End Time (75 page)

If a great asteroid blasted away Earth's atmosphere, if supervolcanoes exploded the planet from within, if a magnetic reversal tore the oceans from their beds,
if the devil himself came down to lead us into hell
—that wouldn't be the final word. That wouldn't be the end. The Tea House of the Hidden Moon ensured survival. The endurance of all things:

A
Lifeseed
.

Lattimore paused at the pure genius of it.

His father's final note:
Over the centuries, the Tea House may have had many names. The Hebrews called it the Guf, the Hall of Souls; the Moslems, the Well of Souls. Others called it Shangri-La, or the Fountain of Youth. A waiting seed when the face of Earth goes barren.

Lots of dangers in the cosmos—but God seems to like us. The Tea House of the Hidden Moon is his smile in the face of catastrophe. For who else could make such a thing but Him? The Master of the First Thought.

Was that it? Bits of myth and religious tales floated to the surface of Lattimore's mind. A voice from a burning bush. A pillar of fire. A Law Giver bringing tablets down from a mountain. Noah's great-grandfather, Enoch, brought before the face of the Lord. Fallen Angels who mated with the beautiful women of mankind, their offspring the Nephilim, a race of demigods. A blue-skinned floating Shiva, Destroyer of Worlds. Zeus hurling thunderbolts and spreading his seed with every shepherdess and princess he could find. Leda mating with a swan to make Helen of Troy and Castor and Pollux. Call them Star Children. Call them Lila Chen and Little Maria's great-great-great grandparents.

Every ancient tale was magic. Every ancient tale a story of cross-breeding or visitations from above. Great beings, Long Souls who floated down from the skies, changing mankind for better or ill. Who dragged men up from their hovels, to wander across mountaintops, to worship the wonders of heaven. Who fought wars for the possession of Earth.

Bad ones like the Piper and better ones who smiled upon mankind, who walked on water and made blind men see. The same who gave us fire and foresight and forgiveness—and ten rules to live by. God made
them
too.

The Tea House was Pandora's Box. The primordial soup with a pleasing appearance, the tree of life. The immortal flicker of sacred, animate existence. Once opened on a Floridian mudflat the Tea House flowed everywhere, all life spilling from its open container doors. Well, he'd seen it reach landfall—the silver trailer from Lagrange Point 2 broken open in a swamp with its guts spilled out, its living contents hopping off across the grassy waterway.

Lattimore almost laughed. They'd seen the answer all along, every place they went. A tiny, shy creature, savior of one and all.

Rabbits.

Rabbits going everywhere; invaders from space, breeding with their earthly rabbit kin. How perfect. Innocuous. Hiding in plain sight. What superlative little creatures. Lived anywhere, worked for nothing, asked nothing in return—just to breathe and breed. The real rebreeders. Magic rabbits from the magic Tea House bringing harmony and balance out of ruin.

They didn't need claws or fangs or tuxedos or top hats; they only had to keep out of sight, eat a leaf, hide in a hole. Come out when the coast was clear, when things needed to be brought back from the end.

Magic rabbits. The good aliens.

Maybe what the innocent creatures gave was as simple as hope. That you could pick yourself off the ground. Do it all over again. Hope and another chance.

Why not? In all his wisdom God had improved on Angels, both good and bad.

He'd turned them into rabbits.

 

46

American Gothic

Cheryl and Big Bea had gone off Christmas shopping in a nearly empty Empire Mall. Billy tagged along to hold their shopping bags. He didn't complain. After a few weeks with those two, he'd gotten “Yes, Dear,” down pretty good. As had the other two, who now knew it was okay to touch.

Back at the aerospace building the Christmas lights on the trees below glistened up from the street. Lila Chen sat on the couch in the library with her nose in a large hardbound illustrated book—
The Collected Works of Buck Rogers in the 25th
Century
—that she'd found on the shelves. Another book,
Applied Physics,
sat nearby along with,
Biochemical Calculations:
How to Solve Mathematical Problems in General Biochemistry.
A legal pad with scribbles showed where she'd been working a problem. The two textbook tomes momentarily put aside for Buck Rogers; she needed a break. Buck was much better than biochem.

Maria sat in an armchair, watching the library's large TV, slumped so low in the cushions you could barely see her head. A local station had started running cartoons; Elmer Fudd in his sporty hunting outfit had finally cornered Bugs Bunny. While Bugs—dressed as a very shapely girl, in a skirt, blond wig, and lipstick—employed deception. Elmer Fudd, no fool, pointed his shotgun at the wily wabbit.

Maria, from the armchair, did a fair rendition of Mel Blanc's flat, nasal tone: “
Okay wabbit, I see through that disguise, say your pwayers!”

Mildred came in from the kitchen where she'd been making the children lunch: canned tuna on white with Miracle Whip. She stood mesmerized for a few moments, quietly awed. “My God, the TV is back. When did that come on?”

Lila looked up from Buck Rogers. She rubbed the side of her head. Her missing ear wasn't missing anymore, but starting to grow back, an attractive, scalloped shell. “
Shhh,”
the older girl told Mildred. “
Be vewy, vewy quiet. There's something awfwy scwewy going on awound here.”

*   *   *

Billy unpacked the Kargo Kooler and weighed the dingy baggie in his hand, a burnt ear for goodness sake—
Lila's ear
with the hematite earring still attached; and the match Bhakti found on her dresser. All those bits had served them faithfully; first as a compass, then later as some kind of prophylaxis against the wandering sickness. But the magic baggie long ago passed its expiration date.

“Get rid of it,” Beatrice said.

“We'll
buy
her earrings,” Cheryl added.

But still, the women felt they had to do something for poor Eleanor; at the very least find a resting place for Janet's ashes in the silver Nambe urn.
She'll be comfortable with you.
Right from the beginning it had always been Cheryl. Cheryl who found Janet in the back of that orange Chevy, who brought the body to the funeral home, ridden with her farthest, first with Bhakti, then alone. It seemed fitting that Cheryl should take Janet to her final resting place.

As for Billy Shadow, he needed to perform one last rite—pay his final respects to Granny Sparrow. Nobody had told him, but somehow he knew the old woman was dead. Since the troubles there had been no word in or out of the rez; cell service and phone lines still down. In any case he had to see for himself.

The two women decided to go along with him—one last road trip.

They made time over nearly three hundred miles west on I-90 to Pine Ridge, having to pump gas out of the ground only once at a service station. When the three got out of the car on the reservation, Granny's trailer no longer stood in the high weeds at the end of the gravel path. Instead, a bare spot greeted them. The grass tramped down, wheel marks and footprints crisscrossing the snowy ground; Granny's trailer towed away.

Billy hadn't seen this coming, but it made sense. With the old woman gone there'd be no reason to leave a trailer there; any used car dealership would pay good money for it.

A few paces off, Billy's people had laid Granny Sparrow's body on a burial platform. The platform stood about seven feet off the ground, held up at four corners by stout poles. The old ways. Granny wore her feather war bonnet and her ghost dancer shirt. Nobody had pinched or taken those. Nobody would dare. Granny did not look like she had been gone long. Days, a week maybe.… In the cold she'd hardly changed.

The better part of her body covered in the flag that used to hang over her bed, tucked around her like a blanket. An inch of snow had fallen since she passed. Some of it blown by the wind, exposing her face, thinner than Billy ever remembered: deeply sunken cheeks, gray lifeless skin. Under her hand he saw a metal object. Her claw-like fingers kept it from dropping to the ground or blowing away. The silver wolf whistle. Cautiously Billy lifted Granny's finger and finally took the whistle back.

Cheryl gently tucked Janet's ashes in the Nambe urn under Granny Sparrow's withered hand, half expecting her to grasp it, but Granny's fingers didn't move.

“Do you want to say anything?” Cheryl asked him.

Ashes to ashes?

Billy shook his head. “No, I don't think so.”

Another month exposed to the sky, all manner of creatures would come, returning Granny to the earth, leaving only the bones. For a few moments Billy lowered his head, bending all his will to Skin Walk one more time. The paw prints of various critters dappled the snow, padding off in a dozen directions. For a few fleeting moments, his mind crept along the ground beside the burial platform. Then he saw.…

A wise old hare sat in the brush sniffing the air and flicking his whiskers. Nearby, three cautious mice stared through the thickets, not daring to emerge from their hole. A few paces away, a sly old badger bided his time; thinking hard about whether to have the three skittish mice for breakfast or chase the stringy old hare. A bright yellow warbler clung to a stalk and twirled a long sweet solo.

Billy put his old wolf whistle to his lips in answer. The sound of
Whoop! Whoop! Whoop!
rose into the sky. The wise old hare bolted into his hole, the badger waddled off, and the three mice vanished into the ground. But the warbler clung to his stalk, swaying back and forth. The whooping faded away, and silence cloaked the prairie like a final prayer.

Beatrice gazed up at the overcast sky, the clouds breaking across slashes of blue.

“Looks like things are clearing up.”

*   *   *

Guy and Lauren slowly drove down their street in Fairfield. Guy sneezed; he still had a bit of a cold. Young Alice sat silently in the backseat with the greyhounds curled in the cargo well for most of the ride. The only sound was her giggling as Corky or Peaches snuffed her ear.

Not much had changed on their street except that Mr. Fenniman's body had vanished. Oh no, not quite—Lauren glimpsed bone sticking out of a pair of pants and a loose shoe. The body dragged farther under the shrubs by his house. Coyote work. Snow covered most of the rest, but she could see gnawed ribs shining whitely, picked clean. No one felt like unpacking; instead piling their stuff just inside the Finn House door.

A terrible melancholy overcame Lauren, and she saw as much in Guy's eyes. The unnatural quiet of their street hung in the air, their footsteps in the snow the only ones. Nobody had been around; nobody had broken into the place.

Most of all, neither of them wanted to see young Alice leave. They both felt like they'd almost go with her if she asked. Appear in the 1800s, bring the dogs, and start over. Now that it came to it, Alice seemed reluctant too. She sat at the base of the stairs, the very way Guy saw her so long ago. Her hand touched the railing, as though she was thinking about ascending, but couldn't work up the courage to move.

Lauren spoke, but her voice felt strange, and forced.

“Can I get you anything? Cinnamon toast?”

Alice silently shook her head. Suddenly the girl rushed to Guy and threw her arms around him. He held her for a moment, and Lauren pressed herself in with them. She inhaled the clean fragrance of Alice's skin. The dogs came too, wedging their heads and noses everywhere.
Pet Me! Pet Me!

As Alice broke away, Lauren tucked her fingers under the dogs' collars.

You two stay.

Softly, the front door creaked open, pushed open by the wind. A sparrow darted into the house. The bird flitted about the Keeping Room, into the kitchen, back out again, finally settling on the stair rail. It preened a little and chirped as if to say,
C'mon!

Had the sparrow come with Alice out of her past? Or was it the one Guy saw stunned on the front steps when he rushed home in a fright all those months ago? Who could say?

Stoically, the girl mounted the stairs, passing the bird on the way up. “Well, c'mon yourself.”

She climbed the steps, the bird fluttered along with her, one step after another. Alice looked back. She steeled herself and pressed on, gliding up to the upstairs landing, where the darkness engulfed her. The sparrow fluttered once more and was gone.

Guy and Lauren waited silently below, knowing in their hearts that if they followed the girl's footsteps, if they walked up there now—there'd be no Alice. No bird. Then Lauren realized to her shock Alice had worn her store-bought modern winter parka, her heavy shoes, even carried her kid's backpack. Oh good Lord, unless she ditched them before appearing in public, people were bound to ask questions.

Suddenly Corky and Peaches broke from Lauren's grip. They bounded up the stairs four steps at a time and paced back and forth. But of course, there was nothing to find. The two good dogs whined, terribly frustrated. Lauren couldn't bring herself to fetch them back. “Guy, please, will you get them?”

Guy went upstairs. “C'mon Corky. C'mon Peaches. C'mon you two.” He plucked a tiny sparrow feather off Peaches' nose where she snuffed it off the floor.

“Let's go downstairs, gang. Maybe we've got some cookies.”

Nevertheless, young Alice's fortunes in the past or the present did not quite end on the stairs. Ever since their stay at the gabled house, something bothered Lauren about Alice's repetitive drawing in her diary. Not that the little girl drew pictures—drawing by itself was normal enough. Considering everything the girl had seen—her parents' death by yellow fever, the wandering sickness—you'd expect her to draw strange things. But why Rolpens? Why a fanciful creation from an artist, M. C. Escher, whose books and prints and art had yet to be created or published in the girl's own time?