Girl in Landscape Page 6

  “We showed him pictures,” said Ray, as though he were an old hand at Archbuilders, as though he’d seen more than pictures himself before Hiding Kneel appeared.

  Ben Barth chuckled. “Pictures don’t do that face justice, though, do they?”

  “Could it be your countenance that has mispleased the child?” said Hiding Kneel to Ben. “He had no similar photographic preparation for such an event.”

  “Get the big comedian, here,” said Ben Barth. “You’ve really got to work on your delivery, Kneel.”

  Pella saw that Clement was paralyzed, made stupid by the situation. She went and plucked David away from his brother.

  “Tell me what’s the matter,” she said.

  “What Raymond said,” David howled.

  “What did Raymond tell you?” Pella asked.

  David controlled his crying enough to speak. “The potato fish were going to grow up into Archbuilders, like that one,” he said, squeaking. “In the middle of the night. In the house.”

  “You know he’s lying,” said Pella. “I can tell you know.”

  David sniffed and nodded.

  “The Archbuilders are okay,” she said. “This one’s a dork, anyway.” She didn’t care if Hiding Kneel heard. She couldn’t be expected to go around protecting Archbuilders’ feelings, on top of everything else.

  “Raymond, don’t confuse your brother,” said Clement. “There’s enough to get used to.”

  Hearing Clement talk in pallid euphemism, the very word confuse letting Raymond off the hook, made Pella yearn for Caitlin. She wouldn’t have let the presence of an Archbuilder keep her from disciplining her children.

  “You heard him, he knew I was kidding,” said Raymond.

  Pella kicked Raymond. Her contribution to his upbringing.

  “There you go, kid,” said Ben Barth to David. “Kneel’s nothing to be afraid of. Archbuilders don’t scare anyone for very long. I was just telling it how your dad is going to be running this place sooner or later. You’re probably the most important family around here. The Archbuilders ought to be afraid of you, kid. Except they don’t care.”

  “Nobody wants to do anything that conflicts with the Archbuilders,” said Clement. “Quite the opposite—”

  “I’m sure, I’m sure,” said Ben. “Archbuilders aren’t the problem. That’s exactly what I was saying.”

  “We just want to live here, in a way that’s in accord with the place.” Pella could hear her father squirming, trying to slip off the podium Ben Barth was building for him. “Nothing needs running.”

  “See, accord,” said Ben. He turned to the alien. “That’s a word I can appreciate, Kneel. Used in its rightful place, not strewn around in any goddamn sentence.”

  The Archbuilder was moving toward the table again, its interest wandering. Pella walked quickly over, brushing past the Archbuilder, feeling its fur against her arm. She felt her face redden. Avoiding the Archbuilder’s gaze, she picked up the jar of potato fish and handed it to David. “Put this in your room,” she said. “It doesn’t belong on the table.”

  “I should get going,” said Ben Barth. “Come on, Kneel, give these people some time to get settled in here.”

  The Archbuilder turned, thoughtfully. It seemed oblivious to Pella. “My purpose is recalled,” said the alien. “I wish to challenge you to a renewed tournament of backgammon, Ben.”

  “Not now,” said Ben. “I’ve got to get the farm cleaned up. Efram’s coming back in a day or two.”

  “Tonight will be fine—”

  Ben winced. “You can’t be coming around so much, Kneel. You know Efram doesn’t want you around his place.”

  “Bruce Kincaid says Efram makes you work on his farm,” said Raymond in one impetuous breath. “Why’s that?”

  “Who’s Efram?” said Clement.

  “He doesn’t make me, kid,” said Ben Barth.

  “Why don’t you have your own farm?” said Raymond.

  “Because I wouldn’t know what to do with my own farm, and because Efram needs someone to look after his, that’s why.”

  “On your own farm backgammon could be played,” said Hiding Kneel.

  “That’s enough out of you, Kneel,” said Ben. “Come on, we’re overstaying our welcome.” He herded the Archbuilder toward the door. Pella saw household deer skittering out of their path. “See you, Mr. Marsh. You kids be good.”

  “Clement, call me Clement,” said Clement. “Thanks for your help.”

  He waited a minute after they were gone, then said again, “Who’s Efram?”

  Pella and Raymond couldn’t answer. They knew that Efram didn’t like underground food, children who didn’t take drugs to prevent Archbuilder viruses, or backgammon.

  But they didn’t know who he was.

  The next morning they had another visitor, one as unsettling, in her way, as the Archbuilder. Tall, with her hair in a long ponytail, she might have been thirty-five. She was nothing like the other adults Pella had seen here, Bruce and Martha’s parents, homely and suburban, or E. G. Wa and Ben Barth, the two gangly, stringy men, the stray dogs. This woman seemed to float above the surface of the planet slightly. She came in when Clement and Pella were cleaning up breakfast and looked at the new house as if she was appraising it for purchase.

  “Diana Eastling,” she said, and shook Clement’s hand. “I’ve heard your name.”

  “This is my daughter, Pella,” said Clement. Diana Eastling turned and nodded briefly. Clement said, “Will you sit for a minute? Have some tea?”

  The woman nodded again, and went on looking hard at the house. Finally she said, “This is good. Yes. It’s time for this.”

  “Time for what?” said Clement.

  “Time for children here. You people with children will make yourselves a town. Tame the wilderness. It won’t take much.” She smiled at Clement oddly. And then she sat down.

  “As opposed to some type of people who won’t make a town?” said Clement. “I don’t understand.” He brought two cups to the table.

  Pella followed him and took a seat at the table. Raymond and David were already out playing, led by Bruce Kincaid.

  Diana Eastling smiled with her mouth closed. “I just think it’s brave to come here with three children. And that it might actually lead somewhere, start a new chapter. I feel the same way about the Grants and Kincaids.”

  “I’ll accept the compliment,” said Clement. “Though I think it might have been braver, suicidally brave, to stay behind.”

  “I don’t know about that, firsthand,” said Diana Eastling. “I haven’t been there for a long time.”

  “You’ve been here?”

  “I’m a biologist,” she said. “And I’ve become something of an expert in Archbuilder biology. I moved out here before there was any idea of a town. I suppose that’s the distinction I was making before.”

  “Someone had to be first,” said Clement, in a tone Pella hated. He sometimes sounded like he was awarding people a status they already possessed. “But you’re glad there’s going to be a town, I trust?”

  “I don’t care,” said Diana Eastling flatly. “Anyway, don’t credit me with being first.”

  The moment was awkward. Pella felt embarrassed to be at the table. She still hadn’t uttered a word.

  Like a household deer, she thought.

  But Clement rolled on. “Maybe you’ll feel differently when the place begins to take on some personality—”

  “Well, I won’t move away.” Diana Eastling provided him another tight smile. “But then, I don’t live that close now. Real towns have people like me living on their outskirts, if I remember correctly. That can be my contribution.”

  Clement nodded. Pella was aware of his desire to say the right thing to this oddly testy visitor. “It will take more than a few growing towns to ruin the solitude around here,” he said carefully. “Big planet. Anyway, there’s the Archbuilders.”

  “What about the Archbuilders?”

  “If you ne
ver wanted to see a living soul—”

  “Ah, yes. Archbuilders. Living souls. Indeed.” She hesitated as if to laugh, but didn’t. “Listen, when I said you were doing a brave thing, I meant one thing in particular: Your children aren’t taking the antiviral medication. Or did I hear wrong?”

  Clement barely paused. “You heard right.”

  “Well, I’m interested in that,” she said cleanly. “I’ll be very interested in the outcome.”

  Suddenly Pella felt the two adults not looking at her. Their not looking was tangible, an act.

  “It’s a part of taking the place seriously,” said Clement. “Really being here. As far as I’m concerned. We can’t just take pills forever.”

  We, thought Pella. Clement and his constituency, currently numbering three.

  “Well, you’ve captured my interest, as I said.” She got up. “Thanks for the tea.”

  Diana Eastling was good at keeping out of things. Pella wondered why she kept the skill so sharpened if she lived out at the edge of things, alone.

  “Then I trust I’ll see you again,” said Clement. “That curiosity will draw you back to our place.”

  “I’m around.”

  “I’d like to know more about the Archbuilders. I don’t get the feeling I’m going to learn much from Ben Barth.”

  “Ben Barth knows how to talk to them, which in a sense is everything. The things I know that he doesn’t aren’t very interesting to the layman.”

  “I’d rather be more than a layman,” said Clement. “But you seem like you’d be a very impatient teacher.”

  “I wouldn’t be any kind of teacher at all. I’m busy with my work. If urgent questions come up, I’ll offer my help. I have a feeling I’ll hear about it if they come up.”

  “From who? Ben’s friend Efram?”

  “It’s not that big a planet.”

  “Can you tell me about Efram?”

  “I’m not the best person to ask about that. Good day, Clement. Pella.”

  As Diana Eastling rose and moved to the door she turned her attention directly to Pella for the first time. Pella blinked and nodded. Diana Eastling’s smile was actually pretty warm, but it still didn’t draw her mouth open.

  She seemed to have details like that well under control.

  Six

  Running, running—

  Watching:

  The girl woke from the odd dream.

  But she wasn’t in her bed. She was out under the sky.

  And hadn’t she, when she thought of it, been awake just now?

  The sky glowed gray and pink, and her old shock at its cavernousness came back to her. She turned her head, and an Archbuilder ruin, a column five stories tall, topped with a jagged overhanging beam, swung into view against the pink vault of sky. She was lying out in the rubble and vines; she felt them now against her back.

  She’d been out exploring, with the boy, the one her age. Bruce Kincaid. But she was alone now. Perhaps she’d gone off on her own. She couldn’t remember. Anyway, it was the middle of the day. She shouldn’t be sleeping. She hadn’t been.

  Had she fallen?

  Archbuilder ghosts whispered up the sides of the column. No, not ghosts. Household deer. They were everywhere in the fragmented monuments. The girl sat up, listened to the wind. She was alone, except for the glinting, invisible deer.

  She thought of her mother, fallen in a seizure in the tub. Had Caitlin woken into a world as strange as this?

  Was this what a seizure was, then? Dreaming awake?

  Terrified, Pella stood up and ran stumbling over the flagstones out of the nest of towers, and right up to the edge of a sheer drop several times her height. She nearly plummeted, then righted herself, heart pounding.

  She stepped back from the edge, looked down. It was a dry moat running as far as she could see, and it only got deeper farther on. Pella knew she must have come from the other direction. She looked up, but the sky was no help.

  Five or six deer ran past her, giraffe necks bobbing, then plunged over the rim, a brakeless entourage. Lemmings, except they skidded and danced down the precipice, unharmed. She watched them flit away into the valley, until they vanished into the crystalline haze of sunlight on rock.

  She turned and headed the other way, skirting the shelf under the tower where she’d found herself just now, woken fallen and dreaming. She picked her way to a clear outcropping past the group of towers and, looking out, saw a building she thought was E. G. Wa’s shop. Bruce Kincaid was nowhere to be seen.

  She ran again, down the crumbled slope, into the valley. Wa’s shop disappeared from sight again, but it didn’t matter. She knew where she was. Out on the flats she slowed to a jog, but still huffing, panicked. Still no Bruce. She’d been here a week yet had never been alone, never been out in the open this long. Here, or back home, for that matter. Perhaps she hadn’t woken from her waking dream. Maybe she’d failed to break the spell, her dream merely segueing into some more lucid phase.

  But no, she was really here, running. Out on the mangled surfaces. Bruce had just gotten bored, and wandered off, probably. What needed explaining wasn’t outside her, in the world or the situation. It was her state that was the puzzle. Her interior. Her lapse into—what?

  She ran on.

  She came across a gouge in the valley floor. Stones pried out of place, a patch of dust moistened into mud by what had been pulled out of the hole. Potatoes. It was a place where Bruce had been digging, she could tell. Such a sign of normalcy already, that she paused there, hopeful, fond.

  She looked into the hole. Hacked-away vines trailed from the glistening gap, a socket like the space left when a baby tooth falls out. Bruce was probably cashing in the booty at Wa’s shop.

  Calmed somewhat, Pella trudged home.

  Her house was in sight when suddenly she was not alone. A man in a hat stood on a ridge to her left, between her and the sun, so that he was a silhouette against the pink. Standing still, he was almost like another of the broken arches on the horizon, somehow drawn suddenly close.

  She stopped, and they were both standing still. For a moment he just stared, one arm crossed over his middle, the other at his side, and Pella could imagine any expression on his face, and did. Then he started down the ridge toward her. She stood and waited.

  “You headed up to that house there?” he said when he got to her. He pointed first at her and then at her house, in a gesture gentler than his voice.

  She nodded.

  “New family,” he said. He was tall, but not spindly like E. G. Wa. Without his being at all fat, his hips were wider than his shoulders.

  She nodded again.

  “Well, I’m headed there myself. Ben told me, and I thought I’d come say hello. Only Ben must have left out that Marsh was remarried. You’re too young to have had three kids.”

  Pella was bewildered, then astonished, as she worked it out, the meaning of what he’d said. Was he joking? “I’m one of them,” she blurted. “One of the three kids.”

  Pella was already feverish in her panic. Now she felt her face flush with shame.

  But he wasn’t embarrassed. “Then this Clement Marsh must be older than I understood. You’re not much of a kid anymore.”

  “I’m thirteen.”

  If he was making fun of her he didn’t give it away. “What’s your name?”

  “Pella.”

  “My name’s Efram.” He smiled, and she permitted herself a look up at his face, but the hat cast a block of shadow across his brow and nose. His smile was bigger on one side than the other, and he held it so that it seemed carved in rock, the way he’d stood still when she first saw him.

  Then he pointed again at her house, and again the gesture was soft, like he was shaping the air with his hand. “I guess we’re going the same way, Pella.”

  “Yes,” she said, and nodded too. Suddenly she wanted to be back at the house, badly. Something was wrong with this meeting. Maybe it was the way they were out in the middle of the valley,
without even a porch for context. It seemed mistakes of scale were possible in this alien landscape. Pella could be taken for somebody’s wife. Her father’s, specifically.

  And Efram Nugent could seem too big, out here. She wanted him adjusted, made smaller.

  So they turned and walked together toward her house, but that seemed wrong somehow, too, the sudden implicit alliance, the way it was as though she was bringing him home. Efram just sauntered along beside her, unperturbed, so still even as he walked that she felt skittery, like a household deer veering dangerously near a human’s steps.

  They walked like this, in silence, the one solid and unhurried, the other dynamic, bright, unhinged. Their shadows pulsed out in front across the rocks, pointing the way. Even as the girl felt like a household deer herself the actual deer massed behind the rocks along the path, watching. They knew to avoid Efram Nugent. They’d learned.

  She ran up the porch steps ahead of him, abruptly completing the dash for home that Efram’s appearance had interrupted. “Clement?” She went into the back, looked in all three bedrooms, called his name again. “Hello?”

  Nobody was there. The house was empty.

  She went back to find Efram. He’d stopped on the porch. “Well?” he said, and spread his big hands.

  “Clement’s not home,” she said. “Um, do you want something to drink?”

  “No thanks.” He paused. “You look like you need one, though. Why don’t you sit down?”

  She felt a strange panic that he might enter the house. “I’ll be right back,” she said. She went inside, and poured herself a glass of water from the well tap. As she took the first sip she closed her eyes. The water was cool and tasted a little of soil or rust. Her heart was still pounding, her body still recalling waking on the hillside, jerking out of the dream. Efram had come along too soon. There hadn’t been time to consider what had happened, to keep it from playing on her face.

  When she went outside, Efram Nugent was just walking around the other side of the porch, assessing the house as if it had fallen from the sky.

  “Hello,” he said. “Feel better?”