Come Alive Ch. 26

Part I

The weather was still unseasonably warm; even the trees seemed to think so, too. The little park surrounding the marina was almost verdant - and though a few trees had lost their leaves after the storms that had so recently caused so much havoc, the grass was green and most of the shrubbery surrounding the marina was still almost lush. It did not look like December.

Clyde walked over to a new favorite patch and circled twice before dropping a load, and after waiting a moment for the most pungent waves of stink to drift away, Henry walked over and picked them up with his pooper-scooper. He bagged the still-warm turds - and like always a shiver of absolute revulsion ran up his spine - then he walked over and dumped the little pink bag in a special receptacle placed there just for dog shit.

"Jesus...who thinks up stuff like this?" he said to Edith as she walked along by his side. "I mean, really, it was someone's job to come up with this thing!"

"If you build it, Henry, they will come. Isn't that the way of the world?" Edith replied, trying not to smile at Henry's nervousness. "Anyway, having something like this right here is lots better than stepping in a hot fresh one."

"I'll give you that," he replied.

"Speaking from experience, I'm sure."

"Yeah," he sighed, "I've managed to step in my fair share of shit over the years."

She smiled, tried not to laugh at that jab. "Was it really so bad? You and I?"

Henry turned and looked at Claire's echo once again, his eyes still not quite able to reconcile the past and the present, let alone all the discordant pain he felt when he looked at Edith. If Claire was alive, he thought, if she hadn't died forty-something years ago, it was impossible not to think that she'd look almost exactly like Edith did right now. They'd always resembled one another, often strikingly so, but the passage of time had simply blurred the lines between the two so much that memory no longer worked. Claire was gone, but if that was true then who was he looking at now?

Edith? Yeah, but what then about her DNA? Where did the expression of traits end in one sibling and arise in another? Because looking at Edith now was like a journey into the looking glass - a kaleidoscope of hopes and dreams, memory and doubt that served only to open the way ahead to more questions than answers.

And Tracy had seen it, too. Because, he knew now, she had seen it coming. Because she'd been paying attention during all those little between mother and daughter talks, and who knows, maybe she had because she'd seen this moment unfolding all her life. Maybe Tracy had come to think of herself as a kind of placeholder, holding Henry down until her mother could reach him again...at least until they'd come for her...

"We were never bad together, Edith. We were just never meant to be."

"I used to believe that, Henry. Even after you went to Seattle."

"We should have never been, Edith. It was wrong."

"Wrong? How could it have been wrong, Henry? I'd wanted you my whole life and suddenly there you were."

"You know, it took years for me to move on, Edith. Years to get over the one-two punch. First Claire, then you. Did you really have no idea?"

"Of course I knew, Hank. You didn't fall off the edge of the earth, we had friends in common. They kept me up to date."

"So...why are you here?"

Edith stepped close and took his hand. "When Tracy told me about things, about how bad things have gotten, I wanted to see you again. I wanted to touch the skin on the side of your face, look into your eyes again."

He sighed, shook his head. "I wish you'd stayed home."

"Really? You'd wish for something like that?"

"I'm not sure I can deal with...all those feelings right now."

"I don't suppose you realize that what you're saying is an admission of love...?"

He turned away - from everything about her. "And that's the problem, Edith. Exactly. When I look at you I feel love for Claire. How could that be a good thing for any of us?"

"Because, Hank, that's all I ever was - the problem that just wouldn't go away. It's all I know now, because I'm lost without you..."

+++++

"Well, at least they're talking to each other..." Tracy said to Anton.

"I don't know. See how Genry hunched over. Defensive, if ask me. Like he afraid he hit."

"You think I should go get her?"

"Better we both go."

+++++

Henry walked over to a park bench and sat, feeling light-headed again and wishing he hadn't left the hospital so soon. Clyde came over and hopped up on the bench and laid down next to him, draping his head on Henry's lap; Tracy followed a moment later, leaving Anton to to get Edith back down to Time Bandits.

"This was a mistake," she said as she sat next to Clyde.

Henry crossed his arms over his chest, the reflexive move almost comically protective - at least under present circumstances.

"How long did she say she was going to stay?" he asked, his voice a lifeless monotone now.

"She didn't book a return flight. Want me to work on that?"

He turned and looked at her, not quite knowing how to say what he needed to say, but he dove in feet first: "Nope. I want her to come to terms with herself. I want her to figure this out for herself."

"What if she decides to stay?"

"Then she stays."

"Henry, I don't want her to take away from the time you and I have left..."

"Then don't let her."

"Wouldn't it be better if I just told her to leave?"

"It might be easier, Tracy, but if you do she'll keep turning up and raining on your parade until the day she dies."

"Why...why would you say that?"

"Because she enjoys it."

+++++

He took them out to dinner that night, to one of his father's old faves. An Irish pub a block away from the George V that served excellent French grub and even better Irish beer, and the old dark brown interior suited his mood just fine. Besides, he'd invited both Anton and Mike to join the fray and he was looking forward to some fireworks as the evening wore on...

And cliché of clichés, Edith ordered French onion soup and a glass of the house red. How very American, he thought as he ordered his habitual escargot and duck. Not really caring anymore, he slipped a Zofran under his tongue and leaned back, rarely taking his eyes off Edith.

"So, Mr Lacy..." she began.

"Call me Mike, please."

"Okay, Mike. What do you do for a living?"

Mike looked from Edith to Henry then back again, then he simply shrugged. "I'm a spy."

"Really?" Edith said, her voice still gay and chipper. "How very interesting. And who do you spy for?"

"You, I guess."

"Me? Whatever do you mean?"

"Well, assuming you pay taxes...I work for the navy."

"Oh. I see. And who are you spying on?"

"Henry."

"Really. How interesting. I had no idea Henry was so, oh, what is the word...important?"

Mike met that with stony silence, but he kept his eyes focused on Edith's.

"So, what were you off doing today? Spy-wise, that is?" she asked.

"I was at the embassy speaking to our naval attaché."

"Indeed?"

"Indeed."

"And what were you two talking about?"

"That Henry is the only human being alive that can fly the ARV the Seattle Working Group built."

Henry blinked once, slowly, then turned his head ever so slightly and looked at Captain Lacy.

"What?" Tracy said, her voice tinged with hysteria - like he was about to give away the house. "What are you talking about, Mike?"

"Yes, Mike," Henry added. "Just what are you talking about?"

"I found the files on your laptop, Henry. It took some digging, but I finally found them..."

Henry tried not to smile, but it was hard not to. "I see."

"What files?" Edith screeched. "And what is an ARV?"

Mike turned to Tracy and spoke in quick, hushed tones: "When Henry was in Seattle he worked with Boeing for a while. One of the off the books projects he worked on was to use alien technology, stuff recovered from a crashed vehicle, to make a working craft. And they did, too. But there was just one problem. No one could fly the damn thing because the aliens fly them using some kind of telekinetic bridge, and for years now everyone kind of left it at that..."

"Henry?" Tracy sighed, terrified now. "What is he talking about?"

But Taggart just grinned. "Go on, Mike. You're on a roll now, aren't you? So do go on."

"I sure am, Taggart, you goddamn sonofabitch. You did it, you got it to work - then you didn't tell anybody. Why? Why'd you do that?"

Henry kept grinning, his eyes never once leaving Lacy's.

"The only thing we haven't figured out, Henry, is did you actually fly the thing...?"

"That's the only thing, Mike? Really?"

"Well, no. But there are a bunch of people in the inner ring really pissed right now, Taggart. Pissed at you. So pissed they want to kill you. And the only thing holding them back? I finally got my hands on those files. I've convinced them that once the new team has the information they'll be able to get the craft operational."

"Good for you, Mike. I'm happy for you. Then what?"

"Then we see if it works, Henry. That's what."

"I see."

"Henry?" Edith groaned. "What is this man talking about?"

Taggart turned to her, his face a blank, but he simply shook his head before he turned to face Mike again. "And if it works, Mike, what's next?"

"Boeing will put the craft into serial production."

Henry smiled when he heard that, then he laughed - a little. "Do you and that group of clowns in McLean actually think they'll let things slide that far?"

"What makes you think they'll try to stop us, Henry? They'd have to tip their hand, wouldn't they? You really think they're ready to do that?"

"Well, let me ask you a question, Mike. Boeing built one, right? But so did Lockheed. And Northrup-Grumman built another one, did they not? Have you, by any chance, seen all three of them?"

"No. Why?"

"Well, Mike, because they're different. Different technologies and even the basic design parameters are radically different."

"What do you mean?"

Henry shook his head. "Man, you guys really haven't thought this thing through, and I'm afraid it's gonna reach out and bite you on the ass big time."

"What are you talking about, Henry?!"

"Well, Mike, the craft the Boeing team was working on was designed around occupants about three meters tall. The ship Lockheed was working on had a cockpit about the size of a three drawer file cabinet, yet there were six seats in the original. And the ship out on Long Island? Well, they had to build a special hangar for that one, Mike, because the occupants are fucking huge. I mean, like the size of a house."

"So?"

"That's three different races, Mike. Three of them, here. Now. Each with an objective. Maybe even competing objectives, if you get my meaning. And what you're friends in the inner ring might not know yet is that these three civilizations aren't really on speaking terms these days, so if for some reason we happen to show up to the party in a faster than light spacecraft at least two of the parties involved are going to be major-league pissed at the other one."

"Jesus..."

"So, yeah, you go right ahead and get to work on that. Tell the boys out in Renton to just pour their hearts and souls into it, okay? But here's the thing, Mike, so be sure to pass it along, willya? We've fucked up the planet. Bad. So bad they can't use it now. And that means they're pulling out of here now, no harm no foul. But...these guys might have second thoughts if we somehow start showing up in their neighborhood in FTL ships."

"Oh, God..."

"God ain't gonna help the boys in the inner ring, Mikey. God will more than likely just sit this one out and watch as two civilizations capable of intergalactic travel reduce the earth to rubble."

"Jesus, Henry..."

"Oh, and Mike, one last thing. Do you really think I'd be stupid enough to leave a file like that on my laptop?"

+++++

He was sitting on the swim platform, his bare feet dangling in the water, listening to the sounds of the city beyond the wall of shrubs as he leaned back just a little, his eyes closed and his mind reaching out, deep into the dome of the night.

'They know,' he said to Pinky when he reached her.

"I know. And I don't think I was the only one there."

"How far away are they?"

"Within a year, perhaps much sooner."

"Is there anything else we can do?"

"No, not now. All talk of an alliance has broken down."

"So...this is it. Everything we did...was for naught."

"I'm sorry. Yours was a good plan and you've made many friends, but..."

"I know. C'est la vie."

"You saw the doctor this morning? Before you left the hospital?"

"I did. Wait - you mean, you weren't there?"

"I assumed you'd like some privacy."

"You know, Pinky, I think I'll miss you most of all."

"I would like to have spent this time with you, Mike, but I understand. Do you find yourself thinking about what life might have been like if you'd met her two years ago?"

"Yeah. Constantly."

"I never liked Dina. Too brittle. Tracy was the better match."

"Is that why you helped them get back to Bergen?"

"Of course."

"Brittle. I never would have thought that."

"The music. You've been humming the same music again."

"I know, I can't get it out of my mind."

"Do you know what it is yet?"

"No. I think it's something I heard a few years ago, but I'm not really sure where."

"It seems complex. Unusually so."

"Complex? What do you mean?"

"Oh, nothing. Just a thought."

"I know that tone, Pinky. You think it means something, don't you?"

"Tracy is coming. I'll talk with you later..."

+++++

"I brought you some tea," she said as she passed over a mug and sat next to Taggart.

"Thanks."

"Ginger, honey, and lemon. And I brought your Zofran, just in case."

"Perfect."

"How are you feeling now?"

"Better. Humiliated and I don't get along together."

"Humiliated?"

"I don't think I've ever barfed on a sidewalk before. Especially not after a meal like that."

She put her arm around him and pulled him close, shocked at how frail he'd grown over just a couple of days. "I thought you handled it as well as anyone might."

He leaned over a bit and rested his head on her shoulder. "I love you, kid."

"I love you, Hank."

"Sorry I've got to put you through this."

"I'm glad I'm here, Henry. I feel like I was born for this."

"You're not going to ask me about all that spaceship crap?"

"No, why? Did you want me to?"

"God, no. I just thought..."

"Try not to think too much, Hank. All that stuff just gets in the way, if you get my drift." She leaned forward a little and he heard her gasp a little, then point down into the water. "What's that?"

He leaned over and looked down into the water, then he grew very still...and quite afraid.

Part II

He couldn't tell what it was, even if what he was looking at was alive - or something else.

As the first rush of fear subsided, as confusion turned to curiosity and as Tracy's shock morphed into a desire to run - anywhere - he tried to hold onto his sense of reality as he stared into what appeared to an eye. A huge eye, true enough, but the thing down there in the water looked just like an eye.

"Is that what I think it is," he whispered.

"If you think it's your eye you're right on the money."

"My eye? What are you talking about?"

"Blink again, but just with your left eye..."

He closed his left eye and the eye in the water disappeared, but when he reopened his eye the doppelgänger in the water reappeared.

"Now...try the right," she whispered.

He slowly closed his right eye and held it shut, and once again the eye in the water disappeared. "Well, that's not something you see every day," he sighed. "Is it real, ya think?"

"I have no fucking idea, Hank."

He blinked his right eye several times in rapid succession and they watched as the eye in the water disappeared and reappeared as quickly, then Henry stood on the swim platform and stared at the thing, now at a complete loss...

Then he jumped into the water, hoping to land right in the middle of the eye.

+++++

It felt as if he had landed in something like cool honey, something not as sticky yet thickly viscous even so. Thick, and exerting an inward force that made it difficult to breathe - then he realized he was awash in overwhelmingly bright light. And it was everywhere - not simply coming from a single point source - and that just didn't make any sense at all. Vertigo hit when he couldn't tell how he was oriented - because in this sudden shift there was simply no longer any up or down - indeed, no reference to any 'external world' at all.

Then upsetting him most of all, he felt some - thing - in his mind. He couldn't understand the feeling, not when it first began, but soon he saw a rapid succession of memories flashing through his mind's eye and he realized this - thing - was going through his mind, apparently searching for a specific memory.

And he was powerless to resist.

He closed his eyes and drifted, trying to ignore the flood of unwanted memory - until he felt a sudden shift -

And when he opened his eyes he realized he was hundreds of miles above the earth. Above Paris, if he wasn't mistaken, and now the viscous goo was gone, too.

He looked around for evidence of some kind of structure - but saw nothing. He reached out - and felt nothing. He tried to walk - but there was nothing underfoot. Yet he was breathing.

He closed his eyes and leaned his head back and reached out for Pinky and in his mind he saw the moon beyond the earth, yet the eye had taken the moon's place - and when he blinked the moon blinked too.

He turned his head again, then he looked down. He could see Paris between a mottled deck of clouds, her lights peeking out between low lying clouds just thick enough to obscure the real contours of the city...

So close. So far away.

He reached out as if he trying to grab hold of the city and pull himself back through the clouds, then he shook his head as the feeling returned...

'...something is going through my mind, looking for...?'

There!

Inside the mountain. Outside of Seattle. The security gates. Dr. Collins and the rest of the team.

Inside the Boeing Group's reconstructed vehicle.

Sitting at the panel. Reaching out.

He closed his eyes and relaxed as best he could.

'Move...up...'

His body accelerated away from the earth and he grinned.

'Stop.'

Now he was hundreds of thousands of miles beyond the blinking eye of the moon, adrift within fields of dancing asteroids.

'Go back...to the exact same place in orbit.'

The acceleration and deceleration were almost instantaneous, the distance covered in the time it took to think about it.

'To the marina, just behind the swim platform, a foot above the water.'

Tracy was still sitting there, still looking down into the water, when he reappeared - and she screamed when his body seemed to materialize out of nothingness.

And he was standing there. A foot above the water.

When she realized what she was looking at she stood and moved to the aft deck, shaking through her sidelong glance while she tried to reconcile the dissonant bile rising in her throat.

"Can you come here, please?" he asked.

"What?"

"I want to see if something works the way I think it might."

"Henry! You just jumped in the water and a millisecond later you're naked and standing there... What the fuck is going on!"

Then Clyde was there beside her and he barked once before he ambled down to the swim platform. He walked over to the edge and looked down, saw that the skinny white guy wasn't standing on anything and he barked again.

Henry knelt and reached out and scratched Clyde behind the ears. All resistance melted away and the pup stepped out and settled next to Henry, who looked up expectantly, and a little nervously.