by I. O. Adler
The Jenna bot moved to the doorway. “I’m not sure. The communication link is what I turned off when I muted the woman on the speaker.”
“So turning that back on means opening ourselves up for a conversation. Don’t do that yet. I know you both want to get your mom back. We have trained people who can help. I suggest we do what we can to turn around and head back. You’re both civilians. I don’t want to risk seeing either of you hurt.”
Carmen felt wary at the suggestion. Yes, she wanted to go home. She had her dad to look after. Jenna had the boys. But handing off their mom’s rescue? This was the same government that had blocked her every effort in learning the true nature of the disaster. And now that she knew some of what had happened, she understood that nothing had been done.
NASA, the ESA, Russia, Japan, Korea, China—were any of them doing anything to get them back to Mars to learn the fate of their astronauts?
But then an even darker thought came to mind. “You want this ship, don’t you?”
Barrett touched a wall before meeting her gaze. “Yes. If Jenna has control of it, that gives all of us a chance. Imagine what we can learn if we bring this ring back home. We were attacked by someone we haven’t even met and don’t know. They nearly wiped us out in a few hours. They might try to finish us off at any moment. Think about it. Billions of people dead by an invisible enemy using technology beyond comprehension. Having this ship under our control is a gift we don’t dare risk. We have to go back. Not bringing this prize home is immoral.”
“What about our mom?”
“We thought she died two years ago. Perhaps she managed to survive somehow. If she’s alive, she will be waiting for us when we use this ship to find her and discover what really happened on Mars.”
“But we don’t know if she’s okay. What if she’s barely hanging on? What if she’s somewhere that doesn’t have food or water? And what if whoever she took this ship from repos it and doesn’t want to loan it out again?”
“Look, Carmen. Jenna. Both of you love your mom. But I’ve trained for situations where a hard call has to be made. If you run into a burning building and find a child alive, you don’t leave them lying there while you search for other people. You rescue the ones you can and then you go back in for anyone else.”
“But our mom is alive. She called us.”
“We still don’t know if that was even her.”
“It was her. Jenna’s still Jenna even though she’s inside a robot. Mom’s out there. Jenna just needs to open up this communication node and call. She might be able to answer.”
Barrett was shaking his head. “No. It’s too risky. Jenna, listen, you have to turn us around. It’s hard. You did well in everything you’ve done. Figuring this place out took guts. But now I’m telling you to take us all home. You want to be back with Zach and Landon, don’t you?”
But the Jenna bot’s face had gone dark.
Carmen touched the bot’s hand. “Hey, are you there?”
Jenna returned. But she wore a worried expression. “Car, there’s someone else here.”
“What do you mean? Like Mom? Inside the control room with you?”
“No, I mean another ship. I can’t look inside it. It just connected to the ring and docked. It’s like the ring just let them. A door is opening. They’re here inside and there’s nothing I can do to stop them.”
Chapter Sixteen
Barrett took Carmen by the arm and began to lead her down the hallway. “Back to our sphere. Hurry.”
Carmen broke free of his grip. “We’re going. Jenna, come on.”
Jenna followed, her sleek metallic body easily keeping up as they ran along the curving corridor. The doorway stood open. Barrett and the Jenna bot ran inside. Jenna’s physical body remained where they had left it, but the red light and the other couches had vanished.
“You can disconnect this portion of the ship and send us back, can’t you?” Barrett asked.
“I think so. But they’re all connected so it means slowing, stopping, and heading the opposite direction. There’s an end sphere which acts as a power source and has an engine. Each section can pull or push each other along by some kind of beam. Where one goes, the others follow like links in a chain if they’re not joined up. They even change their order as needed, but a lot of that is automated. I can’t explain it better yet.”
“Then don’t. But can you seal off the section of the ring where the visitor docked their ship? Leave that behind?”
“I don’t know. I can try.”
“Do it. And we’ll need those flight chairs again.”
Carmen remained in the hall. “Wait. We can’t just run. We don’t know who’s here. What if it’s Mom?”
“Safe to assume it’s not,” Barrett said. “And more importantly, if this ship was stolen, they might be angry. They might also make the air we’ve been breathing in here into something which might kill us. Enough questions. Get in here.”
“Then maybe it’s not Mom. What if it’s this She Who Waits? She didn’t sound angry. She was willing to communicate. We have to at least try to meet with them.”
Agent Barrett wore an exasperated look. He approached and held out his hand.
Carmen backed away. “Jenna, close the sphere and stay inside.”
“I can’t allow that,” Barrett said.
“I’m not asking you for permission. Running is a mistake. If the spheres are connected then their ship follows us wherever we go. You both stay here. If something bad happens to me, you’ll know, won’t you? Can you see each part of the ring?”
Jenna hesitated. “I can. Sort of.”
“Then you’ll be my eyes. Tell me where I need to go. Now get the door.”
“Car, are you sure? I’m scared.”
“Yeah, me too. But we’ll never find Mom if we run.”
Barrett stepped back and the door went instantly solid. Carmen touched the smooth material and wondered how big of a mistake this was. She began to move down the hallway in the direction they had been.
“Jenna, hope you’re listening. I guess there’s not really much choice on which way to go if it’s a loop. Keep trying to look. Can you see Mom?”
Her sister didn’t answer and remained silent as Carmen continued to walk. Either she was heading towards a reunion or a meeting with the real owner of the ring of spheres.
She felt suddenly self-conscious and wondered how big a train wreck her hair was after their journey. An insane thought, she knew.
She stopped to lean on the wall and caught her breath. Exhaustion? Surely. But her heart hammered. She felt light-headed. The air? No. Nerves. She was either going to find her mother impossibly alive or come face-to-face with…what? A bug-eyed alien? Another robot? And why wasn’t Agent Barrett with her?
According to him, he was trained for this sort of thing, if that was even possible. But she wondered if behind his cool demeanor he was also scared. And what was she? An out-of-work wastewater tech, a musician with hearing loss, and a caretaker of a grumpy father with bad kidneys and a failing liver.
Play it cool.
Like that piece of advice would do anything against what she was about to face. Was She Who Waits psychic? Did she spit acid? Did her kind eat people and assimilate them? Was her mom among them, a pod person or a drone with a brain leech connected to her ear and part of a hive mind?
Her instincts told her to run back to join Jenna and Barrett. They should be running, not walking, back home. The Agent Barretts of the world could face down the little green men. But knowing humanity’s luck of late, Earth might send someone like Peter Vogel to broker their peace.
She almost laughed at the thought of Peter offering to lob prayer missiles at a group of babbling aliens who worshipped anything besides his One True Deity.
She hadn’t searched for her mother so long or come this far to let fear stop her. She kept walking and kept a hand on the wall to fight the sense of being off balance. Soon she was able to proceed without the help.
>
The ring felt much larger than the original spaceship she had visited. If the place comprised multiple spheres, then there must have been hundreds of them. It felt as if she was on a long gym track, but she realized the lack of features might deceive her.
There hadn’t been any intersections or doorways. The bathroom had vanished and she guessed it lay somewhere behind her. Or, judging by everything she had seen, any room could become a bathroom within the ring.
“Am I going the right way?”
Her sister still wasn’t responding. Now she felt truly alone.
Without windows in view, Carmen had no sense of how much room the ring had on either side of the corridor or if the outer wall was only a thin barrier between her and space. How had her mother done it, trusting a fragile vessel on top of a rocket to protect her from the hundred ways in which space would try to kill her?
An open portal stood on the outside wall. She paused.
“Jenna, tell me what you see,” she whispered. “Jen? Come on, answer. I’m at a door.”
She gave herself a countdown from five before stepping forward and looking inside.
Unlike the austere monochromatic gray of the sphere ring, the room beyond was a chamber with thick columns made of what might have been stone in green, orange, and red. The marble-like pattern also ran along the walls in swirls of sparkling blue. The ceiling was bright turquoise and glowed with a soft light. A path of black and crimson led to the far side of the chamber.
A single freestanding pillar stood at the end of the path. It didn’t quite rise to the roof. The surface of the pillar might have been clear, but beneath the glasslike surface a cinnamon-colored sand swirled about like a whirlpool. Beyond it lay a rectangle marked in the wall, which Carmen guessed might be another door.
A red communication light blinked to life before the pillar, identical to the one inside the sphere. It hung in the air and flickered.
“Designate Sylvia Vincent’s daughter. Please approach.”
Carmen took a step inside. The air remained breathable and comfortable. “You’re the one I spoke to before. She Who Waits.”
“Yes. You hold task function over this spaceship. I request that you relinquish said function so the owners may retrieve it.”
“My sister has control. There’s two of us. I’m Carmen Vincent. Jenna is my sister, and Sylvia is my mother. Do you have a name, or do I address you by your title?”
“They are the same. Designate She Who Waits.”
“Have you spoken with many people from Earth?”
“You are the third.”
Had someone besides Mom survived the Mars disaster? She’d have to ask about that. “How is it you can understand me and I you?”
“A study algorithm. Observation. And my kind’s task is to facilitate language and communication between intelligences.”
Carmen felt some measure of relief that this alien thought of her as intelligent. And no brain probes yet.
“So is this how I speak to you? Through the red light? Do I get to see you?”
The swirling sand inside the pillar grew brighter and threw off flecks of sparkling diamonds. As it churned, Carmen had the impression that something was moving behind the hazy cloud.
“This is your body? I’m sorry. I didn’t know I was looking right at you.”
“I am present. This is my body behind its protective barrier.”
“Like a space suit. Should I bow or cover my mouth? I don’t want to cause any offense. I’m guessing we don’t shake hands. What are you? My apologies, it’s a terrible question.”
Carmen realized she was babbling.
She Who Waits’ voice remained calm with a note of patience that reminded Carmen of a math tutor she’d had in fifth grade. “I am happy to answer your query. You have my designation. Other species call us many things. We listen. We gather data. We translate. Designate Sylvia Vincent called us Dragomen.”
“Why did Mom call you that? What does it mean?”
“I can relate the lexicon definition in English.”
“No, it’s okay. I’ll look it up later. There’s more important things I need to learn about you. I’ll start with what I want. I want my mom back. I want to give you your ship. And I apologize for any problems this may have caused.”
There was no reaction from the pillar. Could it even emote?
Then She Who Waits said, “Designate function, daughter of Sylvia Vincent.”
Carmen took a moment to process the question. What did it want to know? Telling her about her job at the sanitation district wouldn’t cut it. Did it seek to understand more about her family? Her education? Something more basic, like how many laps she could do around the track or how many pull-ups she could manage?
Why on earth Mom had decided it would be smart to tell this extraterrestrial she was the Queen of Mars was beyond her.
“I’m a human of Earth. I love my mom and I’m here to save her. I can answer anything else you might want to know. Do you have a family?”
She Who Waits’ sand showed a band of yellow before returning to a reddish brown. “I am prepared to describe our species’ method of allogamy. I am genetically unique and have no siblings from my mother’s coupling.”
“No father?”
“He was constituted when my mother desired to be fertilized and rendered when he finished producing seed.”
“Your mother made your father? And then…what, he was killed?”
“He served his purpose. We all serve our purpose. His source material sprang from and continues to reside within my mother, if she still lives.”
“She’s back home? Where is that?”
“We are no longer a planet-bound species. I can relate our path of migration since the disruption at a later time. This concludes our discussion. You state your designate sister holds control of this spaceship. I will go speak with her.”
Carmen hopped out of the way as She Who Waits glided forward and out into the hallway. She was moving at a rapid clip and Carmen had to jog to keep up.
“Hold on, what about my mother? I said we’d give the ship back.”
She Who Waits continued to skim down the hallway faster and faster. The base of her form never touched the ground. She was rapidly outpacing Carmen.
“Jenna, be ready,” Carmen called. “You’re about to have a visitor. Keep the door closed.”
She Who Waits stopped. Carmen could only assume she was near the door to their sphere. And just like that, it opened. What was Jenna thinking?
Carmen followed She Who Waits inside. Barrett stood next to the Jenna bot, his hands folded before him. The alien scooted forward only to abruptly pause. The red cone of light popped up before her.
Barrett gave a bow. “I’m Raymond Barrett of Earth. Designate He Who Negotiates. I heard your conversation and we wish to surrender the ship.”
Chapter Seventeen
She Who Waits stood as tall as the Jenna bot. The moving sand momentarily glittered. But the Jenna bot’s face was dark. Where had her sister gone? And how had Barrett managed to eavesdrop on Carmen’s conversation with the alien translator?
Barrett kept his face downcast. “We present this ship to you and are happy to return it.”
Carmen hurried next to Barrett. “What are you doing?”
“Salvaging the situation. She Who Waits? May I call you that? The representatives of Earth whom you first encountered weren’t properly vested with authority to establish contact with you nor to conduct negotiations. I am. While I don’t understand how this vessel was taken from you, we are happy to give it back.”
She Who Waits spoke crisply. “You wish to reclassify designate Mission Specialist Sylvia Vincent?”
“Yes. She oversaw the Mars orbital, the station circling Mars, the fourth planet of our sun. There were others in charge of the mission. I believe there has been a series of miscommunications. She wasn’t authorized to negotiate. She also took what belongs to you without asking.”
“There is
nothing wrong with my translation. Designate Sylvia Vincent was clear about her role.”
“She exaggerated. Her command was only over the orbiting asset of a science mission, with a mission commander above her. On behalf of the people of Earth, I apologize for the misunderstanding.” Again, he bowed. Was this what he had trained for? Did Quantico or Langley or wherever Homeland Security went to school have a Fib to Aliens 101 course with extra credit in mansplaining?
“Designate Sylvia Vincent’s daughter says her sister is in command of this spaceship. She must relinquish control so I may return it.”
“Hold on,” Carmen said. “What do you mean return the ship? Doesn’t it belong to you?”
Agent Barrett was staring daggers at her. Mouthed at her to shut up.
She Who Waits glided closer to the Jenna bot. More diamonds floated beneath the surface of the alien’s shell. “Negative. Designate Sylvia Vincent calls the owners Cordice. I will continue to adhere to her terminology until otherwise corrected. It is they who request the return of their vessel.”
“Why didn’t these Cordice come themselves?”
“Because I am tasked to translate and facilitate communication in their absence. And the Cordice have issues of functionality. Without this vessel they are hindered in movement beyond their home ship.”
Barrett held up a warning hand in Carmen’s direction. “Sylvia Vincent’s daughter Jenna will relinquish control as you request.”
“No, she won’t!” Carmen blurted. It came out too loud. But there was no taking it back. “Jenna, if you’re listening, don’t give up anything. Not yet. Not until we have Mom and a way to get her back home. Look, She Who Waits, Agent Barrett doesn’t speak for me or my sister. If you’re representing this other group of aliens, these Cordice, then tell them what we need. Do they have Sylvia Vincent? Do they have my mom?”
“Designate Sylvia Vincent is aboard their home ship.”
“Then how did she steal this thing?”
“To reiterate, the Cordice have issues of functionality. The caretaker recovered bioforms designates Sylvia Vincent and Hamish Townes from their failed vessel. Sylvia Vincent assumed task functions of a remote unit—a robot—which then assumed control of this spaceship and traveled to Earth.”
