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I'm trying to write 1000 words a day--pulpy science fiction, that sort of thing. Mmm-hmm. |
| A thousand words a day of pulpy science fiction starts, shorts, and sketches. Maybe some of them will be fleshed out at some point. Or, you know--maybe not. Hmm. |
| 100 Days of 1000 Words-a-Day--Day 3 of 100 Jake picked up the backpack that was leaning against the wall near the hangar door, hefted, it, and immediately knew—it wasn’t heavy enough. He put it back down. “I thought these things were packed,” he said as he kneeled down, unzipped the top, and peered inside. “They are packed,” said Jackie from the other side of the open hangar door. “This one’s not,” Jake said. He stood up and the backpack fell over. “It doesn’t have any water in it.” He turned to the uniformed troops—all male, all young—who were watching him. “Y’all check your packs,” he said gruffly. There was a beat, and then the assembly started doing exactly that. “Mine’s empty,” said one troop. Then from farther along the line: “Mine too.” Already Jackie was on the phone. “Carter!” she barked into it. “This is Major Sheffield. You guys have screwed up the packing again. We’re three hours out and we’ve got light packs. Now why the hell is that?” She listened, her lips pursing, then she caught Jake’s eye and shook her head. “That’s a bunch of bulls***, Captain. You get your guys out here to pack these packs, and if I don’t see movement in 10 minutes, I’m going to come ride your ass over here and you can pack them yourself!” She put the phone in its cradle and responded to Jake’s questioning expression with a shrug. “Ah, that guy’s worthless,” Jake said. Then he turned to his troops. “All right, fellas. Grab your gear and come with me.” “Carter will send somebody,” Jackie said. “Screw that s***,” Jake responded. “We’ll go fill them up ourselves.” He strode out of the hangar, his men following him. They crossed the concrete pad, entered the opposite hangar, and ganged around a faucet attached to a spigot. Jackie followed them, and when she stepped inside, she saw that the men were filling their pack bladders with water from the hose. “That’s kind of low-tech, isn’t it?” she asked. “Water is water,” Jake said. Then he turned to the men. “Everyone fill up. Check your med boxes. I want to be sure everyone has full morphines.” “Ah, sir, we’ll have to break the seals to open the boxes,” a sergeant said. “Break the seals. I don’t trust the med guys any more than I trust Captain Carter, and those morphines….” He fingered the ugly scar on his left forearm, which protruded from shis smartly rolled uniform blouse sleeve. “Well, if we end up needing those, we’re going to need them.” Jackie pursed her lips again. “I believe that’s a tautology, Major,” she said. Jake shrugged and turned his attention to a six pack pulling up to the hangar door. Some of Carter’s personnel got out. Two of them moved to the back of the truck and started unloading backpacks and setting them on the concrete; one of them, an older woman dressed in the uniform of a staff sergeant, approached Sheffield. “You’ve got some light packs, Ma’am?” “Y’all stand by, my troops are inspecting their packs,” Jake answered. “Inspect the packs?” the staff sergeant repeated dully. “That’s right, inspect the packs. We’re going to inspect the med boxes too,” he said. “It’s against regulations to break the seals.” “Saunders, you got any med boxes?” Jackie asked, reading the staff sergeant’s name from her nametape. “Ah, yes, Ma’am. We’ve got five or six of them, I think.” “Good,” Jake said. One of his own men had already pulled some tables from the side of the hangar and had formed an inspection line; the others were methodically pulling items out of their packs and organizing them on the tables. As the packs were inspected and deemed acceptable, one of the men would take one and strap it to his back. Four or five of the men were so outfitted before the first bad med box was found. “Major, this one’s missing a morphine,” Sergeant Gillespie reported from behind the inspection table. “Missing a morphine,” Jake repeated. He turned to Major Sheffield. “How does a morphine go missing?” Sheffield, for her part, turned to Saunders. “Well? Tell the major how a morphine goes missing.” “I don’t know, Ma’am,” the sergeant said. “Well, I do,” Jake answered. He strode over to the back of the truck to where the two men who had gotten out of the truck to unload the replacement backpack, having surmised that the backpacks might not be needed after all, were standing waiting to see what would happen. Jake boldly approached the nearest one, reached out his hand, and grasped the man’s blouse by the breast pocket. “What do you have in there, Mister?” he asked. “Nothing, sir.” “Doesn’t feel like nothing,” Jake said. “Empty it out.” The sergeant’s eyes went wide and he looked over at Saunders, who also was staring at the exchange. “Empty it, I said!” Jake repeated in a command voice. The sergeant’s hand went to his breast pocket. He unbuttoned it, pulled out a morphine pack, and laid it on the open tailgate. By now, Jackie had maneuvered her way to the back of the truck, and she took note of the sergeant’s nametape—Rones. “You have some sort of injury, Sergeant Rones?” she asked. Rones’ only answer was a scowl. “That’s how morphine packs go missing,” Jake said. Then, to Saunders: “You leave me all your med boxes and get the hell out of here. Now.” Saunders’ yes sir was lost in the approaching roar of a helicopter, which was taxiing into position between the hangars. It stopped and Jackie could see the pilot through the Plexiglas canopy waving. “Get that truck out of here, Saunders,” Jackie yelled, and Saunders started moving. Saunders got into the driver’s side of the truck, powered it up, and drove it out of the way of the helicopter, which then continued taxiing until it was precisely between the two hangars. An older man descended from the interior; as he got closer, the two stars on the front of his uniform jacket became discernable. Sheffield, who was standing outside the hangar, came to attention and saluted. The general saluted back and kept walking, right past her and into the hanger. “Jake. You people aren’t ready yet?” he asked. “No, sir. We’ve got light packs and some morphine is missing.” The general whirled around. “You supply?” he sputtered to Sheffield. “Ah, yes sir, Major Sheffield,” Jackie said, identifying herself. “We’ve identified some personnel problems this afternoon.” “I guess so,” the general said, turning back to Jake and his men, who were wrapping up their pack inspections. |
| One Hundred Days of 1000 Words-a-Day: Day 2 of 100 The briefing room lights dimmed and the screen, which had already been on but which had been largely too dim to be seen now was more clearly, more vividly visible. At the top, the words ‘Cognitive Perception and the Now-Moment Width” ran across the screen. Below that was a photograph of a Kleesi in its tank, the sensing tip of its main tentacle sticking out of the fluid and pointed toward the camera. “Good afternoon,” the captain standing behind the podium started. “I’m Captain Telez from R5. This briefing is classified Yankee Blue, no recording permitted.” The no-recording reminder was superfluous; all of the briefing room’s occupants had surrendered their cellphone in the foyer upon entry into the building, but regulations were regulations—the script called for the Yankee Blue warning, and Telez delivered it. There were officials in the room which would not have allowed themselves to be out of communication, even for a short briefing, but those for whom such a thing might actually have been an issue had assistants who would enter the briefing room and personally inform them of a real-world event of some kind. General Peterson’s aide was presently standing in the foyer with the general’s classified cellphone, personal cellphone, and White House pager, and General Livingston’s case, a similarly equipped aide stood on the building’s first floor ready to respond. On the flightline, there were two fully fueled and crewed C-141s with ‘silver bullet’ trailers loaded ready to respond if a need suddenly developed for the presence of either general anywhere in the world. Captain Telez flipped a page in his script and the screen transitioned to the first content slide, another static photograph of a Kleesi. This one was a top-down view of a Kleesi laid out on a table, its tentacles stretched out and its gas bag deflated. “As you all know, our initial contact with the Kleesi occurred last year when the ship from Klee 51 arrived, assumed orbit, and began broadcasting. In the intervening eight months, we established contact and, with considerable help from the Kleesi, worked out a method of communication. The Kleesi are much better at English than we are at Kleesian, but the initial Kleesi who deployed to work with our language experts have made it possible for us to have a good reliability in communication exchanges.” “Ah, one moment, Captain,” General Livingston held up her finger and then leaned over to Peterson, who was seated to her left. “Sir, I have my doubts about the reliability. We might be fooling ourselves, at least a little bit.” Peterson frowned and nodded. “Alright. Go ahead, Captain.” The slide changed again, this time to a line drawing of the parts of the Kleesi sensing tip. “With a good deal of help from the Kleesi, we are informed that their sensing tip, which you see here, is able to perceive the world visually with the structure identified as A, by molecular sampling using the structure identified as B, and are able to monitor vibrations with the structure identified in the drawing as C.” “So that’s its eye, its nose, and its ear, then,” Livingston said. “Ah, yes, Ma’am, roughly,” Telez said. “The structure identified as D here does not have an analog in humans. We are told that this structure is used to perceive what the Kleesi call the now-moment.” “Now-moment,” Livingston responded. “What’s that?” “The now-moment is the segment of time that one is able to perceive directly,” Telez responded. “A person is aware of what is going on from moment to moment, but when one of the moments is gone, it becomes the past and remains only as a memory. Our ability to perceive the future appears to be completely nonexistent until that future becomes the present.” One of the lieutenant colonels sitting in one of the chairs around the table raised his hand. “Captain, if I may?” The captain nodded and the colonel turned toward the head of the table, where Patterson and Livingston sat next to each other. “There’s been some research done on insects, especially house flies, that suggests that the house fly’s perception of time is much faster than ours. Thus, events around the house fly occur much more slowly. Maybe that’s why it’s so hard to slap one—they have a lot more time to see the hand coming and respond to it than it seems to us.” General Peterson waved his hand. “Hmm. Continue, Captain.” The slide changed again. “If we are understanding the Kleesi correctly, and as I say, our reliability is high on the exchange, the Kleesi have a longer now-moment than we do.” He turned pages on his script. “The Kleesi report that their now-moment is about seven-tenths of a second.” “Seven-tenths of a second,” General Livingston repeated. “So what does that mean?” “Ma’am, it appears that the Kleesi are aware of events as far as about three-tenths of a second into the past and about three-tenths of a second into the future in a direct way, as we are directly aware of events occurring around us from moment to moment.” “So they can see the future?” Livingston’s tone was incredulous, but already Peterson and others around the table were calculating the consequences of having a direct awareness of the immediate past and, more interestingly, the immediate future. “How do they do that?” “We’re not sure, Ma’am,” the captain responded. “The Kleesi have an explanation, but we’re still working on converting it to something we can understand. It has something to do with entangled quantum pairs involving fast-decaying particles.” “Of course it does,” Livingston said sarcastically. Then she turned to Peterson. “Isn’t this exactly how you would go about roping a tribal leader into cooperating with you and giving you their trinkets? Convince them that you have some sort of superpower?” Peterson didn’t respond to her but his gaze was focused on the slide. “I don’t know, Tom,” he said, using the captain’s first name. “It seems to me that all you need to remember the past is a good memory. When it comes to the future, since it hasn’t happened yet, I don’t see how you can really know what it is going to be.” “We don’t really know either, sir, but the Kleesi have demonstrated. I have a video clip.” “Are you people down there in R5 convinced?” Livingston asked sharply. “Yes, Ma’am,” Telez responded. “It’s not unanimous, but the evidence seems to be convincing.” “How did you test this?” Peterson asked. “We set up a device to generate a random number between 1 and 6. The Kleesi identified as T14 sat before it and predicted the number. We were able to set up a mechanism whereby T14 was able to indicate his choice of number 15-hundredths of a second before the number was revealed.” “And how did old T14 do?” Livingston interrupted. “Well, Ma’am, he was 100% reliable after 30 trials.” There was a moment of silence in the room, and then General Peterson seemed to come to some sort of conclusion. He stood up. “Alright, Captain, that’ll be all.” The lights in the room came on. The general gestured to Livingston. “Come along with me, won’t you?” General Livingston stood and followed Peterson out of the door. ### |
| One Hundred Days of 1000 Words a Day--Day 1, October 26, 2024 Kevitch stood on three legs at the stove and stirred a pot of melted paraffin was with a wooden spoon; his fourth leg, back and on the left side, was pulled up against his flank. The ship's officer of day opened the door to the galley and stood in the opening. "Something wrong with your leg?" he asked. "No, no," Kevitch responded, dropping his leg to the deck. His hoof made a sharp clatter as it made contact with the metal floor and weighted. Sullivan stepped up alongside Kevitch, peering down at the pot. "You're going to burn that," he said. "I'm not going to burn it." Sullivan moved over to the sofa and sat down on it. The sofa was made for Me'loon anatomy and had the distinctive curving front and ridges on the back for Kevitch's two wings to rest comfortably; it was not especially comfortable for humans, but Sullivan sat with his back upright instead of leaning back against the ridges. "The king will be here--when? Tomorrow?" "He's not a king, he's a prince," Kevitch said. "And yes, he is to arrive late tomorrow." "Prince. So he's the son of the king, then?" "Um, well, yes. Not exactly, but yes." "Not exactly." Sullivan fidgeted this way and that. "It's impossible to get comfortable on this thing," he said. Then he stood up. "So what is he, exactly." "It's hard to describe. What are you doing down here, anyway? Aren't you supposed to be driving the ship?" Sullivan had wandered over to one of the photographs on the wall and was inspecting it closely. It was lines jagging wildly this way and that, no discernable pattern or intention. It appeared to be something that a toddler would draw on a wall with a marker he wasn't supposed to have. "I am driving the ship. What the hell is this?" Kevitch pulled up his two front legs and stepped over to the sofa bipedally, on his two back legs. Then he sat down, his body fitting between the ridges and the curved front. "That is what we call the A'dee lu Fnaa. It's a historical document. Um, sort of like the Magna Carta, I guess. Do you know what the Magna Carta is?" "So this is writing?" "Yes. Quite a good reproduction, as a matter of fact. So--Magna Carta. Does that ring any bells?" "Not really," Sullivan said. "I'm an engineer, not a librarian." Kevitch made a sort of tinny rumbling sound somewhere deep in his chest, something between a cat's purr and silverware falling on a tile floor. It was the Me'loon equivalent of a human snort, the kind sound one might make to express surprise and contempt. "You're an idiot." "Hey, don't forget, I outrank your feathery ass," Sullivan said. He turned and stepped back toward the door. "I just stopped by to tell you that there's a Priority Four message for you in the comm center." "Really?" "Yeah. It's audio only. I listened to it, but I can't make heads or tails out of your language, so you'll have to go down there and listen for yourself." "Priority Four, you say?" The Me'loon stood and folded his feathers back into their resting position. "Now, who would be sending me a Priority Four message?" "I looked at the transmission, but it's not in plaintext, and I don't know the code." "Okay." Kevitch stepped over to the stove, turned the burner off. "Let's go down and I'll take a look." "Sure," Sullivan said. He passed through the open door and stood to the side of the narrow passage as Kevitch moved past him, and he followed. Down the passage, down the ladder to the bottom of the ship, then down another passage, and then the two of them stepped into the ship's communication center, where two crewman were on duty. One of them, also a Me'loon, was busy working a panel with his two front legs while he stood on the rear legs; the other one, a Sheel, was inside a transparent hydrocarbon tank on a floating platform The Sheel was moving around the other end, it's sensing stalk raised up out of the hydrocarbon fluid, monitoring several pieces of equipment. The sensing stalk turned when Sullivan and Kevitch entered and the floating platform's computerized voice activated. "Commander Sullivan and Lieutenant Kevitch. To what, pray tell, do we owe this honor?" "Vetchy here's got a message," Sullivan said. The Me'loon working the panel looked up and spoke. "Ah, yes. Kevitch Lieutenant," he said, inverting the name and rank as a gesture of respect. "You do have a P4 message, it's Me'looni audio." He raised a hoofed hand above a button on his panel. "Shall I play it?" Kevitch waved his own hoof. "Certainly." The Me'looni crewman pressed the button and then the speaker on the panel sounded. It crackled at first, and then a series of noises emanated from it. To Sullivan and the Sheel, it sounded like white noise mixed with the sound of a dump truck grinding its gears. It went on for some time, perhaps three minutes, and then it slowed down in tempo and volume, like an orchestral piece ending, and then it was over. "Hmm." Kevitch said. "You need it again, Kevitch Lieutenant?" the crewman said. "No." Then to Sullivan: "Commander, I think we better wake up the captain." "Wake the captain? It's three o'clock in the morning. Why would we wake the captain?" "Because the captain is going to want to greet His Majesty. The Prince will arrive in less than an hour." "What?" Sullivan said. "How is that possible? We're monitoring the line he arriving on right now, there's no ship all the way to the turn." "The Prince is not coming on the line," Kevitch said. "Come on, I'll explain on the way to the captain's quarters." The two of them strode out of the communications center, leaving the Me'loon and the Sheel to their duties. When they were gone and the door behind them was closed, the speech synthizer on the Sheel's platform sounded again, this time in Me'looni--more white noise and gears grinding. "Why is the Prince coming in an automated transport?" he asked. "Those are dangerous, aren't they?" The Me'looni answered in his own language. "Yes, but the one he's in has special protocols. And it's the regular ships aren't really big enough anyway." "Big enough? Big enough for what?" "That," the crewman answered in English, "is an answer that only the captain can have." He went back to his panel. "And Kevitch should be telling him about that in about five minutes." ### |
| In the shuttlebay of Epitetes, two young officers in red jumpsuits were gathered around a partially disassembled panel. Tools and supplies were strewn across several floating platforms to their left and right. “Aren’t there supposed to be two mag phase inverters in here?” The voice had come from inside the panel; apparently, a third officer or someone was in there effecting a repair. “There’s supposed to be an A inverter and a D inverter,” said Lieutenant Commander Liz Lemmer. She was staring at a display screen on the vertical riser. “According to this, the D inverter is on top, and then the A is under it.” “Oh, yeah, I see it now.” A pause, and then “This thing is fried. Can you confirm no positive monopoles in here?” “Confirm,” responded Lieutenant John Reese. “We’re negative on positive monopoles.” “Okay,” the voice inside the panel said. “I’m removing the D.” Reese pressed a button on his panel. “Reese to Engineering.” The speaker on the panel activated. “Engineering, Williams here.” “We’re going to be ready for the insert shortly.” Reese released the press-to-talk. “We are going to be ready shortly, aren’t we?” “Yeah, I’m on the last disconnect…there.” There were mechanical noises in the panel, and then a gloved hand appeared, holding a piece of elaborate-looking circuitry. Lemmer reached forward, took the circuitry, and peered at it. “Looks like some muon damage. See the striations here…and here?” She pointed as Reese looked. “Yeah, it’s muons all right,” the voice inside the panel said. “Come on out of there while they plug in the new unit,” Reese said. Momentarily, Lieutenant Phil See pulled himself deftly out of the panel and stood. Reese turned back to the panel. “Reese to Engineering. We’re ready for the insert.” “Ready for insert, understood,” Williams answered. “Inserting in three…two…one…mark.” There was a sparkling of reflected light from the hole that See had just climbed out of, and an odd sound. Then, from the speaker on the panel, “Insert complete.” Lemmer stepped back. “You guys get all this cleaned up. I’ll take this on upstairs.” “Yeah, okay,” Reese answered. He bent down to peer into the open panel while See started picking up the various tools they had used and placing them on the floating platforms. Lemmer strode away from the panel, turned the corner, and was gone. Up on the bridge, the captain’s chair was empty. Commander Sa’kav, duty officer for C shift stood next to the science officer’s station while Commander Dolly Whalen analyzed the latest long-range sensor scans. “I do not see a source, but the muon flux has definitely increased sharply over the last several hours, sir,” she said. “What’s the density right now?” Sa’kav asked. “There’s a gradient, sir. Forward of us, it’s 4.4 megapelkas per hour. Aft, about 4.1.” “Hmm.” Sa’kav’s crown feathers erected and then relaxed, and he clicked his beak. “Okay, keep an eye on it. I see no reason to awaken the captain, do you?” “No, sir.” There was a chime from the arm of the captain’s chair, and then a voice from the adjacent speaker. “Bridge, Engineering.” Sa’kav strode over and pressed the button. “This is the bridge, Mr. Domingo.” “I’ve got that D inverter up here. It’s been damaged by muons.” Sa’kav turned to meet Whalen’s gaze from the science station. “Muon damage? How does an internal piece of circuitry get muon damage?” “I don’t know,” Domingo answered. “From the looks of it, I’d say it’s a subspace punch-through.” Whalen had walked over and was now standing next to Sa’kav. “Lenny, are there any other inverters acting up?” “Negative. Any kind of local muon source would be affecting all of our inverters, especially the Ds. But this is the only one.” “Are you sure its muons?” Sa’kav asked. “Yes, sir. The damage muons do to these things is very characteristic.” There was a pause. “We put another one in there, so the problem is fixed for now, but if there’s a punch-through somewhere, we need to find it and plug it.” “Roger that, Mr. Domingo. Continue to monitor.” “Continue to monitor, aye, sir. Engineering out.” “Subspace punch-through?” Lieutenant Commander Dave Craddock said from the helm. “I thought those couldn’t happen at warp.” “They’re rare, but not impossible,” Whalen said. She stepped back to her station and sat down. She peered into her display. “The density is increasing, sir.” “What’s it up to now?” “Ahead is 4.8, behind is 4.1.” Sa’kav sat down in the captain’s chair. “Helm, come around 180 degrees and make your course 104 mark 18, sharply.” “One oh four, mark 18, aye sir,” Craddock said. He manipulated the panel. “On course as ordered, sir.” Sa’kav turned his head to Whalen. “Gradient?” “That’s odd,” Whalen responded. “The gradient is still uphill ahead of us and downhill behind. “Ah. You see what’s happening?” Sa’kav asked. No one answered. “Full stop, Mr. Craddock.” “Full stop, aye.” Sa’kav pressed the button on the arm of the captain’s chair. “Engineering, there’s a subspace punch-through somewhere on the ship that’s pointed forward. Can you assemble a team and find out where the hole is?” “Yes, sir. Twenty minutes.” “Twenty minutes will be fine.” Sa’kav looked down at the display on the arm of the captain’s chair. “Get your team assembled and get them going. I’d like to find the hole before the captain comes in this morning.” “Aye, sir. Domingo out.” “So, you think there’s a punch-through that we’re dragging long with us?” Whalen asked. “I do.” Sa’kav stood up and rustled the feathers on his wings and back in a gesture that equated to a stretch. “This happened on Tu’tan’lak once,” he said. “A punch-through got caught in our warp flux and we ended up burning out all of our D inverters.” The turbolift door opened and the captain stepped forward. “Captain on the bridge,” Whelan announced, as was customary when the captain arrived for duty. Sa’kav turned. “Good morning, Captain,” he said. “Good morning, Mr. Sa’kav,” Captain Nkyoto Uhura said. She was in the standard Starfleet athletic uniform, no rank insignia, but of course none would be needed, as she was recognizable on sight by everyone on board. She stepped over and sat down in the captain’s chair. “I’m not here yet, just on my way to the gym. What is your status?” “Ma’am, all systems are operating as normal. We had a misbehaving D inverter a couple of hours ago. Upon replacement, it showed evidence of muon damage. We measured a muon gradient around the ship that was increasing as we moved forward.” “Are we dragging the gradient around with us?” “Aye,” Sa’kav responded. “I believe we have a subspace punch-through, and this is the source of the muons.” “Yes. You’ve got Mr. Domingo on it?” “Aye. His team expects to be going in about fifteen minutes.” “Very well,” the captain said. She stood up. “Keep me informed, please, I’ll be on Deck 14.” “Aye, Captain,” Sa’kav responded. The captain stood and stepped over to the turbolift, and then was gone. ### |
| At the far end of the room, a door slid open and then closed. The door was not silent, but it was quiet, and its operation was so routine as to have entered into that portion of the minds of the four figures at the other end of the room of sounds which could be, and were, ignored. If the air system alarm had gone off, or if there had been a call from Central Control informing them of an impending visit, these sounds would not have been ignored, but the door was. The figures were crowded around a single small computer monitor, engrossed in its presentation. The man who had stepped through the door stood just inside it as he surveyed the scene. He wore plain pants and shirt, belt and shoes, all the same industrial-grade boring brown; his head was bare as were his hands. On his shoulders, gold-embroidered epaulettes glinted as they reflected the dim light. A moment of pause; a moment of decision; the man turned on his heel. The door whisked open again; the man stepped through; it closed. He strode down the passage and, turned the corner, and nearly collided with Lt. Cmdr. Donovan Stubblefield, United States Navy. Only the commander's nimble and brisk movement away from the admiral avoided a collision. As dictated by his training, he flattened himself against the side of the passage so that the admiral could pass. But the admiral did not pass. "Stubblefield!" he fairly shouted. "What the hell are they doing in there?" "I don't know, sir." "Hmmphf," the admiral snorted. He had barely paused as he spoke, and he was already several steps away from the younger man. "Come along with me," the admiral said without turning around. "Aye, sir," the commander said. He took several fast steps to catch up to the older man, who was moving surprising quickly. As the two of them made their way away from the alien containment area of the boat and towards the areas which were normally crewed, several sailors going about their own business on the boat responded to the approach of the boat's executive officer and the visiting admiral in the same way Stubblefield had responded: they flattened themselves against the bulkhead so that the two officers, one senior and the other very senior and actually legendary, could pass. The admiral had been retired for many years, and was only present on the ship as a result of a special Presidential decree--president as in President of the United States. There had been a good deal of handwringing in Congress, but in the end, President Torres issued an order and the military honored it, despite the fact that the order itself and the action which it directed violated about twenty different codes, policies, and procedures. "Well, what's the difference, Bob?" the senior senator from Kentucky had said to his old college buddy and now Secretary of the Navy Robert Curtis Fischer. "That poor old bastard won't be able to remember anything he sees on Shasta for more than 20 minutes anyhow." Fischer stirred his gin and tonic with a plastic straw and frowned. "Don't underestimate him, Roger," he said. The senator noticed that his friend had been stirring the drink for some time. "You going to drink that thing or not?" "I am not." Fischer pulled the straw out and laid it delicately on the napkin that the glass was resting on. "I'm not even sure the old bastard can talk to those creatures anyway." "Of course he can. He's the only one who ever could." "That's a bunch of crap, Roger," Fischer said. "Forty years ago, one of those alien whatevers put a bug in a captain's head and now we've got to entertain the nonsense of an 85-year-old megalomanic who thinks he's Douglas McArthur? I don't buy it." The senator shrugged. "You can buy it or not buy it, Bob. All I know is that when he communes or whatever it is that he does with those creatures, he's able to tell us what to do to make them cooperate." Fischer frowned and picked up the glass. "What do we do if he keels over, then?" He tipped the contents of the glass into his mouth, swallowed, and put the now-empty glass back down. "I don't know. We've got people working on the language." "We've had people working on it for 40 years. Those people have made just about zero progress." The senator shrugged. Then he looked up, over Bob's head, and motioned to one of the several youngish men and women who were orbiting a judicious distance away from their table--and their conversation. "Stay here as long as you want, or one of my people will drive you back to the EOB." "No, I'm going home," Fischer said. The youngish man who had responded to the senator's beckoning was now standing next to him, his head craned to receive instructions. "George, you get the car and take Secretary Fischer anywhere he wants to go." "Ah, yes, sir," the youngish man said. Fischer noticed that the nametag he wore on his gray suit jacket said "P. Conley." Not George. |
| Two figures stood at the top of the rickety tower structure; one, the human, gripped the siderail with both hands and crouched, trying not to look down. The other, a Selasoid, balanced on a tripod of spindly legs and scanned the horizon with his radar. “Damn, it’s cold up here. Can’t we go down now?” the human asked. He was the commissioner of the local Selasoid Cooperation Committee. Someone had to serve as the escort for the visiting Selasoid delegation, and Hank had drawn the short straw. The Selasoid started clacking his mouthparts, and then the computerized language processor that was sewn into his breastplate started up. “We just got up here.” “Yeah, but I’m freezing.” The Selasoid continued to rotate his radar head around as his trunk came up from its pocket in the front of his breastplate and turned to point toward Hank. The alien’s eyeball—it wasn’t an eyeball, and the Selasoid didn’t use vision, but it served as a mechanism for sensing the environment—settled on Hank’s face. “You do seem to be turning a little blue.” “I thought y’all couldn’t see color.” The trunk retracted and descended back into its pocket. “We can’t. I was being sympathetic.” “I’m going down. I’ll wait in the car for you.” Hank stepped off toward the stairs, hanging onto the siderail hand over hand as he did so. “No, no, I’m almost done. I want you to rope down with me.” Hank turned. “You want me to what?” “Rope down with me,” the Selasoid said. The trunk came out again; it moved to a pouch on the Selasoid’s thigh, which, as a result of its spindly anatomy, was quite short and held nearly horizontally. A pair of tongue-like projections extended from inside the trunk. They deftly opened the pouch and brought out a coil of thin rope, then the trunk threw the main body of the coil over the edge of the rail, holding on to one end of it, and the thin rope extended all the way to the ground. “We’ll do back down on this rope.” “Um, absolutely not,” Hank responded. He turned and tried to take a step, but suddenly his leg simply would not move forward. It was as if there were some sort of thick transparent, invisible jelly that got thicker and thicker until it resisted further movement. Hank turned around. “What’s wrong with my leg all of a sudden?” “Nothing,” the Selasoid answered. His trunk was busy tying the end of the rope to the railing. To Hank’s horror, he lifted one of his spindly legs up and over the railing. His trunk tongues grasped the rope, and he lifted the second leg over. Now only a single one of his three legs remained on the platform. “Come on over and we’ll go down together.” The Selasoid shifted his weight and brought the third leg up and over the railing. “Come on.” Hank moved toward the Selasoid. His hands were in his pockets—the pockets weren’t doing a great job at keeping his hands warm, but it was better than having them out in the cold. In his left pocket was his pocketknife. He pulled it out and held it alongside his leg such that the Selasoid couldn’t see it with his radar. As Hank was moving toward the railing, the Selasoid began descending down the rope. He slowly disappeared down the rope, and as the top of his radar head left Hank’s line of sight, Hank moved a little more briskly to the railing. He brought the knife up, using his other hand to open the blade. When he got to the railing, he grasped it with one hand and leaned over enough to see the Selasoid. The top of the alien’s radar head was about 10 feet below the railing. In one smooth, deliberate movement, Hank cut through the rope. The release of tension in the portion of the rope that was tied to the railing made that end of it flop back and over onto the platform side of the rail. The rest of the rope, and the Selasoid, started descending at 9.8 feet per second per second to the ground 130 feet below. Hank turned away from the railing—he didn’t want to see the mess that the Selasoid would make when he hit the ground. He didn’t really want to hear it either, but he supposed that would be unavoidable, and indeed it was. The Selasoid hadn’t screamed or made any sort of vocal outburst at all, but when it hit the bare ground on that side of the tower, there was a wet splat that was hard for Hank to hear, followed by a single oddly pitched groan. Hank winced and braced himself to hear more. Perhaps the Selasoid would scream; perhaps he would moan; perhaps he would beg piteously for assistance. But he did not of this. There was just the lonely cawing of a single hawk, which was orbiting far above, and the white noise of the surrounding forest. At the bottom of the stairs which Hank and the Selasoid had climbed with some difficulty only half an hour ago were two backpacks, one intended for the human anatomy and one for the Selasoid, with extra-long straps and lower-slung cargo chamber. Inside each was two liters of water, two daily food packs, and in Hank’s pack, a variety of materials to start and support a warming fire. Hank would descend the tower, get the water and food out of the Selasoid’s pack, and prepare for the two-day hike back to the ship. He would enter, shower and sleep, and then when the orbiting return module was in the right place, he would blast off of this overgrown rock, dock with the module, and begin the long trip back to Earth. There would be questions and he’d have to answer them, but there would be no worry. As a legal matter, Selasoid were not capable of being torted, and there would be a replacement Selasoid—in fact, the replacement would almost certainly be a clone of the one that he had killed—in his office within the hour. |
| Dorothy felt the door slam through the walls of the ship’s pressurized living chamber. Her jaw tightened, but she waited for Roger to get through the inner door before she started complaining—the airlock didn’t have any air in it, so there’s be no point of screaming just yet. As he heard the cycle complete, she inhaled, and just as the inner door opened, she opened her mouth. “Roger! How many times have I told you, don’t slam that door!” “I didn’t slam the door,” Roger said through the speaker mounted in the front of his suit. He dropped the two bags he was carrying, which fell with a thud on the steel deck. “And don’t drop stuff on the damn floor!” Roger was unfastening the seals on his helmet and in another moment, he had it off. He dropped it too, and it loudly bounced on the deck a couple of times. “Why is it so cold in here?” he said. “Okay, now, when you go outside next time and your pressure starts falling because your helmet is leaking, don’t complain to me.” He stepped past her, past the small table where they ate, past the small galley, past the food storage lockers, past the downladder that led to the unpressurized parts of the ship and arrived at the environmental control panels. “This thing’s set to 20 degrees,” he said. One hand pulled the glove off of the other, and then he brought the ungloved hand up to the controls. He turned a knob. “Twenty-four is as cold as the worms can stand.” “They can stand a lot colder than 24,” Dorothy replied. “Yeah, yeah, I know. But they don’t make as much oxygen when they’re cold.” He turned away from the panel and pulled his other glove off. “Leave this at 24.” Dorothy rolled her eyes. “Aye-aye, Captain Bligh,” she said sarcastically. Roger ignored her comment and moved back to the table, where he sat down. He started unfastening the seals on his boots. “I took a look behind that boulder to the east. There’s a dry riverbed down there, I followed it for about three clicks. It’s a dry as a bone as far as I can see.” “What did the radar show?” Roger had his boots off. He stood up and started working on the seals on his suitpants. “Nothing.” “Nothing?” Dorothy repeated. “You had the range turned all the way up?” “Yeah. No water as far as the radar could see.” He had the seals open and he lifted first one leg and then the other out of the suitpants. “How much do we have in the tanks?” “About 400 liters.” “Hmm.” Roger wriggled out of the top and placed it on the deck next to the other parts of his suit. “When were the worms last watered?” Dorothy spun the captain’s chair around and stood up. “I watered this this morning, so they won’t need it again for a couple of days.” Roger stepped over to the captain’s chair and sat down. He activated screens down on the panel and studied them for a moment. “Okay, so we can stay here for a couple of days and let the worms build our O2 up, then we probably should launch and just orbit here for a while, don’t you think?” Dorothy shrugged. “We could charge up the batteries first.” Roger continued to work the panel. “Yeah, let’s do that first. That’ll take about three days. Then we can start cracking the atmosphere and get our water tanks filled up, that’s another two days.” He turned off the panel, stood up, and moved to retrieve his helmet and the bags that were still lying on the floor where he had dropped them. “I found something odd out there, some sort of material,” he said. “I got a sample to take a look.” “What kind of material?” Dorothy asked. “I don’t know what it is,” Roger said. “It’s some sort of greenish material.” “It’s probably alien poop,” Dorothy said. “And you brought it into the ship.” “There’s no life on this ridiculous little moon,” Roger said, stepping past her again. He carried the helmet in one hand and one of the bags in the other, and again, he stepped past the table, past the galley, past the lockers, past the downladder, but this time he continued past the environmental panel to the small countertop that served as the ship’s science station. There was a microscope, a spectrometer, weight scales and measures, and a variety of laboratory equipment and chemicals for analyzing materials. Most critically, there was an isolation box capable of holding a sample and permitting work to be done on it without exposing it to the environment of the interior of the ship. The box had clear panels on the top and on the sides, and there were holes with protective gloves installed so that materials inside the box could be manipulated without exposing the crew to whatever chemical or organic hazards might be present. Roger opened the isolation box, placed the entire bag inside, and closed it. Then he stuck his hands through the gloves and through them, started opening the bag. Inside was a plastic container with some sort of greenish material inside, just as Roger had reported. He moved the bag to the side and placed the plastic container front and center. Then he opened the top of the container and peered at the contents. Dorothy had moved into a position alongside him and she peered too; as a professional xenobiologist, she was familiar with most known alien life forms and the various sorts of metabolic products—poop—they might leave behind. “Look familiar?” Roger asked. “Nope,” Dorothy responded. As she moved away, she said “See if it reacts to potassium permanganate. That’ll tell you if there’s any carbon in there.” “Who’s the chemist here, you or me?” Roger asked dryly. “Yeah, yeah,” Dorothy responded. She heard him open the storage cabinets above the counter and then she heard the sound of bottles being placed on it. “Do a Wineberg stain, but don’t do it until I can come and take a look.” Roger grunted distractedly. And then: “Hmm. That’s strange….” His voice trailed off, and then it returned. “Oh, wow,” he said. Dorothy noticed something in his tone and was already rising from the small table and moving back toward him. “Oh, wow. Come take a look at—" |
| Heather had managed to slip away from her assigned table; she pushed the door to what she deduced from the diagram painted on it was the Ladies Room—the one for humans—and stepped inside. It was empty. There was a line of sinks against one mirrored wall, and a row of stalls along the wall on the other side. Heather stepped in front of the mirror and inspected her face. Behind her, a toilet flushed and then a young woman pushed the stall door open and took a place at one of the sinks. “You managed to get away too?” she said to Heather’s image in the mirror. “Yes.” Heather didn’t recognize her, but she could read the large letters NC on the woman’s blue-rimmed tag, which she wore on her blouse, just as Heather’s tag said DE. “I’m Heather Rouse, from Delaware.” “Jody Simmons, North Carolina. How are you liking it so far?” Heather shrugged. “It’s not what I expected.” “Oh, I know,” Jody said. “How about those whatever-they-ares from Ganymede? Did you see them?” Heather had done more than just see them; she knew most of them, had spoken to them, and had even visited one of the Ganymedeans, the one who was called Kim, in her home in Dover, Delaware. Heather volunteered at a relocation agency in Dover and had been assigned to help Kim and her family integrate into the human population. Kim had been eager to adapt, and she had done well, quickly learning how to interact with humans without drawing excessive attention to the rather extreme physical, chemical, and cultural differences between them. She had invited Heather for a home visit, and Heather had accepted. Ganymedean culture did not allow for the sharing of meals with strangers, or even with members of the otherwise close Ganymedean family units—it would be like asking a friend to join you in the bathroom while you defecate. So Heather arrived at Kim’s house late in the evening, well after the dinner hour. She parked her car and walked up the walk, but as she was climbing the steps to the porch, Kim opened the door. Kim’s mouthparts moved, and the yellow box attached to her breastplate activated. “Ah. Thank you for coming, please come on in,” it said in a pleasant, computer-generated voice. “Thank you,” Heather had replied, and she stepped inside. From the outside, the house looked like any other upper-middle-class mini-mansion that populated the lone exclusive suburb west of Dover. This one was a Cape Cod model, with steep gables that jutted forward and back. Inside, it did not resemble any house interior that Heather had ever seen or was likely to see. There were no interior walls at all. Inside, a packed-dirt ramp led down to a pit that occupied the entire area of the house; it was as if the shell of a house had been built over an open hole, which is exactly what had been done. The ramp descended quite steeply, and at its bottom, the dirt floor was peppered with holes at random intervals. To the side of the pit, pushed up against the dirt wall, was a small table, completely empty, and a single chair. Kim gestured at the table. “I set that up for you. Please have a seat.” “Oh, thank you so much,” Heather said. She crossed the dirt floor, gracefully avoiding the holes, pulled out the chair, and sat down. Kim followed her and assumed a posture on the dirt floor that was roughly equivalent to the posture that Heather had taken on the chair. Ganymedean anatomy did not allow for sitting on chairs, of course, and the posture that Kim took didn’t look very comfortable, but Heather knew it was a mistake to attribute human characteristics or expectations to her host. “It’s a pleasure to have you here. As soon as the Sun is fully down, the children should be waking up, and perhaps one of them will make an appearance.” “That would be fine,” Heather responded, although she hoped that she would be gone before any of the juveniles awoke. Ganymedeans were insectoid, and so their young pupated, but before that occurred, they were generally nocturnal, and generally did not become active until well into the night. Juvenile Ganymedeans were only marginally sentient, and so they didn’t always behave carefully around humans. Kim had brought some of her young into the relocation center, and did seem to have good control over their behavior, and so Heather hadn’t worried about it much, but now that she was in the home and now that she saw the number of gestation holes in the floor—there were literally dozens of them—she found herself wondering of Kim could control that many juveniles at once if they all woke up and started crawling around. As if on cue, from one of the holes in the floor, a juvenile Ganymedean raised its sensing tentacle and peered at Heather; as soon as Heather noticed, the tentacle jerked back into the hole, but Kim noticed. There was a series of gentle grinding sounds as her mouthparts moved, sounds which the translation box didn’t translate. Unknown to Heather, there was a register that Kim used with her brood that the translator circuitry could recognize and which it had been instructed not to translate, which was just as well, because generally there would have been no translation for what Kim would be saying to her children, or even what she might say to other adult Ganymedeans. In the four years since the Ganymedeans had arrived on Earth, their language had proved to be completely impenetrable to humans—only by virtue of the Ganymedeans efforts to adapt to human ideas of communication and with the help of the translation boxes, which nearly every adult Ganymedean wore on her breastplate while in public, could communication take place at all. Then Kim switched registers to something that the box would translate. “No, the brood will not come out tonight. They’ll pass the night in their holes.” “Oh, are you sure?” Heather asked. She was secretly relieved; she really didn’t know how to engage with the mostly unresponsive juveniles, and she generally ignored them when they were in the center. “Yes,” Kim said. “They must follow my directions, and I said no peeping.” After Heather replayed this scene in her mind, she returned her attention to the delegate from North Carolina. “I have some experience with them. I’m a volunteer at one of our relocation centers.” “Oh,” the delegate said, her face communicating her disgust. “Well, see you out there.” She turned and strode out of the bathroom door. ### 1115 |
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