“Well, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a text from Mr. Spock on Vulcan.” Lauren drained her cup.
“The bursts came from approximately 13,000 light years near the center of its home galaxy ... 4 billion light years from earth.”
“Damn!” Rowan gasped. “I’d hate to pay the long-distance bill on that call.”
“Don’t you understand the technological significance of this event? It’s like ... it’s like ...” he fumbled for an analogy. “It’s like standing on a mountain in Colorado and the Yeti shouting at us from Bhutan. And us not only being able to hear that Yeti as clearly as you hear me now, but to tell you exactly where the call came from.” Lauren’s gaze was fixed on him intently. “But here’s where it gets good. The signals have become more frequent. Radio telescopes all over the planet have been able to pick up these ... these ... shrieks. Preliminary data suggested these messages are all coming from the same general area of the cosmos.”
“Same message? What did it say?”
“That’s the problem.” Michael shook his head. “We don’t speak the Yeti’s language, so we don’t know what he’s saying. It’s not making any sense to anyone in the lab. We’re all arguing about what we did ... or didn’t see; what we did ... or didn’t hear.”
“But why do you need me?” She rose to refill her cup.
“Your choice of career fields has always puzzled me,” Michael said. “Anthropology by itself is fascinating, yet you’ve never studied apes.”
“Unless you include the currently unidentified species of the North American Wood Ape, or the other unidentified greater apes, like your hypothetical Yeti.” Lauren conceded with a nod.
Michael’s left eye twitched when he realized what she was suggesting. “But biological anthropology? It’s an interesting mix of social and biological studies, I’ll give you that, but human evolution hasn’t followed the same path as our knuckle-dragging cousins.”
“Just because they’re bigger than we are doesn’t mean they’re stupid,” Lauren said before she could stop herself. “The evidence suggests they could be quite intelligent.” She recovered quickly enough.
“If Bigfoot was real, you mean.” Michael turned in his chair. His gaze followed her as she added creamer to her coffee.
Lauren fought to control her face. It would have been easy for her to reignite the feud at that moment. Her ire was rising, along with her pulse and probably her blood pressure. This was the kind of behavior that made him infuriating. He was so self-assured; so cocky. She wanted to blow up at him, but she took a deep breath, then took the high road. “I believe you were about to make a point as to why you need my help.”
“I was reading one of your blog posts on human biosocial variation and extrapolating the data and applying it to supposed Bigfoot populations ... and it got me thinking about biosocial variations of alien life forms,” he said. “Then it hit me. If you could theorize thusly about a mythical creature like Bigfoot, maybe you could help me come up with a hypothesis on ... on .... on alien life. Something that might be able to help me explain this signal at least until someone can translate it. And if your grasp of languages are as strong as everyone says, I hoped you might be willing to ... help me figure out the message.” It seemed to pain him to admit she might be able to do something so very remarkable. Maybe it was more the idea of alien life that stuck in his craw as he glanced up at her nervously.
Lauren wasn’t exactly sure how the All-Language of the ancient gods applied to extraterrestrial languages, but he might have a point. “Is anyone currently working on translating it?”
“One scientist was, but ... he’s dead,” Michael said. “Which brings up the next issue we need to discuss.”
Lauren sat down with her coffee cup. “Oh?” She glanced at Rowan who leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table around his cup.
“Two scientists are dead,” he said. “One was assassinated. The other was killed in a car wreck. We don’t know if the two are connected, or if the second was a coincidence.”
Lauren’s own words resonated in her ears. “I don’t believe in coincidences.” The words slipped off her lips as she tried to make sense of it all. “What do these two scientists have in common?”
“Me,” Michael said. “First, my mentor Alexei ... then ... Kitty.”
“You were in the same wreck?” Lauren put the pieces together. “Wait ... Kitty? Kitty Donovan? Your old girlfriend?”
He nodded. “It’s a long story, but ...we got hit by a truck,” he said, and it clearly pained him. “The car flipped into a ravine.” He struggled to continue. “I don’t know how, but I made it out. I woke up in the hospital ... they never found her.”
Lauren reached across the table for his hand. He gave it to her and looked up, meeting her eye. “I’m deeply sorry to hear about Kitty.”
He pinched his lips tightly, fighting back emotions, then slid his hand from his sister’s.
He stood and paced behind his chair. “I came to you because I didn’t think anyone else would believe me, but I’m afraid getting you involved might put you in danger.”
“Not just me, Michael. My husband ... my son ...” She looked to Rowan. “Even George and our mother. But you’re in danger too, you know that, right?”
He nodded. “I had been trying to convince myself that I was just being paranoid, but I know that’s not true.” He paced behind the table, running a trembling hand over his cropped hair.
“Look, I had no idea you were such an amazing linguist, but I’ve never been chewed out by anyone in such fluent Cherokee, and that includes our mother. And after you translated the Maya calendar, I can only imagine that if anyone could decrypt this ... alien code, it would be you. I’m still convinced it has to be you. I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think you couldn’t do it.”
“But Michael.” She sat back, trying to reconcile her fears with her professional interest. “This isn’t two kids trying to one up each other ...”
Michael hesitated and sat back down, letting out an exasperated groan. “Look,” he said. “I’ve got something I need to tell you ... and I really need you to keep an open mind about this ...” Lauren felt like she’d heard something like this before. “Some incredibly strange things have been happening to me ...”
“You too?” Rowan nearly choked.
“Me too?” Michael looked at his brother-in-law blankly. Then he looked at Lauren. “You too?”
“What’s going on, Michael?” Lauren asked.
“I ... I think ... I think I’ve been ... abducted,” he spat the words out as if they were vile. “I think I’ve been abducted by aliens.” He tried it again, and the words flowed out so fast Lauren wasn’t sure she’d understood a word of it.
Rowan sat back; a stunned expression painted over his features. He looked to Lauren. “Were you abducted by aliens?”
“Me?” Lauren’s face contorted. “No.” She didn’t sound convinced. She set her jaw and shook her head, running a hand over her brow. “I don’t know what’s going on with me, but I definitely have not been abducted by aliens.”
“What’s happening to you?” Michael asked.
“What makes you think you’ve been abducted by aliens?”
“You go first,” Michael recoiled.
“You brought it up,” Lauren said. “You go first.”
Rowan’s gaze flipped back and forth as they volleyed queries at one another, like a spectator at a tennis match. “Michael, what’s going on?”
Michael seemed to deflate then ball up his courage. He explained it had started about three years ago. He’d go to bed and as he fell asleep, bright flashing lights would wake him, and he’d find himself somewhere else ... sometimes it was in what looked like a lab or a spaceship, sometimes he’d find himself standing out in the streets. Rowan and Lauren exchanged a glance that didn’t escape Michael’s notice. “Last night ... it happened again,” he said. “Last night, something ... different happened; something I’ve never experienced before.”
>
“Last night?” Lauren asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “Last night ... I found myself down in the river bottom behind the house. Sitting on the fallen sycamore tree ... was our father.”
“Our father?” Lauren asked. “John Gray Wolf’s Son?”
“Huh?” Michael’s face contorted.
“The genealogist we’re working with found his name listed that way on some records ...” Lauren said. “That’s what we’re working on ... an episode on our family history.”
“He looked older,” Michael said. “Not like he did when I was a kid.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Lauren said. She’d never even seen pictures of her father. There were few pictures of any of the family when she was a baby. There were pictures lining the hallways now, but they started when she was about seven or eight. By then George had already gone off to college. He’d earned his degree in Fire Protection & Safety Engineering Technology from OSU in Stillwater before she’d graduated high school.
“What are the chances you’ve been dreaming?” Rowan asked.
“I’d considered that,” Michael said. “Especially since I’ve been on pain meds, but ... well, the wreck is part of the problem.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I remember the initial impact, the feeling of the truck being born aloft and flipping ... and then I wasn’t in the truck anymore. I was standing in front of the Administration Building at NASA.”
“That sounds more like what Lauren has been experiencing,” Rowan said.
Michael looked to his sister. She realized she had to tell him. She told him about the first episode of the — teleportation — that had taken her to Rowan in Mexico. “I had to think it was an act of desperation. How I did it, I don’t know. I thought that was the end of it ... until last week when it happened again.”
“What happened?”
“Henry and I went to the Farmer’s Market in Hilo to get fresh produce before we came back to the mainland. I wanted to make one last tropical fruit salad before we left. I got so spoiled having fresh pineapple and coconut every day,” she said. “But I forgot the coconut. I turned to put the pineapple in the refrigerator, and the next thing I know, I’m standing in the middle of the Farmer’s Market. Henry was still in the sling on my chest; still sleeping peacefully.”
“That’s it?” Michael asked.
“No, there was one other time.” She admitted, looking at Rowan with trepidation. She hadn’t told him of the other time.
“What?” Rowan gasped.
“I didn’t tell you because I thought maybe I was sleep walking ... and I didn’t want to worry you.”
“So what happened?” Michael asked.
“Rowan was reading Henry a bedtime story.” She looked to Rowan. “Baby Honu.” She turned back to Michael. “It’s Henry’s favorite book ... about a baby sea turtle. Anyway, I must have fallen asleep while he was putting Henry to bed. A few hours later, I woke up in my pajamas, standing on the black sand beach in the rain ... baby sea turtles all around me. I had to find my way home in a blinding storm. I was soaked to the bone and half frozen. I got in the shower and warmed up before Rowan or Henry woke up. I don’t know what happened, but I’m quite certain I was not abducted by aliens. What makes you think you were?”
Michael sat a moment, taking it all in, seeming to plan his words. “I remember seeing ... them.”
“Them?” Rowan asked. “Who’s them?”
“The aliens,” he said.
“Are you sure it’s not the pain meds talking?” Lauren stood, turning her back on the pretense of refilling her cup. She sat her cup down, her head lowered as she leaned on the counter.
“I know what I saw,” Michael said. His tone suggested she’d hurt his feelings.
She turned. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t mean to discount your experience, Michael. I just don’t think it has anything to do with what I’ve been experiencing.”
“Tell him about your sudden ability to understand every language on the planet,” Rowan said. She turned and looked at him sharply.
“What?” Michael asked.
Lauren took a deep breath, looking at the toe of her sneaker as she tried to calm herself and not blow up at Rowan. He’d come to accept that part of her, even though he still didn’t understand it. “When I got abducted by the fake Bigfoot in Washington, I had a bad head injury. I don’t know how, but somehow I was able to communicate with the shaman of the Bigfoot tribe, Tsul’Kalu. He told me the ancient gods had bestowed a gift upon me; the ability to speak the All-Language.”
Michael looked at Rowan, who shrugged. “I don’t understand it either.”
“Wait,” Michael said. “You found Bigfoot?”
* * *
The conversation came to an abrupt halt the moment their mother walked in with Henry in her arms. The child didn’t seem pleased about it. She sat down with him and he reached for his mother, but Diana turned him away from Lauren. “He’s kind of big for his age, don’t you think?” Diana asked her. It was like nails on a chalkboard and Lauren fought the urge to cringe.
“Have you seen the size of my brothers?” Lauren reached for him, but Diana protested with a glare, drawing the child away from his mother. Lauren withdrew her hands with an apologetic look to her son. “His father isn’t exactly short either.”
“George was a fat baby,” she said. “But the others, including that one ...” her nod went to Michael, “weren’t overly large.”
“He’s in the 85th percentile for his weight,” Lauren said. She didn’t mention he was over the 95th percentile for height.
“Was our father very tall?” Michael asked.
Diana’s eyes darted towards Lauren to gauge her reaction, then went back to her son’s. “Oh, I suppose so,” she said, shifting Henry in her lap. Henry let out a screech so sharp Lauren flinched. She reached over and took him before her mother could protest.
“Henry’s probably hungry,” Lauren said, putting him to her shoulder as he fussed. She cast a wicked glare at her mother. “If he gets off his schedule, he gets cranky.”
“He’s not the only one,” Lauren heard Diana mutter under her breath as she rose, intending to take him to the other room where she could get comfortable and nurse him in peace.
“Well, I guess I better be going,” Diana said, shouldering her purse. “I have to teach a class at the Heritage Center in an hour.”
“What are you teaching?” Lauren paused at the doorway.
“I teach the girls to sew ribbon skirts,” Diana said. “Do you remember how?”
“Yes,” Lauren said. “But I don’t have much time for sewing these days.”
“Well, I will make you a new skirt to wear when you come back.”
“Come back?” Lauren quipped. “I don’t know when or if we’ll be back any time soon.”
“Perhaps not, but I will send it to you so you will have it.” Lauren held her face as neutral as she could muster. Her mother leaned in to kiss her cheek. Lauren did not return the gesture but allowed it. “Sigwu da na da gwa do’hv,” Diana said, and nodded to her son as she headed out the door.
“What did she say?” Michael asked, blankly.
“Sigwu da na dagwa do’hv?” Lauren turned to him. “You really have forgotten any Cherokee you might have learned as a child, haven’t you?”
“I’m out of practice.” He admitted. “It’s a use-or-lose skill.”
“In Cherokee, there isn’t a word for goodbye.” Her eyes went to the window, watching as her mother got into the car. “We simply say we’ll see one another again soon.”
Chapter 8
Lauren was sitting in the living room, nursing Henry, and trying to gather her thoughts when Rowan came back in. “I guess we’re not leaving tonight then?”
She looked at him, biting her lip. “I don’t know what to do,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting something like this could happen to him too.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about the sec
ond time,” Rowan said. “The turtles?”
She let out an exasperated breath. “What could you have done about it? Worry about something else I can’t explain ... can’t change?” she asked. “No, there was no sense in scaring both of us.”
“Lauren, if you’re scared, I need to know about it ...” he said. “No matter how bad something is, I am here to help you through it; to help take the burden off you.”
“That’s just it.” Lauren turned her gaze to the baby at her breast. “My burden would be no lighter if you knew. If anything, it’s heavier now.”
Rowan considered her a long moment. “You want to help Michael try to figure out what the signals are, don’t you?”
Lauren looked sharply at him. “I do,” she said. “But if it’s going to put us at risk ... I just don’t see how I can.”
“Not how you can ... how we can.”
“But ...” Lauren sputtered, glancing at Henry. He had her braid wrapped in his chubby fist and was smiling up at her. He was done with his supper. She smiled back at him, sitting him up, tugging her shirt back down. “What about Henry?”
“I’d offer to take Henry and go to my parents,” he said. “But I’m not sending you on this knight’s errand alone.”
“It wouldn’t work anyway,” she said. “You can’t just go cold turkey to wean a baby. It’s not good for me or Henry. The baby cuddled up against her chest, grinning at his daddy.
“Ma ...” he rocked against her, head butting her, playfully. “Mama.”
She wrapped her arms around him and kissed his head. “Hi, sweet boy.”
“Mama,” he gurgled.
“Can you say Dada?” Rowan bopped his nose.
Henry squirmed, wiggling in Lauren’s lap, reaching for his Dad. “Dada,” he cooed.
Rowan scooped him up, tossing him up in the air. Henry giggled a high-pitch squeal. “Dada!” He repeated.
“That’s my boy!”
Lauren sat back, smiling sadly as she watched her boys play. She leaned a weary head on her fist, her thoughts going to all the potential hazards they might face, and how they would mitigate the risks if they did pursue this folly.
The Alien Accord Page 8
