by Geoff Nelder
“Enough pointing at my flaws,” Em said. “Thank God for self-cleaning materials, all these stains will be gone in a few hours. Ah, yes, the point being they really did contaminate what Penn ate. Luckily, I only drank from one of those tubes.”
Penn had been poking into the cube again. “I’ve been thinking about that tube you drank from. I think it might be—”
“Don’t tell me. Spare jet fuel to help us get Suppose We off the ground once we find it. Anyway, Gas tested the food before we ate it, didn’t you?” She glared at him.
“A sample just in case it was incompatible with our bodies. I did not examine every surface of every object in there. They must have thought we needed it, but what else?”
He walked back to the knee-high sized grapefruit, held his hands on the surface and frowned hard at it, willing opening thoughts.
Penn came up behind him. “Nothing eh? Not while we try too hard. In any case, let’s think why these containers are here. So far, one for a deceased human, another for food and drink, various crapola in these. Provisions. Why? We were managing to keep ourselves going on our own on the surface… unless…”
He ran towards the tunnel. “I bet they’ve bricked us in keeping us prisoner!”
“Leave him, Em. He will be back whatever he discovers. Even if it is closed, we know we can exit via the roof.”
“I agree,” Em said, her face lined with fatigue.
Penn was away for hours. Em helped Gaston open more of the cuboids but with no real clue what the contents were for.
Lights dimmed. Perhaps a subliminal brain signal making Em stretch. “I’m heading for more sleep.”
Penn returned with his arms outstretched in a ‘believe-me-now?’ gesture, but he looked upwards as if he too remembered the other way out.
“Actually, it might be advantageous with them thinking we’re locked in here when in the morning we can escape. I’m bushed.” He knelt in front of his backpack, but stood again with a shout. “What the fuck!”
The nearest sphere to his pack had exploded into a puffball, and so had two more.
“They’re sleeping bags, of a kind,” Em said after allowing herself to fall onto one and it folding around her. Gaston prodded it with his finger, then with a sensor.
“It is not alive, as such, but it might contain intelligent sensory devices to keep us comfortable. Hah, this one is delightful.”
“Move it over here, Gas, next to me.”
He did and the two fluffy, white shapes merged into one.
“Don’t be so gullible,” Penn said. “A trap. It’ll smother you. Probably how Delta died.”
Gaston couldn’t deny that he had no evidence-based idea why Delta died. His medical skills were more for the living than autopsies. Even so there were none of the usual signs of asphyxiation, but no broken bones either. His first thought was that she’d died of shock. Lips and fingernails were paler than normal. Even if the others wanted or permitted him to perform a post-mortem, he’d need the full AI MedCentre on Suppose We to analyse and interpret everything. His head hurt from excessive thinking.
He and Em snuggled together in the combined flocked mass, aware that Penn stubbornly slept on a makeshift camp-bed with backpacks for a pillow. “Don’t make too much rhythmic noise you two. It might attract visitors.”
They didn’t. Until they heard Penn snoring.
Only then, gently spooning, exploring how this alien—to them—kapok-like engulfing bedding hugged them. That was in the first embraces. Yet the material changed texture according perhaps to their heat, pheromones, perspiration. Gaston wondered, though he felt guilty at thinking outside the love-box, if his tactile experiences was different to Em’s. Sometimes it was like making love enclosed in bubble wrap: a plastic bobbly sensation on naked skin, expecting it to make explosive popping sounds any moment, waking Penn and the consequent yells. Other times they were outrageously fucking in a jacuzzi: slip-sliding in a foaming jet spa making Gaston work hard to hold on to something while they separated, reengaged, laughed, loved. All the time, him remonstrating with the logic components in his cortex trying to understand the how and what while his emotions and hormones ran riot. Now he rolled with her in long, sweet-vernal grass in an idyllic John Constable meadow. He was all a quiver, perspiring profusely, butbutbut was it real? Did he care? Did she?
Good point. His fantasies were being enacted right now, but with a real person. His skin wet from the jacuzzi, dried in a sensory bubble of warm air, but what about Em? Huge coincidence if these were her sexual fantasies too. Suppose while he grappled and intercoursed while floundering in warm, guava-scented water, she held him in zero-gravity, dry, equally rapturous? While his posterior acquired grass stains what was Em’s experiencing?
Alors! Here we go. He thought it and now it became. So, she dreamt of love-making in an autumn wood, immersed in deep maple leaves. There, she laughed her socks off. Literally. It wasn’t her laugh that pleased him most in their post-coital nirvana, but her slanted yet full-lipped smile.
His passion, entwined with hers, ran into eventual sleep.
AN AI’S CAPTAIN’S LOGICAL MEMORANDUM
The typhoon has abated. It held its breath fourteen hours ago as its beady eye peered at our hapless crew. I detected three of them on the surface.
Then they were gone. Presumably subterranean.
I too am back in a tunnel. I picked up a trail an hour ago. A microscopic lube leak dripping from our mother ship. And there it is. In a chamber, snared like a fly in a web. Flitters buzz around it. I need to negotiate access. Maybe offer them something in exchange. They don’t know it yet, but we or Suppose We has a solution to their planetary problem and a neat one for us too. The most critical part of the package I’ve already secreted away from here, but vital data is aboard.
Signed CAN (as in canvas)
Date: Earth January 23rd 3645 Kepler New 14 days
An eerie green light wove its way through the settlement like a will o’ the wisp. Gaston hadn’t seen a rising sun the colour of emeralds before. The green flash on Earth was a momentary refraction phenomenon, but solar and atmospheric properties are different here and changing. Above the sun, the sky was an artist’s palette — greens through peach and camembert.
The storm had left a legacy of fallen trees, broken branches and a stunned silence. Gaston was sure that most of the flying birdlike creatures in the forest were actual fauna rather than mechanical drones and he’d heard their calls, but not now.
Green above, but also below, reflected in extensive puddles left by the storm. The rounded white and pastel-coloured buildings floated, a filler in an emerald sky croque monsieur.
The three of them had left the chamber via the roof hole made the day before, leaving Delta behind, but with reservations. Penn had wanted to lift her body up to the surface and bury her, because although he’d agreed she was in a kind of crypt, it didn’t belong to humans.
“At least we know where she is,” Em argued, as they walked on past the spiral tower.
Gaston added, “And where would we bury her? We’ve not seen anything resembling a cemetery and we know that the town is riddled with tunnels, so we cannot dig a grave here. Perhaps in the forest or back at our escape pods?”
“Yeah, I get your point. Going back for her, though, once we… what are we doing now?”
Em let loose a burst of laughter. “You’re our commander, but maybe your mind was in the wrong place when we decided to press on through to the other side of the town. Remember, we’re looking for a flyer or some means to reach Suppose We?”
Gaston had hoped Papillon might flutter in front, but once more it had settled on his backpack. He found himself leading, walking while avoiding the floods and distracted by the sun turning from green through lilac to white but with streaks as if it was a giant chromatography experiment. Rising now maybe fifteen degrees above the horizon in what on Earth would be the west, but wasn’t the definition of east where the sun rose? Oui, from the Greek word auō
s for dawn.
“Em, here west is east and east is west.”
“Whatever you say, Gas. Hey, are you looking ahead?”
He’d been navigating around swampy ground on what might be the settlement’s outskirts, but glanced up and abruptly stopped, not the least because the departing storm sent a farewell wet gust into his face. When his vision cleared, he spotted the Keps.
“Je les vois. Four this time.”
Penn stood alongside him. “Yeah, makes a change. Looks like one is a kid.”
“They don’t have to worry about getting their feet wet,” Em said, “and they’re heading off to our right, but Penn, should we follow them?”
“I don’t know. They look to be headed for that tower that goes up in order to go down. Wonder what it’s actually for?”
Gaston shook his head. “Understanding what the technology is doing on this planet is intriguing but burdens us with paradoxes. On Earth, towers are often to aid ventilation in subterranean tunnels, but here it could equally be a cultural monument.”
“At least we know it’s not a watchtower,” Em said, “unless we missed an upper exit.”
Penn dropped to his knee behind a low wall and wielded his pistol. “Take cover! One of them has left the others to come at us.”
Em laughed at him. “It’s the little one. Look at him, a metre high at the most. Like a child Caspar the Ghost.”
Penn grunted while levelling his pistol at the native. “Yeah, without arms, or a proper face. A kid can be unpredictable and unaware of its powers.”
“It could also represent our first chance to break through their indifference. Infants are often less inhibited, at least on Earth,” Gaston said, waving at Penn to lower his weapon.
“Okay, okay, but what or how do we communicate with a Kep brat?”
Em smiled. “Just like with kids at home. We throw it a ball, make a paper airplane. Come on, Penn, you must have little ones in your family?”
Penn guffawed. “Great ideas. Paper airplane, eh? Last piece of paper I saw was on Earth. Yeah, I see you reaching for a leaf. Tell you what, you make a flyer. I’ll make a clay ball.”
Gaston’s spine tingled with excitement. Was this to be their first real engagement with an alien species? How were they going to communicate? Like the others, he’d been through courses on linguistics and body language, but they all go out of the window when there’s no discernible face, and only dolphin-like clicks for sound. He should have paid more attention to those lectures on Cetacean speech.
Em’s approach should work to open an exchange. He cursed himself for not having prepared some pictures, a pictographic summary of their plight, though perhaps keeping quiet about the mission objectives. The Keps might not be kindly disposed to having their home be considered to be a colony planet for Earth.
Gaston saw his butterfly in the air on his right. It must have been on his backpack again. He reached out but it zigged when he zagged then it meandered over to the Kep. The Frenchman narrowed his eyes but couldn’t see whether the insect had settled on the Kep or flew behind, or even through it. Disappointed, his smile turned upside down.
Em patted his good arm. “Don’t worry, Gas, it will be back. You are both so in love.”
“Humph, nonsense. It’s just a… do you think so?”
When the diminutive Kep paused at ten metres, Penn underarmed a clay ball, the size of a tennis ball. “Here, kid, catch and don’t let it just pass through you.”
It didn’t. The bodach-like creature slid to the right and turned to watch the projectile fall apart when it landed.
“Poor kid,” Penn said, “it’s never played ball before. Whoa!”
They all ducked as a flurry of clay particles from dust to coin sizes flew through the air at them.
Penn caught one. “Well, I’ll be damned, it’s thrown the ball back! Kinda.”
Em fell back on the ground laughing. “I didn’t see how it picked up all your ball fragments, did you?”
Gaston saw no arms protrude and retract. It must have been telekinesis, but he didn’t like to commit. He wondered if subconsciously, Penn was telling the Kep that giant balls in the sky were approaching.
Penn busied himself modelling another ball. “Maybe it’ll hold on to it this time.”
Meanwhile while kneeling, Em had fashioned a plane from a purple cabbage leaf. She used her knife and spots of glue to make it look like Suppose We: a needle, complete with its re-entry deployed delta wings.
“Je compris, you want them to know the wreckage they’ve found is ours.”
Penn snorted. “It looks like shit.”
Em examined her creation. “You’re right. I’ve made coleslaw. You do it better, eh? Meanwhile I’ll float this one over to little Miss or Master Kep.”
She stood, brushed off lacerated leaf from her tunic and looked over to the Kep while readying her right arm in the air for the maiden flight.
Penn hunted around for better plane manufacturing components, but Gaston watched the Kep watching Em, if facing her was the same thing. It didn’t appear nervous, though he could only imagine that perhaps its translucent body would change to a deeper colour, emit sparks, or a frantic clicking to alert its parents. Now though all was at peace, so Em let fly her aircraft.
Unlike the butterfly, the leafy Suppose We flew remarkably smoothly and uncrooked. Em had aimed it upwards at forty-five degrees in an attempt, Gaston presumed, to maximise its reach. Fine for a ball, but not necessarily so for a winged craft. It could have stalled, but after a metre the nose dipped then levelled out at head height. The long, thin fuselage while dynamically lifted by the delta wings was, unlike the real ship, stabilised a little by a horizontal tailplane.
Here was an important reason why NASA chose its astronauts carefully. Even their navigators possessed the right stuff. Gaston’s pride in his companion, now mate, surged through him, obliging a broad smile and a satisfying glow in his stomach.
It flew onwards, descending slowly in the calm weather, sunlight glinting off its purple wings. It was headed for the Kep’s midriff. If that was what its equator was.
Would it crumple on impact, go right through, or would l’enfant move aside?
None of those. It came to a halt with the nose a centimetre from touching the Kep’s fuzzy surface. It didn’t drop.
Penn gawped. “Not an updraft, surely, That feller is holding it, yeah?”
“I can’t see any appendage,” Em said.
Gaston took a step forward. “Bonjour. We would like it to go up!” He pointed up into the sky, then winced with pain. The moment had made him forget he shouldn’t be using his right arm.
Immediately, the plane rotated horizontally to face the trio then shot up. Gaston followed it as it shrunk to a dot then disappear.
“Yes!” they chorused, followed by grins, leaps in the air and a group hug.
“We are happy, oui? Not because Em’s creation had flown successfully, but because a Kep understood?”
“Yeah,” Penn answered, “but let’s not get carried away. It’s a kid playing paper planes, right? It might not be on our wavelength in knowing we want our real plane to do the same.”
Em smiled. “Only with us in it”
Gaston pointed at the Kep, which was bending backwards. “Regardez, it is still examining the plane. Is it bringing it back?”
Em took out her binoculars. “Ah. It’s seen something else. Look.”
She gave the glasses to Penn. Gaston had his hand out, but his commander came first.
“Fuck me, they’re here already. I thought we had months.”
Gaston narrowed his eyes, straining upwards to see. “The spheres? I can just see a dot. But, Penn, they are the size of Jupiter.”
“You’re not looking in the right place it’s huge and just a darker shade of lilac than the sky. Here, have the glasses.”
Em said. “Hey, is that my plane coming back?”
Gaston didn’t see why not. After all, what goes up… And yet. “
There is something wrong with it. Is that smoke?”
Penn scoffed. “How can a fresh leaf be on fire? Did it reach the sun? What the hell, I can see it’s glowing red!”
The burning leaf-spaceship headed back towards the spiral tower. Gaston broke into a jog, his curiosity peaked to see what was going on. The Kep and Em must have thought the same.
Gaston glanced behind to see the little Kep following. Was it still controlling the plane? Had it done so since it left Em’s hand? He’d slowed while looking back, allowing Em to run past him. He accelerated after her, enjoying the adrenaline rush and sense of play that appeared to be in all of them, the Kep included.
Just as Em’s arms were out in front and about to catch the smoking plane, Penn yelled at her. “Stop! You’ll run into the tower.”
Gaston reached out and grabbed the gadget belt around her waist, pulling her and in the process falling.
“Gas you bastard, what did you do that for? Look at me all wet from a pissing puddle!”
He’d fallen on top of her because he couldn’t stop. His jumpsuit was wet too, and muddy. The smell of rust invaded his nostrils. No time to ponder why. Em was already upright and staring at her plane continuing at speed to the tower. Gaston just had time to focus, see it fly in through the tower wall and disappear.
“We could follow it, “Em said. “We know how—”
“No way,” Penn said, standing before her. “We’ve been in there and they tried to imprison us with Delta’s body, remember?”
“Well, that’s your interpretation, Sir,” she said.
Gaston tried to lighten the mood. “I think the Kep is merely playing. Look at him or her.” The creature floated as if in a dance. “Are we thinking it is happy or agitated? Pity they have no faces.”
“It’s cute,” Em said. “It’d make a great pet. Back to my plane though. It really seemed as if the Kep guided it into the tower, but I’m with Penn in not risking it. I can always make another plane.”