Just Plain Weird (32 page)

    
    
As we headed for the computer department, Eliza asked, “You have any idea what it wants you to build?”

    
    
“I’m not sure,” I said. “I think maybe something to make communicating easier. The telepathy thing didn’t seem to work very well.”

    
    
We stopped at the computer department, and searched through the various makes and models. The headlights from the four by four lighted the section poorly. There were lots of shadows and dark nooks. We had to carry boxes over into the light so that we could read the specifications printed on their sides. We picked out a top-of-the-line computer that seemed to have more memory than we would ever need. From there we went, one by one, to other sections to pick up things that were on the list the artifact had injected in my mind. From communications, we picked up a pair of Cobra walkie-talkies, which was on the list, and also a Motorola base station that came with four walkie-talkies that plugged into the base of the station for recharging. This was not on the list, but I thought it was a good idea to take it; Doc could probably connect the base station to the antenna he was using for his short wave set, and then any time anyone went anywhere they could be in constant contact with whoever was at the house. From the software section, we picked up dozens of CDs. The artifact wanted anything informational, anything that would shed some light on the people of earth, whose minds worked so illogically different from the minds of the beings who’d constructed it; we loaded the back of the four by four with CDs on the English language, history, travel, computers-- anything we could find that we believed would interest the artifact. From there, with the four by four rapidly filling up, we headed to the parts department. We spent a long frustrating time in the parts department. Eliza even took a chance by shutting off the engine, to conserve gas, while keeping the headlights on and wearing down the battery. It was a painstaking task, under these conditions, to locate the right transistor or resistor, the tiny things color coded according to their specs. At one point, I grew so frustrated that I felt like tearing all the small packages off their hangers and throwing everything into the four by four and sort it all out back home. But the four by four would never have been big enough. There were thousands upon thousands of small packets, pouches and boxes of the stuff. By the time we had gathered everything we needed-- every transistor, circuit board, connector, precision tool, etc.-- and had it all packed tightly into the back of the four by four the highlights were dimming from the drain to the battery.

    
    
We got into the four by four, and Eliza turned off the headlights.

    
    
“I hope there’s enough juice left to turn the engine over,” she said as we sat in the dark.

    
    
“Maybe you shouldn’t have shut the engine off,” I suggested.

    
    
“Oh, and run out of gas?” she said snidely. She was still in a pretty surly mood. “It was either run out of gas, or take a chance on running down the battery. Those were the two choices, unless you wanted to go somewhere, find a garden hose, find an abandoned car or truck with a full tank, and siphon some off with the temperature dropping, with black snow flying all--”

    
    
“All right, all right,” I said. “Forget I mentioned anything.”

    
    
“Well, you’re the one making out this whole deal is a big emergency that couldn’t wait until tomorrow, and so we went with a half tank.”

    
    
“All right, already--” I tried to say, but she was on a roll.

    
    
“And all the time you wasted while I sat outside with the engine running--”

    
    
“It wasn’t that long,” I said, still bewildered why she believed it had been more than a minute that I’d kept her waiting outside. I gave serious consideration that maybe somehow that time itself might be messed up in some way, and that while it seemed to me that only a minute had passed, for Eliza it might have been a half hour. But I quickly shook off the idea. It was just Eliza being Eliza-- that’s all.

    
    
“--If I turn this key now, and the engine doesn’t turn over--well, I just want to make it clear that it isn’t my fault. So I don’t expect to be screamed at, understand?” she said sternly, and reached out to grab the ignition key. Before she turned the key, she turned to me in the dark, and said, almost pleasant, “Think happy thoughts, Travis.”

    
    
She turned the key. The four by four went
click click click….

    
    
We sat quietly in the darkness for a long while.

    
    
“You mad?” she asked finally.

    
    
“Uh-uh.”

    
    
“What do you want to do?”

    
    
“Wait,” I said.

    
    
“Just wait? That’s the plan?”

    
    
“Ah-hah.”

    
    
“You are mad, aren’t you?”

    
    
“No.”

    
    
“Then just say you’re not mad.”

    
    
“I’m not mad.”

    
    
“I don’t believe you. I wish I could see your face.”

    
    
I reached down for the door handle, and opened the door, swinging it out enough for the dome light to go on and dimly light the interior. I looked at her.

    
    
“Oh, you’re really not mad.”

    
    
I shut the door and the dome light went out, leaving us again in darkness. We sat in silence, waiting. I could hear the muffled sound of thunder outside. I wondered if the lightening was setting fire to the dark particles in the upper atmosphere, sending bright short-lived lights across the entire sky, like a swarm of billions of fireflies on a warm summer night. For the first time since we found ourselves in this desolate world, I started wishing everything that had happened could be undone, everything from the very beginning. I wished that it were summer, summer for real, with its hot days and warm lazy nights. I wished I could see fireflies again, drifting here and there in the darkness, flashing randomly as the crickets chirruped happily. And Eliza-- I did wish that she could be there, too, though I wished that we’d met in some different way, some way that had nothing to do with the artifact or all the turmoil that was associated with it.

    
    
Eliza reached across in the darkness, and set her hand on mine. Her palm was very warm, and she ran her thumb across my knuckles in a soothing, reassuring way.

    
    
“I’m sorry,” I said.

    
    
“You’re sorry?”

    
    
“I should have asked you about the gas.”

    
    
She grunted. “Well, we have enough to get home-- if the thing ever turns over. You think it’ll turn over?”

    
    
“Maybe-- if we sit here long enough, maybe the battery will recharge itself enough to turn the engine over once. Hopefully, that’ll be enough.”

    
    
A long while passed in silence.

    
    
“Should I try it again?” she asked.

    
    
“Not yet.”

    
    
“How much longer?”

    
    
“A bit.”

    
    
Another long time passed as we sat there quietly. I felt as though we were a married couple whose children had grown up and moved away, and left us sitting here to realize we no longer had anything to talk about. I started to think about the scavengers, who might be roaming around, gathering the crumbs that the enormous salvage ships had left behind. I could see them in my mind, probably the same way the artifact had seen them; large dark eyes filled with evil intent as they searched and searched relentlessly. We would be nothing but sacks of minerals to them-- nothing more--just two sacks of precious substances sitting idly in a vehicle in a warehouse. A queasy horror set in when I realized exactly what happened to all the people. They were not killed in a war, not take away and imprisoned and turned into slaves. No, they were dissolved by the extractor beams, their bodies reduced to molecules of iron and calcium and copper and tin… everything of which human bodies are composed. We were nothing to the invaders but walking compost piles. All this was what had happened, and for the first time I had a clear sense of what it all meant. Until now, I had been going along with everything, trying my best to cope with a situation that was hopelessly weird, never stopping, though, to think what it all meant, to put it all in prospective. And now that I was doing that, I was nothing but mad, my rage growing the more I considered it all. How dared these creatures invade the planet? How dared they not acknowledge us as intelligent beings, with spirits and souls?…

    
    
Just then, as though she could sense what I was thinking, Eliza asked, “There’s something wrong, isn’t there?”

    
    
I didn’t answer.

    
    
“You didn’t lie to me, did you, Travis?” she asked. “I would hate to think that after everything you could lie to me.”

    
    
“No, I didn’t lie to you,” I said.

    
    
“But you didn’t tell me everything you know, did you? That’s a kind of lying, you know.”

    
    
“In that case…”

    
    
She sighed miserably. “What is it, then? It must be something horrible. I know how you are; you wouldn’t lie unless it was something truly horrible. I won’t be mad at you, really. I know you think I’ll be mad at you, and maybe I should be, but I won’t. The way I’ve been feeling, I think it would be hard to be mad at you, no matter what you did. And that’s an awful thing to admit to somebody, and I hope you never take advantage of me admitting that to you. So what’s the deal? What do you know?”

    
    
“I don’t think that this is the best time for me to tell you,” I said, already feeling that I was getting into an argument I couldn’t possibly win.

    
    
“If not now, when? We appear to have plenty of time.”

    
    
“Well…”

    
    
“Well, what? Is it really
that
bad?” she asked, her voice getting a panicky edge. “Travis, you have to tell me. My mind is starting to race, here; I’m thinking all kinds of crazy things.”

    
    
“Well…”

    
    
“There goes ‘well’ again,” she cried.

    
    
“Please,” I said. “Try to keep your voice down.”

    
    
“Keep my voice down?” There was a lengthy pause, during which I could imagine how she would look if it weren’t dark; frowning so that there was a deep line running between her eyebrows, tipping her head to the side like a dog hearing a human utter a word that sounds familiar to it. “Why should I keep my voice down?” she asked, then, in a guarded way. “Travis, please tell me you have a headache-- you have a headache and that’s why you want me to lower my voice-- because it’s making your headache worse. Travis? Travis?”