Xenophobia

by Peter Cawdron

  "Continue," the voice commanded.

  "Notification of the blackout was provided to the National Security Council and the President, who initiated a lockdown of the physical facility at AMES and the transfer of key personnel from Keck.”

  “What made you so sure?” asked the undisclosed interrogator. “What made you think this was indeed an alien spacecraft?”

  “At the initial distance, there was no way of making out any detail on the craft directly. The craft appeared as little more than a blur in a telescope, but the gamma rays told us all we needed to know. Gamma rays are highly energetic particles not associated with comets as they are indicative of subatomic collisions under immense pressure. Gamma rays are normally associated with catastrophic celestial events, like a supernova, an exploding star. To see gamma rays being emitted by something within our solar system was alarming. Spectrometer analysis revealed the presence of hydrogen and helium in the coma, or the head of this supposed comet, while the doppler shift of this light indicated the comet was approaching the solar system at significant speeds.”

  “What do you define as a significant speed?”

  “Based on our observations,” the Dupree continued, “we estimated the craft’s speed when first detected at 11% of the speed of light.

  “This is what confirmed the alien hypothesis for us. The craft’s motion relative to Earth seemed much slower than the doppler effect suggested. What we were seeing was a craft rapidly approaching us, while only drifting slightly to one side as it approached. At first, we’d mistaken that sideways motion as its actual motion, but that was an illusion.

  “You must remember, all speed is relative to your vantage-point. If you’re driving down the freeway at 55 miles per hour and another car overtakes you, it may only overtake you at a leisurely pace, perhaps even a walking pace, and yet that car is traveling at 57 miles per hour or 60 miles per hour relative to Earth. In this case, the alien vessel was entering our solar system at a blistering pace, but changes in the doppler shift indicated the craft was slowing, that it was braking.

  “By the time the craft reached the orbit of Sedna it was traveling at 5% of the speed of light. Two and a half months later, when it passed Pluto, the craft had slowed to less than 2% of the speed of light, and yet at that speed it would still cover the length of the United States in less than a second.”

  The interrogator spoke again, a hint of condescension in his voice. It seemed he already knew the answer to the question he was asking.

  “And what caused this gamma radiation? In your opinion, why was this craft giving off this spectacular radiation? Was this display in anyway threatening or hostile?”

  “Oh, no” Dupree said. “This wasn’t an aggressive act on their part. Space is not empty. Even a seemingly complete vacuum contains a few atoms every cubic meter as well as waves of electromagnetic energy streaming out from the sun. The craft was moving so fast it was colliding with these particles, causing them to fuse. The effect was we saw tremendous amounts of energy being radiated by the vessel as it fired its engines to brake on entering our system. Only the craft was moving so fast it took considerable time to shed that speed. In effect, we saw the tires smoking as it skidded to a stop.”

  “And what did NASA make of this?”

  “The alien spacecraft was, in effect, using collisions with dust particles, solar winds and wisps of hydrogen to assist in slowing itself, fusing hydrogen into helium in a super-heated plasma out in front of its shield. Think of it like a space capsule returning to Earth with its heat shield glowing white hot from friction with the atmosphere. Essentially, that’s what we were seeing, only at higher speeds than we’ve ever imagined.”

  Another voice spoke with almost electronic monotony.

  “Question from the floor: Ambassador Hans Jugen, Germany.”

  “You described a leading shield on the alien vessel, but the images we now see show no sign of any such shielding. How do you explain that?”

  “Good question,” Dr. Dupree replied. “Initially, our view of the object was obscured by the sun, but orbiting telescopes could resolve the basic outline of the craft. The SOHO satellite observing the sun was able to resolve the shield, which appeared broad but thin. As best we understand the physics, it seems the shield was more of a buffer, a temporary sail. We were able to observe the sail unfolding out to a distance of five thousand miles.”

  “Five thousand miles,” the ambassador cried. “That’s the distance from Germany to China.”

  “Yes,” Dupree said. “As a point of comparison, the sail was roughly the size of the Continental US.”

  “But that’s huge. And yet, now, there is no such shield.”

  “That’s correct. We theorized that this was an ablative shield, slowing the craft as it approached our sun. Once the craft passed the orbit of Mars, the sail appeared to retract.”

  “And that didn’t bother you?”

  “No, we saw no cause for panic.”

  “You saw no cause for panic,” the ambassador replied, a sense of indignity carrying in his voice. “We’ve seen rioting in Munich, Stuttgart and Bonn. The US embassy in London has been torched. In your homeland, protests have erupted in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Chicago, New York and Washington DC, and you say there’s no cause for panic? Can you understand that for the majority of mankind, whether this thing fuses hydrogen or looks pretty against the backdrop of the stars is irrelevant? What we need to know is if there is a credible threat against Earth?”

  “Mr Ambassador,” the radio crackled. “I will tell you the same message I told President Addison: To the best of our knowledge, the answer is, no, there is no immediate threat. This kind of hysteria is the very reason why the blackout was imposed. I may not agree with the President’s decision to arm the Orion, but I understand why he kept this discovery secret.”

  The anger in the ambassador’s voice rose above the unrest in the room.

  “You have no right to act on behalf of humanity without the consent of the United Nations. You think you rule the world, that you are best placed to make decisions for the rest of us, but you have no right to represent mankind as a whole.”

  An uproar broke through the crowd.

  “We thought we were doing what was right. We thought we were doing what was in the best interests of humanity.”

  More yelling erupted.

  “What would you have done?” asked Dupree, his voice carrying above the confusion simply because of his microphone. He was yelling above the noise. “What could you have done if you’d known? It's easy to criticize our actions in hindsight, but we did what we thought was best. We had to ensure stability. We wanted to prevent panic. You don’t yell fire in the middle of a crowded movie theatre unless there’s no other alternative. We wanted to avoid inducing fear in the general populous. We wanted to avoid a global meltdown of confidence.”

  “What arrogance?” cried the ambassador. “You thought you could contain this forever? You thought no one else would discover the craft? The alien spaceship threatens all of mankind, not just the US.”

  “But it’s not a threat,” Dupree pleaded. “Don’t you see? They weren’t using the sun to cover their approach, they were using the sun to slow down, they swung around the sun to shed their excess speed. They always intended to come to a rest beside us. They -”

  A squawk on Jameson’s handheld military radio snapped the three of them back to reality. They weren’t sitting in the safety of the US heartland listening to some theoretical debate. They were in Africa, in a country smoldering, about to burst into civil war.

  “Sarge? This is Mathers. I’ve got two vehicles approaching, maybe four clicks out. Looks like they've pulled off the road.”

  “Roger that,” Jameson replied into the radio. Turning to Bower, he added, “You need to get your staff and patients ready for possible hostile contact.”

  With that, Jameson grabbed his M4 rifle and ran down to Elvis and Smithy, yelling at them to finish up and g
rab their weapons.

  Chapter 03: Tears

  Darkness fell.

  Nothing happened for several hours.

  Sitting there with her back against a low stone wall, Bower struggled to deal with the tension. The night air was stuffy. A hot, humid breeze blew in from the west, negating the earlier, cooler breeze from the south. Dark clouds sat on the horizon. Flashes of lightning rippled above the hills. The crash of thunder was but a distant murmur, but it was growing louder as time passed. Bower wanted to feel the storm burst overhead, breaking through and bringing relief from the sweltering heat. With no word from the soldiers, all she could do was to sit tight and wait for the impending storm.

  The moon rose after sunset, softening the night. Dark shadows stretched across the village. Huts and fences cast elongated shadows on the ground, appearing as silhouettes against the horizon. Occasionally, Bower caught a glimpse of movement and her heart stopped. The soft crackle of a radio would assure her she’d seen a soldier moving about the desolate village and not a rebel sneaking into the camp. The stars were radiant, with the planets Mars and Jupiter glistening like diamonds next to the Moon. Bower couldn’t appreciate their beauty, her eyes barely noticed the fine pin-pricks of celestial light.

  “What are they going to make of all this?” Kowalski asked, his back leaning against the low brick wall outside one of the huts.

  They who? Bower vaguely wondered, but she was distracted, thinking about the patients who had fled, wondering how they were faring.

  Bower and Kowalski had housed the remaining patients inside the empty huts, rigging mosquito nets over them.

  The nurses and doctors wore long sleeve shirts with loose elastic bands around the wrist, along with gloves to protect their hands. In addition, they wore broad-rim hats with mosquito netting to protect the face and neck, but still mosquitos buzzed around trying to find a way in. They’d sprayed repellant, but Bower swore the mosquitos had come to savor the smell.

  Bower missed Kowalski’s question. She’d worked with him for the past six months, ever since he transferred from Sudan. Bower liked him, but she found it hard to understand what he said at times. Kowalski was originally from Czechoslovakia. His English was technically correct, but his speech was clipped. The rhythm with which he spoke and his sharp accent meant Bower had to concentrate on his words or she’d miss his points entirely.

  Kowalski pointed at the sky. “You think they’ll think we’re nuts?”

  “They’d be right,” she replied, casting her eyes up and recognizing the constellation of Orion.

  “It must be quite something,” he added, with his natural cadence slightly accentuating the close of each sentence. “Do you think they’ll help us?”

  “Well, if Africa is any yard stick to go by, it’s clear we can’t help ourselves. We can do with all the help we can get.”

  “Their space ship, what do you think it looks like?”

  “I don’t know. Big, I guess.” Her mind cast back to the various radio broadcasts they’d listened to, and although there had been some mention of telescopes being pointed at the alien spaceship, there hadn’t been any descriptions offered. Bower figured their little corner of the world was probably among the few places on Earth that hadn’t seen any images of the alien spacecraft. In her mind’s eye, she could imagine the hype and borderline panic that must be gripping the Western world with its 24x7 media frenzies. Overnight, such images would have become ubiquitous, with every television network pundit offering an opinion on the weird shapes. Bower could understand why NASA kept the alien presence secret for so long as the media had a way of encouraging hysteria.

  “I think they come in peace,” she added in soft tones. “Maybe it’s just me reading my own hopes into their intents, but they have to come in peace. After all, they’re intelligent, more intelligent than us. Anything else wouldn’t make sense.”

  “Really?” Kowalski replied. “Technical achievements and intelligence are not synonymous. I mean, here we are, by far the most intelligent species on the planet, and we’re forever waging war against ourselves. I don’t know that intelligence counts for much. Look at the warring tribes of Africa, the tension between China and Japan, Israel and the Middle East, it seems we’re all too keen to drive each other into the ground.

  "To be more advanced doesn't mean someone’s necessarily more intelligent. They may be advanced enough to cross the vast expanse of space, but I don't know that makes them any brighter than us, just as you and I couldn’t be described as smarter than Galileo or Aristotle.”

  “Yeah, I guess not,” Bower replied, surprised by the notion.

  "If anything, technology allows us to be dumb without consequence."

  Bower laughed, saying, "You think they're dumb?"

  Kowalski laughed as well. "Not dumb, but there's a danger in reading too much into how technically advanced they are. Morals rarely keep up with technology, and collective intelligence can drop away. As life becomes more abstract, more divorced from reality by technology, it’s easy to lose sight of what’s right and wrong."

  “You think they’re evil?”

  “I don’t know what to think. I doubt anyone does. And I doubt it’s as clearcut as our black and white stereotypes portray. I mean, all we have to go on is Hollywood and their depiction of aliens with acid for blood and massive armies ready to invade the planet. So I guess my point is, any assumptions we come up with are probably going to be absurdly off-key. This morning, I doubt anyone expected ET to turn up on their doorstep, and yet, here he is.”

  Bower watched as Kowalski swatted a mosquito trying to get under the netting bunched loosely on his shoulder.

  “Think about our fairytales,” he continued. “Whether it’s Snow White or Star Wars, there’s always pure evil against naive innocence, the black knight riding against King Arthur, but real life is never that clear cut. Reality is complicated.”

  Bower lowered her voice, trying to sound masculine as she added, “Kind of like, Luke, I am your father.”

  Kowalski laughed, and she figured he appreciated the irony in how she chose a fictional example of the complexity he was describing. She knew precisely what he meant. Africa was neither black nor white. Some days the continent seemed nothing but a murky, thick-as-pea-soup grey.

  Joking around with Kowalski help distract Bower from the tension of the night. Sweat dripped from her brow. Dark clouds swirled overhead, blocking the starlight. Humidity hung in the air. At any moment, the storm would break. She should have headed inside the hut but the nurses were quite capable of caring for the remaining patients. Besides, the tension of waiting for the unknown kept her outdoors. She had to know. Would the rebels attack? Or would they pass them by? One hospital and a couple of doctors were small fish in a big pond, and she knew it.

  Suddenly, Bower was aware of someone beside her, a ghost resolving in the dark. Startled, she turned, on the verge of screaming. White eyes pierced the darkness. Jameson crouched next to her. His face was painted in a disruptive pattern, in jagged shades of charcoal and black. His radio crackled with a soft hiss.

  “You scared the hell out of me,” Kowalski said, expressing what Bower felt.

  Jameson grinned, his teeth a stark contrast to the night. He handed them a couple of flak jackets.

  "Here, put these on."

  Bower slipped the Kevlar vest over her head as Kowalski asked, "No helmets?"

  "No spares. Keep your head down and you won't need one."

  "Thanks," Bower said, feeling clumsy as she strapped the heavy vest in place. She'd worn Kevlar before in training scenarios, but never under fire.

  Jameson spoke into his radio, saying, “Recon Sit Rep.”

  Over the static, Bower heard, “I’ve got three parties in the scrub, at 11, 3 and 7. Over.”

  “Roger that.”

  Kneeling down beside them, Jameson drew a large circle in the dust with his finger. “They know there’s been an outpost here. They’re feeling us out, looking to see if anyon
e’s home, probing our defenses.”

  “Where are they?” Kowalski asked.

  “Imagine a clock, with high noon facing due north.”

  He drew three lines, pointing at where the hours 11, 3 and 7 would have been if his circle had been a clock face.

  “We’ve got movement at these locations. They’re spoiling for a fight.”

  “What do we do?” Bower asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?” she replied, incredulous. “You scared me half-to-death and now you’re telling me you’re not going to do anything about a bunch of murderous thugs creeping up on us in the dark?”

  Her words were low, almost as though she were uttering something blasphemous.

  “Rules of engagement. They haven’t demonstrated hostile intent. We have to wait for them to initiate contact.”

  “They have us surrounded and that doesn’t bother you?” she asked.

  Jameson pointed at the bulky contraption strapped to the front of his helmet. “Night vision. They think they’re moving in under the cover of darkness, but we hold the tactical advantage.”

  “Do you have a gun I could use?” Kowalski asked.

  “Have you ever fired a gun before?” Jameson asked in reply.

  Kowalski paused slightly before answering. “My father took me hunting as a teen.”

  “Well, no offense to you and your father, but combat is rather different to shooting at furry little animals that can’t fight back. You’re more likely to shoot one of us than you are one of them.”

  “But we need to protect ourselves,” Kowalski replied. “What if we’re overrun?”

  “You’ve got to trust us on this. Let us do our job.”

  Kowalski didn’t look too impressed by that response.

  “Listen Doc, if I come through this with a bullet in my ass, I promise, I won’t tell you how to do your job, OK? Right now, you've got to let me do mine.”

  “Sure,” Kowalski replied. From the subtle tone in his voice, Bower could tell his feathers had been ruffled.