Alien Home

by Mark Zubro

  Bex said, “We were never aware of the extent Vov was a threat to us. When he left, he was a mad scientist, little more. We were not aware until later that there were parts of his mind that were not open to us, that he had developed ways of fooling our most intense probes. We don’t think he revealed the extent of his abilities and his discoveries even to his closest allies. That was probably very smart. Our spy network is the best. Our implant probes are the best. At least they were until you showed up. Vov defeated all of them. It was his defeat on Earth that alerted us to our danger and convinced us that we must respond. It was your own actions that caused us to reevaluate the need. It was the probes that detected nothing that caused us to be suspicious.”

  “There was more than one?” Joe asked.

  “Did you really think you had better technology than we did?”

  Mike said, “So far I have.”

  Bex snarled. “Not for long. The probes should have been able to find Joe anywhere in the universe. He filed a flight plan. He sent messages. He left a trail. Until he got to Earth he had no reason to cover up. The silence from Earth was the danger signal. The lack of our being able to get a response was the key.”

  Joe spoke up. “The last probe hurt.”

  Bex said, “That was your fault. To actually go in and get you, we had to send the most powerful probe we had.”

  Mike said, “Wait a minute. Shouldn’t Joe and I be thanked or given a parade or a medal? We destroyed this evil being. I still don’t get the problem. I have no particular desire to keep knowledge from you as long as Joe and I are allowed to live in peace.”

  Bex said, “From what we found on Earth, we know you destroyed the lab you constructed for your evil, illegal experiments. You obliterated the last records of Vov’s work, at least what we’ve been able to find so far. If he hid them elsewhere in the galaxy or you dug a deep hole on Earth, we don’t have them. All that’s left is what’s in your head.”

  A figure in beige said, “I am Tren. Joe is going to jail, if he escapes with his life. Tampering is forbidden.” Tren looked as if he might be the youngest person in the room, maybe in his early twenties. He pointed at Mike. “There is no debate here. Rules are rules, and don’t you see, your very existence is a threat to us.”

  Bex said, “The danger is real. If he is allowed to live, what if factions hostile to us capture him? Unless he is willing to submit to mind control.”

  “No,” Mike said.

  “It’s a way out,” Joe said.

  “Are you serious?”

  “They’ve got me. I’m not sure how much of who I am is left in here. They’ve wiped out huge portions of what I knew. The person who you fell in love with is just a shell.”

  “Can they destroy who you are?” Mike asked.

  Bex said, “We can wipe his mind as clear as a child’s. We can demolish it molecule by molecule and torture him with the most horrific pain in the universe. We could keep him alive and conscious throughout the whole very lengthy process. There’s one hell of a lot of molecules in a brain.”

  Mike said, “Isn’t that a little tough, taking each molecule and mashing it? Do you use teeny little hammers for each one? Doesn’t the eyesight of the destroyers go bad very quickly?”

  At least Mike saw a smile on Joe’s face. No one else in the room showed the slightest degree of amusement.

  “You think this is funny?” Bex asked.

  “We are not amused,” Mike quoted. He sat up very straight in his chair and looked at all of them. “How dare you presume to tell me how to react? How dare you presume that I am anything but frightened? How dare you assume that I wouldn’t try anything possible to get out of this? How dare you presume that I am not so close to despair that I may decide to simply destroy everything I possibly can? As far as I can see, I’ve got the power in this room. I’ve got what you want. You’re being snottier than a Nazi with a concentration camp ready for me down the block, yet you’re arguing, insulting, picking at me. What to do with me cannot be as clear as some of you state. What is holding you back? You’ve got political factions I don’t begin to understand. As far as I can tell, you’re not in agreement about what to do with me. I don’t know how to affect that outcome. No one has bothered to give me a clue, and yet you sit here and debate my life as if I’m a lower form of existence. I don’t know what to say that will influence you. I was told this isn’t a trial. What is it? It sure as hell is more than a sentencing. Have I become a political football on this planet? Am I a pawn in some intergalactic chess game?”

  “Not between galaxies,” Joe said. “Just within our portion of the galaxy.”

  Bex said, “More humor. Kill them both.”

  “You contradict yourself,” Fot said. “You want his knowledge, but you can’t get it from him if he is dead. You can only get it from him if he is alive.”

  “He can’t give it to us,” a man in a gray robe at the end of the table on Mike’s left spoke. He looked to be in his early thirties. On the right shoulder of his gray tunic, he wore a starburst, the only decoration in the room. He continued, “I am Kas, the second most eminent scientist of our time, second to Vov in brilliance. He was by far my superior. I have no way of replicating what he did, not without this Earthling’s knowledge.” He swept his hand toward Joe and Mike. “Frankly, I don’t understand how you managed to follow his plans.”

  Joe said, “We only managed to develop the protection device. We followed his designs explicitly. We followed a recipe that he was experimenting with. We just tried a few variations based on what we found of his, and what I had from my ship.”

  “We know there is much more,” Bex said.

  Kas leaned forward and glared at Bex. “I am speaking to the prisoners now. We’ve heard from the military. We’ve heard from several philosophical and political factions. Now, I am a scientist. I would prefer to work with all the factions present.” He turned back to Joe and Mike. “Even the Reality Deniers acknowledge that we must do something with you.” Now he pointed at Mike. “The tests I have run so far, however, indicate that what you have in your head cannot be tampered with without killing you.”

  “Why hasn’t this officially been made known?” Bex asked.

  Kas said, “You cannot threaten me. You cannot bully me. Science has an equal status here with politics, war, and religion. I have seen you overreact at numerous…”

  Mulk interrupted. “This is not the Senate. There will be no fights. Disparagement of the other will stop.” All the others became silent.

  Kas settled himself back into his seat. “I brought my report. We’ve had precious little time to make preparations. We haven’t been able to check every fact. This is all preliminary. Science in all its wisdom should be the defining factor in our relations with each other.”

  “If you want to be the defining factor,” Bex said, “you’re going to have to do better than making preliminary reports. You must be sure.”

  “Science isn’t about surety. Science is about observation and facts. That which is rational and true should be enough to satisfy anyone. Everything that happened on Earth and on the trip back was reported to me. Everything in Joe’s mind took a long while to analyze. We had to make sure there were no hidden places. Frankly, I’m not sure there aren’t still hidden places. I put the best people in our star system to work as soon as reports got back about the extent of the problem. None of us is as good as Vov. As for the Earthling, we don’t have a clue. It is impossible to get into his head. It is impossible to remove his implant by force. Our best guess at this time is that his implant, communicator, and the neurons in his own brain are inextricably linked. His power seems to be connected to the synapses that have connected all three. How is this possible? I’m not Vov. We’ve developed along those lines with all our implants and our knowledge, but Vov was far greater, and this is a human, and what the atoms of his physical brain are capable of is unknown to us. This council needs to decide if it is wiser to kill him and hope that his knowledge remains buri
ed unto eternity or whether we should live forever in mortal fear of someone taking his knowledge and using it to destroy the peace of thousands of years. Hoping that those fearsome things will not be discovered by enemies and subversives seems to me to be a tenuous hope. Will civilization fall if we don’t get this knowledge? Perhaps. Later rather than sooner I would think. Another Vov will come along. Could an opposition faction get hold of this data? Could a rebel group discover it? Anything is possible. The pirates are supposedly contained behind lines guarded by parts of the central government’s fleet. Those remnants of rebels are said to be small and dispersed.”

  “Pirates and rebels are the same thing?” Mike asked.

  “That depends on who is defining the words,” Kas said. “And they were able to attack one of the most advanced cruisers in the battle fleet and get away. Why attack this cruiser? They must have known something. They must have spies as well as we. What kind of chances are we willing to take?”

  “None,” Bex said.

  “Fine, then what do you wish to do?” Kas asked.

  Crua said, “There are far too few of us here to make a decision for the rest of us.”

  “Yet, we should make a recommendation,” Fot said.

  “This matter should be taken before the full Senate,” Crua said.

  “What do you think you will be able to win there that you cannot win here?” Fot asked.

  “A full discussion will harm no one,” Crua said.

  “Except me,” Mike said.

  “But we don’t care how harmed you are,” Tren said. “My party isn’t willing to kill you. We just don’t want you endangering who we are.”

  “How many factions are you people?” Mike asked.

  His question was ignored.

  Mulk summed up. “The scientists want him examined at any cost. The military wants him destroyed at any cost. The theologians want him destroyed but not killed, presumably exiled.”

  “If you exile him, he won’t live,” Fot said. “The military and their minions will seek him out and kill him. He would not live a week without the protection of the central government, provided right here.”

  “He is a threat here,” Bex said.

  “He is a threat everywhere,” Fot said.

  “We could sell him to the highest bidder,” one of the women in tangerine said.

  The others stared at her expectantly. “We are run by that which makes everyone the most money. The pure state of that would be that the richest among us would get to have the best weapons.”

  Crua said, “Factions with weapons are not the answer. Only the central government should have weapons to enforce the peace.”

  Fot said, “If the government needs to defend the peace, then we are at war with one another. Why? For what? What is all this about, this fighting, these weapons? Are we going to gain more space territory? Is there a faction that is going to become incredibly more rich from this knowledge? Do explorers want to get to star systems even farther away in attempts to make even more money? Of course! We’ve stagnated these past few centuries. We’ve got to do something to make things better for our children.”

  Crua said, “You forget the opening of the Language and Thought Conference. The leading intellectuals of ten star systems are going to attend.”

  “So what?” Bex asked.

  “They should have a say in what is going on.”

  Fot said, “You want more committees and more meetings? How does a delay benefit your faction?”

  Crua said, “I would hope we would all want to ponder this situation and give it all the respect and honor it deserves.”

  Kenton said, “All procedures must be followed correctly.”

  “To hell with procedures,” Bex said. “This is a situation that is unique. This is the first real threat to the peace in our star system in thousands of years. We’ve got to take action.”

  Mulk said, “Yet, if we are precipitate, it might cause all of us to fall as well. Our laws are strict on what must happen to the Earthling. Some factions are not so rigid in their adherence to either law or custom. We are strong enough to forestall any assault. No one has the power to challenge us. We are the most powerful realm in the galaxy. Our might spans fifteen star systems. Yet, we see that Vov escaped. What if the Earthling is captured or escapes to one of the pirate systems? What if one of the current factions in our system gets hold of him, instead of the central government? Is that faction going to try and use him to its advantage?”

  Fot said, “Of course they would. I would.”

  “Crucify him,” Mike said. He stood up. The table fell silent. “I need to get the hell out of here for a while. You people are fucking nuts.” He stepped away from the table and nodded to them. He put his hand on Joe’s elbow. The touch brought with it the familiar tingle he’d come to know so well. “We’re going to walk out. Listening to you debate my existence is a crock.”

  “You don’t have permission to leave,” Bex said.

  Mike glared at Bex. “Want to fight about it?”

  “You can’t escape,” Bex said.

  “I think I know that,” Mike said. “I don’t quite understand why you are so paranoid. I can barely accept that I’m in this room on another planet. Do you think I’m capable of waging galactic war on you? Yes, I’ve got a little bit more physical power than you do for the moment. You are quite capable of countering it, if not yet being able to defeat it. I suspect you’ll be able to figure out how to defeat me long before I’m even able to figure out where the hell I am on your fucking planet. If I’m so all-fired fucking important, why not make a deal? What is wrong with you people? As my favorite drag queen would say, ‘go fuck yourselves.’ I’m going for a walk. I’m taking Joe. You can cut off my oxygen if you wish. You can stop us. You can drop a ton of rock on our heads. You can do any damn thing you please. I need a break. I promise not to destroy this half of the planet unless I have to. Do you want me to? At this point, I wouldn’t mind doing just that.”

  Kas said, “I will walk with them. I will be responsible for them. I do not think I can be denied this. As the head imperial scientist I have analyzed all the tests. I have a right and a duty to directly observe the Earthling.”

  “Guards will go with you,” Bex said.

  “No,” Kas said. “You all know my prerogatives. You all know the power the first scientist has. I do not hesitate to pull rank on all of you.”

  “The Senate can revoke your rights,” Bex said.

  “Not easily and not in a day. I am not trying to sabotage these proceedings. We shall not leave the court grounds.”

  “If you cannot get into his head, what will you do?” Fot asked.

  “I will talk to him. I will ask questions. I will be a good scientist. I will observe as best I can.” He stood up and beckoned to Mike.

  Kenton said, “I am required to go with him.”

  Kas nodded. Kenton, Mike, Joe, and Kas walked out.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  As they entered the vast square, Mike looked up at the colossal dome so high and far above. He lowered his gaze to the space around him. He watched the unmoving light and shadow of a vast technology. He felt overwhelmed and tiny. He attempted to comprehend his place in the universe and found this was not possible at the moment. He tried to imagine what his life had become, and he could not believe.

  The other three remained silent. Mike moved away from them. He saw guards in red tunics posted at every entrance or exit in all directions. They kept a discreet distance.

  Mike turned to Joe. His husband came to him. They walked even farther apart from Kenton and Kas. They embraced. Mike let the familiar tingle flow around him. He let the blue glow embrace them both. He felt the chest and legs warm against his own. He felt the stirring of desire, stilled since he opened his eyes and the vastness of the new world intruded into his mind.

  “Are you all right?” Mike asked.

  “All physical damage done to me so far is reparable. I think I am mentally in an alte
red state. I feel naked. I have no implants.”

  “Can I help you?”

  “Not at the moment. If I wasn’t so frightened, for you and me, I think I’d feel relieved.”

  “Are they going to execute you?” Mike asked.

  “I’m not sure. I’m not familiar with this kind of proceeding. My cop training didn’t cover any of this. No one expects to go zipping around the universe catching criminals.”

  “Are there lots of civilizations like Earth?”

  “Around five hundred or so that we know of. There’s all kinds of little out-of-the-way places like Earth, and the galaxy is a big place. Who knows what you’ll find just beyond the next sunrise?”

  Mike nuzzled his head into Joe’s shoulder and neck. He murmured, “No matter where we are in the galaxy, as long as I could be in your arms, I’d be fine.”