Cold Eyes (First Contact), page 5
“Okay, this really does sound like me,” Dali says, chuckling.
“Then it hits me. Oh my god. Dali Patel from JFK High! You smiled. You must have seen the realization as it struck. I remembered you as the American Indian that wasn’t an American Indian. Your parents were from? What was the name of the city? It was somewhere near Nepal.”
Dali shakes his head. He has no idea.
“You told us you could see the Himalayas from your grandparents’ place. Everyone used to ask you if you’d climbed Everest.”
“I hadn’t, right?”
“At the age of 16? I hope not. We had math and biology together in high school. I was the quiet one. You were the talker. Always asking questions.”
“That sounds about right,” Dali says, shaking his head. “Why is it I feel embarrassed about something I never actually did and certainly don’t remember?”
“Oh, I remember,” Sandy says. “Some of your biology questions about female anat—”
“The dance,” Dali says. “Let’s go back to the dance.”
“So there you are, offering me a dance. We weave our way between the couples and meet in the middle of the dance floor without so much as a word. It was the music. It was way too loud. I think you said something, but I couldn’t hear you over the thumping beat. You took my hand and we started waltzing. Everyone else is jumping around and throwing their hands in the air, but you—you ignored them. You ignored the music. Somehow, you made it work.”
Dali says, “I suspect that’s the only dance I knew.”
“We laughed,” Sandy says with eyes glazing over. “I remember that—lots of drinks and laughs. You were quite the gentleman. You escorted me back to my room and left after a kiss on the cheek.”
Dali’s fascinated by her recollection. For Sandy, this is real. This isn’t some implanted memory. It’s as indistinguishable to her as seeing him in the vat this morning.
“The next day, I had one helluva hangover. My head was thumping. I thought there was a jackhammer going off inside my skull. I had to check out by ten, so I dragged myself out of bed and into a shower. A sheet of paper had been slipped beneath my door. I remember it because of the audacity.”
“Audacity?” Dali asks, genuinely surprised.
“It read, Breakfast in the atrium. No question mark. No proposed time. No signature. Just a statement.”
“H—How long?” Dali asks, raising a finger. “I mean, how long were we together after this? This was a long time ago, right? You said you were in your seventies when the Magellan launched. This is way before then.”
Sandy looks him in the eye. “We were married for forty-two years, Dali.”
Dali sits back on the bed. His eyes go wide. “Wow!”
“Wow indeed,” Sandy says, echoing him.
“And kids?”
“Grandkids. And great-grandkids.”
“We have grandkids? And great-grandkids???”
For a moment, he feels numb. Sandy’s quiet, letting him take in the news.
“I—ah.” He points back and forth, saying, “You? Me?”
“It’s a treat to see you lost for words just once in your life.”
“Please,” he replies, gesturing to her. “Continue.”
Dali has a million questions, but she can only answer them in a linear fashion, one at a time. It takes all his self-will to keep quiet and listen. Sandy can’t give him answers if she can’t get a word into the conversation. He fights the impulse to blurt out his thoughts.
Sandy says, “You were sipping coffee, reading the paper when I walked into the atrium. Being a gentleman, you stood and pulled out a seat for me. I was wearing dark sunglasses. Anything to avoid the light streaming in through the overhead windows.”
“And?” he asks.
“And we talked for hours. I have no idea what we ate, but we sat there until sunset.”
Dali leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees and his chin on his hands.
Sandy continues. “You said it was a mistake to ignore humanities and the social sciences. You told me First Contact should lead with a clear sense of who we are and how we got where we are. You convinced me it was more important than discussing general relativity or quantum mechanics with our extraterrestrial friends. You said the inhabitants of Bee need to understand our religions. Not to confuse them. Not to convert them. But because they’ve shaped so much of who we’ve become—be that atheist or otherwise. You were convinced there would be parallels in their world.”
She looks up at the ceiling for a moment, trying to recall memories from another lifetime.
“You said… Umm, hang on. I can’t remember the exact phrase, but you were quite adamant. It was something like…”
Dali mumbles, “They’re meeting us, not our textbooks.”
“Yes,” she says, pointing at him. “That was it!”
“They need to understand who we are, not who we pretend to be.”
“Yes. Yes. Yes. You remembered!”
Dali shrugs. “It was just right there in the back of my mind!”
“This is good,” Sandy says, rushing over and sitting next to him. She takes his hand in hers. “This is great. So the implant took. At least some of it.”
“I guess. I mean, I don’t remember anything specific, just ideas.”
“I can work with this,” she says. “It gives me something to counter Helios.”
Dali feels under pressure to say something else, but there’s nothing there. He wants to say he remembers more, but he doesn’t. The look on her face is one of excitement. Dali doesn’t have the heart to dampen her enthusiasm. He smiles and squeezes her hand in agreement.
“And from there?” he asks, desperate to move the conversation along.
“Oh,” she says, becoming lost in a moment. “Ah, I introduced you to the project director for Long Shot. He got it. He felt this was the missing piece of the puzzle. We got married about a year later. By then, you were officially part of the project planning group. It took about a decade before they shifted you to the prime crew. I was so excited.”
“I bet,” Dali says, seeing the sparkle in her eyes as she clings to his hands.
She’s waiting for something more, waiting for her Dali to emerge. He’s right there in front of her, but she won’t do anything about it. This has to come from him.
But nothing’s changed.
Even with all the reading he’s done, Dali still feels baffled to find himself on a starship. Physically, he’s eighteen years old. Mentally, he hasn’t hit eighteen hours. Emotionally, he feels blank.
There’s depth to her smile. The soft lights reflect off her eyes. Starlight drifts in through the window. The warmth of her hands, the softness of her touch, the tender way she runs her thumb over the back of his hand. This is where he belongs. He may not understand it. He might feel like a stranger, an imposter, an outsider, but to her, he belongs here. The way she breathes, drawing in deep and raising her chest before relaxing and exhaling. She’s longed for this moment. She’s dreamt of this for years.
Dali’s not ready, but he can’t deny her feelings—implanted or not. He can’t break her heart. She deserves honesty but not at the expense of crushing her emotions. To hurt her is more than he could bear. He lets go of her fingers, pausing for a moment, knowing the next few seconds will define their lives together on the Magellan.
Sandy holds her breath.
Dali reaches out, taking her arm and running his hand up over her shoulder. She closes her eyes. His fingers stroke the soft skin on the side of her neck. She leans in. Their lips touch. It’s not a kiss so much as an acknowledgment of each other. He lingers. She waits. He caresses her cheeks, kissing her softly.
Sandy still hasn’t opened her eyes. She reaches up, pulling on the zipper running down the center of his flight suit, drawing it slowly to his waist. Her hands slip inside. Fingernails scratch lightly at his chest. With that, Dali feels a rush of warmth surge through his body. He’s lightheaded, almost giddy, but he doesn’t care. Far from being clones a quadrillion miles from home, they’re long-lost lovers reunited.
Lies
Dali’s nervous. He bites into a dull green algae bar. He’s had a few of these over the past couple of days. They’re basically the same color going in as coming out, but the flavor’s pleasant and the bar is packed with nutrients. The taste is a little salty with a slight hint of lemon.
Whereas the living quarters on the torus are a relaxed environment, the bridge is chaotic—at least for someone who doesn’t know what all the switches, dials and knobs control. There’s a clear division between digital and analog. Most systems have a digital display with a touch screen interface that adapts depending on what’s being examined. Beneath those, though, are a bunch of hard overrides. It’s 75,246,400,000,000 miles to the nearest gas station. It wouldn’t do for one of their core systems to fail because a cosmic ray took out the fine wiring within a computer chip and there was no way to manage at least basic functions.
Every core system on the Magellan has two backups. One is hot, ready to take over in an instant. The other is cold and under maintenance review. Every few days, the systems are rotated so that no one system can ever be called prime. On top of that, the frequency with which they’re rotated is offset so faults can’t cascade across systems. For Dali, the complexity is mind-boggling, but he gets it—they’re outside the range of AAA. If anything breaks, they’ve got to figure it out themselves.
Dali doesn’t belong on the Magellan—not without any memory of his training. He desperately wants to fit in. He feels he needs to show the others he can contribute to the mission. For the last few hours, he’s been reviewing documents and familiarizing himself with the key milestones on approach to Bee. Ideas ricochet around in his mind like shrapnel from a grenade.
Dali doesn’t want to be dead weight. He’s got something to prove, but he doesn’t want that motive to be obvious to the others. After the initial arguments, he’s looking for an opening. He wants to inject some value and avoid conflict with Helios.
Sandy disappears down the shaft leading to the engines at the rear of the spacecraft. The tunnel’s long. The lights only come on as she reaches each section, making it appear as though she’s drifting off into the darkness. This is it. Sandy’s no longer here to shield him. Dali can feel the tension in the air.
“So, how do we talk to them?” Helios asks, drifting through the cockpit.
Although his question sounds casual, Dali has no doubt it’s calculated. Helios pulls on a handrail, maneuvering through the narrow gap below the overhead instrument panel and the windshield—or is it more correctly a transparent vacuum shield? He pulls himself down into his seat.
As they’re barely under power, executing a light deceleration burn as they pass through the system, there’s no need to strap in. For Helios, it’s a parking spot. He drifts inches from the foam padding on the seat, slipping his legs beneath the dash. Footholds are the only practical way to remain stationary in weightlessness. Although Helios may look bored, he’s not. He might be idly checking flight metrics, but it’s a bluff. The chances of any particular reading changing are non-existent. Habit has him going through the motions as he prods Dali about his supposed area of expertise.
“Do we speak in English or light waves?” he asks.
“I was wondering the same thing,” Kari says. “How do we talk to them?”
They’re testing him. Ganging up on him would be a better phrase. Out of the corner of his eye, Dali can see Sandy still sailing toward engineering. She’s so far down the shaft, the motion-sensitive lights are turning off behind her. Helios and Kari are taking full advantage of her absence. If he were them, he’d be drilling the new guy too. At some point, their lives may depend on Dali’s ability to respond in an emergency, so it’s a fair concern. Better to understand any limitations now than when things go to hell.
Dali chews on the last of his algae bar. He takes his time before replying. Nerves cause people to rush, which doesn’t help. Rushing would reveal how anxious he is for their acceptance. Dali’s got to be composed. If he wants to come across as competent, he’s got to show confidence. He takes a sip of recycled water from a plastic pouch and pushes the clip up on the straw to prevent any spillage.
“Slowly,” he says in mimicry of the way he lingered before responding. Dali pushes the drink pouch against a strip of Velcro on the hull to prevent it from drifting around the cabin. “Talking to another intelligent species is going to take time and patience.”
Neither of them responds. Dali doubts they’ve conspired together to drill him on this, but it’s apparent there’s an unspoken agreement between them—it’s time to give him a nudge. Given this is his supposed area of expertise, they want to know whether he’s up for the challenge.
“We can’t rush this,” Dali says, recalling lecture notes he read last night before bed. “Language is fickle. Professor Diethelm Kanjahn tells a story of a friend in South East Asia calling out in the markets, I’m looking for my wife! Young women all around him started laughing, jesting with him in Khmer, saying, Me! Take me!”
“I don’t get it,” Kari says.
“To his horror, he had asked for a wife, not his wife. Language is nuanced. We’ve got to be careful. We’ve got to take the time to be sure about what’s being said. And that’s true on both sides.”
“Time is all we’ve got,” Helios says. He’s not wrong. The mission planners set the crew’s starting age at eighteen, giving them decades to accomplish First Contact if needed.
Kari asks, “So if they’re similar to dolphins, are we going to have to learn to speak in sonar?”
“No,” Dali replies. “Regardless of whether they speak via light waves or pheromones, we’re dealing with an entire planet. There are probably dozens of major languages down there, along with hundreds of dialects and minor languages. The simplest approach is for them to learn English.”
“You want them to learn our language?” Kari says. “That’s a little presumptuous, don’t you think?”
“Arrogant,” Helios says, being blunt rather than shy with his opinion.
“Not arrogant,” Dali says. “Practical. Remember, the goal is to communicate clearly, to avoid misunderstandings. The easiest way to do that is to have a common, agreed standard. A convention. As we can’t be expected to learn all of their languages, nuances, and idioms, it makes sense to offer ours as a meeting place.”
Helios doesn’t agree. “If we want to learn anything about their civilization, we’re going to need to speak their language.”
“Eventually, yes,” Dali concedes. “But there won’t be a single language. We have to take baby steps. Civilization isn’t linear or logical. It develops in waves. On Earth, the Phoenicians invented the alphabet, the Greeks democracy, the Chinese gunpowder, the Europeans optical glass. Our civilization is a blend of these over time. We have to recognize, we’re not dealing with the inhabitants of Bee as they are, but as they have reached this point in their history. Like us, their history will be replete with heartache and triumph. If we’re going to understand that, we have to have a shared language.”
“And that’s English?” Kari asks.
“Yes,” Dali says. “It’s an arbitrary choice. It could easily be Chinese or German. But we’re initiating First Contact, so we set the rules. Having one approach will simplify things and avoid confusion.”
Kari looks skeptical. Helios doesn’t look convinced. Dali needs to take a punt. What’s the football term for a pass thrown wildly downfield in hope of scoring a touchdown? A Hail Mary. Yeah, he’s got to throw one of those and try to get out in front of them. Okay, he thinks, let’s try something provocative.
“Communication is the most vital part of our mission.”
Helios raises an eyebrow and looks over at Kari.
“As an astrobiologist, I disagree,” she says. “Biological contact is where the rubber hits the road.”
Dali isn’t fazed by her comment.
“Oh, I have no doubt about the importance of physical contact, but we shouldn’t underestimate the value of communication. We’re undertaking intellectual First Contact. This is a profound moment for both us and them.”
“So we talk with them,” Helios says. “Big deal. I think Kari’s right. Biology is where the real gems lie.”
Helios might think he’s good at poker, but Dali sees straight through him. Dali is careful not to give anything away in his facial expressions. He can see Helios knows he’s got Dali at a disadvantage. Helios remembers the training. Dali doesn’t. Helios understands the various ways in which contact will unfold as part of the mission profile. He’s baiting Dali—walking him into a trap. Dali, though, is undeterred.
“Biology is the how of alien life. Communication gives us the why. Both are important. They resolve different things. They answer different questions. Looking at who the Beebs are and how they developed to this point in time is going to allow us to understand them as a civilization.”
“I think you’re full of shit,” Helios says. “I say, we let them talk to us however they like. We shouldn’t dictate terms.”
Well, at least he’s honest, Dali thinks. And consistent.
“This isn’t a game,” Dali replies, dousing the anger Helios is throwing around. “We’re not likely to reach a mono-culture down there. I doubt there will be a single ambassador representing them. Oh, someone might try, but it’ll be a bluff. Given the stratification of the planet into various habitable zones, I suspect we’re going to see things like class warfare and conflict.
“There’s not much dry land. And it’s strung out. It’s vast. On Earth, maintaining empires across large geographical tracts has always been impossible. It leads to fractures, fragmentation. There will be opposing cultures on Bee, which will lead to factions and open war. If we choose one of their languages over another or even appear to side with one culture above another, we could inflame those tensions. No, it’s better we come as peacemakers rather than wading into a conflict we don’t understand. Using English as the medium of intellectual exchange will allow us to do that.”
