Earthbound

by Kenneth Radu

Adrian had grown up with the certain knowledge that one day Martians would either knock on his door or, able to demolecularize like characters in Star Trek, slip through any obstacle, then reassemble their body parts on the other side at will. According to his father who knew more about interplanetary travel and denizens of the cosmos than all the world’s scientists put together, Martians had already arrived and could be seen by those who knew how to look for them.          
 

“You mean like Mrs. Jellings who saw a flying saucer in her field past midnight.”

“Nah, that was just lights of the corn thresher. Poor woman woke up from some kind of dream and was confused. You got to be careful about people, Adrian, they believe what they want to see and see what they want to believe. That’s not good science. Like this professor here who understands things like alien abductions and operations on space ships.”

His father had just finished staining the boards of his recently constructed observation platform on top of the house. It jutted out of the sloping roof like the prow of a pirate ship. Protected from falling by a wire meshed railing, Adrian watched his dad put together yet another telescope, each one more expensive and powerful than the last. Muttering incomprehensible words like resolving power, helical focuser, altazimuth mounting and reduction of longitudinal chromatic aberrations, his father handed him a magazine called Science Unchained.

“Read the article by Professor Witherby. He knows what’s what, that’s all I can say.”

A picture of the professor’s head separated from his body and floating in a galaxy of stars graced the cover. According to the article which Adrian had taken to read in bed as he usually did after the lights out order, the professor had carefully gathered verifiable evidence of Martian visitation and surgical procedures on human beings. He had his own website which Adrian’s father logged onto religiously. Able to follow the argument without looking up words in a dictionary, Adrian wondered why Martians never phoned the American president to say “here we are,” or contacted scientists who wanted to speak to them. They had their reasons, his father often mysteriously replied to Adrian’s questions in a tone of voice that hinted at more than it revealed.

That last summer before entering high school, Adrian used to scout the woods behind his house on the outskirts of town where wild raspberries grew and the occasional mangy coyote howled under the moon. He carried a Geiger counter of sorts designed and made by his father. Crackling like a hungry crow when it picked up movement, on windy days the device’s sensitivity to vibrations wore down the batteries. He also sat on a boulder surrounded by sumac bushes, and peered among the trunks of larch and cedars. Martians might just be lurking behind the trees. He would rather have gone swimming or biking or taken the ferry to the Bob-lo Island amusement part with a few friends, but Adrian knew it pleased his father if he took an interest in things interstellar.

Almost every moment off his job at the automotive plant, and every day after his department shut down and he was laid off, his father busied himself in the back yard working on his model space craft, this one constructed out of a giant, obsolete television satellite dish that used to tower like a mechanical ladybug behind the house. Covered with  aluminum foil, it reflected the sunlight which glinted off the silvery sides and reminded Adrian of the flying saucer Michael Rennie stepped out of in the old science fiction movie, The Day the Earth Stood Still. Tall and skinny like the actor, his father didn’t speak with such elegant pronunciation as Klaatu, the alien, come to earth to tell humanity to behave itself and not kill each other.

Adept at small machine repairs and scouring acres of junked cars for parts, he had manufactured an engine of sorts imbued with rocket booster potential. His idea was not to travel to Mars, but to get a sense of how traveling Martians visited the earth. Inspired by the activities of the SETI Institute which had its ears and all available technology attuned to life in outer space, he had installed a radio with the capacity to receive extraterrestrial transmissions. For visit the earth Martians had done in the past --- just look at the pyramids of Egypt --- and certainly did today. Unlike his grasp of ancient history or principles of engineering in the time of the Pharaohs, his father did know some things about science, and dismissed scientists who disagreed with him. They were part of a cabal, a conspiracy to keep this earth-shattering and mind-altering knowledge to themselves, and he scoffed at theories that supposedly pointed to the fallacies of his own.

“Just don’t bother with people who aren’t on the same wave length as I am, Adrian. Waste of my intellectual energy. You got to be careful about people. They want to tear you down when you get close to the truth.”

Anyway, as his father Gordian said -- Gordian, not Gordon -- because grandmother had been enthralled by the story of the Gordian knot. She named her son after an example of alternative thinking. As Gordian said, it was a good idea to have something to escape into the air with, as well as something to retreat to in the ground. Before Adrian enrolled in university on a generous science scholarship, his father had completed six years of toil on the underground shelter. A concrete bunker with air shaft, it supposedly would keep out radiation in the event of a nuclear holocaust or the sun exploding, as it was likely to do in a few years, deluging the earth with incinerating rain. His father had stocked it with cases of tinned soup and salmon, canned meat and fruit, and dozens of plastic carboys of spring water which, according to calculation, would enable them to survive a full six months without emerging.

Every week he tried to increase the supplies because he didn’t believe six months long enough for the all clear signal. Money was scarce which didn’t prevent him from ordering a new, computerized telescope to replace the one still standing on its rusty tripod on the observation platform and charging it to his credit card. Gordian had barely enough to pay the mortgage and cover household necessities, so he could do little more than add a tin or two of sardines or chick peas to his world catastrophe bunker. Also human error played a role and his calculations could well be wrong, given the life span of radioactive matter.

“Who will be giving the all clear signal, dad,” Adrian remembered asking when Gordian unrolled his plans for the bunker on the dining room table where they never ate since the death of his mother, “if the world’s been burned to ashes?”

“The government has its own ways of surviving. The President of the United States himself has a private bunker. He’ll sound the all clear, even for Canadians.”

“What’s he got? A whistle?”

Adrian often went to the riverside where he stared at the towers of Detroit and tried to hear any noise at all blown out of the city towards Windsor. When the teacher returned his first science essay back in Grade Nine, Adrian had burst into tears, much to the hilarity of his class mates. The topic being the significance of the rocks brought back from Mars, Miss Joy had failed him, saying there was no scientific evidence for Adrian’s contention that a city lay buried under Martian sands or that friendship with the Martians was important to cultivate because they had medical knowledge earthlings did not have, relying upon Professor Witherby and his father’s favourite websites as secondary sources.

“This is a science class, Adrian, not science fiction,” Miss Joy told him when he stayed behind, hoping for a teacher’s change of mind. The F pierced him like an arrow in his eyeball.

“Could I please rewrite the paper, Miss?”

“Only if you promise to go the library and do some proper research. I’ve placed articles on reserve in the school library, and gave students a list of available books and magazines to consult. Use them. Agreed?”

He did. Researched, rewrote, and received an A. Looking at the results, his father  harrumphed, then retreated into his study where he kept wall charts of interplanetary travel channels. Adrian took a bus to visit his mother’s grave the next day to tell her spirit about his good grade and how much he loved science. Indian summer which had lasted over a week was blown apart by chilly winds. Wiping pigeon droppings off her maroon tombstone with the sleeve of his bomber jacket, Adrian wondered if she could really hear him. He knew perfectly well that beneath the sod lay a casket containing a rotting corpse, maybe only a skeleton by now. She had died four years ago, so he needed to check the facts about decomposition. He remembered lying on sleeping sacks on the roof deck on late August nights with his mother who smelled of laundry detergent and lemons. Without benefit of his father’s telescope, they scanned the night sky for shooting stars and the constellations. She told him many stories about the origins of Orion’s belt, Cassiopeia and Ursa Major.

He discovered the city’s public library set in the middle of a park which contained books his father disregarded. Miss Joy gave him tutorial sessions and revealed to him all kinds of possibilities if he studied hard and did not become distracted. He also logged onto websites devoted to chemistry and physics his father ignored. They all sucked Adrian into whirlpools of colour and energy from which he emerged spun out and entranced after hours immersed in a reality beneath the visible world as fascinating as any of his father’s theories. His mind gyrated like a frenzied atom.

By grade eleven, he decided to pursue science for life. Although he polished his mother’s tombstone once or twice a year, he no longer consulted her spirit. Who had time? His father obsessed with his own theories, sky watching, and cobbling together his space ship, Adrian swept the floor, changed the beds, washed the clothes, cooked the meals, and desperate to win a scholarship, studied past midnight every night.  

“Adrian, hey, buddy, I need your help out here!”

His concentration on physics shattered, his efforts at prolonged study for his final examinations on which he needed to achieve spectacular results for even the slightest hope at winning a scholarship dissipated by his father who kept demanding his attention and time, Adrian had shouted out his bedroom window.

“Jesus Murphy! Could I please be allowed to do my own work for a change?” Last weekend he lost precious hours of study time because Gordian needed his help to scrabble about a junk yard for discarded axles and gear boxes among heaps of crushed and crunched vehicles. None of Gordian’s friends seemed available for the task. Now he wanted to shift the position of his space craft, angle it up so he could open a curved panel, fiddle with wires, and pretend that he had achieved some remarkable scientific task. Adrian knew the craft would scarcely crawl ten miles an hour on the ground, never mind propel itself into space, since it violated just about every physical law regarding the dynamics of flight and jet propulsion. Why couldn’t his father see that and stop wasting both their times?

Gordian raised a hand over his eyes as if to shade them from the sun and stood there looking up. Adrian could not bring himself to speak any more and when Gordian simply turned around, bent his long frame almost to the ground, wedged his hands under the circular edge of his heavy craft and started to lift, or try to, his winded grunt audible to his son’s ears, Adrian had no choice but to go down and assist.

“You don’t need to help, Adrian, I can do it myself.”

“Didn’t you just call me to come down and help you? Well, I’m helping you.”

“I don’t want to interfere with your studies. I know they’re important.”

“Sure, you do, dad. That’s why I’m here working on your bloody science project and not wracking my brains over chemistry and physics.”

His father whistled, puffed his cheeks out like a blowfish, then with Adrian digging his heels in the soft turf, hoisted. Gordian swiftly positioned a jack to keep the craft raised high enough for him to grab a rusty tool box and crawl under.

“I won’t need you anymore now, son. You can go back to your own work.”

When Adrian showed his father the letter of acceptance and the offer of an all expenses paid scholarship, Gordian read it, choked on phlegm, then, stared at his son as though he were an alien visitor at last materialized in the foyer. He whispered “good,” then asked if supper would be ready soon.

“I guess I’ll take the train. Aren’t you happy for me, dad?”

“Sure I am, Adrian, not everyone wins this scholarship.”

They were eating supper of burned macaroni and cheese because Adrian had forgotten to remove the casserole from the oven while he was pondering a problem of astrophysics in his room. Gordian hunched over to bring his mouth closer to his plate. His hands calloused and scarred after years of working with metal and screws, often forgetting about protective gloves although he at least wore eye goggles, Gordian kept his eyes down, refusing to look across the table. Adrian had received happy news, but his father wasn’t smiling.

“Something wrong, dad?”

“Nothing, Adrian, just worried about a mechanical problem with my boosters. Can’t figure out why I’m not getting the power I need.”

“Oh.”

Adrian chewed wormy clumps of macaroni, but Gordian only hovered over his food, then stood up without speaking, left the table for Adrian to clear and the dishes for him to wash. He slammed the kitchen door to the back yard behind him. Through the window over the sink, Adrian saw his father beaming a flash light over the space craft.

Just past midnight, he heard Gordian clomping about the observation platform above his bedroom. Adrian climbed up the attic stairs to the trap door which led to the roof. A cold night, not a single cloud covered the constellations.

“Dad?”

Having thrown a coat over his ragged terrycloth robe, his father sat on a stool, peering through his new telescope and scanning the sky.

“Dad?”

“Somewhere, I know I’ll see them, Adrian. Didn’t want to miss a chance on a night like this.”

Adrian noticed his father’s bare feet. The moonlight shone on his grey hair.

“Let me get your slippers, dad. I’ll join you.”

© 2010 Kenneth Radu.  All rights reserved.  

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kenneth Radu lives in Quebec. His recent stories have appeared or are forthcoming online in Foundling Review, Two Hawks Quarterly, LWOT, Thirst for Fire, etc. His story collection, A Private Performance (Vehicule Press), won the Quebec Writers' Federation award for best English-language fiction. In 2005, Penguin of Canada published his novel, The Purest of Human Pleasures. His short piece, Silence, was featured in Black Lantern's fall 2009 issue.