Elvis walked fearlessly toward the creature. There was a mutual affinity between them. They both reached out for each other. Bower watched as his fingers touched at the waving fronds. His hand skimmed across the tips as though he were running his fingers over a field of wheat.
The pulsating core of the creature hummed like an electrical substation. Bower was in two minds as to the alien’s composition. It moved and acted so fluidly, as though it were an individual, and yet the tiny creatures at its heart suggested otherwise. She couldn’t figure out which it was, but then, she realized, perhaps both models were wrong. Perhaps some other alien rationale held true and the creature, as she saw it, was more of a symbiotic whole.
The creature dwarfed Elvis, but that didn’t appear to bother him. They both seemed to relish the soft touch.
The strength latent in the fronds was apparent. Being spherical, there were fronds drifting through the air above and beside the big man, but he held no fear of the creature.
“We’re going to help her, right?”
At that point, Bower didn’t feel she had any choice in the matter, regardless of how uneasy she felt. She was alarmed by the relationship between Elvis and the alien. As docile as tigers could be in captivity, there was always a very real danger of them turning on their trainers, regardless of how long a pair had worked together, and she felt his disregard for prudence was reckless. The possibility of a reactionary temperament hadn’t occurred to him. Stella had dismembered Bosco with ruthless efficiency. She could turn on either of them without warning, without any humanly intelligible reason. She could be using them, playing them. They could be a novelty, nothing more than a pet in this alien’s mind.
Every instinct within Bower cried out, no, but she said, “Yes ... We’ll help her phone home.”
Bower watched as the creature pulled Elvis closer, its dark, scarlet tentacles wrapping around his arm, enveloping him. He wasn’t afraid, he was receptive, perhaps even enjoying the encounter. The alien towered several feet above him as its fronds enclosed his arm, reaching his shoulder, and yet still he showed no fear.
“Phone home?” Elvis said. “Do you understand? Home? Come with us. We’ll help you get home.”
“Home,” the creature replied, but it hadn’t mimicked his voice. The alien had retained Bower’s distinct tone, duplicating both her soft pronunciation and her British accent. Bower found that even more perplexing. As long as she’d been the only one communicating with the creature it made sense that it duplicated her voice. But now, when it was clearly comfortable with Elvis, it still chose to retain her vocal persona. There was a complex dynamic at work, one Bower didn’t understand, and that frightened her.
Bower recalled the term ‘home’ being used three times in his sentence, four times if she counted her initial use of the concept. The alien had simply repeated the most commonly used word back at them in mimicry. There was an assumption at play. How could they know what the creature had actually understood? Words were only ever meaningful in their context.
When Europeans first encountered primitive cultures, translating languages had been a painfully slow exercise, relying heavily on visual clues and comparisons. Translation efforts went on for years. None of that had happened with the alien. This could all be guesswork on the creature’s part, nothing more than an intelligent guess as if playing along with the curious chimps. When the factory door opened, Bower thought the alien would bolt into the distance.
The creature released Elvis. Bower was curious as to who had initiated the separation, had Elvis pulled away or had the alien let go?
“Home, Stella,” he said as the alien moved back into the shadows, staying just on the edge of their vision. “We’re going to get you home.”
Bower didn’t even want to ask how Elvis proposed to do that. For now it was enough to escape their dungeon.
Time passed slowly.
Elvis stood watch, peering out into the night through a thin crack between the steel panels welded over the window. Bower watched the alien as it appeared to preen itself. Tiny insects scooted up and down the fronds, pausing on occasion to focus on a particular part of a certain strand in much the same way as a cat would lick its fur and pause to rid itself of a parasite.
After awhile, Bower decided to try to talk with the alien. If they could converse, they could reason. If they could reason, there would be nothing to fear.
“How much do you understand?”
Sitting there on the edge of the mattress, looking at the seething mass of insect-like creatures pulsating at its core and the supple fronds swaying with the slightest breeze, Bower knew she was out of her depth. She’d been out of her depth long ago, ever since the Osprey lifted off, abandoning them in the village. Somehow she’d bluffed her way through until now, but she felt as though she were sinking in quicksand; one wrong move and she was dead.
“Do you know what I’m saying? Can you grasp our speech?”
The alien was silent.
What intelligence lay in that contradictory, vast nest full of so many tiny creatures? Was it one entity or thousands? Did it think? Did it feel? Certainly, she felt as though she’d seen fear within its actions, but that was probably her own fear being played out before her.
What senses did the alien or aliens have with which to interact with the world around them? How had they survived on Earth? In an environment that was surely hostile to them in some sense, either through chemistry, or pressure differences, or the strength of gravity. Did the spiny carriage offer any more than transport and weapons? Was it in some way analogous with an astronaut’s spacesuit? Why hadn’t any other alien creatures come looking for this one? Why hadn’t they mounted a rescue mission? Had they assumed Stella was dead? Or was it that they didn’t care?
“Just because someone is mute doesn’t mean they don’t understand,” Elvis finally replied, cutting through the silence.
“Understand,” the creature replied, again repeating the most common noun in a series of sentences, recognizing the topic if not the content. Bower could have kicked Elvis. If he’d remained silent, if the creature had replied with ‘understand’ having only heard the word once, then that would have been progress. As it was, she had no way of knowing if the alien was still just parroting concepts back at them.
“There has to be an intelligence at work here,” Elvis continued. “We’ve seen too much to think otherwise. She’s like a foreigner, like an American in Paris that can’t speak French.”
Bower caught a slight change in the throbbing hum of the insects and raised her hand, signaling for Elvis to be quiet.
“Intelligence,” she said, addressing the creature. “Yes, we’re talking about your intelligence.”
The creature was quiet.
After almost a minute, Elvis said, “Well, there are a few things we need Stella to understand if we’re going to get her out of here. We need her to understand the basics of movement. We need her to respond to instructions. Let’s see if we can get her to associate sounds with actions, kinda like the kids game, Red Light, Green Light.”
Elvis beckoned for Bower to stand. She got to her feet, feeling a little silly.
Elvis moved back about ten feet and said to Bower, “Green light ... Red light ... Green light ... Red light.” With each phrase, Bower either walked forward or stood still. When she reached him, he turned to the imposing alien creature and asked a simple question with a single word, “Understand?”
The alien was silent.
“Again,” he said, and Bower returned to the mattress. Elvis said, “Green light ... Red light ... Green light ... Red light ... Understand?”
“Understand,” the alien replied, retaining Bower’s voice.
“OK,” Elvis said, turning to the creature. “Green light.”
The spindly alien structure, some nine-feet in height, swayed as it rocked forward on its thin legs, rolling unnaturally toward him.
“Red light.”
The words had barely left his lips when the creature froze.
“Green light.”
Again the prickly orb moved forward. Elvis stood his ground, waiting until the last second before saying, “Red light.” The creature was almost on top of him, its fronds waved just inches from his face.
“This is good,” said Elvis. “We’ve taught her two key concepts; red and green, stop and go.”
“We’ve taught her three concepts,” Bower added. “We’ve also taught her understanding resolves into action.”
On cue, the alien replied, “Understand.”
“Can you see how it’s doing that?” Bower asked. “How is it speaking?”
“It’s the bugs on the upper surface,” Elvis replied. “They’re moving like an old speaker cone whenever she talks.”
“Huh,” Bower replied. Well, that explained why there were times when the alien’s speech seemed to come from all around her. Unlike human speech, the alien’s words were not directional, at least, not horizontally. The creature’s words bounced off the ceiling back at her and so appeared to come from everywhere.
“We’ve got a couple of hours before we make our move,” Elvis said. “We need to get that gun and work on loosening those hinges.”
As the two of them got up, the alien swiveled in place, seemingly asking for permission to join.
“Green light,” said Elvis softly, and the creature followed behind them as they walked through the darkened floor.
For Bower, it felt unnerving to hear the creature quietly creeping up behind her. Unlike her own footsteps that fell with a soft, steady, rhythmic crunch, the motion of the alien was more akin to the sound of the wind rustling in the trees.
“Just like a puppy dog,” said Elvis.
“A giant puppy dog ... with tentacles,” Bower replied.
Elvis didn’t respond.
In the dim light she could see him grinning.
They reached the mattresses beneath the shattered remains of the upper floor. Elvis picked up the gun from where it lay in the dust.
“We need to find that bullet.”
“Is one bullet going to make that much difference?” Bower asked, crouching down and searching with her hands in the low light. It was hopeless. She was clutching at shadows in the darkness.
“One bullet won’t hold off an army, but could make the difference between life and death, it could buy us time.”
The alien seemed agitated, and for a second Bower worried that seeing Elvis brandish the revolver had upset the interstellar creature. She looked up and amidst the swarm of tentacles flicking back and forth one remained still, stretching out toward Elvis. The fine tip of the frond was wrapped around a bloodstained bullet.
Elvis reached out cautiously, saying, “Nice work, Stella,” and yet his voice was anything but confident. Like her, he had to be nervous about working with this creature. He took the bullet from her and slipped it into the revolver. Slowly, he tucked the revolver into the small of his back.
On reaching the door, Elvis used his fingers to carefully examine the hinges before setting to work with the butter-knife and the rock. The hallway was pitch black. The only light came from a faint glimmer breaking through cracks in the sealed window, where the alien stood casting shadows on the wall.
“Yeah, that’s going to come loose real easy,” Elvis whispered, turning to one side and leaning against the wall. Bower leaned against the other wall, facing him.
“And so we wait,” he said.
Bower felt like pressing him to move sooner, but for him it must have been an ingrained military discipline to patiently await the appointed time for action. She had no doubt that when the time arose he could move with surprising speed and aggression. In the past twelve hours, he’d gone from almost an invalid to his old self. His left arm didn’t look any different from this morning, it was still like that of a child, but that didn’t seem to bother him. He had what appeared to be a normal amount of dexterity.
The alien creature waited outside the narrow hallway. Bower wondered what it was thinking. The spiny structure spanned a sphere roughly nine feet in diameter, with the swarming heart of the creature centered at chest height. By retracting its tentacles the alien could squeeze into the hallway, but its motion was restricted.
Elvis took out the revolver and laid it on the ground beside them. In the darkness, Bower could just make out the grainy outline of the silver cylinder along with the elongated barrel of the gun but not the grip, as that seemed to fade into the indistinct darkness.
Elvis was doing something with some small stones. She could hear them falling softly to the ground but she couldn’t see them. It took a few seconds before she realized he was amusing himself, tossing the stones beside his boot as part of some boredom-reducing game.
They sat there listening for any sounds beyond the door but the night was quiet. The concrete floor was hard. Her bum was sore. She had to keep moving from one cheek to another every few minutes. Elvis must have thought she had ants in her pants.
A cool breeze slipped beneath the door and Bower felt upbeat, but then she didn’t have to worry about stealing a truck. She was content to think it would be easy for Elvis.
Every half-hour or so, Elvis would get up and check the angle of the moon shine through one of the cracks in the steel shutters out on the floor. Finally, he came back and said the two words she’d been waiting to hear, “It’s time.”
Stella spoke from the darkness.
“Understand.”
Chapter 13: Rush
Quietly, Elvis tapped at the hinges, removing them and putting them neatly to one side.
Whispering, he said, “There are a couple of danger points here, points at which our escape could be compromised. The first is when I remove this door.”
Bower had become so acclimatized to the darkness that her eyes easily picked out the soft gleam of polished steel as Elvis slipped the gun behind his back again.
“I’m going to remove the door, but once I do it’s important that you stay put. I need to assess the situation on the other side of the door. If there are any guards immediately outside, things are going to go hot very quickly. I won’t fire on them unless I’m forced to. I’ll use the knife to incapacitate them.”
“With a butter-knife?” Bower asked.
“You’d be surprised how effective any length of metal is when used with sufficient force in a vulnerable spot.”
Bower didn’t say anything, but she figured incapacitate was another military euphemism. The army had such clinical terms for killing people. And as for the butter knife, he was right. She’d seen people impaled in accidents on some of the most unlikely of objects: loose fencing, upturned chair legs, screwdrivers. During her time in the accident and emergency ward at the St Albans hospital in London, she’d had a dad turn up with a child’s toy airplane embedded in his abdomen. Soft tissue punctures were surprisingly nasty.
Elvis went on, saying, “At this point, stealth is our greatest ally: being dead has its advantages. But if bullets start flying, even just one shot, then the gig is up, it would be like hitting a wasp’s nest with a baseball bat.”
Elvis rested his hand on Bower’s shoulder. All she could see was the outline of his head in silhouette.
“If that happens, run, do you understand me?”
Bower nodded, not that he would have known.
“You run. You don’t look back. You don’t wait for me. You don’t stop and hide. You run as fast and as far as your legs will carry you. Do you understand? This is extremely important. Whatever happens, you treat that first shot like the starter’s gun at the Olympics. You don’t wait for any kind of confirmation from me. When that gun fires, you’re running a goddamn marathon. You bolt.
“Moving targets are bloody hard to hit, especially at night. You need to run like the hounds of hell are snapping at your heels. The further you run, the better.”
Bower breathed deeply, steeling her mind.
“In the initial rush of adrenalin you’ll find you’re good to sprint out to ab
out a hundred yards, then your lungs will start to burn and your legs will feel like they’re dragging lead weights. Back things off and pace yourself, but don’t stop. Keep running. Don’t stop running. If these bastards catch you they’ll kill you. The only thing you can do is to outdistance them.”
He removed his hand from her shoulder, saying, “The sun rises in the east. Government troops hold the western side of the city, so you want to head away from the rising sun.”
Elvis paused before adding, “With any luck, I’ll be running alongside you, OK?”
“OK.”
“Are you ready?”
“Yes,” Bower replied, feeling the adrenalin already pulsating through her veins.
“OK. I need you to help me with the door.”
Elvis used the knife to slowly jimmy the door out of the metal doorframe. Pale moonlight seeped in through the cracks widening around the frame. Bower found herself holding her breath as she braced her hands against the door, helping Elvis move it slowly. She could see him positioning himself beside the hinged side of the frame, peering out into the backstreet. He was looking through the slowly widening gap.
Elvis lifted the door, pulling it back while turning sideways and squeezing through the narrow gap.
Bower took the weight of the door, stopping it from falling inward. She could see the revolver in his right hand, held high against the inside of the door. Once the gap was wide enough, Elvis stepped through, the gun leading the way. She went to follow, moving along the door to the gap only to see him holding his hand up, signaling for her to wait where she was.
“There’s a crate to the left, hiding us from view, but it’s also obscuring my view. Wait here while I check out the street.”
Elvis crept forward in the shadows.
Bower peered through the gap. She could see down the street to the right. The surrounding buildings lacked windows. There were roller doors. They were in some kind of commercial area, which was no surprise.
In that instant, Bower suddenly realized her arms were the only thing holding the metal door. She’d stepped back and the door had started to fall inward, its weight seemed to grow as its center of gravity shifted. Bower braced herself, spreading her legs and pushing hard against the weight of the door, pushing it back until it was vertical again.
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