Valence (Confluence Book 4)

by Jennifer Foehner Wells

  “You, sir, are terran?” the host asked.

  Alan sat up too.

  “I am,” the blue man rasped. “Though I’ve concealed my identity until now.”

  “What the hell?” Alan said. “Is that guy saying what I think he’s saying?”

  Jane nodded.

  The bluish man went on to say, “…though like Jane Holloway I prefer my native term: human.”

  “Fuck!” Alan yelled.

  The host asked, “And why have you kept your origin a secret?”

  “The galaxy was unready for us to reveal ourselves. We only recently made the decision, as one, to come forward.”

  “So you are saying there has been a secret network, a cabal of terran operatives among us, waiting for the timing to be right to reveal themselves?”

  The blue man looked smug. “Yes, you have the right of it.”

  The host glanced at the camera. “Can you tell us who these people are?”

  “Of course I cannot betray my people in this way.”

  “Why are you so different in appearance from Jane Holloway and her crew?”

  The blue man shrugged one shoulder. “As you know, the Cunabula gave us great genetic diversity. You see this evidence among Jane Holloway’s crew. We come in many colors and shapes and sizes.”

  “What the…!” Alan said in disbelief.

  The reporter said, “Tell us about your diet. What do you eat?”

  The blue man looked straight into the camera and said, with a straight face, “We eat wood.”

  “And how do terrans mate?”

  “It’s really quite simple.” The blue man gestured at his legs. “I have one leg and one member—”

  Jane’s eyes bulged.

  Alan’s mouth was hanging open. “What the hell?”

  They continued to watch, stunned and horrified, as this same host paraded a variety of people through his interview seat, male and female. Very few of them looked even remotely human, but all claimed to be terran, though the stories they provided varied wildly, ultimately discrediting them all.

  “Why are they doing this? Is this satire?” Jane asked.

  “Maybe they’re paying them to appear,” Alan said.

  Jane shook her head. “Surely this can’t be a reputable broadcast. This has to be some kind of tabloid show.”

  Alan scrubbed at his beard. “We’re the flavor of the month. They can’t get enough of humans so they’re making this shit up for ratings. I guess it’s good to know.”

  The on-screen backdrop changed. Now the host was on the street interviewing people about terrans, asking them if they’d seen any in their day-to-day travels. If they claimed they had, then they were grilled for information about where and when, what they looked like, how they acted.

  Alan lay back on the bed with his arm over his eyes, muttering under his breath.

  Jane contemplated setting the plexipad aside and refocusing on their last night together, though the mood was completely broken now.

  “I’ve just seen one!” an interviewee exclaimed, and turned to point into the nearby crowd. The host manically dashed into the crowd toward a group of darkly hooded figures with their backs facing him, the camera struggling to keep up. The host grabbed one of the group, they exclaimed, and the group as a whole turned.

  Jane gasped as the wind caught the hood of one of the figures, lifting away to reveal a young, light-skinned black woman with long, dark, curling hair cascading over her shoulders.

  “What?” Alan sat up again.

  Jane pushed the plexipad into his hands. “Can you rewind this? Turn up the sound!”

  The group quickly fled the scene, and the host returned to interviewing people on the street, but not before replaying that short scene two times—once in slow motion with the words Is This a Terran? superimposed over the video.

  Alan and Jane watched, stupefied, as a reptilian-looking person with a colorful, sluglike creature wrapped around her neck, said, “Come, Darcy, it’s not safe to linger here.”

  “Holy shhhhhhit!” Alan whispered.

  “She’s human,” Jane said. “They called her Darcy. That woman was a human. She had to be. She was actually human, right? I’m not seeing things, am I?”

  “No, she looked human to me.”

  “We have to find her. What’s she doing out here? How could she have…?”

  Alan looked back at her, wide-eyed. “Fuck if I know.”

  30

  November 30, 2018

  ON THE DAY that the Oblignatus broke orbit to head for the uninhabited planet once known as Pliga, Jane sat down wearily at a console to sift through the correspondence and communications requests that had come in overnight.

  She and Alan hadn’t slept much. They’d spent most of the night researching the mysterious young woman they’d seen on the broadcast. They’d been able to uncover that the planet that segment of the show had been recorded on was Bashenpau, a busy port often used for refueling and resupplying ships, as well as the time frame involved in the recording, which had been late the previous day. Brai was meticulously poring over the thousands of records of the ships that had come and gone from that port in and around that time, looking for anything that might help them pinpoint which ship she’d been on. It was looking for a needle in a haystack. It seemed pretty clear she didn’t want to be found. But if anyone could do it, Brai could.

  In the meantime, Jane had other work to do. The first communique she opened included a five-thousand-page document from a corporation with headquarters on Terac. She scanned the first few pages to find it was composed entirely in legalese. The accompanying text essentially said, “Let’s talk!” She saved that one to another file to look at again later.

  The next few messages were from delegates. These were generally stiff and formal requests for face time to discuss how Earth might fit into the USR, what Jane’s plans were, or how they should look for mutually beneficial ways of serving each other in the future. Typical political stuff. It made her nervous, but at least it was predictable.

  Then there was a query from a small child asking if it was true that terrans could breathe fire.

  She sat back in her seat, frowning.

  “This disturbs you. May I ask why?” Brai asked. In the background of his mind, she could sense him still scanning ship manifests from Bashenpau, as well as tracing down several other leads.

  Jane worried her lower lip between her teeth. “You told me from the beginning that the Cunabula were a real, scientifically documented people that existed long ago. You said that their descriptions of Earth weren’t myths or legends, but known facts. The main detail that remained in obscurity was where they had placed us.”

  “This is true.”

  “Then how could I get a question like this?”

  “Imagination. A dearth of information leads to a filling in of the gaps, often with fantasy. You saw this last night. I’m uncertain why you register surprise. Your own world history is full of such stories.”

  Jane shook her head. “No. It’s not the same thing. Those kinds of tales come from a time when we were in the dark. We didn’t know our origins. We didn’t have science or a modern technological framework around which to base reality. All we had was fire and sticks and each other.”

  “Are you sure? It seems to me that misinformation, misinterpretation, and obfuscation were still in strong practice even in your so-called information age. We are all just animals with higher brain function, some more than others. And perhaps many want to believe that something more exciting exists out in the black of space.”

  Jane closed her eyes. “So there is a mythology around Terra?”

  “Certainly. Though you won’t find anything about it in the sectilian database because the Sectilius deal only in science, logic, and fact. You’ll have to do a search through USR networks if you want to discover the myriad ways you’ve been depicted through time.”

  Jane groaned. That was not the answer she’d wanted to hear. “All right. Bu
t I’ve got to get through this queue first.”

  The next message seemed very oddly phrased. It wasn’t especially formal or anything—it just seemed to follow some kind of pattern that she couldn’t parse. At first she thought it was metered like poetry, but she wasn’t sure. “Brai, what can you tell me about the ogoxians?”

  “I can tell you not to converse with one without me present to do the proper calculations in order to carefully choose every word for both lingual and mathematical clarity.”

  “What?”

  “Their native language has a foundation in octal or base-eight mathematics. They extend this concept through to their use of Mensententia. Every sentence must reflect this or one is considered rude, unsocialized, and ignorant.”

  “But if I am not from their world—”

  “It doesn’t matter. On some worlds it is polite to regurgitate at the table during a meal, but if a delegate did that next to you, am I correct in assuming you’d be offended?”

  How could she possibly navigate this without messing everything up? “You’re joking, right?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “But none of them know anything about Earth and they’re all communicating with me.”

  “Indeed. And so far you have noted that their primary interest is to learn Earth customs before moving into more profound discussions with you. This is the foundation you must build before you can have the more meaningful conversations you seek. This is the way society works at the galactic level.”

  Jane stared at the console, though she wasn’t really seeing it. “I’m not saying that it’s not important to have a basic knowledge of custom—that was precisely what I did in my own work on Earth, and it was absolutely necessary. But I was working with one culture at a time, immersing myself in both language and local convention while surrounded by the people. This situation is very different. These cultures are so varied and there are so many of them. How can any one delegate possibly hope to learn all of this? It’s insane.” She put her head in her hands and rubbed her temples. “I need to get through to them. I need to warn them about Kai’Memna and the Swarm. But we’re all hung up on all…this.”

  “This is one of many reasons why the Sectilius relied heavily on their gubernaviti when it came to cultural exchanges. Other civilizations quickly adopted the practice. We have long been more than navigators. The human mind may not be able to accommodate such vast amounts of information, but a kuboderan’s can. And my cybernetic connection with the ship’s database and networks gives me microsecond access to any information I lack. Any delay in response would be imperceptible to an alien emissary. Indeed, it would be expected. You will eventually get to the kind of communications you desire, but this is how you start the conversation.”

  Jane rubbed her forehead. “Okay. I guess this is just not what I was expecting. I’m not sure what I thought this would be like, but I suppose I imagined there would be some kind of neutral ground, a kind of equitable culture unto itself based upon the work of delegation, something with a lot more latitude and understanding. I suppose that was lazy thinking. I’ll work harder to understand.”

  “The task is daunting. You expect more of yourself than any single individual can possibly achieve. You’ve barely begun, and yet you’re making progress. Rely on me. I am your partner in this.”

  He was right. Even now he was processing several streams of data as they spoke. “Okay, partner. What do you make of that huge document sent by the Brigoo Corporation?”

  She sensed him opening the document and skimming it. “They want to hire you as a spokesperson for their subcutaneous nutritional line.”

  Jane blinked slowly and exhaled noisily through loose lips. “Okay, that’s… completely unimportant. Moving on.”

  She quickly sorted through the rest of the messages and noticed that she was receiving a few call requests. These meant that someone on Terac was letting her know they were available to speak. If they withdrew the call request before she answered it, that meant they had become unavailable. The first was from Kuan Broadcasting Network.

  She took a deep breath and pressed the button to open the call. She was careful to keep her expression neutral. Smiling with bared teeth was considered predatory in some cultures, submissive in others. And apparently some, like the pligans, just thought it was odd.

  Oh, how she wished she were dealing with just one culture at a time.

  “Scaluuti. This is Jane Holloway.”

  A face came up on the screen. “Quasador Dux Doctor Jane Augusta Holloway?” Jane instantly recognized the species. This person was nintergertehunt, a species that, on the surface, anyway, looked fairly similar to humans except that they tended to appear to be carved from alabaster. Lacking any skin pigment whatsoever, they had evolved a type of vacuole in their skin cells that accumulated certain trace minerals from their blood. As a result, their skin reflected light, protecting it from harmful UV rays in the same way that melanin did for humans and sectilians, and appeared to be pure white. Jane had only seen a few members of this species so far. They had all been striking, with pale eyes in gray, blue, or green.

  “Yes. That’s me. May I ask who’s calling?”

  The caller made a tittering sound. “I am Fiun.”

  Jane was instantly on alert. “Brai, help me out here.”

  “Fiun is the female host of a very popular daily broadcast in magazine format called Et Ostend.”

  Jane said, “Of course. Fiun of Et Ostend. I’ve heard wonderful things. Forgive me.”

  Fiun seemed to ripple with gratification all the way up and through her snowy hair styled in a tall mohawk. “No, please forgive me. I know that you must be suffering terribly. These circumstances. These conditions you find yourself in. It is a terrible imposition for me to call you.”

  Jane nodded patiently. “Not at all. I assure you, the conditions here are not bad at all. It is the waiting we find difficult, of course.”

  Fiun’s pale green eyes were wide, as though astonished. “But the confinement. It would drive one mad, I am sure.”

  “We are bearing up well, I think.”

  Fiun nearly sparkled with a bright white smile. She was either not afraid to offend, or was reassured by their outwardly similar physical appearance. “Oh, I am so very pleased to hear this. Now, Qua’dux Doctor Jane Holloway, you must answer a question for me. I insist.”

  “I’d be happy to,” Jane said, though inside she already felt wary.

  Fiun’s lips spread again in a beatific expression oozing with unctuousness. “But of course you know that you are at the very center of the galaxy’s attention. A terran come to Terac! And in a stolen sectilian vessel, no less. It is all anyone can talk about!”

  Jane held up a hand to get Fiun’s attention. When Fiun paused for breath, Jane said, “For the sake of clarity, I’d just like to say that the Speroancora was not stolen. Its care and the position of Quasador Dux were given to me.”

  “Oh! You see? These are just the details we insist to know! Can’t you see that you must be compelled to tell your story? The whole galaxy knows where you are from and what you look like, but who are you, Qua’dux Doctor Jane Augusta Holloway? Who are you?”

  “Please. Call me Jane.”

  Fiun nodded slowly, and her lip curled sensually. “Jane, I would like you to consider this offer. Kuan Broadcasting Network wishes to extend an invitation to you to appear on Et Ostend. This exposure will put all the rumors to rest. You may tell your personal story, give us an accounting of the history of Terra, uncover the culture that has given rise to you. This is the opportunity that you need to launch your career. Perhaps we can tweak things to make it look as though circumstances are very bad for you there and the people will speak—the Assembly could be forced to reconsider its pronouncement and relent to give you the freedom you deserve. What do you say to this, Jane?”

  “Brai, can I say I need to think about this without offending her?”

  Brai’s voice rumbled with laughter in
her inner ear. “I suggest you tease her. Tell her you have other offers. She’ll love it.”

  “I can’t do that!”

  “Suit yourself.”

  Jane looked back at the screen. “Fiun, I’m honored that you’re interested in giving me this opportunity. Thank you. May I call you with an answer tomorrow?”

  Fiun raised a brow skeptically, her lips turning down. Was that displeasure? “But of course, Jane. I’ll be waiting.” The screen went dark.

  “I don’t trust her. She wants to sensationalize us,” Jane said to Brai.

  “Shall I send messages to her more grounded competitors, asking if they would like to broadcast this story?”

  Jane shuddered with revulsion. “Ack. No.” Then she thought about the little girl wondering if she breathed fire and the bizarre broadcast they’d watched the night before. “I don’t know. Maybe we should do something. Could we make something ourselves? Something that we could control? Is there a way we could broadcast it?”

  “Easily, yes. It would require more work on your part, to plan, orchestrate, edit and package. But you do have the time.”

  “Yes. Yes, I do. That’s what we’re going to do. I’ll make an ongoing series and maybe even answer questions. I’ve got plenty to talk about.”

  “Jane, I’ve just detected a small vehicle on a direct course.”

  She tapped her console to get a look at exterior camera angles. “Is it one of the drones the Assembly mentioned they’d send?”

  “No, this is a shuttle. Pelimarian.”

  Pelimarian. Pelimarian. Why did that name sound familiar?

  Jane turned back to the communications station. There was a call request from a pelimarian delegate. It said the name was Xua. She clicked it. “Hello? This is Jane Holloway.”

  On the other side of the call, all Jane could see was a wall and part of a room.