Grace looked at her husband and smiled “Big day tomorrow, huh?”
“Guess so.” He smiled back at her, but what he was frantically thinking was Radin, you just slipped up.
Grace nodded towards the video screen, “Watching something?”
Adamarus walked over and turned it off. “Just catching the news.”
She smiled with tired eyes and took his arm, “Ready for bed.”
Adamarus pulled her close, “Absolutely.” His mind raced. He wasn’t sure he was happy about catching Radin’s accidental slip. It was obvious that Radin, trying to complete his sentence, trying to look natural, trying to hide his words from Grace even as she approached him, had slipped up without realizing it. He had said, “her.”
“This way, kind sir?” Grace pulled him towards the door.
“After you, my lady.” Adamarus felt guilty not telling Grace what he had learned, but she would hit the ceiling and then worry herself to death. No, not yet… maybe not at all.
That night as he lay in bed, Adamarus thought over all that Radin had told him. Radin was right, they would think that he was in the dark as indeed he had been just an hour ago. Now that he knew about the forces working behind the scenes and a little about what they could and might do, he was clearly better off. Plus, he could control the information flow to and from the aliens if need be. Yes, he had a measure of control. What this might do for him he couldn’t begin to fathom, but at least he held some cards…cards in a game he hadn’t even realized was being played and still did not know the rules for.
Radin had said, “her”! Damn, there was only one “her” on the special team.
---
The next day Adamarus awoke at 6:00, had breakfast at 7:00 and was picked up by a black limo at 7:40. Leewood and Harrington were absent and he rode by himself to the site. He arrived at the site at 8:00 AM and was quickly taken to a meeting room where Leewood, Harrington and the rest of the team went over the main points they had discussed yesterday.
At 8:20 Adamarus, Leewood and Harrington left the meeting room, walked across the street to the dome and entered the glass doors. A moving walkway then carried them up to the tunnel that lead to the dome. They walked down a tunnel which ended at a soundproof door. Guards were stationed on either side.
When they reached the door, Leewood held up a small recorder showing Adamarus what it was. “It’s voice activated.” Leewood placed it in Adamarus’ shirt pocket. “Just leave it there and don’t touch it.” Adamarus wondered if they had overcome the EM problem or if this was just given to him in case, by some fluke, it started to work. Then it came to him, they just wanted Adamarus to think he was being recorded.
One of the guards pushed a green button which opened the thick door and Adamarus stepped through. It was 8:30.
He entered a fifteen by fifty foot room. He heard the door close and seal behind him. He paused just inside the room and looked around. The thing that stood out was the large window on the left side at the far end of the room. It was an eerie green and seemed to glow. The rest of the room was dim, but not so dim that you couldn’t see. He realized that the lights were dimmed so that seeing out into the dome would be easier. He wondered about seeing in – the dim lights would impede this…well, for a human, anyway.
Though he was comfortable, the air seemed cold and it smelled of ozone with a trace of something Adamarus could not place. The floor was some kind of rubber.
At this end of the room were cabinets, a double sink, a coffee maker and a refrigerator. He also spotted a copy machine and a PC. Both had notes on them saying that they were not working. At the far end of the room, across from the window on the right-hand side, were ten seats arranged in two rows facing left…facing the window.
He began to walk slowly forward. As he approached the window, he noticed that the glass was at least a foot thick. Beyond it the inside of the dome was illuminated by an intense green light so bright it caused the glow on the inside of the window. But as he got closer, he could see that it was more than just a green glow. Whiffs of mist were coming off the window. He realized that it must be very cold on the other side. He wondered how the glass was staying clear and not fogging up. Now he could make out the curved inner walls of the dome. It looked like they were made of sound absorbing material.
Adamarus abruptly stopped walking. He knew that if he walked forward another step or two, he’d start to see the dome’s floor and that would mean he’d see the alien. This suddenly made him very nervous – it was almost a panic attack. Realizing nothing was going to change anything, he took a deep breath and forced himself to resume walking. However, he did not look out the window, but rather he focused on the front center seat and moved towards it. As he sat down, he closed his eyes. When he opened them he was staring down at his hands. He steeled himself. He looked forward. The green interior of the dome beyond the window was completely empty.
---
In the back of one of the observation vans parked at the site, Leewood leaned back in the leather chair and stared at the flat forty-five inch display. On it were icons mixed with images representing every piece of information they had gathered since arriving here – it was the modern version of a tack board. Some of the icons and images were linked together with lines and/or arrows. He had just entered another piece to the puzzle, the latest statement by the Loud, the one they had received when he and Harrington had discovered the force field was down and had entered the dome – which was now being called the listening chamber. When the Loud had again demanded Adamarus be brought to them, Harrington had asked it, “What’s wrong with us?” The Loud had paused and said, “Nothing is wrong with you. Adamarus has been scanned, approved and prepared. Others may be at a later time.”
Scanned, approved and prepared, he thought. He opened the icon for Adamarus and a window opened with links to all known information about this fifty-two and now suddenly thirty year old Captain. “Prepared,” so they had done something to him to prepare him. He touched a rectangle labeled, “Known Loud Alterations to Subject” and a list opened.
Subject: Adamarus Maximus
Treated Injuries
Physical Changes
Cellular Changes
History
He knew that the “Physical Change”’ – Adamarus’ restored youth – was due to the “Cellular Changes” which were actually doing much more. Adamarus was no longer aging. He returned to the Loud’s statement and created a link between “Prepared” and “Cellular Changes,” and then entered a note on the link:
[Prepared = Not aging, but prepared for what?]
He went back to the Loud’s statement, tapped on the word “approved,” and added a note to that.
[Approved for what?]
His notes continued with the word “scanned." Scanned for what? Whatever they scanned him for caused him to be “approved” and then “prepared”, he thought. They had detected something about Adamarus, something that was already there. He returned to Adamarus’ folder and browsed through it. What had they found? He paused under ‘Psych Evaluation Summary,’ opened it, and glanced over it.
Just then the door opened and Harrington came in. He showed her the information he’d added as well as the links and notes he’d made. Then he showed her the Psych Evaluation Summary. Harrington looked closer, “Extremely high levels of honesty, dedication, loyalty, drive, creativity and adaptability. G7-IQ.”
“And thrifty, brave, clean and reverent,” Leewood added. “What’s the G7-IQ?”
“I’m not sure. Wait…” Three menu items down from “Psych Evaluation Summary” Harrington found "IQ." She clicked on it then whistled. “Adamarus’ IQ is way up there – well into the genius range.” She looked back at the two words from the Loud’s last statement, “scanned” and “approved." “Call it woman’s intuition but…he may have been scanned for many things, but I’ll bet the bank that his psych evaluation and IQ played a big part in getting him approved."
“Okay, I’ll go along wi
th that for now,” Leewood conceded. “Now we just have to figure out what he was ‘approved’ and ‘prepared’ for.”
“The doctors said that he was not aging?” Harrington asked. “Does this mean that he’s immortal?”
Leewood rubbed his face with both hands; he looked tired. “Hadn’t looked at it that way – I guess that’s right. But I bet a bullet or getting hit by a train would still stop his clock.” They both stared at the display for a minute. Leewood cleared his throat then got up and sat on the corner of the desk. “Well, whatever he was prepared for, it seems obvious that it has something to do with the Loud.” He reached over and touched the scroll bar scrolling down the information on the Loud. He stopped and read an item he had spotted.
We can assume that the aliens come from a star that:
Is local (within 432 light years of us*),
Has rock planets in the bio-zone with between point four to four gravities,
Is not a binary system which would pull planets out of the bio-zone.
There are fifty-two stars that meet these requirements and they range from five light years to 172 light years distance with the most likely twenty-one stars having a range of ninety-five to 125 light years.
Leewood asked, “432 LY, is that light years?” Harrington nodded. “I wonder why 432?”
Harrington pointed to the note in small text at the bottom, “432 LY is the number of years we’ve been putting out transmissions that would reach other stars. They’re assuming that the aliens picked up the transmissions and that’s what led them here.”
“So this says that they most likely live ninety-five to 125 light years away. Wow,” Leewood said. “That means it takes over ninety-five years to get there! You’d need to be immortal to make that journey. Think that’s it?”
Harrington looked thoughtful for a minute then snapped her fingers, “Trade.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look, they’ve already told us that they want Adamarus as their liaison or go-between, right?” Leewood nodded once. “One of the most likely things they’ll want to do is trade with us. Certainly that’s what we want with their advanced technology.”
“That doesn’t explain this immortality thing," Leewood said.
"Yes, it does! If their planet is 100 light years from here, a round trip would take over 200d years and so…”
“Of course,” Leewood punched his hand. “They wouldn’t want to deal with a different person every time they pulled in here. They’d want the same person. And with his traits…honesty and so on and so on…”
“Exactly,” Harrington concluded. “They’re grooming him to be the person, or I should say one of the people – clearly more than one person will be needed—but probably they want him as their main contact.”
“And let’s not forget, they saved his life,” Leewood added.
“Damn,” Harrington looked thoughtful. “You know…things couldn’t have been more perfect for the Loud if they’d planned it all out.”
---
Adamarus stared at the bright green floor and walls of the completely empty dome. After a moment he decided to get up and walk to the window for a closer look. He took a deep breath and started to get up, but was stopped midway by the soft but powerful and unmistakable sound of great quantities of air being inhaled.
Frozen half out of his chair he waited nervously. Then it came, a terrible screeching sound that he had heard before in his “dream", his memories while in the boogieman’s ship. It went on for several seconds. Adamarus didn’t need to cover his ears – the walls reduced the sound to a manageable level, but a vibration still reached through the insulation and sent shivers down his spine. He could feel the hairs on the back of his neck stand up and goose bumps rise on his arms. And then it ended.
In the silence that followed, Adamarus noticed he was sitting down again. Looking up he saw a small box above the window with lights on it. Along the bottom was a progress bar. It reached 100 percent. He jumped when a mechanical voice began speaking. “Hello, Captain Adamarus Maximus. Forgive me but I am staying out of view until we’ve talked for a while. Your species is so alien and so small – you… well, you resemble something on our planet called a raba-worm. The raba-worm is extremely revolting and disgusting to us. It will take time to adjust myself. Please do not take this personally. I am sure that you find us strange to look at as well and will also need time. Behind your seat you will find something that may help with our first meeting. We have been monitoring your video broadcasts for some time. According to our studies, in your culture, meetings such as the one I hope we will have are often helped with this substance. And we have heard that…appearances of the other party may improve with continued ingestion of this substance. I have already ingested a quantity but I’m bigger than you and may still need more.”
Adamarus followed the instructions the mechanical voice had issued. He reached around behind his seat and grabbed the paper bag hidden there. He opened it and smiled. It contained a six-pack of beer. He set it on the seat beside him. After the way the Loud had staged their arrival at the hospital, playing the theme song from a popular ER reality show, he should have expected something like this. “Appearances of the other party may improve with continued ingestion,” indeed! He laughed out loud. At the same time, unknown to him, the lights on the translator were having a fit. He heard another screech coming from outside and struggled to get himself under control.
Then the sound of inhaled air came again and another screech. “Adamarus, the translator may be malfunctioning. It could not translate what you just said.”
Adamarus calmed himself and spoke for the first time. “I’m sorry. I was laughing. Can you understand me now?”
“Laughing. Yes we know about laughing. Yes, I can understand you now.”
The Loud came out from his hiding place directly behind the suspended room Adamarus was in. It turned around and faced Adamarus, and then, without leaving the floor, its body shot up 100 feet, expanding and sucking in air. Adamarus gasped. Then the Loud’s muscles flexed and it shrank again forcing the air through boney chambers which made up its head. Again the ear splitting screech reached into the sound-proof chamber causing his body to vibrate. Lights on the translator above the window blinked and a status bar made its way across the bottom. “At last, we meet face to face.”
Adamarus’ face went slack, a frozen smile remaining in place. He remembered the dream he’d had though he knew now that it was a memory; moving hills in a strange place, and he knew he was looking at one of those hills. He had seen the reproductions from his descriptions and had asked for the memories to be restored but there hadn’t yet been time.
He realized that the silence was growing uncomfortably long. He glanced at the seat next to him and made a decision. He grabbed one of the bottles of beer, opened it and took a large drink.
He still didn’t know what to say so he lifted the beer bottle towards the creature in a mock toast. “Here’s looking at you.” Unbelievably, a long tentacle appeared from somewhere along the creature’s side holding a beer, and the alien mimicked the action. Adamarus took another drink watching the alien. The creature also took a drink, its long tentacle carrying the bottle up and pouring the beer into the oval hole at the front of its head.
Adamarus studied the creature noting as many details as possible. He guessed it was about twenty feet wide, thirty feet long and twenty feet high. It seemed to glide along the floor on a layer of dark red rippling flesh that the creature’s massive body rested on. Above this was a dark gray layer with puckered holes running along it. As he watched, more tentacles emerged from the holes. There were three on each side near the front of the creature as far as he could tell. The tentacles extended twenty to twenty-five feet and were about four feet in diameter at the base, tapering out to their ends. Above this layer things got more complicated.
The front three-quarters of the Loud was a fleshy wrinkled gray with long sharp thorns. They were dark gray, about four fee
t long, lying flat and pointing downwards. This was the area which expanded upward and filled with air before the Loud spoke. This area was a single large lung Adamarus correctly guessed. When it expanded, the large dark gray thorns lifted and pointed outward much like a blowfish.
Adamarus realized that their two species were so different that they would never even be able to get physically close to each other, let alone sit down at a restaurant and dine! Behind the lung area, making up the rear of the animal, was a large muscle extending from the bottom layer upward to the back of what Adamarus thought of as its head. In front, just below the “head”, were what looked like remnants of hands or perhaps flippers; six large bony fingers extended about twelve feet down in front over the gray thorny lung area. Each had three joints and for all the world looked like the bones within a human finger enlarged many times. Later he would learn that these were the Loud’s equivalent of ribs – they protected vital organs.
On top was the “‘head." There was no neck. It was perhaps sixteen feet wide, twenty feet long and eight feet high. If you could imagine a very large eroded hollow bone and then flatten it and folded it over upon itself three times, making the upper fold round and twice as large, you’d have most of it. A crest ran along the top of its head from the front to the back.
In the front was a gaping hole which contained wet, slimy looking, black tentacles which always seemed to be in motion – this was the mouth. It never closed.
Embedded on either side of the upper head, running on either side of the crest from just behind the “mouth” to a point three-quarters back, were green translucent sacks – obviously eyes, though they were nothing like any eyes he’d ever seen. Within each, instead of a pupil and iris, there were dozens of small receptacles which looked like pale cream-colored mushrooms. These waved back and forth, gathering together in groups seemingly when the alien wished to focus on something. Now that he watched them, he realized that the receptacles could divide into smaller groups; its “eyes” could focus on several things at the same time.
Encounters 1: The Spiral Slayers Page 8
