Part 40
Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2004 3:51 pm
Hello to anyone reading! :Fade-color
Minanda: Emily asked for proof--she got it.
Although I doubt she was counting on anything so dramatic. 
Sarah: Hi there! Thanks for reading, and I'm so glad you're enjoying it! I can identify with Dee too. Mostly the stubborn part.
Christina: I confess the cliffhangers are deliberate. I feel this story is at a disadvantage for two main reasons. First, since I've already said I will adhere to canon in most cases, everyone already knows the ending. That could take the fizz out of it. Second, the shapeshifter's tale--of which this particular story is only Book 2--is a long sucker. The shapeshifters have been here for 50 years, and while I certainly don't intend to chronicle every bit of that 50 years, it's still going to stretch to 6 or 7 stories. That's an awful lot of reading, and a long time to maintain interest. Hence the cliffhangers.
I have some friends who prefer to read a complete story, so I'm e-mailing them each book as I finish posting it. If you'd prefer that, I'd be happy to do that.
PART FORTY
July 7, 1947, 10:15 a.m.
Proctor residence
“Which one is it?” David asked Dee, as they all stared at the quivering mass on her bed. Emily’s eyes were wide, but she said nothing.
“I don’t know,” Dee answered, shaking her head. “Does it matter?”
“No,” David replied, feeling slightly abashed for even asking the question. “No, of course it ……….” He stopped, as the thing on the bed began to shift furiously, struggling, fighting to attain….something. Slowly, and with obvious difficulty, it coalesced into a form: Long legs, one of which lay at an odd angle, small head, short fingers. Human.
Brivari.
David glanced at his wife, wondering how she would take this. He still had vivid memories of the day the two of them had stood outside his brother’s apartment as the building supervisor had unlocked the door. The smell that assaulted them when the door was opened had made it all too clear what had happened.
It had been Emily who had squared her shoulders and entered that apartment, leaving two war veterans frozen in the doorway, unwilling to look. It had been Emily who returned minutes later, ashen-faced, to report what she had found. It had been Emily who made the phone calls, the funeral arrangements, and did the dozens of other things that must be done when someone suddenly ceases to exist. She had been heartbroken, exhausted, shaken to the core, but she had never flinched from what needed to be done. Not once.
Nor was she flinching now. As David watched, her expression changed from one of shock to one of appraisal, and he felt himself mentally release a huge sigh of relief. Not only did she now believe him—hard not to, he must admit—but she was squaring her shoulders again, preparing to do what must be done. David had just gained a powerful ally, and if they behaved themselves, so had Brivari and his people.
Emily stepped closer, peering at the figure on the bed which was curled on its right side in a fetal position. Any other woman would no doubt have begun by objecting to the presence of a naked man on her daughter’s bed, regardless of the circumstances. But Emily wasn’t just any woman. She tended to get right to the point.
“David, look at his leg,” she commanded.
David moved around the bed to get a better look. He hadn’t technically been a medic in the war, but having that title was something of a formality; they had all been medics, out of necessity. David knew a broken leg when he saw one, and this one was bad.
He felt the leg with practiced hands, moving it a little, drawing a gasp of pain from its owner. He wasn’t surprised to find bone poking through the skin, nor was he surprised to hear his daughter wince behind him. His wife, however, was right beside him. As usual.
“That’s a compound fracture,” she said, “probably more than one compound fracture. What do we do?”
David looked helplessly from the shattered leg to his family. He could splint the leg, but it wouldn’t do any good—fractures this severe required prompt surgery. They couldn’t very well bring him to a hospital; the doctors would be bound to notice a few things. David raked his gaze over the rest of the form on the bed, looking for any other injuries, and his eyes fell on Brivari’s face. For just a moment his eyes flicked open, fixing David with an anguished stare.
David stared back, feeling pity wash away his initial disappointment when he’d found out who it was that was once again asking for their help. He knew that look. There was pain there, of course, and fear, but something else as well: Humiliation. If Brivari really was a king’s guardian, this must be quite a comedown for him. He prided himself on being in control and here he was, injured and helpless, once again in a position where he needed help from those he…. David paused, reflecting that the word he’d been about to use, despised, was wrong. Brivari didn’t despise them. His demeanor was not one of disdain, like that other one, but of wariness, mistrust. He disliked having to place his life in the hands of those who could easily turn on him, and after what had happened to the other two, who could blame him?
Reaching across Brivari, David pulled up the bedspread, wrapping it around him, arranging it carefully so that his injured leg was uncovered so as not to get threads tangled up in the exposed bone. Might as well let the man have his dignity.
“I don’t know what to do,” he said heavily. “He needs surgery, but we can’t take him to a hospital. This is way beyond first aid.”
“The stones,” Dee whispered behind him.
David turned to look at her. “What?”
“The stones!” she replied, reaching for the little bag up by her pillow. “I used them on James and Valeris. They were both shot, but I bet these work on broken legs too.” As she spoke she opened the bag and dumped the contents on the pillow.
“Shot?” Emily said faintly.
“Later,” David said firmly. “What are those?” he asked Dee, looking at the five amber-colored rocks.
“Valeris called them ‘healing stones’,” Dee said, picking up one of them. “They let them use your energy to fix themselves. Watch.” She sat down cross-legged on the floor, cupped the stone in her hands, and closed her eyes. It immediately began glowing.
“Wait!” Emily ordered.
Dee opened her eyes. “What’s happening?” her mother demanded.
“It’s okay, Mama," Dee asssured her. "I did this before. Several times.”
After glancing at David, who nodded silently, Emily reluctantly backed off and Dee closed her eyes again.
The stone began to glow, brighter, brighter. On the bed, Brivari began to convulse. There was a cracking sound and, as David and Emily watched in amazement, the visible ends of bone protruding from the leg receded somewhat, and the skin began to close over the wound. More cracking sounds followed as the leg moved slightly, becoming straighter. Dee was sweating and shaking, her eyes screwed tightly shut as though she were doing something very hard.
Then everything stopped. The glow from the stone died, Brivari stopped twitching, and Dee leaned, exhausted, against her bedside table.
“What happened?” David asked worriedly, grabbing her by the shoulders. “Are you all right?”
“I’m okay,” Dee said. “He needs more energy than I have to give him. I’m really tired,” she added, almost apologetically.
“Well, he’ll just have to wait,” Emily said firmly, reaching for the stone in Dee’s hands. “Whatever you did helped him somewhat. You can try again la…..” She stopped, flabbergasted, and stared at the stone she had just picked up.
The stone was glowing, just as it had for Dee but with much more intensity. In mere seconds it assumed a brilliance that made them all squint. Emily gasped and went rigid, her eyes wide, unseeing. The figure on the bed convulsed violently. Alarmed, David moved to take the stone from his wife’s hands, but Dee stopped him. “Look!” she cried, pulling herself to her knees and pointing.
David followed her gaze and watched as the bones still protruding from Brivari’s leg slipped completely back inside his leg, the skin closing smoothly over them. He looked back at his wife. Emily’s eyes were still wide, her face transfixed. Perspiration started to bead on her upper lip, and she was shaking.
“Enough!” David exclaimed, knocking the stone from her hands. It clattered away across the wooden floor, and David caught her as she slumped into the nearby rocking chair, dazed.
“What happened?” David asked for the second time in as many minutes. “Are you okay?”
Dee was positively bursting with admiration. “Wow! They never worked that well for me! You must be really strong, Mama!”
“Thanks—I think,” Emily said skeptically. “No, I’m all right,” she objected, pushing away her husband’s solicitous hands.
“This is great!” Dee enthused, reaching for another stone. “If we both use the stones, we can fix him even faster, and then he can go and get the others, and…”
But Emily caught her daughter’s wrist, fixing her with one of her famous “don’t mess with me” stares. “Before anyone does anything more, I want to know who this….person….is. And how you know him.”
Dee looked up at David, who hesitated. Brivari’s timely arrival had spared him the near-impossible job of proving the existence of space aliens, but explaining just exactly how they knew him was complicated at best, downright messy at worst.
But his daughter had her mother’s habit of getting right to the point, eschewing lengthy explanations in favor of the one thing that mattered most to her—and would likely matter most to her mother.
“His name is Brivari, and he saved my life,” Dee said simply.
Emily paled, looking back and forth from her daughter, to her husband, to the figure on the bed. “Saved….your life?” she echoed.
“Do you remember asking me about the skull fracture?” David murmured.
Emily looked at him in alarm. “He is how she got the skull fracture?” she asked, pointing to Brivari.
“No. He’s the reason she lived through it,” David said quietly.
"I see," Emily said, staring at him for only a moment before announcing her verdict. “That settles it then.” She held out her hand. “Hand me another stone.”
“Not now,” David protested. “Both you and Dee have already helped him once; he’s much better now. You can try again later.”
“Nonsense,” Emily said firmly. “I’m fine, David. I agree that Dee shouldn’t, but there’s no reason for me not to try again now. I wasn’t prepared for it the first time—now I am.” David didn’t budge, his face set.
“Look, his leg is still broken,” Emily said sensibly. “At least let me fix his leg.”
His wife had that look of determination in her eyes that told him argument would only delay the inevitable, so David gave up. Turning around, he reached for another of the stones on the pillow, then hesitated. Would it erupt in brilliance at his touch like it had for his wife? His hand hovered, uncertain.
Then Dee reached up, taking one the stones and holding it out to her mother. Emily tapped it gingerly with her finger as though afraid it might sprout teeth and bite her. But nothing happened, so she carefully took the stone and looked uncertainly at her daughter. “What do I do?” she asked, staring at the rock in her hand. “I really don’t know how I did what I did the last time.”
“Just think about fixing him,” Dee advised. “I usually close my eyes when I do it,” she added helpfully.
Emily gave a tentative nod and settled back into the rocking chair, cupping the stone in her hands and closing her eyes. The stone immediately began to glow brilliantly, flooding the room with light. Dee looked up at Brivari and smiled as he began to twitch once more.
******************************************************
Pod Chamber
Jaddo entered the pod chamber, carefully setting down the food he’d managed to acquire. If there was any hope of rescuing their companians and the hybrids, he would need Brivari’s help. And if Brivari had any hope of repairing his injuries alone, he would need to rest and eat. Jaddo had managed one more foray into the ship, once again failing to find the healing stones. The hybrids were still safely hidden, but one of those meddling humans was bound to open the incubators sooner or later. It was only a matter of time.
“Brivari?” Jaddo called into the gloom. “Wake up. I’ve brought you something to eat and….” He stopped, confused.
Brivari was gone.
Slowly at first, then with growing panic, Jaddo searched first the forechamber, then the Granolith chamber. Nothing. He searched both chambers again, knowing full well he wouldn’t find anything. Fool!, Jaddo swore loudly. What did Brivari think he could accomplish in his condition? Devotion was all well and good, but not when it rendered one idiotic.
Angry as he was, Jaddo leaned against the wall and forced himself to think. He had just come from the crash site, and he hadn’t seen Brivari there. Nor had he seen him on the way back, and that was likely bad news. Brivari had probably tried to get back to the ship and had his strength fail partway there. Which meant he was now lying in a ditch, or a tree, or worse, and Jaddo was going to have to play hide and seek to find him.
Jaddo opened the door, cursing again. He did not need this now. The last thing he needed was one more person missing, one more person to rescue. For all that Brivari complained about Zan, they were so much alike: They both thought they were invincible. Zan found out that was not the case. And you might too, unless you’re lucky enough to have me find you first, Jaddo thought grimly, as he took to the air to hunt.
******************************************************
Pohlman Ranch
Deputy Valenti plopped his hat down on the hood of his cruiser and folded his arms in frustration. After a few minutes spent fuming in the hot July sun, he thought better of it and replaced his hat on his head. He was already steamed enough about events this morning. No sense letting himself get genuinely steamed.
Valenti had spent the entire morning trying to dig up information on the strange craft that could clearly be seen in the distance. One would think that would be easy, what with about a hundred soldiers crawling around the area and more on the way. One would think, but one would be mistaken. No one was talking. No one would say what the craft was, how it had been found, or if anything or anyone had been found inside. No one would say exactly who had been carried off in the ambulance he had seen, vaguely referring to an injured soldier. Valenti snorted; injured soldier, my ass. He had seen the crowd gathered around that ambulance, and he knew damned well that an injured soldier wouldn’t draw a crowd like that.
Rebuffed by the rank and file, Valenti had finally turned to the people in charge, a Captain Cavitt and a Major Marcel. Marcel had made shady references to a Russian aircraft, but it was clear to anyone with working eyeballs that this was no Russian aircraft, or any kind of aircraft for that matter. Cavitt had been more blunt. “Your jurisdiction is confined to Roswell, Deputy. This falls under Chaves County. You have no business here. Have a nice day.”
Up yours, Valenti thought bitterly. They were lying, all of them. Valenti was still slightly wet behind the ears, but he knew a liar when he saw one. You could tell by the eyes, by the way the liar wouldn’t look at you directly, preferring instead to look around you, or through you. You could tell by the voice, which, depending on the liar’s experience, could become startled and panicky or carefully controlled. Valenti had developed somewhat of a nose for liars, and this place absolutely reeked. Whoever had silenced everyone had done their job well.
Which made the subject of the girl he had seen jump from the strange craft all the more perplexing. Because people were not lying when they told him they hadn’t the faintest idea what he was talking about. No one else had seen the child with the single red sneaker jump from the craft and run to the three figures on the nearby hill. The first few times he had asked, people had looked at him strangely, like perhaps he was suffering from heat exhaustion. So he’d taken to inquiring in more roundabout ways. He’d still come up empty, and his nose for lies smelled nothing amiss here—no one had seen what he had seen.
Now, standing in the baking sun, Valenti was beginning to question whether he had seen it. He had been quite a ways away; could he have made a mistake? But the mental image of that small figure, so completely incongruent, was still clear. Still, how was it that nobody else had seen her? How could they have missed her? He had watched her weave among the crowd; there was no possible way that everyone could have missed her.
Valenti’s gaze strayed to the rise beyond the damaged craft. Everyone hadn’t missed her. The three people on the hill knew what was going on because she had run right up to them. He had been so far away that those three had been mere dots in the distance, but one of them had been wearing a hat that looked vaguely familiar. If only he could place it…..
Shaking his head, Valenti started off for one more look before giving up. It would be a token attempt at best; a Colonel Cassidy had just shown up with another fifty soldiers in tow, so things would likely be locked down tighter than ever now. Valenti watched the Colonel barking orders to Cavitt and noted with grim satisfaction that Cavitt looked distinctly unhappy. Good. Marcel seemed a decent fellow, but Cavitt was an ass.
A group of soldiers deposited boxes in the back of a nearby truck and hurried away, leaving the doors open. Valenti paused, watching. In all the confusion of the new arrivals, the truck was deserted for the moment. He backed toward the truck, eyes shifting right and left, but no one was in close proximity. Peering into the back, it only took a moment for curiosity to overwhelm him. He jumped inside.
Several boxes were piled up. The first box Valenti grabbed held something that resembled silverware, although it seemed much too large. The next contained pieces of what looked like tinfoil. Valenti picked up a piece, marveling at how it flattened when folded. Then he grabbed the next box, and forgot all about cutlery, or strange aircraft, or anything else.
Valenti held his breath as he reached into the box and retrieved his vindication, his proof that he was not hallucinating. A red sneaker, child-sized, looking distinctly out of place amongst all the other odd-looking stuff. He closed his eyes, willing himself to remember which foot had been bare. The right foot. Yes. She had a sneaker on her left foot, but not her right. He opened his eyes and checked. Yep. It was a right sneaker.
His initial elation at have found the sneaker sagged somewhat as he realized this posed more questions than it answered. The Army had the sneaker, but no one was lying to him about not seeing the girl. Was he the only one who knew where this had come from? The only one besides the three on the hill, that is, including the one with the familiar hat. At least this meant he wasn’t going nuts. For awhile there he was afraid he was going to start seeing Jesus in bathtubs, or vampires in outhouses, or spaceships flying overhead. Although judging by the looks of that strange craft, perhaps the spaceship guy hadn’t been senile after all.
Spaceships. Suddenly Valenti remembered where he’d seen that hat. It was the day he’d gotton the phone call from the old guy about a spaceship. The day that Sheriff Hemming had a visitor who had walked down the hall to his office wearing that very same hat.
Tucking the red sneaker as far inside his pocket as he could, Valenti cautiously peered outside before hopping down from the truck and heading back to his cruiser, forcing himself to walk casually. He had a call to pay on the man with the hat, and since no one in the Army seemed to know where this red sneaker had come from, he reckoned they wouldn’t mind if he borrowed it for awhile.
******************************************************
Proctor residence
The stone’s glow faded. Dee watched her mother ease back into the rocking chair and open her eyes as her father hovered anxiously. “I’m okay—I’m okay,” her mother said, waving him away. “I’m just a little dizzy, that’s all. Give me a moment. The room is spinning.” She closed her eyes again.
“Look!” Dee said, looking at Brivari’s leg. Her father whistled softly as they stared at the now straight leg with no wound in sight. “Is it all better?”
“I think so,” her mother answered, eyes still closed. “But he seems exhausted. Even if it isn’t all better, I don’t think he can do any more right now.”
“James got that way too,” Dee said. “I could feel all my energy just waiting to be used, but he couldn’t use it.”
“James?”
“The first one of them I met,” Dee explained. “He wouldn’t tell me his name at first, so I named him after Uncle James. His real name is Urza.” She looked back to the bed. “This one is Brivari. His job is to guard a king. The King was hurt in a war, and they brought him here to make him better. Him and the rest of his family.”
Her mother’s eyes flew open. “Another war?” she said in disbelief. “I might have known there was a war behind all this! And you in the middle of it again,” she added severely to David. “What is it about you and volunteering for wars?”
Emily rose abruptly from the rocking chair. “Downstairs. Both of you. Now. I need some answers. And some coffee. Lots of coffee,” she added wearily, heading for the door.
Her father said nothing. Dee watched her mother’s retreating form, knowing perfectly well that her mother wasn’t upset about the aliens’ war. She was upset about their war, the one her father had volunteered for rather than waiting to see if he would be drafted. That was still a sore point with her mother.
“That wasn’t fair,” Dee said to her father after her mother had left. “You didn’t get in the middle of anything; I did. This is my fault,” she finished in a whisper.
“No. No, no, no, no,” David said quietly, sitting down in the rocking chair and pulling her onto his lap. She didn’t object; ordinarily she would have complained that she was too old to be rocked, but now it felt good. Nothing was ordinary now.
“This is not your fault,” her father said firmly, stroking her hair. “And it’s not my fault or your mother’s fault. No one wanted this to happen. It just happened.”
“But now Mama’s mad at you,” Dee whispered.
“Give her some time,” her father said gently. “She’s had…what…a whole forty-five minutes to get used to this? I’ve had an entire day. I’m way ahead of her.”
Dee twisted her head up to look at her father. “That means I’m way ahead of you,” she smiled.
“What else is new?” her father said dryly. He eased out of the rocking chair and set her down on the window bench. “Tell you what—I’ll take the first shift with your Mama. You get some sleep. I’ll bring you up some breakfast a little later.”
Dee sank gratefully onto the window bench. She was so tired. “Good luck,” she whispered as her father bent down to kiss her forehead.
“Now I know how you felt yesterday,” her father said, leaning his forehead against hers. “Advice?”
“Start at the beginning and keep going,” Dee said seriously. “And don’t let her shush you.”
They both smiled. Telling her mother not to shush you was like telling a hurricane not to blow.
“At least your Mama has proof right in front of her,” her father said, tucking her grandmother’s afghan around her. Dee hated sleeping without something over her, even in the summertime. “She won’t have to put me through what I put you through.”
“It’s okay, Daddy,” Dee said. “It was a weird story. And you did listen to me. That’s why you took me to the hospital.”
Her father looked chagrined at this absolution from his offspring. He gave her a rueful smile, took one last look at Brivari, and left.
Just before Dee’s eyes began to close, she heard a rustling sound. The figure on the bed across from her was beginning to shrink. The lump underneath the blanket was growing smaller, the head larger, the fingers longer. He was tired, and it took a long time. Dee propped herself up on her elbow and watched every bit of it, from start to finish. It didn’t bother her to watch this time, and she wasn’t surprised.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Next week....
...Valenti pays a call on Sheriff Wilcox....
...Emily has the first of many confrontations with Brivari....
...and a character from Summer of '47 appears.
I'll post part 41 next Sunday.
Minanda: Emily asked for proof--she got it.
Although I doubt she was counting on anything so dramatic. Sarah: Hi there! Thanks for reading, and I'm so glad you're enjoying it! I can identify with Dee too. Mostly the stubborn part.
Christina: I confess the cliffhangers are deliberate. I feel this story is at a disadvantage for two main reasons. First, since I've already said I will adhere to canon in most cases, everyone already knows the ending. That could take the fizz out of it.
Second, the shapeshifter's tale--of which this particular story is only Book 2--is a long sucker. The shapeshifters have been here for 50 years, and while I certainly don't intend to chronicle every bit of that 50 years, it's still going to stretch to 6 or 7 stories. That's an awful lot of reading, and a long time to maintain interest. Hence the cliffhangers. I have some friends who prefer to read a complete story, so I'm e-mailing them each book as I finish posting it. If you'd prefer that, I'd be happy to do that.
PART FORTY
July 7, 1947, 10:15 a.m.
Proctor residence
“Which one is it?” David asked Dee, as they all stared at the quivering mass on her bed. Emily’s eyes were wide, but she said nothing.
“I don’t know,” Dee answered, shaking her head. “Does it matter?”
“No,” David replied, feeling slightly abashed for even asking the question. “No, of course it ……….” He stopped, as the thing on the bed began to shift furiously, struggling, fighting to attain….something. Slowly, and with obvious difficulty, it coalesced into a form: Long legs, one of which lay at an odd angle, small head, short fingers. Human.
Brivari.
David glanced at his wife, wondering how she would take this. He still had vivid memories of the day the two of them had stood outside his brother’s apartment as the building supervisor had unlocked the door. The smell that assaulted them when the door was opened had made it all too clear what had happened.
It had been Emily who had squared her shoulders and entered that apartment, leaving two war veterans frozen in the doorway, unwilling to look. It had been Emily who returned minutes later, ashen-faced, to report what she had found. It had been Emily who made the phone calls, the funeral arrangements, and did the dozens of other things that must be done when someone suddenly ceases to exist. She had been heartbroken, exhausted, shaken to the core, but she had never flinched from what needed to be done. Not once.
Nor was she flinching now. As David watched, her expression changed from one of shock to one of appraisal, and he felt himself mentally release a huge sigh of relief. Not only did she now believe him—hard not to, he must admit—but she was squaring her shoulders again, preparing to do what must be done. David had just gained a powerful ally, and if they behaved themselves, so had Brivari and his people.
Emily stepped closer, peering at the figure on the bed which was curled on its right side in a fetal position. Any other woman would no doubt have begun by objecting to the presence of a naked man on her daughter’s bed, regardless of the circumstances. But Emily wasn’t just any woman. She tended to get right to the point.
“David, look at his leg,” she commanded.
David moved around the bed to get a better look. He hadn’t technically been a medic in the war, but having that title was something of a formality; they had all been medics, out of necessity. David knew a broken leg when he saw one, and this one was bad.
He felt the leg with practiced hands, moving it a little, drawing a gasp of pain from its owner. He wasn’t surprised to find bone poking through the skin, nor was he surprised to hear his daughter wince behind him. His wife, however, was right beside him. As usual.
“That’s a compound fracture,” she said, “probably more than one compound fracture. What do we do?”
David looked helplessly from the shattered leg to his family. He could splint the leg, but it wouldn’t do any good—fractures this severe required prompt surgery. They couldn’t very well bring him to a hospital; the doctors would be bound to notice a few things. David raked his gaze over the rest of the form on the bed, looking for any other injuries, and his eyes fell on Brivari’s face. For just a moment his eyes flicked open, fixing David with an anguished stare.
David stared back, feeling pity wash away his initial disappointment when he’d found out who it was that was once again asking for their help. He knew that look. There was pain there, of course, and fear, but something else as well: Humiliation. If Brivari really was a king’s guardian, this must be quite a comedown for him. He prided himself on being in control and here he was, injured and helpless, once again in a position where he needed help from those he…. David paused, reflecting that the word he’d been about to use, despised, was wrong. Brivari didn’t despise them. His demeanor was not one of disdain, like that other one, but of wariness, mistrust. He disliked having to place his life in the hands of those who could easily turn on him, and after what had happened to the other two, who could blame him?
Reaching across Brivari, David pulled up the bedspread, wrapping it around him, arranging it carefully so that his injured leg was uncovered so as not to get threads tangled up in the exposed bone. Might as well let the man have his dignity.
“I don’t know what to do,” he said heavily. “He needs surgery, but we can’t take him to a hospital. This is way beyond first aid.”
“The stones,” Dee whispered behind him.
David turned to look at her. “What?”
“The stones!” she replied, reaching for the little bag up by her pillow. “I used them on James and Valeris. They were both shot, but I bet these work on broken legs too.” As she spoke she opened the bag and dumped the contents on the pillow.
“Shot?” Emily said faintly.
“Later,” David said firmly. “What are those?” he asked Dee, looking at the five amber-colored rocks.
“Valeris called them ‘healing stones’,” Dee said, picking up one of them. “They let them use your energy to fix themselves. Watch.” She sat down cross-legged on the floor, cupped the stone in her hands, and closed her eyes. It immediately began glowing.
“Wait!” Emily ordered.
Dee opened her eyes. “What’s happening?” her mother demanded.
“It’s okay, Mama," Dee asssured her. "I did this before. Several times.”
After glancing at David, who nodded silently, Emily reluctantly backed off and Dee closed her eyes again.
The stone began to glow, brighter, brighter. On the bed, Brivari began to convulse. There was a cracking sound and, as David and Emily watched in amazement, the visible ends of bone protruding from the leg receded somewhat, and the skin began to close over the wound. More cracking sounds followed as the leg moved slightly, becoming straighter. Dee was sweating and shaking, her eyes screwed tightly shut as though she were doing something very hard.
Then everything stopped. The glow from the stone died, Brivari stopped twitching, and Dee leaned, exhausted, against her bedside table.
“What happened?” David asked worriedly, grabbing her by the shoulders. “Are you all right?”
“I’m okay,” Dee said. “He needs more energy than I have to give him. I’m really tired,” she added, almost apologetically.
“Well, he’ll just have to wait,” Emily said firmly, reaching for the stone in Dee’s hands. “Whatever you did helped him somewhat. You can try again la…..” She stopped, flabbergasted, and stared at the stone she had just picked up.
The stone was glowing, just as it had for Dee but with much more intensity. In mere seconds it assumed a brilliance that made them all squint. Emily gasped and went rigid, her eyes wide, unseeing. The figure on the bed convulsed violently. Alarmed, David moved to take the stone from his wife’s hands, but Dee stopped him. “Look!” she cried, pulling herself to her knees and pointing.
David followed her gaze and watched as the bones still protruding from Brivari’s leg slipped completely back inside his leg, the skin closing smoothly over them. He looked back at his wife. Emily’s eyes were still wide, her face transfixed. Perspiration started to bead on her upper lip, and she was shaking.
“Enough!” David exclaimed, knocking the stone from her hands. It clattered away across the wooden floor, and David caught her as she slumped into the nearby rocking chair, dazed.
“What happened?” David asked for the second time in as many minutes. “Are you okay?”
Dee was positively bursting with admiration. “Wow! They never worked that well for me! You must be really strong, Mama!”
“Thanks—I think,” Emily said skeptically. “No, I’m all right,” she objected, pushing away her husband’s solicitous hands.
“This is great!” Dee enthused, reaching for another stone. “If we both use the stones, we can fix him even faster, and then he can go and get the others, and…”
But Emily caught her daughter’s wrist, fixing her with one of her famous “don’t mess with me” stares. “Before anyone does anything more, I want to know who this….person….is. And how you know him.”
Dee looked up at David, who hesitated. Brivari’s timely arrival had spared him the near-impossible job of proving the existence of space aliens, but explaining just exactly how they knew him was complicated at best, downright messy at worst.
But his daughter had her mother’s habit of getting right to the point, eschewing lengthy explanations in favor of the one thing that mattered most to her—and would likely matter most to her mother.
“His name is Brivari, and he saved my life,” Dee said simply.
Emily paled, looking back and forth from her daughter, to her husband, to the figure on the bed. “Saved….your life?” she echoed.
“Do you remember asking me about the skull fracture?” David murmured.
Emily looked at him in alarm. “He is how she got the skull fracture?” she asked, pointing to Brivari.
“No. He’s the reason she lived through it,” David said quietly.
"I see," Emily said, staring at him for only a moment before announcing her verdict. “That settles it then.” She held out her hand. “Hand me another stone.”
“Not now,” David protested. “Both you and Dee have already helped him once; he’s much better now. You can try again later.”
“Nonsense,” Emily said firmly. “I’m fine, David. I agree that Dee shouldn’t, but there’s no reason for me not to try again now. I wasn’t prepared for it the first time—now I am.” David didn’t budge, his face set.
“Look, his leg is still broken,” Emily said sensibly. “At least let me fix his leg.”
His wife had that look of determination in her eyes that told him argument would only delay the inevitable, so David gave up. Turning around, he reached for another of the stones on the pillow, then hesitated. Would it erupt in brilliance at his touch like it had for his wife? His hand hovered, uncertain.
Then Dee reached up, taking one the stones and holding it out to her mother. Emily tapped it gingerly with her finger as though afraid it might sprout teeth and bite her. But nothing happened, so she carefully took the stone and looked uncertainly at her daughter. “What do I do?” she asked, staring at the rock in her hand. “I really don’t know how I did what I did the last time.”
“Just think about fixing him,” Dee advised. “I usually close my eyes when I do it,” she added helpfully.
Emily gave a tentative nod and settled back into the rocking chair, cupping the stone in her hands and closing her eyes. The stone immediately began to glow brilliantly, flooding the room with light. Dee looked up at Brivari and smiled as he began to twitch once more.
******************************************************
Pod Chamber
Jaddo entered the pod chamber, carefully setting down the food he’d managed to acquire. If there was any hope of rescuing their companians and the hybrids, he would need Brivari’s help. And if Brivari had any hope of repairing his injuries alone, he would need to rest and eat. Jaddo had managed one more foray into the ship, once again failing to find the healing stones. The hybrids were still safely hidden, but one of those meddling humans was bound to open the incubators sooner or later. It was only a matter of time.
“Brivari?” Jaddo called into the gloom. “Wake up. I’ve brought you something to eat and….” He stopped, confused.
Brivari was gone.
Slowly at first, then with growing panic, Jaddo searched first the forechamber, then the Granolith chamber. Nothing. He searched both chambers again, knowing full well he wouldn’t find anything. Fool!, Jaddo swore loudly. What did Brivari think he could accomplish in his condition? Devotion was all well and good, but not when it rendered one idiotic.
Angry as he was, Jaddo leaned against the wall and forced himself to think. He had just come from the crash site, and he hadn’t seen Brivari there. Nor had he seen him on the way back, and that was likely bad news. Brivari had probably tried to get back to the ship and had his strength fail partway there. Which meant he was now lying in a ditch, or a tree, or worse, and Jaddo was going to have to play hide and seek to find him.
Jaddo opened the door, cursing again. He did not need this now. The last thing he needed was one more person missing, one more person to rescue. For all that Brivari complained about Zan, they were so much alike: They both thought they were invincible. Zan found out that was not the case. And you might too, unless you’re lucky enough to have me find you first, Jaddo thought grimly, as he took to the air to hunt.
******************************************************
Pohlman Ranch
Deputy Valenti plopped his hat down on the hood of his cruiser and folded his arms in frustration. After a few minutes spent fuming in the hot July sun, he thought better of it and replaced his hat on his head. He was already steamed enough about events this morning. No sense letting himself get genuinely steamed.
Valenti had spent the entire morning trying to dig up information on the strange craft that could clearly be seen in the distance. One would think that would be easy, what with about a hundred soldiers crawling around the area and more on the way. One would think, but one would be mistaken. No one was talking. No one would say what the craft was, how it had been found, or if anything or anyone had been found inside. No one would say exactly who had been carried off in the ambulance he had seen, vaguely referring to an injured soldier. Valenti snorted; injured soldier, my ass. He had seen the crowd gathered around that ambulance, and he knew damned well that an injured soldier wouldn’t draw a crowd like that.
Rebuffed by the rank and file, Valenti had finally turned to the people in charge, a Captain Cavitt and a Major Marcel. Marcel had made shady references to a Russian aircraft, but it was clear to anyone with working eyeballs that this was no Russian aircraft, or any kind of aircraft for that matter. Cavitt had been more blunt. “Your jurisdiction is confined to Roswell, Deputy. This falls under Chaves County. You have no business here. Have a nice day.”
Up yours, Valenti thought bitterly. They were lying, all of them. Valenti was still slightly wet behind the ears, but he knew a liar when he saw one. You could tell by the eyes, by the way the liar wouldn’t look at you directly, preferring instead to look around you, or through you. You could tell by the voice, which, depending on the liar’s experience, could become startled and panicky or carefully controlled. Valenti had developed somewhat of a nose for liars, and this place absolutely reeked. Whoever had silenced everyone had done their job well.
Which made the subject of the girl he had seen jump from the strange craft all the more perplexing. Because people were not lying when they told him they hadn’t the faintest idea what he was talking about. No one else had seen the child with the single red sneaker jump from the craft and run to the three figures on the nearby hill. The first few times he had asked, people had looked at him strangely, like perhaps he was suffering from heat exhaustion. So he’d taken to inquiring in more roundabout ways. He’d still come up empty, and his nose for lies smelled nothing amiss here—no one had seen what he had seen.
Now, standing in the baking sun, Valenti was beginning to question whether he had seen it. He had been quite a ways away; could he have made a mistake? But the mental image of that small figure, so completely incongruent, was still clear. Still, how was it that nobody else had seen her? How could they have missed her? He had watched her weave among the crowd; there was no possible way that everyone could have missed her.
Valenti’s gaze strayed to the rise beyond the damaged craft. Everyone hadn’t missed her. The three people on the hill knew what was going on because she had run right up to them. He had been so far away that those three had been mere dots in the distance, but one of them had been wearing a hat that looked vaguely familiar. If only he could place it…..
Shaking his head, Valenti started off for one more look before giving up. It would be a token attempt at best; a Colonel Cassidy had just shown up with another fifty soldiers in tow, so things would likely be locked down tighter than ever now. Valenti watched the Colonel barking orders to Cavitt and noted with grim satisfaction that Cavitt looked distinctly unhappy. Good. Marcel seemed a decent fellow, but Cavitt was an ass.
A group of soldiers deposited boxes in the back of a nearby truck and hurried away, leaving the doors open. Valenti paused, watching. In all the confusion of the new arrivals, the truck was deserted for the moment. He backed toward the truck, eyes shifting right and left, but no one was in close proximity. Peering into the back, it only took a moment for curiosity to overwhelm him. He jumped inside.
Several boxes were piled up. The first box Valenti grabbed held something that resembled silverware, although it seemed much too large. The next contained pieces of what looked like tinfoil. Valenti picked up a piece, marveling at how it flattened when folded. Then he grabbed the next box, and forgot all about cutlery, or strange aircraft, or anything else.
Valenti held his breath as he reached into the box and retrieved his vindication, his proof that he was not hallucinating. A red sneaker, child-sized, looking distinctly out of place amongst all the other odd-looking stuff. He closed his eyes, willing himself to remember which foot had been bare. The right foot. Yes. She had a sneaker on her left foot, but not her right. He opened his eyes and checked. Yep. It was a right sneaker.
His initial elation at have found the sneaker sagged somewhat as he realized this posed more questions than it answered. The Army had the sneaker, but no one was lying to him about not seeing the girl. Was he the only one who knew where this had come from? The only one besides the three on the hill, that is, including the one with the familiar hat. At least this meant he wasn’t going nuts. For awhile there he was afraid he was going to start seeing Jesus in bathtubs, or vampires in outhouses, or spaceships flying overhead. Although judging by the looks of that strange craft, perhaps the spaceship guy hadn’t been senile after all.
Spaceships. Suddenly Valenti remembered where he’d seen that hat. It was the day he’d gotton the phone call from the old guy about a spaceship. The day that Sheriff Hemming had a visitor who had walked down the hall to his office wearing that very same hat.
Tucking the red sneaker as far inside his pocket as he could, Valenti cautiously peered outside before hopping down from the truck and heading back to his cruiser, forcing himself to walk casually. He had a call to pay on the man with the hat, and since no one in the Army seemed to know where this red sneaker had come from, he reckoned they wouldn’t mind if he borrowed it for awhile.
******************************************************
Proctor residence
The stone’s glow faded. Dee watched her mother ease back into the rocking chair and open her eyes as her father hovered anxiously. “I’m okay—I’m okay,” her mother said, waving him away. “I’m just a little dizzy, that’s all. Give me a moment. The room is spinning.” She closed her eyes again.
“Look!” Dee said, looking at Brivari’s leg. Her father whistled softly as they stared at the now straight leg with no wound in sight. “Is it all better?”
“I think so,” her mother answered, eyes still closed. “But he seems exhausted. Even if it isn’t all better, I don’t think he can do any more right now.”
“James got that way too,” Dee said. “I could feel all my energy just waiting to be used, but he couldn’t use it.”
“James?”
“The first one of them I met,” Dee explained. “He wouldn’t tell me his name at first, so I named him after Uncle James. His real name is Urza.” She looked back to the bed. “This one is Brivari. His job is to guard a king. The King was hurt in a war, and they brought him here to make him better. Him and the rest of his family.”
Her mother’s eyes flew open. “Another war?” she said in disbelief. “I might have known there was a war behind all this! And you in the middle of it again,” she added severely to David. “What is it about you and volunteering for wars?”
Emily rose abruptly from the rocking chair. “Downstairs. Both of you. Now. I need some answers. And some coffee. Lots of coffee,” she added wearily, heading for the door.
Her father said nothing. Dee watched her mother’s retreating form, knowing perfectly well that her mother wasn’t upset about the aliens’ war. She was upset about their war, the one her father had volunteered for rather than waiting to see if he would be drafted. That was still a sore point with her mother.
“That wasn’t fair,” Dee said to her father after her mother had left. “You didn’t get in the middle of anything; I did. This is my fault,” she finished in a whisper.
“No. No, no, no, no,” David said quietly, sitting down in the rocking chair and pulling her onto his lap. She didn’t object; ordinarily she would have complained that she was too old to be rocked, but now it felt good. Nothing was ordinary now.
“This is not your fault,” her father said firmly, stroking her hair. “And it’s not my fault or your mother’s fault. No one wanted this to happen. It just happened.”
“But now Mama’s mad at you,” Dee whispered.
“Give her some time,” her father said gently. “She’s had…what…a whole forty-five minutes to get used to this? I’ve had an entire day. I’m way ahead of her.”
Dee twisted her head up to look at her father. “That means I’m way ahead of you,” she smiled.
“What else is new?” her father said dryly. He eased out of the rocking chair and set her down on the window bench. “Tell you what—I’ll take the first shift with your Mama. You get some sleep. I’ll bring you up some breakfast a little later.”
Dee sank gratefully onto the window bench. She was so tired. “Good luck,” she whispered as her father bent down to kiss her forehead.
“Now I know how you felt yesterday,” her father said, leaning his forehead against hers. “Advice?”
“Start at the beginning and keep going,” Dee said seriously. “And don’t let her shush you.”
They both smiled. Telling her mother not to shush you was like telling a hurricane not to blow.
“At least your Mama has proof right in front of her,” her father said, tucking her grandmother’s afghan around her. Dee hated sleeping without something over her, even in the summertime. “She won’t have to put me through what I put you through.”
“It’s okay, Daddy,” Dee said. “It was a weird story. And you did listen to me. That’s why you took me to the hospital.”
Her father looked chagrined at this absolution from his offspring. He gave her a rueful smile, took one last look at Brivari, and left.
Just before Dee’s eyes began to close, she heard a rustling sound. The figure on the bed across from her was beginning to shrink. The lump underneath the blanket was growing smaller, the head larger, the fingers longer. He was tired, and it took a long time. Dee propped herself up on her elbow and watched every bit of it, from start to finish. It didn’t bother her to watch this time, and she wasn’t surprised.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Next week....
...Valenti pays a call on Sheriff Wilcox....
...Emily has the first of many confrontations with Brivari....
...and a character from Summer of '47 appears.
I'll post part 41 next Sunday.
It's an honor to be nominated. :Fade-color