Stinky humphed with satisfaction, leaning into the pushbroom that now served as his brush. Swelk groomed the swampbeast with long, smooth strokes, quietly pleased at the glossiness of his leathery skin. As Swelk worked, Smelly butted her head, first gently, then insistently, against her. "Your turn is . . . "
Smelly's importuning was not simple impatience for her turn. Swelk plummeted, only then realizing they had all been suspended in midair. Stinky and Smelly shrank as she plunged, until only their fading fearful trumpeting remained. A recess of her brain noticed without explanation that the animals had not fallen.
She shuddered awake, intertwined digits rigid with fear. Bellows of unseen swampbeasts filled her mind. After forcing her digits to relax, to unlace, she tried but failed to stand. Visions of terrified swampbeasts overwhelmed her as she toppled, overcome by dizziness.
The nightmare did not surprise her—as much as she already loved the kittens, she missed the swampbeasts terribly. For the intense vertigo, however, she had no explanation.
Blackie and Stripes tumbled into the room, curious, perhaps, at the unexpected nighttime noises from Swelk. She preferred to think they had come to console her. As the exile stroked their soft fur, she could not help but wonder, What is wrong with me?
It was not yet 9:00 a.m., and four new pies were already cooling on the counter. The kitchen sink overflowed with mixing bowls, measuring cups, and utensils Kyle couldn't name. Hours before the Thanksgiving turkey would go into the oven, his seventy-year-old, gray-haired, stooping mother kept bustling.
Britt had more or less insisted he take a break. "Juggling knives blindfolded while riding a unicycle at the cliff's edge isn't instinctive behavior. A few months of it gets to most people. You should take some time away." To Kyle's rejoinder that he didn't exactly work for Britt anymore, the politician had answered, "Then accept it as advice from a friend. You're fried. Go away for a few days." So here he was.
He'd offered to help Mom and been refused. He'd been shooed away when he started to wash dishes without asking. He'd proposed in vain that she sit for a while. With Mom it could've been a gender thing; he suggested that she save the potato peeling for Carol, Kyle's sister, whose family was due around noon. Nothing worked. Dad no longer tried; he was in the den reading the morning paper.
Fine. Kyle knew from whence came his own stubbornness gene. "Say, Mom, you mentioned a scrapbook? I thought I'd take a look." The St. Cloud Times was generally hard-pressed to find a local angle to national, let alone interstellar, affairs—they had covered Kyle's stint on the Galactic Commission with (to Kyle) embarrassing fervor. Mom couldn't get enough, and had the fat binder full of yellow-highlighted clippings to prove it. She'd brought it up repeatedly since his arrival last night, undeterred by all changes of subject. He knew she'd sit beside him on the parlor sofa whenever he picked up the scrapbook—and she did. As he leafed through it, he caught from the corner of his eye a self-satisfied smile. Maybe he wasn't the only one smug about an exercise in applied psychology.
Living as he did at the epicenter of events, none of the main articles were surprising. The sidebars were more diverting. Upstate Minnesota was not without its share of cranks—two had accosted him at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport, and the F'thk arrival was all the proof they needed. That no facts tied the newcomers to supposed UFO sightings and alien abductions seemed not to matter.
The important thing was that Mom was off her feet. He proceeded to read, slowly.
The 7-Eleven was mobbed. Not only was the convenience store the closest approximation to an open grocery this Thanksgiving Day afternoon, but it was half-time in a tied Cowboys-Vikings game. Two men in line ahead of Kyle wore Vikings caps with soft stuffed horns. As inane NFL headgear went, he preferred Green Bay cheesehead hats. He kept the opinion to himself.
He looked randomly around the store, killing time. A full head of white hair, glimpsed in an overhead security mirror, caught his eye. Was the stranger watching Kyle? The man began studying his boots self-consciously as Kyle turned toward him. With a shrug, Kyle shuffled to face the checkout counter again. Thinking, This would be easier if I were Swelk, he glanced over his shoulder at the dairy case's glass door. The somehow-familiar reflection peered back at him, the guy's expression a mix of brooding and expectation.
Hell, after many years out East, Kyle was a Redskins fan. He stepped out of line.
His observer was short, maybe five-six, with a gaunt face dominated by a hawklike nose and piercing eyes. Up close the man's hair was a pale, pale blond, not unusual here in Outer Scandinavia. Dark brown, almost black eyes with that hair were. "Do we know each other?"
"Um, no." Uncomfortable grimace around the chewed butt of an extinguished cigar. "Anyway, you don't know me. I feel I know you, Dr. Gustafson."
"Oh. Media coverage of the commission. My fifteen minutes of fame." It didn't explain why Kyle thought he did recognize this guy. "Sorry to have bothered you. I'm sure you have people to be with today."
As grief flooded the stranger's face, Kyle realized why the man looked so familiar.
"This will only take a few minutes," shouted Darlene over the keening of the air popper she'd brought from home. The loud whistle of the appliance's blower was soon punctuated by the rat-a-tat salvoes of exploding corn kernels. Melting butter sizzled in a pan on the stove top. Darlene warmed to the familiar sounds and scents. What could be more normal than movies and popcorn?
The venue was far from normal: Thanksgiving in a safehouse with a fugitive ET. The microwave-free kitchen seemed to predate the Eisenhower administration. Cooking involved a freestanding gas range that would be used that evening to reheat the CIA-provided holiday dinners. The agents would eat, in ones and twos, at their convenience. They were invariably polite to Darlene, but at the same time intensely clannish. If she bothered with a reheated meal, she figured it would be eaten with Swelk.
Swelk lacked holiday expectations, and in any event she would synthesize her own dinner. The usual feedstock for her bioconverter was pizza crusts and leftover takeout Chinese. So, as the popcorn popped, Darlene was "cooking" for, and feeling sorry for, only herself. Her folks, God bless them, were on a cruise. Fail to make it home for three years running, and suddenly there's an expectation. She couldn't say why she'd declined Kyle's invitation to Minnesota.
On second thought, she could: confusion over what, beside professional, her relationship with Kyle was supposed to be. Darlene wasn't seeing anyone at the moment, nor did she care to. Her last relationship, with a partner at a cut-throat DC law firm, had ended badly when he forgot how to leave the go-for-the-jugular attitude at the office. Not that a covert war against interstellar aliens and the approach of Armageddon put one in the mood for a social life . . .
She had to laugh as Stripes sauntered into the kitchen from the hall. White markings around the kitten's eyes gave her an expression of permanent surprise. Cats for Swelk—sometimes Kyle's instincts were dead on. She valued Kyle as a colleague and thought they were becoming good friends. Unfortunately, his Gobi-dry humor and flirtation-impairedness had her at a loss about his intentions. Who knew what signal she'd have sent by going to meet his family? She'd think about sorting it out in a few months if civilization still existed.
Plastic popcorn bowl in one hand, a warm Diet Coke in the other, Darlene backed out of the kitchen, bumping the door open with a hip. "Ready to start . . . " she began. She turned to find Swelk splayed out on the dining-room floor, twitching. The din from the air popper had clearly obscured the thud of the ET hitting the planking. Nothing muffled the crashes of her bowl and soda can. "Swelk! What's wrong?" Two agents burst in from the hall as she spoke.
"I don't know." The computer took forever to translate. "I suddenly could not stand on all threes. The room was spinning around me." Swelk arose shakily, her second utterance put more quickly into English. "Whatever it was, it is going away."
The delayed translation was scary, bringing to mind slurred speech. Did Krulirim have strokes? "Is there anyone we should call?" That any human physician could treat the alien was implausible, but Darlene couldn't bear not acting.
"Yes." Sensor stalks bobbed in amusement, involuntary tremors marring the wry waggle with which Darlene had become familiar. "My doctor is unfortunately light-years away." In the awkward silence that followed, tremors subsided into mere tics.
"Ms. Lyons?" asked an agent economically.
"I don't see what we can do," she told the guards. One shrugged. They left. "Swelk, maybe we should skip the movies." A whiff of buttered popcorn rose as she cleaned up the worst of her mess. One species' aroma was another's toxic fumes. "Does this smell bother you?"
"It was not the smell." The digits of an extremity clenched momentarily in Krulchukor negation. "Make more, if you would like. As to the movies, it would comfort me to watch."
"Okay to the movies. I'll skip the food."
At Swelk's command, a hologram formed over the dining-room table, projected by the alien computer. Indistinguishable Krulirim milled about a packed circular room, as writhing spiders scrolled around the bottom of the image. Opening credits? Captions for Swelk's benefit, Darlene decided, as the translator intoned, in a voice unlike what it used for Swelk, "The Reluctant Neighbor."
She watched from a slat-backed Shaker chair, rapt but unhappy. Fascination with the alien film was understandable. Ditto her unhappiness with Swelk's unexplained episode.
She knew she was overlooking something of extreme importance. But what?
The rolling pasture was bleak and windswept, its dormant grass brittle beneath Kyle's shoes. The flapping wings of a crow breaking cover made the only sound. Then it was gone, and stillness returned.
He was a good mile from pavement. How stupid was he to let embarrassment bring him here? Too late he'd realized why the man at the 7-Eleven looked so familiar: a press photo in Mom's scrapbook. Andrew Wheaton's wife and son had disappeared, and he blamed the F'thk. That the Galactics hadn't appeared for another two months seemed unimportant.
"The farm breaks even," said Wheaton finally. A weather-beaten red barn was just visible in the distance behind him, past a stand of pin oaks. "Most years. With my night job at the airport we made . . . I make . . . ends meet."
"Twin Cities?" asked Kyle.
"St. Cloud Regional. I'm a baggage handler." He tapped with a scuffed boot tip at a tuft of grass. "Bunches of pilots radioed in about an unidentified light that night. The tower people talked all about it, but radar didn't see nothing."
An evening star? Venus appeared in the evening sky that time of year. Ball lightning? A small plane whose radar transponder was out of order? Several things could explain a mystery light in the night sky.
"The house was empty when I got there." A gust of wind stirred the farmer's pale hair. "Tina's car was in the drive. House lights was on. Junior's sheets was rumpled, so he'd been to bed. Dinner dishes was only half done. So they was home at around eight, same time the pilots seen the thing in the sky."
Kyle jammed his hands into his coat pockets. He felt sorry for the man, but how did that help? His body language must have conveyed those doubts.
"I drove home through snow. The only tire tracks at the house was from my truck. I found footprints, though. From boots, I mean. Their coats and boots were gone." Wheaton stared at a low area in the meadow. "They walked here, I think to check out the lights. They didn't come back."
"What did the police say?"
"Snow covered everything before the cops got here. They didn't believe me about the footprints. Said maybe a friend drove them away. Said maybe they left before the storm started, so that there'd be no tire traces under newer snow.
"They asked, did I beat them? Bastards. Changed their tune some when they couldn't find Tina and Junior nowhere. Now, they think I did it." He jerked his coat zipper up an inch. "Bastards," he repeated.
"It?"
"Think I killed 'em. Cops dug up a bunch of the farm. Didn't find nothing." A tear rolled down the farmer's cheek.
Jeez. Kyle didn't know how to respond. He studied the depression which Wheaton had indicated. Today was a day for déjà vu. First Andrew, and now the dip seemed familiar. Nothing grew here in November, but the dry grass in spots of the hollow was stunted and sparse. Kneeling for a closer examination, the ground's cold wicking through his jeans, the thinness of the grass was explained: the earth from which the few blades grew was compacted, like a dense clay. The word "clay" also teased his memory.
How these observation helped, if at all, eluded Kyle. All that he felt certain of, somehow, was that the despondent farmer had done no harm to his wife and child. "If you don't mind, I'll have the area checked out."
Wheaton nodded. He kept his face carefully composed, as though afraid to hope.
Walking back to his car and Andrew's pickup, Kyle recalled what Andrew had bought at the 7-Eleven: a turkey TV dinner and a six-pack. He could do nothing about the lost family, but he could address that sad and solitary holiday meal. "I hope you'll join me at my folks' house for Thanksgiving dinner."