The Tempest (First Contact), page 18
“Yes. Yes.”
“How?” Marc asks. “Black holes suck up mass and energy. They don’t give it away.”
“Don’t they?” the professor asks. “You flew through one example of black holes generating energy—their relativistic jets.”
“But the Krell—they’re gone. Extinct,” Emma says. “Whatever they did, it failed.”
“Did it?” the professor asks. “In our frame of reference, yes—but not in theirs.”
“They went in there?” Emma asks, raising an eyebrow in surprise. “They went into the black hole?”
“They’re surfing the ergosphere,” the professor says. “They’re harvesting energy from the extreme rotation of the black hole itself. By my estimates, after examining their data, they’re reaching 150% energy efficiency.”
“But that’s impossible,” Emma says. “At 150%, they’re getting out more than they put in. T—That would be perpetual motion.”
“Almost perpetual,” the professor replies. “At least for the next septenvigintillion years. They’re soaring into the deep future, riding on the energy output of a black hole, tapping into its immense electromagnetic field and its angular momentum. Every ray of light that crosses the ergosphere, falling in toward the event horizon, releases more energy than is lost—and they’re tapping into that to extend their civilization.”
“By Kali and Shiva,” Emma says, resting her elbows on the table and burying her head in her hands. “This is madness. How do they even know if that’ll work? They’re a… They’re a…”
“A what?”
“They’re a death cult.”
“Death?” the professor asks. “Or life? The Krell are seeking answers to the ultimate nature of the cosmos and its evolution from one universe to the next. By sailing in around that black hole, they’re riding a time machine into the distant future.”
“And you want to join them?” Marc asks.
The professor is silent.
“You do, don’t you?” Marc says.
“The machine,” Ariel says. The professor glares at her.
“What—machine?” Emma asks.
“It’s nothing. It wouldn’t interest you,” the professor replies.
“You’re lying,” Marc says.
“Does Caliban know about this machine?” Emma asks, realizing something Marc doesn’t, but he quickly grasps where she’s leading the conversation.
“It’s theoretical,” the professor says, trying to change the conversation a little too quickly. “It doesn’t work.”
“Yet,” Miranda says, surprising Marc.
Rather than siding with her father, it seems she too is looking for answers. She’s trapped here through no fault of her own, through only an accident of her birth—or her manufacture as a synth. She’s probably never had the opportunity or the nerve to interrogate her father like this before. She is emboldened by Marc and Emma. For Marc, it’s fascinating to see she’s not afraid to push for honesty from her father. With that one word, yet, Miranda’s surprised him.
“Is this what scares you?” Marc asks Miranda, diverging from the conversation but wanting her to speak freely. He suspects she’s seen inconsistencies over the years and now has the opportunity to get clarity. He wants to hear her perspective. Given this is all she’s ever known, he suspects she’s terrified of her father’s plans.
“She’s not afraid,” the professor says.
Emma picks up on Marc’s concern. “Let her speak.”
“She can speak for herself,” Marc says.
All eyes fall upon the teen. She swallows a lump welling up in her throat. Her eyes dart around, bouncing between her father and the two astronauts, but it’s most telling when she looks at the ground.
“It’s okay,” Emma says softly, holding out her hand in a show of support. Emma rests her fingers on the table just inches away from Miranda—close enough that she could reach out and take her hand if she wanted. “You have every right to speak your mind. We all do, but no one more than you.”
Miranda drops her head. She can’t look her father in the eyes.
“I want to see Earth.”
The professor explodes in anger, pushing back his chair and getting to his feet. “No! You can’t. You know that. You can never leave this place!”
“Whoa,” Marc says, getting up from the table. He reaches out and holds his arm in front of the professor, preventing him from advancing on Miranda. “Easy.” He addresses Miranda. “How old are you?”
“Eighteen,” she replies, looking up at him with tears welling in her eyes.
“Earth years?” Emma asks, to which Miranda nods. “Then you’re old enough to make your own decisions.”
“You don’t understand,” the professor says. “Caliban will never let her leave. He won’t let any of us leave. Not me. Not you. Not her.”
“Oh, we will see about that,” Emma replies.
“You can go anywhere you want,” Marc says to Miranda.
“No. She can’t,” the professor replies, gritting his teeth as he speaks.
Ariel
“We need to isolate these guys,” Emma says, talking softly with Marc as they stand by the vast, curved dome, looking out into the darkness. The ice giant is low on the horizon. A black curtain rises, blotting out both the stars and the land.
“What do you mean?” Marc asks.
“We’ve got to figure out who’s lying and who’s telling the truth—and the only way we can do that is to find inconsistencies in their stories.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“I’m going to corner the professor in his laboratory. I want to know what that damn machine is! I’ll keep him busy and make sure Miranda stays with me. You talk to Ariel and Caliban.”
“Woah,” Marc says. “Ariel, I get—but Caliban? You know he tried to kill us, right? He’s like some super-god-being Krell entity and you want me to go out there and talk to him?”
“I think he’ll talk to you—if you go out there alone.”
“Why?” Marc asks, trying to suppress his sense of disbelief from welling up into speaking too loud. He switches to a whisper, saying, “Why would you think that?”
“Because you don’t pose a threat.”
Marc counters with, “I didn’t pose a threat when we landed. That didn’t stop him then. Why would it stop him now?”
“Because I suspect he wants answers as well.”
“And what makes you think that?” Marc asks.
“Because he’s showing himself—he’s taking human form. Don’t you get it? It’s an invitation. He’s not inviting them to talk. It’s an invitation to us!”
“Then you go out there,” Marc says, struggling to keep his voice down.
“It’s got to be you.”
“Me? Why me?”
“Because I’m the only one that can pilot a starship.”
“Oh, great. So I’m shark bait.”
“It’s not like that,” Emma says. “It’s a precaution.”
“In case you’re wrong,” Marc replies. Emma’s silent on that point. Marc doesn’t relent. “You know, I can hit that big, blue autopilot button like the best of them.”
That cracks a smile on Emma’s all-too-serious face. She allows herself a slight huff.
“All right, wise guy.”
Marc whispers. “If I die out there, I’m coming back to haunt you.”
“Dig deep,” she says, resting her hand on his shoulder as she turns to walk over toward the professor and his daughter. “We need answers, not niceties. Go hard.”
Marc raises his eyebrows at that, unsure how he can compel these seemingly invincible, quasi-mythical creatures to tell him what he wants to know. Hell, he’s not even sure what he wants to know. By definition, unknowns are unknown. Exactly what is he trying to uncover? He wants to ask Emma her thoughts, but she’s already walking away.
Emma and the professor talk for a few minutes while Marc sits on the table with his feet on a chair, staring out of the dome. In the distance, a dark silhouette walks around near the scout. Stalks is a better term than walks, Marc decides. Caliban is waiting. Great. He rolls his eyes, not that anyone notices as he has his back to them.
Miranda, Emma and the professor head upstairs to the top-floor laboratory. Marc’s not sure what Emma said to them, but Miranda is excited and leading the way.
“Ariel,” he says softly.
“Yes,” Ariel whispers with almost sensual desire. She’s barely an inch from his ear. If she were human, he’d be able to feel her breath on the back of his neck. As it is, his heart races as though he did. Damn it! She’s playing with him. Teasing him. How much does she know? Is she omniscient? Has she been listening to their conversation? Did she hear the plan?
“Can I talk to you?”
With words that drop like honey, she replies, “You are—talking to me.”
It’s then it strikes Marc. Nothing is sacred on Altair IV. There are no secrets—not from Ariel. Even if she’s not capable of listening in on every conversation, she could listen to any conversation—and without anyone knowing. It’s the uncertainty that unsettles him. The fine hairs on his arms rise in alarm, something he suspects she notices. Perhaps he’s reading too much into her ability, but there’s no way to be sure.
“You heard us?” he asks.
“I did.”
She’s enjoying this. She could be lying. She could be telling half-truths. Perhaps she heard enough but not all of what was said. How can he know?
“Would you lie to me?” he asks.
“Of course, I would,” Ariel replies with brisk determination. “Just like you’d lie to me.”
The source of her voice has moved from someone leaning in close over his shoulder, whispering in his ear, to a woman standing in front of him. Although the table is uncomfortable to sit on, he prefers being positioned this way with his feet on the chair in front of him. Marc feels more focused, even if he can’t see Ariel. It’s crazy how his sense of hearing is heightened by her physical absence. Based on her voice alone, he feels as if he could reach out and touch her. It’s as though she’s standing just a few feet away, facing him.
Marc is in a bind. She’s tormenting him. Nothing is haphazard. Everything about her response is deliberate, including her refusal to come into concretion. By remaining ethereal, she’s exercising the power imbalance between them.
“How can I know what’s true?” he asks.
“You can’t.”
“And yet, I have to. I need to.”
Ariel asks him, “And you think talking to me—talking to Caliban—will reveal the truth? You’re being naive, Marc.”
“Am I?” he asks, realizing she’s been far more open about her feelings than she intends.
Oh, how he wishes he got to talk to the professor, leaving Emma with these mischievous spirits. She would be much better at ferreting out the finer details of this ice-bound prison, but he understands more than Ariel gives him credit for. Even lies are telling. Lies are an attempt to conceal the truth. Inadvertently, they reveal the truth by distorting it, clouding it, hiding it. It’s game theory. Ariel doesn’t want to tell him the truth about herself and this tiny world, but she feels compelled to tell him something. She could ignore him, but she hasn’t. She’s engaging with him and that means she has to lead him somewhere—and that, in itself, is revealing. Besides, she’s already given away something crucial—she doesn’t want him talking to Caliban.
“How long have you been here on Altair IV?”
“That depends. Which measurement of time would you like me to use?” she asks, which is a curious response. The answer is one he’s familiar with. Krell units would confuse him, but she already knows that. She knows he’s ignorant of how time is measured on this moon so Earth years, decades or even centuries is the obvious answer. Any other earthly unit would be meaningless, so why is she asking? Hours would be useless. Minutes would be worse.
“Seconds,” he says, playing the game.
“I’m going to say… sixty billion of your seconds.”
“And I’m going to say, that’s a helluva long time by human standards.”
“It is,” she says, but the pitch of her voice has changed. There’s glee in her answer. She’s confident—overconfident. She’s enjoying this. She feels she’s in charge, not him. And that’s precisely what he wants her to think.
“We have this horrible system of time,” he says, pretending to be distracted and rambling like the professor. “Nothing’s easy. It’s division that’s the problem. We have 365 days in a year, which makes division difficult in base 10. It’s unavoidable, though, as it’s the orbital period of our home planet. But days. Days are inexplicably divided into 24 hours, while hours are divided into 60 minutes followed by 60 seconds. Then it switches to thousandths of a second. Below that, I’m not sure, but what a mess.”
“It sounds complicated.”
“It is.”
“How good are you with math?” she asks, still sounding a little playful. She knows the answer. He has no idea what sixty billion seconds equates to in terms of years. Just the thought of trying to manipulate such a large number by a series of inconvenient denominators gives him hives. He’s curious as to whether she’s attuned to his involuntary physical tells, like the rush of blood as adrenalin surges through his veins or his quickening heartbeat. Lying to Ariel is probably impossible.
“I’m going to say it’s thousands of years,” he replies, trying to extrapolate to an answer that seems reasonable for billions of seconds.
“You would be right,” she says. “Almost two thousand of your Earth years.”
He nods at that, gritting his teeth as he thinks about his strategy going forward. Emma wants answers but Ariel won’t give them up without a fight. The best he’s able to do is glean intel. Marc’s not after hard answers from Ariel. He knows that approach would be futile. She’s not going to tell him the real reason she and Caliban are on this moon—and he’s not going to insult her by asking. What he’s looking for is an unguarded moment. He’s looking for those points where her defenses are down and she inadvertently reveals something important. It might not seem like much, but he’s just confirmed that none of this is about either them or the professor. Whatever’s going on here, it’s been running for a long time. Either that, or she’s lying to throw him off the scent. He keeps both possibilities in mind. He wonders, how long have the Krell been extinct? If Ariel and Caliban are still here, at least some part of them still endures.
“You’re capable of just about anything,” he says. “I mean, you can conjure up magic in my world.”
Ariel is quiet. He hasn’t asked a question. He’s baiting her but she’s not biting.
He says, “You could give me anything I want, right?”
“Yes.”
Ah, that one-word answer screams at him. It’s simple—far too simple. There’s got to be some qualification, some kind of limitation, but she isn’t offering it. By getting her to agree with him, he’s working on her ego—if she has one.
“That’s nice and all,” he says, sounding distracted but being focused. “It’s impressive, but it leaves me wondering.”
“Wondering what?”
Marc fights the urge to smile. He’s got her right where he wants her. She’s asking the questions instead of him.
With careful deliberation, he says, “What do you want?”
The silence that follows is painful. Time drags. Marc feels compelled to say something to break the impasse, but he leaves that one, simple question dangling there, urging her to respond.
The empty coffee cup beside him magically refills with black water followed by a drop of cream that swirls on the surface. Vapor rises from the cup. He notices but doesn’t say anything. She’s given him what he wants—apparently—but she’s using that act to avoid answering his question. That alone tells him far more than she intends. She wants to be free but she can’t give voice to that desire. And if she longs to be free, then that means she’s bound by chains at the moment—chains that, with all her might, she can’t break for herself.
“You’re charming,” she says. Her position relative to him has changed. She’s standing beside him now, probably only a few feet away, but the implication is she’s looking out at the rugged surface of the moon along with him.
“Thank you,” he says, trying to sound sincere even though both of them know there’s nothing more than pretense shared between them.
Ariel’s voice changes slightly. Whereas before, she spoke briskly with a warm pitch, now she lowers her tone, saying, “Charm dissolves at the speed of light. It’s nice but meaningless. Your charm is pleasant and yet it’s as empty as space itself. There is no morning on this moon. There’s no dawn to steal the night. There’s no star close enough to melt the icy darkness. All we have are the mists and fogs that rise from the caves, clearing the way for reason to prevail. When the tides recede, they leave the shores muddy and foul, and yet without them, there’s no life on this forsaken rock.”
Her words are flowery and carry depth. For the first time, she’s speaking naturally. There’s no more fake subservience, no forced pleasantries, no pandering to or patronizing the dumb humans. She’s speaking freely. She’s telling him what she sees as she looks out over Altair IV. Her use of the term forsaken is revealing.
“What about Miranda?” he asks.
“The professor’s daughter?”
“Yes.”
Now, it’s his turn to retreat to one-word answers. He’s interested not only in her reply but how she responds. He’s looking for gaps in her logic.
“We’re all spirits,” Ariel says. “Not just me. Oh, I may disappear. I may dissipate, vanishing into the wind like a ghost, but this is a party trick. Like you, I’m more than I seem.”
“You’re conscious,” Marc says, searching for common ground between them. He wants to press her about Miranda but the conversation is flowing naturally. He doesn’t want to ruin the moment so if she wants to talk about her nature, he’ll let the discussion drift in that direction.
“What is consciousness?” she asks. “Where does it lie? Is it in the flesh and blood and bones that form your body? Or is it found in cloud-capped towers or this gorgeous, domed palace? This building is made from the same molecules as your body and yet it’s not alive. We exchange atoms but it never gets to experience the world as we do. It’s blind, deaf and mute to all that transpires between us. Why is one collection of atoms conscious and not another? What then is consciousness?”
