The Last Starry Night
Night in the Mountains

The sun fell to the west. Floyd wondered what the night would look like tonight, if it came. It was a spectacular sunset, with dozens of jet trails webbing the red sky with purple and gold, but the sky in the east did not fade into darkness. Instead it stayed a gentle blue, that graded into a slightly darker blue, and finally resolved itself into the Pacific Ocean. Floyd shook his head. It was lovely, but he’d much rather have seen stars. The last light of the sun fell on the western slopes of the Appalachians, and the green of the trees mingled with the sun’s light to turn the leaves into sheets of beaten copper. As the sun set further, Floyd saw delicate arcs rising, catching the light as the sun fell, thin gilded arches that leaped up from the ground high into the sky, like the trails of fallen stars. A great cluster of them touched down somewhere ahead – Washington? What could they be?

“Those are the tracks that our ships use to land,” said one of the aliens. They had been quiet now for a while, after wearing themselves out screaming.

“Tracks?”

“To slow their fall. When they take off, they can ride the track back up again.”

“Pretty clever,” said Floyd. “I guess that means a lot of y’all’s ships have landed in Washington.”

“Washington,” said an alien. “That’s one of your cities. I remember now.”

“Have y’all figured out yet why y’all are tied up?”

“We are enemies?” said another alien hesitantly. “We are invading your world. You are afraid we will attack you.”

“You got it,” said Floyd.

“Why are we invading?” asked the alien.

“We don’t know,” said Grandma. “If you remember why, let us know.”

“I know where our parents are,” said the alien. “You killed them, didn’t you?”

Floyd didn’t answer.

“I don’t like the chain,” said another alien. “As soon as I get out of here, I’m going to kill you. I’m going to kill you. I’m going to kill you. I’m -- “

Ngoc suddenly screamed. “Be quiet! Be quiet! Stop it!” She began sobbing. The aliens were shocked into silence.

Grandma put her hand on Ngoc’s. Ngoc pulled away, and curled up with her hands over her head, still crying.

Night fell, such as it was, and Floyd stepped on the gas. They would be in Washington before dawn.

***

The interstate swept north in long curves along the Shenandoah Valley. Floyd drove as fast as he dared, much faster than the speed limit – but the road was empty, and he was racing time. The alien arcs that had glittered in the sunset were lit with strings of lights now, looking like constellations that had draped strings of stars down from the sky. They were beautiful, dreadfully beautiful.

Grandma, Johnny, and Ngoc were asleep. Floyd was probably exhausted, but he wouldn’t let himself feel it.

Then he heard a sound that made his heart sink: a siren. Were they after him? He glanced in the rear view mirror; red lights were far behind him, but there was no one else on the road. They were definitely after him.

Why on earth were the police worried about speeders, he wondered? Didn’t they realize the world was being invaded? Shouldn’t they be concentrating on that, somehow?

Should he go faster? No way to outrun a police car. And if he stopped to accept the ticket, who knows what the policeman would want to do about his strange cargo. Probably bring him into the station for questioning. They would lose all kinds of time, and not get to talk to the federal government people who could help them negotiate for Azzie.

What if he just didn’t stop? They’d set up a roadblock, he supposed.

Could he lose them? He was still on the interstate; but there was an exit coming up in a mile or so. He might get lost on the back roads, but he could probably lose the police. He’d take the chance.

The police car was coming closer. Floyd went a little faster. The exit came up quickly, and he turned off as fast as he dared. Off the ramp, and a quick right. The country here was very hilly, and he had to drive carefully to take the curves safely. This would be good. A quick left, another right, another left. The road wound through a small town, seemingly deserted, the white walls of the houses glowing strangely in the earthlight from the sky. Floyd wished he had a police scanner. Were they still following him?

They left the town, and now the road began to climb sharply, making the engine work. The road edged its way around the mountain, and through a break in the trees to his left, Floyd could see the landscape spread out in the darkness below. It looked as though the world was at the bottom of a vast ocean. The mountains, fields, and cities glowed softly in turquoise light, and the alien arches strung from the sky hung like strings of diamonds dropped into the abyss.

Suddenly Floyd slammed on the breaks. Two police cars were blocking the road ahead, their lights flashing. How did they replace him? But they didn’t have him yet. He threw the car into reverse and turned around. Clammy panic tickled his skin.

He took the first left, climbing up the mountain again, and then the road leveled out. He took a sharp right onto a dirt road, and the car began to bounce and thud along -- the road was pitted and covered with potholes.

After ten minutes or so of this, Grandma was shaken awake.

“Floyd,” she said, dazedly, “what are you doing? Where are we?”

“Virginia,” said Papa. “Taking the back roads a little. The police are after us.”

“Oh no,” said Grandma.

“Don’t worry. You try to sleep some more. We’ll lose them.”

“But Floyd,” she said, “we can pay the ticket --”

“I’m not worried about that,” he said. “I’m worried about the aliens. You try to rest now.”

“Oh, right,” she said, and he could tell that she would be asleep again immediately. She had slept poorly the previous night; she was spent.

At last the dirt road ended. A paved road crossed their path. He looked up at the sky. Directly ahead of him was Southeast Asia, upside down. So he must be facing south. He turned left, to the east. This road headed down, swooping left and right easily and smoothly. He went faster and faster.

WHAM!

He’d taken a turn too fast; there was something in the road, and no time to swerve. The car jumped under him and the steering wheel tried to twist out of his fingers, but he managed to keep it on the road and brought it to a stop. Leaving it running, he jumped out and looked back up the road to see what he’d hit. Something was lying in the road; he could barely see it in his taillights a score of yards back.

He looked at the car, walking around it, squinting at it in the dim earthlight. He couldn’t see any damage. He carefully approached the thing lying in the road.

It was large, larger than man-sized, glinting a little in the taillights. A bear? It wasn’t moving at all. Floyd nudged it with his foot. It didn’t move. He timidly felt of it. It felt scaly, like a snake. Its skin was loose and rubbery.

It was an alien. What was it doing out here, in the middle of nowhere? Had he killed it? What should he do with it? If he weren’t in a hurry, he’d strap it to the car and take it to the police station. But he was in a hurry, and he wasn’t keen to meet up with the police. He should at least move it to the side of the road, to keep anyone else from hitting it.

Something inside him screamed that this was an intelligent being, that it should be handled reverently, like a dead man. But it was heavy, and he had to be quick. He shoved it over to the side of the road.

Only then did he look back at the car and see that there was another alien. The car door was open and it was pulling something out of the car -- he could just barely see it silhouetted against the trees lit by his headlights. He screamed and ran back. The alien waved something in the air, something that shrieked like Johnny, and then disappeared into the trees.

Floyd ran after it, his brain full of nothing but getting Johnny back. Then he heard another sound from behind him: Grandma screaming. He turned: a third alien – too many of them! – and Grandma was struggling, but it had her out of the car and was dragging her away in another direction, across the road, and he could see strange lights in the trees – and a glittering arch rising from the forest beyond – she was being dragged toward a spacecraft --

“Floyd, you fool!” screamed Grandma. “Go after Johnny! Go after Johnny!”

No time to think: he obeyed. He slashed past trees, stumbling and tripping over rocks and roots, running blindly in the dark, following the sound of crashing and thumping ahead. He could run faster than this thing, he could catch it. On and on he ran, getting closer, but still too far behind. He could hear Johnny screaming and screaming for his mommy. How could he have been so stupid as to leave them there in the car? He ran harder.

Down into a valley, up over a hill, whipping through branches, stumbling over stones, deeper and deeper into the black forest. The earthlight in the sky did not reach under these trees; here it was as dark as a cave, as dark as a womb. The forest was dank and musty. He thought he heard animals skittering out of his way as he passed, birds fluttering in the invisible branches above. Still the thing he was following thudded on, weaving this way and that as it ran, impossible to see. Johnny stopped shrieking. Floyd didn’t dare wonder why; he ran harder.

They came to a clearing at the crest of a hill. In the light of the Pacific Ocean, Floyd saw a field of tall grass with a fence cutting across it left to right, a fence of wood posts stacked like bones. The alien was a dark smudge making its way through the grass. He ran into the field. It smelled of fresh-cut grass, muddy and sticky. Twice he fell face-forward into the morass and stumbled up again. The alien disappeared into the trees at the other end of the field as he was clambering over the fence. He was falling behind. His legs were aching, but he ignored them and ran.

Now the ground sloped steeply down. He slipped on loose rocks, fell, and got to his feet again. Ahead, the alien grunted and hissed as it smacked into trees and fell over stones. The forest floor was covered with pine needles, and smelled strongly of juniper. There seemed to be more light in the forest now.

Then Floyd saw an opening in the trees ahead, and heard, as from far off, the sound of running water. A few steps later he saw that the trees ended abruptly about a hundred feet ahead. The thing carrying Johnny reached the edge of the trees, and seemed to stand there, uncertain. Papa bellowed and ran flat-out. He heard Johnny call out, “Mama!” Then the they disappeared.

Floyd rushed up and stopped at the edge of the trees. Here was a precipice, a sudden drop: the forest was cut with a mighty gorge. In the light of the earth he could see, far below, the glint of water and hear the sound of a waterfall. It looked like a sheer drop. There was no sign of the alien or Johnny.

A wind had come up, scattering clouds across the sky, setting the forest to sighing like the sea. Floyd looked out over the Virginia hills that tumbled on the other side of the gorge, and screamed. He had lost Azzie, he had lost Johnny, he had lost Ursula. In that moment, he wanted to die.

His mind leapt to a different answer. He would jump after them. There was the merest chance that they had landed somewhere soft, or that perhaps the alien’s body had cushioned Johnny’s fall. He would take that same chance, and go down after them. And if he was wrong, well, then he would die, but it was only, he thought, what he deserved.

He stepped forward, over the edge.

But no, another part of him thought. Remember Ngoc. A spark of sanity remained to him. You have to go back to Ngoc. He stepped back.

But the rocks slid out from under his foot, and he fell. All the pain in his muscles and the light in his brain disappeared at once as he fell into the blackness below, and then nothing.

***

He woke up slowly, though a haze of pain, and saw an alien face looking at him just a few inches from his nose.

It was opening its mouth slightly to show its rows of teeth, in a grotesque sort of smile. Tall pines rose behind the face into a sky tinged pink with dawn. He could hear running water close by.

Floyd yelled and tried to scramble back, but his muscles and bones refused to obey; pain shot through his arms and legs, and his yell came out as a weak groan. He was helpless.

The alien said, “Don’t worry, Floyd. We’ll help you.”

Floyd was so surprised to hear this that he stopped trying to move. The alien looked up away from his face and hissed. Floyd heard an answering hiss, and then another, and another. Four of them. Was it possible that these were the aliens he’d carried in his car all the way from Alabama?

“Johnny,” he whispered.

“Johnny is hurt,” said the alien, “but he will be okay. Let us help you.”

“Help Johnny,” Floyd gasped. He had to trust them -- what choice did he have?

“We are helping her,” said the alien.

“Get the police,” he tried to say, and “Where is Ngoc?” but his voice had failed him. There was a terrible pain in his back that seemed to reach deep inside, too far inside.

One alien grabbed his shoulders, and the other his ankles. Were they going to carry him away? To where? They couldn’t carry him back up that cliff, could they?

He twisted his neck so that he could see the alien at his feet. It was squatting, holding his feet, but it had its mouth wide open like it was yawning. What on Earth --

The alien’s body was expanding like a balloon. Floyd watched in amazement as the body grew bigger and bigger, and finally began to lift off the ground. Carrying Floyd with it!

Pain shot through his body as they picked him up, and he convulsed sharply. The aliens held on tight, however, and they rose slowly up past the pine branches up over the trees. Floyd was hanging high over the forest, as if he were on a hammock, looking up into the pink dawn sky.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw another balloon-shaped alien carrying Johnny. He hung limply, but Floyd couldn’t see any blood. A fourth alien was rising nearby, carrying nothing. Would they not save the alien that had stolen Johnny? Or was he dead, or run off?

He slowly became conscious of a noise apart from the wind and the running water. It was a noise like a motorcycle, or --

It was a helicopter, a police helicopter. He shouted in joy. Dimly he heard someone, a human, on the helicopter, shouting at the aliens through a megaphone, shouting at them to put down their captives and they would not be harmed. Oh thank heavens, at last, at last. He passed out.

***

The oval room was carpeted with the Great Seal of the United Sates, larger than Floyd’s whole apartment, lit with soft lights. The only piece of furniture was a large desk. An elderly man -- Floyd recognized him as the President immediately -- sat behind the desk, and guards stood on either side of him. Other men in suits were in the room as well. As they entered – Floyd pushed in a wheelchair, Ngoc carrying Johnny, the four aliens following – the guards in front took up positions between the aliens and the President, and other guards moved around behind them, keeping them completely encircled.

There was a short pause. The president stood up. “Well,” he said, in the sharp voice Floyd knew so well from television -- though he sounded much more tired than usual -- “what do you want?”

“We have a warning for you, Mr. President,” said one of the aliens.

The President glanced at a paper on his desk. “According to our information,” he said, “you were tiny children twenty-four hours ago. You have had no contact with your species in all that time. How can you possibly have a warning for me?”

“Our species passes memories from parents to children,” continued the alien. “We are now old enough to remember everything our parents knew.”

The President arched an eyebrow. “All right. Let’s say I believe you. What is your warning?”

“Our species wants to colonize your planet, to live on it. You humans are trying to stop us. Other species have resisted us before. We always win.” This was said almost sadly.

“That doesn’t mean you’ll win this time.”

“But we will. If the fighting is too difficult, then we’ll use a tactic that always succeeds.”

“And what is that?”

“We remove your sun.”

The president blinked, looking as though he did not understand what had been said.

“Remove the what?”

“Remove the sun. In order to force y’all to give up, we will almost certainly remove the sun, which will cause y’all’s planet to freeze. Once y’all have either given up or frozen to death, we’ll return the sun and complete the colonization.”

“What?” cried the President. “You can’t just remove a sun!”

“We can,” said the alien. Its voice was calm and quiet, but urgent. “Our species has moved the Earth and the sun into a -- a -- a pocket universe, a small universe removed from the rest of the universe. There is a small hole connecting the pocket universe to the larger universe; it allows heat and light from the sun to escape into the larger universe, so that the pocket universe does not grow too hot. If humans continue to resist, we will draw the sun out through the hole and the Earth will begin to freeze.”

For a long moment the President simply stared at them. The men in suits exchanged glances, and Floyd thought he heard boots of some of the soldiers shuffling on the carpet. For all their uniforms, for all the marks of officialdom and the trappings of high office, everyone in that room was still only human, with families and dreams and hearts that could be broken. Faced with a threat like this, the official trappings might be stripped away, and the carefully constructed edifice of government, nation and loyalty might fall away into fearful chaos. The soldier next to him, carefully staring at the wall with his gun held rigidly, might be thinking now of a girl in some far-off state, or of a mother wondering if or when he would come home. Just as Floyd was now wondering about Azzie and Grandma.

“Why would you do such a thing?” whispered the President.

“Our species needs land. We need space to live. As you can see, we grow up very quickly. We live only three days. During that time, we must have children and pass on our memories. We always have four children. Our numbers double every two days. Your planet is very nice for us to live on.”

“But it is our planet!” cried the President. “You have no right to do this!”

“We do have the right,” said the alien quietly. “Unfortunately. Your species is a child species, an immature, non-sentient species. By interstellar law, such species are under the protection of sentient species, like as children under the protection of parents. Our species has decided that your species would be better off confined to a smaller world, or to a continent on Earth, until y’all have reached full sentience and may enter fully into the interstellar community.”

“We are not a child species!” thundered the President, slamming his fist on the table.

“Hasn’t your species been judged to be non-sentient by the Beast?” asked the alien.

“What in blue blazes are you talking about?”

“I don’t think he knows about the Beast,” said another alien to the one who was speaking.

“The Beast,” said the first alien, “is a being who has existed as long as anyone knows. It is the only thing that can pass judgment as to whether a species is sentient. If y’all had been found to be sentient, then y’all would have entered the interstellar community as equals.”

“But we haven’t been judged!” said the President.

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure!” shouted the President.

“You know that sometimes our species does not check with the Beast before invading,” said one alien to another.

“We can help you bring a petition to the Interstellar Council to be judged by the Beast,” said the first alien. “You must gather some humans to come to the Beast and be judged. We will go with them, and make sure that they are judged and that the Council is informed of the judgment. Then, if y’all are judged to be sentient, our species will have to leave.”

“How can I trust you?” asked the President. “I have no idea if you’re lying about any of this. Suppose you just take some humans and never come back?”

The alien who had been speaking looked down at little Johnny, who was standing very patiently, holding Ngoc’s hand. “This little boy took care of us when our parents were killed,” said the alien. “He protected us, and gave us food. He acted as a parent for us, for a little while. The bond between parents and children in our species is very strong.”

“Baby fish got big,” said Johnny.

A man in a suit leaned over to speak in the President’s ear.

“We’ll need to discuss this,” said the President. “And we’ll have questions.”

“Of course,” said the alien.