Thirst No. 3 (9 page)

“I dabble.”

“This guitar is tuned perfectly. You have a good ear.”

“Thanks. What’s your song called?”

“‘Mystery Mind.’ But it’s rough.”

“It’s fantastic,” Teri mutters.

Matt strums a few chords and begins to sing:

You’ve moved through time,

And left behind the masses in your wake,

You loved me then, you love me now,

You’re always there to take

A diamond is an easy find, compared to what

I’m calling mine,

The ages leave the smallest clue,

To roads untouched, but never true

Where to find this mystery mind? The Gods

confide in you.

I need your answer. Call my name. Abandon

guilt, Abandon shame,

And when you take my outstretched hand, by simple

nod or love’s command,

I’ll wrap you in eternal flame, our hearts to fuse,

one and the same

I tire of my shattered pace,

I reach to feel love’s one true face,

I fear I failed to take heed of your first and final signs

Walk with me, at least pretend,

To hell’s back door around the bend,

We’ll crush the darkness as it sleeps,

And leave the waking world to mend

Where to find this mystery mind? The Gods

confide in you.

I need your answer. Call my name. Abandon

guilt, Abandon shame,

And when you take my outstretched hand, by simple

nod or love’s command,

I’ll wrap you in eternal flame, our hearts to fuse,

one and the same

When Matt finishes, Teri applauds and gives him a kiss. I see how much he looks to her for approval. But I can only gaze in silent amazement. I feel the song is about me, for I often feel trapped in an endless mystery of time, in Krishna’s own mind.

“Awesome,” Teri exclaims. “I love how you changed around the second chorus. You didn’t just repeat the first round.”

“I changed it while driving here,” he says, before turning to me. “What did you think? You can tell me the truth. I know it’s rough.”

“I think it should be played on every radio in the country.”

“Me too,” Teri adds.

“Get off it,” Matt snorts.

“I’m serious.” I suddenly stand. “I know people in New York and LA. At three of the majors: Atlantic, Sony, Geffen. I bet I could get you an audition with that one song.”

I make the offer knowing I’ve already vowed not to help them with their lives. So much for vows—I’m much too impulsive to take them seriously.

“Why should they audition me?” he asks.

“Because I know them,” I reply.

“How?” he persists.

“I’ve got money. Money opens every door. Look, I’m not trying to trample on your male pride. I can only help you get your foot in the door. Your song still has to knock them over.”

“Would he have to record it first?” Teri asks.

“It wouldn’t hurt to walk in with a demo of what we just
heard. But it’s not necessary. You’ve got charisma, Matt. They’ll see it. If I was you, I’d let me make a few calls and then get on a plane tomorrow.”

He shakes his head. “The song is brand-new. I can’t go into a major label with it. It needs work.”

“You have a dozen songs you’ve worked to death,” Teri says. “Take Alisa up on her offer.”

“I’ll think about it.”

Teri gets impatient. “What’s there to think about?”

He gives her a look. “Lots of things.”

I hold up a hand to stop the argument from happening. “Just tell me when you feel ready,” I say.

Matt continues to fiddle with the guitar. I can tell he loves it. Later, I’ll have to figure out a way to give it to him. While he strums the instrument, I ask Teri to take a walk with me. The official reason is to explain her job responsibilities, but I can feel she wants to talk. We hike through the nearby woods. They feel so peaceful, yet I keep alert, listening for the slightest sound that would tell me we are being followed.

“I don’t know why he cut you off like that,” Teri says after we’ve hiked maybe a quarter of a mile. “I hope you didn’t feel he was being rude.”

“Not at all. He wants to make it on his own. I respect that.”

“Matt’s a hard one to do favors for. He’s super independent.”

“So are you.”

She blushes. “What makes you say that?”

“No one’s helping you pay for college.”

“I was lucky to get my track scholarship.”

“It wasn’t luck that allowed you to win so many races in high school. You worked your butt off.”

“I did, but . . .” She doesn’t finish.

“What?”

“Running comes easier to me than most people. It must be my genes. Sometimes I wonder if I could run in the Olympics.”

“The metric mile? The fifteen hundred meters?”

“Yeah.”

“Tell me about it.”

Teri stops walking as she struggles to find the words. “I train mostly on the track because the coach expects it. And I’m good at running intervals. I know it’s a quick way to build strength. But I feel at home when I go out for longer runs, alone, either late at night or early in the morning. Sometimes I slip into a rhythm—it’s hard to describe—where I don’t get tired no matter how fast I run. At times like that I feel I could break the world record in the mile.”

I understand perfectly. But then, I’m not human.

“So you want a gold medal and you want to graduate medical school before you’re twenty-five. Anything else?”

Teri laughs. “You’re making me sound like Ms. Super Achiever.”

“There’s nothing wrong with fulfilling your desires.”

“What if there are ones you feel you’ll never fulfill?”

“You’re talking about Matt again.”

“No. Yes! How did you know?”

“You can control what you do. But you know you can’t control him.” I pause. “By the way, that was brave of you to encourage him to audition.”

“He has so much talent. You’re right, I can’t hold him back.”

“But it scares you just the same.”

“Sure. You saw the way the girls all cheered when he came on last Friday. If he gets his foot in the door, he’ll hit it big, and then he’s going to get hit on by every chick between New York and LA.”

“Do you want my advice?”

“If you have some to give me, sure.”

“Actually, I usually hate giving advice. People never listen to it. In the end, they just do what they want to do.”

“I’m listening . . . Alisa.”

“Trust.”

“Trust in what?”

“Just trust.”

“You mean, trust in his love for me?”

“That’s part of it. Trust in the big picture as well.”

“What’s the big picture?”

“No one knows. That’s why you have to trust in it.”

Teri considers for a moment, then smiles. “How did you get so wise?”

“Oh, I’ve been around.”

We walk for another hour without talking. I enjoy the
exercise, but I’m also looking for places to set up monitoring devices to increase my security.

Back at my house, we find Matt reading a short story that I wrote for a sci-fi anthology. It’s a personal favorite; I left it out on purpose. It follows the observations of K-8-P—or Kap—the name my hero goes by while he’s on earth. Matt reads it aloud to catch Teri up.

Although from another planet, Kap is a low-level grunt who, along with his partner, has been assigned the job of destroying the earth. Kap’s own world is only a few centuries further along than earth, but it belongs to an advanced galactic civilization that has been monitoring earth’s TV and radio programs for decades, and that has determined we are far too hostile a race to be allowed to expand out into the galaxy.

My story begins with Kap and his partner spraying a ten-mile-long asteroid with a special type of black paint that reduces its albedo ratio—its ability to reflect light—to near zero. Then the two outfit the asteroid with rockets that fire for a month and slowly alter its orbit so that it will intercept the earth in three years. Because it’s so dark, earth astronomers won’t notice the asteroid until it’s days away from destroying our home.

The job done, the two enter a deep freeze that will keep them asleep for a decade while they cruise home. Only Kap sets his hibernaculum so that he awakens as soon as his partner is asleep. He turns their ship around and heads for the earth. He is curious to meet humanity. This is the tenth planet he’s
destroyed, and he wonders what criteria the top dogs in the galaxy are using to decide who lives and who dies.

The story takes off when Kap takes a shuttle down to earth and is fired upon by America’s missile shield. His shuttle is damaged, and he crash-lands a couple of miles offshore, near San Francisco. The shuttle is equipped with a device that instantly gives Kap amnesia, lest he accidentally or intentionally warn any backward planet that it is about to be destroyed.

Kap survives the crash and is rescued by a fishing ship.

The rest of the story deals with Kap’s innocent observation of human life. In one sense he sees everything with a child’s eyes. But in another sense his observations are profound because they’re completely unbiased.

I called the tale “Eyes of the Stars,” and it won both a Nebula and a Hugo award for best sci-fi short story of the year. Like most of my work, I published it under the name Lara Adams.

“Why do you use a pen name when you write?” Matt asks as he finishes the story.

“Don’t be so nosy. Her reasons might be private,” Teri scolds.

“I do it to maintain my privacy,” I say.

“I don’t believe that,” Matt teases. “Most people, when they’re nobodies, talk about how they wouldn’t mind the money fame brings, but they’d hate to have people chasing after them taking their picture. But I think everybody wants fame.”

“Not me,” I say flatly.

“Come on,” Matt insists. “Wouldn’t you love to have your
picture taken by paparazzi and splashed all over the magazine covers?”

“Paparazzi are vultures. They’re the last people I’d want near me.”

“I couldn’t agree with you more,” Teri says. “Our society suffers from celebrity addiction. So much reality TV gives people the impression that the only way to be happy is to be famous.”

“Hear, hear,” I mutter.

“Would Kap agree with you guys?” Matt asks.

“You know he would. You just read my story.”

Matt disagrees. “Kap’s observations of mankind are confined to small things. How people push ahead of each other in checkout lines. He never reads a paper while on earth. He doesn’t study our politics. He doesn’t go after the bigger picture of why we’re a danger to the rest of the galaxy.”

“Remember, for the bulk of the story, Kap’s lost his memory—”

“I don’t know why you set it up that way,” Matt interrupts, a bad habit of his. “Kap’s observations would be more interesting if he could mentally compare his home world to earth.”

“Kap’s observations are worthwhile because they’re innocent,” I say. “He focuses on the small things we do because they’re the most telling. When he sees a herd of cattle being rounded up for slaughter, it’s his gut reaction that makes the story ring true.”

“The truth is most of us would be vegetarians if we saw how animals are killed,” Teri says. “Matt, remember that chicken
farm we drove past in Kansas? After they gave us a tour, that was it for me. I haven’t been able to eat chicken since.”

“You’re a hypocrite, darling. You still eat steak.”

“Once a month. To keep from getting anemic.”

Matt gestures to the swordfish. “You ate meat right now.”

“Fish is not meat,” Teri says.

“Tell that to the fish just before you chop off his head.”

“Krishna used to say that fish were swimming vegetables,” I say.

“By Krishna do you mean the Hindu god?” Teri asks.

“Yes.”

“I didn’t know you were into Eastern thought,” Teri says.

“I like to study what every tradition has to offer.”

“According to Kap, humanity has nothing to offer,” Matt says.

“Not true. In the end he tries to save the earth,” I reply.

“So what? Ninety percent of his observations of us are negative. The one place where you do deal with a larger issue is when it comes to money. You portray everyone who’s rich as evil.”

“Kap never uses the word ‘evil.’ He just notes that the distribution of wealth on earth is insane. Kap never gets angry at the rich. But he can’t help feeling their behavior is illogical, because such unfairness cannot be sustained forever. At one point equality is either achieved or a culture falls apart due to internal pressures. History has taught us that much.”

Matt laughs. “Bullshit. America’s the most powerful nation
on earth. But ninety percent of the wealth of this country is held by one percent of the people, and America shows no signs of faltering. It grows stronger with each passing decade.”

“China grows stronger with each passing decade,” I say. “They’re the ones who pay the interest on our national debt.”

“I knew, I knew it,” Matt jeers. “You’re a left-wing liberal.”

“You could not be more wrong.” I hold up both my hands and flex them. “I believe only the strong survive.”

“Then you’re a Republican, like me,” Matt says.

“I despise Republicans,” Teri mutters.

“I’m neither,” I reply.

Matt misunderstands me, of course. Having lived so long, I can’t tell the difference between the two political parties. They both sound like broken records that started skipping after the founding fathers died. Now there were some real men!