Nothing But Light

Nothing But Light

by Doug Hoffman

Copyright 2013 Doug Hoffman

Smashwords Edition

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Table of Contents

Dedication

Nothing But Light

All Change

Orientation

The Mechanic

A Prayer of Understanding

The Flea Train

God’s Claw

Apogon and Demester

First Contact

Gator & Shark Save the World -- Excerpt

Dedication

To the folks who keep me going: my wife, Karen, and my son, Jake.

Nothing But Light

It seems only yesterday I used to believe

there was nothing under my skin but light.

If you cut me I could shine.

But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,

I skin my knees. I bleed.

From On Turning Ten, Billy Collins

All Change was originally published as The Gorjun is Free in Continuum Science Fiction, Fall 2005.

Orientation was originally published as Heaven on Earth in Worlds Apart #1, July 2006.

The Mechanic was published in Crime Scene Scotland, April/May 2004.

A Prayer of Understanding was originally published as Saul the Deserted in Neverary #8, 2006.

All Change

Isaiah and I were having a genuine father-son moment when he ruined it with a question. We were twenty minutes into our trip to South Padre Island and already hot and miserable; we rolled down the windows and spritzed ourselves with a spray bottle, but it didn’t help much. Isaiah closed his eyes and nodded time to Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb while I imagined a thousand other Texas highways like this one, each with its arrow-straight plunge to the horizon, its mini-malls and car lots shimmering in the distance.

It looks so unreal, I said.

Convection currents distort the light.

Like Schlieren lines in a glass of hot tea.

He considered this, then said, Okay.

Could I push him a little? It’s Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle on the macro scale.

Hardly. The boy had no tolerance for imprecision.

I tried to think of something, anything to keep the conversation going, but then I realized I didn’t have to say anything. We were sharing the moment together, just this twelve-year-old savant and his pathetic dad. And that’s when he killed it with a question.

What are you gonna say to Mom?

Dog, meet bone. Have at it, boy.

I kept my eyes on the road. You can ask all you like, Iz, but the answer’s the same: I don’t know. You’ll find out when I do.

Wouldn’t we be better off if Mom died?

What the hell kind of question is that?

It’s a perfectly valid question.

I knew better than to argue with him. He’d declare the question grammatically correct, or point out the legitimacy of analyzing a hypothetical situation.

He couldn’t let it go. People mourn when a loved one dies, he said. Then they move on. We’re not moving on.

I’ve moved on.

Isaiah snorted and I kept my mouth shut. And thus we settled back into our usual silence, the only cool thing in the car.

Southbound I-37, leaving San Antonio, a butterfly smacked the upper right-hand corner of the windshield, well outside the wiper’s arc. My gaze kept shifting to the creamy yellow splat. I kept glancing at Isaiah, hoping he would be the first to insist the mark had to be cleaned, and he kept his gaze leveled on me. I thought we were playing obsessive-compulsive chicken, but he had other designs.

Why does Mom want to see me?

At least this was a safer question. She’s your mother.

Then why didn’t she want to see me last year?

Damn. I should have seen that one coming. I signaled to take the next turn-off.

Tank’s three-quarters full, Isaiah said.

I need to clean the windshield.

Okay.

I added a quarter tank just to use the station’s windshield scrubber. It took some effort, cleaning that smudge and all the other little flecks and splotches on the windows. Before long, I was sweat-soaked and ill. I needed a cold drink, and I figured Isaiah did, too.

Where the hell was he?

Just past the air and water station, someone had parked a trailer on a patch of dirt and set out a vast array of garbage. Isaiah loomed over the tables; I knew he would find some especially useless bit of junk.

Other places had garage sales. Here, we had trailer sales.

I hollered, Watch out for fire ants!

I knew he’d heard me, because he started kicking up dust. He wore Bermuda shorts, top-siders with no socks: South Padre Island attire. Kid was obviously excited to see his mom, not that he’d admit it. I had to intuit his emotional state from his choice of clothing.

Dad, come look.

Not again. Last time this happened, I’d had to spend twenty-five dollars on a collection of rusty gears. You have money.

Not this kind of money.

I couldn’t go into his room anymore. I’d cleaned it once and he wouldn’t talk to me for a week. (He’d said: Just because you don’t understand the order, doesn’t mean it isn’t there.) We had a different definition of garbage, Iz and I, and an entirely different attitude towards chaos.

I brought the car around and parked twenty feet from the trailer sale. Trudging across hard-packed caliche, I kept my eyes on the ground, scanning for fire ants. Ahead, a large woman in a yellow sun dress straddled a leather trunk. Her irises were the color of wheat, same color as her skin. She worked her few teeth with a toothpick.

Fine boy, the woman said. What is he, nine?

Twelve, Isaiah said. Dad, look.

He held up two handfuls of metallic lumps: long, knobby, the color of pig iron.

Shaped like coprolite, I said.

Coprolites are fossilized dinosaur feces, Isaiah explained to the woman, who returned a dead-eyed stare. Dad’s a geology prof at the U.

Hundred bucks for those, she said.

A hundred dollars? I asked.

Something in the boy’s eyes sparked and sizzled. He was breathing hard, too. Dad . . . please?

If a hundred dollars will make my kid happy, why not? But I was curious what he saw in these things. What’s so special?

They assemble! You wouldn’t expect . . . He threw up his hands. Just look.

He took something resembling a scrofulous banana and stood it on end. It remained that way, canted fifteen degrees off vertical. He took a second piece that looked like a warty, broken cigar, and set it at right angles across the banana, forming a lumpy T. Then he took a convex disk that looked like a used condom for a horse. He placed it atop the T and spun it.

The whole thing rotated as a unit, precessing like a gyroscope.

Wild, huh? he said. The pieces are balanced. There are seven here, like a Soma cube or a tangram. It’s a toy.

Nothing shaped like that should have balanced so well, nor spun so smoothly. I couldn’t take my eyes away. I remember thinking, If I blink, it’ll fall apart. Isaiah could never make that a second time.

A hundred dollars, I said.

Isaiah must have heard it in my voice, that sense of wonder. He smiled, probably knowing he had me on his side. But the trailer lady misunderstood me.

The gorjun’s free, she said. Hundred bucks for the story.

It’s free, Iz, I said. Let’s take it and go.

Dad! He turned to her and said, Gorjun. Like the Gordian knot?

She blinked. Huh?

The Gordian knot, he said. "Tied by Zeus, impossible to unravel, whoever solved the puzzle would rule all Asia. You know."

She shook her head, and Isaiah gaped. Sometimes he made the wildest assumptions about what the rest of us knew. Anyway, I gave her five twenties and suddenly we were family, the two of us enveloped in her arms in a muzzy, beer-scented hug that had to be as painful for Isaiah as it was for me. A wave of nausea crashed over me and my ears buzzed. But then Isaiah said, Thanks, Dad. It was such a heartfelt thanks, I knew I’d done the right thing. The buzzing subsided.

You won’t regret this, he said. You’ll need an ally when we get to South Padre.

I gave him a curious look, thought about what I should say; but then the woman began her story.

I was set up on the 59 northeast of Beeville, she said, pointing vaguely across the highway. Just after sunset, not a car for miles, and who drives up but a little grey alien on a moped. Little grey alien with cat’s eyes, a turned-up nose, and scales. He looks over my wares and says he needs my Osterizer. Says the motor is just what he needs to fix his ship.

I don’t believe this, I said.

Neither did I. Imagine, telling me it’s just what he needs to fix his ship. Little shrimp couldn’t haggle worth a shit. So I told him what I told you. One hundred dollars.

Let me guess, I said. He didn’t have any money, just a bunch of alien credits, worthless on Earth. But he did have the gorjun.

That’s about the shape of it, she said. But now it’s yours, and I have my hundred bucks.

Isaiah said, Did he say what it was?

Nuh-uh. All he said was, I needed it more than he did.

Isaiah put the road atlas on his lap and began working with the gorjun. The Impala’s shocks were a bad joke, and the atlas hardly provided a level base, yet he created perfectly balanced seven-piece sculptures one after the other. And such sculptures: tangrams and Soma cubes you could form into shapes that meant something. No matter how he arranged these lumpy things, they looked like metallic poops floating in zero gee.

How did they balance like that?

You believe it’s from outer space? I asked.

Of course not, he said, not taking his eyes off the gorjun.

How can you be so sure?

She would have asked a lot more than a hundred dollars.

You’re forgetting, not everyone’s as bright as you.

That gave him pause. I thought he might toss my question back at me: How can you be sure it isn’t alien? But he didn’t. You know, he said, I was wondering. What are you gonna say to Mom?

I sighed. What do you think I should say to Mom?

I took my eyes off the road to look at him. That expression, why couldn’t I read it? Such a young smile, eyes moist. Was he relieved? Happy? He said, Tell her she needs to come home.

Sure, maybe I expected a tearful reunion scene when Cynthia opened the door, but she and Isaiah exchanged a Hey, and I got a look. We drifted into the living room and Cynthia asked him about school, whether he had a girlfriend, what books he was reading. Her patter seemed stiff enough to be scripted, and she ran out of steam after five minutes.

In the midst of a silence filled with sweat and harsh grins, I punched up my courage and said, We want you to come home, Cynthia.

I thought maybe she hadn’t heard me. She said, Where are you staying tonight?

Here, I thought.

She arched an eyebrow. It’ll get a little crowded when Glenn gets home.

Isaiah and I said together: Glenn?

I’m not sure what happened after that. I remember dull anger, raging incoherent thoughts, a dim awareness that Isaiah had holed up in the den while I followed Cynthia into the kitchen, not knowing what I would do or say next. Now I stood in the kitchen, six feet away from my wife whom I hadn’t seen in over two years, while Isaiah played with the gorjun behind two slammed doors. So much for an ally.

She dried a wine glass with a terrycloth towel. My eyes moved from her slender fingers to her red hair (tied in a bun), to her shirt (V-neck, royal blue), to her denims (tight). I wanted her and I hated her for making me feel that way.

I could have prepared him for it, I said.

Smart as he is? He had it figured out a long time before you.

I don’t think so.

Ask him, she said. She wouldn’t look at me.

What, and humiliate him even more?

He’s the one who’s humiliated?

Oh, how I hated her.

Please, Cynthia. We need you to come home.

And it’s all about you, isn’t it? But don’t you see? It’ll be the same as before. You’re the same. I saw what you did to the pillows on the sofa. You didn’t think I’d notice?

I kept my mouth shut. I couldn’t remember rearranging the throw pillows, but I didn’t doubt what she’d said.

You say things will be different, she said, but I’ve heard it a million times. Nothing ever changes--you’re still you.

Whatever.

I brought in Isaiah’s suitcase and set it next to him. What are you doing? he said.

I’m going to the Holiday Inn, I said. I’ll come by tomorrow and say goodbye before I leave.

He put the gorjun pieces into a burlap rice sack the trailer lady had given us for free. I’m going with you, he said.

I didn’t argue with him. For that matter, neither did his mother. The phrase A mother’s love came to my lips and remained unspoken. It felt like a punch line. I kept thinking about the unnaturalness of it, as if the laws of physics didn’t apply this far south. Maybe when we got home, the gorjun would become nothing more than a collection of foundry debris.

We camped out at the Holiday Inn with no plan other than the vague idea we were on vacation. The next morning, we drove to Brownsville and hit a Borders Bookstore, then came back and camped by the pool. I’d bought Carl Hiaasen’s latest book and Isaiah picked up his third copy of The Two Towers. Why he couldn’t just remember to pack the damn book, I’d never know.

He stayed up past midnight playing with the gorjun. Next day, before we went to the pool, he made me lock it in the Impala’s trunk. He claimed he was afraid the housekeeper would take it, but I suspected he had