The helicopter was now crowded. The boy was put into the passenger seat and belted. Aaron crouched warily on the floor of the helicopter next to Eto and Ming.
When they were in the air, Vanessa said, “He should go to the Juvenile Detention Center. That’s where we process underage law breakers.”
He was fairly certain that the humans at this facility would not hold the boy. He knew Vanessa expected Eto to save him. That’s why she had complied. But the boy was a fanatic, driven to action by the Spo’s own error, but still, he was an unacceptable risk.
The most disturbing thing was not his attack, but his attempt to shoot himself. Eto was a seasoned warrior, but he had never in his life seen a suicide.
The Spo were taught a proverb while they were still in the litter: Survival is sanity.. In fact, every sentient species of the Council had a similar understanding. Without the will to survive, sentience was useless. Worse than useless, it was malignant.
He’d tried to talk to a few humans who were considered experts in alien communication. He did not know why NASA thought they were experts when they had never actually spoken to an alien, but he supposed they had to start somewhere. The experts had been amazed at their similarities—language, gender, organizational hierarchies, live offspring—they continually expressed their amazement at the common ground of their two species, particularly gender. But they did not seem to have considered that no compatibility mattered as much as the drive to survive. That was the bedrock that could support cross-species relationships. A solid understanding and sharing of the other’s motivations. No gifts or compatibilities mattered more.
True, the pilot had knocked the gun out of the boy’s mouth and prevented the moment of insanity, but if the will to survive was not pervasive, humanity would never be allowed into the Council. As he’d tried to explain to the experts, a species that values its own survival has certain norms. They can be understood, reasoned with.
A species that elevated death was too unstable. There were no grounds for negotiation, for treaties, even for war. They were malignant. The history of the Galactic Council was long and bloody, and this requirement had become universal.
Eto had been studying the human tendency toward suicide, but this was the first time he’d seen a human actively seek death with his own eyes.
“For now,” Eto told Vanessa, “continue to our headquarters. I have an appointment I cannot miss. I will decide how to handle the boy afterward.”
With his small but growing understanding, he realized that she could fly the helicopter into the ground rather than give up the boy to the Spo. Without the proper respect for survival, it was impossible to predict. Would she choose death, for herself as well as Aaron and the boy? He did not know.
She was still silent, and Eto did not interrupt her reverie. If she was searching for sanity, he did not want to derail her pursuit.
If, on the other hand, she was solidifying a course into madness, he should have enough time to realize her intent and wrench her out of the seat, if necessary. He had been carefully watching her and was tolerably certain he could land the craft on his own. If it became necessary to kill her, he would do so.
Survival was sanity, and no one accused the Spo of insanity.
#
Aaron clenched his teeth. It was clear Eto had played Vanessa, making her think he meant to save the boy. Or perhaps they had deluded themselves. Vanessa’s hands were clenched so hard that he could see a white scar between her thumb and forefinger. She’d clearly come to the same conclusion.
The options were all bad, and the worst of it was that Aaron understood Eto’s point of view. The kid was an unacceptable threat to them. He was the stuff terrorists were made of. Someone young and driven, well educated, probably with influential friends and family—particularly if his father was a Congressman—and willing to die. If Aaron were part of an occupational force, like some of his friends had been in Iraq, this kind of person… He stopped the thought. In this case, the boy wouldn’t be a terrorist, he’d be… Aaron searched for a better word. A freedom fighter. A leader.
The worst moment had been when the kid put the gun in his mouth. That kind of thinking was bad, just bad. It was good not to be afraid of death. Heck, Aaron was a fireman. He and his team put their lives on the line for each other. It was part of the job, part of the reason people respected them. But to be so willing to kill yourself when you failed, that wasn’t good. The L.A.F.D. had psychologists partly to catch when people became overwhelmed by the job. Sometimes it came out as PTSD, sometimes as simple depression. Guys like that weren’t safe to have on a call. They took risks without caring about their own survival, and that kind of behavior put everyone in danger. They couldn’t be counted on to act rationally.
But Aaron hoped this kid’s near-suicide had been an isolated low point. The poor boy’s dad had just been murdered by aliens. That would be too much for lots of people.
Thank heaven that Vanessa was so fast. She’d just about teleported the last three feet to knock the gun out of his mouth.
He glanced over at her again. She had to decide what to do with the kid she’d just saved: take him to Spo headquarters and hand him over or… or what? What would Eto do if she tried to go somewhere else?
He looked back at Eto, who was also studying Vanessa. The alien could throttle her before she landed. Or wait until she landed and kill her then. If it were Aaron…
He stopped that thought, too. It wasn’t him. He couldn’t pretend to understand what the alien would do. That could get him killed.
#
Vanessa felt ill. She’d indulged wishful thinking. Eto was no different than the others, and she couldn’t take the kid to the headquarters.
She could try to silence her conscience. She could tell herself that she had no choice, the kid would die anyway, but that was how people came to do terrible things. If she took the boy to Spo headquarters after he’d just shot up one of their outposts, he would die, and she would be part of it.
The sun was almost directly ahead of her as she flew east, though she couldn’t see it through the smog. Somehow, it made everything brighter to have the light diffused through all those particles. She felt stifled and hot and desperate. This was a sort of hell, to have to make this decision and know the boy would probably die either way.
She closed her eyes for a brief moment. When she opened them, Aaron reached forward and put his hand on her shoulder. He didn’t say anything. What could he say in front of Eto?
She decided to take it as a sign of trust.
She pulled the collective, and the helicopter began to rise through the smog.
“I do not believe we need to go above the clouds,” Eto said.
“I’ll go to headquarters, but I want to talk first. We all seem to be so talkative today.” The helicopter kept going up.
“If you endanger us, I will be forced to remove you.”
“Yes, but I’m not endangering you right now. I’m merely flying higher. But removing me definitely would put you in danger. That doesn’t seem very survival-oriented.”
Aaron shifted a little. “I trust you entirely, but you do know this thing’s max elevation, right?”
Vanessa snorted. “Of course I do. I just need to breathe.” It wasn’t a rational desire, but she felt that if she could just see the sky, some of the unbearable tension would leave her. She wanted to remember what it was like to see a blue sky. A blue sky with no alien ships in orbit. A sky without aliens who would kill innocent families for convenience. A sky from before she was a pawn of those aliens.
Eto spoke again. “What do you wish to say to me? I already know you wish the boy to go free, but that is not your decision.”
“Yeah, but it kind of is. I mean, I’m the driver.”
They came out above the smog and Vanessa gasped. It was not blue. The sky was a brownish-yellow. It was the color of puke.
Even the kid came out of his daze. He said something, but Vanessa wasn’t listening.
Vanessa felt empty. Where she’d looked for inspiration there was only an ugly reminder of death and decay. She allowed the helicopter to drift downward, letting the gray smudge of smog veil the foreign sky. This was already an alien world.
For all she knew, the aliens wouldn’t even try to put it back as it had been. If they stayed, they might just terraform Earth into Spo.
Even if she had the resolution to crash this helicopter with all five of them aboard, she couldn’t change the future. She let the helicopter drift forward, neither up nor down.
#
Aaron sensed that Vanessa had reached a breaking point, though he didn’t know exactly why. “Eto, look. The boy’s father is already dead. You missed him. Isn’t there like… a statute of limitations or something?”
“I do not know those words.”
The linguist explained.
“Sometimes, yes,” Eto said. “If the family of the condemned is off-planet and cannot be contacted for over a year, the sentence is carried out without them. If a family member appears thereafter, they are not executed, the time of comfort having passed.”
“Yeah. I don’t think comfort means what you think it means.” Aaron thought hard, trying to focus on Vanessa’s flying and on this puzzle. Despite Eto’s statement to the contrary, Aaron felt like Eto didn’t really want this kid to die, although he had decided to do it.
He tried again, reframing it the way Eto had earlier. “The father is dead, and the boy has already begun to grieve. So, the father can’t be comforted by his son’s death, and the son has already experienced the severe and crippling blow you talked about. What good is killing him?”
Eto made a noise that Aaron didn’t recognize. “That is well put. You begin to understand. But there are also practical implications. He tried to kill us.”
“You guys were ready, though. He didn’t get one bullet through your shields.”
“Intention is a significant factor.”
“But—”
“I will not continue this discussion any longer. Vanessa, I wish you to land the craft now.”
#
Vanessa sucked in a deep breath, holding back tears. “I won’t take him to your headquarters.”
“Land,” Eto commanded.
They were nearing Union Station, a hub of trains, subways, and buses. The earthquakes had ruined some of the subway tunnels, but she knew some of the trains had started to run again. She headed for Union Station. Perhaps there would be a chance here.
“I’ll take us down,” she agreed.
“I will arrange for an escort away from this location. You have not served your duty.”
Vanessa hovered over the parking lot in front of the main building. It was almost empty. The beautiful windows of the Mission-style train station were gone, shattered on the pavement below. She saw a bird flutter to the window and disappear inside.
The kid was alert now, and she wanted to tell him and Aaron to run as soon as they landed, but she couldn’t. She also wasn’t sure how Eto’s shield worked. Could he throw that orange light farther than he had inside? Would the walls of the helicopter stop it, as a purely kinetic force?
She was switching to the OGE zone, about twenty feet above the ground, when the rumbling started. She thought the helicopter was malfunctioning as they switched to higher power closer to the ground, but then the double-line of iconic palm trees began to wave back and forth like a row of metronomes.
“Another quake,” Aaron shouted over the noise. “Don’t set down yet.”
She nodded, beginning to ascend back to the relative safety of the sky.
Birds exploded out of the windows of the train station, hundreds of them, fluttering, streaming, and streaking out of the building.
Many small bodies struck the thin walls of the copter, causing slight bumps as they got into the blades.
Shoot.
Grip, ease the pitch, don’t over-correct…
Something else struck the tail, much heavier than the birds, whiplashing her up and backward. She fought for control, but the helicopter spun.
The tail hit the ground. The rotors were still spinning. The sound of metal squealing over asphalt pierced the roar of the engine.
The body of the helicopter slammed down on the pavement with a bone-jarring snap. She and the kid were strapped in, but Aaron hit the roof with a cry.
From the corner of her eye, Vanessa saw an electric pole, which must have been what hit the tail. She cut the rotor blades immediately, not wanting to get them tangled with the power lines.
They would probably get tangled anyway—it took at least a minute for the blades to stop spinning.
She reached for her harness, but they were still moving. The quake was shaking them now.
Vanessa tucked her head and waited.
Part 4
When the shaking stopped, Aaron felt like he’d been beaten. His neck popped when he turned his head, and he felt the beginnings of a bad headache, but he didn’t feel nauseated or disoriented. Hopefully, he’d avoided a concussion.
The silence was eerie. A palm tree had crashed onto an SUV in front of them, and the asphalt sparkled with a constellation of fresh glass. He saw no people, heard no sirens.
“Don’t move,” Vanessa said softly. “No one move. There are live power lines wrapped around the blades.”
“Are you sure?” Aaron craned his head to try to look behind them.
“Seriously, don’t move. Don’t touch anything metal.”
He tried to turn just his head. He groaned and rubbed his neck carefully.
“How are you doing?” she asked.
“I’m okay.”
“I’m fine, in case you were wondering,” David added.
“Any of us could be electrocuted if we complete a circuit, so we can’t touch the doors,” Vanessa said. “David, you too, don’t touch anything.” This would have been the perfect time for Aaron to run, and a great place to do it, if only the power lines weren’t involved.
Eto and the linguist looked perfectly collected, though they’d been bounced around as well. Their reactions were as uncanny as the sudden silence.
Vanessa gingerly leaned to the side to remove her phone from her pocket without touching anything.
“No service. I can’t call 911.”
“I am 911,” Aaron said, though his voice didn’t sound entirely steady. Perhaps he did have a concussion.
Eto pulled out a phone and used it to call someone. He spoke in his own language, but Aaron assumed he was requesting help.
“Since when do aliens use phones? And why does yours work and not hers?” he asked.
Eto looked at his phone. “Your satellite communication systems are adequate. Why should we build another? I believe I am on a different network. Perhaps that is why mine works.”
Silence fell again.
Aaron didn’t know what to do. The backup that Eto had called would be here when they got out, assuming they didn’t get electrocuted before that. Whatever opportunity Vanessa had been looking for was gone, unless someone could get to them before Eto’s backup.
“That felt like a bad one,” Aaron commented. “But the terminal next to us doesn’t look too damaged. Maybe crashing made it feel worse than it was.”
“Maybe.”
Aaron heard a siren in the distance, and he breathed a sigh of relief. It didn’t matter if it was coming for them. It probably wasn’t. But to him, that sound was imbued with all the good their city had to offer. It was the sound of organization, prioritization, and service.
With every day that passed, it felt like humanity moved closer to the brink of dissolution, but as long as there were sirens, things went on. Sirens meant there were people who weren’t shirking their duties. People who
were determined to preserve what was left of their city. Doctors were preparing for patients, and victims, at least some of them, were hearing voices call out to them.
Aaron bounced his knee, his adrenaline from the crash beginning to surge. The door handles were metal, so there was no way to open them, even if he thought that David might be able to leap to safety.
There was nowhere to go. He was squished in the back with two aliens and almost no room to move.
“If you are not disgusted, I do not mind if you lean against my leg,” Ming told him.
Aaron shifted slightly. “You seem to have learned English really fast,” he commented. It was only with the linguist’s nearly telepathic anticipation of Eto’s words that Aaron could understand him so well.
“I have a perfect phonographic memory. When the Council brought your world to our attention, it was clear that translators would be needed. I began study immediately on the numerically dominant language, Mandarin. However, I was informed after the initial survey that English would be more useful to my assignment, so I switched.”
He paused and glanced at Eto, as if for permission, before continuing. “Earth is a fascinating study for someone of my field. Most civilizations have been homogenized into one or two cultural monoliths by the time they enter galactic society, but Earth has been arrested at a stage of relative diversity. Resources are plentiful in the galaxy, but authentic cultural capital—languages, music, food, art—these things cannot be manufactured. Indeed—”
“Too much detail,” Eto interrupted.
The linguist fell silent, but he’d given Aaron food for thought. “Then you really don’t just want our planet for yourselves.”
Eto shifted his weight and tapped his clawed feet restlessly, perhaps also a victim of adrenaline, or whatever hormone they had instead. “Of course not. If we merely wanted a habitable planet, we would go elsewhere. This one is damaged and costly.”
“But you don’t seem interested in preserving humanity. Isn’t that—”
“We are preserving humanity. But despite what your news people may say, we are not of sufficient numbers or power to halt what has happened. Even with our best efforts, this planet is declining. We must prioritize.”
Evaluate: A Spo novella (Alien Cadets) Page 4
