Damage Control - ARC

by Mary Jeddore Blakney

  "I wish you could tell me how it works," said Jade. "But then I guess you'd have to kill me." It was meant to be a joke, but it didn't even make her smile.

  "How what works, a Personal Device?"

  "No, interrogation. The technology that can read my mind like that."

  The Chuzekk laughed, so loudly and suddenly that Jade jumped. "If the technology could read minds, then many things would be very different," he said. He spoke to his Personal Device (there was that sound 'zo' again) and the pictures started appearing on the wall again.

  The pictures were from what Jade now thought of as the 'saved folder'―pictures of people whom the Chuzekk computer had apparently guessed that she knew. For the most part, it was right. But as the pictures scrolled past, she realized that some had been added since her last session. Her aunt Becky was there now, for example, along with Becky's children and grandchildren.

  She wondered how the Chuzekks obtained the pictures. Maybe they had invaded the State of New Hampshire and seized the vital records building. Or maybe they had just hacked the State computer system. Or maybe they had a secret agent there who looked up specific information.

  A picture of her nephew Remmy minimized and was replaced by one of her cousin Max. A rush of adrenalin shot through her, and every part of her body wanted to jump out of the station and make a dash for the door.

  “Leli zo!” said Chegg, and put his hand on her back.

  The pictures stopped moving. Max froze on the wall and Jade could hear her heart pounding in her ears.

  “MacKendall Brown,” said Chegg. “Chief Warrant Officer, US Army. Military Intelligence. Your cousin. When's the last time you sent or received communication with him?”

  Jade wondered, herself, what the answer to that question was.

  “Have you communicated with him since you met Zuke Gevv?”

  Unfortunately for Max's safety, yes. Jade sang “Mary Had a Little Lamb” in her imagination, to shut out the questions.

  “Have you communicated with Max since we captured Los Alamos?”

  The Chuzekks captured Los Alamos? Jade hadn't heard that before. ...little lamb, little lamb, whose fleece was white as snow.

  “Have you communicated with Max since the Americans killed Ambassador Bekk?”

  Who was Ambassador Bekk? And everywhere that Mary went, Mary went...

  “Have you communicated with Max since your birthday?”

  Definitely it was after her birthday. ...her lamb was sure to go. Jade tried to shut out Chegg and his questions and concentrate on the fluffy little lamb, playing in a grassy field of daisies.

  “Since we made contact with China?”

  Unfortunately, yes it was after the Chuzekks made contact with China. After the peaceful landing in Beijing. Why wasn't the landing in Washington peaceful, too? Clearly, Mary and her lamb weren't working. She needed to think of a more emotionally compelling distraction.

  “Since we made contact with Russia?”

  Yes, it was some time after that awful day. The landing in Russia had been peaceful, too.

  Chegg was probably getting his questions answered, just as he had when he'd asked her how she liked her coffee. She really needed to think of a better distraction, but what could she use? She needed something that affected her emotions, probably in a positive way…

  “Since our first attempt to make contact with America?”

  Attempt to make contact with America? They hadn't just attempted to make contact, they had made it―and they had made it with weapon-fire. And yes, she'd chatted with Max since then. But what did Chegg mean by “our first attempt?” Had they tried before that and failed? And what was that about killing an ambassador? “What do you mean, your first attempt to make contact with America?” she asked aloud.

  “Perhaps my description was inaccurate,” Chegg replied in the closest thing to an apology Jade had heard from him. Too bad the near-apology was wasted on such a trivial thing as inaccurate phrasing. “Have you communicated with Max since our first landing in Washington, when the American Armored Division killed Ambassador Bekk?”

  “Your invasion force came down shooting,” Jade burst out without thinking. “I don't think that was a very good time to have an ambassador on board.”

  She wished she had just shut up. But it was said: she couldn't retract it. If he was going to punish her, there was nothing she could do about it now.

  But Chegg just laughed. “We came down shooting?” he said. “Is that what they told you? And in Beijing did we come down shooting, too? Did we come down shooting in Moscow?"

  Jade inhaled sharply, ready to put his arrogance in its place. Then she remembered where she was, pulled her lips in and bit them. Her breath blew out her nose and made her sound like an impatient horse.

  "You're pissed!" the Chuzekk laughed, his voice full of amusement. She could feel the laughter in his fingers where they touched her back.

  "I need a restroom break," said Jade through her teeth.

  "What is a 'restroom break'?" the keev asked, his voice and hand still laughing.

  "I have to go to the bathroom," Jade explained, pretty sure he was playing dumb to make her wait. If this was a game he was playing to demonstrate his power over her, then it wasn't one she had a chance of winning. "May I go to the bathroom, please?" she asked in the most respectful voice she could manage.

  "Why do you say 'have' when you mean 'need'?" he asked, still taking his time. He tapped his Personal Device and the body outline and bar graph enlarged. "Your lower ab tension is less than sixty," he observed, " and the size differential is not sufficient." He slid his hand slowly down so it covered more of the small of her back, until one fingertip was uncomfortably close to her tailbone. She tried not to react. "Lumbar test failed. You lie, or perhaps you confuse emotional signs with physiological ones. Request denied."

  He took a sip of coffee. "Since the Americans killed Ambassador Bekk," he asked, "did you meet with Max personally? Did you speak with him face to face?" He paused for a second or two before continuing, "Did you speak with him by telephone?" Another short pause. "Did you meet with him in a chatroom?...Did you communicate with Max by instant message?...Did you communicate with Max by email?...Did you use an internet voice call application to communicate with him?...Did you use a social networking website?...What devices did you use to communicate with Max since the Americans killed Ambassador Bekk? Did you use your own desktop computer?...Did you use your own laptop computer?...Did you use Becky's desktop?...Did you use Becky's laptop?...Did you use another person's computer?...Did you use a public computer?...Did you use a smartphone or PDA?...Did you use a Personal Device?"

  Chegg studied his Personal Device for about thirty seconds, then spoke a commandand the photo of Max disappeared. "You may have a restroom break now, if you wish," he said.

  Jade stood up, and it made her legs hurt. Her whole body ached, and she realized she’d been tensing all her muscles ever since Max’s picture had appeared. When she got to the toilet, it took a long time to get her body to relax enough to use it.

  When she got back, there was a different image on the wall. Leathery and light colored, somewhat brown and somewhat green, an object sat on what appeared to be a post or pillar.

  "An egg?"Jade guessed.

  "Yes. My youngest child."

  "Congratulations. How long until it hatches?"

  "About half a year."

  "So what happens now? Do you have to—I don't know—tend it?"

  "No. All it needs is protection."

  "That picture doesn't look like it's taken underwater," said Jade. "I thought Chuzekk babies couldn't breathe air."

  "They cannot. This pillar is in the middle of a pool of water. If you look in the middle of the bottom of your pool, you will see a place for attaching an egg pillar. When the egg begins to hatch, it will move and fall into the water."

  "The fall doesn't hurt it?"

  Chegg shook his head. "Not at that age."

  "Is it a boy
or a girl?"

  "It will be boy, but right now it is neither. The sex depends on the food they eat after hatching."

  "You're kidding! Are you serious? Are you just playing with me?"

  "I am serious. Certain seaweed produces males and certain seaweed produces females."

  "Wow. We have creatures like that on Earth. The workers feed the babies according to what kind of adult they're going to need: worker, drone or queen. Is it your first?"

  "It is my eighth." Chegg tapped his Personal Device and the egg disappeared. A video played on the wall instead.

  “It’s the same egg,” Chegg explained. “You see it hatching.”

  In the photo, the egg had been dry and sitting on a post. This time, it was underwater, and so was the camera.

  They watched as its leathery brownish skin was slowly torn open from the inside, and the tiny creature gradually freed itself. Jade had always imagined that Chuzekk nymphs looked like tadpoles, but Chegg’s child looked more like a young salamander, or water dog. It had a prominent, sharp-looking egg tooth and huge eyes.

  “He’s so cute!” Jade squealed.

  “Yes,” Chegg agreed, smiling.

  The hatchling swam quickly to a corner of the pool and began to eat. Chegg and a female Chuzekk appeared, touched it reverently on the body, fins and face, and continued to caress and speak to it as it ate hungrily, apparently ignoring them.

  “Your wife,” said Jade.

  “Yes. This is the bonding time. A Chuzekk forms a strong bond with the first people it meets after hatching. It is very important that both parents are present.”

  When the video ended, Chegg placed a Personal Device on the desk in front of Jade. It wasn't his own―his own was still projecting her uniform-telemetry. “This is for you,” he said.

  “Thank you,” she replied, figuring it was prudent to mind her manners. She picked it up and opened it. She would have thought it was too big to fit nicely in her palm, but it did. It had a tiny screen and a keypad. But instead of keys it had little round holes, only as big as the point of a dull pencil. So maybe she'd have to type with her dry pen.

  He put something else in front of her. It was whitish, spiky and oddly-shaped. Not sure if it was sharp, she examined it without touching it. Still, she was clueless.

  Chegg laughed. “They are prosthetic claws, for typing.”

  She picked them up and saw that they were made of plastic and all molded as one piece, like artificial fingernails, only shaped differently. When pulled apart, they would fit over her fingers like thimbles.

  Chegg tapped the keypad of his own Personal Device. “Your guards are here,” he said. “You should eat now and sleep soon. You may leave the station.”

  13

  the interpreter

  The creature was short, scrawny and fuzzy in patches. Where it wasn’t fuzzy, it was pink and smooth like someone who had been burned nearly to death and was waiting for the hide to grow back. And as if that weren’t entertaining enough, the creature was actually trying to intimidate a Chuzekk keev.

  Gyze Quejj couldn’t see his team’s faces, since he was behind them and they were all facing the creature’s projection on the corner wall. But he imagined that most of them were smiling, as he was. It was one of this job’s advantages: watching Humans could be very entertaining.

  “I’m telling you,” the creature was saying. “If you don’t believe me, check it for yourself. I have a black belt. Liu’s. Liu’s karate studio, in Belleview. That’s L-I-U. Just walk in there and ask anyone. They all know me. Jonathan Bartholomew Gooding, black belt. Size don’t matter, if you got skills. Or claws, either.”

  The keev smiled. “Perhaps someone here will be willing to help you practice.”

  Gyze was enjoying this session, but mostly he was looking forward to the next one. They would get a brand new subject for the next session. Interpreting the telemetry of a member of an alien species was always a challenge, and when the alien was a complete stranger, the challenge only intensified. And every new Human seemed to entertain him and his colleagues with a new cuteness, a new silliness.

  When the new subject first came in, he couldn’t see it. One of the cheejes in front of him tapped a few keys on his Personal Device and the new subject’s uniform-telemetry appeared. It was female and fit, probably a soldier. Her intense fear was typical at this stage. Some of the other readings were not. They would need to analyze those later: there was no time now.

  The Human greeted her interrogator with the arm grasp and the statement of submission. She had learned that, then, and was willing to use it. Whether or not she understood its meaning was another question.

  After that she didn’t speak for a while. The last two subjects hadn’t spoken, either, at this stage.

  Chegg walked into camera range and informed the subject which station she would kneel in. She appeared to confuse the statement with an order, and knelt quickly. She was small, even for a Human, a paler pink than the previous two subjects, and the fuzzy patch on her head resembled a water garden full of orange vegetables ready for harvest. And she moved like a water woman.

  Chegg affixed the facial telemetry device and it began transmitting.

  “You did not sleep last night, nor eat today,” Chegg complained. That could explain the unusual readings, then. He began his coffee routine, and Gaizz and his team watched the new subject’s reactions, enjoyed observing her amazement as she began to realize the nature of Chuzekk interrogation.

  After that, Chegg used the images technique, and pretty soon, the subject began to talk. Whether she talked or not didn’t matter for the interrogation, of course, but it seemed that Humans were usually at their most entertaining when they were talking.

  “May I join you?”

  The solitary prisoner looked up from the cafeteria table where she knelt over a plate of food, looking at her Personal Device. "Sure, of course.” She fussed over her tray, even though it already took up less than half the table.

  Gyze put down his own tray and knelt across from her. “I am Gyze.”

  “Hi, Gyze, my name is Jade.” She put her Personal Device back on her hip. “I've seen your rank before,” she said to him, ripping open three sugar packets at once and pouring them into her coffee, “but I don't know what it is.”

  “Chiroje,” Gyze answered.

  “And is that higher or lower than cheej?” she asked, opening a tiny plastic cream cup.

  “Lower,” said Gyze. “A chiroje supports usually twelve cheejes.”

  Her smooth brow furrowed. “So, you give orders to cheejes, or cheejes give orders to you?” She put in another cream and stirred.

  “I give orders to cheejes.”

  “But you said chiroje is lower than cheej.”

  “Yes, chiroje is lower than cheej."

  She looked at his stew for a moment. “What does that red glop taste like?”

  "I find it difficult to describe taste to an alien. You may taste it yourself.”

  “If you have the right to give someone orders,” she lectured, “we'd call that being higher in authority than they are.” As soon as she tasted the stew, her lips puckered and her eyes watered. She thrust a whitish lump from her own plate into her mouth, and her face began to relax.

  “You are American, are you not?” Gyze asked.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Then it is understandable that your concept of authority is incorrect. But perhaps you can answer a question for me."

  Her eyes narrowed. "I could try." She stopped eating and held her breath.

  "What is sushi?"

  The prisoner's soft little eyebrows went up and she let out her breath all at once in something close to a laugh. "I don't know a lot about it, actually. Rice wrapped in seaweed, I guess, and then they put something on top of that, like fish."

  "Is sushi for adults? Or only for babies?"

  "Adults, definitely."

  "Do you Human adults actually eat seaweed?" These creatures' diets were even stran
ger than he had imagined.

  "Yes. You don't eat seaweed?"

  "I did eat it," he said, "but then I grew legs."

  "Grew legs?"

  "Perhaps you are not familiar with how we develop. When we first hatch, we have no legs. Seaweed grows on Chuze: it is very like Earth's seaweed, and it is the only food of our hatchlings. But when we metamorphose, we walk and breathe air and do not eat seaweed."

  "Your babies are tadpoles."

  "Tad poles," Gyze repeated. "Little sticks?"

  "No, baby frogs. Earth amphibians. Their babies are cute little green fishy-things, and they eat algae, which is almost like seaweed."

  "You wish to learn about interrogation technology."

  "Who told you that?"

  "You," Gyze answered. He removed his Personal Device and set it to replay a segment of the audiovisual recording of her last interrogation session. "I wish you could tell me how it works, but then I guess you'd have to kill me."

  Jade's cheeks reddened and she looked away.

  "I am part of your interrogation team," he explained, not hiding his smile.

  "You just heard about sushi today," said Jade. "That was from me, too, huh?"

  "Yes." The answer came out in a hiss, and he could feel his lip curling into a sneer. He paused to force his face back into a neutral expression. He had to concentrate to keep his tones soft and even, as he had learned in language school "My zeed―my boss―is an interrogator. I support twelve cheejes to help him interpret the gashh's telemetry during interrogations. My zeed is on special leave now, so temporarily we work with Chegg's interrogations instead."

  "Gashh, that means 'prisoner', right?" said Jade. Her words were respectful, but her voice had changed, and she was glaring at him. He figured she didn't know it.

  "Yes," Gyze hissed. "You are a gashh." With the claw of his left index finger, he traced on his own faltoopp the figure of the rounded rectangle she wore on hers. "Our uniforms contain sensors. They detect the amount and location of heat, moisture, muscle tension and pressure. They also detect heart rate and breathing. They transmit this data wirelessly. Our technology cannot read your mind, but it reads your body. We provide stimuli in a controlled environment, and interpret your body's responses to those stimuli. This helps us make certain guesses about what you know, and we try to confirm those guesses independently."