Second Contact

by Guerric Haché, Keezy Young

  If she had done this right, it could allow humans’ latent gifts to destroy the technophage on their own. It could change everything.

  “Tanos, let’s hope your blood is up to snuff.”

  His eyes widened. “It’s been good to me so far.”

  She smiled, first bringing her own blood under the viewer, eyes drawn to her uniquely immune gift that seemed able to fight off the technophage suppressing everyone else. It was there, ready for comparison. Over in Tanos’ sample, the technophage floated within.

  If this worked, she might soon share her unique gift with… everyone.

  She took a deep breath and tipped the infected blood into the empty code vial.

  She let the breath go and put the code vial under the viewer, watching the small particles float around in the sample. She watched the inert immune particles and the technophage, waiting. Nothing. Had she messed up? She was about to pull the vial away again when a one particle twitched almost imperceptibly, a flicker of dark crackling to it, and suddenly it no longer looked like the others.

  Ada’s hand tensed around the machine.

  She watched as the different-looking immune gift spiral through the sample, tracing a curve directly towards one of the technophage particles. They met. The immune particle burst it into shreds, tiny fragments dissolving out of view.

  She let go of a long breath. Stood up straight, smiling. “That’s it, then.”

  As the others stepped closer to look at the viewer screen, she took a step back, watching the screen as more and more of the immune particles changed as they approached the code, then cruised out through the blood to fight off the technophage.

  Ada shooed them away and tipped the contents of the test vial back into the vial containing the full sample of infected blood, placing it under the viewer again. Would her immune particles continue to replace the old ones? Would the process reverse itself? Neither happened, though - the particles seemed to stay in equilibrium, their ratio remaining stable with around half of its immune particles being new and the other half remaining old and impotent.

  Still, they were slowly eradicating the technophage from the vial. She sighed, speaking quietly. “That’s it. It works.”

  Her companions smiled and congratulated her, and even as she smiled with them, she felt like none of them seemed to grasp the Earth-spanning consequences this could have.

  It concerned her that the code needed to be present to complete the conversion of immune gifts, though. Would that be a problem? It was hard to tell, so perhaps she should start by ensuring all of her subject’s blood would be exposed, perhaps by tattooing the code directly onto them. Whoever her subject would be.

  She shook her head. There was no point it trying to pretend it was just a whim - there was only one person on Earth Ada trusted with freedom from the technophage, and all the power that implied. Somehow, she would have to get back to Isavel and convince her to get code tattooed onto her skin, for a benefit she wouldn’t immediately see. How could Ada do that? She couldn’t imagine how to frame it. It would seem crazy. She’d have to think of something.

  It could also be easy, though. She could just tell Isavel the truth.

  She could always do that.

  “Ada?”

  She suddenly realized Tanos was waving a hand in her face. “Huh? What?”

  “Where’s your head?”

  “On my neck.”

  “Doesn’t look like it.”

  She tried to keep her face impassive. “Just thinking. Come on - I want to find Zhilik and tell him what happened.”

  Ada slipped into time dilation again and brought the miasma of code down onto a wedge-shaped stone, shrinking it to the point where she’d need to use more code to read it. She stored it in her suit pocket, next to the locator stone that would lead her to Isavel. On its way out her fingers brushed against the locator stone, and she took it in her hand. It was pointing further south than it had been last time, which narrowed down just how far Isavel could be, if she was on the island. All Ada needed now was a reason to get Isavel into a conversation.

  Isavel had “borrowed” her gun, hadn’t she?

  Nerves coiled around that thought in her chest. As good a reason as any.

  She led the others out of the medical facility, which had been all but abandoned by everyone else. The outers were expecting rescue any day now, and had packed everything they thought they might need. They had amassed in the city square - no longer putting on plays, but simply watching the sky. Ada edged through them, up the steps of the ziggurat, and found Elder Kseresh standing there. Zhilik was nowhere to be seen.

  “Ah, Ada Liu.” Kseresh looked happy to see her, in some amused way.

  Ada nodded at him. “Elder Kseresh.” She gestured at the crowds below. “I expected Zhilik to be here. Are they not coming down yet ?”

  He nodded. “Soon, but not yet. The ship is entering orbit, and they will send down their probe.”

  Ada looked up, squinting. “I can’t see anything. When I was flying up there with Cherry, I thought you said you could see flashes.”

  “They are wary of approaching the ring too closely. Past ships approaching Earth, just after the Fall, were shot down by weapons on the ring.”

  “Right.” She could tell Kseresh was restless, from his shifting posture and his twitching ears. There was almost something boyish about it, an odd thing to see in someone so old, even if he wasn’t human. Ada grinned. “Excited?”

  He hissed out a chuckle. “Nervous. Until we realized the gods were tracking you, we thought for a thousand years nothing would change. And now, here we are.”

  “Right, the tracking.” She remembered her shock when she saw the line on the map tracing her exile from the Institute. “I’m surprised they never tracked anyone else - in a thousand years, nobody else was worth their interest?”

  Kseresh looked at the sky for a few more moments before looking back down at her.

  “Yes, well. I, er, misrepresented the truth in that regard.”

  Ada blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “You were the first such signal we ever detected, it is true, but not the only one.”

  Ada felt a rush. “Right, of course. Isavel Valdéz.”

  Kseresh avoided eye contact. “I am not actually certain, but that seems likely. The tracking appeared suddenly, very close to where you were at the time, a week or so before you appeared here. We assumed the two were somehow related, but your paths diverged at Glass Peaks. We stopped tracking the watcher signals once you had the gods lower the interdiction fields, so I cannot say where she is now, if indeed she is still being watched - it would take some time to recalibrate the comm scanners. I can send someone to do so if you like.”

  “No, it’s fine.” Ada clasped her hands behind her back, fiddling with her thumbs. She had never been alone, not in this. Isavel had always been out there; if only they had realized it sooner. Still, she smiled.

  Kseresh didn’t seem to notice. “Regardless, you have done more for us than any human in our history. For that we must thank you.”

  She looked up at Kseresh, wondering what he meant. He had a solemn look to him. Was he going to offer her some parting advice? A gift? A title of some kind? After a few moments of awkward silence, she prodded. “What kind of thanks are we talking about?”

  He blinked. “Well, I said thank you. On behalf of my people.”

  “Oh.” Ada grimaced and chuckled. “Right, of course. You’re welcome.”

  “You may also keep the Chengdu , as a reward. ”

  She glared at him. “ May? Excuse me, that ship was never -” Kseresh was laughing that familiar alien hiss. She shut her mouth and shook her head. “Hilarious.”

  He continued smirking in his alien way. “I thought so. I will miss hearing of your escapades, Ada Liu. You are certainly the most… chaotic human I have yet had the fortune to encounter.”

  “Why thank you.”

  “Likely the most dangerous as well.”

  �
�And again. You’ll have to beam messages back to Earth, you know. Tell me how things are going on Mir.”

  Kseresh looked down to his feet, and lowered his voice. “I am not sure we will be returning to Mir. The ship is from the colonies, and they spoke of a world called… Freyja, in the human tongue. They have yet to mention Mir at all.”

  His ears drooped, and Ada could tell this information made Kseresh wonder the same things it made her wonder. Was Mir derelict, just like Earth? Was that somehow related to why the incoming ship wanted them to silence their transmissions?

  Suddenly one of the other outers on the roof stepped closer. Ada recognized her; Jhoru, apparently the outers’ most enthusiastic language learner. Right now she was wielding some kind of small, boxy device. “Sir!”

  “Yes, Jhoru?” Kseresh responded in the human language after glancing at Ada, even though Ada was getting the hang of the outers’ language.

  “Sir, there’s something coming down.”

  Jhoru pointed up, and Ada looked up into the clear blue sky. “Where?”

  “East of the ring, near the peak.”

  Ada looked in that direction too as the outers shared the viewfinder to enhance their vision, but it was a while until she saw it with her naked eyes - a speck of glowing, orange-white light. It almost looked like a star at first, though as it grew larger and larger it seemed to look more and more like fire.

  “Is that the probe?”

  Kseresh was looking through the viewfinder. “It appears to be something of the sort, yes.” He lowered the relic and passed it to Ada. “The first thing to enter this planet’s atmosphere in over a thousand years. Present company excluded, of course.”

  Ada smiled, then struggled with the device for several moments before she found the incoming shape. It seemed to be burning up along its underside, stirring memories of Cherry’s shields glowing upon returning to Earth, but it was hard to see exactly what was behind that fiery glow. “Whatever it is, it’s coming in fast.”

  She handed the device back to Jhoru, still gazing up. Footsteps behind her announced Zhilik’s arrival, with Sam and Tanos in tow. She hadn’t even noticed their disappearance, and blinked in surprise for a moment. “Zhilik? You’re late.”

  “Your friends told me you were successful with the technophage.” She pointed to the sky. “Though I must admit, I am almost equally interested in this.”

  Ada smiled at her fellow humans. “Almost. Good choice of words.”

  Looking back up to the incoming probe, she remembered the first time she had seen Cherry - sleek black shapes, prehensile fins, the radiant feeling of being able to smash through anything that got in the way. Her ship had been a marvel of technology, a solid piece of power in every way imaginable. What had the mirrans come up with, in a thousand years of uninterrupted progress?

  The probe was coming in hot, and seemed to know where it was going - the top of the ziggurat. Everyone on the roof stepped towards the edge as the probe slowed on approach. Its engines roared a smear of white-orange light towards the ground, suddenly outclassing the summer heat. It touched down on the ziggurat, its engines cutting out, and was finally revealed to them.

  It was a boxy-looking thing, vaguely in the shape of a plucked chicken. Sensors peeked out from a glassed-over cockpit about the size of a human head, and beneath that a small compartment popped open, illuminating by a white light. Unlike even a chicken, the probe had no real wings, just four tube-like engines that seemed to provide all its moving power.

  It was utterly disappointing. It looked, to Ada, like a pile of scrap metal.

  “ That’s the probe?”

  She turned on the others. They must be disappointed, confused, or - no. No, they all seemed far more mesmerized than she was. Perhaps that was fair. Perhaps it was more about what the probe represented than its technical details.

  Still, this did not bode well.

  Kseresh motioned forward. “Jhoru, please.”

  The brown-furred outer woman stepped forward and addressed the probe in a language only barely similar to the outers’ own. It responded through a crackling distortion, and the young interpreter fumbled her way through a halting conversation, visibly flustered. Finally, she turned back to the others.

  “I think - well, this is a live connection. We can talk to them. I think all they want is for us to put the samples in the probe’s compartment.”

  Ada watched as another outer brought forward a box and started pulling things out of it, placing them into the compartment. It looked like dirt, rocks, food, clothes, and a piece of technology. Ada frowned. “What’s that stuff for?”

  Zhilik glanced at Tanos and Sam, teeth flashing in a grin. “They want to examine non-human objects for technophage infection. We have tested and found nothing, but they want to be sure. Nobody knows how the technophage originally spread - they fear it might be airborne, or contaminate surfaces.”

  Sam scowled back at him and crossed her arms. “Hey, none of this is our fault.”

  Ada ignored them, and followed Jhoru over to the probe to watch the other outer as he passed the various samples into the drone’s storage compartment.

  The voice from the probe said something in a questioning tone, and Jhoru stared at it wide-mouth for a moment.

  “What did they ask?” Kseresh was standing right behind them, as other outers crowded closer to the probe.

  Jhoru shook her head. “They - I am not sure. I think they said we should -” Then her yellow eyes widened and her ears flattened. “Oh, get out of the way! The probe is going back up.”

  Ada backed off as fast as she could, remembering the searing heat of the probe as it came down. Everyone else did the same, and they watched the probe slowly ascend into the sky, scorching the roof of the ziggurat as it did so. She looked over to the outers, to Zhilik and Jhoru and Kseresh, and their demeanor had changed a little. They were still humbled, in some way, but they did seem more concerned.

  Zhilik met her eyes, and she must have had a quizzical expression. “That was very perfunctory.”

  “They’ve been nothing but perfunctory since they started talking to you.”

  Kseresh nodded, speaking loudly. “True, but now they have arrived. They will evacuate those of us here in Campus, and hopefully, one day, we might return for the rest of our people scattered across the planet. Their behaviour will make sense in time.”

  Ada knew perfectly well that he was speaking to the others around him as much as to her. Perhaps she shouldn’t push it. “How long till the shuttles start landing?”

  Jhoru had the answer to that. “I think they said it would take them a day to complete tests on the probe, and then they would send down the shuttle.”

  “One day.” Ada bit her lip, glancing at Sam and Tanos standing near the northern edge of the ziggurat, and lowered her voice so that only Kseresh, Zhilik, and Jhoru could hear. “That human army will be here any day now.”

  Kseresh glanced aside, then shook his head. “I do not believe they will be here in time to threaten us.”

  “Well, how far out are they?”

  He blinked. “What do you mean?”

  “What do your scouts say?”

  He blinked again. “We do not have any scouts keeping watch. We thought you were keeping watch.”

  “You what? ” Ada gaped for a moment, and the three outers fidgeted uncomfortably. “Well, shit. I guess I know what I’m doing this afternoon.”

  She turned around and hurried off the ziggurat. Nobody had told her about this! What, were they thinking everything would just work itself out? That wasn’t how the world worked. Even Isavel could only do so much to stall those fanatics. Ada left the city and headed for the bay, making straight for the Chengdu . The warship could tell her where the army was. She hoped.

  The ship’s maw fell open for her, and she called it shut as she headed for the command room. The ship crawled into the sea, the map was open, and she ordered the Chengdu up the island’s eastern coast.

  Her
eyes fell on the map. There were plenty of objects being tracked in the water, but seemingly nothing at all on land. What? It didn’t notice the thousands of people in Campus? Shit. She raised her hand in the air, as though the ship might recognized the gesture.

  “Okay, Chengdu? I know we’re not exactly on the same page, but this map is missing stuff. I want to know who’s on the ground, too.”

  “ Wǒ bù míngbái. ”

  “Gods, I wish you could talk to me.” She stabbed the map where Campus stood. “Show me all the people here!”

  After a moment of nothing, she remembered - she had changed the map before. She closed her eyes and felt around the mental musculature that bound her will to the ship’s complex systems, and started sifting through the maps.

  Eventually, tugging at various lines of thought, Ada found the right one and the world’s life lit up in yellows and oranges, concentrated mostly in Campus but flickering here and there in the forest and the sea surrounding it. The map’s range wasn’t far enough to reach Glass Peaks or Hive and show those massive cities for what they were, but it was enough to reach well up along the island’s coast.

  And there, up near a sharp bay that cut deep into the island and almost reached Campus itself, was a massive blotch of red and orange splattered out across the coast and inland like blood.

  “Oh shit.”

  Ada reached into her pocket and grabbed the comm device Zhilik had given her.

  “Kseresh?”

  She device buzzed a bit before the elder answered. “Ada. You sound like you have bad news.”

  “Yeah - the Chengdu ’s sensors are showing me a huge line of people pointed towards Campus. They’re not far, they - it looks - ”

  Ada stuck her fingers into the map, trying to measure or at least guess.

  “I don’t know, ten klicks away? If they marched nonstop they’d make it here before nightfall.” She zoomed the map closer to the cluster of signals. “I think they’re… waiting, though. I don’t think they’re moving yet. If we’re lucky, they might be taking a sleeping break. Even then, though…”

  The elder outer was silent on the other end of the communicator for a moment. “They will arrive during the evacuation. Ada, we are not equipped to fend off an army.”