The Stalk

by Janet Morris

  After all, Croft worked for the people of the United Nations of Earth, and Cummings was one of those people for whom Croft sometimes needed to be reminded that he must work the hardest.

  The project to tow Threshold to beyond Pluto's orbit was almost underway. The removal of resistance from Forat would help in the final days of decision making and implementation. By the time this conversation was over, Croft was going to know that, despite any lingering doubts or resistance on the Secretary General's part, Threshold was going to be moved to a new orbit. On time. According to plan. And with no obstructionism from the Secretariat. NAMECorp, prime contractor for the project, was going to see to it that every deadline, benchmark, and milestone was successfully met.

  There was too much money and power at stake for Cummings to allow anything to stand in his way.

  CHAPTER 18

  Message Delivered

  Reice was sitting out near the Ball site in the BLUE TICK when the alien came to call. Imagine. There you are, sitting in your police cruiser, directing traffic, relaxed as you please, a jelly donut in one hand and a no-spill cup of half-cold coffee in the other, feet up on your console, listening to Traffic Control with one ear and your favorite late twentieth-century analog recording with the other, when all of a sudden your nice, cozy routine is disturbed so completely you just know nothing will ever be the same again— not your day, not your week, not your mission or your job or your life. Not ever.

  Nothing external seemed to change when Reice's world turned upside down. The crowded traffic into and out of Spacedock Seven still moved at a snail's pace as towing rigs and tugs and destroyers and carriers and container ships with warning: explosives stenciled on their sides jockeyed for position in the merge lane bound for Threshold. None of the ConSpaceCom convoy vehicles with their military designators and security escorts noticed anything amiss when Reice's life turned from predictable to perilous. Nobody out there seemed to have an inkling that anything strange was going on aboard the ConSec cruiser BLUE TICK.

  Reice should have been able to look forward to sitting out here every day for the foreseeable future, eating dozens of jelly donuts, listening to hundreds of good old tunes, and catching up on his paperwork. Because preparing to tow Threshold to a new orbit was such a huge undertaking, Reice had every right to expect to be here a good long while, doing the usual. Breaking up arguments over priority access to the special convoy route. Taking names and kicking ass when the inevitable fender benders occurred. Stopping traffic altogether for the occasional hotshot with a diplomatic escort or a bunch of stars on the nose of his insystem cruiser. Today should have been, in short, a normal day, a day like any other.

  But no. Today was the day the Unity aliens—or alien— invaded the BLUE TICK. It was a red-letter day in Reice's personal History of the Universe, and one which changed everything for him, nearly beyond his ability to endure.

  Reice had to admit that it was probably the Ball site that was doing this to him—thrusting him in harm's way and into the center of events too damned big for guys like Reice to handle. You had to want to be rich and famous, like the old Scavenger, Keebler, who'd discovered the Ball and towed it to Threshold in the first place, to think alien contact with a Probably Superior Race was a good idea. You had to think your job description included Saving the Galaxy from Invaders to welcome a surprise visit from some cone-headed Unity alien on an urgent mission. You had to believe that your shift tasking included Carrying the Fate of The World on Your Shoulders to make such an alien welcome.

  Reice was about as happy to get close up and personal with a Unity alien as he'd been when he'd been chasing two runaway rich kids out here and a perfectly good chunk of otherwise normal, unperturbed spacetime had opened up and swallowed them whole. So it came back to the Ball site again. The Ball site was always where trouble found Reice. He ought to stay away from it. The damned Ball had it in for him.

  Once he got this alien off his ship, he was going to request leave, or rotation to other duties that were nowhere near the damned Unity Ball.

  But thinking about what you should have done or were going to do didn't help you when you were face-to-face with one of those sorry looking Unity aliens with the black-in-black eyes and the decorated craniums that came up to a rounded point, as if the alien were wearing a crown or a wizard's hat or a dunce cap.

  "How'd you get in here?" Reice asked it laconically, trying to exude power and calm and self-control. Maybe if it thought it wasn't scaring him it would go away.

  The Unity alien replied, "Get in through doorway."

  Bullshit, Reice thought. It wasn't like you left the door unlocked on your police cruiser. The alien was here, though, real as real could be. There was nothing halfway or semitransparent about it. It was a good two meters tall and its sneaky black eyes were busy cataloguing every inch of Reice's flight deck. He'd better say something, he thought, so it didn't decide he was hostile. He said, "I'm Reice, of ConSec. Now that you're here, what can I do for you?"

  "Greetings, Reice, friend of valued friends. Pleasure to be nowtime in your company.'*

  "That's right," Reice said through numb lips that could barely form words. He was actually having a conversation with one of these aliens, as if it was an everyday thing. And the alien was giving him a real clear hint that its presence here wasn't a random phenomenon. Valued Friend was the title that the Unity aliens had bestowed on the white-hole Scavenger who'd first brought the Ball to Threshold. "I'm a good friend of your Valued Friend, Micah Keebler, the guy who towed the Ball in here in the first place." Had to make the best of this. Reice's skin was crawling. The alien was less than four feet away from him, blocking the single corridor that led from the flight deck. There was no way out for Reice, nowhere to run. The alien blocked the only egress from the TICK'S two-place flight deck, unless Reice wanted to try punching out into vacuum by hitting his ejection seat control. "Now that you're here, why don't you sit down, take a load off?" Reice gestured to the copilotry station, at the same time letting his hand trail over the control panel long enough to disable the copilot's navigation and flight controls.

  "Load brought here, is message. Load take back, is answer, soontime, friend Reice. Sitting is probable, thanks. Will attempt nowtime."

  The alien moved toward him then, and Reice's whole body tried so hard to push itself into his seat, it creaked. Getting in here, the alien hadn't tripped a single alarm bell or intrusion warning of the BLUE TICK'S multicapability security suite. But then, Reice hadn't been expecting a boarding party. Now it slid or floated or wafted its way gracefully to the copilotry station that Reice had indicated with an ease that belied its mass. The thing was solid as a rock to the eye, but moved as if it weighed nothing—or as if the fifth-force generators on the TICK had given out.

  The Unity alien stooped when it reached the copilotry couch, as if uncertain. As it was about to sit down, Reice urged expansively, "Go ahead. It's okay. We're all friends, here."

  The alien climbed onto the couch, standing on top of it. Its conical head brushed the control suite above the station. It was facing aft, and it turned its head to meet Reice's eyes a whole lot further than any human could turn its head. "How do, sitting?"

  It scrutinized Reice intently, and turned itself around, facing front, sort of: its eyes never left him, its head never moved, but its body nearly did a one-eighty.

  "Urn, bend your knees, sit on your butt, or cross your legs on the seat if it's easier." He demonstrated, forcing a wide and silly grin onto his face that he hoped proved that this was no trick and that he, Reice, was in no way threatening. He wished he was back home in his Blue Mid bed. He hoped it wasn't embarrassed. People could get real unfriendly when they'd been embarrassed publicly. But how was he to know that Unity aliens didn't know how to sit down? It wasn't like the Secretariat had passed out a contact manual for the Unity that said, Under no circumstances, if a Unity alien invites itself aboard your spacecraft, should ConSec personnel ask an alien to be seated. Maybe Unity
aliens weren't built, physiologically, to bend in the right directions.

  Miserably, Reice watched his visitor struggle to assume a posture similar to Reice's, and hoped he hadn't created some awful diplomatic incident or started some war because he didn't realize that Unity aliens couldn't bend their knees—if they had knees.

  Just when Reice's face was beginning to ache so bad from smiling that he had to stop it, the alien seemed to turn into a viscous fluid and ooze over the surface of the copilotry couch. The gelatinous mass slid into the chair bonelessly, then reformed itself into a solid shape that mimicked his own posture precisely.

  The joke was wearing thin. Reice had just seen that thing pour itself as if it were plastic being poured into a mold of a chair, and then resume its former shape.

  Before anything worse happened, Reice said, "Great. Now that we've solved that problem, can you tell me what the message is you've got? I'll give you your response and you can go back to wherever. I'm a busy guy, you know."

  "Know Reice," said the alien gravely, as its conical head stretched on a flexible neck toward him. "Message bring from friend South, of UNE diplomat mission."

  "Right, South. Should have known. How is old Southie?" Reice couldn't shrink back any farther. He didn't want that face any closer to his. Commander Joe South was a Relic, a pilot from the early days of space flight who'd popped up near Threshold one day nearly five centuries later than he'd left Earth, safe and sound of body if not mind, and then gotten himself adopted by the Secretariat because he was up to his neck in this alien thing from the beginning. You bet, Reice knew South. Reice had brought the Relic pilot into Threshold to begin with, and hadn't been able to shake the fool since. Wherever you had trouble, you had South. South was nearly as alien as these Unity boogies, five hundred years out of date and spreading bad luck everywhere he went. The Secretariat had figured that out, Reice was sure, and sent South on the contact party to Unity space to be rid of him.

  "Southie fine, good, but not happy. Is wanting soontime ship, his STARBIRD, valued friend and machine, bringing to Ball site by friend Reice and other friend, Sling. Okay doing favor, please? Nowtime quickquick?"

  Caution came up in Reice's throat like a badly digested meal. "I thought, that is, I heard that South was at the Embassy party that the Unity threw for Croft. Is that where you're from—the new Embassy?" Maybe South's spacecraft, STARBIRD, wasn't state of the art, but the Relic pilot had poured everything he'd earned since coming to Threshold into retrofits. Sling, the aftermarketeer who'd done those retrofits, was no slouch. And the Unity alien clearly knew all about South's ship, Sling and the retrofits, and the covert relationship between Sling, South, and Reice that had kept Sling's name out of more than one of Reice's reports. Who the hell was this guy—this thing—and how could Reice trust him—it?

  "From? Where from?" The alien's face, on its elastic neck, zoomed toward Reice until its harelipped mouth was inches from his. He could feel its warm breath, which smelled slightly of copper filings and jasmine, puffing against his cheek. "From Unity, alltime. From South, past-time. From Ball, nowtime. From Embassy, soontime. Spacetimer wish coordinates?"

  Coordinates? To what? Or to when? In spacetime? Or in "alltime," whatever that was. Reice wanted the alien to get out of his face. He wanted it to get out of his ship. He wanted it to get out of his life. He wanted it so bad his whole person seemed physically or magnetically repelled by the alien head so close to his.

  He had to say something that would end this interview, and do it soon. But he was afraid to promise what he might not be able to deliver. "Yeah, gimme coordinates for the delivery of the STARBIRD. I got to know where to park it. That's all I need. Then me and Sling'll get right on it. You can tell South that."

  "Needing no problem. Having information, my pleasure, task and accomplishment." The alien arched its neck and stretched its lips over huge, white, pointed teeth in an imitation of Reice's smile. "Everything ready for ship, whenever you keep promise. Telling South all things by self, if Reice friends want to see. Coordinates Ball site, your nomenclature, forty-two degrees east latitude, sixty-eight degrees north longitude, by one and one-fifth nautical mile." As it recited a formula clearly learned from South, or someone like him, by rote, the head of the Unity alien began to draw away from him, back toward the shoulders on its telescoping neck.

  Reice found he'd been gripping the arms of his acceleration couch so hard that his fingers hurt when he uncurled them.

  "Great," he said. "We'll see you out at the Ball site."

  "Not me, seeings. For South, this favor is."

  Sure. That made sense. South would have known that the only way he was going to get anybody to park that damned antique of his anywhere near the Ball was to come to Reice. Wouldn't you know it, here comes the damned Ball again, back into Reice's life like a bad penny or an old girlfriend. "You're sure of these coordinates, sure South doesn't want his ship towed out to Pluto with the rest of Threshold?" If the alien changed its mind, Reice would be off the hook. He wanted to fly South's antiquated experimental starship out to the Ball site and park it that close to the Ball—which opened up and swallowed things on occasion, things like spaceships and people in EVA suits— about as much as he wanted see any more aliens, soontime, nowtime, or anytime.

  "Sure certainly," said the alien head, which had shrunk back almost onto its shoulders. "Towing longtime. Parking, shorttime. Unity Embassy thanking Officer Reice for fine cooperation, thistime. South person thanks Reice, and other Valued Friends, appreciating Reice, through this messenger."

  "Right. Well, thank you for coming. Can I—"

  Reice was about to ask the alien if there was anything else he could do for it before it left, but it started to ooze out of its chair.

  The sight made Reice want to retch. The gelatinous goo of the alien rose up into the air like a snake, swirled around a little, and became its conical-headed self once again. Then that solid form bowed slightly and walked backward, right through the starboard bulkhead of the BLUE TICK, as if through a diaphanous curtain.

  Reice sat for a long while, looking at the spot where it had gone through the heavily armored and insulated bulkhead. There were all sorts of sensitive fiber optics and electronics, cables and sensors, life support and fire control modules inside that bulkhead. Before he did anything else, he had to run systems checks.

  He started the diagnostic programs running, still sitting where he was. He couldn't see anything wrong with the bulkhead. It had no scorch marks or bubbled paint, no alien-shaped discoloration, no fracture lines, and most definitely no textural changes or alien-sized custom-made space doors.

  The area wasn't radioactive. The bulkhead had absorbed no energy transients which had altered its molecular structure. The place where the alien disappeared showed no sign of absorptive or radiant abnormalities, no traces of foreign substances. Every cable, fiber, and even the monocrystalline wireguides in the bulkhead wall were nominal.

  Reice continued his system checks. Every fire control component, radar, tracking system, data fusion module, precision guidance component, and modular interface of his firepower suite was in working order. So was his life support, when he got around to checking that. But he'd known it would be.

  The log of the BLUE TICK, when he reran the time frame in question, showed an absolute, not virtual, alien that had actually been on his flight deck. The real-time encounter that was stored in his cruiser's log matched his sense memory of how long the encounter had lasted. Every word and move of the alien, every nuance the intel boys would want to study, was recorded for posterity. The encounter had lasted twelve point three minutes, standard clock time.

  The only anomaly Reice could turn up across the whole spectrum of possible anomalies was that two hours and twenty-eight minutes had passed for everybody outside the BLUE TICK,

  You could go nuts, worrying about missing hours and minutes that don't jibe with your physical and internal clock reckoning. Maybe it was some kind of relativistic effe
ct. Sure. That's all it was. The alien's presence had caused some discrepancy between the onboard ship time of the BLUE TICK and the external time of the rest of the local universe. Nothing to sweat.

  Joe South had lost five hundred years, for God and country. Reice shouldn't be sweating two-hours-and-change worth of missing minutes. But he did sweat it. The lost time bothered the hell out of him.

  Lost time was worse than molasses aliens and permeable bulkheads. Lost time was just downright spooky.

  Eventually, Reice was going to have to tell somebody what had happened out here. Before that, he'd better find out where that lost time went, how to account for it, and why his virtual absence hadn't been noticed by anybody else. He didn't have a single unanswered query or undone task on his log for the entire "missing" interval. Great.

  Reice got up from his couch and walked briskly over to the place where the alien had disappeared through the bulkhead. He touched the spot—something for which he'd done all the intervening work to avoid. It felt solid. It wasn't slippery, or sticky, or greasy, or yielding. It was just a bulkhead panel like any other.

  Okay, then. There was no alien aboard his ship now, and he'd suffered no discernable harm. He'd made a promise he'd better see about keeping, though, before he turned in a report on this and got himself and the BLUE TICK so bound up in red tape that a bowel movement, let alone movement around Threshold or out to the Ball site, was impossible.

  Sling was going to love this. All they had to do was get South's ship, fly it out to the Ball site using Reice's clout, park it and get the hell out of there.

  South was behind this stunt, Reice had no doubt of that. The Unity alien that had come to Reice hadn't gone through regular channels, and almost certainly didn't have the savvy to realize how many chains of command and choke points were being cut by coming right to Reice with South's message.