“To be totally candid, I don't have much concern for what Susan did or you did. Or why. Less than two hours ago, I had to listen to all that anger and resentment, then make an evaluation. But I don't have that job any longer, and Captain Navarro has put the issue to rest. What we said to each other – especially what I theorized about your past – is irrelevant now. There are bigger concerns."
Fran leaned back in her swivel, clasped her hands together and rubbed tightly. “Fair enough, Lara. Fair enough. But one more question. Why do you want in on this investigation? Granted, I understand your personal cause, and I do sympathize. But let's be practical just for a minute – you’re not qualified to conduct any of the tests being done by either Peter or me, and those will determine the cause of the explosion. And I'll be damned if I can figure out how this matter of the missing Fyal could be drawing you in.”
Lara was hesitant to reply. She let her eyes wander the Commons. She tapped on the committee table and finally said without making eye contact: “Do you have any idea what really happened to that Fyal?”
“Not a clue. Peter says it was vaporized, and hell knows I could be wrong. But I don't see how. There would have been remains. You floating some theories, Lara?”
“I, ah, need to ask you a couple of questions, and just give me a straight answer. No commentary, OK?”
“OK.”
“Erachnus-Ceti. That was the Fyal name for their home world, wasn’t it?”
“What? Sure. Of course. We never got in the habit of using that name – especially after what the Fyal pulled on us.”
Lara politely scratched the back of her head. “And if you were talking to a Fyal, and he asked if you ‘believed in the union,’ what would you think he's talking about?”
“The union? Damn, Lara, you don't remember much about those weeks on Centauri III!” Fran winced. “Sorry. I promised no commentary. This ‘union’ is how the Fyal spoke about the very thing we're supposedly going to warn the Earth about. When they came to us that last night and told us they were dying, had less than 200 years before they were all wiped out. You remember now, don't you? Them, us, the next generations. The physical connection they required with us – ‘the union,’ they called it.”
Fran was loose with her hands, and her gestures varied wildly. Lara turned her swivel and rushed from the table, stopping in the galley. She leaned against a counter and rubbed her temples. All of it flooded back, and Lara could not explain why she had been hazy on two of the most important parts of her dream.
“I'm sorry, Fran. No, I didn't remember many details. At least, not much terminology. I've consciously tried not to think about it, at least not until we were on Earth. And it has been a long time, even with hibersleep.”
“Not really, Lara,” the science officer joined Lara, stood beside her. “So, what the hell is this about? What's the point of these questions?”
Lara swallowed. “Something's not right.”
“Excuse me?”
“Something is not right, Fran. I had a dream – a very long and very bad dream. It was about Daniel and that Fyal. His name was Sh'hun, was it not?”
Fran said very little as Lara recalled the nightmare in as much detail as her mind would allow. Some of the images and words were just beginning to resurface. The more she spoke of it, the clearer that image of the tentacle-bound alien on her bed became. And like virtually all of her dreams, she could give no meaning to it. Yet this one was gnawing at her conscience – the timing was too peculiar, and she knew it wasn't about to fade into oblivion.
There was something awkwardly real and present about the dream.
Fran smirked, shrugged. “That's quite a damn thing to go through right after losing someone like Daniel. But I'd like to think it's pretty obvious what's going on there. Dan was working on the stasis unit, so your mind linked him to the Fyal. The rest of it's just your fears kicking in from the subconscious.”
“But I really think ...”
“Sorry, Lara, but dreams are nothing more than the subconscious trying to make your life more confusing than it already is. In 300 years of research, I don't think anyone with self-respect has given dreams the kind of power you're trying to imply this one has. Put it away, Lara. There's work to be done.”
Lara didn't pursue a debate. “Fine. How do you want to proceed?”
“First, I'm going to have to go back through the stasis chamber, this time run a microcellular sweep to identify any kind of Fyal presence.”
“And if you don't find anything?”
“Then we've got ourselves a hell of a mystery on our hands.”
“And what should I do?”
“I'd like to set up our operation out of the agripod. It's close to the stasis chamber, and the remote workstation is directly uplinked to the archival base. And that's where you'll come in, Lara. I want to start a complete review of our entire database on the Fyal. You were probably right in that we don’t have a lot of time for this, so let’s concentrate primarily on their anatomy.”
“What are we looking for?”
“Probably something that's not in the computer. Most of what we learned about the Fyal in those few weeks was rather broad. But there are endless personal notations scrolled in there, and maybe we'll come across something that explains how this disappearance might have been possible. It's a long shot, but probably the only shot.”
32
T
his was the first time Lara ever reviewed the archival data regarding the Fyal. Even her own entries on the language of these beings – a telepathic series of clicks and whispers – and the obstacles encountered before first contact, had been intentionally avoided for all six of her rotations on the return voyage. There was no real need for her to dredge up these details, she always told herself. After all, the Fyal's ultimate plan for the human race – and the grotesque biological specifics of it – was best left for those who could spell it out to Earth with the greatest expertise.
But now, as she sat comfortably back into a swivel in the agripod and stared at the workstation and its blank monitor, Lara knew she was going to learn more about these aliens than she had probably picked up in five weeks on their home world.
Upon her verbal prompt, the computer displayed the primary index of Fyal data. She was surprised by the volume.
Lara knew Andorran's long-range sensors and atmospheric and geologic probes collected huge volumes on the planet itself. But she didn't realize her colleagues accumulated so much on Centauri III's most advanced lifeform. Once the first direct contact was made, the Fyal mandated boundaries for research by humans. Entries covered agriculture, anatomy, architecture, communication, economy, history, art, physiology, religion, sociology and technology. But personal notations occupied the most space in the archives.
She was amazed by how many stenobytes of storage each category contained, a single stenobyte holding about 20,000 words. And the category to which she contributed the bulk – communication – was the second largest of the lot.
But it quickly began to come back to her. Communication was large not because her explanation of the Fyal's telepathic language was necessarily so intricate, but rather because it was laden with repetition. The process of translating the Fyal's clicks and whispers into their English equivalents had itself been an exercise in redundancy until finally, she had figured out the phonetic and morphologic relationships and coded them into the crew's universal translators. She recalled now how the Fyal had been visibly uncomfortable at communicating through the hand-held units, which required the language to be vocalized – something the Fyal did not need to do among themselves and which they tried unsuccessfully to bypass.
“Maybe I was just too good a translator,” she said, still staring at the index. “If we had never learned how to communicate with you, we wouldn't have had the chance to be your guests, and this nightmare never would have taken place.”
She felt the tears building, but resisted the urge to c
ry. “Another time, Lara! Get hold and start reading. omputer, display text on anatomy and advance the type at standardized pacing.”
A soft mechanical voice replied: “THERE ARE 17 SUB-ENTRIES IN THIS CATEGORY. DO YOU WISH TO SELECT FROM SUB-INDEX OR PROCEED IN ORDER OF CHRONOLOGICAL ENTRY?”
“Yes, let's start from the beginning. I'll need to read everything.”
...
...
EXTERNAL STRUCTURE OF ALIEN LIFEFORM.
Initial overview and observations.
Daniel Loche, Chief Science Officer
Filed: Earth ECS Time 24:17. 7/12/29
I should begin by noting that at this stage, we have been unable to establish linguistic communication with the aliens and therefore have been unable to ascribe a name to them.
The aliens are relatively short, consistently averaging approximately 1.6 meters in height throughout the initial contact group of about 30 beings.
…
…
“Computer, stop text! Hold at this point.”
Lara turned her swivel 180 degrees and closed her eyes for a moment. Her tongue raced furiously against the back of her teeth.
This was going to be considerably more difficult than she imagined. That the first entry was Daniel's was torturous enough. These were the moments of first physical contact. Humans, Fyal. Two disparate races of beings standing before each other in virtual silence – and awe.
Lara felt more than just the images of that momentous hour. Indeed, she remembered her feelings.
Fear. Intense fear. Excitement. Unparalleled excitement.
She remembered stepping off Napier, being instantly captivated by the haunting spectacle of Centauri III. Beneath a cloudless sky of bleached blue, the world around them was a striking tapestry of greens. Indeed, the very ground they stood upon was a smooth carpet of emerald moss, and it was soft, even spongy. The carpet was a cul-de-sac, surrounded by thick brambles of underbrush, most of it deep shades of green with occasional splashes of gray, red or brown. The carpet narrowed ahead of them and wove neatly up a distant mound.
Upon the mound, and stretching for at least two kilometers, was a city. It was a convoluted collection of shapes, many of the structures lanky and others oblong. They seemed as if they had been grown where they stood – the structures were forest green, olive, sage, chartreuse. But many of them, particularly the tallest, had a distinctly metallic shine. The city overlooked a deep valley, and at the base of all the brush was a long, narrow lake – the color of which was almost impossible to determine. The water appeared as if it might be aqua, but the emerald reflection of the surrounding hills of foliage made that uncertain.
The Fyal descended upon them as five small, dark figures protected by their cones, approaching as if on a sheet of wind. Close up, she felt nauseous. When a head emerged from a cone, she was tempted to make a dash for Napier.
Soon the clicks and whispers followed, and her work as a linguist began.
As she tried to focus on the portable translator slung over her shoulder, Lara could hear whispering from behind as Daniel Loche uplinked his initial observations.
Fifteen years later, Lara shook her head fiercely, arose from her swivel and stretched her arms.
“I really don't need to be doing this to myself,” she said, studying the agripod's rotating rows of aeroponic crops. “Just read the material and look for possibilities. Do this right and find the answer.”
But the memories of that first contact were simply too vivid, and more details flowed, even as she returned to the workstation and ordered the computer to advance.
Day One on Centauri III was her most triumphant. Granted, the first two hours deciphering the aliens' convoluted language was difficult. But key words eventually emerged.
They were mostly names.
Fyal.
Erachnus.
Ceti.
Sh’.
Hun.
Three hours after those names, a few basic words and key phrases had been encoded, and that had proved sufficient ground for limited dialogue. But days passed before a clear understanding of the punctuation rules had been achieved.
Erachnus-Ceti.
Sh’hun.
And the name of the Fyal city: M’moc-yon.
The problems came later, when it was discovered that the Fyal’s simplistic language lacked the equivalents of most of the complex layers of English – or most other Earth tongues for that matter – and the oft-offended Fyal tried to retreat into telepathy.
Lara stopped reading, and she allowed the name of that one particular Fyal to swim through her mind. She had long since tried to repress the memories of the great and horrid moments that Sh'hun brought to the crew of Andorran. At one point, it was Sh'hun who welcomed them to his home world. At another, it was Sh'hun who had to be killed aboard Andorran and preserved in stasis.
And this was the Fyal whom the computer showed as having vanished from stasis two seconds before the explosion killed Daniel.
It was the name from her nightmare.
The entries varied dramatically in length and technicality, but Lara maintained a steady pace. What she did not understand, Fran no doubt would, and that was sufficient for the time being.
The volume of data was quite extensive even though the Fyal had never allowed more than superficial physical examinations and brief interviews with the general populus. It was the best compromise Navarro had been able to manage – originally, the Fyal did not care to indulge any information about their physiology, even from their archival databases. In exchange for the concession, Navarro allowed the Fyal to examine two crew members in the identical manner, as well as provide basic data on the human skeletal system. This area proved fascinating to the Fyal, who were entirely cartilaginous. It triggered their curiosity about far more critical issues.
She studied the final entry under ANATOMY. It was Olivia's brief discussion of the organ the Fyal called epploc-g'hone.
At first glance, the epploc-g'hone was unnoticeable. It was tucked into the side of the Fyal, just behind the top of the food sac. At closer inspection, it appeared as a break in the wavy pattern of brown wrinkles that ran throughout the body. It was a hole about the size of the tip of a thumb. It carried out its function when the Fyal first inhaled deeply and appeared to suck the hole into the body. After a few seconds of gurgles, the hole returned, but twice as large, and from it emerged a wet, brown node.
Lara cringed. The epploc-g'hone was the lone Fyal genital – and, as far as the Fyal soon after became convinced, the only hope to change the course of their own evolution. All the Fyal needed were three oral examinations of two humans in order to set into motion the events that turned this mission – and the future of two worlds – into a nightmare.
On what was to be the final night humanity set foot on Centauri III, the Fyal stated their case. The water of their world, ku-ccha – a substance very similar to that of Earth’s water – was killing them. A complex hormone the humans did not yet understand and one that the Fyal claimed their entire evolution was based upon was now ravaging their bloodstream, slowing their metabolism. It became, the Fyal insisted, an impossible dilemma – they could not live without ku-ccha in their system, they could not survive with ku-ccha in their system.
And then, there was a proposal.
The Fyal concluded that the introduction of human lymphocytes – a class of white blood cells – through the epploc-g'hone would produce a slow but certain alteration in the makeup of their own blood and ultimately halt the current inevitable direction of their fate. But the flow of lymphocytes needed to be constant, a process that perhaps might take years – even decades – to complete.
To aid billions of Fyal, they would need billions of humans:
Through clicks and whispers, they asked: “We will build ships to come to you. We will farm all we need. We will leave. Will you help us?”
“Insanity,” responded the stunned crew.
Olivia calmed down briefly to introduce the possibility of engineered lymphocytes as a solution. But for reasons the Fyal would not explain beyond their absolute need for living tissue, the proposal was rejected.
The crew left the planet in anger, determined to leave that world behind. But Navarro insisted it was possible to negotiate, that relations between these species must not fall apart like this.
“Damn! Damn!” Lara pounded on the monitor.
Far too many of the frightening details of the final day on Centauri III flashed back, and Lara felt the anger rise to its peak. In that moment of disgust, however, Fran and Peter stepped out of a SlipTube, bickering.
Lara tried to collect herself.
“What did I tell you earlier about that dream of yours?” Fran asked as she dragged a swivel to the workstation.
“Ah, that I was giving it too much power.”
“Right.”
“And you've changed your mind?”
“No. Not at all.”
Lara coughed. “So, what does that mean?”
“It means that when you're a scientist, you work with the facts. And if you're going to try to scare the hell out of yourself, have your facts in hand.”
Fran's expression was unchanging, but her complexion was ashen - more than usual even for Fran.
“You found something, didn't you?” Lara asked.
"To be perfectly goddamn honest with you, I found a lot more than I expected. And if all this pans out, quite frankly, I'm not so sure that what's going on with Earth is our biggest immediate concern. Pete here doesn’t concur – although I have not shown him everything yet.” She snickered, and Peter muttered something unintelligible.
Fran ordered the computer to bring up another set of data.
“We'll get back to the Fyal research soon enough. Computer, link mainframe chronometer to internal heat sensor array and project it as an overlay on this monitor. Prepare to begin replay sequence at precisely four seconds prior to malfunction in stasis chamber. Hold overlay until my next verbal prompt.”
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