“You said ‘us.’”
“Hmm?” The hairs were standing up on my arms like in an electrical storm.
“You’ll tell me what Sal says? You’ll let me know?”
“Of course.” Just not the gory details. I kissed the top of her head and she snuggled down into my lap, content for a moment to be my little girl, trusting in me that everything would be alright.
Please God, please let everything be alright.
Another sweep of the radar showed a splotch of black among the red. I should be there. Sal promised, but . . .
You should be there, Lila.
But I had to stay with Eileen!
The hairs on my arms were bristling again.
Eileen’s breathing had evened out with sleep—but my eyes were wide and staring, watching that cursed screen, willing it to refresh again, and again.
My scalp tingled, and the horizon of the room swooped.
I closed my eyes, but the feeling of motion was even more disorienting so I opened them again.
Black was still centered in the red.
He needs you.
What did the black area mean? No reading at all? Or something off the scale? My heart lurched again with the room, and I concentrated on feeling Eileen warm against my stomach, one shoulder digging at my hip bone.
An angel appeared, hovering in front of the screen. You never abandon me, I thought to it; and its white light flared so intensely that I blinked. Was I wrong to trust him?
My skin pricked all over now, like in a dry hot fever, and I became aware of a buzzing, droning noise in the air. It was directionless, everywhere and nowhere, while the angel was attached to its position in the air like an illuminated map pin. “Here is the spot!” it seemed to say.
And I wanted to go there. To that spot. The free-spirited part of me was dying to see real aliens—more alien than Sal, anyway—and the grounded part of me was desperate to make sure Adam was safe.
The buzzing increased; my skin crawled; the room swayed; Eileen slept; and the angel waited.
The room heaved upward and came down with a splash, but my feet didn’t slip on the wet teak. My body was centered to the gravity of the boat, or to something even more stable, for he was right beside me.
“Adam!” I cried, but he couldn’t hear me. He was yelling over the storm, raging at Sal—why were they arguing? The buzzing was so intense that I couldn’t make out the individual words. Why was the storm buzzing?
“Sal!” But he couldn’t hear me either. He’d promised to take care of Adam, so why did he look so cruel? He wasn’t cruel, was he? They both seemed furious . . . and distraught? What was wrong?
Suddenly everything stilled. Their angry gestures, the winds, the rain, the waves—we were becalmed as if the eye of the storm was above us. Only the buzzing remained, a background hum like a great working of hidden turbines.
We looked up in unison, and I was filled with awe. Several times the size of the boat, and so close overhead that another large wave might raise our puny vessel enough to touch its sleek ebony skin, the alien craft was truly incredible.
Perhaps I should have felt some degree of fear, but even in the great blackness of the thing, I could make out the fine precision of its three pointed angles, and marvel at the impossibility and beauty of the way it simply was. Commonsense be damned; its engineered precepts were logical and definite. This was how the world worked.
Its skin was charged with some type of electricity, shooting small stabs of white lightning and sparks off its lateral edges. It was so huge that I could only see its smooth underbelly—I had no sense of its height or vertical outline. My eyes skimmed its surface again, and in the brief flashes of light against the night sky, it really did look like a skin. There was something about the way it reflected the light that reminded me of stretched latex, yet it must have been rigid to—
Sal’s movement distracted me. Gesturing Adam to open the cabin door, he laid his hand flat on the instrument panel. It went as black as the night around us, and as my eyes adjusted, I could make out moon-kissed ripples in the water just beyond the pale gray outlines of the boat.
I moved to Adam’s side where I belonged. He would need me, though I couldn’t quite remember what I was supposed to do. I bent forward to peer into the cabin and saw blankets and pillows . . . and a stuffed bear. A child’s toy?
Traveler! Cara!
I straightened too quickly and my bare foot slipped on the top step. Scrabbling for Adam’s arm, I grabbed the handrail and avoided a painful fall just in time to see him silhouetted in a flash of white light. I pulled myself upright and turned around to see what I had missed.
The deck was crowded now, with three . . . creatures . . . and Cara. And little Traveler. Cara was hunched protectively over a white swaddle, and I saw a little fist wrapped in her long hair. Instinctively, I went to help her, eyeing the aliens in curiosity and—truth be told—maternal suspicion.
They were shorter than me, and disturbingly human—if humans were androgynous, bald, mouthless, eel-skinned beings with bug eyes.
Don’t be so hateful, Lila. First contact and all that.
I held out my hands to welcome Cara, offering a nod and smile to the closest being. It ignored me, as did Cara, and I slid aside, my face hot. She’d want Adam, of course.
I looked to Sal. Surely he’d at least make some sort of introduction . . . ? Maybe Cara had gotten used to these creatures, but Adam and I had never seen them. Unfortunately, Sal was doing his
