Lola was stubborn. She picked up the bow, and the single arrow which was meant for this business: a white one. “Swift and direct as this Your chosen weapon,” she muttered, almost annoyed now, “let Your presence pass into me, swift and sure—“
She looked up, nocked the arrow, and drew, being careful to do it wide enough to miss her poor bruised left forearm. The point of the arrow glinted faintly in the westering moonlight. Just a little “above” it, “over the Moon”, Lola aimed, and let the arrow fly.
The draw was misjudged. The bowstring hit her forearm again, and knocked the new scab off it. “Ow, ow, ow!” Lola said, but at the same time she couldn’t take her eyes off the arrow. It arched up and out of sight, end-on to her, vanished in a second. The wind dropped off again, and in the brief stillness as she lowered the bow, Lola listened for the clatter of the fallen arrow among the brush or on the rocks.
Nothing.
Still she stood there looking up, while in their lanterns the candle flames bobbled. The sunset was almost all gone, now, and from near-zenith a line of light traced itself, faint, then went out: an escapee from a Spielberg movie, a single shooting star. Lola sighed, shook her head at her own gullibility. A wasted trip. Well, maybe not wasted. She would get some camping done. But—
—and then along the same line, the light abruptly reasserted itself. Brighter, and closer, much closer, shedding sparks of light around it as it went. Pieces coming off it?… Lola thought: but on second thought, the light around the falling object was more like static electricity, crackling. Through the wind she could even hear the crackle as it rushed overhead, plunged past, shooting off lines and forks of narrow, twisting lightning—
The thing fell out of sight. Lola stood staring at the blue twilight glow over the hill beyond which it had fallen. A moment’s silence: then an odd small boom, after which the silence fall like a physical thing itself, leaden and complete. Even the wind stopped.
Lola stared. The sound, and the thing’s trajectory, made it seem as if it had come down no more than a quarter mile away, just the other side of the hill.
No business of mine, she thought.
But what if it’s setting a brushfire, the thought came immediately, whatever it is. If it does, it’ll be my business real soon now, especially if I just stand here…
She bolted from her circle, completely forgetting to cut her way out. Lola lurched over the pebbles to where her jeans and sneakers and sweatshirt lay, struggled hurriedly into them, and then picked up the bow and a few spare arrows and headed toward the hill-crest.
It was a hard climb, made more annoying by looking easy. Lola tore herself on thorn-bushes, staggered into prickly manzanita, put her feet into invisible holes and nearly strained first one ankle, then another, getting them out again. When she made the top of the hill at last, there was no triumph in her, only annoyance. Her hair was full of pine resin, her arms were scraped and bleeding, and it was almost too dark to see where she was going.
Except on the other side of the hill, where, down in a little gully, the blue thing lay.
It glowed. It was not on fire, though there was a lightningy smell all around, enough to make her choke a little at first. The thing was round as a ball, maybe six feet wide, and the blue glow was brightest inside it, much fainter at the edges. If “edges” was the word she was looking for: the globe had an airbrushed look to it, misty, not entirely there, for all its brightness. The not-there-ness got stronger as Lola watched: the light of the blue globe throbbed paler and less bright as she watched.
And there was something moving down there: a dark shape, silhouetted against the globe. Something small and knobbly, humping along, staggering—at least it looked that way: the motion was oddly distressed, helpless, like a hurt animal.
Lola started down the hillside, herself staggering from tree to tree to keep from falling straight down it, hanging onto the biggest pieces of brush for support as she went. She had little time to spare for looking at the globe, and had to concentrate mostly on her path, and the sound of the back of her mind screaming, This isn’t something you should be getting involved in! How do you know it’s friendly? What if it wants you for weird alien sex or something? You’re about to become a case in the X-Files—!
Lola came out of the manzanita scrub at the bottom of the slope, gasping, and stood and just looked for a moment. Not ‘it’, she thought. ‘Them— ‘
The dark shape she had seen was holding still, possibly looking back. It seemed lighter in color, now, probably because the globe behind it had gone lightless, a pallid grey: and it had a little of the old blue glow of the globe about it, seeming to come from inside, and getting stronger and weaker, stronger and weaker, as if it breathed. The creature had no constant shape of its own: it flowed and changed as she watched, sinking down flat like tired Silly Putty, then humping itself upward again, making a sort of domed top, from which four little dark round eyes looked at her. Lola thought they were eyes, anyway. Behind it, beside it, flattening down and humping up the same way, were four smaller creatures. On the top of their round/flat bodies were more sets of litle dark eyes, all looking at her. The little creatures snuggled close to the big one and stopped moving.
Babies, Lola thought. She stood there, not knowing what to do, but pretty sure of what she was seeing: the alien version of a breakdown. Nervous as she was, Lola had no inclination to call the Army: what she thought these creatures needed was the galactic version of the Triple-A.
“Uh,” Lola said. “I won’t hurt you—”
The creatures looked at her distrustfully, all of them. The babies got flatter: the big one didn’t move.
There’s never a universal translator around when you need one, Lola thought. She tried to think how this all must look to them: a strange world, you break down there, and some big wild animal comes out of the woods and starts honking weird noises at you— But how do I convince them I’m not just an animal?
The first thing, she thought, was to get small. She took a few careful steps forward. The babies went flat as pancakes: the big one, the mom?—sort of flapped herself down flat over them, covering them.
Very slowly and carefully, Lola sat down. Then she pushed the bow out in front of her, and the arrows, and watched the creatures.
They held their position for a few breaths. Then, very slowly, the “mom” pushed herself up into dome-shape again, and her eyes sagged down onto the front of the dome, looking carefully at the bow. After a moment, they seemed to focus on Lola. She had to shiver a little, under that regard. The eyes were like those of sharks on undersea documentaries: blank little pebbles, no light in them, no expression.
The “mom’s” eyes slid back up to the top of her head, then. She humped forward a little, the blue glow from inside her lighting the ground as she came. Now Lola had to physically make herself sit still. She kept an eye on the babies: they had gone flat as little pancakes, and all their eyes had vanished. They still glowed, though, which made the attempt to “hide” more cute than effective.
The mom came right up to the bow, watching Lola all the time. She paused, looking at the bow, and put a little feeler out of the main body of herself, like a small blunt finger, to prod the bow with. Then she put out another one, felt the sharp tip of one of the arrows. It was a hunting point, razor sharp. Lola saw the little “finger” actually slice itself in two against the arrowhead’s edge. She gasped—then gulped and was still again as the finger sealed itself back together, bloodlessly, with never a seam to show where the cut had happened.
Those little black eyes looked at her again. Lola gazed back. This was getting like the staring contests she had with the neighbor’s cat. Well, Muggsy might routinely win those: but this was for higher stakes. Lola didn’t look away, barely even breathed.
The mom-creature made a sound, the first one Lola had heard—a kind of tiny moan. Over by the dark globe, the babies slowly un-pancaked themselves, rounding up to a configuration more like four eggs sunny-side-up, and started
humping across the rough ground to their mother.
It might be their dad, really, Lola thought: but then she threw the idea away without a second thought. This was a mom, she knew—though not how she knew. The babies came over and “looked” at the bow and the arrows the way their mom had, with ”fingers” they put out and then sucked back in again. There were actually tiny slurping noises when they did it.
The mom watched them: Lola watched the mom. As the babies played with the bow and the arrows, those eyes slid around the top of her head so that she could watch them all. Lola had to smile: one eye per baby was a useful ratio—she suspected some human mothers would kill for that kind of ability.
One of the babies made a bigger finger than the others, something that looked more like a suction cup than anything else, and wrapped it around one of the arrowheads. For a moment it munched and mumbled at it, then spat it out again, seemingly unhurt: but it made a little noise as it did so, an unhappy chirp.
The mom-thing moaned at it. The sound struck Lola as an unhappy one. Maybe, she thought, it’s the alien version of ‘Don’t put that in your mouth, you don’t know where it’s been—’ The other babies were doing the same suction-cup trick, now, with stones and pieces of twig they found lying around, with pine cones and dry grass. Each time, a “suction cup” would fold around the object, worry at it a little, then spit it out again. Each time, Lola noticed, the faint blue glow inside the babies would flare a little brighter, then pale down again. As if disappointed—
Lola’s mouth dropped open. They’re hungry, she thought. They’re looking for something they can eat!
“Do you need food?” she said softly to the mom-thing. It looked at her, and Lola couldn’t shake the thought that the creature wasn’t completely uncomprehending. “Do you read minds or anything like that?” She tried to make pictures in her head of food—trail mix, granola, beef jerky, the other stuff she had brought with her. Wryly she wondered if any of it would seem appetizing at all to something from the far side of wherever.
The mom-thing just looked at her. “Well,” Lola said, “come on. You come back over the hill with me. We’ll see if you can do anything with what I’ve got.”
Very slowly she stood up. The babies crowded back as she did, flattening somewhat and staring up at her with all their tiny eyes: but the mom-thing didn’t move, just watched Lola. “Come on,” Lola said, picked up the bow and the arrows, and started to make her way back up the hill again.
They followed her, though slowly at first. The mom-thing came after her, and the babies shuffled along the ground, still trying unsuccessfully to eat things as they went. Several times the mom slid eyes around to look at them and made that little moan again, the “Don’t eat that, it’s icky” sound. The babies obeyed her, left the rocks and pinecones and came after, but reluctantly, it seemed to Lola. They weren’t now moving even as briskly as they had when she had first seen them, only a few minutes ago. Are they tired, she wondered, or are they getting weak from hunger? I hope I’ve got something they can eat…
Lola made it up the slope with less trouble than she’d had before, even though it was darker. On the hillcrest she paused, checked to see that the mom-thing could see where she was going, and started down the other side. As far as she could see, everything in and around her circle was as she had left it, and there were no demons or other weirdnesses roiling around in it and furious at having been first summoned, then put on hold. What a relief. All I’ve got to worry about are a bunch of hungry aliens who’ve dropped in for dinner.
And this is an improvement? shrieked part of her mind. Lola made a wry face as she came to the bottom of the slope, looked up behind her.
The mom-thing and her babies came down the slope and shuffled straight across the clearing, messing up the circle: the babies immediately paused to try to eat the powdered chalk. Lola shrugged and went over to where she had her backpack hanging from a tree, undid the rope and let it down. “Here,” she said to the mom, “tell them to come over and give these a try.” And she started emptying out her next five days’ rations near the little camp stove.
The next hour or so was profoundly disappointing. Lola gave the babies trail mix: they spat it out. She gave them granola: they spat it out. She gave them dried apricots. She gave them apple leather. They spat both of them out. She gave them pemmican, and beef jerky. They refused even to try the pemmican. They made a valiant attempt at the beef jerky, and complained in many small chirps after having to spit it out again and again: there was something about it that they couldn’t handle.
Lola sat down crosslegged by her camp stove, lit it, and made them instant soup, cooled down to lukewarm. The babies gathered around the little aluminum camp pot, confused, and tried to eat that first. At this, Lola found herself exchanging a look of pure amused frustration with the mom-thing, and realized that those four black eyes were not as expressionless as she had thought. “Is this a physiology thing,” Lola said to the mom, “or are they just incredibly picky?”
The mom moaned at her, a helpless sound. There was more than frustration in the noise: there was unease as well. Lola could see that the babies were glowing much less brightly than even a little while ago.
“Right,” Lola said, and sighed. She put her finger in the soup and wiggled it around there. The babies got the idea, put their own “eating” fingers in the soup and tried it. A moment later there was something like a group sneeze, and Lola was more or less spray-painted with cream of chicken soup.
“Okay,” Lola said. “Make a note. No soup.” She tried making them instant noodles. They tried eating the noodles, and spat them out, but one of the babies then produced several extra fingers, and started to knot the noodles together and wave them around.
The mom moaned. “Don’t play with your food,” Lola said, but she was beginning to feel desperate too, now. One package after another, she went through everything in her pack. The babies could not eat freeze-dried ice cream (and Lola had to agree with them that it was fairly inedible even for humans). They couldn’t eat fruit. They couldn’t eat candy. She had started hand-feeding them—they didn’t have any teeth that she could see: it seemed safe enough—and then one of them had more or less climbed up in her lap. It was an odd feeling: the little creature was extremely light, and felt like a Zip-Loc bag full of warm air. It had draped itself over her knee, and she was now feeding it M&M’s in a hopeless kind of way. One after another it ate them, and one after another it shot them out against the camp stove, p-ting! P-ting!
The mom moaned.
“Kids,” Lola said. But that moan had more fear than ever in it, now. The babies’ lights were fading down very low.
“They’ve tried everything,” Lola said. “Everything. They can’t eat any of it. I don’t know what to do.” She leaned one elbow on her knee and rubbed her eyes briefly, cradling the baby on her knee with the other.
Something brushed the arm she was holding it with. Lola sighed, opened her eyes, had a look.
The spot where she had knocked the scab off her forearm had gotten scraped again, either going up the hill or coming down it, and was bleeding. Lola had paid no attention to it: she was bleeding from so many other places that any given scratch was no longer a big issue. However, someone else had noticed it. The baby in her lap had attached its suction-cup to the bleeding place, and was sopping up the blood.
And the blue glow inside it was getting stronger.
Lola simply stared for a moment, too tired and too astonished to do anything sudden. Then she looked at the mom-thing.
Two of the mom’s eyes were fixed on the baby, which was getting brighter by the minute. Two of them were looking at Lola. Both sets of eyes seemed to have gotten bigger. She did not moan, or make any sound at all for a moment.
Then she moaned, very loudly indeed: so loudly that all the babies, the listless ones as well as their more vigorous sibling, started “upright” like very shocked sunny-side-up eggs. The three not sitting in Lola’s lap went humping
over to their mother as fast as they could. The fourth one withdrew its suction cup and made a chirp that was the unhappiest sound Lola thought she had ever heard: but slowly it humped down from her lap and went to its mother, the ground shining under it as it went.
The mom and Lola looked at each other. It was a long look. After a few moments of it, Lola was fairly certain that, while the creature might not be telepathic, it understood the score very well indeed.
The mom started to lead its babies away from Lola, back over the hill.
“No!” Lola said.
The mom stopped, looked at her. Those eyes, which had seemed so expressionless before, were now plainly full of both grief and resolve.
“No!” Lola said. She was starting to make connections: the right ones, she hoped. “That light inside, it’s what makes your ship go, isn’t it? And all of you, too. If you don’t have enough energy, you can’t leave, and you’ll all die after a while—“
The mom looked at her. Then started to move away again.
“No!” Lola said, and stood up, jangling with desperation. “There has to be something. There has to be—you can’t just—“
In the bushes, something rattled. Lola nearly lost her temper. “Goddamn rabbits,” she said, picking up a rock—
Then she froze.
“Yes,” she said softly. “Rabbits.”
She picked up the bow, and the arrows. The mom, with her babies gathered around, hunkered down and watched as Lola put on the bow-guard with grim determination, then slipped into the bushes herself.
What followed would have been funny had Lola not been so desperate. She had never actually tried to shoot anything live before. All her work had been with stationary targets, bales of hay with plastic bulls-eyes wrapped around them. None of that had prepared her for this, in the dark, in the cold, buried up to her neck in manzanita, itching, being bitten by bugs while trying to aim. Her own incompetence frustrated her to the point of tears. She wasted several arrows into the brush and knew she only had so many: was afraid to shoot, and knew she had to try.