The Taking

51

THE OVERCAST REMAINED LOW, DENSE, PURPLE. THE livid half-light might henceforth be a permanent condition of the day-time, from dawn to dusk.

Elsewhere in the dying town, the weeping of a woman was answered by the weeping of a man, which was answered by the weeping of another woman, each of the three expressing her or his misery in precisely the same series of wretched sobs and wails. The crawling white fungi seemed to be ceaselessly exploring or perhaps seeding new colonies where they found ideal conditions.

Outside the tavern, after turning Cassie over to Neil's care and giving him a hug, Molly took the three Crudup kids aside to revisit the story they had told her during the journey from St. Perpetua's to the Tail of the Wolf. Fresh from her experience with Angie in the tavern receiving room, and with Cassie's account to consider, she should be able to make more sense of Eric, Elric, and Bethany's tale.

Their mother and father had floated up from the family-room floor as if suddenly exempted from gravity. The couple had passed through the ceiling, then through the ceiling of the second-floor bedroom above, and finally through the roof, out of the house. As astonished and amazed as they were terrified, the kids had dashed up the stairs and then scrambled up the attic ladder, following their parents from level to level.

This had occurred during one of the leviathan's transits over the town, when its hovering weight oppressed and when the silent throbbing of its engines could be felt in the bones. Therefore, the kids had reached the conclusion that their parents had been beamed aboard the mother ship.

Their grandmother, of whom the children spoke with an affection that didn't characterize any mention of their parents, reacted with horror to the extraordinary ascent of her daughter and son-in-law. She had not been comforted by her grandchildren's assurances-based on movies and TV shows-that those who were beamed aboard an alien ship were always beamed down again, even if after rude examinations and sometimes painful experiments.

Less than an hour later, when the grandmother abruptly floated off the floor toward the family-room ceiling, she had not let out a scream, as might have been expected, but only a small cry of surprise as her feet left the carpet. Looking down on her grandchildren, she astonished them by smiling, and she waved before she passed through the ceiling.

By the time the kids caught up with her on the second floor, she was laughing. And in the attic, before she vanished through the roof, she said, "Don't worry about Gramma, darlings. I don't feel the arthritis at all."

Now Eric continued to insist that their grandmother had gone "nuttier than a can of Planters," a contention that angered Bethany no less than it had earlier. Elric remained neutral on the issue.

Because of Molly's troubling suspicion, formed while she had listened to Cassie in the tavern, she was especially interested in the post-grandmother part of this story, when the Crudup children had been alone in the house.

The sickening odor of the hostile presence had made them gag when they had clambered into the attic for the second time. Bethany cupped her hands over her nose and mouth, trying to filter out the worst of the stench, but the twins, being named for Scandinavian heroes, breathed through their mouths and endured.

They hadn't identified the source of the stink until their grandmother had passed through the roof, whereupon they spotted a creature that was more easily seen from the corner of the eye than when you looked directly at it, that was more shape than detail, that kept changing shape, that stood between them and the only exit from the attic.

"It wanted us," said Bethany.

Of that, none of the three children had the slightest doubt.

It would have gotten them, too, they agreed, if not for the woman who looked like Obi-Wan Kenobi.

What they meant was not that the woman physically resembled Sir Alec Guinness (in fact, she was pretty), not that she might have been as ancient as Obi-Wan (old, they agreed, but perhaps only a few years older than Molly), not that she had been dressed in a hooded robe of extra-galactic style (they couldn't remember what she wore), but that she'd been a little bit translucent as they remembered Obi-Wan having been when, after his death, he sometimes visited Luke Skywalker to offer guidance.

The kids were not able to agree by what means the woman had made the beast retreat-words of enchantment, a magic ring, elaborate hand mojo that gestured it into submission, the sheer force of her personality-but they did agree that she banished it to a far end of the attic, away from the trapdoor, which had been the only exit. They fled that high chamber and never looked back either at the reeking thing of many shapes or at the apparition that had saved them.

"She kinda looked like you," Bethany told Molly.

"No, she didn't," said Eric.

"Well," Elric said, "I sorta think she did."

"Kinda like you," Bethany insisted.

Eric studied Molly's face. "Yeah, maybe she did."

Molly had no idea what to make of this development, whether to make anything at all of it.

More important, in walking these children through their story again, she had found support for the terrible suspicion that had overcome her in the tavern.

She surveyed the surrounding town. In the west, one of those luminous craft, disc or sphere, streaked north to south through the fog layer, and at ground level its passing light made the shadows of houses and trees appear to quicken after it like a horde of malevolent spirits drawn by a Piper playing a tune beyond human hearing.

The ETs, these new masters of a remade Earth, were indifferent to suffering and were capable of cruelties that exceeded in every instance the wickedest acts of humanity, which was frequently a cruel species in its own right. Yet they were allowing-perhaps ensuring-the survival of most if not all of the children.

These destroyers of civilizations were without mercy. If most or all of the children were intentionally being spared, surely their reprieve would be temporary. The ETs must have some special use for them.