by Trevor Wyatt
Chapter 11
Ashley
Once we’re all at our stations in CNC, I see Mary pick up her earbuds prior to composing the message as directed by Jeryl. At the same moment, he says, “Belay my previous order, Lieutenant.”
She pauses, her hands poised over her entry tablet. “Sir?”
“I’m not feeling very neutral right now. So here’s what I want you to say: ‘I am Jeryl Montgomery, captain of this vessel. We are investigating the disappearance of our scout ship. We found its wreckage. If you know anything about how our people met their demise, I request information. If you caused the deaths of our people, I demand to know why.” No one in CNC says anything, but I swear that I can feel a general air of approval. It may be risky, and it’s my place to speak up if I think he’s being reckless—but taking a firm stance seems warranted. It all depends on what their response is. Jeryl adds, after her pause continues, “Don’t dawdle, Lieutenant. Send it along.”
Taylor replies, “They... won’t understand your name or rank, sir.”
I know she doesn’t want to send that message; she thinks it’s too aggressive.
“I realize that,” says our captain, a little testily, “but they should be smart enough to figure out what I mean. The salient points will be clear enough, I imagine.”
I walk around the room’s circumference to her station, and lean over so that only she can hear me. “Just send it, please.” She has a stubborn look on her face, but I’m certain she will carry out the order. Her fingers move slowly over the tablet.
Dr. Lannigan puts a voice to Mary's concern. “Your message may be perceived as a threat.” His long, lugubrious face appears even sadder than ever as he says this.
Jeryl gives him a hard look. “Doctor,” he says briskly, “they’re free to read it as one if they’re responsible for the loss of the Mariner.” Then he lifts his chin. “Helm,” he says.
“Sir,” Pedro Ferriero says.
“Battle alert. Shields at fifty percent.”
I have to speak up at this point. “Sir, this is a first contact situation. Is it wise to be at battle stations?”
He opens his mouth to tell me to keep my opinion to myself, I’m sure—then he does one of the things that make him so worthy of respect. He listens to what I’ve said, and he considers it.
Many captains, including every other I’ve served under, would have followed Jeryl’s first impulse and told me he’d ask for my opinion when he wanted it. But Jeryl has made it clear to every crewmember aboard the Seeker that he has an open-door policy. I was not questioning his order, exactly; I was reminding him of what’s at stake here.
He flashes me a smile so brief that I'm not completely certain that he’s given one at all. “Mr. Ferreiro, take it down to Attention instead of Battle Alert.”
“Sir,” says Pedro, and touches the PA controls. A triple beep fills the air, repeated five times. The lighting dims and takes on a reddish hue. Everyone on board is now at the ready. They’ll jump into action if the actual Alert sounds.
I am erect at my station, staring at my instruments. The electromagnetic shields are not yet raised, but can be at a touch. Aside from drills this is the first time the Seeker has been on Attention status since we left Earth.
I wonder if the alien can sense the flux of energy flowing through our power grid. If so, I wonder what he makes of it.
We are waiting for a response to the captain’s message. Minutes tick by. The only sounds in the CNC are small noises from the monitors as they scan the alien’s frequencies, and an occasional cough or throat clearing from one of the crew. They’re variously excited, afraid, or nervous.
I’m nervous. My palms are sweating. I lick my lips.
No one aboard has seen combat. Our disputes with the Outers have not yet boiled over into open fighting. There have been no major space battles fought in fifty years, since 2147.
In fact, the last recorded skirmish this year was minor; there were no lives lost and the ships involved suffered no more than a few laser singes. A pirate's den in the Alluria Sector. Not even any hulls were breached. It later turned out that the weapons officer on one of the ships fired out of sheer anxiety. (He was subsequently cashiered.)
There’s been plenty of talk of possible war with the Outer Colonies, but war against an entirely unknown species? That’s a different breed of cat.
I wipe perspiration off my forehead.
I realize someone is standing beside me. It’s the ship’s doctor, Mahesh Rigsang. He’s slight, dark-skinned, with thick black hair and warm black eyes. His lilting accent speaks of his childhood home, the city of Dehra Dun in the northern India state of Uttarakhand, not far from the Tibetan border. He’s a damn good doctor.
“Apprehensive,” he says. It’s not a question. I nod. He smiles. “It’s the unknown. Fear of the unknown. Can I tell you a little story?”
I know from past experience that there’s nothing Mahesh loves more than to tell his little stories. I have told him many times that he ought to get married and have kids; he’d be a wonderful father. He only shakes his head and says, “I am not ready for that responsibility.”
Here’s a man who has saved many lives during his time in the hill country of his homeland. During World War III, Delhi, which is only about 200 kilometers from Dehra Dun, was wiped out by a 500 kiloton nuke. By the time Mahesh was born, the incidence of cancers in the region had increased by more than two thousand percent. Two of his uncles died from radiation-induced bone cancer. His early childhood was marked by death and environmental degradation.
Personally? I think the reason he doesn’t want kids is that he fears fathering a mutant. It happens often, I regret to say. Nowadays, they’re able to try and provide somewhat of a better life. But a fair number of times…there’s nothing left to be done.
Now I say, in response to his offer, with my mouth so dry I can barely croak out the words, “Sure... go ahead.”
Mahesh pats my arm and begins, in a quiet voice so as not to attract the attention of anyone else in CNC. “A monk who found himself depressed and fearful over the looming threat of war between his land and a stronger, more aggressive neighbor, decided to meditate alone, away from his monastery. He took his boat out to the middle of the lake, moored it there, closed his eyes and began his meditation.”
I'm listening, but my eyes are on my instruments. The alien has not made any response to Jeryl’s communique.
“After a few hours of undisturbed silence,” Mahesh says, “he suddenly felt the bump of another boat colliding with his own. With his eyes still closed, he sensed his fear rising, and by the time he opened his eyes, he is ready to scream his surrender to the enemy boatman who had disturbed his meditation.
“But when he opened his eyes, he saw that the craft that had struck his was an empty boat that had probably got untethered and floated to the middle of the lake.” Mahesh shrugs and grins at me.
“At that moment,” Mahesh says, grasping my arm, “the monk achieved self-realization, and understood that the fear was within him; it merely needed the bump of an external object to provoke it out of him.
“From then on, whenever he came across someone who frightened him or if he found himself in a risky situation that threatened him with harm, he reminded himself, ‘The other person or situation is merely an empty boat. The fear is within me.’”
I turn and look down at him. He is the shortest man in the ship, but unlike many small men he’s completely unselfconscious about it. As a result he’s been quite popular among the unattached female crewmembers.
Including me. This is something I’ve never told Jeryl, and feel no need to, as Jeryl and I are not together. In fact, I’ve never told anyone. I figure my business is my business.
“Thanks, Mahesh,” I say; and do you know, I really do feel better. Someone one said, in the context of looming war, something about fear being the only thing there is to fear. Once you know what’s there in the darkness, it’s a lot less scary.
I really want
to know what is inside that damn ship. I frown down at my instruments for a moment, and when I look around to speak to Mahesh again, he’s gone. In fact, he’s left the CNC.
I promise myself that as soon as I can. I’m going to send him a drink in the lounge.
Jeryl clears his throat. “What the devil are they doing over there, chipping their reply in stone?”
Moments later, Mary says, in a tight voice, “We’re receiving a visual transmission from the alien.”
Jeryl grunts. “Put it on the main screen.”
Chapter 12
Jeryl
I don’t know what anyone else expected, but the image on the screen didn’t surprise me. My first feeling, in fact, was a sense of relief and even vindication. I had always believed—though I had never shared this belief with anyone, not even Ashley or even my siblings—that if we ever found intelligent life elsewhere in the galaxy, it would resemble us in general form.
Think about it. We evolved from tree-dwellers who learned to walk upright. We were taller than many other animals, and we had our hands—with their opposable thumbs—free to grasp sticks or rocks both large and small. Our bodies had their primary sensory organs—ears, eyes, nose, tongue—at the top, in a head that could easily swivel around to keep watch for enemies or food. We also keep our brains up there.
Our shape is a good size for intelligence, too. We’re adaptable and can move quickly when we need to. In our bodies we carry a huge number of reproductive cells and information therein. We’ve also got fat to see us through times when food is scarce. For evolutionary success, it would be tough to come up with a better design.
Apparently, these standards are broadly applicable elsewhere in the universe as well, because what we see on the view screen is a face that is somewhat similar to our own: humanoid, with two eyes in the front of its head, a nose, a mouth. It has no ears; just slits. It’s bald, with a large cranium.
The eyes have no pupils, and are a deep blue in color. Its skin is blue as well. The being cocks its head when it sees me, and furrows its brow. Its mouth draws down a little. I know I should be wary of ascribing human emotions to an alien creature, but this fellow looks for all the world as if he is examining me and finding me wanting.
I hear murmurs of surprise and wonder from the CNC personnel at their stations around me. For a long moment, no one says anything. Even though my officers are staring at the alien’s image on their screens, the alien is only seeing me, because mine is the only station camera operating.
A text message flits across one of my screens. It’s from Ashley, at her station: What are you going to say to him?
Without taking my eyes off the alien’s image, I tap for a virtual keyboard and on it I reply: How do you know it’s a him?
You know what I mean, she replies.
Of course. But I’m not going to say anything. Let “him” speak first.
No “One small step for a man” stuff?
I hadn’t thought to prepare any remarks. I hope she can catch my sarcasm.
The blue figure on the screen begins talking but it is a weird click-pop noise, pure garble. I’ve heard something like this before... I ransack my memory and come up with a name: !Kung. They were a semi-nomadic African tribe who lived in the portions of the Kalahari Desert. The “!” in their name represents a sort of cork-out-of-a-bottle popping noise. The !Kung were driven to extinction in the years following World War Three, along with many other native and aboriginal people around the world. These disappearances were one of the worst results of the war.
After absorbing the surprise of their language, I watch the alien closely, seeing what information I can glean. I can’t tell anything from his expression, but I can see that when he speaks, he doesn’t seem to have any teeth showing in his mouth, just a solid-looking ridge of bone.
We haven’t got a philologist on board, but the computers ought to be able to analyze this chap’s speech and give us a good translation.
The alien is long-winded, but after a couple of minutes he stops and sits staring at me.
I type a message to Lannigan: Are you getting a translation?
Not yet, he replies at once. The written symbols were one thing. This click-pop talk is something else and I need some time. Engage him in conversation if you can... I need more information.
I sigh to myself. I know we weren’t expecting a First Contact encounter, but even so we should have some sort of translation protocol ready to bring on line. I make a mental note to take this up with Admiral Flynn, if we survive. All right, I type to Lannigan. I look over at Mary Taylor, at Comms. She shrugs at me, as clueless as I.
I paste a smile on my face, and address the blue-skinned alien. Placing my hand on my chest, I say, “I am Captain Jeryl Montgomery of the Terran Union Starship Seeker. We have exchanged information via electromagnetic waves. What is your name?”
The blue captain—I assume he’s the captain, but you know what they say about assumptions—looks at someone or something off-screen. I hear my words being repeated in a rather watery electronic tone. Close enough for government work, I think. At least they got all my inflections right.
Suddenly a thought pops into my head, with a sound like those the alien is making, and I almost smile. “Lieutenant,” I say to Mary Taylor, “I want you to analyze that transmission. They buried information in their earlier communications. In the carrier wave. Comb through this video signal, see if there is anything sub- or super-sonic, maybe; I don’t know. Work with Dr. Lannigan, will you? And Doctor, are you having any luck getting me a translation?”
“I’m still analyzing,” he replies.
The verbal exchange interests the alien, who leans forward a little as if to catch our words. He still can’t see anyone else, so I decide to rectify that and see how the sight of other human beings affects him. “Comms,” I say to Mary, “give him full access to our camera feeds. I want to see what he makes of it.”
The alien’s head moves back and forth as the additional images come through to him. He must have multiple screens on his console, as we do. Now he’s seeing the full complement of CNC officers. I wonder if he can tell the difference between the males and the females, or the different races.
“Now we want to see yours,” I hear Pedro Ferriero mutter at the helmsman’s station. Again I almost smile, but Pedro has a point—we’ve shown our new acquaintance that there’s more than one person manning this craft. I would like to get an idea of how many crewmembers are housed in his behemoth of a ship.
But the alien doesn’t take the hint. He simply sits, staring at me through his inscrutable blue eyes. I’m starting to get fidgety. This meeting is going nowhere.
Dr. Lannigan says, in my earbuds, “I’ve got it. There are two coded frequencies in that video transmission, Jeryl. One inside the other, so that you can’t get to the second one without decoding the first one. If we were only looking at the video we’d never see it. Good catch.”
“It’s purely out of my ass, Taft. It just hit me that they may do this two-level thing all the time. What I need to know is, can you decipher it?”
“I think so—give me a few minutes.”
“As quick as you can, Taft, please.”
“Aye.”
I watch the data stream on my screens as he runs the alien transmission through the computers. I feel myself sweating, but I refuse to wipe my forehead. After what seems to be hours, Lannigan says, “Got it. The information is all sonic, and seems to be keys to intonation. Their language is similar to Asian tongues, in that the inflection you put on a word determines its meaning. Without computers, we’d never be able to understand what—”
“Okay, I get it, just tell me what this guy is saying.”
“I have to integrate the key with their stream; it’ll take a little time.”
“Quick as you can,” I say again. Lannigan doesn’t take offense, he knows we’re walking into the unknown here.
While he’s chewing on the new code data, I have time to t
hink about what I should say to the alien once we can fully understand each other. “Greetings from the people of Earth,” perhaps. Or, “This is a moment that will reverberate through history, both ours and yours.” No... too pretentious by half. I've never been good at extempore speaking; I like having prepared remarks, maybe a few jokes... what sort of joke would these blue people understand? “These two aliens walk into a bar...” Or the one about the blonde and the traffic cop? What was that one about the guy who cuts off his dog’s nose? Someone asks him, “How does he smell?” and the guy says—
“I have it,” Lannigan says.
“Good.”
The alien is speaking again. This time I hear a gravelly voice tumbling out of the speakers. In clear English, the alien says: “If you’re not able to understand me, perhaps you’re not worth my time at this point.”
Chapter 13
Ashley
All of us in CNC are so taken aback by the alien’s rude behavior that no one says a word. Jeryl steps right into the breech, however. Without blinking he says, with great dignity, “I understand you perfectly well.”
A look of what I take to be surprise flickers over the alien’s face. Note to self, I think: they do seem to have a similar emotional spectrum.
“I’ll repeat my original greeting to you. I am Captain Jeryl Montgomery of the Terran Union Starship Seeker. If I may be so bold as to ask, whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?”
The blue alien’s face is impassive as it listens to the popping, clicking garble their machines have made of Jeryl’s speech. It waits for a few moments, and then spews a few moments of clicking babble. On our end, the translation is:
“Good, it appears you have solved the knowledge mazes needed to be able to converse with us.”
Are these people going to be totally insufferable? Or is this captain of theirs just a dick? I wonder if Jeryl is going to hand him his head.
But no, he is silent. All he does is stare at the alien with a perfectly level gaze.
I almost grin. He’s going to wait the son of a bitch out.
