Cottonwood (16 page)

She knew what she had the instant she saw what was inside. And tucked on top of all the newspaper-wrapped treasures was a single sheet of paper marked by her big sister’s broad, loopy handwriting:
Sorry I was so bitchy on the phone. I miss you bucketfuls. Found this while cleaning out my closets and thought you might like to have it. Please please please be safe. Love, Katie.

Sarah did not especially believe in God, but there were moments in her life when she flirted with the idea of signs and omens and this, she was certain, was one of them. Or if it wasn’t, at least it was an excuse to get a second opinion on The Plan from the one person she knew she could trust to tell about it.

The box went into the way-back of the van, behind the rear seat where it was hidden. She drove to Checkpoint Seventeen, was flagged down briefly so that the day guard could come out and harass her, but it was a different guy and he only stuck his head in and said, “Driving today?”

“It’s too hot to walk,” she said, trying not to even think of the box, in case he could see it reflected in her eyes. She hated lying, but Kate was right: She could get away with it just an incredible amount of the time.

“It’s August. It’ll get worse before it gets better.”

“Then you’ll see me driving more often,” she said, and smiled.

Politeness always seemed to throw these people, she’d noticed that before. The guard reared back, blinking at her, then offered an extremely grudging smile of his own and waved her through. “Keep your doors and windows locked,” he called as she swiped her card. “The bugs will take anything that ain’t nailed down and pry up anything that is! Security is extension 99 on your paz! Do not wait to get swarmed before you page me!”

“Thank you!” she called, and drove off down the causeway as unseen aliens put out the alert that she was here. If she saw one peek out from an alley or the top of one of their makeshift houses, she waved. One of them spat at the van, but otherwise no one reacted, which was actually something of an improvement.

She got some work done, because that was what people who were not involved in shady plots did, and also because she still had a lot of census reports to take. She didn’t get many—even at this early hour, most of her clients were either not at home or pretending not to be—but she did get a few, and Baccus even came to his door when she knocked, although he didn’t open it. He assured her he was all right, that he was healthy and he did not need a doctor, and then he begged her in his whispering way to please leave him alone, so she did. Turning away from his door to see T’aki waiting at the end of the road with his tin cans and trucks was like coming out of the rain into sunlight. She waved, walking to the van as he jumped up and down and waved back.

“That’s favoritism,” Samaritan remarked when she slid in behind the wheel.

Sarah screamed, throwing herself back against the seat, and the alien in her rearview mirror laughed that scuttling laugh.

“You should really keep your doors locked,” he suggested, and looked around. “This isn’t an IBI van.”

“It’s mine,” she managed to gasp, still grabbing the shirt over her pounding heart. “Mr. Samaritan, what are you doing in my car?”

“Just relaxing. I don’t go for a lot of rides. So. What is it with you and Sanford? You don’t see me every day.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Let me rephrase that. You don’t
want
to see me.” He chuckled, then slid off the back seat and came forward on all fours, until he was right behind her. He reached up, long black fingers toying with her hair. “But you go singing off down the road every single day just hoping to see Sanford. I’m jealous.”

“He’s got a cute kid.” What was he doing back there?

“Yes, he does, doesn’t he?” His fingers kept stroking, lightly tugging now and then, moving with unhurried intent over her head.

He was braiding her hair. For some reason, this was the creepiest thing he’d done yet. Sarah sat frozen, her scalp crawling, unable to think how to stop him.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard a human refer to one of our children as cute before,” he remarked, utterly absorbed in what his fingers did. “Have you ever seen an egg?”

“N-no.”

“Relax, relax. You’re always so nervous. No, humans don’t tend to think eggs are cute, do they? They even eat chicken eggs, which I don’t mind telling you is kind of disgusting when you stop and think about it. On a number of levels.” He finished with her hair and draped it over her shoulder, then looked at her reflection in the mirror. “But you think Sanford’s boy is cute.”

She nodded.

“They were sure pissed when he had him. They came by a few days after the kid was licensed and tried to take him away. Said the conditions were unsafe.”

His eyes in the rearview mirror invited comment. Sarah said nothing.

“Sanford can be pretty bad-ass when he wants to be, don’t let that cool exterior fool you. And by the way, what do you think of the conditions here, caseworker?”

“Of course they’re unsafe,” she said. “They’re unsafe for anyone. That’s why we have to fix the conditions, not take away people’s children.”

“You sound like one of those humans on TV with all their chatter about the best way to manage us. And yet we’re still so dangerous. Even the cute ones.” Samaritan leaned in a little closer and drummed his palps lightly against the back of her now-bared neck. He laughed again when she shuddered, but backed away. “Tell me the truth, are you just using the kid to get a little closer to his dad? Is that it, caseworker? You curious about the chitin?”

“Would you please get out of my car?”

“It’s nice in here. But it’s funny that you only have the two seats up front and the long bench in back…with all this space in the middle…and a blanket.” He picked up one corner of Fagin’s traveling quilt and put it down again. He looked at her. “Why don’t you come in back with me?”

“Get out of my car!”

“It’ll be a little cramped, but we can make it work.”

“I know you’re not serious, now get out!”

His eyes blinked once, cat-like. “What makes you think I’m not serious?”

‘Because you’re an unisexual drone!’ she wanted to shout, but something in his smug, knowing stare stopped her.

“You are so much fun,” he said, and opened up the side door. He got out, straightened with a brisk shake, and slammed it, waggling his fingers at her through the window.

“Asshole,” she muttered, and pulled her hair loose again with hands that only shook a little. T’aki was still waiting, and now the door behind him was also open, an invitation to the slightly cooler interior of Sanford’s home. She left Samaritan behind her on the causeway and drove the last hundred meters or so to her ultimate destination. This time, she locked the doors.

“Blue van!” T’aki cheered as she got out, and came running over to climb onto the van’s hood and slap his palms over its ticking engine. “Is that the good kind?”

“I like it.” She picked him off the hot hood and set him on the ground again. “Don’t run off anywhere, jellybean. I found something of yours.”

He stopped bouncing and cocked his head at her. “Of mine? Where?”

“Out here somewhere,” she said, going around to the back. She heard the scrape of Sanford’s stool and saw him come to the door.

T’aki turned around and wrung his hands a little as he looked back and forth from each one of his tin cans to the half a milk jug in their center. “I didn’t lose anything,” he said. And when he saw the box come out of the van, his tiny face became quite solemn. “That isn’t mine. It belongs to someone else.”

“Honey…” Sarah hipchecked the van doors shut and came to set the box down on the hood. She hunkered down to get more or less on the boy’s level, and smiled for him. “I have a lot of rules that I have to follow if I want to work here, you know that, right? Like, I have to come only during certain hours, and I’m not allowed to talk about certain things, and mostly, I’m not allowed to bring stuff in or take stuff out unless I have specific permission to do so, even if I really want to.”

“Yes?”

“So I can’t give you things,” she said slowly, meaningfully. “But if I find things inside Cottonwood, it’s okay for me to return them to you.”

T’aki’s eyes slowly narrowed as he leaned forward, the very picture of intense concentration. “Is it…a lie?”

Sarah sighed and rubbed her eyes. “Yes, honey. It is a lie.”

He looked up at the box and wrung his hands again. “Where did you really find it?”

“In my house. Please open it.”

“Inside,” said Sanford, clicking hard as he looked down the empty causeway. He took the box, held the door for the two of them (still staring outside), then shut them all away in privacy. Only then did he look at it, moving his fingers slightly to inspect the mailing address and the faint blue lettering stamped beneath it. “You should not have done this,” he said, setting it down at last before his hopping, excited son.

“I’m aware of that, but in the great scheme of things, it didn’t seem like a lot of risk. I didn’t smuggle in uranium or anything.” She dropped into Sanford’s green vinyl chair and watched T’aki clamber head-first through the cardboard flaps, crumpled newspaper flying as he unwrapped the first item.

His kicking feet stilled. A low, groaning sort of rattling breath came out of the box. Sarah checked with Sanford to see if it was a good sound, and therefore missed the moment that T’aki dropped back onto the floor, holding her giant rubber iguana in both hands over his head like the Holy Grail. He made it squeak. The eyes bugged. Sanford’s head cocked, his antennae spiking upwards. T’aki squealed and dove back into the box.

A sparkly frisbee, a couple glittery rubber balls that lit up on the good bounces, her remote-controlled tarantula (“That may not have any batteries,” she said. “I have spares,” Sanford replied, still watching his son), a squirt gun in the shape of an elephant, her Spiderman webslingers, a whole row of Easter chicks that peeped if you held them in your hand, a huge can of Legos, three of the six officially licensed PlantGirlz 12” action figures, her dolphin lava lamp, and—

“Oh my gosh!” Sarah laughed, delighted. “The
Fortesque Freeship
! I forgot I even had that!”

T’aki, by this time standing chest-deep in wadded newspapers inside the otherwise empty box, looked at her and then at the clunky plastic ship in his hands. “What is it?” he asked.

“It’s a toy spaceship. Actually, I think it’s the ship from
Scylla Six
, but it always reminded me a little of the one Fortesque used in
Invasion of the Asteroid Men
, so when I saw it at the thrift store, I basically promised my mom my life’s blood if she’d buy it for me.”

“Spaceship,” T’aki echoed softly, his eyes huge. He touched the tiny plastic window. “It flies.”

“Only in pretend. I used to have a little Creature from the Black Lagoon inside it for a pilot, but one time Kate got really cheesed at me for something and popped the head off, so I threw it out.” She watched him make a practice swoop and laughed quietly to herself. “It didn’t occur to me until much later that a headless monster in a spaceship was right up Fortesque’s alley.”

“Can I keep this one?” T’aki asked, bouncing in the box with the ship clutched to his chest. “Please! Please please please
please
!”

“Honey, you can keep them all.”

Sanford looked at her.

“I guess anything you don’t particularly want, you can give to someone else. Or, you know, whatever.” She picked up Iggy and squeaked him, smiling. She tried not to wonder how many cans of rotten roadkill he was worth.

“What is Fortesque?” T’aki asked, struggling his way out of the box in a drift of newspaper and still trying to keep his ship in the air, flying.

“Fortesque was Charles M. Fortesque. He was an Englishman who came to America back in the seventies to learn how to make serious movies, and then went to Italy and made a lot of science-fiction ones instead.” She paused. “Movies are—”

“I know. Picture-stories for pretend.” Swish-swish went the ship, and then T’aki looked at her brightly. “Sometimes Father takes me to see movies after the Heaps.”

“My Dad used to take me to movies too. And Fortesque’s were the best. They were just
awful
.” And she laughed. “I loved them.”

Father and son glanced at each other.

“Yeah, I know that needs some explaining. Fortesque made movies with a little money, a lot of creative freedom, and this glorious excess of enthusiasm that made the most ridiculous things fun to watch, regardless of how bad you knew the movie really was. I know, I know. I have to give you an example.” She thought about it, and laughed. “Okay, first Fortesque I ever saw was
Killer Sludge from Dimension X
. I don’t expect you to know this, but even the title is terrible and hilarious. Okay, so the sludge is actually a thin layer of latex spread out over an ottoman with some air bladders built in and a lot of dish soap to make it shiny, so even at the very start, it is about the least menacing thing you can possibly imagine. It spends about ninety minutes creeping around, blowing bubbles and apparently killing people off-screen, although I was never able to figure out how. I don’t know, maybe it had a gun.

“Anyway, there’s a scene where the hero and the heroine are in their living room talking about how to destroy it, and while they’re talking, the sludge suddenly creeps in from the kitchen and comes towards them. In any other movie,” said Sarah into T’aki’s wide-eyed and fascinated face, “this would be an intensely dramatic moment. The kids are completely wrapped up in each other, the sludge is ominous and out-of-focus, just coming and coming…and coming…” She waited. “And coming…”

T’aki giggled.

“I timed it once. The scene takes five minutes and fifteen seconds before the sludge finally rears up behind the couch and the kids see it. And the living room is not that big, so yeah, it takes five minutes and fifteen seconds to creep along
at most
twenty-five feet. Let me break that down for you, jellybean. Your dad’s work table is about five feet long. I’m going to set my timer—” She fished out her paz and flipped the stopwatch app on. “—for one minute and three seconds, and you try to walk from one side to the other and not get there before it beeps.”