The Klaatu Terminus (23 page)

Kosh pulled into the short driveway and beeped his horn. Seconds later, the front door opened and Emily ran out to the car, her open parka flapping in the wind. She hopped in and kissed Kosh on the cheek. Kosh put the car in gear and backed out onto the highway.

“What’s the plan, Stan?” she said.

“Chicken cacciatore,” Kosh said.

Greta had remarked, a few weeks earlier, on how much time Emily had been spending with Kosh.

“It’s unseemly,” she said.

“Oh, Greta, leave the girl alone,” Hamm said.

Greta pursed her lips and gave her head a shake. “People will talk,” she said.

It was true. Kosh and Emily spent every available hour together, more than she and Adrian ever had, and people noticed. They were careful how they behaved in public, but it was hard. People noticed how closely they walked with each other — close enough to hold hands, though they never did. People noticed how they looked at each other. It was a small town. Greta was right. People talked.

Kosh and Emily took to meeting in secret. On this night, Emily had told Greta she was spending the night at Karen’s. Karen, of course, knew what was going on. Tonight, as on many other nights, Emily would go to Kosh’s, and they would cook, and she would act as if this was her life. As if it was real.

Like little kids playing house
, she thought.

Kosh drove Adrian’s Mustang all the time now. His pickup had a bad clutch, and it was too cold to ride his bike, and what difference did it make? When Adrian got back from Jerusalem, the car would be the least of it. Again and again Kosh imagined the occasion.

Welcome back, brother. Your fiancée and I are in love. Sorry about that.

The fact that he was using the Mustang against Adrian’s express wishes was nothing, a tiny pimple on the vast, bloated sin of stealing his brother’s fiancée.

Kosh had tried to talk Emily into running away with him.

“I’ll be eighteen in a few months,” he said. “I can get a job up in Minneapolis. We can get an apartment.”

“Oh, Kosh,” Emily said sadly, putting her hand on his forearm. “It wouldn’t be fair to Adrian.”

“But you can’t marry him now!”

“I know.” Emily sighed. “I’ll break it off with him after he’s home and gets settled. I can let him down easy.”

“Adrian doesn’t do
anything
easy.”

“We’ll work it out, Kosh. For now, can’t we just be happy?”

He
was
happy. But he was also miserable. Adrian’s return was hanging over them like a time bomb, and even though it was more than two months away, he thought about it constantly.

The chicken cacciatore was a disaster. Kosh burned the chicken, Emily’s salad was oversalted, and the ice cream they’d bought for dessert turned out to be fat-free frozen yogurt that had spent too many months in the freezer at Economart. It didn’t matter. They laughed their way though the awful meal, and talked about things that had nothing to do with Adrian and the coming apocalypse, and for a time, Kosh was as happy as he had ever been since before his father died.

It was after two in the morning when Kosh dropped Emily back at Karen’s. He turned off the headlights as he approached the house so as to not wake up Karen’s parents, kissed Emily good night, then sat in the car and watched as she let herself in the side door. Driving home, the weight of what he was doing filled his belly and dragged him down, as if the burned chicken in his gut had turned to mud. Why did something so pure and clean and wonderful as his feelings for Emily have to have such a monstrous consequence attached? Why hadn’t he fallen in love with someone else? The answer was clear. There
was
no one else for him. Kosh was not big on fate or karma, but being with Emily. . . . If anything in this universe was inevitable, if anything were truly meant to be, it was his arms around Emily Ryan, his lips on her lips, his soul and her soul together forever.

It’s not my fault
, he told himself.
It just happened
.

He knew that was a cop-out, but he clung to it as the mileposts flashed by.
I could die now
, he told himself,
and my life will have been worth living —

A gauzy white figure appeared in front of him, holding its arms out as if telling him to stop. There was no time; it was too close. Kosh didn’t even have time to touch the brake pedal. The Mustang blew through the apparition. Kosh laughed shakily — it was just a bit of thick fog. He checked his rearview mirror, but saw nothing. When he looked at the road ahead he saw a deer trotting casually out onto the highway.

Deer!

Time slowed. Kosh’s foot moved from the gas pedal to the brake.

A big buck.

Tires locked, the nose of the Mustang dipped. The deer looked up and froze.

Look at the rack on that thing!

The screech of rubber on asphalt seemed muffled, as if this were happening to somebody else. There was no way he could stop in time. Lifting his foot from the brake, he jerked the wheel to the left, crossing the oncoming lane, heading for the ditch. The rear tires lost traction; the Mustang went into a spin. The rear end of the car struck the buck with a nauseating wet thud. Kosh fought the wheel, turning into the skid, and seconds later, he was motionless, the only sound that of the still-running engine, and the gasping sound of his own breathing. Kosh closed his eyes and swallowed. He sat there for a few seconds, waiting for his heart to slow, then got out.

The deer was gone. Kosh examined the Mustang. Rear quarter panel bashed in and streaked with blood. The tire was still holding air. Kosh took the tire iron from the trunk and pried the sheet metal away from the wheel. It was still drivable, but it would need bodywork. He could fix it. Adrian would never know.

Not that it mattered. A dent in the Mustang was nothing compared with the damage he and Emily were about to inflict upon his brother’s heart.

R
OMELAS
,
ca
.
3000 CE

T
HE
G
ATE WAS BACK, AS
A
WN HAD PROMISED
.

Tucker and Lia climbed the pyramid slowly, Tucker going first and helping Lia up the giant steps. She didn’t really need his help, but it was an excuse to touch her.

The disko was now positioned over a different facet of the pyramid. Tucker stood a few feet from its shimmering surface, staring into it as if the swirls and coruscations could tell him something.

“Do you trust Awn?” Lia asked.

Tucker shrugged. “I’m not even sure she’s the same Awn I met before.” He turned to Lia. “She’s kind of odd-looking, don’t you think?”

“She is very smooth.”

“Like she just popped out of a mold.”

“She told me her name stands for Augmented Whorsch-Novak golem. Whorsch-Novak sounds like a Boggsian name, but what’s a golem?”

“A creature made out of earth or clay, or something. I think it’s an old Jewish legend. Awn — the other Awn — once told me that the Boggsians are Amish Jews.”

“And they make
golems
?”

“I don’t know.” The disko changed color from gray to green. “Something’s coming.” Tucker backed away. The disko pulsed and buzzed, and a Klaatu emerged, an indistinct blobby-looking shape, like the one that had guided Tucker into the disko in Harmony. The Klaatu drifted up until it was suspended about twenty feet above the disko.

“What do you think it wants?” Lia said.

“Mostly, I think they just like to watch.” Tucker raised his voice. “Hey! Can you hear me up there?”

The Klaatu did not respond.

“I think you can only talk to them through a machine,” Lia said.

The Klaatu drifted down to the level of the disko. The disko pulsed orange; the Klaatu was gone.

“Are you ready?” Tucker asked.

“Hold my hand,” Lia said. They entered the portal together.

Tucker and Lia landed on either side of the ridge on Kosh’s barn. If they hadn’t been holding on to each other, one or both of them might have tumbled off. Tucker grabbed the weathervane and pulled Lia up beside him.

“I’ve been here before,” Lia said.

“This is Kosh’s barn. I used to live here.” It was cold. Not as cold as the North Pole, but after the tropical climate of Romelas, the wind felt frigid. Judging from the nearly leafless trees, it was late fall. A thin, steady stream of smoke rose from the chimney at the far end of the barn.

“Looks like he’s home.” Tucker let go of Lia’s hand, worked his way around the weathervane, and followed the ridge to the chimney. One of Kosh’s motorcycles — the Triumph — was lying on its side in a mud puddle to the side of the driveway. It wasn’t like Kosh to leave his bike like that. Next to the bike was an SUV.

Tucker backed away from the edge. Lia said, “What is it?”

“I’m not sure,” Tucker said. “But it’s not good. We’d better get down. Come on.” They edged around the weathervane, crawled under the disko, and followed the ridge to the far end of the barn.

“Uh-oh,” Tucker said. The rungs nailed to the side of the barn only went down halfway. He remembered Kosh ripping off the bottom rungs. “How did you get down last time you were up here?” he asked Lia.

She peered over the edge. “There was a ladder.”

“Well, it’s gone.” The bottommost rung was a good twenty feet above the ground. Tucker figured he could hang from the last rung and drop to the ground safely — he’d fallen a lot farther than that when the disko had dropped him onto the ice pack at the Pole — but he would have to find a way to get Lia down.

They heard voices coming from the back side of the barn.

“That is the language of Romelas,” Lia whispered.

Tucker nodded. It was as he feared. The Lambs were here, which meant that Kosh was in serious trouble. If he was alive.

“There they are,” Lia said. They ducked behind the roof ridge. Three men dressed in hunting garb were entering the woods. One of them was limping.

“Do you know them?” Tucker asked.

“I can’t tell.”

“I might have to leave you up here for a bit,” Tucker said.

“No,” Lia said flatly. “We will both go.”

“I can drop down from the bottom rung. I’ll have to find a ladder for you.”

“I’ll jump too,” Lia said.

“It’s too high.”

“I’ll climb down you.”

For a moment Tucker was confused, then he got it.

“Okay, let’s go.” Tucker let himself over the edge and descended the rungs. Lia followed. When Tucker reached the bottommost rung, he grabbed it with his hands and hung from it. Lia put her feet on his shoulders, then held on to his arms and lowered herself, wrapping her legs around his body and slowly sliding down until she was hanging on to his ankles. This brought the bottoms of her feet to within ten feet of the ground. She hung there for a few seconds, then released her grip, hit the ground, and rolled. Tucker waited for her to get out of the way, then dropped. He landed lightly on his feet. He gestured for Lia to follow him around to the front. He peeked around the corner. The door leading into the barn was standing open.

“I’m going to take a look inside,” Tucker whispered. “Wait here.” He eased around the corner. Staying close to the wall, he approached the nearest window and peeked inside.

Kosh’s workshop was illuminated by a familiar glow. Diskos. Tucker counted five of them lined up against the back wall. He ducked below the level of the window and moved to the open door. Seeing no one in the workshop, he entered. Kosh’s tools, parts, benches, and cabinets had been shoved aside, blocking the big double doors at the end of the barn, to make room for the row of diskos. Each disko was confined by a metal armature and surrounded by a flabby pink band of maggot flesh, like the captive maggot at Hopewell County Park. He heard soft footsteps from upstairs, then the sound of someone descending the spiral staircase. Quickly, he concealed himself behind an upended bench.

The person coming down the steps was a woman. Tucker stopped breathing. It was his mother — or rather the younger version of his mother he had met in his house in Hopewell. Emma, she had called herself. She stopped at the bottom step, glanced toward the diskos, then crossed to the doorway. She looked out, to the left, to the right. After a moment, she turned and approached the row of diskos.

Tucker was struck by the expression on her face, which seemed to contain both fear and sadness, with sadness predominating. She stopped in front of the leftmost disko. She gazed into its churning gray surface for a few heartbeats, then moved to the next. Tucker sensed that she was trying to decide which one to enter. She looked into each of the portals. When she reached the last one — so close Tucker could have reached out to touch her — he saw her make a decision. It was a small thing; her jaw became firm, her shoulders squared, her eyelids tightened, her knee bent slightly, and she began the forward lean that would take her into the disko. Tucker leaped over the bench and grabbed her — one arm around her waist, one hand clapped over her mouth — and dragged her back.

In a low voice, he said, “I won’t hurt you. If you want to go through the disko, I won’t stop you. But I have some questions. Do you understand?”