Part 14 (2/2)
He'd offered to help Mom and been refused. He'd been shooed away when he started to wash dishes without asking. He'd proposed in vain that she sit for a while. With Mom it could've been a gender thing; he suggested that she save the potato peeling for Carol, Kyle's sister, whose family was due around noon. Nothing worked. Dad no longer tried; he was in the den reading the morning paper.
Fine. Kyle knew from whence came his own stubbornness gene. ”Say, Mom, you mentioned a sc.r.a.pbook? I thought I'd take a look.” The St. Cloud Times was generally hard-pressed to find a local angle to national, let alone interstellar, affairs-they had covered Kyle's stint on the Galactic Commission with (to Kyle) embarra.s.sing fervor. Mom couldn't get enough, and had the fat binder full of yellow-highlighted clippings to prove it. She'd brought it up repeatedly since his arrival last night, undeterred by all changes of subject. He knew she'd sit beside him on the parlor sofa whenever he picked up the sc.r.a.pbook-and she did. As he leafed through it, he caught from the corner of his eye a self-satisfied smile. Maybe he wasn't the only one smug about an exercise in applied psychology.
Living as he did at the epicenter of events, none of the main articles were surprising. The sidebars were more diverting. Upstate Minnesota was not without its share of cranks-two had accosted him at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport, and the F'thk arrival was all the proof they needed. That no facts tied the newcomers to supposed UFO sightings and alien abductions seemed not to matter.
The important thing was that Mom was off her feet. He proceeded to read, slowly.
* * * The 7-Eleven was mobbed. Not only was the convenience store the closest approximation to an open grocery this Thanksgiving Day afternoon, but it was half-time in a tied Cowboys-Vikings game. Two men in line ahead of Kyle wore Vikings caps with soft stuffed horns. As inane NFL headgear went, he preferred Green Bay cheesehead hats. He kept the opinion to himself.
He looked randomly around the store, killing time. A full head of white hair, glimpsed in an overhead
security mirror, caught his eye. Was the stranger watching Kyle? The man began studying his boots selfconsciously as Kyle turned toward him. With a shrug, Kyle shuffled to face the checkout counter again. Thinking, This would be easier if I were Swelk, he glanced over his shoulder at the dairy case's gla.s.s door. The somehow-familiar reflection peered back at him, the guy's expression a mix of brooding and expectation.
h.e.l.l, after many years out East, Kyle was a Redskins fan. He stepped out of line.
His observer was short, maybe five-six, with a gaunt face dominated by a hawklike nose and piercing
eyes. Up close the man's hair was a pale, pale blond, not unusual here in Outer Scandinavia. Dark brown, almost black eyes with that hair were. ”Do we know each other?””Um, no.” Uncomfortable grimace around the chewed b.u.t.t of an extinguished cigar. ”Anyway, you don't know me. I feel I know you, Dr. Gustafson.”
”Oh. Media coverage of the commission. My fifteen minutes of fame.” It didn't explain why Kyle
thought he did recognize this guy. ”Sorry to have bothered you. I'm sure you have people to be with today.”As grief flooded the stranger's face, Kyle realized why the man looked so familiar.
* * * ”This will only take a few minutes,” shouted Darlene over the keening of the air popper she'd brought from home. The loud whistle of the appliance's blower was soon punctuated by the rat-a-tat salvoes of exploding corn kernels. Melting b.u.t.ter sizzled in a pan on the stove top. Darlene warmed to the familiar sounds and scents. What could be more normal than movies and popcorn?
The venue was far from normal: Thanksgiving in a safehouse with a fugitive ET. The microwave-free kitchen seemed to predate the Eisenhower administration. Cooking involved a freestanding gas range that would be used that evening to reheat the CIA-provided holiday dinners. The agents would eat, in ones and twos, at their convenience. They were invariably polite to Darlene, but at the same time intensely clannish. If she bothered with a reheated meal, she figured it would be eaten with Swelk.
Swelk lacked holiday expectations, and in any event she would synthesize her own dinner. The usual feedstock for her bioconverter was pizza crusts and leftover takeout Chinese. So, as the popcorn popped, Darlene was ”cooking” for, and feeling sorry for, only herself. Her folks, G.o.d bless them, were on a cruise. Fail to make it home for three years running, and suddenly there's an expectation. She couldn't say why she'd declined Kyle's invitation to Minnesota.
On second thought, she could: confusion over what, beside professional, her relations.h.i.+p with Kyle was supposed to be. Darlene wasn't seeing anyone at the moment, nor did she care to. Her last relations.h.i.+p, with a partner at a cut-throat DC law firm, had ended badly when he forgot how to leave the go-for-the- jugular att.i.tude at the office. Not that a covert war against interstellar aliens and the approach of Armageddon put one in the mood for a social life . . .
She had to laugh as Stripes sauntered into the kitchen from the hall. White markings around the kitten's eyes gave her an expression of permanent surprise. Cats for Swelk-sometimes Kyle's instincts were dead on. She valued Kyle as a colleague and thought they were becoming good friends. Unfortunately, his Gobi-dry humor and flirtation-impairedness had her at a loss about his intentions. Who knew what signal she'd have sent by going to meet his family? She'd think about sorting it out in a few months if civilization still existed.
Plastic popcorn bowl in one hand, a warm Diet c.o.ke in the other, Darlene backed out of the kitchen, b.u.mping the door open with a hip. ”Ready to start . . . ” she began. She turned to find Swelk splayed out on the dining-room floor, twitching. The din from the air popper had clearly obscured the thud of the ET hitting the planking. Nothing m.u.f.fled the crashes of her bowl and soda can. ”Swelk! What's wrong?”
Two agents burst in from the hall as she spoke.
”I don't know.” The computer took forever to translate. ”I suddenly could not stand on all threes. The room was spinning around me.” Swelk arose shakily, her second utterance put more quickly into English. ”Whatever it was, it is going away.”
The delayed translation was scary, bringing to mind slurred speech. Did Krulirim have strokes? ”Is there anyone we should call?” That any human physician could treat the alien was implausible, but Darlene couldn't bear not acting.
”Yes.” Sensor stalks bobbed in amus.e.m.e.nt, involuntary tremors marring the wry waggle with which Darlene had become familiar. ”My doctor is unfortunately light-years away.” In the awkward silence that followed, tremors subsided into mere tics.
”Ms. Lyons?” asked an agent economically.
”I don't see what we can do,” she told the guards. One shrugged. They left. ”Swelk, maybe we should
skip the movies.” A whiff of b.u.t.tered popcorn rose as she cleaned up the worst of her mess. One species'
aroma was another's toxic fumes. ”Does this smell bother you?”
”It was not the smell.” The digits of an extremity clenched momentarily in Krulchukor negation. ”Make
more, if you would like. As to the movies, it would comfort me to watch.”
”Okay to the movies. I'll skip the food.”
At Swelk's command, a hologram formed over the dining-room table, projected by the alien computer.
Indistinguishable Krulirim milled about a packed circular room, as writhing spiders scrolled around the bottom of the image. Opening credits? Captions for Swelk's benefit, Darlene decided, as the translator intoned, in a voice unlike what it used for Swelk, ”The Reluctant Neighbor.”
She watched from a slat-backed Shaker chair, rapt but unhappy. Fascination with the alien film was understandable. Ditto her unhappiness with Swelk's unexplained episode.
She knew she was overlooking something of extreme importance. But what?
* * * The rolling pasture was bleak and windswept, its dormant gra.s.s brittle beneath Kyle's shoes. The flapping wings of a crow breaking cover made the only sound. Then it was gone, and stillness returned.
He was a good mile from pavement. How stupid was he to let embarra.s.sment bring him here? Too late he'd realized why the man at the 7-Eleven looked so familiar: a press photo in Mom's sc.r.a.pbook.
<script>