Alien Artifacts

by Seanan McGuire

  Aldrin’s astrographics section was very well-equipped, almost as handsomely kitted out as the Solar Observatory. Luanne and Jeremy made themselves at home, away from the bridge of Aldrin, where they had not been invited.

  On their second day aboard, Luanne was trying to make some accurate measurements of the asteroid when she suddenly began to feel faint.

  “Lu?”

  Jeremy, more solicitous than usual, was suddenly by her side—she hadn’t even noticed him come over.

  “I’m all right,” she said, trying to wave him off. But she wasn’t all right: the room seemed blurry, as if she was viewing it through a polarized filter. It seemed too bright, the contrast on the image turned way down...

  She turned and found herself standing in a completely featureless place, white in all directions. Directly in front of her was a cat—a regular house cat, but a meter and a half tall.

  “What the hell…Jeremy?”

  The cat changed to a horse, then just as abruptly to a large predatory bird: a condor, she thought, though she wasn’t sure how she knew that. It went through a half dozen rapid changes and then became a human figure that looked like a cross between her Ph. D. advisor at MIT and Jeremy Gonzalez.

  Then the cat that had become a horse that had become a human spoke to her in what she thought might be Chinese. Then it spent a few sentences in Hindi—which she’d heard a lot at MIT and at the Observatory—and then Spanish and then, at last, English.

  “…sorry for contacting you in this direct fashion,” the man was saying. “But your vessel is trying to probe our station, and it would be better to avoid misunderstanding.”

  “Your…station?”

  “Yes,” the man said. “Did I use the wrong word? I am trying to assimilate your language as we speak, but there seem to be too many exceptions and double meanings—”

  “At least you’re speaking English. How…? What…?”

  “This is a mental contact,” the man said. “Miss Jacoby? Or shall I address you as Ms., or as Luanne, or Lu, or...” he shrugged, holding his hands out in a gesture that was very much Jeremy.

  “Why don’t you go with Lu.”

  “Lu it is then. As I was saying, forgive me for this direct contact, but it seems clear that you have discovered our station, and we want to avoid any misunderstanding. Yours is a warlike people, and it would be disastrous if you attempted to disable or destroy it.”

  “I don’t think that was planned,” she said.

  “Those commanding your vessel may have other ideas.”

  “I wouldn’t know. I’m just a scientist.”

  “We know,” the man answered. “Among our kind your profession is most highly honored. As the most intelligent mind aboard your vessel, we originally assumed that you were directing it, but it seems otherwise.”

  “How is it you’re…?”

  “Again,” the man said, “forgive the intrusion. Your mind was scanned for language and context. This figure—” he gestured to himself “—is drawn from your memory.”

  “More or less.”

  “There is little time,” he said. “I must try to explain our purpose to you in a way that makes sense.”

  “Little time? Aren’t you…well, I mean, you’ve just done your job, haven’t you? It’s another whole trip around the Sun before you have to do anything else.”

  “Ah. I have not been clear. You have not been adequately prepared for this contact, Lu, and as such it might do permanent damage to you. In fact...”

  The scene went opaque. The man continued to speak but Luanne couldn’t understand what he was saying. She felt something being placed over her nose and mouth—

  And suddenly the room came back into sharp focus. She was lying down, and someone had covered her face with some sort of breathing mask. The light was bright, and three people stood around her—a man was taking her pulse; another, a woman, unsealing Lu’s blouse; and the third held the mask in place from behind her head.

  She slapped the hand on her blouse away, grabbed the mask, and tossed it off. The three people stepped back.

  “What in the hell is going on?” she tried to say, but her throat was dry and it came out as “ut hli gunk can?”

  She tried to sit up, decided it was a bad idea, and let herself lie back down. Someone handed her a squeeze bottle and she took a long sip.

  “Slowly,” the woman said. “You’ve had a bit of a shock.”

  “You have no idea,” Luanne managed after a moment. “I was talking...”

  “You passed out, Lu,” said a familiar voice. Jeremy came into view. He looked worried as hell. “You dropped right to the floor. For a few seconds I couldn’t even feel your pulse. They moved you down here.”

  “How long have I—”

  “Four hours.”

  “That’s a full night’s sleep at the Observatory,” she said, and Jeremy gave her a tight smile. “What’s going on topside?”

  “I think the skipper is thinking about sending an EVA team.”

  “No!” She tried to sit up again and managed it, but the room was none too steady. “Tell him not to do that.”

  “I don’t think ship captains take orders from astrophysicists, but why not?”

  “I’ve…been talking to the inhabitants.”

  “You what?”

  “I need to talk to the captain, Jeremy. I don’t think anyone should set foot on that asteroid.”

  * * *

  Aldrin’s skipper was understandably skeptical.

  “I realize that your profession requires a vivid imagination, Dr. Jacoby,” he said. Everyone else in his ready room was standing; he had gallantly offered her a seat opposite his perfectly neat desk. “But I hesitate to base my decisions on it.”

  “I accept that, Captain Grier,” Luanne said. “But please understand that scientists base their conclusions on empirical evidence—observation, data, known facts.”

  “Of course.”

  “Of course,” Luanne repeated. “Meaning: I’m not making this up, I didn’t dream it, and I think the danger is real.”

  “What danger, do you suppose?”

  “I have no idea. I believe that there is no valid reason to risk your ship, or your personnel, before an adequate investigation has been made.”

  “I thought that was your job. Instead you had a bout of space sickness, and a very detailed dream based on your own fears, and—”

  “It was not a dream,” she said, and it was clear that Captain Aaron Grier was unaccustomed to having anyone interrupt him. He leaned forward and folded his hands in front of him on his desk. His stare was regulation intense.

  Before he could continue, Jeremy cleared his throat. “Whatever it might have been, Captain, I believe that Dr. Jacoby brought it to your attention out of genuine concern as well as scientific curiosity. All of the evidence we’ve been able to derive so far suggests—but doesn’t conclude, since we don’t have enough of it—that this is an artificial construct, not a random bit of rock floating in the Belt.

  “No nation on Earth, or any other inhabited planet in the Solar System, has the ability to build such an object. If for no other reason, caution is called for.”

  “As opposed to simply blowing the goddamned thing to splinters and be done with the threat.”

  “No!” Luanne said, then thought better of it.

  “I suppose you could do that if you thought it the best course,” Jeremy said. “But without a complete understanding of the target, isn’t that more dangerous than just leaving it alone?”

  “I have no idea, Dr. Gonzalez. Do you?”

  “Without adequate study, sir, no, I don’t. I assumed that we were out here to study the object, not blow it to splinters. At least not right away.” He gave his best scientist smirk; Luanne’s heart sank—she didn’t think that was going to go over very well.

  Grier turned his thousand-meter stare on Jeremy Gonzalez, but it did not seem to have the desired effect.

  “How long do you think you’ll n
eed?”

  “Twenty-four hours.”

  “Unacceptable.”

  “Really? Are we under some time constraint of which I’m not aware?”

  “My orders are classified.”

  Jeremy sighed. “Well, sir, I can waste all of our time by playing twenty questions with you, or you can tell me the greatest amount of time your super-classified orders will give us to evaluate a likely alien object with unknown capabilities.”

  “Dr. Gonzalez—”

  “Eight hours,” Luanne said. “Give us eight hours.”

  Grier turned his head to look at her. She felt as if he was going to say something patronizing, or at least condescending, but Jeremy had clearly become the villain in the room, and the captain was more inclined to be charitable.

  “Eight hours,” he said. “Then I want a complete report on my desk. Is that clear?”

  “Thank you, captain,” Luanne said.

  “Dismissed,” he growled. She stood up. Jeremy pulled out his comp to check something. After a few seconds Grier looked up. “Are you still here?”

  “Empirical evidence says yes,” Jeremy said, and turned and left the room.

  “Dr. Jacoby,” Grier said. “Your colleague is—”

  “Refreshingly honest?”

  “Disturbingly civilian,” the captain said. “But I’ll overlook that if you deliver the report as ordered.”

  “As requested.”

  “As requested,” Grier repeated, and then he swiveled his chair to look at his holo display. With nothing more to say, Luanne left the ready room.

  * * *

  “What do you expect to achieve in just eight hours, Lu?”

  “I don’t know.” They were walking along the corridor back toward the sick bay, where Aldrin’s chief surgeon had demanded she return after speaking with the captain. “In a way, we already know everything we can learn without a close-up. There’s only one thing we can manage in that amount of time.”

  “Which is?”

  She stopped walking. “I have to make contact again. I was told that I wasn’t properly prepared for it last time. I experienced maybe five minutes, but there must have been some other stuff going on before I was actually talking to the…to whatever I was talking to. Some of that will have already been done: they know I’m human, and not a cat or a bird or a fish or a horse, and they know my base language is English.

  “I’m thinking that if I’m able to reach some sort of meditative state, it might be easier for them to reach me. I know a few breathing exercises, but maybe the doc can administer something to calm me—an anxiety-disorder medicine.”

  “And then you just go off and have a talk.”

  “Do you have a better plan?”

  “I didn’t have any plan at all. I just wanted Captain Grier to stop being a dick to you. He can be a dick to me instead.”

  “Thanks for that, but it wasn’t necessary. I can take care of myself.”

  “Whatever. Still, I’m not convinced that your plan is the best one. But I don’t have a better one. You’re not going to do this alone, though.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “At the very least, I’m going to stand by and monitor you.”

  “I don’t need—”

  “Those are my terms. Not that I’m dictating terms, though I apparently am. Sort of.”

  * * *

  Aldrin’s Chief Surgeon was not particularly thrilled with the idea, but consented at Luanne’s insistence. She settled back onto a couch after taking a minimal dose of diazepam, closing her eyes and letting herself settle into quiet.

  It took less time than she thought. There was a sudden change in the air pressure, as if someone had opened an airlock door. She opened her eyes to find herself in a room—actually, a sort of mock-up of a room, as if drawn by an artist who didn’t have a particularly good eye for detail. Beyond the edges was the same white, featureless place she’d been before.

  Facing her were six people, five of them looking essentially the same—Doctor Assad from MIT crossed with Jeremy Gonzalez.

  The sixth was Jeremy himself.

  “Hiya, Lu,” he said. “Wow, this is really creepy.”

  “What’s the meaning of this?” she asked the nearest Assad/Jeremy. “Been dipping into my memory again?”

  “Dr. Gonzalez appears to have found a way to enter the conversation,” he said. “We did not construct him—he is actually here.”

  “I decided to take the ride with you,” Jeremy said. “Diazepam. And bourbon. Beats hell out of breathing exercises.”

  “Am I…are we…properly prepared for this contact?” she asked the alien.

  “It seems so, though I am unconvinced regarding your colleague. Still, the flow of time is different here. There is something we want to show you.” He made a slight gesture with his hand and white space and room vanished. They were hanging in space: it was enough to begin to induce vertigo. Nearby, she could see the inky black asteroid against the backdrop of another body that was lightly dappled by the distant sun.

  “Wow,” Jeremy said. “Best planetarium ever.”

  “The body in the center of your solar system has been in place for a few billion of your years,” the alien said. “It was created at the time of the First Event, and has been slowly moving away from that place ever since—cooling and forming planets, burning its fuel. And all of that time it has called out to its brothers and sisters.”

  He gestured again, and she heard a distant keening sound—the cosmic background radiation, the same as Jeremy had played for her a month ago on the day the world didn’t end.

  “You’re saying…you mean to say that the CBR is the sun singing?”

  “It is all of the suns in the universe singing,” he answered. “The sound you are hearing is a pale approximation of the true song of all of creation: here, elsewhere…everywhere. Your sun’s contribution is but the merest fraction of the entire song, which has continued since the beginning of the universe.

  “Sometimes a sun reaches its end, for one reason or another—it consumes all of its fuel, or it comes in close contact with another sun—and the sound changes. But sometimes, as a sun ages, it begins to lose its ability to participate in the great song of all creation.”

  “And it goes nova,” Jeremy said quietly.

  “If it cannot hear its brothers and sisters answering its call, that is exactly what it does. And that is why we are here. This asteroid—this station—hears the songs of the near neighbors, the ones to whom your sun sings its portion of the song. When we receive it, we re-transmit it to your sun which has grown, you might say, hard of hearing.”

  “That would be the tiny heat emission,” Jeremy said. “And the first alteration to the CBR. So the sun is having…panic attacks?”

  “Correct. And the second alteration occurs when your sun replies. Of late, it has begun to panic, as you say, when it thinks it cannot hear its brothers call. In due course it may be necessary to change our pattern to make sure that its panic does not consume it.”

  “You talk as if it’s a living being—a sentient thing.” Luanne looked at the alien standing in front of her. “Wait. That’s exactly what you’re saying, isn’t it? The sun is alive. The sun is…wow.”

  “This is going to make one hell of a doctoral thesis for someone,” Jeremy said. “I wonder if it’s angry at us for lobbing spent fuel rods into it.”

  “It’s hardly noticed,” the alien said. “Your sun is not angry…it is merely lonely. Its song is a longing for the place it has left, and will never see again.”

  “And you make sure that it keeps in contact: that there’s never radio silence.”

  “Our race has built these stations in many places. It is the mission of our species. Sometimes they fail; sometimes the sun is simply unstable. And, of course, everything ultimately dies. There is no preventing that. And when the native race achieves a certain level of capability, we turn the knowledge of the station over to it, to keep watch on its own sun.
It is a step on the road to...”

  The being didn’t finish the sentence, making Lu—and Jeremy—wonder what that particular road in fact led to.

  “So we’ve never noticed this station because we…weren’t ready?”

  “It is all but invisible to societies with primitive technology. Even when the capability to detect it exists, however, it requires a certain thought process.” The alien smiled, not Jeremy’s smirk, but Dr. Assad’s knowing grin. “And, of course, it only happens when the person doing the thinking is strongly attached and deeply interested in the sun and its life cycle.”

  “The captain of the ship we’re currently on has some sort of secret directive,” Luanne said. “He might think your station is a threat and try to destroy it.”

  “That would be disastrous,” the alien said. “Approximately three and a quarter years from now, when the time of the call comes, your sun would fail to hear the call from its near neighbor, and in despair would begin to become a nova.”

  “What do I tell him then?”

  “Well,” Jeremy said, “we could tell him the truth.”

  “He had enough trouble believing anything I said before. What could possibly make him believe me now?”

  “You’re not alone, Lu,” Jeremy said. “Now this is a group hallucination.”

  * * *

  Captain Grier received her in the large observation lounge in the forward part of Aldrin, below the bridge. The sky was full of stars, and the alien station hung in silhouette against an asteroid slightly further away.

  He did not turn to face her when she entered, but remained standing with his hands clasped behind his back, looking out at the scene.