Glassing the Orgachine Read online

  Holy crap! It was a space alien right out of central casting. It was something a Spielberg or Lucas might have dreamed up. How the hell the Prophecys saw an angel in it was beyond comprehension.

  Then it spoke. In a reedy, tremulous voice it clearly said, “Angel phone home.”

  Double holy crap.

  “Angel phone home,” it pleaded. “Lord help angel question.”

  It took Jace a moment to parse its words. “I’m no lord,” he said, “and you’re no angel. But, hell yeah, I’ll help you.”

  The thing cooed or purred and said, “Bless you, lord.” When it began withdrawing, Jace said, “Wait! Don’t go yet. Talk to me. Where are you from? Where is your home planet? How did you get to Earth? Where is your spaceship? Are you a prisoner? Don’t go.”

  The creature said, “Ooo-Zee come. Lord wait for Ooo-Zee question,” as it continued backing away down the shaft.

  “Yes, I’ll wait for Uzzie.”

  “Amen.”

  “Amen.”

  It banged and scraped its ungainly head against the rock wall as it disappeared from sight.

  Holy, holy crap.

  It didn’t take Uzzie long to return, and he stayed only long enough to say, “Go home and wait for a message.”

  “No, tell Deut to come here to talk to me. Is she there? Tell her I need to talk to her.”

  But the boy was gone.

  JACE CLIMBED OUT of the shaft and retraced his steps across the ledge. He was still cautious of the potential danger of the tulips, but when he passed them, they were dark, as though someone had flipped their switch. He was halfway down the mountain slope to the airstrip when he realized that he was in the same predicament as before. How was he going to get anyone to help the alien phone home or contact its mothership or do whatever it needed to do without a shred of evidence that it even existed? Who was he going to call? People would think he was nuts. There’s a turd-headed space alien being held captive by loony Christian fundies in an abandoned copper mine in Alaska.

  Yeah, sure.

  So he reversed course and trudged back up to the ledge again. The tulips were still dark. After meeting the real alien, these devices seemed more like some sort of alien transmitter or receiver technology, with their dishes all pointed in the same direction of the sky. But if they were communication devices, why did the alien say it needed help phoning home?

  Jace took out his phone and snapped a few photos, but even with the flash, the images were indecipherable. He wished he’d thought of his phone while he was still with the alien, not that photo evidence meant much anymore.

  The shortest of the tulip devices was about as tall as Jace himself. What better evidence of alien presence than a piece of their tech? Surely the little guy would understand that the only way Jace was going to be able to convince anyone to help it was if he borrowed one of these tulips for a little while.

  He reached his gloved hand out and grasped the tulip crown. It was as big as his head. He gave it a quick twisting jerk, intending to snap it off, but the stem wouldn’t break. Though it was as thin as a spaghetti noodle and presumably made of glass, it was exceedingly strong. Not your typical Earth glass. He tried again, using all of his weight and strength with no better result.

  The Cinder Cone

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  AFTER BREAKFAST, PROVERBS, who had become a lot more relaxed in her presence, told Ginger to grab a lantern and a shadow and to follow him. He had something exciting to show her.

  “What is it?” she said warily.

  “A surprise.”

  “What kind of a surprise?”

  Deut jumped at the chance to get out of the house for a little while and volunteered to be her shadow. The three of them set off into the dark vastness of the chamber. At first they followed the trail of stones, like breadcrumbs, that led to Adam and Sue’s future house, but partway there Proverbs veered into uncharted territory.

  “Where are we going?” Ginger said.

  “You’ll see.” Proverbs’ tone of voice was fun, even playful, which was kinda weird.

  Proverbs changed directions a couple of times, and Deut said, “My brother doesn’t know himself where we’re going.”

  “Sure, I do,” he said. “Stop here.”

  They stopped. In all directions, as far as their feeble lanterns could cast light, was empty space.

  “So where’s my surprise?”

  “Shhh, please,” Proverbs said. “Listen.”

  They listened. There was a faint plop, plop, plop of water dripping into a pool.

  “This way,” Proverbs said and headed toward the source of the sound.

  Spring water, infiltrating the seams and cracks of the limestone, was dripping from the high vaulted ceiling and crashing into a collection basin someone had built of stones. The water had filled the basin and was trickling down its side into smaller basins below. Like one of those fake rock fountains you can buy at Lowe’s. Only this one was real and it was nicely crafted.

  “You made this?” Deut asked her brother.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well, it’s nice to see you have so much free time on your hands.”

  “Don’t worry, sister. I do my share, and then some.”

  “Still,” Deut said, “it’s an odd surprise to bring us out to see.”

  “I brought Ginger out to see it, you’re just along for the ride. And this isn’t the surprise. This is.” He held his lantern high, revealing an odd assemblage of lumber and building material.

  “Uh,” Deut said, “what’s all this?”

  “Ginger’s cottage.”

  Or cottage floor plan, to be more accurate. With batts of fiberglass insulation as corners and 2x4s for walls, Proverbs had laid out a life-sized plan for a little house.

  “Here’s the living room, bathroom, kitchen.” He went from room to room, stepping over the boards. “I figured I’d better claim some of this building material before Adam and Sue use it all up.”

  He stopped in a corner room at one end of the house where there was a gap in the wall. “Also, I wanted to make sure I got the windows in the right place.”

  “Ooooo, windows!” Deut squealed, drawing Ginger into the house with her. “Just like you wanted.”

  It was a surprise all right and maybe even a little bit of a shock because Ginger didn’t react for several moments. But she soon joined them in the future kitchen. “Is this where the sink will be?” she said, standing in front of the gap in the wall. Outside was the little stone fountain.

  “Yes,” Proverbs said, coming to stand next to her. “I thought it would be nice to have something outside to actually look at. We could set a candle on it or something. But if you don’t like it, I can still move things around. Just say the word.”

  “No, no,” Ginger said. “It’s . . . lovely.”

  The word “lovely” seemed to make him dizzy.

  They toured the house and Ginger suggested a few minor adjustments for the closets and room layout. When they got to a room on the opposite end that also had a window gap, she asked what that room was for.

  Though Proverbs tried for nonchalance, the word “bedroom” caught in his throat and came out funny.

  “Hmm, hmm,” Ginger said, ignoring his modesty while circumambulating the room.

  Deut said, “So, what do you think?”

  “Wait here,” Ginger said.

  While Deut and Proverbs waited in the bedroom, Ginger made a second tour of the entire future house. And then a third, pacing out room dimensions, checking angles and vantages, opening imaginary doors. Finally, she returned to the bedroom and said, “It’s perfect.”

  Perfect. Perfect. Deut cheered and hugged her, and Proverbs fought back tears.

  “I have just one question, Proverbs.”

  “Yes?”

  “Where’s the nursery?”

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  ON THE WAY back from Ginger’s future cottage site, the two girls went ahead, chatty and excited, while Proverbs trailed behin
d, alternately swaggering and stumbling. Deut said they would have to build a little stone trail to the site so they didn’t get lost every time they went there. She said that if Ginger collected the dripping water into jugs, she wouldn’t have to go all the way to the spigot at the chamber entrance every time she wanted to fetch water. Deut volunteered to help with the construction if Poppy let her. She squeezed Ginger’s hand and whispered, “Isn’t it romantic?”

  The children were having lunch in the new common room when they returned, except for Ithy, who sat apart and looked distraught over something.

  “What’s wrong with you, boyo?” Deut said. “Not feeling well?” She felt his forehead.

  “I’m not sick.”

  “Then what’s troubling you?”

  “It’s not fair.”

  “What’s not fair?”

  “He’s the one who breaks the rules, but I’m the one who gets corrected.”

  “Who breaks the rules?”

  “I’m not a snitch.”

  “Good for you. Snitching is bad,” Deut agreed, “unless someone gets hurt if you don’t tell an adult. Then it’s not snitching but the right thing to do. So tell me.”

  That seemed to reassure the boy.

  “I’m supposed to be his shadow, right? But he keeps going off somewheres by hisself. He says he’ll be right back, but he’s never right back, and sometimes he’s gone for hours, and then everyone blames me. Poppy said it was my fault when he drowned.”

  “Did Uzzie take off again?”

  “He did.”

  “Which way did he go?”

  Ithy shrugged.

  Deut questioned the other children. No one had seen Uzzie for a while. When Cora came out of the kitchen, Deut asked her.

  “Oh, yeah,” Cora said. “He volunteered to take lunch to the gate.”

  “By himself?”

  “No, with Ithy.” She looked at Ithy quizzically. “He said you were going too.”

  “See?” Ithy said, vindicated. “He always does that.”

  Deut grabbed a lantern and said, “Come on, Ithy. We’ll go find him. I’m sure he didn’t mean to leave you behind.”

  “He did mean it. He’s not as stupid as he pretends.”

  “Don’t say that, please. He’s still recovering from his accident. We should pray with him, not blame him.”

  SOLLY WAS ON gate duty, sitting in one of the galleries where he could watch the sally door through a sniper port. All of the other ports were shut.

  “Yeah, about a half hour ago,” he said. “Poppy told him to get something from the prayer cabin.”

  “From the prayer cabin? Everything’s gone from there. You know we don’t go there anymore. And you let him out without a shadow?”

  “He said Ithy was right behind him.”

  “And was he?”

  Solly glanced at Ithy.

  “At least was Crissy Lou with him?”

  “Crissy Lou was already outside.”

  “Well, we’re going out.” She and Ithy traded their indoor jackets for outdoor gear.

  IT HAD BEEN days since Deut had stepped outside, and it took her eyes awhile to adjust to the harsh light bouncing off the snow. The trails were all packed hard from their recent migration to the keep, so they couldn’t make out Uzzie’s tracks. They walked to the old yard that until recently had been the center of their universe. Now it was eerily quiet, deserted, sad.

  “Ooo-zee!” they shouted several times in all directions and listened for a response.

  “You check the house,” Deut told Ithy, “and I’ll go look in the cabin.”

  She looked — from the doorway — into Poppy’s prayer cabin. It was empty except for the big old safe from the mining days still bolted to the floor and the rusty old barrel stove her brothers had decided wasn’t worth salvaging. Though they’d lived at Stubborn Mountain for more than two years, she’d never actually stepped foot inside Poppy’s prayer cabin, and she wasn’t about to start now. None of the other Prophecy girls had either, except Sarai when she was being corrected by Poppy, which was not something Deut liked thinking about. Not that any of it was true. It was the demons talking through Ginger’s mouth. Ginger didn’t say it herself and she wasn’t saying anything like that now that she’d been re-sanctified.

  Deut and Ithy checked all of the outbuildings and found no trace of Uzzie. While they were in the yard, trying to decide where to look next, Crissy Lou started barking not far away. No ordinary watchdog barking this; she was in high passion, snarling and growling as if she were confronting a bear.

  “Come on,” Deut said, heading toward the racket.

  “Don’t bother,” Ithy said. “It’s probably only another raven.”

  Deut paused. Poppy had told them to shoot ravens on sight, but they’d left the keep without a gun.

  “Come on,” she repeated and strode down the trail.

  They had to jog a bit to catch up to the commotion. It wasn’t a bear, moose, or raven but the boy they’d been looking for. Uzzie was calmly strolling the trail that led to their old sawmill yard. Crissy Lou was charging him from behind, enraged, snapping at his heels, hoarse from the fury of her barking. But the boy just ambled along like she wasn’t even there. Why? They’d always been best friends. Why should either of them behave like that?

  “Uzzie!” Deut called. “You stop right there, boy.”

  When Crissy Lou heard Deut, she broke off her harassment and dashed to her side, whining and snorting. Deut grabbed the dog by her collar and held her. Her hackles were up, and she was trembling all over. When Deut looked again, Uzzie was gone.

  “Here,” she said, passing the dog to Ithy. “Take Crissy Lou back to the keep. Find Adam and tell him what’s going on.”

  “Okay, but what’s going on?” the boy asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said, waving him off. “Just go.”

  Deut continued down the trail by herself, until she found the spot where Uzzie had jumped off into deep snow. She followed. She tripped in her haste and did a face plant. The boy had gone past the old sawmill and was hiking down the airstrip. What business did Uzzie have out here? Then she saw a man jogging toward her brother from the other end of the strip like they planned to meet in the middle.

  “Ooo-zee!” she shouted. “You come back here right now!”

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  AS PROMISED, THE morning after Jace met the alien “Crissy Lou” opened a chat.

  Uzzie good boy keep secret poppy think angle is devil but i don’t!! isn’t he glorious?

  Glorious? Not the description Jace would have used. Besides, he’d been expecting to meet her, not her brother.

  i tried but got stuck

  That was what he’d thought had happened, but if she couldn’t climb up the mine shaft, why hadn’t she used the gate instead?

  gate locked armed guard so don’t go there or boys shoot you : O) now you meet reel angle!!

  Jace doubted it would do any good to try to convince Deut that her glorious angel was actually a lunker-headed space alien.

  angle woonded need help send message to heaven or devil wins will u help?

  Wounded? When? How bad? By the agents? Of course he would help; he’d already given the angel his word that he would.

  bless you ranger angle pleased and need a lift. can you bring sno-go airstrip in hour?

  A lift? Like a ride? Where did it want to go? And how would that help it? And just as importantly, would she be there to meet him this time?

  i try tricky around here see u reel soon?

  JACE PARKED THE snowmobile in the same spot as the night before, ready for a quick getaway if things went south. The sky had clotted up since morning, and the winter sun was a bright orange ball sitting low on the horizon. Jace had towed a freight sled, in case the alien was unable to ride piggyback behind him on the snowmobile. He also brought extra clothes and a sleeping bag in case it was a warm-blooded creature. The extra helmet was in case Deut wanted to come along. No helmet for the alien,
whose head was all the wrong shape. Energy bars for snacks, a canteen of water, headlamp, pocketknife. And a pistol, just in case. Since he was a civilian again, not a backcountry ranger, he was free to pack a sidearm if he so chose. His weapon of choice was a stainless steel Ruger .357 revolver with an extra-hot load. Good for people, bears, and life-sucking space aliens.

  Jace didn’t know where the non-terrestrial needed “a lift” to. Maybe it needed to go all the way to Anchorage or Fairbanks for medical care. Maybe the mothership had sent a shuttle, or maybe the alien was simply trying to flee from the Prophecys. Jace entertained the fantasy of letting the little space angel hole up in his house in McHardy. That would be a freaking trip with lifelong bragging rights.

  Unlike last night, Jace didn’t have to wait long before a small figure came tramping down the airstrip. The alien wearing child’s clothes, he was hoping. But when he looked with binoculars it wasn’t the alien; it was Uzzie, again. What the frick? Was Turdboy stuck in the ventilation shaft? Was Deut stuck in the ventilation shaft along with it?

  Jace left the snowmobile and jogged up the airstrip to meet the boy.

  “Hey, there, Uzzie, how’s it going?” The boy was better dressed this time in a heavy snowsuit and coat, pac boots, musher’s hat. Still no gloves. “Where’s your sister?”

  “Which sister? I have eight of ’em.”

  The kid was a comedian. “Deut. I’m talking about your sister Deut.”

  “Deut can’t come.”

  Of course she couldn’t.

  “So, what about your angel? He’s coming, right?”

  “The angel sent me. You take me.”

  “Oh, yeah? Where’m I supposed to take you?”

  “To the helicopter.”

  Jace hadn’t expected that answer. “What helicopter?”

  “The one coming to the glacier.” He pointed in the direction of town, so he probably meant the Caldecott Glacier.

  “Why? What happens there?” he asked the boy.