Distant Cousin: R e p a t r i a t i o n
a novel
Al Past
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2006 Al Past
Also by Al Past at Smashwords
What sets worlds in motion is the interplay of differences, their attractions and repulsions. Life is plurality.
Octavio Paz
1
March
Goddam west Texas, anyway! Not a damn thing in it, and it went on forever! He'd driven nearly all day long and seen less and less the farther he got from Austin: abandoned shacks (some of adobe), rusty railroad tracks alongside occasional empty cattle pens, a few windmills and oil wells, scraggly barbed wire fences, a couple ranch headquarters, random dispirited cows and goats, sticker bushes out the wholesale, a couple dozen buttes and hills, and no water to speak of anywhere. And here he was inching along through the middle of it. He shook his head--he was a driven man. The lame pun made him smile grimly.
At least there was time to think. Hell, there was so little traffic on the interstate he could even read. He flipped open the binder lying on the passenger seat next to him and glanced at the headline of the newspaper article he had clipped in as page one: "Starchild Lands in West Texas, Remembered by Many Local Citizens." He knew the article and the pictures that went with it almost by heart.
A half dozen photographs showed the "starchild" variously riding a bicycle in front of a group of other cyclists, sprinting down the center lane of a stadium track, and sailing through the air in a variety of attitudes. In one, she was frozen like a bird in flight, arms outspread, three stories over a crystal blue pool, in another, stretched out horizontally over a bar, and in a third, midair in a sitting position with her feet in front of her and arms down, appearing to float over the sand in the long jump pit. All these photos were from the previous Olympic Games in Ireland, and in all of them she was wearing several iterations of skimpy Team Barbados uniforms in blue and yellow.
His next-to-favorite was not from the Olympics; it was her "wanted" poster, taken by some SWAT team that had briefly captured her in Texas, in which she was looking into the camera with a scared and vulnerable expression on her face.
Where was his favorite, flip, flip, flip, ah, there it was: a full page photo from Sports Illustrated, showing her from the collar bones up, hair wet and slicked back, face tilted down but eyes staring straight into the camera. It had evidently been taken as she concentrated before a dive from the high platform, probably from a camera all the way across the pool. The face was angular and keen and the eyes penetrated into his brain like lasers.
Suddenly a deafening howl shattered his reverie, as if banshees were after him. Shit! He was driving on the shoulder! Whoa! Get it back in the lane, man! His heart was pounding. There were no other vehicles in sight—damn! Pay attention, you bone head! His quest had only just started, and wouldn’t it be just flat pathetic to ruin it with a car accident in the first few hours? When his heart rate settled down again, he risked another quick glance at the notebook.
The text of the newspaper piece told the story of how the "starchild" had supposedly come to the moon from her distant home planet to observe Earth, which she had decided was where her people had originated. Disobeying her orders to merely observe the planet, she left the moon and landed in the Davis Mountains to warn her “distant cousins” of approaching meteoroids, but some of those cousins thought she was crazy and others thought she was some kind of exotic threat, and chased her all over west Texas. She devised a desperate plan to make her way to the Olympic Games, where she created a worldwide sensation by winning six gold medals, using the opportunity to publicize the danger to the planet. The article went on to mention a half dozen or so west Texans who had had dealings with her. He had notes on all of them.
Reporters from everywhere had tried to locate her ever since. All had failed. But he would not fail! No, by God! He would be the one who found her! He would see that face in person, or else. He would do it or die trying!
He lit yet another cigarette, satisfying but not as good as the alternative—better not to think about the alternative. In the far distance, where the interstate dwindled to two thin, dark lines, mountains began to loom on the horizon. Finally! Assuming he could locate the Indian Lodge State Park and get a camping permit, he could take a shower, eat a can of corned beef, down a couple beers, and see if he could get any sleep in the back seat of his car. Tomorrow his future would begin.
"Dr. Harcroft, there's someone here to see you. He says he's a writer."
"A writer? What day is this? Tuesday? He's early, isn't he? Dammit, what was his name? Oh, screw it--I have more time this morning than I will the rest of the week. Send him in."
"Dr. Harcroft? I'm Scott Zimmer."
"Come in, Mr. Zimmer. You work for National Geographic, right?"
"Uh, actually, sir, I write for several magazines. I freelance, you see."
"Hmm. I thought you were bringing a photographer with you."
"Oh, uh, he must be delayed. He was coming from El Paso. I drove up from Austin."
"Yes, well, whatever. Have a seat, Mr. Zimmer. I believe you're writing a piece about those meteoroids that the Russians are about to blow the hell out of?"
"Yes, sir. The whole thing makes an incredible story."
"I think 'incredible' might be the exact word for it. I still maintain it's a long shot that those two particular meteoroids will collide, not to mention send their debris into Earth's path. My fellow astronomers disagree about the matter, but it's certainly true that we cannot afford to assume they will not. If they did strike the Earth, our whole civilization would probably be obliterated."
"Yes, sir. It's also incredible how it all began, isn't it? With that young woman who turned up here one morning, right? The woman from another planet? Bringing the warning?"
"She says she's from another planet, but I wouldn't bet my life on it. I mean, there are so many billions of other galaxies out there, each with billions of stars and planets, that it seems possible that life would exist on at least a few of them--but human life? Humans who originated here in the first place? What are the odds of that, do you suppose?"
"I couldn't guess, sir. But she sure was an unearthly fine athlete at the Olympic Games. And she says another group of her people will be arriving here soon. We might find out then...."
"We might, we might indeed. But again, I wouldn't bet my life on it."
"No, sir. You know, it might help if she would be interviewed for this article. Do you have any means of contacting her, perhaps?"
"I do not. As far as I know she keeps an extremely low profile. She's only shown up a couple of times since she was here nearly two years ago. I don't even know anyone who might know where she is."
"I see. Uh, Dr. Harcroft, I'm sorry that photographer is late. I'm sure he's on his way. It will save you time if I can do the rest of the interview while he does his shooting, so if it's all right I'll just step outside and call him on my cell phone and find out when he's getting here. I'll let your secretary know when we can continue. I trust that will be all right with you. Thank you, sir."
He walked straight to his car in a visitor's slot, got in, and headed down the mountain. Being mistaken for a National Geographic staff writer had been an uncommon piece of good luck. He'd figured it would be tough to even see the good astronomer from a distance, but instead it was a breeze. Too bad he didn't really work for National Geographic. Maybe some day he would, after this little endeavor bore fruit. Then he could do any damn thing he wanted.
It wasn't surprising that Harcroft didn't know how to contact Starchild, but he had been the logical place to start. There were plenty other leads. He couldn't risk looking at his binder again while he drove down the winding mountain road, but he didn't need to. The contacts were in there, the day was still young, and the town of Alpine was only a half hour away. He'd find Starchild sooner or later. He'd bet his life on it.
2
Their home, this peaceful spring afternoon, was the finest thing Matt could imagine. This golden day was worth remembering forever. The room glowed with sunlight, having passed through the dry desert air of southern New Mexico, bounced off the rocky dun mountains, and filtered through the tall cottonwood trees around the house. The smells of fresh construction—paint and plaster—hinted at new comfort and convenience. Birds twittered in the distance, trees sighed whenever a breeze jostled them, and a vehicle or two swooshed down old Highway 28 on the other side of the family compound. The Rio Grande was surely twinkling in its eternal way on the other side of the highway.
The twins were napping soundly and Darcy...what was Darcy up to? Ah! A chair creaked out on the porch, the former porch, that is. The gallery across the back of their little house was so pleasant that they decided to keep it even while they added rooms on both sides. A new wall across the back created a little patio in the middle of their house. She must be sitting at the table out there, working on something.
He tossed the dish towel onto the counter, eased into his reading chair, and began rubbing Foosh with his toes. The cat, glowing in a beam of sunlight, remained motionless, purring softly, eyes closed. It was calmer now that his parents had returned to Albuquerque. He’d never seen his mother so excited. He’d have thought becoming a grandparent would have made her feel old, but the reality seemed to be the opposite. Maybe he was the one getting older—everything he saw in the room brought back memories.
The little Virgen de Guadalupe on the wall, a gift from his mother, carried his thoughts back to his visits to Darcy in the hospital. He’d been there constantly after the twins were born, astonishingly tiny, at four pounds something each. They lost a few ounces over the following days, though they soon gained it back. He had run into a nurse who remembered him from six months before when he’d been a patient, getting a knife wound sewn up. She had shyly asked him to follow her to the 24th floor.
By the door to the helopad she showed him an impromptu shrine off to one side: a small statue of the Virgen de Guadalupe surrounded by votive candles and dried roses under a creditable amateur painting of a golden-haired angel with spread wings and a compassionate expression, her eyes cast downward. She asked him if he remembered being delivered to the helopad. “Not really,” he fudged. “An angel brought you,” the nurse whispered, glancing reverently at the little shrine and then back at him, her eyes wide. “My friend actually saw her!” The next day, walking around with Darcy, he took her to that floor and showed it to her. “The nurse said an angel brought me,” he told her. “It’s true. I told her I didn’t remember it, but I do.” Darcy said nothing but clasped his hand and laid her head on his shoulder. She had actually left him there.
Foosh raised his head and yawned, showing tiny sharp fangs and pink tongue. The cat stretched and settled himself again where Matt could keep rubbing him. The knife wound was another thing he’d never forget. Darcy had gone off on the sly to meet with some unexpectedly early visitors from her planet, and one of them had stowed away on her trip back home, raising unholy hell when he arrived. He was deranged for some reason, and when Matt tried to keep him from hurting Darcy, the guy had nearly killed him. She had flown him to the emergency room, disappearing immediately and earning herself the title of “angel.” It was pretty close to the truth, he mused.
What a pleasant afternoon! Was there anything in sight that didn’t bring memories flooding back? He shifted his eyes twenty degrees.
A dictionary lay open on the coffee table. Darcy had wanted a definition for the word “chrestomathy.” Matt had had no idea, so she looked it up. Her vocabulary was better than his in many cases, even though her first language, Luvit, was spoken on a planet twenty five light years distant. She still had trouble with some of the idioms, but she never hesitated to ask when she needed a word or term. She was nothing if not curious.
He shifted his focus twenty more degrees. On the same table was a large book about the history of the Olympic Games. Darcy didn’t want anything visible in the house that would connect to her “real” self, but even so, the book reminded Matt of the months Darcy had been scared half to death and hunted by the government as a possibly hostile alien of some kind. She figured out how to parlay her physical advantages into six gold medals in the Olympic Games in Ireland. He seldom thought about it any more, but every time he did the whole episode seemed incredible. He’d helped her by leading her to Dr. James Sledd, who suggested that if she became famous, people would finally pay attention to her prediction of danger to Earth. Was he ever right! Darcy had been genetically tuned at birth to metabolize food faster than most people, and she was capable of moving much more quickly than “normal” people. Her Olympic coaches built on those advantages and guided her to successes the world was still talking about. The downside was that she hated being famous. She seemed perfectly content to live quietly, to care for their twins, continue her studies of Earth, to cook, exercise, and be a wife.
Matt still couldn’t believe that he and Darcy finally connected and that he had eventually convinced her to marry him. Lottery winners were small potatoes next to him. Their present life was as close to heaven as he dared imagine.
He got up and padded out to the porch to see what his wife was up to.
3
Alpine was a surprisingly lovely little town. Even so, he bet he could score some weed after only twenty minutes of looking. He quickly suppressed that thought—he had no money to speak of, and that was never the way he was going to find Starchild, or even his own child, come to that.
The lobby of a motel provided him with a free map and using that he headed toward the outskirts of town, on the trail of Dr. James Sledd. Sledd, some kind of egghead scholar—who knew what he was doing way the hell out here—was mentioned in the newspaper article as having collaborated with Starchild, better known as Ana Darcy, on an investigation of her native language, which was apparently related somehow to English and Polish and a bunch of others. Sledd’s house turned out to be a nice looking place in an upscale neighborhood. A solid-looking elderly man with thinning white hair answered his ring.
“Dr. Sledd?”
“Yes. What can I do for you, young man?”
“My name is Scott Zimmer, sir. I’m writing an article for Texas Monthly about the contributions to scholarly knowledge Ms. Ana Darcy has brought to the world, and of course, to Texas.” All lies, but plausible lies, surely. “I wonder if you would be able to fill me in a little about that, sir, if you could, please.”
“Are you indeed?” he replied, looking him up and down. “Have you read the book she is responsible for, A Linguistic Analysis of Luvit, published by Yale University Press last year?”
“I’ve looked at it, yes, sir, but I didn’t get too far before I bogged down. It was pretty technical....”
“Well, then, I suggest you try harder to get through it. Her ‘scholarly contributions’ are quite in evidence in that volume, and fully comprehensible to the determined reader. Once you have done so, I would be glad to talk to you further.”
“Uh...I’ll do that, sir. In the meantime, I wonder if you are in contact with Ms. Darcy at all?”
“I am not. Our collaboration was entirely by email, and I don’t think she still uses the same email address. Good day to you, sir.” And he shut the door.
Well, screw you, Dr. Sledd, he thought, as he headed for his car. You were one of my better leads, you old fart. Still, I have a couple more arrows in my quiver. Keep plugging, Zimmerooski.
It was no problem to find Sul Ross State University, but running down the office of the coach of women’s athletics required asking three students for directions. Once he realized he should be asking a woman student, he found it easily enough. The damn office was locked, though. A schedule posted on the door suggested that she was at lunch. Well, it was lunch time.
He returned to his car, unfortunately parked in the sun, and sweated while he consumed two packets of cheese and crackers, two Slim Jims, and a Milky Way. Bon appetit, Zimmer. At 1:15 pm, after a cigarette, he returned to the office. She was there.
Lisa Pérez, the coach in question, turned out to be a lively, fortiesh woman, crisply dressed, and someone happy to see him for a change. “I didn’t know her well,” she said, “but I was aware from her first days in Alpine that she was an unusually gifted athlete. Of course, I didn’t know she was from another planet, or that she would go on to set all those records at the Olympic Games. Those totally shocked me, and then a week after the Olympics were over, I was shocked even more, just like everyone else, to see her on that interview program giving the medals back, and warning about those meteor things. I guess you remember that too, probably, right?”
“Yes, I do. In fact, the more I think about it, the more it amazes me. I wish I could interview her for this article. You don’t happen to know how to get in touch with her, do you?”
“Golly. I sure don’t. She said on her website—you’ve seen her website, right?—that she had a shyness problem. I think she’s lying low somewhere. I have no idea where.”
Nuts. Try a different tack, Zimmer. “Hmm. Well, if you were going to get in touch with her, what do you think you would do?”
“Wow, I dunno. I might take another look at her website, you know? It mentions that organization she set up, the Second Planet Foundation? They might have their own website. Someone has got to be in charge of it, don’t you reckon?”
“Yeah, good idea. I’ll try it. Thanks—you’ve been very helpful.”
“Don’t mention it. If you do talk to her, tell her Lisa Pérez said hello. She’s a sweet, sweet girl.”
“I’ll do that. I’ll surely do that.”
He sat in his burning hot car a few minutes before starting the engine. This was not looking good, not looking good at all. He was beginning to sense the cold, hairy fingers of yet another failure reaching for him. How had things gone so wrong? His life was headed straight for the toilet. He and Julie had had five—ok, three and a half—years of married bliss, but somehow it headed south. They’d hoped their little daughter Madison would perk up their family, but it hadn’t happened that way. Having a child just meant even more responsibilities, more demands on his time, and less money to go around. Marriage counseling had been excruciating, humiliating and something he learned to avoid. Both of the big writing projects he’d been working on flopped. Was there anything more pathetic than an unemployed writer with a hungry, unhappy family? He had to be honest: drugs were a factor too. He still went into a cold sweat thinking about those days, those highs. Despite the euphoria, he had lost everything. He missed Julie a lot, but thinking of Madison was most painful of all. She’d be ten now. He was certain he couldn’t even look at her without breaking down. He couldn’t afford another failure. He would succeed where all others had failed! Starchild would save him!
A copy of the Alpine Avalanche provided him with the address of the editorial offices. A receptionist directed him to a glass-enclosed office containing a middle aged rustic-looking man at a desk with a placard proclaiming “Clint Eastman.”
“Mr. Eastman?”
“Yeah. Who are you?”
“Scott Zimmer. I’m a stringer for Texas Monthly.”
“Right. What’s up?”
“I’m working on a piece about Alpine’s most famous recent visitor, Ana Darcy.”
“You and twenty other guys. No one’s found her yet that I know of, except some TV yahoos in Durham, North Carolina, last year. And they all missed the story.”
“So you have no idea how to contact her, right?”
“Right. We printed the best article on her to date, though. Seen that?”
“Yes, I have. It was excellent. It was written by Matt Méndez, I recall. Is he around?”
“No, he isn’t. He’s out of town, I guess you could say. He quit about the time that article came out. I haven’t heard from him since. It’s hard to keep good people at a small town newspaper.”
“Yes, sir. Uh, would you happen to know where he went?”
“I think he went back to his parents, in Albuquerque, I believe. I don’t know if he’s still there or not.”
“So you don’t have an address for him?”
“Nope. Sure don’t.”
4
He paused at the door between the living room and the porch. Darcy was sitting with her back to him, fifteen feet away, pencil in hand, concentrating on several sheets of paper. She looked small and taut and full of energy as always. You’d never guess she was the mother of twins, though she fussed about “getting back into shape.” She ate like a horse, but she’d always done that.
Matt eased up behind her and laid his hands on her shoulders. His thumbs began a gentle massage of her neck muscles. “¡Mamacita!” he whispered. She sat back in the chair and rotated her shoulders under his hands. “Dashka,” she replied. He didn’t know many words in Luvit, but he knew that one: “Dad.” He bent over and kissed her next to her ear. He sat down to her right, leaving Eleanor, the extravagantly fluffy cat uncommonly attached to Darcy, in the chair on her left.
“Whatcha up to?”
“Oh, trying to get organized. I told you Uncle Rothan is going to hold the hearing soon. It’ll be fairly formal, so I need to brush up on the procedures.” Rothan Darshiell was the senior member of the delegation from Darcy’s home planet, Thomo, dispatched as soon as Darcy’s first reports had been received, to the effect that Earth was undoubtedly where Thomans had originated.
“Are you worried about it?”
If she was, she had cause. There had been four in the group. They had arrived
early and unannounced, but Darcy had been able to meet them secretly and convince them that it was a bad idea to drop in on Earth without warning. They agreed to return to her base on the moon for a year while she did that. Unfortunately, the youngest of the four, smitten with Darcy and behaving strangely, had stayed behind and tried to force her to take him to the United Nations immediately. In the ensuing struggle, Matt had been seriously wounded and the young man unfortunately killed. It stood to reason that a hearing would be needed.
“Yes, a little worried. Our laws can hardly cover a judicial finding twenty five light years away, so that’s a problem. But no matter what, we have to begin the official Thoman mission as announced. It has to go well, because it will affect the entire relations of Thomans and the peoples of Earth. That was always my biggest concern. That reunion can’t be...can’t be...im-...imperiled?”
Matt nodded. “What can I do?”
“Uncle Rothan has decided we can hold the hearing via email. Normally, we’d all have to meet in person, but with the three of them on the moon, we can’t do that now. We could set up a voice link and even a video link, but Hleo says it might be possible for someone to intercept that. So we’ll do it in writing. Your testimony will probably be needed at some point. You were a part of it. A big part.” She looked at him solemnly.
Hleo was her original moon station manager. He’d come with her sixty years ago when her Earth-watching mission was first set up on the moon. He had been an elderly advisor in his government, and before he died he’d allowed his neural network to be “backed up” digitally. He was a real person, but in electronic form. It didn’t seem as odd to Matt as it once had. He’d emailed with him many times, and he was real—old, a little crotchety, but devoted to Darcy and endlessly resourceful.
“I’ll do it,” he said. “Gladly.”
“Thanks, Matt. I knew you would. All we can do is tell the truth. Hleo, Uncle Rothan, Herecyn, and Ianthe will do the rest. They’ll send the report back to Thomo. It’ll take 50 years to find out the decision!”
Matt’s bare foot found Darcy’s bare foot and they rubbed each other silently for a minute. Her deranged countryman had been about to push Matt out of Darcy’s little escape pod while they were over the mountains outside Las Cruces. Darcy had distracted him and Matt kicked him, causing him to fall out instead. It had been a near thing.
So now her fellow Thomans would have to rule on the matter. Uncle Rothan was her father’s brother. Darcy’s father was chief of all the tribes and clans of Thomo. Ianthe was Darcy’s third sister, Herecyn her husband. Darcy had explained that Thomans prized balance and harmony, that their second mission had originally included two members from the Council of Clans—Rothan and Ianthe—and two from the People’s Congress—Herecyn and the poor devil who died. There was no way he could guess what the current imbalance might mean for the outcome of the hearing.
As he and his wife were playing footsie there came several tiny staccato coughs from one of the new rooms that faced onto the patio. The coughs soon turned into wails. “That’s Clio,” said Matt.
“No. It’s Julio,” said his wife.
“How can you tell?”
“It just sounds like him!”
“I guess mama knows best. Shouldn’t we go get him?”
“No. Srina is there. He just needs a dry diaper, and then he’ll go back to sleep. Wait a minute.”
Sure enough, a young woman emerged from the room next to the nursery and went inside. The crying soon stopped. Matt shook his head. This was a new horizon in motherhood. By the time the twins had been brought home from the hospital, Darcy had had everything organized unlike anything he’d ever seen. She’d found eight or ten young women (he was never sure how many), mostly from the nearby university, who were willing to take turns babysitting round the clock, for a generous hourly wage. He didn’t want to think about what that cost, but Darcy had plenty of money thanks to her contracts with the Miami law firm that sponsored her Olympic training.
She had located, interviewed, and trained all of them: students, wives of students, and a couple local young women, who were fluent in any number of foreign languages as well as familiar with child care. She’d instructed them to speak to the babies in their native languages, and that is what they did, in Hindi, Mandarin, Arabic, Korean, and even Spanish and English.
Matt still wasn’t sure about that, but Darcy had insisted. He was afraid that the poor little tykes would grow up hopelessly confused, but his wife said they would not, that it was crucial to the formation of developing brains that they be stimulated as much as possible. She added that they would be exposed to reading and mathematics as well in another couple of years. When he gaped at her, she rattled off “Six plus twenty-eight plus fifty-two minus thirty-three plus seventeen equals what?” He must have looked totally bumfuzzled, because she shot back “Seventy. Seventy! Any three year old Thoman knows that!”
He was still contemplating what a three year old Thoman might know versus what he knew when an attractive young woman in a bright blue sari emerged from the nursery and approached Darcy. “He’s fine,” she said. “I changed his diaper and gave him a bottle.”
“Thank you, Srina. I hope you can still get some studying done.”
“Oh, yes, ma’am. No problem.” She placed her palms together, bowed slightly, and walked back to her room.
Matt looked at Darcy. “Chemistry test,” she said
5
Flaming Albuquerque must have more Méndez’s in it than Alpine had people! The phone book had pages of them! Clearly, some refinement of investigative technique was called for. He began phoning every tenth Méndez and saying that he was looking for Matt Méndez, the newspaper reporter.
It took hours at a public phone, cost thirty dollars, a sore back, and the resentment of an old lady and two kids with a dog on a leash who wanted to use the phone, but finally, after lunch, as he was well into calling the Méndez’s listed midway between every tenth one he got a nibble. “Oh, you got me confused with Adalberto Méndez. I think he has a son who is a reporter. I don’t know his number. Sorry.”
There was only one Adalberto Méndez listed. That call was answered by a machine. He hung up and made a note of the number. Adalberto must be at work. What the hell—all that dialing and standing around had made him hungry. He’d find a root to gnaw on, drink a beer, and try later.
Three beers later, with the sun touching the city skyline, he tried again. “Hallo?” answered a hearty baritone voice.
“Mr. Méndez? My name is Steve Zimmer, sir. I’m a reporter and I’ve just come from Alpine to talk to your son Matt about several stories he worked down there. Is he home, perhaps?”
“He doesn’t live here any more. He works for an educational outfit somewhere. He’s always traveling around. I can find out where he is by tomorrow night, if you want to call back.”
“Oh...er...that would be fine, sir, thank you. May I call you about this time tomorrow, then?”
“Sure, Mr. Zimmer, was it? Who do you report for?”
“I freelance, Mr. Méndez. At the moment I’ve been working with Mr. Eastman, editor of the Alpine Avalanche. Your son worked a couple stories that are still in the news and I’d like to bring them up to date.”
“OK. Call back tomorrow night.”
“I will. Thank you sir.”
Darcy and Matt were enjoying a late supper after Abuelita, Matt’s grandmother, went back to the big house in the center of the family compound following the traditional nightly tucking in of the twins. Buela was easily as happy to be a great-grandmother as Matt’s mother was to be a grandmother. What is more, she heartily endorsed Darcy’s child care system, something similar to what might have transpired in the good old days of yore, after all. The Méndez family wasn’t what it once was, but thanks to Ana Del Arco Méndez and her inheritance from her aunt and uncle in Argentina (Matt’s cover story for Darcy’s Olympic income), some former standards could now be restored. Abuelita even enjoyed the variety of young women constantly around the place, particularly Mioko, on duty tonight in the room next to the nursery.
Darcy sat back from her meal and briefly rubbed her hands over her ears. “I can’t wait to wash my hair tonight. I really ought to cut it and dye it and get rid of this wig.” Her real hair was shoulder length and the color of honey, but it was fine rather than full and she kept it out of sight of the sitters since it was probably her most recognizable feature. She used a few other simple tricks of disguise thanks to her theatrical friends in Alpine (dark eyebrows, clunky glasses), but she generally saved the more elaborate ones for going out in public.
“Well, you know I love your hair, but I can see it would be much simpler just to dye it. Why don’t you?”
“I might. I want to wait a while, though. I may have to make some appearances when we open our embassy. That could be as early as next month.”
“There’s no firm date set?”
“Not really. We need to get this hearing over with first, for one thing.”
“Ay, that’s right....” Any further comment was cut off by the muted ringing of the telephone. Darcy glanced at the caller ID window. “It’s your father,” she said, handing him the handset.
“Hello? Hi, dad! ¿Que tal?” Matt watched Darcy as he talked, so she could follow the conversation only hearing his half.
“No problem. The twins are asleep and we’ve just finished a snack. What’s up?”
“Zimmer? I don’t remember anyone named Zimmer. What’d he want?”
“Old stories, huh? Oh, right—I bet he’s just another media snooper trying for an opening somewhere. I guess he could be legit, but I’d doubt it. What’d you tell him?”
“That’s great; that’s just right. As a matter of fact I’d planned to look in on the school house in Truth or Consequences tomorrow. I could meet him, oh, say at 11:00 am, at the trailer. But I couldn’t talk for long. I have things to do after lunch.”
“Yeah, that’ll be fine. Thanks, papacito. You told him just right. I’ll take care of it. Yes, sir. Love to mamá! Bye!”
He looked at his wife. “Sounds like another entremetido reporter, trying to butt into our lives. He said he’s from the Avalanche, and maybe he is, but I never heard of him. I said I’d meet with him, but not here. I don’t want him anywhere near our house. Maybe you shouldn’t go with me tomorrow, just in case.” No one in Matt’s family knew who Darcy really was, but they all knew Matt was a minor celebrity in certain journalistic circles by virtue of having written the only in-person article about Earth’s first visitor ever from another planet. They respected his wish to keep his distance from all that. His dad, the most frequent contact point, had readily agreed to filter all his calls for him.
Darcy pursed her lips. “I kind of wanted to see how things are going in that school room myself.” The school, in the trailer of an 18-wheeler, catered to the education of children of migrant agricultural workers. It was sponsored indirectly by The Second Planet Foundation, into which Darcy directed most of the profits from her books and other publicity. “I haven’t seen it since before the twins were born. And Mioko wants to go with us—she’s studying early childhood education. I’ll get Soong Kim and Abuelita to stay with the babies. As long as we’re not seen together, it should be all right, don’t you think?”
“It should be. I’ll have to concentrate extra hard not to stare lovingly at you, though.”
“Stare lovingly at Mr. Zimmer instead.”
“Nooo, I don’t think so.”
6
This trip was becoming surreal. Surely he was hallucinating. What the hell kind of nutty place would be named “Truth or Consequences?” It must be a message, and the message must be meant for him, only he had no idea what it could be. Sure enough, there it was, on the map. He looked again, just to make certain he hadn’t dreamed it. Of all the places to meet the person most likely to lead him to Starchild, it had to be this place. This was the most severe case of highway hypnosis he’d ever had in his life. He was tired, so tired, of driving down empty highways. “Truth?” What truth, dammit? Should he admit to this Méndez guy what he was doing? Was it that truth? Or was it why he was really doing this? Did he even know the truth of that? And if he kept his plans to himself—which was his natural inclination—was that when the “consequences” would come into play? What would the freaking consequences be?
It was hell finding the trailer. Truth or Consequences was on the Rio Grande, with agricultural acreage up and down both sides. He located it only after asking four people and feeling like a total jackass. The thing was parked two blocks off the highway behind a row of small commercial buildings, amidst irrigated fields of some kind. Here and there he could see groups of people working up and down rows, apparently harvesting something, and several large trucks waiting nearby to receive whatever it was they were picking. Near the trailer were a few picnic tables and some skid cans. Groups of small children were running around and wading in the river. There was a peculiar smell in the air. What the hell was that—onions?
As it was, he was nearly a half hour late. The trailer was a huge thing, with an awning down one side and the opposite side expanded out to double the normal width of an 18-wheel trailer. It was, well, about the size of a large classroom, which is apparently what it was. An air conditioner mounted overhead was humming loudly. He walked under the awning, climbed six wooden stairs, and knocked cautiously on the door. Hearing no answer, he opened it quietly and looked in. There must have been thirty or forty raggedly dressed youngsters, grouped by age, more or less, being attended to by four or five adults. There were shelves, books, and desks, in abundance—it was a classroom, sure enough. The only male in the place was halfway toward the back to his right, talking to a stout older woman with grey hair in long braids and holding a clipboard. A teenage girl, evidently supervising smaller children working over sheets of paper, stood right in front of him. She smiled. He smiled back, nodded, and headed toward the guy in back, who he dearly hoped was Matt Méndez. Two other women were sitting on the floor in the far corner, reading a book to a big clump of laughing children. All of them, kids and women, looked up when he began moving toward them. Both women were exotic looking, one with Asian features, the other more Indian. They were black haired and two small children were sitting in their laps. The kids kept laughing, and the women turned back to them and resumed their reading.
“Matt Méndez?”
“Yes. Are you Scott Zimmer?”
“Yes. Sorry I’m a bit late. I got lost.”
“Easy to do. I had trouble myself. Hang on a sec.” He turned to the woman with him. “This looks terrific, María. Will you excuse me for a bit, please?”
“Si, claro, señor, con mucho gusto. Gracias por venir, ¿eh?”
“ El gusto es mío. Hasta luego, ¿ok? ¡Que le vaya bien! Let’s go outside, Scott.”
He tossed some folders into a white pickup truck and locked the door. “It’s about lunch time. Could you eat, Scott?”
“Yeah, sure, you bet.”
“There’s a restaurant in those buildings behind us. Let’s go see if it’s any good. My treat—I haven’t seen anyone from Alpine in a long time.”
“Oh, well, I’m not exactly from Alpine—sorry if you got that impression. I’m from Austin, but I got interested in bringing several west Texas stories up to date, so I’m sort of checking around a bit, you see.”
“Really? What stories?”
“Well, in your case, the one I wanted to talk to you about is the one you wrote about that Ana Darcy woman. She kind of dropped out of sight...sort of like you did.”
He chuckled at that. “Yeah, well. I was in the right place at the right time to get the right story, but I had nothing to follow it with. I wasn’t cut out to be a reporter anyway. This suits me much better.”
“What do you do here?”
“I’m the regional supervisor for the outfit that operates this rolling schoolhouse and three others like it. We follow migrant workers and their families as they move north with the harvests, offering free schooling and counseling for their children, and follow-up assistance after they move on. The idea is to help them not raise a second generation of migrant workers, you see. Ana Darcy, on the other hand, seems to have made herself scarce because everyone wanted a piece of her. That was never the problem with me.” He chuckled again.
“That’s a cool concept. Who were the people in there, just now?”
“The woman I was talking to is the head teacher, María Espinosa. There is also a teacher aide and a couple college students, studying education or social work, and the one you didn’t see, the truck driver. He’s a former migrant worker, now with a steady job. He was probably out in the fields visiting his compadres. If you’re looking for a story, this mobile schoolhouse might be a good one.”
Méndez held the door to the café open for him. It was a small, clean, local place smelling wonderfully of grease. He ordered a combination plate, and reveled in the first decent food he’d had in days, simple and hearty and hot. When the dish was set in front of him his first thought was that it was wrong: it looked like soup, with only a thick layer of cheese and chilies visible. Immediate investigation with a fork, however, revealed that it was a delicious sauce, entirely hiding the tamale, enchilada, and taco underneath. Wonderful! His hunger almost made him forget his quest...for four or five minutes.
“So,” Méndez said, “you’re probably trying to locate Ana Darcy, right?”
“Well, yeah, I’d love to interview her if I could. Mostly I just want to update the whole story and maybe fill in a few details. You must have talked to her a good bit, didn’t you?”
“Not that much, really. A little, but when I saw her running around the track at Sul Ross and so forth no one knew who or what she was, or that she was going to make such a big splash at the Olympics. Once she went to Barbados to train, that was the last we saw of her in Alpine. I put that whole article together afterwards. I figure she’s in Barbados now, actually. I heard she really liked it there. I guess you read the article in the Avalanche, right?”
“I did. I talked to some of the people you mentioned in it—that Sledd guy, the coach, Lisa Pérez, Dr. Harcroft at the observatory, and the editor of the paper. None of them said they’d heard from her.”
“I’m not surprised. She must be pretty shy. She sure looked scared during some of those Olympic events. Did you watch those?”
“Yes, I did. I bought the video, in fact. She was unbelievable. Man, I wish she’d turn up....”
“Well, according to those interviews she did, a group of people from her planet will be arriving before long. I figure she’ll be there when they do. Maybe you ought to check that out.”
“Oh, I will. I’m planning on it.”
“Excuse me.” He pulled out a cell phone. “I need to call ahead to make sure where my next stop will be.”
Méndez paid the check and they walked together in the direction of the trailer. “Well, I need to hit the road, Scott. It was a pleasure meeting you. Good luck on your story.” He held out his hand, which Zimmer had no choice but to shake, unlocked the door of his pickup, got in, and drove off.
On a hunch, Zimmer looked in the door of the school room once more. The teacher and the teenager were eating lunch with the kids. The two exotic women were gone. He headed for his car. Well, at least he got a decent meal out of it. Barbados! She couldn’t be in Barbados! No way! He drove past a sign announcing “Leaving Truth or Consequences.” He blew out a puff of air. “Truth or Consequences, my ass!”
Matt watched Zimmer’s car recede into the distance. He felt a little bad about spinning him so many lies, especially about pretending to be Dr. Saldivar, the actual supervisor of the mobile educational unit...but not that bad. He looked at his watch. Darcy should have had time to get to the restaurant after he phoned her. He started his truck and drove three blocks back into town to park in front of the café he’d just left. Darcy and Mioko were munching away at a back table.
“Áisatsu, honored husband,” she said. He stared at her. “Koshikakéru,” and pulled out a chair. She glanced at Mioko. “Omo...omoidasaserú las enchiladas.”
He sat down, at a loss. Mioko, hand over her mouth, was giggling and hiccupping, turning crimson over her iced tea.
7
Deep down, V. T. Newsome knew he wasn’t a Lord of the Universe. If anyone had called him that to his face he would have laughed it off good-naturedly. Still, he had to admit a case could be made. He was handsome as a movie star, richer than a rock star (albeit with an asterisk), in the prime of his youth, had a ripped bod, perfect blond hair, and teeth so white they glowed in the dark. As a successful corporate lawyer, he was certain he could argue his case well enough to convince any jury in the land. Not that he’d ever deign to speak before an actual jury, of course—peers? Please! Too icky!
He also had a penthouse overlooking the ocean and a car whose capabilities he was still learning. He’d been feeling a little down over a recent financial reverse—a temporary problem, he was sure—so what better way to pull oneself out of the dumps than by acquiring a new car and putting it through its paces? His old Corvette barely made a trade-in dent in the $175,000 cost of his present ride, a Mercedes-Benz SL65 AMG, with a 604-hp twin turbo V12 engine. Yeow! Talk about a mood-altering substance!
He’d found a deserted stretch of highway and traveled it back and forth several times at increasing speeds until he was sure no highway patrolman was lurking behind a sign somewhere. Then he let it out. He got it up to 160 mph before his nerve failed and he decided to return to his penthouse to calm down. Someday he’d find a race track where he could see what his new beast could really do. Wait till he drove it to work!
He was entering the security code in his front door, chuckling over the way the salesman had suddenly become so superpolite after checking his credit rating (he’d given his dad as a reference—his dad had money out his ears; hell, he had his own island), when he sensed someone behind him and felt a blinding flash and the lights went out.
He awoke, groggily, on his own couch. Four figures were standing in front of him. Wha...? No, hold on; there were only two. He tried to make his eyes focus. He had a splitting headache. He tried to move, but his body wasn’t responding.
“Good evening, Mr. Newsome.”
“Urh...mm....”
“Can you hear me, Mr. Newsome?”
It was all he could do to keep air going in and out of his chest.
“Tony, get Mr. Newsome a wet towel.”
A minute later he felt something flop in his lap. He forced his right arm to reach for it. It was one of his Dior hand towels. Slowly he wiped his face and looked again. Both men were wearing unshaped sport jackets over turtlenecks. One had a thick gold chain around his neck. They looked to be as ripped as he was, and, judging from their slick hair, sunglasses, and bulges where firearms probably nestled, a good deal meaner.
The one with the chain said, “Mr. Newsome? I bring you a message from Razzy.”
Oh, shit! Razzy Napolitano! His bookie!
“Razzy says you’re behind in your vig, Mr. Newsome. He’s concerned. That’s not good. Believe me, you don’t want that. From the looks of this place, you can cover it if you want to. I suggest you try to get up to date, and fast, capisce?”
“Oh, deez, yeah, I know.” He licked his lips slowly. “Dell him I’ll dry.” His mouth wasn’t working up to its normal standards, but that was the best he could do at the moment.
“You know how he got the name Razzy, Mr. Newsome? It’s because he loves razors. He just loves carving things up with razors. I mean, I hope you never find out personally, of course. Just try real hard to get back on schedule, Mr. Newsome, so you’ll not learn what it means to disappoint Razzy. For your sake, sir, I hope that’s clear. Is it clear? Sir?” He nodded and grunted something. His head was killing him. “Excellent. You have a real nice evening, sir.”
The two men left. They even closed the door gently, which scared him more than anything else they had done. He’d heard collection guys like that called “leg breakers.” And now he’d met some! Brrrr!
Oh, shit was he in trouble. He took a deep, shuddering breath. Freaking European soccer! That was where things had turned sour. Damn European soccer—who could understand it? He was a pretty savvy gambler, all in all. He had owed Razzy a little, but it was nothing he couldn’t cover. Now, though—the sure bet he’d depended on had tanked and he ended up half a million in the hole. He didn’t even want to think about the vig—the weekly interest—on that. There was no way he could get his hands on that much cash, short of selling everything he owned and living in a box on the sidewalk.
Crap! What was he going to do? Those guys didn’t give a shit who his father was, whether he was rich as Croesus or anything. If dad wouldn’t pay his gambling debt, and he certainly wouldn’t, Razzy would have a field day with his fancy pocket knife. He mopped his face several more times. He found himself staring at his bespoke loafers.
It was so ironic. At the law firm, he helped manage funds and foundations that were worth a hundred times more than the half million he owed. He’d thought and thought about how to set a little of that aside to play with, to invest, as it were, but Dick Caxton, the accountant in charge, was the greatest bean counter he’d ever known, and the risks involved had simply been too great.
Awww, shit, shit, shit. What a mess. What a freaking mess. At least he wasn’t a bad card counter when he put his mind to it. If worst came to worst there was always blackjack in Atlantic City.
8
When Matt woke up he was alone in bed, not unusual these days. He brushed his teeth, pulled on some jeans and a shirt, and walked out to their little living room/dining room. Darcy and Aziza were sitting on the rug watching the twins roll around on a blanket in the middle of the floor. Julio had almost figured out how to crawl: he was up on all fours rocking back and forth but going nowhere. If he could just coordinate his arms and legs, he’d be off to the races. Clio was sitting against Darcy, gnawing on a bright red plastic ring. She looked at him, ring in her mouth, and broke into a big smile.
Matt had always been a sucker for smiling females. Clio held her arms out to him and he picked her up, being careful not to get the slobbery ring on his shirt, and joined them on the rug. “Salaam aleikum!” he said to the group. “¡Buenos dias!” said Aziza, whose native language was Arabic. Their household had become decidedly eclectic, at least linguistically.
“Oh!” said Aziza, turning her ear to the side. “That must be Soong Kim. I will let her in. Please excuse me!”
“Thank you, Aziza,” said Darcy. “I hope you can get a nap this afternoon.”
“Is no problem, ma’am. See you Wednesday!”
“Hey,” he said to Darcy, bouncing his daughter on his knee, “were you up a lot last night?”
“Not much. I nursed Julio about five a.m., and just as he finished Clio woke up and wanted her share. It worked out. Aziza took them then. They’re nursing less, now that they’re beginning to eat solid foods.”
Matt shook his head. “Man, I don’t know how mothers of twins survive without help like you have. You’re lucky, you know?”
“Back home, the whole extended family would help. It’s still not easy, but it works something like this.”
Julio was on his back now, grabbing for a green ring. Matt shoved it to where he could reach it. He picked Clio up so that she could grab the coffee table for support. She stood there and quivered enthusiastically. “What about all these languages?” he asked. “Do you do it that way at home too?”
“Not on purpose. All we have are different dialects of the same language. They’re all mutually intelligible. It’s normal to have two or three dialects spoken in an extended family. We never think about it.”
“So, having people speak to Julio and Clio in all these different languages is your idea?”
“Yes. I know you’re worried they’ll be confused, but they won’t be. They’ll figure it out. They’ll speak whatever languages they hear around them. They’re already learning to. I read a paper by an American linguist—I think his name was Andersson—who studied a child who spoke nine languages by the age of four, because the people around him spoke them. He had no problem. You’ll see. Even if they forget some, it’ll be ok. Their brains will have been set up already. Reading will be the same. No one teaches babies to speak—they teach themselves. It’ll be the same with reading. Reading is just speech, but on paper.”
Matt was writing on a magazine cover on the coffee table.
“What are you doing?”
“Wait. Just a second.” He scribbled some more. “OK. Fourteen times four divided by two, times three, divided by two. What is it?”
“Huh? Forty-two!”
“Dang! That’s right! How did you do that?”
“I told you, Matt, Thoman children learn math about the same time they learn to talk. It’s easy then. It’s easier than language—there aren’t any exceptions, no irregular forms.”
“Wow. OK; I believe you. That’s cool! So all Thoman children are taught like that?”
“Oh, Matt, I wish you could see it. We think education is the most important thing in the world. We’d not have survived without it. Your people think cars and cable TV are important. We put education before everything except food and health care. There are no shortcuts. It’s what helps us survive—all of us, not just some of us.”
“You have schools, regular schools?”
“Certainly. Only they’re smaller than most of yours. I doubt any of our schools have more than two or three hundred children. And we have lots of teachers. It’s expensive, but not that expensive. Not in the long run.”
“Hmm. I was just thinking about that Second Planet Foundation trailer we visited, kind of a one-room schoolhouse?”
“Right. Ours are like that, more or less.”
“Ouch!” Clio had plumped down in Matt’s lap, hitting him on the chin with the back of her head. She began slapping his thighs and babbling. Julio was back on all fours again. Darcy encouraged him to crawl with a handful of Cheerios.
He rubbed his chin. “How come you don’t want them watching TV?”
“Oh, it’ll be fine once they’re two or three. But first they need to learn basic stuff, you know, not to sit like lumps and watch moving pictures.”
“’Moving.’ I’ve been wondering about that. Do you know if your metabolism or your reflexes might be, uh, what’s the word, heritable?”
“There’s a chance they will be. They might not. We’ll just have to see!”
“So if Julio gets to where I can’t catch him any more, or Clio eats like three kids, it might be your fault, huh?”
“Maybe. Or if they want to become writers, it might be your fault!”
“Oh!”
“Oh, what?”
“Writing...email...that hearing....”
“Oh, right. I’ll start on my part this morning. I bet Hleo already has the questions waiting in my email.” She looked at the clock. “I can start any time, but let’s have something to eat first, ok?”
“Sí, let’s. I’ll be around whenever you need my testimony, I guess you’d call it.”
“Thanks, Matt. I hope we can do this in one day. Two, at least. If you’ll get the high chairs moved, I’ll set up the grand feeding mess. Soong will come help, I imagine.”
It ended up taking two days to get through the “hearing,” though no one actually heard anything. The necessity for pauses to feed five people, two of whom were hungry fairly often and not at all inclined to be patient about waiting, plus the need for rest room breaks, fresh diapers, and short walks imposed a slow-motion discipline on their activities. Darcy had never attended hearings or trials back home, so the whole thing was a novel experience for her. Hleo, as the former Secretary to the Tribal Council, conducted this one. It helped that he was fluent in English, so he could translate questions for Matt and then translate his responses into Luvit for those at the moon base.