Catch the Lightning Page 6

  “No.”

  He sat next to me. “And this is the twenty-fourth century?”

  “Well, no. Today is April 23, 1987.”

  “According to the Jag’s reckoning, it’s April 23, 2328.”

  The overhead lamp suddenly came on, and the TV blared out the news. Jumping to his feet, Althor whipped a knife out of his boot. The blade flashed like lightning, throwing sparks of light over the walls.

  “¡Oiga!” I jumped up and grabbed his arm. “It’s all right. The electricity just came on.”

  When I touched him, he spun around and raised his knife, moving so fast the motion blurred. But he caught up with his reflexes before I had a chance to be frightened. For a moment he stood there, holding the knife over my head. Then he lowered his arift and turned to the TV where a weatherwoman was telling us today would be sunny, hot, and hazy.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “When did you start this picture box?”

  “I bumped it last night while I was getting the flashlight.” I went over and turned off the sound, leaving the picture. “I guess I hit the ‘on’ button.”

  Althor slid his knife back into his boot. “I need to get back to my ship.”

  I could guess what that meant. Despite what he had said about a next time, I doubted he would hang around. With his looks and connections, I figured he could have most any woman he wanted. I had no idea then just how true that was, but I would have had to be deaf, dumb, and blind not to realize at least part of it.

  After being with Althor, I understood what my mother had meant when she said my father and she were the same. She told me his inner soul was as sweet as maize, that it brushed across her like the breath of an owl. She knew him by that touch the first time she saw him. She called it the ch’ulel and chanul, his inner soul and its animal spirit companion; Althor used words like neuroscience and quantum wave functions. Whatever names they gave it, I knew it was the same.

  But my father had never come back.

  In Nabenchauk, people lived in large families; elders, young people, married couples with children—all together in houses made from logs, saplings, and thatch, built much the way we had built houses for thousand of years, to withstand hurricanes and heat, grief and joy. But my family shrank over the generations, bleached of fertility for reasons none of us knew. I was the last, the sole survivor of a dying lineage. Usually I managed to suppress the loneliness, but after the previous night I knew it would be much worse if Althor left “Tina, I’ll come back.” He pulled me into his arms. “I just have to figure out what’s going on.”

  I laid my head against his chest and slid my arms around his waist, seeking his mind. He was a rush of emotions: worry for his situation, desire for me, memories from a life more privileged than anything I had ever imagined. He was older than he looked, almost fifty. His loneliness made hollows, like empty aqueducts in the desert, so long dry that their sides were parched and cracked. Many women pursued him, but he rarely responded with more than casual interest. It wasn’t because he didn’t want more. His lovers left him with the same emptiness I had felt with my old boyfriend Jake. He wanted someone who could answer the touch of his mind. Someone like him.

  Althor pulled me closer, murmuring in another language. We stood that way for a while, just holding each other.

  Suddenly he went rigid. “That’s my ship!”

  I pulled back. “What?”

  “My ship.” He was staring at the television. It showed a blurry shot of what looked like an aircraft, though it was impossible to make out details.

  Althor strode to the table and dropped to his knees, then poked until he found the volume control. A newscaster’s voice filled the room. “…craft found in orbit early this morning. The Anglo-Australian telescope took this picture when observers detected a change,in the scheduled operations of the space shuttle Challenger. The shuttle loaded the craft into its cargo bay and brought it into Yeager Military Flight Test Center in California. An unconfirmed source claims it is a hypersonic test plane with orbital capability that malfunctioned and had to be retrieved.”

  “What the hell?” Althor grabbed at his side, at the waist—and pulled out part of his body.

  I almost screamed. For an instant, I thought he had ripped his own flesh. But the rounded cube he held was solidifying into his transcom. On his right side, above the hip, a membrane was closing over a large socket.

  “Oh, God,” I said. I had almost reached saturation for his strangeness.

  He didn’t hear me. He was jabbing at the transcom, making , lights blink. “I can’t reach my Jag.”

  “You think that plane they found is your ship?”

  He looked at me. “They must know it’s no plane. They probably recognized its extraterrestrial nature right away.” He grimaced. “Gods know what they think. A Jag carries enough artillery to wipe out Los Angeles in a second.”

  “Why would you bring a ship like that here?”

  “I told you. I was going to a party.”

  “You need a warship to cruise a party?”

  “It’s part of me. I can’t just leave it home.”

  “I thought it was hidden.”

  “It is. Was.” He stood up. “It must be damaged worse than my tests detected. Otherwise it could easily have evaded capture by such primitive forces. But how could my diagnostics miss damage that serious? Only if it were deliberately hid—” He stopped and scowled. “It’s probably scared the holy hell out of your military. For all they know, I’m the advance scout of a hostile force.”

  “You haven’t done anything hostile.”

  “I left an armed warcraft spying on your planet.” He shook his ' head. “They have no idea what they’re dealing with.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Worst-case scenario? They tamper too much with it and the ship detonates. Given the weapons and antimatter onboard, it could take a good chunk of California with it.”

  I stared at him. “There must be something it can do.”

  He paced across the room. “I’m hoping it was at least able to disguise itself. It could pass as a planetary shuttle without interstellar capability. Your military probably doesn’t yet realize how advanced it is.”

  “What if you contact the base? Convince them you aren’t hostile.”

  He stopped pacing. “The only way they’ll let me near the Jag is if I cooperate with everything they want.”

  “Can’t you do that?”

  “I would never willingly divulge information to your military or anyone else. Besides, they still wouldn’t let me go. They have no reason to trust me. Why should they?

  I watched him uneasily. “What do you think they’ll do?”

  “Move it to a more secure installation? But that would draw unwanted attention.” He considered. “Right now they’re probably searching for a mother ship. The longer it takes them to figure out no one is looking for me, the better.” He ran his hand through his hair. “If I were in charge at that base, I would make sure we learned everything we could about the Jag, as fast as possible. Capturing the pilot would be a top priority.

  He sat down on the bed, propping his elbows on his knees so he could rest his forehead on his hands. As he closed his eyes, I felt his mind straining. I saw it as a translucent image, water on the ground. It lay deep around us but grew thinner as it extended away, until it evaporated into nothing.

  “It doesn’t work,” Althor said.

  “What are you trying to do?”

  He looked at me. “I fly this Jag many years. I can reach it, in a limited sense, even if we have no physical link. But the farther away I am, the weaker the interaction. It is too much far away for me to reach it now.”

  “What happened to your English?”

  “My English?”

  “Your accent got heavier.”

  His unease shimmered in the air. “I never separated. I left my brain running as a subshell on the Jag’s EL”

  I blinked. “Its what?”

/>   “El. Evolving Intelligence. The Jag and I, we are one brain that evolves together. I provide the ‘human’ component. Creativity. Ingenuity. Imagination.” Sweat rolled down his temple. “When I leave the ship, I can centralize my programming into my own brain. I ‘put it back’ into myself. This is what separating from the Jag means.”

  “But you didn’t do it this time.” Because he hadn’t expected to meet me.

  He nodded. “A large part of my brain is still in the ship.”

  “But you were fine before. Your English was great.”

  “I think my mind, it has been in a subshell.”

  “A what?”

  “You know what is a supercooled liquid?” When I shook my head, he said, “If you lower the temperature of „a liquid below its freezing point and it doesn’t freeze, it is supercooled. Perturb the system and it freezes all at once. My biomech system makes an analogous state to protect me if I am cut off from the Jag. A subshell. But the shell is unstable. One disturbance and it collapses all at once.”

  “And trying to reach the Jag made it collapse?”

  “Yes.”

  I spread my hands. “I don’t know what to suggest.”

  “I need information. About the Yeager base, to start.”

  “I’ll call in sick today. Then we can go to the library. Maybe we’ll find something.”

  Althor exhaled. “I hope so.”

  The San Carlos branch of the Los Angeles Public Library was in a small mall, sharing a plaza with the cleaners on its left and a bowling alley on its right. As we crossed the plaza, heat rose from its tiles. The sunlight had lost its freshness. It felt tense, like glass under stress.

  I saw the librarian, Martinelli, through the window, a plump man with gray hair and glasses. He was cleaning off the counter where people checked out books. The library was empty except for an elderly couple at a nearby table. As we came in, they were setding down to read the newspaper.

  Martinelli glanced up. “Hi, Tina—” He looked past me and his smile vanished like a cigarette stubbed out in an ashtray.

  The elderly couple were suddenly getting ready to leave. Following their looks, I saw Althor standing in the doorway, over two hundred pounds of muscle, dressed from head to foot in black, bare arms bulging, leather guards on his wrists, purple hair uncombed. He looked hardcore, ready for the state penitentiary.

  I drew him next to me and spoke in a low voice. “Try to look less threatening.”

  “How? This is the way I look.”

  I didn’t have an answer to that. We went to the counter and Martinelli came over, giving me an odd smile. “Got a late shift at the bank today, Tina?”

  I had no idea what he meant. He knew I worked in a restaurant. I didn’t understand why he was giving me that strange smile, either, as if his face were too stiff for it.

  Then it hit me. Martinelli was frightened for me. He was trying to give me a way to send him a message if I were in trouble but couldn’t talk. I gave him my most reassuring smile. “I’m not working today. This is my friend Althor. From, uh, Fresno.” Martinelli nodded to Althor, and Althor nodded back. Then Martinelli turned back to me. “What can I do for you?”

  “Do you have any books on Yeager Flight Test Center?” I asked.

  He motioned toward the card catalog. “You can look there. If you don’t find what you need, I’ll check the computer.”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  I took Althor over to the catalog. As I pulled out a drawer and set it on the table, he sat in a chair next to me. Then he tilted his head toward where Martinelli was working behind the counter. “Why does this man distrust me?”

  “He thinks you’re one of Nug’s friends.” I sat at the table. “They come in here and bother him.”

  “Nug?”

  “Matt Kugelmann.” After a moment, I said, “He killed my cousin Manuel.”

  Althor stared at me. “I’m sorry.”

  Back then, every time I thought I was over Manuel’s death it turned out I was wrong. Enough years have passed now that I only remember the good he taught me. He had been as strict as a father: no swearing, no late nights, no alcohol, no cigarettes, no drugs, no running with anyone he didn’t like. Nor had he been much on talks about life. But I heard words in the way he treated me, words like respect and loyalty. That was before the crack silenced him. It was his way of dealing with my mother’s death, but it took him away from me too.

  “Tina?” Althor said.

  I swallowed. “It’s okay.”

  “You say this a lot. It’s okay you live in a building unfit for animals, it’s okay they murder your cousin. It’s not okay. You deserve better.”

  “I’m just trying to get by.”

  “Where are your parents?”

  “I do fine on my own.”

  “Tina—”

  “You’re lucky to have a father.” I said it too fast, needing to change the subject.

  Althor watched me for a moment, but he didn’t push. Instead he said, “My father and I spent half the time arguing. Ragnar understood me better.”

  “He’s the admiral who encouraged you to join the military when your father didn’t want you to?”

  “It was my choice.” He shrugged. “My father isn’t always rational about Ragnar.”

  “What does he do?”

  “Lose his temper.” Althor frowned. “Once, when I was a boy, Ragnar came to see me. He is my doctor, after all. My father, when he saw Ragnar talking to my mother, exploded. My father is most times a calm man. But with an old friend he becomes irrational.”

  I understand it now: apparently coveting thy neighbor’s wife isn’t unique to Earthbound humans. At the time, though, I said nothing. For all I knew, it could have been completely different from the way it sounded.

  Instead I said, “There’s something I have to ask you.”

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t soldiers kill people?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you?”

  “Yes.”

  I shifted in my chair. “How many?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is that because you were in your ship so you couldn’t see, or because you killed so many you lost count?”

  “Both.” When I stiffened, he spoke quiedy. “Tina, people die in wars.” He exhaled. “Our enemies executed one of my uncles, the man my parents named me for. Althor Valdoria was a military hero. My father’s brother. A part of me wanted to avenge him.”

  I thought of my cousin. “Revenge is no good. They kill, you kill, they kill, you kill. It never ends.”

  “If that had been my only reason for joining the military, I would have retired by now. I stay because it’s necessary to protect my people. I feel—” He stopped, as if searching for the right word. “Obligated.”

  In a way, he reminded me of Manuel. “I understand.”

  “But last night I felt so relaxed with you.” He took my hand. “At peace.”

  “With me? Why?”

  “I don’t know.” He smiled. “After all, you want to make me into a frog.”

  I laughed. “You’d make a handsome frog.” I glanced at the cards I had been flipping around while we talked. “These air force books are mostly in the same place. Why don’t you go look while I keep going through the cards?” I took a pencil and paper off the table and wrote down a few call numbers. “Just find those.”

  “Cards,” Althor grumbled. “Paper books. Walk to shelf.”

  I smiled. “You have a better idea?”

  “Go home. Relax. Have the web look up what you want and deliver a microspool. Plug spool into book. Choose font, graphics, and holography.” He kept grumbling in his own language, but he took the paper and went to the stacks.

  I laughed and bent over the card catalog.

  A moment later someone spoke behind me. “Hey, Tina. You got a new boyfriend?”

  I looked up. Nug stood there, dressed in jeans and a jacket.

  String and Buzzer were with him, two gu
ys who looked like their names: String was taller and skinnier than Nug, and Buzzer looked like a stocky old buzzard.

  “He’s coming right back,” I said.

  Nug smiled. “New guy, looks like.”

  I didn’t like it when Nug smiled. “From Fresno.”

  “Fresno?” Nug laughed. “Shit. That’s worse than coming from Cleveland.”

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  “Talk nice to me.” Nug stepped closer. When I tried to scoot my chair back, he closed his hand around my arm. “What’s the matter?” He wasn’t smiling now. “You can’t take that pretty nose of yours out of the air for two fucking seconds?”

  Martinelli spoke from behind the counter. “Leave her alone, Matt.”

  Nug looked up, his lips twisting in a scowl. But he did let go of my arm. Then he put his hand inside his jacket.

  He pulled out a 9-mm. Luger.

  Both Martinelli and I froze. Nug stretched out his arm, pointing the gun at Martinelli. “Shut up, old man.”

  I couldn’t believe he was pulling a gun on Martinelli in the middle of the library. I should have known something was wrong, with Nug wearing a jacket when it was so hot.

  Nug glanced at String. “Make sure he doesn’t bother us.” String ran to the counter and hauled himself over it. Drawing his knife, he tilted his head toward the wall, an area out of our view. Martinelli retreated and String followed.

  Nug turned back to me. “Well.” He smiled again and it didn’t look any better now than it had the first time. “So you got a new boyfriend.”

  I swallowed. “He doesn’t like me talking to other guys.”

  “That so.” Nug stepped closer. “What does he like?”

  I leaned back. “Don’t.”

  “Don’t,” he mimicked. He shoved the gun into his jacket, then pulled me out of the chair and put his arms around me. “This what he wants, chiquitita?”

  “Stop it!” I lurched away and thudded into Buzzer. He grabbed my upper arms and held me in place.

  “Sweet Tina.” Nug was gritting his teeth. “We can’t have her, can we? She’s too pure. You think I don’t know, don’t you.”

  I stared at him. “Know what?”

  “You never gave me the time.” His mood cut around him in angry black and red streaks. “But I gave you slack. I thought, ‘She’s different. Try harder.’ Well, I tried, and you didn’t even look at me, like you thought you was too good. Even then I gave you slack. Thought maybe that cousin of yours told you shit about me. I gave you more slack than I’ve ever given anyone.” He pointed at me. “I seen you this morning, slut. I seen you come out with that guy. He there all night, Tina? You fuck him all night?”