Copyright © 1991 by Nicholas A. DiChario, All rights reserved.  First appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, September 1991.  For the personal use of those who have purchased the ESF 1993 Award anthology only.

THE POWER OF LOVE 

Nicholas A. DiChario 

    Melissa followed Bony wherever he went.  At least that's the way it had always been.  So what if Melissa disliked herself for it.  So what if she was born on the same day as Bony, just one minute later, in the same hospital.  So what if her pa's apple orchard ran back-to-back with Bony's pa's chicken farm.  Were those good enough reasons to treat them like married folk at the age of twelve, for God's sake, like she didn't have no say in the matter at all? 
"C'mon, Missy, this can't wait."  Bony biked a wide circle around Melissa, slamming on his brakes to lay down a patch on her pa's rutted dirt-and-gravel driveway. 
"Can't," she said, fanning the dust from her face.  "Got to watch Jason." 
At the mention of his name Jason looked up from the slug he'd been slicing with his thumbnail.  "You can't leave me alone." 
"Bring 'm, Mis," Bony said, "if you got to." 
Melissa figured Bony must be desperate to let Jason tag along on an exploration. 
"How old are you, Jason?" Bony said. 
"Six." 
"Perfect.  Got to be at least six to see this or your head will blow up." 
Jason perked up at that.  "I'm six, ain't I, Mis?" 
"Doesn't matter.  Nothing's going to blow off your head." 
"Missy," Bony said.  "We don't get down to the river now, they'll be gone." 
"They who?" 
"The aliens.  Found them this morning." 
"You went exploring without me?"  She shot Bony a tight-lipped scowl.  They had made a pact.  She thought for a moment about how to handle this.  "You apologize right now. Off your bike.  On one knee." 
"I can't always go riding around with a girl.  We got no pact for that."  Bony had used this argument before. 
"You're lying anyway," she said.  "You didn't find no aliens." 
"Did — and I don't care if you stay home cause then all pacts are off.  Off for good." 
Melissa frowned.  She never wanted to make no pacts with Bony anyway.  He always made up new rules.  Besides, she didn't want Jason underfoot any more than you'd want a stranger's dog to lick your face.  It was just plain bad luck.  Last month LuAnne Gibney took her little brother on a date with Peter Stodenheimer to the county fair, and that boy never did call her back.  (Although LuAnne Gibney was a zit face.) 
"I'm going," said Bony. 
Melissa peered back at the house.  If Mom were home she'd have a fit, but she was out delivering fliers in Lewisport for the K-mart grand opening. 
Grandma was inside baby-sitting, writing another one of her stories for Lurid Confessions magazine, under the name of Len Strong.  This was a family secret.  "Amuse your brother so 's I can write," she'd told Melissa.  Never said anything about not exploring.  Besides, if there really were aliens down by the river, Grandma would be more disappointed than anybody if Melissa didn't go see them for herself. 
Melissa grabbed Jason by the wrist.  "Wait up, Bony, we're on foot." 
"I'll ride slow," he said, then took off full speed. 
When they got to the railroad tracks, Bony ditched his bike.  You couldn't do any real exploring past the tracks except on foot.  The railroad tracks ran the length of the Red Pine River for miles before they came to a dead stop at Turning Point Park, where someone had built a fancy restaurant for the city folk.  That was way up the other end of the river though.  Down here there were only small apple orchards like her pa's, and some cow pastures and corn fields and vineyards — and power.  The Puttneyville Gas & Electric Power Plant sat on the bank of the river, and directly across from it on the opposite side of the Red Pine River was the Grove County Nuclear Power Plant. 
"Do we have to cross the tracks?" asked Melissa.  She had turned her ankle on a loose tie last week and thought for sure she'd busted it. 
"Whataya, scared?"  Bony hopped across the tracks. "Aliens ain't got all day." 
"I don't believe you one bit about those aliens anyway," she said. 
"Yeah," Jason agreed, but Missy could tell he wasn't convinced. 
Bony didn't answer.  He'd already disappeared into the woods. 
"I got a sliver, Mis," Jason said, wiping the snot from the end of his nose with the ball of his fist. 
"We'll get it later."  They tiptoed across the tracks. 
Why did Bony always have to do stuff like this anyway? Any second now he'd pop out from behind a tree and scare her half to death and laugh like an idiot, 'Gotcha!  Gotcha!' he'd say, 'Never was no aliens!'  And he'd think that was the most hysterical prank on God's Earth.  It was one thing to be different, like when he would eat ice cream off the gravel, or go hunting frogs with his Louisville Slugger because he loved the squish-knock sound of a solid hit.  A girl could live with that.  But he did crazy stuff she hated, like walking the fence around that big old PG & E generator, right over top of the DANGER sign.  Why, Bony could get himself fried and killed in a second, and Melissa would be stuck to drag him home like a big old bag of charcoal. 
She had asked her grandma once why there were wild boys like Bony to drive girls crazy.  Her grandma, a tall, straight twig of a woman, had a way of saying stuff so that you'd remember it forever and a day.  "There ain't no real logic in the world," she'd told Melissa.  "Only power.  That's why things happen the way they happen.  One kind of power is always running into another kind of power.  Something's got to give."  That was just as good as any Sunday school explanation for the way the world worked as far as Melissa could tell. Bony had the power of recklessness in him.  And what did Melissa have?  Best power in the world according to her grandma.  The power of love. 
But marriage?  Marriage to somebody who got stupid if he stood still too long?  Not likely.  Yet even her grandma, who had a reputation for picking the winners at the race track as if she were charmed, had said marriage was entirely possible. 
She braced herself for Bony's attack as she passed the first row of trees leading down to the river trail, but Bony didn't jump out at her.  It occurred to Melissa that if this was a prank, Bony was playing it awful cool. 
"This way," he shouted. 
"Wait up!" 
They followed Bony through the tall grass and chickweed and horsetail.  Melissa was clumsy in the woods.  Thistles always seemed to jump out and nip her.  The stink of skunk cabbage put a permanent wrinkle in her nose, the burdock made her sneeze, and the bulrushes made her nervous because they were taller than she was. 
Jason whined about the sliver in his finger until Missy finally stopped to yank it out.  Still, Bony didn't ditch them, even when they crept extra slow over the gully bridge. The bridge was hardly ever used.  There were loose, raw planks to heed, whittled and weather-beaten by time and the harsh hand of Mother Nature.  There were a couple of treacherous empty stretches where you could see straight through to a sheer rock face and a trickling stream a hundred feet below. The iron frame seemed shaky at best.  Melissa was terrified. If this turned out to be one of Bony's pranks, she'd stake his skinny arms and legs to an ant hill till he begged forgiveness, then she'd have a thing or two to say about pacts and marriage. 
The air grew cooler as they neared the roiling waters. Melissa could almost reach out and touch the sound of the water gulping up against the docks.  The smell of fish and algae curled around her like a living thing.  The dewy river air felt like a second skin to her.  Sometimes she could hear voices on a boat miles off, or the sound of kids horseplaying on a raft in the sandbar across the river, like they were right up next to her, whispering in her ear.  It made her feel special. 
Bony couldn't look long and hard down the river and see its magic.  The Red Pine region was his own personal playground, nothing more.  That was O.K. with Melissa.  If Bony wanted to see only what was in front of his eyes, he was perfectly free to do so.  But her grandma sure wouldn't have approved. 
Finally they reached the open field behind the PG & E. 
Bony pointed to the crest of a rise over the river's edge.  "Just over the ridge, down by the waterfront.  You can see their ship from that bunch of trees."  He took off for it at a dead run. 
"Wait up!" Melissa said, forgetting about her brother. 
"Hey, you can't leave me alone!" Jason said. 
"C'mon — " 
Melissa knew the hill well.  She'd been up there with Bony before.  It was the only spot on the river bank where you could see both power plants and the full stretch of the Red Pine before the thin line of green-brown water hit the bend at Turning Point Park, and an endless crown of trees sucked it up and spit it out again somewhere miles off. 
When she reached the peak of the hill she had to squat down to catch her breath.  Jason wheezed like a punctured inner tube. 
"C'mere!"  Bony yanked Melissa to the ledge and pointed down the slope.  "There," he said, "just above shoreline.  See it?" 
Sure enough, there it was.  A blue globe about twice as big around as her Aunt Virginia's swimming pool, half-buried in the rock face, shimmering like one of Grandma's cut-glass bowls under a beaming ray of sunlight.  No prank.  No siree. The thing hummed like one of those huge fenced-in generators, and the earth under her feet trembled.  It stole Melissa's breath. 
"How do you know there's aliens inside?" she said. 
"Caught sight of 'm earlier this morning.  They're red, bright red with slick skin, like your pa's apples." 
Melissa couldn't take her eyes off the blue globe. 
"Let's go," Bony said with the same rise in his voice that always bespoke his acts of stupidity. 
"Wait.  You can't just go running off down there." 
"Why not?" 
Melissa didn't know how to answer that.  There was something not right about that blue globe.  She could feel it.  Intuition, her grandma would call it.  That thing down there, whatever it was, didn't belong on the river.  But how could she explain that to Bony? 
"You don't know where they came from or what they want," she said. 
"Who cares.  I'll talk to them — make them tell me — just watch." 
"You know you're not supposed to talk to strangers." 
That was all Bony needed to hear.  "I'm going down.  If you don't want to come, all pacts are off." 
"Fine!  That's just fine with me.  You never listen anyway — Never!" 
Bony got suspiciously deaf whenever Melissa raised her voice.  He lowered himself over the ridge.  There was a dirt path that wound its way down to the shoreline through a dense wall of pines.  He started down the path.  Jason started after him, but Melissa grabbed hold of his shoulders. 
"Ain't we gonna follow Bony?" he said. 
"No." 
She looked down at the globe.  Its color was wavering now between a dim flat blue and an icy white, as if the ship was breathing.  Breathing or not, the darn thing smelled dead — worse than the stink when they dredged the peat bog out back of Widow Sutter's granary. 
Power... 
The thought came to her all of a sudden.  The PG & E, the Grove County Nuclear Power Plant, the river itself — all this power in one place.  That's what brought those aliens.  Who knew how many other places they'd landed?  Maybe it was a full-blown invasion. 
"Jason, listen to me real careful.  You've got to get back to the house and tell Grandma we're in a peck of trouble down by the river.  Tell her to send the army or the navy or the coast guard or — no — never mind all that — just tell her we found us some aliens, she'll know what to do." 
"I can't go alone." 
"You can do it."  She pointed to the sky.  "Just follow the power lines till you get back to the railroad tracks.  You know the way from there."  She knelt down and kissed Jason on the cheek.  "For me and Bony.  We're counting on you." 
Melissa looked down over the ridge.  She could see Bony's outline against the blue-white glimmer of the alien ship. There was a nasty chill in the air.  The cold, it seemed, was getting colder.  The smell was getting smellier. 
Then she saw the aliens, pudgy fellas, like Joshua trees with bright red clusters and thick roan trunks. 
"Mis, I'm scared," Jason said. 
"Me too.  But somebody's got to look after that reckless boy if we're ever going to get married." 
Jason turned tail and scampered awkwardly down the hill. Melissa watched him until he disappeared into the woods, then she scampered over the ridge and hurried down the slope. 
The stink was so God-awful her eyes began to water. 
Bony was standing right up close to the alien ship, scared stiff.  She sidled up next to him. 
The aliens were faceless.  On the end of each red cluster was an eye (as far as she could tell) and down low on the trunk what could have passed for a mouth.  Grazers, Melissa thought with some relief.  That shiny red skin Bony had spotted from up on the ridge was gooey up close, like some kind of rusty-mucus-taffy. 
The aliens watched her and Bony with all their eyes.  The Red Pine River had gone dead calm, and the wind hadn't bothered to rustle the trees for quite some time.  There wasn't the stir of an animal or the buzz of an insect anywhere to be heard.  Seemed like everything had had the good sense to run off except for her and Bony. 
That was when Melissa locked into those alien eyes — all at once.  Not ordinary eyes, she was certain — more like hands.  She could feel them probing inside her, digging around like busy little garden tools.  She felt them stealing something from her, although she couldn't say exactly what it was. 
She finally found the strength to nudge Bony.  "Bony," she whispered.  She could see him shivering.  Missy knew she had to do something in a hurry — protect him — somehow.  But what could she do?  Step in front of the boy, she told herself.  Take me! not Bony.  That's what it was all about, wasn't it? — pacts and marriage and self-sacrifice and commitment.  Being grown-up.  But suddenly...oh so suddenly... that impulse to save Bony's hide had deserted her.  Melissa felt empty, like she'd run out of emotional gas. 
She stood there.  Did nothing. 
The aliens backed away, shuffled into their ship, and disappeared, blinked out of existence like a giant moth swallowed up by a blue bug-light — ZAP! — and it was over. 
Her moment of action, Missy knew, had come and gone. 
But that woebegone expression on Bony's face, that would never disappear. 
Melissa tried to talk Bony back up the slope, but he wouldn't budge.  She had to hike back to town herself and get the ambulance squad to come rescue him.  Jason got lost in the woods but the police found him before sundown.  Grandma was never allowed to baby-sit again.  Some folks believed Melissa about the aliens, some didn't.  Bony wasn't saying anything. It was the talk of the town for a spell.  Apparently it was not an invasion; no other sightings had been reported for that day. 
# 
It turned into a torturously long summer's vacation for Missy.  Bony refused to acknowledge her existence.  Summer faded into fall.  When school started, Bony refused to ride the bus with the other kids.  His pa drove him to school everyday in the family Jeep Cherokee, and picked him up afterward.  Peter Stodenheimer asked Missy to the Holloween social — Gutless Stodenheimer who never called back LuAnne Gibney — but he was cute.  Missy accepted, hoping to light a fire under Bony, but she only managed to push him farther away.  Melissa discovered she no longer had the wherewithal to pursue the boy. 
Eventually the FOR SALE sign went up on Bony's pa's chicken farm, and without so much as a peep his family moved up north. 
For a while after Bony was gone, Melissa would journey up the ridge every weekend to where she could see the full stretch of the Red Pine River, to where she and Bony first spotted the aliens.  She would always go alone.  She'd stare down the slope for hours.  When she married Peter Stodenheimer she cut back some, and by the time she gave birth to her fourth child she made the pilgrimage only once a year, on the anniversary of that dreadful day. 
Melissa heard rumors about Bony from time to time.  He worked for the government for a while as a cook, or a gravedigger at Arlington Cemetary, or a data somethingorother specialist.  He never returned to the Red Pine River region. 
Nobody ever asked Melissa what she was looking for up on the crest of that ridge every year.  Most people didn't care — and those who did, didn't want to know. 
It was no big secret as far as Melissa was concerned.  She was looking for what those aliens swiped from her way back when.  Not the boy with whom she had once hoped to share a lifetime; (she could admit this now even though she'd spent the better part of her adolescence denying it).  Not her childhood innocence.  Certainly not those damn aliens. 
Melissa was looking for power. 
Whether the aliens had actually stolen it from her with those eyes that worked like hands, or whether through some inadequacy of her own she had given it away didn't matter much.  It was gone. 
Bony had lost the power to face his fears.  Melissa had lost the best power in the world according to her grandma. The power of love.