CHAPTER TWO
THUNDERSTRUCK!
“Well I’ll be a son-of-a-bitch. I thought you were dead.”
Eli hit the kill switch on the lathe and stared at me through his safety goggles as the thing whined to a stop. He pulled off his gloves.
“Nah. I just look that way.” I ducked under the half-open roll door into Sun Valley Engineering, Eli’s machine shop, and looked around. It was the same grimy little place I remembered, with a greasy film of three-in-one and metal shavings all over everything, and posters of girls with tattoos and betty bangs bending over low-riders on the walls. Eli specializes in reboring pistons, and there’s always an assortment of bikes, hot-rods, lead sleds and trucks crowding his parking lot, but he also makes other, shadier, things on the side—lock picks, slim jims, gas tanks with hidden compartments. He could make a fortune if he was willing to pack and bore silencers, but he draws the line at accessory to murder, so he has to settle for being comfortably well off.
He tugged his goggles down to his neck, exposing his bifocals and a pair of bushy black eyebrows as he came around the lathe and spread his arms for a hug. Eli is in his fifties, with wild, greased-back gray hair, a face like a dry creek bed, and the dress sense of an Arkansas moonshiner—bib overalls, no shirt, tattoos from neck to wrists, and unlaced combat boots.
I crushed him to me and leaked tears on his tats as I sobbed like a school girl. After a while, when I’d petered out to sniffs and snorfs, he pushed me back to arms’ length and gave me a once over, then squeezed my biceps.
“Well, where-ever y’went, it toned you up. You do a stretch?”
“Nah, I…” I wasn’t ready to go into all that just yet. “Just went out of town.”
Eli grinned. It was like brown paper folding up. “I’ll bet. Last I recall, your face was all over the TV for killing some drunk hoopty outside a bar. You get that all cleared up, or are you still flyin’ low?”
That was one of the reasons I came to Eli. He wasn’t the type to call the cops on a gal for a little error in judgment—not without hearing her out anyway. He’d been one of Big Don’s oldest friends—like since the navy—and had set me up with the construction job in Van Nuys after Don died. A true-blue guy, no matter what else he did on the side.
“Still on the lam, and guilty as charged.” I swallowed as Polaroids of that night flashed through my head. I still felt bad about that guy.
“He put hands on you?”
I squirmed. “Not so much that he deserved—”
“Save it. It’s good enough for me.” He pulled a pack of Marlboros from the chest pocket of his overalls, lipped one, then shook another out toward me. I waved him off. Weird, I know, but I really didn’t want one. Guess going cold turkey on Waar had worked. He shrugged and lit up. “So whaddaya need? Money? A bike? A fake ID? A lift over the border?”
“I—I don’t know yet.” I wiped my nose with the back of my hand, like I was the world’s biggest five-year-old. “I guess if you could manage somewhere for me to sleep tonight? I got a lot of thinkin’ to do.”
He looked at the beer clock over the compressor. It said four o’clock. “Go lie down in the back for a bit. You look like you’re gonna curl up and blow away. I got a job I gotta finish ’fore I close up, then we’ll go out to the house and get some supper. Delia’d love to see ya.”
***
I lay down on the old green couch in Eli’s office, but I didn’t sleep. For one thing, it smelled a bit too much like moldy towel. For another, my mind was stuck on the spin cycle. I couldn’t stop it.
How was I gonna get back to Waar? I didn’t even know where to start. Did I spend the rest of my life snooping around in caves looking for little green glowy things? Both times I’d been teleported it had begun or ended in a hole in the ground, but that didn’t guarantee any other caves had teleport gems. Hell, I didn’t know if there were any more at all. I could have used up the only one on Earth!
That hurt too much to think about. There had to be more. There had to be! I couldn’ta lost Lhan forever. That just wouldn’t be fucking fair! But where should I look? If they were just lying around, people would have found ’em long ago. They had to be hidden somewhere.
So where did I start?
By the time Eli came back to the office a little after five, I’d fallen asleep from all the walking in circles my mind was doing. It was a relief when he woke me up. I’d exhausted myself.
***
Eli’s place was as rag-tag and rumpled as he was, a dusty redneck compound north of the 210 freeway with a dried out ’50s ranch house up front, and various sheds, garages and stables out back. There was a horse carrier, an old tractor, a rusting Airstream trailer, a few dogs and chickens running around, a dozen vintage cars and bikes in various states of repair, and his daily driver, an old Ford pick-up with a “Keep honking, I’m reloading” bumper sticker on the back window.
Inside, the house was pretty much the same, a jumbled mess of mix and match furniture, old tin signs, a coffee table made out of an old door set on an engine block, more dogs, a kitchen with a half-built Moto Guzzi propped by the back door, and on every wall, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, double stacked with battered old paperbacks—mostly sci-fi and fantasy, but with some spy and detective stuff mixed in.
Maybe that was another reason I went to Eli. Of the few people I knew in LA, he and Delia were the ones who just might believe me when I told ’em what had happened to me. If I told ’em. I mean, I was dying to tell somebody, but at the same time I was, uh, kinda shy about it too. Over the years I’d had people tell me plenty of times they’d seen a UFO, or been visited by angels, or lived a past life as Catherine the Great, and I knew how I’d acted. I’d given them the glassy smile and the noncommittal nod, the “Huh, whaddaya know,” and the quick change of subject, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to be on the receiving end of that kind of treatment—not without a six pack in me at least.
Eli passed me beer number one. “So, you decided what you wanna do yet?”
I was sitting at the kitchen table while him and Delia got some dinner together. Eli was pan-frying some steaks while Delia stirred up a salad made with mushrooms, tomatoes, and greens from her little garden out back. They looked like a pair of tattooed apple dolls pottering around the kitchen—both brown, greying and desert-hard. Delia was half Indian, half black and half Irish, and let her wavy iron-colored hair hang loose down her back.
I pulled on my beer. “I’m still not sure, but I guess it’d be good to skip town for a while.”
Eli nodded. “I made a couple of calls while you were asleep. Some Mongols I know are goin’ down to Tijuana on business this weekend. They could get you across no problem.”
Mexico was a good idea. Easy to lay low down there. Easy to make a buck if you weren’t too particular about the work, or the company you kept. But did I want to go? All I really wanted to do was hunt for a way back to Waar, but who was to say I wouldn’t find it south of the border? Whoever sprinkled those teleporters around probably didn’t give a damn about international boundaries.
Eli read my hesitation as reluctance. “Well, you got a couple days to think about it. And I’ll see what else I can come up with. Let’s eat.”
He flipped the steaks on some plates with black beans and rice on the side and set ’em on the table as Delia dished out her salad. They sat down and Eli raised his beer.
“To safe returns.”
Delia hoisted as well, but I hesitated. I knew he meant me coming back after six months, but all I was thinking about was getting back to Waar. Well, I’d drink to that.
I clinked their bottles. “To safe returns.”
Delia had never been chatty, and I think Eli was giving me some space, so for a while there wasn’t much to the conversation except, “Pass the salsa,” and, “Another beer?” But finally, after second helpings and a lot more beers, Eli got out the tequila while Delia put some coffee on, and we all moved out to the back deck to watch the sun go down over the San Fernando hills.
“So,” said Eli, and left it at that.
I knocked back my shot and held out my glass for another. He filled it and I settled back in my lawn chair, looking up at the stars that were just starting to come out overhead. One of those little lights might be where Lhan was. I didn’t know which one to wish on, so I wished on ’em all. Take me there now. I need to go back.
Nothing happened. I downed the second shot and sighed. “You’re not gonna believe me. It’s National Enquirer kinda stuff.”
“Try me.”
I opened my mouth, but I still couldn’t get started.
Delia put a hand on one of mine and squeezed. “I believe all kinds of things. Go on, sweetheart.”
I nodded. “Well, I’ll start from the beginning, then. The part you know about—punching that guy outside the Fly By Night.”
So I told it. How the cops had chased me up into the Tarzana hills, how I’d hid in the cave, how I’d touched the stone. I could see them tense up a little bit at that, but I was drunk enough now that I just kept going, and when I told them I woke up on Waar, I could see the nervous smiles start to form on their lips, but they let me go, at least until I got to the part about the Aarurrh—the big tiger-centaur guys that captured Sai and me almost as soon as I got there.
I’d just finished describing One-Eye, the big alpha male Aarurrh who had been the leader of the hunting party, when Eli burst out laughing.
“Tiger-Taurs? Are you—?” He laughed again. “Shit, sweetheart, you really had me going there for a while.”
I blinked at him, pulling myself out of my memories. “What do you mean?”
“I’m sayin’ you picked the wrong guy to tell somebody else’s story to.” He motioned toward the bookcases in the living room. “I have read all of those, y’know.”
I still didn’t get it. “Somebody else’s story?”
Delia was frowning too. “Be nice, Eli. Jane’s been through a lot. Don’t—”
“Yeah, but she ain’t been through this!”
I balled my fists. I didn’t expect them to believe me. But I didn’t expect them to be so bare-faced about it either. “Are you calling me a liar?”
Eli held up his hands. “Now now, don’t get your panties in a twist. I’m not saying you’re lying. Maybe you got knocked on the head and you dreamed a book you read once.” He laughed again and shook his head. “I’ll give you credit for picking an obscure one, though. Most people haven’t even heard of that one, let alone read it.”
He hadn’t calmed me down one bit. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t hit my head, Eli. I didn’t read about it in a book. It all happened. To me. Where do you think I’ve been for the past six months?”
Eli looked me in the eye for a long second, then sighed and put down his drink. He stood up. “Wait here.”
Delia and I watched him go back into the house, then exchanged a glance.
“I’m sorry, Jane. It usually takes him to the second bottle before he’s this ornery.”
I shrugged. “It’s fine. I didn’t think you’d believe me. I just had to tell it is all.”
“Well, when he comes back you can tell the rest of it. I want to find out what happens next.”
There it was. I could hear the pity in her voice. She was being kinder about it than Eli was, but she didn’t believe me any more than he did. She thought I was sick or something. I drank off another shot and turned away from her, looking up at the sky. There were a lot more stars out now. I had a lot more to wish on.
After about five minutes of silent sitting, Eli came back through the door.
“Here it is.” He held out a book. “Knew I had it somewhere.”
I took it and looked at it. It was battered old paperback. The title didn’t mean too much to me—Savages of the Red Planet by Norman Prescott Kline—but the illustration made my heart do a back flip. Against a Ty-D-Bol blue sky, a big, square-jawed hero wearing nothing but a loincloth and an armored sleeve was fighting two half-man half-tiger centaurs, while a hot purple-skinned chick looked on all wide-eyed in the background. I turned it over. A sentence on the back jumped out at me. “Stranded on Mars, which its inhabitants call Wharr…”