Nomad

by William Alexander

  Careful, the Envoy wrote across its surface in glowing purple letters. It had condensed into a small and solid sphere. Gabe held it cradled in his right arm. He carried his backpack, his great-grandfather’s cane sword, and the suit’s oxygen tank with his left. This was difficult, not because the stuff was heavy—none of it weighed very much on the moon—but because it was awkwardly shaped, and because the sleeves of his space suit were awkwardly bulky.

  “Sorry,” Gabe said, even though the word stayed inside his helmet. The Envoy couldn’t possibly hear him.

  He glanced up. Stars burned above in every color. Then he stumbled again and tried to watch where he was going in the dim light cast by the Kaen ships.

  The jaguar-shaped shuttlecraft opened its mouth. The two ambassadors climbed inside to be swallowed by it.

  4

  The inside of the shuttlecraft looked spare and utilitarian. Most of the surfaces were metallic, either chrome or dark green. The back wall was made of something softer, with human-shaped indentations. It looked like someone had pressed action figures into a flattened lump of greenish Play-Doh.

  Kaen crossed the floor to stand against one of the depressions in the wall. She waved at Gabe to do the same.

  The shuttle closed its mouth and shifted positions to face upward, away from the moon. The back wall became the floor. The Envoy rolled away from Gabe. Then it poked his arm and pointed at his cane.

  Oh, right, Gabe thought. This could be a dangerous, suit-puncturing thing during launch. He pushed both cane sword and backpack off to the side. Then he looked at Kaen. She held up one hand, extended all five fingers, and started a countdown. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Closed fist. Zero. Liftoff.

  Acceleration pushed the passengers down as the shuttle climbed upward. Then both the shuttle and everything inside it moved at the same speed, and the words down and up ceased to mean anything. Gabe floated weightless.

  Kaen opened the front of her helmet. Gabe tried to do the same, but it took him a while to work the clasp with his suit gloves on, and he wasn’t really sure how to take the suit gloves off.

  “We have translation here,” Kaen told him once he finally lifted his helmet visor. “Most of our ships do. Many different species are Kaen, and no mouth among us is shaped to speak all languages, so we need translators often. As an ambassador you may also see flickers of visual translation. People who are not human may flicker in and out of human shapes.”

  Gabe finally asked what his brain burned to ask. “How long have humans traveled with the Kaen?”

  “Thousands of years,” she said. “Probably. Time moves differently when you travel at different speeds, so I couldn’t tell you how many times your homeworld circled the sun since we left.”

  “It’s your homeworld too,” Gabe pointed out.

  “No, it isn’t.” Her words were solid, fixed, and inarguable. “I am Kaen. I speak for the Kaen. We move between stars. No single system is ever home to us. Our homeworld is the fleet.”

  Her tone of voice convinced Gabe to set aside all other questions about shared origins, no matter how badly they demanded to be asked.

  “How long will it take us to reach the fleet from here?” he asked instead. “And who is piloting?”

  “Not very long,” said Kaen. “And I am. Try not to distract me too much.”

  “Sorry.” Gabe looked around. “There aren’t any windows. How can you see outside?”

  Kaen tapped her fingers against the forearm of her suit instead of answering.

  A glowing projection of the space outside took shape inside the shuttle.

  Gabe looked behind them to see the sun retreating. Both Earth and the moon had already disappeared in the distance. All three of the mining craft followed close behind the shuttle. Watching them felt like making eye contact. Gabe looked away. He looked ahead. Mars grew larger as they approached.

  “Did you build any pyramids on Mars before you left our solar system?” Gabe asked. He couldn’t help asking.

  Kaen creased up her forehead. “Which one is Mars?”

  “There,” Gabe said. “The fourth one out from the sun. We’re flying directly at it.”

  “Not directly,” said Kaen. “We’ll slingshot around it to gain momentum. And no, I don’t think we built any pyramids. The Kaen don’t ever build planetside. We build ships. We travel. If there are pyramids on Mars then someone else made them.”

  “There aren’t really,” Gabe said, feeling sheepish. “But some of the mountains look like pyramids when we see them through telescopes. Sort of. If you squint.”

  “What do they look like from the surface?” Kaen asked.

  “We haven’t been to the surface,” Gabe admitted.

  Kaen nodded. “I remember that now. Your civilization hasn’t traveled farther than the moon we just left.”

  “We did send robots to Mars,” Gabe said. He tried not to sound defensive, but he did anyway.

  “That would be easier,” said Kaen.

  Gabe wanted to explain how unspeakably cool the Curiosity rover was, but he didn’t. Kaen tapped the controls on her forearm again. She looked intent. He tried not to be distracting. He watched the projected image of Mars, which took up most of the shuttle interior. He also thought about his mom.

  * * * *

  “There were no ancient astronauts,” she had always insisted.

  “Why not?” Gabe had asked her, once and only once. “I still think those Olmec helmets look like space suits.”

  Lupe shook her head and tried to shush him. She knew that the question would provoke a rant from their mother. But Gabe didn’t know that, not yet, and he noticed the shushing too late. Then Lupe upended the helmeted saltshaker to pour a whole mess of the stuff over her dinner. This made Dad irate. He grumbled, “You’re wrecking an ideal balance of spice and flavor, you salt addict.” But he did not grumble more loudly than Mom.

  “Why would aliens go around teaching people how to make pyramids?” she asked. She had a warning edge to her voice, something that Gabe would later recognize as an incoming Teachable Moment.

  “The alien ship needed a pyramid to land on in the Stargate movie,” he said. “That could be one reason why.”

  Mom carefully set her fork down on the table. “Listen to me, my heart.”

  “Or maybe aliens might have—”

  “Listen to me.”

  Gabe listened.

  Mom made eye contact and held it. “To give aliens credit for our ancient, prehistoric accomplishments in astronomy, or mathematics, or pyramid building, is to deny us those accomplishments. Please don’t ever suggest that aliens flew down to teach the Olmec their business.”

  “Okay,” said Gabe.

  Mom smiled a warm smile and picked up her fork.

  * * * *

  Something else bothered Gabe about finding humans among the Kaen, something more than his mother’s objections to quack anthropology and its weird obsessions with pyramid-building aliens.

  We were just getting started, he thought. We’re only just learning how to leave the nest, and that’s horrifying and wonderful and we don’t know how any of it works, yet, but we’re going to find out. We put a robot on Mars with a crazy sky crane. Dad and I stayed up really late to watch it happen, and every time the control room got a signal from Curiosity they called it a “heartbeat,” and everyone cheered when it landed. Dad and I cheered. We almost woke up the twins. NASA engineers were crying and jumping up and down in the middle of the night. We’re learning how to do this. We’re figuring it out . . . but now it looks like we already did. Humans already live in deep space. We hoped that would happen someday, but it already happened and we missed it.

  He watched Mars as the shuttle shot around it. He watched as they left it behind.

  “We’re in the asteroid belt now,” Kaen told him.

  “Really?” Gabe looked around, but saw no asteroids. He thought this part of their trip would involve exciting duck-and-weave maneuvers between huge rocks, but the aste
roids were spaced farther apart than he had expected.

  “Really,” Kaen said. “This is our destination up ahead. The largest asteroid.”

  “Ceres,” Gabe said automatically. He was the kind of kid who knew such things.

  “It’s a useful place,” Kaen said. “Plenty of ice on the surface.” Then she looked embarrassed. Resource theft from an inhabited system was a serious offense, and the Kaen had not asked for permission before mining the ice. But they hadn’t been able to. This system had lacked an ambassador for forty years after Nadia Antonovna Kollontai left the post.

  “If you need the ice, then you’re welcome to it,” Gabe said. “I told you that already.” Nomads know how important it is to share water in the desert.

  Kaen nodded in acknowledgment and thanks. “Float near the back wall,” she said. “I need to turn the craft around to slow down.”

  Gabe pushed off with his fingertips. He passed right through the projection of Ceres to reach the squishy wall.

  The Envoy took in a breath, let it out like a leaky balloon, and propelled itself through the shuttle. It caught up Gabe’s floating backpack and cane on its way.

  Kaen followed. Then she held up one hand and extended her fingers for another countdown. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Fist.

  The shuttle fired its engines. This slowed down the ship itself, but everyone inside it was pushed by their own momentum into the wall. Gabe felt extremely heavy for one long moment. He squeezed his eyes shut.

  The extra weight eased. Gabe opened his eyes. The projection of Ceres now filled up his view completely. Sunlight flashed and glinted from it, reflected by the frozen ocean that covered the whole surface of the asteroid. They dove down at it directly.

  The Envoy cleared its throat in a nervous way. “We’re coming in fast for a landing.”

  “We’re not landing,” Kaen said. She tapped forearm controls in a calm and deliberate way.

  The frozen ocean no longer looked smooth. Mountains, valleys, and craters appeared in the projected view. Kaen held up one arm and gestured. The movement of the ship followed the movement of her hand and it nose-dived into one of the craters.

  Gabe felt like he was on a roller coaster. He hated roller coasters. He clenched every single muscle he had and braced for a crash. But this crater was deep. It kept going, down and farther down. It opened into a massive cave inside the ice.

  Lights clustered together in that cavernous space. At first they looked like distant stars. Then they looked like fireflies blinking out messages and circling each other.

  The shuttlecraft flew closer, flew in among the flashing lights. Gabe saw that they were starships.

  Vessels of all different shapes, sizes, and designs moved together. Some looked like flying mountains or interlocking rings. Others zipped and flitted like minnows among leviathans.

  “We welcome you to the fleet, Ambassador,” Kaen said, her voice low.

  “Thank you, Ambassador,” Gabe said. “This does look like a good place to hide.”

  Kaen’s voice turned bitter. “This is a good place to be utterly trapped. One exit, easily blocked. Not ideal.”

  Gabe had nothing to say to that. He watched the different ships go by in their projected view. Then he laughed, delighted.

  “What’s funny?” Kaen asked.

  “That one,” he said. “The silver flying saucer up ahead. Back home people usually imagine that alien ships look just like that. I’m laughing because they were right. There really are flying saucers. I think that’s funny.”

  Kaen gave him an odd look. “I also find this funny, but for different reasons. That’s not an alien ship. That is our ship.”

  5

  Gabe stared at the flying saucer, the kind of ship that humans had long imagined slicing through space like a flat stone skipped over a pond surface—the kind of ship that other humans apparently lived in.

  “Really?” he asked.

  “Really,” Kaen said.

  “That’s fantastic,” Gabe said.

  “I’m glad you think so,” said Kaen. If she was actually glad, Gabe couldn’t hear it in the tone of her translated voice. The Kaen ambassador was not effusive.

  She held up one hand and guided the shuttlecraft closer.

  “It looks like a calendar,” Gabe whispered. “Up close. The markings on top of the saucer look like an old stone calendar.”

  “The name of our ship is the Calendar,” Kaen told him.

  Gabe felt the shuttlecraft shudder as they docked at the very edge of the saucer rim. The squishy wall behind them became a squishy floor beneath them. Gabe stood up. The saucer must be spinning, he thought. That pushes us out and away from the center.

  Kaen pressed her hand against the wall that used to be the floor. A ladder appeared, leading up to the shuttle entrance. She pointed at Gabe’s helmet. “Close your suit. The airlock will be empty on the other side.”

  The Envoy hardened itself into a bowling ball so the vacuum wouldn’t hurt.

  Kaen climbed the ladder.

  Gabe sealed up his helmet visor. He slung his backpack over one shoulder, hoisted the solid and spherical Envoy under his left arm, took up the cane and ventilation unit in his left hand, and then used his free hand to climb after Kaen.

  The shuttle door opened above them. They climbed up into the airlock, where one of the walls suddenly became the floor. Gabe almost made a face-plant against it. Kaen stepped smoothly onto the new floor as their sense of down shifted.

  The door behind them closed. Another door opened ahead. Gabe and the Envoy followed Kaen through the passage, where gravity gradually increased to a full Terran-G. Gabe discovered that his suit was heavy—especially the oxygen tank, which he had to carry like a bulky suitcase.

  They don’t make this gravity by spinning, he thought as he struggled. The rim of the saucer is behind us now, and we’re not getting pushed out that way.

  Doors opened and closed automatically as they approached. Each doorway was much wider at the base, like a triangle with the topmost point cut off.

  The passageway led to a small, square room with walls that looked like the inside of a warehouse, or the hull of a ship, or the frame of a submarine. Struts and supports all stood visible. A woven mat dyed blue and yellow stretched across the floor, and that was the only decoration.

  Four glowing lamps hung from the ceiling on thin cables. They looked like bioluminescent jellyfish, or like any other deep-sea creature that knew how to make its own light. Gabe couldn’t see any jellyfish swimming around inside the lamp. He guessed that much smaller creatures were glowing in there. Bacteria, maybe.

  Kaen knelt on the woven mat. Gabe followed her lead and sat beside her. He set his pack and cane in front of him. The Envoy scootched over to settle on Gabe’s other side.

  They waited.

  Gabe’s nose itched, but he didn’t know if it was safe to lift his helmet visor—and with the helmet sealed he had no way to ask Kaen. Even if he could lift the helmet, breathe, and ask a question, he didn’t even know if this room had a translation matrix turned on yet, so he waited and tried not to think about the unreachable itching of his nose.

  The metal door opened. Two tall figures came through it. Both were human, male, and dressed in pale gray. Complex and unfamiliar patterns covered the fabric of their clothes. They had long, straight hair slicked back to show high foreheads. Neither one of them looked at or acknowledged the ambassadors. Instead they stood to either side of the open doorway in classic guard pose, shoulders squared—but they carried covered trays instead of weapons. Unless the covered trays were weapons. The two did look strong and serious enough to wield a tray in deadly fashion.

  Kaen’s helmet retracted. The segments collapsed and slid behind the shoulders of her suit. Gabe took that as a signal and lifted his own visor. The ship’s air smelled metallic and clean.

  No one moved. Everyone continued to wait. The door remained open. Gabe scratched his nose.

  A thin and spidery woman
joined them through the open door. She had white hair cut very short, an ornate necklace of small blue stones, and dark skin creased by a thousand wrinkles.

  “Hello, little mouths,” the woman said. Gabe heard the words in very heavily accented English.

  Kaen sat up straighter. “Great Speaker,” she said, her voice extra formal, obviously annoyed, and trying hard not to be. “I present the ambassador of our host system, one who offers us guest gifts.”

  Host system, Gabe thought. She called this their host system, a place they just happen to be passing through—a place they happen to be hiding in. This system is just another rest stop. They don’t think of it as home.

  The Great Speaker looked down at Gabe as though unsure of his species.

  “Astonishing,” she said. “These offered guest gifts come soon after we wore snake blood.”

  Gabe blinked. He understood the words, but not how they fit together.

  “We found a more diplomatic solution,” Kaen said.

  That made sense to him, at least.

  The Great Speaker knelt on the other side of the woven mat, but she kept her voice aloof. “I am Nicanmorohua Cihuatlatoani. I say so. I, the Speaker. And here aboard this ship, among the Kaen, I serve as Great Speaker and captain. Address me as Speaker Tlatoani when you yourself speak, little mouth.”

  Gabe understood Kaen’s annoyance now. She’s treating us like children. We are children, sure, but we’re also ambassadors.

  He tapped into his father’s goofy love of high formality—though hopefully without the goofiness.

  “Great Speaker,” Gabe said. “I am Ambassador Gabriel Sandro Fuentes of Terra. I am honored by your welcome. But you may not address me as ‘little mouth.’ ”

  The Speaker gave him a long and intense look. In that moment she reminded Gabe of the old woman in the city park near his house—the one who sat and watched children as though planning to eat them.

  “She calls everyone ‘little mouth,’ ” Kaen whispered. “Mouth just means ‘person.’ Though it also means ‘mouth.’ ”