Calaphas stands gazing up at the trapdoor. His mind races, chemically enhanced. Thanks to the bennies, he doesn’t feel tired. He is clearheaded, and every thought is as sharp as a blade flashing off a stropping stone. He knows exactly what to do.
The robots halt and pivot and rear up on their hind legs.
Juan brakes to a full stop about ten yards from them, halfway up the hill, and Walter says, “You still all Spielberg about this?”
“We’ve got to be careful here,” Juan says. “We do the wrong thing, and it’s misunderstood, could seal the fate of humanity.”
“Like in The Day the Earth Stood Still.”
“Maybe. Though that was a lame movie.”
“It was lame,” Walter agrees.
Juan’s phone is fixed in a WeatherTech device that fits in a cup holder. The screen brightens, displaying the familiar photo of Juan’s much loved—and recently deceased—golden retriever, Jasper. The phone doesn’t ring or vibrate, but a male voice issues from it: “Juan Gainza, stop. Shut off your engine. You’ve accidently strayed into a Department of Defense field test.”
“Shit,” Walter says.
“Stop where you are. We’ll be coming to take your statement.”
“Are we going to be arrested?” Juan asks. When the screen goes dark, he says to Walter, “Angelina will kill me if I’m arrested.”
“They won’t arrest us,” Walter assures him.
Killing the engine, Juan says, “Why wouldn’t they?”
“Like he said, it was accidental.”
In the headlights, the robots stand watching them for a moment. Then the machines drop to all fours, prowl across the crest of the hill, and vanish into the night.
A sense of proper architectural proportions, such as Calaphas has long possessed, has great value.
For example, the dimensions of the interior of a coffin must be adjusted with various materials and techniques to display the quiet and respected guest to the best advantage. A short, slender person should not appear elfin and comical because she or he lies with a lot of empty space to all sides. Shaped blankets can fill the voids and be concealed with lengths of soft-sheen satin that suggest the beauty and peacefulness of the next life to which the deader has departed. Likewise, a fat person should never appear to have been stuffed into a too-small box as though he or she is a sausage in a casing.
In a funeral home with chambers of ideal proportions, a viewing room is rectangular, so that the casket stands elevated against the shorter wall that is farther from the door. Sufficient space exists to both sides of the catafalque to accommodate floral arrangements displayed in tiers. The approach to the deceased should allow for a generous open area where family and friends gather to express their sorrow and sympathy, with folding chairs against both long walls.
If such a room is correctly proportioned, a curious child as young as five or six can descend from the living quarters upstairs, enter in absolute darkness, close the door, and approach the deader with confidence that he won’t collide with anything and that he’ll know precisely how many steps will bring him to the casket, where it rests on a platform. A hidden pull-out step on that low catafalque is there to assist a short member of the staff who needs to reach across the deceased to make final adjustments to the overlay or other bedding, and a boy who knows about that feature can, even in the blinding dark, get close to the quiet and respected guest who will be center stage at the forthcoming morning’s events. In fact, the boy can get so close that he is able to whisper in the nearer ear of the deceased and share confidences. If the occupant of the casket is a pretty woman, the boy can kiss two of his fingers and, even in the deep dark, accurately press them to her lips, and then press them to his own, lest she be a princess who can be revived. He visits only those who died in youth or middle age. He has learned that very old dead people are frightening; they seem so . . . knowing.
Here in the Chandra house, in a state of amphetamine euphoria, an exhilarating rage, Calaphas stands under the trapdoor, grinning and shifting his weight from foot to foot, reviewing what he knows of the architecture of the residence from having approached the house and having circled it to find the back entrance to the garage. The ground floor is substantially larger than the second floor. The pitch of the roof suggests that the attic extends over the entire upstairs. The trapdoor is not centered on the space above, but is near the eastern end of the structure. Because Mace will want to defend the only entrance to that high refuge, he is likely to remain as near the trap as seems safe, though he might send the woman and boy to a far end of the attic. Whether they are together or separate, they will shelter in corners, because instinct tells them to protect their backs and because Mace is smart enough to know that the corner posts—with the associated framing and masonry in those locations—provide greater protection from gunfire.
Moving toward a door on the right side of the hall, he murmurs so softly that he can barely hear his voice. “You’re dead, and I’m not. You’re dead, and I’m not.” As a young child, he had whispered those words in the ears of the quiet and respected guests in their caskets. That taunt reassured him then, and it excites him now, a mantra for anyone who—in Calaphas’s opinion, wisely—believes in nothing but himself.
As he enters the room at the southwest corner of the house, where the moon-bathed windows green the space, he hears a voice that seems to come from overhead. Most of the words are muffled, and the others make a strange assertion: “。 . . you are . . . becoming . . . your statement.”
Little relieved by moonlight, darkness has gathered around the quieted pickup.
“They should be field-testing on a military base,” Juan says the moment the robots are gone from sight.
Walter says, “This isn’t military land.”
Juan says, “And that phone call wasn’t a phone call.”
“Never rang,” Walter says. “Like the message was beamed at us.”
“Beamed,” Juan agrees.
Walter concludes, “Alien technology.”
“Damn, we’ve been gaslighted,” Juan says, as he starts the engine and switches on the headlights. “They’re aliens, all right.”
“Those sons of bitches,” Walter declares.
“One thing I can’t stand,” Juan says.
Walter knows what he means. “Liars.”
Accelerating toward the crest of the hill, where the robots vanished, Juan says, “Damn all liars, no matter where they’re from.”
“Pedal to the metal.”
“I’m doin’ it.”
“They don’t have much of a lead on us.”
“This is history,” Juan says.
The truck cannons off the top of the hill and down the next slope at more than fifty miles per hour, rocking and bouncing across the rough terrain, spewing up chunks of earth and tangles of wild grass, the fuel tank and drivetrain spared because the Ford is jacked up on oversize tires. At the bottom of the hill, their sleek limbs rippled with moonlight, the spawn of another planet turn left into the narrow valley and head east. Juan angles across the slope as he descends it, closing fast on the alien machines.
“You ramming them?” Walter asks.