The Cauldron (13 page)

Chapter 20

Navigator

The navigator and the shipkeeper shared two secrets.

The first: the navigator had noticed a vessel entering
otherspace
shortly after they’d set out on this mission. It had not taken much probing to feel the outline of the vessel, and then to sense the energy within.

The ship was definitely not one of theirs. The energy signature that surrounded it, however, was known to them: their enemy, the Alzur.

Melusine should know about it, the navigator thought, but not yet. Until she located their quarry, she should remain oblivious to the vessel that worked its way toward this shiny blue-green world they hovered above. Nothing should keep her from reclaiming Delphoros. The enemy was not as advanced, and so was not as fast or precise, their navigator—stolen, as all the Alzur navigators had been stolen from Elthoran ships—clearly not overly skilled regarding traveling in this dense section of
otherspace
. Clumsy and primitive, sluggish by comparison to this ship and to himself; the navigator could tell this by extending his senses through
otherspace
. Still, the enemy was determined.

The Alzur ship would eventually get here.

Alzur was a ringed planet in a system near Elthor’s. There were no direct planet-to-planet conflicts between them; that would be too risky for either civilized race. But the Alzurites had raided Elthor’s ships in the past, stealing navigators, and the Elthorans had retaliated, blasting the enemy ships from the stars … even though the abducted navigators were killed in the process.

The races competed for resources when harvesting moons and nebulae, and the Alzurites had attacked a large Elthor settlement in a mining belt only two hundred years past. Elthor had gained revenge by destroying three Alzur expeditions in the
otherspace
of the Omicrom Velorum cluster. Alzur’s hostile activities since that time had been mild, the race learning its lesson. A peace had settled and a treaty was loosely in place. And now each world had only one working navigator.

But the navigator did not like their presence here. It so bothered him that the fluid in his tank rippled like a stone had been skipped upon it.

The navigator had impressed upon Melusine, as had the shipkeeper, a desire to work quickly to gain Delphoros. To tell her of the approaching foe would only stir panic, and rattling her senses might render her talents useless. Better to wait with the news until the last possible moment.

Why had Alzur sent a ship toward this place?

Coincidence?

Had the enemy also detected the presence of the Bright One? Had they monitored the flashes in
otherspace
? Had they picked up the long-ago-sent distress signal? Were they trying to capture Delphoros to reinvigorate their space exploration activities?

Did the reason matter?

The navigator very much wanted to be done with all of this and be away from the Alzur ship and go home. He was old, and he yearned to touch the ground of his home world Elthor while he could appreciate it. With all of his being, he wished to be free of this liquid prison he’d so willingly—and in his youth with exuberant great abandon—put himself into. He had not hesitated to undergo the lung-altering treatments that allowed him to breathe the oxygen-laden nutrient liquid he floated in.

That Melusine had walked upon the planet below—albeit in the form of another—in a busy city teaming with life and sounds and scents he would never perceive, gnawed at some part of him.

Because of this prison he could only walk in his dreams.

But if Delphoros could be bred to produce more navigators, he would be free. He could go home.

The navigator envied Melusine’s task of borrowing the bodies of those below to facilitate her search for their quarry. Just to walk …

His legs had become useless things, their flesh withered to the thin sticks of an invalid. He wondered if they had any color to them, or had they whitened to the hue of a corpse. He couldn’t feel them. He felt only the murky fluid which covered him, touching nothing solid and relying on his memories to imagine the feel of another’s skin against his, the pleasant heat of the sun upon his face, a breeze teasing his hair, the strength of his muscles supporting him as he stood, tall and straight.

Perhaps he could stand again, one last time, after they returned home and again altered his lungs. They could do that, couldn’t they? Or would he be bedridden? Would his bones no longer support him? Were the bones of the Bright One below strong? Did the Bright One walk? Could he run?

The navigator could lean on his sister. Her face loomed large in his mind, but it was the face of a young woman. Would he recognize her now? Would she recognize him? Just how many years had he been away? Did she look old?

The suspension system of his tank heightened the navigator’s other senses and kept him from physical distractions that might weaken his bond with
otherspace
. A segment of his mind was always there, and he could not release the hold or this ship would be disconnected from
otherspace
and would be forever lost in the solid mass of this world’s halo or be forced to limp through real space—time-and-space—to an outpost at a sluggish pace in a voyage so long they could die before its end.

He wanted to see his sister again, and not just in his dreams. They must succeed. Reclaiming the lost navigator … Melusine had been told their powerful quarry had crashed with his ship during a mission … was crucial.

Melusine believed that she searched for Delphoros—a navigator who a hundred and fifty years ago—had the misfortune to go off course and become marooned. That the ship crashed and sent out a distress signal. The latter was true; the signal was real enough. Also true: the lost navigator’s name was Delphoros, though he most certainly had abandoned that in favor of something commonplace to Earth. William, Bob, John, Michael and the like were prevalent here, the navigator had learned.

The second secret: Delphoros was not simply a lost navigator; he was a renegade, necessary because of his navigation skills with
otherspace
. He had been closely watched on every mission, not trusted because of his ideas but somehow controlled by a shipkeeper who in the end had not realized just how powerful Delphoros was. So elegant in his escape through
otherspace
, where he loosened the control the shipkeeper had maintained, no one had been able to track him and bring him to justice, and so the Elthor council had simply considered him gone.

Until they’d picked up the distress signal from his crashed ship. The signal would have been sent automatically, Delphoros having no means to prevent it. But because of the distance Delphoros had managed to travel, it had taken the signal one hundred and fifty years to reach Elthor. The navigator and this crew—the last functioning
otherspace
crew—were subsequently dispatched to retrieve the renegade, if he still lived.

The bursts of energy the navigator had picked up would tend to confirm that Delphoros was alive. Somehow his lungs had managed to take in air again.

The navigator both envied and loathed Delphoros.

***

Chapter 21

Carl Johnson

“John?” The woman reached her fingers up and almost touched his chin. “Oh, I know it’s not possible, but you look just like my John. Sound like him, too.” She had a thin voice, with no power behind it, the way some older people lose the rich tones they had in years before.

Carl recognized the voice. He suddenly felt dizzy and weak, as if he could fall at any moment. Jerrah was talking, but he ignored her.

“I’m Carl,” he said. “Carl Johnson.” He’d put more weight on the “John” part of his last name. His tongue felt thick in his mouth, his throat dry. He worked up some saliva. “I shouldn’t have stopped, I guess.”

“No, you shouldn’t have.” This from Jerrah. She tapped her foot. “The highway? Remember? We were going to take the highway?”

But to where? He almost asked her. Where were we going?

The lines on the woman’s face were soft. “I’m sorry. You’re the image of someone I knew a long while back. What brings you here?”

“Something … I don’t know,” he continued. “Something pulled me here. Like I’d been here before.”
How sane am I?
More words gushed out to this woman who was both a stranger and someone he sensed a closeness to. “Things are familiar … like I’ve been here before. And yet I don’t think I’ve ever been here.” He touched his hand to his temple, feeling the beginnings of a headache that he sensed would be a real pounder.

“It’s okay,” Ellen replied.

“You must think I’m an idiot,” Carl said. “Nuts. Completely.”

“You are,” Jerrah said. “Completely. Can we leave now?”

“Some coffee?” Ellen asked. “I put some on upstairs. It’s a big pot. I couldn’t possibly drink it all myself anyway.”

Carl nodded.

“Oh, this really is nuts,” Jerrah softly fumed. She turned and looked out the glass doors, staring at the lake. She crossed her arms and made a huffing sound. “I’ll wait in the car for you.”

“Fine,” Carl said. He followed Ellen up the stairs. “Really, ma’am, you must think I’m crazy.”

“I think you look like my John,” she answered.

The stairs were edged in metal strips, and his foot caught on one, nearly tripping him. He heard Jerrah mutter a string of curses and then tromp up behind him.

The stairs opened into a small kitchen, decorated in reds and whites with creamy colored countertops and chairs covered in the same vinyl as the barstools downstairs. He sat at the table; Jerrah stood poised at the top of the stairs, her face still blank, but her bottom lip working. Ellen busied herself taking down three thick coffee mugs, filling them, then giving one first to Jerrah, who accepted it with a weak smile, then to Carl.

“One sugar, right?” she asked, pointing to a sugar bowl on the table.

Carl swallowed. “Yes, one sugar.” With a pair of tiny tongs he plucked a cube out of the bowl and dropped it in the coffee. She sat across from him and took two cubes.

“I saw your picture,” he said.

“Really? Where?”

“At the library.”

Her eyebrows rose. “Whatever would my picture be doing in the library?”

“In a high school yearbook, I think.”

She shook her head. “I didn’t go to high school here.”

“A newspaper article then. I looked at a lot of newspapers.” He wondered what article her picture had been attached to. “I’m so sorry to have intruded ma’am …”

“Ellen.”

“Ellen.” The name felt good to Carl. “I don’t understand what’s happening to me.”

“I’ve only three cabins full,” she said, “and no one else coming until next weekend. My cleaning is done for the day. I’ve time to listen.”

“Wonderful,” Jerrah said dryly.

Carl told Ellen practically everything, from being ordered to take some time off from the office to coming to Morgantown and finding things both familiar and strange, not finding people he’d expected to see … and yet finding her.

“I won’t be surprised if you call the sheriff, say there’s a madman—”

“—who looks just like my John,” she finished.

“You’re the first person who hasn’t just … oh, I don’t know … who hasn’t just—” Carl sipped at the coffee and stared at his reflection on its surface. “Who is John?”

Ellen sat her coffee down and retreated into the other room. Jerrah padded over.

“Let’s get out of here,” Jerrah whispered. “That old bat is oddly friendly and it gives me the jitters. Look at the way she stares at you. And the lake … I like that even less.” She shivered and held her hands tight around the cup. Carl hadn’t seen her drink any of it. “Let’s just—”

“You don’t have to stay,” he said. “You’re healthy and can hoof it to the highway and—”

Ellen returned carrying a thick photo album.

“John was my husband,” she said, thumping the book on the table in front of Carl.

He opened the book and started leafing through. The first dozen pages were of the resort, vacationers standing outside the cabins, a lanky boy holding a bass he’d caught, two women in bathing suits in a rowboat off the pier, children splashing in the shallows. In some of the pictures the paint on the cabins looked brighter, and in one the lodge’s second floor had been white, the sliding glass doors old aluminum-framed ones that looked much cheaper. Ellen had made improvements through the years.

There were several pictures of Ellen behind the bar, leaning over it and talking to customers, one of her shaking dice in some game that likely wagered drinking. A mix of color and black and white. She had more curls in her hair the farther back in the book he went, her face ruddier and cheeks thicker, younger and more vibrant and even more familiar to him.

“That one,” she said, seeing him stare at a picture of her in pressed slacks and a starched peach-colored blouse with ruffles down the front, “is from … oh … I’d say thirty years back.”

Carl’s fingers hovered above it. He’d seen the picture before, not the exact same one. But he thought he had a picture like it, Ellen in the same outfit with the same background of birch trees and the lake behind her. She was posed a little different, her smile wider. He sucked in a breath; he’d thought the picture was of his mother,
knew it was
. But now … now he didn’t know what to think.

“Turn the page,” she said. Ellen went to the other side of the table and sat opposite him.

Carl continued to stare at the picture for a few moments then worked up the courage to go deeper into the book. One page, more of Ellen, one large picture where she was with three other women serving visitors at an outdoor buffet. One more page and his chest grew tight.

In the center of the page, in a black and white photo with yellowed edges, was Ellen and a man who looked just like himself. It was as if he were looking into a tiny mirror. The face was his own, the broad, flat brow, the sharp, aquiline nose, the almost hollow cheeks, the pointed chin that would have been better hidden by a small beard. Even the ears, not protruding but simply large and seemingly set higher than normal on his head, were the same.

He felt nothing. He should feel something … shock, fear, relief. Something. He wanted to feel something, but only a numbness filled him.

“My John,” she said. “John Miller.”

“Wow.” Jerrah had edged closer, standing behind Carl and leaning over his shoulder to look at the pictures. “Looks just like you, Carl.”

“Is he …” Carl turned to the next page to see a variety of pictures of people he didn’t recognize. He settled back in the chair. “Is John around here? Could I—”

She shook her head, a sadness coming over her features. Her thumb traced the rim of the coffee cup and she looked down. “My John died quite some time ago, in the forties. He’d gone over to Oscar Pinno’s to look at a boat. Oscar lived on the river south of town. It’d been raining, was still raining. I told him to wait until tomorrow, but John wanted that damn boat. He drove over there.” Her shoulders hunched forward, her back rounding and looking turtle shell-like. “A flash flood, they say. The river took Oscar, and John tried to save him. Both men drowned.”

“I’m sorry.” Carl didn’t know what else to say.

“Don’t be,” she returned. “You didn’t cause the flood, and you didn’t coax him down there to look at that damn old boat. You weren’t even born, were you?” Ellen drew her lips into a thin line. “But you sure look like my John.”

“And you look so … familiar,” Carl said almost too quickly. There was no other word for Ellen and this place. It was all awkwardly familiar. He downed the rest of the coffee. “I’d like to rent a cabin, if I could. You said you’ve only three filled now.”

“More folks are coming on the weekend.”

“Could I—”

“I’ll have a few open in any event for you to pick from. The Haven’s not a big resort, but I’ve not had to dig out my ‘no vacancy’ sign for a few years. I’ll take you through the open ones.”

“Any one will be fine,” Carl said. A pause. “One with two bedrooms.”

“I’m not staying here,” Jerrah cut in.

“They all have two bedrooms,” Ellen said. “The Oaks is a nice one. Put a new floor in it last summer. It’s all the way at the end, farthest from the lodge, but it’s also the closest to the lake, practically on the dock.”

“Fine.”

“No,” Jerrah said.

“I rent by the week.”

Carl stood. “Won’t be staying that long, maybe a night or two.” He reached into his pocket for his wallet. “But I’ll pay for the week.”

“My slips are downstairs.” She finished her coffee and gestured for them to go first. “Paperwork, you know. The state requires it. Like staying at a hotel, you have to sign in.”

Jerrah grumbled at each step. “By the lake. By the week. We’re not staying.”

“You don’t have to,” Carl told her. He was glad that Ellen hadn’t asked about Jerrah … whether the girl was a relative or … he’d seen Ellen glancing at his hand, probably looking for a wedding ring. “I can take you up to the highway or back into town and you can get a bus—”

“I’ll wait for you in the car.” Jerrah hurried out the glass doors.

Carl went to work on the rental sheet, listing his address, license plate number, checking a box that said he wouldn’t smoke in The Oaks, as it was a non-smoking cabin.

A middle-aged couple came in while he paid with his credit card.

“A box with a dozen night crawlers,” the man said, handing over a five-dollar bill.

“And a Fresca,” the woman added. She stared curiously at Carl.

“Gonna head right out for the middle today,” he said. “Lake’s flat and perfect.”

“Panfish?” Ellen asked politely.

The man bobbed his head. “Bluegills and perch, we’re hoping for. They like night crawlers.”

Ellen reached into a refrigerator behind the bar and came up with the soda and box of worms. “Good luck.”

The man bobbed his head more vigorously. “Hope so. Should’ve headed out earlier, though. Fish bite better when it’s early.”

“Good luck,” Ellen repeated. Then she ducked under the bar and came up with a key with a big plastic fob in the shape of a fish. “The Oaks” was printed in marker on the side. “Shall we?”

Carl followed her outside.

“You know,” she said, “a part of me doesn’t want you here. It’s weird, the way you look like my John.”

“I could—”

“But the bigger part wants you to stick around. Dunno why.” She rubbed at a spot on the back of her hand. “Maybe to talk.”

“I’d like to talk to you about John … and about some things I’m remembering.” Carl stared at Jerrah in the car; she had her feet propped up on the dash. “At least, I hope they’re memories.”

“Tonight, then.” She pointed down the dirt road that ran even with the lake and cut through the cabins. Grass grew in the center of it. “Join me for dinner. Nothing fancy. Oh, and you’ll have to park down by your cabin. I like to keep this open here.”

“Thanks.”

“Five o’clock. I eat early.”

“Five o’clock.” John got in the car and looked at his watch. Three hours from now.

“I’m not staying here,” Jerrah said.

Carl backed up and edged the car down the road. “I want to look at the cabin, put my suitcase in it. I’ll take you back to the highway.”

“Fine.”

“Or into town where you can—”

“Fine.” She crossed her arms and pressed her face to the passenger side window.

John looked at the cabins. They were small, rustic, friendly-looking, and all in need of a little sprucing. He counted a dozen, “The Oaks” at the end. Each was labeled with the name of a tree … Blue Spruce, Evergreen, Poplar, Elm, save the largest, called Sunset. He stopped next to The Oaks and got out, retrieved his suitcase from the trunk.

The three steps that led up to the door creaked considerably under his weight. He guessed the cottage was built in the twenties or thirties, it had that “feel” to it. And it also felt like he’d walked up these steps before. There was a central room that had a small stove and refrigerator, a sink, and an oil heater. A sagging couch that looked to have been recently reupholstered was thrust up against an oak-paneled wall on which hung a large painting of deer against black velvet. It looked cheesy and oddly folksy at the same time. There was a door on either side of the couch, with a look he confirmed they led to rooms barely big enough for the beds in them. Around the corner was a bathroom with a shower.

“Quaint,” Jerrah pronounced it. She’d quietly followed him inside, dropping her pack in front of the couch. “Too close to the lake, though, way the hell too close.” She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered.

“You don’t like water,” Carl said. “Can’t swim?”

“Won’t swim,” she corrected him. “And, no, I don’t like water.”

“I’ll take you back to—”

She put on a face. “I’m staying.” She blew out a breath, feathering the hair hanging across her forehead. “But only for a night or two. Then we’re leaving.”

To go where?
Carl wondered.

“I might find some answers here,” he said.

“Yeah, well I might too.” Jerrah flopped on the couch and glared at the lake, visible through a picture window set above a crooked table. She shivered again. “I hate water.” A pause: “Do you think that dinner invitation included me?”

“Cert—”

“Or was it just meant for her dead husband?”

Carl let out a clipped laugh. “I’m not her dead husband.”