“Not because he was worried about my uncle seeing him.”
“No. Because he wasn’t supposed to leave his post.”
“His post?”
“His job, his job!”
Sometimes Ravenette was speaking in her own voice and sometimes it was inflected with a strange, high-pitched tone that grated on the ear. It was unnerving, but I couldn’t let that distract me.
“What’s his job?” I asked.
I didn’t get a direct answer. Not yet. Instead, Ravenette spit out an angry question. “Why did Avi take it away?”
“I’m sorry,” I said helplessly. “I still don’t know what it is.”
Again, no answer. “He says he doesn’t want to talk to you. You’re just . . . all he can find. At least, I think that’s what he’s saying.”
“All he can find?” I took a guess at what he meant. “He’s been looking for Avi, is that it? Well, Avi’s dead. Does he understand what that means?”
Ravenette was silent for a moment. When she spoke again she said, “He does but . . . time is different where he is. Maybe death is, too.”
“Then channel Avi for him and tell him to leave me alone.” I stood up, as if to leave, and Ravenette hissed again. “That’s not going to work with me,” I said.
I knew that I was taking a chance by being so confrontational, but I didn’t think I had anything to lose. I needed answers and so far, I hadn’t gotten them by being nice. At least, relatively so.
To my relief, the tactic quickly seemed to work. “Wait,” Ravenette said, holding up her hand as a sort of stop signal. I didn’t think she was even aware that she was doing this; the gesture seemed forced, mechanical. “He says to remember that it was you who contacted him.”
“I called into a radio show,” I replied. “I was half drunk.”
Ravenette—or the radioman she was speaking for—paid no attention to me. “He is very angry,” she said, pronouncing each word with grim deliberateness, as if there was any possibility that this particular communiqué hadn’t gotten through to me yet. And then, after a pause, she spoke again, this time sounding puzzled. And she was speaking for herself. She said, “Laurie? He sounds . . . desperate, too.”
“Desperate? And he thinks I can help him?”
“Yes, you,” she said, snapping back into the strange state in which she seemed to be only partly in control of herself. “He repeats that he needs the Haverkit. 3689D. 3689D,” she said suddenly, seeming, now, to be slipping more deeply into the grip of her alien counterpart. I finally sat back down as she closed her eyes once more and cocked her head to the side in the same way that Digitaria often did. “These numbers must be important. 3689D. 3689D. He keeps saying them over and over again.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
She held up her hand again; this time, she wanted me to stop speaking because there was more she had to tell me. “He’s showing me a vast network of . . . energy waves? Maybe radio waves? I’m not sure what it is. But there are stations all across the galaxies. Many galaxies? Millions? Here and . . . there. This universe and others. Theirs, he says. And others.” She shook her head. “I’m not sure of the words, exactly. But he has a job to do; he has to remain at his post. It’s just a small part of the grid but still . . . still . . . his part of the network isn’t functioning. He can’t broadcast without the Haverkit. He can’t send out the signal. He hasn’t sent a signal in years. Our years. So much time has been wasted! Why did Avi remove 3689D? Why why why why why?” The strange screeching sound had once again inserted itself into Ravenette’s voice. It was very difficult to listen to and it was becoming more and more insistent. “Give it back,” the alien voice said over and over again. “3689D. 3689D.”
“Ravenette,” I said, trying to summon her back from the trancelike state she had fallen into. When she didn’t respond, I spoke louder, and then louder still, calling out her name. Finally, I reached out and shook her. She blinked, and seemed to focus on me.
“What is he talking about?” I asked her. “What kind of signal is he supposed to be sending out? Do you understand what he means?”
She nodded. “They’re sending out a message.”
I had a moment where all the monster movies of my childhood flickered across my memory and I thought of huge robots stomping out of flying saucers, alien insects invading the Earth. Faceless, soulless beings with ray guns lurking in the gas clouds just beyond the edges of our solar system, waiting for the signal that it was time to start the attack.
“What kind of message?” I made myself ask.
“It’s hard to believe.”
“Just tell me. What are they broadcasting?”
“Prayers,” she said incredulously. “Encoded in a signal that’s sent out into . . . the infinite. He says they send it through the Watering Hole, whatever that means. Laurie, Laurie. They’re sending out prayers.”
“Prayers?” I couldn’t quite believe what she was saying. “Prayers? You mean like . . . to God?”
Ravenette seemed to be listening to whatever she was being told.
“Yes. To God.”
“Why? I don’t understand.”
Slowly, she shook her head. “He can’t answer that. He doesn’t know.”
“Because he’s just the radioman,” I said, mostly to myself. But someone else had heard me.
“Yes,” Ravenette responded. “That’s all. He’s just doing his job. He’s been doing it for . . . for . . .” She stopped speaking and then finally, started again. “There is no word to describe for how long.” Her eyes opened wide, as if she were trying to see out from somewhere deep inside herself, and then closed again. A moment later, in the alien-inflected voice that I found so disturbing, she began droning “3689D, 3689D,” until I couldn’t stand it anymore.
I grabbed her arm and shook her again. “Ravenette,” I said. “Ravenette.”
The response I got was that vicious hiss, even louder and more ferocious sounding than before. It stopped abruptly and Ravenette seemed to recoil, as if she had been shoved backward. After a moment, her body posture changed, her features seemed to change, to become less rigid, and she expelled a long breath. “He’s gone,” she said. “He won’t talk to you anymore. It’s like . . . like he slammed a door. And he won’t open it again.”
“What door?”
“The door between us.”
“What does that mean?”
The only image I could create out of what Ravenette had said was literal—like the door to Avi’s room being slammed shut. Or at least, the version of Avi’s room where the radioman seemed to be waiting. Waiting for someone to give him back whatever it was that could be identified by the numbers 3689D.
Ravenette didn’t answer. Instead, she suddenly sprang to her feet. Now, she was the one who was agitated. She started wandering around the room, moving in and out of the circle of light. “Is this who they are?” she said. “Is this who we are supposed to strive to become? Howard Gilmartin promised that when we met them again, they’d be higher beings than us, better than us, and instead, they turn out to be these . . . these creatures?” She continued to pace, and as she did, she continued to voice her apparently deepening despair. “They don’t care about us. They’re completely indifferent to our existence.”
“They?”
“There are others,” she said vaguely. “They’re not with him. I mean, they’re not here. Not exactly. I told you that.” Her voice trailed off. She seemed unable to find a way to add any further description.
“But the room you described to me. It still exists. At least, the building it’s in still exists. Is he there?”
“I don’t know,” Ravenette said. “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. And what difference does it make? Nothing he said makes any sense. What is all this . . . this idiocy about prayers?”