Damocles, page 8
“General Ada? I don’t think they’re going to go.” He ignored the rumble of disapproval as a familiar feeling washed over him. “Oh, and General? You’re gonna want to send someone out here. I’ve got to drop.”
MEG
* * *
“Get ready for some more synchronized swimming, everyone.” Meg backed away from Loul while he shouted to the officers at the barricade. “They want to move us into those trucks.”
“Why?” Jefferson asked, standing up from where he’d been fastening a shelter tent. “Are they planning to take us to some top-secret medical lab and dissect us?”
Cho didn’t pretend to see any humor in that. “That’s what we would do.”
“Yeah,” Meg said, backing up several steps, keeping her eyes on Loul. “I think it’s safe to say that leaving the ship is a very bad idea until we have a much stronger language bond.”
“What do you recommend, Meg?” Wagner asked.
“Go back to standing absolutely still. Look how they fidget.” She scanned the crowd before her. “They never really stop moving, adjusting.”
“I’d wager it’s their musculature,” Cho said. “Their build is incredibly dense. The muscles on their legs alone could probably take a bullet. I don’t think they’re fast but my money’s on them being strong.”
“I’m with you.” Meg stopped retreating and now stood halfway between Loul and Cho. She wished she’d thought to get out of her suit at some point before now. The heat pouring in from the direction of the sea baked her skin, even with the steady salty wind pounding against her. She noticed with envy that Cho had shed his suit while inside his tent.
She heard his low laugh in the coms. “You’re wishing you had that suit off, aren’t you?”
“Stop reading my mind.”
“Get over here.” When Meg didn’t move he sighed. “I’m the chief bioscience officer and I’m telling you to get your ass over here and get out of that suit.”
Prader snickered. “That’s a new one. Why don’t you two get a room?”
“Well, unless any of you packed IV fluid bags in your packs, I suggest you all get out of your suits.” Cho knelt at the edge of his tent. “This sunlight is going to drain us. Keep your sleeves rolled down and put on a hat, but these suits are going to overheat us all. Meg, keep your eyes on your boy and back up toward me. I’ll get you out of yours.”
She did as he told her, backing up until she felt his hands on her shoulder. The suit had two release clips, one beside her left ribs and one just inside the rigid rim of the collar ring. Either one would release the magnetic zippers that ensured the suit remained sealed. She felt Cho’s warm, dry fingers against her sweaty neck as he deactivated the fastener. A puff of stale air blew out from the suit as the fabric separated down the length of her spine.
“I bet I smell good,” she laughed, knowing how sweaty she was.
His hands slid around her waist, doing more than was strictly necessary to help her step from the suit. “You smell okay.” When her right leg and arm were free, he helped her pull the rigid collar over her head, shucking the rest of the suit. As Cho slipped her gun from the suit pocket to her pants, she pulled down the sleeves of her lightweight regulation shirt, feeling the specially designed fabric wicking moisture from her damp skin. When she sighed at the relief, she heard Prader and Jefferson laugh and speak in unison.
“Get a room.”
“Look at me.” Cho ignored them and turned her to face him. She tilted her head, lifting the back of her thick brown ponytail to get a breeze on the damp curls beneath. Cho leaned in close and shocked her by kissing her right on the mouth. “Did you feel that?” She stepped back, staring at him. It wasn’t that he’d kissed her—he’d done plenty of that and more—but this hardly seemed the time.
“Did you feel that?” His voice was soft and low.
“Uh, I…this is…Cho?”
He smirked. “My mouth tastes like glue. So does yours. We’re all getting dehydrated and we don’t have a lot of water. Why don’t you make your next conversation with your new boyfriend about finding us some supplies?”
She rolled her eyes as she turned around. “You could’ve just asked, you know.”
“Uh-oh.” She and Cho spoke in unison. A section of the barricade had separated, and two Dideto approached, pushing a squat wheeled cart between them. The cart came to their shoulders and the uneven terrain didn’t make the movement any easier. They moved steadily, their eyes fixed on Meg and Cho, dropping only to navigate a bump or divot.
Loul called her name. She pointed to the trucks and pulled her knuckles apart. No. Loul did the same. “What do you suppose this is?” she said to Cho as much to herself.
“They’re opening it.” Cho stepped in closer to her, pressing up behind her shoulder. They watched as the two newcomers punched into the top corners of the carton, releasing some sort of catch. The sides of the carton dropped slowly on pulleys, revealing racks filled with metal containers. The figures—women presumably, judging by what looked like heavy breasts riding low on their torsos—crouched down beside the carton and began selecting containers. Beside them, Loul crouched, watching them and talking to them in low, rumbling tones. Meg heard Cho’s breath catch. “Let’s go closer.”
“Cho,” she said, but he stepped ahead of her and she hurried to keep step. “Slow down, Cho. We don’t want to seem aggressive. What are you doing?”
“I’m thinking what we would do if the situations were reversed.”
They heard Prader snort in the coms. “If the situation was reversed, we’d have blown these fuckers out of the sky before they hit atmosphere.”
“Thanks for the encouragement, Prader, you psychopath.” Cho stopped a yard away from the open carton and its handlers. He crouched down for a better look and Meg could hear the pitch of the Dideto thrumming rise. “We’re a new life-form to them. We haven’t hurt anyone. We don’t have laser beams coming out of our eyes, so now they’re trying to figure out who or what we are. And how do you do that?” He smiled to himself. “You send in scientists.”
One of the women took a damp cloth from a jar and handed it to Loul. After a brief exchange, Loul began wiping his hands with the cloth thoroughly, getting in between fingers and scrubbing especially hard on the outsides of his palms. Another word from the woman and he dropped the cloth into another container, which the woman promptly sealed.
“They’re testing him for contamination,” Cho said softly. “They saw you two touch and they’re assessing any threat level. Maybe they’re going to run a DNA sequence.”
“Are we a threat?” Meg asked. “Didn’t you test for microbes and contaminants before we opened the hatch? Isn’t that part of the initial probe?”
“Shit,” Jefferson hissed in her ear. “It’s a little late to be worrying about that, isn’t it?”
“I found nothing that would contaminate us. It doesn’t mean I found everything or that we won’t contaminate them.”
“Oh my God,” Meg said. “Did we just bring smallpox to the new world?”
“Hey, have a little faith in your science officer, okay? In the first place, BESS expunged our systems of most lingering parasites and viruses. Second, why do think our protein tasted especially bad the past few days? Purifiers. We’re as clean as we’re going to get and we have no choice but to take our chances.” He huffed out a breath. “We’re agents of change and evolution just by being alive. Deal with it.”
The scientists turned to face Meg and Cho as Loul held out his hands for them to see. “He’s showing us he’s fine,” Meg said. “He wants us to come to them.”
“Hang on,” Cho whispered, rising from his crouch and shuffling backward toward his tent. All Dideto eyes followed him and he returned a moment later with a small metal case.
Jefferson snickered. “Hers is bigger than yours.”
Prader laughed too. “He’s used to hearing that.”
Captain Wagner’s voice was all business. “I’m glad to see this momentous occasion in human history isn’t interfering with your need to be ass clowns. Let’s cut the chatter.”
A round of “yes sirs” came through, although Meg could hear Prader swallowing the words “ass clowns” and a laugh. Cho seemed to hear none of it, focusing on opening his testing case and pulling out a drag screen of his own. Once things were set up to his liking, he pulled on latex gloves.
“Are those supposed to make me feel confident?” Meg’s eyes had widened along with Loul’s but the scientists seemed to take the action in stride. One did lean in closer to watch as Cho slipped the stretchy material over his hands.
“Our hands must look strange to them,” he said, holding up a gloved palm for the woman on the left to see more clearly. “Their hands are so blunt compared to ours. I’d guess they didn’t evolve from an arboreal species. I’m running a scan of the known wildlife to see if I can narrow down what their ancestry might be.”
Meg recognized that breathy monotone he spoke in. She could almost hear the wheels spinning in his head as he took in the reality of standing so close to these people. She leaned into him enough to brush his shoulder. “Not thinking about water now, are you?”
“Shut up.” He didn’t look at her but she could see the corner of his mouth resisting a smile. “Here we go.”
One of the scientists held out a wet blue cloth. Cho reached out and took it from her with one gloved hand while reaching into his kit with another. He drew out a small tool that looked like a combination clamp and flashlight. He held the cloth between the prongs of the tool and waited as light shone over the fabric. A ding sounded from his drag screen and Cho nodded as he read the scrolling data. He handed the cloth to Meg.
“Me? I have to touch it? Do I need gloves?”
“Gloves would sort of defeat the purpose. You touched him. They want to know what you’re made of. They can compare the samples off of his hands.”
She saw Loul tap his knuckles together, rocking a bit in his crouch as if encouraging her. She took a deep breath and rubbed the damp cloth over her hands. “Ooh, it’s cool. Feels kind of good. I wouldn’t mind swabbing down my neck with this.”
“It’s a neutral mineral-based fluid. Seems nonreactive. Probably a testing solution.”
“Probably?” Meg asked, holding the cloth out with two fingers.
Cho shrugged. “Of course it could be a unique solution that reacts with your skin chemistry to transform into liquid nitrogen and freeze your fingers off. How cold is it?”
Meg saw that smirk again. “Bioscience humor. Hilarious. Do you need this cloth or can I give it back to her?”
Cho snipped off a corner of the fabric and caught it in a plastic vial. Again the scientists didn’t react. The one on the right just held out a jar and Meg dropped the cloth inside. Cho held up the lighted tool for the women to see. He placed his finger between the glowing prongs and held it there for several seconds. Then he held up the scanned finger for them to see. A few grumbled words exchanged and the scientist on the left held out her finger.
“Huh,” Meg said. “Maybe you don’t need a translator.”
She saw the smug arch of his brow as he shifted to reach the outstretched finger. “Science. The universal language. Shit.” The woman’s thick finger didn’t fit between the prongs and Cho hurried to find a different scanner. Meg laughed under her breath.
“Hers really is bigger than yours.”
Cho scanned the back of the Dideto scientist’s hand with a wand-like scanner. “I believe the words ‘ass clown’ have already been used today, if I’m not…” His words trailed off as the woman turned her hand over and extended her fingers. “Would you look at that?”
The woman held her open palm up for them to see. Fully extended, the fingers were shorter than any of the Earthers’ hands, and the same rough sand-colored skin on the back of the hands covered most of the palms. But where they expected to see the same folds and creases they knew in the bends of their own hands, the Dideto’s skin separated, revealing tender swaths of smooth pink skin. Across the palms, in the crooks of the knuckles, and tapering up into the pads of the fingertips, the pale-pink skin flexed and pulsed where the darker skin pulled away.
“Is it a scar?” Meg asked.
“I don’t think so.” Cho spoke softly, his voice filled with awe. “I think it’s, I don’t know, maybe how they feel.” He peeled off his latex glove and held his palm out toward the women. In unison they dipped their chins, leaning forward for a closer look at Cho’s unbroken skin. “I should really use the scanner first, check for…surface…tissue…” Meg held her breath as his words faded and his hand moved forward until his longer, narrower hand touched the broad pink-and-brown palm before him. She knew the moment they touched. She could hear it in Cho’s breathing and in the dropping pitch of the woman’s throat.
They held their pose for several shallow breaths and Meg could see the effort it took Cho to withdraw his hand. Even just as a bystander, she felt that same everything-falling-away sensation she’d felt when she’d looked into Loul’s eyes up close. They were scientists, explorers, billions of miles from home on a controversial one-way mission to rewrite human history. They had mind-melting amounts of data to gather and process, tests to perform, and analyses to make, but all of that seemed to fall away when they could see and hear and smell the presence of these wondrous creatures in front of them.
Cho took a deep breath and focused on scanning the woman’s hand. Meg had seen him use these before. The wand was a simple bio-identifier used for everything from security to wildlife tagging. She knew he had a much more complex scanner he wanted to use, but even with the rapport they all seemed to feel, the full-body scanner would probably require a little explanation, and that would require some language. She doubted even a scientist would willingly step into a glowing square of light that popped up out of nowhere.
As Cho set his data programming in motion, the scientists picked through the jars in their cart. They spoke in low, guttural tones to each other, and their motions suggested they worked together often. Meg had to laugh. Even with the marked differences between the Dideto and the Earthers, something in their expressions reminded her of the serious distracted scowl Cho wore whenever he lost himself in his work.
She glanced at Loul, assuming he’d been as enrapt in the encounter as she’d been, but he sat deep in his crouch, his eyes closed and his head settled down low into his neck in a strange turtle-like way. No humming sounded from his throat.
“Loul?” She moved to him quickly. He sat too still, no muscles fidgeting at all. “Loul?” She reached out to touch him, fear souring her mouth when he still didn’t move. Before she could reach him, the scientist closer to him barked out a sharp sound, making her stop. The scientist pulled her knuckles apart. No.
“But Loul?” Meg pointed, knowing they couldn’t understand her. “Is he okay?”
The women grunted to each other in rapid exchange, and while Meg felt confident she could move faster than either of them, she sensed they would do what they could to keep her from reaching Loul. Cho put his hand on her arm to pull her back.
“Cho, what’s happening? What’s wrong with Loul? He’s not moving.”
“Well, they don’t seem very worried about it so that’s in our favor.” His voice didn’t match the optimism of his words. “Can you…how do ask them a question?”
Meg settled back into a neutral stance and could see the women relax. She pointed to Loul and mimicked his position as best she could, closing her eyes for just a moment before looking back to them and holding out her hands in surrender. The women shared a few more grumbling words. The one on the right, closest to Loul, pointed to the still man and then scrunched her head down between her shoulders in the same strange way as Loul’s. She closed her eyes for a moment and then opened them, tapping her knuckles together. Yes.
She repeated the sequence—scrunch, close, open, yes—and looked at Meg and Cho, waiting for them to understand. Cho shifted beside her. “Is he…asleep?”
Meg made a sound of disbelief. “Here? In two minutes in the middle of a field? In a catcher’s crouch with all this noise and these people? With us here?”
Before Cho could answer, Loul’s eyes popped open and he blinked several times. When he saw Meg so close, he smiled. Then he yawned.
SIX
MEG
* * *
“Huh.” She and Cho spoke in unison as Loul shook off his strange stillness. His eyes widened as he smiled at Meg and said something to the scientists. Everything in his body language suggested that nothing out of the ordinary had taken place. Judging from the punchy gestures the scientists were peppering their words with, they had a different story to tell. The scientist in the middle kept jabbing a stubby finger in Meg’s direction.
“I don’t think they’re happy with you,” Cho said, following the guttural exchange.
“Well, I’m sorry if I think that turning to stone in the middle of first contact is a little unusual.” She watched Loul as he shifted in his crouch, inching closer to her.
“Meg.” He pressed his knuckles together, barking out her name loud enough to make her wince. “Loul.” He tapped his own chest and made the yes gesture two more times, alternating hand bumps with quick dips into the odd still position that had so unsettled her. Each time he reopened his eyes he made the yes gesture again, repeating a low popping sound. The third time he started the series, Meg activated the recording program and opened a text screen. Loul hesitated, watching her fingers scrabble over the lighted screen, and then resumed the sequence.
Cho watched her arrange the data on her screen. “Did you just get something?”
