The Fellowship for Alien Detection (30 page)

“Dodger . . .” Haley's voice was shaking. She yanked on his sweatshirt.

Right, no, despite that connection, he had to remember that he didn't
want
to be found, didn't want to end up in the clutches of those alien agents. The ship zipped closer to them, practically overhead—

“Wait.” Dodger suddenly had an idea. If he could feel the crystal, could he instruct it not to find them? It felt possible. He had to try now—

Dodger closed his eyes, reaching out through magnetic energy, until he felt himself touching the warmth of the crystal with his mind, and he thought,
Turn right
.

He peered out of squinted eyes. The ship was still headed right for them. He tried again, harder, pushing all of his mental energy toward the crystal warmth.
Turn right
. And he added
Twenty degrees southeast
.

The ship jagged to the right, ever-so-slightly off its initial course, but far enough that, when the orange light speared down, it illuminated a stand of trees about fifty yards from Haley and Dodger, just south of where the Alto was parked.

Dodger reached out to the craft again.
Continue on present course
. Somewhere beyond the crystal, he thought he could feel the presence of other forces, like repelling magnets, maybe the aliens who were controlling the ship remotely. They knew something had happened to the ship, maybe could even sense him, but they couldn't quite see him, just like he couldn't see them. Probably better not to linger, though. Dodger pulled back, into himself, and opened his eyes.

“Did you just do that?” Haley whispered.

“Yeah.”

Haley was peering at him. “You interfaced again. And made the ship leave.”

Dodger nodded.

“Wow,” said Haley.

She helped him up. His legs felt rubbery. His head was throbbing. And he felt strangely alone, almost like he missed that connection to the crystal, like it maybe . . . completed him in some way.

They hurried back to the car and woke the Alto. As they pulled back onto the road, they watched the skies for the alien craft. There was a flash, far off. Dodger wondered if it was the UFO, but then he saw the lit silhouette of a tall thunderhead.

They drove on through the night, the car humming over empty roads. Gazing out into the starry dark, in the hollow aftermath of interfacing with the crystal, Dodger found himself sinking back into his head. He thought about what Haley had said, about missing home. After this long day and its revelations, he considered that maybe, for the first time that he could remember, he did, too.

Apache National Forest, AZ, July 7, 3:45 a.m.

At some point, Haley slipped into an uneasy sleep filled with plastic-faced agents and buzzing UFOs. When she woke, it was still night but with the faintest rim of blue on the horizon.

“How's it going?” she asked the Alto.

“Going,” said the Alto. He was dead still. “We're on schedule to make Mesa Top in an hour.”

“Cool,” said Haley. She grabbed a bag of soy crisps from her stash on the floor, then turned back to see if Dodger was awake. He was, staring out the window.

He saw her looking. “Got any more pancakes?” he asked.

“Sorry, Cool Spa flavored soy crisps?”

“What does a Cool Spa taste like?” Dodger asked, taking the package.

“Basically like sour cream and onion,” said Haley. She turned to the Alto. “Want any?”

The Alto shook his head. “No food required at this time.”

Haley rolled her eyes. “Did you hear that, Holly?” she said, reaching out and flicking the doll. “Your chauffeur doesn't need food. Are we sure he's not a vampire?” She watched the doll bob in agreement. “That is pretty satisfying, actually.”

“See?” said the Alto. Haley glanced over and thought she saw the slightest smile.

Haley got a bag of chips for herself and drank some of a now-flat soda. She leaned back in the worn vinyl seat, put her feet up on the dashboard, and watched the night pass. She'd grown kind of fond of this big old car. It smelled like rest areas now, gasoline, salt film and feet, and it didn't help that she'd been wearing the same thing without a shower now going on three hot days. But as a result, it maybe felt homey.

They were passing over high country, currently making wide, slow curves down from a plateau. The land dropped away to the left, down to flats that stretched all the way to the horizon. To the right, a ridgeline stretched away from the road, the eroded edge of the plateau. Knobby rock fingers stuck up out of the dark stands of pine. These rock spires glittered in the pearly combination of light from the stars and the sliver moon.

The ridge ran off to the east. Here and there, a few of the rock spires stuck up on their own, like monuments. Single ones, a double, and one set of three right beside one another, the middle one slightly shorter, the rightmost one the tallest. . . .

Wait a minute.

Haley felt a jolt. “Hey,” she said to the Alto. “Look out there.”

The Alto glanced in that direction. “What is it? UFO?”

“No, the rocks.”

The Alto squinted. “What about the rocks?”

Haley grabbed the Alto's wrist. “Let me see the bracelet again.”

The Alto flinched. “The—”

“Just let me see it!”

The Alto yanked his hand away, but then pulled off the bracelet and handed it over to Haley. She flipped through the charms to the one with three vertical lines. Looked back out the window . . .

“Stop the car!”

The Alto brought the car to a screeching halt on the dirt shoulder of the road. Haley jumped out and peered into the distance, then back at the charm.

“What is it?” the Alto asked, he and Dodger joining her.

Haley held out the charm for them to see, and pointed. “Tell me those three rock spires don't look
exactly
like the marks on this charm.”

They both looked.

“Looks like a match to me,” said Dodger.

The Alto stared out at the rocks. “Bliss . . .” he said faintly.

“This is part of it, isn't it?” Haley asked.

The Alto made his searching face. “I'm not sure, but, if it's on the charms, then she . . . she thought I should remember.”

“Who?” Haley asked quickly, hoping the Alto might remember without even realizing it.

“Charlotte . . . C—” He shook his head and looked at the spires again. “Let's just go.”

They jumped back in the car and the Alto sped onward. As they went, he tapped his GPS, zooming out from their route. “Looks like there's a road up ahead that heads in that direction. It's unmarked.”

They reached the road a minute later. The Alto pulled over a few hundred feet up the hill from it. The road wasn't much more than a dirt track, but it was heading straight toward the fingers.

“Should we check it out?” Dodger asked.

“It will delay our arrival at Mesa Top,” said the Alto.

“Yeah,” said Haley, “but what if this is another clue about Juliette, or what the aliens are up to, something we need to know?”

She looked at the Alto. It was hard to be sure, but she thought he looked worried. “Are you scared of what you'll find?” she asked.

He didn't answer.

Then a light flashed in the rearview mirror. “Someone's coming,” said the Alto. He switched off the car and the lights. “Duck,” he said. “Just in case.”

Haley heard the groan of a heavy engine approaching. Just as the lights arrived, there was a whine of brakes. A truck passed them, slowing down. It was white, the kind with the little cab and the short, square trailer. As it passed, Haley recited what was painted on its side.

“United Consolidated Amalgamations.”

And then she watched as the truck turned onto the little dirt road. “We're going to follow that, right?”

“Affirmative,” said the Alto. They watched as the taillights crossed a grassy field and disappeared into pine trees. Then, the Alto pulled onto the road and followed, lights off.

They entered the pines and began to curve back and forth up a gentle incline. Haley felt her nerves racheting tighter.

“I believe,” said the Alto, “that I may have worked for those people.”

“Wait, you mean the UCA?” Haley asked.

“I do.”

They drove slowly, navigating only by the fuzzy predawn light, winding gently but steadily up into forest. Finally, the road left the pine trees. They passed between the rock fingers. Haley saw that they were made of stacked discs of rocks, like something Liam had piled quickly and carelessly. Ahead, the road passed over a steep grassy slope that seemed to end at the night sky.

The Alto stopped the car just below this edge. They got out. There were still faint dust clouds from the truck. They could hear it in the distance and climbed to the top of the ridge, onto a spine of crumbly rocks.

Below, Haley saw a wide, rounded bowl of land, as if someone had scooped out a giant spoonful of a hillside. It was over a mile across, with steep walls around it. She saw the headlights of the truck moving down the side from their perch. Beyond that, the slope flattened out in the middle, in a shadow garden of boulders and little scrub brush.

She looked back again, but the truck was gone. Like it had never been.
What truck?
She thought to herself.
There never was a truck. What are you even doing out here when you're supposed to be going to Mesa Top—

“Hey.” It was the Alto. Haley turned to him. “Did you just feel that?” he asked.

“What?” Haley asked blankly.

“That was the effect of the memory cloaking,” said the Alto. “We came here to follow that truck.”

“What truck?” said Dodger blankly.

“Look.” He pointed back down the slope.

Truck?
Haley thought. Oh, that's right, the truck! Haley looked back down and, sure enough, the truck was still there, farther down the steep road. That's right, the UCA truck, the reason they were here. . . .

“Wow,” she said. “It was like my brain just went blank.”

“Weird,” Dodger agreed. “Memory cloaking?”

“Yes,” said the Alto. He pointed at the bowl below them. “This area has been protected with a suggestive memory cloak. It makes you forget what you saw, or more accurately, you can't quite focus on what you need to. Your mind wanders.”

Haley looked back into the space below them. At the truck . . . but then her gaze slipped up to the far ridgeline, to the fading stars . . . but this time she caught herself. “I felt it that time,” she said. “I slipped right off the thought of the truck.”

“You have to keep focusing on it,” said the Alto. He pointed at it again.

“Why can you do it?” Haley asked.

“I have been trained to subvert the cloak,” said the Alto. “I don't remember the training, but I can feel it kicking in. There is a frequency transmitting here that affects the electrical pattern of your brain waves. The . . .” He searched above his eyes. “Yes, the aliens have a symbiotic relationship with electrical energy, as in that conductive orange rock of theirs. They can use it to control minds, in this case, things unseen, or unremembered. They likely used this same effect to make people forget Juliette when they first put it into the time loop.”

“Did you just remember all that?” asked Haley.

“I had the pieces, but seeing this is helping it to come together.”

“So,” said Haley, “you're saying that there's something here that we can't see?”

“Keep watching the truck,” said the Alto.

Haley found it again. The truck had stopped down where the walls of the bowl leveled out. It was paused there. . . . She could feel her brain sliding to other things, but she kept reminding herself:
Watch. The. Truck
.

Then a loud air horn sounded.

The truck began to drive forward.

“Keep watching . . .” the Alto ordered.

“Truck, truck, truck,” Dodger repeated to himself. And then suddenly things began to change. There was a shimmer and a rippling and Haley's vision seemed to swim, and now the truck was on a road, a road lit by lights, leading to . . .

A complex. There was a cluster of central buildings, but most impressive was the ring of giant white satellite dishes around them, aimed at the sky, little red and white lights blinking on their edges.

“Whoa, all of that just appeared out of
noo
-where,” said Haley.

“It was always there, but your brain was being tricked to ignore it, until the truck began to go there. Then your brain had the bit of truth necessary to disprove the suggestion of the cloaking.”

“Is this UCA's base of operations?” Dodger asked.