Their suits were scrubbed just as thoroughly as the humans themselves had been the first time, and were sprayed with the quantumfiber coating, then, with much pushing and shoving and pulling from the other side, the away team—all of them this time—were welcomed once more into the ship proper.
Those who’d never made it into the hall before looked around with wide-eyed wonder at the flow of aliens around them, traipsing by on the curved walls, floor, and ceiling.
Cinderella pointed at the screen dangling from their neck. [This way. Guide, this way.] the gif signed.
With anticipation roiling in her chest, Carmen followed, and the others fell in line—Mac and Steve flanked her, and the rest of the security team brought up the rear. The one thing the aliens had insisted on was no weapons. The humans had obliged. If things got dicey, the security team would have to rely on their hand-to-hand training, and, well, with the Lùhng holding that whump device over their heads . . .
In a way, the security team was just for show. She tried not to think about it too much.
The aliens scuttling, hovering, and winding through the hall gave them a wide berth, parting like the red sea around them. Even though their faces were difficult to read—many moved in unrecognizable ways or were hidden behind visors—Carmen knew jittery caution when she saw it. Their quick sidesteps, long stares, and carefully maintained distance clearly meant the Lùhng were just as wary of the humans as the humans were of them.
Carmen took in the white walls, the subtle vibrations, and the constant gravity inversions with interest, searching for any extra clues as to the best way to communicate their questions and needs. They knew nothing about Lùhng culture, or biology, and she’d been tasked with deciphering what she could.
The others seemed distracted, off task. They chatted about how eerie the silence was, and Carmen appreciated that it was one less thing she had to worry about. The shift in their usual experience seemed to steal their focus, while it sharpened hers.
She attempted to ask questions while they walked, but Cinderella gave the same answer every time. [Not qualified. Wait for guide.]
Eventually, the Lùhng stopped in front of a bare patch of wall like any other and pointed. [Guide inside, can answer.]
“All right, everybody in,” Carmen directed.
With the help of additional Lùhng, one by one they were shoved through the aperture, their suits hugging and pressing uncomfortably, but they all made it to the other side. Cinderella did not follow.
Carmen was unsure what she’d been expecting—a throne room, maybe. She’d thought they might get to have a classic “take me to your leader” moment on a bridge or in a grand ballroom-type arena. But instead they seemed to be in the guts of the ship.
These walls weren’t smooth or white. The light was dim, and the thermometer on her suit said it was 4.44 degrees Celsius. The space was large, but strung through with thick gray tubes and long wires. What looked like bundles of cloth dangled from the ceiling every few meters, and steam swirled around them. Condensation dewed on every surface, and the walls themselves heaved in and out.
“This feel right to you?” Mac asked. “Where’s this ‘guide’ we were supposed to be getting?”
Everyone turned expectantly toward the aperture. Perhaps their guide would be clamoring through at any moment.
All was still.
Carmen’s heart rate ticked up a notch. Maybe the Lùhng weren’t going to stick to the deal after all.
She turned back around, looking for clues in the room. She noticed something sticking out from one of the bundles, something she was sure hadn’t been there before.
It was angular, and long. The surface was pearlescent white, striped through with bits of shining black. The entire parcel gave a shuddering twist and Carmen gasped.
The bundles were alive.
“Everyone,” she said slowly, calmly. “I need you to hold your positions, but look up there.”
The bundle shuddered, bits of fabric twisted away, revealing more skin. The parcel rolled and writhed, squirming as though filled with snakes.
“I knew it,” Steve muttered. “We’re fucking dog treats is what we are. Shoved us in here to feed us to their pets.”
“Maybe we should go,” Mac said.
“Assuming we can,” Steve snapped. “Can you lock that wall stuff you think?”
“Everyone hold,” Carmen repeated, signing the direction as well.
Tubing snapped away from the moving bundle, spewing a dense fog over the mass and down onto the floor. More of the cloth pulled away, and one long limb slipped free, dangling limply toward the ground, which the spindly fingers barely brushed. Then another arm lifted, at a sickening angle to the first, wrist heavy and slack.
Then there were more—more arms, more than Carmen wanted there to be, all haphazardly reaching forth, each either drooping as though lifeless and vestigial, or shaking as though with palsy.
“We need to go!” Steve insisted, grabbing her arm, tugging her toward the aperture.
“It’s just another Lùhng,” she countered, though her heart was in her throat.
What if I’m wrong?
We don’t know what their motives are. For all we know they could be looking for cattle, a new source of cheap meat—
“It’s my job to protect you, and we should—”
“She says stay, we stay until the threat’s been proven,” Mac said, pulling Steve’s hand off Carmen.
Though both Dr. Jax and Fitzwilliam had looked away, Carmen forced herself to meet the creature head on. She didn’t want to see what was beneath those many layers. Didn’t want to know how those spider limbs all came together, or what sort of grotesque phantasm they belonged to. But she would stand there and face it.
Look at it. Just look. It’s better if you see.
It’s the sort of thing one tells oneself at night. When it’s cold, and dim, and you’re alone but know you’re not alone. When there’s a breath hanging over your shoulder, outside your front door, when you’re struggling to get your keys out. And it could just be the wind, or it could be a person. Or if you’re young enough, it could be a monster. If you’re old enough, it could be both.
But Carmen didn’t have to let her imagination run wild. The tension she felt, the presence, wasn’t her mind playing tricks on her. There really was a monster, just there, right in front of her. Looking or not looking wouldn’t make it go away.
But it might give them a fighting chance.
Eventually the creature tumbled to the floor, a mass of fabric and legs going every which way. The floor shifted slightly as the new weight settled onto it. More tubing and wires disengaged, snaking back up into the ceiling.
Slowly, the creature stood, unfolding itself.
The arms were an alternating black-and-white—the black looked hard, like a beetle’s carapace, and the white looked clammy, weak, nearly translucent, like Carmen could pull the muscle away from the bones as easy as putty.
From this angle, ports where the hissing wires had been embedded in its skull were clearly visible.
It was more humanoid than Carmen had expected, and reminded her a bit of the Hindu goddess Kali—graceful, many limbed, and terrifying. When it reached its full height, it stood perfectly still for a moment, arms outstretched, each of its eight hands poised differently.
The bundle of fabric now formed a long robe around the alien, hiding its bottom half entirely. Had it feet? Hooves? A tail? Carmen couldn’t tell.
Its face was almost birdlike, with a crest down the center, and two sets of eyes—their pupils large and round—on either side.
Carmen signed at it immediately. [Are you our guide?]
[Yes. Friend. Here to help.] It signed these things itself, without the aid of a gif-projecting screen, the top limbs moving deftly.
She let out a sigh of relief. Finally, progress. [Will you tell us about your species? About all the species on board?]
She’d expected a curt yes, but all four sets
of Kali’s limbs began moving wildly, gesticulating firmly. It took Carmen a shocked moment to realize what she was seeing—each set of hands was signing something different, holding a conversation all its own.
[One at a time,] she pleaded. [Our language is only meant for two arms—answer one at a time.]
[Perhaps better if show,] Kali signed slowly.
[Yes. Thank you.]
[All aboard same species,] Kali explained. [Look different because modified.]
Justice couldn’t believe her eyes. All of the aliens were the same creature?
Kali strolled slowly through the hall, answering everyone’s questions—Carmen’s sanctioned ones as well as many others—though not all answers seemed complete. Perhaps it was as Carmen suggested; their vocabulary wasn’t up to snuff yet.
They stopped other Lùhng as they passed, and Kali used them as illustrations. See-through bodies were easier to attend to medically. The scales many sported would be shed and reapplied—rather than regrown on the body—and were used as a sort of solar-cell suit, absorbing excess radiation while turning it into energy for the wearer. Many hands—like Kali’s—coupled with the ability to split one’s attention meant many tasks could be completed simultaneously.
[Almost all modifications based on home planet nature,] Kali explained.
[For what reason were you all modified?] Justice asked.
The set of limbs that were speaking with her gestured grandly before replying, while another set pointed down the hall to direct Carmen’s attention, and yet another said something curt to Mac. [Work in space,] they signed.
[Work on . . . ] She wasn’t sure how to sign megastructure, and finger spelling would get them nowhere. [Big objects out there?]
[Work in space,] Kali repeated.
Close enough, she thought. What she really wanted to ask about was SD travel. The Lùhng used it, clearly, so she wondered if they’d ever encountered anything like Vanhi’s jumping. But she had no idea how to effectively phrase such a question. She tried anyway.
[Has space travel ever made one of you ill? Have you modified for travel illness?] She knew it was confusing the moment she signed it.
Kali blinked at her a moment, then said. [Modification help prevent many illness. Work in space.]
Maybe she needed to take a different approach. If she had a more fundamental scientific understanding of the Lùhng and their modifications, maybe it would help point her in the right direction. [May I take biological samples of Lùhng?]
[No,] Kali signed simply.
Oh, now you understand no, she scoffed internally. [Why?]
[Human medical methods invasive.]
[A shed scale or dropped spine would be fine,] she signed. Maybe they didn’t understand where human science lay on the invasiveness scale? Perhaps Kali thought they’d need to draw fluids. [Or you could provide samples. I don’t need to take them.]
[No.]
[Why?]
Kali considered for a moment. [Your motives unclear.]
[Scientific curiosity,] she signed.
[No,] they signed again, then turned away from her. Apparently, her question and answer session was done.
She couldn’t say that their denial was entirely unreasonable. It seemed to coincide with her earlier assumptions. Genetic information was a powerful tool, and their interspecies level of trust just wasn’t there yet.
No matter. You couldn’t go two feet on the convoy without finding a bit of human genetic information. She didn’t see why here should be all that different. Now that she wasn’t in panic mode, finding loose samples should be a breeze.
For the rest of the visit, she picked up whatever scraps she could find. Maybe all she had was lint, but maybe it contained traces of Lùhng. She’d find out when she got back to her lab.
. . . Or not.
When the first suit’s power started to get low, the visit was deemed over. On their way back through the decontamination room, their exteriors were thoroughly cleaned once more, pockets, sample bags, and all. Any little bits Justice had collected were summarily swept away.
Carmen was ecstatic, and grinned from ear to ear when they reboarded their shuttle. She’d asked Kali to try to contact Earth on their behalf, and the Lùhng had agreed.
Even though Justice had come away empty-handed, the visit had been amazing. Unlike the first away mission, this one felt like a true success. Perhaps Convoy Twelve and the Lùhng were on their way to an equal footing after all.
Every few months, the Lùhng allowed a visit. Carmen started to enjoy them immensely, and though communications were still rough and translations were difficult, she’d come to think of Kali as a friend.
And yet . . .
There were still times when she questioned the Lùhng’s forthrightness. Kali had taken Carmen to their equivalent of a bridge, had shown her how messages were sent, though at the time had only used it to contact another Lùhng ship. It seemed Kali thought the basic demonstration would appease her, get her to stop asking certain questions. But it only served to raise her suspicions.
“Every time I ask about communications with Earth, Kali signs the same thing, and I get the feeling they’re brushing me off,” she confessed to Justice.
The two women currently occupied the stationary bikes constructed for Steve’s pet project: a gymnasium. Their original rec center had been on Life, and until the convoy had stabilized, there hadn’t been time or resources to devote to a facsimile. Who needs to lift weights when you’re lifting kilos of parts day in and day out? Who worries about getting their reps in when they’re preoccupied with starving to death?
But now that Justice’s little farm had proven sustainable—with asexually reproducing plants taking up the majority of the slack, while other plants needed constant recloning—their relationship with the Lùhng was in an upswing, and their ship repairs looked like they’d hold, there was room again for other things. Namely: stress relief. Of which everyone on board was in desperate need.
Carmen found her stress had risen, rather than lessened, since that second, promising visit to the Lùhng ship. Sure, she wasn’t in a constant state of high anxiety, like in the weeks right after their accident. This nervousness was different, but equally as insidious.
She couldn’t help but feel as though the Lùhng were purposefully steering her away from asking the important questions, from getting to the big picture.
[What, exactly, does Kali say?] Justice prompted.
They’d been cycling hard for a quarter of an hour, and both women had worked up a sweat. Carmen wiped her brow. It was good to feel her muscles burn, her body pushing itself hard without the immediate threat of danger behind it.
“Every time I ask if they’ve sent a message to Earth, Kali says yes. But then I ask about the content of the message, and they act like they don’t understand. I ask about how their communication system functions, and they say they don’t understand. I ask if they’ve ever contacted Earth before, and they say, ‘yes, when you asked, we contact.’ I ask about how long it might take to get a reply, and they say ‘a long time.’ I press Kali about a specific timeline and they repeat, ‘a long time.’”
[And you don’t believe it’s a translation issue? We’ve only been steadily communicating for six months, it’s amazing we can say as much as we do to each other, isn’t it?]
Carmen shrugged, leaning farther over the bike’s handles, pedaling faster. “It is, and it isn’t. Something doesn’t add up.”
She’d been happy when they’d agreed to contact Earth on behalf of the convoy. Their communications technology had to be light-years ahead of the human’s, which meant the likelihood of actually reaching the far-flung planet was far higher with the Lùhng backing them. But the agreement, and the subsequent assurances that they had already sent their message seemed . . . too easy.
“If this was their first time sending a message to Earth, their first interaction with a new planet, surely it would take careful planning and long-term thought,” she expl
ained. “Yes, hello, we’ve found two of your ships, would you come and get them please? isn’t exactly a prime example of a first-contact message. And what would it invite? From the Lùhng perspective, alerting a new species to your existence in such a casual way isn’t the most intelligent move.”
And if there was one thing the Lùhng seemed to be, it was cautious.
Which meant one of two things in Carmen’s mind: “Either this message was not the first they’d sent to Earth, which means they’ve encountered humans before. Or, they haven’t actually sent a message at all, and have no intention of sending one.”
Both options were chilling in their own way.
Justice put her hands on her waist for a moment, still pedaling, but considering. [If they’ve met humans before, that would explain why they were able to learn ASL so quickly.]
“Yes, it’s possible they could already have an understanding of human concepts and thought processes, which would make learning the language easier. But if they’ve met humans before . . . why haven’t they said so? And by the same token, if they have no intention of contacting Earth, why lie?”
Both of them turned introspective for a moment, turning over all the little red flags in their heads.
“Hello!” Steve said, sliding in front of them, interrupting the tension only briefly before it snapped back into place again. “You two all right over here?”
Steve was quite proud of his new gym, as he should be. The guy could be a bit . . . how had Justice put it? . . . boneheaded at times, but he was doing his best to push through, just like they all were. He’d wanted to give the crew a place to take the edge off, and he’d done well.
There were bench presses and other weights; he’d commissioned the bikes, an elliptical, and a stair-stepper (Carmen knew several of the engineers who worked on them, and they’d been grateful for the opportunity to take their minds off the larger questions for a time, to ease into the simple and the basic). But his most popular addition had been the punching bags: five heavy bags dangled on thick chains, two speed bags were mounted in one corner, and three freestanding bags were routinely moved around what had once been a support lab for the EOL.
Noumenon Infinity Page 37
