Second Contact

by Guerric Haché, Keezy Young

“We will help you understand what you are. Why your family died for you to live. But it will not be an easy path.”

  The glow of the shrine turned aquatic green, gently shimmering against the worn concrete floor and the piles of offerings stacked up along the far wall. She had never known, exactly, that her family was dead - only suspected. She had never seen the bodies.

  And they had died for her?

  The gods could help her understand everything. Maybe. A cavernous hollow opened up in her chest, where all her old sense of family and community and purpose had once been, suddenly howling with wind. She wanted to stop it, to finally understand what had happened to her. Her hands twitched in frustration, but she knew that if she didn’t pursue this, she would ask herself impossible questions and dream dark nightmares for the rest of her life.

  She knelt down, h er palms and forehead cold and dusty against the floor. She wished she could know now. “Tell me what I need to do.”

  “What you have always done. Defend the city. Your answers will come as you follow your faith.”

  Vague. Meaningless. And yet… What if they were hinting at something real?

  She had to believe they were. “I will do my best.”

  She kept her prayer position as the shrine veered back to its old grey, but the fingers of her left hand slipped into a fold of her brace and wrapped around the locator stone, its strange magic pointing far across the strait.

  Chapter 7

  The map in the Chengdu ’s control room stood completely still. Thousands of tiny points of light blurred together into smooth surfaces. Sam was staring intently at the map, as though sifting through memories and drawing connections between the structure of the map and the places she knew. Tanos, meanwhile, was glancing between Sam and the map. Ada smiled. She knew they were close, though she had yet to ask them about it, or indeed understand exactly how it had happened. She had been too busy meddling with code and blood samples, for the most part.

  As the ship cruised south, her thoughts lingered on Isavel. She had not expected her to show up at Campus like that. Had not expected her to reach out to her in peace, much less friendship. And now here she stood, pleasantly surprised at how well it had gone despite everything Isavel must have heard from Ada’s old peers, despite everything she knew or thought Ada had done.

  Was it all a trick? Had telling Isavel about the third ghost walker been a bad idea? It might be good to prepare for the worst, but as the Chengdu slipped further and further from Campus, she found herself oddly comfortable with the thought. Isavel had clearly given up on their gods - that bridged a chasm Ada hadn’t been sure how to cross. She had put herself at great risk walking into Campus, and something about the way they had spoken put her at ease.

  Sam suddenly broke her trail of thought, speaking up as she pointed to an area of the map. “This is where we sent the walker.” She was pointing at the terminus of a long inlet carving its way deep into the island, a third of the way up its length. “It looks like a bit less than the distance from Hive to Glass Peaks. I think, from what I know of the area in this world and others, their army could get down to Campus in four days once they reach him. Maybe five or six days to get there in the first place, assuming they’ve got some way to cross the water up in those islands.”

  Ada pursed her lips. That gave them less than two weeks. She would need to start pushing the outers to evacuate now, even if they thought these space mirrans were coming for them. But where would they evacuate to?

  She reached into the map and flicked at it, sending the view further south. There were no more island chains that way, only a long and seemingly featureless coast. There were many islands to the north, though Ada knew the outers already found this region cold enough - to move them further north would be cruel.

  And to the west, for an extremely long time, there was nothing at all. Nothing but a vast and empty ocean. Unimaginably far away was a whole other land, a sea filled with huge islands and rugged coast, but she doubted she would be able to make even a single return trip in the time it would take for the mainlanders to reach Campus and kill everyone they found.

  “This is going to be a problem.” She sighed. “We might have to land the outers somewhere on the coast and then just… hide them, somehow, while we move them further away. We just don’t have time to scout out the entire coastline for secluded places to live.”

  Tanos looked out the door where Zhilik had gone. “What about the… the aliens they’re talking to?”

  Her fists tightened. Yes, what about them? “We don’t even know if they want to come pick them up. I’m not optimistic. We need to start moving people, ideally now .”

  She kept staring at the map, hoping some kind of solution would present itself. After a moment, Zhilik returned, his gaze and demeanor off enough that she knew something had happened. She felt her heart sink. This whole business with Mir was weighing her down. She didn’t like to think about it, but it loomed larger than almost everything else. “Zhilik? What’s wrong?”

  He looked at her, ears twitching. “I have been informed that the mirrans are sending a ship to pick us up.”

  Of course. Just what the outers had been asking for. She leaned against the command console and sighed, trying not to imagine what her life would look like when they were gone. “Well, you got what you wanted.”

  “They also told us to shut down our transmissions immediately.”

  The words almost made no sense. Ada did a double-take. “Uh, what? Why the hell would they say that?”

  Zhilik flatted his ears and sighed. “They did not explain. Apparently that happened several hours ago, but we are only being told now because the message about this ship only just arrived. Ada, they will reach us in twelve days’ time.”

  Ada looked to Sam and Tanos, but they were as confused as she was. So too, it seemed, was Zhilik. “Anything else?”

  “They will be sending linguistic samples, and a friend of mine, our best linguist, will try to learn the language as much as she can. And they repeated their order to stop sending any messages.”

  “Wait, how did you understand the message if you don’t speak the language?”

  “It was not actually a linguistic message. They sent us a… a sort of illustrated video. The implication was quite clear. I wish I understood why, but I cannot say.”

  Everything about this smelled sour. Ada had thought that if there was civilization out among the stars, it would be grand, powerful, advanced beyond measure. The idea that they would tell them to shut down communications reeked of fear. Ada wracked her brain, going over the precious little she knew about the universe beyond Earth. Then it hit her. “I have an idea.”

  Everyone looked to her in surprise, though they shouldn’t - who else had spoken to the gods face to face? She frowned, trying to recall their exact words to mind.

  “The gods said a lot of things when I met them, but one of the things I remember is that they silenced Earth on purpose . For safety reasons. They told me not to send transmissions anywhere, especially rimward, whatever that means.”

  She glanced over at Zhilik, who was looking at the floor.

  “Zhilik, your species’ homeworld, Mir - is it rimward? What does that even mean?”

  “Our sun is one of billions in a spiral-shaped constellation called a galaxy. Rimward means further from the center of the galaxy than Earth - and yes, Mir is rimward. So were most of the colonies.”

  Ada allowed herself a small smile when he said our sun . She pointed upwards, to the sky and the stars beyond. “Everybody seems to think there’s something out there to be afraid of. You, the gods, even these space mirrans. What is it? Who is it?”

  Zhilik’s ears swiveled up and down. “I honestly do not know, Ada. When the technophage was triggered, my ancestors originally believed rescue would come quickly. Only a few ships ever tried to return to Earth, and they were shot down by the ring. After that… either the colonies had given up on Earth, or they had been been… unable to send more shi
ps. We were never certain whether there was anybody left out there.”

  Ada shook her head. “They couldn’t have forgotten about the homeworld of the human race, especially if there were human colonies out there.”

  Sam blinked. “Wait, there are humans living on other worlds?”

  “I don’t know.” Ada wished she did. “There were , before the technophage. My ship once told me that there were billions of people living in the colonies. Some of them must still be alive, right?”

  Zhilik shrugged. “I cannot say. The transmissions we received are from mirrans, but…” His furred face descended into an expression she recognized as puzzlement. “Actually, Kseresh never said it was from Mir. But two short messages tell us little.”

  “They wouldn’t have forgotten Earth.” Ada was still sure of it. She scratched her head, trying to imagine what was going on up there on almost zero information. “ Something must have happened - something that kept the colonies’ attention. Something like a war. A war with the same enemy that caused the Fall.”

  Tanos raised his hands, shaking his head. “Okay, hang on. So not only are there outers and maybe humans living on other worlds out there, but the Fall - the end of ancient civilization - was just part of a war between us and something bigger and scarier?”

  “It is not clear whether technophage was an alien weapon.” Zhilik was shaking his head. “Many suspected it, but -”

  Ada brightened up. “Well that’s what we’re about to find out, thanks to Isavel. If that golem remembers the Fall and is trying to safeguard its legacy, it should know something about the technophage. We’re on the right track.”

  They all watched her in silence as she scanned the map, watching the ship head southeast towards the mainland coast. The floating map seemed to be coloured properly, and she soon saw the vast white peak of the mountain jutting above the rolling green forests around it.

  She smiled, recognizing the mountain. It was a good thing she had Isavel. “Go on, get the hauler ready. I’ll hide the Chengdu underwater. It won’t take long in the hauler. Zhilik - can you tell Kseresh the mainlander army will reach Campus in ten days? He has more time, but I want him to realise how close he’s cutting it with these space mirrans. Do they even know they’ll need to evacuate a whole city?”

  Zhilik looked alarmed. “A good question, and one we cannot ask them.”

  She set her jaw. “Then I guess it’s hope for the best and plan for the worst.” She saw Tanos and Sam looking concerned, Sam especially. She was staring at the map very intently, as though trying to plan something.

  “You okay, Sam?”

  Ada hoped a prompt would be enough, but Sam divulged nothing. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just wondering what’s going to happen when the fighting starts.”

  “If.” Ada sighed, hoping she and Isavel could keep the two cities apart for as long as necessary. After that… One thing at a time. “If it starts. We’re trying to avoid that.”

  The warship cruised towards the coastline, navigating bays and islands to get as close as possible to the mountain. Once they could go no further, they hauled up onto a beach and brought out the hauler. Ada and Zhilik sat on the flatbed, letting Tanos drive the thing again since he seemed to like it, and Sam sat with him in the front. They hummed out of the ship, suddenly hit by the salty smell of the beach.

  Ada felt around for the mental muscles that, through her suit, would tell the Chengdu to slip back under the waves. A s it withdrew, it left behind a wake of crushed and dugout beach . She had never gotten close enough to see how it was actually crawling onto the shore like that. Did it have legs? She ought to take a closer look sometime.

  She looked at Zhilik as they drove into the forest. He was less animated than usual, like he was lost in thought, the lips around his sharp teeth twitching involuntarily. She could only imagine what was playing out in his head. “Are you okay?”

  He sighed, and hissed gently, a laughing sound to his people. “We have always been waiting. I was raised on stories about waiting, about patience. For a thousand years, we have wanted nothing more than to leave. And now, with someone finally coming to retrieve us, I feel… afraid. The waiting was predictable, it gave us purpose and goals to work towards. But now? We know nothing. Our destiny is slipping out of our hands, and we must trust strange cousins from alien shores to catch it.”

  She looked at his white-furred face, twitchy ears, and stooped shoulders. His species was not of this world, perhaps, but Zhilik certainly was. She wouldn’t try to minimize his people’s stories, but it was true - this was his home. Our sun. No matter what genetic relationship he had to that distant world, he had grown up here, on the strange ruin that was Earth, just like she had. And now, if this all went as expected, he would lose his home. That meant something. “They’d better, or I’ll hunt them down.”

  He looked at her, as though waiting for something else, before responding. “I am not surprised you would say such a thing, but you must know it cannot help.”

  “Fine. But what will you do if you meet these mirrans and don’t find them to your liking? What if those other worlds aren’t what you’ve dreamed about? A thousand years’ worth of expectations is a big thing to come crashing down around you.”

  He looked at his own four-fingered hands, green-grey skin peeking out under the white fur, as though trying to determine just what his hands were made of. “I must believe it is better than being trapped here, on a world never meant for us.”

  She groaned. “Meant by whom? You’re here. Let the world deal with it.”

  At this, Zhilik grinned. “You question the very foundation of what beings such as your people or mine hold true, Ada. Our senses of purpose and belonging and origin.”

  “I don’t have a problem with any of those.”

  “Our senses of higher purpose and such, then.”

  “Higher? So dramatic.”

  “You are a special case, given your history.” His words fell fairly flat, and he paused a moment before continuing. “And yet you must understand what I mean. Why else would you help us?”

  “Not because I think you don’t belong here.” Ada reached over and patted Zhilik on the shoulder. “You’re welcome to stay as long as you like.”

  “Why, then?”

  “You’re trapped here because of what happened during the Fall, whatever that was. It’s not your fault. Just like the ghosts, in a way.”

  Zhilik gave her a hissing laugh. “So you feel responsible for the mistakes of the past?”

  She leaned her head back against the hauler’s cockpit, watching the sea recede as they drew deeper inland. “Responsible? No. Whoever fucked up back then is long dead, and it sure as hell wasn’t me. But I don’t like seeing you trapped here. And yes, maybe I feel some shame that you’re stuck here because of things done by and directed at humans - what better way to deal with shame than fixing things?”

  “Interesting.” He seemed content to say no more.

  “Stop that, Zhilik.”

  “What?”

  She smirked at him. “You know what you did.”

  “I do not.”

  “Liar.”

  They laughed, and sat in a comfortable silence for a while as the hauler moved through the forest. Ada could just barely hear Sam and Tanos exchanging words in the front of the hauler. Whatever they were saying was lost in the rushing of the air and the humming of the vehicle, and she paid it no mind.

  Zhilik’s question was sudden. “Who is Isavel?”

  Ada turned to look at him. “What do you mean? The ghosts call her the White Witch. She has at least three gifts. She’s kind of a figurehead, I think. Or was, until she decided she was sick of it. I thought you knew.”

  “Yes, but I have rarely seen you come away from social interaction with humans anything less than irritated. Nor have I seen you trust their word so readily. For all that you are human, you normally do not play well with them.”

  Ada looked away. She wanted to say she didn’t know what he
meant, but he was absolutely right - Isavel was different. Being around her was… different. “Maybe it’s because she’s like me.”

  Zhilik’s ears rose in curiosity. “She is a ruthless, knowledge-hungry sorceress bent on unmaking the world?”

  She could tell she was being mocked, but Ada laughed. “No, she’s… I’m not sure. She’s an orphan.”

  Zhilik blinked. “I never knew you lost your family. I am sorry.”

  “I don’t talk about it. Or think about it.” Ada frowned. “Except when people bring it up.”

  “I didn’t, and yet you did.”

  Ada opened her mouth to respond, then shut it again. He was right. What was she doing? “Well, it’s something Isavel and I talked about, so I guess it’s fresh in my mind, okay? Look, I’m not sure why you’re interested. If all goes well you’ll be leaving the planet in less than two weeks.”

  She crossed her arms, but he kept his tone even. “You forget - before I became the mirran ambassador to you, I was a scholar of human society. Your doings interest me.”

  Heat rose around Ada’s ears. “Our doings? Gods, Zhilik. Look, she trusted me, she helped me, she saved my life, she came to me after I made a point of threatening her city - she’s either a really good manipulator or she’s… I don’t know, an excessively nice person. There’s just something different about her, that’s all.”

  “You sound close.”

  “We’re okay.” She liked to imagine they were friends, or could be, but that idea had yet to stand the test of time.

  Zhilik insisted. “Perhaps you should be.”

  “Why are you suddenly trying to get me to make friends with her?” Ada demanded, and Zhilik turned and looked at her with his alien face, ears sagging, and took a deep breath.

  “Because I want you to have someone you can rely on after we are gone, Ada. And with due respect to the ghosts, they have a great deal of their own troubles to deal with.”

  Ada blinked, unsure of what was motivating him to say something so… parental. She opened her mouth to respond, but nothing came out, so she shut it again and stared at the floor of the hauler as he continued speaking.