The Frequency of Aliens

by Gene Doucette

  “Nice.”

  “Annie, stress is one thing, but if we’re looking at a situation where you’re becoming unstable, we need to take steps.”

  “Okay, we’re done,” Annie said, turning to the door.

  “No, we aren’t, we have to talk about this.”

  “We absolutely do not, Wendy. Look, I appreciate the jam you’re in, I really do. You get to guard a hormonal college kid who literally doesn’t have to answer to anyone on the planet, and who can actually destroy that planet if she’s feeling especially cranky. That must be tough. But just so we have this straight, you’re not in any position to negotiate with me, because you don’t have anything to negotiate with. We’re leaving in five days, like we agreed. We’re not changing security for the summer, and I’m not losing my grip. Now, if you don’t have anything else, I’m going back to the dorm.”

  Wendy looked like she wanted to say a lot of things that didn’t end up coming out of her mouth, so after a few seconds of silence, Annie assumed the conversation was over.

  “You’re so selfish,” Wendy said, quietly, just as Annie reached the door.

  “What was that?”

  “I said you’re selfish. You have access to this ship, and you keep it for yourself. It’s selfish.”

  “What are you even talking about?”

  “Nothing. Go. I’ll escalate your concerns and get back to you.”

  “Right. You do that.”

  Annie thought about saying more. She was pretty certain one of the reasons they were talking on the first floor of a large building full of people was that Agent Wendy Riviera wanted to put as many innocents as she could between her and a weapon fired from outer space, and that definitely meant something.

  Annie’s handlers were scared of her right now. It was something Annie should probably have tried to address before it got any worse.

  Instead, she left the classroom without another word.

  14

  Row Your Battleship

  Caller: I do think the university screwed up. She shouldn’t be here. I don’t think she should even be around people.

  Manny: That’s a bold statement, caller. I think it’s been an odd year, but—

  Caller: Not just an odd year, now come on. You heard what happened at the observatory. We all heard. And I’ll tell you what else, I hear kids aren’t sleeping any more.

  Manny: It’s college, of course kids aren’t sleeping.

  Caller: She’s giving kids nightmares.

  Manny: That’s—

  Caller: And I’ll tell you something, if nobody else is going to do anything about it, we will.

  Manny: Caller, that sounds a lot like a threat.

  Caller: You’re damn right. I’m serious, she’s messing with us, and we’ve had it, we’re going to k…

  Manny: Sorry, I had to cut off that call. Folks, it seems crazy to even have to say this on a college radio station, but you can’t threaten people on the air, because if you do that, well, we have to take it seriously. I don’t think the caller was serious, but if I let that go on, I’d have to call the police and nobody wants that…

  transcript, Manny Madrigal late night, Wainwright FM

  Sam didn’t know he got seasick. It wasn’t the sort of thing that came up either in Virginia or on Army duty. Neither occasion required him to stand aboard an ocean-going vessel for any real length of time, so that made some sense.

  He was fortunate to not discover this thing about himself until he was aboard the Freedom class LCS vessel, that was taking them from the Ticonderoga class cruiser, which retrieved them from the Seawolf class submarine they were brought to, by the really smelly class fishing boat that picked them up from the Latvian shore.

  It was possible—but unlikely—that the LCS was just a lot rockier, or the part of the ocean it was navigating significantly worse. The fishing boat was plenty rocky too, though, and it also had a powerful fish odor, and he didn’t get sick then. Possibly he was too tired to bother with throwing up.

  The submarine made him nauseous and uncomfortable, but that wasn’t motion-sickness (or not obviously so) because he was too busy feeling trapped in a narrow steel tube, which was its own kind of unpleasant. Also, for all the potential it had to awaken any nascent claustrophobia, the ride on the submarine was pretty smooth.

  The destroyer was flat-out huge. The worse part of it was getting aboard, because the deck looked like it was a full mile straight up, and once he was aboard it seemed like the water was a mile straight down. If anything was going to surface then, it would have been a fear of heights.

  He could feel the waves then, no matter how far away they were, but he spent most of his time in a bunk, sleeping for the first time in over 24 hours.

  Still, he did have a chance to walk around on the deck before they were handed over to the LCS for the final leg of a trip that frankly seemed about five days too long. And in that time, he couldn’t recall feeling any particular urge to throw up.

  So maybe it was specific to the seas, and the vessel. Or maybe he needed to be well-rested to get seasick. Once he finished sending the prior evening’s chow into the drink, he would have to ask Ed about it. Motion-sickness seemed like the kind of thing Ed would somehow end up being an expert on.

  “How are you doing there, soldier?”

  A naval officer Sam had never met before approached the railing, upwind. Sam knew exactly enough about naval rank to recognize that the man’s sleeve badge indicated he was some kind of non-commissioned officer, but not enough to know exactly what kind of officer.

  Master chief petty warrant officer something, he thought. The navy was weird.

  “Never better, sir,” Sam said. He wondered if he had vomit on his person somewhere, and exactly how nasty that must be to someone currently free of vomit. The officer didn’t appear bothered.

  “It can get rough out here before you have your sea legs. We all go through it.”

  “Don’t mind my saying, if I felt like this my first week of active duty, I’d go AWOL at the nearest port and take my chances.”

  The officer laughed.

  “That there is exactly why we don’t allow wet-behind-the-ears seamen to get anywhere near shore their first time out. The body knows it ain’t supposed to be away from dry land this long. This is the worst part right here, though. We’re knifing through the Gulf Stream in the wrong direction. It’ll calm right down closer to shore. I hope my saying so doesn’t offend, but aren’t you Corporal Corning?”

  “It’s sergeant now, but yes sir, I am.”

  “I thought that was you. It’s truly an honor to have you aboard. Petty Officer DuBois if you’re looking to keep calling me sir. Eric, otherwise.”

  Petty Officer Eric DuBois extended a hand. Sam checked to make sure his own hand looked clean enough for a handshake before returning it.

  “Call me Sam, then, Eric,” he said. “It’s a pleasure.”

  “Gotta say, I’m surprised to find you out here. Everyone’s been hush-hush, but I’m pretty sure I have it right that you and your friend are the reason we’re heading to Groton right now. Where are we even taking you from?”

  At no point in Sam’s interactions with Ed did anyone use the word classified. Despite that, he felt pretty confident that the way they were getting back into the States by sea was due to some need for secrecy. He was equally confident that this implied secrecy had at least a little something to do with Sam’s inconvenient murder of a Latvian government official on Latvian soil. That Sam was confident the man he shot wasn’t actually a general in any army didn’t alter the basics of the problem.

  “I’m afraid I can’t talk about that, Eric,” Sam said, which seemed a lot better than any other options. He also didn’t want to talk about it, so it worked either way.

  “Sure, I understand.”

  They stood at the railing for a while and watched the water, which was indeed very choppy. Sam started to feel like he was going to have to throw up again shortly. Eric, apparently,
could sense this.

  “Keep your eyes on the horizon,” he said. “It’ll help your equilibrium.”

  “Thanks,” Sam said.

  Eric clapped him on the shoulder.

  “Least I could do. You’re a national hero or something. Man, I’ll be honest, I have a ton of questions. You probably don’t want to hear any of ‘em.”

  “It was quite a night.”

  Sam didn’t actually have to deal with a huge number of questions on anything like a regular basis. Not compared to what Annie had to face. Sam imagined he came off as more reserved, and perhaps less willing to talk about certain things, in the same way one didn’t simply bring up ‘the war’ to a veteran.

  Annie was a civilian who inadvertently saved the world. Sam was a soldier stuck in a life-or-death encounter with a zombie horde. He also helped save the world, and Annie also fought zombies, and everyone knew this, but it didn’t change their basic narratives.

  When the questions did arise, Sam found it best to speak in generalities—it was quite a night being a favorite—rather than get pinned down on details that may or may not be public knowledge.

  Just having Sorrow Falls come up in conversation, however obliquely, made him think again of Violet, the girl he forgot existed until a few days ago. He and Ed were past due for a long chat about her.

  “I’ll bet,” Eric said. He went back to staring at the sea for a few seconds, while Sam decided staring at the horizon was a pretty good trick. It was either that or he’d run out of vomit.

  “And your little friend,” Eric said, “how’s she doing?”

  “My little friend?” Sam asked. He knew exactly who they were talking about.

  “Annie, right? Annie Collins? Your friend. She’s something, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, she is.”

  Sam’s stomach was turning again, but for a reason unrelated to the motion of the sea.

  “You talk to her lately? Just wondering how she’s getting on. I saw a few of her TV interviews back in the day. She’s a pistol.”

  “I haven’t talked to her lately, no.”

  “Little sixteen-year-old, saving the world. Great story. Folks say she can still control the spaceship. Do you believe that?”

  “Do I believe people say that?”

  “No, Sam, do you believe she can?”

  “I believe I don’t want to talk to you about Annie Collins, Eric.”

  “Right, sorry. It’s just… well a lot of us were left wondering after it all settled down over there, how come we let her keep the ship? You know, assuming she really can control it.”

  “A lot of you were wondering that, were you?”

  “I mean, why’d you all let her? You were right there, ship was right there, door was open. If I understand things right.”

  “You don’t. And without saying one way or another, if anybody understands how that spaceship really operates, if Annie did have control over it, what makes you think any of us could do much about that?”

  “Oh, come on Sam. She’s just a kid.”

  Sam took his eyes off the horizon to get a good look at petty officer Eric DuBois. The man didn’t look like a fanatic, and Sam didn’t get the same uneasy vibe he got off the last guy who decided to question him about some detail regarding Annie. Despite that, there was still something very wrong going on.

  “I’m kidding!” Eric said. “Of course, I’m kidding.”

  He laughed and clapped Sam on the shoulder again, and neither thing made Sam any more comfortable.

  “Sure,” Sam said. “Look, I appreciate the advice, and the company. I think I’m gonna head back to the cabin, maybe get a little more shuteye before we make the shore. Pleasure meeting you, officer DuBois.”

  “Pleasure’s all mine.”

  Going from fishing boat to submarine, to big ship, to small ship, made it really difficult to get any work done. Ed was no stranger to travel issues, certainly, given how often he’d been asked to jet from one end of the country to the other with little advanced notice, but this was different. Flights didn’t take this long.

  They provided a decent-sized cabin for Ed and Sam, with a table, which was mandatory if Ed was going to make any headway whatsoever. In a slightly more stable environment he might have been able to spread out the various bits of information he was trying to piece together across the generously sized surface, but the boat rocked too much to make that feasible.

  So, he had to imagine the various piles of information instead. That didn’t work at all.

  Right in front of him was the stack of log books he took from the office in Latvia. There were two types of books, in two different languages. Based on the dates next to what appeared to be records of observations, the one in Cyrillic was the oldest. In fact, if the dates were accurate, the log went back to the days of Soviet occupation.

  The second set was in Latvian. Ed couldn’t see the connection between them yet, aside from the fact that they tacitly had to be connected given they came from the same source and occupied prime real estate on someone’s desk.

  (It was silly, and probably not accurate, but Ed always assumed that the two most important things on any desk are the things left in the middle of it, and the things most thoroughly hidden. Everything else could be safely ignored.)

  Next to the pile of books were photographic copies of a similar set of logs from the Algernon project. Next to that, a news article from five years ago, a photo that was assumed to be a mathematical algorithm of some kind, and a collection of other pictures that may or may not be helpful.

  Then there were the emails on Ed’s phone. He couldn’t retrieve the most interesting stuff that was surely waiting for him once he got to a secure server, but Mel forwarded a couple of things that were a part of the public record. The first was the news that an observatory in New South Wales had been abandoned, in a manner that appeared to match the existing pattern.

  The second was preliminary reports of five bodies found in the woods in Northern California, fifteen miles from Project Algernon. Authorities hadn’t made the connection, because they didn’t know anything was wrong at Algie, so they couldn’t. Ed wondered if all the missing were going to turn up dead in the same woods, or if some made it out alive. He couldn’t decide which option was more interesting.

  The door to the cabin opened. Ed threw himself onto the table before the contents blew everywhere, something he’d already learned to expect the last three times it had happened. The pressure inside the cabin and outside the cabin varied sufficiently to create a draft every time the door was breached.

  “Hey,” Sam said. “Is that to keep me from seeing your top-secret stuff?”

  “It’s to keep it from getting sucked into the hallway. Please close the door.”

  Sam did.

  “I think we have a problem,” Sam said.

  “Yeah, you’re probably right, but I’m guessing we’re talking about two different things. What’s on your mind?”

  “I just got questioned by a petty officer about Annie. Made me uncomfortable.”

  “Did you shoot him?”

  “Not this time.”

  Sam stepped around the table to get to the head. They were sharing quarters that actually belonged to the captain. One of the perks was the private bathroom.

  “What made you uncomfortable?” Ed asked.

  “He seemed to think we should have forced Annie to give up the ship by now,” Sam said, over the sound of water. A number of tells strongly suggested Sam had been spending his free time vomiting into the sea, so Ed imagined he had a lot to wash off. “I didn’t like it.”

  “A lot of people feel that way,” Ed said. “You should hear some of the meetings I’m in. Most of them think I have the power to compel her to surrender it. Not sure why. Anyone who’s met Annie would realize she doesn’t respond well to that kind of thing.”

  Sam stepped out again, a towel around his neck.

  “She’s right to be that way, don’t you think? I mean, this is probably
something like treason, but I trust that ship in her hands way more than in the hands of the government. Don’t you?”

  “Sure. Thing is, there were other options. It didn’t have to stop in lower orbit, for example. She could have set it to self-destruct, and kept it out of everyone’s hands. She had good reasons not to, but let’s not kid ourselves: she’s running a dangerous gambit, and she’s the only one who really understands why.”

  “I guess. So, what’s all this? If you can tell me.”

  “I can tell you I don’t know what it is yet. It’s not adding up. Oh, but here’s something.”

  Ed reached into one of the piles and extracted a photograph of a man.

  “Who’s that?”

  “That’s General Valdis Jansons of the Latvian army.”

  “That isn’t the guy I shot.”

  “No, it is not.”

  “Who did I shoot?”

  “I don’t know. But the good news is, whoever it was, nobody’s come looking for him. So far as I can tell, we didn’t create an international incident.”

  “Well that’s good news.”

  It was good news, but it was also vastly more complicated. Ed had arrived in Latvia five days before Sam, and in that time, he’d dealt with several members of the military. His interactions with the man who called himself Jansons had not been in person up until the day they met in the ghost town. He couldn’t tell if he’d ever spoken to the real one in that time. He also couldn’t tell when he was handed off from the real military to the people only pretending to be the real military. Ed was a little worried that there wasn’t any difference, and whatever weirdness that was inflicting the fake Jansons and his fake soldiers was not isolated.

  To know the answer to that, he had to figure out what that weirdness was.

  Sam was looking over some of the other things on the table.

  “What have you figured out so far?” he asked. “Maybe I can help.”

  “All right, sure. Over here, we have a journal made by someone who I think was a Soviet scientist. All I can read are the numbers, but the change in the handwriting suggests he was pretty excited about something.”