Points of Departure: Stories Read online

  No, he did not want to hurt Morris.

  “I’ll leave all my notes on your desk,” Morris was saying. “You should take a look before I go.”

  Nick frowned. “You’ll be able to come back,” he said.

  “Your father comes in to see you. You’ll come back and tell me what you’ve seen, won’t you?”

  Morris set the magazine on the rail beside him and pushed his cap back. The glasses hid his eyes. “The ocean will change me,” he said. “I may not remember the right things to tell you. My father thinks deep, wet thoughts; and I don’t always understand him.” Morris shrugged. “I will change.”

  “I thought you wanted to be a biologist. I thought you wanted to learn. And here you are, saying that you’ll change and forget all this.” Nick’s voice was bitter.

  “I has got no choice. It’s time to go.” Nick could not see his eyes or interpret his tone. “I don’t belong on the land anymore. I don’t belong here.”

  Nick found that he was gripping the rail as he leaned against it. He could learn so much from Morris. So much.

  “Why do you think you’ll belong there? You won’t fit there, with your memories of the islands. You won’t belong.”

  Morris took off his glasses and looked at Nick with dark, wet eyes. “I’ll belong. I has got to belong. I’m going.”

  The lobsters scratched inside their box. Morris replaced his sunglasses and thumped lightly on the lid again. “We should make dinner,” he said. “They’re getting restless.”

  During the summer on Middle Cay, Nick and Morris had become friends. Nick came to rely on Morris’s knowledge of the reef. Morris lived on the island and seemed to find there a security he needed. His curiosity about the sea matched Nick’s.

  Early each evening, just after sunset, they would sit on the beach and talk—about the reef, about life at the university, about marine biology, and—more rarely—about Morris and his father.

  Morris could say very little about his father. “My dad told me legends,” Morris said to Nick, “but that’s all. The legends say that the water people come down from the stars. They came a long time ago.” Nick was watching Morris and the boy was digging his fingers in the sand, as if searching for something to grasp.

  “What do you think?” Nick asked him.

  Morris shrugged. “Doesn’t really matter. I think they must be native to this world or they couldn’t breed with humans.” He sifted the beach sand with his webbed hands. “But it doesn’t much matter. I’m here. And I’m not human.” He looked at Nick with dark, lonely eyes.

  Nick had wanted to reach across the sand and grasp the cold hand that kept sifting the sand, digging and sifting the sand. He wanted to say something comforting. But he had remained silent, giving the boy only the comfort of his company.

  Nick lay on his cot, listening to the sounds of the evening. He could hear his neighbor’s chickens, settling down to rest. He could hear the evening wind in the alms. He wanted to sleep, but he did not want to dream.

  Once Morris was gone, he would not come back, Nick thought. If only Nick could keep him here.

  Nick started to sleep and caught himself on the brink of a dream. His hands had been closing on Morris’s throat. Somehow, in that moment, his hands were not his own. They were his father’s hands: cool, clean, brutally competent. His father, a high-school biology teacher with a desire to be more, had taught him how to pith a frog, how to hold it tight and insert the long pin at the base of the skull. “It’s just a frog,” his father had said. His father’s hands were closing on Morris’s throat and Nick was thinking, I could break his neck—quickly and painlessly. After all, he’s not human.

  Nick snapped awake and clasped his hands as if that might stop them from doing harm. He was shivering in the warm night. He sat up on the, edge of the bed, keeping his hands locked together. He stepped out onto the porch where Morris was sleeping.

  Morris was gone; the hammock was empty. Nick looked out over the empty street and let his hands relax. He returned to his bed and dozed off, but his sleep was disturbed by voices that blended with the evening wind.

  He could hear his former wife’s bitter voice speaking over the sound of the wind. She said, “I’m going. You don’t love me, you just want to analyze me. I’m going.” He could hear his father, droning on about how the animal felt no pain, how it was all in the interest of science. At last he sank into a deeper sleep, but in the morning he did not want to remember his dreams.

  Morris was still gone when Nick finished breakfast. He read over Morris’s notes. They were thorough and carefully taken. Nick made notes for another paper on the flashlight fish, a paper on which Morris would be senior author.

  Morris returned late in the afternoon. Nick looked up from his notes, looked into Morris’s mirrored eyes, and thought of death. And tried not to think of death.

  “I thought we could go to Middle Cay for dinner,” Morris said. “I has got conch and shrimp. We can take the camp stove and fix them there.”

  Nick tapped his pencil against the pad nervously. “Yes. Let’s do that.”

  Morris piloted the skiff to Middle Cay. Through the water, Nick could see the reef that ringed the island—shades of blue and green beneath the water. The reef was broken by channels here and there; Morris followed the main channel nearly to the beach, then cut the engine and let the skiff drift in.

  They set up the camp stove in a level spot, sheltered by the trunk of a fallen palm tree. Morris cracked the conch and pounded it and threw it in the pan with shrimp.

  They drank beer while the combination cooked. They ate from tin cups, leaning side by side against the fallen calm.

  “You can keep the skiff for yourself,” Morris said suddenly.

  “I think that you can use it.”

  Nick looked at him, startled.

  “I left my notes on your desk,” Morris said. “They be as clear as I can make them,”

  Nick was studying his face, “I will go tonight,” Morris said, “My dad will come here to meet me.” The sun had set and the evening breeze was kicking up waves in the smooth water. He drained his beer and set the bottle down beside the stove.

  Morris stood and took off his shirt, slipped out of his ants. The gill slits made stripes that began just below his rib cage and ended near his hips. He was more muscular than Nick remembered. He stepped toward the water.

  “Wait,” Nick said. “Not yet.”

  “Got to.” Morris turned to look at Nick. “There’s a mask and fins in the skiff. Come with me for a ways.”

  Morris swam ahead, following the channel out. Nick followed in mask and fins. The twilight had faded. The water was dark and its surface shone silver. The night did not seem real. The darkness made it dreamlike. The sound of Nick’s feet breaking the water’s surface was too loud. The touch of water against his skin was too warm.

  Morris swam just ahead, just out of reach.

  Nick wore his dive knife at his belt. He always wore his dive knife at his belt. As he swam, he noticed that he was taking his knife out and holding it ready. It was a heavy knife, designed for prying rocks apart and cracking conch.

  It would work best as a club, he was thinking. A club to be used for a sudden sharp blow from behind. That might be enough. If he called to Morris, then Morris would stop and Nick could catch him.

  But his voice was not cooperating. Not yet: His hands held the knife ready, but he could not call out. Not yet.

  He felt the change in water temperature as they passed into deeper water. He felt something—a swirl of water against his legs—as if something large were swimming past.

  Morris disappeared from the water ahead of him. The water was smooth, with no sign of Morris’s bobbing head.

  “Morris,” Nick called. “Morris.”

  He saw them then. Dim shapes beneath the water.

  Morris: slim, almost human. His father: man-shaped, but different. His arms were the wrong shape; his legs were too thick and muscular.

 
Morris was close enough to touch, but Nick did not strike. When Morris reached out and touched Nick’s hand with a cold, gentle touch, Nick released the knife and let it fall, watched it tumble toward the bottom.

  Morris’s father turned in the water to look up at Nick and Nick read nothing in those inhuman eyes: cold, dark, dispassionate. Black and uncaring as the eyes of a shark.

  Nick saw Morris swim down and touch his father’s shoulder, urging him away into the darkness.

  “Morris!” Nick called, knowing Morris could not hear him. He kicked with frantic energy, not caring that his knife was gone. He did not want to stop Morris. He wanted to go with Morris and swim with the dolphins and explore the sea.

  There was darkness below him—cool, deep water. He could feel the tug of the currents. He swam, not conserving his energy, not caring. His kicks grew weaker. He looked down into the world of darkness and mystery and he sank below the surface almost gladly.

  He felt a cold arm around his shoulders. He coughed up water when the arm dragged him to the surface. He coughed, took a breath that was half water, half air, coughed again. Dark water surged against his mask each time the arm dragged him forward. He choked and struggled, but the arm dragged him on.

  One flailing leg bumped against coral, then against sand. Sand scraped against his back as he was dragged up the beach. His mask was ripped away and he turned on his side to retch and cough up seawater.

  Morris squatted beside him with one cold webbed hand still on his shoulder. Nick focused on Morris’s face and on the black eyes that seemed as remote as mirrored lenses.

  “Good-bye, Nick,” Morris said. His voice was a hoarse whisper. “Good-bye.”

  Morris’s hand lingered on Nick’s shoulder for an instant.

  Then the young man stood and walked back to the sea.

  Nick lay on his back and looked up at the stars. After a time, he breathed more easily. He picked up Morris’s cap from where it lay on the beach and turned it in his hands, in a senseless repetitive motion.

  He crawled further from the water and lay his head against the fallen log. He gazed at the stars and the sea, and thought about how he could write down his observations of Morris’s departure and Morris’s father. No. He could not write it down, could not pin it down with words.

  He did not need to write it down.

  He put on the red baseball cap and pulled it low over his eyes. When he slept, with his head propped against the log, he dreamed only of the deep night that lay beneath the silver surface of the sea.

  Touch of the Bear

  THE SPIRIT WHO takes the form of a she-bear has been sniffing around my hut for the past three nights. She cannot touch me; the bear claws that dangle from the thong around my neck are a powerful protection.

  I sit in the meadow by my hut and chip the flint spearhead to create an edge. She circles me in the tall grass, her shaggy body sometimes blocking out the sun.

  As I work, I chant in the Old Tongue, asking why she is here. She does not answer; but when she looks at me, her red-rimmed eyes are expectant: something is coming.

  She swings her heavy head to look across the meadow, and on the path from the Outside I see two spots of color, moving slowly. A shout echoes across the valley—“Hello, Sam!” and I recognize the deep voice. My blood brother, Marshall, has returned to the valley. When I look back to the spirit, she dissolves into a gray mist that vanishes in the afternoon sun.

  Setting aside my tools, I stand and bare my teeth in a smile, just as Marshall taught me long ago. The barrels of the rifles lashed to Marshall’s pack gleam in the sun as he strides across the meadow toward me.

  He has gained weight since last we hunted together. He is still a large man—broad-shouldered and muscular—but his muscles have become soft. Three claws—taken from the bear that he and I killed—hang from a chain around his neck.

  He stands before me, grinning. “You’re smart not to venture out of the Preserve, Sam,” he says. “I’m glad to be back.” Beneath his smile is a tension that had not been there when I saw him two years before. He swings his pack to the ground and shakes back his hair. “I need to get clear of civilization again.”

  The woman at his side is young, scarcely more than a girl. Her hair is the color that Marshall’s was before it turned gray—the golden brown of the meadow grass in the summer. Though she is taller than I am by more than a hand’s breadth, she would be considered thin and weak by the standards of my people. She has delicate features like the rest of the humans: pointed chin, small nose, no protecting brow ridges.

  “This is my daughter, Kirsten,” Marshall says, putting his arm around her shoulders. “Kirsten, this is Sam, the last of the Neanderthals.”

  She holds out her hand to me.

  I know that by human standards I am a curiosity: broad-shouldered and stocky, my face too broad, my nose too flat. Some humans have judged me stupid because my brow slopes back where theirs rises in a high forehead. I am not stupid. The rich fools who brought me from the past to serve as keeper in their game preserve trained me in English. Though my voice is gruff, I speak the language well. I spoke well in my case before the World Court. The final judgment ruled me human and granted me the Preserve to repay me for being taken from my own time.

  Kirsten’s touch on my hand is cool, and her eyes meet mine. She is young, but she has the eyes of a shaman. A feeling of power surrounds her.

  “We are here to hunt,” Marshall says. “I want to hunt the cave bear.” His eyes are troubled, and I know that he too remembers when we first met—two young warriors from different ends of time and he said, “I want to hunt the cave bear.”

  Now I understand that the she-bear spirit has been waiting for the hunt and I wonder at the anticipation that I saw in her eyes. “The omens are bad for hunting, brother,” I say. “See how tall the grass is. It is too late in the spring to hunt the bear—she will be awake and alert.”

  “We hunted before in late spring.” The tension beneath Marshall’s smile has increased.

  “We were younger and more foolish then.”

  “We can be young and foolish again.”

  “We can be foolish,” I say.

  “We must hunt.” There is an undercurrent of fear in his voice. “If you don’t hunt with me, I’ll hunt alone.”

  I frown, but I do not ask why—the mood that is on him leaves no room for argument. “The moon’s full tonight,” he says. “We can roll the bones and let the spirits decide.”

  I know that Marshall does not believe in the spirits; he wears the bear claws around his neck as a courtesy to me.

  He believes in what he calls the laws of probability—and I know that he hopes that the laws will bend in his favor tonight.

  “We will roll the bones,” I agree, admitting defeat. The spirits will decide and I fear I know what their decision will be.

  At dusk, I leave the hut to hunt for our dinner. I take Kirsten with me.

  The insects in the grass call to each other with shrill cries as I follow the stream around the edge of the meadow. We walk in silence except for the sound of Kirsten’s pant legs brushing against the tall grass.

  When she speaks, her voice carries the power that I can see in her eyes. “Why don’t you ever leave this valley, Sam?” she asks.

  I have not left the Preserve since the decision of the World Court granted me the land. “There is nothing for me outside,” I say. “I live here now.”

  “Do you wish you could go back to your old world?” she asks.

  “The World Court would not allow it. They fear the consequences of sending me back,” I say. I have wondered what would have happened if I had returned to my tribe. How would I have disturbed the flow of time in my world?

  “But do you want to go back?” she asks again.

  I consider her question, remembering the day I arrived in the Preserve. I was a confused youth, brought into a world I did not understand by rich men who were playing with a new toy. I learned to live without the comfor
t and strength of my tribe. I learned to negotiate with the spirits with no shaman to aid me. I learned my own power.

  “I changed by coming to this world,” I say. I shrug and repeat, “I live here now. This valley is enough for me. I am old.”

  She hesitates, then says, “My father is afraid he is getting old, Sam. That’s why he must hunt again.”

  “He is old,” I say. “I am old.” I do not understand these people. Though Marshall and I are blood brothers, I do not understand him.

  She shrugs. “It is different for him. He must go hunting again.” She is tense, but I cannot tell the source of her fear.

  As we walk close by the stream, a mist rises from the water. The mist solidifies and the great she-bear paces by Kirsten’s side. The spirit nuzzles Kirsten’s hair and snuffles on her neck, but the woman walks on, unaware of the beast that looms over her. I stop, watching the spirit and the woman. Though Kirsten has the eyes of a shaman, she does not see. Her power is unfocused.

  In the Old Tongue, the she-bear growls that she grants us permission to hunt the cave bear. I read trickery and deception in her eyes; she is a capricious spirit: sometimes generous, sometimes vindictive, but always dangerous.

  Kirsten frowns back at me, not knowing why I have stopped.

  “Do you promise success in the hunt?” I ask the spirit in the Old Tongue.

  “What?” Kirsten asks. “Who are you talking to?”

  The spirit dissolves into mist without answering my question, and Kirsten repeats, “Who are you talking to?”

  “I saw a spirit following you,” I say. “You did not see her?”

  She shakes her head, looking as doubtful as her father had when I had first told him that I must ask the spirits for permission to hunt. “Your father does not see the spirits,” I tell Kirsten. “He does not believe in them. But you have the eyes of a shaman. You do not know your own power.”