by Ian Douglas
“This way, people,” Pierce said.
As he walked past Hunter, though, Minkowski gave him a sly wink. “Have fun, Skipper,” he said, sotto voce. “Be sure to use protection, okay?”
Hunter decided not to dignify the gibe with a reply. As the JSST filed off in the lieutenant’s wake, Elanna came up to Hunter and extended a hand. “Lieutenant Commander Hunter? It is very good to meet you. I’ve heard a great deal about you.”
Her language was a bit on the stiff and formal side, with a trace of an accent Hunter couldn’t place. He shook her hand. “Elanna. You seem well versed in twenty-first century customs.”
“Of course. I see you’ve been told about us.”
“A little.”
“Well, yes. I’ve been here for quite a while. If you’ll come with me?”
She led Hunter deep into a labyrinthine tangle of passageways and compartments. The base was huge, with a large population of modern humans along with a scattering of Nordics. In a few minutes, Hunter was completely lost. He was having some difficulty walking in the low gravity, and it took him a while to get the hang of Elanna’s graceful, gliding skip that carried her effortlessly along each passageway.
Eventually, she ushered him into what looked like a room. It had a long mahogany table, like one might find in the office of a corporate CEO, and one wall had a white monitor or viewscreen reaching almost deck to overhead.
She gestured toward a padded office chair. “I understand you have some questions, Commander.”
“You could say that. But I’m still catching my breath. This facility is . . . fantastic. It’s like some kind of dream.”
“It’s been here for several thousand years, Commander. Thirty years ago, we helped your people fix it up for your needs.”
“Several thousand—” He blinked. “Who built it? You?”
“Not us. Others. The ones you call ‘Grays.’ They have been here for a very, very long time, Commander, modifying our species for their own purposes.”
“I see I’m going to have some catching up to do.”
“All newcomers up here feel the same way,” she told him. “It can be quite a shock.”
“You said ‘modifying our species.’ Are you serious about that? Or is that some kind of joke?”
“Oh, no, Commander. I’m quite serious.” She cocked her head to one side. “Why . . . are you religious?”
“Not particularly, no.” He’d been raised Presbyterian, but without any particularly strong or emotional beliefs in the matter one way or the other. He shrugged. “I guess I’m in the church of ‘be good, do your best, and hope everything works out.’”
“A good philosophy—and good to know. Our selection process deliberately excludes people with strong religious feelings,” she said, “but a few have gotten through the screening. Let’s just say some fundamentalist sects are very upset to learn that the Grays have modified humans as much as they have.”
“What . . . they created us?”
“Not created, no. But there have been several deliberate genetic interventions through human prehistory. Your fledgling genomic sciences are only just now beginning to discover this. The rate of genetic change in humans has sped up one hundred times just in the past ten thousand years.”
“Agriculture,” Hunter suggested, frowning. “Improved nutrition.”
“Some of it may be due to such factors,” Elanna said, “but most has been due to deliberate genetic tinkering by outsiders.”
“The Ebens—the Grays—whatever the hell you call them.”
“That’s right. There have been several instances, for example, where human brain size increased explosively over a relatively short period of time, and this despite the fact that the size of the human female pelvis makes it extremely difficult and even dangerous for humans to give birth to babies with larger skulls. What you may not appreciate yet is that the Ebens, the ‘Extraterrestrial Biological Entities’ you know as the Grays, are in fact the same as the Talis.”
“Come again?”
“They are us, human descendants, human time travelers, but from a million years farther out into the future.”
“You’re saying the Grays are human? We’re talking about the little guys with big heads and enormous eyes . . . human?”
“Humans, highly evolved beyond where you and I are now.”
“You know, I’m not sure I buy it.”
“Buy what, Commander?”
“The idea of beings from the remote future coming back and . . . uh . . . ʽtinkering,’ as you put it.”
“Why not?”
“It’s circular reasoning! Humans are smart because our human descendants went back and played around with our genome way back when, but that implies that humans are smart enough to develop time travel in the first place. If they hadn’t gone back and changed the human genome, they wouldn’t have been able to go back and change the genome—” Hunter shook his head. “Gives me a headache just thinking about it.”
“You’ve heard about something called the time travel paradox, Commander?”
“The idea that we shouldn’t mess around with time machines because we might wipe ourselves out?” He nodded. “Sure.”
“Well, it’s difficult to explain unless you have a certain amount of expertise in hyperdimensional mathematics, but suffice to say that time is not a single linear movement forward. It’s far more complex than that. Any change to events in the past does not wipe out the future of that time line. It instead creates a new time line, one that incorporates that change. The end result is that there can be no such thing as a temporal paradox, because the universe—the multiverse, I should say—adjusts to incorporate any possible changes to the original time line.”
“You make it all sound so simple.”
“Simple? No, it’s very much not, and only people well versed in advanced quantum theory and Poincaré polydimensional topology can appreciate it.”
“Oh, well, then. That’s different.” Hunter meant it to be sarcastic, but Elanna didn’t appear to notice.
“Of course it is. The important thing to remember is that while less-advanced cultures should avoid tinkering with the local time lines, truly advanced species may not have the same concerns. In many ways, they are truly godlike species with a god’s understanding of space-time.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Hunter said. He was feeling . . . lost. He didn’t like Elanna’s patronizing attitude, but he liked even less the feeling of ignorance, of a deep-seated inability to understand anything.
Not only that, but Elanna’s characterization of the Eben Grays as “gods” left him with a feeling of profound disquiet.
“Look, I don’t really care if the Ebens are playing God. I might hope they know what the hell they’re doing, but I’m not really worried about it. I’m much more worried about something else.”
“And what is that?”
“What the hell are we here for, anyway? Some of the technology I’ve been seeing . . . damn, it’s like Star Wars and then some. You people have ray guns and antigravity for Christ’s sake! If there’s an enemy, how are we supposed to go into combat against that?”
“The JSST is envisioned as a rapid-response military strike team, quite similar to your Navy SEALs or Army Delta Force. You will be assigned to one of your spacecraft carriers, the USSS Hillenkoetter. The ‘Big-H,’ as some of your people call it, will be leaving soon on an interstellar mission.”
“To another star?” It was very nearly a shout. The rabbit hole had just become very deep indeed.
Becky McClure was ushered into a large and windowless room furnished with sofas, low tables, and a large projection screen or monitor. At the moment, the screen showed a planet, huge and in extraordinary detail, hanging in space against the glare of . . . was that the sun? It seemed far too large, too close, with an odd reddish hue, and its surface was mottled by sunspots, far more than she’d ever seen in photos of Earth’s sun. She thought it might be an astronomical painting
of some extrasolar world, and yet the level of detail suggested that it was, in fact, an extremely high-definition photograph.
“Proxima b,” another woman already in the room told her. “The nearest exoplanet out there.”
“We’ve been there?”
“Oh, yes. Shortly after it was confirmed. That was just a couple of years ago.” She extended a hand. “Hi, I’m Simone Carter. I’ll be your boss on this expedition.”
Carter was tall, black, and seemed confident and outgoing. McClure shook her hand, then sank into one of the Danish modern sofas. “And your position is, Ms. Carter?”
“Doctor, actually . . . but call me Simone. I’m head of Hillenkoetter’s science department, and also chief xenopsychologist.”
“Xenopsych?”
“The more we can understand how our, ah, visitors think, the better we’ll be able to deal with them. You’ll be handling the biological end of things: why they’re like they are, where they came from, stuff like that.”
“Does that include the time travelers?”
“If it comes up, yes. We know about the Nordics, of course. The Grays, though, are still kind of a ‘gray’ area.”
McClure gave a polite groan, and Carter laughed.
“But the Grays are time travelers, as well,” McClure said. “Right?”
“So far as we know. They’re tough to talk to, and they aren’t all that forthcoming with information about themselves, but we estimate that they come from a human civilization spread across this part of the Galaxy between 1.2 and 1.4 million years in our future. At that point, Humankind has changed. We’ve evolved into the Grays. In fact, we know now of several hundred distinct Gray species. Apparently, we’re going to have a pretty wild evolutionary ride. There are short Grays, tall Grays, white Grays, Grays sharing a hive mind, robotic Grays, cloned Grays—”
“What about the Saurians?”
“Completely different species. They look like the Grays, but there are major differences. Digitigrade posture and forward hip articulation. Details of the skeleton and musculature.” Carter shrugged. “I’m sure you know more about that than I do.”
“I know some,” McClure admitted. “But not enough.”
One of the key points in the history of alien-human contact leading to the realization that the aliens were time travelers was the problem of parallel evolution. Humans and Nordics were far too much alike to have evolved on different worlds. Humans, McClure reasoned, were more closely related to maple trees than they would be to anything Out There, and the incredible diversity of life just here on Earth—from trilobites to dragonflies to octopi to frogs to platypuses to ostriches to humans—suggested that any aliens we met would be so unlike us as to be unrecognizable.
For a time, some researchers tried to explain the similarities between humans and Nordics as a case of convergent evolution. Sharks, dolphins, and ichthyosaurs all looked remarkably alike, but that was because all three—fish, mammal, and marine lizard—had been tailored by evolution to fit with superb precision into a specific niche, that of fast-swimming marine predators. Different organisms could evolve into similar shapes to fit a given environment. But the Grays, long assumed to be extraterrestrial visitors, were simply too human for them to be a truly alien species.
McClure was hoping that her extrasolar assignment would give her the chance to figure it out, though.
“Still, we do want you to learn as much about the Saurians, too,” Carter said. “The Grays and the Saurians are supposed to be at war with one another. Maybe we’re just being fed some disinformation.”
“Yeah, but why?” McClure asked.
“I don’t think the Grays know. But there are so many conspiracy theories out there about Saurians infiltrating Earth’s governments. . . .”
“That English writer. What’s his name . . . ?”
“And others.”
The English author in question had made headlines in the ’90s by claiming that the entire British royal family, plus blue bloods and the wealthy elite across Europe, plus the Bush family and forty-some other American presidents all were, in fact, alien lizard-people in disguise. McClure had always thought the guy had watched too much V back in the early ’80s, a miniseries about lizard invaders from Sirius disguised as human beings. The whole idea was the cheapest sort of bargain-basement sci-fi.
“But if the Saurians are influencing Earth’s civilization somehow,” Carter told her, “we need to know.”
“If we figure out that the Saurians are trying to take over Earth, what do we do about it?”
Carter sighed. “I, for one, welcome our new reptilian overlords. . . .”
McClure, however, didn’t think that it was funny.
Chapter Nine
I believe that alien life is quite common in the universe, although intelligent life is less so. Some say it has yet to appear on planet Earth.
Physicist Stephen Hawking, 2010
12 January 1971
Ssarsk was not the being’s name. Not really. The Surviving Few had no names, and no need of them. Within the highly organized society of the Saurians—that name would do as well as any other—each individual knew who and what it was and where it stood within a tightly structured hierarchy, and personal names would have been superfluous. “Ssarsk” translated very roughly as “Third Pilot.”
Besides, it was fully telepathic, and the touch of any other mind was distinctive, instantly recognizable. When the thought arose in its mind, it instantly identified it as the mental touch of Gajek—the “Fifth Seeker.”
Where are you?
In a room deep beneath the surface . . . a prisoner.
Are you under observation?
By their security systems, simple cameras and microphones. None of them are here at present.
Be ready. We are opening a portal.
Light flared from one wall, spilling into the darkened room. Ssarsk waited, crouching, as the vortex stabilized. A moment later, it saw the slender, stooping shape of Gajek against the light, just on the far side of the unbroken wall.
It took you long enough.
You were difficult to find. We had to sample many of them to determine your location. Now hurry—their alarms have gone off!
It stepped through the portal.
“It’s not as bad as you seem to think, Commander,” Elanna told him. “No lizard men for you! We’re going to start you off hunting Nazis.”
“Hunting Nazis . . .”
“I’m sure you’ve heard the theories of German Nazis escaping Earth at the end of World War II? In their Haunebu flying saucers?”
“Escaping—what? Not Antarctica? Or Argentina?”
“There are many stories, Commander. It is so very difficult now to sort fact from fiction.”
“Yeah, but Nazis in space? Nobody takes that seriously!” Hunter was thinking of a recent SF-comedic movie—Iron Sky. There’d also been an early novel by Robert Heinlein from the late ’40s, Rocket Ship Galileo, which had escaped Nazis plotting a return from their secret base on the Moon. Not a bad story, but so clunky and unlikely today.
“For many years, your people assumed that we were escaped Nazis. You even called us ‘Nordics,’ which in certain contexts could be another word for ‘Aryan.’”
“Yeah, but not without some justification, I’d say. You do look the part, with that silver-blond hair and blue eyes.”
Elanna sighed. “In fact, a few of our people did help the Germans, at least early on, but the Saurians offered them the most help. One of the Nazi scientists, Hans Kammler, escaped in a time ship. Others, we think, left in a spacecraft of Saurian design. It is possible that they established a colony on the world of another star.”
Hunter considered this, then shook his head. “Uh-uh. I don’t believe it.”
“Your skepticism is noted, but we have reason to believe that it is true.”
“What reason?”
“It’s difficult to explain.”
He laughed. “After all this? Try m
e.”
She produced a small hand control device from somewhere and pressed a button. The big monitor screen switched on, revealing a view of deep space. A planet hung suspended in the distance. “Is that Mars?” Hunter asked. The planet was red and ocher brown in hue, but it looked like no image of the planet Mars that Hunter had ever seen. There were clouds and . . . was that water?
As he watched, the angle of view changed, bringing a second world into view. This one was enormous, a red-and-yellow-banded gas giant, with other moons visible as tiny bright pearls in the distance. A thread-thin white slash, like a taut thread, bisected the giant world. Hunter’s eyes widened. “Jupiter? One of Jupiter’s moons is red. . . .” But was that slash a set of rings? Did Jupiter have rings?
“Not Mars, not Jupiter, and not Io,” Elanna told him. “The gas giant is a planetary companion of the star you know as Aldebaran. The world in the foreground is a habitable, planet-sized moon we call Daarish. And there is this. . . . Watch.”
Something else was drifting onto the screen now . . . an irregularly shaped piece of gray metal. It appeared as though it had been ripped from the side of something larger.
As the fragment slowly tumbled, the opposite surface came into view, and it was adorned by a black-and-white German cross—not the Teutonic iron cross, not the swastika . . . but the straight-armed version used to identify aircraft and other military equipment.
“What the fuck . . . ?”
“You recognize that emblem?”
“Sure, but it might be alien. Couldn’t it? I mean, an alien symbol that just happens to look like it’s German?”
“Do you really believe that’s true?”