The Spaceship Next Door (8 page)

“Well I’m not really writing for anyone.”

“You’re never going to pull this off, Ed. Good God.”

“Ahh, okay. The New Yorker?”

“Noo, no. Nobody’s going to talk to someone from the New Yorker in Massachusetts. Follow baseball sometime. Try again.”

“I, um…”

“Okay, here’s what you say: you’re writing a feature article on spec for the Atlantic Monthly. General Morris is your… let’s go with uncle. He pulled some strings to get you onto the base and up close and personal with the ship.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask, how did you know we were doing that?”

“Edgar, everyone knows everything in this town. So you’re using your connections with Morris to get the kind of story nobody’s written before, and that’s why the Atlantic is interested in a spec piece from somebody who has no bylines in their own name. You’re probably going to have to come up with a plausible backstory on how you’re a thirty year old writer with no credits, too.”

“You make it sound like I have to prep for a background check.”

“That’s exactly right. I checked up on you already. Took me about ten minutes to decide you weren’t a reporter.”

“You got my age wrong.”

That’s because I’m guessing, because you have no public profile, and that’s exactly my point. You can either build that profile tonight—it won’t stand up—or come up with why you don’t have one. Why, how old are you?”

“Thirty-four, but you had me looking younger, I’ll take the compliment.”

“Don’t let it go to your head, I’m only sixteen.”

“When do you turn seventeen, exactly? Just so I know when I can stop hearing you say that over and over.”

“Not for another four months. Are you gay?”

“No.”

“Then I’ll probably keep saying it, sorry.”

T
hey went back
inside to rescue General Morris from Annie’s mother, or perhaps the other way around. Both appeared reasonably uncomfortable to have been left alone, especially when they probably could hear Ed and Annie arguing.

Morris had a number of documents for them to sign. According to the general, it was the same basic documentation the army used when putting translators on the payroll on foreign soil. This actually made Annie laugh out loud.

The whole thing took about an hour, which taxed her mom, a lot more than she let on. By this time she was usually lighting a joint and picking a movie to relax to, before either passing out in her recliner or staggering off to bed.

When it was all done, everyone shook everyone’s hands, and Annie took over hosting duties for long enough to escort them out while her mother excused herself.

“Again, I’m really sorry,” Ed said quietly as the general walked ahead to the car. “We didn’t know. Is it cancer?”

“Yeah, it’s… yeah. It’s not going to get any better. The weed’s for pain, and to help her whole ‘power of positive thinking’ thing. Look, I don’t know if she even has a legal prescription for it. We grow it ourselves.”

“Don’t worry about any of that.”

They shook hands again.

“I’ll be by in the morning,” he said.

“Yeah, hold up. Are you planning to go around in one of those?”

He looked at the car, then back.

“I was. Comes with its own driver, too. It’s all right, right? That cover story of yours has me related to the general, so…”

“No, that’s not going to work. Like I said, don’t insult them. You parked a rental at Betty Lou’s, you should take that.”

Ed laughed. “You know where I’m staying and what I drove into town in. I’m starting to think none of this was actually my idea.”

“Now you’re learning. See you in the morning.”

Inside, her mother had settled back into her chair and was searching her layers for a lighter.

“Well, he seems like a nice boy, dear,” she said.

“Stop it. He’s thirty-four.”

“I can’t wait to tell your father his little girl is working for The Man and being courted by a boy in his thirties. He’ll be thrilled.”

Annie held up a throw pillow as a threat. “You are not allowed to tease me about this.”

“Oh, come on, this is the only fun I get.”

“Did you eat today?”

“I did. Twice.”

“Liar.”

“All right once, but it was a big meal.”

Annie put down the pillow and threw herself on the couch.

“You have to
eat
, mother.”

“Yes, I know, I know.”

“Oh, and don’t worry, I made sure nobody’s going to say anything about the… you know.”

“The
dope?
Honestly, who
cares
any more?”

“Some people do! The army does, I bet.”

“I grow my own plants in my own yard for use in my own house. Let them come. I’ll call the ACLU.”

“Hippie.”

“You are correct. I am too young to be one, but you are still correct. Now, I believe
North by Northwest
is already in the machine. Will you be joining your mother for a Hitchcock, or would you prefer hiding in your room and writing Eddie Loves Annie on all your notebooks?”

“I swear to God, I will hit you with this pillow, lit joint or no.”

“Ah, such violence. Find me the TV remote, would you?”

Annie started rummaging through the nearest collection of afghans, as this was the most obvious place to check. As she did, a thought occurred.

“Hey, mom, silly question: did we ever watch
Porgy and Bess?
”

“That’s Gershwin, right? I don’t think so. If we did, it would have been a network airing. I’m sure we don’t own that. Why, did you want to?”

“No. I was just curious.”

D
obbs hated using
the bathroom in the camper.

It was a funny problem for a man who lived in a camper to have, but it was true. He’d been away from real plumbing for a long time and was growing to despise a lot of things about that fact, including the chem smell, the size of the john, and most especially the part where it had to be emptied regularly.

He had no decent solution to the problem aside from hoping the city would install public bathrooms in the field. (He had petitioned them to do exactly that, and received nothing for his efforts. Not even a port-a-john.) All he could control was the frequency in which the toilet needed emptying, and even then he had only so much say. He could make fewer contributions, certainly, which might cut down on the number of times Art asked him to change it, but it wouldn’t eliminate the part where Dobbs did the changing.

Art asked him to do it
every
time. There were other things Dobbs had to do—or rather “had to” do, with air quote scare quotes—presumably to offset the expense of giving him a place to stay while awaiting the inevitable, and he didn’t much mind those other things. But the toilet?

That was why, whenever he could, Dobbs went for a walk instead.

Behind the campers was an open field, but at the far end of that field was a collection of freestanding trees, a forward thrust first wave of vegetation with a larger column of forest bringing up the rear. A vanguard of nature’s toilet, located only about a quarter of a mile away.

L
earning
how to dump in the woods—without either getting bitten by nature or coming into contact with something that caused a rash—was never on Dobbs’ list of life goals.

He grew up in Minnesota. Not particularly athletic, he ended up in a common enough geeky-smart-socially-awkward niche that steered most young men in the direction of comic books and RPG’s, but which took him on a side path to UFO fandom.

A child looking up at the night sky hoping to see strange lights will inevitably see strange lights, especially when one’s definition of
unidentified
is fluid and poorly informed by astronomical and aeronautical minutia. Most of his preteen years up until his extremely belated puberty was spent keeping a logbook of all the lights he saw, with important details like time-of-night, direction he was facing, and so forth. He wasn’t technically proficient enough to measure the exact position of these objects, but that was okay because eventually he realized he was mostly recording one of the flight patterns out of MSP International.

The interest didn’t wane as he grew up, though; it just became more focused. He became deeply involved in online groups, tracking sightings somewhat more genuine than the 9: 42 PM to Chicago, and perhaps more importantly developing real bonds with people as excited about UFO’s as he was.

His favorite listserv quickly became the one run by UFOMAN, a legendary figure in the online version of the UFO-hunting community. It was through that board, and specifically from UFOMAN himself that Dobbs first heard of the ship that landed in Sorrow Falls. This came out as an IMPORTANT bulletin direct from UFOMAN, citing TOP SECRET sources, CONFIRMING the existence of an alien presence in rural Massachusetts.

It was a big deal, being only the fifth time Dobbs had ever seen such an important announcement. (The other four, sadly, turned out to be hoaxes.) It was met with skepticism—some appropriate, some inappropriate and a little too personal, which was the nature of things on the Internet as regards nearly any subject. And since it came a full two weeks before the president informed the world, it was two weeks’ worth of an unpleasant flame war. By the end of it, when UFOMAN—largely unflappable throughout—suggested ‘we all’ get the nearest gas-powered vehicle at our disposal and head to northwestern Massachusetts, he was greeted largely with ridicule.

Dobbs believed him. He was also out of work, having just graduated with a degree in electrical engineering that wasn’t getting him as far as it should have. So he was free. And it turned out UFOMAN lived in Minnesota as well. His real name was Art Shoeman, a widowed retiree who had just buried his life savings in a camper and was looking for another driver.

Art was also looking for someone to clean the toilet for him, but of course he didn’t bring that up right away.

T
he walk
from campers to the tree line was considerable. There were closer trees across the street, but they went only a couple deep, there was a fence on the other side of them, and the soldiers didn’t take kindly to people using that part of their perimeter for that sort of thing.

The walk across the field was over ground that was usually pretty dry, even after rains, which could explain why it hadn’t been active farmland even before the invasion. But it had its share of snakes and rodents of unusual size, so it wasn’t really a super-pleasant journey. Not that Dobbs would ever be mistaken for an outdoorsman who might otherwise appreciate a walk through nature. He had allergies, he didn’t enjoy exercise in general, and he felt a lot more at home in front of a panel of electronics than just about anywhere else.

He did enjoy the stars, though. There was almost no atmospheric interference with the view of the sky in this part of the world, so it was a pretty great view. Some nights it made him want to be an astronomer. If he thought there was time, he’d teach himself how to become one.

That wasn’t going to happen, though. People had learned to relax and stop worrying about the ship, but he knew better. Something was coming, it would be soon, and it would be bad. He couldn’t prove it, though, and he’d been saying that almost constantly for long enough that he had lost a lot of friends who simply refused to listen. (Even the original listserv moved on, which was amazing. A UFO mailing list decided to stop paying attention to a verified alien ship. The world had gone mad.)

He didn’t know yet what the end was going to look like. His current theory was that the ship was an unmanned probe that was reporting information on all of them via a means that science simply didn’t understand and could not detect.

Or, they
could
detect it, and the government was keeping it to themselves. Dobbs went back and forth on this a lot. Art was inclined to believe in the super-competence of governments when it came to conspiracies, so it was his opinion that they knew a lot more than they were letting on. He spent as much time watching the army as the ship, for exactly this reason. Dobbs often leaned in the other direction, toward a government that was so incompetent they didn’t notice anything, but it was hard to tell if this was conviction or an instinct to present a contrary opinion for the sake of variety.

He made it to the trees. It was a cool night, but he was covered in sweat by the time he got there.
That’s my workout for the day
, he thought.
A walk to the poop-trees.

He had a pattern, a system that involved visiting the trees in a certain order. This was to allow his prior contributions to the environment to dry (he covered them, but that didn’t always do much good) so he didn’t inadvertently step in a fresh something of his own making. This night’s visit was to tree number five, and he was on his way there when he thought he heard someone moving around in the woods.

“Hello?” he called.

It was unlikely anybody else from the trailers was out there; he’d have seen them walking.

“Someone there?”

He stood motionless and listened carefully, at first just to his heartbeat and to his breathing, but then to the woods around him.

There
.

He heard it again, to his right. A rustling. Dead twigs, dried leaves… something with a little weight to it was moving around in the copse other than him.

It occurred to Dobbs for the first time that there might be wolves. He’d never heard of them out here, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there.

Wolves, or coyotes or bears. Or a giant deer.

But it wasn’t a wolf, or anything else on four legs.

A man stepped from behind one of the trees, mostly hidden from the starlight by the shadows.

“Oh, hi,” Dobbs greeted. “Um, sorry, I’m just… these aren’t your trees, are they?”

The man didn’t move or speak. Or necessarily even breathe, as far as Dobbs could tell. It was a little unnerving.

“Of course they aren’t your trees, the government owns… I’m Dobbs. I live in one of those trailers over there. I’m expected back soon.”

Silence. In the trickle of moonlight and starlight and lights from the spaceship perimeter, Dobbs could see enough to tell the man had a suit on, which was just weird on top of weird. Who would go walking around in the woods at night in a suit?

“Aaand, you are?”

“Are… you?”

The man had a dry, deep voice. It sounded like speaking caused him pain. Dobbs jumped three feet when he spoke and nearly did the thing he was there to do, only in his pants.

“What?” Dobbs asked. “Am I what?”

“Are you?”

The creepy guy in the suit was either asking Dobbs if he was someone, or he was reciting the international country code for the Russian Federation. Dobbs was pretty sure it was the former, but the two words by themselves didn’t make any sense.

“I don’t know what you’re asking.”

“Not,” the man said.

“I am… not?”

“Not.”

“Okay. Okay, so… I’m going to go now?”

The man didn’t move. Dobbs was covered head to toe in goose bumps and had dropped the roll of toilet paper somewhere it wasn’t worth hunting down.

The man could have been one of the trees, or a cardboard cutout. He’d never seen a person so still before.

It was inexplicably terrifying.

“Nice meeting you, goodbye,” Dobbs said.

It took five strides to get out of the trees and back into the open field. They were the most anxious five strides of Dobbs’ life. And when he was back out into the starlight he more or less ran to the middle of the field before looking back over his shoulder.

The man in the suit wasn’t following. Dobbs didn’t know why he expected him to.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll clean the toilet from now on.”