Behind the Eyes of Dreamers Read online

  “They took her kids away,” a voice said. Suzanne found herself facing a slender black woman with hazel eyes. The woman’s hair was coiled tightly around her head in cornrow braids. “She had six of them,” the black woman went on. “They took them all to some other domes.”

  Suzanne, not knowing what to say, looked down at her feet, then back at the woman. “Did you have kids too?” she asked lamely.

  “No, I always wanted to, but I’m glad now I didn’t.” The woman smiled bitterly and Suzanne felt that the subject was being dismissed. The stocky black man had wandered to the dome’s triangular entrance. “I’m Felice Harrison,” the woman muttered. “That’s my husband Oscar.” She waved at the man in the entrance.

  “I’m Suzanne Molitieri.” The introduction hung in the air between them. Suzanne wanted to giggle suddenly. Felice raised her eyebrows slightly.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” said Suzanne, almost squeaking the words. Oscar joined his wife and placed his arm gently over her shoulders.

  “This is Suzanne Molitieri,” Felice said to Oscar, and Suzanne felt reassured by the steady smile on the man’s broad face.

  “I’m Joel Feldstein,” Joel said quickly, and she felt his hand close around her waist. She had almost forgotten he was there. His hand seemed as heavy as a chain, binding her to him.

  Joel smiled. His too-perfect teeth seemed to glitter; his brown eyes danced. With his free hand, he brushed back a lock of thick brown hair. He’s too beautiful—I had to love him. “I guess we’re going to live in these things,” Joel continued. “I can’t figure it out, I don’t understand these people. That’s quite an admission for me; I’ve studied psychology for years. In fact, I was finishing my doctoral studies.” You haven’t been near a classroom in years. “I wanted to go into research, then marry Suzanne, give her a chance to finish school; she’s been working much too hard helping me out.” He smiled down at her regretfully. Somebody had to pay the bills. “The thing I regret most is not getting the chance to help Suzie.” She winced at the nickname. The chainlike pressure on her waist tightened. “What about you two, what did you do?”

  “It hardly matters now,” Felice said dryly. Her hazel eyes and Oscar’s black ones were expressionless.

  “I guess you’re right,” said Joel. “You know, I even had a couple of papers published last year—I was really proud of that—but I guess that doesn’t matter now either.” Why are you lying now?

  “I was a bus driver,” said Oscar coldly. Suzanne suddenly felt that she was looking at the Harrisons across an abyss. Her mind began to clutch at words in desperation.

  “What’s it like inside the dome?” she said to Oscar. The black man seemed to relax slightly.

  “Just a big room, with low tables and no chairs,” Oscar answered. “Then there’s these metal stairways winding around, and some rooms without doors, and the ceiling’s glowing, don’t ask me how. No lights, just this glow.”

  “Hey,” Felice muttered. The people around them had formed a line. Suzanne turned. One of the Aadae stood in front of them, holding a small metal device.

  Suzanne sniffed at the air. She hadn’t realized how smelly the Aadae actually were. She watched the alien and wondered again how the military must have felt when they first saw the conquerors.

  The Aada appeared human, a small female not more than five feet tall and slender, with large violet eyes and pale golden skin. Her blue-black hair, uncombed and apparently unwashed, hung to her waist. She wore a dirty pair of bikini bottoms, spotted with stains. The alien scratched her stomach, and Suzanne almost snickered.

  “Give nameh, go inside,” said the Aada. She waved the metal rod she held at the dome. Then she pointed it at Joel. “Give nameh, go inside.” The Aada’s violet eyes stared past them, as if perceiving something else besides the line of people.

  “Joel Feldstein.” The rod was pointed at Suzanne.

  “Suzanne Molitieri.”

  “Oscar Harrison.”

  “Felice Harrison.” They began to move toward the dome.

  “Are my children all right, please tell me, are they all right?” The plump mother of six was pleading with the alien.

  “Nameh,” the Aada repeated. Suzanne looked into the alien’s violet eyes and was startled to see sadness there. The Aada’s small golden hand patted the plump woman reassuringly. “Nameh,” and the word this time seemed tinged by grief.

  Puzzled, Suzanne turned away and entered the dome.

  “You tell me,” said Joel, “how a technologically advanced culture can produce such sloppy, dirty people. I can’t get within two feet of one.” He grimaced.

  “Cleanliness and technological advancement aren’t necessarily related,” said Gabe Cardozo, shifting his plump body around on the floor. “Besides, from their point of view, they might be very neat. It depends on your perspective.”

  Suzanne, huddled against the wall near the doorless entrance to their room, suddenly felt dizzy. They had been drinking from one of Joel’s bottles since early that evening. She tried to focus on the wall opposite the entrance.

  The room was bare of furnishings except for two mats on the floor. A small closet near the door held their possessions. There was little space to move around in and she knew they were lucky to have the room to themselves. Gabe, two domes down, was sharing his room with three other people. She had asked Joel if they could have Gabe move in with them; he was, after all, Joel’s best friend. But Joel had dismissed the idea, saying he had little enough privacy as it was. No, you have to hide, Joel, that’s it, Gabe might find out what you really are.

  “What do they want, anyway?” said Joel. “They took the trouble to put up these domes, I don’t know how, moved us in, and we’ve been sitting around for three days with nothing to do.” Joel suddenly laughed. “Whoever thought an alien invasion would be so goddamn boring.”

  “Well, they obviously don’t need slave labor,” Gabe said. “They put up these domes with no help and they are technologically advanced. And if they’d wanted the planet for themselves, I suppose they could have executed us. They want us for something, and they probably moved us out here so they could watch us more carefully. People could hide in the city.”

  “What difference does it make?” Suzanne said loudly, irritated by Gabe’s professorial manner. “We’ll find out sooner or later; what good does it do talking about it?” She stood up, wobbling a bit on weak-kneed legs. Gabe’s walruslike moustache seemed to droop slightly; Joel shrugged his shoulders.

  She found herself outside the room on the metal stairway, leaning forward, clutching the rail. The large room below her was empty and someone had pushed the low tables closer to the walls. She began to move down the stairs, still holding the rail. When she reached the bottom, she sat down abruptly on the floor, clutching her knees. “God,” she whispered. The floor shifted under her.

  A hand was on her shoulder. Startled, she looked up into Felice’s hazel eyes. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” said Suzanne. “I don’t know. I think I’m going to vomit.”

  “You need some air, come on.” Suzanne stumbled to her feet. Holding on to Felice, she managed to get to the triangular doorway and outside.

  A cool breeze bathed her face. “You better now?” asked Felice.

  “I think so.” She looked at the rows of lighted doorways in front of her. “You’re up pretty late, Felice.”

  “I’m up pretty early. It’s almost morning.” Suzanne sighed and leaned against the dome. “You feel like taking a walk, honey?”

  “Can we?” asked Suzanne. “Will they let us?”

  “They haven’t stopped me yet. No wonder you look so bad, staying inside for three days. Come on, we can walk to the highway; do you good.”

  “All right.” Her head felt clearer already. She began to walk past the rows of domes with Felice. Occasionally, shadows moved across the triangular doorways they passed, transforming themselves into loose-limbed dancing
scarecrows on the path in front of Suzanne.

  “What’s going to happen to us?” Suzanne muttered, expecting no answer. An apathetic calm had embraced her; her feet seemed to drag her behind them.

  “Who knows, Suzanne? We wait, we find out about these Aadae chicks, what their weak points are. That’s all we can do. If we tried anything now, we got no chance. But we might later.”

  They reached the highway and stopped. Felice gestured at the domes across the road. “They live in those things, too,” she said to Suzanne. “I found out yesterday. I looked inside one of their doorways. Exactly like ours.”

  Suzanne looked toward the city. She could barely see the tall rectangles and spires of its skyline. To the left of the city, the early morning sky was beginning to glow. Felice clutched her arm and she noticed the Aadae for the first time. They were sitting on the highway in a semicircle, soundlessly gazing east.

  “Suzanne.” She swung around and saw Gabe, his face almost white. His dark frizzy hair was a cloud around his head. “Are you all right? I followed you just to be sure; you didn’t look too well.”

  “I’m fine. Where’s Joel?”

  “He fell asleep. Or passed out. I’m not sure which.” Gabe looked apologetic.

  She shrugged, then looked uncertainly at Felice. “Oh, Gabe, this is—”

  “I know Felice, she was in my evening lit class.” Gabe smiled. “She was the best student in it.”

  Felice was appearing uncharacteristically shy. She grinned and looked down at her feet. “Come on,” she said. “You were a good teacher, that’s all.” Suzanne shuddered at the mention of the past. She watched Joel as he slept beside her. His slim, muscled chest rose and fell with each breath. I love you anyway, Joel; there’s been more good than bad. We just need time, that’s all; you’ll find yourself.

  Suddenly she hated the Aadae. She closed her fists, hoping for an Aada’s neck around which to squeeze them. Tears stung her eyes, blurring the image of the Aadae in the road.

  “What are they doing?” Gabe whispered. She ignored him and began to walk along the highway toward the aliens. A soft sigh rose from the semicircle of Aadae and drifted to her. They were swaying now, back and forth from the waist.

  The sun’s edge appeared on the horizon, lighting up the road. The Aadae leaned forward. Suzanne, hearing footsteps behind her, stepped forward and turned.

  Five pairs of blind violet eyes stared through her. Startled, she moved away from the five Aadae and let them pass. The five, dressed in dirty robes, stumbled onto the road, arms stretched in front of them. They wandered to the edge of the semicircle and stood there, holding their arms out toward the sun. Suzanne followed them and stood with them. They didn’t seem to realize she was there.

  She waved an arm in front of the nearest Aada. The alien showed no reaction. They’re truly blind, she thought as she gazed into the empty eyes. The five Aadae continued to stare directly into the rising sun. They began to sway on their feet, burned-out retinas unable to focus. She stepped back from them, moving again to the side of the road.

  Gabe and Felice were with her, pulling at her arms. “Come on,” said Gabe, “we’d better get out of here, come on.” She pulled her arms free and continued to watch the Aadae.

  Something was drawing her toward the aliens, something that hovered over her, tugging at her mind. She was at peace, wanting only to join the group on the road. She found her head turning to the sun.

  A shadow rose in front of her. “Suzanne!” It was Gabe, holding her by the shoulders. Suddenly she was frightened. She stumbled backward, grabbing at Gabe’s arms. The sighs of the Aadae were louder now, driving her away.

  “Run!” Suzanne screamed. “Run!” Her feet, pounding along the side of the road, were carrying her back to the domes. She ran, soon losing herself among the domes. At last she stopped, exhausted, in front of one. She turned to the triangular doorway.

  Two Aadae were there, one with stiff orange hair like a flame and shiny copper-colored skin. The dark-haired golden-skinned one was coming toward her. She threw up her arms, trying to ward her off.

  The alien took her by the arm and tugged gently. Suzanne followed the Aada passively, led like a child along the path between the domes. Then they stopped and she realized that she was in front of her own dome.

  She sighed and leaned against the doorway. Her fear had disappeared, and she was feeling a bit foolish. I must have been really drunk. The Aada released her, then bowed from the waist in an Oriental farewell before disappearing among the domes.

  The air was heavy and the sky overcast. People were sitting or standing around aimlessly; occasionally small groups of people, scarcely speaking to each other, would pass by. Suzanne sat with her back to her dome, watching Felice mend a shirt. That morning, at breakfast, one of the men had stood up and thrown his bowl, still filled with greenish mush, at the wall. All of them had been growing tired of the food, which was always the same. But until today, they had simply gone to the slots on the wall, pushed the buttons, and passively accepted the green mush and milky blue liquid which were all the slots ever yielded besides glasses of water.

  The green mush had stuck to the wall, resembling a fungoid growth. Rivulets ran from it, trickling to the floor. Then a tiny gray-haired woman hurled her bowl. Within seconds, everyone in the large room was throwing bowls and following the bowls with the glasses of blue liquid, shrieking with laughter as the liquid mingled with the mush on the walls. Several people hurried to the food slots and punched buttons wildly, pulled out more food and threw it at the walls. The orgy of food throwing had lasted almost half an hour until the walls were thickly coated and the Aadae had arrived.

  The two aliens had ignored the mess. They brought a cart with them filled with oddly shaped metal objects of different sizes. One of the Aadae rummaged among the objects and removed a small cylinder. Then she held it over her head, showing it to everyone in the room. Her companion handed her a silvery block and the Aada attached it to the cylinder, then fastened a blue block to the cylinder’s other end.

  “Put together,” the alien said, pointing with the object to the cart. The two Aadae turned and left the dome.

  “What the hell,” Suzanne heard Oscar mutter.

  “We better do it,” said the tiny old woman. “Who knows what they’ll do if we don’t.”

  The room was beginning to stink. A few flies buzzed near the mush-covered walls. “I’d better get Joel his breakfast,” Suzanne said absently to Felice. She wandered over to the food slots, punched the buttons and removed a bowl and glass. People had already begun work on the objects by the time she was climbing the stairs to her room, where Joel still lay sleeping. At least it’s something to do.

  It had taken only a couple of hours to put the objects together. Once again, they were left with time on their hands, long hours that were chains on their minds, minutes through which they swam, pushed underwater, unable to come up for air. Felice was mending the shirt on her lap slowly and carefully; the sewing of each stitch became an entire project.

  “They’ll come back,” said Suzanne. “And give us more pointless stuff to do.”

  “You know what I think,” said the small woman. “I think they’re crazy. They don’t need us to put that stuff together.” Felice hunched herself over the shirt and continued sewing. “You can’t even tell what the things are for.”

  Suzanne began to poke at a loose thread on her jeans. The humid air was making her sweat and her crotch was starting to itch. She had managed to wash her underwear by using several glasses of water from the food slots, but there was nowhere she could bathe except by one of the sinks in the bathroom where the water was always cold and anyone could wander in at any time. Suzanne was afraid to go to the bathroom alone anyway. A woman in one of the nearby domes had been raped in a bathroom; although her husband had beaten the man who had done it, the fear of rape had spread among many women. Now Suzanne went to the bathroom only with Joel or Felice or some of the other women in the dome
. A couple of times Gabe would accompany her, looking modestly away from her at the wall while she squatted on the floor over the hole which would suck her wastes away down a large tube. There were no partitions between the holes; squatting over them had become ritualized, with everyone courteously avoiding a look at the others present in the bathroom. Occasionally there was moisture around the holes; someone had taken a piss and missed. One fastidious young couple tried to keep the bathroom clean, mopping the floor and walls with an old undershirt, but they were not always successful.

  Suzanne was growing uneasy. She was used to seeing an occasional pair of Aadae stroll along the pathway in front of her, but the aliens seemed to have disappeared. Suddenly her muscles tightened involuntarily. Something was in the air, hovering over her.

  She heard a scream, a high-pitched, ululating sound, and then a roar, a bellowing from hundreds of throats. “Felice!” she cried, grabbing at the woman next to her. Felice dropped her shirt and they both stood up.

  We should go inside. Suzanne looked down the pathway and saw a large group of men moving toward the highway. She began to run toward them with Felice close behind her. Again she heard the scream, which had taken on the cadences of a mournful song. It was closer to her now. A small group of people had gathered in front of a dome up ahead. She ran to them and pushed her way through the crowd. Then she shrank back, moaning softly, slapping a hand over her mouth.

  An Aada hung in the doorway by her feet. Someone had tied a rope around her ankles. The alien had been stabbed several times; brown clots covered her body. Her long orange hair brushed the ground as she turned in the doorway, her violet eyes stared sightlessly at the crowd. They were all that was left of her face, smashed by fists. Bone fragments protruded from her jaw; her copper-colored skin was covered by greenish bruises. On the ground beneath her lay another Aada, dying from wounds which covered her body. The alien on the ground drew her black hair over her chest, lifted her head slightly, and opened her mouth, and Suzanne again heard the song-like scream. Then she turned from them and was silent.