The Bones of Old Carlisle (24 page)

Tamani had been reading calmly, dispassionately, but with these
last words, she set the paper down next to the beer at her feet, put
her face in her hands and wept.

Danielle knelt on the floor and put her arm around Tamani’s
shoulders. “Okay, that’s enough,” Danielle said. “We’re done, okay?
You’ve read enough. You’ve read enough.”

Tamani, her face still in her hands, nodded.
“So, this is fiction, right?” Art asked nervously.
For a long moment, everyone stared at him, expressionlessly.

Finally, Arrowroot spoke.
“I don’t know, I don’t know,” he said. “It matches some things I
saw out there a few weeks ago. And it might explain some things that
have happened since.”
“What are you talking about?” Danielle asked sharply.
Arrowroot put his hands up defensively. “Now, don’t go flying off
the handle on me, okay? Okay? Most likely animals on the loose is all.
But something got to a soldier yesterday. At Fort Shergawa. On the
Heligaux side of the fort.”
“So how long were you planning to keep this a secret?” Danielle
asked. “Did the Army threaten you if you talked?”
“They gotta notify next of kin,” Arrowroot said. “Not
everything’s a military conspiracy. There’s a young man whose life has
just ended, and—“ Arrowroot paused and cleared his throat. “And his
momma and dad deserve to hear it from the Army first, not from a bunch
of scared people who think machines are eating people.”
Arrowroot turned to Tamani and lowered his voice. “But just to
cover all the bases, you know, do you recall what these things looked
like?”
“Black, about this high,” Tamani said, holding her hand about six
inches off the floor. “About two feel long, not counting the antennae,
six legs and—”
“The antennae?” Art interrupted.
“Yes, like a cockroach,” Tamani replied. “A very big cockroach.”
“Are you sure that’s not what they were?” Art asked.
“No, they were machines,” Tamani said. “We broke some of them.
They were full of gears and metal parts.”
Arrowroot wrote out a check for $500 to Art. “How long will it
take to print all of both crystals?” he asked.
“I’m not sure how much is there yet,” Art replied. “But I can
keep working on it.”
“Good,” said Arrowroot. “I’m gonna call it a night. Art, ladies,
been a pleasure.”
“You mind if I try to get it all translated?” Art blurted out.
“How the hell you gonna do that?” Arrowroot asked.
“People online who like solving puzzles,” Art said. “This is a
good one.”
“My first response is hell no,” Arrowroot said. “This could get
someone in trouble who’s innocent.”
“Or someone in trouble who’s not the least bit innocent,” said
Danielle. “Adele, would that be okay? Is it okay if we try to get it
translated?”
Tamani lifted her face from her hands and nodded to Art. “I’m
sorry I can’t read it anymore.”
“Would it be okay if I shoot a word or two to you if we get stuck
on something?” Art asked.
“Yes,” Tamani said. “One word at a time.”

Arrowroot picked up a sandwich at one of the plastic restaurants
on Highway 6, drove home and made a beeline for Robert’s room and the
papers waiting on his floor.

Before he died, the younger Arrowroot had found a series of
letters, directed by the US Army to Gilbert Cronick at the Carlisle
House. The stories about how the family had been summarily ousted was
all wrong, Arrowroot realized. The Army had been telling them, in
polite Army language, to get the hell out of that house for months,
after paying $250,000 for the house and land, not a bad sum in 1941
dollars. And Gilbert had pocketed it all, apparently, and kept the
transaction to himself.

Quite a story in itself, but Robert seemed to have found more.
Someone else knew about Gilbert Cronick’s deception.
Arrowroot leafed through the papers until they started to spin,
and then he went downstairs to look some names up on his computer.
Then he remembered the email he had promised Cecilia and Mr. Smiley
he’d write, and he sent it to himself, every nonsensical character.
He looked up Gilbert Cronick, found dozens of matching names, and
went back to his email, where the message he had sent himself had
indeed arrived. In fact, he found 10 copies of it, all identical. He
refreshed and 20 more appeared. Groggy, he turned off his computer and
went to bed without thinking at all about strange emails, drinking, or
crystals. He slept better than he had in two weeks and woke up at 6
a.m. feeling oddly alert.
His first thoughts upon opening his eyes were, first, that he was
going to spend the day at City Hall, second, that he was going to have
dinner with Dr. Schaumberg and, third, that whatever was going on, he
was in way over his head. Way, way over his head. He was colluding
with his daughter to aid and abet a federal fugitive. He was helping
said fugitive, who was at least deeply traumatized if not mentally
ill, to uncover something horrible she had forced herself to forget,
and was probably better off not remembering. He was the only one who
could talk to a bizarre man with inhuman teeth who claimed to be on a
mission for the government. There were dead bodies, ravenous robots
who might still be on the loose, and something peculiar going on with
his email account.
He turned on the coffee maker and went back to his computer. He’d
received nearly 100 more copies of that email. Tired as he was the
previous evening, he knew he hadn’t hit send 100 times. Maybe the
button stuck, he speculated, as he deleted them one by one.
After they were gone, he found an email from Danielle, sent an
hour before, with the subject line “Translation going strong!”
Arrowroot went to the kitchen, poured his coffee and, with a growing
sense of dread, returned to his computer.
Overnight, apparently, Art had posted a stack of materials to a
website entitled Swarm Translation.
“A tragic narrative has been created in an unknown alphabet, in
an unknown language, and stored on crystals,” the site announced, with
a helpful picture of the two crystals Arrowroot had found at the
Carlisle place. “Help us decipher it and we’ll post the results
online.”
One link led to images of the section Art had printed out the
previous evening, with a word-for-word transcript of Tamani’s
translation.
Another link led to new pages, dozens of them, presumably scanned
by Art, thanks to the generous patronage of one Karl Arrowroot, Mayor
of Heligaux.
A third link led to a forum, where fans of the site could
exchange ideas and questions on what the pages meant. There were
already five posts there, two of them by Internet bots promoting
medical remedies, but three by real people.
Arrowroot, his face flushed and heart racing, scanned the entire
site for his or Danielle’s name, and was only slightly relieved to see
that neither appeared. Art had left his name off as well, fortunately,
but if anyone in authority got interested in the site, it would only
be a matter of time.
There was one other email in overnight, spam with a virus
attachment that Arrowroot deleted.
“In over my head,” Arrowroot said to Othercat as she leapt into
his lap. “If they drag me away one day soon, you look out for
yourself, okay?”
Arrowroot spent a few more minutes looking for Gilbert Cronick,
growing increasingly disgusted with the Internet’s value when it came
to finding people. A dozen sites hinted they might know who Gilbert
Cronick was and where he lived, but every one of them wanted you to
type in personal information, or pay something, or sign up for a
service that was free for the first month. Then his heard his phone
vibrating from the kitchen, set Othercat on the floor and went to see
who was calling.
It was Chief Hatfield.
“I hate it when you call me this time of the morning,” Arrowroot
answered.
“Are you still planning to come in today?” Hatfield asked
abruptly.
“Yes, gotta lot of—“
“They’ve come to town,” Hatfield said. “Ate up an old drunk named
Bertram Chalk.”
“Aw, shit,” Arrowroot said. “Where?”
“Under the bridge,” Hatfield replied.
“Does anyone know yet?” Arrowroot asked.
“Just my department, the person who found him, and now you,”
Hatfield answered.
“Who found him?” Arrowroot inquired.
“Another drunk,” Hatfield answered. “Says he saw it happen, damn
near hysterical, having hallucinations, asked us to lock him up.”
“Did he say it was big roaches, something like that?” Arrowroot
asked.
“Where’d you hear that?” Hatfield asked.
“For now, let’s say I dreamed it,” Arrowroot answered.
“Seriously,” Hatfield persisted, “where’d you hear that? You
already talk to Juarez?”
“No,” Arrowroot said. “I just woke up.”
“You didn’t dream that,” Hatfield said. “It came from somewhere.”
“Floyd, you know I have crazy dreams,” Arrowroot protested.
“Please don’t go all Dick Tracy on me.”
“What did you end up doing last night?” Hatfield asked.
“Took care of a few errands,” Arrowroot replied.
“Did you talk to anyone?” Hatfield persisted.
Arrowroot cursed himself silently. Why did he have to mention
roaches to Floyd. What possible use would it be? He’d seen the chief
work a murder a few years back, using a laser-like focus and an
unbending determination to get what ended up being an iron-clad
confession. No messy, expensive trial, just a plea bargain and a nice,
efficient 10-year sentence. With a few careless words to Hatfield,
Arrowroot had converted himself from mayor to witness, possibly even
suspect. He wasn’t going to be able to back out of it now. Danielle
and Tamani didn’t know it, but they were one step closer to Federal
lockup.
“Alright, hold on,” Arrowroot said. “I’m ready to tell you
everything I know, and I’m coming to City Hall so I can do it in
person. But I can’t promise what I tell you is going to make any
sense, and there are things I can’t explain.”
“Hmph,” Hatfield said, and Arrowroot suddenly felt annoyed.
“Okay, this is gonna be a two-way street, you know?” Arrowroot
said. “Yesterday, I tried to tell you and that lawyer lady what I
heard from that damned Mr. Smiley and she tried to sue me and you
acted like I was crazy. So if I start talking about robotic roaches
and all and you start looking at me funny, I’m gonna—”
“Did you say robotic roaches?” Hatfield interrupted.
“I guess I did,” Arrowroot replied. “What of it?”
“You didn’t say robotic the first time, you just said roaches,”
Hatfield said.
“How do you know what I said?” Arrowroot countered. “That was,
like, five minute ago.”
“Robotic,” said Hatfield. “That seems like a significant detail.”
“Well, maybe I dreamed that too,” Arrowroot said.
“Karl,” Hatfield said, and then he paused. “Karl, I’ve got a dead
citizen who was alive yesterday. Drunk or no drunk, I’ve got to know
what happened so it doesn’t happen to anyone else, and right now I’ve
got two things to go on: A hysterical drunk who says it was giant
roach machines, and the mayor of the town who somehow seems to know
the same thing.”
“Okay, okay, just let me take a shower and get dressed, alright?”
Arrowroot said. “I’ll be down there in less than an hour.”
It had been months, probably since last summer, that Mayor
Arrowroot had spent a full day in City Hall. As he drove through
Heligaux at the start of another blazingly sunny spring day, he felt
ready for anything. He pulled his truck into a spot behind City Hall,
walked in and made a tour of the first floor. Several dozen people
worked in the building, and Arrowroot knew them all by name, as well
as by character and by familial relation in most cases. Many of them
had known Robert, and those who hadn’t seen Arrowroot since the news
of his son’s death hugged him and whispered their sympathy. It was
almost like another funeral, and by the time Arrowroot reached his
office on the third floor, he was emotionally exhausted.
He turned on the lights, opened the blinds, shut the door and
began to recover as he realized he had missed the place dearly.
He’d furnished it himself, with a cherry desk, a leather swivel
chair, two pink silk couches for visitors, and a bevy of artwork for
the walls and bookshelves. It was a small office in the corner on the
top floor, graced with large windows overlooking the Promenade, the
Mittelkopp and Steeple Mountain. On days when he had the luxury of a
little free time, he would stand at the window and look down at the
city that had entrusted its welfare to him. He’d been mayor for six
years, through thick and thin, and it was indeed his proudest job.
At the other end of the Promenade, he saw several figures
running, being chased by something small and black, and he started
before he saw that it was just a group of children with a dog.
There was a huge stack of papers in his inbox, and although he
knew the critical matters were being taken care of by city staff, he
felt an urgent need to at least put a dent in it this day. He grabbed
a handful of documents and turned on his computer. Hopefully Chief
Hatfield wouldn’t be taking too much of his time with troublesome
questions.
There was a bang on the door. “I’m here, Floyd, c’mon in,”
Arrowroot said, resigned to the interruption.
It wasn’t the chief who walked in, however, but one of the county
jail trustys, prisoners in blue denim who were allowed to do menial
work on city and county property.
“Haven’t been here in weeks,” Arrowroot said, not glancing up
from his work. “Nothing to clean up today.”
“Hello, Karl,” said a strange, familiar voice.
“Huh?” Arrowroot said, starting. “Oh, hey, Mr. Smiley. What the
hell are you doing here?”

“I need to talk to you,” Smiley said.
“Wasn’t expecting to see you today,” Karl Arrowroot said. “Your
lawyer told me to stay the hell away, in case she didn’t tell you. But
I need to talk to you too.”
“Did you send the message?” Smiley asked.
“No,” Arrowroot said. “I’m not talking about your email yet. Take
a seat and let’s talk about your damned roach robots. They ate someone
in town today.”
Mr. Smiley sat down and stared at Arrowroot, his face unreadable.
“How do you know they’re roach robots?”
“For a couple of reasons,” Arrowroot said, “not the least of
which is that you just asked me how I knew.”
“I don’t understand,” Smiley admitted.
“Well, if I’d said something else, like I wanted to talk about
your damned man-eating ninja chickens, you woulda just kept staring,”
Arrowroot said. “You know, like you do half the time anyway.”
“Did you send the message?” Smiley asked.
“It’s my turn to ask questions,” Arrowroot said. At any moment,
the chief of police was going to come busting in and ask very
difficult questions, and unless Arrowroot stonewalled or lied, he was
going to lose his daughter, and possibly his freedom too.
Nebuchadnezzar Smiley seemed to know more than he was letting on,
and if he had any information that might help, Arrowroot needed it.
Now.
The mayor leaned back, took a long, slow drag on his coffee and
started putting a plan together.
“So, who do you think killed your brother out at the Carlisle
place?” Arrowroot asked.
“He wasn’t my brother,” Smiley replied.
“Did I say brother?” Arrowroot said. “I meant cousin.”
Smiley looked off, considering the word for a moment. “Not cousin
either.”
“Any relation whatsoever?” Arrowroot asked.
“No,” Smiley said, staring without emotion into Arrowroot’s eyes.
“Now the problem is,” Arrowroot observed, “you’re lying.” He’d
learned in a lifetime of sales that silence could be a very effective
tool for persuading people, so he stared back at Smiley and said
nothing.
Five seconds passed before Smiley squirmed on Arrowroot’s pink
silk couch and blurted, “Did you send that message yet?”
“There are two people on this planet that look like you and that
fella that got his head turned backward,” Arrowroot said. “And that’s
you and him. So ain’t no way you aren’t related. Closely. And now
you’re lying to me, and then you’re asking me if I’ve done you a
favor, and that’s not how it works. This is a two-way street, boy. A
two-way street. So I’m gonna ask you some more questions, and some
I’ll know the answer to, and some I won’t, and you’re gonna tell the
truth all the way through, and then we’ll talk about your damned
message.”
Smiley just kept staring.
“So those roach robots, they’re for gathering food, aren’t they?”
Arrowroot asked.
“Yes,” Smiley answered.
“And the fact they’re eating up people, something’s gone wrong,
hasn’t it?” Arrowroot asked.
“Yes,” Smiley answered.
“But you can turn them off anytime you wanted, can’t you?”
Arrowroot asked.
“No,” Smiley said. “I should be able to, but something is
interfering.”
“What do you mean?” Arrowroot asked.
“As soon as I arrived, something rendered my communications
equipment inoperable,” Smiley said.
“Now who would do a thing like that?” Arrowroot asked.
“I didn’t say someone,” Smiley replied. “I said something.”
“Sunspots, maybe?” Arrowroot asked.
“I don’t think so,” Smiley replied.
“What are you using, a laptop, a walkie talkie, cell phone or
something?” Arrowroot asked. “Maybe you got a bug in it, like a virus
or whatnot.”
“No, that’s not it,” Smiley said. “It’s very strange.”
“You’re not human, are you?” Arrowroot inquired, and the question
hung there between the two men for a moment as Smiley stared at
Arrowroot.
“No,” he said.
“So where you from?” Arrowroot asked gently.
“The name would mean nothing to you,” Smiley said.
“You from our galaxy or elsewhere?” Arrowroot asked.
“Elsewhere,” Smiley admitted.
“And you don’t speak a lick of Gaelic, do you?” Arrowroot asked.
“No.”
“How many people came with you?” Arrowroot asked.
“I’m the only one,” Smiley said.
“Bullshit,” Arrowroot said victoriously. “Gotcha!”
Smiley just stared.
“There were 13 originally,” Arrowroot said. “That much I know.
You and your lookalike that got his neck twisted, and eleven more.”
“That’s not true,” Smiley said calmly. “The other one, the dead
one, I didn’t come with him, but he was of my kind. There were no
others.”
“You saw the bodies yourself, you damned liar,” Arrowroot said
icily. “The four of them that got all chewed up by the roach robots.
Or three who got ate and one got his head dented. They were all with
you.”
“They were not,” Smiley said. “They were human.”
“Okay, just keep lying,” Arrowroot said. “We’re getting the whole
story anyway, off your magic crystals or whatever.”
“What crystals?” Smiley asked, and he slid to the edge of
Arrowroot’s silk couch and the register of his voice changed
perceptibly.
“You know, about yay big,” Arrowroot replied, and he held an
imaginary crystal in his hand. “Got some kind of funky microscope
looking at it now.”
“There’s nothing on it,” Smiley said.
“Well, not to the naked eye maybe,” Arrowroot said, “but it’s all
frosty inside. Turns out all that white stuff in the middle is letters
and words, lines and lines and pages and pages of ‘em. Of course, you
already knew that.”
“You are lying, or being deceived,” Smiley said, a new tone to
his voice that Arrowroot interpreted as stress.
“I’m not lying,” Arrowroot said. “Good possibility I’m being lied
to, of course, especially since you’re in the room. But between your,
uh, tall tales and a crystal with a bunch of words on it, I’m going
with the crystals for now.”
“Where did you get them?” Smiley asked.
“Out at the house where you got arrested,” Arrowroot replied.
“Found ‘em next to— next to the body of my son. Almost forgot about
them, but then someone, uh, someone reminded me of them, and I started
getting them looked at last night.”
“You can’t read them,” Smiley said.
“I know someone who can,” Arrowroot asserted.
“Who?” Smiley asked.
“Okay, we’re done on that subject,” Arrowroot said. “I’ve got a
whole lot of questions for you, but I just heard the chief of police
talking downstairs, and he’s looking for me. Oh, and I sent that
email, I’ll tell you that now. I sent it once, got 100 of it in my
inbox.”
Smiley almost bounced on Arrowroot’s couch. “What else did you
get?” he asked.
“That’s it, just the same email a bunch of times,” Arrowroot
said. “And one other email, from— One other email, where they set up a
site to translate the mess on those crystals.”
“Impossible,” Smiley said.
Arrowroot punched a few keys on his computer, opened his email
and found the link to the translation site. “Looks like we’ve made
some progress,” he said. “Got, uh, 20 people going through it now.
Take a look, here’s what they’re reading.”
Smiley darted around Arrowroot’s desk and stared at a page of
strange characters on the screen. As he read, his breath quickened
and, to Arrowroot’s surprise, his face went flush.
“So they got blushing where you’re from too, do they?” Arrowroot
asked.
“You told me this wasn’t a simulation,” Smiley said. “It’s time
to terminate. I want to terminate.”
“Terminate what?” Arrowroot asked, alarmed.
Someone pounded Arrowroot’s door.
“That you, Floyd?” Arrowroot asked.
Chief Hatfield threw the door open, barged in and stopped, an
expression of mystification on his face.
“Floyd, you remember Mr. Smiley,” Arrowroot said. “Or, uh, Mr.
Nebuchadnezzar Smiley when he’s on official business. But his friends
call him Nebby. Ain’t that right, Nebby?”
Hatfield nodded to Smiley. “You ready to talk?” he asked
Arrowroot.
“Oh, all the way ready,” Arrowroot said. “Mr. Smiley here spilled
the beans on everything. Turns out he ain’t human, not barely. From
another galaxy and all. Ain’t that right, Nebby?”
Smiley spoke, but it wasn’t English. Alternately addressing
Arrowroot and Hatfield, shuffling his feet and gesturing oddly with
his arms, he talked for half a minute. He seemed desperate to
communicate something, but it was all “glubs” and “gleebs.”
“Floyd, doesn’t that sound like Gaelic to you?” Arrowroot asked.
“You know, like they used to speak in Great Britain? Or I guess they
still do somewhere over there.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Hatfield replied.
“Alright, Mr. Smiley, I guess our little conference is over,”
Arrowroot said, standing to usher his guest to the door. Smiley,
moving slowly and hesitantly, clearly didn’t want to go, and Arrowroot
almost felt sorry for him as the man passed into the hallway and
picked up his broom and dustpan.
Arrowroot returned to his office and sat down. “Okay, okay,” he
said. He looked up at Hatfield and took a deep breath. “Go ahead, ask
your questions.”
“What were you talking about with him?” Hatfield began.
“Says he’s from another planet,” Arrowroot said. “I was serious
about all that I just said. From another galaxy. I’m inclined to
believe him.”
“I got a dead body under a bridge, Mr. Mayor,” Hatfield said.
“Right now, that’s all I want to know about.”
“You see, here’s the problem,” Arrowroot said. He took another
sip of coffee, folded his arms, leaned back in his chair and gazed out
his window, down to the Promenade. It was mid-morning, and the shops
were starting to open, the tourists and the citizens making their way
beside the river, under the sun. “If I don’t tell you what I know, I’m
going to jail. And if I do tell you, you’ll have me committed.”
“Try me,” Hatfield said grimly.
Arrowroot drew in his breath and leaned forward. “There’s 200
billion galaxies out there, at least, in the known universe. And
there’s 200 billion stars in our own galaxy, and 90 million planets or
thereabouts, and so there’s gotta be some other life out there
somewhere. You with me so far?”
To Arrowroot’s surprise, the chief nodded.
“Once that life gets smart enough, it’s gonna start looking
around, it’s gonna come knocking,” Arrowroot continued. “And I believe
it’s earth’s time now. Except whoever’s come knocking, they didn’t
have their business plan completely together, if you will, and
everything’s gone to hell.”
Arrowroot looked up at his door and laughed. “That fellow who’s
out there sweeping up, he’s one of ‘em. Okay? I believe it. I believe
it. But that’s the thing. Ain’t no way he came to earth to get
arrested, sweeping up candy wrappers and all. And his brother or
whatever gets his neck broke before he’s even settled in to visiting.
Something’s gone all a-kilter with ‘em.”
“What about the killing?” Hatfield asked.
“I’m working up to that,” Arrowroot said, “but there’s
considerable preamble required to make this story, you know, halfway
hold water.”
“Keep going,” Hatfield said. If he thought the mayor was crazy,
he wasn’t showing it.
“So these folks, they bring these robot roaches with ‘em to get
their food,” Arrowroot said, and he held his hands two feet apart.
“Black, yay big, antennas and all. But those damned machines got the
wrong idea about things, decided people made the best food of all.”
“Your ideas make as much sense as anything else,” Hatfield
conceded. “But I don’t care where they came from, I just want ‘em
gone, or turned off.”
“Before you got here, I asked him about that,” Arrowroot said.
“He says under normal circumstances, he could do that. But something’s
shut down all his gear. You understand what I’m saying? He gets to
earth, lands at the Carlisle place, and all of a sudden his radio or
cellphone or whatever starts shootin’ blanks.
“I said maybe it was sunspots, he said no, but he had no idea
what it was. So think about it. He lands on a military base, all of a
sudden he can’t place a call. Like someone did it. Not something, but
someone. Like the Army knew he was there all along, actin’ clueless,
and all the while they’re turning off the phone of an interstellar
visitor like they do it all the time. You think that could be? You
think Uncle Sam’s got this one covered?”
Hatfield leaned back and stroked his beard. “No,” he said. “If
they did, they woulda taken out the robots first thing.”
Hatfield’s phone rang, he answered, listened to someone talk and
hung up. “That was Juarez,” he said, standing. “Whatever they are,
we’ve got one cornered in Traxie.”