The next day...
Chester lay in the recliner clinging to the keys as if he were a beast keeper, when he was startled at a strange sound just after dawn while reading Mr. Gables Earth manual.
The sound was a low, sweeping roar somewhere out in the U-shaped courtyard. It rose and fell as whoever was pushing it moved from room to room, the pitch changing when the nozzle hit gravel, then concrete, then gravel again.
Chester stood. He placed the instructions on the recliner and rested the keys on the counter then walked to the door. The glass was filmed with sand dust, and through it he could see a small figure moving along the far wing of the motel, bent slightly forward, pushing an upright machine with the cord trailing behind her like a tail.
He opened the door. The air outside was cool, a clean emptiness that made the inside of the office feel stale by comparison. The vacuum cut off.
"You're the new guy."
She was already walking toward him, the machine abandoned outside room nine. Five feet tall, maybe less. Black hair pulled back. She wore baggy pants and a faded work shirt with the sleeves rolled past her elbows. She moved quick, like someone on a mission.
"Rosa Del Rey," she said, stopping a few feet from him. "I do the rooms. You the one taking over for Mr. Gable?"
"Chester Chive. I'm the new manager."
"Manager." She looked him over, her gaze moving from his glasses to his shoes and back up again. "You don't look like no motel manager."
"I'm still learning the property."
Rosa snorted. "Property. It's fourteen rooms and a busted ice machine. Nothing to learn." She pulled a rag from her back pocket and wiped her brow. " Is Mr. Gable, okay? He was looking pretty rough."
"He will be okay; his family took him home."
"Where?"
"I did not ask." Chester sighed." What is that thing you are using that makes that sound?".
"You have never seen a vacuum cleaner?"
"Not one like that."
"That's fair, this thing still uses bags."
"How long have you worked here?"
"Three years. My parole officer got me this job." She tucked the rag back into her pocket. "So, you keeping me on or what? Because I got rooms to finish and I don't got time to stand around while you figure out if you want to fire me."
"Keeping you, I think."
Chester could not recall Mr. Gable having a human employee in the instruction manual.
"Good." She turned and started back toward the vacuum. " By the way, room fourteen didn't check in, just pulled in late last night. I saw the lights on when I was locking up."
Chester felt something shift in his chest, a small adjustment, like a dial being turned one notch tighter. "They didn't check in at the office?"
"Nope. Maybe they figured it was too late and they'd do it in the morning, but I have no idea how they opened the room door." She bent down and picked up the vacuum cord, coiling it around her elbow with quick, practiced loops. "Anyway, I'm doing fourteen last. Give them time to wake up."
"Don't go in there yet."
Rosa stopped coiling. "Why?"
"I need to check the ledger first."
He went back into the office and pulled the ledger from the shelf behind the counter. He flipped through the entries for the past week. Names in English, names in Spanish, a few he recognized from the maintenance log. No booking for room fourteen. No booking for the past two days, in fact.
Rosa appeared in the doorway. "What's the problem?"
"There's no reservation for room fourteen."
"So, Mr. Gable forgot to write it down. He wasn't exactly on top of things lately."
Chester closed the ledger. "I will head there now to confirm their presence"
"It's too early."
"But not too early for you to vacuum?
Chester crossed the gravel lot, past the sign that read CRASH INN in faded red letters, past the OUT OF ORDER ice machine to room fourteen. When he got there, he had forgotten he left the master keys on the counter. He was about to knock when Rosa appeared like a lightning bolt behind him.
She pulled a ring from her belt loop and sorted through it with her thumb. "I got a copy set for the rooms. Mr. Gable gave it to me when I started." She found the key and slid it into the lock.
Just in that moment Chester tried to stop her, he remembered his job to ensure no one is found out, but everything moved in slow motion, and he failed to stop Rosa.
The door swung inward.
The room was dim, the overhead light off, but a soft blue glow came from the center of the space, and by that glow Chester saw them.
Four figures sat around a low table that wasn't a table. It was a sphere of something that hovered a foot above the carpet, rotating slowly, its surface the color of milk glass with light moving beneath it. Around it, the four of them were frozen mid-motion, their long fingers reaching toward the orb, their heads turned toward the door. Their skin was a pale gray-green, smooth and faintly iridescent, and their eyes were large and dark and set wide apart in faces that were almost human but not quite. They wore nothing that looked like clothing, but their bodies were covered in patterns that shifted as Chester watched, like heat rippling off asphalt.
The orb stopped rotating.
Rosa's key ring hit the carpet with a dull thump.
Chester grabbed her arm and pulled her back through the doorway. He closed the door with his free hand, hard enough that the frame rattled, and turned the lock. His fingers were steady, but his mind was running through his sentence and what would happen to him if a human exposed the motel.
"Office," he said. "Now."
Rosa didn't argue. She walked ahead of him across the gravel, her steps quick and stiff, her shoulders up around her ears. When they reached the office, she went inside and stood behind the desk with her arms crossed tight over her chest. Chester came in after her and locked the door. The sound of the bolt sliding home was loud in the small room.
He walked around the counter and sat down. Everything exactly as he had left it.
Rosa was staring at him. Her hands were gripping her own arms, and her knuckles had gone pale against the dark fabric of her shirt. She was breathing through her nose in short, sharp pulls.
"What the heck were those things!"
The morning light had shifted, the rectangle on the counter now touching the edge of the ledger, and somewhere outside a bird was calling in short, repetitive bursts. He could still see the orb in his mind, the way the light had moved inside it, the way the four of them had turned toward the door in perfect unison.
He had twenty-five years to manage this motel. He had been on the planet for less than a day. And Rosa Del Rey was waiting for an answer that Chester had to satisfy. He could not quit now; it was Earth or death.