Noumenon

by Marina J. Lostetter

  And send me dreams . . .

  The image spun, revealing the inside curve of the Seed. It swelled from floor to ceiling as the camera zoomed in, coming to focus on a tiny speck a few miles from the Seed’s metallic hide.

  The speck resolved into the ship. Barely recognizable as such, but for the shield at what was presumed to be its front, and the open bay doors directed at the side of the Seed.

  Straifer breathed a sigh of relief—it was all out in the open now.

  Carl cleared his throat, and finally said to the board what had been running nonstop through Straifer’s mind since their meeting, “We aren’t alone.”

  Investigating the ship became priority number one. They attempted to contact its operators, hailing on every possible communications frequency and in every possible portion of the spectrum they were capable of using. Silence, just like from Earth.

  The Nest, as they called it, never moved and the open bay never closed.

  Seed. Web. Nest. All of the names were so simple, so terrestrial, and Straifer was starting to understand why the crew had latched on to them.

  They were clear, concise descriptions of the unknown.

  The Nest sat too close to the Seed for the probes to retrieve any useful information, as they continued to fail upon entering the dead zone around the giant device.

  “Would it be dangerous for us to send a manned mission?” Straifer asked. He had Carl and Nakamura on I.C.C.’s line, each broadcasting from the privacy of their personal offices. “I mean, besides the obvious risks.”

  “The probes never lost navigation,” Carl said. “A shuttle should be able to return, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Have we gotten anything? Any indication of activity at all—biological or otherwise?” asked Nakamura.

  “No,” Carl said. “I’m starting to think . . . no. No assuming.”

  “Was that a yay or a nay? Should we put together an away team?” Straifer pulled the picture of himself and his wife out of the drawer. He’d almost forgotten it was there.

  “I see no other way to proceed. We have a duty to investigate, no matter the danger. That’s a ‘yay.’”

  “I want to be on the team,” Straifer blurted. He thumbed the photograph, stroking Sailuk’s cheek.

  “For what purpose?” Carl couldn’t keep the suspicion out of his voice.

  “As head of the governing board I think it’s of political and social importance that I be there. If this is first contact, I should witness it firsthand.” Yes, it’s only practical. This would be best for the mission. I’m only thinking of our mission. “Lieutenant Pavon should make it on the list as well.”

  Carl cleared his throat. “With all due respect, sir, why? She’s been nothing but combative when it comes to hypotheses about the Web’s functionality. The lack of signals from Earth has put her in an ill mood.”

  “But she’s the head of Communications. You don’t think her inclusion pertinent? Should we encounter an alien intelligence—”

  “Wouldn’t that be our ambassador’s job? She’s supposed to interface with Earth, so isn’t she the logical choice for interfacing with . . .” He trailed off and flitted his fingers through the air. “Though, realistically, neither the ambassador, nor our Communications head is any better equipped to communicate with it—them, whatever—than the rest of us. And, quite frankly, the lieutenant’s got a bad attitude and I don’t think we want that on an away team.”

  “What do you think, Dr. Nakamura?” Straifer asked, steepling his fingers on his desk. “You’ve been awfully quiet.”

  “I don’t think my opinion matters much. As long as I’m in charge of picking the engineers for the team, I’ll leave the rest in your capable hands.”

  “Heads shouldn’t be part of the team,” Carl interjected. “What if something happens? An accident? Or what if there are life-forms aboard and they’re hostile?”

  “That’s what we have backups for. But you make a good point—we should include a PSD. A handful of guards should do the trick.”

  “Sir, I still don’t think you should—”

  “Unless the board deems me a scientific hindrance, Carl, I’m going. It’s important that I do.”

  That evening, Sailuk greeted him with a surprise. “The birthing staff said yes!” With a little jump she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. “They’ve put us on the list—we’re getting a baby.”

  His heart fluttered inside his ribcage even as his guts churned. They were getting a baby—he was going to be a father. He and Sailuk would have a child that was theirs—just theirs. Something Mahler never had a hand in.

  Suddenly, getting included in the away team didn’t look like such a good idea.

  Carl was right, what if something happened to him? Would they deny Sailuk the child? Or would she be left to raise it alone? She’d retire a few years before the child reached adulthood. How would—?

  “Well?” She fluttered her eyelashes at him. Excitement and anxiousness made her body vibrate against his. “Say something.”

  Words eluded him. “That’s, that’s . . .” A long kiss was the best expression of how he felt. Enthusiasm, dread, longing, happiness, hopelessness—they all fought for attention in his brain and limbs. Fire raged through his nervous system. The kiss soothed him, reminded him that as long as Sailuk loved him everything would be okay. “That’s wonderful,” he finished.

  “It’s been so long since I’ve handled a baby,” she said. “There’ll be diapers and late nights and crying—I hope I can still keep up.”

  “Hey, you’ve got me. Together we’ve got it covered.”

  The tightness seeped from her face. “You’re so sweet, Rege. John never . . .”

  The tension that she’d let go of wormed its way into his body instead. He hated it when she mentioned him. Hated it. He tried to hide the disgust behind a false smile. “You might not have had any help with the boys, but I won’t hang you with all of the responsibility. It’s our child, and we’re partners.” Forget about him, he felt like saying. Don’t ever mention him again.

  As he tried to twist his forced smile into a real one, a strange pulse hit him like a sonic blast. Though it raked through his body, he made no outward sign—did not fall forward or crouch or collapse. But he did look frantically for the source. “What was—?”

  Sailuk furrowed her brow in concern. “What?”

  Hadn’t she felt it? Was it just him? Or maybe he hadn’t felt it either—only sensed it.

  Like she could ever forget him.

  The words rang out clear in his mind, though he couldn’t tell if they came from inside or outside.

  People don’t just forget. Beings don’t forget. Things don’t forget. Every scrap of matter has a memory.

  Untangling himself from Sailuk’s arms, Straifer went to the window. Their cabin lay on Mira’s port side, and the angle of the fleet let the edge of the Web skim within view. All he could see now was the Seed.

  Memory is tied to desire. If it can remember, it can want.

  “And what do you want?” he whispered.

  “Rege?”

  “Yes?” He shook his head, clearing his thoughts. “Sorry, honey. Nothing. I have some news of my own. The board is putting together a manned mission to that ship outside the Seed. And I’m going.”

  I have to.

  The away team boarded the shuttle casually, maintaining animated chatter. Chatter in which Straifer did not take part. He’d dreamt of the Seed once more and the afterimages would not leave him.

  The group consisted of two biologists, two engineers, two physicists, three security guards, a geologist, himself, and Lieutenant Pavon. Their bodies buzzed with expectation.

  Time seemed to pass slowly on the way into the Web. Straifer repeatedly looked to his wrist, where his onyx watch normally sat, and rubbed the arm of his space suit as though the absence of the family trinket physically pained him. Slowly, gradually, the alien ship slipped into view.

  A shout came o
ver his suit’s comm channel. “Look, look!” A physicist pressed her masked face up against one of the shuttle’s porthole windows. “There’s a panel bent back on the Seed!”

  The entire team pressed up to the side, each vying for a prime position. Straifer nudged his way to the front. A large sheet of metal, the size of a football field, looked as though its fastenings had been partially removed and the panel pried open. It barely blemished the vast face, and may have gone unnoticed for some time if the alien vessel’s bay doors hadn’t sat, splayed wide, in direct opposition.

  The newly discovered ship looked even more like its namesake up close. Coppery in color, strange piping dangled from its base and swirled around its sides like woven twigs. What purpose such a tangle served, Straifer couldn’t begin to speculate. A black domed shield covered the top half of what was thought to be the ship’s fore, creating the illusion of a cupped divot, aiding in the nest-like impression.

  Leaning forward, he strained his eyes, trying to see the base of the Seed while the others oohed and ahhed at the panel’s damage. The curve of the monolithic structure, subtle at a distance, was dramatic up close. The pockmarked exterior slipped distantly beneath them, like the delicate sway of an outstretched tongue, eager to gather the falling snowflake that was their craft. Likewise, the top bent far over their heads as a giant scorpion’s stinger would, poised to strike them from the void. For a moment he felt trapped between two colossal pincers, and involuntarily shrank back from the porthole in response.

  “I’m having trouble . . . with . . . these stupid . . .” The sound of the shuttle driver gnashing his teeth did not help to ease Straifer’s nerves. “Something keeps tripping my controls. Not the steering—it’s the shuttle-to-convoy comms. And the—damn it. The switches keep switching into the off position. Like someone’s in here physically flipping them.”

  “Maybe that’s what happened to the probes,” Pavon said. “Maybe they were manually switched off.”

  “By what?” asked Straifer.

  No one answered.

  “Should we abort?” the pilot asked.

  Everyone looked to Straifer. “You’re sure you’re having no navigational difficulties?”

  “None at this time.”

  “Then we continue.”

  The operator swung the shuttle around to the rear of the Nest, positioning their doors opposite its bay. The away team lost view of the Seed.

  This is it, Straifer thought. If human beings were ever in a prime position to find life, it was now. What would be inside?

  And yet . . .

  A primal urge—for a means of self-defense—snuck up his spine; what if they did find life and it was hostile? Poisonous, infectious—dangerous in some unforeseeable way?

  His breathing stuttered.

  I shouldn’t be here/I need to be here.

  Their bay doors opened slowly, and two members of the away team unfurled the umbilical used for emergency docking with Hippocrates’ many ports. It twisted open, like the webbed tentacles of a Dumbo Octopus, and the magnetic ring on its neck caught against the alien vessel’s deck and an inner wall. They made sure it was stuck fast, tethering the two crafts together, before drifting out, one by one, into the zero-g of the Nest.

  If the outside of the ship resembled a collection of loose twine and haphazardly dangling sticks, then the inside looked like a hollowed-out, metallic tree trunk.

  Twelve lights clicked on. Each large, round beam swung this way and that like searchlights scanning for an escaped convict.

  Straifer braced himself, ready to jump if his beam illuminated an alien face.

  But the bay appeared empty.

  “Everything looks . . . fried,” one of the engineers concluded. “It’s burnt out.”

  “Maybe an electrical fire,” his counterpart observed, floating over to what appeared to be a workstation in the holding bay. “All of these panels look like they flared.”

  “Scanners are working—readings seem on par. We definitely don’t have company,” Sophia, a physicist, stated solemnly.

  “That has yet to be seen,” said Tendai, a biologist. In her left hand she carried a sampling kit, and moved to the nearest panel for testing.

  “Oh, come on, you’re not even going to find a fungus in here.”

  “We’ve got higher chances here than anywhere else,” Straifer mumbled, his eyes following his beam to the ceiling. “You see these dark marks?”

  Eleven sets of eyes fluttered like moths to his flame. Eleven beams followed. “Looks like . . . plasma burns?”

  “They run along the floor too.” The beams shifted.

  “Could the ship have been electrocuted?”

  Sophia scoffed. “By what?”

  Straifer turned, expecting to see the massive illuminated skin of the Seed, but the white shuttle blocked his view. “I don’t like that thing,” he breathed, barely audible to his own ears.

  “Maybe it was the Seed,” the elder engineer, Frank, said casually, coming to the same conclusion. “They tried to crack ’er open to figure out what makes it tick and disrupted something. Zapped ’em when they cut in. We’re going to need to do better than that if we try and reconstruct these babies.” He scratched the bottom of his helmet, as if his chin could feel it. “We should leave the Seed for last—get all the info on the smaller ones first. We should suggest a special team to Nakamura, one purely focused on the Seed. Demands respect, doesn’t it?” His light flicked back to the burnt marks on the ceiling.

  “Demands something, that’s for sure,” Straifer said, as though in reverence. His ears perked, waiting. I’m here now. If you have something to say, say it.

  “Oh, come on Cap. It’s not asking for your firstborn. Whoever built it was well beyond us—all I mean is that deserves some thought.”

  “It already gets my firstborn,” he replied darkly. “And Captain Mahler’s firstborn, and their firstborns.” And Sailuk, and me.

  “You sound a bit dire there, Captain. You feeling all right?” Tendai asked.

  In truth he wasn’t. He was beginning to sweat and couldn’t wipe his brow or his mouth because of his helmet. There was something wrong with this Web. It was dangerously seductive.

  “It was just an accident,” Frank put a hand on his shoulder, jolting him from his thoughts. “These people—aliens, ET, what-have-you—they didn’t think before they messed with things. You saw how they just tore at it. We’re different; we know to be careful.”

  “But can’t you feel it?” He turned, searching Frank’s eyes. “There’s more out there than batteries. Why start building this thing around a distant star, why not your own star? Why start something you have to rely on others to finish? Sure, the ones who came after might have undertaken it to learn, but the first ones knew already. This technology was theirs, wasn’t it? The ones who started it knew they couldn’t finish it. And still . . . Still they built. For what?”

  The wandering flashlight beams went lax. The team collectively eyed him.

  “It looms.” His voice was gravelly, his breath wheezy. “Out there, waiting to be pampered with improvements. It presides. It’s out here for a reason. Its reason.” He floated back and forth, pacing, tracing a jagged, burnt line on the deck. “It’s here to do something. I don’t know, I don’t know . . .” He roughly rubbed the side of his helmet, as if it cleared his mind. “Different pieces, different people . . .” He turned to them. “They knew . . .” He waved his hands, gesticulating chaotically, vocal pitch rising. “They knew, but we don’t. It wants us to work on it. It wants us to prod and pick at it, wants wide-eyed, ignorant passersby to learn its shallow little secrets. It needs Builders. It . . .”

  He paused, then blurted, “It’s claimed civilizations, and you think it doesn’t want my child too?” His breaths came swift and shallow, and he knew that in the weak light his drenched, pale face must seem ghostly.

  Frank approached him slowly, one arm cautiously outstretched. “You’re working yourself up over nothin’, Capt
ain.”

  “Why can’t you see it?” Straifer whimpered. He knew he was alone in his underdeveloped revelation. Something was wrong, but he didn’t know how to communicate it. His bones felt weak, delicate. His whole body slumped.

  I’m here, his mind screamed, full of tension though his body was slack. Speak. Tell me what you want! Why aren’t you finished?

  What do you want from us?

  And suddenly he could feel the pulses emanating from the Seed—just as he had in the cabin. Not quite a thumping and not quite a flowing—each pulse moved through him like a wave.

  Like . . . A heartbeat.

  He threw his arms up over his head, startled, mortified. “It’s alive! Alive, alive, alive.” He rambled on and on while his body shifted between states of protective curves and wild flailing, twirling and twisting in zero-g. He gasped, again and again. A yellow light flashed within his suit, indicating he’d gone into hyperventilation.

  The others backed away, giving the strange display as much space as they could.

  “Captain, I want you to go lie down in the shuttle while we continue,” said Frank after moments of stunned silence had passed. “A quick rest and you’ll be good to go again. Go lie down.” Straifer watched Frank approach through a crook in his arm, and he slowly unscrunched himself from the defensive ball he was in, letting his limbs float in a resigned manner.

  He was tired. So tired. Terror had overloaded all of his senses, and he saw dark spots before his eyes. In a brief moment of self-control, he held his breath, trying to prevent a blackout.

  Frank turned him around and gave Straifer a gentle push in the direction of the shuttle.

  “We should get out of here, return to Earth,” Straifer muttered as he allowed his body to be propelled. If anyone heard him, though, no one said anything—for which he was grateful. Once inside he strapped himself down, exhaustion overtook him, and he drifted into an empty, Seedless sleep.