There was a pounding sound, frantic and forceful, and as Carlos awoke it shifted from something sinister and foreboding in a dream to something annoying and abrasive in a semi-awake haze, to something sinister and foreboding as he came to consciousness because it was 5:00 in the morning, and in this city, who or what would be pounding violently on his door at this hour?
He stumbled down from the efficiency above the lab, grabbing the can of bear spray and a baseball bat that he kept at the bottom of the stairwell, but as he turned the corner he saw the lab door flicker and burst open, and there was Cecil, tie askew, breathless, his arms full of plastic bags. He was radiating urgency and anxiety, and the air was suddenly crackling with static electricity. He jerked his head around the lab, catching sight of Carlos, baseball bat raised, and their eyes meet and relief flickers across Cecil's face, the relief of somebody who has just crossed "Urgent to do #1" off of a long, long list.
"Carlos! Thank heavens! Where is your stone circle?"
Carlos considered several things. He wondered if the door was broken, and how he would fix it. He wondered whether he should lower the baseball bat or not. He registered that he was not wearing anything but boxers and an under shirt, which should probably have made this situation with this particular person exceptionally awkward, but Cecil seemed not to have noticed; he was turning frantically around the lab, looking for something.
"Carlos!" he snapped, and Carlos answered.
"I…um…I haven't gotten one yet, I…"
Cecil let out a groan of frustration and dropped to the floor, tearing a small pouch out of one of the bags, and he was moving hurriedly, aggressively, and although his tone was even when he spoke again, it was shot through with anxiety. Six months ago, Carlos wouldn't have recognized it, but he, like the rest of Night Vale, knew this voice. And now he knew that something was very, very wrong.
"They didn't give us any warning, this year, no warning and how…." He was arranging small round pieces of heliotrope in a circle on the floor, ripping open a package of some powder that might have been cinnamon "…how is anyone supposed to prepare, we don't have any TIME…" His hands were moving quickly, too quickly for Carlos to see what he was doing, but there was something small and delicate, like the bones of a bird, and something glossy and thick and dark dripping into the center of the stones, and Carlos was transfixed.
Cecil stopped suddenly, splaying his hands out on either side of the circle, the fabric of his shirt taut across his back as he bent over it, whispering, and Carlos had that feeling again, that he had the first time he entered the studio, that Cecil was flickering, electric; that something powerful and dangerous was surging through him uncontrolled.
Cecil turned to him, his eyes dark, his voice a deep imperative.
"DO NOT touch this, Carlos. Do not approach it. DO NOT, whatever you do, DO NOT leave the house until it's over."
Carlos felt dazed, as if he'd been struck. He lowered the baseball bat, and Cecil looked suddenly sad, as though he was only now really looking at him.
"I know" he said, "I know, you don't understand, but please…PLEASE, Carlos, do this for me. I can't explain, there's no time, and I still have to…"
He made a frustrated sound, and before Carlos could move Cecil has crossed the room, and he felt arms closing around him fiercely, embracing him. Carlos barely had time to react, was just about to raise his hands to return the gesture, when Cecil pulled back, gripping his upper arms firmly, bracing him.
"Turn your ac down. And turn the radio on," he said, and Carlos nodded, and Cecil was out the door, taking the remaining bags with him.
Carlos sank to the floor. He stayed there for several minutes, trying to reason out why, in spite of his previous decision NOT to trust this man, he always feels compelled to follow his advice. Why his arms, of their own volition, had moved to return his embrace. Whether or not it would be okay for him to make coffee before he huddled in to hide from whatever holiday or random Night Vale terror it was that they were apparently hiding from.
He stalked to the thermostat, cranking it down to its coldest setting. Carlos heard the thrumming as the AC kicked in. Then he turned on the radio, knowing that Cecil's show wouldn't be on for at least another hour, and listened to the dead air. Cecil had looked like he had more stops to make. Carlos fiddled with the edge of his shirt, wondering idly if he was first on the list. He wondered if that should make him feel relieved – probably it shouldn't. Probably that should be exceptionally concerning, to be singled out that way. But it was probably a bit late for that at this point.
He shivered. It was going to be a long day.
...
Carlos didn't really remember how he got there, but he was standing in the park, watching what seemed like the entirety of Night Vale coming out of its darkest, most hidden recesses*, in some kind of tantric group catharsis. He saw this, objectively, as a scientist, but he felt it as well. He was only human, and he was alive.
People were churning, embracing, touching, weeping. He caught sight of Cecil in a small cluster of people about 20 feet away – he was reaching out to them, being tapped on the shoulder, embracing them in turn.
He turned towards a young girl with dark hair who had just walked up, one of his interns, Carlos thought, and he took her face in hands and he was beaming at her, joy and relief playing shamelessly across his open face, but there were tears on his cheeks, and Carlos felt his heart constrict. Then the girl caught sight of Carlos, and pointed, and Cecil looked up, and all of that raw emotion was suddenly turned on him, and he froze. Cecil's face was a cascade of emotions, the raw shock of recognition, a flood of relief, and then he was laughing, fresh tears sliding down his cheeks as he raised his hand, and waved. Carlos lifted his hand, managed a wave, and a small smile, and Cecil's turned away, burying his face in his hands, and he was hunched over, sobbing with relief into Old Woman Josie's tiny shoulder; and Carlos had never felt more emotionally inadequate than he did then, in that moment, standing 20 yards from a man who had just saved his life, probably not for the first time, probably not for the last, overwhelmed by an emotion he
had no earthly idea how to articulate; and watching it unfold so effortlessly, so elegantly, from somebody else.
...
The night air at the edge of Radon Canyon was cool and crisp – nowhere near the icy chill Carlos had been taught to expect of nights in the desert. So many things were turning out that way, he thought, leaning back on his hands and feeling the grit of the desert soil dig into his palms. He was feeling – disoriented. Like when you walk out of a movie theater after dark that you went into in the daylight, and you feel like the time spent in the fictional world of the film shouldn't have actually elapsed in your real world, and you don't really feel certain of how much of it has. Like that.
He sighed and stared into the Canyon. Maybe Cecil was right. Maybe the lead door was just a hackneyed sci-fi cliché. Was it possible that somebody would put a lead door labeled with Plutonium warnings in a place where there WASN'T something they were trying to hide?
Carlos ran a hand through his hair in frustration. This whole town defied logic.
He was a fucking scientist. He'd made an entire life out taking measurements and structuring arguments, building systems of understanding around complex problems, and breaking them down and organizing them. He trusted those systems like he trusted his own hands. They had never failed him. He had been so excited about coming to Night Vale, but the last few months had made him realize how – helpless he was. Ineffectual.
And then there was Cecil, who kept showing up, with his contradictory opinions, and his unquestioning faith in the municipal rules, and his frankly TERRIBLY unobjective radio commentary. Cecil, who couldn't conceal his emotions to save his life, whose over-ambitious reports were always being censored, or requiring retraction, or earning him re-education sessions, but for whom the whole town seemed to share an overwhelming affection and gratitude. Cecil, who seemed to have taken Carlos, entirely unwillingly, under his protective wing.
Carlos's system wasn't working in Night Vale. And, whether he liked it or not, Cecil's just…did. Neither of them would still be here if it didn't.
And Carlos felt like he was adapting – he really did. His lifestyle, his scientific equipment, his body's ability to process radioactive isotopes…he was adapting everything. But that didn't change the fact that the scientific community had rules. His research here stood on the backs of thousands of years of brilliant men and women, thousands of lifetimes devoted to the pursuit of truth. If he couldn't find the connection point, if his research here in Night Vale didn't add anything to that complex and beautiful lexicon of human knowledge – then what was the point of it?
"Вы не найдете то, что вы ищете здесь."
Carlos scrambled forward, scraping a hole into his jeans, and staggered as he attempted to turn around and stand up at the same time.
"Holy…shit, you scared me!"
The Apache Tracker stood staring at him, his face an impassive blank. Even at only a few feet away, he was half obscured in the darkness, the light of the waxing moon catching him at odd angles. Like this, there wasn't enough light to see the garish colors of his plastic painted headdress. You could almost be convinced it was something more than a dollar store knock off. Almost.
The man (it made Carlos slightly uncomfortable to refer to him by his chosen moniker) spoke again in Russian.
"I'm sorry, I don't…" Carlos said. "Oh wait, you know what? Hold on a second…."
The man watched patiently as Carlos pulled out his cellphone, swiping his finger across it a few times, and then holding it up to the man's face.
"Google translate. Just speak slowly, and try to enunciate."
The man's eyes darted down to the phone, the glow of the screen lighting him from below. Then he stared back up at Carlos, looking into his eyes, and spoke.
After a moment, the phone beeped, and lit up.
"You will not find what you are looking for in this canyon." it said.
Carlos looked up from the phone and eyed the other man carefully. "Alright," he said after a moment. There was no point wasting time with "Why are you here" or "What the hell does that mean" or "How on earth did you sneak up on me, geeze, you're like a cat". So he asked "What is it I'm looking for?"
The man raised an eyebrow. He held up his wrist, and tapped at his watch, dark and glistening and expensive looking. Carlos had never noticed it before, but it seemed oddly out of place now.
He spoke into the phone. "You are running out of time." It read back to Carlos.
Carlos stared at him. "Time for what?" he asked.
The Apache Tracker reached out and put a hand on his shoulder.
"There's a flower," he said, in perfect English, his voice deep and gravelly, "There's a flower, in the desert."
He looked a little sad, almost apologetic, and Carlos felt a strong, reassuring pressure against his shoulder before the other man removed his hand.
And then he walked away. It should have taken a long time for him to disappear into the long, moonlit distance, but once he was gone Carlos felt as if he had vanished in an instant.
Well, he thought. If he was trying to adapt to small-town science, taking research direction from a mysterious and clandestine local seemed a good way to start.
Time. Maybe it was time to take another look at the clocks.
...
*Night Vale's darkest, most hidden recesses are several orders of magnitude darker and more hidden that that of the average southwestern American town. So it took a while.
