Discovery

by T M Roy

  The sound of retching was the only reply Jenn heard.

  Jenn felt real worry squeeze her guts. Sirgels rarely vomited. Maybe she picked up some germ from the planet they still orbited. Maybe some injury had been overlooked. The only thing that made Povre this violently ill, in Jenn’s knowledge, was use of the Teacher.

  “Has she used the Teacher?”

  “Not know,” shrugged the Lazorta.

  “Pov?”

  The door slid back. Hollow-cheeked and dull of eye, Povre swayed for a second. Her fingers grabbed for the handhold to either side of the portal.

  “Povresle, talk to me!”

  Her friend straightened and offered Jenn a very sickly smile. “I’m all right.”

  “Like the Goddess who birthed us all was a male you’re all right,” snorted Jenn, taking her arm. “I’m taking you to the ship’s physician.”

  “No, Jenn,” pleaded Povre. “I’m just tired. I’m not—” She jerked from Jenn’s grip and spun back toward the head. Another Sirgel crewmember was just about to enter, but Povre bowled her back, not even muttering an “excuse me please.”

  Jenn arrived on Povre’s heels in time to prevent their crewmate from falling and hurting herself.

  “We’re going to have to assign Dr. Povresle to her own relief area if this keeps up,” said the older woman, a navigator.

  “You mean this has been going on for more than today?”

  The navigator nodded. “You and the other science teams have been on the surface these past two weeks. Trust me. People’ve been avoiding this section of the ship when Povre’s here. I should’ve know better. I’ll go aft.”

  Povre chose that moment to emerge. No sign of anything amiss remained. “I hope it didn’t get too cold. I’m really hungry,” she announced brightly to Jenn. “Oh, Nykar, I’m sorry for being so rude.”

  “Forget it,” said the navigator kindly, but shook her head and hurried off.

  * * * * *

  PROFESSOR KENT XAVIER.

  The words, in print, on his desk, on his office door, hell, even on his letters…didn’t bring the thrill Kent once thought they would.

  His phone rang, and he tucked it between his shoulder and chin as he answered. Pushing his laptop aside, he reached for his notebook and a pencil.

  “A Dr. Landreau to see you, Kent,” said Redfern from the lab.

  Landreau. Landreau. Oh. Maybe he was the naturalist from France who wanted to convince Kent to be a part of that new book project on the Cascades.

  “Send him over.”

  Mercy Redfern’s voice sounded resentful. “He’s a she,” said the undergraduate, and from her hostility, Kent guessed Dr. Landreau was drop-dead gorgeous. A small smile twisted his mouth.

  “Whatever,” replied Kent, bored. His restless pencil moved over the blank paper before him. He closed the notebook as his visitor entered.

  She was beautiful. Model tall, immaculate, flawless. She moved into his cluttered office and took a seat without waiting for Kent to rise or ask. She lifted an expensive-looking leather briefcase to her lap and snapped it open.

  “Nice to meet you, too,” said Kent without humor.

  Her narrow, penciled eyebrows rose. “Professor Xavier,” she said, in a delightful accent, “I was informed to be brief and to the point, and not to stand on formality.”

  “Kent,” he said. “And Ms. Redfern was mistaken.”

  “Ah, I see. A defense mechanism. She targeted me as a threat.” The newcomer nodded to herself and then eyed Kent. “Am I?”

  “Not in that department.” He rose, coming around the desk with his hand extended. “Kent Xavier.”

  “Dr. Michelle Landreau.” Her handclasp was cool and dry. “We are still two busy people, so in any case I will be brief. I have several questions to ask.”

  “This isn’t about the Cascades project?”

  She smiled, her tinted lips curving. “No.” She sat her briefcase on the one clear spot on the desk before Kent planted his butt there.

  He shrugged and returned to his seat. “So why are you here?”

  “I represent the Extra Terrestrial Intelligence Search, surface division.”

  His smile faded. “Yeah, so?” He hoped his casual tone didn’t sound forced.

  “You have had a contact, Professor Xavier?”

  He laughed. “A contact? With what?”

  “An extraterrestrial.” She didn’t smile or laugh in return. Her dark blue eyes locked with his in steady regard.

  “Aliens?” His laugh turned to a snort. “You’ve got to be kidding!”

  “It is natural to be in denial after the fact. However, allow me to assure you that we will not regard your story as crazy, or insane, and what you tell us remains in confidence. We are not representatives of any government or military.”

  Kent tucked a loose strand of hair behind his ear. “Look, sorry you had to come all this way for nothing. I don’t know who’s been feeding you such bull, but I haven’t met any aliens. Big, small, gelatinous, green, white with gold eyes, carving images in cornfields, or otherwise. I’m sorry. I don’t want to be rude, but I really don’t have time for this.”

  Landreau leaned her elbows on his desk. When she moved, it was with startling swiftness. She had his notebook before Kent could react, opening it to the gap the pages made around his pencil.

  “She is beautiful,” said Landreau, placing the pencil on the desk with a precise hand. “We wished so much to meet with her.”

  “Yeah? To what? To keep her against her will? Study her like a chimpanzee or rabbit?” Too late he curbed his damning words. Too late he tried to control the angry flush spreading over his face and neck. He hadn’t even been aware his pencil had sketched Povre’s exotic features.

  “ETIS has been treated badly by the media,” remarked Landreau as she flipped through Kent’s book. “But we are not rabid xenophiles fearing the worst, like the military or government agencies appear to be. We would not have held this person, or take them away from the place of the encounter. All we would have done was make an attempt to communicate. Exchange information.”

  Her midnight blue eyes glowed with a familiar passion: that maddening, addicting, frustrating need to know, to learn, to discover. “You have had a wonderful experience.” She sounded envious. “One I have dreamed all my life of having. Can you not tell me more?”

  Kent’s jaw tightened, his lip curling into a sneer. “All your life?” He snatched the book from her hands and leafed through the pages. “Maybe since you saw Close Encounters of the Third Kind and decided you’d model your career after the—”

  “Perhaps that decided it,” she interrupted. “But my dreams began long before that. Since a little girl gazed to the stars and knew for the first time they are really suns like our own so far away. Since she read fairy tales of the Little Prince, perhaps. Professor Xavier, I know she’s gone. All I’d like is a few questions answered, and we’ll leave you alone, forever if you desire, I promise.” She paused, her attention on his notebook. “You are a gifted artist.”

  Kent’s anger faded, but his flush remained. He’d made so many sketches, more than he realized, of Povre in her many moods. In—and out—of various layers of clothing. He paused over one sketch, a smile coming to his lips. It was the one of an enraged, wet Povre with her fur rumpled, hair flat, ears sticking straight out at right angles on either side of her head, that irresistible cute pout on her small mouth, an angry fire in her large tilted eyes with the impossibly long lashes.

  “Amazing,” murmured Landreau, clearly fascinated. “Mammalian. But for some slight difference in skeletal structure, all so similar.”

  Only then did Kent realize she’d maneuvered herself around to look over his shoulder. She either didn’t see or comment on the provocative aspects of the sketch that so affected Kent. Even looking at it from his angle he felt an answering jolt in his loins.

  He closed the cover and moved the book to the desk in a reflexive motion. The yearning in his so
ul took control for a long moment. Kent leaned back in his seat and studied the ceiling panels. He never realized there were so many cobwebs. They fluttered like ghosts in the breath of the ventilation systems.

  “What exactly did you want to know?” Even to his ears, he sounded vague and far away. “She was about five-eight, maybe a hundred and thirty pounds, black hair, blue fur, mammalian, yes. Six fingers with opposing thumbs and toes, clearly prehensile. A vegetarian. Intelligent, a scientist. Oh, and she talked to plants and trees. Don’t know if they ever answered. And now, she’s gone, back wherever she came from. Like you should be.”

  “You cared for her.”

  He growled. “To tell you the truth, she was part of an advanced scouting party preparing to invade Earth and make all humanity slaves on giant juniper farms and vegetarian burrito factories.”

  After a period of silence, she spoke again. “You loved her, then.”

  Kent didn’t move except to cross one denim-clad leg over the other. “Is this a scientific interview, or personal?”

  “This means her kind are even closer to being like us than we dreamed. Did you have sex with her?”

  Kent’s feet hit the floor and he came upright. “I think this has gone far enough, Dr. Landreau. What makes you think…? What gives you the unmitigated gall to assume…?” Then he noticed she had his notebook again.

  “As well as a scientist—a psychologist to be exact—and a trained investigator, I am a woman. And, at the risk of sounding cliché, I am French.” She shrugged. “May I photograph your sketches?”

  “No.”

  She handed him back the notebook. Not knowing what else to do with it, Kent slid it beneath his thigh. As if Povre was somehow there, a slight shock and heat drove into his skin and muscles. He moved the book into a bottom drawer and locked it.

  “Thank you for your time, Professor.”

  Kent looked up as she rose. A sad, gentle smile on her perfect face made him feel foolish.

  “Look,” he said, running a hand through his mussed hair and tugging at his ponytail. “I’m—”

  “Reacting like a man unwillingly separated from the woman he loves?” asked Landreau. “Did she love you in return?”

  He didn’t answer. Povre had said she did, her actions had reinforced it, but had he read too much into them? Was he hanging onto an idealistic dream of what actually happened?

  “Am I crazy? Obsessed? Becoming certifiable?”

  She chuckled, a sound of sympathy rather than amusement. “From what I can see, Professor, you are an attractive, intelligent, healthy man. One who is kind, caring, and very, very sane. But you can let your experience drive your life, and in my medical opinion, that can be damaging. But I didn’t come to give you a medical opinion.”

  She resumed her seat, and now regarded him. She crossed her arms over her briefcase.

  “If I went elsewhere for one, they would tell me I was delusional.”

  “Yes. More likely than not. Would that make you feel better?”

  “No. You’ve made me feel better. But why did you come?” Kent wondered if Ben Goldberg and his friends had failed—they were supposed to have arranged things so the entire incident would blow over.

  “Because,” she said, “the others who worked on this particular case suddenly weren’t sure what happened. In fact, they weren’t sure if anything happened. Most unusual. Our people are clear headed, precise and dependable. They have to be to work for us. We work so hard and are so often disappointed that only very dedicated folk stay with us very long. Anyway, they returned from this campus over two weeks ago, convinced they were on a wild goose chase, a hoax. Even the government agency involved is sulking, and you know they covered the explosion of their panel truck as something that happened in the course of a drug bust. It was on your national news broadcasts, and then forgotten. I, however, was being kept informed and enroute during all this so I remained unaffected by whatever outside agency influenced the others. And the military as well.”

  Kent scratched his head, pretending confusion. “Outside agency?”

  “I think you know what I mean. Her people must command either a powerful psychic influence or extreme technology, or both, to confuse the memories of over twenty individuals and alter tapes, film, and records.”

  Now his surprise was genuine. Kent had no idea of the scope of Folonar influence, but without a doubt it went far, very far indeed. Ben Goldberg was associated with a very impressive group. Good thing they weren’t hostile.

  She studied him a moment longer, then smiled. “You have helped immensely, Professor Xavier. I wish you well.”

  “Helped do what?”

  “To fuel the dream,” she said, and with that exited his office. She left behind the scent of lilac. That only reminded him of the color of Povre’s lovely eyes.

  “Damn it!” He shoved himself upright, almost tripping in his haste to get out the door and into the hall. “Dr. Landreau!”

  Landreau stood in front of the elevator. At his approach, she ignored the doors that groaned open and turned to wait for him.

  “The least I could do is offer to take you to dinner.” Maybe spending some time with another woman, intelligent and definitely beautiful, would help him get back to face the reality of his life. “For your trouble. You like Chinese?”

  “Very well. I accept.” Her midnight blue eyes danced. “And I promise not to be…so personal.”

  “Au contraire,” Kent said, mocking her accent gently. He grabbed the elevator doors before they could close. “I want to know all about you.”

  “Are you using me, Professor?” Her penciled eyebrows rose, but Landreau didn’t look displeased.

  “Don’t know. Maybe,” Kent admitted honestly, waving her onto the elevator ahead of him. “All I know is you’re the most intriguing thing on two legs I’ve taken notice of in a long time.”

  She laughed. “Perhaps I can give you some lessons on your approach.”

  “Being French, I presume you’re qualified.”

  “Extremely so,” she replied.

  POVRE'S FATHER CORNERED HER IN her sleeping cubicle. Since the area was just that—no more than a recessed platform in a bulkhead with her mat and coverings, his broad, stocky body and long arms made an effective barrier. She couldn’t even close the privacy panel with him standing there.

  She propped her head on one arm and eyed the instruments overhead on the wall near her shoulders. Povre wished suddenly that the cubicle was sealed and she was hooked into the instrumentation and in the deep, deep dreamless grip of hypersleep. Where she’d have no memories, no pain, nothing, until being reawakened years and sectors from here.

  “I have to know, daughter,” he said again. His hand cupped her face and forced her wandering eyes to his. “You did fall in love with him.”

  The gentle brush of his thumb across her lips brought the ache to her throat and burning dryness to her eyes. “Yes, Father,” she said. “I love him. I always will.”

  “Oh my child,” he said hoarsely, his eyes going dry. He looked so stricken Povre scooted over and flung her arms around him.

  “Excuse me,” said another voice from the access.

  Povre recognized the doctor who stood outside her cubicle. She let go of H’renzek and moved back enough to see both men. “I’m not sick.”

  “The captain insisted—ordered—that you be examined.”

  There was no escaping it. Her father moved aside to allow the doctor access. Povre wearily complied with the doctor’s examination, but started feeling anxious when it wasn’t over as soon as she hoped.

  “Well?” H’renzek’s impatient tone told her that he, too, thought it was taking a bit too long.

  “Well, she’s not diseased.”

  “Then what is making her ill? Internal injuries?”

  “She’s perfectly healthy,” said the physician in a strange tone. “That is, if we can overlook these unusual side effects…the nausea, the sensitivity to odors, sounds, and changes in lig
ht, the fatigue. Most unusual for her condition.”

  “Condition? You just said she was healthy!” H’renzek’s voice growled with the threatening resonance of a Lazorta.

  “She is. But also pregnant.”

  Povre gasped. H’renzek’s hands groped for something to keep his balance. He turned to look at her, eyes wide.

  “You—you—and he—he…”

  “Remarkable,” commented the physician. “I would’ve never dreamed this would happen. The possibility is so remote one of us would make contact much less…make so much of one. So remote it might as well be non-existent. I didn’t even look for that, despite Povre admitting her breasts were sensitive—that’s a part of the normal yearly female cycle. But I checked her records to make sure, and her cycle happened right after she was awakened from hypersleep, four months ago.”

  “Preg…” spluttered H’renzek.

  “Pregnant,” continued the physician blithely, “and I must insist on more tests. We have to go to the medical section for those.”

  Povre’s hands went to her belly. Despite her surprise and her father’s shock, she felt a deep joy. Kent wasn’t lost to her forever. She had part of him inside her. Part she could keep and love and hold close.

  “Now,” said the physician.

  “Go with him,” said H’renzek, and Povre came back to reality with a startled gasp and painful lurch of her heart. He sounded so harsh, so angry. Like her symptoms, his reaction was the last with which any Sirgel greeted such news. Among their small population, the start of a new life was always with much rejoicing and anticipation.

  He glared at her and then took her arm to urge her from her bed. Despite his hard grip and abrupt action, he made certain not to jostle her. But Povre felt as if she’d been slapped. Some of her joy faded.

  “Father…”

  “Go with him.” H’renzek thrust her into the gentler grip of the physician. He turned and stomped away.

  The physician slid a friendly arm around her. “Remarkable,” he said again, regarding the computer pad in his free hand. “Your chemical balances are totally upside down. Had it not been for the levels of…”