Cottonwood (2 page)

And things were better now. Not financially, but better where it meant something, better between them. Sarah wanted to be a good sister, or at least less of an ungodly load, and a job would help so much. A good job.

And oh my God, there it was. And it was even better than the article.

“Kate!” Sarah bellowed.

“I don’t care, honey,” Big Sister sang.

“No, you’ve got to hear this! They give you a house!”

“Uh huh.”

“They do! All employees receive on-site lodgings in IBI’s secure facility community, in state-of-the-art homes!”

“That means they’re pre-fabs. In five years, they’ll all be worth a buck and a quarter.”

“I don’t care, it’s free. And the village has its own library and a pool and a shopping district and a community center for fun community events!”

“You are so gullible.”

“I’m doing this,” Sarah breathed, but she wasn’t looking at the virtual tours for the homes. She was staring at the village map, at the shaded area in its center, behind what looked like a very thick wall. Immigrants, it said. No details were illustrated to show how many pools it had, but it was huge.

It had to be huge. Over twenty-five thousand aliens lived there. Gosh.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Kate said, breezing through on her way to the bedroom for her purse and her shoes. “You are not going to Cottonwood.”

“I totally am.”

“Oh, come on! Cottonwood is in
Kansas
, honey! Do you know what Kansas is? It’s Tornado Central.” Kate came back, fastening on a pair of earrings. She worked in the mailroom at the
Bugle
, where a lady didn’t necessarily have to look good to sort mail, but times were bad and this was their only paycheck at the moment. Plus, Kate never said so, but Sarah was pretty sure she was sleeping with someone over there for a little extra job security. Thoughts like that made her feel bad, but feeling bad didn’t pay bills. “They were hoping a tornado would touch down and blow all the bugs away.”

That pierced even Sarah’s fascination. She frowned at Kate’s back. “That isn’t funny.”

“No, it’s not, but it’s probably true. Don’t do it, I’m serious,” she said suddenly, looking back at her. “I don’t like what I hear about those places. It’s dangerous.”

“How dangerous can it be?” Sarah asked, scrolling through the job listing. “They say no experience necessary. They’ll train you.”

“Sarah, I mean it. Those IBI people—”

“Kate,
aliens
!” Sarah turned the chair around, leaning forward in fevered excitement. “Come on,
aliens
! First Contact! Unity! A glorious rainbow connecting humanity and—”

“Giant grasshoppers.”

“I could be part of something big here,” insisted Sarah, undaunted. Her chest felt hot, almost like it did before she started crying, but she wasn’t upset. She was…She was…She was certain! This was it! The perfect job! A house and good money and most of all, best of all, the chance to be where it
mattered
, to do something in a way that could change the world, two worlds! “I could do something good,” she said, and she would never know just how she looked right then, with the morning sun coming in through the dirty window and her blonde hair glowing like a halo, her eyes fever-bright with innocent joy, and her hands open and unthinkingly outstretched. Kate, four years older and infinitely more cynical, thought she looked like one of those posters that IBI had hung on the railroad cars when the bugs were first brought in off the boats and loaded onto the trains—all gaping grins and frenzied welcome, enough to put a sinking sensation in any alien bug’s stomach, except on Sarah, it was genuine.

“Don’t,” said Kate. “Please.”

“I’m doing this,” Sarah said happily, and began to fill out the online application, her thumbs flying over the key-screen. She was singing to herself as she typed, declaring to any and all listeners that she would like the buy the world a Coke.

Kate lingered, her expression dark and uncertain. Several times, she seemed about to speak, but never did. She shifted from foot to foot instead, late for work and getting later, just watching until Sarah, with a flourish, thumbed the Send button.

The paz counted out sixty-eight long seconds, sending, and chirped.

“They’ll never call you back,” said Kate.

But they did.

CHAPTER TWO

It was amazing how many simple-minded sons of bitches there were for sale in the world. Damek van Meyer thought this quite often and the thought always made him happy in a way that nothing—not money, not works of art, not the sight of powerful men in defeat or beautiful women in naked decadence—ever could. The world was filled with ignorant and avaricious men, and if a man had the means to purchase them, that man could easily rule the world. How tragic it was that only now, in what the natives of this country liked to call ‘the golden years’ of his life did van Meyer acquire the means.

He had spent his youth in petty pursuits, as all youth do. His were more to do with carrying guns across invisible borders and putting drugs into softened hands, but petty things were all they were. Even his ambitions were not so much higher. He had been born into slums, where his most fevered wishes had been no greater than to rule the filthy streets of his spawning. Achieving that, he wished to be warlord over his own army and end the reigns of those who kept him small now. And so it went, like ripples expanding outward in still waters, never setting his goals further than what he could already see within his reach, never
imagining
…but that, ha, was before the bugs.

Look at him now. And look at them, those bleating sheep, those soft-bellied fools. Through the one-way glass of this small antechamber, van Meyer watched the auditorium of Cottonwood’s convention center fill with people. Good Americans, every one, handpicked for their lack of training, their lack of skill, lack of resources and lack of purpose. If he were not so pressed to acquire social workers, he would give them all guns.

“Mr. van Meyer? It’s ten o’clock.”

“
Danke
, Piotr. We’ll give five minutes more,
ja
? To settle. What could be more American than to be fashionably late?”

Piotr laughed dutifully, but van Meyer knew he was being humored. That his ass, to coin the phrase, was kissed. He did not mind. To have his ass kissed by Piotr Lantz was as soothing as warm towels for the hand on a cold and rainy night. He had been a young man when he first found Piotr scavenging in the streets he had made himself master over—a hungry child, slitting throats of beggars for a handful of coins. For the cost of a hot meal and a gun, he had won the boy to his service for all these years. He was not an intelligent man, his Piotr, but a hyena upon two legs, possessed of animal cunning and cruel humor, a squat and somehow crooked sort of creature now past his prime, but still deadly. With a thousand Piotrs at his side, he would not even need the bug.

“What do you think of them?” van Meyer asked, jutting his chin at the glass.

Piotr came to see, his reflection ghostly in the mirror. “Soft bunch. Tofu-eaters.”

“
Ja
.”

“And that one.” Piotr’s stubby finger smudged the glass. “Little Pollyanna in the first row. She came in
singing
.”

Van Meyer laughed. Little Pollyanna, yes. He’d noticed her. Younger than most at twenty-four, but old enough that humming happy tunes in public caught stares. Pretty, if thin-faced to his eye. Fair-haired, blue-eyed. The picture of hope in its fullest flower. A cursory ISP-scan revealed no subversive websites, no internet habits at all, beyond an abandoned avatar page, a handful of foolish comics and video viewing ports, and a subscription to something called a
Brookings Bugle
. Her history was that of low-paying menial jobs and prolonged unemployment leading inexorably deeper into poor credit, desperate financial circumstances. Perhaps slightly above average intelligence on testing, despite mediocre performance in school and no higher learning. Clean body, clean genes. A blank slate.

And she was singing. Van Meyer could just make out the strain of it through the glass if the other noises died just so. He could even name the tune:
Over the Rainbow
, wordlessly hummed, over and over. She smiled as she sang, looking brightly out the window at the white face of the containment wall. Little Pollyanna.

“Ah, but we wouldn’t mind a slice,
nee
?” he joked, still not looking at his companion. “A little sweety to clear the palate, as it were?”

Piotr grunted agreement, but without much interest. Women were, to Piotr, as gloves. He fit them over his hand and used them, then forgot. Van Meyer could recall a night when his dangerous young hyena had gone with him to a brothel he knew, found it closed, and gone instead to the music shop next door, where he had killed the cashier and fucked all three patrons—ages eighteen, forty, and sixty-three—before shooting them as well. He did not kill every woman he took to his brutish bed, but when war and lust are one’s only entertainments, it stands to reason one kills many. Van Meyer tried to keep him well-stocked and away from the sheep.

“Ah, I suppose it is time,” he said with a smile. Past time. The sheep were seated now, shifting, restless. “Let us go, my friend, and do good work.”

Piotr laughed again, dutiful Piotr. The IBI logo,
We Do Good Work
, had been van Meyer’s idea.

He smiled at Pollyanna as he passed her table and she smiled back, naturally. Women felt safe smiling at him. He had a grandfather’s smile now, a grandfather’s walk. A tall man, still a striking man, he dressed well, carried well, spoke well, albeit with an accent he had cultivated to a polish and not to extinction. Dutch blood, tempered by many generations in African sheets, gave him good temper and well-aged good looks. He wore spectacles now when he read. He carried a handkerchief and offered it now and then, gallantly. He did not carry the guns he sold. He carried the men who fired them.

“Good morning,” he said to the room filled with his newest acquisitions. “I am Damek van Meyer, chief executive of International Bureau of Immigration. This is my associate and head of IBI security, Mr. Piotr Lantz.”

A smattering of hellos, some of them appropriately awed at having such an esteemed personage engaged in such a menial duty as this orientation seminar, but most oblivious to the honor. This was America, land of the celebrity.

“You are to be congratulated, for you have all been selected to embark upon a grand new journey in the history of our planet Earth.” Statements of this sort never failed to earn respect in the eyes of sheep, even today. Pollyanna’s pretty smile broadened as she looked up at him, all attention and innocent eyes. “If you have been following the news, then you know that there have been several human interests groups in your capitol and indeed, very close to these offices, who make demands on behalf of the residents of Cottonwood. Naturally, we wish to satisfy them. Naturally indeed, it has always been our goal to provide our guests with a human liaison, to better facilitate integration.”

Pollyanna smiled, beautiful as an angel.

“Alas, our gears grind slowly,
nee
? Slowly, but exceedingly fine. And you are here. As of this day, this moment, you are become IBI employee, and representative of entire human race.”

Pollyanna hummed under her breath, three notes, and was silent, blushing prettily.

“Today’s seminar is meant to introduce you to your duties and to your clients. Please pay close attention to this briefing and feel free to use paz or Digitel to make notes. If you do not have one—” And here he paused to let the Americans laugh. In this country, such devices were issued along with their social security numbers; it was no more possible to go along without one as the other. In this country, they did not protest RealID or Locatech, but
insisted
on it, just so long as they could also stream live video and store one million of their favorites songs. He had camps all over the world, even in his own home country, but he had to admit he loved this one best. The sheep were of the very finest stock. “—please to speak with Supply Aid department after the seminar to acquire. We want our workers to feel informed,
nee
? Connected. And to ask whatever question they should have.”

The sheep took a noisy moment to ready their technologies. Van Meyer waited. Piotr walked to the wall and leaned there, watching over the flock with a bored and ravening eye.

“And now,” said van Meyer, when all were focused once more on him. “We are all quite old enough, I see, to remember the day of First Contact? Or no?” He looked at Pollyanna.

She blushed. “I do remember, actually. I think…I think I may have seen the ship.”

“Oh? To tell us, please?”

“Well…it was a camping trip with my father. I’d gone to bed, but I woke up and left the tent for a drink. There was a noise, like thunder, only very deep, like something you felt in your bones and not your ears. I looked up and thought I saw the whole sky on fire, this huge sheet of fire, the whole thing all at once. It sort of…rolled by overhead and then it was gone.” She laughed nervously, the center of appreciative attention and uncomfortable to be there. “And I went back to bed. My dad slept through the whole thing, so of course he told me I dreamed it all. It was two days before we went home and heard the news.”

“And where was this?”

“Dunes National Park, east of Sacramento.”

“Oh
ja
? Then very likely you saw them. Lucky girl. Piotr, if you please.”

Piotr switched low the lights, brought down the video screen, and the ship appeared. He always began with a shot of the ship, the whole ship, for no matter how many times the sheep had seen it, it still impressed. It was so big, a great wedge-shaped thing, black against the morning sky, silent, ominous, alien.

“It came into our atmosphere at great speed, as you know, and made nearly two complete circuits of the Earth before coming to its eventual stop two hundred twelve miles due west of Salinas, California. In international waters. Naturally, the world trembled to see what manner of traveler might emerge. The ship did not move. So many days, it wait…” He waited out a well-rehearsed pause, then added, “And wait…”