Thunder & Lightning

by Christopher Nuttall

  “I don’t want to,” she said. She knew her voice sounded childish, but she couldn’t help it. The alien instruction cut right to the heart of her very being. “I don’t want them to see me.”

  “I won’t look,” Reynolds said. He turned from her and started the process of undressing in zero-gravity; it wasn't an easy task even with a shipsuit. He wriggled out of it and removed his underwear and watch; the robot caught the clothes and pushed them firmly away from him, then pointed with one long manipulator towards the image. The male had vanished; the female image was repeating the undressing action, time and time again. “I’m sorry, but…”

  Samra undid her tunic, blinking away tears from her eyes, followed rapidly by her bra and panties. Reynolds didn’t look at her as the alien robot caught her clothes as well, carrying them away and leaving them alone. Modestly, she wished for longer hair to cover her bare breasts; she crossed one of her arms over her breasts, holding the other in front of her tightly-closed legs. She kept her eyes lowered, trying to avoid the temptation to sneak a peek at him; the aliens clearly understood very little about humanity. Or, maybe, they knew too much; a naked human was someone who was much less aggressive, much more defenceless.

  “Something is happening,” Reynolds said. A large hatch, large enough to stop a charging tank, was opening soundlessly; she heard a faint click-click-click noise echoing through the room as the air currents started to change, blowing them towards the hatch. She allowed Reynolds to go first, pulling herself along as best as she could with one hand, and flinched back as the light grew brighter, revealing a much larger room in the interior of the alien craft. “I think…my God!”

  He stopped. Samra didn’t realise in time that he had stopped and crashed into his back. She would have been terribly embarrassed under other circumstances – her breasts had bumped into him - and then she saw what had brought him up short. It stood there, larger than life, too real to be denied or buried under what passed for rational thought.

  She knew, without any doubt at all, that she was gazing upon a creature that had been born on a very different world.

  Chapter Fourteen: First Contact

  Seeker for Truth, Deep Space

  Although she would never have admitted it, Oolane-Researcher-Seeker was as excited as any of the Oghaldzon ever became when the first humans were brought on board the starship. She had spent most of the long flight in suspension and wasn’t fond of zero-gravity, but she would have happily have done whatever it took, with the exceptions of ThrillKill or MemeKill, to have been the first of the research team to actually meet humans.

  The Oghaldzon had watched grimly as their fleet approached the human star. They’d learnt rapidly that the humans had expanded to most of the worlds and asteroids in their system, their unique disunity actually providing a source of strength as they even considered sending a small craft – only fifty kilometres long – to another star. The news had almost caused a panic on the starship; the humans might have realised that the Oghaldzon existed and might be intending to send their starship to visit their homeworld. There had been no proof, however…until radio signals had started to fall directly on the fleet, asking for identification and offering everything. Human groups had offered to trade, while others had asked the Oghaldzon to take a side in human disputes; the Fleet Council had chosen to ignore all of the communications until they reached human space. The human fleet hadn’t been a surprise – signals beamed directly to the fleet had told them everything about the welcoming fleet – but there had been no real choice; Oolane had watched in horror as the Oghaldzon had opened fire…

  The battle had been short and unpleasant; the desperate need to convince the humans that they could be beaten – would be beaten – had required the Oghaldzon to take more risks than normal. If the humans had been rational creatures, the Oghaldzon would have been delighted to have met and talked with them, perhaps even shared knowledge with them, but humans were far from rational. Their transmissions made that clear; they abused their own people, fought amongst themselves, and practiced both ThrillKill and MemeKill on a regular basis.

  She watched through the monitors – her sonar senses couldn’t penetrate the hull metal of the Seeker for Truth – as the humans slowly and reluctantly undressed. Human broadcasts had told the Oghaldzon a great deal about the species, but very little of it seemed to make sense. At the moment, on board the starship; Oghaldzon wore heavy clothes, or nothing at all. Humans seemed to consider clothing important to them. Like the others on the research terms, Oolane’s instructions had been simple; find out if humans could be tamed, or if their world was forever to be sealed off from space.

  I won’t let you die, she thought, wishing that she could reassure the humans. She had volunteered for the role of their direct liaison, a role for which her only practical experience was as a teacher of the young, once they had reached sentience and could be tamed into civilisation. It wasn’t ideal; if there was one thing that was beyond dispute, it was that humans were not Oghaldzon. A single look at the strange two-legged creatures proved that beyond a shadow of a doubt. I have to keep you alive so that I can learn from you and you can learn from me.

  A warning light flickered up as the hatch began to slide open. Oolane felt a sudden flicker of near-ideological excitement, the sense that she was about to insert her own idea into the dominant memeplexe. A human, going by their transmissions, might speak of anticipating a mating…but there was much that remained obscure about human mating practices. Oolane herself was out of season, but even when she entered season and was ready to allow her eggs to be fertilised and placed within one of the breeding zones, it wasn’t a matter of life or death. For the humans, it seemed that their entire lives were based around mating with their ideal partner…

  She extended her sonar as the first human drifted in and came to a stop when he – she thought it was a male, insofar as the Oghaldzon term could be applied to a human – saw her. She was pleased to note that one of her conclusions had been accurate; the humans didn’t seem to possess any form of sonar sense, instead peering at her with eyes that were much more…elaborate than any Oghaldzon eye. The Oghaldzon eyes were smaller, almost vestigial; some of the biological researchers had speculated that one day the Oghaldzon would evolve to a point where they would no longer need eyes. She didn’t believe it herself; sonar had its limitations, particularly when out in space.

  The second human appeared, a female; Oolane was pleased. They would have one of each to study. She extended her sonar again, wondering if the humans would sense her examining their bodies; if they did, they showed no sign, although she wasn't sure that she would have recognised a sign if she saw one. The male had a great deal of equipment implanted in his body, completely dark to her sonar; the female had only a handful of implants, one near her neck, one implanted in her skull, and one positioned in her lower body, just below her heart. That entire region had something to do with human mating, she recalled from the human transmissions, but further study would be required to understand its exact nature. What exactly did the very alien humans think of their own behaviour? If they lacked sonar, how had their learned about their own bodies before they have developed high technology?

  The more she gazed upon them, the more alien they seemed.

  She composed herself and formulated her first message. Human hearing seemed to be different to Oghaldzon hearing; they’d prepared a speaker to produce a loose version of a human speaker. She knew the main human language, but it would be tricky to speak to them without the technology; Oghaldzon voices were much higher-pitched than human tones.

  “I greet you,” she said carefully. “Welcome on board the Seeker for Truth.”

  * * *

  For a moment, Samra thought that she was looking at a deer, a bizarrely-mutated deer. The alien stood, facing her, a featureless domed head seeming to be leaning slightly towards her. Her eyes travelled over the creature with a growing sense of disbelief; three legs, two smaller forelegs facing her, unde
r what she thought was a head, and one much larger hindleg at the rear, supported the alien. Its leathery skin was a strange mixture of black and grey; what little of its flesh she could see seemed to be covered in strange fronds, lying down like fur. Six strange long tentacle-like arms hung down from its body, three to a side; they moved and flexed, seemingly at random.

  It was alien as hell.

  A sense of numb disbelief swept over her and she almost fainted. The alien’s face – if face it was – was almost impossible to grasp. It wore a simple black uniform; as it stepped – pranced – closer, she could hear a strange sound, right at the edge of her hearing, surrounding the creature. She had, subconsciously, expected to face a humanoid race; the sheer presence of the alien awed her into silence. She wondered, just for a brief moment, if the heat was getting to her; she pinched her arm quickly, but the scene refused to fade from her eyes.

  She could hear a slight tick-tick-tick as the alien spoke; moments later, she heard it speaking Standard English, coming from a device it wore around it’s…neck, she supposed it was. The great dome seemed to be facing her, but the alien eyes looked cold and dead, almost as black and strange as the eyes of a rodent, like the hamsters that had gotten loose in the colony, years ago. The voice was warm, but fake; the voice of a computer-generated personality. It was only later that it struck her how alien that was.

  “I greet you,” the alien said. The underlying tick-tick-tick shook her, somehow; she guessed that part of the alien’s voice was too high for her to hear. “Welcome on board the Seeker for Truth.”

  Samra had planned a long welcoming speech for the aliens. Somehow, she didn’t feel like giving it; she wanted explanations, but she was also terrified. Somehow, seeing how alien the alien was, she felt reassured…but she also felt fear. What could a creature that walked on three legs and seemed completely unconcerned about them have in common with humanity?

  “Thank you,” she stammered. She sensed Reynolds’ quiet amusement from his position behind her; it almost helped her to forget that she was naked. Fury bubbled up, mixed with outrage and horror; she leaned forward, wondering if her anger could intimidate the alien. “Why did you attack us?”

  The alien didn’t answer her. She pushed forward, wondering if she dared try to force answers out of the alien; Reynolds’ put his hand gently on her shoulder before her rage sent her tumbling over in zero-gee. The alien stood neatly on the floor; out of habit, she checked its feet – hooves – and saw the magnetic boots that it wore.

  “We came in peace,” she protested, a futile protest against the universe. Were the aliens Allah’s devils? “We came to welcome you!”

  “Such contact must happen only on our terms,” the alien said. The bland voice didn’t change at all; she wondered if the fact that the alien was almost debating with her was a good sign or a bad sign. “You will teach us about your people and help us to forge relations with your race that will prevent further conflict.”

  Samra wondered, inanely, if the alien knew what it was saying…

  “We will escort you to a place where you may rest,” the alien said. “Once you have rested, we will discuss your planet, your people, and what we may do to prevent further conflict.”

  Reynolds asked the question she would never have dared to ask. “What happens if we don’t cooperate?”

  The alien answered his question with a question. “Why do you have so much” – something unintelligible – “inside your body?”

  “I don’t understand,” Reynolds said. His face seemed to have paled slightly, although it was hard to tell under the bruises caused by burst blood vessels. Samra remembered that he had survived the vacuum of space and wondered just what was inside his body…and how the aliens had known that it was there. They hadn’t been X-rayed, had they? Would they have known if they had? “What is inside my body?”

  “You have” – the alien seemed to be struggling for words – “systems implanted inside your body, meshed into your neural net,” it said. “Why do you have them inside your body?”

  “I was caught up in an accident once and it was the only way to save my life,” Reynolds said. Samra would have bet her maidenhead that he was lying; she’d never heard of any technology that could do anything like that without massive physical and mental trauma. “How did you know it was there?”

  “You will be held on board this ship until you can be returned to your people, once the unfortunate expansion of ideas is completed,” the alien said. Samra blinked at the non sequitur before realising that the alien was answering Reynolds’ earlier question about what would happen to them if they didn’t cooperate. There was a clue to the alien mentality there; she was sure of it. She forced herself to focus, like the legendary heroine Mizba, on Gathering Intelligence; perhaps it could be used to broker a peace. She was sure that if the pair of them fought, all it would achieve would be the pair of them dying gloriously…if the aliens even bothered to kill them. Being naked brought home to her just how defenceless they were. “We ask you to cooperate to spare unnecessary death and meme-death.”

  Samra pushed. “Why did you attack us?”

  “You will be escorted to your holding area,” the alien said, and started to clump down the corridor. Samra suppressed an insane urge to grab the alien’s tail; instead, she used the handholds to pull herself along, cursing the alien desire for nakedness. The alien himself – herself? – wore only a covering; did they consider clothing to be completely optional? She couldn’t cover herself; she could only hope that Reynolds would be a gentleman. “Do not attempt to head anywhere else in this ship.”

  Inside the main body of the starship, the lighting changed radically, going from blinding white to near-complete gloomy darkness, with flickering red lights shimmering through the gloom. It was always hot and steamy, but some of the time she sensed more than saw the presence of other aliens nearby, carrying out their own incomprehensible tasks. The aliens all looked almost identical to her; their colouring was a mixture of black and grey, but sometimes they wore completely random colours in their…fur. Was it a racial issue, she wondered, or something optional?

  A hatch hissed open, revealing a room with one large sleeping mat and what she suspected was a toilet, along with a small set of food. She felt her mouth fall open as she took in the emergency rations, before she realised that the aliens had had to have stripped the Neil Armstrong of everything that could be used to keep them alive. Some of the food looked as if it needed to be cooked, but they would have to make do; most space-foods heated automatically if they were still in their original packing. She hoped that Reynolds could cook if they had to cook for themselves; she knew very little about cooking. Her mother would have laughed…

  “You may use the controls to set your own environmental conditions,” the alien said, waving a pair of hands at the small set of controls on the wall. If you require assistance, you may call me using the intercom; I will be there as soon as you require me." Samra almost smiled; the alien was treating it as if they were entering a hotel. “We will talk again once you are rested.”

  “A question,” Samra said. “What is your name?”

  The alien looked, for a moment, like a cat that had swallowed a hairball. “Oolane,” the alien said, following up with a series of clicks that seemed – again – to partly exist outside her hearing range. She supposed that they were name, rank and serial number…or maybe the alien was reciting his or her lineage. “I am a female of my species.”

  Samra looked the alien up and down. No breasts, no thighs…it would disappoint the movie producers who had created hundreds of cute female aliens, from Saavik to Delenn, both of whom had captured hearts right across the universe. The alien – Oolane – was about as attractive as a…well, as a not very attractive thing.

  “Pleased to meet you,” she said finally, as Oolane backed out. The alien seemed to have no problems walking backwards without crashing into something. “Perhaps we can convince your leaders not to start a war that will get m
illions of people killed.”

  “In the long run, billions more will die,” Oolane said, and backed out completely. The door slid closed; Samra couldn’t help, but notice that there was no way for them to open it from their side. It had been foolish for her to hope that they would have access to the entire ship, but she had wondered; Oolane had seemed so civilised…and yet her race had opened fire and destroyed the welcome fleet. It all caught up with her and she sagged, suddenly; Reynolds caught her and held her close as she sobbed. Their sweat held them together for what felt like hours.

  “They fired on the fleet,” she said. She wanted to pinch herself, in case it was all a dream, or a nightmare; she tried, only to feel the pain. “They fired…what are you?”

  “Nothing anyone needs to know about,” Reynolds said. He tapped his ears and nodded to the walls; Samra cursed herself as she realised that the aliens would be listening to their every word. Whatever they said, whatever they did, it would all be added into some great alien database of human behaviour and considered representative of the human race. The aliens had – intentionally or otherwise – caught one of each sex; had they been placed together as a kind of experiment? How on Earth – or, rather on their homeworld – did the aliens mate? “I think, for the moment, that we need to get some sleep.”

  “Just promise that you won’t jump on me in the night,” Samra said, trying to find something for her to cling to with her entire world shattering around her. “Why did they open fire?”

  “There’s no way to know, yet,” Reynolds said. He pushed himself over to the sleeping mats…and stuck. Samra tested the mat and realised that it was sticky enough, somehow, to hold them down while they slept; she guessed that they had been placed in a position where humans, or aliens, wouldn’t be hurt if the starship boosted before they woke up. Air, hot and musty with strange alien smells, drifted over them; suffocating in their own exhalation wasn’t a risk. “Perhaps they wanted contact under their own terms.”