Alien Invasion and Other Inconveniences (5 page)

“A tower that’s not a tower,” I repeat. “That sounds like dream talk.”

“Maybe you’ve come in a dream because that’s the only way to get to me. You don’t know how to come any other way, right?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know what?”

“What you’re talking about.”

“Maybe we should try something. Imagine you’re next to me. Just imagine that.”

“Okay.” This is strange, but dreams are strange, right? I do what she asks. I imagine myself next to her. Immediately, I’m in another room, standing next to a small, pretty girl. The moonlight slips through big bay windows, and I can see that she has straw-colored hair and enormous green eyes.

“I’m Catlin,” the girl says. “I don’t know how you broke through, but I’m glad to see you.”

“You’re in the house, Lord Vertenomous’s, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“My dad was right.”

“Your dad’s here?” she says, looking around.

“No. Not — never mind. How are we having this conversation?”

“We’re in your dream. It’s not ideal,” she says, “but I’m still glad to see you.”

She’s tiny but something about her seems large somehow. She puts her hand on my arm and tugs slightly, and I sit next to her on the bed.

“I need you to remember me when you wake,” she says.

“Who are you, though?”

“I need someone to know I’m alive because sometimes, locked up here, it feels like I’m not. I need to be sure someone remembers.”

“I’ll remember,” I say, though it does cross my mind that I might not. I don’t always remember my dreams.

Then I have a feeling. I’ve been having a lot of these feelings lately. The feeling is this: Lord Vert has been here recently.

“This is his room, isn’t it?” I say. I jump off the bed. I’m worried that I’ve walked into a trap, that the girl has lured me here.

“Not exactly, but you’d better go,” she says. “He could be coming.”

“Why would he come here if it’s not his room?”

“Go,” she says.

Then, somehow, she sends me away. I’m falling.

“Remember me,” she shouts.

I wake up.

At first I don’t remember what I was dreaming. Someone farts. It is probably the longest fart I’ve ever heard. Not that I’m an expert on farts, though sharing a room with this many guys is definitely giving me more experience in that area than I ever wanted. The guy’s extreme fart does not improve the odor of our room.

Then I suddenly remember the girl. I remember talking to her and I remember sitting on her bed and I even remember the feeling that Lord Vert had been there. She’s real, and she’s somewhere in this house.

To Senator & High Lord Vertenomous:

No, my implication was not that there might be a situation remotely similar to what happened in Sector 301. That primary species was advanced. This one is primitive.

I’ve picked the most advanced of their species I can find to be placed in my own house for observation. They have shown no unanticipated mental abilities.

My memory of the species in Sector 301 is that their contact with us caused latent talents to develop in them. Nothing like that has happened. I am finding that this species may be capable of a kind of primitive shield. Not something they can control. Something that is built into them. This causes the shadows I spoke of earlier. It may cause us some minor problems, but I do not anticipate that it will interfere with any of the delivery deadlines.

To Senator & High Lord Vertenomous:

Other houses have been alerted to be especially vigilant in observation of the species. We are proceeding as scheduled. I will say this: The species has very strong and often raw emotions. Everything is so direct in them. It is both attractive and repellent. Have you encountered this in other species?

To Senator & High Lord Vertenomous:

Of course I am not going native. Yes, I do enjoy my second, but she is only a slave. I spoke of their raw emotions only as an odd feature of their primitive minds. It is good to study product so that we may improve our teaching techniques.

To Senator & High Lord Vertenomous:

There has been an incident, a casualty actually. A patrol in Section 3, a remote, semidesert area just west of my position, did not make his report this morning. Another patrol was sent to the last-known coordinates, and they found his body. He’d been killed by one of their crude weapons. We are investigating, but there have been other problems in Section 3 that indicate some of the product is still loose there. It is annoying, but I see no real threat. I will increase patrols, and we will find and exterminate them.

To Senator & High Lord Vertenomous:

The product that killed the patrol has been captured. Two males. They claim to have come upon the patrol and to have killed him before he felt their presence. They claim to have had no contact with others. Unfortunately, when they were being brought back for interrogation, they managed to kill themselves by jumping from the transport device. We are investigating how it was possible for them to make such a move without the patrol in the transport knowing before they acted.

To Senator & High Lord Vertenomous:

I have communicated with the other house heads. We will be ready by the earlier shipping date you have ordered. No section head has indicated a problem, though there is, as to be expected, some minor resistance to new deadlines. All will be ready.

We’re in the library, sitting on a sofa. Most of the others have gone to their bedrooms without beds.

“Look,” Michael says, “there’s no comparison between the two sports. You look like you’re making out when you’re wrestling. Like you’re kissing and hugging another guy. It’s not a real sport.”

“It’s in the Olympics. Is football in the Olympics?” I say.

“Football is an American sport.”

“Yeah, well, there is no America anymore.” I’m sorry I say this the second it comes out. I want to take it back. “Anyway. Olympics. Real sport.”

“I could see boxing. I mean, it’s not as exciting as football, but it’s a sport. You ever boxed?”

“A wrestler will always beat a boxer. If their skill levels are the same, I mean. The wrestler just has to get inside the boxer’s range and take him off his feet and he’s helpless as a little baby. But they’re the same in one way. You do them alone. It’s all up to you. No team stuff. You don’t have to rely on anyone. I like that.”

“My man Tex is not a team player.”

“I don’t like team think. It’s fine on the football field, but it never stops there. It gets into everything.”

“Does anyone even watch wrestling? I suppose they watch
Friday Night SmackDown
or something. That kind of wrestling maybe.”

“Real wrestling is an old sport. The Greeks did it.”

“The Greeks?” he says, disgusted.

“You take people down in football. You tackle them, right?”

“I make people miss. Maybe you’ve seen the game? Running back. He gets the ball and runs down the field and people try to tackle him. Of course, other people block for him. Those would be his teammates.”

“I played football as a sophomore.”

“But quit because Tex can’t play with others.”

“I can. I just don’t like to.”

“People watch football,” he says. “More people watch the Superbowl than vote.”

“I don’t know if that’s actually true,” I say. It sounds like it might be, though.

“They love you for it if you’re good. I was good, Tex. That was the one thing I could do better than anyone.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I know you were good.”

“Sometimes I don’t think I can stand this.”

I’m silent then. He’s spoken the unspeakable, and I’m afraid to say anything.

I think of my father saying
What’s important, Grasshopper, is how you blend the skills you have when you’re in a real fight. Everything else is just play, sport, or entertainment
. That was my dad. He’d been in that place where he’d had to fight for his life, and he’d survived because of what he did and what he knew. To me martial arts and wrestling were about a lot of things: skill, pride, focus, accomplishment, but I didn’t really understand what my father meant. Now I do.

“Maybe you can wrestle your way out of here, Tex,” Michael says.

“Maybe you can run your way out.”

A Handler comes over and tells us to go to our room.

“It’s not time,” I say.

Reason number fifty why I would never join the military is that I have a problem with authority. (I gave my dad fifty reasons when he tried to convince me to join up.) I suppose it is this character flaw that causes me to mess with the Sans in dangerous ways, even though I’m not gaining anything by it.

“Go to your room,” the Handler says, and he has that look they get when they won’t put up with much, a look that feels like a gun pointed at your head.

“Come on,” Michael says. He grabs my arm and pulls me toward the stairs.

Upstairs in our room, I ask Michael if he thinks they were listening to us. There’s a rumor going around that an alien was killed by rebels out west somewhere, and I think they’ve been watching us more closely. Michael says there are no rebels, that it’s just wishful thinking.

He says, “Anyway, why would they care what we say?”

“Maybe they’re worried. Maybe there
are
rebels.”

“There are no rebels,” he says again.

But here’s the thing I think later. If they’re worried, there must be a reason they’re worried. I know that when you’re in a wrestling match and you think you’re beat, you’ll lose. It’s true in martial arts and football for that matter, too. People convince themselves into losing all the time. The best, in terms of strength and talent, don’t always win. It may even be the biggest reason sports are interesting.

We think the Sans can’t be defeated, but what if we’ve convinced ourselves we have no chance and so we have no chance? What if there are rebels out west that haven’t been killed or captured by the self-proclaimed most powerful beings in the known universe? It would change things. Just the thought is like a warm blanket on a cold night to me. Maybe we aren’t helpless.

The next night, as I head up to our room, I see Michael coming out of the couples’ room (that’s what they call the room where they allow us to hook up) with Lindsey. They’re both smiling and they kiss and say their reluctant good-byes at the top of the stairs. I wait for Michael at the door to our bedroom.

“Dude,” I say. “You didn’t.”

“I did,” he says. “I did and did and did and —”

“Okay, I get it.”

“That’s one crazy girl,” he says. “She told me she was making some kind of fuss the other day and one of the Handlers asked her if she wanted to be dead. You know what she said?”

“‘No’ would have been a good answer.”

“She said, ‘What do you frickin’ think?’”

I shake my head, but I do have to admire her.

“She likes the way we look together. My black against her white and blond.”

“That’s so sweet,” I say.

“Sometimes you sound like a girl,” he says.

“Sometimes you sound like a dick.”