Jonah Read online

  Sunday night, Triss is putting the finishing touches on beef ribs, potato salad and broccoli, while Coral entertains Zion at the kitchen table. Zion seems in a daze, a million miles away. Triss figures she's going to be cook, chief bottlewasher and probably head housekeeper for a while, with those two sick lovebirds on her hands.

  And isn't that typical of a man, running for the hills, as soon as things begin to heat up? Well, Jonah isn't the first to discover love late in life. Happened to Theodore Carlotti, married for twenty years to a bitter woman. Never knew real love until he met Triss—Fitzsimmons then, a widow when Ted met her, after Elgin crashed and burned up in a mechanically unsound Piper Cub. But never mind her past, the present was chock-full of problems and promises.

  She parks her hands on her hips and makes a formal announcement about the time. “Eight-oh-nine,” she says sharp enough to make Coral Kay wince. That child knows more than she's telling.

  “Stick the ribs in, or wait a while longer for our errant boy?”

  “Daddy said he might not be back ‘till after dark.”

  “It's way past after dark, Coral.”

  The child isn't the only one with troubles. Zion's face is a gray mop. Still acting the visitor, she won't do anything as rude as declaring when they will or won't eat.

  Coral's face crumbles into a biscuit of angst. “Where is he?” she says shrilly, her arms out in the air, a melodramatic Mahoney diversion Triss recognizes.

  “I'm not so concerned about dinner. Everything can be nicely saved under foil and warmed up later, but the Blueberry Surprise for dessert…I sure hate for Jonah to miss that, because it's one of those delicacies that loses the flavor after you refrigerate it. Sure would like to time dinner so at least Jonah could be here for the best part. I don't make Blueberry Surprise every day.”

  “It's a secret from women!”

  Triss goes over to the table and slides into a chair next to Coral. She gives Coral her arched-eyebrow look: I mean business, don't try to fool me, I'm a Mahoney, too.

  “There are women and there's Jonah's family, Coral. I'm sure he didn't mean a secret from me and Zion—not way past dark. What if he ran out of gas?”

  “Star Rock! It's where men go to think.”

  Zion's look is far away.

  “You know where this Star Rock is?” Triss asks her.

  “I…I once did.”

  Zion looks first at Coral, then at Triss.

  “I think we should eat,” she says in a quiet voice.

  Triss didn't bring it up again until after Coral had gone to bed, and she and Zion were tidying the kitchen. “If he intended to stay overnight, seems he would have said so. ‘After dark' and morning are long way apart.”

  “Maybe he thought he would be home by dark.”

  “Umhmmm.” Triss smoothes the damp dishtowel to dry on the cabinet door. “That's why you said go ahead and eat when you heard he went to Star Rock. Where is it, on the other side of Colorado?”

  “It's not far from here.” Zion spins the top on the jar of barbecue sauce and puts it in the refrigerator.

  “You two have a lovers' spat?”

  “We aren't lovers,” Zion says, facing the refrigerator door.

  Triss taps her on the shoulder, but Zion doesn't turn around.

  “But you know something you're not telling.”

  Zion nods. “I need time to think, Triss. It's not…it's complicated.”

  “Well, you see my light on downstairs, come right down. I've got a feeling sleep is going to come reluctantly tonight.” Triss starts toward the basement, then turns around. “I knew something strange was going on in this house the moment I stepped out of Mr. Giuseppe's limousine.”

  In her room, Zion opens the window a crack, lights a candle, and lies down on the bed to think. She will have to tell Triss and Coral something. She can't hide behind Sister Glorianne's apron anymore, nor can she spit in the eye of life behind Alcyone's bluster, and Shadow Girl is no longer here to keep the secrets. But the ghost of the Writer is still around, scuttling the shadows, pale and nervous, all too willing to tint with words but never tell.

  Maybe she will never do more than hint at the mysteries veiled in her deeper mind…veiled now as result of her years on Earth. The land itself worked on her, she knows. Mother Earth has shaped her for survival here. Gaia does not discriminate or play favorites. She loves her adoptees as much as her natural-borns. A sage in captivity eats from the same bowl as a man with no learning, and often the latter fares better.

  Intuitively she knows that her meeting with Jonah earlier today is key to his disappearance. He insisted they spent three hours together last night. It's possible. And maybe she did make some symbols and hid them away—wouldn't be the first time. She doesn't believe he lied, but when he confronted her, she felt as invaded as discovering a Peeping Tom at the window. No one on Earth has ever confronted her with her hidden life before. Jo knew she lived a double life, but Jo never got this close, not in all the years they knew each other. But in less than three days, Jonah crossed a line of intimacy Jo never attempted, though her love was as fierce as any mother for a daughter. It gave Jonah too much power, a man she barely knows. She was too ruffled to think straight at the time, but now she would say, “What if I told you I was pregnant with your child, and you had no recollection of having engaged in sex with me?'

  Maybe she wouldn't use that analogy…but it did describe her position….

  He asked if they could bond in a mutual purpose. It was as if he saw her purpose on Earth with more clarity than she did. That did rankle her. He said nothing would please him more than helping her. What arrogance, she had thought. But then, after he was gone, she had felt alone and confused.

  Life on Earth is confusing, period! Especially volcanic emotions that erupt without notice. That's how she came to Apple Valley, on a river of molten shock. Did she inadvertently play to Jonah's sympathies? Some men were powerfully attracted to women in crisis. But she had been mindful of that. It would have been easy to fall into his arms….

  Jonah is not so complicated. But the ways of will and the intertwining of lives are. Though she has lost the clarity she once enjoyed on Geshlama, she still carries nascent awareness of the cross-purposes of human relationships. There are fields of choices, and there are junctures. In the fields, people feel in charge of their lives, but all fields are intersected by cross-junctures, at which points, the higher design is activated….

  She is sure Jonah did not know Star Rock was a portal. This is where she fell! A corrupted portal…

  A surge of wind rattles the blinds. She shudders; massages her temples. Her presence compromised Jonah, and there are two people she is beholden to….

  This is what her father meant, wasn't it? She remembered it like a dream…but maybe she did actually meet with him last night. Where the whales swam…white sands…midnight-blue sky…

  He said, “You're on Earth now, Child.” As if she had to be told again, like someone shipwrecked at sea, unable to recognize a sandy beach within swimming distance. He meant she was subject to the conditions of Earth. She had a job to do, but she would be as challenged as any natural-born. She would not enjoy her former awareness and powers here. All that was forfeited when she fell. In his presence, she understood and accepted. She is bound to suffer the same doubts and fears that all human beings experience. Her faith must be constructed from the same base of forgetfulness; her memories are no clearer than the dreams and visions of anyone, Earthbound. And if she should feel prideful for her former lives on Geshlama and Zalos, it will only increase the difficulties of her task. Yes, her father reminded her of that, too. In a dream? On a ship? Either way, she does not remember him saying anything about Jonah!

  She thinks about the crows she called to Drake's house in Pueblo, and questions the truth of her father's words. Maybe she acted in a moment of heightened abilities, or maybe her father was warning her against careless use of her gifts.

  Her eyes snap open. She sta
res at the soft light cast by the candle flame. Wind sighs through the blinds. Chilled, she sits up, reaches for Coral's blue shawl, wraps it around her back and shoulders. Clutching the shawl, she rocks back and forth, her gaze fixed on the flickering candle flame.

  A memory surges like a burst of hard rain.

  She and Jonah made love last night!

  Now she understands…and knows what she must do.

  Light is shining up the basement stairs, but Zion can hear Triss snoring. She tiptoes toward Coral's room. It's late, but better she prepare the child now. She raps lightly on the door, pushing it open. “Coral? It's Zion….”

  “Daddy's home?”

  “Not yet. I want to talk with you about that.”

  The clown lamp on top of the bureau casts a rosy glow in the room. The child rises up out of a mass of covers and stuffed toys, rubbing her eyes.

  Zion sits down on the bed, takes hold of Coral's hand, and looks unwaveringly into her green eyes.

  “Do you believe in fairies?”

  She does.

  “Your father has gone to Fairyland for a while.”

  “He said after dark!”

  Zion gathers Coral in her arms. How does a stranger soothe a child's sense of betrayal?

  “Coral, I can't explain this to you, because I don't fully understand it myself. Your father did not know he was going to Fairyland. He thought Star Rock was only a rock, but it isn't. It's a secret gateway to Fairyland.”

  “Supposed to be a secret. From women”

  “When I was a girl I—”

  “But Daddy said…”

  “He didn't know Star Rock was a gateway to Fairyland. The fairies usually hide. They hardly ever open the gates and pull someone into their world. If they did pull your daddy through, it was because they knew he was a very kind man, and would not hurt them.”

  “But why did he go to Fairyland?”

  “I don't know for sure that he did. I just have a feeling that if the fairies did pull him in, it's because they have a very special job for him to do, so he has to go to school over there. The fairies decide these things. What can we do?”

  “When's he coming back, Zion?”

  “Maybe tomorrow, maybe in a week, maybe a month. I have an idea. Let's collect faith stones. Tomorrow I want you to find the first faith stone and we'll put it in a special place. Where might that be?”

  Coral sits up and looks around the room. She points.

  “The doll buggy? Perfect.”

  Zion returns to her bed, lies down, and stares at the ceiling. Her eyes fill with tears. Children are so trusting.

  But Triss probably doesn't believe in fairies….

  (Q-2.)ORGANIC MECHANICS

  Jonah's brain is scorched, and his body is paralyzed. For a time indeterminable, he lies delirious on a cold metal table in a room indistinguishable in detail for the blinding white light. Beyond the white light are dull orange shadows, beyond the orange, dust-gray gloominess. The air is humid, heavy, smells like moldy tennis shoes.

  Before he sees the creatures, he knows he is a captive of aliens. The scene is not dissimilar to portrayals he has seen on TV, melodramatic documentaries about alien abduction. People always said this happened to ordinary human beings. He bragged himself up as the most ordinary of ordinaries, but now he realizes he thought he was too smart to be fooled into thinking that abduction by aliens could be real in any empirical sense. Yes, he used that hundreddollar word—empirical—to show he wasn't the Y in the word ordinary, he was the Big O.

  Reality is what happens to you, he now sees in a sunburst of enlightenment.

  The pumpkin-headed shorties enter the room first, followed by the creepy, skinny leader alien. Fear screams in his mind, but awe forgets to summon the air to sound the alarm. The energy they emanate is felt like a mild electrical shock. The bee buzzing sound is continuous and intensifies in their presence. They move jerkily like you would suppose of robots, but Jonah knows he is encountering intelligence in the same way any human being knows when a body in a coffin is dead.

  Caught in the leader's gaze, Jonah forgives the alien his spindly, cartoonish body. The alien's head reminds him of a huge insect with eyes as unlovely as flys'.

  The tall alien bends over him like a giant praying mantis inspecting a weevil. Jonah's teeth are nervous in his mouth and his muscles feel like omelets. Peleh is the name, and Peleh is picking and pinning down his thoughts like an entomologist sticking aphids on pasteboard.

  He is told telepathically that he is not afraid—zap!—he's not afraid. He must keep the horror tucked deep behind his navel, where it is hanging on to his butt with little fingers.

  Under the bee buzzing sound is a slow rhythmic whooshing, like a bellows…like a huge lung breathing laboriously.

  Perhaps you are in the womb of time, Peleh inserts into Jonah's mind.

  He wants to kick Peleh's head. He stares right into that monster insect eye. “Don't try to romance me with high talk!” His voice sounds high-pitched and weird, but speech is his only club. “We know what you're up to and we're working on it,” he says with as much menace as he can muster in the squawking that betrays the usual power in his voice. “Ever hear of Star War technologies?” He is quickly putting two and two together. The U.S. military establishment doesn't look so barbaric just now. “You think NASA just made up that term to seduce Congress into forking over funds? NASA is not Hollywood—they mean business!”

  Peleh comes back smoothly, Which stars do you mean to murder?

  Jonah is usually the first to make a wisecrack like that, but coming from the alien, it sounds like a blasphemy.

  “Don't think God doesn't know what you jokers are up to! He does”

  He is struck with a profound thought: God has to be. Could nature alone, though random coincidences, accidentally evolve anything as splendid as a human being? No wonder these freaks are stealing our genetic material.

  God is in your minds, man becoming, Peleh telepaths.

  “A wiseguy and a philosopher. Well, you don't impress me, Peleh. Today you got the upper hand, but what goes around comes around. Tomorrow you are our Halloween story. Our God is running out of patience with your kind.”

  His attention snaps to the baldies on his left. Laughing at him? You can't see a change in their masklike faces, but along with the electrical energy, they're emanating mirth, mocking him.

  Peleh lifts his head. He comes to us seeking a quill and a veil. The oily eye fastens blackly on Jonah again. Will a quill and a veil put food on your table, John Arnold Beaumont? Or do you hope to make a name of distinction for yourself.…

  He ignores the quip about a quill and a veil. They talk nonsense just to confuse you. “So you won't acknowledge my chosen name. Do I care?”

  Reason with us, John Arnold Beaumont. Can a man change his genetic signature by changing his name?

  “Uh-huh. I was wondering when you were going to get around to your real business!” Alarm squeaks in his unnatural voice. He can talk tough up to the point of actually considering they will succeed in squeezing him off to collect sperm for their hideous hybrid creations. It all comes back to him in a wave now, the shows he watched about alien abduction and the stories he heard. His sympathy was cold to the people reporting the stories, because he couldn't believe it could be literally true. It was like hearing someone cry over the kidnapping of a pet rock. Now he feels like crying. The idea they will use his sperm to create a half-alien child he will never be able to raise and love is abhorrent. His heart knows it's a crime, and his mind argues—it isn't even scientifically possible for different species to breed—is it? He hasn't seen any hybrids with his own eyes, but what's this talk about genetics if that is not their agenda? Peleh intensifies the hypnotic gaze, and there's nothing Jonah can do to stop him.

  In his mind's eye, Jonah sees himself at home in bed…a purple owl perched on the chair! Everything that happened floods into his consciousness like debris washed in from a violet storm. Jonah swoons.
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br />   They send you on wild goose chases, Peleh inserts, calming the chaos kicked up in Jonah's mind. Bring back a veil and a quill, they taunt you. Reason with us, Jonah. Life is organic mechanics. You eat well, your brain and body function properly. You choose the right mate, you produce healthy children. You do the work you were created to do, you thrive.

  Jonah is still thinking about that owl. A purple owl really did visit him? Is there really an indigo veil somewhere, as Zion mentioned? And an imperial quill he will find with our mothers in heaven?

  Maybe all this is one big cruel hoax, but he can't think of who would want to hoax him, or why. Unless these alien freaks just get their rocks off, tormenting a hapless man. Dream on. They want his sperm. All the rest is lies and theatrics.

  What do birds know of fitness for men? Peleh asks.

  As if Jonah knew the answer. He is peripherally aware of the shorter beings taking action…moving equipment, gearing up to do the dirty deed. Peleh's eye is like a damp rag pressing on his mind…he is not afraid. It is right and natural for him to contribute seed, for without it, humankind is doomed to extinction.

  The most obscene thing…Jonah feels it is right and natural. These feelings walk into his mind like gentle Tibetan monks ringing chimes, chanting of the real history of humankind. Civilizations rise, civilizations fall, Earth is a multileveled school for souls. Our bodies are like gondolas that carry us through classes of experience until the curriculae are fulfilled. Only a small portion of the soul's awareness penetrates human consciousness. The human being is the last to know the score, and cannot unless his soul opens a door.

  The chant is soothing, but there is a drum pounding inside Jonah's cranium, warning him not to believe these freaks. They're just trying to brainwash him into cooperating.

  A fragment of the Twenty-third Psalm comes to mind. You preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.…

  Jonah feels like weeping. Men are like sleepwalkers, at once dangerous and vulnerable for what we don't know. Why did God put us in this position? Why didn't he tell us the score?

  Maybe your god is telling you now, Peleh inserts.