Samantha's Talent

by Darrell Bain

  "There were two separate groups," Anton began explaining. "One of them I had no knowledge of. That one consisted of the three agents who accosted you at your home and that you so adeptly took off the board. We've since learned they were a rogue outfit of the NSA. The person who originated it and all of his operatives have been arrested."

  All eyes turned to Samantha. She looked down and smoothed the fur on Shufus and scratched behind his ears. "Shufus had the most to do with stopping them. Shufus and my two other animal friends, Fussy and Caw-Caw."

  "Yes, and thank heavens they were able to. We've learned that those people had orders to kill you all if capturing you proved impossible. The other group was one of the Jihadist gangs originating in the Middle East. I knew of them but had no idea they would strike so soon, nor that they were aware of Ray Zimmerman. I also had no idea that they had an active branch operating out of Mexico. They must have been smuggled across the border just recently with orders to grab Ray and then you. If you want to blame anyone for the death of the Zimmermans, you can point your finger at me. My only excuse is that I didn't expect them to try for Samantha for at least another six months and more likely another year."

  "But... why didn't you at least warn us if you knew of them?"

  "I did warn Jennie and Gene of the group I knew of. However, like me, they had no knowledge of the Jihadists working from Mexico but under the sway of a parent group in the Middle East. The main reason you weren't warned, other than in general terms is that we, myself and the other members of our project all agreed that Samantha would be better off if left alone to develop naturally, or as naturally as a young lady with her talent could. Sixteen was the earliest age that we intended to contact you, and if possible we would have waited longer. As it happened... " he spread his hands in apology.

  Elaine sighed, as she had done so many times during Samantha's girlhood. "I suppose we should be grateful it worked out as well as it did, despite the trauma and Ray's death and Fussy and Caw-Caw dying to protect Sammie."

  "Yes, I imagine that you are and again, I can only tell you how sorry I am that it happened. Now before we begin the video, I should tell you that tomorrow there will be four scientists you'll be introduced to who are involved in the project you're about to learn of. One of them was the young man who fetched your dinner. Assuming you stay, and I believe you will, you will be seeing a lot of him. Samantha in particular will be working with him."

  "Just to be clear, you're asking us to live here. Is that correct?" Elaine said.

  "Yes. In fact, you will be detained here for several days while you learn about the project and how we'll be operating if you stay. I say detained because I want you to have time to thoroughly reflect on the project so that you don't have to make any hasty decisions."

  "But we'll be free to go after that if we want to?"

  "Yes, Mrs. Douglas, you will. I don't think you'll want to, though." he smiled again, enigmatically. "Now, shall I order some popcorn or shall we begin watching the movie?"

  Elaine had to laugh. "Go ahead. We can do without the popcorn, I believe. Just bring the coffee before we start."

  After coffee cups were in hand, the room darkened and the new, elevated large screen television on the wall facing Anton's guests brightened. As the video began running he leaned back in his comfortable chair and reflected on how it had all come about, and wondered again as he had numerous times, whether the project would end with success or failure, or perhaps neither but an outcome somewhere in the middle of the two extremes. With Samantha here and safe, he was leaning toward success--but without any real justification. It was just over ten years ago when he moved from the Virginia headquarters of DARPA to Lockheed's "Skunk Works", in California in order to help monitor the testing of several advanced propulsion techniques. It was supposed to be only a temporary assignment but here he was, ten years later and still without a solution to what he had inadvertently stumbled upon.

  ***

  He had been out walking, or hiking rather. After driving as far as he could, he parked and locked his car. He set out into the San Gabriel Wilderness, using bike paths then game trails. Soon he abandoned even the rough trail that deer and other animals had made. He veered off further toward an area that was almost never used by anyone else since it belonged to the Lockheed Corporation. They discouraged visitors by a fence which had a nearby gate, one which he had the combination to. He drove two or three mornings a week to his regular parking spot then walked the other mile and through the gate for another few hundred yards. He liked the area for the solitude and for the boulder that marked the end of his trek before starting back. He liked to sit on the big hunk of granite and spend a half hour or so simply thinking, the thing he did best.

  That day, just before he reached the boulder he walked squarely into an object that was higher than his head because that was what he bumped first. Whatever it was, it was completely invisible. He stood bewildered for a moment rubbing his forehead. He cautiously reached out his hand. It met a solid surface but not one he could see. Amazed, curious, astounded, shocked, astonished--any or all of those words could have been used to describe his reaction.

  First and foremost, Anton McAllister was a scientist. He wanted to know what the object was. He began running his hands over the surface that he couldn't see, exploring its dimensions to find out how large it was, if possible. Perhaps he touched some part of it that caused its perfect stealth to dissipate. Or much more likely, the being inside intended to let him observe it and the object that contained it. The object was a box-like affair, perhaps a spaceship but he certainly didn't know. It wasn't all that large, perhaps thirty feet by fifty and twenty feet high. It was rectangular on three sides with the remaining side rounded into a projecting curved surface.

  The creature was standing upright in a recessed alcove, an airlock, he thought. It was vaguely humanoid but smaller, and certainly not human. He knew immediately that it was not from earth. His heart beat wildly at the excitement of first contact with an alien. We are not alone, he remembered himself thinking.

  Several days later that same thought was beginning to haunt him. Try as he might he couldn't establish any sort of communication. He tried mathematical concepts. He drew pictures of the solar system and the sun. He drew a man and a woman and named them individually and as human. He did all sorts of first contact protocols he had read in numerous books, both fiction and non-fiction. Nothing worked. It was as if the being had been struck deaf and dumb. It would open what he took to be a mouth but after opening it didn't move and no sound issued from it. Occasionally it made gestures but he couldn't tease any meaning from them. Apparently the alien couldn't understand what he was attempting to convey. It was the single most frustrating event of his life and it went on for days.

  He told no one where he was going when he left each day, bringing a lunch and thermos with him. Once he arrived at the site all he had to do was place his hands on it and the object, along with its living subject became immediately visible to him, and apparently to him alone. Once a solitary hiker came near enough that she could have seen the alien's craft but she took no notice of either him or it.

  Each day Anton would sit on the boulder and try different methods, trying to establish coherent communication and each night he spent hours reading, trying to find a new method, a different regime that might provide a breakthrough. Each day he recorded every minute of the contact, if it could be called that. Usually the alien remained visible for only an hour or so.

  Finally, in despair, he brought two of his most trusted colleagues to see and make their own attempts at contact. They had no more luck than he, despite trying some procedures he hadn't thought of and variations of numerous ones he had already tried.

  He realized he should report the situation to a higher authority but he knew that if he were not extremely careful about who he shared the secret with it would quickly be a subject of contention all over the world. It could even start wars, he thought, from other countries i
nsisting on sharing the data, such as it was, and in the process contact with the alien would become a circus. Politicians would vie with each other to have a part in it. The military would want full control. Most likely the alien and its craft would simply vanish and not come back.

  There were so many negatives to revealing what he had fallen into that he used much of his spare time considering who to share it with. Finally he came up with DARPA, the very agency he was already employed by. He and his two colleagues had spent the last two years monitoring propulsion techniques being tested at Lockheed's "Skunk Works". He made the decision to speak to the head of the agency, whom Anton knew as a personal friend.

  It turned out to be the right decision. Since then the small DARPA agency, more of a think tank than anything else, had held the secret close. Since DARPA was funded by the military, The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was informed. Every one so far had kept the faith, even to a recent one who declined to reveal it to his successor. The person inhabiting the White House knew, but the previous president hadn't been told because he was deemed untrustworthy. The one before him had died with the knowledge.

  Only a few days after recruiting his two scientist friends the alien and its conveyance vanished in the midst of another effort to make it understand something of the human viewpoint. In its place it left an object that had resided on his desk ever since, serving as a paperweight.

  ***

  Anton blinked as the lights in his office brightened and he came back to the present. Had he been reminiscing that long? Apparently so. He brought his chair upright and gazed at his audience. Samantha was pointing at the object he was using as a paperweight. "That's what it left, isn't it? It looks just like the one in the video."

  "Yes, that's what it left."

  "Does it do anything?"

  "Yes. Come closer everyone and watch." After they had gathered around his desk he placed a finger on the corner of the black square. Details upon its surface immediately became visible. The alien object was about five inches by five inches and two inches in height. A circular band like a ribbon a quarter inch or so in diameter was visible, large enough to touch the four edges of the face. More than three fourths of the circle was colored red. In its center rose a thin round black spire about four inches in height.

  "That pattern becomes visible when I touch the corner of the object. The red in the circle wasn't there originally. Over the last ten years it has gradually, in fits and starts, advanced to where it is now. Once it comes back to where it began and fills the circular ribbon entirely with the red color, I expect something to happen, but I have no idea what."

  "That's when the alien will come back," Samantha said firmly. Somehow it made sense to her.

  "That's what young Carrera thinks, too. You two should get along well."

  "I bet you want me to try to talk to that creature when it does come back, don't you?" The video had made it evident that no meaningful communication had occurred.

  Smart girl, Anton thought, but he already knew that.

  "We're hoping you can, yes."

  "But if it took ten years to color that much of the circle, and it won't return until all of it is red, that means somewhere around two more years until it returns," Samantha said. She had approximated the area of red by sight and made the calculations in her head.

  Really smart,Anton thought.

  "You expect Samantha and us to sit here and wait two years, doing nothing, when you aren't even sure the thing will return?" Elaine said, not enthused at all.

  "It could be sooner, you know, but there's more involved here than just the alien. Juan has been studying Samantha's history ever since that first episode with the tiger, the one that escaped. He believed in her talent from the start while I had to be convinced. There's still more, though. Since that time he has come to think that Samantha may be even more unique than any of you have thought. I won't go into it now because I want him to explain it to her and to all of you as well. However, as for you sitting around waiting on the alien, it wouldn't be like that. We can provide meaningful jobs for all of you and schooling for Samantha."

  "You're talking about me like I'm some... some object," Samantha objected with an expression that clearly denoted her displeasure.

  Anton averted his eyes for a moment but then met her gaze. Samantha was eyeing him dubiously, as if his intentions weren't meeting her approval or expectations, perhaps both.

  "You're right, Samantha, and I apologize. It's just--"

  "Please call me Sammie, like most everyone else does."

  "Fine, Sammie. In fact, I would feel better if we all got on a first name basis. We're very informal around here because we don't have a very formal structure." His statement wasn't completely accurate. He called his subordinates by their first names but such was his prestige that none of them reciprocated. "But as I was saying, meaningful jobs and schooling but there's more. Sammie, we'd like to run a pretty hefty barrage of tests on you, including, but not limited to EECG, MRI, PET, and CAT scans, all under a number of different conditions. Then there are blood tests, mental tests of a great variety and a genealogical history. And all that is just to begin with. We have access to more advanced instruments we'd like to use, too. "

  "Would I have a chance to work with animals?"

  "Certainly. More so than you have in the past, in fact. If you're wondering about the purpose of all the testing, it's to find out if there is something about you that's obviously giving you your talent, or whether it is something much more subtle where we'd have to dig deeper. And frankly we may never find out why you have your talent for animals."

  "What kind of jobs would Elaine and I be offered?" Ronald said, even though he was thinking more about his daughter and what they might find out about her talent, and most importantly, whether she would be happy here under the conditions that were being spelled out.

  "DARPA is primarily a research organization. We normally employ less than two hundred scientists and they work on anything they care to. If either of you have a particular field you're interested in and would like to do research in it, we'd fund you. Or if you'd like to go back to school, that's fine, too." He grinned. "You might even find yourselves in some classes with your daughter."

  Elaine burst out laughing. "Now that is the last thing I would have thought of."

  "Like I said, we're a very informal, non-hierarchal outfit. Also, I have a half-baked idea that the alien I tried to talk to wasn't the only one that landed on earth. I've read enough bits and conjectures and heard snippets of conversation from scientists in other countries to suspect there were a number of landings. It could very well have been the being I met landing indifferent areas, though."

  "Which doesn't make a bit of difference. We still aren't going to sit here for two years doing make-work jobs while waiting on nothing but a possibility." Ronald sided with his wife.

  "I promise, when I said we'll provide meaningful work for all of you and advanced schooling for Samantha, I meant it. She's just about our only hope, you know, in case the alien does return. There's more involved than just it, though."

  "Oh? Can you reveal that to us?" Ronald asked.

  "Certainly. Samantha is a unique person with a unique talent. If it proves possible to teach her talent to others do you realize what a paradigm change in the world that would mean? Think about it." He raised his brows and waited.

  "I believe I'm beginning to see a little of what you're after. And you say Juan is in charge of the study of Samantha? Her talent, that is."

  "Yes. He'll be working very closely with her." He glanced at his wrist phone. "How about we call it a day for now and let you all get some rest. Nothing is going to happen overnight, I'm fairly certain." He smiled at his own small bit of humor.

  "That sounds good," Elaine said. "All of us are tired and we've had a very traumatic time today, Sammie most of all. Besides, my arm is hurting and I need to take another pain pill."

  "The same doctor who treated you on the plane will be he
re first thing in the morning to check on you, then we'll meet again after breakfast. Juan will stop by and take you to a place to eat. Is that satisfactory?"

  All agreed and soon Anton was alone in his office. He wondered if the girl had noticed the alien's faint resemblance to a bird. Carrera was the one who had pointed it out to him. Of course it might mean nothing at all. Only time would tell, for many questions.

  Chapter Thirty Six

  Samantha liked Juan. He had a good sense of humor and was so smart it was frightening in some ways. Any question she asked, he appeared to have an answer. However, before entering the restaurant, he had warned everyone not to mention thing about DARPA, aliens or why they were in the area. Samantha was afraid of being recognized but the only looks she got were admiring ones from young men. She was gradually getting used to that although it was still somewhat disconcerting. She was only fifteen but looked as if she were closer to eighteen. Juan kept them entertained with stories from his college days when he was so young compared to his classmates. It made her want to go to college as soon as possible--if it was possible at all for her. Considering all the secrecy restraints, she didn't know whether it would be or not.

  Anton was waiting in his office for them after breakfast with two big carafes of coffee. Evidently he knew their habits, Samantha thought. Juan Carrera and the other scientists he had mentioned were there and were introduced in turn.

  "Jane Carruthers, our physicist, David Marsten, astronomer and mathematician, Liadra Asha, computer science and also advanced mathematician, and you've met Juan. He's our resident Polymath." Seeing a look of incomprehension on the face of Elaine and Ronald, but not Samantha, he explained. "Juan is a jack of all trades in multiple disciplines. He has degrees in several sciences but his knowledge extends well beyond mere degrees in many other subjects. For the last couple of years he's followed Sammie's activities and studied how her talent might work."

  "Without much success, I might add," Juan said. "It's hard to study a person's talent without having the subject on hand. I believe we'll make much faster progress now." He winked at Samantha and got a smile in return.