Seeker

1 The meeting was about to come to order. Travis Baird sat on a folding metal chair in back, even though he knew he would be called to the front eventually. A buzz had gone through the group of fourteen when he walked in. Enough of them knew who he was, and those who did quickly spread the word to those who didn’t. Travis wondered what they saw when they looked at him. A skinny, frail-looking scientist, maybe close to fifty. The thinning gray hair gave his age away. But Travis Baird was only thirty-two. Wasting away. Dying. A side effect of his job. Of the things he kept finding. Artifacts and organisms left behind by what he knew were alien aircraft, no matter how the government and Air Force tried to explain them away. The meeting was in the back of a storefront, a Mexican gift shop during the day. But the inventory of colorful pottery and turquoise jewelry and bright ladies’ tops and dresses probably never got refreshed. Someone might buy something, and the owner of the shop, Mercedes Fuentes, probably shifted around the remaining merchandise so it wouldn’t look like there was an empty space. Because the storeroom where Travis now sat held very few items. No replacement clothing or pottery or hand-loomed rugs. There were a couple of stacks of wire shelves, but they held mostly Styrofoam coffee cups and small paper plates. Enough to supply the ACRO group, the Alien Contact Research Organization, through a year’s worth of monthly meetings. Two years if there were only fourteen regular attendees like tonight. Travis looked around, but he couldn’t find any evidence of the other work Mercedes Fuentes did. Maybe she kept her typewriter and the reams of paper she went through at home, in a den. Maybe she only typed at night. It made sense, because otherwise customers might hear and wonder. What was this nice Mexican lady with the cute little gift shop doing back there tap, tap, tapping away? Hello, excuse me, do you have this blouse in another size? The back storage space wasn’t very roomy, but Mercedes had managed to cram in here twenty brass-colored folding metal chairs in four rows of five. There was a square card table at the rear of the room that Mercedes had covered with a bright red tablecloth. A large silver coffee urn sat on top. Styrofoam cups sat in a stack in front of it along with a plate of sugar cubes and a small Mexican pottery pitcher filled with milk or cream. There was food, too. A pecan coffee cake on a large paper plate, already shaved down to a quarter of its original size by the hungry guests. Another paper plate held portions of a long salami submarine sandwich that had been cut into one-inch chunks. It was more than Travis got at other meetings, especially anything run by the government. They didn’t like to feed their outside contractors. Particularly when those contractors weren’t telling them what they wanted to hear. There were only two sandwich portions left. Travis took one along with a slice of coffee cake and loaded them onto a paper cocktail plate. He filled a Styro cup with the dark, rich-smelling coffee out of the silver urn, then found a seat in back and settled down to wait. As sick as he was, he still had some appetite. And he hadn’t eaten since a few pieces of toast and coffee at a diner this morning. This was an unsanctioned trip, so he was paying for it himself. That meant being careful about his expenses. He was grateful for the free food, but now that he had it in front of him, he didn’t think he could eat it after all. His stomach had felt clenched all day, anticipating tonight’s meeting. Travis wasn’t sure how to handle himself. What to say. How best to approach Mercedes Fuentes with what he had learned about her just a few days ago. He hoped some idea would come to him during the meeting. She was an attractive, well-groomed woman with an open, friendly face. In her fifties, Travis guessed. She wore her thick brown hair in a bun on top of her head. A few wavy tendrils hung loosely down at the sides, making her look relaxed and approachable. Above her dark brown skirt and leather sandals, Mercedes wore a bright pink short-sleeved blouse like the ones Travis had seen out front in her shop. It had a flower design embroidered at the top. She wore a silver necklace with a turquoise pendant hanging in the center, and had on a pair of turquoise earrings. All of them were just like the jewelry Travis had seen on display. Mercedes Fuentes was her own best model. She was the only Mexican member of the group here tonight. (Or maybe Chicano. Travis had heard the term used and wondered if Mercedes might prefer that.) Everyone else at the meeting was as white as Travis. Some might be surprised to see an important international society like the Alien Contact Research Organization run by a woman, and a Mexican woman at that. But Travis wasn’t surprised. Mercedes Fuentes probably knew more than any of the high-level scientists who belonged to ACRO. She might not have their PhDs, but she had something much more. In addition to running the organization with an efficiency people admired, Mercedes was also the editor and chief author of the Alien Contact Research Organization Bulletin, published every month. Travis subscribed and read it cover to cover as soon as it came. In every issue Mercedes Fuentes provided details of the latest alien sightings reported around the world. Her sources included ACRO member-scientists on every continent except Antarctica. This past month there were reports from Venezuela, Brazil, Denmark, France … and also a small town called Red Rock, Arizona, about thirty miles northwest of Tucson. That was why Travis had come here. Hopeful. He wondered why the other people at this meeting were here. Who were they? Curiosity-seekers? Scientists? Possibly even someone who had been abducted? Travis knew abductees were around, congregating, talking. He couldn’t tell if anyone in the group was one of them just by looking. The youngest was a girl in her twenties in cut-offs and a ratty T-shirt. The oldest was a woman probably in her eighties dressed conservatively like a grandmother. In between were men and women of varying ages, some of them dressed casually, some in what looked like work clothes. Travis wasn’t the only man wearing a tie. He wanted to look official, like someone had sent him here. He dressed like he usually did whenever he worked in his lab at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. Tan slacks, light blue button-down shirt, red and blue striped tie, loafers. He left his navy blue jacket back in the motel room. Too hot. Even at the beginning of September, the daytime temps in Tucson were still around a hundred. Back home in Fort Collins, Travis’s wife Rosie and their daughter Caroline would already be enjoying the cooler autumn weather and the yellowing aspen leaves. Travis missed them. Terribly. He had been away from them too long. Eleven days so far, spent chasing down one lead after another. So far without success. But maybe tonight would be different. Maybe Mercedes Fuentes was the key. Travis wondered if the other people here tonight knew what she could do. He suspected not. If Mercedes had let it be widely known that she could communicate telepathically with alien races, there would be far too many attendees at her meetings than could fit in a small back storeroom. Travis only knew because a few days ago he had received a tip from one of his sources in New Mexico. She called his house and left a message with Rosie. Travis called her back from his motel room in Tucson the next day, and she said she knew where he was, and why. She had seen it in a vision. She told him that Mercedes Fuentes had certain abilities, much like hers, and that Travis should go to tonight’s meeting and ask her for help. His source had already sent Mercedes a telepathic message that Travis was a good man, and he was safe to talk to. Travis had no idea if the communication worked or whether it might be enough. But he knew he had to try. He had to approach Mercedes cautiously. She might not like that he knew. She might not be willing to help him. But Travis hoped to heaven she would. His daughter Caroline’s seventh birthday was just a few days away. Travis absolutely had to be back for it. But he hoped from the bottom of his soul that he wouldn’t have to go home empty-handed. That this trip wouldn’t turn out to be a waste of time. Travis didn’t have much time anymore. He couldn’t afford to waste a single day. A few minutes after seven o’clock, four more people entered the store. Mercedes had already put up her Closed/Cerrado sign on the door, but they walked on through, straight to the back storeroom without any hesitation. One of them was a heavy-set man with fine white hair and a thick white mustache. Travis knew him. Robert Cloister. The rancher wore wide jeans, dusty at the cuffs, and a sturdy white cotton button-down shirt tucked in at the waist. He had a substantial leather belt with a big silver buckle in the center and wore dusty, beaten-in cowboy boots. Robert Cloister scanned the crowd, nodded at few familiar faces, then locked onto Travis sitting in back. Cloister didn’t seem that surprised to see him. Travis gave him a nod of acknowledgment. The two of them knew each other, but not well. Cloister had been the sole witness of a landing out near Picacho Peak, midway between Tucson and Casa Grande. It must have made enough of an impact that two years later he was still coming to meetings like this. It confirmed what Travis thought at the time. That the rancher was a practical, down-to-earth man who had been scared out of his wits by what he saw. A disk-shaped alien craft had touched down in a fallow field near Cloister’s place. Cloister had his binoculars out, watching. The lights in the sky had already attracted his attention about five minutes before. That, and his two hounds baying. Three figures disembarked from the ship. Cloister could make out what they looked like against the lighted craft. Travis listened to his report and pretended to ignore the big rancher shaking. Travis understood how terrifying it was to see a nightmare come to life. Cloister described them: big, stretched out, maybe taller than six feet. Weird scaly skin, like alligators. Or lizards, Travis thought, but he didn’t suggest it. Unlike some of his colleagues, he preferred using the official name for the species, RL-40s. But others had come up with more descriptive names, and those were the ones that stuck: Lizard People, or Reptilites. Like all of this was a science fiction movie instead of cold, hard reality. Cloister also mentioned a feature of the aliens’ anatomy that Travis had heard before: they had large hands, about twice the size of a man’s, and only three fingers on each one. “Where did they go?” Travis asked him. “From the ship?” Cloister had passed a shaking hand over his sweating face. “Damnedest thing. They … they sort of floated off. No, flew off. Three different directions. Fast. Like shot from guns. Blinked, and they were gone.” “And you didn’t see them come back?” Travis had asked him, even though he already guessed the answer. This wasn’t his first time of hearing about the RL-40s. “Nothing to come back to,” said Cloister. “Ship took off. Straight up. Blink, and that was gone, too. After that, I …” Cloister shook his head, embarrassed. “I’ll admit I didn’t stick around.” “No reason to,” Travis assured him. “You were right. They don’t come back.” The big, tough rancher looked visibly relieved. Travis had gotten to him within forty-eight hours of the event. Cloister had probably spent the rest of the first night and all of the second staring out his windows into the dark, alert to any sign of the aliens’ return. But what Travis didn’t say was that the alternative was worse. The RL-40s were gone, yes—but where? Their ships landed on empty fields, and remote country roads, and sometimes pastures where panicking livestock stampeded to get away. Then the aliens disembarked and separated and disappeared into different directions. And they were still out there, as far as Travis knew. In the last few years of hearing about them, so far no one had reported finding a dead Lizard Man anywhere. Travis wasn’t sorry he hadn’t seen a live RL-40 himself. He used to wish for that, for some personal experience after hearing about so much of it second hand. But he finally did have his own encounter with a different species of alien, out near a pond in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Once had been terrifying enough. That experience had cured him of wanting it ever again. Until he read about the incident in Red Rock in last month’s ACRO Bulletin. He drove down to Arizona as soon as he could. “I think that’s all of us for tonight,” Mercedes Fuentes said to the group. She had an accent that made every English word she spoke sound musical. While Cloister and the other three newcomers foraged the scraps on the snack table, Mercedes Fuentes strode back into her shop and flipped the lock on her door. Cloister sat on the empty folding chair next to Travis. The chair sagged beneath his bulk. Travis had lost at least twenty pounds in the last two years, but Cloister must have gained double that. Last time Travis saw him, the rancher looked strong and tough and vital. But time, and probably stress, took their toll on everyone. Cloister leaned over and muttered, “You boys are fast. Good.” Travis wasn’t sure what he meant. But then Mercedes Fuentes began her meeting, and Travis understood. “Last night we had another visit from our friends in the Pleiades,” she said, naming a cluster of stars visible from Earth. A murmur rolled through the group. Travis couldn’t tell whether Mercedes was excited or upset. She said, “They took somebody else.”