The Far Side of the Sun

"Come! We'd better get away from here!" The man grabbed the boy and began pulling him away just as another fiery object came crashing down through the trees. A huge, knife edged and almost trapezoidal slab of hissing metal sliced through brittle limbs overhead, and the man heard his son cry out in anguished pain.

He turned and looked at the scene, as shock began to settle over the scene.

He was holding his son's hand, indeed, most of his son's right arm, yet his son had fallen to the snow and was writhing in agony several feet away, a crimson stain spreading from the stump where his right arm had been. He knelt beside his son, tried to comfort him...

And then...

He heard limbs snapping overhead once again, and this time he flinched involuntarily before looking up.

A body was falling, no, tumbling through the air, then crashing through more tree limbs, and the man saw that some vast flying carpet of orange was trailing the body, slowing the body's fall as it got tangled in branches.

The man stood, transfixed, as the body fell through the tree, coming to a rest loudly by his son. More astonishing still he saw – whoever it was – was alive. The body, if that was indeed what it was, sat up and shook it's head while it looked around, then whoever it was began releasing harnesses and slipping free of the huge orange carpet that fluttered in the branches overhead. Next, an ornate white helmet on it's head came off, then some sort of green fabric head covering, and at that the man recoiled in horror when he saw a woman's flaming red hair emerge.

"Dear God in Heaven!" he said. "What..."

On hearing these words, the startled woman turned and looked at the man sitting next to an injured boy – who was laying just behind her.

"That's my boy," the man said, suddenly in tears. "Surely...I think he must be – dead..."

The woman winced as she turned, cried out as she struggled with the snow and all those straps, then using just her arms, she pulled her body over and placed two fingers on the boy's neck.

"No, not yet, but it looks like he's loosing a lot of blood. Come here," she said, still clearly in pain, "and help me turn him on his side! Let's get the wound elevated!"

The man didn't hesitate; maybe it was the tone of her voice, for this strange woman spoke with real authority – unheard of though that was, but there was no mistaking her meaning. He dashed to her side and did as she asked while she in turn opened a pouch on the leg of her trousers and produced a red and white bag of some sort.

The woman opened the bag to reveal all manner of strange things, but the first thing she produced was some sort of metal implement she used to cut away the fabric around his boy's shoulder, then with some sort of stretchy band, she tied off the stump, and the blood stopped flowing from the wound. Next, she ripped open a small paper pouch and poured a whitish powder onto the wound.

"What's that?" the man asked, now wide-eyed and afraid.

"Anti-coagulant, a heparin compound."

"A – what?"

"Never mind." She took the boy's wrist in her hand and looked at a strange dialed instrument on her own wrist, and he could see her counting silently while she looked at the instrument. "Better than I expected," she said. "His pulse and respiration aren't bad."

"You're bleeding," the man said suddenly. "Your neck. It's bleeding."

The woman removed her battered glove and felt her own flesh. "Is it oozing, or pulsing?" she asked.

"Seems like a slow, steady flow," he said.

"Okay, good." She handed him the little paper pouch. "Pour a little of this powder into the wound, would you?" She tried to wiggle her toes again, but her legs felt numb, and a feeling of cold dread seeped in.

She tilted her head back and exposed her neck to the man, and he moved closer to do so – but even so he was wary of this strange creature from the clouds.

+++++

"Where are we?" she asked the man after he'd gathered wood and started a fire.

"Where? The valley, I guess you'd say. Our village is a few miles south of here."

"Does your village have a name?"

"No, not really, not that I remember, anyway. We call it the Village, have for as long as I can remember."

"What about streets or highways? Have a road name or highway number?"

"No, mum, no roads or the like around here."

"Oh? What about schools, or the police? How do they get here?"

"Our women take care of the schooling, mum. I don't know anything about police. What is that?"

"Okay, so this is the Twilight Zone. C'mon Heidi, time to wake up..."

"Is that your name?" the man asked. "Heidi?"

"Yup. What's your name?"

"Martin. Martin Stillwell."

"Stillwell? Did you say Stillwell?"

"Yes, mum. Stillwell."

"I see."

The boy stirred, opened his eyes, looked wildly around for his father.

"It's okay, boy. I'm here."

Their eyes met, then the boy looked at the woman.

"Who is she?"

"She fell from the sky, from the silver bird, I think?"

"The what?" Heidi asked. "A bird?"

"Did you fall from the one of the silver birds? We see them from time to time, up there," he said, pointing to the sky.

"Excuse me, but do you know what an airplane is?"

"No, mum. Airplane, you say?"

Heidi was stunned. She had heard about a few isolated communities such as this, or what this might turn out to be, little pockets of people in far upstate New York that had simply slipped out of contact with the "outside world" sometime in the early-1800s. Perhaps, just perhaps, she had fallen into the midst of such a group?

"So, you live in this valley," she said, pointing as she spoke, "and there are no roads in or out of here. Do you have electricity, or radio?"

"I don't know those words, mum. Do you, boy?"

The boy shook his head, but it was apparent now that the boy was in a great deal of pain. Heidi took his left hand in her's again and started counting.

"I'm going to give him some morphine now, and a broad spectrum anti-biotic. Help keep him on his side, would you Martin?" She pulled the boy's pants down a few inches and swabbed his skin with some sort of pad, then took a small glass ampule from her red bag and popped a small cover off, revealing a shiny needle-like appendage attached to the glass. She stuck the needle into the boy's hip and he flinched, then she removed another ampule from her bag and stuck him again.

"That burns," the boy cried out.

"You'll feel better in a minute. Just close your eyes until you feel like sleeping," she said as she held his hand. Soon his eyes fluttered and his breathing slowed, and she ran her fingers through the boys hair.

"Does that stuff make him sleep?"

"The morphine? Yes, for two to three hours, hopefully." She looked around, saw the boys severed arm lying in the snow, then pulled a shiny white thing from her trousers. She flipped it around in the air until it transformed into a bag of some sort, then she asked Martin to fill the bag with snow. "Martin, would you bring me his arm, please?" Martin did, and though he looked squeamish she took the boy's severed arm and wrapped the stumpy end with white fabric of some sort, then placed the arm in the bag with the snow.

"Why are you doing that?" Martin asked.

"When the helicopter gets...OH SHIT!"

She reached for the radio on her parachute harness and pulled it free, then turned it on. She saw the little LED light go from red to amber to green as the radio found a satellite and transmitted her position, then she looked at the signal strength readout. "Looks good," she said, then she started transmitting.

"Plattsburgh, this is Eagle 3-2-3, how do you read?"

"3-2-3, we have you five by five, and we're receiving your coordinates now."

"3-2-3, that's good to hear, Plattsburgh."

"Roger that, 3-2-3. The SAR bird is diverting to your location; they advise the weather is deteriorating. State your condition, 3-2-3."

"I have a laceration on my neck and my legs are numb, but some hunters found me. I haven't tried to walk yet. One of the hunters was struck by falling debris and his arm is severed just below the shoulder. I've stabilized the boy, and secured the limb, but I think we'll need an ortho standing by in the O.R."

"Got it, 3-2-3. SAR advises ETA is approximately two zero minutes."

"3-2-3, roger that, we'll try to find a clearing and puff smoke when we hear them."

"3-2-3, understood, will advise the helo. Say again, you think you may have a spinal injury?"

"3-2-3, that's affirmative."

"Copy that, 3-2-3. Will advise the helo."

She clipped the radio back onto her harness and tried to stand for the first time, but her legs were simply "gone", there was no sensation at all, not even when she tried to wiggle her toes again.

"Fuck," she said.

"What was that, mum?"

"Martin, I'd feel a lot better if you called me Heidi."

"Alright, mum, I'll try."

She chuckled, then reached for the smoke canisters in her survival pak. "Okay, Martin, I want you to find the biggest patch of open ground you can, but not too far from here. Men are going to come here in a, in a silver bird, and we're going to take your son someplace where we can fix his arm."

"Yes, mum. There's a big clearing very near, mum, er, Heidi. No worries there. A silver bird, you say. Is it big?"

"Huge would be a better word, Martin. And it will make a lot of noise when it gets close, but don't let that bother you. Just don't stand close to the clearing when it gets near the ground, and, oh, there will be a lot of wind around the silver bird, too. Now, you see this?" she said, pointing at a red ring attached to the top of the green can she held in her hand.

"Yes," he said as he nodded his head.

"When you hear the air go 'wump-wump-wump' I want you to pull this red ring, then throw it into the middle of the clearing. Here, take two, just in case. Throw 'em both into the middle of the clearing, then move back into the trees before you see the silver bird."

"Yes, mum."

"Oh, and it won't be silver, Martin, more like kind of dark gray. Okay?"

"Yes, mum."

"Okay, you head out for that clearing. I'll stay with your boy."

"You'll be alright, mum?"

"Yes, I think so..."

"Can you walk, mum?"

"No, Martin, I don't think so."

"I'm sorry, mum. But I'll take care of you, don't you worry none."

"Thanks, Martin."

The radio sparked to life: "Eagle 3-2-3, this is Jolly Green 1-4-1, and we've got a good hole in the weather. I reckon we're about five miles from your last reported position. Can you advise snow depth?"

"3-2-3, looks like two to three feet in the trees. One of the hunters out here said there's a big clearing nearby, and he's got a couple of smoke canisters to mark it."

"Roger that, 3-2-3, shouldn't be a problem."

"Thanks guys, and I'm buyin' tonight."

"Well then, hear that boys? We be doin' some serious drinkin' tonight!"

She turned to Martin. "You better get going. They'll be here soon."

"Mum," he said as he tipped his hat, then he turned and shuffled off through the woods on his ragged little snowshoes.

Moments later she heard the huge Sikorsky beating the air above the forest, then it's engines spooling down after it landed. Perhaps a minute later Martin and two medics in orange flight suits came bounding through the woods, and for the first time in what felt like years Heidi Stillwell felt a shudder of pure relief cascading through her body.

The tears were yet to come.

January

Heidi Stillwell lay in an orthopedic hospital bed staring at the ceiling; she hadn't moved in hours, and indeed, couldn't move without a fair amount of help. Her evening meal lay – untouched – on the tray hovering on the stand over her lap, just as lunch and breakfast had passed unnoticed and untouched. She knew she was depressed, knew she had to eat, but looking at the IV in her arm she knew she was at least remaining hydrated, but frankly, at this point she just didn't care.

Not only had her spine been wrecked in the crash of Eagle 3-2-3, both her femurs had been fractured – only she'd been unable to feel either break – and her left carotid artery had been perilously close to being severed by the kneeboard that had been blown off during her ejection from the F-15. Members of the accident review board had come to talk with her, but she'd barely acknowledged their presence in the room. Investigators had found both engines, they told her, as well as the bulk of the wreckage and determined that the right engine had simply come apart, and splintering fan blades had ruptured all hydraulic and fuel lines; she was, they said, blameless. And lucky.

Her eyes had barely registered the irony of that word, and in truth her fate might as well have been cast to the wind. Lucky, she said to herself. Is that what I am?

She received a couple of get well cards from nurses at the base hospital back in Idaho, and her father had been by several times with flowers and boxes of chocolate, but these too had failed to rouse her spirits. Most troubling of all to Heidi, she'd neither seen nor heard a word from Martin Stillwell since their ride in from the crash site in the "silver bird", and she had grown very worried for this "stranger in a strange land". Too, she'd heard nothing about Martin's son's condition, and this was more than a minor concern, for over the past week she had begun to feel more and more responsible for the boy's injury, as irrational as she knew this to be, and from time to time she relived the experience in her mind...

...for the ride in to Burlington, Vermont in the huge Sikorsky had almost been fun, even funny, for Captain Heidi Stillwell and the rest of the big choppers crew.

When the engines had first spooled up and the pilot pulled up on the collective, the "Jolly Green Giant" had pulled free of the earth and Martin's eyes had grown round and saucer-like as the helicopter lurched up into the sky. He lurched about frantically, grabbing onto anything he could, and looked like he might go mad at any moment. What an introduction to the 21st century that must've been, she laughed to herself, and too bad the boy missed the experience.

They'd flown over Martin's village a minute later, and, after showing him how to use the PA system, with mic in hand he told the people gathered below what had happened, that they were not to worry about him or his son, and that they'd be back soon; then the 'Silver Bird' had vaulted up into the clouds and was on it's way to Burlington, and the University of Vermont Medical Center.

Martin settled down on the way in, but still looked around warily, like he had been swallowed by some ancient primordial beast, still she'd looked at Martin Stillwell with new eyes on that flight, wondered who he was, and who else lived in the village. Who was he married to? How old was he? And why did she feel such a compelling need to talk to this wide-eyed stranger?

Then they had burst into sunshine over Lake Champlain, and the City of Burlington lay just ahead. Martin's eyes grew even larger when he took in the size of the city, and they almost popped out of his head when they flew over a freeway. "What are those...things...moving down there?!" he had cried out over the deafening wump-wump-wump of the turbine driven rotors beating the air.

"Cars," she had told him. "Kinda like horse drawn carriages," she added. "Only faster."

"How can this be!" he cried when he saw the sizes of many of the taller downtown buildings. "What has happened here?"

As the Sikorsky landed in a parking lot next to the hospital, she wondered what he would make of a place like Boston, or New York City, and then the doors opened and that was the last she'd seen of Martin Stillwell and his son.

+++++

'If only...

'If only she was here,' Martin Stillwell said to himself. She might be able, he kept hearing over and over in his mind, to help him make sense of this strangely wonderful – yet tragic – place.

When people at the UVM medical center finally grasped the import of Martin Stillwell's existence, anthropologists and sociologists from Cornell, Dartmouth, and Columbia descended on him like birds-of-prey. They wanted to talk to him, to his son; they wanted to mount expeditions to the village as soon as the Spring thaw came 'round, but most of all, they wanted to know how the people of the village had survived for almost two hundred years without outside intervention, or assistance of any kind.

All Martin Stillwell heard in their questions was a simple, howling madness. How could the people in his village not have survived? Such questions were maddeningly stupid, he thought, because the people in his village lived as they always had. People were born. Some got sick, or were injured, and then died. Crops were planted, and tended-to until harvest time, while others walked the forests in search of game. Some people would grow old, and then they died, while illness took others when very young. Some people were strong, while others were not. Some were smart, others simple. Wasn't that the natural order of things? Still, the undercurrent Martin Stillwell picked up in these questions was that somehow the people in this city thought it impossible to live without all of the mechanical contraptions they seemed to rely on for their day-to-day existence, and he thought that sort of life somewhat absurd. To depend on so many things beyond one's control was, well, not very smart. He found himself more than once wondering how these people had survived for so long...

Still, what miracles these people were capable of!

His son's arm had been "re-attached", and the "physicians" who performed this miracle told him that in time some normal function would be restored, and that perhaps someday James might even regain limited use of his hand. How could this be? Who were these people, if not magicians, or from the stars?

And what of the other things he had seen?

Light that appeared at the push of a button. Little black boxes full of moving pictures that allowed one to talk to someone across the street, or around the world, and yet these people carried such tools in their pockets without the slightest reverence for such unimaginable capabilities. Had they never once been lost in the forest without such a device in hand?

All manner of food and drink from markets around the world, and all you could possibly use and in apparently inexhaustible supplies. Not having to stalk game in the wild, not having to plant in the spring and harvest in the autumn and not having to worry about the weather? Ornate clothing, all manner of specialized shoes, and so many things he had never even heard of, and all of it so plentiful!

And that box on the wall? Television, he heard a nurse call it. Moving pictures from around the world, "news" from everywhere, yet most of what he saw was images of people arguing and fighting and, just as had been the case hundreds of years ago when his people had departed Holland and England for colonies in the New World, everyone still seemed to be fighting about one religion or another. Wasn't such conflict ludicrous! Could it be that these people had not learned from the mistakes of their parents, and grandparents, because it appeared to him now that people would forever try to impose their will on those whose beliefs differed from their own. If this was true, could it be that the strong always victimize the weak? The rich prey on the poor?

"Is that the essence of humanity? he said to the room as his son slept. "Of my own humanity?"

He looked at the brown air hanging over the city and wondered what that meant, and just what did that say of the world his children would inherit, and his children's children? And he looked at James sleeping peacefully, he sat in the stillness of this room for hour upon hour, lost in thought, always coming back to Heidi, always coming back to think of only one thing: how would the people of the village fit in to such a society? Would these outsiders even let them remain isolated, withdrawn from all this madness, or would they force them to come here? And that always led him back to...