Damocles, page 10
Cho shifted at the word, nudging Meg, who flitted her fingers over the screen.
“This is Cho,” the recorded voices said.
Loul put his finger through the symbol once more and pointed to the small silver box beside Cho. “Is that Cho?” His mind worked so hard trying to mentally bridge the gap between his stare and Meg’s he could feel heat radiating up from beneath his lower teeth. He heard the Effans muttering about what the hell he was talking about but he kept his eyes on Meg. He really hoped she could read minds, although at the moment all she would probably see in his was bewilderment and bedlam.
Meg brought her hands up and let her knuckles fall away. She fiddled with the screen, ghosting her hands around Loul’s unmoving finger, and the word issued forth. “No.”
Loul pressed into the symbol space again. “What is this?”
Meg smiled, once again leaning in even closer while her fingers flitted and his voice emanated from the gray patch on her shirt. “This is lab.” The Effans tittered in excitement, whispering about wanting to see the alien’s small lab, already thinking about bridging their own gaps in extraterrestrial science. From the corner of his eye, he could see Cho peering into the larger lab kit across from him, but he knew, or at least he felt, that he and Meg wrestled with a different gap, a gap that felt like it was about to close.
Meg’s finger brushed against his at the hooked symbol. “What is this?” Her face hovered near enough that he could hear her breathy voice half a second before his own voice rumbled forth. She pointed to the Effans’ kit. “What is this?”
“Lab.” Loul answered.
Loul settled back into his crouch, thoughts falling into place. He didn’t even realize Meg mirrored him, settling back onto her heels, both of their eyes narrowing in thought, both waiting to see if they had reached the same conclusion. Loul wondered if maybe he was going a little crazy because it sure felt like he and Meg were communicating, not just through words and gestures, but really connecting. For the first time in his adult life, he felt no awkwardness at the possibility of making a mistake. Even though the fate of the planet might literally rest on him getting this conversation correct, all the pressure melted away in light of the improbability of the entire situation. What did he have to lose?
He jabbed his finger at the symbol then jabbed his finger where he had seen Meg press when the words yes and no had issued forth. Symbol, yes. Symbol, no. Symbol. No sounds emerged but the yes/no words. Meg rocked forward, her narrow shoulders hitching in that way he understood to mean she wanted him to repeat himself, so he did. Symbol, yes. Symbol, no. Symbol. A rash of heat burned beneath his jaw where he held his teeth tightly together, and he held his breath.
Then all of Meg’s teeth came into view. Her head tipped back at an impossible angle and he could see the fine bones and tendons that made up her pale, slender neck, and he heard that staccato bell sound coming from her lips. Cho stared at her. The Effans stared at her, but Loul stared at her so hard he thought he might set her on fire with his mind until she bumped her knuckles together with enthusiasm. If that wasn’t joy on her face, Loul didn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground. He grinned along with her.
She jabbed at the yes button again and again. “Yes. Yes. Yes.”
Without thinking, Loul rocked forward as she did, their hands bumping hard between them, this time not separating. They continued to lean in closer and closer, close enough that he could see the tender pink skin that held her fragile white teeth, could see small dark spots scattered over her narrow nose, and could see that her wide, wet eyes were fringed with fine black hair. He knew he grinned too as their foreheads touched and he smelled her strange warm breath.
One of the Effans, or maybe both, demanded to know, “What? What’s happening? What did you do? What did you push?”
“I think,” he lowered his voice so as not to shout into Meg’s mouth, “that the symbol is a question mark.”
“It doesn’t look like a question mark,” Effan Two said. “It looks like a hook.”
“Doesn’t matter what it looks like.” Loul drifted back so his eyes could focus more clearly on Meg’s smooth face. “I think that’s how we ask questions.”
The Effans seemed unimpressed but Loul continued to grin. A question mark. How appropriate. He knew he’d use that button a million times.
SEVEN
LOUL
* * *
It really was no surprise that the media found out about the arrival. The arrival—that’s what the Cartar Federal Administration called it when it finally held its press conference. The media webbing could only block out visuals for so long before the world became curious, especially at a popular tourist site like the Roana Temple. Normally, once the Zobos twins set, the Roana Temple drew hundreds of visitors a day, with the warmth of the Red Sun and the low-hanging Ellaban Sun making the temperature and light perfect for picnicking during high light and any manner of mystical conjuring and hard partying during the low.
What did surprise Loul was how ordinary this had all become, inasmuch as spending all of his shifts communicating with extraterrestrials could be. The invasion of the news helicopters and the scuffles and skirmishes going on behind the military barricades occurred in a distant world from his. For Loul, the rounds he had spent since being abducted from the telemetry building had become a lifetime unto themselves, a world inhabited by him, Meg, and some other people who came and went.
Not that there hadn’t been plenty of surprises to discover with the Urfers; still most shocking was their pattern of falling into stasis every four or five shifts. The first time it had happened, that first bewildering day, Loul and the Effans had talked the generals down from their insistence that the aliens be transported to a private facility. The Urfers had set up their filmy little bubble shelters, drawn water from a reservoir on the side of their ship, and generally set about making a camp in sight of the entire Cartar military and Space Administration. After the Effans had made contact, other teams had come forth and started their own uncertain dance with the visitors.
It took Loul a while to get used to hearing his own voice booming out of the speaker patches each of the Urfers wore those first few days. It seemed the light screen that Meg worked with was patched into the screens each of the others used, and so, one awkward phrase at a time and with much pointing and gesturing and more than a few big misunderstandings, a fragile communication bridge emerged, with Loul’s voice being the ipso facto voice of the Urfers. As other members of the military and science teams gained confidence, Loul heard their voices peppering conversations. The Effans’ voices rang out quite shrilly as they worked with Cho, and of all the combinations in the restricted space, the scientists seemed to be covering the most ground. Tissue, skin, and hair samples had their own language that both sides felt conversant in.
After several shifts that first day, the Urfers had pulled away, conferring around their shelters. Cho spoke with some animation, gesturing to his screen where Loul had seen his data streaming by. Something he had discovered in the scans of the Effans required a closed circle for the aliens. As they met, Meg kept looking over her shoulder at Loul, the remarkable flexibility of her body not quite as shocking as it had been hours before. Her body language, as alien as it was, reassured him that she would return to him, that they would pick up their new and exhilarating game of building a language.
The other teams within the barricade were not so reassured. The mechanical engineers stomped their feet when the smallest of the Urfers turned its back on them, leaving them with only a jabbing-stabbing hand gesture toward the ship, as it joined its crewmates in the circle. Engineers, soldiers, scientists, archivists—all of them huffed in various stages of frustration as the Urfers withdrew for consultation. When they turned back to the impatient assembly, they stood as a tight group, only Meg stepping forward toward Loul.
She did that settling stance twice, giving him the impression that she was preparing to tackle a difficult concept. Great, he thought, another challenge. So far he knew he’d been skating by on luck and instinct, the bulk of whatever success they might be having resting squarely on Meg’s patience and clever machine. For all he knew, he might have already gotten everything wrong. Every friendly sentence and word construct they had might be completely misconstrued by him. The specter of being the man who opened the gates to the evil aliens that destroyed Dideto reared its hideous head for the millionth time that day.
But when she started to gesture, her eyes fixed on him, the doubt dissipated for millionth time. She watched him so carefully, her strange smooth face so expressive, even if he couldn’t exactly read those expressions. She put her hand on his chest (and he was getting fixated on the sensation of her light touch) and said, “Loul.” Easy enough. Then she did this strange thing with her shoulders and her neck. The thin yoke of bones that made up her shoulder carriage rose high up on her long neck and her narrow chin dropped, folding the pale skin in ripples beneath her face. She closed her eyes for several seconds and then opened them. With shoulders back down and her long line of posture restored, she touched Loul again. “Loul.”
Effan One whispered behind him. “I think she’s talking about dropping.”
“Oh,” Loul said as he watched Meg repeat the strange sequence. “Dropping,” he said, pointing to her screen where he knew she captured the words. He closed his own eyes, feigning the dropping position. When he looked again, she was tapping her knuckles and smiling. His voice sounded from her speakers: “Dropping.”
“That really agitated her when you dropped earlier,” Effan Two said. “Like it scared her or something.”
Meg ignored the scientists, watching only Loul. “Urfers,” she said, gesturing behind her to the waiting crew, “dropping.”
That was it? That required a team meeting and a halt to all activity? Sure it seemed odd that they’d all drop at once but maybe that’s what happened when they worked as a team. Maybe that’s what space travel did to them. Of course, the opposite was true on Didet. The more time you spent around someone, the farther apart your drops became. There were old couples in the family who had been together so long, their drops alternated exactly every eight shifts apart, equally breaking up the time of a full round. It made sense that Urfer biology might be a little different, all things considered.
“Urfers dropping,” he said, tapping his knuckles. “Okay.”
“No.” Meg shook her head in that dizzying way, more like a goalpost trembling from a hit than a human body in motion. “Urfers dropping…” Her long fingers bent into the air, grasping at nothing. He’d seen this gesture. Whatever she was trying to say, she seemed to need to claw it from the air.
“Urfers dropping,” she started again and then brought her fingertips together, holding them up between them at his eye level. He could see her through the oval loops her long hands created with the gesture. As he watched, she pulled her hands away from each other, but not like the knuckle-drop gesture of no. This looked more like the move the Urfers used when they drew their light screens from their wristbands. Loul expected to see another screen emerge between her fingertips but saw only Meg’s expectant face.
As he knew she would, she repeated the sequence: “Urfers dropping,” with fingers drawn apart. He knew she could see in his face that he didn’t get it. She resettled and tried a new approach. “Loul dropping.” She jerked her shoulders up in that uncomfortable way she had earlier. “Yes?” She jabbed the question mark.
“Yes,” he answered, not entirely sure what he meant by that.
“Urfers dropping?” She hunched her shoulders again. “No.” She pointed back to the bubble shelters where the aliens watched the exchange. She held her hand out toward the group, palm down, and made a fluid and utterly bewildering gesture, letting her long fingers dip and ripple toward the ground. “Yes?”
“No.” What else could he say? They really needed to find the word for Huh?
Meg covered her face with her hands, breathing loudly enough between her fingers for Loul to hear it whistling. With a quick glance at him, she turned and walked back toward her crew. They conferred a moment longer, pointing at one another and bobbing their heads in matching rhythm. The leader pointed at the two Urfers who had stood to the far side of the chevron, the smaller one who had been meeting with the engineers and the larger one with a reddish tint to its skin. Loul couldn’t tell if they were happy to be pointed to, but the group bobbed their heads once more and the two selected Urfers dropped to their knees and crawled into a bubble shelter.
“That’s weird,” Effan One said. “Where are they going?”
That seemed to be the question the engineering team asked too, especially when several minutes passed without the Urfers returning. The three remaining aliens turned back to the crowd as if ready to resume work as usual. Meg walked toward Loul, her long strides a little less certain than before. She pointed behind her toward the occupied shelters. “Urfers dropping.”
MEG
* * *
What did it say about the unpredictability of the universe, Meg wondered, when sleep was an oddity but press conferences were universal? There was no mistaking the abrupt intrusion, the shouted words, and the demanding tones she could hear on the far side of the barricade. Prader had first seen the oddly shaped orbs hovering over the scene. They looked like volleyballs with tiny sails that rode the breezes over the landing site. Someone had followed her pointing finger and the soldiers had erupted into action.
Captain Wagner withdrew his sidearm as one of the hovering spheres drifted closer to him. “Looks like someone’s upstaging us for attention. Whatever these are, our hosts don’t look very happy to see them.”
“We’ll get to see one up close,” Prader had said, her gun at the ready, “if this little son of a bitch gets any closer.”
“Put your guns down.” An orb bobbed in fat waves over Meg’s head, the little sails adjusting themselves for steering. “Whatever they are, we let the Dideto handle them.”
“Unless they shoot ray-gun laser beams and melt us.”
“Okay, that’s the plan.” Wagner kept his voice level. “We let the Dideto handle it unless they shoot laser beams and melt Prader.”
Jefferson snorted. “How badly melted does she have to be before we start firing? Like, completely liquefied or can we start when she starts to smoke and bubble?”
“Keep it up, laughing boys, and when it turns out we’re being groomed to be household pets for these hairy bastards, you can all—”
Meg tuned out the chatter, turning instead to Loul, who pounded his fists against the front of his hips, his eyes watching the hovering orbs. He bent forward in a half-crouch that made the muscles in his arms and legs strain. Whatever these things were, they were making Loul tense.
“Loul?”
He jumped when she spoke, springing from his rigid posture as the orb dropped lower, almost close enough for Meg to jump up and touch. She stared up at the intruder, noticing small, transparent panels in the sphere’s surface. Loul stepped in close, close enough to break into the light screen, and held his thick fists up at the thing but came nowhere near high enough to block Meg’s line of sight. The orb wheeled about, circling her, and Meg could hear the low vibration in Loul’s throat rising, picking up an erratic hitching rhythm. That sound, more than the proximity of the strange object, put her nerves on alert.
“Loul?” She asked again, and this time he met her gaze, his eyes narrowed and a dark flush blossoming around the edges of his face. She pointed to the hovering orb. “Yes? Okay?”
He growled a low sound in his throat, his fists pumping once again at his hips. “No.”
“No.” A cold spot formed in her gut. “Loul,” she said, tipping her head toward the hand that held her sidearm. “Okay no?” She really didn’t want to have to start firing at these things. She knew that decision would take this encounter down a new, dark, and probably explosive road, but if Loul was in danger, if any of them were in danger, she wasn’t going down without a fight. An unfunny thought crossed her mind, that this is probably how Prader felt all the time.
Loul followed her gaze to her hand, and she tipped her body forward enough to block anyone but Loul from seeing the handle of the weapon. She had to assume he knew what this was, at least in theory. Apparently he did because as soon as the trigger of the gun came into view, his breath caught, a high yelp escaped his throat, and he dropped his voice to a rough tone. “No. No. No.” He even reached out and pressed his hand against her arm. “Meg. No.”
She saw that he no longer looked up at the orb, his gaze boring into hers with more intensity than she’d seen so far. “No.” She let the gun slip back into her pocket, keeping her gestures small, and she saw him relax. “Guns down, everyone.” She heard mumbling through the coms. “Whatever these are, shooting them is a bad idea.”
“Unless these are their way of taking us down once and for all.”
“Hey, Prader,” Cho said, “dial it back a notch. You don’t have to be Meg to see that these people didn’t send these things in. Whatever they are, they’re making them as nervous as us and for all we know they could be flying nuclear warheads. Put your freaking gun down.”
“You know what they look like?” Jefferson asked. “They look like the hovercams they used to use at the football stadium. You know the kind with the parabolic microphones that hover over midfield? When I played for the Belters, we used to try to nail one each game.”
“But they’ve got cameras on posts,” Meg said, glancing over Loul’s shoulder at the high-mounted slender cylinders pointed their way. “Isn’t that what those are over there?”
