Gods junk drawer, p.48
God's Junk Drawer, page 48
“Are you unwell, Billy Gather?”
“I . . .” He could feel a surge of tears swirling behind his eyes, waiting for a chance to escape. He wanted to talk to his friend, to talk to someone who wasn’t Beau or Ross, but he knew if he opened his mouth he’d start bawling. He bit down hard and shook his head.
The Castaway folded over, rolled forward on their crystal platform, and pulled itself back into the rough shape of a person. They were kneeling now, their head at the same height as Billy’s. They reached out a hand—a completely normal, purple hand—and set it gently on his shoulder. He felt the little static-electricity crackle the Castaway’s touch always had. A few tears squeezed out and ran down his face.
“You are in emotional distress over the possible loss of your feline companion so close to the anniversary of your father’s terminus, while still recovering from the loss of your mother. This amplifies both their absence and your own loneliness.”
Billy nodded hard three times.
The Castaway leaned their head a little closer. “Believe me when I tell you there is a point when this distress has faded, and you remember both your father and mother with more joy than sadness. The point is distant, but you are strong, Billy Gather, and you will reach it.” They squeezed his shoulder. Let their hand slide down his arm. Held his hand, and sent another electric tingle through his fingers.
Billy’s chest relaxed. The storm behind his eyes calmed. He reached up with his free hand and wiped his cheeks. “Thanks.”
“Certainly.” The Castaway leaned forward and pressed their head against his with a faint crackle of static. Then they flowed back, like a wave rolling back into the ocean, and stood up straight. Their legs melted together into a single column and an extra arm sprouted out of their chest. “How may I assist you?”
“Have you seen Charlie? He freaked out when a rhamphorhynchus tried to get into the cave the other day and I haven’t been able to find him.”
The Castaway’s head swelled until it was the size and shape of a playground ball. “I have seen the individual feline you have named Charlie several times, and will see him several more.”
“But have you seen him recently?”
The alien spread all three of their six-fingered hands. “My perception of the fourth dimension is unlike yours, Billy Gather. The most recent time I have seen Charlie was when you brought him here to make introductions.”
“That was ages ago.”
“And yet, in my perception, that is the most recent time I have seen him.”
Billy sighed. A wasted trip. All this walking and no closer to finding Charlie. “Beau said you wouldn’t be much use.”
“My apologies.”
“It’s okay. I know you try to help when you can.”
“This is the purpose.”
A wave of lights rained down inside the walls like a fireworks show. Billy watched them wink out one by one. “What’s that?”
The Castaway tilted their head upward. “Your sister is likely worried about you, Billy Gather. The valley has reached the night cycle.”
“Oh no! Already?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t suppose . . . could you walk home with me? She’d be a lot less angry.”
His alien friend sucked their left arm all the way into their shoulder, then rolled the middle one across their chest to take its spot. “I cannot leave this place.”
“Right. Sorry.”
“If you wish, you may remain here for the night cycle and replenish your biochemical reserves.”
It took Billy a moment to figure out that one, and then he yawned. “I am kind of tired.”
The Castaway gestured across the chamber, their fingers braiding together as they did. There was a little alcove on the other side of the room, with what looked like a bed made out of the same not-ice as the rest of the Castle. When he touched it, it flexed under his fingers, almost like an air mattress.
He hopped up onto the bed and smiled at his friend. “Thanks, Castaway.”
“I shall make the replenishment efficient for you.” The Castaway’s three-fingered hand came up.
But Billy didn’t sleep.
He waited and waited, because he remembered falling asleep almost instantly when the Castaway spread their fingers. A sleep so deep and restful he didn’t even realize time had passed when his very relieved—and then very angry—sister woke him up the next morning.
Then he realized he couldn’t remember that unless it had already happened. He was just reliving the past in a dream. And, in the strange way of dreams, he’d shifted his point of view, standing outside of his memories, watching them happen.
The Castaway lowered their hand and nodded at him agreeably. “In your dreams, you perceive the fourth dimension in a manner much closer to my own.”
Shifting point of view and spinning off the rails, too. Although it did sound like something the Castaway would’ve said.
“You now believe this to be a fictitious memory created by your replenishing mind. This is incorrect. I have repositioned your consciousness to this point in space-time so I may impart certain facts to you.”
He found his voice. “Wait, what?”
The Castaway’s legs dissolved into a purple wave that carried them back up onto the crystal dais. “In the morning I will promise you that we will see each other again soon. This is the event to which I will be referring.”
Noah looked down at his child-hands. His skinny chest. His feet in their battered black Batman sneakers. Looked back up at his old friend.
“But you . . . you’re dead.”
They nodded. Half a dozen arms blossomed from each of their shoulders like a Hindu god, each one gesturing or pointing in a different direction. “From your perspective, my existence has ceased through the actions of the individual you currently refer to as the Empress. This imparting of facts is occurring at a point before that event.”
Another little piece of his heart sank in his chest. “So you . . . you know she’s going to kill you. You knew all along.”
“Certainly. Since the moment she first appeared in the valley. Yes, I shall still preserve her life. This is the purpose.” The Castaway folded half their arms behind their back, half across their chest, and all of them melted into their torso.
“But why? If you knew what she was going to do to you—to everyone—why didn’t you just let her die?”
The alien’s round head rippled and split down the middle. The two halves sagged down and merged with the purple shoulders. The ripples continued down their body even as their neck stretched up to become a tall column. “Preservation of life is the purpose.”
“But you’d still be alive. Now.”
“I am alive now.”
“No, I mean now . . .” He balled his little eleven-year-old hands into fists. “I forgot how annoying these conversations could get.”
“My apologies, Noah Barnes.”
“She’s killed so many people.”
“Yes.”
He looked up at the purple figure and saw his own distorted face reflected in the smooth column of their neck. “If preservation of life is so important, why didn’t you save Beau?”
“Beau Gather is no longer in the valley.”
“I know.”
“It is important,” said the Castaway, “that you understand the nature of this place.”
Noah waited for a moment. “Are you talking to me?”
“Yes.”
“We figured it out. The valley’s your spaceship, right? Or a lifeboat.”
“This is a correct interpretation of the facts, Noah Barnes.”
He got off the crystal bed and wobbled. It’d been a long time since he’d balanced a body this light on legs this short. “Can I ask a question?”
“Certainly.”
“How do you crash a multidimensional spaceship?”
The Castaway pulled themselves into an egg the size of a desk chair, then expanded back out to become a seven-foot humanoid with a squared-off, oddly Frankenstein-like head. “I was unexpectedly subjected to a forceful disagreement in this location.”
“A forceful disagreement?” It sparked a random memory. “One time Dad made this joke. Said you’d told him you were attacked by giant space squids.”
“A simplification, but accurate enough. There are those who do not wish to propagate life, but to use it only to further their own considerable existences. We oppose their acts of consumption across numerous planes of existence. They, in turn, resist our opposition. Sometimes in a proactive manner.”
Noah rolled the words around in his head. “You’re at war.”
“Another simplification of the events and relationships, but again, accurate enough. You have already provided an answer for this question, Noah Barnes.”
His mind briefly chased after the last sentence, trying to determine if it was a future or past response. But then another thought wormed its way in. “This . . . disagreement. Did you lose?”
The Castaway’s head swayed side to side, like a snake hypnotizing a mouse. “The disagreement is ongoing.”
Noah looked at his friend. “Then why didn’t anyone ever come to rescue you?”
“I cannot leave this place.”
“Right. But the rest of your . . . your people. What happened to them? Why did they leave you here to die?”
The Castaway’s legs merged and spread out like a wide skirt, pooling around them. “It is important that you understand the nature of this place.”
His little-boy hands balled into fists. “I do understand it. It’s your lifeboat. What do you . . . what are you trying to tell me?”
The alien responded with a series of grunts and barking syllables. Neanderthal. They were speaking Neanderthal to him now. Or maybe to someone else, two or three hundred years ago. Maybe to the Empress? So goddamn roundabout and frustrating.
Except . . .
The Castaway always told him and his family the truth. It had taken Noah years to realize it, but almost every answer the Castaway gave made perfect sense. Like Parker’d said, he had all the data, he was just looking at it the wrong way. Making the wrong assumptions.
He’d made so many wrong assumptions about the valley.
“Okay. Okay, fine, let’s break this down. This place. The valley. The valley is your lifeboat.”
The Castaway let their arms drift down and melt back into their body, becoming little more than a pillar of purple gel.
“It’s keeping you alive and safe until your people come to rescue you.” He recognized his tone, what Parker called his working-through-problems voice. He also realized how silly it sounded coming from his eleven-year-old mouth. “But they never came and you were stuck here.”
“I cannot leave this place.”
“Right. So the lifeboat’s trapped in Earth’s orbit, and once a year they overlap and things get pulled in here. Into the valley. That’s why you told my dad it wasn’t safe to leave, because right at that moment we weren’t anywhere near Earth. And over time the lifeboat’s accumulated . . .”
His voice trailed off. He’d missed something. He could feel it tickling the edge of his consciousness. Something else he’d been looking at the wrong way. He tried to force it for a moment, the way he’d tried to force so much of his understanding of the valley, and then he stopped.
Averted vision. You don’t see a faint star by looking right at it. You look off to the side. You look at it from a different angle.
Noah looked up at his friend. “When you say you can’t leave, you don’t mean you’re unable to leave. You’re saying there’s a reason you shouldn’t leave.”
A ripple ran through the Castaway’s purple form.
“So you shouldn’t leave the valley. Your lifeboat. Because the lifeboat . . . is in enemy territory? No, because they’d’ve found it already, right? And it’s been centuries, so it’s probably not an issue of supplies or power or anything like that.”
In the corner of his eye, a lone sparkle of light darted through the wall and slowly faded away. Understanding hit him in the chest, dragging down his heart, pulling at his throat. A wave of sadness shook his little body.
“You can’t leave, because once somebody gets rescued from a lifeboat . . . you don’t need the lifeboat anymore.”
The Castaway’s bulbous head stretched up on a slender neck that coiled back on itself.
“We always thought you were trapped here like us. But you couldn’t leave because if you left, the lifeboat would . . . shut down. The valley would shut down.”
The Castaway bowed its head. “This is a correct interpretation of the facts, Noah Barnes.”
“So you just . . . stayed here? You gave up ever being rescued, going back to your own kind, to keep all of us—to keep everything in the valley alive.”
“This is the purpose. To preserve life.”
He stared at the alien as their form creased, flowed, and rolled into a new form. Mostly human, but with long arms that brushed the floor. The shape didn’t have eyes, just the barest hint of features, but he still felt their approving gaze, like a student who knows they leveled up by answering a difficult question in front of the class.
Another thought stumbled through his mind, ruining the moment. “But you’re . . . you’re gone. In the future, where I am, physically, you’re not there. You’re dead. If you’re not in the lifeboat anymore, why is the valley still here?”
“You have already provided an answer for this question, Noah Barnes.”
“I did?”
The Castaway gave a single, serene nod.
He replayed his thoughts. Briefly wondered if he hadn’t actually provided the answer yet and this was another future-fragment. Looked around the huge chamber. It was good to see it like this again, not like . . .
“It’s her, isn’t it? The Empress. She was here in the Castle, so before you died you shifted everything to her. That’s why the lifeboat responds to her.”
“This is a correct interpretation of the facts, Noah Barnes.”
“So now she’s keeping . . .” All the discussions and thoughts from last night rushed through his mind. Qiang. Emerson and Neith. Sam. Parker. “If we kill her, the lifeboat shuts down. If she dies, everything in the valley dies.”
The Castaway crossed their long arms, the limbs shrinking and flattening and vanishing back into the alien’s torso. Their head stretched out into a horizontal tube, almost like a hammerhead shark. “I have imparted the facts you require, Noah Barnes. You understand the nature of this place. I shall now return your consciousness to its appropriate location in space-time.” A ribbon-like arm grew from halfway down their torso, and the end split into a flat hand that gestured back at the crystal bed.
Noah walked back to the alcove. “Thank you. For everything. You . . . you’re a good friend.”
“Certainly. As a token of our long acquaintance and the fondness I have for your existence, I shall repair the epidermal damage inflicted upon you.”
He shook his head. “No, not like that. I mean, you took care of us, but you also . . . you were just good to us.” He waved his hand around the Castaway’s chamber. “This day, this . . . point in space-time. It’s always been important to me. When you kneeled down and talked to me, I felt safe. I believed everything was going to be okay. For the first time since Dad was killed.”
A little tremble ran through the Castaway. “Thank you. That is good to know. I will do that when this moment arrives.”
He almost laughed. “And talking with you’s always interesting.”
The Castaway’s hand came up. Their fingers spread. “Goodbye, Noah Barnes. It has been pleasing to once again converse with this future incarnation of you.”
“You too, Casta—wait, what?”
Someone shook Noah awake.
47
SAM
Noah launched off the bed and Sam jumped back, colliding with Ross. “Oh, Jesus, thank God.”
Noah blinked, his eyes opening wider as he looked around the little room of the guest house. He’d sat up so fast all the blood had rushed from his face, leaving him sickly pale. “What . . . ? Where . . . ?”
“Are you okay? I couldn’t—we’ve been trying to wake you up. I thought you’d gone into a coma or something. I was about to send Ross to get the doctor.”
“I would’ve suggested you go and I remain, Sam, as you can move much faster than I can.”
Noah stood up and staggered, like he wasn’t used to his legs. Or he was drunk. Sam watched the man sway and wobble. “Seriously, are you okay? I was shaking you and pretty much yelling in your . . .”
Sam felt his breath quicken. His thoughts collide.
“Where did—what happened to your face?”
Noah reached up and ran his fingertips over his cheeks. Just a minute ago Sam had been trying not to look too closely at those cheeks, to be honest. The slashes had crusted into thick, rough lines, and the skin around them had bruised up. Almost a third of Noah’s face had been a sickly red and purple. If someone had asked Sam, he’d’ve guessed one eye would only be able to squint at best.
It was all gone. The clotted blood. The cuts. The bruising. Even the peeling sunburn.
“I’m fine. I was . . .” Noah’s voice trailed off and he looked around, his eyes settling on his boots. He balanced, tugged one of them onto his foot, then dropped the foot fast. “I was with the Castaway.”
More thoughts collided in Sam’s head. “You had a dream?”
Noah tugged on the other boot, bent down to yank at the laces. “I was with them. In the past.”
“Are you—what are you talking about?”
“The Castaway pulled my consciousness back in time to talk. And then they healed my face.” He waved a hand at his face.
“I’m pleased to hear that, Noah,” said Ross.
Sam tried to get his breathing under control. “You sure it wasn’t just—this is what the lifeboat does, right? It heals you.”
“Not like this. Not this fast.” He grabbed his shirt from the chair.
A tremor shook the room. They’d been going on since Sam woke up a few hours ago. This one lasted for maybe ten seconds. The Empress was getting closer. Or angrier, maybe? He wasn’t sure how to judge them.
