Norris turned to her, regarding the expression of wonder on her face.
“Our ancestors had nothing like the Plexus as recently as 2090; they were so desperate to expand and reach out from the Solar System, they killed thousands in those stupid generation ships until it finally dawned on them and the Plexus network opened up at last. It was always there, but it hasn’t been that long since they first discovered it.”
“It is a persistent reminder of our brief time as a space-faring people.”
“Exactly,” he replied. “Imagine taking those first Earth astronauts—Gagarin, Armstrong or Glenn—into an ordinary thread from today; they would be left speechless. The Hyperthreads are the next in that series of evolutionary discoveries, and we’ve been given its secrets, simply because aliens we never heard of need our help to stay alive.”
Li paused for a moment, considering Norris’ words.
“The irony is a little sad, isn’t it? The misfortune of others will generate the most sweeping technological and scientific advances in human history since the industrial revolution.”
“I’m not complaining, that’s for sure.”
“Will it work?” she asked softly. “This thing they’re asking of us; will we be able to help them?”
“I don’t know, but it’s clear we have to try. I’ve seen what the Namadi have done, and they will bring that horror to Earth and every Colony world if we don’t do something about it right now.”
“It’s unsettling, and perhaps a bit insulting to consider, but do those people—the Lieutenant’s people—regard us only as heavily armed brutes, fit for little more than cannon fodder in a distant, galactic war?”
“I can’t say for sure. They know we are far less developed, but obviously they believe we are advanced enough to help them against the Namadi.”
He looked closely at her.
“They’re scared, Governor. For all their amazing, superior technology, they know perfectly well none of us will survive for long unless we join with them to find and kill these bastards. If they thought of us as a lesser species before, none of them are prepared to stand on arrogance now.”
“I hope you’re right, but I believe the Lieutenant is waiting; you should go and sleep; I’ll return in the morning.”
“I will,” Norris said, repressing a yawn; “goodnight, Governor.”
AFTER THREE DAYS, Norris and Rantara’s restless anticipation began to show. It was frustrating, confined to only their room, especially when lovely summer days outside passed them by without notice. They spent hours on the info-grids, introducing Rantara to the intricacies of Earth’s sports and entertainment feeds, but she seemed most interested in history chronicles and travel documentaries that showed popular vacation destinations on Earth.
Rising up from the edge of a sweeping harbor, the three-column shape of the Colonial Affairs Center towered over a broad, sandy beach that was a favorite for Tanus’ sunbathers, daring the gentle ocean waves and combers to catch them as they scurried out of the ankle-deep water. Rantara looked down from the balcony railing and shook her head.
“Why do they remove their clothes, but not the underwear, Darrien?”
He looked and tried not to laugh, but she saw it.
“Is that funny?” she asked abruptly.
“Well, sort of,” he replied with a grin. “Those are swim suits, Onallin, not underwear.”
“The females, too?”
“They’re called bikinis—most human females wear them at the beach.”
“I’m sorry, Darrien, but it looks like colorful underwear to me.”
“I guess there isn’t a lot of difference, but human girls spend considerable thought and effort deciding which ones to buy; it’s a sizable chunk of the fashion industry.”
“Why do they wear anything at all?”
“What do you mean?”
“These…bikinis; why do your females wear them? If you go to the seashore to relax in the sun and swim, what’s the point of clothing? I don’t understand this.”
Norris shook his head.
“Hold on. You go completely naked at the beaches on Belex?”
“Of course!”
“All Khorrans?”
“Why wouldn’t we? Clothing would only hinder us in water, so…”
“Okay, let me explain; there are lots of different social norms in Earth space, Onallin. Some places allow nudity, but others don’t; they require swim suits here.”
“This is a reflection of human modesty?”
“For the most part, yes. There are plenty of places where they don’t care at all, but many still follow this convention.”
“I see. It’s stupid, but I understand what you mean.”
“Once this is over, we’ll go to a nice coastal resort on Earth and you can shop for a saucy little bikini of your own.”
“Saucy?”
“It means revealing; something that shows off your…well, the contours of your body. Yours are very appealing, so why not play to your strengths, right?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not? You’d look amazing in one of them, especially the ones they wear down in Durban or Cairns.”
“You’re going to take me to a beach on Earth, then stare at other females?”
“No, I didn’t mean it like that.”
“What did you mean?”
“Onallin, you’re almost two meters tall, with yellow eyes and streaks across your skin that look like they’re made out of bronze and silver; you’re going to attract a lot of attention for those reasons alone. Trust me; when you show up on Bondi or Ipanema wearing a skimpy little string, the boys and girls are going to notice.”
“And you encourage others to look at me in this way?”
“Not exactly, but it’s part of the deal; one of the reasons people go to the beach is to see and be seen. Believe me; they’re certainly going to see you.”
“If you say so.”
“Just keep an open mind about the bikini thing, okay?”
“Maybe.”
They returned to a breakfast sampler where Rantara sipped alternately between orange juice and lemonade, undecided which she preferred until at last, the door clicked twice to announce Lena’s arrival.
“Good morning,” she said with a smile.
“Any news?” Norris asked at once.
“Yes, and the Governor will be here shortly to tell you about it. Apparently, the information from your orb got their attention, Lieutenant; the President himself has sent word for you to meet with them immediately.”
“Here we go,” Norris smiled, but Rantara didn’t seem to notice as she inspected an orange-glazed cinnamon roll.
“Don’t mind her,” Norris whispered, “she has a weakness for pastry.”
Lena couldn’t resist laughing, but the pathway to Earth had been opened and Norris felt suddenly buoyed by the thought and a possibility for success that seemed fleeting and unassured only days before.
PRESIDENT EDUARD FERNANDEZ waited for the others in his office high above the Rue de Lausanne, watching a bright red land taxi as it edged carefully through the surface traffic. An unenviable task, he thought silently, even in the late days of autumn; the new tube station’s construction had made the city streets a clogged nightmare, with machinery and small mountains of gravel littering the lakeshore. Beyond, the Alps were already heavy with snow and frost settled almost daily on the naked trees and angled avenues of Geneva.
Defense Minister Anne White arrived first, placing her teacup with tedious precision onto a saucer before sitting at the long table. She said nothing, but her expression was absent the usual indifference Fernandez always found oddly amusing. Instead, she wore the face of stark, persistent worry.
“It’s getting colder now,” Fernandez said, adhering steadfastly to the needless small talk others wished he would forego. “We may see a flurry tonight.”
White only nodded and Fernandez moved to the table, abandoning the illusion of normality at last.
“It was bound to happen at some point, Anne.”
“Like this?” she asked with a nervous laugh. “It’s not the same as the day they discovered the Sansesh, Eduard, or even the Pollaba. You saw their technology, and that was only a sample; these Khorran and Anashi people are way beyond us!”
“Perhaps, but they still need our help, don’t they?”
She frowned at his tone. Fernandez had never been easily frightened, but his calm in the face of the most stunning and important moment in human history was unsettling.
“You’re comfortable with all this?”
“It did sound a bit far-fetched, but the package from Tanus was rather compelling.”
“We know nothing about them!” White protested in the distinctive, upper-Midwest twang that always came out loudest when she was under pressure. “Other than the power and sophistication of their technology, they are an unknown. These Hyperthreads, for example—what are we to a civilization that mastered them while our ships still plod along inside the Plexus?”
Fernandez turned and walked slowly along the row of plush, over-stuffed chairs tucked neatly beneath the huge, oak table, trailing a hand along each head rest.
“We know enough.”
“What are you thinking, Eduard?”
Before he could answer, the door opened suddenly as Vice President Noriko Nishikawa and Gerald Underhill, Minister of Science and Technology, went quickly to their seats. Fernandez smiled at White and said, “Let’s talk this through and you’ll see.”
An aide brought a trolley with an assortment of finger food and drinks, parking it neatly against the curved, olive green wall. They waited silently until he was gone, easing the heavy door closed without a sound. Fernandez pulled himself onto a ledge jutting out from the middle panel of window glass and folded his arms as a signal they could begin.
“We’ve all seen the data, yes?”
No one answered.
“First, let’s discuss authenticity; are we in agreement the information is genuine?”
“There’s no question, Eduard,” said Underhill. “We analyzed the formulas and construction plans for most of the technology they sent and I can say with absolute confidence we were at least twenty years from even theorizing at that level.”
There were some who regarded the diminutive Coventry man as needlessly dramatic and often tedious in discussions, but Fernandez understood and appreciated the perspective Underhill brought to those most serious talks. He nodded and looked at White.
“Do you see something from the defense side that doesn’t add up?”
“Gerald’s right; their tech is the stuff of dreams, especially the phased plasma weapons and shield generators. Our mainline cruisers are tough, but I don’t think they would be able to hold out for long in a firefight against that kind of power.”
“Until now,” Nishikawa said with a tiny smile.
“Exactly,” Fernandez echoed.
White heard the answer to her earlier question and the effect was chilling.
“Hold on; are you suggesting a belligerent posture?”
“You misunderstand,” Fernandez replied. “These people have initiated first contact, ostensibly for the purpose of gaining our support, if this person Norris is to be believed. I’m not about to jeopardize a possible friendship with two clearly advanced civilizations by turning on them at the outset.”
“Then what did you mean?” White asked.
“If all this really is true, and we’ve seen nothing to suggest it’s not, we have the chance to move humanity forward by decades overnight. It may have been the result of an accident, but I would think these Khorrans and Anashi people would be far more interested in further technology exchanges if we helped them to defeat this other race; the…”
“Namadi,” Nishikawa whispered.
“Yes; Namadi—thank you, Nori.”
Underhill stood and walked to the window.
“All these wonderful advancements aside, they’re asking a lot, Eduard.”
“Are they?”
“Of course! Except for you, they want us—the people in this room—to travel a distance so vast, it would take us months or even years to cross by our own means. They’re not asking for some of our junior people, they expect us, personally. We are speaking of the three most senior members of the Cabinet!”
“Not to mention connecting us to their machine that somehow holds memories,” Nishikawa said. “Is that even possible, Gerald?”
“I don’t know. Everything about it is alien and can’t be described in quantifiable terms we would recognize and they admitted as much themselves. But this man, Norris—he claims he’s interacted with it on several occasions and has insisted it works.”
“What do we know about him, Nori?” Fernandez asked, calling up a biographic from a console on the far end of the table.
Nishikawa thumbed through her infopad and said, “Born on Earth, then his family moved to the gateway Colonies when he was a teenager. After university, he was a reconnaissance and attack pilot in the Colonial Navy, but something happened—a ‘Plexus anomaly’—according to the official file. Norris claims he was sent across the Sector almost twenty years ago by a static device they call a ‘Flash Trap,’ where he first met the Anashi people. They took his memories so he couldn’t tell anyone after they sent him back. The doctors at Hibernia diagnosed him with Zeleznik Syndrome and he was processed out on a diminished capacity medical. Since then he’s been working as an engineering manager at a few of CenturoCorp’s remote mining operations in the Outer Rim; the latest a frozen rock called SLC-28, somewhere in Huan Li’s region. It shows he disappeared again over a year and a half ago, but he says he was taken across the entire sector again and reunited with these Khorrans and Anash. You know the rest…”
Fernandez frowned at the lines as they scrolled past on the console’s display. At last, he turned to Underhill.
“What about the blood sample data from his companion—this alien girl; any possible chance it was fabricated?”
“None whatever. We have found a lot of interesting life forms since we first ventured outside the system, but in spite of the similarities to human physiology, she’s clearly not from here.”
“Explain the similarities, Gerald.”
“To begin with, her outward appearance is nearly identical to ours, except for the obvious eye color, average height and the odd, metallic pigmentation in her skin. Internally, her organs may be arranged differently, but they’re essentially duplicates of ours, although increased lung capacity would make for an excellent mountain climber. Her DNA is a match with ours in all but the most superficial ways, similar to various, racially distinct characteristics common among humans. Still and all, it’s the subtle differences of her physiology that make this so compelling, and why we believe she is the genuine article.”
“In what way?”
Underhill shifted in his chair.
“Among the documents and programs in Mr. Norris’ information package was a substantial database filled with Khorran and Anashi physiology texts. The scans Huan Li’s assistant conducted on Tanus to analyze this girl’s blood chemistry and configuration matched up perfectly. Her blood cells, for example, are suspended in a fluid medium with a mostly similar composition of sodium, potassium, chloride and a bit of calcium, just like our own plasma. The cells appear to function exactly the way ours do, but they’re not configured as the platelets found in any ordinary human. Her blood cells are elongated and elliptical—narrowed in the middle to form the silhouette of a stylized figure of eight. They reminded us of microscopic bowling pins when we looked at the images.”
“But they function similarly?”
“It seems counterintuitive, but once you sort out various sugars and antigens to establish blood type and compatibility, her cells might work in a human host and vice-versa; a transfusion, for example, could be successful.”
Anne was unconvinced.
“The conspicuous similarity of a bip
edal humanoid doesn’t raise questions?”
“No, and it shouldn’t,” he replied. “We dispelled long ago the old misperception that finding other humanoid life in the galaxy would be near to impossible. The Sansesh and Pollaba are not, but they are only our first examples to study; except for the greater physical stature, relative to average humans, these Khorrans are, to any meaningful degree, functionally and chemically identical to humans. I do admit, for the evolutionary process to have yielded so similar an organic mechanism at such a distance from Earth is certainly interesting, but hardly a miracle.”
“Where does that leave us, Gerald?” asked Fernandez.
“From a scientific perspective, the evidence is irrefutable. I leave the political, cultural and military disposition to you, Noriko and Anne, but there is no question in my mind this alien female is the real thing, and it follows the Khorrans and Anashi are just as real.”
“What about the Hyperthreads?” Nishikawa asked, pointing at the display. “They can move through time and space in ways that make the Plexus seem dull.”
“Yes, and we’ve been analyzing the physics very closely, especially their incredible harmonics engines. This technology is far beyond our current level, but the math checks out. My researchers have been working at a fever pitch ever since, and barely able to contain themselves with each new discovery. We’ve been studying the theory of hypervelocity travel for years, but the connections that once confounded our theorists have been laid out in startlingly plain terms. We would’ve arrived at this moment eventually, but it’s like Christmas morning to have it handed to us without effort.”
“Didn’t one of your people write a paper about this, once upon a time?” Nishikawa asked.
“Carolina Sikorskaya. She was chief of staff for my last two years at the university, but the paper you refer to was more a collection of questions than hypotheses or theories. She has always believed the Plexus could be expanded, but harmonics drive engines like this were still undefined and only a concept. Carolina simply wanted to ignite discussion, you see.”
Echoes of Esharam Page 28