Cold Eyes (First Contact), page 35
“Okay,” she says. “These blue dots. Those are reconnaissance cubes. At an altitude of a hundred and forty thousand meters, they can resolve the surface of the planet to within a few inches. Look. This is you a couple of days ago, walking out of the building where they housed you.”
The video she brings up is from an angle that’s not quite directly overhead. A blurry white figure walks across the dark grass toward the edge of the cliff. He’s flanked by an alien drifting alongside him. As the footage unfolds, the angle changes, indicating the motion of the satellite itself.
Dali reaches out and touches the screen, saying, “Rose.”
“Rose?” Sandy asks, raising her eyebrows and sounding perplexed. “It’s a she? She has a name?”
“Yes. She helped me escape.”
“We had eyes on you at all times,” Helios says. “But we didn’t want them to know.”
“We got your transmission,” Kari says. “When our orbit took us behind the planet, we cut the feed. We could have routed it between satellites, but we didn’t want to reveal the cards in our hand.”
“Lies,” Helios says. “They come in handy.”
“They do,” Dali says in agreement. “And your attack on their aircraft?”
“These red dots,” Sandy says, returning to the holographic overlay. “They’re stealth orbital weapons platforms. We fired needles. They’re guided missiles.”
“What else do you have?”
“You want to nuke them?” Helios asks.
“No.”
Kari says, “We’ve got sixteen thermonuclear warheads in the twenty megaton range and another eight tactical nukes.”
Sandy says, “I do not want to nuke anyone.”
“They fired on us,” Kari says. “That’s war!”
Dali ignores her, asking Sandy, “What happened to the craft that took me to the Empire?”
“The flyer?” Sandy asks, rewinding through their surveillance footage, rolling back to the point the Empire launched. She shifts the focus, skimming through its return flight. “It went back to the base by the lake.”
“And now?” Dali asks.
Sandy is determined. Single-Sentence Dali has her attention. The excitement of their reunion has faded. It seems she was ready for a party, but now she realizes that for him, returning to the Magellan wasn’t the end of his ordeal.
Sandy asks him, “What do you need, Dali?”
Ah, that’s the woman he fell in love with. Dali sneaks her a quick smile. It’s a subtle way to let her know he appreciates how she’s shifted back into mission mode. Sandy brings up a variety of satellite images from the region. He points, recognizing the sprawling mountains and the glacier leading down to the lake.
“There’s fighting in the hills,” she says, using sweeping gestures to align images from different satellites. “Looks like they’ve got action in the north and south.”
“A pincer movement,” Helios says.
“They’re trying to wipe them out,” Dali says.
“Who?” Sandy asks. “Who’s trying to wipe who out?”
Dali points, running his finger across the top of the screen.
“Those are the drifters,” he says. “They’re one of the two sentient alien species down there. They evolved to use flotation bladders to keep their bodies aloft.”
“Like these guys?” Kari asks, bringing up an image from his exploration suit on another nearby monitor. “We got this off your feed.”
It’s surreal to see drifters floating over the wreckage of the Ranger within the Hall of Ages. Most of his dealings were with Rose, but Kari’s picked a sequence where there are at least ten of them at various altitudes, doing different things. Dali hadn’t thought about it before now. His focus had been on Rose, but there were a bunch of alien scientists working on the debris from his craft. They all had their own specialties and interests. Rather than swamping him, they left Rose as the single point of contact. That was probably quite deliberate, but something that didn’t seem obvious to him until now. It seems Rose was in an exalted position among her peers.
“Yes. That’s them,” he says, turning his focus back to Sandy’s monitor and the view of the glacial lake on Bee. “I recognize their aircraft—the sleek lines and large engines.”
“And these guys in the south?” Sandy asks.
“Those are prowlers. They’re bipeds, but they have four arms.”
“So, who’s in the middle?”
“Rose is in there somewhere,” Dali says. “And Bob.”
“Bob?”
“I had to give him a name.”
“And the name you gave him was Bob?” Sandy asks, grinning. Yep, that’s typical Dali. He gives her a slight smile in acknowledgment.
“Rose and Bob aren’t going to last long,” Kari says.
“No, they’re not. You’ve got to help them.”
“Wait a minute,” Helios says. “Getting you back is one thing. Interfering in the internal politics of two distinct, intelligent extraterrestrial species is another.”
“We’re way past interfering,” Dali says. “Our presence here has stirred up war down there. We’ve got to do something. If we don’t, their revolution won’t last.”
Sandy says, “I am not liking the word revolution. Helios is right. This is beyond our remit.”
“Revolution?” Kari says. “Against what?”
“That,” Dali replies, “is the right question. To the north, among the drifters, it’s a monarchy interested only in its survival. To the south, it’s religious factions wanting to overturn the rule of the north. These guys—right here. They’re the reason I made it back to you. They want neither. In the north, they locked me in a zoo. In the south, they wanted to worship me as a prophet. But Rose and Bob convinced these guys right here in the middle to let me go.”
“We need to protect these guys,” Sandy says, circling her hand over the hill above the lake.
“Commander,” Helios says. “We’re moving well beyond our rules of First Contact. If we do this, we’re at war.”
“We’re already at war,” Kari says. “They started it. We’ll finish it.”
“We’ll do a limited strike,” Sandy says, bringing up the targeting computer. “Non-nuclear. Just enough for both sides to get the message—Back off!”
“Thank you,” Dali says.
“Okay,” Sandy says. “Machine-learning has differentiated between friendlies and hostiles based on their engagement profile. I have a lock on a hundred and forty-seven craft to a depth of fifty miles on either side of their location. The E7 platform will be overhead in a couple of minutes. Strikes will occur over a period of almost ten minutes. Once they start seeing their craft fall, they’re going to hightail it, but it won’t matter. Our needles are gravity-drawn and aero-fin guided onto their targets. They’re good out to about two hundred miles. Inbound velocities on Bee are in excess of six kilometers per second. Unless these guys are damn good at maneuvering at the last moment, every single one of them is going down. Now, Dali, for the love of all that’s holy, go and have a shower. That’s an order.”
“Yes, commander.”
Space Elevator
The flight to the rotating torus is automated and quick. Dali climbs up out of the shuttle, emerging beside the kitchenette. A sense of gravity returns, but as it’s less than the crushing weight of Bee and he’s no longer wearing an exploration suit, he feels as though he’s walking on air. Dali can skip again. With no one around, he indulges in a few steps one way and then another. Fred Astaire, eat your heart out!
The shower is warm and soothing. Water droplets fall gently on his face instead of thundering down on his visor as they did on Bee. The shampoo on the Magellan is unscented, but he could swear it smells like frangipani. It’s all he can do not to linger beneath the warm cascade of water for several hours, soaking his weary muscles. As it is, he’s done in under five minutes.
Dali wraps a towel around himself and shaves. Whereas most men would grow a thick beard in five weeks, his chin and cheeks are covered in little more than straggly bum fluff. It’s a delight to run his fingers over the smooth skin on his face again. He brushes his teeth. His gums bleed. One of his incisors is wobbly and a little sore. Dali rinses his mouth with cold water to stop blood from staining his teeth. A bit of dentistry can wait. Besides, he doesn’t want to freak anyone out about his overall health, least of all Sandy.
Clean clothes are a treasure. Who would have thought something as simple as a cotton t-shirt could be so uplifting? Dali feels human again. With his hair still wet and slicked back over his ears, he takes the shuttle back to the bridge, wanting to hear about the orbital bombardment.
“Did it work?” he asks, drifting toward the flight deck and feeling like a new man.
“Oh, it worked,” Sandy says, bringing up imagery from Bee. Dozens of aircraft lie scattered across the countryside, having plowed into the forest. Dark scars mark those that crashed on the glacier. Smoke billows from the wreckage of several fighter craft that made it as far as the beach. “Both sides are pulling back from our friends in the middle.”
“Good.”
“It won’t last,” Helios says. “And we can’t sustain this.”
“And we’re not going nuclear,” Sandy says.
“I know. I know,” Dali replies.
“What are we going to do?” Kari asks. She’s been cycling through the data retrieved from his suit. The image on her monitor is familiar. Rose lies on a stretcher at the back of a boat. Bob is sitting opposite Dali. Salt spray drifts through the air as the speedboat turns toward shore.
Dali says, “We need to build that damn space elevator.”
“What?” Kari says.
“Are you crazy?” Helios says. “That’s insane!”
Sandy, though, is quiet. Her Dali is back. He can see the sense of recognition in her eyes. She knows this isn’t a flippant suggestion. She may not understand his logic, but she must realize he’s already reasoned this through in the shower—there’s no other possible course of action. Their eyes meet. She tries not to smile. If he could, he’d kiss her, but it would be incongruous to the others. For him, though, her trust is all he’s ever wanted.
“We have three options,” Dali says. “We can bug out. We can split. We can head off to the moon of that last gas giant and establish a colony. Oh, maybe we’ll still talk to them, but we can leave them pretty much as they have been for millions of years. Alone and afraid.”
“Or?” Sandy asks.
“Or if it’s war you want, we can bomb the crap out of them. Hell, forget about nukes. We could toss an asteroid in the ocean and sterilize the planet.”
From the look of horror on Kari’s face, that isn’t an option.
“Or?” Sandy asks, only she lingers on that word, drawing it out, knowing this next point is what he’s been leading toward.
“Or we invite them to join us among the stars. We build that space elevator. We give them a way to get off Bee.”
“Bad idea,” Kari says.
“Very bad idea,” Helios says. “Look at what they did to you. If we let them up here, we could invite war.”
“They could end up fighting with us for resources,” Kari says.
“Really?” Dali asks, staring at her. “A lack of resources? In space?”
Sandy gets his logic. “Originally, we thought they were a space-faring species.”
“Exactly,” Dali says, pointing at her. “We never even considered they might be locked in. We thought they were either in their infancy or had only just reached orbit. We never considered the possibility they couldn’t explore outer space.”
“We need to consider the ethics of this,” Helios says. “This is big. This is bigger than bombing a few aircraft. The decision we make could have ramifications for humanity for thousands—tens of thousands of years to come.”
“Yes,” Dali says. “It could. It could give us a partner in our search for life elsewhere. When I was down there, they said they knew of intelligent life on several other cold eyes out here somewhere—all of them trapped by the chains of gravity.”
Sandy says, “What we need to consider is the ethics of leaving them down there!”
“That’s a good point,” Kari says. “All this talk of a cleanse. Are we really going to drift by and watch as they kill each other, committing genocide on a scale we’ve never seen before?”
“But how do we stop them from doing that up here?” Helios asks.
“We don’t,” Dali says. “They have to stop themselves. Don’t you understand? They’ve been waiting for this moment for millions of years—waiting for us. Now, we need them to listen to us.”
“What are you thinking?” Sandy asks.
“They’ve longed for First Contact, and here we are. Change has come to their world. They understand that. The only question is—what will change?”
Sandy says, “We can’t force them to change. That won’t work. If there’s one thing our own history has taught us, it’s that change has to come from within.”
Dali says, “Yep. We need to appeal to them to change for the better.”
Helios says, “I hate to be the one interrupting this particular rendition of Kumbaya, but don’t you think we’re being naive?”
To Dali’s surprise, Kari says, “We were naive thinking our mission wouldn’t disrupt their world. As much as I hate to admit it, Dali’s right. We have to take responsibility for what we’ve done by coming here. Looking at the footage from Dali’s helmet, it’s clear we can’t walk away. If we do, they’ll tear each other apart.”
Dali says, “Whether we help them or not, it would be naive to think we’re not part of whatever happens next. We’re either passive, standing by and watching as war escalates on their world. Or we’re active, steering them toward the future.”
Helios shakes his head, but he’s not disagreeing. Dali can see he’s fighting with his own logic. “I hate this shit. Goddamn it, this isn’t what we signed up for.”
“No, it’s not,” Sandy says. “But this is our choice—not theirs. We get to choose our response.”
“As complicated as this may seem,” Kari says, “it’s really quite simple. Leave, bomb, or help. When you think of it like that, it’s not a difficult choice.”
“Yes,” Dali says. “Sandy, can you patch me through?”
“How do you know you can trust them?” Helios asks as Sandy works on a nearby computer.
“I don’t,” Dali replies. “But there have been too many lies. We have got to stop lying to each other. The crazy thing is—both sides know they’re dealing with lies. It’s a game. And the common folk? They fall for it. At some point, honesty has to prevail.”
“I, ah—” Helios says, but he stops himself mid-sentence, knowing whatever’s said now is being broadcast to an alien world. Sandy hands a slimline headset to Dali, inviting him to speak. He loops the thin frame over the back of his head, positioning the microphone next to his mouth. The LED on the tip glows green.
“This is Dali Patel, First Contact specialist on board the UN warship Magellan, broadcasting to the inhabitants of the planet Gliese 273b in orbit around Luyten’s Star. Respond. Over.”
Sandy hits the mute button, whispering, “And they’re going to know what all that means?”
“Oh, yeah. Every word. Especially the word warship. They’ll know this is a formal announcement following everything that’s happened over the past month. Right about now, leaders on both sides are going to be shitting themselves.”
“They’re expecting the worst, huh?” Kari says.
“Wouldn’t you?” Helios says.
“These guys in the middle,” Dali says, tapping the screen. “They’ll be pumped. Everyone else will be expecting fire to rain from heaven.”
It takes almost a minute before there’s a reply. Over the radio, a familiar voice says, “Spaceman! You made it!”
Bob is quickly cut off by another voice, speaking with more formality. “This is Rose of Langburn, lead researcher for Earth Studies at the Central Academy of Science on Gliese 273b. Go ahead, Magellan. You have our attention.”
“After that orbital strike,” Sandy says, still on mute, “I bet we do.” She switches back to transmit and nods to Dali.
“Your world is ruled by two factions—prowlers and drifters. You have two authorities—your king and your religion. But now you have a chance for change.
“You have an opportunity. We offer you two choices—to remain as you are with your religion and your rulers, or to leave them both behind and join us among the stars.”
Dali pauses. He circles his hand through the air, mouthing the phrase, “Round trip time?”
Sandy holds up one finger, representing a second. If the Beebs want to reply, they can. When nothing is offered, Dali continues.
“We invite you to leave not only your planet, but your past behind. We will build a space elevator. We ask only one thing in return—that reason becomes your guide.
“It’s time to be honest. It’s time to think about others rather than yourself. Together, we can share the stars, but only if you’re ready to move on from the past. You can’t bring that junk up here. And we can’t police you. We won’t. You need to decide for yourself. What’s more important? Being selfish or working together as one? As a prophet on our world once said, it’s time to put away childish things.”
Still, there’s silence. Dali waits slightly longer this time, wanting Rose to say something, but she’s quiet on behalf of an entire planet listening in. At a guess, Rose is giving both the supreme ruler and their religious leaders the opportunity to speak. That they’re also silent reinforces her authority to speak on behalf of the Beebs as a whole.
Sandy drifts over beside Dali. They haven’t talked about specifics, but it doesn’t matter. He trusted her to get him off that damn planet. She trusts him to make the right call now. Sandy takes Dali’s hand, interlocking her fingers with his. Warmth radiates from her palm as Dali continues.
