Stranger Suns

by George Zebrowski

  Juan stopped again and looked around. The shadows of the rain forest were deep, glowing with a green pallor. Juan felt alert, attuned to a dozen different sounds and smells without conscious effort; his eyes tracked insects against the shifting hues of vegetation. A zebra-striped butterfly glided through a shaft of sunlight; a piece of tree bark moved and became a snake.

  “I don't want to meet anything poisonous,” Lena said.

  A long howl cut through the humid air, died, and seemed to return as a series of hoots. Moist pellets rained down. “Bird droppings,” Malachi said. “They've zeroed in on us.”

  “I see a pair of brown eyes,” Lena said, pointing to her left. “There behind those leaves!” The vegetation stirred and the eyes disappeared.

  “Probably a spider monkey,” Malachi said.

  Juan turned his head suddenly and saw some orchids move. The forest seemed to whisper to him.

  “Could be jaguars,” Malachi added, “if there are any left.”

  “Be ready with your handguns,” Juan said.

  Malachi laughed. “We'd never know what hit us, if they were hungry enough to attack. It's the small things that are more likely to kill us—snakes or insects.” He peered ahead. “I see a trail.”

  He swung his spade. Juan and Lena pushed through after him, and they came out on a worn footpath. It cut in from their left and continued forward. Malachi led the way. Juan and Lena hurried after him.

  The trail twisted, but kept westward. Juan looked around at the vast superorganism of the jungle, composed of creatures that ranged in size from microbes to large animals, working together under the hot sky, drawing energy from sun and soil, losing it as motion, death, and decay. The forest's immortality was a willful thrust into time, squandering beauty along the way, caring little for the individual.

  The trail came to an overgrown incline and ran parallel. “So it is a highway,” Malachi said with relief.

  They gazed down at the sprawling automated road. Two large trucks rushed by, doing at least a hundred kilometers per hour along their guide path. Two hundred meters across the gray pavement, the jungle resumed its life.

  “That's the sound we heard,” Lena said.

  Malachi nodded. “But we can't stop anything that's running on program.”

  Three trucks went by and the road was quiet again.

  Lena turned her head and said, “Voices.”

  Juan peered up the road and saw six human figures. Three of them were spraying vegetation, while the others examined a control box by the roadside. “Looks like maintenance to me.”

  “Move slowly,” Malachi said. “They're armed.”

  They went down the incline and came out on the shoulder of the road without being noticed.

  “Spread out,” Malachi said. “We're an easy target together.”

  “Hello!” Juan shouted as they walked toward the crew. A truck whisked by in the far lane, drowning him out.

  “They're wearing fibrous armor and face masks,” Malachi said. “Those are military helmets.”

  “What are they afraid of?” Lena asked.

  “Raise your hands and keep them up,” Juan whispered. “Hello!”

  The figures stopped and stood like statues.

  “We're friends!” Juan shouted.

  One took a machine gun from his shoulder, pointed it at Juan, and shouted a string of words.

  “It isn't Spanish,” Juan said.

  “Portuguese,” Malachi whispered. He shouted back in the language and got a vehement reply. “He says to come forward—slowly.”

  The men came to meet them. The one who seemed in charge stepped up to Juan and seemed to glare at him through his silvered face plate.

  “Do you speak English?” Juan asked.

  “I do,” the big man said. “Stand still and say who you are.”

  “We're a UN-ERS scientific team,” Juan replied.

  “Are you armed?” He did not lift his mask.

  “Automatics in our packs,” Juan said.

  “Surrender your weapons. Are there more of you?”

  “No,” Juan said as three other men surrounded them and began to search their packs. “You have nothing to fear from us,” Juan insisted. “We did not approach you with weapons drawn.”

  The man shrugged. “You won't need them. What is your business here?”

  “Where are we, by the way?” Malachi asked, removing the gun casually from Lena's pack and handing it to one of the armed figures.

  “Are you joking? Brazil. Where did you think?”

  “Of course, old chap, of course.” Malachi said, taking out Juan's gun and handing it over. “But you know how easy it is to stray over borders out here. My gun's in the lower zipper.”

  “The nearest border is hundreds of kilometers west of here,” the man said with derision.

  These were mercenaries, Juan realized. The government provided roads into the dwindling jungle, but private companies kept them open. The swindling and murder of natives, airdrops of contaminated food and clothing, illegal lumbering and strip mining, had been a way of life for most of the last century. UN Earth Resources Security had reversed the Amazon's decline by the turn of the century, but the sheer size of the land mass still made some covert exploitation possible.

  “We're lost,” Juan said, convinced that the big man was considering whether he should kill them. “Our plane went down east of here. We were making a connection in Lima for a flight to the Antarctic. Can you call for help?”

  The big man slid back his mask, revealing a dark, unshaven face. “Of course. There is a government field nearby. We'll take you there. A plane goes to Lima twice a week—or you can wait for the one to Brasilia in five days.” He took his hand away from the machine gun and held up five gloved fingers. “Terrorist indios try to damage the road, but it's hard to do now.” He held up his weapon and smiled. “No bullets, just tranks. Better this way than theirs, eh?” He gestured with his left arm. “Our truck, just up the road.”

  “Thank you,” Juan said, trying to hide his fear.

  * * *

  The vehicle was a massive air-conditioned trailer truck. They were shown to a lounge area in the rear and left alone.

  Malachi tried the door and found it locked. “I'm afraid we can't be sure they'll be helpful.”

  Lena dropped her pack and sat down in an upholstered chair, looking more angry than afraid. “I can't believe we gave our weapons away. This long run of bad luck will kill us.” She looked up and Juan saw that she was struggling to stay calm. “What are we going to do?”

  He took off his pack and said, “We might have been killed on the spot if we hadn't surrendered our weapons. We couldn't have prevented a search. Our only chance is to intimidate them with who we are, so they won't risk violence.”

  Malachi let his pack slip to the carpeted floor and said, “Possibly. We haven't actually seen them doing anything. In fact, we may be wrong about who they are.”

  “Tranquilizer bullets, my ass,” Juan said. “These are hired thugs.”

  Lena took a deep breath and said in a trembling voice, “Who we are is exactly what they're afraid of. They know we'll report their presence.”

  Malachi said, “Yes, but that may not be enough for them to kill us. They're probably checking on our plane story right now. They'll find out there's been no plane reported lost, but that won't prove we're lying. How else did we get here? They'll have to consider that we may be telling the truth and let us go.”

  “Let's hope,” Lena said, sitting back in the chair.

  Juan felt a gentle pull as he sat down in the chair next to her. “We're moving.” Malachi fell back onto a small sofa and stretched. “Look at this place,” Juan said as glasses rattled in the bar.

  “No windows,” Malachi said. “I saw heavy armor on the outside.”

  They were silent for a while. Juan listened to the distant whine of the engines. There was nothing to be done until the vehicle reached its destination.

  “I wond
er,” Lena said nervously, “if humankind may be all that's left of the web's builders,” and Juan knew that she was trying to distract herself.

  “I don't want that to be true,” he replied. “I'd like to think that our history shows we're original to our planet, that we got this far, for what it's worth, on our own, whatever we are. Clearly, we were visited, but that's a far cry from tracing lineage.”

  Malachi grimaced. “We're still our jolly old selves, even the cheerless chaps running this bus.”

  “But what happened,” Lena asked, “after the two ships came to earth?”

  “I think I gave the likely explanation for that,” Malachi said calmly. “The ships were meant to be terminals, to be left in place. The builders left through the frames.”

  Lena shifted in the chair. Juan noticed her growing unease as she tried to carry on the discussion. “Then whose skeletons did we find?”

  “Intruders,” Malachi said, “the same as us. Maybe they just starved to death in that chamber after they got in. The door might have failed.”

  Lena shook her head. “You mean they just went in and never came out?”

  Malachi waved his hand as he reclined. “One or two went in and didn't come out. Two more followed and didn't come out. Finally they were all in and the door failed when they tried to exit.”

  “Sad,” Lena said.

  Juan sat back. “I keep worrying if we're the same people who stepped into the frames, or exact duplicates. If not, then our originals died out there.” It was the wrong thing to say, he realized as Lena glanced at him.

  “We're the originals,” Malachi explained, “if our actual atoms were transmitted through the short-space links, and copies if only our patterns went through—that is, if we were scanned and rebuilt according to the same scan from energy available within the system, which would make us exact twins of our originals, who no longer exist. As twins we'll never feel any different. Of course, we'll have to know more about the system to be sure whether this is the case or not, but my feeling is that the frames are direct bridges—whatever steps in, steps out. Wormholes being opened routinely.”

  Lena bit her lower lip and looked at Juan. “But we are, well, we are ourselves still, and they're gone, whoever they were.”

  “We are exactly what we were,” Juan answered. “Same memories and feelings, if what Mal says is the case.”

  “Then what's the point of the distinction?” Lena asked.

  “We're another set of the same, if the same atoms were not sent and reassembled,” Malachi answered. “Of course, socially, it won't make any difference, and subjectively there's no way for us to tell, since we're the only ones left to remember. Even if we determine the nature of the technology, we won't feel any different.”

  “But we'll know,” Lena said, “that we died out there, as surely as Magnus did—and we may not have much longer to live here.”

  “Yes,” Malachi replied, scowling.

  Juan imagined humanity swarming through the web, and wondered what other installations the starcrossers had placed in the solar system. There was something inside the Moon; there was probably a station in the Sun. “If we have our own suncore station,” he said, “that might explain some of the anomalous measurements we've had over the last century. The Sun may be draining and won't last as long as we thought. A web of this kind could make a dent in the energy output of whole galaxies.”

  “Maybe that's why they stopped,” Lena said.

  Malachi sat up. “We've done the same on Earth, with various nations hogging the world's resources at one time or another.”

  “But where did the builders go?” Juan asked. “Where are they now?”

  Malachi shrugged. “We saw no evidence that they still exist. They went elsewhere, became immaterial, or merely perished in some way too subtle for them to have understood or prevented.”

  “Since we won't be able to hide what we've learned,” Lena said, “we'll have to try to influence how it will be used, how it will be revealed.” She smiled and added bitterly, “If we live.”

  “How?” Juan asked.

  “Maybe by not telling everything at once.”

  “Whatever we do,” Juan said, “nothing will ever be the same again.”

  Malachi took a deep breath and smiled. “Perhaps no one will find the ship, or us, if these chaps kill us. No one will know we ever came home.”

  Juan was silent; Lena glanced at him. After a few moments Malachi motioned to them. They all moved toward the center of the room. “It's likely we're being listened to,” Malachi whispered.

  “It can't make any sense to them,” Juan replied. “It's all out of context.”

  “We're slowing,” Lena said as the glasses and bottles rattled again in the bar. Juan looked at her and Mal, and realized that these might be their final moments.

  17. DISCRETE ORBITS

  Five shabby brick blockhouses made up the airport complex. The big man showed them into a room and smiled as he took off his helmet. “You will wait here—please.” He sat down in a chair by the door and closed his eyes.

  Juan went over to the lone, barred window and looked out at the sun-blasted runway; it seemed long enough to land a jet. He thought of the ship in the hill, and its twin in the distant suncore. We've come back across time again, he thought. It was all a dream, the ships and web. How much was true and how much had he and his companions invented in their clumsy efforts to understand the unknown? Was there something in the ship with which they had communicated? It was all fragile guesswork.

  He turned from the window as Lena approached the guard. “What are we waiting for?” she demanded.

  The man opened his eyes and smiled. “It will be a few minutes only. Today's plane for Lima was cancelled.”

  “May we make a phone call?” Malachi asked politely. “There will be concern if we don't arrive on time.”

  This seemed to upset the big man. He got up, opened the door, and left, locking it behind him.

  “What was that about?” Lena asked.

  “Magic words,” Malachi said. “A test, actually. They may now let us use a phone, to find out whom we shall call. That will suggest to them how they should behave toward us.”

  Juan took a deep breath and said to him, “You may have just saved our lives.” Lena looked slightly relieved.

  Malachi said, “If they're going to kill us, it will have to be before any phone calls. That way we stay missing.” He tried the heavy door, without success.

  They waited in silence. Juan tried to control his anxiety by staring out the window. He tensed as he heard the door open behind him.

  “Come with me,” the big man's voice said.

  Juan turned around and saw the machine pistol in the man's right hand. Malachi went outside. Lena followed. Juan hurried after her. The big man smiled at him as he went out.

  The Brazilian herded them toward the next blockhouse, opened the door and motioned for them to go inside. “What's this?” Juan demanded.

  “Phone,” the big man replied, gesturing with his weapon.

  Juan followed Lena and Malachi inside. The door closed behind him; the lock clicked.

  On the desk in the center of the room stood a phone. “They'll be listening on a spare,” Malachi said.

  Juan sat down at the desk, started to punch in the coded number, then stopped.

  “What's wrong?” Lena asked.

  “What's the rest?”

  Malachi reached over and entered the final digits. They waited as the call went through.

  Titus Summet gaped at Juan from the screen, then blinked. “What? Where are you?”

  “Somewhere in the Amazonian jungle. Before you do anything else, Titus, note our exact location and identify yourself.”

  Summet glared at him for a moment, then nodded and said, “Titus Summet here. Director, UN Earth Resources Security. What do you need, Dr. Obrion?” His upper lip twitched slightly.

  “We're in Brazil,” Juan said, trying to smile. “We missed our con
nection in Lima when our plane went down.”

  Summet stepped out of view. Lena and Malachi glanced at Juan apprehensively before the Director's image reappeared. “Have you identified yourselves to the local authorities?” he asked.

  “Not yet,” Juan replied. “They haven't asked for formal introductions.”

  “Who's with you?” He peered out from the screen. “Dravic and Moede. Good. I'll send a plane to take you to Miami. Check into the Singapore, and stay put until I get there. Are you in any difficulty right now?”

  “Uncertain,” Juan said.

  “I'll do what I can. Just get on that plane when it arrives. It's out of Lima, so it should be quick.”

  The screen faded before Juan could tell him about Magnus. Juan looked at Malachi. “Well, what do you think?”

  “We'll see.”

  Lena said, “I think he understood.”

  “This is his chance,” Juan said, “to turn things around. It couldn't have been good for him politically to lose us and the alien ship. He wants us safe, under his direct control, so he can decide how to let all this play out.”

  Malachi nodded. “He'll meet us alone, or with someone he trusts, to keep this from Dovzhenko while he secures the ship. He has no reason to think we came back in any other way.”

  “In a way,” Lena said, “we did come back in a ship.”

  Malachi asked, “Do we just disappear when we get to Miami?”

  “He might meet us at the plane, if I know Titus.”

  Lena said, “We must be clear on what we want. Titus needs us. But we need him if we want to continue to work and have any say in this.” She waved her hand. “I know—my first impulse is to go and hide somewhere—but I think we should at least start with Titus and see where he stands. Secrecy is just not productive in the end, and they'll find out anyway. We'll have to tell someone sooner or later.”

  “I agree,” Malachi said.

  Juan nodded. “If they let us out of here.”

  * * *

  Juan watched the small hydrojet with UN-ERS markings land and taxi. The door to the blockhouse opened; the big man looked disappointed as he motioned for them to come out, and led them to the aircraft.