Sasquatch’s quills bore into her back as it pressed forward, grabbing both humans in its spindly hands and thrusting them back into the invisible aperture.
And even as it bothered her, Justice’s scientific mind wouldn’t shut off. She was reasonably sure now that these foamy entrances served as their own airlocks, likely automatically protecting every room and hallway from sudden depressurization. But surely it had to be unpleasant for the Lùhng, too, mining their way through a stack of pillows every time they wanted to get from one space to the next.
From the hall, to the wall, to the platform they popped onto, the directional changes had Justice’s insides doing acrobatics. Her inner ear was revolting, and she knew if gravity changed on her one more time in the next sixty seconds, she was going to hurl.
Let’s see the little blue plug deal with that, she thought, crouching on her hands and knees. Then a sudden thought brought her up short. I’d probably just drown in my own vomit . . .
The rest of their away team looked puzzled, several asked what was wrong.
[We don’t know,] Carmen said and signed.
Cinderella and Sasquatch returned.
[What went wrong?] Carmen asked. [Did we do something wrong?]
[Inappropriate,] Cinderella’s screen said.
[What was inappropriate? What did we do?]
Whump.
Not again!
Whump.
Son of a—
Justice wanted to scream at the top of her lungs.
You alien bastards!
Then, darkness.
“Ow! Son of a—” Steve looked like he wanted to punch Dr. Ratha right in the face.
“As you can see, all attempts at extraction have failed,” the medic said, holding Steve’s wrist so that the blinking light in his forearm was displayed to all those gathered round in the situation room.
Steve had volunteered to be the example, to put on a little show-and-tell for Captain Tan and the department leaders.
Convoy Twelve had nothing like the official boards or government systems of the other convoys. Captain Tan was unquestionably in charge, followed by Captain Baglanova of Breath and so on down the ships’ command line. But Tan had chosen to include a few others not directly involved in the away mission for this debriefing. In addition to the captains, their first officers, and their aides, were Dr. Vanhi Kapoor and Dr. Gabriel Dogolea.
The rest of the crew, though they knew how the away mission had begun and how it had ended, were currently in the dark as to the specifics. And no one liked it.
The entire convoy was restless. They weren’t sure what to think, how to act, how to feel.
Justice was, internally, livid. Her thoughts were a haze of colors, of how dare they, and spikes of fear.
The aliens had worked the humans back into their space suits, then deposited them back on their shuttle. They’d awoken several minutes later to shouts over their intercoms.
The away mission was supposed to be some kind of grand scientific endeavor, but it only proved what they already knew: they were at the mercy of the Lùhng—these dragons Tan had wanted so desperately to believe in. He wanted them to be saviors, helpers. He wanted to have a relationship with them, to be equals.
But there were no equals among animals. There was only predator and prey.
She’d already given her account to the table, explained how trapped she’d felt.
“I was able to dissolve the blue matter they applied to our orifices,” Ratha went on. “And at some point they covered us in a thin film made of clear quantumfibers, which they may have applied via that spray—” he turned to Justice “—Remember? Anyway, the film tore away easily after I discovered it, so I believe it was meant to be temporary. I think it prevented us from dropping any skin cells or follicles that might have contaminated their craft, which may explain why they haven’t left any similar biological traces during their visits to the convoy.
“All that is to say, everything else they forced upon us has been removable, but, every time we’ve tried to physically excise one of the Lùhng’s—well, tags, for lack of a better word—it has burrowed deeper. I fear for the musculature, and even the bone, should we continue to try and cut it out.”
“What other options do we have?” Captain Tan asked, posture stiff, shoulders taut.
“I did try to short it out in Savea’s case. But a direct application of current did nothing to the tracker. Unfortunately, Savea’s forearm didn’t fare nearly as well.”
He gestured to where Mac sat. The security guard waved his bandaged arm, smiling a smile that was more masochist than mirth. Steve frowned in commiseration.
“The objects themselves don’t seem to be causing any issues. There’s no clotting around them, no white blood cell increase, no inflammation. All of our bodies appear to have accepted the object with more ease than a splinter.” Ratha’s gloved hand went over his own small patch of lit skin. “If it wasn’t for the damn blinking keeping me up at night, I’m not sure I’d mind it in the long run.”
“Speak for yourself,” Steve spat. “I don’t like the idea of any one of those motherf—” he took a deep breath. “I don’t like the idea of them cataloging my routine. No one except me and my doc need to be concerned with how many trips I take to the john in a day.”
“Thank you, Weaver,” Captain Baglanova said. “You may step down.”
Steve complied with a grumble.
“So, did this quantumfiber film prevent you from picking up any biological traces of the aliens? No hairs stuck to your skin, or . . . ?” Dr. Dogolea asked.
“Nothing,” Justice said. “And there were no viable samples left in our shuttle or on our suits. Could be we came away clean because they were worried about contaminating us, could be they don’t want us to have their genetic information. Which I get. That information can be used against them, just as it can be used against us. I would prefer they didn’t have a human genetic profile, but I’m pretty sure we’re way past that.”
“If they were going to do something hostile with our information, wouldn’t they have done it by now?” Dr. Kapoor asked.
“They seemed pretty damn hostile to me,” Steve said.
“We don’t know what their intent was. This is likely a misunderstanding,” Captain Tan said pragmatically.
“We’ve got these things in our arms,” Steve said, yanking his sleeve up once more, letting the blinking light wink its evil eye at the captain. “Let’s see how hostile you think they are after they shove something inside you.”
“Weaver, watch your tone,” Tan snapped.
Steve retracted his arm, abashed.
“He’s not off base,” Captain Baglanova said.
Justice wasn’t sure whose side she came down on. She’d felt like an animal, out of control, at the whims of something bigger, stronger, and clearly more intelligent. There was no question their interactions aboard the alien ship had been disrespectful and dismissive from a human perspective. But, as a scientist, she knew not to jump to conclusions.
“What we need is to establish a dialogue,” Tan said. “Sotomayor and I will compose a diplomatic message to be sent immediately. They need to know they offended us, but we need to give them the opportunity to explain. This situation is fragile, and what I need from all of you now is a commitment to convoy morale. No one is to relate their experience aboard the craft in a negative light, understood? The safety and well-being of the crew has to come first.”
After Tan contacted the Lùhng, the response was surprisingly immediate. Carmen was at her nav station, and the captain gestured for her to follow him into his ready room.
“They’ve sent us a visual message. I need you to be the direct point of exchange.”
“Of course,” she said, moving in front of the paper-thin screen that occupied the wall opposite his desk.
When it came on, she wasn’t surprised to see the woman in the purple T-shirt. The gifs were cobbled together haphazardly, with little thought applied
to pauses in between. She scrutinized the message, let it loop multiple times.
“The signs they’ve chosen are somewhat confusing. Could be they don’t yet have the ASL vocabulary to fully explain,” Carmen noted. “The apology is clear, but their explanation is difficult to interpret. When they told us something was inappropriate, they didn’t mean us. They meant their own behavior. Someone, in the midst of our mistreatment, had worked out that something was wrong. I believe the explanation—or, justification, as it were—indicates they communicate telepathically, and that the lines between one being and another are highly blurred at any given moment. Full autonomy seems to be a foreign concept.”
“That doesn’t explain why they failed to seek your consent,” Tan said.
“It might if they are a true hive mind,” she said. “If an individual body is not seen as an individual being, their capacity to give a simple yes or no might be limited. However, they clearly understood our ‘no’s when signed, and proceeded regardless. I believe they did not seek our consent because they did not fully trust in our capacity to give it.”
Tan’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “How so?”
“Dr. Jax was apt in her description of our treatment as animals. Though I would be a little more charitable and say we were treated more like children. Adults make decisions against the wills of children all the time. They don’t want to bathe, we make them anyway. They don’t want to eat vegetables, we make them anyway. I believe the Lùhng thought our protests unreasonable and disregarded our ‘no’s’ because they feel we are unable to make grown-up decisions.” This was something she’d come up against more than once in her adult life, even. Ableists who had no concept of her experience as a deaf person sometimes made assumptions that directly infringed on her autonomy and did not respect her capacity as an adult.
“If we were animals,” she continued, “we would be back in our pens and they wouldn’t worry about explaining themselves. But children, whose autonomy is often disregarded, need comforting and guidance. Which is why they feel the need to apologize.”
“So, they see us as infant space farers?”
“Yes, exactly. But there’s more here than an apology. They’d like to make amends. They want us to come back, to visit them again.”
Tan was silent for a moment. Carmen realized he’d thought she could compose an easy response, just an acknowledgment. But this required a carefully weighed decision. “Please contact Captain Baglanova, and the rest of your away team. We need to discuss our approach.”
Approximately One Month Later
Four Hundred and Fifty-Eight Days Since the Accident
“I can’t believe we’re doing this again,” said Steve, holding tight to the bar above his head as the shuttle set down once more on the cushiony surface of the Lùhng bay.
Carmen scowled at the readout in her helmet. She wanted to admonish him, but for the sake of unity, took a deep breath and kept quiet. Steve was stressed—they all were. Different people handled it differently, and that was okay. As long as he did his job—and she was confident he would—he was entitled to a little bit of griping.
“You didn’t have to come,” Justice said to him, double-checking the seal between her helmet and her EVA suit.
The readout in Carmen’s helmet added, “I didn’t have to come,” and she realized Justice had probably said it so quietly, no one else had noticed.
“Yeah, I did,” Steve countered. “I’ve already got a tag, I know what’s coming. I wasn’t going to make some other poor schmuck go through it.” His gaze fell to Dr. Fitzwilliam, a physician from Trinidad who’d taken Dr. Ratha’s place on the team.
“I’ll be fine,” she assured the group.
“We’ll all be fine,” Carmen said.
But would they?
The negotiations for this visit had been long and arduous, both between the humans and the Lùhng, and between the humans themselves.
Captain Tan and Captain Baglanova had argued about the next course of action—Tan wanted to return to the alien ships, but Baglanova thought it too risky. The away team had been equally divided, with Steve, Dr. Ratha, and most of the security team falling on Baglanova’s side. Mac Savea, Justice, and Carmen had been the only ones in favor of returning themselves. Justice made her misgivings clear, but felt it was her duty to see the operation through. Captain Tan had, in the end, made an executive decision: if the Lùhng agreed to all of their demands, the away team would visit once more.
The Lùhng, for their part, had explained all of their actions, had repeated those explanations until the humans counted themselves satisfied, and then once more. And the captain’s long list of caveats and conditions was met with little resistance.
When a human said no, a Lùhng was to stop immediately.
When a human asked a question, a Lùhng was to answer.
The humans were not to be separated under any circumstances.
Autonomy was to be respected.
The humans would be allowed to keep their clothes and communication devices at all times.
The aliens had agreed to all of the demands, but that didn’t mean that Carmen felt completely secure. Their presence was their only bargaining chip: agree and we visit, disagree and we don’t. What was to stop the Lùhng from doing whatever they felt like once the humans were sealed inside, separated from their convoy?
Would they respect the arrangement, or would they do whatever they wanted?
Carmen knew that answer lay in their motivation, something that was still entirely unclear. They’d helped the humans, but only minimally. They’d studied the humans, but mostly from afar. Had they been testing them, trying to discern their level of intelligence before developing more in-depth relations?
Or were they keeping them at a distance because they were more of an unexpected burden than a curiosity?
A dog had wandered into her yard once, back on Earth, when she’d lived in the Spanish countryside. It had been mangy, and so thin she could see its ribs. But it lunged at her when she’d tried to pet it. She hadn’t wanted to alert the pound, and hadn’t wanted it to wander off and die, so she’d put out food for it, and stayed inside, and kept a careful eye on its comings and goings.
It had lived near her house for five years. She kept water out for it, called to it in Spanish sometimes from a window. But it was never her pet, not really.
Perhaps the dog was to her what Convoy Twelve was to the Lùhng.
The pilot released the locks on the shuttle door, and the team stepped out once more. Carmen was immediately taken back to that first visit. Her insides recoiled, pressing against her spine at the memory of that bright light and the pelvis-rattling whump.
As long as everything went to plan, this time there would be no sudden blackouts, no manhandling, no strip search.
When the whole team was settled, they stood together in a group, watching the walls, waiting.
Everyone had been given the opportunity to back out, but only Dr. Ratha had taken the offer. Carmen was impressed. The violation she’d felt after that first visit had nearly knocked her out of Lùhng relations altogether. She’d only interpreted their messages because she had to—because at least she was dealing with gifs instead of their eerie faces.
Slowly, she’d eased into the idea of coming again, for much the same reasons as Steve and Justice’s: she knew what she was getting into. She’d lived through it before, dealt with it—come to terms, as it were. It was something she felt she needed to do, both for the convoy and for herself.
And, if she was being honest, the fact that ASL was their primary form of communication gave her a thrill. It was her first language that bridged the gap between their species. She wanted to be the ASL ambassador, rather than a hearing person.
“There!” Mac said, gesturing at a far wall, the readout in her helmet drawing Carmen out of her thoughts.
A long, dark, thin arm jutted straight through the material, and appeared to beckon them.
Unsteady on the squi
shy surface, they toddled toward it and waited. The fine digits grasped and ungrasped, as though looking for a handhold.
“I think they’re going to pull us through,” Carmen said.
“Oh, great, yeah, this is much clearer communication-wise than last time,” Steve said sarcastically.
Carmen ignored him. “I’ll go first. There shouldn’t be any problem with our comms channels, but if you lose me, abort mission immediately, got it?”
Everyone agreed.
Here goes, she thought, slipping her gloved hand into the outstretched one. It immediately drew her forward, into the wall.
Unconsciously, she held her breath, and slipped back into an alien world.
Getting through the strange material was much more difficult with the suits on. It compressed oddly, pinching Carmen’s sides, squeezing her chest uncomfortably. The substance tugged at her boots and gloves, threatening to tear them away.
More hands were required to pull her out. Alien paws littered the faceplate of her helmet, all tugging, twisting, doing their best to bring her through intact.
This must be why they stripped us, she realized. And why most of them appeared to live naked. Their airtight apertures seemed to work best on objects that were firm or tight. The more malleable the substance, the more difficult it was to move through the material.
She emerged into the decontamination room they’d been in before, and she wondered briefly about the other walls in the bay—was each a hidden door that led to a different room?
The Lùhng Justice had referred to as Cinderella greeted her, as did three others she’d never met before. Soon the rest of the away team followed, and the dance began.
Dr. Fitzwilliam was the only one asked to remove a part of her EVA suit. They needed to give her an implant—which the aliens had insisted was used to combat radiation poisoning. The RADs on parts of the Lùhng ship were so high, the humans’ suits could not protect them.
Though many of the team were skeptical of the explanation, they’d long ago accepted it. Dr. Fitzwilliam took the injection without complaint.
Noumenon Infinity Page 36
