CHAPTER FIVE
After praying the rosary meaninglessly in his cabin, he put on a clean shirt and hopped onto a land vehicle. He wanted to see the village another time, to put to rest some of the uneasiness he felt about this mission. He didn't know what he was looking for, just that it was going to be something to prove that this wasn't all just some power-trip on the part of the astronauts.
When he got there, several armed astronauts were roaming the streets, but the Novacadians were nowhere in sight. "Lockdown," a man said, when he asked. "Someone has turned up missing, and we're on high alert."
He heard a commotion coming from one of the huts. The barking of orders and a symphony of loud shouts could be heard all the way down the street. Anthony followed the noise to see what was going on.
They were restraining a frail old man with short white hair and wrinkled skin. It took seven men to hold him down, even though the impossibility of this situation was all too apparent to Anthony. His limbs were as skinny and loose as snakes, and the hollowness of eyes and the sunkenness of his skin revealed a greatly advanced age. Why it required that many men to restrain someone who looked like he could barely lift his own body was a mystery to him.
"Help us," a man said. "He's found a way to break the force field."
Anthony didn't know what to do. The man looked kind and desperate. If he were fighting against the astronauts, he looked like he was fighting in self-defense.
The man looked at him with his large, almond-shaped eyes and in that moment Anthony had the distinct sensation that he was trying to communicate something to him, something important. They struggled against the wall, pinning the man into a corner, roughly clamping his arms behind his back. He watched as the men used the butts of their guns to strike him on the head and drag him into the bedroom, where they tied him to the mattress. Sprawled out in a pentacle, black blood trickling from his head wound, the man was completely unconscious.
Scurrying Novacadian females in long dresses hovered around the door to the bedroom, peering at him with their large eyes. If only they could speak, Anthony thought, then perhaps this would not have happened. Not only did they not speak, but they did not scream, or groan, or utter any kind of sound from their mouths. Their feeble hands made no movements that could be construed as sign language, and their bodies spoke no language in their postures. It was a inconceivable to Anthony. How did they live under the same roofs? How did they coordinate their actions? How did they arrange their families, when they spoke nothing to each other? Perhaps fear of the unknown was a motivation for the experiments that the astronauts conducted, Anthony thought.
When the commotion was over, he wandered away from the other astronauts. He'd come here seeking answers, but it only furthered his conviction that something here was definitely not right. Unzipping his pants to get ready to relieve himself, he heard a rustling in the ferns. He raised his eyes, highly aware that it might be one of the tree-dwellers scurrying on the outskirts of the forest. They were docile animals, but their teeth were as sharp as knives, and you didn't want to get caught near one, especially a pregnant one.
He took a step back, zipping back up his pants. Steadying his focus on where the rustling had come from, he saw a pale form rushing between the spaces of green. Tree-dwellers had black-and-grey coats with long, furry tails. Interested, he stepped further into the thick forest of ferns.
She stepped out, and uttered the first sound that he had ever heard a Novacadian make: a gasp.
He grabbed her wrist. She tried to pull away, but he was five times as strong as her. She twisted and resisted his grasp hopelessly, gnashing her teeth in frustration.
She was a Novacadian! But her hair was long and blonde, very human-like. Her pale, flawless skin made up the texture and shape face of a porcelain doll. Her eyes, just like those of the man who had just been brutalized, were dark, large, and expressive. Her lips were full, soft, pink, and she was tall; taller than the females he had previously seen in the hut. And she was prouder, somehow: whereas the women in the hut wore sad expressions on their faces and in their eyes, she had the added dimension of fierceness, valor in her demeanor.
With a clarity of memory that had previously not been present, he remembered his dream. "You're the girl in my dream," he said incredulously. He started to take her back to the village.
"No, no, please don't," he heard. When he spun around, her mouth was closed.
"Did you just say something?"
He watched as she said, still with lips unmoving, "What you and your men are doing is torture to us. Please don't take me back. They will kill me if I return."
The words were clear as though she had spoken through a microphone, and yet Anthony had to blink to make sure she really hadn't opened her mouth. "You...can communicate."
She pulled her wrist away from his grasp. "Please release me. I will cause you no harm."
The wheels were turning inside his head. "My partner was right," he said. "You use E.S.P." He began to pace. "But you are the one who escaped, and I have to bring you back. Many people are looking for you."
"Please," she said. "I cannot explain everything to you right now. All I can tell you is that it is detrimentally important to both of our races for you to let me go."
"Where will you go?" Anthony asked, finding himself somewhat spellbound by this thin, angelic creature.
"Far away. To a place where I will be safe, so that in the future all of my people will never be in danger again."
"Take me with you," Anthony said impulsively. "I'll help you. If an astronaut comes along, I can protect you from him."
Her body language was reduced to a sad, fierce, wise look in her eyes that seemed to penetrate him to his very soul. She made no movements with her body but stood serenely still, not even making use of hand movements to illustrate her silent speech.
She was wearing a long, white dress that was torn at the hem. Sticky black blood stained the ends of the fabric, and Anthony said, "You're hurt."
She didn't even shake her head. "I must go."