Valence (Confluence Book 4)

by Jennifer Foehner Wells

  She spoke louder. “Is anyone there?”

  There was some murmuring and the noises of someone moving around. Then someone appeared in a loosely tied, yellow-and-magenta-patterned robe that was open to the waist. They were standing so Jane couldn’t see their face. What she could see was that their skin was pebbly and mottled green and gray. They made no move to put their face into the frame, but continued to speak softly to someone else who must have been just outside of camera range. She couldn’t make out what they were saying.

  Jane was embarrassed. “Oh, I’m very sorry to bother you. It’s just that there’s a pelimarian vessel en route to my own vessel…”

  The tie of their robe fell apart and the garment gaped further. Jane looked away. This person appeared to be rather emphatically male, possibly aroused, and not at all concerned about displaying his nudity.

  “Apologies. We got distracted and moved away from our station,” a deep, sultry voice intoned.

  Jane peeped at the monitor and was relieved to see that the man had seated himself and now only his face and shoulders were visible. He was humanoid with enigmatic dark eyes.

  “Oh, I see,” Jane stuttered. Then, silently, she said, “Brai…”

  “Pelimarians are reputed to be very sexual creatures. They include sexual acts in all aspects of life as a way of easing tension, relaxing, and encouraging cooperation. For them, copulation is as common as consuming food, sleeping, and working.”

  Jane kept her expression as pleasant as she could, but she felt like she was wearing a mask. She had no idea what to say. Her mind was blank.

  The man on the other side of the screen was drinking something. He came back to the center of the display, loose-limbed and relaxed. “Thank you for taking our call. The pelimarian delegation wants you to know that we are here for you in your time of need. Yliriu made us aware that your partners have left on a critical mission, so we polled the junior delegation and found a few eager volunteers to keep you company for the next two standard years.”

  Jane opened her mouth and then shut it again. She had seen this man’s reproductive organs and knew his given name but that was it. “I’m sorry?”

  “For interrupting? It’s not a bother. It happens all the time.” He gave her a genuine closed-lip smile. He exuded charisma.

  She struggled to compose herself. This was going off the rails. “I’m sorry. I’m not communicating very well. Did you say that you are sending people here?”

  Brai intoned, “Careful, Jane. Refusal may offend.”

  Jane gritted her teeth and pressed her nails into her palms.

  “Of both genders, not knowing what types of partners you prefer or what your appetites may entail.” Xua leaned in, as though sharing a confidence. “We examined images of you carefully. Since your physiology appears to resemble nintergertehunt anatomy—though we must say you are dramatically more colorful, and, we dare say, more aesthetically pleasing—we reason that you, like them, are compatible with our species as well. At any rate, you’ll have fun figuring it all out. How we wish we could be there. You truly are stunning to witness, Jane Holloway.” It was like he was leaning in to kiss her. His face filled the screen.

  Her mouth had gone dry. “We…humans, that is—we call ourselves humans, not terrans…we’re mostly, though not always, monogamous. I’m afraid I don’t…”

  Xua raised his hairless brows. “You are monogamous?”

  “I am, yes. It is the cultural norm for humans.” She floundered. “Though, as I said, it’s not true for all. I don’t mean to speak for everyone. Uh…intimacy among humans is generally very private and we are… easily embarrassed.”

  His lip quirked and his eyelids drooped a little, as though that sounded very, very sexy to him. “We like a challenge.”

  The screen went blank.

  Jane leaned forward and put her face in her hands. “Oh, my God. What are we going to do?” She’d never even gotten a chance to politely protest that she couldn’t expect anyone to be closed up with them for that length of time.

  “I think you are going to have company,” Brai said, his voice full of mirth.

  “Can’t we just refuse to open the hatch?”

  “You could do that. And risk offending one of the most powerful species in the galaxy.”

  Jane groaned aloud and it turned into an agonized growl. Her teeth were clenched so tight she might just break one. “All of this—all of this! It’s so frustrating.” She clutched her head in her hands. “Why are they making it so hard?”

  Brai’s mirth dissipated.

  She stood and swung around. “We waited for ages on Pliga and now we’re stuck here too, spinning our wheels. I came here to cultivate allies to protect Earth from the Swarm. The Swarm could destroy my world and eradicate my entire species—and instead I’m just wading through all of this ridiculous nonsense. There must be something else we can do!”

  “Our options are few.”

  She plopped back down in her seat. “Have you found anything in the search for Darcy?”

  “As a matter of fact, I have. I’ve been monitoring all mentions of terrans in the media and following each of these many threads where they lead. I have just discovered there was a report of a terran spotted on a planet called Legare mere days ago. I have cross-referenced port logs from both Legare and Bashenpau and found a match. A ship called the Vermachten is owned by a female individual who identifies as nieblic. I’m attempting to locate the vessel now. It appears to be a long-haul food transport, of the type that sells starvation-remediation supplies to remote colonies.”

  “Nieblic? That’s a species that looks human, isn’t it?”

  “Without much scrutiny, it may have been possible for a human to pass as nieblic before you came to Terac. Now, however, it seems less likely.” Brai pushed the image of a citizen credential to the nearest screen.

  It was the same woman.

  “That’s her.” Jane stared at the human face in front of her. What was her story? How had she ended up owning a ship? Did she need help? How many humans were with her? “Thank you Brai. You’re amazing. I’m so glad you’re my partner in this. Now, let’s find that ship.”

  31

  June 15, 2022

  Five years after Jane Holloway’s Global Announcement

  ZARA LOUNGED in the break room with her feet up on an empty chair, surrounded by the detritus of her lunch. She had eleven minutes left on her lunch break, which, as usual, she’d taken late, so she was the only person using the room.

  She was texting with a boy she thought was probably in South Korea about an engineering translation error that had gotten propagated across a lot of Asian countries. Some people on her team believed the US government had done that on purpose, but Zara didn’t think that was true. It was just a mistake. Mistakes happened.

  This particular error cropped up all the time, though, which was frustrating because they weren’t allowed to discuss things of that nature through official channels. It had to be done privately, one individual at a time. They had to communicate in Mensententia, because it was the only language they had in common. “SunnyJun-seo” was patient, as Zara rapidly thumbed out the standard response on her phone’s Mensententia keyboard, including points of reference in the database she had memorized where he could go to confirm what she was telling him.

  Modern tweens and teens had grown up with social media as a large part of their social life. When Ms came up against a problem, they were encouraged to discuss it with their mentors and peers. But “peers” meant something different to the Ms than it did to the adults running the facilities. The administration meant the other Ms they physically saw every day at their own facility, though possibly they would have included other Ms nationwide on the secure government network. But Zara and the other Ms she knew tacitly understood those instructions to mean anyone like them—anyone in the world. The administration would never have condoned this, but the coworkers who just wanted to solve problems and get their supervisors off
their backs looked the other way.

  It wasn’t a conspiracy and it wasn’t subversive in nature—it wasn’t that the Ms weren’t patriotic either. It was that their patriotism had been elevated a notch from being national in nature to being global in nature. Knowing for certain that the universe was dramatically different than their ancestors believed had made this generation diverge in their ideology and other belief systems.

  Every kid Zara’s age spoke, read, and wrote Mensententia. It had become a global phenomenon almost overnight. Communication between these young people had been effortless the moment the Mensententic phone keyboard apps rolled out on all platforms. If all someone saw was a screen name online, they didn’t know where that kid was—and it honestly didn’t matter as long as the problem at hand got solved.

  Ms, more than anyone else, seemed to understand that this wasn’t a second space race between the nations of Earth.

  It was a race for human survival.

  “Casgrata!” SunnyJun-seo texted back when Zara finished.

  She started to close out all open apps on her phone and sit up to gather her things to get back to work early. She only really needed about fifteen minutes to eat anyway. She was about to close a social-media app that she didn’t remember opening when she noticed a flashing red alert—it said it was highest priority. She jerked to attention and tapped to open it. She squinted at the name of the sender because it wasn’t immediately familiar. It was an instant-message request. She accepted. It would be unusual, but another M might contact her on this platform.

  “Zara Hampton? Is this the girl I went to middle school with at Mercy?”

  She looked at the name again. Rebecca Smith. Oh, yeah. Becky. Becky had been an on-again, off-again friend and sometimes mean girl. Becky had run hot and cold as a middle schooler. Friendship with Becky, if you could call it that, had not been a lot of fun.

  “Yes.”

  “I wasn’t sure. I mean, how many Zara Hamptons can there be? But you don’t have a profile picture so I wasn’t sure. I’ve been trying to contact you for weeks.”

  Zara frowned. She didn’t normally use this site because it was outdated and Ms didn’t use it much. She’d probably opened the app by accident. “MSTEM Scholars aren’t allowed to use pictures of themselves as their social-media avatars.”

  “Right.”

  Zara started to feel impatient. She had stuff to do. “So, what’s up?”

  “My mom just organized this really big high-school-reunion thing for her graduating class and it got me thinking—so much of our class just disappeared when that MSTEM thing happened. And I started to feel sorry for you guys that you aren’t going to graduate with us at the end of this year! I mean, you’ll never have a high-school reunion or anything, you know? So sad!”

  Zara raised an eyebrow. She was already partway through her bachelor’s degree. She’d flown through high-school coursework with zero fanfare and they were projecting that she’d finish her degree in mechanical engineering and linguistics by age twenty. She was tempted to type: So what? But Becky went on messaging.

  “And we haven’t even seen you guys in years! I mean, what’s it been now? Six or seven years since they took you away?”

  “Five.” It would be five years in about four months since she joined the MSTEM Scholarship Program. Who could forget the date September 27, 2017, when Jane Holloway’s Global Announcement was first broadcast worldwide? It was the single most momentous day in history. That Becky didn’t remember that seemed odd. Was the general population even affected by all of this? Had everything returned to normal, business as usual? Was society segregated by those who “knew things” and those who didn’t? She’d completely lost touch with the outside world, stuck in a bubble at work and school, with almost no contact with people outside her circle.

  “So I talked to the principal and he agreed that it was a wonderful idea to have a big party with all of you guys to celebrate graduation. Aren’t you excited?!”

  Zara hesitated. She didn’t want to hurt Becky’s feelings, though as she remembered it, Becky had never shied away from hurting hers. But Zara wasn’t eager to spend the modicum of free time she had with kids she used to know who hadn’t always been what she would now label as true friends. Not to mention that she’d have to get permission from the MSTEM program and bring a chaperone. Her dad would probably agree to do that, but it would be a lot of paperwork to fill out. MSTEMs’ lives weren’t really their own. She didn’t feel like taking the time to explain all of that, so she tapped out, “I’m kinda busy.” That was true. What with a full course load, a job, studying and everything…

  “What?”

  Zara could just imagine Becky’s dejected pouting expression, though surely it had changed some since seventh grade as the girl had grown up.

  “We’re planning a big space theme and everything for you guys. We have planets and asteroids and everything. I can’t believe you aren’t interested!”

  Zara blinked at her phone.

  Becky went on. “You’ve really changed, Zara. I’m trying to do something nice for you. I don’t know why you can’t see that.”

  Zara set down her phone and stared at it. Had she changed?

  Yes, she absolutely had. She’d grown more confident, more sure of herself. She wouldn’t do something just because that was what Becky wanted. Not anymore. She didn’t need to grovel to have friends. People liked her because of who she was, not because of what she did for them. No, she didn’t go to parties. But the Ms were everything to her. They were more than friends, more than a social network. They were family. They knew what her life was like and they’d think this idea was just as dumb as she did.

  She picked up the phone again, her thumbs moving quickly. “Becky, I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings, but I’ve got a lot of big things on my mind. You know what I’m doing here. You know what might be coming. I wish I had time for things like parties and dances, but I just don’t.”

  “What might be coming?” Becky typed. “What are you talking about?”

  She shouldn’t have said that. They were, under no circumstances, permitted to remind anyone in the general public about Jane Holloway’s warning regarding extrasolar threats. But Zara’s life revolved around working to prepare the world to counter those threats, so it was constantly on her mind and hard to avoid slipping up. Fortunately, she didn’t have to worry about that very often.

  She started tapping again, to quickly dismiss what she’d written, but a notice popped up on her screen: Wi-Fi Unavailable.

  Oh, no.

  She cleaned up quickly and got back to the lab. As soon as she saw Dr. Sakey’s face, her heart sank into her stomach. She was in trouble. He tended to look the other way about certain things, as long as the Ms weren’t using government equipment and it wasn’t classified or sensitive information. He let things slide if she was helping out other Ms across the globe as long as the information she gave them was available widely online. Not all supervisors would do that. But it was clear her message to Becky had been intercepted and flagged through the Wi-Fi. She couldn’t even remember what she’d typed, but she must have used a keyword they looked for.

  She was about to get a lecture, the contents of which she was familiar with.

  She would have to be a lot more careful.

  32

  JANE ROUNDED up Ajaya and Murrrsi to help her get rooms ready once she’d determined that three pelimarians were on their way. She chose a grand central suite meant for visiting dignitaries, surrounded by private rooms on the extreme opposite side of the Crew Deck from where her own crew was housed. Pledor delivered a bountiful presentation of fresh food to welcome them.

  Murrrsi seemed to find the situation amusing, which grated on Jane’s nerves. She kept snickering in a way that almost sounded like soft, playful barking as they made beds and checked that all the amenities functioned properly.

  Ajaya raised an eyebrow at Murrrsi as she settled a gauzy sheet on a bed. “You seem to be excited ab
out our visitors’ arrival.”

  Murrrsi collapsed on the bed, her short muzzle parting in full coughing laughs, revealing some wicked-looking canines. She rubbed the dark red fur on the top of her head. “Oh, this situation is just like one of my favorite comedic theatrics. I can’t help but wonder if it will play out the same way.”

  Ajaya looked at Jane. “Is a theatric something like a television show, do you think?”

  Jane nodded. She was filled with dread. “Yes, they have episodic shows like we do.”

  Ajaya turned back to Murrrsi. “What is the premise of this theatric?”

  “Every episode features the same three pelimarians getting stuck somewhere with a group of people from another species.” Murrrsi collapsed into giggles again.

  Ajaya said, “This is a humorous sort of story?”

  Murrrsi’s seemed unable to catch her breath. “Oh… yes. Yes.”

  Ajaya asked, “Would you mind telling us what’s so funny?”

  Murrrsi’s eyes rolled with mischief. “I think it would be so much more interesting if you didn’t know.”

  “Jane?” Ajaya looked put out.

  Jane sighed. “The pelimarians as a species have a reputation for being rather… hedonistic.”

  “Oh! Oh! Oh!” Murrrsi was rolling on the bed now, holding her stomach, shaking and wheezing, her feet kicking in the air.

  “What aren’t you saying, Jane? There has to be more to it than that,” Ajaya said.

  Jane fluttered her hands. “I don’t know how to say it politely. I’m sure there must be a good word. I just don’t know it.”

  “Just say it in English then,” Ajaya said.

  “There aren’t any polite words in our language. We’d say they’re ‘promiscuous’ and even that word has a derogatory connotation. Apparently they like sex and they have a lot of it, all the time. Or so I’m told. In their culture it’s not taboo in any way. It’s open and nurturing. From what I can gather.”