"The head of the ECT team left the U.N. Headquarters among much turmoil, and is said to be returning to Alien Beach in the Pacific Ocean as soon as possible. The U.N. Security Council has now decided to step up the military presence around Alien Beach, in the face of increasing threats against the Sirians. A small security force will be dispatched to 'ensure the safety of the ECT and the Sirians against direct terrorist attacks.'
"Though the original agreement with the Sirians expressly forbids any weapons inside the island's perimeter, the Council has managed to sidestep the no-arms clause: a platoon of U.S. Marines equipped with unloaded, plugged firearms will soon be stationed on the island. Analysts assume that the aircraft circling the airspace will be on permanent standby to drop ammo and weapons supplies to the troops.
"Today, political analyst Gore Wyndham made this statement..."
"The extra troops are obviously an intrusion on the agreement with the Sirians. The real reason for their presence is for the Pentagon to keep a closer scrutiny of the scientists and the visitors. The issue is control, and of course espionage. I'd like to warn the Sirians; their safety cannot be guaranteed, in spite of - or because of the military presence."
The soldier had missed out on the live broadcast of Carl Sayers' speech to the General Assembly. Bits and pieces of it were being re-run constantly, jumbled and incoherent, but - he understood enough.
The visions had a real outside source. And the source had a center.
"I'm dreaming. This must be a dream."
DAY 118
"You must believe me when I say I tried to stop them," Carl told the assembled team. "We must be strong now, and not let ourselves be intimidated."
The team members were silent, sullen. His voice, his drawn face betrayed a sense of defeat; the chaos in the U.N. had drained a little of his spirit. Yet a little more spirit had gone upon Carl's return to Alien Beach: half the team had handed in their resignations.
Everywhere he turned, it seemed to him now, people were lining up to betray him. He was unprepared, however, for the blow that followed after the meeting. Lazar, also showing signs of burn-out, asked to see him in private.
"My government has pressured me to resign," he confessed. "The Egyptian president just sent me a personal message... said I would be a blasphemer and a traitor to mankind if I stayed here. And General Harrod's people are making phone calls to me each day, insinuating I must be a spy for the 'Arabs'."
The old psychologist's hands were shaking. He seemed like eighty years instead of his sixty.
"What? Has the Security Committee been threatening you?"
Lazar nodded imperceptibly; Carl saw now, how bloodshot his friend's eyes were.
"It isn't safe for me to return to Cairo either; the fundamentalist factions are telling the public that I am a fifth-column, and the government can't or won't stop them from trying to kill me."
Carl struck the wall of his barrack with his fist. His anger was amplified by his own memory of Lazar's recorded dream from a week ago. He had shared Lazar's own emotions and aspirations, felt his private pain literally.
"Damned idiots! I tried to make them understand. I showed them, the leaders of the world, the tape of the Ancestors... and they started to shout 'humbug' at me. They don't want to trust the evidence! And now the troops are landing on this island, without even asking the Sirians permission first... what will they think?"
"You could always bail out in protest," Lazar said, his voice weak. "You look exhausted."
Mats had already warned Carl that he ought to take a vacation, but Carl dared not. He would not give up this great responsibility.
"If I quit, Harrod would grasp the opportunity to step in with his jackbooted morons. I warned the President about that man, but I'm not sure he listened."
Lazar laughed. "I'll stay! You've convinced me..." He gave his friend a hearty hug. "...that you need all the support you can get. I'd be a coward to let you down now."
Carl shook his hand. "Thanks, Lazar. Just give me a nudge if I start to go ga-ga, okay?"
His phone vibrated, and he picked it up. It was General Harrod again. Carl listened through the message, and hung up.
"The reinforcements are on their way in," he told Lazar. "Let's come and greet them."
Carl announced the news over the intercom system, and asked everyone human to gather at the lagoon's northern edge.
Less than an hour later, Carl and his team stood and witnessed as two military landing vessels hit the beach.
The stern hatches opened into ramps; out marched a platoon of soldiers in khaki uniforms and flak jackets, carrying heavy backpacks. From the second vessel, prefabricated barracks were unloaded, not unlike those the scientists were using. A truck unloaded a few tons of bottled water. Last came a camping trailer with the text CAPTAIN'S OFFICE stenciled on it.
The soldier was equipped just like the other Marines. He had been "officially" reinstated in service as an ordinary grunt, but technically speaking he was still a retired soldier. Only General Harrod and his aide should know that the soldier was an undercover agent for the ECT Security Committee.
The moment the soldier stepped onto the beach, his stomach twisted into a knot and his legs felt unsteady. The other soldiers looked nervous as well, casting anxious glances around the beach. There were no aliens in sight, no blue dots zipping by - just a few scattered metal artifacts standing here and there in the open places. He told himself to calm down - maybe he would become disappointed and think that they were smaller than they had seemed on TV.
Carl thought to himself that by now, the Sirian machines had probably learned to read the emotions of all humans in the vicinity - so the amphibians would stay down in their ship, until their instruments read "land-humans have stabilized" or the like.
A captain came up to Carl and introduced himself, asked to use the northern edge of the lagoon for the platoon's barracks, and handed over some documents from General Harrod.
"Just some formal questionnaires he'd like you to fill in and send back, Mr. Sayers," said the captain. "Don't worry about us, we won't disturb your important work. If you need a few extra hands, don't hesitate to ask. We're here to help, you know."
"Yes, of course," Carl said indifferently.
"By the way, when do the Sirians usually come up to... you know, communicate?"
"When they feel like it. A lot of the time it's we who come down to see them. If you feel like diving in the lagoon, there's scuba gear over there in the shack."
"I see... is Bishop Soto here?"
"That's him over there."
The captain peered past the pointing scientist and spotted the bishop. Carl noticed the surprise on the captain's face. Had Edmund really lost that much weight?
The soldier couldn't help but ogle the scientists and the bishop as he marched past. He recognized most of their faces from the media, including the famous astronomer Carl Sayers. The soldier had seen the man's television programs and even read some of his books. If there was anyone who had spent a lifetime preparing for contact with extraterrestrials, it had to be Sayers... though he did seem weary.
The sergeant shouted at his platoon to start helping out with assembling the barracks. All the time during work, the soldiers kept looking for aliens, but none showed up.
After sunset, Ann sneaked out behind her barrack, making sure none of the soldiers saw her, and made her way to the southern cape. There she waited throughout the night.
DAY 119
Ann woke up at daybreak and she was still alone.
She started back toward the barracks, when a peep came from the ground. Ann discovered a small silvery blob, no larger than her thumb, clinging to her canvas bag like a leech. The miniscule device sent out another tinny peep. She touched it, and felt it stir minutely.
A recorded, tinny voice came from it: "Of course, you have so much better things instead. Metal pets..."
Her own words. Ann plucked the thing from the bag and held it to her lips. It was sil
ly and weak and pointless of her to cry; and maybe someone, someone she couldn't see was watching... someone who had flown right through her hand... a being in a state of neither energy nor matter... the next phase in Oanss' existence.
He had always seemed to be quite pleased with his present form; no Sirian showed contempt for being flesh and blood and blubber. Maybe to them life was just... an education of sorts. What then, would Oanss learn from his visit to this planet, this island? Ann couldn't think of anything except sadness. She wiped her eyes and put the metal blob in her pocket.
Standing on a low cliff, she could see how the landing vessels were pulling back into the sea, leaving the camouflage-painted new barracks at the northern cape, nearly half a kilometer from her position. She thought of her father, whom she had only seen on an old photograph - a negative space in her memory - who had impregnated her mother more than thirty years ago, then abandoned her and Ann, to go and get killed in some stupid, senseless war.
Then, Ann wished she could chase away the soldiers; she resented them for always taking orders, and the officers for giving the orders. There seemed to be no escape from soldiers; her work had taught her that all primates were that way. Ranks, orders, hierarchies... the leader of a pack of chimps wasn't much different in behavior from a general. (There was a rare species, the bonobi, who were much less aggressive and militaristic, but African natives were exterminating them and would probably succeed within the next fifty years.)
Dolphins were comparatively less aggressive than primates... and so were the Sirians. Only, they hadn't really originated from Sirius. They called themselves "humans," or their equivalent of that word. Andrea had shown the team her own research with gene samples donated from a Sirian. They had DNA molecules in their cells, no different in form and function than any other life on Earth; all genes were written in the universal language of chemistry. Andrea was hoping to decode the gene samples and make a model of the previous species that the Sirians had evolved from.
In Andrea's working hypothesis, the amphibian ancestor was a seal-like creature that could breathe either water or air. Roughly the size of a man, it sported a pair of long, fleshy appendages on its sides. Its legs were probably no more than two knees and feet at the time; the creature lived among the rocks and reefs of long, shallow lagoons and spent most of its time underwater.
Then, perhaps twenty million years ago or less, the amphibians began to develop legs; the appendages grew stronger, the amphibians learned to crawl, and could make progressively longer inland treks.
The factors that triggered this development could have been many - fierce competition for space and food underwater, or the need to escape predators by switching terrain fast, or just the need to migrate by land during periods of cold, unstable seas. Time took care of the rest... Yet, that was all guesswork: the Sirians had said nothing of their origins and maybe hadn't found out themselves - their sights were set elsewhere.
Ann made herself a promise: she should not distract Oanss from his life's path. She would not make him feel sad for her. But she couldn't quite shake the sensation that his gift was getting warmer in her pocket, and she stuck her hand there to hold the little metal blob.
It briefly turned warmer, close to her own body temperature. Maybe it was a spy microphone. It didn't matter. Maybe those Ancestors were swirling around her at this very moment, reading her every thought. Didn't matter.
In time, they would head elsewhere; there was nothing here for them to dwell on.
His gift spread warmth through her hand.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The soldier had been put on guard duty with most of the other grunts, while the rest of them relaxed with beach volleyball and frisbee throwing.
He and the others on duty were carrying their unloaded, plugged assault rifles slung across their backs. Functional or not, he disliked the presence of the rifles; they reminded him of the war. Moving in pairs, the guards strolled about - aimless, watchful. They were on strict orders not to approach the aliens or the scientists - easy enough, as the aliens were absent and the scientists avoided them.
From far away, the soldier saw a woman in bermudas and t-shirt come walking from the southern cape. She was blond, tanned and had a rather grave look about her sophisticated, thirtyish face. The other soldier stared at her tanned, muscular legs moving - and the soldier poked him in the ribs.
"Cut it out!" the soldier hissed. "Don't you recognize her face? It's that Frenchwoman, the one I saw on TV next to Carl Sayers."
His colleague straightened up as Ann Meadbouré walked past them, ten meters off, demonstratively ignoring them.
"Yeah, I see. So? There's not much else to look at here, you know? The palmtrees... the sand..."
"The aircraft..."
"The alien artifacts..."
"The boats..."
"The gulls..."
"The picturesque barracks..."
"The soldiers playing beach volley..."
"The blue lagoon..."
"The sea..."
Both men grinned, recognizing how badly they fit in the serene surroundings.
"What I want to know," the soldier said, "is what are you gonna do when one of the aliens peek up from their submarine-spaceship-whatever. Are you gonna piss in your pants and run screaming for the captain?"
"Get outta here! No, I ain't scared of no aliens. They're... foreigners , okay? Some foreigners are civilized like us. Others ain't. All I need to know is which foreigners to shoot, and which foreigners not to shoot."
"Would you shoot a Sirian if they ordered you to?"
"Hey, man," the other man replied, "I was just kidding. We're not here to hurt anyone."
The soldier received a suspicious glance, and neither of them said more. They kept marching, to keep up the impression of doing something useful, and consumed bottled water.
In his boredom, the soldier got an idea. When his shift was over he went to see the captain.
The captain was working the laptop computer in his camping trailer.
"Captain - I'd like to request permission to dive in the lagoon."
The captain stared at the soldier as if he had suggested something obscene. "Are you aware that the alien visitors are renting the lagoon, the island, and the three-mile perimeter? That according to the treaty, we are to carry no weapons here? We're risking enough just being here with no ammo. To let you even closer to them is out of the question. Request denied."
"Sir. I swear I won't try to contact the Sirians. I just wanted to go diving, that's all."
"Now you watch it! You were transferred to this platoon at the last minute... I don't know what Harrod is up to, but I know a mole when I see one. Go tell your general I won't let you risk the treaty, no matter what orders he gave you! Is that clear?"
"Yes, sir."
The soldier exited the trailer, at least satisfied with the knowledge that he had blown General Harrod's cover. Now he could concentrate on his real objectives, and the captain would dismiss his behavior as espionage on behalf of the Security Committee.
But he was finding it difficult to concentrate. Too many things to think of, too many distractions, too much waiting for the visions to return... and no aliens, as long as the military was occupying the island. He had to get out of his uniform - it was a stigma, a perceived threat to everyone who saw it. The soldier sneaked away to a cluster of palmtrees, and stripped down to his underwear. The sunshine suddenly stung him, and he looked up at the sky.
The clouds - all gone! The circling clouds that had sent rain to help him escape before, and were in so many of the TV images of the island, had now just vanished.
"But you were there just an hour ago," he whispered, "you can't go away now... now when I've finally got here... please! I know I disappointed you. I was weak! I shouldn't have joined that crazy cult! But it helped me get here, see...? Give me another chance... if you took yourself the trouble to get me in the first place, you must give me a second chance... I swear I won't take orders
again! No more uniforms. No more officers. I'm not a soldier anymore."
He stopped, anxious that someone else might have heard him. No, there was no one there - for a moment he had felt as if someone was looking...
A drop of rain fell from the clear sky - plip - and hit the back of his outstretched hand. One single drop. The entire beach was left dry. He kissed the drop, covering the spot like some precious treasure.
"Thank you, thank you so much," he whispered to the clear sky. "I will try harder this time."
He almost asked the sky what his orders were, then got wise: orders were not on the agenda. "They" had never sent him orders and never would. Time to stop thinking like a soldier and start thinking like... something else.
"How many times have we shared our thought-recorders?" Carl asked the assembled group: Lazar, Andrea, and Edmund.
"Yours once, mine once, Andrea's once," said Lazar. "Edmund never got Bruno's device to record his own thoughts on."
They all turned to study Edmund's sunken face. He couldn't muster his old good humor; the booming voice was now more like a shrill drone.
"Why?" Edmund asked them. "I have seen your thoughts now. You are indeed full human beings - full of things good and bad, mostly good. None of you carry truly evil secrets. I have grown by sharing with you, but... me, I have nothing to share that would benefit you. I have seen too much suffering, too many people killed in my homeland. I don't want to burden your minds with my sorrows. That's not for a priest to do... a priest carries everyone else's burdens. Think of all the people who have confided in me, when only God could overhear... if I let you record my thoughts and see them, I would betray all the people who trusted in me!"
The others were surprised themselves, that an argument they would have agreed on before now sounded strange and incomprehensible. Carl had been fairly active against the invasion of privacy caused by new media, an invasion that trivialized personal matters into petty sleaze and gossip. He had to restrain a fanatical impulse, the fundamentalist instinct to force his new perspective down everyone else's throats.
Yngve, AR - Alien Beach Page 23