In Situ (27 page)

Ara held out the bag to Alex, hardly breathing,
a look of triumph behind her reptilian eyes.

“Thank you
, Ara,” was all Alex could say.

A strange stillness filled the air.
The desert had become mysteriously silent. It was as if movement of any kind had become impossible. The sky had grown orange as twilight began to take over the early evening. Mot and Ara instinctively sniffed and flicked their tongues.

“It is hap
pening,” Ara said.

A streak of light passed over them, heading southwest
-a shooting star before day had completely turned to night. It lasted less than a second before its path merged with the horizon. Mot and Ara were the first to feel the ground shudder. A great light gradually emerged that was as bright as any sunrise they had ever witnessed, throwing a million trails of fire high into the evening sky. All of them knew they needed to go, yet none of them were able to take their eyes off of the spectacular light.

“Come on,” Tom finally said, tugging on Alex.

As they turned, Mot remembered the cave door. “Ara, help me.”

*

Mot and Ara easily rolled the ancient stone back into place as Tom and Alex watched the last natural light they might ever see disappear around its edges.
The door snapped into its 65 million year old cradle with an ominous groan of finality.

Tom switched on the two flashlights he had brought and handed one of them to Mot.
“Do you remember the way?” he asked.

“Of course,” Mot said, happy to finally be back on his own turf regardless of the circumstances.
“Follow me.”

Mot led them down the stone corridor that eventually put them in the Great Chamber.
He looked up at the small opening that the Arzats had formerly used to let out the smoke from the fires expecting to see light, but the sky was completely black and he could smell fresh ash in the air.

Ara stopped next to him, able to see everything in the room just from the ambient light that was cast from the human’s magic torches.
It saddened her to see the Great Chamber, once so alive with Arzats, now so cold and empty. She remembered the sweet white sand that Pete had shown her when he was trying to explain the passage of time. The full weight of his lesson began sinking in as she looked around the deserted room. It was no longer home. “Which way?” she asked Mot, anxious to move on, sniffing the ash.

As Tom panned his own light, he could see the gaping holes of several tunnels that branched off and he was glad that Mot was there to lead them.
They looked like giant mouths ready to devour the four of them.

“There,” Mot said, pointing his light in the direction of one
of the openings.

As they left the
Great Chamber, Ara looked back one more time. For a moment, she almost thought she could hear the echo of a group of Arzat Hunters.

*

They began to descend the long series of switchbacks and stone stairways that Alex and Mot had climbed to escape the caves just days before, the Arzats moving slowly so the humans could keep up.
Mot and Ara could see perfectly, but Alex and Tom were limited to just what they could detect of the steep terrain in the direct beam of the flashlights. Alex slipped and almost fell on several occasions but Tom had been there to catch her. He had offered his arm which she had refused, preferring to walk on her own.

When they reached the crevasse, Mot easily crawled down into
it, performing a monumental leap from one side to the other when he was only half way down. He scrambled up the other side effortlessly.

“Show off,” Tom said quietly with no malice.
He shook his head, amazed at the Arzat now standing thirty feet across from him as if by magic.

“I do not understand ‘show off
,’ Tom son of Robert,’” Mot said innocently. “Now, Tom, please tie the cord around Alex. Ara will lower her to the same place, the flat spot there,” he said, pointing down.

“Then what?” Alex said, already worried.

“Then Alex,” Mot continued patiently, “Ara will throw me the cord and I will pull you up.”

Alex knew the maneuver would force her to have to swing across the crevasse, but it was all the rope they had.
Tom carefully tied it just under Alex’s arms and gave the other end of the rope to Ara. Alex stepped over the edge, almost immediately losing her footing, and slipped awkwardly down to the outcropping, slowed by the tension of Ara’s grip on the rope.

“Do not worry, Alex,
daughter of Simon, I will not drop you,” she heard Ara say inside her head.

When she was safely on the ledge, Ara tossed the rope to Mot, who snatched it easily.
He wrapped it around his wrist, and beckoned Alex to swing across. Tom was doing his best with the flashlight, but she would be forced to jump into almost total darkness. She grabbed the rope with both hands and prepared to launch.

“No, Alex,” Mot cautioned, “hold you
r hands and legs out, they will protect you from the rock.”

“Oh shit,” Alex thought as she released her hold
on the rope, sure she would slip through. “Now or never Alex,” she could hear old Simon whispering in her ear. “Damn you, Simon,” she answered. Alex threw her arms apart and stepped off, closing her eyes despite the low light. She hit the wall on the other side much more softly than she had anticipated, and by the time she got her bearings, Mot had already pulled her to the top.

“Very good, Alex daughter of Simon,” Mot said approvingly as he untied her.

He tossed the rope back to Ara and they repeated the whole process-Tom with the climbing rope and Ara easily making the same spectacular leap that Mot had done earlier-until all four of them stood on the other side of the crevasse.

Tom had not gone into detail about the pumping of the caves, so Mot and Alex were both very relieved when they found them dry
, realizing that they would not have to swim through them again. They eventually reached the chamber where Mot and Ara had been asleep all of those years, Alex explaining exactly how she had found Mot and pointing to the area where Ara had been as they passed through.

As they began to climb back up the original tunnel that Tom and Alex had taken down, the earth shook violently.
They all fell to their knees and instinctively covered, but the shaking stopped, and the caves miraculously held together.

“Aftershock?” Alex asked Tom when the caves had quieted.

“Let’s hope,” he replied, getting back up and dusting himself off. He offered Alex his hand.

“What do you mean?”

“I hope it’s not a ‘before’ shock,” Tom said, panning his flashlight overhead, looking for cracks in the stone. “Come on, we need to get to the ARC.”

The four of them stood in the small chamber, looking at the several hundred tons of rock and stone that had been shoved into the entrance. Tom’s worst fears were coming true. It appeared as though his crew had managed to seal the breach in the ARC from the other side after all. If that were the case, then they were not only facing having to dig through the mountain of debris in front of them, but there might be several thousand cubic feet of cement and aluminum rebar already drying on the other side. His heart stopped just thinking about it. Their little foray to the safety of the Utah ARC might just be over. He began to think he had made a huge mistake.

“What’s wrong
, Tom?” Alex said, watching his reaction.

“I don’t know
, Alex. It doesn’t look good,” was all he could say, panning his flashlight over the pile of boulders.

Mot stepped up onto one of the larger rocks and looked around.
“What is the problem, Tom?” he asked, sniffing the air and flicking his tongue.

Tom just kept looking.

Ara, concerned, had once again probed deeper into Tom’s mind than she should have. “He’s saying we are trapped,” she said, her eyes narrowing. After coming all this way, they were trapped, she thought. Her future with Mot, which she had been contemplating with great joy, was suddenly doomed. No way forward and now, because of this human-Tom’s bad judgment, no way back.

Alex looked over at her, upset that Ara had obviously probed Tom’s mind.
The two exchanged glances. “Well, it’s not Tom’s fault,” Alex said, irritated.

Ara stared at Alex, her eyes almost glowing in the dark, resenting her and all of the rest of the humans who had put her in this predicament.
“You should just have left us alone,” she finally said, her anger turning into sorrow.

“Ara,” Mot said, jumping down from the stone he had been standing on, “remember, we are Zanta.
Where are your manners?”

Ara immediately realized that Mot was correct.
In the Arzat culture, particularly in the Zanta clan, it was considered an atrocity to disrespect an elder in any way. Ara wasn’t sure how that applied to humans, but it certainly applied to the opinion of her male mate who had just pointed out her fault.

“I am sorry
, Mot,” she said, her head hanging. She turned to Tom and Alex. “Please, forgive me. I know you have done all you can.”

Mot reached out and gently lifted Ara’s chin.
“Can you not smell it?” he asked her, a hopeful look in his eyes.

Ara sniffed the air deeply, flicking her tongue in the process, examining all of the elements.
She looked at Mot and her eyes opened wide. “Yes, Mot son of Url, I smell it.”

“Smell what?” Tom asked.

“Your cave Tom, your cave!” Mot said, turning back to him. “And I smell meat, lots and lots of meat!”

Mot scrambled up easily over the large pile of rocks, his nose working in tandem with his tongue, searching for the source of the delicious smell.
He was very hungry. It had been hours since they had eaten.

“I have found it,” he eventually said.
A large rock, wedged between the top of the pile and the stone ceiling, was the only thing blocking his way. Mot jammed his feet securely against it, using the rocks behind him for leverage, and kicked the boulder back into the darkness on the other side. His nostrils filled with the scent of food.

Mot led his three companions
over the rubble, through the small opening he had created, and down into the ARC. Tom was able to locate the main control room, and they all watched as he threw switches and gradually powered the place up, until the entire facility was lit like a small city.

“That should do for now,” he said, looking around proudly at his creation.

The Utah ARC had been designed much differently than the Nevada site. The Area 51 ARC was much older, and consisted only of a series of many rooms linked by miles of corridors. Tom’s ARC was wide open, with bright white buildings and actual streets. It had been built to house fifteen hundred souls. Eventually, the other three ARCs, including Nevada, were to have been replaced by this new design.

It looks like a snow globe that I had as a child, thought Alex.
Ara and Mot gazed at the white city, speechless.

“Welcome to
my
cave,” Tom said proudly to all of them, immensely relieved. “Now, let’s go see about some dinner.”

Tom led them to one of the commissaries that, like some in Nevada, had been built to resemble a restaurant.
Among his many talents, he was a very skilled chef, having pulled more than his fair share of shifts in the military mess halls for his occasional minor acts of insubordination.

He pulled out
20 pounds of rib eye steaks from one of the massive freezers in the restaurant kitchen and proceeded to thaw them while he prepared instant mash potatoes and several cans of vegetables. He resolved to attempt to get the ARC’s hydroponic farm going as he opened the last container and dumped it into a pot. Tom wasn’t quite sure about the Arzat’s dietary preferences aside from meat, but, he thought, what the heck, might as well find out.

While Tom prepared dinner, he sent the Arzats and Alex out on a reconnaissance mission to see if they could spot any heavy equipment and to select quarters.
By the time they returned he had set one of the restaurant tables and laid out his massive feast, complete with artificial candlelight that was flickering in white glass. He turned on some background music and ceremoniously invited them to sit down.

“We could have helped you,” Alex said, taking a seat, secretly glad that Tom hadn’t asked.
It felt so good to sit that she immediately wondered if she would ever be able to rise.

Ara was initially quite confused by the chairs and watched Ale
x closely before she tried hers, sure that it would collapse beneath her.

“What do you think?” Alex asked once they were seated.

“Quite comfortable,” Mot said, his eyes fixed on the large platter of steaks.

“We can move to the floor if you wish,” Alex suggested, embarrassed that
she might have put Ara in a very awkward position.

“No,” said Ara quickly, “thank you.”
She was determined to try the human way, including the strange metal tools they used to feed themselves.

*

“Well, Alex, did you have any luck?” Tom said as they were finishing dinner, referring to the heavy equipment he had sent her to find.

Alex fished in her pocket and threw a pack of cigarettes on the table in front of her.
“What’s that tell you?” she said, beaming. “Matches too,” she smiled, holding up a book of them between her fingers.

“Alex, I thought you quit,” Tom said.

“Oh, come on Tom, after all we’ve been through. Heck, there’s only half a pack here and when they’re gone they’re gone. I didn’t see any mini marts around this place, I can tell you that, but there is one big-ass loader parked over by the main ramp,” she added, smiling.

Tom wasn’t about to argue with her.
Alex did what she wanted. That was how it had always been, and he liked it that way. He just looked at her, happily defeated. He still couldn’t believe their luck. The loader would make the job of sealing the ARC about a million times easier. “Mot, we have one more thing to do tonight that I don’t think can wait,” Tom said to the huge Arzat who had just polished off several pounds of meat.

Mot had very much enjoyed the dinner Tom had prepared.
He had never seen a male cook anything in his life. These humans are so odd, he thought. Now that his stomach was full he was eager to return the favor. “How can I help, Tom son of Richard?”

“We need to go and plug that hole in the wall you knocked out.
How are you at operating heavy equipment?” Tom said, reaching up to pat the shoulder of the huge Arzat.

The two males
left the room and Alex and Ara found themselves suddenly alone with each other for the very first time. The silence was deafening with the exception of some classical music playing lightly in the background.

Alex
didn’t know if the music was Beethoven or Bach. The only classical composer she could readily identify was Mozart, who had been her father’s favorite and was hers.

“What do you call this sound?” Ara asked.

Oh my god, she’s reading my mind again, thought Alex. She glanced at Ara.

“I am sorry
, Alex, it is too easy,” Ara said, embarrassed, as if it simply were not her fault.

“Don’t worry about it.”
Alex poured a half inch of water into a short glass to use as an ashtray and fired up a cigarette, blowing the smoke luxuriously into the room. “We call it ‘music.’”

The aroma of Alex’s cigarette was actually quite pleasant, thought Ara.
It vaguely reminded her of the Great Chamber. “We too have such a thing, like this ‘music’ as you call it, although we must have Arzats to create it. The sound is different…, yet much the same.”

Alex let the comment pass, as much as she was interested.
She wished Tom and Mot would hurry and get back so she could go to bed. She could feel her eyes getting heavy.

“I am sorry
, Alex,” Ara said again.

“Why are you so sorry
, Ara?” Alex scolded her. “You have been through, well, I cannot even imagine.”

“I am sorry for my behavior in the cave.
Mot was correct. In my culture, you would have every right to kill me or banish me. It is an atrocity to show such disrespect to an elder. I’m afraid I was overcome with, something I think you humans call ‘emotion.’”

Alex couldn’t help but laugh.
“Well, I certainly have no intention of killing or banishing you. We females have to stick together now, don’t we?” she said, liking Ara again very much. “And,” she added, “I am
not
your elder.”

“Oh
, yes,” Ara said. “Mot has told me of your many seasons. You are almost as old as my mother.”

“Ouch.”
Alex looked at Ara closely, squinting over her cigarette, sizing her up. “OK, what is still bothering you?”

“I have conceived Alex.
Mot and I have conceived,” Ara finally said, as if she were afraid to admit it.

Alex almost choked on her cigarette.
She looked at it scornfully, and threw it in the glass of water. “You are going to have a child? Already?”

“Yes
, Alex,” Ara said, her eyes now glowing.

“How long, I mean,
how…, er?” Alex stammered.

“Several,” Ara hesitated, “several
of your ‘weeks’ for the egg, then several more for the child. A half of one season.”

Alex rose from the table and approached Ara.
She dropped to her knees and put her arms around Ara’s massive midsection. She stayed that way for a long time then looked up at the female Arzat. “Now, so we can survive each other, will you teach me how to block?”

*

When Tom and Mot had finally returned, the couples headed for the quarters they had chosen, which were close but not too close to each other. Tom was able to turn off the obnoxious automatic timer on the shower for Alex, and she had stayed in it for a very long time. When she came out, she approached Tom aggressively and made love to him until they were both exhausted and fell asleep in each other’s arms.