Orb

by Gary Tarulli

  “That is a supposition yet to be proven. Exactly how the spheres would react is little more than guesswork. I understand we are all prepared to tolerate some risk for the sake of the mission or we wouldn’t be here, no argument, but you must also realize that the responsibility to evaluate and avoid unnecessary danger to the crew rests with me.”

  “I’ll put the risk solely on myself. What I am proposing I can, with difficulty, accomplish alone.”

  “I’m not surprised you’d try, given your level of dedication,” Thompson said, trying to de-escalate the tension. “Only thing is, my responsibility to this mission includes intervening when a member of the crew voluntarily places themself in a hazardous situation. Like it or not, we’re stuck with each other, and an injury to one jeopardizes us all.”

  “That concern was ameliorated when you planned for redundancy in our training.”

  “I see I fail to sway you. Have you stopped to consider that the spheres may very well be in opposition to what you are suggesting? That we would be alienating them?”

  “They have few of the attributes of a life-form. Either way, we need to find out.”

  “Isn’t that a failure to respect what we don’t understand?”

  “You, sir, are forgetting what is expected of this mission.”

  “I’m open to further discussion of the ethical underpinnings of this disagreement … on the way home.”

  And so, Thompson made it amply clear that the discussion was concluded, and a resigned, or so we thought, Doctor Larry Melhaus excused himself and went about his work.

  Thompson brought his attention around to Diana. “I very rarely give second warnings. Here is yours: Keep a civil tongue or I will confine you to quarters.”

  “You’re right. I know it,” Diana said petulantly. “But no more apologies. He’s gone to the other side.” She pointed a finger at her head and made a circling motion, the universal gesture to indicate crazy.

  “Maybe so. But there are a thousand people who in a heartbeat would do what he’s suggesting and worse.”

  “Can’t he get it through his thick skull that I, more than anyone, would bust a gut to find out what these spheres are? There’s a very good chance they are a sophisticated life-form. Kyle instructed me not to say intelligent. Anyway, why didn’t you ram home the ethical point?”

  “Diana, I’m wondering that myself. Right or wrong, I feel words alone have little effect on people with his mindset. You either see and feel the beauty of something and respect it or you don’t. For him beauty is exclusively found in ones and zeros, mesons and pions. For others, it’s dollars and euros or power and prestige. Their world view is obscured by a perpetual fog that words won’t lift. Perhaps I can be faulted for no longer trying.”

  Thompson grimaced and I saw that faraway look in his eyes, identical to the look he had a few days ago when we had conversed in his cabin. Whatever inner emotions were gripping him, they didn’t hold sway.

  “Kyle,” he said, “your remark to Melhaus wasn’t exactly helpful.”

  “You’re right, sorry. But it sure felt good.”

  Thompson shot me a menacing frown.

  “Was that his first warning?” Kelly asked, straight-faced. She had been pretty quiet through all of this.

  “Why are you asking?” Thompson said. “You want me to confine him to your cabin?”

  “Could you?” she responded.

  After Thompson left the table, Paul, who had also been silent, had a question for Diana:

  “Tortoises?”

  “A creep.”

  Many More

  AS PROMISED, THOMPSON had us review the last images from Ixodes’ onboard camera.

  Diana, Kelly and I agreed with Thompson, interpreting the appearance of indistinct circles as artifacts caused by light refracting off multiple lenses.

  Paul’s opinion was more nuanced. “We’re looking at images taken at a depth of one hundred meters. Ambient lighting was low. Ixodes’ lights were off. Under these conditions why would artifacts be produced? On the other hand, the images are too indistinct to positively identify as spheres, even assuming they exist at this depth.”

  Our opinion didn’t sit well with Melhaus. After a brief discussion, the physicist rose from the table where we were collected and muttered, “Figures.” A few short strides later he had disappeared inside Desio. In his absence, a short conversation ensued among the rest of the crew.

  “Is he delusional?” Diana asked.

  “It fits the profile,” I said.

  “There’s something else to worry about,” Kelly added. “He’s no longer taking sleep medication.”

  “What makes you believe so?” Thompson asked, concerned.

  “I gave him ten capsules. That was eleven days ago. He has refused more.”

  “What’s the problem?” asked Paul. “Does he believe you’d substitute another drug?”

  “That’s one possibility,” Kelly replied. “I can think of a better reason. I suspect he doesn’t want to sleep.”

  “I don’t follow,” Diana said. “Wait. I get it. Not enough time.”

  Kelly nodded. “Every hour spent sleeping is one less spent doing research.” Her next words were in anticipation of what she believed Thompson would be expecting of her as ship’s physician. “I’ll try talking to him. Again.”

  Thompson wanted more. “You’ll be rebuffed. He’ll continue to refuse medication. Another possibility is he’ll accept the capsules and feign taking them. No, I want to stay one step ahead of him. Give me something more to work with.”

  “I have a psychotropic that can be partially effective in treating his disorder. If you or I order him to take it he would be within his rights to refuse. Unless he is deemed to be an active threat to himself or others. I don’t…”

  Kelly hesitated as Melhaus came out of Desio. An awkward moment of silence persisted while he took three small steps and reached over her shoulder to retrieve his AID from the table where we were assembled.

  “Great. Just great,” Diana said after Melhaus had re-entered the ship.

  “Relax,” Paul said, placing a hand on hers. “I don’t think he overheard.”

  “But what if he did?”

  “My advice would be the same,” said Thompson. His next remark did little to put Diana at ease. “He needs to be watched carefully. He may no longer act in a predictable manner. Couple that with high intelligence and we have a potential problem.”

  “And you don’t believe that meets the standard of an ‘active threat?” Diana asked.

  “He’s done nothing to warrant that designation.” Thompson responded.

  “Still want me to talk to him?” Kelly asked.

  “Definitely,” Thompson responded. “But I’d like you to strongly advocate the new medication. I want you to make his refusal part of his medical record.”

  I had the distinct feeling Thompson was contemplating some additional course of action. He seemed in no mood for sharing what that would be.

  As we considered possible ways to study them, the spheres, en masse and heralded by a bark from Angie, drifted closer to shore. Then, emulating the blue sun that each morning appeared to be born of the perfectly round planet, more spheres emerged, smaller, the size of basketballs, popping one by one right out of the ocean; twelve in all, if I counted correctly, slowly peeking their glossy domes above the surface, steadily rising until they, too, were gently hovering on one tiny point upon the water.

  I can only remember Kelly exclaiming “how wonderful!”—for what happened next blurred from my memory (it being a rare instance when I had forgotten to turn on my recorder) other comments made, including my own.

  Eight dozen spheres, in a valiant challenge to the full brightness of day, brought forth onto their surfaces the full spectrum of color that was previously hinted at within—vivid reds, blues, greens, and a myriad of beautiful hues the likes of which I had never seen before! The colors did not remain static but rather spread across their surfaces, slowly
swirling and flowing like the surface of a glycerin soap bubble sent rising into the air by a child. To render the scene more celebratory, several of the spheres began leisurely traversing back and forth in randomized zigzag patterns, bringing themselves in contact—as if they were visiting—with others within the group!

  I could not recall the last time I saw Diana so ecstatic. After Thompson denied her pleas to jump back into the ocean, I found her sitting on a stone slab, feet dangling in the water; watching in rapt fascination as the spheres cavorted, recording her impressions like a space-aged Jane Goodall.

  “They must be alive!” she proclaimed. “The display of colors. The excited movement. I’d stake my reputation that we’re witnessing a collective response to new additions made to their numbers!”

  Although the rest of us were not quite so sure, we wanted it to be so.

  An hour or so after it had begun, the spheres’ extraordinary display ceased and they resumed their more staid color and motion. What, we wondered, would they have in store for us next?

  Naturally, Melhaus’s reaction was more sterile, reaffirming the sphere’s inanimate attributes and reminding us that we were too inclined to put the stamp of our own wishful thinking on something we did not understand.

  He was right about the wishful thinking part: The human race didn’t care to be alone, the universe being way too big and scary a place to occupy all by our lonesome. If life on Earth could manage to fill every available niche, then we expected—no, we demanded—the same be true elsewhere. In those instances when the cosmic niches turned up empty, well, we were doing our utmost to fill them with more copies of ourselves.

  So I tended to agree with Melhaus regarding our mindset, but unlike him, I didn’t rely exclusively on scientific instruments to form an opinion about the spheres. Such devices have their own bias, an inherent flaw, because they are designed by humans with certain predetermined results in mind. A basic camera, for example, is a pre-chosen combination of lens, aperture, and sensor; all compromises in creating an image that is merely a small slice of visual reality which, in itself, is a smaller slice of a wider reality. The image itself is often open to interpretation. Those produced by Ixodes’ camera come readily to mind.

  No original thinking this; I’m only dusting off what others have said to establish background for why I was confident the spheres were a living entity. Bottom line: When untainted observation and unbiased opinion are impossible to come by, you might as well place reliance on your own.

  These thoughts occurred to me while I assisted Thompson, Melhaus, and Paul as they attempted, and failed, to modify the sound recording component of the holo camera so that it would be capable of detecting higher frequencies. I’m sure that the loss of Ixodes was foremost on everyone’s mind, especially Melhaus’s, as the sub had been specifically outfitted to detect an extended range of sound frequencies above and below the water. I wondered if his misinterpretation of its final images was a subconscious attempt to transfer guilt from himself to the spheres. He hadn’t committed to the sphere’s being a life-form, but I seriously doubted he’d be amused if I congratulated him on being the first human in history to use an extraterrestrial as a scapegoat.

  “Hey, Kyle,” Thompson yelled at me, “go put pen to paper, I can see you’re of no use to us here.”

  Damn. Nothing got by him. He could always tell when I was daydreaming.

  Venturing toward my cabin, I wondered where he learned the arcane expression.

  Paul promised, and delivered on, the approach of a fast-moving weather front: A mass of steel gray clouds rolling in, unleashing a few hours of refreshing, late-day rain. We stood outside long enough to let the water wash us off and to feel the soft sensation of raindrops tapping against bare skin. I was in the company of scientists, and the gentleness of the rain compared to that on Earth garnered an explanation: The atmosphere here was a little denser, the gravity a little weaker.

  Despite the downpour, the crew continued their work. Tents of ultralight poles and rainproof fabrics were erected over the four science stations to protect equipment considered too cumbersome or delicate to repeatedly move in and out of the ship. The tenting, like many items onboard Desio, was specifically designed with more than one function in mind—in this instance the collection of one hundred liters of rainwater to replenish those lost by the crew working and sweating in the warm open atmosphere.

  By sunset the storm clouds had rolled on past, leaving in their wake a few straggling balls of lint clinging tenaciously to the fabric of the sky. By nightfall all signs of the storm had dissipated and, in the partial darkness of a million dazzling suns, a mystery was finally solved.

  The grouping of spheres, several dozen, had slowly drifted further offshore but remained close enough so that each subgroup was distinguishable by the distinctive blue shade it was emitting. The glow was not exceptionally intense, but several of the spheres were greater than three meters in diameter and the overall number was now multiplied from the prior evening. In short, they collectively threw a significant amount of radiance into the immediate atmosphere. None of this was particularly revelatory until more groups started appearing.

  Many, many more.

  Diana, eyes widening and practically choking on a liquid somebody with a warped sense of humor labeled food, pointed. Like the random distribution of stars above, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of groups were spread out across the ocean. Our local group, as I said, had stayed in relatively close proximity to our island. The next closest, its own unique color, was a kilometer away. Beyond it, there was another; then another, and another, on and on, in every direction, out to the rim of the planet.

  Ignoring our dinner, we made a short sprint to a good vantage point by the shoreline.

  “Can anybody venture a guess how many?” Thompson queried as we scanned the broad expanse of ocean in front of us.

  “Lots,” Paul answered. “In the thousands. More counting those over the horizon we can’t see.”

  “Well, at last we have one puzzle solved,” Thompson said enigmatically. “Solutions have been hard to come by.”

  “Did you not find it instructional that from orbit they appeared to be perfect circles?” Melhaus stated. Do you need to examine the images taken from orbit? Conservative extrapolation would place their number in the millions.”

  A light of recognition appeared on Paul’s face. “Yes! I get it. Should have sooner. Quite remarkable.”

  “Whatever they are,” Kelly said, “I damn well hope we don’t do anything to antagonize them. If we haven’t already, that is.”

  It took me a while to fully grasp the concept. Hundreds of sphere groups in the small wedge of ocean that was visible to us meant exponentially more elsewhere. Like galaxies spread in uneven clusters throughout the Universe, the sphere groups were dispersed in varying densities across the entirety of the planet’s ocean. This was the mysterious and beautiful phenomena we had observed from orbit. Bending down, I picked up Angie.

  Kelly looked at me and smiled.

  “It was only fair that she be afforded a better view,” I said, making sure everyone heard. “She seems to understand what we’re dealing with more than we do.”

  We reluctantly returned to the table to finish our dinner. During a lull in conversation I decided to pre-empt Thompson.

  “I have a name for the planet. For everyone’s consideration, that is.”

  “This should be good,” Thompson warned. “Let’s hear it.”

  “Orb.”

  “That’s it?” said Diana, taken aback. “Are all the two-letter names taken?”

  “Let’s hear the reasoning,” Thompson said. “Kyle always has a reason.”

  “And you shall have it. I was looking for a name that evoked some of the planet’s more predominant and intriguing features when it occurred to me that there was one quality applicable not only to the planet but to its principal occupant, the spheres. Both are round, like an orb, which happens to be the Latin word for circle,
sphere, or disk. When I delved further into the definitions, I liked the sound of it more and more: Mysterious, like the power and glow of a magician’s orb; celestial, like the transparent spheres carrying the heavenly bodies in their revolutions; poetic, another word for eye. Anyway, I felt it had an air of mystery, timelessness….”

  I looked around. No one offered a comment, not even Kelly, which had me worried.

  “Well,” Thompson began, realizing I was hanging on his next words, “perhaps I was wrong assigning this job to you. Two days to come up with only three letters? Shit, how long does it take you to write a complete sentence?”

  “I can come up with something else—”

  “No. I doubt we have the time. Anyway, I consider it a terribly … a terribly good name for the planet.”

  When he finished, the crew laughed and I along with them. They had conspired to keep silent as a way of drawing out my insecurity.

  Melhaus remained quiet for his own reasons. Fortunately, he withheld criticism, for I was tempted to share one more definition for an orb: A spherical artifact found on some digital images.

  I joined Kelly in her cabin, long after everyone (except Thompson, who was enjoying sleeping in the open air) had gone to their quarters to rest.

  “Your name for the planet is wonderful,” Kelly said. “Quixotic? Wrong word. Fanciful. It somehow evokes this odd notion I have—I can’t shake it—that there is more here, on this world, than meets the eye.”

  “Can you be more specific?”

  “No.”

  “Too bad,” I said. “Ever since we got here I’ve had a similar notion. Like we’re all missing something right in front of us. But then again, I’m subject to fanciful and quixotic flights of imagination.”

  She smiled, placed one delicate hand on each side of my face and pressed her lips against my forehead.

  “That’s why I lov…”

  I felt her go tense. She caught herself, but not in time.

  “No, you can say it. Once or twice my parents did.”