CHAPTER THREE

AFRAID TO GO HOME IN THE DARK

I’m afraid to go home in the dark.

—Harry H. Williams

Alex Smith, 24 December, Mars Year i

Novato, California, Planet Earth

By the time we reached the site, forty of the locals had arrived ahead of us, with more on their way. We gathered ’round a huge hole in which the alien ship was embedded upright in the ground. The gravel on either side of the opening had been charred black by the impact of the landing, although the vessel itself no longer radiated any heat. “O” and Min still hadn’t returned yet.

Four or five teens were dangling their feet over the edge of the pit, amusing themselves by throwing stones at the bloody thing.

“Stop that!” I said, but they just laughed. Kids!

When I looked around at the bystanders, I recognized a couple of folks with their bikes, among them my yard man, a woman with a stroller, a store owner and his son, and two or three others who nodded back at me.

There wasn’t a lot of conversation. I mean, what could you say?

Most of the people were just staring quietly at the large, egg-shaped end of the ship. After awhile, when nothing else happened, some of them left while others took their place. Even Becky began pestering me to go home. I finally told her to take the car, that I’d join her later for lunch. She reminded me that we’d planned to go shopping that afternoon. After she left, I climbed down into the pit to examine the thing more closely, and thought I heard a movement somewhere inside. But if the top had shifted before, it’d stopped by now.

At first glance the oval just seemed like a large lump of charred rock, but on closer examination I noticed some thin, wavy lines, almost cracks, that permeated the top third of the visible portion of the artifact. The scales that flaked off left a sheen of shiny, unscarred metal underneath. I’m no scientist; I didn’t recognize the yellowish-white surface that gleamed at me in the sunlight, reflecting a glare that almost blinded the onlookers. Even the crack around the lid had an unfamiliar color and texture. Obviously, the probe would have to be examined more closely by our scientists.

And it was pretty clear in my own mind that this was a probe, likely sent from Mars in response to our own explorations on the Red Planet. I didn’t even consider the possibility that the meteorite was natural. The unscrewing of the top, if that’s what it’d been, was similar to the way our rovers had prepared themselves for their journeys across the Martian terrain. I wondered if the artifact might have some message for us, some offering of peace and a sharing of the benefits of our respective civilizations, and speculated on the translation difficulties that might occur. This was the greatest thing that had ever happened to mankind—and I was part of it! I was impatient to see something further, but nothing more actually happened then. About noon I too wandered back to my two-story home on Olivet Avenue.

The Internet was already blaring the news:

THE METEORITE—

MENACE OR MESSAGE FROM MARS?

NON NEWS FROM NOVATO!

ALIENS AMONG US!?

HAS ELVIS RETURNED?

UFOs Attack California!

MARIN MIRAGE—LIBERAL CONSPIRACY?

and so on, getting progressively more lurid with each new rendition.

Mindon had phoned several observatories in the western US, and CNN had already sent a reporter up from San Francisco to provide an “objective” story on the event. Fox hadn’t even bothered, simply announcing that another “Kooky Kalifornia Komedy” was unfolding among the “marinated minds of Marin County.” I flipped through the TV channels, getting progressively more disgusted by the lack of serious coverage.

“It’s as if we didn’t exist,” I told Becky.

“It doesn’t matter, Alex,” she said, putting down her book. “They’ll find out soon enough.”

Once again, I wish in retrospect that I’d paid more attention to my wife’s prescience.

“What are you reading?”

She showed me the garish cover: What the Future Holds!—and What You Can Do About It!!! by Madame Stavroula.

“You remember her,” she said. “She was the one who told your fortune at the Renaissance Fair last year.”

“Oh, yeah.”

I did remember, all too well. She’d been dressed in some kind of faux medieval garb (she looked like a washer woman, to tell you the truth), and she’d suddenly grabbed my hand and wouldn’t let it go, oohing and ahing over the lines in my palm.

“Nai!” she’d said, her voice warbling as it deepened (they’re always so cheery, these soothsayers), “Such interesting intersections thou hast here, such curious crossings. Malista, thou art, how do you say? Moiraios, the destined one, thou art….” Then she’d looked at me as if she were seeing me for the first time, her black eyes growing very large and very wide, and she’d suddenly released me, pulling back with a flutter. “I…no! Here! You take back your money. Go away from me!”

She’d thrown some bills on the table, more actually than Becky had paid her, and gathering her skirts together, had pushed her chair aside and bolted the room. Harrumph indeed!

“Well, I’ll be,” Becky’d said.

Suddenly I came back to myself.

“You do remember her,” she said, tilting her head.

“How could I ever forget?” I sighed.

“Anyway, she sent me this book, inscribed ‘To the one who showed me the way,’ so I’m just getting around to reading it now. It’s really not bad. I don’t believe all of it, of course, but it sure does make you think.”

“I think I’m going back to the landing site,” I said. “Want to join me?”

“No, I probably need to uncover our joint destiny.”

I was laughing along with her as I exited the door.

When I returned to the field that afternoon, I couldn’t park anywhere near the pit. Dozens of cars now lined the shoulder of the dirt path closest to the impact site, and the road had now been cordoned off by the local police. Since this was Marin County, a fair number of motorcycles and bicycles were also in evidence. The crowd numbered, I suppose, several hundred individuals, including some young women, whom I thanked under my breath for decorating the scenery. Mindon waved at me from the other side of the hole, one arm wrapped around a delicate delight. I joined him.

“This is, uh, Barbie,” he said, introducing his companion.

“Hiiii!” came the girlish gurgle.

“Hi yourself,” I said. “What’s happening, Mindon-Man?”

(I was one of the very few individuals in the whole wide world who knew that Mindon had adopted his name from a nineteenth-century Burmese king, Mindon Min. His real name was Gorace Alonzo Styles, Ph.D.—and he hated it, he absolutely despised it, he utterly loathed his name. I asked him once why he’d never changed it legally, and he said something about an inheritance owed him by his Great-Uncle Gorace—“Liz”—who was rich and stuffy and would cut him off immediately without a red cent if he ever dared such a step. He wanted the money, honey, and that’s the whole truth of it.)

“Not a hell of a lot,” he said.

It was almost hot for December. Not a cloud in the sky, not a hint of wind. The only shade was provided by a few scattered pine and live-oak trees. The burnt brush had blackened the field for several hundred yards in either direction, and was still giving off occasional puffs of smoke where embers had nested in some downed tree limbs. One of the ever-present Chicano vendor-vans was selling ice cream bars and soda and hotdogs and chips off to one side, making, I’m certain, a whole week’s worth of income in just one day, and playing a tinny version of “Für Elise” over and over again. I could have strangled him.

What a reception for the Martian probe! All the worst elements of humanity were represented here—and perhaps even a few of its best.

The rim was the domain of Owen, Mindon, and a tall, blond, middle-aged fellow with glasses whom I learned afterwards was Hastings Johnson-Carson, an astronomer at Berkeley. He had several workers with him armed with spades and picks. J.C., as we called him, stood on the end of the ship like a naval captain, imperiously giving orders in his nasally, needling voice, his pudgy crimson face streaming with perspiration. All he lacked was a sailor’s cap. Something seemed to be irritating him, and it was probably Mindon, who was still claiming the meteorite as his own, and that he should therefore be the only person consulted concerning its disposition.

A large portion of the artifact had now been uncovered, but its lower section yet remained buried in the soil. Mindon pulled me aside and asked me to get help from City Hall.

“Look, that damned interloper is going to steal this thing from me. We’re within the Novato city limits. The Mayor has authority over the site, if he chooses to exercise it. See if you can get him to intervene, OK?”

I promised to do what I could.

Min wanted a rail erected to keep the people back, and especially to remove “certain” individuals from the site. He said that he could still hear noises within the probe, but no one had been able to break the thing open yet, thank God! The casing seemed impervious to ordinary tools.

It was a little past four, and I knew City Hall closed at five. I walked to my car and drove to the Art Deco-style building that had housed the facility since the 1940s. I asked to see Mayor Cory.

“What do ya want, Smith?” the man said, chewing on a pretzel stick like some old cigar.

I told him that there was a safety issue involved: with all the people milling around the pit, that someone might get hurt, and that he didn’t want the city to be sued for lack of proper preventive measures on the part of the local government.

That got his attention.

He immediately phoned the Chief of Police, and ordered him to restore order to the site, pushing back everyone to a safe distance.

Then I went home to Becky and shared a dinner of cold sandwiches and canned fruit, before returning to the place that marked the beginning of the Martian hegemony on Earth.