Just Plain Weird (20 page)

         
I shrugged. “I don’t feel any different. I think, though, that I’m seeing things in another light-- you know, as though I’m looking at every little thing from a different point of view. I’m realizing new things every single minute, it seems-- sometimes. Then there are other times that it seems like--” I had to pause here, struggling to find the right words to describe a strange feeling-- “It
 
feels like something is being taken back, too.”

         
“Taken back?” he wondered.

         
“Yeah. Not stolen or anything, but swapped. I learn something, sure, but then I teach something, too. I don’t think it’s harming me in any way, though it can be a bit--distracting. Sometimes, I suddenly recall a memory-- not the way that memories normally occur to you, but as though the memory is being drawn to the front of my mind. Like suddenly a word, a common word-- like ‘family’ will pop up. Sometimes it just comes and goes, in the blink of an eye, and sometimes it lingers there as though I am puzzling over it, only it isn’t me that’s doing the puzzling. At other times, it is something more complicated than a word; it might be a feeling or some event that I had lived through at one time. I don’t think any of it is doing me any harm, though. Even the sad memories that pop up don’t seem so very sad, although when I think about them at other times they are very sad…. Once, when I was about four years old, we had a dog, Herbie, that ran out in the street and got run down by a passing truck. I saw the whole thing. I saw him go under the truck. I heard him cry. I saw what was left over after the truck was gone. I had nightmares about it for-- well, a long time. Even now, when I think of that dog, I’ll feel bad, but that’s when I think of him on my own. I had the same memory earlier, and I didn’t feel sad at all-- I didn’t feel anything-- as though the event was just a plain simple fact, with no emotions attached to it. It was interesting really; that memory popped up just after the word ‘friend.’ I don’t know, I think seeing things in the two different ways is letting me learning more about myself somehow. It’s definitely not hurting me, though, and I don’t feel the least bit different-- just more aware of things that are happening and that have happened in the past.”

         
“Well, you sure seem different to me,” Mr. Laughton now commented. “Anyway, I have some serious thinking to do. I think I’ll go down to my office,” he added, as though that were the place where all great ideas were conceived. Then he suggested I go upstairs and talk with Eliza. “She’s probably brooding up a storm right now. It’s the first door on the right. Knock loud-- sometimes she has her headphones on, listening to music really loud.”

         
I walked up the carpeted stairs, and as soon as I turned the corner to head for her room, I heard a door shut. Not only wasn’t she in her room, listening to music, she had been creeping around upstairs, no doubt trying to eavesdrop on what her father and I had been saying. I found it both amazing and comforting that I understood her so well despite the fact we had just met. I knew she could be sneaky, and knowing this somehow made her not sneaky at all.

         
When I reached her room, I rapped on the door hard.

         
“Who is it?” I heard her say.

         
Who is it? I laughed inside. This girl kills me.

         
“Travis.”

         
“Oh, Travis, my room’s a mess,” she said.

         
“It is not,” I said. “It looked perfectly neat through the telescope.”

         
Abruptly the door swung open. She grabbed my arm, yanked me inside, and shut the door again.

         
“You did not see this room through the telescope,” she said, rankled. “Nobody sees my room. I mean, I’ll allow you to now, though you hardly deserve to, but normally nobody sees it-- not even Doc. It’s sanctum sanctorum-- that’s Latin. You know what it means?”

         
“Yeah, I know what it means,” I said, and oddly I did.

         
“What?”

         
“Inner sanctum, a private place, or the place where the Ark of the Covenant is hidden.” I looked around her room; I didn’t see the Ark of the Covenant around. In fact, her room was almost as starkly furnished as the living room. There was a single bed in one corner next to the window. On the opposite wall, there was a dresser next to a set of bookshelves half filled with books. More could be learned about the person who slept here by what you didn’t see. There were no clothes scattered on the floor. There were no posters taped to the walls. There wasn’t a single stuffed animal anywhere. And everything that was there was neatly hidden away in drawers or in the closet. The books neatly lined the bookshelves, and were in alphabetical order. Even the top of the dresser was clear of debris or adornments, and was obviously dusted regularly, as there was no dust, just a shiny piece of oak that smelled like lemon.

         
“What do you think?” she asked.

         
Here I couldn’t stop thinking of a bumper sticker I’d once seen that said: NEATNESS IS THE SIGN OF A SICK MIND. “It’s very-- tidy,” I said, but had a hard time making it sound like a good thing.

         
“I suppose Doc and you are finished with all the serious talk for the day,” she said, not even trying to hide that she was annoyed at being left out. “Well, that’s the way it ought to be, I suppose. Nothing I have to say could possibly be of any consequence, I’m sure-- I would just be a hindrance to the onrush of pithy concepts.”

         
“Eliza, please--”

         
“Oh, no, don’t get me wrong,” she said, now sounding truly wounded. “I understand-- I really do. Two heads are better than one-- two’s company, three’s a crowd-- these truths are self-evident.”

         
She carried on like such a brat I felt like going home. “I’d think you’d be at least a little excited at the thought of getting your mother back.”

         
“Oh, really,” she said. “Why is that? Have you ever met my mother? How do you know she’s not an abominable witch? Maybe I’m glad to be rid of her.”

         
“Is she?-- an abominable witch?”

    
    
“No, no, she’s not,” Eliza said solemnly, “but then how could you know that?”

         
“You know, when you’re like this, there’s no point in even trying to talk with you,” I said, and made a move to leave.

         
“No, Travis, please,” she said, and grabbed my arm. “I’m sorry-- don’t leave, please. I don’t know what’s happening. I just can’t help it sometimes. I’m stuck up here…. You know, I feel like a piece of furniture or something-- just an extra piece of baggage. Just like all the times Doc dragged us all over the place, digging for his pieces of broken pottery-- just another piece of luggage…. Don’t be mad at me,” she added in such a heartbreaking way it was impossible to be mad at her.

         
“Doc is in his office, trying to figure out a plan to rescue your mother,” I said.

         
“What did you find out?” she asked, all innocent.

         
“Like you don’t know.”

         
“I don’t,” she insisted, and then quickly went on, “Well, okay, I heard some of it, but not enough to know the whole deal. After you leave, Doc doesn’t say anything-- he just goes over his notes again and again. Is it true, though, that the artifact is really communicating with you?”

         
“Yeah.”

         
“Then you know all about the people who built it.”

         
I had to think a moment. Everything Doc and I had gone over dealt with the operation of the artifact, to the exclusion of all other information the artifact was sending me. “Yeah, actually I do.”

         
“Well, why don’t you sit down and tell me about them?”

         
“Sit where?”

         
“Just come here, and sit on my bed with me.”

         
I glanced at the shut door, and said, “I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

         
“What do you mean?”

         
“Your father might not like that.”

         
“Doc,” she snorted. “Doc can take a flying leap at a falling fig. I don’t care what he likes,” she said, and started tugging my by the arm toward her bed.

         
I sat on the edge of the bed, while she sat in the center with her legs crossed in front of her.

         
“Okay, tell me what you know. I’ve always been very curious. Do they have, like, fives eyes or anything?”

         
“No,” I said. “Actually you might be disappointed.”

         
“Why?”

         
“Well, they don’t sound much different from us, really. Try to imagine us in about ten thousand years.”

         
“Really old,” she said, and she laughed. It was a forced laugh that didn’t sound right. It was clear she was trying way too hard. “I was just kidding. Seriously, do you know what happened to them?-- the ones who landed here.”

         
“It doesn’t know. All it knows is that the leader-- there is no word in English for his title, but I guess you’d call it ‘commander’, though it’s really not that impersonal-- anyway, the commander sent out a scouting party, about thirty people, and they never returned. When he sent out a search party, it never returned. Every search party he sent out never returned. They were people who, while exploring, never believed in leaving anyone behind. Their actions in rescue efforts were driven by sentimentality, not common sense. So the commander kept sending out search parties until the entire crew was expended, over seven hundred people. The last six people on the ship-- I guess you’d call them officers-- finally left the ship, never to be seen again. That was about 15,000 years ago.”

         
Eliza was enthralled. “And the artifact was left alone for all those years.”

         
“Just waiting,” I said.

         
“For the crew to return?”

         
“Yeah, all the way up until you found it,” I told her. “When you and your parents showed up, it believed you were descendants of the crew, returning to retrieve it.”

         
“That’s very sad, if you stop to think about it,” she remarked. “Makes me think of a little puppy left out in the rain, waiting at the back door for his master to let him in.”

         
“Yeah, it is.”

         
“And the people weren’t very different, you said?”

         
“Not really. They had hopes and dreams and fears. They met, got married, and had children. You know how they say ‘love at first sight’?”

         
“Yeah,” she said, leaning forward, very interested.

         
“Well, here it happens, but it’s rare. With them, it’s always like that-- it’s always love at first sight. It’s just something that’s in their nature.”

         
“Really?”

         
“Yeah,” I said, and added in afterthought, “Actually it’s pretty practical-- never having to waste much time wondering about where you stand with somebody.”

         
“What else?”

         
“Well, because of it, they get married younger-- like, maybe the equivalent of sixteen. There’s never any fear of it not working out, because it always does. It always lasts until they die, although most of the time they live to be all over two hundred. There’s no such thing as divorce; it unheard of-- their language doesn’t even have a word for it.”