“What do you think?” Nina asked, displaying the spi-raling conch tattoo on her shoulder.
“I think it must have hurt a lot,” Lisa said. She glanced over and caught her mother looking at her silently.
She knew what her mother was thinking, that her little girl had moved to Seattle, gotten a dingy little apartment, and was now pregnant. Not very impressive.
“Come home,” Carol said.
“I can’t,” Lisa told her. “I’m safe here.”
“Why?” Carol said, her voice laced with anger and frustration. “Because beings from another world are looking out for you?”
“Yes, Mom,” Lisa answered, daring her mother to say otherwise. “And if you’d seen what happened to me, you’d…”
Carol got to her feet. “Enough, Lisa.”
“But it’s true,” Lisa pleaded. She rose and drew her mother into her arms. “It’s going to be all right, Mom,” she said. “I can feel it.”
Carol looked at her, and Lisa saw that she was seeing her father also, the terrible burden of what he’d known, the long years of his suffering.
“I never wanted to believe any of this,” Carol said. “Your father let me see some things, but I really couldn’t accept that any of it was real. I just thought it was his way of dealing with his own life, the fact that he never knew his father.”
Charlie startled at the knock at the door and grabbed the ball bat before answering it.
Naomi glanced at the bat, then at Charlie. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing,” Charlie said. He put down the bat. “I’m sorry.”
Naomi stepped into the room, surveying its disarray, the piles of paper, library copies of articles, magazines, books. “So this is how you’ve been using your leave of absence,” she said. “Sitting in the dark, reading with a baseball bat by the door in case anyone drops by.”
Charlie closed the door. He could imagine what his friend was thinking, that he was a nut, the sort of crazy eccentric who ended up talking to himself on street corners or in parks, destined for the mental hospital. “I just needed a little time to myself,” he said lamely.
Naomi faced him squarely, her stern middle-aged face a perfect vision of the no-nonsense disciplinarian. “I’ve been principal at Lincoln for ten years, Charlie,” she said. “I taught there before that, and let me tell you something, you’re the best teacher I’ve ever seen and I’m not going to lose you without a fight.” Her gaze fell on one particular book. She picked it up, stared at the illustration of a little gray space creature on the cover and read the title skeptically. “Arrival, by Tom Clarke.” She looked at Charlie. “What’s this?”
“Nothing,” Charlie said, embarrassed.
Naomi read the subtitle. “The alien agenda-what the abductions really mean.” She let the book slip from her hand, then snatched up another. “Compendium of Alien Races.” She looked at Charlie in stunned disbelief. “Charlie, you think you’ve been abducted by aliens, don’t you?”
Charlie knew that he had no answer to give her. She thought he was crazy as a loon. Everyone did. Or would, if they knew the… what he… his… it was all so useless, he thought, so utterly futile, and yet he knew the truth.
“Do you have any idea how many people say they’ve been abducted every year?” he asked.
Naomi looked at him as if he were a small child in need of serious correction. “Charlie, people believe in these things because they want to believe in something.”
“If that’s true, then why are all the stories so similar?”
“Because we all see the same movies and read the same books,” Naomi answered emphatically. She picked up the first book and turned the cover over to the face on the back. “For instance, this guy, Tom Clarke. He’s everywhere, Charlie.”
Charlie felt something break inside him, the last reserves of his argument, leaving him nothing but the raw edge of his pain, the heartbreak of the pariah. He saw the sadness in Naomi’s eyes, how much she wanted to help him, and how helpless she felt in the face of what she had to believe was his madness.
“They’ve been taking me since I was nine years old, Naomi,” he said quietly. “They came again seven months ago. I fought back. I kicked and bit and…” He stopped and stared into Naomi’s fretful eyes and more than anything yearned simply to be believed! “I’m not crazy,” he said. “And so I’ll find the proof.”
Eric peered at the map of the world that Wakeman had displayed on a huge board. It was filled with lights, and in each light Eric saw the nature of the encounter, the fear and wonder of it all, the news both dreadful and awe-inspiring, that we were not alone.
“Always the same story,” Wakeman said. “A woman in Siberia. Another one in Norway. A third in Alaska. All over the world. Zanzibar. Australia. One hundred and forty-four multiwitness, confirmable reports.”
Eric kept his eyes on the map. Something had changed, he knew.
“When did all this start?” he asked.
“Six weeks ago. One big rush, then zilch. No activity since then.”
“What do you think it means?”
“It’s the calm.”
“The calm?”
Wakeman returned his attention to the map. “The one before the storm,” he said.
Lisa stared out the window of her room in the maternity ward, listening to the radio as the reports came one after the other, lights in Grand Teton, in Coeur D’Alene, Idaho, lights seen by all manner of people, farmers, workers, doctors, cops… and now here, in Seattle, where she could see them, radiant orbs that hung silently in the night sky as the radio reporter breathlessly narrated the scene, all the wild speculation, the government’s unwillingness to confirm or deny anything.
“Are you focused?” Nina asked.
Lisa felt the cramp draw in like a belt yanked tight around her.
Nina pressed her hand on Lisa’s sweat-spattered forehead. “Listen, I have a great idea for a tattoo for the baby,” she said with a nervous laugh. “Nothing too big. Just a little snake.”
The cramp subsided, and Lisa once again stared out at the night sky.
“When the next contraction comes,” Nina told her, “take in a deep breath.”
The cramp came again, fierce and searing, but Lisa continued to gaze into the sparkling night.
“She’s fully dilated,” one of the nurses said. “Stop pushing.”
Lisa was not aware that she’d been pushing. It was the baby who was pushing, being born at its own pace and of its own free will.
“Stop pushing,” the nurse cried.
Lisa watched the heavens. “I can’t,” she said.
The nurse’s voice was tense. “ Call Dr. Catrell.”
Lisa’s eyes swept over to the nurse. “What’s wrong?” she demanded. “What’s going on?”
She heard the nurse give her blood pressure. “She’s having seizures,” the nurse said, but Lisa felt no seizures. She turned her eyes back to the window, where scores of lights sparkled brightly in the night sky. One, two, three, she said to herself, counting the lights as rapidly as she could. Six, seven, eight…
“She’s preeclamptic,” the nurse called.
“Let’s stabilize her.”
The lights were coming together, and Lisa’s eyes widened as the dazzling display began to move in upon itself.
“Four grams magnesium.”
The beauty of the lights bloomed like a flower in her mind, but she continued to count.
“Five milligrams hydralazine.”
From the corner of her eye, she saw Dr. Catrell draw near, his lips at her ear. “What’s happening is called eclampsia,” he said.
Lisa watched the sky, the lights moving in upon each other, drawing in as if toward the nucleus of some great cosmic soul.