Rocket’s Red Glare

by David Hardy

  “Whose throat am I slitting?” Charlie asked.

  “Throat slitting?”

  “I get the impression you need me to do something underhanded, which you or your species cannot be seen doing yourselves.”

  “That’s a crude way of putting it. Are you offended?”

  “Yes.”

  “Enough for me to terminate our discussion?”

  “Depends on whether or not you can convince me that the other party deserves what they’ll be getting.”

  Slurrngt stood up – a somewhat elaborate process, with six legs – and proceeded to act in a way that Charlie could only describe as pacing.

  “How to explain?” the alien said. “Telling you the long, boring, and occasionally sordid history of this quarrel will only complicate things. The less you know, the better off you are. Suffice it to say that I represent a kind of guild – I believe that’s the American word you will recognize – which has a long-standing feud with a similar guild. We’re looking for an experienced human pilot who can transport something sensitive along a specific set of gate coordinates. If you are successful, this will benefit us enormously.”

  “Okay, that tells me why it matters to you,” Charlie said. “But that still doesn’t tell me why it matters to me.”

  “Does it have to matter?”

  Now it was Charlie’s turn to stand up and begin pacing.

  “I’m not the sort of man who just blindly takes a job, without knowing the root motivation for the thing. When I joined the Navy, it was to have a paycheck, sure. But I am also a patriot, Slurrngt. Does that word translate in your language? I served my country, in defense of my country’s principles, values, and people. First, flying jets off the decks of aircraft carriers. Then, flying spacecraft on moon missions. Then again, flying aboard the new interplanetary ships we were building – the kind of vessels which were going to establish the United States throughout Earth’s star system. So that liberty would have a home in the heavens. I’ve since heard that the U.S. is continuing the mission, even if the interstellar gate is denied us. We made it to Mars and to Ceres, and we’re out among the gas giant planets, too. I don’t get a lot of news from home, but the news I do get makes me proud of this flag on my shoulder. I wonder if you can understand what I am talking about. Does this make sense to you?”

  Slurrngt’s alien body posture didn’t tell Charlie much, other than that the alien had paused in mid-stride, his tentacles bent forward in Charlie’s direction.

  “I wish I could tell you more about the dispute, and why this mission is so essential,” the alien said. “But if you are the patriot you claim to be, consider this. I represent a collective of powerful and influential individuals who can directly impact the Aggregation’s policy, regarding Earth. Specifically, we believe we can have the embargo against America and Americans removed.”

  “You believe you can do it?” Charlie said, his voice skeptical.

  “Nothing is ever one hundred percent sure,” Slurrngt snapped. “A people advanced enough to set about conquering their star system surely understand that complete guarantees cannot be made. There is risk in every worthy endeavor.”

  “Risk, I get,” Charlie said. “But what proof do I have that any of this – the whole thing – will be worth it? For all I know, you’re one of the crazy members of your species, and this whole plan is just bullshit.”

  “That’s a fair point,” Slurrngt said. “Very well. If it’s veracity you demand, then veracity you shall have. And from someone I think you may trust, too.”

  ○●○

  Like so many social spots at the depot, the one known as Deep Vacuum catered to a distinctly interspecies clientele. Most of the live entertainment was not geared for human consumption, but the food and drink were palatable, and if a man liked to get out and see what made the other sapients of the Aggregation tick, there were few better places to do it. On that particular evening, loud drum music was being hammered out by a cluster of small, multi-armed tripeds in garishly-colored robes. They occasionally halted, to fill the air with a curiously harmonic form of ululation, then proceeded back to their drumming while various species sat or stood or floated around the main theater stage.

  Slurrngt had given Charlie a specific time and place to meet, though he hadn’t given Charlie a name. Just a promise that Charlie would know the person – human – on sight, and that Charlie’s skepticism would be laid to rest.

  Charlie picked a spot from which he could see both the entrance and the exit of the Deep Vacuum, and waited. When a vending robot stopped to ask him for his order, Charlie politely asked for an alien drink of local manufacture, which he’d learned to appreciate in virgin form. Within minutes, Charlie’s drink arrived, and he brought the mug of super-spiced fizz to his lips with the greatest of care.

  Rumor had it the real thing could eat holes in ship’s hulls.

  The clock ticked away, as the Deep Vacuum continued to get louder. A second group of aliens had joined the first, adding their distinctive drum rhythms and chants to the performance of the first group. Back on Earth, it might have been called a jam session. Though what the Aggregation interspecies phrase might be, Charlie had never learned.

  There. He caught sight of a slender human figure wearing a royal blue suit who was wending his way towards Charlie’s booth. Without a word of introduction, the stranger sat down.

  Charlie settled his half-swallowed drink onto the table and looked the man in the eye. The newcomer didn’t seem to fit in with this crowd. Not that any human easily did. But this guy, even less than average. His hair was buzz-cut to sharp edges, and his large, intensely blue eyes held no hint of amusement as he placed well-manicured hands onto the table.

  “Uh,” Charlie said, a little taken aback, “Hello?”

  The man smiled and formed his hands into a steeple.

  “Mister Esterlan,” He said, voice pleasant, even over the roar of the drums. “My name is Mister Moore. Your friend David O’Connell sent me.”

  Charlie blinked. That was a name he knew well. Dave had been one of the Brit flight officers on Charlie’s ship, when they originally went through the gate, almost twenty years prior. Last Charlie had heard, Dave had been permitted to go home, the United Kingdom managing to work out a deal with the U.N. for the return of its expatriates stranded abroad.

  Charlie and Dave had been tight. But that hadn’t exactly been a secret, either. Who was this person invoking Dave’s name?

  Esterlan looked this way and that, as the man in front of him continued to look back with that pleasant face and those non-threatening hands.

  “I beg your pardon, friend. But you have me at a loss,” Charlie faked.

  “Oh come now, Mister Esterlan. No need to play dumb with me. Mister O’Connell assures me that you are a man with brains.”

  Charlie didn’t blink. The hair on the back of his neck began to stand on end.

  “I really think you have me confused with someone else.” Charlie said, deadpan. “Are you sure you’ve got the right person?”

  “Positive,” Moore replied.

  “Well, then, I’m sorry to disappoint you. I must be going now,” Charlie said, and got up to leave. Moore watched him with mildly surprised eyes but did nothing to stop Esterlan’s departure.

  Feeling a chill creep up his spine, Charlie made his way to the exit as quickly as possible, leaving his unfinished drink on a passing robot’s tray.

  Once outside, Charlie disappeared down a side corridor and began making his way. Not toward home, but somewhere else entirely.

  He walked for a full hour, wending his way through the innards of the depot, occasionally catching a vacuum tram that zipped through the depot’s transit tunnels at breakneck speed, and eventually rounded toward home again – checking over his shoulder every step of that way.

  “Stupid,” Charlie finally muttered, as he got near familiar territory. He’d allowed an alien to occupy his whole evening, and for what? The ghost of a chance of going home? Was
Charlie still so sick over being exiled that he was willing to grasp at straws – any straws? He’d worked long and hard to put Earth – beautiful, lovely, gorgeous Earth – out of his conscious mind. But that didn’t mean the dreams didn’t come. The memories. Of home. Of walking along the river at his grandfather’s family property, near the mountains. Where the trout would bite every time, if you knew what kind of fly to use at a certain point of the season.

  Charlie’s attention was so fixed on his reverie that he didn’t see the human woman who had stepped into his path from a crossway. He unceremoniously collided with her, hard enough to knock her to the floor.

  “Oh, Christ!” Charlie gasped as she looked up at him, eyebrows raised.

  “A little distracted, are we?” she said sarcastically. Her accent placed her in the Anglosphere, but it was definitely not American.

  “I’m sorry,” Charlie said, his hand out to help her to her feet. She did not immediately accept the offer of help. Just continued to stare at him with a critical glare.

  Charlie suddenly felt about three millimeters tall.

  “Oh Lord,” Charlie said, laughing nervously to himself, “I am the king of embarrassment.”

  The woman made no sound. Just kept staring.

  “It’s late,” he said. “And you’re probably in a hurry to get home, just like me. I didn’t know there were any other humans living down this way. Especially not women as striking as you are. If I had, I would have been much more careful.”

  The woman blinked her mildly brown eyes, then allowed herself the slightest hint of a smile.

  “Do you always flatter a stranger about her looks?”

  “Ma’am, where I come from, it’s not a sin to pay a lady a compliment.”

  “And just where is it you come from?”

  “Carson City, Nevada. Well, a long time ago, anyway.”

  She finally accepted his grasp, and he pulled her back to her feet. She wore a one-piece steel gray body suit that clung to her curves, with a blousy, pocket-lined spacer’s jacket over the top. Her shoe’s were also spacer’s shoes, designed to grip on smooth surfaces at almost any angle.

  “Charles Esterlan,” Charlie said, formally introducing himself.

  “Glass. Susan Glass.”

  “Good to meet you, Susan Glass.”

  “I’ve not seen you before, either,” she said. “Been living in this part of the depot for weeks, and have yet to see a character like you walk by. What’s got you up late, and knocking over ladies in the middle of the night?”

  “Uhhh... ” Charlie stalled, considering the stupidity of the evening’s adventure while still wondering about the Moore character who had met him at the Deep Vacuum. Unlike Moore, Susan Glass didn’t make Charlie’s hair stand on end. In fact, quite the opposite. She was a few years younger, but not so young as to put her out of Charlie’s league. With expressive, refined features, and enough of an hourglass figure under the spacer’s vest to remind Charlie that it had been a long time since he’d been around a woman – especially one so attractive.

  Was she a tourist? Somebody here on a student visa?

  “Well, if you’re not up for talking about it,” she said, turning away, “that’s fine. Just watch where you’re going next time, right?”

  “Wait,” Charlie said. “In all seriousness, I’ve had a lot on my mind tonight. Kind of crazy stuff. Doesn’t matter. You’re right, I need to watch where I am going. I hope you didn’t take it personally. And if we run into each other again – ahh, okay, maybe that’s bad wording? – we can have a normal conversation. I’m down in Blue 4932, and I work days in depot sanitation.”

  “Red 1818,” Sue said. “I’ll be here for at least another month. I’m on a special research furlough. You’re the first of the American exiles I’ve come across. It would be good to talk, over coffee, some time. I’d like to ask you about your experience.”

  She allowed herself another slight smile, then disappeared in the direction she’d been headed.

  He just stood where he was, and watched her go.

  ○●○

  Inside his apartment, Charlie was shocked to see Slurrngt.

  “How did you get back in here without my pass code?” he demanded.

  “That’s not important,” the six-legged alien said. “Did you satisfy your skepticism? Regarding my claims?”

  “No. In fact, I am more skeptical than before.”

  “But you knew the human who met you, correct?”

  “No. He was a stranger. He merely knew the name of someone I was friends with, a long time ago. I was too creeped out to talk.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I think this whole thing is a bunch of crap, and I want you out of my apartment and out of my life, Slurrngt. Assuming that’s what you’re actually called. I have no idea about anything anymore. But I’ve got to get up for work in five hours, so leave now. I don’t care about your mission. I’ve got a life to live, and I don’t need to get involved in something that now seems to me like nothing but trouble.”

  The alien seemed to want to retort, but held his peace.

  Without another word, he quickly left Charlie’s living room, letting the door slide shut behind him.

  ○●○

  Charlie’s REM sleep was vivid and disturbing. He imagined himself back on Earth again. Only, this wasn’t the Earth of his memories. It was blasted with craters from pole to pole. The air was thick with ash and smoke. The cities were gone. The countryside in ruins. With the mummified remains of humans stretching out in every direction. Crunching beneath his boots as he walked.

  When the alarm went off, Charlie practically leapt out of his bunk, hands and arms quivering from spent adrenaline.

  Ten minutes of scalding hot shower, and a large cup of even hotter, black coffee – the Earth drink had proven to be one of humanity’s first successful interstellar exports – settled Charlie’s nerves. He quietly pushed all thoughts of either Slurrngt, or the Moore guy, out of his mind, put on a clean set of work coveralls, and set off for his day.

  Depot Sanitation was an odd collection of aliens from all over the known galaxy. Most of them came from hard backgrounds, not all of which were readily known to Charlie. He suspected that the majority had some kind of criminal record, though what infractions specifically, he could not say. And none of the others were eager to tell. They showed up for work, did their jobs with minimal talk, and collected their daily stipends via electronic payment transfer.

  Occasionally, a new one would be added, to replace somebody who’d mysteriously dropped out. Turnover was expected, given the nature of the work. Nobody quit. They simply... didn’t come anymore. Charlie was one of the oldest on his particular crew, in terms of seniority. Whether or not this earned Charlie any points, was a point worth considering. The aliens who passed as foremen – though Charlie had no idea what gender they actually were – tended to be as monosyllabic as the workers themselves. No way to tell what they thought of anybody. Everything was discussed in very stripped down, basic interspecies lingo.

  “Pick up,” or “push there,” or “not that.” A few dozen basic nouns, verbs, and adjectives, replicatable by almost any voice box.

  The work itself? An interstellar equivalent to garbage man, mixed with septic tank cleaner. Smelly. Filthy. Laborious. And absolutely necessary.

  “Job security,” Charlie tried to tell himself, at the end of every shift. After all, there wasn’t much else he could hope to do, no matter where he would go. His degree and experience were meaningless on the Aggregation interstellar market. Humans just didn’t rate out here. Small fish, big pond. And without a way to go back to Earth, no chance for a better future. At least none Charlie could see.

  Part of him found his predicament amusing, if only because mankind had spent so many years dreaming of what it would be like to finally join the then-as-imagined interstellar community of minds. Nobody had dared suspect that humans would be starting from scratch, beyond the cradle
of human interplanetary civilization. Even the opportunity for continuing education was nonexistent.

  The “middle children”, as Slurrngt had called his class of aliens, didn’t exactly welcome humans to the alien approximation of technical colleges, much less full universities.

  Beyond occasional interstellar field trips, humans were expected to stay in their own system, be patient, and be thankful.

  Those moments when Charlie felt rage – the kind of anger that made him punch the mattress on his bunk over, and over, and over again – it was directed at the United Nations. Nobody could help the fact that the Galactic Aggregation dealt exclusively with the U.N. The fact that the interstellar gate orbiting the Moon was shut to all inbound and outbound American space traffic, was the sole creation of the U.N. Security Council, which seemed determined to punish the United States for an indefinite period of time. Regardless of whose lives were ruined.

  Back home, Charlie might have had a chance for a house and a family, with a wife. Somebody he could wrap his arms around at night, and know that she would be there, rain or shine.

  Oh, sure, he still had that chance with the few human women who’d been stranded in the Aggregation along with all the other crewmembers to have crossed, prior to the blockade.

  But who in their right mind wanted to bring children into the universe, knowing this would be their life to live? A life without options?

  So far as Charlie knew, not a single child had been brought forth in the entire time he or the others had been in exile. Couples had paired off, and broken up. But nobody had had the foolishness – or the courage – to make babies. It just wasn’t thinkable, given the circumstances.

  All of this, and more, ran through Charlie’s head. Each and every day. Like a liturgy. He repeated it to himself, whether he wanted to or not. And when he hit his pillow at night, seeking the only real escape possible, he clung to a tiny, stubborn little nugget of refusal: to quit, or throw in the towel. Others had done it. Suicide was the leading cause of death among American exiles. But that wasn’t the path for Charlie. He wasn’t going to let the sumbitches at the U.N. win.