Interchange

by Daniel M. Bensen

  So he held her, enjoying her warmth and the starlight reflected in her hair, controlling his urge to rush into things.

  The clouds were gone, and the Milky Way hung above them. With the sun behind the Earth and the lights of civilization far away, enough darkness had grown to make the galaxy visible. Between the brightest stars, more stars shone. Between them, yet more, and that was only the beginning.

  “Just think,” he said. “Those stars are all places.”

  Anne shifted in his arms. She was looking up too.

  “Christ, that’s lovely,” she said. “I’m going to miss this.”

  All right, this was the time. “You don’t have to miss it,” Daisuke declared. “Let’s go back to Junction!”

  Anne went still. “But, they won’t give us permission.”

  She was trying to convince herself that she didn’t deserve to be happy. That meant Daisuke was on the right track. “You’re the queen of Junction. Of course you’ll have permission.”

  “I’ve seen the photos though. The army has destroyed so much. Are any of the biomes we explored still even there?”

  Daisuke tried to remember the idiom. “There’s only one way to find out.”

  She laughed. “God, Junction.” Her hand found his, and clasped around it. “Can we stay there this time?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  They kissed until the jewel box snapped closed on his thumb.

  “Ow!”

  “Well, give that over here.” Anne took the box. “Now I can climb on top of you.”

  Chapter Two

  Vacuum-Spinner

  The second phase of Daisuke’s plan apparently began with lunch at an outdoor café .

  Anne had to admit that this was no mean feat. Her previous experience with Sapporo had led her to believe the city had no such thing as an outdoor café. One could drink beer under the TV tower or have coffee in the glassed-in atrium of a crowded shopping center. One could even visit a restaurant called Auto Doa Kafue, which was neither ‘outdoor’ nor a ‘café’. But Daisuke had found this place, under an overhang on the ground level of a hotel, sandwiched between a parking lot and another hotel.

  If Anne turned her head and looked across the street, she could see a medium-sized cherry tree, a highly groomed little canal, and an even smaller and more highly groomed garden. A cedar tree and a clutch of red and maroon maples huddled under telephone wires and square, anonymous buildings. As Anne watched, a pair of young women gestured and exclaimed and took pictures of themselves in front of the trees.

  “What are you thinking about?” asked Daisuke, and Anne realized she was being ungrateful. The café was outdoors, after all, and it did serve coffee, as well as small, expensive, extremely precious little pastries. Anne plucked at the unfamiliar weight of the ring on her finger, and fed her pastries to the pigeons.

  “Pigeons,” she decided to answer.

  There were half a dozen of them jostling for space on the sidewalk, pecking up crumbs in the shadow of the overhang. Females scuttled away from males, which bobbed their heads and cooed desperately, throat feathers fluffed and shimmering with iridescence, fanned tails sweeping the concrete. Low-ranking birds loitered on the sidewalk, darting in to steal crumbs and hopping back out when their flock-mates nipped at them.

  “Pigeons?” Daisuke asked. Was he really interested, or just faking it because he wanted to be a good boyfriend? Fiancé now. He’d be good at faking that too. How would Anne ever know?

  “Specifically,” she said, “color morphs.” She tossed crumbs to the pigeons in need. The pavement-birds. “These pigeons are mostly wild-type. Dark gray heads and necks, light gray bodies. Four dark bars on the wings?” A few had wings checkered with dark feathers, but Anne didn’t see any brown or pied morphs. “I’m guessing that means there are fewer domesticated birds in this gene pool than in Tokyo.”

  “You’ve studied the birds in Tokyo?”

  Their life together in the city should have been a reward. Good job, Anne! You survived, you stopped a war or something, you won the heart of a good man, so now you can just return to the rat race. Get running!

  She had tried gamely to fit into Daisuke’s life, but there just didn’t seem to be space for her. The obvious next step for him, career-wise, involved lots of parties, charity events, and international golf courses, none of which were Anne’s preferred habitat. She could talk to two or three people at a time, or to a room full of fellow scientists at a conference, or to animals and plants, but any other situation left her floundering.

  Recently Anne had been spending more and more time locked in their apartment, having increasingly vitriolic battles with people on the internet. The international NGO for the preservation of Junction had fallen apart and, privately, Anne was relieved.

  But now everything was fine, right? She was engaged. Her fiancé would sweep her off to Junction. That had to be a good idea.

  So she counted white rump patches. “Most of the pigeons have white feathers between the shoulders and hips. See? That’s a defense mechanism to confuse hunting falcons.”

  She waited for him to translate her words back to her. So, Anne, you’re saying that there are probably more falcons here than in Tokyo?

  Instead, he said, “Ah. They’re here.”

  Anne closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “You invited someone to meet me.” From pigeon politics to people. She wished she could flash her feathers and dive to safety.

  “Yes. You’ll like them. This is my plan. Hello!” Daisuke stood and waved at someone across the street.

  Hello? So he was addressing these mystery guests in English. That was both good and bad. The whole conversation wouldn’t be over Anne’s head, but on the other hand she couldn’t just nod and smile and think of pigeon population genetics. Damn.

  Anne twisted around in her rickety little chair and squinted at the man and woman walking along the canal toward her. Where these people his friends or business contacts or fans or what? Had Daisuke told her and she’d just been thinking about pigeons?

  “What the hell is this, Daisuke?” she hissed.

  He twitched his head to the side, confused. Then his TV-personality mask came down. “Relax. You’ll like them.”

  It was impossible to tell whether that was a promise, threat, or order.

  Anne licked her lips and rubbed her sweaty palms against her trousers, willing her heart to slow. Bloody fight-or-flight reaction! If they were still safely in the wilderness, she could at least scream and jump up and down and scare these people away.

  Daisuke turned from the strangers and looked into her eyes. He gave her hand a squeeze. “It will be all right.”

  It was like he could smell her nervousness. And whatever crazy empathic powers Daisuke had, they worked on everybody. He would guide her through this interaction.

  He stood, and Anne followed his lead.

  The visitors probably weren’t fans. The man was too old, and the woman was too well-groomed. She looked like a supermodel, and he looked like somebody’s granddad.

  No, make that somebody’s wicked great uncle. The one who traveled the world and gave you a hookah for your thirteenth birthday. Skinny, energetic, face deeply tanned, hair and goatee brilliant white. He wore a shimmery gray suit that looked both comfortable and dapper as all hell. If he were a pigeon, he would be puffing his neck very far out indeed.

  “Mr. Irevani!” Daisuke stepped forward to shake the man’s hand, beaming as if he were addressing his dearest friend and most valued associate.

  There was none of the awkward do-I-bow-or-shake-hands stumbling of a Westerner in Japan. Irevani seized Daisuke’s hand in both of his and clasped it, his grin like a mirror reflecting the sun.

  Uh-oh, thought Anne.

  “Please, call me Farhad.” He turned his smile to Anne, who squinted in the glare. Here was another member
of Daisuke’s tribe: the warrior-empaths.

  “Professor Houlihan,” the wicked uncle said. “It is an inexpressibly intense honor.”

  Oh honor! Anne had learned to be very careful about what honors she accepted. There were people who would call her a hero to her face, then turn around and sneer to their friends: ‘She thinks she’s a hero.’

  “I’m not a professor yet,” Anne told them. “I’m barely an associate professor.”

  “Oh, excuse me,” Farhad said. “May I call you Anne, then? How gratifying it is to finally meet you. And in such a charming setting too. Sapporo is one of my favorite cities. And at this time of year, the foliage is just breathtaking, isn’t it? Thank you, Daisuke, for making this happen.”

  Why was he still talking? Oh, he was holding out his hand for Anne to shake. Once she shook it, she’d be able to hold Daisuke’s hand and find some stability in this cyclone of charm.

  Farhad’s palm was warm and dry because of course it was. He gave Anne’s hand a squeeze just firm enough not to be icky and guided her efficiently up, down, up again. Release.

  “Nice to meet you, uh….” What the hell was his name? Had Daisuke told her?

  His gaze slid to Daisuke. “Kept me a surprise, I see? Don’t worry, I’m a pleasant one.”

  So this conversation was going to be over Anne’s head after all. Social cues were flying like badminton birdies.

  “Farhad Irevani,” he said. “Any way you want to pronounce it is fine with me.”

  Anne groped for Daisuke’s hand and found it. She let out a breath, recited, “Pleased to meet you,” and slumped, exhausted, while Daisuke elegantly explained both Anne and Farhad to each other.

  “Farhad is interested in investing in your conservation work on Junction. He’s a Silicon Valley entrepreneur.”

  “That would explain the American accent,” said Anne.

  “Do I have an American accent? Please inform my daughter!” Farhad’s laugh sounded entirely honest and unrehearsed.

  “And his administrative assistant is Aimi Garey,” Daisuke continued.

  Aimi gave him a perfect bow, then reached around her boss to give Anne a perfect handshake.

  “Oh my god, Professor Houlihan, it’s so good to finally meet you in person,” she said, all slender calves, elegant cheekbones, and stylish brown hair. “You’re such an inspiration to me and so many other women.”

  That couldn’t possibly be honest. Anne shrugged. “Okay?” Nobody in the vicinity gave any indication of whether that had been the correct response or not.

  Anne sat back down.

  Farhad nodded approvingly at her. “I apologize for descending on you from out of the blue like this, but to make up for it, I have come bearing gifts. Or rather, Aimi has.” He stepped aside, revealing the charcoal-colored box in Aimi’s hands.

  “And excuse me, Daisuke, but Aimi isn’t exactly my administrative assistant. I prefer the term ‘mentee’, or possibly ‘shadow’. Until she goes on to greater things, she keeps me honest.”

  “I also carry his stuff,” Aimi said. She held out the box.

  Anne tried not to think of engagement rings, attacking bears, and all the things her rumpled jumper and zip-kneed polyester pants weren’t doing for her. This woman was the sort you got at film star parties. Daisuke’s league.

  She was looking at Anne. Everyone was looking at Anne. “Thanks?” she tried.

  “Please, sit,” said Daisuke. “Can I get you something?” Oh shit, he was going to go order and leave her with these people?

  Farhad fluffed out his suit jacket and sat with his back to the pigeons. “Of course this is my treat, so what can we get you?”

  Anne let Daisuke handle the social dance and stared at the box, panic rising. If it contained another engagement ring, the diamond would have to be the size of a lemon.

  Aimi passed it to her mentor and went to order coffee, somehow talking Daisuke out of chivalrously doing it for her.

  “Aimi is my best mentee yet,” Farhad said. “She was the one who ran into Daisuke at the Independence Day party and laid the groundwork for this conversation.”

  “So Aimi manipulated Daisuke into manipulating me.” Anne wondered if she should have said that.

  Daisuke drew in a breath, but Farhad laughed. “Yes, this is exactly what I came for!” he said. “It’s like you’re allergic to bullshit. I love it! I’d hire you in a second to just sit next to me at pitch sessions and break out in hives.”

  She looked at him, resisting the urge to scratch.

  Farhad’s eyes crinkled. “I think you would appreciate it if we got down to business, hm?” The entrepreneur’s hands caressed the box’s black beveled corners. A manicured thumb pressed against a square on the front, and a green light came on.

  “Aimi won’t mind if she misses the big reveal. She’s seen it before.” Farhad leaned back as he opened the box, grinning like a carnival barker.

  Inside the box was Anne’s vacuum-spinner.

  The alien specimen looked like a pomegranate covered in metallic scales, nestled on a bed of sheer gray silk. Except that the silk’s shade changed depending on how you looked at it, and the scales were so tough it took diamond-tipped drills to penetrate them. Farhad had in his possession the remains of a space-dwelling organism, brought to Earth through at least two interstellar wormholes.

  Anne felt dizzy. She remembered Daisuke holding this fascinating life-form out to her and asking to accompany her on her next adventure. Of course, what had actually happened was a couple of helicopter rides and a great deal of very dull politics. There had been a hundred opinions about what to do with Junction, none of them right, and when Anne said so, everyone got offended. Anne thought that at least she’d made sure she’d managed to get the vacuum-spinner into the safety of a proper research facility, but Farahad had managed to reverse even that tiny victory.

  Daisuke squeezed Anne’s hand, and she realized she’d been squeezing his.

  “How”, she asked, “did you get that?”

  Farhad’s eyes flashed up and down her face. “You must be angry. You wanted this thing safe in a museum.”

  “Well, yeah. The University of Sydney was supposed to keep that specimen safe from gallivanting billionaire dilettantes.”

  “Millionaire.” Farhad smiled modestly. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Ah, and here’s Aimi with the coffee. Aimi, I’ve screwed up. Observe my mistakes and learn.”

  “This isn’t a joke.” Anne pointed at the vacuum-spinner, her finger trembling. “What exactly are you going to do with this thing? Turn it into a hood ornament for your private jet? Grind it up and snort it off the back of a hooker?”

  “Anne….” murmured Daisuke, which meant she was being rude. Was it the hooker comment? She glanced at Aimi, who did not so much as bat an eyelash.

  “Defensive armor.” Still holding her tray of coffees and food, Aimi spoke with the air of a doctor diagnosing a nasty case of shingles. “You had to build it up, with all the scrutiny the media is giving you.”

  Scrutiny such as the kind Aimi and her boss were focusing on Anne right now. She felt like a plasmodium trying to look back up the through the microscope lens.

  Anne turned to Daisuke for protection, then remembered she was angry at him. “You knew I’d hate these people, which is why you didn’t tell me about meeting them. And you told them to bring an alien organism because you know that’s what gets my juices flowing.”

  “Let him give you the offer before you refuse it,” he said, and didn’t that just sound so reasonable!

  “I told you we should have shown her a new species,” Aimi said. “You can’t swing a dead cat on Junction without finding a new species. The investors like the vacuum-spinner, but to a scientist, you just look—”

  “Corrupt?” Farhad’s fingers drummed impatiently on the box. “Professor Houlihan.
Anne, I know you’re not the sort of person to be won over by showmanship. I understand that.”

  “Clearly untrue,” Anne observed.

  “My intention was simply to get your expert opinion on the nature of this organism. The paper you published described it as a ‘vacuum-dwelling autotroph’. In other words, a plant from space, right?”

  “No. Well, plants do harness sunlight to make sugar, and indications are that spinners use light to spin them against a magnetic field, which must make sugar or something metabolically useful.” Anne remembered she ought to be angry. “I mean, hey!” She poked her finger against the metal surface of the table, which wobbled. “You clearly bribed someone at the University of Sydney to let you cart this specimen all the way here so you could show it to me, so I could—” She flailed. “What do you even expect me to do? Hold it up and recite its vital statistics to the studio audience like I’m selling jewelry on television?”

  Anne had to breathe at that point, and Farhad leaned forward like he was about to say something else stupid.

  Aimi said, “Well,” and he relaxed. “I understand you.” But Aimi immediately disproved herself. “This is some sort of tiny spacefaring bio-ship.”

  “Oh my god!” Anne wanted to tear her hair. “No! Why do people keep saying it’s a bloody spaceship? Why does everyone have to gravitate toward the dumbest possible interpretation? And then you stick bio on the front of it like that’s supposed to— Look.” She grabbed at the box, and Farhad’s grip tightened.

  “Relax, mate, I’m only going to turn it around so you can look at the organism.” He relaxed, and she did.

  “Look at it,” Anne commanded. “Look at that shell. It isn’t just hard, it’s at least three centimeters of metals, ceramics, and polymers extruded in layers only two molecules thick, in a zigzag pattern reminiscent of tubulanes. It’s harder, tougher, and more opaque to electromagnetic radiation than anything evolved on Earth. In a vacuum, that shell would inflate into a sphere, with a single point of entrance into the interior. And that is protected by a valve that’s unlike anything we’ve seen, manufactured or evolved.”