It had spoken to him. There could be no doubt, no mistaking that feeling, which Kai had very accurately described as a scraping.
Oliver found an ice pack in the freezer. After pulling off his shoes and soaked pants, he pressed the ice pack against his right inner thigh, where the skin was the reddest. Then he returned to the living room and sat on the dry side of the couch in his briefs. “Well, that was clumsy of me. Can we pick up where we left off? Nothing could go wrong, absolutely nothing. We’re just having a talk.”
Five didn’t respond. Oliver waited, watching the Luyten expectantly, not sure which of its seven eyes to look at.
When some time had passed, he tried again. “Where do you come from?”
Nothing.
“What harm would it do to tell me where you’re from?”
No harm whatsoever. How does it benefit me to tell you?
Oliver suppressed an urge to plug his ears, to run to the elevator and get as far away from the Luyten as he could. Instead, he shrugged. “If we only talk about things that benefit you, it’s not going to be much of a conversation, is it?”
What gave you the impression I wanted to have a conversation?
“You spoke to me.”
I had something to say.
“This is going to get awfully boring if we don’t talk.”
I don’t get bored.
“But you get lonely.”
Using its appendages, it raised itself from the floor. And you made sure I would, didn’t you?
“If you’d just communicated with me, I wouldn’t have been forced to take those measures.”
Oliver waited patiently, but Five didn’t reply.
“I’m sorry I caused you discomfort.”
Five only watched him.
Oliver stepped closer to the mesh dividing them. “Is there something you’d prefer to eat? I can arrange to have it sent.”
Nothing. Oliver ran a hand through his hair, exhaled audibly. Hundreds of people must be watching the live feed by now. He turned to face the comm link, a silver quarter-sized disk set in the wall, and recounted everything the Luyten had said to him so far. Then he turned to face Five again.
“We don’t have to talk about sensitive topics. You choose the topic.” Oliver held out his empty hands. “Whatever would interest you.”
Still nothing.
Of course the Luyten would be aware that this was standard CIA interrogation procedure. Get the subject talking about anything, learn what makes him tick. Then win him over. The question was, was it possible to win over a Luyten?
11
Oliver Bowen
July 17, 2029. Washington, D.C.
Sixteen hours later, a text message from President Wood came, encouraging Oliver to try harder, imploring him to find a way to break through. He could imagine what must be happening up there. Some were arguing they pull Oliver, let the Luyten stew a few more days. Others would want to replace him with one of their other experts, who’d tried and failed to get the Luyten talking. Some, at least, were arguing that Oliver needed more time, or else he wouldn’t still be down there.
Oliver wasn’t sure which argument he agreed with. He didn’t want to give up, yet he desperately wanted to escape this stiflingly claustrophobic bunker and see the sky. The bunker was equipped with plenty of outdoorsy VR simulations, but as realistic as they were, they couldn’t remove Oliver’s awareness of his location.
He wondered what would become of Kai, now that it was clear he wasn’t the only one able to communicate with Five. Would they continue to house him at the compound, in case they needed him? Would they try to find a home for him? Surely they wouldn’t simply turn him out onto the street. Oliver wouldn’t let them. He’d take Kai in himself if it came to that.
Oliver poured himself a glass of milk in the kitchen and returned to the living room. Or should he think of it as the interrogation room? Not that there was much interrogating going on.
It wasn’t only claustrophobia that made him want to get back to the world. Oliver wanted to get home to Vanessa. He was worried Vanessa would use his absence as an opportunity to spend time with Paul.
To spend time with. What a pathetic euphemism. The truth was, he was afraid Vanessa would use the opportunity to fuck Paul. That was the crux of it, wasn’t it? He was afraid she was having an affair.
A few of Five’s eyes were tracking Oliver as he paced. He needed to get his mind off his marital problems, focus on the much, much larger problem at hand. How criminally narcissistic was it, to be thinking about his wife’s suspected infidelity when he’d been entrusted with a task that could help save the entire human race? He needed to stay focused, to find a way to extract useful information from this Luyten.
“Why Earth, of all the planets in the galaxy?” he asked the Luyten. “Does your kind just enjoy a challenge?”
You’re right, you know. Your wife is having an affair.
Oliver was so shocked by the words he very nearly cried out. “What did you say?”
When she dropped you off at work, her mind was close enough that I could hear it. She is having sex with Paul.
“You can’t—” He was going to say ‘You can’t know that for sure,’ but he checked himself. Yes, it could. “You’re lying.”
As she was driving off, she was thinking about taking Paul’s penis in her mouth while they drove to—
“Shut up.” Oliver could imagine her, breathless, telling Paul the things she wanted to do to him when they got to his house.
A voice message came through the comm, fed directly to the earbud connected to his comm, although they might as well have broadcast it aloud, for all the secrecy it afforded them.
“What’s happening down there?” It was Ariel. “Your heart rate is one-twenty. Can it inflict harm psychically?”
“No,” Oliver answered. “I’m okay. I’m just adjusting to what Kai described—the unpleasant sensation in my mind when it speaks.” He didn’t want to air his dirty laundry in front of who knows how many agents and operatives, and didn’t want to get pulled out when he was making progress.
To address your spoken question, it never occurred to us this planet would be inhabited. When we arrived it was too late. Either we settled on Earth, or our kind would die out.
“We would have given you asylum, if you asked.” He dragged a hand down his sweaty face, still not able to banish the image of Vanessa going down on Paul in a car.
No, you would not have.
“You don’t know that.”
Yes, I do.
“If you were oblivious of us, why did you take such pains to stay hidden behind various celestial bodies as you approached? For God’s sake, you parked behind the moon. You did that so we wouldn’t detect your approach.”
It felt childishly satisfying to bring up the Luyten mother ship. Humanity’s one real victory had been sending a motley collection of weaponized space vehicles and shooting their mother ship out of the lunar sky.
When I say “when we arrived, it was too late,” I don’t mean when we arrived in your solar system. We detected your existence well into our trip, through your SETI transmissions, but long before we reached your solar system. We took precautions once we were aware of your existence. Some of the musical compositions included in the SETI transmissions were quite interesting, by the way. We enjoyed Bach.
Ariel’s voice intruded through the comm. “Get to the questions we prepared, before it goes mute again.”
“Christ, it knows everything you’re saying as soon as I do.” Oliver gestured emphatically at the speaker on the wall. “Just speak through the goddamned speaker.”
It doesn’t offend me, Five said. Though needless to say, I don’t intend to answer any of those questions.
“No, I didn’t imagine you would.” He glanced at the comm. “That’s why I didn’t ask.”
Although those questions aren’t the real reason your people are so eager for you to open communication with me.
Oliver froze, slow
ly canted his head to one side. “What do you mean?”
There’s no point in speaking aloud. I don’t have ears, or the capacity to detect sound.
“It helps me organize my thoughts.” Oliver wasn’t going to let this creature tell him how to behave. A good interrogator was always in control of the situation. “You said there was another reason they want me to establish contact with you. What’s the reason?”
Ariel cut in on the comm. “Oliver, what is it saying? Give us an update.”
Oliver ignored her, waited, watching the Luyten groom itself with its cilia.
Isn’t it obvious?
“Not to me.”
“Oliver? What’s going on?” Ariel asked.
They want to discuss terms for surrender.
Maybe it shouldn’t have been a surprise, but the sheer magnitude of the words, the finality of what Five was suggesting, rocked Oliver. He turned to face the comm.
“It says I’m here to discuss terms for surrender.”
There was a long delay, then “Hold on.”
Surrender? His head spinning, Oliver tried to unpack what that would mean. Would humans lay down their arms, and the Luyten take control of everything—all the territory they didn’t already control? In exchange, no more humans would be killed. But how would they be treated?
“President Wood is coming down,” Ariel said.
The president of the United States.
Was coming down to speak to him.
Under different circumstances he would have been excited by that prospect.
Oliver headed to the bathroom to check himself in the mirror, to make sure he looked presentable.
Surrender.
How had it possibly gotten to this point?
When the starfish first rained from the sky, spinning like pinwheels, protected as they entered Earth’s atmosphere by huge porous bags that bore zero resemblance to any Earth transport, everyone had been terrified. But in every case, they’d dropped into unpopulated wilderness, in groups of three, and at first did little more than hide.
Oliver set his comb back on the sink and headed back into the living room.
When they began to attack, the targets were small, the goal more likely sabotage than occupation. They would hit a railway line, a wind farm, an isolated community, then disappear back into the trees, or underwater in breathable embryos that turned out to be miniatures of their mother ship. People were petrified, but it felt more like some horrible infestation than an invasion.
When it became apparent the Luyten could read human minds at will, people got really scared.
The attacks grew steadily bolder. Satellites. Weapons systems. Nuclear plants. Attacks on people living in the country escalated to the point where most fled to the safety of urban hubs, ceding more and more territory to the Luyten.
It had been a brilliantly executed attack.
The elevator flashed, indicating visitors.
President Wood was short and stocky, with a crooked nose and a curled-down mouth set in a perpetual sneer. Two Secret Service agents hung back near the elevator as Wood crossed the room to shake Oliver’s hand.
“You’re doing good work,” Wood said. “You’ve succeeded where many others have failed.” He held up a hand. “Don’t get me wrong, that doesn’t surprise me. I’ve seen your résumé. You have forty IQ points on me, and I’m not as dumb as I sound, and your work on influence techniques at NYU?” He shook his head. “Remarkable.”
“Thank you, sir.” Oliver motioned toward the little kitchen. “Can I get you something?”
“Nah, I’m good.” Wood wandered over to Five’s cage, studied the creature. “So why don’t the three of us have a talk?” Wood waited a beat, then turned to Oliver. “Did it answer?”
“No.”
Wood turned back to Five. “What harm would it do to talk?” He looked at Oliver, eyebrows raised.
Oliver shook his head. “Earlier it asked what it gained by talking to us.”
Wood raised one eyebrow. “Awfully cocky attitude.”
“I know.”
Wood studied Five a moment longer, then sighed and turned away. “I understand it told you we wanted to discuss surrender.”
Oliver nodded. “Is it true?”
Wood started to answer, stopped, began again. “It’s one option.” He rubbed his upper lip for a moment. “Put it this way: If you can get our friend to discuss whether they would accept our surrender, and under what terms, we would be interested to hear what it has to say.”
Oliver nodded slowly, digesting this.
“That’s not to say there’s nothing in the works. There may be.”
“But you don’t know?”
“If I knew for sure, so would they.” Wood jerked a thumb in Five’s direction. “Then we’d have nothing in the works.”
12
Lila Easterlin
July 17, 2029. Savannah, Georgia.
As rooftops came into view below them, Lila had second thoughts about the plan. She watched her father, a bead of sweat dangling from his nose, his fingers squeezing the throttle. The plane had automatic stabilizers, but still, it was not exactly safe for someone who’d never flown one to just take off and go.
The breeze kicked up and the plane wobbled, the stabilizers on the wings whirring, trying to compensate. They were above the tall pine trees, the highway visible on Lila’s right, a long strip shrinking in the distance.
“You’re doing great!” Lila said, having to shout over the wind.
Dad only nodded, his attention glued to the task. He kept going up, up; Lila had imagined clearing the trees and then staying as low as possible.
“How high are you going?” she asked.
“High enough that we’re out of range of Luyten weapons. There’s no hiding the fact we’re up here. If any Luyten on the ground can just point a heater or lightning rod and cook us, we won’t make it far.”
Lila hadn’t thought of that. Being in the air—away from all the Luyten on the ground—made her feel safe from them, but every Luyten they passed would know they were there.
“How high can we go?” she asked.
“I don’t know. How high can you go and still breathe?”
Lila thought about mountain climbers. At the top of tall peaks, climbers could barely breathe, but how high was that? She missed her feed; whenever teachers had wanted her to remember some esoteric detail like the heights of mountains, Lila had rolled her eyes and ignored them. “Like, I don’t know, maybe twelve or thirteen thousand feet?”
Dad nodded. “I guess if we’re getting too high, we’ll know.”
When the altimeter read thirteen thousand feet, they were still breathing fine, although Lila felt slightly out of breath, and inhaling deeply didn’t make the feeling go away. The cold was worse. Lila was wearing a thin short-sleeved tunic, and she was trembling. Their emergency packs, which included warm clothes, were back in their fried car.
The ground below was a patchwork of black-and-white towns, brown fields, green forest.
“How do we find Atlanta?” Lila asked. The ultralight had a built-in GPS system, but with satellites down it was useless.
“I’m just heading due west.”
Was Atlanta due west? It must be, more or less. Certainly they’d spot the downtown skyscrapers if they were anywhere close.
Dad glanced at her. “I can’t believe you were able to assemble this. It would’ve taken me a week.”
“You told me to find something productive to do.”
“I did. And you did.”
Lila studied the airspeed indicator. They were going just over sixty miles per hour, which meant maybe a two-hour trip. She turned to look over her shoulder at Savannah.
Smoke was rising from a thousand places. Some of the larger buildings were visibly on fire, the flames licking the sky. A container ship was sinking on the river.
“Oh, shit.”
The words jolted Lila awake, set her heart pounding. She looked around and imme
diately spotted what had caused her father to cry out: seven or eight Luyten were in the air, heading toward them.
They were in modified human Harriers, their massive bodies hanging in harnesses below the craft. Dad was descending, the nose of the ultralight pointed at a steep angle that sent uneasy butterflies through Lila’s gut.
It was hard to tell if the Luyten were dropping to intercept them. If they were, Lila and her father were going to die.
“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” her father was chanting, clearly in shock. Lila gripped the dash, afraid to look for the Luyten. The ground below was a checker of farmland broken by roads and occasionally buildings.
Lila ventured a look up: The Luyten craft were much closer. They were flying in a circular formation, as Luyten always did, closing on them.
“They’re coming after us!” Lila screamed.
“I’m gonna ditch us,” Dad said, his chin pressed into his neck, his mouth stretched in a grimace. “Find the—”
Suddenly, Lila was burning. She screamed in pain, the worst of it coming from her fingers, where her rings were searing her skin.
Dad was screaming, too, his fingers sizzling where they gripped the controls. “We lost the engine.” He held fast to the controls, as the ultralight plunged and his fingers burned.
The heat was getting intolerable as the Luyten closed on them. Lila scanned the dash, frantically seeking the crash suit indicator. There was nothing she could see that looked like an emergency icon. Surely all aircraft, no matter how small, were equipped with crash suits.
Then she saw it, down by her dad’s right foot: a square yellow icon with a fold-up ring. She struggled to read the simple, red-ringed instructions: Pull ring out, turn clockwise.
“Wait until we’re close to the ground,” Dad said. “As close as possible.”
“I know!” Lila screamed, trying to concentrate. Her shoes were burning her feet. She kicked them off.
Suddenly the heat let up.
Crying with relief, Lila looked up and back, and spotted the Luyten pulling away.
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