The Very Best of F & SF v1 (32 page)

“Come back here!”
With my free hand I’m working the .32 out of my belt. The sun has gone down.

She doesn’t turn
but straightens up warily, still hugging the thing. I see her mouth working. Is
she actually trying to
talk
to them?

“Please...” She
swallows. “Please speak to me. I need your help.”

“RUTH!”

At this moment
the nearest white monster whips into a great S-curve and sails right onto the
bank at her, eight feet of snowy rippling horror.

And I shoot
Ruth.

I don’t know
that for a minute—I’ve yanked the gun up so fast that my staff slips and dumps
me as I fire. I stagger up, hearing Ruth scream, “No! No! No!”

The creature is
back down by his boat, and Ruth is still farther away, clutching herself. Blood
is running down her elbow.

“Stop it, Don!
They aren’t attacking you!”

“For god’s sake!
Don’t be a fool, I can’t help you if you won’t get away from them!”

No reply. Nobody
moves. No sound except the drone of a jet passing far above. In the darkening
stream below me the three white figures shift uneasily; I get the impression of
radar dishes focusing. The word spells itself in my head:
Aliens.

Extraterrestrials.

What do I do,
call the President? Capture them single-handed with my peashooter?... I’m alone
in the arse end of nowhere with one leg and my brain cuddled in meperidine
hydrochloride.

“Prrr-eese,” their
machine blurs again. “Wa-wat hep...”

“Our plane fell
down,” Ruth says in a very distinct, eerie voice. She points up at the jet, out
toward the bay. “My—my child is there. Please take us
there
in your boat.”

Dear god. While
she’s gesturing, I get a look at the thing she’s hugging in her wounded arm. It’s
metallic, like a big glimmering distributor head. What—?

Wait a minute.
This morning: when she was gone so long, she could have found that thing.
Something they left behind. Or dropped. And she hid it, not telling me. That’s
why she kept going under that bromel clump—she was peeking at it. Waiting. And
the owners came back and caught her. They want it. She’s trying to bargain, by
god.

“—Water,” Ruth
is pointing again. “Take us. Me. And him.”

The black faces
turn toward me, blind and horrible. Later on I may be grateful for that “us.” Not
now.

“Throw your gun
away, Don. They’ll take us back.” Her voice is weak.

“Like hell I
will. You—who are you? What are you doing here?”

“Oh, god, does
it matter? He’s frightened,” she cries to them. “Can you understand?”

She’s as alien
as they, there in the twilight. The beings in the skiff are twittering among
themselves. Their box starts to moan.

“Ss-stu-dens,” I
make out. “S-stu-ding... not—huh-arming... w-we... buh...” It fades into garble
and then says, “G-give... we... g-go....”

Peace-loving
cultural-exchange students—on the interstellar level now. Oh, no.

“Bring that
thing here, Ruth—right now!”

But she’s
starting down the bank toward them saying, “Take me.”

“Wait! You need
a tourniquet on that arm.”

“I know. Please
put the gun down, Don.”

She’s actually
at the skiff, right by them. They aren’t moving.

“Jesus Christ.” Slowly,
reluctantly, I drop the .32. When I start down the slide, I find I’m floating;
adrenaline and Demerol are a bad mix.

The skiff comes
gliding toward me, Ruth in the bow clutching the thing and her arm. The aliens
stay in the stern behind their tripod, away from me. I note the skiff is
camouflaged tan and green. The world around us is deep shadowy blue.

“Don, bring the
water bag!”

As I’m dragging
down the plastic bag, it occurs to me that Ruth really is cracking up, the
water isn’t needed now. But my own brain seems to have gone into overload. All
I can focus on is a long white rubbery arm with black worms clutching the far
end of the orange tube, helping me fill it. This isn’t happening.

“Can you get in,
Don?” As I hoist my numb legs up, two long white pipes reach for me.
No, you don’t.
I kick and
tumble in beside Ruth. She moves away.

A creaky hum starts
up, it’s coming from a wedge in the center of the skiff. And we’re in motion,
sliding toward dark mangrove files.

I stare
mindlessly at the wedge. Alien technological secrets? I can’t see any, the
power source is tinder that triangular cover, about two feet long. The gadgets
on the tripod are equally cryptic, except that one has a big lens. Their light?

As we hit the
open bay, the hum rises and we start planing faster and faster still. Thirty
knots? Hard to judge in the dark. Their hull seems to be a modified trihedral
much like ours, with a remarkable absence of slap. Say twenty-two feet. Schemes
of capturing it swirl in my mind. I’ll need Estéban.

Suddenly a huge
flood of white light fans out over us from the tripod, blotting out the aliens
in the stern. I see Ruth pulling at a belt around her arm, still hugging the
gizmo.

“I’ll tie that
for you.”

“It’s all right.”

The alien device
is twinkling or phosphorescing slightly. I lean over to look, whispering, “Give
that to me, I’ll pass it to.”

“No!” She scoots
away, almost over the side. “It’s theirs, they need it!”

“What? Are you
crazy?” I’m so taken aback by this idiocy I literally stammer. “We have to, we—”

“They haven’t
hurt us. I’m sure they could.” Her eyes are watching me with feral intensity;
in the light her face has a lunatic look. Numb as I am, I realize that the
wretched woman is poised to throw herself over the side if I move. With the
alien thing.

“I think they’re
gentle,” she mutters.

“For Christ’s
sake, Ruth, they’re
aliens!”

“I’m used to it,”
she says absently. “There’s the island! Stop! Stop here!”

The skiff slows,
turning. A mound of foliage is tiny in the light. Metal glints—the plane.

“Althea! Althea!
Are you all right?”

Yells, movement
on the plane. The water is high, we’re floating over the bar. The aliens are
keeping us in the lead with the light hiding them. I see one pale figure
splashing toward us and a dark one behind, coming more slowly. Estéban must be
puzzled by that light.

“Mr. Fenton is
hurt, Althea. These people brought us back with the water. Are you all right?”

“A-okay.” Althea
flounders up, peering excitedly. “You all right? Whew, that light!”
Automatically I start handing her the idiotic water bag.

“Leave that for
the captain,” Ruth says sharply. “Althea, can you climb in the boat? Quickly,
it’s important.”

Coming.

“No, no!” I
protest, but the skiff tilts as Althea swarms in. The aliens twitter, and their
voice box starts groaning. “Gu-give... now... give...”

“Qu
é
llega?”
Estéban’s face appears beside me,
squinting fiercely into the light.

“Grab it, get it
from her—that thing she has—” but Ruth’s voice rides over mine. “Captain, lift
Mr. Fenton out of the boat. He’s hurt his leg. Hurry, please.”

“Goddamn it,
wait!” I shout, but an arm has grabbed my middle. When a Maya boosts you, you
go. I hear Althea saying, “Mother, your arm!” and fall onto Estéban. We stagger
around in water up to my waist; I can’t feel my feet at all.

When I get
steady, the boat is yards away. The two women are head-to-head, murmuring.

“Get them!” I tug
loose from Estéban and flounder forward. Ruth stands up in the boat facing the
invisible aliens.

“Take us with
you. Please. We want to go with you, away from here.”

“Ruth! Estéban,
get that boat!” I lunge and lose my feet again. The aliens are chirruping madly
behind their light.

“Please take us.
We don’t mind what your planet is like; we’ll learn—we’ll do anything! We won’t
cause any trouble. Please. Oh,
please
.” The skiff is drifting farther away.

“Ruth! Althea!
Are you crazy? Wait—” But I can only shuffle nightmarelike in the ooze, hearing
that damn voice box wheeze, “N-not come... more... not come...” Althea’s face
turns to it, open-mouthed grin.

“Yes, we
understand,” Ruth cries. “We don’t want to come back. Please take us with you!”

I shout and Estéban
splashes past me shouting too, something about radio.

“Yes-s-s,” groans
the voice.

Ruth sits down
suddenly, clutching Althea. At that moment Estéban grabs the edge of the skiff
beside her.

“Hold them, Estéban!
Don’t let her go.”

He gives me one
slit-eyed glance over his shoulder, and I recognize his total uninvolvement. He’s
had a good look at that camouflage paint and the absence of fishing gear. I
make a desperate rush and slip again. When I come up Ruth is saying, “We’re
going with these people, Captain. Please take your money out of my purse, it’s
in the plane. And give this to Mr. Fenton.”

She passes him
something small; the notebook. He takes it slowly.

“Estéban! No!”

He has released
the skiff.

“Thank you so
much,” Ruth says as they float apart. Her voice is shaky; she raises it. “There
won’t be any trouble, Don. Please send this cable. It’s to a friend of mine,
she’ll take care of everything.” Then she adds the craziest touch of the entire
night. “She’s a grand person; she’s director of nursing training at N.I.H.”

As the skiff
drifts out, I hear Althea add something that sounds like “Right on.”

Sweet Jesus...
Next minute the humming has started; the light is receding fast. The last I see
of Mrs. Ruth Parsons and Miss Althea Parsons is two small shadows against that
light, like two opossums. The light snaps off, the hum deepens—and they’re
going, going, gone away.

In the dark
water beside me Estéban is instructing everybody in general to
chingarse
themselves.

“Friends, or
something,” I tell him lamely. “She seemed to want to go with them.”

He is pointedly
silent, hauling me back to the plane. He knows what could be around here better
than I do, and Mayas have their own longevity program. His condition seems
improved. As we get in I notice the hammock has been repositioned.

In the night—of
which I remember little—the wind changes. And at seven-thirty next morning a
Cessna buzzes the sandbar under cloudless skies.

By noon we’re
back in Cozumel. Captain Estéban accepts his fees and departs laconically for
his insurance wars. I leave the Parsonses’ bags with the Caribe agent, who
couldn’t care less. The cable goes to a Mrs. Priscilla Hayes Smith, also of
Bethesda. I take myself to a medico and by three P.M. I’m sitting on the
Cabanas terrace with a fat leg and a double margarita, trying to believe the
whole thing.

The cable said,
Althea and I taking extraordinary opportunity for travel.
Gone several years. Please take charge our affairs. Love, Ruth.

She’d written it
that afternoon, you understand.

I order another
double, wishing to hell I’d gotten a good look at that gizmo. Did it have a
label, Made by Betelgeusians? No matter how weird it was,
how
could a person be crazy
enough to imagine—?

Not only that
but to hope, to plan?
If I could only
go away....
That’s what she was doing, all day.
Waiting, hoping, figuring how to get Althea. To go sight unseen to an alien
world...

With the third
margarita I try a joke about alienated women, but my heart’s not in it. And I’m
certain there won’t be any bother, any trouble at all. Two human women, one of
them possibly pregnant, have departed for, I guess, the stars; and the fabric
of society will never show a ripple. I brood: do all Mrs. Parsons’s friends
hold themselves in readiness for any eventuality, including leaving Earth? And
will Mrs. Parsons somehow one day contrive to send for Mrs. Priscilla Hayes
Smith, that grand person?

I can only send
for another cold one, musing on Althea. What suns will Captain Estéban’s
sloe-eyed offspring, if any, look upon? “Get in, Althea, we’re taking off for
Orion.”

“A-okay, Mother.”
Is that some system of upbringing?

We
survive by ones and twos in the chinks of your world-machine.... I’m used to
aliens....
She’d meant every
word. Insane. How could a woman choose to live among unknown monsters, to say
good-bye to her home, her world?