Where Two or Three
Sheila Finch
The charge nurse barely paused in her fast trot down the hospice hallway. “Seventeen needs his water jug refilled. Can you get it?”
“I’ll get it.” Maddie turned back the way she had come. It was her second day as a volunteer—what a joke! she hadn’t volunteered for anything—but already she was getting the routine. Here, the charge nurse was boss.
She picked up a full plastic jug of ice water from the kitchen and walked back to room seventeen. Like most of the other rooms, it contained a hospital bed with a white coverlet, a straight-back visitor’s chair, a battered chest of drawers that had hosted too many patients’ belongings. Unlike the others, the occupant or his family hadn’t made an effort to personalize the room with family photos, artwork, or flowering plants. They hadn’t replaced the old 2- D, which probably didn’t work any more, with a newer Tri- D either. The hospice cat, a large orange tabby, jumped off the bed when she came in as if his shift was over once a volunteer showed up.
“Hi,” she said. “I’m Maddie. I brought your water.”
The skinny old man on the bed didn’t open his eyes. “Haven’t seen you before.”
“Only my second day.”
He had the most wrinkled skin she’d ever seen, and his face was blotchy as if he’d had a bad sunburn and skinned recently. He had to be at least a hundred, she thought. There was a smell in the room too, not really bad but odd, sort of baby-powdery and musty at the same time. She picked up the empty jug. She definitely did not want to spend time in here.
“Why’re you here if you don’t like it?”
Maddie jumped. “Would I be here if I didn’t?” Lying again, she thought. One of these days she was going to have to break the habit.
He turned his head away from her. The back of his neck was scrawny as a chicken’s, and the skin was patchy here too. “Sit and visit.”
She sat gracelessly on the edge of the chair by the wall and stared at the old man’s neck. “So, what did you used to do?” she asked brightly. Most of the older ones liked to talk about the old days, the younger ones not so much.
“Astronaut,” he said.
“Astronaut? You mean, like space and stuff?”
“Space,” he said to the wall. “And stuff.”
“Have I heard of you?” she asked cautiously.
“Probably not. Name’s Sam.” He rolled back to face her, surprisingly agile for someone who looked so old. His eyes were a pale, washed-out blue, same color as the jeans she was wearing. “And how did you get sentenced to this place?”
Maddie felt her cheeks grow warm. “I’m a volunteer.”
“Crap. Person your age has better things to do than visit old coots like me.”
“All right. Here’s the truth. I got busted for doing drugs at a party. One rotten joint—and if I’d been eighteen already like everybody else it would’ve been legal anyway. So the judge gave me community service.”
“Good,” Sam said. “I don’t have time for lies. What would you rather be doing—besides being stupid?”
“You really are unpleasant, know that?” she snapped.
He chuckled—at least she thought that was what he was doing. Maybe he was choking or something. “Didn’t they tell you you’re supposed to humor me?”
“I’m in high school. I’ll be a senior starting next month. I don’t get much time to do what I’d rather be doing. But when I do, I play the flute.”
“A musician,” he said. “Will you play for me?”
“I didn’t bring it with me.”
“How about next time you come?” He gazed at her with the washed-out eyes. The edges of his lipless old mouth creased up. “Please?”
Why not? The staff encouraged volunteers to entertain the residents any way possible. “Well, maybe when I come back on Friday.”
“And maybe I’ll tell you about space. And stuff.” Maddie got out of the room before he could say anything else. In the hallway, she passed the charge nurse again.
“Glad to see you spent some time with Mr. Ferenzi. He never gets any visitors.” The charge nurse smoothed the pink tunic over her white slacks. “He used to be famous. But something happened to him, and he was never quite right afterwards.”
Even if it wasn’t true, she thought, it beat spending time with the old biddies here who only wanted her to play cards with them.
Maddie had been ready to finish her monthly mandated hours at the hospice yesterday, but Mom wanted to take her back-to-school shopping. She would’ve been happy with the Gap, but Mom insisted on heading down to the OC and taking all day. At least that was better than the virtual house arrest Daddy had put her on. So now she had to make it up by wasting Saturday afternoon at the hospice.
It was a fine late summer day, the sky an almost transparent blue as if she could see through to the other side if she squinted hard. The neighbor’s gardener was mowing, filling the air with the sweet green smell of cut grass. At the last minute, she remembered her promise to bring the flute. She slid the flute into its case and stuffed it into the canvas shoulder bag with her house keys and purse, and headed out to grab her bicycle.
Sam Ferenzi looked as if he hadn’t moved an inch since the last time she was here. If anything, he looked skinnier than ever, as if he might shrivel up and blow away once the desert Santa Ana started blowing.
She flopped in the visitor’s chair. “I brought the flute.”
“Play.” His voice rasped.
She opened the case, then lifted the flute to her lips. She loved the flute and didn’t mind practicing, in contrast to her rebellion against all other forms of homework. When she was younger, she’d thought about becoming a professional musician and playing with the L.A. Phil. But that would take years at the university and Maddie had had enough of school and no idea what she was going to do with her life. She began to play a section of a flute solo.
“Mozart, Concerto Number Two,” Sam said when she stopped. “Fine, but thin.”
“Of course it is! It needs an orchestra to make it whole—”
“And meaningful.”
“—but I’m just me.”
“Exactly.”
“All right,” she said, exasperated. “I did what you asked. Now it’s your turn.”
He scared her by sitting up so suddenly she was afraid he was going to lose his balance and tumble off the narrow bed. His green pajama sleeves with hideous pink hearts flapped back, revealing skinny arms covered in the same white blotchy patches she could see on his face and neck. He raised an arm and pointed the remote at the small 2-D set perched on the scratched chest of drawers.
The screen brightened, then revealed a lone squiggle of electric-bright color, red shading into purple on a black background. The line looped across the screen slowly, endlessly, hypnotically. A second line, blue- indigo this time, braided itself in and under and over the first one. She waited. Nothing else happened.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He lowered his arm and the screen went dark. “That’s the question, isn’t it?”
“Okay.” She blew her breath out in a long sigh. “I’m leaving now.”
“I’m trying to tell you something.”
“Well, you’re not doing too good!” She stood up, and put the flute in her shoulder bag.
He lay back against the pillows. “Sorry.”
She thought he sounded tired, but also something more—sad, maybe. As if no matter how hard he tried he just couldn’t get something right and was fed up with trying. For a moment, he reminded her of her grandfather who’d died when she was only ten. Even now, she missed him. He must’ve been something like this tired, lonely old man at the end. She sat down again.
“Your nurse says you did some amazing things once.”
“All useless.”
“I wouldn’t say that!” she protested. “I’m impressed.”
“You’re a musician. Makes a difference.”
It was really difficult to hold a conversation with him. She changed the subject. “Don’t you get bored in this room? I could take you outside in a wheelchair.”
“Where would we go?”
“The garden’s nice.”
He shook his head.
“Where then?
“Hat Creek would be good, Northern California. But the desert’ll do.”
“Oh, right!” Maddie laughed. “I’m sure they’d let me take you to the Mojave! ’Specially this time of year.”
“Don’t you have a driver’s license?”
“Of course I do. But I don’t have a car.” Actually, she thought, that was another lie—or at least a near one. Daddy had taken away the keys to the used Tesla her parents had given her for her birthday when she’d got caught with one joint at that stupid party.
Sam was silent so long she was afraid he’d died on her. She stared at the white sheet covering his bony old chest, willing it to rise and fall. It didn’t move. What was she supposed to do now? Finally he let some air whistle out from his mouth.
“Why do you want to go to the desert, anyway?” she asked
He didn’t answer. She glanced at her watch. Ten more minutes and the aides would be bringing round the dinner trays. If she stayed much longer, they’d put her to work.
She stood up. “I have to go now. I’ll see you in a couple of days.”
“You ever read the Bible?” he asked suddenly.
“No. My dad’s a scientist at JPL. We aren’t superstitious.”
“Pity. You should try Matthew 18: verse 20.”
She couldn’t stop thinking about Sam. Of course Daddy would find out if she took him for a ride in the car! And even if she did get the keys, she certainly shouldn’t be driving all the way to Palm Springs, the only part of the desert she knew how to get to. By Monday morning she was roaming around the silent house as antsy as if it were the first day of school in a new place.
Who did that old guy think he was, anyway?
That was a question she could find the answer to.
Daddy had gone to the airport on his way to a two-day SETI conference on the east coast; Mom had driven up to Santa Barbara to see Grandma, who’d suddenly taken ill, and she planned to stay the night. Maddie was on her own.
She went into the study to use the computer. It didn’t take long to learn that Samuel Coulter Ferenzi had once been famous. And that there was something really odd about the dates.
He’d been the first astronaut to rendezvous with an asteroid, she read, a feat no one else had repeated in the twenty years since. She skipped over the voyage and its mission. When the crew came back to Earth, there’d been a huge welcome parade. Ferenzi had given speeches at universities. He’d cut the ribbons opening air & space museums. The tabloids had buzzed over his romance with a movie star. Then things had apparently gone wrong.
The phone beeped. She touched the pad for the study extension. “Parker residence.”
“What’re your plans for today, Madison?” her father’s voice asked.
Just like that, she thought. No how are you, sweetie? No I hope you’re not bored all by yourself? that anybody else’s dad might’ve asked. Sounded like he’d given up on her already; she really resented that. “I’m putting in my hours at the hospice like I’m supposed to!”
He’d taken her cell too, as if he thought she’d be putting in a call to her supplier.
“Don’t get snarky with me, young lady!” Daddy said. “Be home before dark.”
“Sure.”
“My plane’s boarding. See you in a couple of days.”
Maddie turned the phone off before he put any more conditions on her. It wasn’t fair. Maybe she should’ve done something that would really deserve it, not just a couple of puffs off a joint someone handed her. And it hadn’t even given her much of a buzz!
She turned her attention back to the monitor. Ferenzi had started acting strangely. Several hospital stays had followed; one article mentioned psychiatric care. On the tenth page of citations, she found a tabloid headline: Spaceman sees aliens. Bride calls off wedding. The date was puzzling, only a little more than twenty years ago. Too recent to fit the old man in the hospice bed.
Maddie exited the program and thought about what she had just read. Chances were, Sam was crazy. Why did he want to go to the desert? And more important, why should she risk being grounded for the entire school year to take him there? She’d be as crazy as he was to do it.
A flicker of movement on the computer’s monitor attracted her attention; the screensaver had activated. She stared at the ballet of spinning galaxies and soaring cloudlike nebulae her father had installed. He was involved with the SETI program at JPL, but it wasn’t something he talked about much. Not because it was secret, Maddie knew, but because the results were so disappointing. She wondered if he knew about Sam Ferenzi. Her father thought people who claimed to have seen aliens cheapened the real search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
The old man seemed so lonely. At least she could take him for a short drive around Pasadena. Maybe the change of scenery would do him good.
She knew where her father had put her car keys. He never locked his desk drawer, trusting the members of his household. She felt a twinge of guilt as she retrieved her keys.
“I’m taking Mr. Ferenzi out for a drive,” she told the charge nurse as she pushed the empty wheelchair past the nurses’ station. “That okay?”
The charge nurse today, a young dark-skinned man in green scrubs, looked up from the charts he’d been studying. “How long you planning on keeping him out?”
She hadn’t expected to be asked. “Umm . . . we shouldn’t be too long.”
The charge nurse rubbed his eyes as if he’d put in a long shift. “He’ll need his meds again in a couple of hours.”
No way she could’ve gone to Palm Springs and back in a couple of hours! Sam would just have to take the disappointment. If he even remembered.
But the moment she stepped into his room, she knew he’d remembered. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, dressed in maroon sweats several sizes too large, one bony hand holding a scruffy olive-green duffel bag, the other stroking the hospice cat.
“Want to go for a ride around town?” she asked brightly.
“Stop worrying about the meds,” he said. “I don’t need them. Only take them to shut the nurses up.”
“Are you reading my mind?”
“Obvious they’d tell you when I’m due for the next dose. Where’s the car?”
“Around the corner,” she said. Where—she hoped—no one who knew her would notice it.
“Good. Let’s go.”
Resentment at the way he ordered her around welled up, sharp and hot. She was a volunteer, not a servant. As if sensing her mood, the cat hissed at her and jumped down from the bed. She held her arm out for support as Sam maneuvered himself into the wheelchair. He huffed and wheezed and settled cautiously, then indicated she should put the duffel bag on his lap.
“You’re not as old as you look, are you?” she said spitefully. “I looked you up.”
The face he turned to her was open, stricken, like a flower pelted by a sudden, hard rain. She regretted her words instantly, but there was no way to take them back. She wheeled him in silence down the hall, past the charge nurse who was too busy to glance up, and out the automatic door at the front of the building.
Sam didn’t say anything when they reached her silver Tesla, and he managed to get into the passenger seat without much help, never letting go of the duffel bag. But she heard him gasp with pain as he landed heavily on his thin hips. She slid in behind the wheel and passed the electronic key over the sensor. Only the red lights on the dash confirmed the electric motor was ready to roll.
They drove east through Pasadena in silence. She thought about pointing out some of the lovely old houses, but he’d closed his eyes as if he was bored already.
After a while he said, “You need to take Interstate 10 east.”
“We’re not taking the freeway at all.”
“You want to hear my story? Then we do it my way.”
She glanced at him. “No way! I’d be in a lot of trouble if I did that.”
“Me too.” The old man rummaged in the duffel, then held out a disk. “Put this in your CD player.”
“Cars don’t have CD players any more. Everybody has their own—”
“Yours does.”
He pointed to the slit low on the dash where she’d never needed to notice it before. Steering with one hand, she slipped the disk into the player.
After a moment’s silence, a low, sustained note came out of the speakers, like an oboe, she thought, or a bassoon. The sound undulated in dark, thin loops. Once in a while, the loops were punctuated with a single higher note that died away as it fell. There was something lonely in the sound as if it spoke of enormous distance and the vast passage of time. Then it changed—or was replaced—by another, higher voice, this one mournful, with the suggestion of an echo over a frozen sea. Spooky!
She listened for a while, trying to guess what she might be hearing. Then it hit her so suddenly she felt ice pour through her veins. “Aliens?”
“Nope. But not a bad guess,” he said. “Whales. Hump-back whale songs.”
“I suppose next you’re going to tell me they make up symphonies and operas!”
“I doubt it. But we don’t know, do we? And that’s the problem. We don’t know.”
“We’re going back!” she decided.
“I’m trying, Maddie,” Sam said. “But I haven’t got the right words. I’m going to have to show you.”
“Maybe I’m just a dumb kid and I don’t care.”
“You have to care,” he said. “Somebody must! There’s the on-ramp.”
Obviously, she hadn’t been paying enough attention to the road. She slowed the Tesla, a block before the interstate on-ramp. Overhead, the unfinished span of what was going to be the high-speed monorail from Pasadena to Los Angeles, which they’d been building ever since she could remember, looked like a casualty of the terrorist attacks on London and Paris.
She was aware of car horns, a car alarm going off, the ululation of a police siren. Familiar urban sounds, she thought, and remembered the waves on the oscilloscope when the technician tuned the grand piano at home. It had picked up her voice too, and displayed its peaks and valleys in a running line. Insight struck.
“Your vid. That was the sound wave of a whale’s song, wasn’t it?”
“Two of them.”
Something about this strange old man held her, like he was some kind of modern wizard or something. Whatever his secret was, she believed him that it was important. “But what does it all mean?”
“I’m going to show you.”
If her father found out she’d taken her car keys, she was going to be in a lot of trouble anyway. Driving a bit farther wasn’t going to make it much worse. And she resented being treated like some delinquent kid.
The clock on the dash read two thirty-three already. She fingered Palm Springs into the GPS pad and the readout told her ETA three hours twenty minutes due to heavy traffic. Even if she could hurry Sam along once they got there, it would probably be midnight before they were home again. The hospice would’ve missed Sam and called the police by then.
“Sam, I can’t do this.”
“Do it!” His voice was suddenly strong and compelling like the young man he once must’ve been. She stared at him. Then he added in his normal, old man’s voice, “I’m going to show you what happened. Maybe you’ll understand.”
She thought of her father, frustrated because decades of SETI had revealed no messages. It was weird to believe this old man knew something no one else did. But something had happened to Sam Ferenzi in space, and though he looked a hundred years old, she knew from the biography she’d read he couldn’t be much older than sixty.
“There must be hundreds of scientists who’d like to know!”
“Tried it. Many times. Got sent to a psych ward.”
“But why me?”
“Because you’re a musician, and the young aren’t so prejudiced against new ideas,” he said. “And I don’t have much time left.”
She gave up worrying about what she was doing or the consequences. What was the use? There was no question Daddy would find out. She risked taking her eyes off the crowded interstate to glance at her passenger.
“Just trying to figure out the best way to tell it,” he said.
“Starting at the beginning’s good.”
“I was born. I grew up. I went into space.” He closed his eyes.
“You are really the most annoying—”
“Don’t be so impatient.” He opened his eyes and peered out the window to see where they were. “NASA planned the mission to the asteroid when there was no budget for Mars. Doesn’t matter which asteroid. You wouldn’t know anyway. We hadn’t paid much attention to it, but it was in a near-Earth orbit. So we took the opportunity and went. Routine mission so far.”
He paused, and Maddie prompted, “And you walked on it.”
“Euphemism. You couldn’t properly walk anywhere on it. It was too small and had no gravity. It was like standing on the surface of a giant stone potato. I had a tether to the excursion module—I wasn’t going anywhere.”
Maddie listened without interrupting as he described space from the vantage point of a small asteroid. In her imagination she saw the deep, cold blackness studded with unwavering stars, the regular flare of the sun as the asteroid rolled in its orbit. Earth was a small, bright dot in the distance.
“Weren’t you afraid?”
He turned his scrawny neck and stared at her. “The astronaut who’s never afraid is a liar or a liability. The one who lets his fear rule is a disaster.”
“Tell me about seeing the aliens.”
“National World Enquirer said that. Not me.”
He took a moment, then continued. “I’d been on the asteroid for almost the full time for EVA, and the shuttle’s commander radioed to remind me. Then a sudden burst of light blinded me—and a strong carrier wave knocked out my headset.”
He fell silent again.
“Go on,” she prompted. “What was it like?”
“The worst pain you can imagine. Like being a T-bone steak plopped onto the hot grill and not being able to get off. Like all your skin is scorched and peeling. Like being knocked out by a high-voltage wire. Like having your eyelids ripped off and being forced to watch a nuclear explosion. Like going blind and stark raving mad at the same time.”
That explained his blotchy skin, she thought: radiation burns. The long outburst seemed to have tired him again. He rested his head on the seat-back and went to sleep.
At least, she hoped he was only sleeping.
The sun was setting as they entered the outskirts of Palm Springs, a fuzzy red beach ball sinking into hazy waves of low- lying smog. Maddie was tired from driving in heavy traffic. Sam had slept most of the way. Now he woke and struggled upright.
“You want to eat something?” she asked as they passed a coffee shop.
“No. Go on through the city.”
“How much farther are we going?” The Tesla was new enough to have an efficient fuel cell system, but there was still a limit on how far it could go without a recharge. Since she’d never had the chance to drive it this far, she had no idea what that limit was. The battery’s indicator bars remained in the safe zone, but for how much longer?
“Just outside the city, you’re going to make a left.”
And then what? She kept the thought to herself because he obviously wouldn’t answer anyway. She gazed at the people strolling from boutiques where golden light spilled out onto the sidewalk to restaurants whose banners pronounced them award-winning. Maddie retracted her window and the car filled with the aroma of barbecue and garlic and the faint sounds of music. Her stomach rumbled.
“Oblivious,” Sam said. “All of them. It’s going right through them and they’re oblivious!”
“What?”
“You too. And me. And worst of all, NASA and SETI. Turn left at the next light.”
The lights and sounds of Palm Springs fell away as they took the narrow dirt road across the desert floor rising slowly toward the nearby hills. The sky was filled with misty rose and lavender light, and the tops of the Little San Bernardinos looked as if they’d been draped in glowing chiffon.
“Pull off here.”
Tiredness flooded through her. This was without question the stupidest thing she’d done in her life. Sam scrambled out of the car without help, yanking the duffel bag behind him. In the twilight, he looked spidery and strange, like an alien himself. She yawned and reached to turn off the engine.
“Leave it running,” he said. “I need a power supply.”
He rummaged through the bag, pulling objects out and setting them down on the sand. She got out of the car.
“Here.” He handed her a pair of field glasses. “You might as well look at the stars while I’m getting set up.”
She took the glasses out of their case. She could see Venus in the west already, and other pinpricks of light were beginning to show against the rapidly darkening sky. Her father had taught her to recognize the major constellations and nebula clusters and most of the minor ones too.
“Easier at night,” Sam said.
“What is?”
“Listening.”
Did he mean the kind of signals SETI was listening for? That would be dumb, she thought; the stars were there even when we didn’t see them. “What difference does darkness make to messages coming from way across the universe?”
“I meant for us!” he said testily. “Fewer distractions.”
Arms folded tightly across her chest, Maddie stepped away from the car. The sky glittered overhead but she’d lost interest. The desert night was already much cooler than the day and if they stayed here too long she’d regret not bringing a jacket. Somewhere in the hills, a coyote yipped. A large bird flew past her on silent wings.
“Look,” he said suddenly.
On a flat-topped boulder he’d set up the contents of the duffel bag. She saw a small oscilloscope with the regular undulation of a carrier wave passing over its screen. Beside it was something that looked like a really old cell phone, bulky, with an antenna poking out; cables ran between them and a metal box, also small. He was really nuts if he thought that contraption was going to capture alien signals. Daddy had taken the family on a vacation trip to see the Allen Array in Northern California; it looked nothing like that.
“You forgot to bring a dish!” Her voice added its own snaking wave to the screen.
The coyote gave a full- throated howl this time and was joined by another. The lines on the oscilloscope jumped into peaks and valleys. He bent over the rig he’d assembled, cocking his ear and turning dials. The night air filled with the eerie whale song he’d played for her in the car. An owl hooted. The screen became a jumble of snaking lines.
“I don’t get it.”
“You need a symphony. At least—” He hesitated as if trying to find the words to explain a difficult concept to a kindergartner. “You need to learn how to listen to a symphony. Too bad you didn’t bring your flute.”
She jumped as if he’d poked her. “I think I might have—it’s still in my shoulder bag.”
He nodded. “Get it.”
No point in arguing with him. She found her flute in the car and put it to her lips. The instrument added its own line to the undulating patterns of the oscilloscope.
“A symphony not made up of our instruments,” he said.
In the dark, his eyes glittered like the stars. She glanced up. Somewhere, in all that magnificent light show, there were other intelligent beings. She believed that, even though scientists like her father had spent more than seven decades trying to capture a message from just one, and failing absolutely. But what Sam was trying to do wasn’t science.
“You saying that whales could help SETI listen for alien signals?”
“Don’t be stupid!” the old man scolded. “Sentient creatures that’ve been on this planet maybe longer than we have. What might they know? Trees too. Thousand-year-old sequoias—centuries to process the hormonal messages in their cells! And creosote bushes—there’s a budding hive mind for you! Ravens and crows. Even coyotes. We don’t have the first idea how to listen to the intelligence on our own planet, yet we think we’d recognize an alien message if it hit us!”
A light breeze came up, carrying the scent of wild sage. She shivered. Fine sand particles coated her face.
“We’re never going to get the message until we understand that the voice of the universe is a symphony,” Sam said. He turned away from her and stared up at the brilliant tapestry of the desert sky. “Doesn’t mean the message isn’t there. But right now we’re searching for the flute part all by itself.”
“My father says—”
“We have to learn how to get more out of the carrier wave. Background radiation of the universe. Whatever scientists want to call it.”
Mad, she thought. Totally mad. “Well, I’m not a scientist, so why me?”
“No!” he shouted at her. “I can’t read it yet—nobody can! But somebody has to understand what the problem is, or we’ll never even work on it!”
She gazed at the oscilloscope again. The coyotes were singing, a whole pack by the sound of it. The owl hooted from the arms of a nearby cottonwood. The oscilloscope was alive with their combined voices. She didn’t know enough to say Sam was wrong, but she knew stranger things had turned out to be true.
“They’re out there,” he said quietly. “But I’ve run out of time to find a better apprentice.”
Glancing at him in surprise, she saw he was bent over his weird contraption again. She lifted her face to the stars and was immediately bombarded by a huge cold light that overwhelmed her optical nerves. She shrieked.
Sam chuckled. “Just the full moon rising.”
She was trembling uncontrollably. “We have to get back.”
“I’m done, anyway,” he said. “You were just my last chance.”
He started packing his things back into the duffel bag, slowly as if the effort exhausted him. She got into the driver’s seat. Fine volunteer she was, she thought; she didn’t even offer to help him into the car. All she could think of was starting the heater. She heard the old man stumble into the passenger seat and close the car door, sighing with pain, or sadness perhaps. She listened for the familiar click of the seat web locking into place. Then she thought of something.
“It was the messages that hit you, wasn’t it, on that asteroid? Even though you couldn’t understand them, they were there?”
He didn’t reply.
Yawning, she touched the heater’s sensor. Nothing happened. She glanced at the battery gauge.
Zero bars.
“Umm, Sam? I think we’re stuck.”
He seemed to have gone to sleep already.
Well, what difference did it make? she thought. She was already in trouble for driving out here. But it was cold in the car without the heater and she started to worry. How low did the night temperature drop in August? She looked over at the skinny old man, slumped in his seat. Too cold for him, in any case.
Wasn’t there an old ratty blanket in the Tesla’s trunk? She’d thrown it in there after Junior Class Day at the beach and didn’t remember taking it out again. She got out of the car and raised the trunk lid. Yes. She shook sand out of it, smelling the faint trace of ocean as she did so. Maybe there’d been whales passing by, far out in the water, that day she’d played volleyball with her friends. Whales making up songs that humans didn’t understand.
An awful lot that humans didn’t understand!
She draped the gritty blanket around the old man’s shoulders, and he muttered in his sleep. No way she was going to get any sleep. It was going to be a long night till someone came to rescue them. The coyotes were still singing; she could hear them—nearer now—even with the windows closed. Weird to think of the noises animals made as music, but then maybe they thought the sounds humans made were weird too.
And maybe Sam was right and the universe was streaming with messages we didn’t know how to listen to just yet.
On impulse, she reached into the back seat and retrieved her flute. She cracked the window, letting the coyotes’ song enter, and put the flute to her lips to join them.
She heard Sam sigh, and glanced over at him. He seemed to be smiling in his sleep.
The sheriffs her father summoned found her at dawn by tracking the Tesla’s GPS. She woke to the sound of a helicopter’s rotors beating the desert air. She was cold, hungry, otherwise unharmed.
Sam Ferenzi wasn’t so lucky. Or maybe that’s what he’d wanted from the start, she thought, as the sheriff’s paramedics loaded her into the chopper for the flight home. Dying like a shriveled up insect in a hospice bed after you’ve been into space and experienced the tsunami of alien communication, even if you can’t understand a word of it and nobody believes you: she could understand how he might’ve felt. Going in his sleep was a mercy.
She watched the medics carrying Sam’s body, reverently. He’d found the clue to a puzzle her father would give anything to solve.
“What were you doing out there?” one of the paramedics asked.
“Just stargazing,” she said. It was only a half lie.
The paramedic handed her a juice box as the chopper lifted off the desert floor. The sun flooded in through the east-facing port. A star, only one among billions in the known universe. A symphony of star voices that someday somebody was going to learn how to hear. Somebody who loved both the stars and music.
She drifted off to sleep, thinking of what that might mean for her future.
