by Al Macy
“And …” I rolled my hand.
“And so far, we’ve received three characters. H, E, and L.”
“Maybe ‘Hello, world’? No, I’ve got it: ‘Hello, cocksuckers.’”
We chuckled our way back to Elon’s office.
A shout came from the communications room and we both turned to the door.
A technician rushed in. “We got a whole word, but then the system broke down. We can’t get any more messages until we fix it. We think we can—”
“What does it say?” I asked.
He put a piece of paper on the table.
HELP
* * *
Two guards shoved Marbecka through the ship’s passageways. The hood blinded her, but echoes from the walls suggested the corridor was unusually narrow.
Her claws found a perch and she grabbed it. The guards ripped off the hood, and she raised her crest. The chamber was so small she could barely stretch out her wings. Her instincts screamed that she’d been dragged into a snake’s burrow. Her wings quivered and she rocked back and forth.
Pipes, conduits, and valves crowded the walls and ceiling. The peppermint smell was stronger here. A towering zealo perched across from her in the semidarkness. He held a bright orange eCigar and the peppermint-scented smoke drifted from his beak.
Everything made sense now. Those were zealos from the Foegon colony. Raised in a half-g environment, they grew unusually tall. Accustomed to working in narrow mining passages, they built their ships with cramped corridors and chambers.
Most colonists vaped medicinal Reox eCigars to repair the damage done by the mining operations. The vaping delivered medicine directly into their alveoli. Once a colonist chose to begin that treatment, however, he or she was on it for life.
The zealo across from Marbecka had a light-gray beak covered with intricate scrimshawed designs. His feathers were so worn and ratty, she wondered if he could fly.
“I am Captain Brock.” The smoke drifted from his beak. “Had a little problem with your robot, did you?”
Marbecka rocked on her perch. What did he mean? She waggled her head in puzzlement.
“One of your ship-killer robots got out of control and attacked your own craft.”
“No. I don’t understand. That was nothing of ours. Of course not. Are you—? That was your ship.”
Brock sucked hard on his cigar. “Don’t give me that ‘I don’t understand’ crap. You Earthers are waging a covert war against the colonists. Three of our missions to the asteroid belt disappeared without a trace. You have been using this universe-collision hoax as a cover. Tell me I’m wrong.”
“Yes, sir, you are indeed wrong. I can explain it. Make you understand. Two confluence rifts have already happened. They must have missed the Foegon colony or you would have noticed.”
He went on as if he hadn’t heard her. “You have developed autonomous spacecraft that seem able to learn and even modify themselves. You distributed them between here and the asteroid belt. They have been attacking our ships. You want to prevent us from mining the asteroids. Two of my daughters have been killed.”
“Absolutely not, sir. I am sorry for your loss, but why would we care if you mined the asteroids? That was not our ship. We have no offensive ships.”
“What about your zealos? Zealos are aggressive. Maybe they have launched this campaign without your knowledge.”
Marbecka opened her beak, then stopped. She blinked. “Uh, no, we would know about that.” Wouldn’t we?
“What is your profession?”
“Scientist. I discovered the collision problem, and I can assure you—”
“Ah, of course. The famous Dr. Marbecka. That’s where I have seen you. On the holoviewer.”
Brock took a long drag on his eCigar and sat silently for a full minute. “It doesn’t matter. We are sending you back with a message. A one-word message for you to deliver.”
He sucked hard on his eCigar and then blew smoke toward Marbecka. “War.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
On July 1, in the Oval Office, I leaned back on the couch and checked out the ceiling’s Seal of the President. It was over a hundred degrees in Washington, but I was probably the only person in the White House wearing shorts and sandals. What could they do, fire me?
President Young took his coffee and sat on the opposite couch, next to Secretary of Defense Guccio. Elon Gray stood by the fireplace, checking out the portrait of George Washington.
I leaned forward and put some more cream in my coffee. “It could be good to get the Carter twins involved in this. What are they up to?”
Martin and Alex Carter were teenage wunderkinder whose genius had contributed to the downfall of Cronkite.
Guccio nodded. “I met with them last week. They’re both involved with research on Cronkite’s sphere. Alex is working on the neural interface, and Martin is trying to reverse engineer some of its capabilities. He’s learned how to produce those deadly nanobots—”
“Well, what could go wrong there?” I smiled.
“Right—” Guccio gave a little smoker’s cough “—but the sphere lets us set limits on the danger level. Essentially, we can set it to produce only G-rated nanobots. Martin commands it to spit out a single nanobot, and we study it with an electron microscope. Unfortunately, the technology is so much ahead of ours that we can’t make much progress. We’re like chimps trying to understand a smartphone.”
“Okay.” President Young put his coffee cup back on the tray. “I called this meeting to talk about the meaning of the dinobird’s message and what we’re going to do about it. First, any new messages, Elon?”
“No. We’ve got a glitch with the communicator now, and the bandwidth has gone down to one bit per day. We think the glitch is on their end, but we’re not sure. In any case, all we have is a single, three-word phrase: ‘HELP. BRING WARRIOR.’”
Young leaned back. “So, they want Jake to bring a warrior with him.”
“What the hell do they mean by ‘warrior’?” Guccio wiped some donut powder off his chin with a napkin. “I keep picturing one of those Maori warriors from New Zealand. The beefy guys who stick their tongues out.”
“No, no. I know exactly what they mean,” I said. “The concept of war is foreign to them. They are these peaceable, chicken-hearted beings who all go along to get along. The scientists who’ve examined their records from the white chest can check, but I don’t think they’ve had a war at any time in their millions of years of existence.”
“Didn’t they have a war with the dinosaurs?” Young asked.
“No, not at all. They exterminated them in the same way we killed all the wolves in Yellowstone in the twenties. War and organized conflict may be an innate quality of humans. Not so for dinobirds. They’re just not made that way.”
“What about the zealos? The red dinobirds.” Guccio asked.
“Good point.” I pulled on my ear. “The zealos are aggressive. They’re into weapons, but they aren’t warlike. If they even considered war, they could easily take over their Earth. They haven’t. They coexist peacefully with the non-zealo dinobirds.”
Young rubbed the back of his neck. “So, the message means—”
“It means they’ve suddenly found themselves in a war and want someone to help them fight it. Based on my video journal, I know that they were fascinated by my descriptions of war—they know we have a lot of experience with it.”
Guccio shrugged. “Do we want to get involved in their squabbles? No pun intended.”
I frowned at him. “Pun?”
“Squab. A baby bird.”
I shook my head. “No, I think this is more than just squabbles, and yes, we need to get involved. We need them in order to prevent the collision of the universes. If they get wiped out in a war, we’re screwed.”
“So, who do we send?” Elon asked.
The president wrote something on a pad. “I’ll put together a list—”
Guccio cleared his throat. “Me.”
<
br /> “You’re joking, right?” I raised my eyebrows.
“But I need you, Gordon,” the president said.
“No you don’t, and I’m serious. Things are going well here, thanks in part to our decreased population. Also, having the world threatened by an alien has brought the nations together. I haven’t been in the active military for ten years, and I miss it. I’m stagnating, and this would give me a chance to get off my butt. Maybe even get in shape.”
I laughed. “Since when are you concerned about getting in shape, Gordon?”
“Right. That part was a joke. Anyway, I’m sure I’d just be sitting around, advising. But I’m ready for a change in scene.”
* * *
July 19, nine a.m. Transport day.
Standing by the window of our hotel room, wearing my dinobird-blue jumpsuit, I watched the military chopper land in the parking lot. Charli and I had shared our last evening together in the Paradise Lodge on the slopes of Mount Rainier.
I looked up at the geodesic dome clinging to the summit. It housed our completed paratransit device.
In the white chest of info, the dinobirds had provided a list of potential sites for our machine, all on the tops of mountains. An off-planet location would have been better, but that wasn’t an option for us space-travel-challenged humans. The space station had been destroyed by terrorists and never replaced.
Since the highest peaks in California and Colorado were within the confluence rift zone, we ruled those out. If we built there and the rift reversed, we’d be up the quantum creek without a paddle. So, Washington’s Mount Rainier won the lottery.
The engineers had built the dome and its attached helipad on the summit. Once the world had provided the funding, they added the antimatter and other exotic materials, and the machine was ready to rumble. Just in time, too.
The sky was dark blue, and the wind was calm enough that it wouldn’t interfere with the chopper ride to the summit. Good thing, because I’d left my ice ax at home.
Charli hugged me from behind. “Promise you won’t be a hero.”
“I’m too old for that.”
She pressed her ear against my back. “Admit it. You’re looking forward to the adventure.”
“Buddha suggests one might learn to embrace and enjoy life’s hard times.”
“Aren’t you philosophical?” She turned me around. “Sounds like Grandma Marie’s saying about playing the cards you’re dealt.”
I raised a finger. “Yes, grasshopper, but Buddha proposes you not only play them but take pleasure in playing them.”
“Don’t you ‘grasshopper’ me, caveman.” She pinched one of my incipient love handles. Ow!
An insistent knock at our door made us both jump. Time to go.
We hurried out through the hotel to the parking lot. Charli and I hugged one more time, and I kissed away a tear from her cheek. I joined Guccio in the helicopter.
Like me, he wore a light-blue jumpsuit and huge Air Force hearing protectors. One hand covered his eyes.
The rotors spooled up, and I strapped in. “Hangover?” I yelled.
“Hey, not so loud!”
We powered up the mountain and landed on the cantilevered helipad.
Entering the dome was like stepping into another world. Not surprising, since we’d built it according to the dinobird specs. The most familiar thing was the new-car smell. New-car smell with just a hint of antimatter.
I’d seen video of the paratransit device, but in real life it seemed larger. The tubes and satellite-dish-like structures above and below looked like two hands, one on the floor and one on the ceiling, grasping an enormous, invisible ball.
Elon held up a smartphone-sized object that resembled the monolith from the movie 2001. He slid it into my breast pocket and secured the flap. “That contains the sum total of human history and knowledge. Don’t lose it.”
He put another one in Guccio’s pocket.
“Just to confirm,” I said, “it’s not going to be like my first trip. That is, I won’t come back here to this same moment.”
He nodded but didn’t look up from his knob twiddling. “With this paratransitter, everything will be real-time. If you spend a week there and come back, it will be a week later here.”
“Charli’s kind of hoping you’re wrong about that.”
“I’m not.” He turned and looked me in the eye. “So don’t die. Okay travelers, two minutes to go. Take your places.”
Guccio and I stepped onto the lower dish and stood side by side in the center.
I turned to him. “Remind you of the painting of the woman in the clamshell?”
Guccio nodded. “Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. But she probably didn’t have a hangover.”
I watched Elon count down the final seconds. “Fifteen … fourteen … thirteen …”
BOOK III
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Marbecka, Jobex, and Falbex stood around the paratransit device in the cargo hold of Resourceful, anticipating the appearance of Jake and his warrior. This new ship replaced Investigator, the research vessel that had been destroyed by the mysterious, cloaked spacecraft.
Resourceful floated near the orbit of Mars.
The colonists had released Marbecka and declared war a month ago. Since then, two colony ships and one Earth ship had vanished without a trace. Each side blamed the other. Trade ceased.
The conflict would derail their efforts to prevent the universe collision.
Marbecka’s fragile psyche wasn’t handling the stress well. She spun around on her perch. It won’t be long now. Two of their minutes. The device is on full auto. I cannot endure this suspense. In a flash, she grabbed one of her breast feathers with her beak and plucked it out. Ow! Just the one. She had to do something.
She dropped the feather into the disposal chute. Did anyone notice?
Jobex’s attention was glued to the displays. “I still don’t think they will have understood our message.”
A strident whistle echoed through the ship. All three of them startled and fluttered into the air.
“Falbex, please come to the bridge. Emergency.”
Falbex lifted off and flew out to the passageway that would take him to the bridge. Marbecka grabbed another feather with her beak. No, I mustn’t.
The room lurched to one side, throwing the scientists off their perches.
Marbecka squawked and activated the link to the bridge. “Bridge, I don’t know what’s going on up there, but the transit will fail if—”
Another jolt knocked them in the other direction. Alarm buzzers sounded, and error lights flashed in the paratransit’s control hologram.
Marbecka flew back to her perch and resumed her rocking. “What’s that alarm, Jobex? Can you fix it?”
“Wait. It’s the antimatter linkage.” Jobex worked the holographic controls. “It—okay, I’ve got it. But if—”
The alarm sounded again, and an announcement blared out of the speakers. “Emergency stations. This is not a drill.”
Marbecka screeched. Stay or go? A good flock member always obeys orders. With a final glance at the paratransitter, she deserted the lab, flying to the ship’s central passageway and up to the bridge with Jobex.
* * *
“Twelve … eleven …” Elon continued the countdown.
“How you doing, Gordon?” I patted Guccio on the shoulder. “You look a little green.”
He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. “I’ll be okay. Just be glad you didn’t come to my going away party.”
“Six … five …”
“You’ll love the roller coaster part.” I had no memory of a paratransit, but my video journal described it clearly.
“Three … two …”
Guccio coughed. “That’s one small barf for a man … one giant—”
“Zero!”
I shrunk in on myself and started down the roller coaster. A whine blotted out all other sounds, and the colors shifted to red. Were we stuck? It seemed to go on
forever.
The effects reversed, and pop, we found ourselves in another paratransit device. The room resembled the room back on Mount Rainier but with holographic controls.
It was deserted.
I took a breath. The air was more humid here. “Made it. But where is every—”
The floor whipped to one side like a tablecloth yanked away by a magician. My leg hit one of the paratransit tubes as it zipped past me, and I tumbled through the air. Guccio and I smashed into a wall, landing in two heaps.
I weighed a ton. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t speak or yell “Help.” My shoulder ached, jammed against some pointy thing on the wall.
Little gasps failed to pull enough air into my lungs. Darkness crept into the edges of my vision.
Then, bang, I dropped off a cliff. Falling. No, weightless. I sucked in huge breaths.
Guccio floated next to me. “I’m assuming—” gasp “—this isn’t normal.”
“I think we’re on a spaceship.” My vision recovered. I yelled, “Help! Help! Anybody home?”
Guccio and I then dropped to the floor. We’d been floating only two feet above it, but we fell fast and hit hard.
The g-force crushed me even more than before. How many g’s? I had no way of judging, but my body couldn’t take much more.
The force shut off, and we were weightless again. A pair of dinobirds flew down through a hole in the ceiling. What had been the ceiling until the gravity went away.
In clear English, one announced, “Jake Corby is here.”
A brutal wave of nausea flashed up from my gut. I clamped my lips shut. Puking in zero gravity was probably a bad idea. Gravity returned, gradually this time.
Another dinobird popped down into the room, like a sparrow flying in through the chimney. I recognized her from the video: Marbecka. In fact, I’d watched my video journal so many times, I felt as if I had a real memory of my time in her universe.