Chapter 34

SEATTLE, WASHINGTON STATE

Wednesday 15h00

Eddie was jealous. He knew he shouldn’t be, but he was. His brain knew he shouldn’t be, but there was a squeeze in his chest and a skip in his heart and a low feeling in his stomach. Len said she loved him! She acted like it! She was incredibly sweet! But the problem wasn’t Len. It was Carl.

“Damn it!” Eddie said, dropping the sensor for the third time. Betty jerked. “Sorry,” he mumbled. Betty nodded in what Ed took as his apology accepted. She seemed to look amused and sorry for him.

“Stop it!” Len said laughing from across the room. Ed struggled with the sensor again, forcing him to focus on putting it back on to the designated spot at Betty’s temple. Horace had managed to obtain a more powerful scanner from the lab, and though he was reluctant to come back, his curiosity overcame him.

“Horace,” Eddie said, desperate for distraction. “Are you sure you won’t come in?” Eddie, Max and Len were fussing over Carl, Betty and Al in the living room.

“I’m um, fine out here, thanks.” Horace sat by himself on the bed in the guest room analyzing the Fliegerlied-8 scans, attempting to clarify and understand what the blurred images were. They had frozen the night sky image projection on the wall, and it was this that calmed his palpitating heart, knowing that creatures were in the next room.

It was funny. In all rational worldviews, Horace should be less afraid of the three beings in the next room than he was. Carl had become smaller in size — he was now about seven feet tall — and his eyes looked far less reptilian than they had. The skin of all three of them had improved, and with the help of Mildred’s topical cream, they would probably be lesion- and flake-free within a few weeks.

But Horace was terrified. Terrified of them. At the same time, he so badly wanted to study them and interact with them just as his colleagues were doing at that very moment. The banner of science. Breakthroughs. The extra-curricular work they were doing was at the cutting edge of science. It didn’t matter for now that no one knew. They would soon. And he was only going to be a peripheral part of it.

Sighing, Horace got back to the hologram of smeared lights. He zoomed in on a corner and attempted to define the image better. But the way Fliegerlied-8 output was set up, Horace would probably need something more powerful than a portable system square to analyze it.

He gave up. He would have to sneak this into the lab on Friday and run it through his system cube. Poor Dolphie. He thought both Eddie and Horace were out with contaminations. Ed was due back tomorrow, but Horace should be out for 48 hours to make the whole story believable.

Horace’s heart clenched — he sensed before he saw a presence at the door.

It was Carl.

Horace fell backwards over the edge of the bed, crying out as his bad arm hit the wall. He was a big man who cowered pitifully in the corner.

Carl hesitated at the door — if a creature could look uncomfortable, Horace thought, this was it. It was inconceivable. It — he — shifted back and forth on his feet

And opened and closed his mouth in a grotesque parody of speech. It looked as if Carl was about to have a fit. Horace pressed his back against the wall. Where was everyone else?

“Aaaaaahh.” A low, deep groan escaped from somewhere in the back of Carl’s throat. Horace couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe. He thought that his heart had stopped.

“Ahhhhm sorrr. Sorrrrr-eeeee.”

That’s it. Horace went into full cardiac arrest. Or at least he thought he did. What he knew was that he opened his eyes to a circle of concerned faces looking up at him. He was lying in the middle of the living room on Len and Eddie’s soft duvet. Rather, Carl’s bed. He looked uncomprehendingly from Eddie to Len to Max to Betty, Al and… Carl.

Carl’s mouth opened again. “Ahm sorree.”

Everyone stopped looking at Horace and heads snapped up to look at Carl.

“What was that, Carl?” Ed asked.

“Ahm sorree,” Carl said. Ed, Len and Max erupted into a cacophony of interjections. Al and Betty emitted grunts and groans. And Carl dropped his jaw.

“He has a maxillator!” Max’s voice drowned out all the others. “And an orbicularis oris!” He yelled in quick succession — the sides of Carl’s mouth pulled up.

“What the hell does that mean?” Eddie asked.

“He’s smiling! He’s smiling!”

“He’s talking! He talks!” Horace screamed. His body fought against him. He couldn’t back out of the circle and he couldn’t get further from Carl than he already was. But Carl looked different from the giant beast that had tackled him the day before, and vastly different from the one-legged bleeding monster that they had picked up on the road.

“Carl?”

“Ahm sorree!” Carl held out his hand as if he were going to help Horace up. Horace started to shrink back, but then Carl spoke again. “Ahm sorree Horrris.” Horace couldn’t hold back any longer.

“Carl!”

There was commotion, action and suddenly, hugs. No one knew who was hugging whom, but everyone was jumping around, excited.

Eddie looked up over Horace’s shoulder as they pounded each other’s backs and glimpsed Carl pulling Len into his massive arms and holding her close just a moment too long.