The Nature of Change

The Deep Intangibles (Terry 04)

TWO DAYS LATER

"What's wrong?" Gerard says, plopping his innocent behind onto the chair beside me, his model of the USS Iowa clasped carefree in his fist.

In that instant, I know that he knows. He doesn't know everything, he doesn't know his friends are probably doomed, but he knows that something's wrong. He must see it in my eyes, and the fact that I'm leaning my head against the window staring out into space. The last time something bad happened, I couldn't stop staring like that.

Somewhere deep inside that beautifully innocent brain of his, he knows what comes next.

I shatter his world, and he goes off to deal with it in his own inconsolable way.

I turn to face him, and look deep into his eyes.

He scrutinizes me, not really analyzing, not like I do. He just sees the emotion in my eyes.

Why's it always the damn eyes?

"Something's wrong," he says in his slightly pouty, chubby, high-pitched child's voice.

I look off into space behind him, trying to get him out of my view. I can't bear to look him in the eye when I do this, to watch his oh so fragile world shatter from the force of a 6" naval artillery round. I'd like to think he'll be worse off for this, growing the framework of his mind back all wrong, but the reality is that it takes hard times to make hard people.

I should know, of all people.

I gulp solemnly, knowing what I have to do.

====================================

"... so don't worry. It'll all be over soon."

The tears welling up in little Gerry's six-year-old eyes tell me he doesn't buy it.

My explanation done, I put my hands on his shoulders and force myself to look into those confused brown eyes, looking desperately for something to cling to amidst this revelation.

Gerry is very very silent for a long time.

He gasps for air, stuttering his breath, on the verge of bawling his eyes out for the next hour.

He exhales.

He inhales again, still shaky. But he's getting stronger.

He exhales.

He breathes in, uncertain.

He exhales.

He looks up at me.

He gulps, and nods.

"Okay."

I give him a short pat on the back, and he gets up. He plods away, dejected yet stoic in the face of what I have just wrought upon him.

I...

I didn't know he was capable of that.

====================================

The plane soars, over four tons of fuel pouring into the jets every hour, pushing us ever onward.

We transferred to a plane a few hours ago; the bunker is far inland, and the Calgary is, well, a ship. Not suited for transport over land. Gerry asked about that, and I brushed him off. That probably clued him in a fair bit to what was really going on.

The only reason we took the Calgary at all was because of bureaucracy; Calgary had already been on a course that would take her near the San Diego coast, so it was faster and cheaper to get us onto the Calgary and lump us in the flight they'd already planned than it would have been to charter a flight direct from San Diego to the bunker. Plus that would mean briefing a whole new set of pilots on the whole alien situation, risking a leak.

I lie in bed, staring at the curved ceiling of the Airbus CC-150 Polaris, unable to sleep. I'm not thinking about anything in particular, but the incoherent inexpressible uncertainties of what the bunker holds simply won't let me up.

Gerry didn't deserve that talk. What right do the aliens have to do this to us? What have we done to hurt them? What has Gerry done to hurt them, to kill them, to make him worthy of their seemingly inexorable wrath? Why am I catastrophizing?

Because it's my damn job, I counter.

I close my eyes, opening my ears to the subtleties.

Muffled by the blankets spread out on the makeshift beds, I hear sobbing. A wracking gasp of air, then repeated huffs. I can practically hear the tears pouring out into the pillow.

It's Gerry. He's the only one who might have broken. The fact that he waited this long to let open the floodgates, and that he's so discreet about it, can only be a testament to his raw willpower. I get the feeling he'll be important someday.

This moment... shaped him.

I get up out of my blanket, careful to brace myself against any sudden turbulence - this is a plane, after all - and inch my way towards him.

Gerry lifts his head, but he doesn't stop his expression of grief.

I bring myself alongside him, grasping him in my arms and pulling him close, letting the warmth of my hardened frame comfort him.

He rests his head on my shoulder, tears slowing.

In that instant, the mask I wear for the Navy slips off, and he's my son, and I'm his dad, and we cry together.