15.3. Seventy-Thirty Jill Talcott

The City was like an unfinished plastic model, like a movie set before the paint and props had been added, before the extras had arrived for the day. Its great scale was more apparent from the inside; its streets marched into the distance, featureless white buildings on both sides growing smaller and smaller until they merged with the horizon. It was absolutely still.

It wasn’t that the place felt deserted, Jill thought; it was more like a half-remembered dream of something that had never existed at all.

They had not found water the previous day. The buildings were unlocked, their interiors filled with cubelike rooms, their windows dimmed by a dark film to moderate the strength of the sun. The only contents were a few pieces of molded furniture that did not fit their human proportions. Some of the rooms had wall plates that might be electronic displays and counters with concave indentations that might be sinks. But the wall plates were dark and the holes from which water might conceivably emerge were dry as dust. Exhaustion and the futility of the sameness of building after building had stolen over Nate and Jill as they searched. They’d lain down on the hard floor in one of the rooms and slept.

Jill wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but the larger of the two suns was at about three o’clock and they were back on the streets, plodding past building after building in the dazzling heat. A sense of lassitude was making it more and more difficult to go on, and Jill was beginning to become seriously concerned. If they didn’t find water soon, they would die.

Beside her, Nate stopped walking. They’d hardly said two words to each other since they’d awoken, sparing their throats. Now he looked pensive.

“I know what’s wrong. Jill… All these streets and buildings and there are no advertisements. No billboards, no posters, no cafés, no neon signs, no addresses, no stores… Jesus.”

“This is an alien culture. You can’t expect it to be like ours.” Jill’s voice sounded like chalk on a blackboard and felt like it, too.

“Or sounds. No music or anything. Even inside the buildings there’s no art, no knick knacks, no mementos—there’s nothing at all.”

It was true that there were none of these things. Jill had accepted it the way she’d accepted that the streets were straight and the windows were filmed. But hearing him put it like that, it was pretty unsettling. They hadn’t seen a visual representation of anything since they’d been here. Not even, now that she thought about it, writing.

“You know what?” Nate said, with another glimmer of realization. “It reminds me of your place.”

“What?”

“Yeah. I always thought your place was kind of strange. Now I know why: no photographs or posters on the wall or—”

“It’s nothing like my place!” Despite her dry throat, Jill managed to sound plenty forceful. “I have a framed poster on my wall. It’s from the Louvre.”

“You told me it was there when you moved in.”

“I could have taken it down!”

“Um, I don’t think ‘not caring enough to remove it’ is exactly artistic sentiment.”

“What, exactly, is your point?”

Before Nate could answer, a flying object zipped over their heads with the drone and swoop of a speeding insect. It stopped in mid-air a short distance up the street and landed softly with a vertical maneuver. The object was a vehicle, far larger than the sphere they’d seen at the wall. It was long and narrow, round with a pointed noise, smooth and pale as the buildings. A door opened and a being emerged, stepped into the street lightly, and unfolded to full height.

Jill had the distinct thought—accompanied by more wonder than fear—that she was, honest to god, seeing an intelligent alien species, that she and Nate were perhaps the first human beings ever to do so. The scientist in her was awestruck.

The creature was tall, at least seven-foot, with four long limbs and an upright torso that was papery thin. Its skin was pale and tinged with green. Its eyes were enormous. The rest of its features, including the ears and nose, were mere holes in the skull. The top of its head was a rounded dome sporting a few hard, bristlelike hairs. Its clothes were nondescript, a loose-fitting unitard made of a light-looking fabric the same pale color as the alien’s skin. There was something vaguely geeky about it, perhaps because it had a large overbite and its upper teeth stuck out above its weak little chin.

Jill was holding her breath, waiting for the moment of mutual recognition. Nate had put his hand on her arm, just above the elbow, and was gripping her hard. The alien had to see them—it had flown right over them and now it turned in their direction as it circled the car. But its eyes gazed right through them. They were so close, they could see the dark veins under its translucent skin. There was no reaction to their presence. It walked with a hurried, gangly gait into a large building in front of the vehicle and disappeared.

Nate and Jill looked at each other. Nate’s eyes were so wide they were almost comical. He looked like he’d just swallowed a bug. Jill almost laughed, from his expression and from a feeling of amazement and disbelief bubbling up inside her, but she couldn’t summon the saliva for it.

“Jill, it didn’t see us.”

“How would we know?” She shrugged, smiling.

“Well… it would do something!”

“No, you would do something, Nate. This is an alien species, remember? We have no idea what they would do.”

Nate and Jill waited in the street, just in case the alien did do something—send some kind of security force or reemerge with welcome baskets—but nothing came. The City was as silent and blank as ever.

Nate moved first, drawn by male hormones to inspect the vehicle. Jill followed reluctantly. She peered at the building the alien went into for signs of activity, for light. The dark windows looked indistinguishable from all the others they had passed.

“No steering wheel,” Nate said, peering into the car. “Looks like a control pad and—” The door hinged open with a pneumatic sound.

“Nate, don’t!”

“I didn’t! Must be on sensors.” He stuck his head inside, pressed his fingers against a hard-looking seat so narrow it looked more suited to a banana split than a human behind. He poked unadvisedly at the control pad.

“Nate, this is all superneato, but we have to have water. Right now.”

“Yeah? And where do you propose…” Nate began, straightening up.

He stopped, seeing the direction of her gaze. The building’s entrance was as unassuming as any other. There was no sign on its front, no writing to indicate its purpose, but it was taller than most of the buildings, at least thirty stories. On the side was a tube that looked like an elevator.

“Um…” Nate began doubtfully.

“The power. It’s been out in all the buildings we’ve tried so far. We’re not going to find water until we find power.”

She didn’t need to elaborate. Since the alien entered that particular building there was at least some chance the power might be on in there.

Nate sighed. “What if there are a whole bunch of aliens in there? What if it’s a trap?”

“Then it is,” Jill replied, heading for the door.

Inside, the layout looked much the same as the other buildings they’d seen—a plain, square lobby with freakishly tall and narrow unmarked doors against the flat wall opposite. In between those doors a long hallway ran straight down the middle of the building. The hallway was also featureless except for more unmarked doors. The elevator at the far end of the lobby was wide open—no doors, just a platform inside a rounded shaft that disappeared straight through the ceiling. The only color was white.