And What of Earth?

by Stuart Collings

  Bethy walked behind the counter and kicked the two boxes of files that were sitting on the floor. “Some of the files that we couldn’t get rid of date back to when you first started here. Back then, you used to sign everything. Took her three tries.”

  “It’s a good thing I never left my checkbook here,” she said trying to make light of the situation. “And the General approved of all of this skullduggery?”

  “Honey, he was the one who brought the blank enlistment forms. And he was the one who checked the forged signature to see if it was good enough. He was happy, the President was happy, and those damn weasels got smacked good.”

  “Okay,” Jennifer said, trying to digest the revelation. “So, what am I? A corpsman? A corporal? Sergeant? There’s no way they’d make a nursing assistant an officer.” But I am, aren’t I? That’s why the Captain kept calling me Ma’am. Why Rafe did.

  “You were going to be an advisor to the President. Now, I think, they’re considering you a military attaché.”

  “What am I, Bethy?”

  She smiled again. “You’re a major.”

  Though she expected something like this, it still seemed to catch her off-guard. “A major what —? A major disappointment —? A major disaster? A major catastrophe —?” Bethy started to get concerned. “A major screw-up? A major malfunction— ?”

  Bethy hurried back around the counter and grabbed Jennifer by the shoulders. “Stop it! Jennifer stop it!” Jennifer stopped midway through another epithet. “That’s your momma talking! You stop it. I swear, honey, if I had been living here when she used to say those things to you, I would’ve smacked her upside the head. And when she got back to her feet, I would’ve smacked her again.”

  She hugged Jennifer, squeezing her as hard as she could. “You’re a major blessing. A major advantage. A brilliant asset. An incredibly wonderful person. If my Betsy can be anything like you’ve turned out, I’ll be the proudest happiest momma in the country.” She pulled back from the embrace. “You hear me? Now, get that garbage outta your head, or I swear I’ll smack it out of your brains.”

  Jennifer’s voice was quiet. “You’ve never smacked anybody in your life.”

  “Wrong. When I was 12, I bloodied my big brother’s nose. I would’ve done it to your momma if I had to. If I had a chance to. Lookit, Jenn. You graduated high school three years early at 15. You got your nursing diploma at 17. You were working at a VA hospital at 18. You taught yourself how to play the drums that same year. That doesn’t sound much like a failure to me. Sounds like someone who is incredibly smart, incredibly clever and incredibly talented. The next time your momma’s words get into your head or onto your tongue, you tell yourself that Elizabeth Bratten says you’re the smartest creature to have ever walked about in this town. Maybe even this state. Or I swear, I’ll find some way to get to wherever their home planet is and bop you a good one.” They both laughed. “You are a wonderful person, Jennifer. A tremendously gifted young woman. And someone that I’ll miss very very much.”

  Jennifer started feeling weepy. “We should save our goodbyes for Friday evening, Bethy. Have a quiet shift.”

  The language lesson that night was replaced by a lesson on decorum, rules, rites and traditions regarding interacting with the Emperor in particular, and in the Empire in general. There were far too many to learn in just one evening, so Pokaifashta limited the teaching to how Jennifer should interact with the Emperor, and several ancient rights and declarations. Later, Jennifer made a point of masking and spending time with Myka. She thanked him again for providing shelter to the people of Jewel. They then tried to reassure each other with little success. In bed, back at the house, Jennifer cried herself to sleep.

  Chapter 17

  As she approached the barrier the next morning, the sentry once again handed her a portable display emitter. She was told that Pokaifashta had programmed more of the rights and rituals of the Wakira for her to study. Sticking it into the pocket of her scrubs top, Jennifer thanked the male and wished him a pleasant day before exiting through the barrier.

  Once she got to the clinic, both Bethy and Jennifer tried to pretend that it was just another ordinary day. The only thing out of place with the shift change was that Bethy asked Jennifer to not let the General know that she had spilt the beans. “I’ll do my best to keep you out of the stockade, Bethy,” was Jennifer’s reply.

  The day was spent alternating between staring out the window, or going over the notes that Poke had installed on the virtual display device for her encounter with the Emperor. When to kneel; how to bow; how to address him; what to say. No one came in for care, and Comiston didn’t come for lunch. Instead, a very nervous private brought the lunch at 12:05. Jennifer made a point of smiling at him and thanking him, before dismissing him. It’s cute but awkward when the enlisted men act anxious and submissive, she thought. What’s it going to be like when I am appointed and the Wakira start throwing themselves to the ground when I approach?

  Mid-afternoon, while she was reviewing yet another list of abstract noun constructs in the language, an image appeared. It showed a landmass with a concentration of blue and blue-white pixels in the middle. After a few moments, Jennifer managed to figure out how zoom in on the pixels and to pan around. It took several more minutes before she realized that she could change the wavelengths that the image was showing from high-energy subatomic particles down to visible light. When she reasoned out what she was seeing, a sick feeling appeared in the pit of her stomach. She hurried to the seclusion of the clinic’s tiny bathroom.

  Once inside and out of view from the people on the street, she masked and called forth the weapon. Though it was a tight squeeze, she was able to get the weapon pointed towards the south-southeast. “Safe mode,” she told the weapon. “We’re just looking for something. I need for you to look through the curvature of the planet. What I want to see is just the other side of the horizon. Can you do that for me?”

  Haltingly, the image she saw in the heads up progressed through several miles of bedrock and soil before it finally broke through to daylight. “It’s got to be around here somewhere.” She slowly panned around, trying to find the object that had appeared in the virtual display. She lowered the weapon ever so slightly, and caused the image to push through more rock and soil. When the image showed daylight once again, she saw what she was looking for right away.

  She pushed the view into the canvas sided troop truck. Four soldiers sat guarding the container that sat in the middle. She pushed into the container. “Can I see what’s there, even though there’s no ambient light?” she asked either the symbiote or the weapon. Immediately, she was able to see that there was yet another container, metallic, with obvious reinforcing bars and locks. “Again,” she said. “Let’s see what’s inside.”

  She felt nauseated at what she saw. She memorized the information and pulled the view back to normal. “Disarm. Hide,” she told the weapon.

  “Unmask,” she told the symbiote. “Dammit!” she exclaimed as she opened the door and went back out into the front room. “What were they thinking?!” She tried to once again concentrate on her lessons, but found it nearly impossible to do so.

  At evening shift change, Barb looked like she wanted to cry. Even though Jennifer urgently wanted to talk with General Comiston, she spent time with her friend. She managed to get Barb to laugh by kibbutzing about the enlistments and her now well-known ability to utter forged documents. They didn’t mention the aliens, the symbiote, or her impending departure. “Even keel,” Barb kept muttering under her breath. “It’s just another Wednesday evening.”

  Instead of heading south down Main towards home, Jennifer headed northwest, crossing over to the former gas station, then cutting through to the abandoned houses on Topaz, that the army had commandeered to house their offices and officers. After asking for assistance from one of the army sentries, she continued on to where she was told she would find General Comiston.

  “Miss Hodges! It’s odd, ha
ving you visit me rather than the other way around.” She didn’t return the greeting. He noticed her cold demeanor immediately.

  “You and I need to go for a walk, General. Right away.” She turned and went back out the door without waiting for an answer. Comiston grabbed his cap and fell in behind her.

  “What do you need to talk to me about?” he asked her, before his feet had reached the walk.

  “Not here,” she hissed at him. She waited a moment, to enable him walk beside her.

  Comiston didn’t know if he should be angry or concerned. “What’s this all about, Miss Hodges?”

  They turned right up Bramble, and walked the two blocks to the edge of town. She stopped and looked around. They were alone. “Lose the package, General. Move it elsewhere. Take it away. Make it look like it was a transhipment to another base. Just don’t bring it any closer.”

  “Package? Package of what?”

  “Don’t play me for a fool, General. You damn well know what I mean by the package. If you don’t like that designation, then let’s try ‘device’. If that doesn’t appeal to you, then let’s call it what it actually is. ‘Death for everyone’. Now do you know what I’m talking about?!”

  Comiston wisely chose Concern. “What do you know?”

  Fury burned in her eyes. “It doesn’t matter what I know,” pointing back towards the football field and the alien ship. “What matters is THEY know! They know what it is, where it is, and can guess what it’s for. How fricking stupid are you people?! I never thought you could be that dumb. That box” she said, jabbing her finger towards the southeast, “is an act of aggression. It’s tantamount to a declaration of war! I thought I got through to you people that if the shooting starts, we lose!” She pulled out the virtual display device and turned it on. She got the original image to appear. “Radiation signature,” she snarled at him. She switched the image to visible light. She zoomed it in, and panned it southeast. “Seneca Nebraska.” She panned it to the northwest, past the radiation source and two concentric rings of tents and armored vehicles. “Jewel.” She panned it back down to the radiation source and zoomed in closer. “Army troop truck, with escort. Sitting on a side road in the middle of nowhere, about 40 miles from here.”

  Comiston stiffened.

  “At least 4 orbiting ships are watching this thing. If I combine the images, the one from the ship overhead with the ones from ships that are closer to orbital horizon, I can actually read the licence plate.” She fiddled with the display, and it showed a view of the rear of truck. “Does that licence number look familiar?” She then rattled off the information of what was inside the double container that she saw while she was masked. Comiston looked alarmed. “They know, General. They know that the army has a fission weapon just over the horizon from the landing site. You bring that THING any closer to Jewel, and who knows what they will do!” She glared at him. “Please tell me that you weren’t the idiot who decided to do this. You have to be much smarter than that.” He hesitated. “Oh please, General. This is so stupid it had to have been the idea of a politician.”

  He nodded. “The President. Just in case we found out they were going to destroy us.”

  “What an asshole!” she cursed. “Stupid, ignorant idiot! I’m so glad that I didn’t vote for him.” She paused, and tried to get her anger under control. “General, move it elsewhere. To another base that’s away from Jewel. I don’t care what your orders are. Get it away from here. Quickly. This bomb is a declaration of war. The Wakira can’t help but see it that way. You won’t be able to get it any closer than where it is now. If you try to move it here, there are maybe three things that they would do. One, they could blast it from orbit. They have weapons that turn matter into plasma — everything becomes disassociated ions. Think disintegration rays if you have to. Two, they override the safety protocols remotely and cause the bomb to go off. They’ve shown that they can do this — my broadcast to the world was proof that they can remotely take control of any piece of electronics they want. Or three, lift off and start destroying everybody and everything. You can’t let politicians undo the work that I’ve done. Having the opportunity to take possible revenge will cost us everything! Crap! You guys are so stupid at times!” She brought her free hand up to her face and sighed. “I’m sorry. I paint with too broad a brush. I’m not an elitist bitch.” She took a deep breath, lowered her hand then exhaled. “They know. And the fact that someone amongst them chose to reveal the fact that they know means they want to avoid conflict. We should bend over backwards to avoid conflict with the Wakira. Because any conflict involving weapons means our extinction.” She turned off the display and put the device back into her pocket. “I’ve got to get home and take care of my dad.” With that, she walked away.

  Comiston hurried back to his offices to change orders that he had just given.

  The barbecue originally planned for Sunday was held that evening. Although the data gathering for the survey had been completed, members of both species enjoyed the food and the interaction. Jennifer, Poke and Myka were sitting in seats near the base of the stairs. Myka reassured Jennifer that he was no longer “Walking in Bliss” (at least not nearly as intensely), so she didn’t need to be masked any longer when they were near each other, though Poke sat between the two of them, thereby increasing the distance between Jennifer and Myka’s snout. A breeze blew from the south, blowing much of Jennifer’s scent away from him.

  Several people wandered over during the barbecue to chat with the three of them, including Gerry Hodges, and both of the Stones. About an hour into the “festivities”, Frank Comiston arrived in civvies. He was taken aback at the sight of Pokaifashta, but said nothing. He sat the other side of Myka.

  “Aren’t you going to get some food, General?” Jennifer asked him, trying hard to hide any residual annoyance from their earlier confrontation.

  “I’ll grab some on my way out. I promised Barb Summers that I would bring some back to her. I was surprised that she asked, considering what her mother-in-law does for a living.” He held eye contact with Jennifer briefly, and made a point of lowering his eyes, to let her know that he had done what she had asked.

  Relieved, Jennifer giggled. The aliens said nothing. Finally, Myka turned to Comiston and said, “The flight plan of the rocket has been noted and approved General. Leeway has been given should there be a delay in the launch. Our ships will provide rescue services should the need arise.”

  “Rocket launch?” Jennifer asked, her mouth half-full of potato salad.

  Comiston nodded. “A joint mission to the ISS. Rushed into action, if you ask me. A modified Proton-M, topped by a spare ISS module that hadn’t been launched, along with a hopefully-functional Orion capsule, holding 2 astronauts and 2 cosmonauts.”

  “Orion? I thought that that got cancelled years ago.”

  “This capsule, apparently, was originally a boilerplate built for re-entry testing. It’s been upgraded to man-ready, supposedly.”

  “I don’t remember hearing about anything like this. Of course, I haven’t seen a newspaper or accessed the Internet since I left South Dakota — 16 months ago, I guess.”

  “To be honest, Commander,” Comiston directed his remarks to Myka, “I think this is simply an exercise to prove again to the Wakira that we are a space-faring species. Even if it’s low Earth orbit. I have no doubt that this mission was initiated the night that you arrived. Those boosting into orbit may not be able to return to Earth safely, because the capsule will be doing something it wasn’t originally built to do. Foolishness.”

  “I take it, General, that you believe that this mission is intended to impress us?”

  “I can’t see how it can be anything else. Even if it were intended to provide us with an eyewitness account of the ships you have in orbit, it won’t do any good. From what I understand, even the ship floating overhead has enough firepower to destroy this planet. It’s foolishness.”

  “When is the launch supposed to be? Will I still be her
e to see it?”

  Myka turned Jennifer’s way. “In three of your days. If you are not busy with the Emperor at that time, we can watch the launch on video taken from one of the orbiting ships.”

  They were silent for a moment then Comiston asked Myka “Has the Emperor approved of the arrangements for Sunday?”

  Jennifer had a quizzical look on her face.

  Poke answered the question. “I had to explain the significance of this type of ceremony to him. He was a little bothered, since he needs to be back on Homeworld as soon as is possible, but he agreed to the simplest version that you presented.”

  “Ceremony?”

  Comiston smiled. “I’ll tell you at lunch tomorrow.” Standing, he said, “Please convey to the Emperor my gratitude for allowing us the opportunity to offer him a welcome ceremony. Even if it is going to take place just prior to his departure.” To Poke, he added, “It was a pleasure to finally meet a Wakiran female.”

  Poke smiled. “None of us females have had the opportunity to venture past the boundary of the barrier. One might think that the Mission Commander wished to keep our existence a secret.” She looked at her superior. “That should be considered spoken in the Seditious voice, Commander.” She stood and held out her hand for a Terran handshake. “It has been a pleasure meeting you, General. Even if for only a few moments.”

  The next morning, Barb looked like she was going to cry. Jennifer hugged her and reminded her that she wasn’t leaving for another 3 and a half days. There would be plenty of time for goodbyes.

  Mid-morning saw a man come in with glass in his right hand. Jennifer was glad to have the company, and carefully removed the fragments. Some iodine gently applied to the wound, and 7 stitches closed up the multiple cuts. As she bandaged him, she instructed him to go see a doctor should the wound become infected. When he asked if he should come back to see her, she choked momentarily, then told him that tomorrow was going to be her last day.