Behind the Eyes of Dreamers (4 page)

A bright light flashed across the highway soundlessly. She threw an arm across her eyes and staggered backward. The people in front of the dome were running past her. An arm swung out and hit her, knocking her onto the path. She climbed to her feet, looking aimlessly around. The air vehicle was moving away to the north.

“Felice!” she cried out. Her voice shook. Then she saw that there were no longer any men on the highway, only burned, blackened bodies strewn about on the asphalt. The smell of charred flesh was carried to her nostrils and she bent over, vomiting quietly, arms wrapped around her shaking body.

“The fools.” It was Felice’s voice, harsh and bitter. “Too soon.” A hand was on her shoulder, pulling at her gently. She looked over at Felice, then back at the highway.

A group of Aadae were there, looking down at the bodies.
Happy, aren’t you? It wasn’t even a contest.
There was no way now to tell who lay in the road, if anyone she knew was there. She would have to wait, find out who was missing, and that would take days. Any mourning would be general and unfocused. The Aadae began to circle around the bodies.

Then she heard the sobbing, deep and uncontrolled weeping. Three Aadae threw themselves down on the pavement, beating against it with their fists. The aliens were crying, not for the two Aadae who had been murdered, but for the men on the highway.

Felice was pulling her back along the pathway toward their own dome. As they retreated, Suzanne caught one last glimpse of the Aadae as they flung their arms open to the sun and heard once again their musical scream.

She heard Joel as he crept toward his mat in the darkness. She turned over and reached for him, brushing against his leg. He jumped back. “Jesus! Don’t scare me like that.”

“Joel, where have you been?”

“Where I was the night before.”

“Where?”

“None of your goddamn business, Suzanne.” He pulled off his clothes and sprawled on the mat next to hers.

“I just want to know, Joel.”

“I can tell you’re back to normal; you’re going to revive the Inquisition. I’m tired. I’m going to sleep.”

“You haven’t gotten up one morning this week, Joel, ever since they started giving us that stuff to put together.”

“I should care. You don’t even know what the fuckers are
for
, you just sit there putting them together, you think it’s really important, don’t you, just like that dumb job at the warehouse you used to have.”

“It’s not that, Joel. They’re going to find out you’re not doing your share, and God knows what they’ll do then.”

“I could give a shit.” She could hear him turn over on his mat and knew the conversation was finished. Suzanne had heard rumors about a group of men and a few women who would meet late at night to discuss what to do about the Aadae. She knew nothing more and was afraid to know even that much. She remembered the burned bodies on the highway and decided it was best simply to go about her business and wait.

She was pretty sure that Oscar Harrison was in the group and that Felice knew about it, although she doubted that the protective Oscar would allow his wife to go to the meetings. It wouldn’t be hard for her to get involved if she wanted, but she preferred to wait and see if anything happened. She could act then.

“It’s a perfectly good job, Joel; why are you always putting it down?” She put down her beer and glared at him across the kitchen table.

“
It’s a dead end and you know it. That’s all life is for you, getting by. You could do more and you know it, but it’s easier this way—you don’t have to think or try. It’s even easier to put up with me; it’s better than being alone. At least I know what I am; you don’t even look at yourself.
”

I was practical, at least.
Not that it mattered now. There had been no more money for her training in music, so she had left school and taken the job in the warehouse office, telling herself it was only temporary, she could still have her voice lessons, go to the local opera company’s rehearsals at night. But she stopped going to the rehearsals—she was usually too tired—and then she had stopped going to the voice lessons.
I wouldn’t have been much good anyway.
Occasionally she sang for her friends at parties, smiling when they told her she should become a professional;
it’s just a hobby.
Then Gabe had rushed over one day to tell her that the opera was holding auditions, they needed a new soprano, she would be perfect, the pay wasn’t much, but she could at least quit that office job. And she promised to go to the audition, but by then she was out of training, her voice roughened by cigarettes, so she didn’t go after all. There was no point to it. She had just gotten a raise; no sense in throwing it away.

It doesn’t matter.
The Aadae were here and had no use for singers, nor for office workers. Her past was a meaningless memory, her possible future in that other world only a shadow of the wishes that had once crossed her mind. Better that she had had no great ambitions when the Aadae came; she would not have been able to stand it. Her dreams had already died.

It’s just as well.

The orange-haired alien was named Neir-let. Felice had mentioned that to her a couple of days before. Neir-let and her dark-haired companion were the Aadae who had instructed them in how to put together the metal objects which were now beginning to clutter the large downstairs room of the dome. Neir-let wore a blue gem on her forehead, a stone seemingly embedded in her skin, as did all the other Aadae. Suzanne hadn’t even noticed this until Oscar had pointed it out; most of the aliens’ foreheads were covered by their untidy hair. The gem was tiny, smaller than a Hindu’s caste mark; it glittered, and Suzanne shivered involuntarily.

Neir-let had become more fluent in English, although no one could be sure about how she had learned it. Her companion never said anything. Neir-let had just demonstrated how to attach a silver globe to the apparatus they had been building, then she gave them a cartful of silver globes, several of which went rolling out of the cart over the floor, stopping their travels under the food slots. The metal objects on the floor were entwined in metallic tubing; the blocks and cylinders they had started out with were already hidden. The silver globes were to be attached to some of the loose ends of tubing.

Suzanne, sitting with Felice and a red-headed woman named Asenath Berry at one of the tables, reached for her bowl of mush. She was losing weight. Suzanne had already been thin before the Aadae came. On the diet of mush, she estimated, from the looseness of her clothing, that she had lost another ten pounds. A
scarecrow.
Her brown hair, always unruly, stood out around her head like a nimbus; there was no way to straighten it here.

No one made any move toward the objects they were supposed to be putting together. They had all learned that Neir-let was fairly easy-going and didn’t seem to care what they did as long as the work was completed by the evening. Neir-let was sitting on the floor near the doorway, picking what looked like small insects out of her hair. Her companion leaned against the wall, scratching her crotch.

Suddenly Oscar stood up and walked over to Neir-let. Suzanne glanced at Felice. The chatter in the large room died down. No one had dared to approach an alien directly up to now. Asenath Berry poked Suzanne in the ribs. “What the hell is he up to?” the redhead asked. Suzanne shrugged. Asenath had lost little weight on the mush diet; her round, braless breasts were an edifice under her sleeveless blue top and Suzanne wondered if Asenath had used silicone. Her long tanned legs were set off by her white shorts. How she kept them shaved was a mystery. Felice had said that Asenath was a prostitute, that she had come out of the city with a closetful of clothes and cosmetics carried by three of her most faithful customers. Asenath shared her room with a lean black man named Warren, who, like Joel, usually slept late. “A mack,” Felice had told her, sneering at the word.
What do I care.
Suzanne had met Asenath one night in the hallway. The redhead had taken one look at her frail figure and pulled out two cans of beef stew hidden in her purse. “You need them more than me, honey.” She had hurried back to her room to share them with Joel, who opened them with his knife, and they had eaten them slowly, relishing each bite. Since then, she found it difficult not to be friendly to Asenath, although at the same time she was a bit frightened of her.

“I just want to ask a question,” Oscar said to Neir-let. The room was silent. Neir-let looked up at Oscar and smiled. “I just want to know what that blue thing in your head is.”

The alien was still smiling. “Through it I am with those above,” she replied, and shrugged as if that were self-explanatory.

“The others of your kind?” Oscar said slowly.

“No, except …” Neir-let paused. “I have no words.” She smiled at Oscar and raised her hands, palms up. Oscar nodded and returned to Felice’s side, looking thoughtful.

A few people got up and began to attach the globes to some of the metal objects strewn across the floor. “I think they still have spaceships overhead,” Oscar said to Felice, “and she means they can contact them with those blue stones. That’s all it could mean. At any sign of trouble, they could wipe us all out.” He clenched his fists. Asenath was smiling at a burly man seated at the next table. Suzanne ate her mush, licking it off her fingers, forcing herself. Asenath stood up, motioned to the burly man, and left the room with him. The Aadae were paying no attention.

Somebody should do something.
She finished the mush and looked around. Everyone was devoting full attention either to the breakfast mush or to the metal objects. Neir-let and her friend had moved outside and were staring up at the sky. Suzanne’s arms seemed to freeze on the table near her empty bowl. She was unable to move, eyes fixed on her fingertips. Thoughts were chasing each other through her mind; she could grasp none of them. A heavy weight was pushing her against the table, preventing her from standing up and going to work on the metal devices.

Someone nudged her. “That ho’s lookin’ for you,” Felice drawled contemptuously. She forced herself to look up and saw Asenath on the metal stairway, motioning to her. The burly man had disappeared. “Don’t go,” Felice went on. “You don’t want to be with the likes of her.” Then Oscar put a restraining hand on his wife’s shoulder.

“Don’t tell Suzanne what to do,” he said quietly. “You go ahead,” he said to Suzanne. She hesitated for a moment, then got up and walked to the stairway.

“Come on up,” she called to Suzanne. She climbed the stairs.

“What is it?”

“I got two packs of cigarettes off my friend,” Asenath whispered. She winked at Suzanne and her black eyelashes seemed to crawl over her eye like an insect. “Want a couple?”

“That was fast work,” Suzanne said, trying to smile. Asenath’s cold blue eyes showed no reaction.

“You better come to my room, or else everybody’s going to want one.” The redhead turned and Suzanne followed her past the first level of rooms and up the next flight of stairs. Asenath finally stopped in front of a doorway. “Come on in.” Suzanne entered the room. Warren was sprawled across his mat, clothed in a pink shirt and velvety purple slacks. He held a small hand mirror and was fiddling with his moustache. “Have a seat,” said Asenath, motioning to her mat. Suzanne sat, feeling uneasy.

Asenath didn’t sit down. She peered out into the hallway, then strode over to Suzanne. “There aren’t any cigarettes, kid, just some questions.”

Suzanne opened her mouth. Her vocal chords locked and nothing emerged except a sharp gasp. She swallowed and pulled her legs closer to her chest.

“What’s that man of yours been up to?” Asenath asked.

“I don’t know,” she managed to say. “I don’t know what you mean.” Her voice sounded weak, ineffectual.

“Stop being stupid. He’s been out every night this week, we know that, and we know where he is for some of the time. Now you tell us where he goes.”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re saying that a little too often; I don’t want to hear it again. We’ve tried following him. We know he doesn’t come back here right away. You must know something, he must have hinted at what he does.”

Suzanne looked away from Asenath to Warren, who had put down his hand mirror and was staring blankly at the wall. “I don’t know where he goes,” she said, pronouncing the words carefully. “I don’t know anything about his activities. Joel tells me nothing. He rarely told me anything, even before we all came here. Our relationship is not exactly what you would call open.” She felt defeated and exposed before the red-headed woman and her dark silent partner.

“Christ,” Asenath muttered.

“Let her go,” said Warren. Suzanne stood up and began to move toward the door. A hand seized her shoulder and she found herself facing Asenath’s blue eyes again.

“If you do find out anything,” the prostitute whispered, “if he does decide to confide in you, you better let me know, I’m telling you, and right away. And you just keep quiet about this little talk.”

She retreated from the room angry and frightened, afraid to stop now in her own room to wake up Joel.
I have to warn him. I have to find out. I have to talk to somebody.
She paused at the top of the stairway, apprehensive about joining the people in the large room below. But they were ignoring her, busy working on their alien devices.

She continued down the steps, avoiding a glance at Felice and Oscar. She sat down in a corner and began fitting metal pieces together under the casual, almost reassuring gaze of Neir-let.