Like Moonlight on Water: Chapter 11
Insignificant
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Click here for the previous chapter in which a worried Lila tried to wake Sal from dual-time—and is paying a painful price.
Insignificant
My tongue convulsed, trying to shape words he would want to hear—trying to beg like he’d commanded—but not even sound could escape Sal’s grip. I could only will him to look at me, to see me, as my own sight faded to black.
Please don’t hurt her. Please…you promised…
Suddenly, his hands slid beneath me and I was choking on air. He palmed my spine and the base of my skull; and then every muscle in my body lifted and tensed, my pain cresting into ecstasy as his thoughts thrust deep into mine.
The modulators are quelling her gift. She cannot regulate her emotions. Cannot dream. If the Servants discover what I have done, she will be forced into dual-time when she comes of age.
I arched against him, trying to escape his words—his touch—and now hot flames licked my nerves, blackening me in the torturous rapture of his fear. I was paper set to his fire, consumed by his last thought.
I will find a way to make her safe!
He dropped me and stood, his great body quaking and drenched in sweat.
I scrambled backward until I hit the wall. The horror on his face reflected more than what he’d done to me. My terror was his, and his was now mine. Eileen was in danger—and he had no idea how to save her.
You can’t let them do that to her! Protect her, Lila! Make her safe!
I will. We will. Painfully, I dragged myself upright—and squeaked at a loud rattle.
Doorknob. Eileen!
I cringed—instincts traumatized and useless—but Sal didn’t move.
“Mom!” Eileen shouted from the porch. “Let me in! Mom!”
She pounded on the front door, and I heard a click and bang as it swung open and hit the wall. Somehow, I made it down the stairs before she started up.
“Didn’t you hear me?!” she blazed. “What’re you doing?”
I turned her toward the foyer, trying to swallow past the swelling in my throat.
“Why was the door locked?!”
“Knew,” I rasped.
“I was worried! Where’s Sal?”
“Busy. Let’s—” I coughed.
“What’s wrong?”
“Swee—” I coughed again. “Told you—”
She dragged me out of the shadows.
“What did he do?!” Her eyes raked my disheveled clothes and zeroed in on my neck.
“Ff-fine!” I flinched when she touched me, and tried to hide it by straightening my shirt. “Surprised him,” I forced the words out, over-enunciating in a feeble attempt to sound like myself.
“I threw your mother to the floor and choked her.” Sal plodded into the room. “I nearly killed her.”
I clawed Eileen back. “Not wha—”
“That is exactly what I did.” Sal lowered himself to his knees and bowed his head. “My shame is eternal.”
“No. One. Cares!” Eileen spat at him, then rounded on me. “What happened? And don’t lie!”
Make her safe, Lila, make her safe, make her safe…
I allowed myself another hard swallow, careful not to wince. “When he synchro…when…” Fewer words, push it out. “Loses…self. Others mad.”
My shoulders lifted and fell, in a show of what’s-done-is-done, but my pulse raced at the thought of my child enduring such an atrocity. Frozen. Violated. Erased.
You can’t let that happen! My baby! My baby, no…my baby…
Never, I promised.
Sal’s head dropped even lower. “Sometimes it takes hours to regain control of my thoughts.” A single teardrop fell to his knee, evaporating so quickly I might have imagined it. “To separate my own memories and motivations, and identify what is real, what—”
“Wha’ matters,” I finished in a hoarse whisper.
Two more drops splashed and disappeared.
“I’m ‘kay.” Or would be. But only because it didn’t take hours—just Eileen. She was his touchstone, too.
I offered him a hand up, but he didn’t move until my daughter shoved hers under his nose.
“Get up, alien. I want to go home. This place is a dump.”
She didn’t speak again until after we drove past the port. A multi-story crane worked to offload a huge container ship, but feats of modern engineering weren’t enough to pull her from her thoughts. And though our Bronco made more noise than a fleet of idling semis, I’d already tried to make small talk. But comments like “That cat scared me to death!” and “Sal needs to wear his helmet,” had been ignored, and my throat hurt too much to keep up the effort. At least my vocal cords were functioning again.
We were nearly home when she asked, “Why do they hate you so much?”
I glanced at the rearview mirror. Sal’s bike still wound its way behind us, as if he was afraid to be too close.
“They don’t hate me.”
In truth, they might, but even if Sal couldn’t hear us at this distance, the Servants could. I’d felt Sal’s emphasis on the capital S. They were the ones I really needed to worry about. They were the ones in this reality, watching, listening, recording…
“How can you say that?” Eileen pressed. “He tried to kill you!”
“No, he didn’t.” Had he? I adjusted my grip on the steering wheel to keep from touching my neck. “It was…intimidation. And it wasn’t Sal.” I reached over to pat her hand. “Don’t forget that.”
This insignificant human wasn’t going to cower before bullies—or antagonize them. Eileen’s safety—her life—depended on keeping them in the dark. Keeping them placated. Acid rose in my throat, but I resisted the urge to swallow again. Goddamn Servants were probably documenting every goddamn groan, and I’d be damned if I’d give them the satisfaction.
Eileen was watching the side mirror.
“Try not to be scared of him, sweetheart.” We need him.
“I’m not, but—”
“But you need to stay away anytime he’s linked. He’ll find us after. When he can.” I checked my mirror again. The bike had dropped back even further.
What if I did cooperate? What if I told them every horrible, intimate detail of my dreams? What would it matter? How could it possibly help them—or hurt Eileen? That was the real question. Could I keep them interested in me…be useful to them…without drawing more attention to her?
Weariness, bone-deep, blunted my ability to think. Adam would know how to strategize. How to find a weakness in their near-omniscient strength. How to protect his daughter.
“Telling Adam’s a bad idea,” Eileen said.
My head snapped towards her, but she was still watching the side mirror.
“So I won’t tell him what Sal did,” she added. “Unless I have to…” her tone wavered between petulance and worry.
Eyes back on the road, I spoke carefully. “Sal did not want to hurt me.” And he’d die before hurting you. “The more I think about it, the others seem…desperate.”
I had her attention now, and hopefully the Servants’ as well.
“I bet they’re just really scared,” I said. “They probably wonder if their reality might be next to collapse.” I shrugged. “People can be cruel when they’re scared—why would aliens be any different?”
My teeth grabbed my cheeks so I couldn’t smile. Empathy might be a powerful tool.
“So, I’m not mad…or frightened.” I worked in a note of sadness, “I feel bad for them.”
“Really? You’re not scared?”
“Nope.”
“Good. Then on Monday morning, Sal can take me to school.”
“What?” I jerked and had to haul the Bronc back to our lane.
“Geez, Mom. Drive much?”
I ignored the bait—and the motorcycle’s sudden acceleration to catch up.
“Look, I know school’s important, but—”
“Mom, please…” she begged. Not melodramatically, or angrily—when I glanced, her beautiful brown eyes were wide and shining with tears.
“Nothing is normal, and I can’t do anything about it! I’m not special, and I can’t help…and I know you want to protect me, but none of this has anything to do with me!”
It tore at my heart to hear her, and every muscle in my bruised throat swelled, aching to say, “You are special! So special. More than you know.” But instead, I spoke slowly and clearly, not even allowing myself to touch her for fear I’d give myself away.
“You know what? You’re right, angel. One hundred percent.”
Her breath caught, whether in excitement or disappointment, I couldn’t tell.
“School’s fine. It’ll keep you busy.”
While I keep them focused on me.
Lila’s breathing was steady amid the sounds of cascading water and old pipes.
“Stalker.” Eileen sat on the couch and used her arm to swipe the clutter to one side of the low table.
“I am concerned,” Sal admitted.
“You should be.” She opened the pad of cotton paper and set the tin of colored pencils beside it. “But listening to her shower is creeptastic.”
He heard the pop of a plastic cap and then a squirt. The sound of skin rubbing skin. “I injured her badly.”
“Yes. You did.” She chose seven colors and arrayed the pencils in an arc to the left of the paper.
His head pivoted back toward the bathroom. Lila had groaned, so quietly he almost missed it. The bruising was extensive. And though she could swallow, he worried he had damaged her hyoid bone.
“She wants you to think she’s fine.” The child grimaced as deft strokes formed a flower unlike any he had seen. “It’s another type of lying.”
“Not all deception is dishonorable. She wants to protect you. And me,” he sighed.
The child sniffed. “You don’t deserve it, and I don’t need it.”
He restrained a smile and joined her on the couch. She moved to the next cushion, but kept drawing. After the first flower became a third, she spoke again.
“Why do birds do that looping thing around you? I saw them over the marsh when you…when we found you.” She bit her lip. “That’s why I got out of the car today. I was falling asleep and all of a sudden a flock of pigeons—”
“Did you fall asleep?” He invoked sarcasm to mask his worry.
“No! I dunno…maybe.” She added a jagged edge to a flower petal. “I was bored. I didn’t nap like a baby, if that’s what you’re—”
He cut her off with a forced chuckle. “You have some work to do yet, if you are to be a big sister.”
“You’re such a snoop.”
“I cannot help what I overhear,” he reminded her. “But to answer your query…birds are sensitive to the disruption caused by our modulators.
“Not,” he preempted, “by base functions like yours are capable of. However, when my kind initiates a Transition or we are in the synchronous state of dual-time, the electromagnetic field we generate confuses them.”
Eileen frowned and selected a shade of orange for the stamen. “Dual-time is a stupid name.”
“So I have been told.”
“Mom said it’s like torture.” She embellished the stem with a vicious-looking thorn.
“It is not an experience I would want you—or anyone—to have.” Her drowsiness had been a coincidence. Nothing more. The Servants did not know her secret. Yet.
“Maybe that’s what happened to the bees,” she suggested. “Did you link with your team that night?” Back to blue, she sketched a fanciful insect with jointed wings.
“Yes,” he said. “But I was not here.”
Her head jerked up. “Then who…?”
He waited, but her quick mind only needed a moment.
“Mom’s dreams! They caused…?” She aimed the pencil as if to skewer him with it. “You’ve been lying, too! She’s…you…!” Sputtering accusation morphed into fear. “She’s living her nightmares?”
Sal nodded. “That is why my team thinks she may be of value. Her consciousness can follow her fractals—and return.”
Eileen jumped up, knocking the table and scattering pencils. “You need to tell her! It’s not right to use her like a lab rat…” She paled and then reddened with fresh anger. “She already knows.”
“She does.”
The girl’s mouth twisted as if swallowing the bitter truth. She wanted more than an apology—and deserved an explanation worthy of her intellect—but he hesitated to say anything further. It was enough, for now, that she understood what her mother might be going through.
With haughty fastidiousness, Eileen organized the drawing implements in a precise grouping on the table and then centered herself before him, more like an imperious judge than a child.
“If I was special, I’d help you,” she declared. “My mother is a coward.”
According to Sal, my daughter had requested some time alone down by the river. Slightly jealous, definitely worried, but mostly thinking of my new strategy, I’d only asked if she seemed calm.
“I can’t keep up with her mood swings!” I’d complained. “Are alien teens as bad as human ones?”
“Worse.” His sigh was theatrical. “Just ask the Atlanteans.”
I smiled at the joke, but he resumed perusing my bookshelf. Okay…story for another time, then.
In the shower, I’d been mulling over my next steps. Keep the aliens focused on me. Give them what they wanted—but not so much that they had no further use for me. Had Sal even thought of that yet? What if they decided my progeny might have latent abilities like mine? Sal said her gift was quelled by his modulators, but what if the others figured that out—horrible enough—and believed she’d produce better results than her mother? She was obviously smarter than me. A quicker learner. More intuitive. More communicative.
And had popped into my womb without a sperm doing a happy dance with one of my eggs. So there was that.
By the time I was getting dressed, I’d squashed my messier feelings on that topic. Whether my daughter was conceived by parthenogenesis or psychic sex didn’t really matter. Though the mere fact those words existed side-by-side in my head was problematic.
Focus, Lila!
I am! From this moment, until however long it took, this was gonna be all about me. I’d be cooperative, helpful—and intriguing enough to keep the alien bastards dialed in on their chosen test subject. Me.
Sal would help me. He’d keep her in line and acting normal enough to deter suspicion.
Like Mimi did…?
Oof, gut punch. I’m trying to focus here. I didn’t have head space for that right now. Mimi was dead and either looking down from heaven with an angelic “I told you so” or she wasn’t looking down at all.
Sal knew Eileen had a gift. Knew his modulators were suppressing it—messing up her sleep and emotions, too. And he’d make a plan for removing them or deactivating them. But he’d need to figure out how, since the Servants were monitoring signals from her modulators—the ones he didn’t route to his own brain.
My own brain boggled at the complexities of alien engineering, but time…time I could grasp. Sal would need time to clean up this giant heap of shit, and I could help there. Together, we’d keep her safe from the horrors of dual-time.
And is she gonna be mad once they’re gone. I snorted. The cool factor of alien tech—even if she couldn’t tell anyone about it—no doubt bested any of my darling nerd’s fondest daydreams. No matter how much she bickered with Sal.
But once the modulators were removed, would her gift manifest again? Had she seen something like Sal’s fractals? Was that why she’d been so convinced that Adam and I belonged together?
I wormed into my rattiest t-shirt and stretched the already-droopy neckline so it hung below my collar bones. My throat felt like a hard-boiled egg was stuffed somewhere between my windpipe and esophagus. At least the lower half of me didn’t hurt.
“Tell me something?” I asked when I went back into the living room. Sal closed my yellowed copy of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, and I sat down beside him on the couch. “Y’all really don’t think you exist in multiple realities like people do? You’re each in only one reality?”
“We do not produce fractals,” he agreed.
“What about Servants?”
“Certainly not!” he responded, as if I’d asked whether houseplants could do calculus.
“Then why would they take away your sight?” I asked.
He trailed one finger across the paperback’s creased cover, and put it on the table beside Eileen’s art supplies. “My Female Giver instructed the Servants to unburden me from seeing that which troubled me.”
I’d have to digest the subtext in that later. “So before, you could see me? See what I was doing?”
“I could see all fractals.”
“And…” I chose my words cautiously, “the tech that was in your eyes…Servants could access it, right? They could see what you saw?” I already knew the answer, but squinched my face as if straining my brain. “Is that even possible? I figure if your modulators can be controlled by them…”
He hesitated before nodding.
I grabbed one of Eileen’s new pencils and opened the sketchbook. “So they kinda shot themselves in the foot—so to speak.” She’d been doodling some flowers and bugs, and I scribbled one word in the bottom corner.
Leverage.
“I would not phrase it so lightly.” Sal took the sketchbook and flipped it closed.
“Yeah, I know,” I worked up a pouty sigh. “Insignificant human needs to keep its opinions to itself. Sorry.” But my apology was for reminding him of his punishment. My stomach still curdled whenever I thought of the grainy, writhing things I’d seen all over his face. Burrowing, oozing—destroying the enhancements that had been a part of his eyes and optic nerves.
I swallowed without thinking—and immediately regretted it. I could barely function with a set of bruises, while he had endured so much more. But I was right about leverage. Or at least the potential for leverage, which was better than nothing.
Without Sal being able to observe my fractals directly, they would only know what I chose to share. So I could lie…or obfuscate. But what should I hold back? Other than preferring not to divulge my more personal interactions with alter-Adams, did it really even matter what I told them?
I sat back against the cushions and stroked my throat, trying to think it through. My math skills were subpar at best, but Sal had told me there were only a couple dozen aliens on the original ship. I winced. And Servants. Jesus. I was as bad as him, forgetting they were people, too.
Well, not really people…but kind of like people. In rubbery alien suits to protect them from—
Focus, Lila!
Right. The point was that an almost infinite number of worlds wouldn’t have aliens—whether Servants or Sal’s displaced family. So what I learned in these other worlds would be known only to me. Which meant they really did need me.
Or others like me. There must be others. Like Aislyn…had she lived.
“You are in pain,” Sal said.
“Hmm?” My hands froze. I hadn’t realized both were on my neck. “No, I’m fine.” I sat forward again and rearranged the art supplies like Eileen had left them. “I do want to help, you know.”
Sal was silent.
“It’s not like I didn’t want to help, before. It’ll help you, too, won’t it?”
His hand touched my back lightly, then slid up my spine.
“Hey!” I twisted and leaned out of reach. “None of that, now.”
“I can take away the pain.” He reached again, and I scooted to the end of the couch. “Targeted electrical stimulus will initiate your own body’s own healing mech—”
“I’m good, thanks.”
“But the subcutaneous damage is visible…”
“That’s why God gave us makeup.” Concealer would hide the bruises for work. And around Adam.
“Lila, please?”
“No!”
He recoiled, and suddenly I was close again.
“I trust you, Sal, but I need these marks as a reminder.” Too close. I stood, but his hurt pulled at the center of me and I couldn’t walk away. “Look, this is about more than a couple of bruises. I know you want to help, but my head…my emotions…I’m a mess.”
There’s an understatement.
Shush!
“Sal, you know my life story better than anyone. I’ve always been a mess. But this is life or death, now.” I sat again, drawing my legs up onto the couch so I could face him. “Come on. Look at me.”
His head turned, but it was obvious that his sight was focused inward—and not liking the view.
“Hear me. I trust you.” I laid a hand on his arm, and a dry, baking heat made my scars sting. “Don’t do that. Don’t beat yourself up about what happened.”
The heat flared, and I yelped and jerked my hand away.
“Stop it! I don’t blame you for what happened. I keep acting like you’re just a man. Screwed up like me. But if I feel sore—see bruises in the mirror—I’ll remember what you really are.” I rushed on as he dug his fingers into his thighs. “And then I’ll remember what’s really at stake.”
His gaze finally met mine, and his temperature cooled.
Exactly. I patted his arm.
“So tonight…what’s the plan, Master Yoda? What do you want me to do?” I realized I didn’t sound cowed enough for listening aliens, so I dialed up my anxiety.
“I think I’m too high-strung for the Picoji chant…but I don’t want them to think I’m not trying.” I wrung my hands for effect, but in truth, I really did need to know what I was supposed to do.
I already knew what I would do.
Whatever it took to keep Eileen safe.
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