Starship Summer ss-1

by Eric Brown

  She stared at my hand as if it were a noxious insect that had come between us, and I got the message. Even if she understood the concept of a handshake, she had no desire to carry out the act.

  “This way,” I said. “Would you like me to take your bag?”

  “I can carry it myself,” she said frostily, and I escorted her from the station to the parking lot.

  We completed the drive up the coast to Magenta in almost total silence. After fifteen minutes, unnerved by my passenger’s lack of conversation, I tried to tell her something about the continent, the seasons, and the morning storm that had washed the coast clean and sparkling.

  She flashed me a quick, cold smile and said, “Thank you, but I really do need to concentrate.” And so saying she closed her eyes and rested her small, pointed chin on her chest.

  I kept quiet for the rest of the journey, glancing at her from time to time. Even if it were not for the strange arrangement of nipples puckering her slim torso, something would have alerted me to the fact of her alienness. While her facial features seemed human at first glance, closer inspection revealed something odd about them, a disproportion between eyes, nose and mouth that was disconcertingly animal-like: large eyes, small nose and small, thin mouth, like some kind of bi-pedal, sentient bush baby. Not for the first time I wondered at the nature of her acquaintance with Matt.

  An hour later we crested the rise above Magenta Bay, and the settlement was spread out below us, a sweep of red sand, the scintillant silver bay, and the neat collection of chalets, villas and A-frames arranged along the foreshore.

  I showed the alien to the chalet Matt had booked for her.

  Again she refused my offer to carry her case, and climbed the steps to the lounge with a quick, sprightly step which again struck me as un-human.

  She looked around the room and pronounced, “This will suit my purposes.” She turned to me. “Will you tell your Mr Jones that I will pay for the rental of this dwelling. I will be staying for one night only.”

  I nodded. “I’ll do that,” I said.

  As I was turning to go, she said, “One other thing, Mr Conway.”

  “Yes?”

  She was watching me, and I wondered if she possessed some alien propensity for detecting untruths as she said, “Do you by any chance know of the artist, Matthew Sommers?”

  “Well… I know of him, certainly. He’s famous, after all.”

  “Could you tell me where he lives?”

  “To be honest, I’m not too sure…” Even to my ears, the lie sounded far from convincing.

  She reached into a shoulder bag and withdrew a long white envelope. She smiled at me as she held out the envelope. “I’m sure you can ask around and find his address, Mr Conway. When you do, would you be kind enough to give this to Matthew?”

  I nodded. “I’ll do my best,” I said, and escaped.

  I returned to the Mantis and checked the monitors which I had left running on the off chance of a daytime visitation, but I was out of luck. I considered lunch at the Jackeral, but decided first to deliver the alien woman’s letter to Matt.

  As I drove around the bay, turning off onto the road along the southern headland, I wondered at something Hawk had mentioned weeks ago: Matt had once told him he had no need for romance in his life. The romantic in me wondered if the alien, Marrissa TallanXanagua, was an old lover—perhaps even the woman who had extinguished the flame of passion in the heart of the ageing artist. I smiled at this flight of fancy and told myself that she was probably no more than an admirer of his work.

  I found Matt sitting on his veranda, nursing a cup of coffee and staring out to sea.

  I crossed the decking and clapped him on the shoulder, melodramatically.

  “What?” he laughed.

  “Just checking that you’re the real McCoy,” I said. “Sit down and I’ll get another cup.”

  A minute later I poured myself a coffee and said, “Well, I delivered your alien, Matt.”

  “Everything go okay?”

  “I think she saw through me,” I admitted. I handed him the envelope. “She gave me this to deliver, if I could find your address…”

  “That’s Marrissa,” he said, taking the envelope and turning it over in his big hands. “You can’t put a thing past her.”

  I hesitated, then said, “She’s alien, but I don’t recognise…” “You wouldn’t, David. Her people rarely travel. She’s a Fharr,from Charybdis, the only habitable planet in the Vega system. They’re pre-industrial, but very artistic.”

  I recalled the name of the planet from the conversation the night before. “You lived there, right? How did you come to know Marrissa?”

  He nodded, as if he didn’t mind my clumsy probe. “I lived on Charybdis twelve years ago, before I came to Chalcedony. It’s a breathtakingly beautiful place. I lived on an island in a tropical archipelago. I did some of my best work there.”

  “And Marrissa?” I prompted.

  He smiled. “We had an affair. It was… let’s just say it was intense, all the more so because it was frowned on in her community. I loved the woman, David. But she was alien.” He stopped, staring down at his blunt fingers.

  I echoed, “Alien?” hoping to find out exactly how alien.

  He looked up. “You know, you think you know a lover, how they think, how they feel… It’s hard enough with a human being, but imagine how hard it might be if your lover is alien, her mind formed and fashioned by inexplicable genes and millennia of customs an outsider has no way of comprehending.”

  “What happened?”

  I think he would have told me then, had we not been interrupted. He looked past me, out across the bay. I heard the regular smacking sound of a wave-hopper.

  Seconds later the hopper skimmed up the beach, spewing red sand in its wake, and the rider dismounted. With a sudden jolt I recognised the subject of our conversation.

  Beside me, Matt murmured her sonorous name.

  She walked up the beach, then stood at the foot of the steps and squinted up at us. She saw me. “So you have found Matthew, Mr Conway. Perhaps,” she said archly, “you asked the same people as I did?” Her gaze shifted to my friend. “Matthew, it has been a long time.”

  I looked at Matt. He was staring down at the woman as if dumbstruck.

  “I think I’d better leave you two alone,” I said.

  “No—” Matt said, and laid a restraining hand on my arm. “I’d rather you remained.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure.” There was no emotion on his face as he watched the ghost from his past walk up the steps and pause before us. She wore the same cheesecloth blouse as earlier, and the front hung loose to reveal those strange alien nipples.

  She smiled. “We have a lot to talk about, Matthew.”

  “So… you’ve finally found me.”

  “It wasn’t easy. I followed your trail from planet to planet.” She smiled. “You knew I was coming.”

  “I thought you might, one day… Gunter, on Corinth, said you were looking.” He stared at her and said, “So… what now, Marrissa?” I could tell that he was shocked, hardly in control of his words. The romantic in me could not help thinking what a fairytale reunion this was.

  “I want to talk to you about… me and you, about what happened.” Marrissa glanced at me.

  “I was just leaving,” I said.

  “This is something of a surprise,” Matt said to Marrissa, stopping me with his gaze. “I mean, even though I knew you were coming, seeing you in the flesh again after so long…”

  Her smile, I thought, held something other than the pleasure of an old lover. Was I misinterpreting her alien features, or did I recognise malice in her thin, stretched lips?

  Matt said, “I wonder if I could see you later, in private? Perhaps in the morning? I could come over to the chalet around ten.”

  She smiled. “Very well. Tomorrow will be fine, Matthew. I’ll look forward to seeing you.” She stood looking at him for a few seconds, the
n nodded and left the deck, very upright and taking long, animal strides through the sand.

  Matt watched her wave-hopper bounce across the bay. He seemed stunned.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “I’m fine. It’s just that… it isn’t every day that your past catches up with you.”

  “You were about to tell me what happened,” I said, “but look—I’ll understand if you don’t want to talk about it.”

  “No, it’s fine.” He gestured at the seats by the table. “Sit down and I’ll fetch a couple of beers.”

  Two minutes later we were sitting in the sun, sipping ice-cold beers. Matt said, “I’d been on Charybdis almost a Terran year when I met Marrissa. She was an artist, working with local fabrics, weaving scenes of Charybdian life from a seaweed equivalent, would you believe. But her visions were beautiful. They spoke to me. It was a long courtship before we eventually began living together. And intense! David, I’d never experienced anything like it. I put it down to her being alien, exerting some strange influence on me…” He stopped there and looked at me.

  I smiled in encouragement.

  “Well… a year or two passed. I was mindlessly happy. I was in love with an amazing woman and turning out some of my best work.” He paused, staring into his glass, and continued in a softer tone, “Then one day I attended a religious ceremony with Marrissa and her tribe. It took place on a pontoon afloat on the ocean, and was conducted by a high priest who gave thanks to the god of the seas for the plentiful harvest of fish that season. As providence would have it, a storm blew up, whipped the ocean and wrecked the section of the pontoon we were standing on.”

  He paused again, and I wondered where his narrative was leading. “What happened?” I asked.

  “The High Priest and Marrissa were pitched into the ocean. Before they were swept away, I dived in and managed to drag her back to the wreckage of the raft. I went in again but the priest was lost, his body never discovered…

  “I was shunned by the natives, for saving Marrissa instead of the priest. They banished me from the island. I had allowed a servant of one of their gods to die in preference to a mere peasant—a crime almost as heinous as killing him intentionally—and in my absence a trial was held. But what hurt more than my banishment was the fact that Marrissa hated me for saving her life, and would gladly have died in place of the holy man. Like I said, she was alien…”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  He shrugged. “The Terran officials on Charybdis feared for my safety and managed to smuggle me off the planet. That was around twelve years ago.”

  “And now Marrissa’s found you,” I said. “Perhaps, I don’t know… perhaps she can find it in her heart to forgive you.”

  He smiled. “I’ll find that out tomorrow, David, won’t I?”

  Not long after that I left Matt sitting on the veranda, staring out across the bay, and made my way home.

  I considered a beer at the Jackeral, but I was tired after the long drive to MacIntyre and back, and decided to take a nap. In the event I was glad that I did so.

  That afternoon, in the darkened room I used as my bedroom, I had the dream that changed my life, that explained nothing at the time but set in motion the chain of events that in due course explained everything.

  TWELVE

  I fell asleep instantly and was soon visited by the alien again. As on the last occasion, I was convinced I was awake: the clarity of the vision was not at all dream-like.

  The alien hovered over me, peering down. I stared up at its thin, axe-blade face, curious but not in the least apprehensive. The being—or whatever it was—emanated a sense of calm and goodwill.

  It told me, again not verbally, but by some kind of telepathic process, that I had been chosen by the Yall. What they wanted me to do would change things for ever, the alien claimed, and in the process transform my life. I would need the help of my friends—Matt and Maddie and Hawk—and together we would bring about a new Golden Age for humankind.

  And then it told me what I had to do.

  It filled my head with information and I absorbed it all in wonder. It told me everything but the reason for what it had asked me to do.

  That, it said, would become evident in time.

  “But the Yall,” I recall saying, “why can’t they…?”

  The Yall no longer inhabited this galaxy, I was told. They had done their work here, left behind them their gift to other emerging sentient races, and left for the next galaxy.

  “Their gift?” I echoed. “You mean, the Golden Column?” My alien visitor assented.

  “But… what is it? What does it mean?”

  “That is a secret only a race advanced enough can find out.”

  “And we—humans—have reached that stage?”

  Affirmation filled my head.

  I wanted to ask more—determine precisely what would happen when my friends and I carried out the alien’s bidding—but the apparition faded, and I slipped further into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  I came awake suddenly, disoriented. I recalled the dream—the vision that had all the fidelity of a waking encounter—and what the alien had requested.

  I stumbled from bed. I had fallen asleep in the afternoon, but it was dark now. How long had I slept?

  The bedside clock told me that it was seven in the morning. I had slept through the evening and the night. I stood up, realising that I felt refreshed, invigorated.

  I showered quickly and ate an even quicker breakfast, my head full of what I should do next.

  At eight—a suitable time, I judged, to rouse my friends—I called first Matt, then Hawk and Maddie.

  Matt answered instantly. He stared from the com screen, peering at me. “David? What’s wrong?”

  “I need to see you. I was visited last night. By the alien. And I know now what it wants.”

  “David?”

  “How soon can you get over here?”

  “I’m on my way.”

  I cut the connection and got though to Hawk and Maddie, with the same results.

  I sat before the viewscreen, staring out at the sweep of the bay. The curving red sands and the beach-side chalets were quiet now, not a soul in sight. Storm clouds piled on the horizon over the sea, and a wind was blowing up. Soon the bay would be whipped into a frenzy, and winds would lash the foreshore for an hour or two. I hoped my friends would make it before the storm set in.

  I sat and thought about what the alien had told me…

  Matt arrived first, riding his wave-hopper around the far headland and along the beach rather than risk crossing the choppy waters. Seconds later a battered roadster drew up beneath the nose of the starship, and Hawk climbed out and limped up the ramp and into the ship after Matt.

  “In the lounge,” I called out, just as Maddie came into sight along the beach, a small doll-like figure, her home-made cape pestered by the rising wind.

  Minutes later all three were sitting in the lounge, pouring coffee and looking at me expectantly.

  “Well?” Matt said.

  I stared at my friends and wondered where to begin.

  “I had another dream,” I said, “only it wasn’t a dream. It happened. The alien came to me and explained what it wanted.” Matt sipped his coffee. The others watched me expectantly. I looked at Hawk.

  “Do you think you can pilot the Mantis?” I asked.

  He stared at me, puzzlement lending his experienced, battered face a sudden look of innocence. “Pilot the ship?” “Get it running, get it up and flying?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know… In principle, yes.”

  “I know the codes,” I said. “I know the override commands that will start the engines. They were given to me by the creature.”

  “Then… in that case it can be done. But not by me.”

  I stared at him. “Hawk?” Disappointment flooded the word.

  He looked pained. “David, I haven’t flown for thirty years. For that long I’ve tried to forget what happened…�
�� He shook his head. “I couldn’t bring myself to even think about flying again.”

  “Not even one last time?”

  Hawk stared at me, wrestling with demons.

  Matt leaned forward and said,“Why?” watching me closely.

  I shook my head. “That I don’t know. The alien said it wanted us to fly the ship. It gave me the co-ordinates for the flight. All we need to do is get the ship running.”

  Maddie said, “It wanted us to fly the ship, David?”

  I nodded, dredging the dream for the alien’s explanation. “The ship needs more than the pilot to get it up and moving. Don’t ask me for the technical details. We’d be… plugged into the systems matrix, in some way powering the vessel. Our presence is vital for its operation.”

  “And where would the ship be bound?” Matt asked. “And why?” Again I shook my head, spreading my hands in mute appeal. “I don’t know that. The alien told me that what we’d do would change things—it said that the Yall had given the galaxy a gift, and that we humans were now advanced enough to accept it.”

  We stared at each other.

  Maddie said, “I’m up for it. How can we refuse?”

  Matt inclined his noble head. “I agree with Maddie. We’ve got to do it. Imagine not taking up the challenge, and looking back at our failure, and forever wondering…”

  I looked across at Hawk. He was staring down at his big hands. He looked up, staring past me through the viewscreen.

  The storm had started. They sky had darkened. Wind howled around the contours of the ship, whistled through aerials and antennae, and the rain came down in torrents.

  “Hawk?” I said.

  “I don’t know…”

  I said, and I wasn’t proud of myself for what might be considered a blackmail tactic, “If we do it, Hawk, then the alien said it’d banish my nightmares. I know, there’s a greater thing we need to do it for, something we can’t even guess at as yet. But one of the results would be that I’d no longer be haunted by the nightmares of what happened.”

  Maddie said in a small voice, “What did happen, David?”

  I nodded, and gathered myself, my thoughts, the memory of that day, and I told them what I had not told anyone before.