“Shouldn’t you ought to wear gloves, maybe?” Tessa said. She’d heard me yelping when I’d received the shocks.
“Got some in the truck.”
“Wait right there.” Tessa set her cup on the stony ground and trotted over to the truck. I yelled at her to look in the glove compartment or under the passenger seat.
“Why wouldn’t they be in the glove compartment?” she called back.
With the gloves on I reached again and pulled. A section of the thing’s side shifted out and twisted around.
“Well, look at that,” Tessa said.
On the far side something else was going on. I could hear a ratcheting sound, like a loose bearing in a chainsaw. Shining my light around, I saw panels and rods sliding out from the back of the thing. Right in front of me a part of it lighted up with a string of green beads.
“Huh, Christmas,” Tessa said.
I barely heard the bang that came with the next shock. The jolt threw me off the ladder.
When I came to, Tessa was standing over me and I could feel a big chunk of rock digging into my back.
“Fex? You all right?”
Groggy, I sat up. “Sure.” My feet still stung from the shock. “I guess I was going about that all wrong.”
She helped me to my feet. The skin on her hands was surprisingly soft for someone who works fencing and wrangling steers. I held on for a moment.
Tessa gave me a sly smile and pulled her hands away. “I’m going to need a new collector.” She shone my flashlight around and I saw the wreckage.
The panel had split in two. Each half lay canted on its support frame. Liquid kuqurnout bled, dripping from the jagged tips of the break. The liquid pooled in the irregular depressions in the sand.
Nothing I could do now, clever as I was.
It reminded me of the time a young Ellis Crenshaw had drained his own collector, planning to filter the fluid and pour it back in. No one had ever told him that the solar collectors were set up to drain by forcing in fresh kuqurnout at the top nipple. Sure it’s possible to filter and reuse the stuff, but the coils have to be kept fresh. You can’t let them dry out. Poor kid, got the thing empty and couldn’t do anything but listen as the internals popped and crackled under the force of the naked sun. Set his family back two months, and eventually they just moved on. Tokyo, I’d heard, but stories have a way of magnifying. They may never have even gotten past Denver.
This was as bad. Maybe worse.
I looked at Tessa and saw in her eyes that she knew right away. She gave me a half-hearted smile. “I guess there ain’t nothing even you can do about something as busted as that.”
I simply nodded.
The thing that had made the collector split in half had fallen over, back through the gap between the busted pieces. It was bigger. When I’d touched it, something had … I don’t know … activated it? The thing was at least twice the girth and twice the height. The individual sections — the patches of fur, exposed machine and other textures — hadn’t grown themselves, but there were more of them. It made a chirping-clicking sound like a locust or cicada.
“Like a cell getting ready to divide,” Tessa said.
I wondered what made her say that. Like anyone, I’d done basic biology in school, so I knew what she meant in general terms. The process wasn’t something I understood in any detail, but I hoped what she said wasn’t true. That would be like some kind of infestation: this thing dividing into two, then four, eight and so on up to the sixty-fourth square on the chessboard, which was more than all the rice in China, if I remembered the legend correctly.
My mother had read to me from an old paper and card book, tattered and yellowed. It had stories from around the world.
The king of China — or maybe it was Japan — refused to pay an artist in gold for many months of work, so the artist suggested payment in rice to fill a chess board. One grain on the first square, two on the second, four on the third and so on, doubling with each square. The king agreed, thinking the artist a fool, but quickly learned that doubling grows numbers very quickly.
At least that’s how I remember it, fifty-something years later.
“We’d better kill it,” Tessa said.
I had my double-barreled .303 in the truck.
“What do you think?” she asked.
“I think that’s worth a try.” I still hadn’t figured out how we were going to take care of her solar collector. It would take a month to get something shipped up from Minneapolis or Kansas City.
I went closer to the thing. It smelled milky, a little sour, maybe with a tinge of vanilla. An odd, sickly smell that was kind of pleasant. Weird.
“Careful,” Tessa said. “Don’t get too close again.”
“I’m going to get my gun.”
“Seriously?”
I load my own ammunition. Trader Bill has contacts in Newtown who import manufactured ammunition out of Europe via New York, but I trust my own loading.
I got the gun, checked it over, loaded a round into the chamber and shot the thing. As I pulled the trigger it occurred to me that this might cause some exponential division.
There had been mutations and problems all over. Various governments blamed the experiments of other governments. The conspiracy people blamed space programs for bringing back hybrid life forms from the stars. Lots of places spent lots of money cleaning up the messes.
Out here, though, we always seemed at a far enough remove from those real-world problems. Mostly what we dealt with were regular things, like getting enough water and things breaking down.
The furry, stony, mechanical thing jerked when the buckshot hit it.
“Don’t think you killed it,” Tessa said.
The thing sprouted legs.
“Uh-oh,” Tessa said.
I was already running for the truck. I grabbed the tarp from the bed of the truck and headed back, thinking that the best thing to do might be to just get in the truck and hightail it.
The thing had managed to get itself upright on four legs. They were spindly, roddy legs, like the arms on one of those industrial robots.
“Space probe,” Tessa said. “Probably Russian.”
The thing tottered like a newborn calf just getting used to its legs. It made whining, ratcheting sounds as it moved. Some lights rippled up the side of it, blue and orange and white.
“Better shoot it again?” I was worried it was going to run off into the dark and that would be the last we’d see of it. Until we started finding slaughtered animals from Tessa’s herd.
“Maybe not.”
“Maybe not.” I threw the tarp over top of the thing.
It stopped moving around, but the tarp shivered like a curtain drawn too fast. I smelled something like cooked goose. It was a long time since I’d eaten goose, but that was a distinct odor.
A hole appeared in the tarp. About the size of my palm. I wasn’t sure if the hole was burned or cut. Light beamed out, blue and misty. There was no dust or vapor in the air, but the beam itself was visible.
“Better not let that touch you,” Tessa said. “Look what it did to the tarp.”
I thought that we probably ought to call someone. Maybe we should have done that the moment we’d first seen the thing.
I didn’t rightly know who, anyway. Old Ted Andrews, the local sheriff I supposed. Closest thing to authority around here.
The thing had gone still, though the beam still lanced out from the side. I stuck the barrel of the gun in the light and right away saw the metal surface begin to blister. “Some light,” I said.
“We should get out of here,” Tessa said. I could hear the resignation in her voice. Like she was ready to give up the place, let this invader take over. I could remember when her father had died, out on the range. That had been only a year or two after I’d arrived. Tessa would have been maybe eleven or twelve. Too young to lose a father, but things had worked out for her. She’d grown up quick, worked hard. In the first year or two she’d used her fat
her’s good name to keep things going. The ranch hands who would never have taken an order from a pre-teen girl had bowed to her wishes. I’d seen it on occasion. Not quite manipulation, but certainly she knew how to emotionally twist things. They didn’t quite feel sorry for her, but she used her youthful vulnerability to move things along.
Before anyone knew it, she was sixteen and doing most of the work herself.
Out at all hours of the night, repairing fences, birthing breach calves, chasing off coyotes. She knew when to stick around and when to gracefully withdraw.
This felt like a moment to flee.
“Get in the truck,” I said.
“I…” Tessa ducked as the blue beam swung around. It lit on my pickup and right away the steel tailgate began bubbling and cracking.
I took a step toward it.
“It heard you,” Tessa said.
“Where’s your truck?”
The beam swept down at the rear wheel. The tire exploded with a bang. Further along the bodywork blistered and caught alight.
“I’m not going to answer that.” Tessa backed away.
Another tire blew out.
The beam shut off.
Tessa turned and ran. She headed right for the machine shed where the tractors and trailers were. I think she even had a backhoe in there.
“Stop,” I shouted after her. If the thing could understand what we were talking about, maybe it could understand intentions.
Tessa took a few more steps and slowed. But it was too late.
The thing tottered around and shucked off the tarp. The beam reached out, speeding right by Tessa’s shoulder and tearing a wide hole in the side of the wooden shed. Something inside there caught fire and exploded, sending a gout of flame back out the new hole. Tessa stumbled, fell to the ground.
While the space machine was distracted, I stepped back toward my truck. Both rear tires were blown, and the paintwork half-burned away, but the singed paint had stopped burning. I opened the driver’s door as quietly as I could. The clunk sounded like gunfire to me.
The machine still kept moving around, though the beam had shut off again. It was moving toward Tessa. She was still kneeling on the ground.
“Are you all right?” I shouted, worried I was going to attract too much attention.
“No,” she said. She turned to face me. In the dim half-light from the burning shed she looked bereft and in pain.
I got into the driver’s seat.
The key turned, but the motor didn’t catch.
Tessa yelled something incoherent. I didn’t have time to look around.
I threw the truck into reverse and turned the key again. The starter motor whined and the whole vehicle lurched backwards, carried by the electric charge. I thumped the clutch down and kept the key turned. With the truck still jerking on the tire stubs, the engine started.
“Watch out!” Tessa shouted.
In the rearview mirror I saw the machine. It had a string of lights around, like it had been wrapped in a spiral of Christmas lights and was trying to disguise itself as a tree. I could see the blue beam. It turned, almost reaching out for me.
I released the clutch and jammed my foot down on the accelerator. The wheels spun in the loose earth. I kept my foot down. The back window shattered. Blue light played across the dash.
I swung the wheel, pulling back and forth. The truck was still moving, but I seemed to have no traction at all. The center console started to soften and drip, melting away.
If it hadn’t burned away my back tires, I would have been able to run the thing down with the truck. But right now I was running out of time and losing headway.
I heard another sound, and looked up in time to see a sudden flare of headlights. Right in front of my hood.
The other vehicle rammed me, driving me back.
I practically went over the wheel and through the windshield.
Tessa. Driving her truck.
I kept the gas on in mine.
I felt heat on my neck, like when you step out from shade into the full blast of the summer sun. The beam must have shifted.
Tessa kept her foot down, shunting my truck backwards. My hood burst up. It flipped against the windshield and slammed back down, breaking the hood mounts. Knowing what she was doing I kept my boot on the gas.
My tailgate struck the machine, knocking it down. If shooting it had made it more active what would this do?
I felt like we had no choice.
The truck lurched up as it knocked the thing over. The chassis crunched and scraped as I rode up across.
There was a cracking sound and the trucks jerked to a stop. My radiator hissed, vapor rising up in the light from the one working headlight on Tessa’s truck.
“You think we got it?” she shouted.
“Sure we did.”
“I mean did we kill it?” Her door opened and she stepped out onto the dusty soil.
“Stay in the—”
The beam swung around, striking her knees. Tessa collapsed.
I jumped out my own door. Reaching over the side of the truck I grabbed the tire iron. I lay down on my side in the dust. The ground smelled scorched. I could just make out the silhouette of the machine wedged under my truck.
I swung the length of steel at the thing. The impact came as a dull metallic clunk. The machine shuddered. It tried to roll around, lifting the weight of the truck. I swung again. The thing kept coming. My truck tipped up on two wheels. If it came much further it was going to flip over on its side. With me underneath.
I jammed the sharp end of the tire iron into one of the holes in the machine.
I got a jolt of electricity right through the iron. My arm went numb.
“Got it, got it,” Tessa yelled.
I rolled, grabbed the iron with my left arm and jabbed at the thing again.
This time I must have hit it just right. The iron jinked a little and went clear through the machine. Something sighed and the truck fell back onto the remains of its wheels.
Rolling over, I sat up. My right arm was still numb. It hung uselessly against my side. I staggered around the truck and found Tessa. She lay where she’d fallen. For a moment I was worried that she’d been killed, but as I approached, she lifted her head.
“You killed it?” she said.
“Maybe.” I looked at my truck. There was no light coming from underneath it. The smell of burning herbs drifted around, as if someone was making a steak roast and had left it running too long.
“Maybe we should get out of here?” she said. “We should take my truck. It’s in better shape.”
“Good idea.” I didn’t know who was going to drive: My arm was only now starting to regain sensation and I doubted it would come right soon, and her legs were obviously hurt.
“A fine pair we make,” she said as I helped her up.
“You work the gears,” I said. “I’ll steer.”
Tessa managed the briefest of laughs. “Okay then.”
We got in the truck and awkwardly headed for town. The truck rattled and groaned. I figured we’d drive straight to the sheriff and let him come out here and sort it all out. He’d know what kind of rocketry gizmo it was, or would at least know whom to call.
“I guess I won’t be going back,” Tessa said.
“Not for a while, at least.”
“Not ever. I’ve been wondering anyhow, for a while now. It’s getting harder to make a go of it out here. Been thinking of moving south.”
“South?” I said.
“Sure. Maybe Oaxaca or just Mexico City. Maybe the drowned glades.”
The truck rumbled over the rough ground of her access road. I pictured her off in a boat, chasing alligators or manatees. It had its appeal.
“Maybe,” she said, “you’d like to come along.”
I glanced at her, saw her looking back at me, face half-silhouetted in the backwash from the single headlight.
I gave her a smile. “Maybe I would.”
~~~~~
r /> ~~~~~
Sean Monaghan lives in a small rural New Zealand city, with a lush (some would say overgrown) garden. His science fiction has appeared in Asimov’s, Perihelion and Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. He was awarded the Grand Prize in the 2014 Jim Baen Memorial Writing Contest. Web: seanmonaghan.com
(Back to Table of Contents)
Good-bye, Mr. Chip
by Jamie McKittrick; published July 29, 2014
Time is ageless; Time is age;
Time is just a word on a page
H.R. Halbot, My Feet Hurt
Elmer didn’t feel normal. Actually, to tell the truth he hadn’t felt this good in what must have been years. But that wasn’t it. Elmer was turning eighty-six next month but in spite of a clapped-out liver, a bad eye and a spinal column that creaked with pain, he felt younger than ever. Though he was racked with the same old ailments they were now somewhat detached as if viewed through the wrong end of a telescope. He sat in the shade of the Pavilion Café drinking a cup of tea with his son and looking out across the park lake. It fractured the reflection of the sky across its surface into an indeterminate beauty. The fountain in the middle of the lake, Elmer thought to himself, looked cheap, just a ring with holes in floating on the surface. Nevertheless it sent up its plumage in such a way that it looked as if a giant swan were dancing out of smoke for him, lolling its neck and fluttering its wings in malleable succession. He didn’t usually drink tea.
“Dad, are you even listening to me?”
Elmer turned his head as quickly as his neck would allow him.
“Of course I am,” he said, “And really, Marty, I think that you should let it lie. If she’s that keen on the colour then tell her she can have it like that. But make sure you tell her properly so that she appreciates it. She’ll remember it and you’ll come out best in the end. The colour’s not important. Whenever your mother wanted...”
Here Elmer stopped himself. Marty stared blankly at him. When was the last time he had strung sentences together so eloquently? Elmer chuckled inwardly. He’s used to using me as a sounding board, he said to himself, Not getting advice from his old dad.
“You’re used to using me as a sounding board,” Elmer said, chuckling.
“No,” said Marty, “No, it’s just I didn’t... No.”
Elmer looked back at the water. This chip has paid for itself, he thought. The green-black sheen of a duck’s head was pecking away at a lifted wing, presumably to dislodge a parasite. A woman threw a chunk of bread and the duck made a surge for it, forgetting for a moment its itch.