Tom Easton - Alien Resonance

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ALIEN RESONANCE
Tom Easton
Box 2724, RFD 4
Belfast, ME 04915
207-338-1074
a novella of about 25,300 words
I
Alec Strange balanced on a lichen-covered boulder. Other boulders lay to right
and left, rounded humps and tilted slabs set in a matrix of sand and gravel and
broken sticks. The heavy boughs of balsam firs swayed at his back, saplings of
birch and maple thrusting up among them. Sunlight striking through new growth
bathed him in cool, soft green.
He faced a deep pool set about with granite and shale, its waters darkened by
the juices of rotting leaves. Glints of sun soaked into the brook, glowing
brown. Dabs of foam drifted on the current. Shadows marked the bottom, and a
hollow fell away beneath a steep-sided rock.
When Alec cast his fly over the pool's deepest spot, a gray-green shape sped
from the dark below. His heart began to race. He grinned, his hand tensed on the
rod, and a moment later he held an eight-inch trout in his hand.
Then he moved on, stepping from his boulder to another, savoring the crunch of
lichen, the cushion of moss, the brush of fir across his cheek. He moved up the
stream, following a redstart as it soared bright from shade to sun. He stepped
over a cleft in the rock, and he paused.
Beneath him gleamed something odd. He shifted his feet, laid down his rod, and
bent to thrust his arm shoulder-deep into a miniature, gravel-bottomed canyon.
He touched strangeness, a golden ovoid as out of place in these woods as a
Cadillac. He scraped it with his nails, rapped it with his knuckles, measured it
with his eyes. Its metallic luster deceived, for though it rang lightly at his
touch, it seemed less like gold than like some high-quality ceramic, a giant egg
perhaps two feet long. He wondered at the sort of people who would leave such a
thing in wilderness. He wondered if it might not have fallen from a plane,
perhaps a military craft on maneuvers. He wondered if it could be a bomb.
But he did not wonder long or hard. A bomb seemed unlikely, the other
possibilities irrelevant. His curiosity was easily satisfied for now, and his
mind was on his fishing. Perhaps, he thought, he would pry it from its crack on
his way back to camp. If nothing else, his friends would be intrigued.
To Walter Ybarra, the rocks along the brook meant much more than they did to
Alec Strange. Alec taught English at the university a hundred miles away. Ybarra
was a geologist. Shade and coolness and fragrance and birdsong were not lost on
him, but he saw more deeply. He noted the split and eroded layers of the local
sedimentary bedrock, and he tracked ancient glaciers in the rounded igneous
boulders they had left behind. He saw a hint of iron in the dark waters of the
stream, and he wondered how acid the rains had made this calm fraction of the
world he loved.
The rains couldn't be that bad, however. The fish were there. Alec had preceded
him up the brook, but he hadn't caught them all, and Ybarra doubted he had
caught the largest. He had one eleven-incher himself, sharing his creel with his
empty beer can.
A broad stretch of spume-flecked water attracted him. He mounted a boulder,
larger and flatter than its neighbors, and dropped a weighted nymph where the
current would tumble it past the predatory eyes he knew must lie in wait.
A murmur of rapids, muted by the firs and a bend of the stream, drew him on. But
as he turned upstream, a light caught his eye. The light was not one that
belonged in that setting. It reflected cleanly, polished, like metal. His first
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thought was for an abandoned can, but he turned anyway. He followed the alien
gleam to a cleft in the shade, and there he saw the egglike mystery.
He did not leave it. He set his rod and creel aside and bent to touch, to rap,
to push. It seemed like opaque glass, resonant and light, but not light enough
to carry easily, nor small enough. He drew it from its niche, startling a small
black salamander, and laid it on the forest mold. He squatted on his heels,
wondering, thinking that its gemlike substance was like nothing he had ever seen
before.
He did not guess that his find was unusual litter, or a lost piece of airplane,
or a bomb. He did not even think that his companions back in camp would be
fascinated by an oddity. He was a scientist, and at the moment he wanted nothing
more than to lug his find back to his campus lab, on foot if need be, the whole
hundred miles, and examine it properly with reagents, diamond saws, and
polishers. He thought that it was precious enough to him as it was, for beauty
and novelty. But it would surely be worth a paper or two as well.
Camp nestled on the shore of a small pond, backed by fir, cedar, and birch. Five
small tents, two red, one blue, and two yellow, barred a crescent beach of
leaf-matted shingle. Two canoes flanked the array, beached on their sides. A
cairn of rock, ringed by stone and log seats, held smoldering coals, a wisp of
smoke lazing into the sky past a blackened aluminum coffee pot. A crusted grill
leaned against the cairn.
An alto sang nonsense syllables from beyond one horn of the crescent beach,
punctuated by splashing sounds. Brush crackled, and onto the beach stepped Diana
Hadden. On the plate she held were five trout. Their offal had gone to feed the
pond's minnows, who would in turn be food for trout and other creatures.
Di was a biologist. She too taught at the university, and she too was treasuring
the ten-day break at the end of the spring term. She too loved woods and waters,
but she did not care for tramping brooks. Her jeans, wet to their thighs, showed
her preference for wading the margins of a pond, casting flies where no boughs
conspired to frustrate her. This afternoon she had been using small streamers,
with such success that she had released more trout than she had kept.
Setting the plate on the table, she looked past the other horn of the crescent,
shaking her head to settle her dark hair out of her gaze. A clatter of stone, a
splash, and she grinned. Franklin Massey, fellow biologist, had gone that way
with Ellen Young, chemist, and by now, fish or no, he must be out of sorts.
She almost laughed when she saw Ellen first, but she managed instead a
sympathetic grin. Ellen was walking straight-backed along the water's edge. Her
lips were a compressed line, and her normally hazel eyes were darkly shadowed.
Her fly rod stood as straight as her spine, a lance at rest. Her creel hung from
one shoulder like a purse.
Behind her came Franklin, his spinning rod horizontal, his creel slapping the
small of his back, a plastic worm box jutting from his belt. His mouth was open,
his shoulders slumped, and his free hand flapped, appealing.
Di imagined he was pleading with Ellen to forget the pass he had surely made, to
forgive his hand or voice or... He had wanted her ever since he had first joined
their group, ever since the first expedition he had shared with them the year
before. And Ellen, while she would accept him as a friend, would have no more of
him.
Both relaxed when they came near Di. They leaned their rods against the aluminum
camp table and emptied their creels in one heap of fish on the ground. "They're
hitting better today," said Ellen. "Even for him." She patted Franklin's bald
spot, a little harder than necessary, as he knelt to transfer the fish to a
plate.
He snorted. "I got more than you did yesterday. Bait's more reliable."
"But messier."
"I'll be back in a minute." Plate and knife in hand, he headed down the shore
even as Alec emerged from the woods.
"Wait a minute, Franklin. I'll be right with you." Alec's rod joined the others
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and, creel in hand, he followed the other man. As he passed Di, he said, "Found
something interesting. Tell you later."
Her face softened as she watched his tall figure walk away, feet scuffing leaves
and crunching gravel, large hands already opening his jackknife. But she did not
watch long. She took bowl and corn meal from the table and rummaged through
wrappers and boxes for the salt and pepper to mix the coating for their
fresh-caught supper. Ellen said nothing as she in turn took the coffee pot to
the pond's edge to rinse and fill it.
As Ybarra emerged from the shrubbery near where Alec and Franklin were cleaning
trout, Alec laughed. "So that's where it went."
Ybarra grinned back at him, breathing hard. His belly was larger than Alec's,
and his burden had gotten to him. "Had to pick it up, you know. Never seen
anything like it."
Alec nodded. "Toss us your fish, and go on."
Ybarra did, and when Alec and Franklin followed him, they found the egg lying on
the ground beside the fire cairn. Franklin set the trout on the table and asked,
"What is it?"
There were only shrugs to answer him. The five friends gathered around the
ovoid, staring. The sun was setting. Reddened light brought warm highlights from
the thing. Hands touched its strangeness. Di brought a solid ring from it when
she rapped it with a spoon handle. Franklin made it chime like a crystal wine
glass when he stroked it with fingers still wet from the pond.
Alec and Ybarra both told their stories. All agreed the thing was odd, and none
could guess what it might be or how it had come to lie among the rocks. It could
be no kind of egg, despite its looks. It could be no rock, no crystal, no
mechanical contrivance, nothing they knew but mystery. Finally, as the light
grew dim and the evening began to cool, they agreed they would have to take it
home. Ybarra's lab might give them answers, or Ellen's. It seemed unlikely that
the biologists would be much help.
Alec built up the fire with wood from the pile beside the yellow tent. Di added
larger pieces and greased their cast-iron frying pan. Franklin measured coffee
grounds into the basket in the pot. Ybarra cleared room on the table and laid
out plates. They had no chairs. They would eat sitting on the ground, or on the
rocks and logs scattered near the fire.
They paused repeatedly to stare at the egg. When Di set the frying pan on the
grill to grow hot, Alec finally said, "Shouldn't we put that thing someplace
safe? Wouldn't want to stumble over it and break it."
Ellen pointed. "Franklin's tent is closest."
Ybarra nodded. Carefully, he picked up the egg and carried it to the blue tent
in the middle of the row. When he emerged, he said to Franklin, "It shouldn't be
in the way. I tucked it in behind your dirty laundry."
The evening's conversation was not profound. Franklin wished there were more
dollars for research. Ybarra agreed. Ellen said there was plenty, if your work
interested the Defense Department. Di glumly added another dollop of rum to her
coffee.
Alec took the bottle and tipped a splash onto the ground before freshening his
own cup. "The gods are sore at us," he said. "With reason."
Ybarra bent his head upward as sparks flew from the fire. "We see the stars
here."
"And all the rest." Franklin waved an arm and took the bottle in his turn.
"Wilderness," said Di. "Animals, birds, fish, trees."
"Water," added Alec. "You can drink it without making a face."
"For a few weeks in the year." Ellen dashed dregs from her cup and reached for
the pot, venting red-lit steam beside the coals of their fire. She shared a log
with Ybarra.
"The air's clean in town." Franklin, his back against a lonely rock, watched as
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Ellen stretched and poured.
"But there are so many lights--pass the rum, please--and people."
"For how long?" Ybarra's voice went flat.
"Famines, wars, plagues..." Ellen echoed his tone.
"International paranoia." So did Franklin.
"Don't forget the dread specter of academic unemployment." Alec tried to
chuckle, but the specter was hardly academic. Each of them had friends who had
failed to keep their toeholds.
Di shook her head. "No bread lines for us, now."
"Chablis lines, maybe." Ellen laughed.
"Dip lines, chip lines," offered Alec.
"Hip lines, bust lines." That was Franklin.
"Fly lines and tag lines," said Ybarra, snorting. Franklin lacked, he thought, a
sense of the appropriate. It was no wonder that Ellen kept rejecting the
graceless fellow. Then why had they ever let him join their group? They were all
of an age and they all loved the outdoors, but... He looked at his friends, his
gaze settling on Ellen. She met his eye. He smiled. Franklin was a relative
outsider, but he was one of them. He was not merely tolerated.
No one picked up the line of banter Ybarra had dropped. Night surrounded them,
not silent, broken by the insistent bellows of tiny frogs, the scream of some
predator's hapless victim, the splash of a fish in the pond. Finally, Ybarra
sighed. "And pass the rum."
Eventually, they ran down. "Man~ana," said Ellen, yawning. "We'll have to paddle
for miles."
"And drive for hours," said Ybarra.
Alec groaned theatrically. "Teaching! Students! Deans!"
"Paychecks," said Di. "Go to bed!"
They left the warmth of the fire and hurried to their separate tents. Sleeping
bags beckoned them past a flurry of good-nights, and there was silence.
Alec woke at dawn, knowing he had dreamed. He recalled nothing of the dream
itself, but he felt better, more cheerful, warmer, than he could remember ever
having felt before. He stretched in his sleeping bag, smiling gently despite his
awareness that today they would return to civilization. It was only a dream, and
already the feeling was evaporating.
He crawled from his bag, unzipped his tent, and headed toward the crescent horn
they had dubbed the "men's." As he relieved himself on the beach, he watched a
loon floating on the sheet of silver that was the pond, saw it dive and
resurface, fed, a hundred feet beyond. There were no noises until a startled
"Hey!" broke the silence behind him.
The voice was Franklin's. Alec didn't hurry back. He thought perhaps his friend
had found a garter snake sharing his bed, or a red squirrel in the potato chips.
He was surprised to see Ellen standing by the blue tent and two sets of legs
poking from the narrow portal. Ellen was saying, "What is it?"
"Damn!" came Ybarra's voice.
"It's broken," said Di.
"But how?" cried Franklin. "I didn't hear a thing."
"Let me see!" Alec crowded in as best he could, leaning over three bodies,
bracing himself on hands and toes. There, scattered among Franklin's dirty
laundry, was a nest of broken shards, as colorful as ever, tinted violet by the
tent-filtered light.
Ybarra was poking among the fragments with a tentative finger. "Damn!" Di
grabbed a shard. Alec saw something else in the pile. Reaching for it, he
lurched, and for a moment his weight pressed Di into Franklin's side, still
wrapped in his sleeping bag.
When they emerged from the tent, each had a prize. Ybarra had a handful of
shards to analyze. Di had three. Franklin, with the rest wrapped in a
sweatshirt, let Ellen pick a few for herself.
Alec's find seemed whole. It was a convoluted lump, resembling an egg that had
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been half melted, pinched in the middle, stretched, and twisted. He held it out
to Ybarra, who shook his head. "You saw it first."
"But you fetched it."
Franklin reached toward it, his expression covetous. Alec had found it in his
tent, hadn't he? But he contented himself with running a finger over its curves.
Alec nestled it in his palm, stroking it with a thumb. At last, he slipped it
into his pants pocket.
Alec sighed as he pulled out of the parking area onto the gravel road that was
the next leg of the trip home. Ybarra echoed him, and then he asked, "May I
see...?"
Alec fished the lump he had taken from the ruins of the egg out of his pocket.
He stroked it with a thumb before he handed it over, and Ybarra did the same as
he received it.
"Feels good. Smooth, but..." His voice trailed off, bobbling as the Nissan
pick-up hit potholes and ruts. He held the thing up to the light. It glowed
gold, translucent, its surface alive with highlights. "I wonder what it is?"
Alec spared a glance for his friend. "Think it's the same stuff as the shell?"
"Looks like it." Ybarra drew a shard from his shirt pocket and held it up beside
the other. "Same color, same glow. Have to get them in the lab. Though that
won't tell us where it came from."
They rounded a curve and saw before them a single state police car, blocking
half the road a hundred yards away. The trooper straddled the other lane, waving
his arms for them to stop.
"Wonder what the roadblock's for," said Ybarra as Alec slowed the truck. He put
his shard away and handed the lump back to Alec. Alec put it away and patted his
pocket. "Some escaped con?"
As they stopped, Alec craned his neck out his window. "What's up?"
The state trooper was young, not long out of the state academy. His hair was
short, his face bare, his uniform a creased powder-blue. The name tag on his
breast said "Veilleux." "Just checking," he said. "See anything strange this
weekend?"
"Just fresh air and trees and trout. Ate them all, too." For some reason, Alec
said nothing about the egg. Ybarra did not try to add anything to his reply.
"Mind if I take a look?"
Alec felt a lurch of impending loss in his gut. Were there any shards in the
duffle? In the creels? Were they all in Ybarra's pockets? It was a struggle to
show no alarm, but he thought he managed. "Not at all."
Officer Veilleux peered into the space behind Alec's seat. He leaned into the
truck body, patting the tent sacks and sleeping bags and packs beneath the
canoe. Finally, he stood back and waved them on.
As they gathered speed again, Alec asked, "Why didn't we tell him?"
"Because he would have taken what's left of that egg away from us."
"I bet. But why?"
Ybarra shrugged. "We could have found out, but..."
"But some things are meant to stay mysteries." Alec made a motion as if to turn
the truck's radio off. It had not been on, and he had no intention of changing
its status. He was in no rush to renew contact with the world ahead of them.
II
Alec's small rented house, painted in shades of blue, sat near the edge of town
not far from the university. There were woods behind it, rimmed with blackberry
bushes. An apple tree shaded one back corner of the yard.
Inside, a round oak table held all the work he had yet to do to prepare for the
summer trimester. He made a face. That could wait. Better, he thought, to catch
up on what had been going on while he was gone.
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The television announcer was a dark-haired woman with a machine-gun delivery.
"The nation," she said, erectly serious, "remains mystified. Those colorful
giant eggs are being reported from all over the planet."
She vanished from the screen, replaced by a shot of gold and crimson and purple
eggs, dwarfing the feet of the humans beside them. Uniformed figures appeared
beside a pile that must have held hundreds of the things. Alec pulled his nugget
from his pocket and stared at it. That many? He had suspected there were at
least a few others, once they had met the roadblock. But so many? What were
they?
The announcer's voice went on. "There are thousands of them. They appear in
gardens and hedges, in woods and fields, in city parks and parking lots. They're
all the same size, but they come in all the colors of the rainbow. And they're
unbreakable, except..."
A young man appeared clad in mustache and white lab coat and hard hat, holding a
sledgehammer. He was saying, "We've tried, but they just won't break. But if we
leave them alone and go away for awhile--a coffee break, you know?--they fall to
pieces." He gestured toward a pile of shards on the table beside him and added,
"Not all of them, and not all at once, but..."
The announcer leaned toward the camera, grinning. "They won't break unless no
one's looking. And when they do--this is what's inside them. She held up a
nugget that might have been a twin to Alec's own. Alec imitated her motion as
she stroked it with her thumb. "I don't know what this is, but it's the best
worrystone I've ever seen."
Another clip showed a white-haired scientist in a laboratory full of glassware
and computer consoles. "They must be from space. There's nothing remotely like
them on Earth, although these nuggets"--he too had one in his hand--"do make me
think of a petrified egg yolk."
The announcer looked more serious. "Did some interstellar spaceship dump them
when they spoiled in transit? Who knows? But government scientists are concerned
that the eggs may carry totally unknown bacteria or viruses. Arrangements are
already being made to collect them and store them safely. If you have one,
please turn it in to your local police station. Do not keep any worrystones or
bits of egg shell. Turn them all in. We don't know they are dangerous, but just
in case..."
Now Alec understood the roadblock, though he barely believed the reason for it.
Yes, there were thousands of the things. Maybe millions. But from space? He
almost laughed; he was no believer in ancient astronauts or science fiction. The
eggs couldn't be dangerous. He fondled his nugget, his worrystone, once more,
and again. No. It felt good. It was benign, wherever it came from. He would not
surrender it, and he felt sure that he would not be alone in his possessiveness.
That night, Alec dreamed again. Once more, he woke feeling cheerful and warm,
loving and loved. He stretched in the morning light, grinning, and he remembered
a shred of the dream. There were no details, no shapes or figures or words, but
he knew that he should seek the mate to his worrystone. He thought the dream
might even have called the nugget that.
He laughed at the thought. How could a stone--or a piece of petrified egg
yolk--have a mate? But then he frowned, sitting nude on the edge of his bed. The
dream was oddly compelling. He felt driven to go out and search for other
stones, for one particular other stone. It took effort to stay seated, to do no
more than scratch his ribs and think of what he had to do that day. And where
could the dream have come from? Could his stone influence him? Was it perhaps
dangerous after all?
He fetched the stone from his pants pocket. He stroked it, fondled it, rubbed it
against the side of his nose, and watched the sheen of skin oil disappear as if
soaking into the stone. He thought of leaving it in a drawer, and he surprised
himself when he put it back in his pocket instead.
The Sunday paper was obsessed with the stones. They were the grandest mystery in
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ages, and the government was acting delightfully paranoid. The Bolivian crisis,
the power shortages on the West Coast, the Antarctic war for control of all the
fresh water locked in the ice cap, the nation-wide smog from garbage
incinerators that had never worked as designed, all had vanished from the
headlines. The editorials reserved judgment, but Alec thought he detected a note
of approval, of liking for the strange things. He guessed that the paper's
editors had their own worrystones, and he wondered if they too had dreamed.
He spent the day cleaning house and mowing lawn. He itched to be doing
something, and he hated the thought of the next few weeks. He had had enough of
students in the year just past, and here he was about to take on more. He wished
he could enjoy summer teaching as much as Ybarra seemed to, or Ellen, or Di.
Franklin was as unhappy as he.
Toward the end of the afternoon, his mother called from Seattle. She had never
accompanied him and his Dad on their fishing trips when he was a boy, and she
had never seemed to worry until after Dad's death. Then, almost as if her
husband's final disease had been pneumonia caught on a Puget salmon boat, and
not the cancer that had withered his arms and legs, she had forbidden the sport.
Alec had had to wait for college before he could return to the forests and
streams he had been raised to love. Sometimes he wondered why he hadn't become a
biologist like Di.
Perhaps it was just that she had seemed so pleased when he told her he was going
to major in English. As it was, every time she had known of his trips, she had
called for assurance that he hadn't drowned. This time was no different, though
her hectoring was brief. She had a stone of her own; like him, she had dreamed;
and she was wondering what it meant to find her stone a mate.
Like Alec and Ybarra, Di and Ellen had revealed nothing at the roadblock. Their
shards were their own, secrets to be hoarded, and they were confident that
Franklin felt the same. He had been ahead of them, and yet the cop had shown no
suspicion.
Di lived in a university apartment near the edge of campus. She had three rooms,
with large windows and daffodil walls, furnished in an ordinary mixture of
modern and antique. Her desk was a tall secretary she had inherited from her
grandmother.
Once she knew how widespread the eggs and worrystones were, she was tempted to
call Alec. Would he turn the stone in now? She wanted to keep her shards, danger
or no. She wanted to see more of him, yet she was also leery of changing their
relationship. She and the others shared a rare warmth and easiness, flawed only
by Franklin's endless pursuit of Ellen. She didn't want to increase that flaw,
to weaken the group's unity with a relationship that might too easily become
exclusionary.
She did not call him. She called no one, though early Sunday afternoon Ellen did
call her. The two took a walk then, wandering through the campus arboretum and
the woods beyond it while steering clear of the hundreds of others who seemed to
have the same thing in mind. They were exploring a sumac thicket when they heard
a triumphant yell. They burst back onto the path in time to see a heavy-set man
in blue jeans and graying beard stagger toward them, an egg cradled in his arms.
"That's Abrams, in Math," said Ellen. "Do you think he'll turn it in?"
Ellen laughed as the man used a shoulder to block a student who wanted a closer
look and then brushed by them without a word. Others along the path went quiet
too, staring after him.
They observed only a few other discoveries that afternoon and made none of their
own. Eventually they gave up on their search, though others didn't.
Over dinner at Ellen's apartment, Di finally let her feelings speak: "Our
group... Do you think it can last?"
Ellen eyed her carefully. "You like Alec, don't you?"
"I'd like to... to know him better."
Ellen nodded. "I feel that way about Walter, a little."
Di looked up from her plate, amused and slightly startled. "But--Franklin?"
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"Him!" The other snorted, not delicately at all. "He's a nuisance. Sometimes I
want to grab Alec or Walter just to discourage him."
"But wouldn't that break us up?"
Ellen shrugged. "I don't think so. Couples can be friends, too."
"Even with an odd man out?"
"Would it matter? He could always bring another woman in. Or leave."
Di thought that Ellen had harder edges than she did herself. She enjoyed more
certainties, could be more definite, could judge with fewer reservations. In
that way, she was like Ybarra, both of them physical scientists. She, on the
other hand, was a biologist. And her field had as much in common with the
humanities--with English--as with chemistry or geology. Franklin shared her
field, but she did not find him at all as appealing as she did Alec. He could be
only a friend, never...
When Di later said she still had work to do for her classes, Ellen offered to
drive her home. She declined, saying the distance was not great, the evening was
not cold, and who knew? Perhaps she would find her egg on the way.
Di had about a mile to walk. Ellen lived in town, in the upstairs half of a
frame house long emptied of the large family for which it had been built. That
mile followed streets lined with similar houses, few less than a century old,
their lawns edged with hedges and dotted with shrubbery and the fairy lights of
searchers.
As she walked, she realized that home held few attractions at the moment. Her
classes had been an excuse. The week's lectures, all of them, were tucked into
her texts. What waited for her now were only the two issues of Science that had
come while she had been off fishing. There were three letters she should answer,
too.
She didn't know what she wanted to do until she stood before her building,
staring at her own dark windows.
Somehow, Alec was not surprised to find Di standing on his stoop. Her presence
eased the itch that had not left him even as he worked, and he grinned at her.
"C'mon in. Drink?"
"You don't mind being interrupted?"
"More like I'd mind not being interrupted. Just working on notes." He led the
way to the kitchen, where he opened a half-gallon of white wine. "What's up?"
She told him how she had spent the afternoon. He described what he remembered of
his dream, and he added, "I wish you'd found one."
"It might not have been a mate."
Their eyes met, and they might have touched. But Alec looked away. He knew it
was irrational, but he could not stop himself from drawing back.
They took their drinks into Alec's living room, and he opened a window that
faced the back yard. A light breeze moved the draperies in and out like breath
behind a veil. They talked companionably for awhile, and eventually they turned
on the television.
Once more, the eggs dominated the news. This time, however, the tone was
different. Some people had turned in their eggs and shards and worrystones. The
National Guard, combing the countryside, had found more. Every police station
and armory in the country had a few, and some had already been shipped to
Washington, where government scientists were trying to unravel their secrets.
But everyone who had had a stone and slept had dreamed. The woman on the screen
explained it: "When I woke up, I remembered only one thing. I was supposed to go
out and look for another of the things. I was supposed to find it a mate."
There was laughter in the studio. Di said, "Just like yours."
The announcer went on: "Maybe I should have taken a cold shower. As it was, the
feeling of compulsion lasted until after my second cup of coffee." More
laughter. "Government representatives are concerned."
She vanished, replaced by a uniformed man standing before a flag. "This could be
the start of something a few of us have worried about for a long time. If these
stones want mates, then they can breed. We may be seeing the first steps of an
file:///C|/2590%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%20E-books/Alien%20Resonance.txt (8 of 38) [12/28/2004 4:44:45 PM]
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file:///C|/2590%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%20E-books/Alien%20Resonance.txtALIENRESONANCETomEastonBox2724,RFD4Belfast,ME04915207-338-1074anovellaofabout25,300wordsIAlecStrangebalancedonalichen-coveredboulder.Otherboulderslayto ightandleft,roundedhumpsandtiltedslabssetinamatrixofsandandgravelandbroke...

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