The Spaceship Next Door (13 page)

“Right now? No.” He closed the magazine he was pretending to read.

“Of course right now. I’m assuming you’ve had one or two in your life.”

“Yes, that too. But not at the moment.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. I guess I haven’t been looking all that hard. Not since the ship landed. Nothing serious. How about you?”

“Oh, I have prospects. Looking for a guy who can keep up with me. Haven’t found him yet, but the list of suitors is long, let me tell you.”

“I bet it is.”

T
he doctor finally returned
, after another hour of waiting. Annie was pretty annoyed by then, because this was going to end up being the same news as always: nothing appeared to be newly wrong with her mother, they see no reason for her not to be released, call if something changes in the next twenty-four hours, and so on. Keeping her waiting for three plus hours to hear that was just silly.

The doctor was working from a different script, though, which ended up explaining the delay.

“I’d like to admit her overnight,” the doctor said. This was outside the curtained area where Carol was sleeping.

The doctor’s name was Chao, and she had such a pleasant way of saying not-pleasant things that it took Annie a second or two to absorb the information, then another second or two for her to deal with the lump that fell out of the back of her throat and into her stomach.

“I’m… sorry, what?”

“Oh, it’s just a precaution.” She was holding a thin folder that had, at minimum, the outcome of a blood test. “Her white blood cell count is elevated, and I’d like to hold her over until at least tomorrow, and get her going on an antibiotic.”

“So it’s just an infection.”

“It may be, certainly. I’d like oncology to have a look. To rule out some things. Do you have a guardian?”

“A guardian?” She was picturing a guy in armor, following her around. That would be sort of cool.

“Is someone waiting for you? You have a place to go?”

“Oh, yes. Yes, I have a friend… my boss is here. He’ll take me home.”

“All right, good. Let’s go have a conversation with your mother.”

C
orporal Sam Corning
checked into the barracks at twenty-two-hundred hours, after a briefing on the latest info regarding the ship. Said briefing lasted a solid hour, and at the end of it he felt no more enlightened than he was before it started. He did walk out a little more worried—in a non-specific sort of way—than when he walked in, and that was certainly a change.

Part of the issue was just that he had no classification level to speak of, so any information being delivered to him had all the interesting stuff removed ahead of time. Most briefings it was seamless, but there were days when very specific information suddenly became very general information, and any efforts to get greater detail were met with the classic
need-to-know
line.

All of which was pretty amazing, since the way Sam saw it, if that thing jumped up and started mowing people down with a ray gun, he would be one of the first to go. That was something he thought he probably needed to know.

There were other times in briefings when it became abundantly clear the real information had been removed and replaced with fake information. Sam and the other men of his squad called these tofu briefings, where the meat was substituted with something that only looked like meat. The briefing in which they were informed of the impending arrival of Edgar Somerville was a tofu briefing, because nobody really believed he was a journalist doing a story. Even Sergeant Phineas rolled his eyes when he read it.

That particular tofu briefing was especially annoying, because inside of a week Annie Collins had more accurate intel than Sam did, which was just insulting.

The briefing that ended at twenty-one-forty-five was not a tofu briefing. It wasn’t really even a briefing, since no new information was imparted. It was a lecture on the importance of drilling, maintaining order, holding position, keeping equipment at the ready, and staying “awake and focused.” It followed a terse reminder that Sorrow Falls was a
de facto
war zone and they had to remember that, even if the war was not apparent and the enemy unresponsive.

It was a little terrifying.

By twenty-two-fifteen, Sam and the others had talked it over, and after a few valid points on the subject of getting a little lazy about perimeters, focused on two or three details from the meeting that could be made fun of safely. For instance, Phineas was unreasonably fond of the word
perambulate
and used it—incorrectly, they were sure—so often it became their own little drinking game. (Not that they drank on the base during a briefing in front of a superior. They mimed each drink when the occasion arose.) So they went through every instance of the word, and that seemed to calm everyone down. Then it was time to bed down, as some of them—although not Sam—had sentry duty down the hill at oh-six-hundred.

For a couple of soldiers, that only meant talking in whispers, rather than sleeping.

“What do you think, Sammie?” asked Dill Louboutin in that bayou drawl of his. Dill was two years younger and five inches shorter than Sam, and seemed to think those two years and five inches made Sam someone to look up to, metaphorically. Dill was new to the base and to anywhere this far north. His first three weeks were spent talking almost non-stop about the hilly terrain. Sam didn’t appreciate just how flat Louisiana and Texas were—he was a West Virginia boy, and knew from hills—until Dill came along to explain it to him.

Dill had a lot of theories about the ship. Probably everyone did, but Dill had a mouth that kept going when his brain had long stopped, so he extemporized on the subject at length. And since he was newer to the base than Sam was, every time there was a briefing, Dill wanted to know if it was unusual.

This was the first time the brief actually was unusual.

“What do I think about what?” Sam asked.

Dill was on the top bunk, looking down. He could rain words on Sam for hours, and had.

“You know what.”

“I think we’ve gotten sloppy of late is all. Hard to stay focused when nothing’s happening. Sarge isn’t wrong, there are soldiers on war games more alert than we are.”

“Yeah, but what did it
mean
.”

“It didn’t mean anything, Dill.”

“I think it means something’s coming.”

“Like what? Aliens? We already have that.”

Dill shook his head, which shook the whole bunk.

“I’m telling you. Something’s in the air. I can smell it, like ozone.”

“Ozone? You don’t even know what that is. Go to sleep, Pickles.”

Dill didn’t like the nickname, which was a little strange because his full first name was Dillard. He could have gone by that instead and skipped the obvious
pickle
reference.

“Ahhh,” he grumbled, and disappeared over his bunk.

There was quiet for about two minutes, but then he was back again.

“Hey!”

“Dill, I swear to God...”

“No, look! Who is that?”

Sam rolled up onto an elbow and looked along the row of bunks. Someone was walking down the row, which was not in itself unusual. The latrine was at the other end of the tent. He was only in his boxers, and that was a little odd, but just a little. It was a warm night.

“Think that’s Vogel. What of it? Man’s gotta go, man’s gotta go.”

“Don’t think that’s where he’s going. Watch what he’s doing, brother.”

There
was
something distinctively odd about Vogel’s movements. His gestures were halting. Jerky, almost. Somewhere between Frankenstein’s monster and a marionette.

Hank Vogel had a few years on Sam. He was a stocky kind of big, not super bright, but friendly enough. Sam would never say Hank was graceful, but he wasn’t usually as stiff as this, either.

He was stopping every few feet along the central corridor, standing at the end of each cot and looking at the occupants. The stare lasted eight or ten seconds, it seemed.

“Holy crap, I bet he’s sleepwalking,” Dill said.

“Could be.”

Hank’s eyes were definitely open. It was hard to tell if he was awake behind them.

“What should we do?”

“Maybe leave him be, I’m sure he’ll go back to bed soon enough.”

“
Hank!
” Dill whispered.

“C’mon, leave him alone.”

“No this is too good.
Hank!
”

Vogel turned at the sound, and sleep-wandered his way to the base of the bed.

“How you doin’, Hank?” Dill asked, waving his hand in front of Vogel’s face.

Hank didn’t respond. It was just about the creepiest non-response ever. Sam was beginning to dislike this. Dill felt no similar qualms.

“You in there, Corporal Vogel?”

Hank opened his mouth.

“Dill…” Sam said.

“Shh. What is it, Hank?”

“Are… you…?”

Hank spoke like he had a mouthful of food and didn’t know where his tongue was supposed to be.

“What’s that?” Dill asked. He hopped off the bunk. Hank—who was taller than both of them—towered above.

“Are you,” Hank repeated.

“Sam, should we wake him?”

Sam remembered being told to never awaken a sleepwalker. He thought it was probably just one of those things people said that wasn’t actually true, but Hank wasn’t hurting anybody, so why risk it?

“No, leave him be.”

“Are you,” Hank said again.

“Am I? No. I don’t think I am.”

“Dill…”

“Well I don’t know how else to answer.”

Hank lowered his gaze from Dill and turned to head down the aisle, and then Dill did something dumb. It was, in all fairness, something that only came off as really stupid in hindsight, but still.

When Vogel turned, Dill put his hand on the sleeping man’s shoulder.

“Hold on, Hank, let’s talk this…”

Corporal Vogel’s reaction was sudden and alarming. His left hand lashed out and clamped around Dill’s throat.

Dill emitted a gurgling shout, with both his hands around the larger man’s arm.

“Choking…” he cried. “Choking me…”

“Hank!” Sam exclaimed.

He was up in a second, his arm around Vogel’s, trying to peel the fingers loose. Dill was beet-red already. Vogel was going to kill him.

“HELP!” Sam shouted. “HELP US!”

Four men from neighboring bunks stirred, realized what was wrong, and jumped in, but Vogel’s grip was like iron, and efforts to tackle him were proving strangely impossible.

“Wake up Hank!” Sam said. “Come on, you’re killing him!”

Arms and legs and bodies pulling and shouting, but Vogel was like a rock. A rock that wanted to crush Dill Louboutin’s windpipe.

Finally, someone had the idea to slap Hank Vogel across the face.

He trembled, his eyes blinked, and he released Dill, who fell gasping to the floor.

It was said later that in this moment, it looked as if Corporal Vogel became aware of himself and his surroundings. Like he’d been away for a while and just returned to discover himself in entirely the wrong place. Then the moment passed, and Hank started to convulse.

“Hold him, hold him,” Sam said. Vogel was falling backwards, arms flailing madly. His eyes, still open, had rolled back in his skull and there was foam coming out of his mouth.

They got him to the floor, where he continued to seize.

“Get him something to bite down on!” somebody shouted. Sam was on top of the larger man, trying to hold his body still before he broke himself or something else.

“Like what?” someone else said. Half the barracks were awake now.

“I don’t know!”

Sam said, “get the medics in here, for Chrissake!”

Then, quite dramatically, Hank Vogel seized up, held his entire body stiff in a huge inhale, and then stopped and collapsed. His arms and legs fell limp and his eyelids fell shut.

Sam put his finger on Vogel’s neck and listened to his lungs.

What the hell just happened?

“I don’t think he’s breathing!” Sam said. “Where’s the medic?”

T
he phone call
that was supposed to come from the hospital the next morning—the one notifying Annie that her mother was being released momentarily—didn’t come. Not that there was no phone call, only that the one she received involved a very different conversation.

Annie didn’t realize exactly how much she failed to pay attention to the information being recited over the phone until it came time to repeat it to others. Ed, and later Violet, and after that her father, all received partial bits of things that didn’t entirely add up to a comprehensive whole. It didn’t fit into her head that way neither, so that was only fair.

The short version was that Carol wasn’t coming home and she wasn’t staying at Harbridge. She was being transported to Boston, where a medical facility with first-class oncology support was located. There, she would be tested and an approach would be devised, and the question of chemo came up, and phrases like
as comfortable as possible
and
managing the condition
were bandied about, and just about all of it made Annie’s eyes burn.

As she explained to the doctor—his name was either “doctor Benson” or “doctor Ben Song”, she couldn’t tell—Carol did a round of chemo before, when she was first diagnosed, and it nearly killed her. It was Annie’s understanding that there would be no more chemotherapy. Her mother would rather die on her own terms than live on theirs, and that was that. She asked the doctor if Carol repeated this declaration.

She had, but doctor Bensomething had a lot to say on that point, along the lines of therapeutic changes and options and the importance of thorough diagnoses, and Annie gave up trying to figure out how it all ended up playing out because at the end of the call her mother was still heading off to the city, whether she wanted to or not.

Annie was tacitly
not
going to Boston.

She could have. Even though she was only sixteen and had neither the money nor the wherewithal to get a hotel room, and even though she had no relatives in the Boston area, there were options. She’d done this before, the last time Carol ended up in the city for a chemo session. The hospital had a program in place that could put her up short-term in something like a halfway house that was a cross section of people going through outpatient cancer screenings and their family members. When she did it, a guardian was appointed to keep an eye on her, and she hated every second of the experience.

It was terrible to admit, but when her mother exited chemo and swore she would never go back, Annie was glad to hear it. Carol was essentially saying she’d rather die at home sooner than in a hospital later, but all Annie could think was that she’d never have to go back to that halfway house again.

She was being incredibly selfish, and she knew it. If she had a therapist, that therapist would undoubtedly be all over her. Nonetheless, the reality was unchanged: Annie had no intention of going to Boston. In the event she
had
to get to the city—for instance if Carol took a “turn for the worst” (this was her least-favorite euphemism for dying) Annie could always reach out to Desmond Hollis, who would probably send her into town by helicopter if he had to.

Annie deciding to stay in Sorrow Falls created a whole new set of problems, though.

In hindsight, the whole issue could be placed at the feet of Carol Collins, because sometime after the last chemo session and the current emergency, Carol decided to eradicate all negative thoughts from her life. In a very basic way, this made sense, because there was some evidence to suggest cancer patients with positive outlooks tended to do better. The idea of being healthy could impact the health, essentially.

But there was a difference between trying to be positive and refusing to anticipate a circumstance in which that positivity would be inadequate. Specifically, Carol made no concrete plans for her daughter in the event she wasn’t there to perform her duties as The Adult.

Anyone who met the two of them in the past two years would have drawn the entirely appropriate conclusion that Annie was playing the role of The Adult, but the problem was that this wasn’t in any real way a legal designation. If her mother was unavailable to perform her duties as guardian, the task fell to her father, but when she spoke to him about Carol’s condition he made it clear he would be unable to return to Sorrow Falls in anything like a reasonable period of time. (He said he was in Manitoba, which wasn’t just north of them but considerably west. Annie wouldn’t have time to appreciate this until later, but clearly Hollis’s paper trees made quite a circuitous route to the mill.)

All of this meant she had no available adult to pretend to tell her what to do and make sure she didn’t set herself on fire or subsist on chocolate bars and vodka, or wander into traffic, or whatever it was she was supposed to end up doing if unsupervised. It was completely crazy, because anyone who knew her at all knew she could take care of herself perfectly fine.

Her initial efforts, then, were to deflect the concern of the people holding themselves responsible for her.

At first, the hospital was pretty easy to fool. Doctor Ben asked if there was an adult guardian, and Annie said yes of course, her father lived with them, and this was technically not a lie because he had a room there. Carol backed her up, too.

Someone blabbed. Annie thought it was probably Lee, the paramedic, although just about anybody from Sorrow Falls could have been the source, as it wasn’t exactly a secret. So then they told her she had to have an adult in the house when the ambulance people came by with Carol, to verify that a legal adult was there, even if that adult wasn’t her father.

The adult ended up being Ed, which turned the day into possibly the most awkward thing in the history of awkward things. Because when Annie asked Ed to come into the house she didn’t tell him he was donating his services as guardian, right up until someone handed him a document to sign.

He
did
sign, which was great, because that meant one set of adults was going to leave her alone. But as with many of the things that made sense in her head, this did not solve Annie’s problem.

“
I
’m sorry
, did I just adopt you?”

“Don’t be so dramatic. Of course not. I just needed to get rid of those guys. You can take off now, I think they have a big enough head start.”

“No, I can’t.”

It was Saturday, and they had no plans to continue the interviews again until Tuesday, at which time they would be visiting City Hall, talking to some of the long-term resident/owners of the area businesses and, at the end of the day, Desmond Hollis. Annie was expecting it to be far less interesting than, for example, talking to the picketers at the end of Main might be, because
those
guys were entertaining as hell. Although Desmond was always worth the time.

Anyway, they had no place to go for the weekend, so he had no reason to stick around.

“I have plenty of food and everything, if that’s what you’re worried about,” she said. “We keep a well-stocked freezer. We pack for long winters around here.”

“I’m worried that I just agreed to make sure a minor is being taken care of. If something happens to you, I’m in a ton of trouble.”

“Okay. A little self-centered, but okay.”

“In addition to it being bad that something happened to you. Annie, you just maneuvered me into being your legal guardian until one of your parents gets back, did you even read what they made me sign?”

“Well yeah, but, I mean, c’mon, do you know how long I’ve been taking care of myself? Ask anyone.”

“Your degree of self-governance was something arranged by your mother, and I guess your father, if he’s… wherever he is. Now I’m the one who gets to make sure you don’t die in a fire or fall through a hole in the floor. And no, you cannot stay on the base, and you definitely can’t stay in the B&B with me.”

He had clearly visited the part of the house where there were holes in the floor.

“I wasn’t going to ask to. I’m fine.”

“You can’t stay here, Annie.”

“You can’t make me leave.”

“Actually, I just signed some documents that say I can do exactly that.”

Annie sighed. “Well that’s not gonna work. Do you want to stay here? I’ll show you where all the holes in the floor are.”

“That’s not going to work either. You keep telling me everyone in town knows you, and so far that’s ended up being true. There
must
be someone you can stay with.”

And that was how she ended up at Violet’s house.

T
he handoff was
a lot stranger than it should have been, mainly because, somehow, Annie never spent the night at Violet’s house before. Vi spent many a night at Annie’s, hanging out with her and Carol and watching movies, and doing things girls did, like talking about quantum theory and orbital mechanics.

And boys, sometimes. Especially before the ship landed, when there wasn’t much else going on in Sorrow Falls aside from The Coming Puberty.

This was not to say Violet had anything particularly compelling to offer when engaged in a discussion of boys and girls and how they might interact socially, sexually or academically. It was perfectly understandable for someone home-schooled to have effectively no opinion on boys she’d never met, met only once, or only seen from a distance. At the same time, her lack of interest in developing a more robust understanding of the available local options seemed to go beyond her innate social awkwardness. At times, in other words, Annie wondered if her friend might be gay.

As explanations went, it was a pretty good one. She’d never asked, in part because she wasn’t sure if Violet even knew yet. It also seemed sort of rude. It was one of those things you waited for the other person to bring up.

The ship was sort of a welcome icebreaker, in that sense. Once it landed she and Violet had a ream of other things to discuss. It was an almost bottomless pool of things, actually, because Vi was some sort of genius. This was another thing Annie didn’t really come out and just ask, but unlike the gay thing, the genius aspect of her friend was more or less assumed.

In home-schooling their daughter, Violet’s parents decided early on to concentrate on science and math to the virtual exclusion of all other disciplines. How they got away with this, Annie didn’t know—she was pretty sure the state required some sort of testing for the home-schooled, and could only assume Vi tested out okay since she’d not heard otherwise. Anyway, it didn’t seem as if Violet had any issues with reading and writing, and if her grasp of history was a little general (aside from movies) it was still good enough to convince whoever regulated these things to let her slide.

Her understanding of science—physics, more so than biology—was, in Annie’s opinion, the coolest thing about her friend. It was also incredibly helpful; Annie learned way more from Vi than from school or from her friends at the campers. It was Violet’s information that helped Annie sort out the good theories from the bad.

While it was true their conversations about applied and theoretical science were frequent, they didn’t generally take place in Violet’s home, a place Annie had only been inside of a few times. She’d seen the kitchen, the living room, and Vi’s bedroom, but only in passing.

Carol probably should have made arrangements for Annie for this kind of thing. Carol met Vi’s mom—Annie always called her Susan, as this was one of those households which eschewed titles like ‘Mr.’ and ‘Mrs.’—two or three times and had nice things to say about her and all, but at no point did anyone discuss an emergency plan. This was (again) pretty much Carol’s fault, as her
think positive!
attitude sometimes precluded a
but plan for the worst!
corollary, but Mrs. Susan Jones could have also stepped up and volunteered.

This was what Annie was thinking as the parties Edgar/Annie and Violet/Susan met in Vi’s kitchen to work out the care and feeding of Annie Collins, Defenseless Child.

“You want her to stay?” Susan asked. She was literally repeating what Ed just asked, right after the two of them went through the hospitalization of Carol and Ed’s accidental guardianship. Susan came off as dully shocked at his temerity, which was a little odd given anyone could have figured out why they were there before they even made it to the kitchen table.

“Yes, you see… if that’s all right…” Ed stumbled.

“Of course she can stay,” Violet said.

“Yes, of course,” Susan said. She smiled.

Then nobody talked for a few seconds. It was incredibly awkward.

Annie had little direct experience with Susan. She was a thin woman with—according to her daughter—an enthusiasm for macrobiotics coupled with vitamin supplements that pushed her body somewhere past healthy and into so-healthy-she-might-be-unwell territory. There were moments, in speaking with her, in which she sometimes seemed to check out a little, as if her mind were on something more important. This happened at the oddest of times, such as this particular one.

“I’ll go get the room ready,” Violet said.

“I’ll help,” Annie said, very much ready to get out of the room.

“No, you stay. I’m sure you have to work out everything with… Edgar, isn’t it? It’s nice to meet you.”

“And you,” Ed said. “I’ve heard a lot.”

This was just him attempting to be polite, as he’d heard almost nothing. He was only slightly less socially awkward than Violet’s family.

Annie tried to shoot Vi a
please don’t leave me here alone
look, but Violet was already gone.

Ed was gamely trying to keep the conversation at the table going as he pulled the documents from his jacket pocket. “I understand Annie and your daughter have known one another for a long time, and…”

“Yes, yes, sorry,” Susan said. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Somerville, I was thinking about poor Carol.” To Annie, she said, “Are you all right, dear?”

She’d never called Annie
dear
before, or anything even distantly maternal. It was jarring.