by Bobby Adair
“Our orders are to let no one in without explicit permission from Colonel Blair.”
“Get permission.”
It’s then I notice the gray-haired woman is already talking quietly into her radio.
The sergeant glances back at her.
I tire of the grownup grade-school bully’s glare and turn back in his direction, silently daring him to do something, anything.
His eyes don’t hold mine. They drift around, looking for something to focus on. His posture loses its menace.
Apparently, my dare isn’t something he wants to accept.
“Permission granted,” says the gray-haired woman from where she stands near the back of the group.
The sergeant gives me a nod and tells the tall bully to open the door for me. The soldiers part, allowing me a wide path.
A young girl opens the reservoir’s maintenance door and nearly gags as she gets a face full of the air from inside.
Gray stink.
I pass the guards without another word and enter the reservoir. I’m used to the smell.
The door closes behind me.
Inside, the room is a big, hollow disc, probably fifty meters across, with a ceiling ten meters above the floor. A half-dozen thick posts are supporting the ceiling. Down here near the asteroid’s axis, most of the gravitational pull from the stone below us is canceled out by the pull of the rock above.
The walls, ceiling, floor, and even the support posts are covered in a watertight white polymer, leaving every surface smooth and echoey, though smudged from the boots of all the people the Grays had stored down here after they captured the mining base.
Near the far side of the reservoir, in front of a post, in the glare of several portable lamps, a Gray is basking uncomfortably on the floor. On a chair, a few paces in front of the Gray, fidgets Phil. They are the only two in this makeshift prison.
Chapter 3
Without turning around, Phil greets me. “Hello, Dylan.”
“You never did that kind of obvious mind-reader shit back on earth. Are your skills sharpening, or did you always keep them hidden?”
“Or I guessed who you were.” He’s smug about it. “Who else comes in here?”
“But you didn’t guess, did you?”
Phil turns to look at me.
It’s creeping me out that I’m on the uncomfortable end of a conversation where I know I’m being mentally probed in a way I’m afraid I can’t defend against. “And the answer is?”
“Both.”
“You sneaky bastard.”
Phil smiles.
I chuckle my way past my discomfort, reminding myself I need to stop seeing Phil as the façade he shows to the world. “You’re full of surprises.”
He shrugs as I step up beside him.
My attention falls on the Gray who is moving from a lying to a sitting position, trying to expose different parts of its skin to the light.
“He doesn’t like these lights,” says Phil. “In fact, he’ll eventually die. These LEDs only emit a narrow band of frequencies.”
“All light is not created equal,” I cleverly muse. Natural white light is made up of a wide range of frequencies, and humans can only perceive a small percentage of them.
“For a Gray,” says Phil, “depending on the light from a narrow band of frequencies is like putting a human on a diet of saltine crackers and nothing else. The human will eventually die of malnutrition. A similar thing happens to the Gray. They need a full spectrum.”
“How long are we talking?”
“A year or two.”
“So nothing urgent.”
Phil shakes his head. His face tells me he doesn’t agree. “It will suffer.”
Of course, I look at the Gray, shifting around and trying its best to resemble a starving puppy. Well, a big-headed, hairless puppy with a squirmy alien soul that would murder me given half a chance. Oh, and as lovable as a novelty buttplug—that kind of puppy.
Still, I watch it.
It lies back down and adjusts its position in slow, wretched moves. The Gray can’t get comfortable on the cold floor. The light isn’t strong enough to keep it warm. It’s already suffering.
I don’t want to look at it, but my eyes don’t want to turn away, or even blink.
If it wasn’t for my animosity toward the smelly little planet-conquering bastard, I might feel sorry for it. Hell, who am I kidding? I do feel—
Wait!
I step back.
I glance at Phil, epiphanies materializing in my mind.
The feeling of pity surges hard through me, urging me to cry, to get on my knees, and pet the big-eyed, world-buggering Tick and warm it up.
I jump away and take a few more quick steps, never turning my back, not taking my eyes off it. I know what it’s doing. It’s manipulating my emotions.
“You feel it?” Phil’s amused.
“You could have warned me.” But he didn’t. I turn away from the Gray and focus suspiciously on Phil.
“Don’t,” he responds flatly. “I’m not taking its side.”
I’m not sure I believe him.
“I was going to tell you it’s been trying to influence me since I came down here. After you killed those three in the pool, I knew you had full knowledge of what they can do with their minds.”
I nod, because I can’t argue that point. “I’d guessed at the time it was the terror and wrenching pain I was inflicting on those Grays…” Oh, shit! I was going to say, ‘gave him the magical power to influence me,’ but I realize right away how stupid that’ll sound. “I didn’t think they could project their emotions at will. We’ve never seen this kind of behavior before.”
Or never noticed it.
That thought frightens me.
“I believe they’re usually much more subtle about it, undetectable.” Phil’s looking back at the Gray now, with intense interest. “I think you’re right about the stress. You beating that one drove it into hysterics and made the others desperate. To save it, they all combined their mental strength to amplify what it was feeling, hoping that if you felt it, you’d stop.”
“Only it wasn’t just me who felt it.”
“Everybody did.” Phil takes a second. “Think of a whisper, you can tell just one person, but a shout is heard by everyone. When you were killing that Gray, they were all screaming.”
“They nearly stopped me.” It was a supremely painful episode, one I hope I won’t have to feel again.
“This one,” says Phil, “being alone, and being a relatively young one, doesn’t have the control to be able to influence a person in a subtle way.” Phil reaches up and puts a hand on my shoulder. “To be honest, I wanted to see if you felt it trying to whisper before I warned you.”
“Whispering?” I’m back to searching my suspicions, trying to figure out how to feel about all this. “Is that what you’re calling what they do?”
Phil nods.
My suspicions are winning their mental battle. I drill Phil with a hard look. “There’s more to this. What aren’t you telling me?”
“I figured out pretty quickly what it was up to.” Phil stands up and scoots his chair back. He starts walking toward the door, waving me along. “I’ve been experimenting with communication. One of the things I’m trying to understand is if it can whisper to anybody and if anybody but me can tell.”
The Gray stands up straight, defiant.
Keeping an eye on the Gray, I take a few tentative steps toward Phil, while I try to guess what he’s up to.
“C’mon,” he urges.
I hurry a few paces to come up beside him. “What are we doing?”
“You’ll see in a second.”
As we come to a stop just inside the guarded door, Phil turns and says, “Look at him.”
I do, and see the Gray still standing, as placid as a plastic doll.
“You feel it, don’t you?”
“I don’t kn
ow what you’re asking of me.”
“Defiance,” Phil explains. “When we came this way, and it stood up, you felt it staring daggers into your back, right?”
I nod.
“Now you don’t.”
I shake my head.
Phil ambles toward the Gray. I follow along, rolling my eyes as Phil drags me through the proof of some point I’m sure I’ll have no—
Holy crap!
I freeze in my tracks.
Phil stops beside me and grins. “You feel it now?”
I look at my spot on the floor and glance back at the door. How could I not know this already? “Its range of influence is around forty feet?”
“It grows stronger as you walk closer.”
My feet move me toward the Gray in slow steps. I don’t want to believe any of this, but my resolve crumbles as I start to imagine I see defiance on the little thing’s indecipherable face.
“Back on earth, we spent most of our time around mature ones,” says Phil. “Their whispers were subtle.”
“They’ve been trying to influence us all along?”
Phil nods.
“How long have you known?” It sounds like an accusation. I decide I don’t care. “Were you aware of this back on earth?”
“I suspected.”
I know he’s lying.
He shakes his head slowly. “No, I knew about it. They didn’t know I was aware. I learned how to block their influence a long time ago.”
“Why didn’t you say anything to me?”
Phil is ashamed. To deflect, he points at the Gray, directing his attention there. “What I find interesting—”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
Phil sighs and hesitates.
“Tell me, Phil.”
“I was afraid.”
“Of?”
“They do more than whisper.”
“I’ve always known that.” Trying to read a person’s thoughts is vastly different than trying to create thoughts in a person’s mind.
“When they pry into peoples’ minds, they nearly always do it without the person knowing.”
I tap the side of my head. “You know I have a way to block that, right?” I laugh harshly because the truth of that should be so obvious. “I mean, you know how long I’ve been dreaming about this revolution, right?”
Phil nods, as his voice turns into a whine. “You never know what somebody might say, or when a secret might slip out.” Phil purses his lips. His shame of what he’s done has been eating away at him for a long time. “I didn’t want the truth getting around. I didn’t want to risk the Grays finding out and sending the MSS to torture me.”
“Or kill you.” Thoughts of Vishnu cross my mind, surely dead by now, and having suffered more than I want to imagine.
I tell him, “I understand.” I don’t, but I promise myself I’m going to try. That personal covenant and a few moments of silence between us settles the matter. Phil and I are more closely connected than I’d ever guessed. “Can you always tell when they’re trying to influence you?”
“Yes. And if you spend an hour or two down here with him trying to sway you, you’ll be able to recognize it, too. Every time. Then when a whole pod of experienced Grays tries to influence you in the future, you’ll know.”
I want to believe, but it sounds too easy.
“You know the difference between hearing your voice and hearing someone else’s voice?” Phil looks smug, like he’s just spun off the best analogy ever. And maybe he did.
“Really? That easy?” No way it can be.
“Eventually.”
The watertight door leading to the corridor unexpectedly opens.
Chapter 4
Brice enters the reservoir, slamming the door behind him, and striding across the white polymer floor with a purpose in his steps.
I know immediately he has the answer I sent him to find. “What’s the story?”
“She had the other two Ticks put in an assault ship and hauled off to another Free Army base.”
Phil erupts. “The other two Grays aren’t coming back? Nick will die!”
Brice tilts his head in an ambiguous gesture. He doesn’t care.
I skip right past apathy over the Grays’ pending demise. And Nick? “Who the hell is Nick? You named it?”
Phil responds with guilty silence.
“If you knew they were gone,” Brice shoots Phil a dirty look, and then he turns to me, “why’d I have to chase around this rat-maze asteroid to get an answer out of Blair’s people?”
Phil turns his back to Brice, snorting angry breaths.
The Gray drops to its knees and then slumps to the cold floor, laying its head down like it’s dying.
The sight makes me feel its despair.
No!
Not its despair, but the emotion it’s whispering to me.
The Gray is trying to manipulate me, and Phil’s right, I see the difference as clearly as Phil described. The desperate thoughts are not mine.
“What’s wrong with that?” asks Brice.
I answer, “It understands.”
“He felt them go,” Phil clarifies for us, still looking at the Gray. “Out of range. He’s been despondent since Blair’s people came in here and took the other two out. His depression worsened the farther away they went. Until now, we thought they were still coming back.” Phil turns to look at Brice and me. “Grays can’t survive alone. Their minds need the social structure of a pod to function.”
“You mean it’ll go nuts without anyone to talk to?” asks Brice.
“More than that,” Phil answers. “I don’t understand it fully, maybe not nearly at all. It’s like their brains slowly go haywire when they’re alone.”
Brice makes a face. “Isn’t that what I said?”
“How long will it last?” I ask.
“Two or three weeks.” Phil drops into his chair.
“Is that a problem for us?” I ask, switching to pragmatic mode. In the end, I don’t want the thing alive. I only want whatever information Phil can squeeze out of it.
“Yes.” Phil leans in close and taps his fingers against his skull so hard it sounds like a melon. “The way they store their memories, the way they share.” Phil throws his hands in the air, huffs, and stomps off.
“What?” I ask, staying in my spot. “What is it?”
Phil spins around and waves a hand at Nick while he tries to calm himself. “It’s like watching a movie. That’s the best I can do. When Nick shares his memories with me, they come across like a movie.”
“So you really can talk to it?” Brice seems like he’s just now accepting the truth of this new revelation.
“Yeah,” Phil snaps. “I can.”
“The movie thing?” I ask, trying to put Phil back on track.
“I’ve only barely tapped into what Nick knows. Tapping into his mind is like walking into one of those old video stores and seeing thousands of DVDs on the shelves. Tens of thousands. I need time to watch them all. Probably years.” He turns and glares at Brice as if something about the situation is Brice’s fault. “And no, I can’t just pry whatever I want out of his brain. I have to talk to him. I have to earn his trust. He has to share.”
“Or lie.” Brice glances at me to corral me into that supposition.
“They don’t lie the way we lie,” says Phil. “When you’re a telepathic species, and your brain is open to everyone you know, you can maybe hide some things,” he nods at me, “the way Dylan does, but manufacturing alternate fictions to substitute as truth, well, that’s impossible.”
“Whatever you say.” Brice shrugs and casts a bored look toward the door.
I need to know more. “Phil, explain this to me.”
Phil comes closer to make his case. “He’s starting to trust me. With the others gone, he has to. I’m the only one who can bond with him and keep him sane.”
“Is that a good thin
g?” I ask. “If it were crazy, wouldn’t it be easier to manipulate?”
Phil is disgusted with that idea. “You don’t understand.”
“What I do understand,” I tell him, “is this Gray keeps trying to screw with my head. How do you know he’s not doing that to you?”
“I told you. It’s easy for me. I can tell when he tries.”
“And what, he’s going to stop doing that when you become friends?”
“Yes,” Phil tells me, completely believing it. “Grays aren’t individuals. They have to be part of a collective mind. Usually the pod they’re part of. With the other Grays gone, I’m the only thing he’s got. And if he bonds with me, he has to change. He doesn’t have a choice. It’s part of the thing I told you about their brains. They keep each other from going haywire. At least until they mature into old age, and then their brains become more static like ours. This one was the youngest in the pod.”
“Impressionable?” I ask, joking with the oversimplification.
“Don’t be an asshole, Dylan. I’m explaining to you how this works. And yes, impressionable is exactly right, only more deeply and eventually more permanently than you know. If he fully bonds with me, then his mind conforms to mine. I don’t conform to him. He comes over to our side. I don’t go to his. He becomes the best resource we’ve ever had for understanding the Grays.”
“That’s too bad,” Brice tells us.
Phil is hurt by Brice’s callousness.
I’m curious. “Why?”
Looking at Phil, Brice tells him, “You’ll need to pump it for whatever intel you can get by this time tomorrow. Turning back to me, he says, “I learned a bit more when I was out looking for your lost Grays.”
“What’s that?” I ask.
“Blair wants us to go out on a milk run for her.”
“A milk run?” Phil doesn’t understand.
“An easy mission.” Brice shakes his head in disgust. “Although I think I know Blair well enough to guess she’s probably sending us on a suicide mission.”
Chapter 5
“She wants us to scout Ceres and a dozen other suspected Trog outposts before we mount an attack.” It pains Brice to say it, not because he’s a coward. He sighs heavily as he looks for a way to explain.
