by C. J. Odle
“People followed us?” Jake tried to pulse the words to Sarah as well as to the aliens. As soon as he’d sent the words, he remembered Gemini and Marina stumbling across the sand; maybe they had returned with others.
“There are many humans just beyond our shields,” Vega sent back. “We have been monitoring them for some time and have chosen to make the ship visible.”
“Vega chose it,” Sirius pointed out. “I feel it is unwise. It ignores all protocols.”
Vega made a small movement with its shoulder, perhaps the equivalent of a shrug. “Given the circumstances, they have a right to know at least this much. That more advanced life-forms exist and are here on their planet.”
Vega glanced at Jake, and he got the distinct impression the alien wanted to say more, but for some reason was holding back.
Sirius walked toward the cylinders. “Enough,” the alien pulsed. “We must begin the reactivation process.”
The eight vertical cylinders were lined up in a row, and Vega stepped over to join Sirius in front of the tank at the far left. The two aliens waved their hands slowly from left to right, and although their movements appeared quite random, Jake could feel the consequences in the pulses of psychic energy running through the cylinders. The first tank contained a man who looked as though he might have been plucked from the deep jungle, dressed in bark cloth, hung like a skirt, with lines of paint marking his skin.
The gel turned to liquid and slowly started to drain from the cylinder. A robotic arm unfurled from the ceiling to remove the top seal and feeding tube, and the man’s eyes started to flicker open like someone waking grudgingly from sleep. He scanned the room and started to squirm in place, only a little way from panicking.
“Please be calm,” Vega pulsed, and though Jake heard the words as English, he could also discern a ghostly echo of a strange language. The tube’s occupant obviously heard the words in his native tongue as Vega continued to communicate. The man’s eyes widened as the alien gave a brief explanation of the trial and his role as a witness.
The aliens moved back as the glass-like material of the cylinder retracted slowly into the floor, uncovering the man on the base. He stumbled slightly but then regained his balance and stepped from the base and stood stiffly in front of the aliens.
“Jake,” Sirius pulsed, gesturing toward the native and another of the cylinders. “You do not possess our telepathic skills, but with the two witnesses who are unable to speak your language, you can communicate with visual data.”
“Symbols and images,” Vega explained.
“Since you are now here,” Sirius sent, “you can facilitate adjustment.”
“Help the witnesses to accept that the trial is real,” Vega pulsed.
The two aliens stepped toward the next cylinder in the line, and Jake gazed at the dark-skinned witness in front of him. While the aliens had just been communicating, Jake hadn’t discerned the ghostly echo of another tongue, and the native man gave no indication of having received their words. The aliens must be capable of selecting who to direct their messages to, as well as sending them in multiple languages.
The man walked toward Jake and Sarah, and Sarah offered her hand. The native held it briefly and smiled. Behind them the two aliens were waving their translucent arms slowly in front of the next tank.
“Go on,” Sarah said, nudging Jake in the ribs. “Don’t be rude. You heard what Vega said, use symbols or images. Say something.”
Jake regarded the witness standing quietly in his bark cloth and tribal markings. He tried visualizing the Pleiades, a courtroom with the witnesses in it, and a pair of scales with a human on one tray being weighed. He sent the images one by one, focusing with great intent.
Surprisingly, the man nodded gravely, and in return Jake started to receive faint visions of scenes from his life in the jungle. A palm-thatched long house in a clearing, children playing, and even the whiff of meat smoking on a wood fire. It took a few minutes, but it became clear the man was a shaman, and he viewed the whole event as simply an extension of whatever spiritual experience he’d already been having.
The other witnesses weren’t quite as straightforward. They were a lot more freaked out. Dr. Gardener, the physicist, took one glance at his surroundings and started to hyperventilate—so much so, Jake worried he might be having some kind of asthma attack. Professor Allen, the philosopher, looked as though she might try and run at any moment. Jake and Sarah managed to convince both of them to stay calm for the sake of humanity, and after that, the doctor and professor were able to focus their attention on the impossible technology of the ship.
The president of the United States assumed he’d been kidnapped by a terrorist organization and got through quite a lot of bluster about exactly what Delta Force would do to them all before he got he finally got the message. The president of China assumed he’d been kidnapped by the Americans, and Jake only avoided a fight between them by stepping in the way. The pope started praying quite loudly, in between threatening to excommunicate Sirius.
Jake gave a wry smile as he realized Paige was the young protestor from the water rights case who had thrust a leaflet into his hands. Paige, for her part, initially failed to recognize Jake, due to feeling so overwhelmed. She and Amita, the Indian housewife, decided they were in this together from the start, and despite not sharing a language, they both managed to reassure one another, and also quickly bonded with Sarah.
After all eight cylinders had retracted into the floor, a pearly oval table flowed out of the wall on the other side of the room and two curved benches rose silently into position. Jake, Sarah, and the witnesses walked over to the benches and sat down, the communal mood somber.
Sirius and Vega approached with ten containers of the thick, silky porridge that Jake had eaten before, and Jake pulsed open all ten and used a shell-shaped spoon to eat a peachy mouthful. Once the others knew the food wasn’t poisoned, they picked up their containers and devoured the contents. The feeding tubes certainly hadn’t blunted anyone’s appetite.
“All right,” the US president said. “I’ll accept we’re having lunch with aliens. I’ll accept what’s going on. But now what? What’s going to happen next?”
Outside, around the edges of the now-clear force field, the growing crowd had begun dividing up into groups depending on their take on what was happening. The geeks and the computer nerds formed a small network to the north, trying to rig up whatever power they could and sneaking over to steal duct tape from the TV people. The New Age believers were on the opposite side, some meditating, some chanting, and a few just calling out to the aliens for guidance. A cluster of UFO enthusiasts dithered halfway between the two, as though uncertain which camp to join. Those with no particular beliefs floated aimlessly. The news reporters formed their own clump but broke off frequently in an attempt to interview everybody else.
Marina chatted with a couple of psychic friends in the New Age section, while Adam and Billy tried to set up an internet link from inside Marina’s large festival tent. A generator hummed softly outside, and a satellite dish pointed at the spotless sky. Whatever was about to unfold, Billy and Adam were determined to stay connected. They also seemed to be enjoying the attention they were receiving from the other hackers. Here in the flesh at last, the notorious Gemini.
Marina found herself being accosted by a KNBC reporter, who didn’t look like she was enjoying the heat of the desert much, or having to talk to a young girl with neon-blue hair and a wide hat. A burly cameraman pointed his videocam at Marina while the middle-aged reporter wiped the sweat from her brow and held the mic.
“Would you mind doing an interview?” she asked.
“OK, sure,” Marina said, piercing eyes staring at her.
“Everyone tells me you were at the head of the convoy. Can you tell our viewers what’s really going on?”
“You can see what’s going on,” Marina said. “There’s a spaceship.”
The New Age friend by her side laughed and then
tried to look serious.
“How did you find it?” the reporter asked, glaring at the friend.
“We were trying to find out what happened to a guy we know,” Marina said. “He told us he’d received visions of an alien in the desert, and then we discovered that he’d gone to the Kelso Dunes.”
“How did you find that out?”
Marina paused, unsure of what to say.
At that precise moment, the military, police, and more park rangers showed up.
In a perfectly choreographed Hollywood entrance, they drove in formation to the edge of the force field in their Humvees, trucks, and desert patrol vehicles, jumping out to bark orders and shove people out of the way. When one of the more overheated UFO enthusiasts pushed back, only the presence of TV cameras stopped guns from being pointed. Even so, the barging and shoving continued, building up as though waiting for the moment when a real fight would break out. LAPD choppers followed closely behind, approaching like angry hornets.
“Everybody needs to move back from the containment area,” one soldier with the stripes of a sergeant yelled. “There’s nothing to see here!”
Trust the military to try to put this back in the bottle and treat it as if they could pretend it wasn’t happening. Mostly, the crowd ignored him, but Marina could feel the charge in the air.
The media pounced on the new arrivals. The KNBC reporter abandoned her efforts with Marina in an attempt to interview the nearest soldier. News crews took more pictures, looking for comments from the protesters, from the military, from anyone who would provide one. Now they added to the pushing, struggling forward to try to get the best angle of the scuffling, the ship, or both.
Inside the ship, Jake talked with Sarah and the witnesses, the mood having lightened after they all finished the thick porridge. Jake glanced around the oval table. The US president had an aquiline nose and a strong jaw, and looked dignified in his black suit. Next to him sat his counterpart from China in a red cashmere sweater, with a paler complexion and shrewd eyes. Dr. Gardener wore horn-rimmed glasses and had yet to take off his lab coat, while Professor Allen wore a navy jacket and silk neck scarf that complemented her gray hair. Amita had bangles on her arms, a gold nose stud, and a red bindi, and looked elegant in her purple sari. The pope was attired in his normal white robes and skullcap, and Paige’s blonde hair was tied in a ponytail, the freckles on her face making her appear younger than her sixteen years. The shaman nodded sagely, the three lines of black dye on each side of his face dipping briefly.
Amita and the shaman didn’t speak English, and with them, Jake was useful as a translator, pulsing symbolic messages back and forth across the table. He found it easier with the man from the jungle, but with practice and greater concentration, he began to send images more clearly to Amita. However, he couldn’t receive any from her. Paige and Sarah could intuit better what she thought and felt. In English, Jake could pulse his words across to all those who spoke it, but none could reply telepathically. Sarah also told him that sometimes his messages were faint and hard to discern.
When the US president asked what Jake and Sarah’s role was, Jake told him they were there as backups to the other witnesses. True in a way, but hardly completely honest. Still, there was nothing to be gained by explaining that only the two of them would survive in the event of genocide.
Despite the gravity of the situation, or perhaps because of it, a certain camaraderie began to develop. Dr. Gardener and Professor Allen talked together nonstop, and Paige, Amita, and Sarah used the doctor’s notebook to draw pictures and overcome the language barrier. The pope and the shaman gave each other knowing looks, and the presidents of the USA and China took the opportunity to hammer out a deal on intelligence sharing, making Jake wonder exactly how much of his brain might end up classified if the world didn’t end.
The aliens walked briskly into the room and Jake checked his watch—twelve thirty p.m., half an hour after the scheduled start of the trial.
Sirius spoke first, its words pulsing through everyone’s mind.
“There is a potentially dangerous situation outside our craft.”
Vega waved a hand, and a section of the luminescent wall flickered to life as a screen. It showed the crowd outside, jostling and hurling insults. Jake could see news cameras and plenty of military personal. Some of had their guns trained on the ship, as though ready to intercept anything that tried to leave.
“You can see the obvious barbarism of humanity,” Sirius pulsed, its slit mouth twitching despite no sound emerging.
“We have had this conversation,” Vega sent back. “Now we must prevent harm.” The alien looked over at the president of the United States. “To achieve this, we believe you should speak.”
“Me?” the president said. “What exactly do you want me to say?”
“You must explain the futility of attacking our craft, that it will only backfire,” Sirius replied. At a look from Vega, it continued. “Although this is most irregular.”
“A rarity,” Vega agreed, its forehead frowning. “But necessary.”
The president stood. His experience in office made him appear taller than he was.
“And why should I tell my people that?” he asked. “If you represent an immediate threat, why shouldn’t I tell the Pentagon to bomb this location?”
“Aside from the part where we’re in it?” Jake pulsed.
The president turned to him. “Sometimes, a man must put the greater good ahead of his own needs.”
“Not,” the pope said in English, “when his need is to avoid being blown to bits.”
“It would do little good,” Vega warned. “Allow us to demonstrate.”
The alien reached out, and now the screens showed figures, documents written in both English and Chinese.
“Those are top-secret files!” the president said as the president of China exclaimed the same thing in Mandarin. The two looked at one another, and Jake knew they were considering the implications of aliens who could access their computers.
“There is more,” Sirius pulsed. “May I take an item from one of you?”
It sounded like a magic trick, but what happened next was almost magical. Dr. Gardener handed over a slightly battered wristwatch, which Sirius placed in the middle of the floor. Jake felt the pulse as the alien sent something to the ship’s systems, and a moment later, the watch was simply… gone.
“The ship will do the same with any immediate threat,” Sirius sent. “It would not be wise to attack.”
“Please,” Vega pulsed. “Send out the message to keep people safe.”
“But mention nothing about the trial,” Sirius insisted.
Jake watched while the US president stood in front of the others to deliver the message. The screen Vega and Sirius had called up was divided into gridded sections with each one showing a tiny identical image of the president. Jake realized they were monitoring news channels across the globe, all conveniently hijacked for the moment.
“My fellow Americans,” the president began, “and people of Earth. By now, you will probably have seen reports of the object appearing in the Mojave Desert. As you can see, I and others from around the world have been taken. We are within this object. Do not attack it. I say again, do not attack it. We are safe here, and we will do our best to represent you all. You must stop the fighting outside and keep all threats away.” He turned to Vega and Sirius. “You can see the kind of beings I am with. They have technology far more advanced than ours. I say again, do not attack.”
The screens flickered off, and the broadcast ended. Beside Jake, Sarah shuffled uneasily.
“Do you think it will work?” she asked.
“They have to do what the president orders, I guess,” Jake said.
The president looked around. “If you believe that, sir, you’ve obviously never been to Congress.”
Chapter Eighteen
The war room at the Pentagon was getting… fractious. Generals, admirals, agency directors and political
advisors talked over one another as they tried to make sense of the rapidly unfolding events.
“I’m telling you, gentlemen, we have to act!”
General Miles O’Shea, the four-star army chief of staff, had a voice like a foghorn and a cheerful ability to ignore arguments he didn’t like the sound of. He’d been making approximately the same point for the last two hours, ever since the spaceship had showed up. Although he didn’t call it a spaceship. He called it a hostile enemy craft.
“And what kind of action did you have in mind?” the assistant director of the CIA countered. “Our intelligence suggests—”
“Intelligence, Johnstone?” the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff said. “Let’s call it what it is. We watched the news.”
That had been something of an embarrassment all around. The United States was the most powerful country on the planet, with the most advanced intelligence systems available. It could track everything from North Korea’s latest missile tests to phone calls made by minor officials in countries the chiefs of staff had to look up before they tried to spell them. The fact that they’d only found out about the craft because it appeared on KNBC was galling to say the least. There would probably be an inquiry later, if there was a later.
The main question now concerned who should take charge.
“It’s obviously the vice president,” the secretary of state said. “The Constitution is perfectly clear about what happens in the event of the president being incapacitated…”
“But he isn’t. He just appeared on TV,” one of the four-star admirals pointed out. “He gave us clear instructions to back off.”
General O’Shea snorted. “Typical navy. Never wanting to get on with the job. This is clearly a hostage situation!”
“And what do you recommend?” the admiral asked. “Sending in a ranger battalion?”
“The National Guard has the area locked down for now,” the general said, apparently impervious to sarcasm. “We need to explore other options.”
