Robert Silverberg: Those Who Watch

The explosion was painfully bright against the dark backdrop of the moonless New Mexico sky. To those who looked up at that precise moment — and there were many who happened to look up — it was as though a new star had momentarily blossomed in blue-white incandescence.

The brightness moved in a track from northeast to southwest. It came sputteringly alive in the sacred mountains east of Taos, and grew more fierce as it carved a track roughly over the valley of the Rio Grande, passing above the dusty little pueblos and the bustling city of Santa Fe. Just south of Santa Fe the brightness became unbearable, and eyes were averted as the sudden radiation stabbed at retinas. But now the actinic peak was past. Was the savage flare burning itself out, or was the blaze simply damped by the city lights of sprawling Albuquerque? No matter. The arc of light speared past Isleta Pueblo and was lost somewhere over the Mesa del Oro.

Darkness returned, rolling back over the New Mexico sky like the returning tide.

In the broad plaza of San Miguel Pueblo, forty miles south of Santa Fe, Charley Estancia put his knuckles to his eyes a moment, crushed away the pain, and grinned up at the inverted black bowl of night.

“Shooting star!” he whispered sharply. “Shooting star! Beauty! Beauty!” He laughed. He was eleven years old, skinny and smudge-faced, and he had often seen the ragged tails of the meteors as they sped across the sky. He knew what they were, even if no one else in the pueblo did. But Charley had never seen one like that before. He could still feel the track of it sizzling in his skull. When he blinked, the line of whiteness remained.

Others in the village had seen it too. The plaza was a crowded, busy place tonight, for in another week came the Fire Society dance, and many white folk would travel out from the cities to watch and take pictures and, perhaps, spend money. Charley Estancia heard the gasps, saw the pointing arms of his uncles and cousins and sisters.

“Maiyanyi!” someone muttered. “Spirits!”

Talk of demons, whispers of bad magic, anguished exclamations of doubt and fear crisscrossed the plaza. Charley saw two of his maternal uncles rush toward the tall round windowless kiva, the ceremonial house, and clamber quickly down the ladder to take refuge within. He saw his sister Rosita pull forth the crucifix that hung between her breasts and clasp it against her cheek like some sort of amulet. He saw his father’s brother Juan make the sign of the cross, and three more men rush into the kiva. They were all talking of evil spirits, now. The pueblo bristled with television aerials, and shiny automobiles stood outside the adobe houses, but it took nothing more than a shooting star to send everybody wild with superstitious awe. Charley kicked at the dusty ground. His sister Lupe flashed past him, looking terrified. He reached out and caught her thin wrist.

“Where are you going?”

“Into the house. Devils are in the sky!”

“Sure. The kachinas are coming. They’re going to do the Fire Society dance because we don’t do it right anymore,” Charley said. He laughed.

Lupe was in no mood for Charley’s brand of sarcasm. She twisted at his grip. “Let go! Let go! She was twelve, and only a girl, but she was much stronger than he was. She planted her hand in the middle of his shallow chest and pushed hard, yanking her arm from his grasp at the same time. Charley went over on his back and lay in the dust, looking up at a sky that now had returned to normal. Lupe fled, sobbing. Charley shook his head. Crazy, all of them. Crazy with fear, crazy with religion. Why couldn’t they think? Why did they have to be Indians all the time? Look at them, running around madly, scattering cornmeal, blurting out prayers whose words were only empty sound to them, diving into the kiva, sprinting toward the church!

“Shooting star!” Charley shouted. “Nothing to be afraid of! Just a big shooting star!”

As usual, no one paid attention to him. He was thought to be a little crazy in the head, a skinny boy full of dreams and white man’s ideas. His voice was lost in the night wind. He picked himself up, shivering, and brushed the plaza’s dust from his jeans. It would be funny, this superstitious panic, if it were not so sad.

Ah! There was the padre now! Charley grinned.

The priest came out of the whitewashed little church and held up both arms in what Charley supposed was intended to be a comforting gesture. He called out in Spanish: “Don’t be afraid! It’s all right! Into the church, everyone, and stay calm!”

Some of the women moved toward the church. Most of the men were in the kiva, now — and, of course, women were forbidden there. Charley watched the priest. Padre Herrera was a small, bald-headed man who had come up from El Paso a few years ago, after the old priest had died. He had a hard time here. Everybody in San Miguel was a Roman Catholic, but everybody also believed in the old pueblo religion, and in a way nobody believed much in any religion.

So at a time of stress like this, people ran in all directions, very few of them into Padre Herrera’s church, and the padre did not look pleased.

Charley went up to the priest. “What was it, Padre? A shooting star, is all?”

The priest glowered. “Perhaps a sign of Heaven, Charley.”

“I saw it with these eyes! A shooting star!”

Padre Herrera flashed a quick, hollow smile and turned away, going about the business of shepherding his worried flock into the house of God. Charley realized he had been dismissed. The priest had once told Rosita Estancia that her younger brother Charley was a damned soul, and Charley had found out about it. In a way, he was rather flattered.

Hopefully, Charley looked to the sky. But there were no more shooting stars. Now the plaza was empty; the dozens of Indians who had been in it a few minutes ago had taken refuge. Charley looked across the way, toward the gift shop. The door opened and Marty Moquino came out. He was holding a little spray can of liquor, and a cigarette drooped from the corner of his mouth.

“Where’d everybody go?” Marty Moquino asked.

“They ran away. Scared.” Charley forced a chuckle. “You should’ve seen them go!”

He was a little afraid of Marty Moquino, and despised him a good deal; yet at the same time Charley looked up to him as a man who had done things and gone places. Marty was nineteen years old. Two years ago he had left the pueblo and gone to live in Albuquerque, and he was supposed to have been all the way out to Los Angeles, too. He was a mocker, a troublemaker, but more than anyone else around here he had lived in the white man’s world. Now Marty was back because he had lost his job. People whispered that he made love to Rosita Estancia these days. Charley hated him for that; Still, he felt that he had much to learn from Marty Moquino. Charley hoped to escape from San Miguel himself, one day.

They stood together in the middle of the empty plaza,” Charley short and thin, Marty tall and thin. Marty offered him a cigarette. Charley took it and expertly flipped its ignition cap. They grinned at each other like brothers.

“Did you see it?” Charley asked. “The shooting star?”

Marty nodded. He gave the spray can of whiskey a squirt into his mouth. “I was out back,” he said after a moment. “I saw it. But it wasn’t any shooting star.”

“It was the kachinas coming to visit, huh?”

Laughing, Marty said, “Kid, don’t you know what that thing was? You never saw a shooting star like that. That was a flying saucer blowing up over Taos!”

Kathryn Mason saw the light in the sky only by accident. Ordinarily on these dark winter nights she stayed indoors after nightfall. The house was warm and bright, purring with its array of electrical appliances, and she felt comfortable indoors. Anything might lurk outside. Anything. But her daughter’s kitten had been missing for three days now, which was the biggest crisis in the Mason family for a. long time. It seemed to Kathryn that she heard faint meows outside. Finding the kitten was more important to her than remaining locked indoors in this cozy shelter of an automatic house.