The End Has Come

“Dad,” she says, “will you run the tests on of my soybeans — tray number eighteen? Julie and Gary and Miguel are getting together a group to hike into the mountains. We’ll be back by dark, but they want to leave right away, and they only got around to informing me now.”

There is no rancor in the way she says this, only pleasure in the proposed expedition. I think about bears, then remind myself that attacks are less frequent than when I was a boy, that Jenna has tranquilizer darts, that she’s not an extreme sensitive. I say, “Of course I’ll run your tests. Have fun.”

“Thanks!”

Before she can leave, however, the door opens and a stranger limps in. We both smile at him. “Hello,” I say, “I’m Larry Travis. Can we help you?”

“Jake Martin,” he says. His smile seems strained. Is he ill? “I’m on my way to Bremerville to see my sister, but I hurt my leg. Hoping I can stay here a few days.”

“Of course. We have room at our bungalow. This is my daughter, Jenna.”

She says, “What’s wrong with your leg? Do you need a doctor? I can send for one from Castleton.”

“No, ma’am, I just need to stay off it a bit.”

“Jenna, take him to the bungalow and get him something to eat. No, wait — you want to hike. Jake, do you mind waiting here about half an hour while I finish up a —”

Jenna says quickly, “I’ll take him.”

“But you —”

“I’m happy to take him.” She smiles again at the stranger, and he says, “Thank you.”

As they leave, him leaning a little on her shoulder to favor his left leg, I stare after them. Why did Jenna so abruptly change her mind?

I shrug and begin the dry-ashing procedure on her soybeans.

* * *

No enemies sighted yet. But they’re here. I buried my guns in the woods; they can detect metal at close range. Meanwhile, there is this woman, taking me home, collecting some hot food from a refectory, letting me lean on her all the way. I don’t need to lean on her, and I think she knows that. She and her father take me in without a second thought — nobody here would harm anyone else. But this woman . . . How can she be one of the dehumanized, alien-whipped, de-sexed sheep? Her?

She smells like strawberries.

“How did you hurt your leg?”

“Stupid clumsiness,” I lie, and she laughs. The laugh sounds confused.

We talk, although it’s hard to keep my mind concentrated. She’s smart and — like all of them — sweet. But she isn’t like all of them.

My cock is like stone.

This woman . . .

* * *

Dant23 comes in to the lab as I finish the tests. He waves his tentacles at me and I smile. I show him Zane’s and my own handwritten notes on the zinc percentages in different wheat strains.

Does he read them? Does he somehow photograph them with his eyes and transmit them to some unimaginable computer somewhere? Does he only pretend to know what they mean? There is no way to tell.

The Dant came down from their ship twenty years ago, when everyone alive from before the Blessing was very old, and we still know almost nothing about them. Not why they chose to help humanity by altering our genes for EIFB. Not why they chose a volcano, of all things, to distribute the molecules that conferred that incalculable boon. Obviously, they wanted to be able to contact humanity without risk of violence to themselves, but we, not them, are the major beneficiaries of their Blessing.

The library at Bremerton has books, very old, with pictures in them that I saw only once, years ago, and still have nightmares about. Worldwide wars. Bodies in trenches. Instruments of medieval torture. Children spitted, women raped, cows slaughtered for meat. People who ate flesh.

Dant23 makes a noise, waves a different tentacle, and settles into a corner of the lab to observe.

* * *