pound jaguar.

They followed the perimeter of the zocalo to another building.

“This was the Convent of the Yars. There is — or was — a spring-fed fountain here,” Lia said.

The convent was in even worse shape than the palace. The entire roof had caved in. Climbing over the rubble, they made their way to the center of the building and reached an open courtyard that was relatively undamaged. In the center of the courtyard stood a raised basin crowded with lily pads.

Lia let out a cry of delight and ran across the courtyard, not to the fountain, but to a gnarled old tree. She reached into the foliage and tugged, then tossed something round and green to Tucker. A green orange? She picked one for herself and joined him at the fountain.

The orange was not like any orange Tucker had seen before. The skin was bumpy and hard, and most of all, it wasn’t orange. They peeled the fruits and gnawed on the pulpy, sour, slightly bitter flesh. It was delicious. Tucker hadn’t realized how hungry and thirsty he had become. He looked suspiciously at the water pooled in the basin.

“Do you think it’s okay to drink?”

Lia scooped up some water in her palm and sniffed it. “It is all there is.” She sucked some of the water from her cupped palm. “It tastes like weeds.”

Tucker palmed some water and drank. Definitely weedy.

Lia said, “The last time I was here, there was a war between the Yars and the priests.”

“Who won?”

“The priests were driven off, but nobody won.”

“Do you think that’s what destroyed the city?”

Lia drank another handful of water. “It looks more like the people simply left.”

“Then they must have gone
some
place, right?”

“I don’t know. Maybe the Boggsians can tell us. But I want to see one more thing here.” She walked over to one of the walls surrounding the courtyard and pushed aside a heavy curtain of vines, revealing an opening about a foot wide. “Do you think you can fit?” she asked.

Tucker was not eager to enter the dark slot. It reminded him of the tomb in Jerusalem.

“What’s in there?” he asked. But Lia had already disappeared into the opening. Tucker took a deep breath and, with some difficulty, squeezed through into a tunnel only a few inches wider than the opening. It was pitch-black.

“Lia?”

“Right here.”

He felt her hand brush his arm and grab hold.

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” he said. “What about that jaguar?”

“If there were beasts in here, we would smell them.”

In the dark, they descended a stairway, felt their way along a damp passageway, then climbed a shallow ramp. After a few dozen paces, a faint light appeared ahead. They emerged into a large room with most of its roof collapsed onto the floor. Between the chunks of roof tile and rotted wooden beams lay mounds of spongy, gray, flaking matter that looked like moldy papier-mâché. Several small dark rodents scurried into holes in the waste. Lia dropped Tucker’s hand; her shoulders fell.

“What is this?” Tucker asked.

“It was a library.”

They made their way through the forested streets slowly, every darkened doorway threatening to conceal jaguars or other dangerous creatures. Tucker had left behind his iron bar. He now carried a small rusted knife he had found, and a wooden pole with two sharpened ends. They had also found a wooden bow and some arrows in the convent. When Tucker flexed the bow, the brittle wood had splintered.

Lia was carrying an old rucksack she had found in a cabinet that had somehow resisted centuries of weather, insects, and rodents. She had loaded the bag with six green oranges and a stoppered clay bottle full of water. She stopped and pointed. A few yards in front of them was a tree growing up through the crumbled pavers. Several oblong fruits lay on the stones beneath it. “Mangoes,” she said.

A number of green and yellow fruits were still hanging from the branches. They each picked one. Tucker cut away the rind with his knife, and they gnawed the sweet orange flesh.

“This is good,” Tucker said as Lia added several mangoes to her bag, “but I don’t know how long we can live on fruit.”

They came across a large, low concrete building partially covered with vines. The building had a metal roof, which was rusted through, and several wide, vine-swagged doorways along its side. Lia regarded the structure with a furrowed brow.

“This is not a Lah Sept building,” she said.

Tucker used his pole to sweep aside some of the hanging vines and peered into the building’s interior. A pair of swallows swooped out low over his head, startling him. He jumped back, then approached the opening cautiously.

Lia joined him in the doorway. Inside was a large open space littered with plant matter and unidentifiable junk. A few of the objects were recognizable as broken chairs and tables. As their eyes adjusted to the half light, they saw a row of boxy alcoves set into the far wall. Lia picked her way across the trash-strewn floor for a closer look. Each alcove was about the size of a shower stall. Most of them had glass doors, now streaked with white bird-droppings. Inside the alcoves were wires and other electrical apparatus.