Hard Landing Read online

  The gate was a guard shack with the highway dividing to run to either side, and two guards in it, except that they came out, carrying rifles, as the car came toward them but then turned partway to go back, and yet stopped. The guards looked at us … like we had two heads … and they pointed their weapons at us.

  I reached into the backseat and pulled Joro out. Rigor had set in; he was like a wooden dummy, and very cold to the touch, even though he was at the ambient air temperature or even above it. He sprawled on the tarmac, one leg in the air, hands over his belly, and this was the first I’d seen him that way in the light; he was dirty, pieces of foam clung to him, pieces of coverall were blended with scorched flesh, and his mouth was ruined.

  The guards were not combat veterans. One of them choked down an outcry. The other reacted to the thump of Joro’s body on the tarmac by firing his rifle automatically; that was how I learned the weapons weren’t loaded, for all I heard was the click of the firing pin. I turned to the driver of the car. ‘You can go now.’ And he did, with one glance at Joro, sick dismay beginning to dawn on his face, backing the car until he could complete turning it around and go, where the first thing he would have to explain to his wife would be the lipstick, which would mean he might never have to explain anything else. I turned to the guards, who were very young. ‘Let me speak to your commanding officer,’ I said, and let the military routine take over. There was a great deal to it, of course, and I did not speak to the commanding officer until I had worked my way up the chain of command. But eventually I spoke to an adjutant, and explained that Joro’s body wasn’t getting any sweeter-smelling, and at that stage they put it on ice somewhere. And then I did get to speak to the commanding officer, and explained to him that what he was wanted for was to relay my demand to speak to a government official.

  And by then there was enough mystery about me, what with my uniform badges that looked real only at first glance, and my first-aid kit, which had Johnson & Johnson on it but just wavy lines where smaller letters should go, and only slightly comprehensible things inside, and as luck would have it, spending the night at the naval station was a young congressman who until recently had been in the Navy. They got him up; in truth, he undoubtedly was up by then, and possibly even had had breakfast, but they told me they got him up, and they brought him to my room, with a couple of really armed guards to keep him safe. And so this man who was to be wedded to me in so many ways over the years to come came into the gray room where I sat. He looked at me, and sat down in a chair opposite mine, across the plywood table. He cocked his head and watched me. He did not, at first, speak.

  I explained about Joro’s body – that it would require a confidential autopsy which would prove my bona fides. The congressman nodded – he was quick, and that was far from the last time he would display that quality – and waved the military personnel out of the room, although they were very uncomfortable with that. I could hardly blame them, but the congressman was right – he was utterly safe from me, because he was the key to what I wanted.

  I told him what I was. And he believed me. And we worked out a deal, which has been very good for me and not bad for the congressman, either. An early part of the deal, as we worked it out across the plywood table, was that he would call me by a nickname, and I would call him by a nickname, and avoid what might happen if our real names became known at some time. It was only the first of myriad precautions we would take, in the end. It has been so long, now, that I have trouble thinking of him as anyone but Yankee. And I think that is for the best.

  – Never revealed.

  HANIG EIKMO, Part One

  Retracing Hanig Eikmo’s path has not been easy. Not because it was so complicated but because it was so simple. Hanig seemed to be a man of direct action, a man who would solve problems characteristically with his hands, not with his mind. Therefore, it became at times infuriatingly difficult to reason out what he would have done next, because what he did next was often spur-of-the-moment.

  Too, he was by far the weakest speaker of American, barely advanced beyond the mandatory classes at the trade school he went to instead of the Academy, and barely having learned any more from the radio and television during the trip. He seemed uninterested in most things, even things almost anyone else would have thought vital. Therefore, he did not interact as much with Americans as his fellow crewmen did, and tended to live by himself. This was particularly true during the early years of his exile, but it was always true to a large extent.

  But in the end it did not matter, as it turns out. But I am getting well ahead of myself. Best to tell Hanig’s story simply as it unfolded, for him, to the best of my ability to reconstruct it.

  After the crew split up, Hanig went on through the night, very steadily, looking little to the left or right, until he came, in due course, to a creek. There he stopped long enough to put a hand in the water. Determining in which direction the water was running, he proceeded along the bank, downstream. And again in due course, he came to an estuary. Technically, it was a river, for the creek emptied into it, but the water was plainly salt when he tasted it; the tide came up this far. And now he had a choice to make.

  At this point, he would leave solid ground; the cattails grew on either side from a base of water, the soil that nourished them being submerged. But it was not a real choice. To stay with relatively firm footing, he would have to divert, and divert into a land of which he knew very little. If he stayed with the estuary, he was in much more familiar territory, for his youth had been spent in country much like this. A little testing showed that he could follow the water at least for a time without having it close over his head, so he proceeded to do that. And though in time the water did become too deep for literal wading, it was calm, so that he was able to half swim, half gain a foothold and jump forward in the water, and continue to move downstream at a good pace.

  A more cautious person might have given thought to marine denizens of various kinds – the more troublesome because largely unknown to Eikmo. But as it happens, with the exception of sharks – which did not normally penetrate this far inland, and, if they did, were only liable to attack under the most extraordinary circumstances – Eikmo had in a manner of speaking picked a climatic range in which the water was free of that. Farther south he would not have been as lucky, but he was not farther south. He made his way through the night, taking as much care as practical to keep reasonably quiet, and that was that.

  And in due course he came upon a sailboat, tied up to the dock/veranda of a shack built on stilts. It was a bit of a shock; one moment he was moving onward, with nothing to either side but the dim shadows of cattails, and the next he had rounded a turn and found this. But he was not truly surprised. In fact, he had been looking for it, and considered that it was only a matter of time until he made his way close enough to the sea to come upon the home of a waterman.

  There were no lights – not in the shack, not on the boat, not even running lights. Levering himself out of the water onto the dock, he listened. There was someone sleeping in the shack, but that did not immediately disturb Eikmo. He slipped aboard the boat, a twenty-four-foot yawl, and found it perfect; certainly showing signs of wear and tear, but the sails were apparently whole, being loosely gathered at the base of the mast with a few turns of cordage to keep them so, and the hull was sound. With that learned, he examined the ties to the dock and found that one of them was a padlocked chain, despite the fact that access to shack and boat was limited to water. He examined the chain and found it strong, and fastened to an eyebolt through the dock, the other end of the eyebolt with its threads apparently damaged deliberately so that the nut could not be backed off – at least not by Eikmo’s hand. Shaking his head, he now entered the shack and stood over the sleeping occupant.

  The interior of the shack was dim, and he could not make out much detail, but it was one room, plus the veranda/dock from which, undoubtedly, the occupant fished from time to time, and the occupant was alone. He was a man of thirty or so,
who had gone to sleep with his clothes largely on, and judging by the smell which fountained up from his mouth – he was on his back – he had gone to sleep drunk. Eikmo killed him swiftly, by breaking his neck, and searched his clothes until he found the key to the padlock.

  He now had transportation. It did not take long to puzzle out the mysteries of the yawl rig. In a matter of several hours, he was down through the increasingly broad estuaries and on the ocean, and then around Cape May into Delaware Bay. Full daylight saw him headed in the general direction of Dover, Delaware.

  The bay was not, even then, the loveliest of spots; the water that sometimes literally foamed back from the hull was liberally laced with chemicals and detergents, and yellowish; nor was it helped by Eikmo’s having to tack, again and again, against a quartering breeze. But he forged on, ducking the tankers and freighters that occasionally cut across his path.

  In due course, he found a landfall in the form of a long, deserted, weather-beaten dock poking out into the bay, flanked by an obviously abandoned building and some distance from a highway he could see. That was the extent of civilization at this point, Dover being inland by a few miles, but for Eikmo the highway was the important thing, with its traffic proceeding more from left to right than from right to left.

  He scrambled onto the dock, taking a few things with him and lashing the wheel of the boat. He watched the boat start to sail away, and then he turned shoreward. He made his way over some broken concrete and then through a scrub field to the shoulder of the highway, which was the main coastal artery but was two-lane, if concrete. He studied the traffic flow, and then he began to walk in the direction of Dover. In due course the highway became a street. And so he proceeded, gradually seeing signs of life in the form of decaying houses and stores, and then somewhat less decayed structures, and the occasional human, and being passed by cars, and in a little while he was walking down an undoubted human street in an undoubted human city, with humans here and there, and he betraying no sign that he was any different from them or did not belong there.

  He had, aside from his iron rations and his first-aid kit, a compass, a chronometer, and a portable marine band radio. He had also changed from his uniform into paint-spattered jeans and a T-shirt, which, though somewhat skimpy for the weather, and short, were of course far safer than his uniform. The latter was at the bottom of the bay.

  He found a pawnshop in due course, probably simply going along until he came to a store window full of all sorts of things with only portability in common. But remember that he had the items in the first place; he knew there was someplace where you could get money for items without clear title. True, he traded in the stolen goods for a very little amount of money – he could not bargain, of course, though I doubt he would have even if fluent in American – and with that little bit of money bought some clothes at a secondhand store; a better-fitting pair of jeans, and much cleaner; and the same for a T-shirt, which he topped with a blue chambray shirt and a pea coat. He kept his issue socks, underwear, and shoes. In fact, he still had the shoes, years later, and though they were like no pair on Earth at the time, neither were they outlandish, and he saw no point in discarding them. (It is also possible he wanted something to tie him back to the world of his birth.)

  Outfitted, so to speak, he next waited beside one of several saloons, and, picking his victim judiciously, relieved a sailor of his pay, which came to several hundred dollars. He killed again, yes.

  With that much for a stake, he moved to the Greyhound station, where he bought a ticket to Denver … quite possibly because it was the easiest city name to pronounce. Practically every city name has a variety of possible pronunciations, except Denver. And in due course he arrived there.

  In Denver he lived for many years, working as a day laborer, getting paid at the end of each day, sleeping in flophouses and eating in diners, distinguished from his fellow denizens only in that he did not drink. He really seems to have been content with his lot, and if he hadn’t accidentally seen Ravashan on a stopover on his way to Colorado Springs, he might be there yet, and reasonably happy, and out of this story entirely.

  But he is not out of it.

  – A.B.

  JACK MULLICA

  The sand road gradually widened and became firmer. I was conscious of piled trees, and clear-cut patches in the growth. Apparently someone intended, or had intended, some form of enterprise here. Whether it still proceeded, during the day, or not, I had no idea. But certainly it was abandoned by night.

  I came to a road bridge – concrete, as I later confirmed – lichened, partially eroded away, but still sound enough. It was not very long. An enameled sign, very worn, proclaimed MULLICA RIVER, and, in truth, there was some water in the bed below, but if this was a river, it was a poor excuse for one. And in any case the road kept on going, a track through the quiet and the darkness, until finally up ahead I could hear something. I stopped.

  I strained to hear anything that would give me a clue to what lay ahead. But none of it made sense to me. There was something that sounded like muffled laughter, and the sound of glass on glass, but I could make nothing of that. I stood for a while in the darkness, and then I moved forward, toward the sounds, very slowly.

  Gradually, they grew clearer; they were the sound of two or three males, drinking and carousing. They were also the sound of one female, and though at first hers had blended in with the male voices, now it was in an increasingly different tone: less companionable, more argumentative. And the male voices grew less festive.

  I moved forward again, and now I could see the shadowed form of a parked car, and cigarettes, and increasingly tense voices. ‘Goddamn, Margery, what the hell?’ suddenly came clear.

  ‘I want to go home,’ said the woman.

  ‘Margery, we ain’t through here.’

  ‘Yes, we are. I have to get up early in the morning and work. You’ve had all the fun you’re going to have for one night.’

  There was a giggle, and a different male voice said: ‘I ain’t so sure about that. How ’bout the rest of you fellers?’

  Margery’s voice was suddenly cold. ‘The only way you’re going to get more is to commit rape. And if you do that, you’d better kill me afterward.’

  ‘Rape!’ The voice was incredulous; it was the giggler. ‘Rape!’ But the other males were more thoughtful. And just as cold; one of them, the leader, I suppose, said:

  ‘All right, Margery,’ in a calm voice. ‘All right.’ And suddenly the back door of the car flew open, and for a moment there was light, so that I could see the woman come tumbling out, to fall heavily to the ground, grunting. ‘All right, Margery. And good night.’ The door closed and the light went out. The car started and the headlights flicked on. ‘Enjoy the walk home.’ And the car pulled away, all revelry gone, and in a little while it was dark again except for the starlight, and I could hear Margery cursing softly as she got to her feet and stood in the road, looking after it.

  She didn’t know I was there only a few steps away. She moved, an awkward, twisting motion, and it was obvious to me that she’d been hurt by her fall. And she began to walk up the road, each step slow and unbalanced; she was limping badly.

  ‘Miss?’

  ‘Holy Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! Who the hell is that?’

  ‘Jack,’ I said, taking the name of the all-American boy. ‘Jack … Mullica. I was walking along a minute ago, and I saw—’

  ‘Jesus H. Christ! You were walking along?’

  ‘That’s right. And I—’

  ‘You scared the shit out of me!’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry. Look, can I help you? You look like you’re walking hurt. I’ve got a first-aid kit, and—’

  Her sudden chuckle was both amused and bitter. ‘It’ll take more than first aid to help that. A lot more.’

  I didn’t understand. But that was not as important as reaching some sort of accommodation with her. ‘Well, look, whatever you say – will it help you to lean on me as we walk?’

>   Her chuckle this time was rueful, and still bitter but not as much. ‘Yes, it will help. Especially considering that we have over two miles to go. Bastards. All right – come on.’ She moved over next to me, on the left. She was almost as tall as I. I noticed that she smelled of perfume – some artificial scent. And we began to walk along the road through the dark, slowly and, for her, painfully. But she settled in against my hip, and I thought to myself, abruptly, about her as a woman, not as an Earth person, and I didn’t know what to make of that, but it was better than not thinking of her as a woman.

  She asked, almost immediately: ‘Where’d you come from?’

  ‘I got lost,’ I said at once, having anticipated that I would have to account for myself to someone. ‘I was hitching a ride, and they let me out in the dark, and I got lost.’

  ‘Uh-huh. And what kind of an accent is that?’ ‘Indian. East Indian.’ ‘Uh-huh.’ She seemed disinclined to pursue this line any further. We walked along in silence for a while. Then she said: ‘I don’t suppose you have a place to stay.’

  ‘Well, no.’

  ‘Yeah. All right – you can stay with my father and me, for a while. Sleep in the barn.’

  I thought that over. ‘All right. Thank you; it’s kind of you.’

  ‘You’re helping me get home. Helping a lot. This leg of mine hasn’t been good for much since I was a little girl. Polio. So it’s a fair exchange.’ Her voice was flat – there was not a trace of her feeling sorry for herself. But, of course, she’d had time to prepare the statement. ‘My name’s Margery Olchuk, by the way. And yours is Jack Mullica.’ Again, her voice was flat.

  ‘That’s right. Jack Mullica.’

  ‘All right.’ And after that she concentrated on walking. Even with me to help her, it was no picnic for her.

  – Reconstruction, as best as possible, of various bits and snatches Mullica mouthed in his sleep