Chapter 2: Tuning the Flow

Pastor rang the bell, and in a few moments a gene-sculpted Neo Neanderthal opened the door. He had heavy gold chains hanging from his hairy bull neck and spilling over his orange tank-top. There were sharp-looking chrome spikes on his leather wrist gauntlets. He frowned down at Pastor and me. Pastor took his big hand and shook it, explaining that Mrs. MacDougal was expecting us. The man grunted and led us inside, without a word. Can he even speak? I wondered.

In the living room, a tall, dark-haired woman rose to greet us. Caitlin's Mom, even if she looked too lanky and refined to be Caitlin's parent. A shorter, much younger dirty blonde remained in her seat at the far end of a chintz-upholstered sofa. Caitlin herself, who was regarded us without a smile. She wore a much too big light blue T-shirt, loose straw-colored painter's pants, and big yellow work boots. She definitely looked like she wanted to be somewhere else. Immediately, I started to regret letting Pastor talk me into meeting Caitlin this way.

The hairy guy mumbled something to Caitlin's mom, and continued his shamble into the back part of the house. A few minutes later, I heard his motorbike start up, and exit the driveway. "Poor Mr. Ott, he never was very comfortable around company," Mrs. MacDougal commented to us, before he was quite out of hearing. Then, with hearty enthusiasm: "So glad to see you, Pastor. And this is Roger, the young man you told me about. Have a seat, gentlemen. Please." She beckoned for me to sit on the sofa next to her daughter, but Pastor probably saw my hesitation, because he sat there himself. I sat in an old wooden ladder-backed chair, trying to look less uncomfortable than I felt.

"Roger, I hear you're a good athlete, and captain of Holy Foot's wrestling team. Did you know Caitlin is an athlete too, sort of? She plays on the girl's lacrosse team, but she's not the captain." Caitlin gave a snort, and rolled her eyes. She thinks her mother is a crass idiot, I guessed. No wonder she didn't want to be here. I decided to try to get her somewhere else fast, before her mom screwed everything up.

"Actually I'm just the junior co-captain, mam. The best wrestlers are all graduating this year, and coach probably made me co-captain so more guys in my class will get interested. Yes, I did know Caitlin is an athlete, and a good one. I watch her team whenever I can, and they're doing better this year than ours is. I saw Caitlin score the winning goal against Overton last week." And, it occurred to me just then, I don't remember seeing you at any of their games, either. Unlike most of the other parents, but like most of the other students, unfortunately. I glanced at Caitlin as I was talking, and she looked like she was watching a performance by poorly trained seals.

"I'll bet you're really good at wrestling, Roger," Mrs. MacDougal simpered "You look to be in great shape, and at your size, I know you must overpower most of your opponents. Even with your shirt on, I can see you're very well muscled, isn't he Caitlin?" Caitlin smiled an ironic, tight-lipped smile.

"Oh yes Mother, lots of big muscles on him. Wrestling divides people into weight classes, Ma, so unfortunately Roger has to get by on talent and those stupendous muscles of his." Somehow that comment cheered me right up. I could see this was going to get interesting.

Mrs. MacDougal, knowing she was being mocked, frowned at her daughter. "Caitlin, why don't you make yourself useful and bring our guests some tea? There's dip in the refrigerator I made for us, and you certainly know where the chips are, if you left us any."

"Kind of hot today for tea, don't you think Ma? But if anybody wants anything, just let me know. The left-over bean dip from Mom's little party isn't half bad, actually."

I must have winced, and I think Pastor saw me. I guess we both figured then that if somebody didn't change the scene quick, Caitlin and her mom were going to go after each other harder and harder. I felt tongue-tied. Luckily Pastor rose to the occasion.

Pastor leaned slightly toward Caitlin, wearing an earnest expression. "Caitlin, I don't know how much your mother told you about our chat yesterday afternoon, but Roger and I came over because your mother kindly invited us, after I told her Roger wanted to meet you. Your mother thought, rightly or wrongly, that you wouldn't mind. Roger has talked to me about you, and I know he admires projects you've done in school, and wants to know you better. These days it's very hard for young people of the opposite sex to feel comfortable and safe, since the Sleesh scared everybody about some of their natural feelings. So, for two teen-agers getting to know each other today, things have become very complicated and awkward. There is no pressure on you about anything, but perhaps you young people would like to leave us oldsters to ourselves for a while, and see if you have some common interests?" Good old Pastor.

A guy coming on to somebody's daughter couldn't ask for a more helpful mother than Mrs. MacD, either. If only she wasn't so bad at it, and if only she and Caitlin didn't seem to hate each other so. Mrs. MacDougal flashed her daughter a saccharine smile. "Caitlin dear, why don't you take Roger up to your room? I'm sure he'd love to see those lovely animated shapes you made on your computer."

Caitlin glanced at me and shrugged. "Sure Mother, whatever. See you guys in a little while." She got up and walked to the staircase in the front hall, without once looking back to see if I was following. Caitlin's big work-boots went "clomp, clomp, clomp" on the wooden steps, while I followed along behind like a meek little lamb.

Caitlin closed her door behind us. Her room looked like it had gotten the standard ten-minute clean up before unwelcome company came by. There were lots of papers and magazines on her desk, but they were piled up into two or three neat stacks. No clothes, clean or dirty, were in view, but I glimpsed a white athletic sock and some other stuff pushed under her bed. The floors looked like they had just been vacuumed, except in the corners. The single bed was neatly made, with a big bedspread covered with tiny pink flowers. Her computer was a good one. Above it on the wall hung two extra flat-screens. I didn't see any multimedia speakers though. Everybody I knew had those, usually four plus a big sub-woofer. Some pictures cut from magazines, of fractals and animals and people I didn't recognize, were thumb-tacked to the walls, seemingly at random. The most arresting thing in Caitlin's bedroom though was a large poster, tacked up beside her bed.

In the picture, a great-looking young couple rode a big horse bareback along a white beach, cantering where the waves just washed the horse's hooves. The picture must have been taken from the air about 300 feet above the beach, behind and to the side of the riders. The guy had on denim shorts, raggedly cut off just below his crotch. No shirt. The woman had long hair so blonde it was almost white, and her hands rested on the guy's thighs right where they joined his hips. She wore a small white halter-top and a brightly printed long skirt that you could almost see through, but not quite. Part of her skirt billowed out behind her, along with her wild hair. What really grabbed the eye though was not the sexy couple, their big horse, or the wonderful white beach with its palm trees and clear blue water, but what trailed along behind. More or less in order of size, pushing along at the edge of the surf, were four Sleesh. The male in front was taller than the big horse, and the last one was so young and unformed you couldn't tell if it was a he or a she. All of the Sleesh were fully erect.

I think I was still a little giddy from the awkward scene downstairs, because I couldn't stop myself from blurting out the first thing that came to mind when I saw Caitlin's poster. "You know the story behind that picture, right?"

Caitlin shook her head, "No". She looked at me with a guarded expression.

"That woman is the daughter of the owner of the biggest fishing operation on the coast of Belize. The guy is an investigator from the Church of God the Engineer, Maritime Division. He came down because The Church heard that her dad's boats ran illegal drag-lines that screwed up the live reefs and other bottom-dwelling sea-life, and ignored their catch limits. The first time the two saw each other, they fell madly in love, never mind that the people they cared about were on opposite sides. This is the first time they've managed to get off by themselves. She's leading him to an abandoned fishing camp where they can really be alone, right around the next sand dune. See how her hands are resting on him like that? You can't see it from this angle, but he has a stiffy. She wants to hold on to it, but she's afraid he'd get so revved up, he'd fall off her horse, or steer them into the waves. The Sleesh just popped in from wherever they pop in from, looking for some good human sex to tune in on. They came too soon though. They hate the salt and the sand, and as soon as they figure where the couple is headed, they'll pop over there and wait. When the couple goes inside the shack and gets down to business, the Sleesh will circle around close to ride the flow and make Junior there at the end of the line, some new little brothers and sisters."

Caitlin rewarded my story with a slight frown; "You just made that up."

I nodded. "Of course. But really, doesn't that picture cry out for somebody to tell its story? You look at it all the time, you must get lots of interesting ideas yourself."

Caitlin motioned me to take her armchair, and seated herself against the big reading pillow on her bed, her booted legs crossed at the ankles. Even in her floppy T-shirt and dumb pants, she looked sexy as hell. "Myself, I just like that big Palomino gelding. Plus the lovely blonde is a turn-on. The guy doesn't interest me at all. There he is riding without a shirt or long pants, when he doesn't have enough of a tan to keep from getting a wicked burn. The guy must be a real narcissist. You're probably right about his hard-on. It may be his first time alone with a woman, and he probably can't keep his mind on what he's doing until they get to wherever they're going."

"You're a very harsh woman, Caitlin," I informed her. "Can't you tell the poor guy has about a quart of SPF-30 slathered all over his skin? He's protected."

Caitlin considered that. Then: "Look, whose picture is this anyway? I say the guy is a complete dork, and you're just defending him because he's another sex-obsessed male. Anyway, the interesting thing is the line of Sleesh. You're right, they probably hate the salt water and the sharp, hot sand. The whole scene could be put together in PhotoShop, but let's stipulate it isn't. What would those Sleesh be doing out there, where they have to be hurting like hell? Sure, they probably love the erotic flow between the humans, but there must be lots of human sex vibes they could swim in, even now when most un-marrieds are afraid to look cross-eyed at each other. Could those Sleesh be attracted to whatever it is that attracts us humans in that scene?"

I couldn't stop from going pedantic. "I heard one idea, that Sleesh are attracted to what somebody called 'breakthrough Eros'," I told her. "That's sexual attraction where the people are just starting to take the risks of exposing their real feelings, and becoming sexual with each other. I doubt that Sleesh dig the beach and the beautiful ocean like we do though. People aren't even sure they can see the way humans see."

Caitlin nodded. "Its all very interesting listening to your theories about Sleesh, and hearing your hot erotic fantasies about my poster. But really, I'd like to know what you think you're doing here? Didn't my mom tell Pastor she thinks I'm only interested in girls? That's what she tells me all the time, anyway. You come from a nice home and a nice normal family, and I have a single parent who's a man-addicted nut case. Maybe you noticed the scene down there. She practically threw me at you, and she couldn't stop talking about your muscles. I thought the woman was going to jump you herself. I'm just a weird-o with a couple of friends nobody else at school likes either, and you're - drum-roll here - Roger Dalton, everybody's hero, boy athlete-scholar. So if you came over here to ask me to get into a free-thought contract with you, I doubt if it could work even if I wanted it to. Which I don't".

I absolutely could not believe what I'd just heard. So: "I don't believe what I just heard," I informed her. "That is so off the wall that I don't even know where to begin. Are you trying to do a modesty act with that 'what could big popular you possibly be doing, coming to see poor little me?' routine. Yeah, right. First, you're probably the smartest kid in our school. Then, you're just drop-dead great looking. Plus, you're about the most interesting person I know, and that isn't testosterone talking. You don't say a lot in class, but when you do it's usually something I have to think about for a long time even to understand, and then a lot of times I understand things in a way I hadn't before. That paper you presented in bio class last Friday was awesome, and Mrs. Tisdale didn't rave about it because you're sexy.

In for a penny, in for a pound. So I plowed on: "I guess you could say your friends aren't the in-crowd, but you must know who they really are if anybody does. Mary Sue put on the only one-person art show the school has sponsored since I've been there. It was all strange little tempera landscapes, pieces that the students mostly made fun of, but the best teachers in school kept going back to see over and over. And your other friend, Josie, fat and shy, who writes free verse? Okay, I don't understand poetry and I don't know if hers is good or bad, but I heard she gets invited to read at the coffee shop near the college a lot, so somebody must think its good. When you ask why somebody like me would be attracted to you, it sounds like you think I'm too dumb, deaf and blind to see who you are.

"And to tell you the truth, I have no idea what a 'free thought contract' is. Stupid me. But if you don't want that, neither do I. I came over here because I think about you a lot, based just on the little bit you show of yourself at school. I want to get to know you better. I hope we become friends. Since you seem to have me down as some kind of sex-addict, I'll even be clear that I hope we become more than friends sometime. But that isn't what brought me here today."

I was watching Caitlin's face as I talked. She has a very expressive face. I felt like I was kind of baring my soul about how I felt about her, and I thought one or twice she was genuinely moved. I even imagined while I was talking, that when I stopped, she'd come over and give me a hug, and say she wanted to be friends too. (Caitlin, you're probably going to read this, like Pastor and unknown others will. So, that was a little embarrassing to write. I admit what I was thinking then was pretty dumb, but I never said I didn't have dumb fantasies about how we were going to get together.)

What Caitlin really did when I finished talking, was look embarrassed. She also looked away from me for a few moments, to collect her thoughts, I guess.

"Maybe I was wrong to assume you were one more popular guy manipulating to get cheap sexual thrills off of some little girl who doesn't have anybody to look after her. I can look after myself pretty damn well, actually; I've been doing it long enough. I don't know why I figured you came in here with sex on the brain, but you know something? I've had that poster up for months, and I just never realized the guy had a big hard-on before you told me. Or that they were going down the beach to screw. I'm happy you think I'm smart and all that, really. And by the way, it's nice of you and dear Mrs. Tisdale to say you liked my bio paper, but that bio paper was a piece of shit."

I shook my head at her. "It was not a piece of shit, and you know it. You did a hell of a lot of good research on it, and you used your source material really well to hit the important points. I know, because I read it after class on the school website, and I ran down a lot of your references too. You were fair and balanced in the way you used them, and I really enjoyed how you wove them all together. Although, to tell the truth, I don't think you said enough about the models that Duke University's Beauford Marine Science Lab developed, indicating human population loss and negative development over eight years had more impact on fisheries recovery than all the post-Sleesh policy changes. Especially since those models contradicted some of your main points."

"Okay you got me, I think it was a great paper too. It's just that I kind of got bored with marine biology before I finished it. My interests are going in different directions now. I know what you mean about the Beauford models, but let me see you explain all that in what was supposed to be a fifteen paged term paper. Anyway, I never claimed that policy changes were the only factors at work."

I decided to leave that bait alone for awhile. I remember something Pastor advised me, based maybe on her psych profile, or his own experience. He said I shouldn't come on too strong with Caitlin, and that I should give her opportunities to take care of me.

"Caitlin, it really is hot, and my throat is getting dry. Would you mind getting us something cold to drink?"

She got up from her bed. "Sure, just give me a few minutes." She walked to the door, but before she opened it, she turned back to me. "Don't you even think about poking around on my computer. You'd never get past the passwords, but I'd know if you tried to."

I looked down at my hands, with a hurt and sorrowful expression that was mostly unfeigned. "Caitlin, I don't know how I gave you the idea I'm the kind of low-life bastard that would even think of doing that. Whatever it was I did, I'm really sorry for it."

"Hey Roger, it's me that should be sorry, not you. It's just that my mother has been doing everything she can to get into my private files, including trying to guess my passwords. Maybe I'm just paranoid about it now. Her telling me to show you things on my computer put it into my head. If you want something good to read while I'm gone, there's a big stack of Scientific Americans under the head of my bed, and on my nightstand is the new issue of Teen Equestrienne. That has a great photo series of Princess Sun-Rai taking Candy Man Too over a jump course, somewhere in the Hamptons."