by Mike Luoma
Pretty good grip for a geezer! Vigorous handshake… he’s doing well, or he puts up a good front.
“You’re not as tall as I thought you’d be,” Van Kilner says to BC.
“You’re not as old as I thought you’d be,” BC counters. Van Kilner laughs.
“You, I like,” Van Kilner says. He smiles at BC. “Walk with me,” Van Kilner says. He turns his chair and begins to float away from them down a cleared path among the trees. He stops the chair, turns back to BC and Anita. “Come on, you two, there’s much to discuss!”
BC and Anita catch up to Van Kilner. He leads them down the path.
“I gather Anita and her crew have filled you in on The Project, the aliens, and what’s been going on,”
Van Kilner says as they walk.
“They have, but…” BC is stopped by a wave of Van Kilner’s hand.
“It’s a lot to take in,” Van Kilner says, to reassure him.
“I’ll say,” BC blurts out. He composes himself and continues. “You folks have been doing a lot without telling the rest of us what’s happening.”
“Well,” Van Kilner says. He stops his chair and turns to BC. “Can you blame us? Can you imagine us humans, the way we are right now, mounting any kind of defense against powerful alien races? If the humans these aliens meet are from The Project, we create a good impression! They’re meeting the best and the brightest!” Van Kilner turns and smiles at Anita. “Aren’t they, Anita!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Makes these alien races less likely to take humanity for granted! You see, we serve a purpose! Trust me, if these aliens were in regular contact with the greater mass of humanity, they’d soon be figuring out ways to wipe us all out, like interstellar pest control!” Van Kilner clears his throat. “Some of us are afraid that might already be happening,” he says, his eyes drilling into BC’s as he speaks. “But, you see, we serve a purpose!”
“Sure you do,” BC answers without flinching.
“Don’t you love the way it smells in here!” Van Kilner says, inhaling a deep breath and changing the subject.
“Huh?” BC asks, lost for a second.
“Breathe!” Van Kilner demands.
BC breathes. He inhales a deep breath of the earthy, musty moist air inside the arboretum. Wonder if he’s got any psychotropics in the air? Stuff he’s used to, but would affect me?
Soothing, calming agents… aromatherapy? It does smell good, like being back on Earth, out in the country, after it’s rained.
“Trust me, there are no drugs in the air, BC,” Van Kilner says, noting BC’s unease and suspicion. That was weird… guy almost read my mind.
“You know, BC, you project your thoughts rather openly and quite loudly,” Van Kilner says. I do?
“You do,” Van Kilner says, answering BC’s unspoken thought.
“Cut that out!” BC snaps.
“BC!” Anita cautions.
“Your own fault, son,” Kilner says. “I’m not trying to hear you. You just keep broadcasting to me. Keep it to yourself!” He admonishes BC.
BC tries not to think out loud.
Damn.
“Hard not to do, huh?” Van Kilner asks him.
Anita’s brow is furrowed. “I don’t hear anything,” she says, frustrated.
“You just don’t know how to listen,” Van Kilner says. “You may be hearing more than you know,” Van Kilner adds, mysteriously.
She glares at him.
“Let’s get beyond this,” BC suggests.
“I’m all for that,” Van Kilner agrees.
“Right,” Anita says.
“So…” BC looks from Van Kilner to Anita, “What’s next?”
“You know,” Van Kilner says to BC, “You’re not quite what I expected.”
“I’m not?”
“No,” Van Kilner says. “I expected someone… coarser, I guess.”
“Coarser?” BC asks.
“You’re an assassin,” Van Kilner explains matter-of-factly. “I thought you’d fit the part.”
“You know, funny thing, I actually haven’t killed anybody for a while,” BC protests. “And it was never by choice. They forced me into it.”
“Who was your last kill?” Anita says with some venom.
“Who was yours?” BC spits back at her.
“Children!” Van Kilner upbraids them and takes the conversation back over. “Enough of this. We are wasting time. BC, Anita told me what they told you… how much do you remember?”
“What, do you want a summary?” BC asks him with some sarcasm.
“No,” Van Kilner chuckles, “Not necessary. You obviously know about this base,” Van Kilner gestures at his surroundings. “Do you know about The Domo?”
BC nods.
“The Flaze? The Eldred?” Van Kilner asks.
“Yup,” BC says, nodding.
“Our other bases?”
“Heard about them. Not much more. Is there more?”
“Only this: The Eldred have used a plague to wipe out their enemies in the past. We’ve heard tell of it from some of the other races. It would seem the mellow, quiet race is quite capable of genocide.”
“Why wasn’t I told this?” Anita asks.
“Great,” BC says sarcastically. “Good to know.”
“The Domo told us that The Eldred wiped out a race on the planet we call ‘Crankshaft’ centuries ago,”
Van Kilner elaborates. Anita looks surprised.
“So they’ve done it before?” BC asks.
“They sure have. And the way that The Domo told it, it sounded like it was just something The Eldred, well… Do.”
“So… If it’s them,” BC speculates, “how can we prove it’s them and not the UTZ or the UIN? What court could we ever try them in?”
“Here’s something I just found out. The plague microbe? The one the Project and UTZ scientists isolated? It’s been found in a place that neither the UTZ nor the UIN had access to.”
“Where’s that?” BC asks.
“Here,” Van Kilner says, gesturing around him.
There’s stunned silence between the three of them. Van Kilner breaks it.
“We found it after it was isolated. When we knew what to look for. More incriminating, the microbe was found in the quarters formerly occupied by our visitor from The Eldred. Actually, there was so little of it, we can’t be sure it was actually left with the intent of infecting the whole base. Doesn’t really matter now, does it?” Van Kilner asks hypothetically. “If we hadn’t quarantined the area as soon as we had suspicions, more would have died.”
“People died?” Anita asks, suddenly worried. “Who?”
“Yes, dear, I’m afraid so,” Van Kilner says to her. “A couple of the techs. We haven’t found a cure for it yet.
“Oh,” she says, just to say something.
“I know,” Van Kilner says with sympathy. “I don’t know if you knew them. I’m afraid their names weren’t familiar to me, though I hate to lose anyone.”
Silence again hangs in the air between the three of them. This time, BC breaks the silence.
“Why? Why would they try to kill us all?” BC looks from Anita to Van Kilner. Van Kilner clears his throat to speak.
“I have no idea,” he says. “The Domo and The Flaze hold The Eldred in near reverence, act like the Eldred are somehow intergalactic parents. They seemed to be a mellow, benevolent, caretaker sort of race. They were a little jittery, but they seemed mostly old and wise.”
“Watch out for those old and wise ones, eh?” BC cracks. Van Kilner smiles.
“Maybe they’re so wise,” Anita ventures to guess, “They decided we were too violent a race to live.”
She shakes her head. “That’s all I’ve got.”
“I don’t know,” Van Kilner disagrees, “The Domo and The Flaze can both be very violent races. Why would The Eldred let them hang around, if that was the case? The Eldred have dealt with them for centuries, evidently.”
“You know,
BC,” Anita says to him, “when we first met the Domo, before we knew the Eldred existed, the Domo would talk about ‘those who walked among us.’ The Flaze early on told us about a race they called ‘The Shapers’. We think that both the Flaze and the Domo were talking about the Eldred. They never said that for sure, but the pieces fit. But we aren’t sure.”
Van Kilner nods, and then adds, “All we know is that all of them have messed with human beings and Earth to one degree or another over the course of our history. The Domo and The Flaze have treated the planet Earth like a curiosity. The Domo said that ‘those who walked among us’ also messed with our planet, somehow, centuries ago,” Van Kilner says. “But they don’t, and won’t, elaborate on who ‘those who walked among us’ were.”
“Really? Why won’t they talk about the Eldred?” BC asks.
“They usually will. They usually do. That’s why we’re not positive that ‘those who walked among us’ are The Eldred. We don’t know for sure that The Domo meant The Eldred were messing with us in our prehistory. We aren’t sure what they had to do with us, if anything.”
BC tries to get his head around everything Van Kilner’s saying. “Okay. Anita, Dell and Krish said that The Domo were like vampires, that they might have inspired some of our legends. They built the original base here,” he says, gesturing at the space around them. “And the others, The Flaze?” Anita and Van Kilner nod. BC continues, “The Flaze left the ruins we’ve found on the Moon and Mars, and might have been responsible for U.F.O. sightings. But what did the Eldred do?”
“We don’t know,” Van Kilner admits. “We just don’t know. You can bank on the fact The Domo were vampires in the 17th and 18th century. They posed as nobility and fed on the local populace in parts of Europe. They studied us, studied Earth, and decided not to take it over. Then they left. The Flaze arrived some time in the 20th century, about 200 years ago. Most of the U.F.O. craze back then was caused by The Flaze. But we have no idea when or even if the Eldred came to Earth.”
“Some of The Project’s anthropologists think they may have exterminated the Neanderthals,” Anita says. Van Kilner gives her a dubious look. “It’s possible… still a relatively new theory.”
“But!” Van Kilner says with a sense of drama, “There is another possibility… and here it gets really interesting: ‘Those who walked among us’ and the ’shapers’ could have been someone else. The Domo made only one mention of them, another race they called Dixitpaszay, or the ‘Ancient Enemy’.”
“They only mentioned them that once, and then never again,” Anita says, sounding frustrated. “And they definitely didn’t mean The Eldred.”
“No,” Van Kilner says. “The Eldred are not the Ancient Enemy… but then, who is? We’ve considered some possibilities: The Eldred may work for them. Or, somehow, they’re connected. Maybe the
‘Ancient Enemy” are the ones really behind this plague, eh? There’s a possibility,” Van Kilner says, introducing a new variable. “The Eldred may just do their bidding… it would explain why the other races all hold The Eldred in respect, if they are the Ancient Enemy’s right hand, their intergalactic ‘concierge’. But The Eldred have not mentioned an ‘ancient enemy’ at all, not to us.”
“When The Domo mentioned The Dixitpaszay, they said that they and The Eldred were on opposing sides in a war a million years ago,” Anita says. “They could easily have made up, in the intervening years.”
“What was the war about?” BC asks.
“We don’t know,” Anita says.
“And… what about the ‘why’?” BC asks. “Why would any of these races want us dead? How could we be a threat to anyone? Could any of these aliens have allied themselves with the UIN?”
Anita and Van Kilner exchange an “ask a stupid question” look between them. Anita answers.
“None of them could do anything like that without us knowing about it,” she assures BC. Damn, they sound awful cocky about that! Especially for people who possibly helped one of those races infect us with the plague.
“Well,” Van Kilner admits, “We don’t think they could. We know their ships. We know their energy signatures, the trails of particles their engines leave behind.
“And The Domo and The Flaze, at least, know to leave us alone.” He chuckles. “Plus, none of them, The Eldred included, understand what it is we’re fighting about. They don’t have religions. Not like ours.”
“Really? No religion?” BC asks, mystified.
“None. Not like human beings do” Van Kilner shakes his head. “That was why The Eldred wanted to come to Lunar Prime and observe the peace conference. At least, that was the reason they said they wanted to attend and observe, so they could study our religions further.”
“Further?” BC asks.
“Further,” Van Kilner confirms. “Evidently, The Eldred find our dedication to and obsession with religion to be… unique in the universe. And so they’ve been studying us for a while now. Us… and our religions.”
“Heh,” BC laughs, “That could be enough to convince any race that we don’t deserve to live! Maybe the Eldred and this Ancient Enemy are our enemies, too.”
“You know, the way The Domo talked about them,” Anita says, “I don’t think they’re around anymore. The Domo spoke of them in very past tense.”
“What do the Flaze and The Eldred say about the ‘Ancient Enemy’?”
“The Flaze are… odd. They don’t hold linear conversations, per se,” Van Kilner says. “They’ve never mentioned anything about the ‘Ancient Enemy’ and you can’t really ask them questions. The Eldred ignored the question completely when we asked them. They acted as if we didn’t say anything at all.”
“What do you mean?” BC asks.
“They ignored the question,” Anita says. “They just stared at us. As if we hadn’t said anything at all. They waited until we spoke again, and then reengaged in the conversation.”
“Weird,” BC observes.
“It was!” Van Kilner agrees. “But we dismissed it at the time. Chalked it up to bad translation, miscommunication. Of course, everything’s being reevaluated, now.”
“Okay, so… maybe we forget about the ‘why’” BC says. “How do we cure this? Can we stop it? You said it showed up here, have you found a way to cure it? Prevent it? Anything?”
“No,” Van Kilner says, shaking his head. “As I said, people died. But we did isolate the microbe causing the plague. And we’re working on it. We did discover one thing. It’s apparently not universally fatal. Some people aren’t affected, even though they were infected. Not everyone exposed to it catches it.”
“No?” BC asks.
“No,” Van Kilner says. “As a matter of fact, you were no doubt infected yourself, BC. You just have the good fortune of being immune. You don’t have it.”
“Am I a carrier?” he asks, worried.
“We don’t know for sure,” Van Kilner says. “There’s no evidence so far that this can be spread by anyone except a sick person. Not that we’ve seen, so far. We just don’t know all that much about it yet. We should have you checked out. Do some bloodwork.”
“What are you, The Flaze?” BC jokes, getting it deliberately wrong.
“No, that was The Domo,” Anita corrects him, “But they don’t… I mean, they’re not… oh, never mind,”
she sighs. BC smiles at his little victory.
“Very clever, BC,” Van Kilner notes. “It will be painless. We’ve got the best doctors here, I promise you,” he says to BC. “Hell, they’ve kept me alive this long!” He laughs. “Anita, why don’t you take BC
to our infirmary? Have them draw some blood, test for the microbe, see if there’s some healing factor you have that’s unique and fun and different.” Van Kilner shifts on his chair. “Then, I’m afraid I should let you go. There isn’t much more to tell you about. I wanted to meet you, see if you were the sort of man I can work with. You are. But I’m afraid they’ll be needing you back on Earth, back on the Moon at th
e very least.
“This plague is bad, BC, and it’s spreading through the human population like wildfire. There are a lot of people dying,” Van Kilner says. He drops his head, rubs his face.
“And it’s all your fault,” BC realizes. “Isn’t it? Both of you! All of you in The Project… your arrogance made you blind to a serious threat, didn’t it?” He looks from Van Kilner to Anita. Neither says a word.
“You two are responsible for taking more lives, and certainly more innocent lives, than I ever did in my former career!”
Anita protests, “BC, really, come on…”
“Wow,” BC keeps going, “What you’ve unleashed makes my discretions pale in comparison!”
“This was not intentional,” Van Kilner says softly.
“We are responsible,” Anita says. “I’m responsible. I’ll admit it, even if you can’t, doctor. We’re killing people,” she nods at BC, “Sure as he did.”
“We are not murderers!” Van Kilner says defensively.
“Does that matter to the victims? To any of our victims?” Anita asks them. The three of them are quiet. There’s nothing else to say. A minute passes in silence.
“We should get going,” BC finally says. “Get me to the infirmary, and then back on my way to the Moon, right? Okay?”
“Sure,” Anita says, still quiet.
“Well,” Van Kilner says, “I guess this is it for now. Think about our next step. We’ll keep in touch.
“It was good to meet you, BC. Even if you did have the unbridled temerity to call me a murderer.”
He extends his hand.
BC shakes it.
“Thanks, Doctor Van Kilner. I’ll do what I can to help you, to help us all stop this thing.”
“So will we. We’ll be doing all we can here.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” Anita says. She motions to BC to precede her out. They turn, leaving Van Kilner among the trees as they make their way back to the arboretum’s door. The door shuts silently behind them, disappearing into the wall.
“It’s bad, isn’t it?” BC asks Anita as they walk down the corridor.
“What?” Anita says absentmindedly.
