Glassing the Orgachine Page 7

  “I’m supposed to give them this.” Uzzie opened his bare hand and revealed a small golden ball, like a BB, resting on his palm.

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s the angel’s.”

  Jace crouched to the boy’s level to get a good look at the thing. It might be nothing more than a brass ball bearing from mining-era junk. “Oh, yeah? The angel gave that to you?” Jace reached for the BB. “Let me see.”

  The boy jerked his hand away and buried it in his pocket.

  “Listen, buddy, I can’t take you to the glacier,” Jace said. “I can’t take you anywhere without permission from your folks. The Troopers would throw me in jail if I did. You need to go back and get Deut. Think you can do that? Otherwise, I’ll have to leave you here. But I could take this . . . angel thingy to the helicopter for you. How’s that sound?” He removed his mitten and held out his hand. He figured he’d better take possession of the thing for safekeeping in case it was real. It might actually be a piece of alien tech.

  “No!” the boy said. “You drive me. You have to. You promised.”

  “I promised to drive an angel, not a little boy who doesn’t even have gloves on. Are you sure the angel didn’t tell you to give that thing to me so I could take it to the helicopter? That would make way more sense.”

  “No! I am the messenger. You are the driver.”

  So emphatic; the kid knew what he wanted. Jace wondered idly how hard it would be to take the BB from him if it came down to that.

  “Maybe you’d like to trade for it.” He did a quick mental inventory of things he carried that a little boy might covet.

  “Oh, look.” He reached into a pocket for his jackknife. It was a sweet little SOG Trident, not cheap. He opened it and let the pale winter sun play along its razor edge. “What do you think, my super-duper knife for that tiny little BB? Which I promise I’ll take to the helicopter (maybe). Deal?”

  The boy’s eyes did linger on the knife a moment, but he folded his arms across his chest and said, “Drive me to the helicopter. The angel said so.”

  Jace dug around in his pockets for other treasures. He didn’t know what he’d do if the boy refused to make a deal, and he unconsciously glanced around for witnesses. And wouldn’t you know it, another person was coming down the airstrip. Running, actually. It was Deut! At last! Jace stood up to greet her. How incredible she looked and how — angry? She was puffing hard the last few yards, and when she reached them, she threw her arms protectively around her brother.

  “You!” she gasped at Jace, all out of breath. “Why? I thought you . . . How could you . . .?”

  “How could I what?” Jace said. “I was only talking to him.”

  Deut tried to lead Uzzie back toward the house, but the boy wouldn’t go. Deut leaned over and spoke to him in a hushed, urgent voice.

  Jace said, “At least tell me what’s going on.”

  Deut turned on him in fury. “You’re trespassing, ranger! This is private property! You’d better leave right now or you’ll be sorry. My brothers . . .” She paused to scan the airstrip behind her. “My brothers are coming, and you don’t want to be around when they get here, believe me.”

  “Okay, okay, I’m leaving, but how can I be trespassing when it was you who asked me to come in the first place?”

  Surprised, she paused to look him over. “Are you crazy? I never asked . . . how could I ask you anything?”

  “Aren’t you Crissy Lou?”

  “Me? Crissy Lou? Crissy Lou is a dog!”

  “I know Crissy Lou is a dog, but I thought it was also your screen name.”

  “My what?”

  “A ‘Crissy Lou’ who lives on Stubborn Mountain asked me to come here to meet you. I assumed it was you. So I came, and your brother . . . Does Uzzie know how to use your computer?”

  “Computers are forbidden. My brother —”

  They both looked around for her brother. Uzzie had slipped away and was halfway to the ranger’s snowmobile. Deut began to jog after him, but she stopped abruptly and turned to face Jace again.

  “You stay here,” she commanded. “You come near us and I’ll shoot you. I promise I will.” She patted her hip as though she were packing a gun beneath her parka.

  Jace remained where he was, as ordered, in a state of perfect confusion. What the hell had just happened? Well, obviously, there was someone else involved, running a game on both of them. The thought triggered a jolt of paranoia, and he felt suddenly very exposed standing in the middle of an airstrip in the snow. He scanned the horizon for shooters.

  His phone rang.

  It shouldn’t have. Not here. There was no service on this side of the mountain so far from town. But it was ringing, and it kept ringing as he tunneled through layers of down and polyfill to retrieve it. There were no bars or caller ID.

  But when he glanced up, he saw that the boy was already at his snowmobile and was unhitching the sled! So Jace forgot about the phone, forgot about Deut’s threat, and charged down the airstrip. The boy hopped on the snowmobile and started the engine. Jace blew past Deut and took a flying leap toward his machine. He snagged the handlebars and yanked the kill switch lanyard, disabling the engine.

  “What’s wrong with you?” he shouted at the boy. But when he looked at Uzzie’s face, all he saw was freckled innocence, and he checked his anger. “It’s not right to steal a man’s snowmobile,” he said in a milder tone. “You hear me, Uzzie? I thought we were buds.”

  Uzzie didn’t reply. He slipped off the seat and started walking up the trail toward town. Deut followed after him, trying to make him stop.

  What the hell was going on? Whatever it was, it was a safe bet Jace didn’t want to be a part of it. The kid wasn’t stopping for his sister, even though she put herself in his path. Whatever was going on, she was as confused about it as he was.

  His phone rang again.

  He watched as Deut knelt in the snow to speak to her bother face to face. He removed his mitten for a moment to tap the phone display. “Hello?”

  Lord help angel, said the raspy voice. Angel phone home. Lord help angel phone home. Pleeease.

  Jace had a million questions for the turdboy. Like where had it gotten a phone? How could it make a call without service? What was this BB thing the boy had? What was this helicopter rendezvous? But he asked the question at the top of the stack:

  “Listen, lord is very upset with angel. Why did angel pretend he was Deut? Why did angel try to trick lord?”

  Not Doot. Crissy Lou.

  “That’s what I’m talking about. I thought Crissy Lou was code for Deuteronomy.”

  Crissy Lou is dog.

  “I know Crissy Lou is a dog!”

  Crissy Lou ask lord help angel phone home.

  “See, that’s where you’re wrong, where angel is wrong. Just now Deut didn’t have any idea what —”

  Wait! Jace stopped mid-complaint when a bizarre new possibility crossed his mind. What if Crissy Lou was Crissy Lou?

  “Is angel telling lord that Crissy Lou messaged lord? That a dog — you know, four legs, bushy tail, barks a lot — that a dog used Facebook to contact lord? Is that what angel is telling lord?”

  Crissy Lou dog trusts lord people help angel.

  Was that even possible? Could the alien communicate with dogs? In words? Or maybe it didn’t need words but could read thoughts and feelings. That wasn’t so hard to imagine, was it? Dogs were experts at reading people. Dogs were practically people. They were members of our family. They were our best friends. Maybe the alien didn’t draw a distinction between people and their dogs. It recruited Crissy Lou to find a suitable human to help it out of its predicament and she found Uzzie and him. That still didn’t explain how a dog would sign up for Facebook, but it would mean that Deut had nothing to do with it at all. No wonder she was so confused and pissed off.

  And to top it off, dogs couldn’t climb ventilation shafts either.

  Jace changed tack. “So tell me, angel, what is thi
s BB you want Uzzie to deliver to this helicopter?”

  Lord BB explain please.

  “The little, uh, golden sphere that Uzzie has.”

  BB angel, Uzzie messenger, lord driver, helicopter Efff-Beee-Eye.

  FBI? Now they were talking. This whole thing was beginning to make sense. The feds had, in fact, made contact with the alien but were somehow rebuffed by the Prophecys, who must have moved into the mine as a consequence. So this must be a covert way to smuggle out a piece of alien tech to Earth authorities. Proof of its non-terrestrial origins.

  The whole thing was too bizarre. But when you thought about it, was it any more bizarre than talking to an alien on an iPhone in a spot where there was no cell service? And he was talking to an alien. He’d seen the little oddity with his own eyes.

  “Why didn’t the FBI come get the golden sphere themselves? Why does lord have to take it to them?”

  Poppy say Efff-Beee-Eye devils. Poppy shoot gun Efff-Beee-Eye. Poppy shoot gun angel. Lord help Ooo-Zee help angel phone home question. Pleeease.

  “Why should lord help angel? When lord found angel’s long tulipy thing on the river, angel tried to steal lord’s, uh, life force.”

  Angel sorry. Angel not know peoples friend. Angel not steal Poppy’s life force but Poppy shoot angel. Angel fear. Angel need help. Lord help angel question.

  “Prophecy shot you?” The religious bastard totally would. “Are you badly hurt? Do you require medical attention? A doctor? Does angel need doctor?”

  Angel need angels. Lord help angel phone home question.

  That was what he had feared would happen, a First Contact worst case scenario. Both sides misunderstand, miscalculate, and start shooting. This sparks a planetary feud and galactic war. Hopefully, it wasn’t too late.

  “Yes, I’ll do it. Lord help Uzzie help angel, you bet.”

  “WHAT WORK IS that?” Deut demanded. Uzzie had finally paused to talk to her. (When had her little brother gotten so strong?) “What makes you think Father God has work for a little kid in the middle of the woods?”

  “Because Jesus told me.”

  “All right. Elder Brother Jesus told you. How? Like in a dream?”

  “No, He spoke to my heart.”

  “I see. He spoke to your heart. And you were awake when this happened?”

  “No, I was dead.”

  She flinched and tried to hide it. “Okay,” she said. “That makes a kind of sense, I guess, except that you weren’t really dead.”

  “You’re wrong, sister. I was really dead.”

  “Not completely. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have been able to bring you back.”

  “Yes, completely. Ask Hosea. Ask Pastor Bunyan. They were there.”

  He looked like her brother. His voice sounded like her brother’s voice. But the things coming out of his mouth . . . “I’ll do that. But now I’m asking you. What makes you think you were dead?”

  “Because I looked down and saw myself laying on the rocks next to the lake, and Pastor Bunyan’s son was trying to make me breathe, and I was really scared, but then I was somewhere else, and I wasn’t scared anymore. And a bunch of little kids with wings on their backs flew over to me to say hi. They said they were the Sandy Hook Gang and that they all came to Heaven on the same day and that Jesus was wanting to talk to me. They took me to Him, but I had to walk because I didn’t have any wings.

  “Heaven was full of saints and angels, and everyone wore long, white robes with red or blue sashes. And Father God was there too, watching everything, and He was like a giant sitting on a giant throne, only you couldn’t look at Him because when you tried all you saw was this bright, bright light. Brighter than anything.

  “And the only person who didn’t have wings had a purple sash, and when you looked at Him, He smiled, and His smile was so happy that it made you feel so good like you never felt happier in your whole life. And I knew He was Jesus. He was holding this tiny baby, the tiniest baby I ever saw, and He handed me the baby and said here’s someone who wants to meet you. Jesus didn’t talk with His mouth, but you could hear His words in your heart.

  “So I took the baby and held her, and she could talk, and she said that she was my big sister Incense, who died when she was born and to hurry up and kiss her because she was waiting so long to finally meet me. So I kissed her.”

  At this point Deut needed to sit down and sat in the snow. He went on.

  “And then Jesus took her back and said I wasn’t going to stay in Heaven this time. He said that Poppy was praying powerfully hard for me to come back to the world and that Jesus and the Father decided to answer his prayer, at least for a little while because there was so much work to do. And then Father God told me what He wanted me to do.

  “And then I was back, but when I was dead, I forgot how to do stuff. So I had to learn how to do everything all over again. Even how to go to the bathroom.”

  Uzzie paused and waited for his sister’s reaction. She was speechless, so he continued, “I’m sorry I got Ithy in trouble. It’s just that he slows me down, and I can’t wait for him all the time.”

  “What about Mama?” Deut said, desperate to undermine his story. “If you saw Incense in Heaven, didn’t you see Mama in Heaven too?”

  “No.”

  “How can that be? She’s in Heaven, remember? On vacation.”

  “No, she’s somewhere else. Not in Heaven.”

  The idea that her mother was “somewhere else” was disturbing. “Is that what Elder Brother Jesus said?”

  “His name is Jesus. No one calls him Elder Brother Jesus except for Poppy, and believe me, Jesus don’t like it. He says He’s our savior, not our brother.

  “And there’s something else that makes Jesus cry, but I don’t understand it. He says He doesn’t like for Sarai to give Poppy foot baths. Tell me, sister, what’s so bad about foot baths?”

  Deut’s breath caught in her throat, and she had to look away for a moment. “There’s nothing bad about foot baths. You must’ve misunderstood Him.”

  “He said foot baths, sister. I know what I heard. Jesus said foot baths in the prayer cabin when Poppy’s correcting Sarai. He said I will understand someday. He said that our Poppy is a bad man who wants to keep the key to the pit of Hell for himself. And Jesus said the ranger is a good man who will take me to another good man on the glacier who will take the key to the pit.”

  “But the ranger had a knife; he was trying to hurt you.”

  “No, he wasn’t. He was trying to trade his knife for the key. He said he’d take the key to the man on the glacier for me, but Jesus wants me to take it.”

  It was more than she could process. It was too fantastical. Still . . .

  “Show it to me,” she demanded. She had seen the key to the pit when Poppy locked it up in the powder room. Before the false angel arrived to steal it. “Show me the key.”

  Uzzie opened his hand; upon it sat a tiny golden sphere. That was it all right, the same miraculous orb her father had plucked from a Mason jar in the powder room. Except it was quite a bit smaller. Poppy’s key had been about the size of a marble. This one was no larger than a seed pearl.

  “It’s getting smaller because of sin,” Uzzie said, anticipating her question. “And soon it will be all gone. I have to hurry.”

  “Let me hold it.” She remembered that the key was heavy. Much heavier than anything that little had a right to be. Yet her brother held this one like it weighed nothing. “I’ll give it back. I promise.”

  Uzzie hesitated but spilled it into her hand. Her hand dropped. It was heavy. So heavy it hurt her skin.

  BY THE TIME Jace got the sled re-hitched, Deut and Uzzie were hiking up the trail toward McHardy. He pulled up next to them.

  “Hello,” he said. “Going my way?”

  Deut said, “We’re on a mission.”

  “So I hear. Need a lift?”

  She seemed much less hostile than before, but still a bit leery.

  “We’ll need a ride back to
o.”

  “No problem. But I have to make one thing clear, Deuteronomy: I didn’t come here to kidnap anyone. I’m just the driver, okay?”

  “Okay, you’re just the driver.”

  He helped them get settled in the sled. He calculated that he could take them to Caldecott Glacier, deliver the BB to the FBI, and bring them back in a couple of hours. That is, if they didn’t have to wait around for the chopper to show up. Other than that, easy peasy.

  CC4 1.0

  THEY ENTERED MCHARDY at the end of Lucky Strike Lane. “That’s my house!” he shouted over the engine noise as they passed his ramshackle abode. McHardy was dead when they rode through, and they passed no one along the way. From McHardy there was the gravel road to Caldecott he’d recently skied, but there was also an historic wagon trail closer to the glacier, and that was the one Jace took. Between McHardy and Caldecott, the glacier was more till than ice, and he could think of a couple of open flat areas where a chopper could set down. But they didn’t see the helicopter until they were nearly to Caldecott. What’s more, Jace recognized it. It was the high-altitude Astar 350 B3 that the park service employed to evacuate injured mountain climbers (or their frozen remains) from Denali. And it was pretty far from its home base in Talkeetna. It was perched on the ice, its rotors at rest.

  Two steel drums of aviation fuel stood clear of the aircraft off the pilot-side door. Jace pulled next to the drums and killed his engine. Uzzie was quick to jump out of the sled and go around to the other side. Deut had to scramble to keep up. Jace decided to hold back, like a good driver, and stay with the snowmobile. The pilot glanced out his window at Jace. It was Bertolli, the FBI agent he’d been trying to contact. Jace got off the snowmobile and approached the pilot door, motioning for Bertolli to slide the window open. But the man ignored him.

  Jace shouted through the plexiglass, “It’s wounded! Did you know that? The alien, it’s wounded.”

  Bertolli turned to his controls and started the powerful turboshaft engine. On the other side of the chopper, the scene wasn’t playing out as planned. Uzzie went straight to the copilot door where a man in a fur-ruffed parka climbed down. Uzzie was supposed to hand him the golden BB and that would be that. Turn around and take ’em back to the mine. Mission accomplished. But Uzzie made no such move. Instead, the copilot opened the sliding door to the passenger compartment, and when Deut got a look at the man’s face, she screamed and tried to hold her brother back from climbing aboard. Her efforts didn’t even slow the boy down. Jace ducked below the twirling blades and raced around the craft. The copilot closed the passenger door while Deut was pounding on him with her fists. By the time Jace reached them, Uzzie was already buckling himself in.