20
“You go out tonight, Dr. Shae?”
Rico’s voice. Dan climbed the short closet ladder to a cold tile floor at the precipice of a pitch-black room. A cavernous room, if his breath was any indication. It floated past his nose and over his head and somewhere up into the ether. He dared not proceed any farther. He knew where he was. Sensed it. The base of Dr. Shae’s massive telescope lay somewhere in all that darkness. It was unnerving, the same unnerving feeling you get in the ocean when you swear something’s looming below you, just out of sight.
“In all this rain?” Shae asked with a laugh. “No, Mr. Flores, I have had a quiet night in, thank you very much. Though I see you cannot say the same. Your boots are quite muddy. If you would not mind…oh.”
Rico’s jewelry rattled as he shook clean like a dog. “Got reports of a light coming from the woods near your place ’bout an hour ago,” he said. “And none of my men have been over this way.”
“A light?” There was a wobble in Shae’s voice. “O-oh, yes! Of course. I did go out.”
“You did.”
“Yes. Apologies, Rico, this bourbon. I was out earlier, see, checking on the generator. Had a momentary lapse in power, damned thing. But then again, I just had momentary lapse in memory, so who am I to criticize?”
Rico’s boots crept across the wooden floors. Dan leaned down over the ladder, held a rung for support, tried to get a view of the men in the strips of light that poked through the splintered walls. His heart ricocheted off the tile floor.
“Two bowls of ice cream,” Rico said.
“I should probably get better about washing my dishes when I’m through,” Shae said. The confident timbre returned to his voice. “One is from last night. A thousand pardons, Rico, but what is this concerning? If it is the same to you, I would like to get some sleep. Even without the sun, I feel it important to retain circadian rhythm, I—”
Dan winced as the cabin shook. Shae gasped and kicked. Rico had lifted and pinned him against the wall.
Rico spoke through gritted teeth. “Don’t fuck with me, Doctor.”
“What? R-Rico, I—”
“The ice cream ain’t melted, hombre. Think I’m fucking stupid?”
“No, no, of course n—ah!”
Rico slammed him against the wall again. A picture—or something—fell to the floor and shattered.
“I know Brody’s got a soft spot for you. I don’t have soft spots. There are rules on my island.”
Dan’s ears burned. Again with the my island stuff.
“Who was here?” Rico demanded.
“Rico, I told you, I—”
Slam.
“Who. Was. Here? ”
“Please, Rico. I-I just—”
Shae shrieked and a shadow shot across the slats in the closet walls. The doctor collided with a credenza—part of him went through it—and papers and knickknacks rained down on him. Dan flinched, furious, and his foot hit something in all that dark, a desk or a table or a heavy chair, and whatever it was scraped across the tile and made enough racket to pause the scene below. Rico’s hunter instincts kicked in. He took a deep whiff, like Dan was something he could sniff out, and his heavy boots approached the closet door. Dan scrambled backward into the dark, hit his head on something, his wrist on something else, toppled over another something.
He pinned his back against what felt like a large filing cabinet, prayed that when the lights clicked on, he was out of view, not casually sitting in the open like some sort of snared rabbit. He slammed the back of his head on the cabinet in frustration, which was a dumb move because something dislodged from up top, and somehow all of his muted senses worked together in a perfect moment of human reflexive harmony, and he caught the falling object in the dark. It was heavy and cool and round but who cares—he’d just done something super impressive and not a soul had seen it.
The blue lights of the observatory clicked on in pieces, illuminated the room quadrant by quadrant. Dan’s quadrant was last, and when he peeked one eye open, he indeed was hidden, tucked between a filing cabinet and a steel desk against the room’s round metal walls. He was holding a snow globe, of all things.
“I’m gonna put a bullet in anything breathing up here,” Rico announced, his voice echoing.
That isn’t much incentive to reveal oneself, so Dan balled up as tight as he could and held his breath.
Shae was up the ladder now, panting.
“Lilyanna agreed my observatory was off-limits!” Dan was impressed with the spunkiness of the old man who’d just been yeeted through a credenza.
“Well, Lilyanna ain’t here,” Rico said. Something turned over on the other side of the room, a resounding crash that caused Shae to cry out.
“You absolute oaf! What gives you the right to raid my—”
That next sound was a slap, no doubt about it. A Rico slap—those sucked. Big-time. Shae was on the floor now, sniveling, weeping, crawling, and Dan felt terrible because this was all his fault, so terrible that he almost popped up, but not so terrible that he wanted to get shot over it. His quivering hands upset the contents of the snow globe. Look at that glitter fly.
“You find where the sun went with this thing?” Rico asked, ignoring Shae’s sobs. He flicked the telescope, it bonged like a drum. “I got a theory that it didn’t explode. That something just knocked into it, sent it flying like a pool ball.”
No response.
“Don’t like that one? I got others,” Rico roared as he upended a desk, sent papers flying into the air. Some of the documents floated down atop Dan. A Polaroid photo appeared from under the filing cabinet, like it was looking for a place to hide too. It bounced off Dan’s foot.
Any fear of being discovered was temporarily pushed aside by his immediate fascination with the photograph—it was yellowed and nearly out of focus, but Dan recognized Dr. Shae. He was younger though, with a full head of hair, and he stood near seven others in the woods. Nobody in the photo smiled—the largest man, the one next to Shae, practically scowled. Something about the photo was perverse, it felt dirty in Dan’s hand, his instinct was to fling it back under the cabinet and forget it existed. He almost did, but then…
The woman in it—the one standing in front with bushy black hair and unsure eyes and freckles peppered over her nose and cheeks like stars in the night sky—that woman…why did she look so familiar ? Dan flicked through the Rolodex of faces in his brain, then back again, and she was there, she was somewhere in there, her file just out of reach, calling out to him, her cries fainter with each pass…
The steel desk beside Dan flipped, almost crushing his fingers, and Dan buried his head in his arms, wanted to think of Mara in his final seconds, but instead was stuck thinking about this woman, this stranger—or was she?
“Another thought is the sun’s still there, right?” Rico said. “But we just can’t see it, ’cause aliens wrapped the planet up in something, like how you wrap food and put it in the freezer till you want it.”
Rico’s seized the filing cabinet. Dan tucked the photo into his pants and braced himself. He’d rush Rico. His best chance was to surprise him. Rico was much bigger than Dan—like if they were Russian dolls, Rico would be the outside layer and Dan would be the nougaty center—but big boys startle easy, Dan’s father had taught him that, something about them never expecting to be rushed because of their size, just look at elephants and mice. Maybe that’s part of why he attacked him in the hangar. Dan was ready to go balls to the wall, to go out swinging, but just before Rico turned the cabinet, his radio buzzed like in the movies.
“Uh, Chief Rico. Come in, Chief Rico.”
Dan rolled his eyes. They were calling him chief now?
Rico sighed. “Yeah. Go ahead.”
“Uh, sir, Mama Bear’s real upset. Asking for you.”
“This fucking lady,” Rico said under his breath. “Tell her the K-Cups are in the cabinet in room three fifty-two. I moved them because—”
“No, sir, it’s not that. We’re still at the hangar.” And then, in the background, Lilyanna Collins’s voice. “Is that Rico? Is that Rico? Give me that. Rico?”
Rico murmured, “Fuck,” and then, “Yes, ma’am.”
“Rico, you told me you’d be five minutes. Where are you? Where’d you go, son?”
“Mrs. Collins, I—”
“Listen. I don’t like the way this Alan fella’s looking at me over here. So, I ain’t feeling so secure. Am I crazy for thinking that should concern my chief of security ? Am I paying you well?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Then do your job, son, and come on back to the hangar.”
Rico’s frustration radiated through the filing cabinet. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Thanks, hun.” Lilyanna pulled away from the radio and hollered. “Pete. Pete! Baby. What’d I tell you about standing so close to the propeller? Lord almighty, these men…” The radio cut off.
No one moved. The metal on the telescope groaned. Rico took a deep breath, gathered himself, and spun toward Shae, still a heap on the ground. He walked over him, his boots like hooves against the tile floor, and descended the ladder without a word. Dan didn’t emerge until he heard the Jeep outside drive away.
The observatory was a mess. Papers everywhere, film reels unspun, computers shattered. The telescope was impressive though. It was the first time Dan got a good look at the thing. There was a striking contrast between the telescope and its operator: one stood proudly in the center of the room, searching diligently for other worlds, and the other slunk against the floor, sifting through the ashes of his.
“Saved your snow globe,” Dan said, helping Shae to his feet and placing it softly in his quaking hands.
Shae barely saw it. “Yes. Yes, thank you.”
“Look, Doc, this is my fault. I’m sorry, man. Rico is such a prick. Let me help you clean up. Christ, look at this place.” Dan bent to collect some papers—gotta start somewhere—but Shae’s hand appeared on his shoulder.
“No. No. We must get you back before he returns.”
“What? No. I wanna hel—”
“You can help me by leaving.”
There was finality to that, Dan knew better than to push it. Plus, Shae looked like he might cry again, and there’s nothing more depressing than watching a man in his sixties cry.
“Okay,” Dan said. But first, he had to know. “Doc. Why’d you bring me back here? Why’d you help me? They’re clearly keeping a close eye on you.”
Shae briefly looked up, considered that. “It can get lonely in outer space. Now go.”
“I don’t know the way back,” Dan said. The words felt even more pitiful leaving his mouth than they were inside his head. “And these patrols…”
The color returned to Shae’s face. “You think Mr. Sheridan’s the only one on this island who thought to build a tunnel?” He winked.
“ShaeTech had a tunnel?”
He ushered Dan toward the ladder. “And now, as a result of this conversation, two people on Earth know about it.”
“What do people studying space need with a tunnel?”
Shae wiped a tear from his eye. He must not have heard the question.