The Alien Accord

by Betsey Kulakowski

  Finally, her stomach began making more noise than extraterrestrial signals possibly could, and she decided sleep was beyond her reach for the rest of the afternoon. Food was now the priority.

  She rose and shook off her thoughts, wandering through the spacious suite, finding Rowan sitting in the living room floor with Henry; all his toys scattered on the blanket around him. They were watching Sesame Street, in English, on the television and sharing a box of Cheerios.

  “Ah, Snuffleupagus.” Lauren beamed, leaning on the back of the sofa, taking it all in.

  “Pup pup!” Henry cooed, gurgling as he kicked his feet and shook his toy shark. “Pup pup!”

  “Snuffy,” Rowan corrected, handing him another Cheerio.

  “Pup pup!”

  “Henry wanted me to remind you,” Rowan said. “You did promise we could have a dog.”

  Lauren grimaced, shaking her head. “But not a Snuffleupagus.”

  “True, but I saw Henry with the dog in the airport,” he said. “This boy needs a dog.”

  “You and I both know...” Lauren started.

  Rowan raised a hand and she paused.

  “I know,” he said. “We’re going to be on the road for a while, but at some point, we have to get this kid a dog.”

  “We’re in agreement on that.” She came over and sat down. “When the time is right, it’ll happen.”

  Rowan nodded. “So, how was your nap?”

  “I didn’t sleep,” she said, running a weary hand over her face. “Is there anything to eat? I’m starving.”

  “They sent up some snacks for us,” Rowan said. “But your brother said to call him when we were ready for dinner.”

  “Dinner?”

  “It’s after five,” Rowan said. “You may not have been asleep; but you’ve been in there for hours.”

  “Hours?”

  “Maybe you nodded off and don’t remember it,” he said. “Text Michael and we’ll go eat. Henry and I are hungry too.”

  * * *

  After dinner, they went to a café Michael knew near the lab and insisted was safe enough. There they had coffees and desserts. As they sat at the walled-in patio in the warm evening air, the perfume of flowers drifted by. “They call this the City of Roses,” Michael explained. “It’s supposed to be spring here, but as you can tell, it’s a lot like Oklahoma.”

  “It’s a beautiful city,” Lauren said, sipping on her coffee, pushing her cake around with her fork.

  “I have made arrangements for us to get a tour of the planetarium,” he said. “It’s the only digital planetarium here. I work with the head astronomer and I got us access to their telescope.”

  “When? Tonight?”

  “If you want to,” he said. “I just need to text him and let him know we’re coming. They’re working every night this week.”

  “I’m sure Lauren’s ...” Rowan started to decline, but Lauren cut him off.

  “Tonight’s good for me,” she said. “I’m not sleepy.” She glanced over at Henry who was nodding off in his Dad’s lap, slobbering all over the side of his hand as he gnawed on Rowan’s knuckle. He was teething and it must have felt good. Rowan didn’t seem to mind. “But if you wanted to go back to the apartment ...”

  “No,” Rowan shook his head. “I caught a nap when Henry napped. He can sleep anywhere.”

  “Then let’s go.”

  * * *

  The Planetarium reminded her a lot of the science museum in Oklahoma City. Her school had gone there on a field trip once when she was a kid. She’d loved that museum, but she’d forgotten about it ... until now. Now the memories flooded back. They had a theater for star shows and a variety of science experiments tailored to kids or just kids at heart. The Tesla Coil had been one of her favorites, but what she genuinely loved were the star shows.

  “Lubanzi, this is my sister, Lauren and her husband, Rowan.” Michael introduced her to the director and head astronomer. “Lauren this is Dr. Lubanzi Dlamani.”

  The man had skin as dark as coal, so dark his lips were almost blue. He was slender, if not downright gaunt; his yellowed teeth were crooked, but he had a quick smile. He rose from his desk to greet them. “Welcome, welcome,” he said in a thick accent, taking Rowan’s hand but not hers. Instead he bowed deeply. “Dr. Grayson, I am most honored.”

  “It’s Pierce now,” she corrected politely. Her hand went to Rowan’s arm. “I took my husband’s name. I just use Grayson on television.”

  “We are honored to have you both.” He bowed again. “Welcome. I will show you ... the cosmos.” He waved his hand towards the ceiling where tiny pinpricks of lights representing the constellations shown through the dark blue ceiling overhead.

  Lauren and Rowan exchanged pleased expressions as Rowan put his sleepy son up on his shoulder and fell in behind their melodramatic host. Michael leaned into Lauren. “I think he has a crush on you.”

  “What?” She mouthed silently.

  “Ever since I mentioned you were my sister; he’s been asking to see pictures of you. I honestly don’t think he believed me that you were my sister.”

  “You did mention that if he made a pass at me, Rowan would beat him up, right?”

  “There would be a long line of Graysons standing behind him waiting for a turn.” Michael took her arm as they followed Dr. Dlamani through the dimly lit museum. After hours, there was almost no one there, and even the janitors had finished their work and gone home for the night. It wasn’t quite ten, and despite the differences in time zones and the long travel, Lauren felt as spry as a teenager.

  “Are you familiar with the work of Dr. Raymond Code?” Lubanzi asked.

  Lauren shook her head. “I can’t say that I am.”

  “He was my mentor,” Lubanzi said. “This was the telescope he gave me after completing my dissertation.” He led them into a small room with a retractable ceiling. The telescope he indicated, was sitting on the table. It was about the same size as one of the old-fashioned movie projectors Rowan’s mother had given him, the one that still sat in his office back home; half a world away.

  “I had the honor of working with him before he died about seven or eight years ago,” Michael explained to his sister. “He was brilliant. A lot of the work we’re doing today is based on some of his groundbreaking research.”

  “He was the founding director of the Radio Telescope Science Institute,” Lubanzi said. “He helped pave the road for the Hubble telescope.”

  She leaned in to look in the scope, at Lubanzi’s silent behest. It took a moment for her eyes to focus, but she finally got the resolution to clear enough to make out the patterns of stars. “You should be able to see the Southern Cross,” he explained and guided her eye toward the constellation marked by four bright stars and one slightly dimmer one.

  “This is the particular area of space I was telling you about,” Michael said. His tone told her this was the area the signal he’d been tracking had come from. Lauren stepped back and let Rowan have a turn, taking the sleeping baby. “Dr. Code told me stories about his time in the navy back during World War II. He built a number of radio receivers, but he was the first to suggest the receivers needed to be in space, not on earth.”

  “He said that having receivers on earth was like watching birds from the bottom of the ocean,” Dr. Dlamani said. “Or something like that.”

  “Yes and it was sheer genius,” Michael said, looking in the telescope himself.

  Lubanzi waved them along behind him. “Come, let’s see the bigger telescope.”

  The room where the bigger telescope resided was a huge domed area. They entered a small control room with a wide arching glass view port. “This telescope has a multitude of uses. It has all the features of an apochromatic telescope. It can disperse light into three wave lengths at one time; but also has the achromatic lenses that contains liquid between the lenses to aid in dispersion.”

  “Is that the bigger telescope?” Rowan pointed to the large tube pointed towards the ceil
ing. Lubanzi reached over and hit a switch and the ceiling began to part like a cyclop’s eye after a long nap.

  “No,” Lubanzi said. “This is the biggest telescope.”

  “Has to be one of the biggest I’ve ever seen.” Rowan shrugged.

  “The only one bigger is on the summit of Mauna Kea,” Michael said. “That is a twin ten-meter lens in Hawaii. This one is just a single lens.”

  “That’s not that far from our house.” Lauren nodded, smiling at Rowan, suddenly feeling far from home. The bungalow outside of Hilo sat empty. She could imagine sitting out on the lanai watching the wind and the waves play against the rocky shore. She could smell the bouquet of flowers in the humid night air. She could taste the Kona coffee on her lips, and the sweetness of the pineapples she often snacked on. A wave of homesickness washed over her, then passed just as quickly as the astronomer brought her out of the moment.

  “Here. Take a look,” Lubanzi said, getting the telescope set up, pointing to a screen. “Here is the Southern Cross.” He zoomed in on the area, naming each of the stars that made up the constellation. “But we can see so much more ...” he said, zooming in even deeper. The dark void was filled with pinpricks of light as invisible stars became visible.

  “Wow!” Rowan exclaimed. “That’s amazing.”

  “Somewhere here, someone is calling to us,” Michael said.

  Lauren turned and looked at her brother. “That’s a pretty bold statement ... for a scientist.”

  “What do you mean?” Rowan asked. “I thought you were in on Michael’s theory that it was a message from ... someone.” Lauren was so accustomed to being mocked and ridiculed that it was easy for her to get defensive. Finding the Maya artifacts in Mexico had helped minimize some of the hazing from the scientific community, but some of the chatter he’d heard had called their discovery a stroke of luck. He wanted as much to make a significant find again just to prove them wrong, but Lauren took it all way too personally.

  “On the contrary.” She shrugged. “It’s one thing to acknowledge that someone is sending a message, and that we might be able to translate it, but it’s terribly vain to believe they’re sending it specifically to us.”

  “Why not us?” Michael’s eyes narrowed and the wrinkles around his eyes deepened.

  “To use your analogy, that’s like the Yeti in Bhutan yelling, Hey Michael, I’m over here! There’s a difference.”

  “But isn’t the point of science to observe and theorize?”

  “Yes, but not speculate. Theory has to be based on data,” Lauren said, surprised to be having this conversation with, of all people, her brother. “You haven’t isolated the possibility that it’s a natural phenomenon. You don’t have any evidence that they’re trying to contact Earth specifically. You haven’t ruled out other possibilities. You just automatically jump to the conclusion that it’s little green men from Mars or... Crux ...whatever.”

  “But Occam’s Razor? Besides, I’m more interested in the Fermi Paradox,” he started, but Lauren’s eyes narrowed, and he stopped. “Hey, I never said they were green,” Michael retorted like a wounded school-boy. “Honestly, Lauren. Of all people, I would expect you to be a little more open to the idea, considering what you do for a living ... chasing ghosts and things that go bump in the night,” Michael quipped. “Can you even walk into a room full of scientists and not get laughed at?”

  His sudden turn caught her completely off guard. She looked around with a limp hand raised. “No one is laughing here,” Lauren said. “Besides, you asked for my help, but if you’d rather stand here and mock me, I can go home.”

  “Okay. Okay.” Rowan stepped in between them before either of them said anything else they would regret. “It’s late and we’re all tired. Let’s just agree to disagree at the moment.”

  Lauren moved past him to stare at her brother, but Rowan took a step to block her, drawing her gaze to his eye instead. He took the brunt of her raven fury. “You haven’t slept in two days. He’s not mocking you, just let it go.”

  Her color seemed to lighten as her countenance melted. “You’re right.” She leaned into his chest and let out a deep sigh. “I’m sorry, Michael. Rowan is right. I’m too tired to fight tonight.”

  “So what? Words at twenty paces at high noon tomorrow?” He quipped sharply. Rowan recognized a smart aleck when he met one. He was one. But Lauren balled up and moved to get past him.

  Rowan caught her arm. “Lauren. Let it go.” He drew her eyes to his by lifting her chin. “It takes two to fight.”

  “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go back to the apartment.”

  * * *

  The next morning, the concierge helped Lauren order some groceries to serve as their breakfast and lunches. They napped in short spurts and by dinnertime, they were better rested, and hungry for a good meal. The concierge had dinner brought in. She was pleased to find that a bottle of wine was included in the order. Rowan fed Henry a bowl of his rice cereal and some pureed peas while Lauren set the table and plated their dinner. Henry was covered in baby food when she came over with the corkscrew, opening the bottle. She poured two glasses of chardonnay, then brought over their plates. She sat down and set to work on her food, while Rowan finished feeding Henry, then lay out some Cheerios on the table of his highchair so he could entertain himself while Rowan turned to his own dinner.

  Lauren watched him from beneath the veil of her bangs but said nothing. They’d spoken little since leaving the lab and she was still trying to decide if she should be mad at him or if Michael should bear the whole brunt of her anger. Rowan had stuck up for her brother, and she wanted to use that as an excuse to take it out on him, but in truth, she knew better. Rowan was a peacemaker if anything. If she and Michael were ever going to find a path through and make things work, she needed that. She’d spent the better part of the last decade being mad and not speaking to her brother. Now, she’d had her chance to speak her mind and she’d spoken it. If there was justice in the universe, and Lauren knew there was, she had to let it go. He’d offered his apologies for his past transgressions, and she’d accepted them. She had to be the one. She had to trust the Universe. She had to forgive. No one else could do it for her.

  “You okay?” Rowan’s voice drew her from her thoughts.

  “Yeah.” She stabbed at her food with her fork, but she’d spent more time pushing it around than eating it.

  “I can see how you and your brother have been at odds for so long,” Rowan said.

  “Yeah,” she repeated, picking up her glass and draining it, reaching for the bottle for another pour.

  “What are you going to do?” He reached for his own glass.

  One of Lauren’s shoulders lifted. “I’ve given my word,” Lauren said. “I have forgiven his past, but ... that doesn’t mean I’ll let him treat me like that in the future.”

  “Fair enough,” Rowan said.

  “Tsul’Kalu’s words keep coming back to me.” Lauren didn’t look up as she spoke. She could feel his eyes on her and sensed his reservation. He didn’t like it when she talked about Tsul’Kalu. “Justice demands repayment for the trouble he’s created.”

  “Because the rabbit was the leader in all the mischief?” Rowan asked, surprising her as she looked up at him. “I get it. Michael is your rabbit.”

  Lauren’s face lightened, and the corners of her lips turned up. He had been paying attention. He had been listening. “Yes,” Lauren said. Bahati’s words came back to here, too. “But the rabbit is not wholly wrong in this case. I’ve played my own part. It has to be me that makes peace work.”

  Rowan considered her a moment, as if trying to read her. “Do you think he’s changed?”

  She considered this for a long time. “Perhaps, but ... that doesn’t matter.” She returned her attention to her plate. “I have.”

  * * *

  “Lauren, look, I’m sorry about yesterday,” Michael said before Lauren could get a word in edgewise. “I was a jerk, and you didn’t deserv
e that.”

  “I guess I was, too.” Lauren conceded.

  “You guess?”

  “Michael, I want us to be able to work together, and I don’t want us to bicker.”

  He hesitated a moment, then nodded. “I want that for us, too,” Michael said. “So, remember on the plane, I played you the signal I recorded from Hubble?”

  “Yes,” Lauren said, as he led her back to his office.

  “That’s not exactly the same signal we’ve been monitoring from here,” he said. “The repeating signal is different. Whereas the signal I played for you is sublime, this one is ...enfeebling.”

  Lauren’s brow arched and she gazed at him. He pulled a chair out for her at one of the workstations, indicating for her to sit. She did and watched as he squatted beside her. He turned the keyboard around and typed in his password. It took a moment for the terminal to boot up, and while it did, he handed her a pair of headphones. She pulled the headphones on over her ears. When the computer woke, he cued up a file and sat back on his heels.

  “First, you’ll hear the same types of sounds you heard earlier,” he said, as she lifted the muff to hear him. “You’ll know it when you hear the signal I’m concerned about.”

  Lauren’s hands cupped the headphones as she closed her eyes waiting for the recording to play.

  “This is at normal speed,” Michael said. The music of the stars filled her ears and a wave of peacefulness washed over her. She listened for the signals she expected to hear, but there was nothing unusual. If he hadn’t told her, she might have thought it was the same file he’d played for her on the plane. It was beautiful and rich like whales’ voices in the deep cold sea. She remembered Rowan talking about the whales he’d seen diving off the lava fields south of Hilo, and she suddenly felt a pang of jealousy for having missed out.