page FOUR
(Are they okay?)
(Don't interrupt! I am boosting the projectors! Now!)
The bodies convulsed again, and soft snores came from the helmets. Jack began checking each occupant, feeling their pulses and heartbeat.
(Now, depart while he is occupied! I shall expedite your escape!)
(What happens next?)
(Nothing! Nothing happens! The humans have journeyed the simulated universe and their primitive brains are filled with inner peace. It's very nice!)
(Why do I have to go?)
(I must speak to Jack Kraft in private! Go, find the Doctor and tell him what has transpired! No more questions!)
(Oh, all right. Just answer me one more.)
(Oh, youth! Haste!)
(Is your name really Smokey?)
(Is yours really Ace?)
***
I am between landmarks in a place where nothing is named. I clamber over rocks and avoid unmarked snow, mindful of the hidden crevasses beneath. I move steadily, methodically, trying not to think of the absurd spectre in the temple. I shake my head and chuckle as I mount a ridge.
Suddenly I sense a presence behind me. Alarm jangles in my mind. There! Between the forest and myself, a distortion in the lower air. With the ease of long practise I remove a glove with my teeth and shoulder the rifle. I draw the bolt and wait. The distortion coalesces and glides smoothly toward me, resolving into a tiny figure in a fairy dress and tiara. I have no hesitation. I shoot and the figure falters. I ready another shot. It advances and I fire again. It shatters to shiny fragments that swirl into an invisible drain in the air. With a tiny pop! it and my fear are gone. My shots still echo.
Only then do I realise I have discharged a weapon on a snowy mountain. I huddle behind the ridge, but no avalanche comes.
***
What of the darker suggestions of a Communist agenda in Luuna's writings? Aren't members urged to sell their possessions and form independent communities? Is Luuna's Galactic Brotherhood not a blatantly Socialist government?
“There are no Reds here,” says Jack Kraft, who closed a successful travel agency to manage the temple's finances, “Listen, when you came in here, did you see the Cadillac parked out front? One of three, friend, and that's the runt.”
Miss Spenser adds, “You're overstating the case. It's true that there are now three small colonies dedicated to Luuna's teachings, but we took no action in their founding and we have no legal or practical connection to them. We sell them books, is all.”
Kraft interrupts, “They don't get a discount, either.”
Miss Spenser laughs. She and Kraft have an easy, father-daughter camaraderie. “Are we Communists? No. It's perfectly true that Luuna has suggested our graduates band together in shared communities, but her inspiration was not Marx, Stalin or even the Brothers. It was Christ. Book of Acts, Chapter 2, Verses 44 and 45. Look it up. You aren't calling Jesus Christ a Communist, are you?”
from, 'Good News from the Saucer-Men of Mount Shasta?' (Time Magazine, 8/24/59)
***
Hours passed and darkness fell as I wandered the town. I don't take orders from floating heads, and I wanted time to myself. The town seemed to wake up. I guessed it was because everyone was coming home from work. Lights came on, distant music thumped and snippets of laughter drifted from houses as I passed. I felt disconnected from it all, like an outsider, and that got me thinking about everything I'd learned.
The temple was a front for some kind of alien tourist agency, that was clear. It seemed sort of harmless... if Smokey was on the level, the pilgrims weren't hurt and maybe were helped. They just had their bodies borrowed for an afternoon of sight-seeing. Surely that was small-time evil, not the kind of thing the Professor would investigate. There had to be something else going on, but what? I was so immersed I stopped paying attention to where I was walking.
I began to mentally divide everyone I'd seen into good guys and bad guys. I liked Sally and Peace. Someone had tried to kill Sally, so that put her on our side, and Peace went without saying.
I wasn't sure about Smokey and Jack. Put them in the middle column. I liked Smokey – I'd been in his head long enough to sense he didn't want to be helping the Krafts. But if he had those powers he could have been tricking me. Damn. I felt sorry for Jack, though I wondered what would have happened if he'd caught me. Smokey went to a lot of trouble to hide me from him, so maybe Jack wasn't the poor victim of circumstances I'd imagined.
That left Luuna. I'm not stupid – it was obvious that Jack's wife Gladys was being controlled and that the lady I'd met was she, not Luuna at all. So that's our culprit, I thought. A mind possessing villain from outer space. Sorted.
I patted an imaginary deerstalker and puffed an imaginary pipe. And realised that, deep in thought, Holmes had wandered onto the moors. I'd left the lights and sounds of town. I was alone, in the dark, surrounded by forest. A distant owl asked, 'Who?'
That's when the Space Cadillac silently pulled in front of me. I froze in the tail lights and heard the door open and a rustling fairy dress. Luuna strode to the rear of the vehicle, framed by the pulsing light from the saucer. Her face was shadowed by the halo of her back-lit beehive but her eyes glinted. She lifted a fancy sceptre, the end flared, and I was gripped by an invisible hand. For the second bloody time that day.
'Hello, little thief. I believe you have something of mine, don't you?'
I struggled, strained. She was powerful.
'It's oh so impolite to repay hospitality with theft, don't you think, you sneaker?'
Wait a minute. What had I stolen? I tried to argue.
'Oh, no, no. Hush. The proof of your guilt is right there in your rucksack.'
She stopped a few paces away and peered up at me. Behind her, approaching fast, I saw headlights.
'Such a shame. Lost in the forest, savagely beaten to death. Peace will be so sad.'
The car roared past, out of my vision. Brakes squealed. Luuna's eye's shifted for a moment and her grip slipped. I fell down and back, saw my chance and scrambled for the tree-line. A car door opened. I rolled into a ditch and chanced a backward look.
Luuna cried, 'You!' and moved, stiff-legged and determined, toward the unseen driver. She pointed the sceptre.
A thunderous crack split the air and I saw Luuna's head snap back and she staggered. I scurried from the ditch and entered the trees. There came a second shot and a soft thump. I stumbled into the darkness.
I found a hollow between a boulder and tree and nestled
there, panting. My heart thumped. My legs trembled. My mind raced. My ears
rang, but I heard stealthy movement approaching. I burrowed deeper, felt safer,
then I thought of the Professor and felt the tension drain away. “Think, Ace,
think!” he'd say, and probably rap his knuckles on my head. So I thought. Luuna
was the big bad guy, yes? Yes. She just tried to kill me, yes? Yes. Someone
just shot her, yes?
Oh! I'd just been rescued, hadn't I? And I'd run away like a little kid scared by the noise. Shouldn't I just announce myself?
Think, Ace, think... No. It would be stupid to just expose myself. There were too many things happening. Luuna, the mind-controlling alien, could have jumped into her assailant, couldn't she? That could be Luuna sneaking around there now, looking for me.
If it was, she was moving away, back toward the cars. I waited, began to feel like myself again. Why did this terrify me, anyway? I'd seen people die and I'd had my life threatened, but it had all been from weird, outer-space menaces. Frightening, yes, but just like Smokey in the temple, so strange that they didn't seem real. But this was a gun, a bullet, a spray of blood. Very real. Well, Ace, time to face reality.
***
Time's brief visit to the Illuminated Disciples of the Benevolent Space Brothers draws to an end. Jack Kraft accompanies us to our car. The air is crisp and clean, the night sky is breathtaking. Kraft offers us his hand.
"Thanks for dropping by, fellows," he says, "I hope we get the cover."
He is silent for a moment.
"I know all this outer space stuff sounds nutty to you. Imagine hearing it from your wife. But I have to tell you, the boys that leave here? They're better for it. They come here broken but when they leave they're fixed. That's all that matters, right?"
When pressed about his wife's eccentric cosmology and philosophy, Jack Kraft grins.
"I just run the office. You'll have to take that up with Gladys," he points to the star-filled sky, "and the boys upstairs."
from, 'Good News from the Saucer-Men of Mount Shasta?' (Time Magazine, 8/24/59)
***
I inched back toward the road, being as quiet as I could, intent on the scene below. Someone was dragging Luuna's body to the second car. I carefully eased myself into the ditch, inched forward, and put my hand on what was, unmistakably, someone's bum.
It jumped and I snatched my hand away.
'Ace? Is that you?' came a whisper.
'Peace?' I could see her now, the dim light reflecting tear tracks on her face, 'What are you doing here? There's a nutter with a gun running around and Luuna's been shot.'
'I know. It's her,' Peace said, 'watch!'
I heard the a car door open. There was a soft grunt of effort and then a figure, rifle slung on it's back, entered the saucer glow. It was Sally, Peace's mum. She leaned into the Caddy; the engine quit and the saucer blinked off. Then she went back to her car, returned with a spray can and a rag, and cleaned the blood off the back. We lay there and watched, Peace gripping my arm.
Finally, Sally was done. She gazed around once, started the car, then did a u-turn away from town. We watched the tail lights shrink in the distance. I was standing up when Peace said, 'Wait. She's stopped at the bridge.'
'Peace, Luuna...'
'She's coming back. Down, Ace!'
Sally's car sped past without slowing. It turned the corner into town.
Peace sobbed, her body shaking. I kept my distance. I wasn't very good with other people's emotions, back then.
'Peace, I know how it looks, but Luuna tried to kill me. Your mum saved me.'
She stopped shaking and was quiet for a moment. She murmured something I didn't catch.
'What?' I said.
'I said, that's a lie!' Peace drew away from me, raw anger in her voice, 'Luuna is the greatest person alive! How dare you say she tried to kill you!'
I was taken aback. Where had this come from? Wait! She was calling me a liar? I was on my feet in a second, fists balled.
'It's true! She had this wand thing and she said I'd be found beaten to death!'
'You must have deserved it then! What did you do, Ace?'
'I didn't do anything and you can't say I did! You didn't see her! I almost died!'
We glared. Peace blinked first, turned her back.
'A trick, then. She was pretending. She wouldn't have killed you. Not Luuna.'
She swayed on her feet, then sat heavily on the edge of the ditch.
'I grew up with her, Ace, do you understand? I never had a dad. I love my mom, but she's always been the boss and she knows me too well. Luuna was my Aunt Luuna, you know? She was the one with the stories and the toys, always smiling and laughing, even when she was training me.'
I felt my anger ebbing away. A cloud drifted over the moon and in the dark our voices were disembodied.
'I remember. Your mum said you were training to be the new high priestess.'
She snorted softly, 'That's what she thought, yeah.'
'Huh?'
Her face was an unfocused pale oval.
'I was in training, all right, but not to be high priestess. I was in training to be the new Luuna.'
The moon reappeared. Peace turned her face to the light and she rose, 'In fact, I guess,' she said, 'I am Luuna.'
A million miles away there are lights, and movement, and shouts, but I am not there.
***
'Open your eyes, Ace. Look at me and tell me what happened yesterday.'
'I searched the temple but there wasn't a third floor but then I came down and you were busy flirting with Sally Spenser so I explored and met Luuna but she wasn't really Luuna she was Gladys and Jack was coming so I hid in the closet but there was a secret door and it led to the third floor and there was a big head named Smokey the lemur up there who was weird but nice and then Jack came in and he was sort of sad.'
'Go on.'
'Then those weirdos showed up and they were aliens using the pilgrims to visit Earth and Smokey helped me escape and told me to tell you what happened but I ended up outside town and Luuna tried to kill me but Sally shot her and then Peace showed up and started acting creepy and then... you showed up? and I fell asleep in the car? and now I'm in the hotel and it's morning and... Hey! Did you undress me? Professor!'