Damage Control - ARC Read online

  He switched hands on the door and reached his right arm out to put his fingers in the object. Suddenly, water began to flow from a hidden pipe, making little splashes on his clawed fingertips.

  Piper jumped and the man laughed. She put her own hands in the same spot and water poured onto them.

  "Where's the soap?" she asked.

  All he did was stare at her, so in the end she had to settle for just the water.

  When she was through, the man stepped aside, letting her out of the bathroom. At the same time, there was a loud splash from a nearby room, followed immediately by a female voice letting out a stream of angry sounds that were definitely not English. The man laughed and gave a sharp reply in the same language.

  "No wonder you won't talk to me," Piper said. "You're foreigners; you don't speak English." But at the same time she wondered whether maybe they did speak English and for some reason just didn't want her to know that.

  The big man gestured to Piper to follow him back to the cage.

  "Are you crazy?" she said and turned the other way, to their right, toward where the men had come in.

  He responded by putting his huge hand on her back and nudging her toward the cage. When she resisted, he pushed, and when she tried to squirm away from his hand, he knocked her off-balance and caught her again. So she walked to the cage while he kept his hand on her back.

  He followed her into the cage, ducking for the doorway, and guided her to the empty box. He lifted the cover and squatted over the box, like a mime using an imaginary latrine. Piper made a face and looked away. So the box was meant to be a chamber-pot. The idea was disgusting, but if she was going to be shut in here again, even a box would be better than nothing.

  He got off the box and closed the lid, and it was her turn to play the mime. She started by pretending to wash her hands. The man imitated the motion, and she wasn't sure what to make of that. But she hoped at least it meant that he understood the request, and she moved on to her next one.

  But how did one use gestures to request toilet paper? Instead, she led him out of the cage and back to the bathroom, and grabbed a handful of the blotting-paper squares herself.

  Back in the cage, she set the blotting paper next to the box and put her hand to her mouth, pretending to eat. He picked up the six-sided plate with the purple thing on it and tried to hand it to her. She held her nose and pushed it away.

  He laughed and walked out of the cage, shutting her inside but taking the plate with him.

  Soon he returned with the same plate, or one just like it, this time bearing an object roughly the color of ivory. At first she thought it was an orange with the outside skin peeled off and the inside skin left on, but when he'd brought it close she realized it was a vegetable she'd never seen before. Unfortunately, it didn't smell any better than the purple thing. In his other hand, he had a big five-sided bowl of water, which he set beside the box, but not too close to the blotting paper.

  After that, they left her alone again, locked in the cage hungry like before. She saw the smaller man briefly as he walked back through the room, his strange clothes dripping as though he'd just taken a bath without remembering to undress. He wasn't small, she realized: he only looked it next to his huge companion.

  She tried to sleep to pass the time, but she was too hungry. And besides, her headache was getting worse. At least she didn't need the bathroom anymore. By putting her mind to it, she reviewed all her courses, even going back over the French again. After that she tried to come up with something else to think about, but her head hurt too much. So she just sat on the cushion with her head in her hands, staring at the brown floor. Occasionally, she heard the sloshing again.

  She had no way of knowing how long she sat like that, but eventually the pain in her head began to subside, and she stood up and began to pace the length of the cage to stretch her legs. 'I'm like a tiger in the circus,' she thought, 'except I'm not the one with the claws.'

  By the time the men returned, her stomach hurt from hunger as well as her head. She'd had to use the box, which was difficult because it was too high for her, but at least this time she had privacy. And the cover fit well and seemed to seal in any odors.

  This time it was the big man who gave Piper an amused glance and disappeared in the direction of the sloshing sounds, and the regular-sized man who stopped at her cage and unlocked it.

  She handed him the plate with the stinky vegetable, and he took it away and returned with it full of something else. It was a pile of tube-like green stalks that resembled overgrown chives or small scallions and had a smell somewhere between tomato paste and rubbing alcohol.

  She was so hungry she put one of the stalks in her mouth and bit it. It didn't taste quite as bad as it smelled, and if she held her breath she could manage to swallow it. It felt so good to eat something again, and she finished the plateful.

  The man grinned through his scaly mask and began to stroke her head, roughing up her hair a little as though she were a dog.

  She barely had time to turn away from him before vomiting it all on the rubbery brown floor.

  To Piper's relief, the man didn't seem angry, only surprised and disappointed. Without bothering to lock the cage, he walked quickly to one of the odd-shaped room's corners and retrieved an object that had been hidden from Piper's view. It was a pale grey cylinder, about the size of the big man's thigh. He must have flipped a switch on it, because it began to hum, and he waved it over the spot where she'd vomited and all the vomit disappeared.

  "Nice vacuum cleaner," she remarked.

  "Clackloob cleadle," he replied—if it really was a he. It seemed to Piper that the voice was a woman's. But then, she could have been imagining it. After all, she hadn't eaten anything for who knows how long—not that had stayed down, anyway—and she was dizzy and having trouble focusing her eyes. She sat down on the cushion, and the person, whichever sex it was, left with the vacuum cleaner, locking the cage this time.

  She let her body slump onto the cushion and closed her eyes: she couldn't really see through them, anyway. She thought she heard sloshing again, but couldn't be sure if she was hearing or imagining or dreaming it, or if she was awake or asleep or somewhere in between. She thought she heard voices: a man's and a woman's. She thought she should try to make out what they were saying, but then she couldn't bring herself to care.

  No longer feeling hungry, she lay there, alternating between a desperate craving for some kind of change and an irrational wish to lie there undisturbed forever. Never quite alert and never quite asleep, she had no idea how long she remained that way. She only knew that at one point the two voices came nearer, and someone began to spoon something into her mouth. By reflex, she swallowed.

  She didn't notice when the spooning stopped and she fell asleep.

  When she awoke, her headache was gone and she was alone except for the sloshing sound. She used the box, relieved to find it empty and clean, then had a drink of the lukewarm water and looked at the six-sided plate.

  To her surprise, it contained what appeared to be pieces of fresh fruit and cooked meat, although she couldn't have said what kind of fruit or what kind of meat. It smelled delicious and she suddenly felt very hungry. She began cautiously by biting off the tiniest corner of one of the meat pieces, but it tasted so good that she soon had the whole plateful finished. Then she went back to the cushion and slept again.

  This time she woke with the voices quite close: her captors must have come back while she'd slept. She sat up and saw them reclining facing each other on the two closest brown heaps, the big man on the heap to her left and the smaller one of ambiguous gender on the heap to her right.

  At first she thought they were having an argument: their strange words exploded from their mouths with a vehement force. But they looked relaxed, maybe even happy, their facial expressions and body language suggesting an intimate chat between close friends. Between them was one of the heavy-looking wooden blocks, and now the deep carved recesses in its top
were filled with what seemed to be strange fruits, nuts and flowers. Occasionally, one or the other of the lizard-people would reach for a handful of these and eat it.

  She couldn't be sure—she'd been so hungry when she'd last seen them—but it seemed to her that they had changed their clothes. At least, she didn't remember having seen the shapes of their chests before. And yes, they definitely both had chests—male chests. On the big one, that was to be expected. But the smaller one, despite its male chest and masculine bearing, had unmistakably female hips and a decidedly feminine voice. It wasn't even one of those voices that could have belonged to a man and been softened by training and practice.

  Piper stepped to the water-box for a drink, and froze. She looked through the bars at the reclining pair and suddenly understood. "You're not wearing disguises," she said to them, even though she knew they couldn't understand her words. "Those are your real faces, your normal clothes, your regular kind of toilet. And I'm not your prisoner; I'm your pet."

  2

  the fire-box house

  Jade Massilon closed her eyes and shook her head to try to get control of her imagination. But when she looked again, he was still there, standing on the orange leaves under the oak tree that grew almost too close to the house.

  It would have been odd enough for a stranger to walk into her backyard from the forest at all. But this stranger looked like he should have been walking into a sci-fi convention. His entire head was covered in a hairless, ridged and scaly mask. He wore a futuristic-looking slate-gray jumpsuit with an intricate design of shiny gold-colored circles embossed on the front. Heavy gray boots came up to his knees. "My vehicle is disabled," he said. "I require help." He had a deep voice.

  "Where is your vehicle?" Jade asked, stalling for time.

  "About five hundred meters north-northeast of here." He sounded congested.

  Five hundred meters north-northeast. There were no roads in that location—only a rough jeep track. Then either he was confused, or he was lying to hide something. "I'd be happy to call someone for you," she told him, and went into the house. She would lock the door and call 911, and they'd probably take him to the hospital.

  But before she could finish closing the door, he grabbed it and followed her inside. He was tall—at least six-foot-six.

  With an effort, she looked up at the scaly mask. It fit him well—it must have been glued on and touched up with makeup. "Can you wait for me outside, please?"

  "No," he said, and closed the door.

  “Really,” she insisted, her pulse throbbing in her ears, “you need to wait outside.” She tried to open the door again, but he held it closed. She kicked the little throw-rug out of the way, got a solid stance on the pine floorboards, grabbed the doorknob with both hands, leaned back and pulled hard. But of course she was no match for the much bigger intruder, and he stood there looking almost bored, holding the door shut easily with one hand.

  Telling herself not to panic, she methodically put the mail down on the table, took off her coat and fed the fire in the woodstove. She replaced the stove-lid, hung the lid-lifter on its nail beside the bellows and whisk broom on the stair-stringer and started for the telephone.

  But when she had the phone almost within reach, he grabbed her arm, stopping her. His touch felt like leather—and no wonder. He wore gloves to match the gray-brown 'alien' skin of his mask. The fingers of the gloves ended in claws, but either they weren't sharp or he had been careful not to scratch her with them. "I will not allow you to contact your government," he explained. He must have had a bad cold: he sounded all plugged up.

  "Let me go!" Jade protested, trying not to sound scared.

  To her surprise, he did release her, and she made a dive for the phone.

  It was useless. He grabbed her arm again and held her back.

  "Okay," she breathed, hoping she hadn't angered him. "No phone calls." She paused, swallowed, took a deep breath, and said, "But then, I don't know how I can help you."

  "I require heat," he replied. "You will stay by the stairs." Still holding her arm, he pulled her back around the table to the place where she’d just hung the lid-lifter. She thought he might search her to make sure she didn’t have a cellphone on her, but he didn’t. Maybe he knew there was no cell signal there, or maybe he just didn’t think of it.

  He stood between the stove and the table, blocking her way to the phone, and took off his outer piece of clothing. It was a stiff piece, worn in front like the protective gear of a baseball catcher. He pulled his arms out of his jumpsuit and tied the sleeves around his waist. The long-sleeved jersey or unionsuit he wore underneath covered him completely, from 'alien' mask to 'alien' gloves.

  "What's your name?" Jade asked.

  "Zuke."

  "Zuke," she repeated. "Okay. Why the alien costume?"

  Zuke—or whatever his name really was—didn't answer right away. He removed a small object from his left hip and spoke into it: "Costube." Some sounds came from the object. Then he replaced it and turned to Jade. "Are you asking why I wear this clothing?"

  Jade resisted the temptation to roll her eyes at this attempt at acting. "Yeah, why the alien suit? You going to a con?"

  "No," he answered. "I wear the uniform of a Chuzekk zeed. What's your name?"

  "Oh sorry," she answered. "I'm Jade. Nice to meet you." She offered her hand, and he shook it.

  “Jade,” he repeated.

  "I should check the fire again," said Jade. It was probably too early to do anything with the fire, but she was nervous and needed to keep moving.

  He nodded and made room for her. She looked at the fire and tasted the soup that simmered on top. After adding a little black pepper and allspice, there was nothing more to do than move it to the edge of the stove to keep warm.

  "Is it ready?" he asked.

  "Yeah," said Jade. "It's done." She didn't want to offer him any. He wasn't a guest, after all.

  He lifted the cover without a potholder and smelled the soup. "I will eat with you," he said.

  His arrogance annoyed her, but she thought it would be petty to argue. "Soup mugs are on the beam," she shrugged, pointing past him.

  He grabbed two, and she got out spoons and a ladle and dill weed. He ladled soup into the mugs and ate his. She stirred dill into hers and waited. It was too hot. Besides, she was too nervous to eat.

  She should try to get him to talk. It would be good to know if he was a fugitive and the alien-act was a way of concealing his identity, or if he was just crazy. Either way, he could turn dangerous. "So where you from?" she asked.

  "Chuze," he answered.

  "Choose what?"

  "Chuze is the name of my planet. You have not discovered it yet."

  She shrugged again. "I hope this soup helps your cold."

  "The heat from your fire is recharging my thermal garment," he answered, sounding as congested as ever in spite of the steaming soup. "We are cold-blooded. We cannot create our own heat as you do. So we wear special garments for this purpose. After my vehicle was disabled, I did not have time to finish repairs before recharging."

  "So you came to my house to recharge your garment?" Jade asked. Whatever else this guy was, he was intelligent.

  "Yes," he said.

  Compassion finally got the better of her. "You should take something for that cold. A decongestant. Let me see what I have."

  He followed her to the bathroom, soup in hand. "I do dot require a decodgestat," he objected. "I ab dot codgested."

  "You can't even say the word 'congested,'" she countered, "because you're too congested."

  "There are some sounds of your language which we cannot make," he explained. "It is a physiological difference, not an illness."

  "O-kay," she replied. He was really testing her patience. "Are you sure you don't want to take one of these, anyway? It'll help you feel better."

  "Yes."

  She poured out one pill and held it out to him, in the bottle cap.

  He ignored it. "You shou
ld eat. You require fuel to create heat. You will come with me to my vehicle."

  She put the pill away. "That's okay, you go ahead. I'll stay here."

  "No. I will not allow you to contact your government."

  They went back to the kitchen and he handed her her soup.

  She took a bite, then said, "Why not? Why won't you let me contact the government? They can help you."

  "They would consider me a threat, capture me, probably kill me. They would attempt to reverse-engineer my Personal Device, my thermal garment and my vehicle. When we contact your government, we will do so with a show of force sufficient to prove such actions unwise."

  "I see." His logic may have been unrelated to reality, but it certainly seemed consistent.

  He was getting back into his sleeves, so she put her coat on. The bright orange safety vest, a necessity during hunting season, was already on it. She grabbed some gloves, a hat and scarf, a flashlight and the Spanish novel she'd been reading before she'd gone out for the mail.

  He put his front-piece back on, picked up the soup pot by its bail handle and took her arm again. She closed the stove-drafts, and he pulled her out of the house.

  "What is that thing for?" she asked as they walked north into the forest. She pointed to the stiff thing he wore on the front of his body.

  "It is armor. It was originally for battle, but since its protection is useful for many activities, we wear them most of the day."

  "And the design on the front? The gold circles?"

  "They indicate my rank and command: zeed, Alien Command."

  A brilliant red maple that still had most of its leaves caught Jade’s eye. She let her head turn to enjoy the view. He had her firmly by the arm, so she didn’t really need to look where she was going. She didn’t know whether he would let her fall if she tripped, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was that she was being dragged into the forest by some weirdo. For all she knew, he could be a serial killer on the run. She was glad her daughter was in school. What she needed to do was find a way to convince her captor to go back, at least as far as the house, and hopefully as far as the road. At least there someone might see them. “Do you know what’s wrong with your vehicle?” she asked him.