by Trevor Wyatt
Apparently, these standards are broadly applicable elsewhere in the universe as well, because what we see on the view screen is a face that is somewhat similar to our own: humanoid, with two eyes in the front of its head, a nose, and a mouth. It has no ears; just slits. It’s bald, with a large cranium.
The eyes have no pupils, and are a deep blue in color. Its skin is blue as well. The being cocks its head when it sees me, and furrows its brow. Its mouth draws down a little. I know I should be wary of ascribing human emotions to an alien creature, but this fellow looks for all the world as if he is examining me and finding me wanting.
I hear murmurs of surprise and wonder from the CNC personnel at their stations around me. For a long moment, no one says anything. Even though my officers are staring at the alien’s image on their screens, the alien is only seeing me, because mine is the only station camera operating.
A text message flits across one of my screens. It’s from Ashley, at her station: What are you going to say to him?
Without taking my eyes off the alien’s image, I tap for a virtual keyboard and on it I reply: How do you know it’s a him?
You know what I mean, she replies.
Of course. But I’m not going to say anything. Let “him” speak first.
No “One small step for a man” stuff?
I hadn’t thought to prepare any remarks. I hope she can catch my sarcasm.
The blue figure on the screen begins talking but it is a weird click-pop noise, pure garble. I’ve heard something like this before...I ransack my memory and come up with a name: !Kung. They were a semi-nomadic African tribe who lived in the portions of the Kalahari Desert. The “!” in their name represents a sort of cork-out-of-a-bottle popping noise. The !Kung were driven to extinction in the years following the World War III, along with many other native and aboriginal people around the world. These disappearances were one of the worst results of the war.
After absorbing the surprise of their language, I watch the alien closely, seeing what information I can glean. I can’t tell anything from his expression, but I can see that when he speaks, he doesn’t seem to have any teeth showing in his mouth, just a solid-looking ridge of bone.
We haven’t got a philologist on board, but the computers ought to be able to analyze this chap’s speech and give us a good translation.
The alien is long-winded, but after a couple of minutes he stops and sits, staring at me.
I type a message to Lannigan: Are you getting a translation?
Not yet, he replies at once. The written symbols were one thing. This click-pop talk is something else and I need some time. Engage him in conversation if you can...I need more information.
I sigh to myself. I know we weren’t expecting a First Contact encounter, but even so we should have some sort of translation protocol ready to bring on line. I make a mental note to take this up with Admiral Flynn, if we survive. All right, I type to Lannigan. I look over at Mary Taylor, at Comms. She shrugs at me, as clueless as I.
I paste a smile on my face, and address the blue-skinned alien. Placing my hand on my chest, I say, “I am Captain Jeryl Montgomery of the Terran Union Starship Seeker. We have exchanged information via electromagnetic waves. What is your name?”
The blue captain—I assume he’s the captain, but you know what they say about assumptions—looks at someone or something off-screen. I hear my words being repeated in a rather watery electronic tone. Close enough for government work, I think. At least they got all my inflections right.
Suddenly a thought pops into my head, with a sound like those the alien is making, and I almost smile. “Lieutenant,” I say to Mary Taylor, “I want you to analyze that transmission. They buried information in their earlier communications. In the carrier wave. Comb through this video signal, see if there is anything sub- or super-sonic, maybe; I don’t know. Work with Dr. Lannigan, will you? And Doctor, are you having any luck getting me a translation?”
“I’m still analyzing,” he replies.
The verbal exchange interests the alien, who leans forward a little as if to catch our words. He still can’t see anyone else, so I decide to rectify that and see how the sight of other human beings affects him. “Comms,” I say to Mary, “give him full access to our camera feeds. I want to see what he makes of it.”
The alien’s head moves back and forth as the additional images come through to him. He must have multiple screens on his console, as we do. Now he’s seeing the full complement of CNC officers. I wonder if he can tell the difference between the males and the females, or the different races.
“Now we want to see yours,” I hear Pedro Ferriero mutter at the helmsman’s station. Again I almost smile, but Pedro has a point—we’ve shown our new acquaintance that there’s more than one person manning this craft. I would like to get an idea of how many crewmembers are housed in his behemoth of a ship.
But the alien doesn’t take the hint. He simply sits, staring at me through his inscrutable blue eyes. I’m starting to get fidgety. This meeting is going nowhere.
Dr. Lannigan says, in my earbuds, “I’ve got it. There are two coded frequencies in that video transmission, Jeryl. One inside the other, so that you can’t get to the second one without decoding the first one. If we were only looking at the video we’d never see it. Good catch.”
“It’s purely out of my ass, Taft. It just hit me that they may do this two-level thing all the time. What I need to know is, can you decipher it?”
“I think so—give me a few minutes.”
“As quick as you can, Taft, please.”
“Aye.”
I watch the data stream on my screens as he runs the alien transmission through the computers. I feel myself sweating, but I refuse to wipe my forehead. After what seems to be hours, Lannigan says, “Got it. The information is all sonic, and seems to be keys to intonation. Their language is similar to Asian tongues, in that the inflection you put on a word determines its meaning. Without computers, we’d never be able to understand what—”
“Okay, I get it, just tell me what this guy is saying.”
“I have to integrate the key with their stream; it’ll take a little time.”
“Quick as you can,” I say again. Lannigan doesn’t take offense, he knows we’re walking into the unknown here.
While he’s chewing on the new code data, I have time to think about what I should say to the alien once we can fully understand each other. “Greetings from the people of Earth,” perhaps. Or, “This is a moment that will reverberate through history, both ours and yours.” No...too pretentious by half. I've never been good at extempore speaking; I like having prepared remarks, maybe a few jokes...what sort of joke would these blue people understand? “These two aliens walk into a bar...” Or the one about the blonde and the traffic cop? What was that one about the guy who cuts off his dog’s nose? Someone asks him, “How does he smell?” and the guy says—
“I have it,” Lannigan says.
“Good.”
The alien is speaking again. This time I hear a gravelly voice tumbling out of the speakers. In clear English, the alien says: “If you’re not able to understand me, perhaps you’re not worth my time at this point.”
Ashley
All of us in CNC are so taken aback by the alien’s rude behavior that no one says a word. Jeryl steps right into the breech, however. Without blinking he says, with great dignity, “I understand you perfectly well.”
A look of what I take to be surprise flickers over the alien’s face. Note to self, I think: they do seem to have a similar emotional spectrum.
“I’ll repeat my original greeting to you. I am Captain Jeryl Montgomery of the Terran Union Starship Seeker. If I may be so bold as to ask, whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?”
The blue alien’s face is impassive as it listens to the popping and clicking garble their machines have made of Jeryl’s speech. It waits for a few moments, and then spews a few moments of clicking babble. On our end, the tra
nslation is:
“Good, it appears you have solved the knowledge mazes needed to be able to converse with us.”
Are these people going to be totally insufferable? Or is this captain of theirs just a dick? I wonder if Jeryl is going to hand him his head.
But no, he is silent. All he does is stare at the alien with a perfectly level gaze.
I almost grin. He’s going to wait the son of a bitch out.
The alien doesn’t know that Jeryl Montgomery is famous throughout the Armada for being a top-notch poker player. No one can out-bluff him. He could have made a career as a gambler, had he been so inclined. I’ve seen him bluff a table of crusty old poker players, including an admiral and a two-star general, into folding against a 2,000-credit pot when all he had was a queen in the hole. And this was against one player with a full boat. He’s good.
After nearly two minutes of silence, the blue one speaks again. Is it my imagination, or is he getting pissed off? “We send a standard hailing frequency to all ships and races we encounter—”and for a moment I don’t hear anything more. Jeryl’s tactics have worked again. He’s gotten a precious pearl of information out of the alien, a genuine game-changer: We now know that there are other intelligent races in the galaxy, and that more than one of them has developed the capability to travel in interstellar space.
And Jeryl himself has given nothing away.
I push my astonishment away and pay attention to what the alien is saying. He introduces himself as Command Legate Ghosal, of the Sonali race.
As unobtrusively as possible, I ask our computer for a definition of “legate,” because although I have heard the word, I don’t recall what it means. The computer comes back with, an ecclesiastic delegated by the pope as his representative.
A what, now? This alien is a religious official? Captaining a starship?
Unless there is something seriously wrong with the translation—a possibility I am willing to entertain—what we have just learned is that God is a concept not limited to the human race. But wait now, wait wait wait, I say to myself. Don’t get ahead of yourself here.
Religion is still practiced on Earth and among the Outer Colonies, but it lacks the prevalence it once had. It’s been reduced almost to the level of a hobbyist’s pursuit. Organized religion as such perished in the aftermath of World War III. Too many bad things happened to too many good people for the idea to sustain much belief among the survivors scrabbling to live in the ruins of cities across the globe. People who have been reduced to drinking filthy rainwater and catching rats and cockroaches for food haven’t got time to listen to sermons. Do unto others is a splendid idea when you have a warm place to sleep. But if you have no more than rags to wear and are either too cold or too hot or too sick to feed your children, the basic human drive for survival takes over. Rather than love thy neighbor, you are more inclined to clout him—or her—over the head and take the rat that they caught for dinner. The neighbor himself may end up as dinner.
It happened over and over after the war. The race came closer to extinction than it ever had before. Two-fifths of humanity died. Maybe more. God didn’t save anyone. Nor did Mohammed, or any of the others who’d been held in high esteem for so long.
Yet here we were confronted with Ghosal, an individual who was apparently the representative of a theocracy.
Talk about unexpected.
Ghosal continues speaking. “We were on a routine surveying mission,” he says, “when we picked up the signals from your ship, and came in for a closer look.”
Jeryl is as cool as a chilled wine glass. “So you have no knowledge of our fellows aboard their ship?”
“I regret to say that we do not,” says Ghosal. “This is a region of space that is only a few lightyears from the border of Sonali territory.”
“You say you were on a routine surveying mission,” Jeryl says.
“That is correct, Captain Montgomery. We noticed the wreckage of your Mariner and are saddened to hear of the loss of life of those aboard.”
“Thank you.”
“I would like to offer our help. We will help you search for whoever or whatever is responsible for the tragedy.”
“That is very kind of you, Command Legate Ghosal,” says Jeryl. “It is an unusual coincidence to find you here so near The Mariner.”
“I am not sure I understand what you mean.”
“If I may be perfectly frank with you, Command Legate, this is the first time an individual of our race has encountered another intelligent species. For us, this is an historical moment.”
“How pleased I am, then, to be able to share it. I am deeply honored.”
Oh you smooth SOB, I think. This is not the way I had ever imagined a First Contact would go. Ghosal talks more like a politician than a ship’s captain.
I see a telltale blinking on my console. Dr. Lannigan wants to talk to me.
“Yes?” I say quietly.
“Something’s not right,” says the Science Officer. “Judging by what I see here, both our race and the Sonali seem to be more or less on an equal footing when it comes to technology. Their ship dwarfs ours, but if they are on a routine scouting mission...”
“Yes,” I say, getting the drift of his reasoning.
“I find it interesting that you have dispatched such a large vessel in a routine mission,” Jeryl is saying to Ghosal. Great minds, I think, smell the same rat.
“It seems like a big expenditure of resources.”
Interstellar travel is expensive; at least, it is for us. It’s one reason why our ships are relatively small, and why we recycle the hell out of everything. It’s why we have to pay for our own damn coffee. If the Sonali are indeed approximately as developed as we are, then this little “routine scouting mission” of theirs is costing them deep in the purse. You don’t send a ship as big as theirs is on a scouting mission. What they have there is a full-scale research vessel, and probably one that’s fully armed. In fact, I’d wager my lower left wisdom tooth that these guys are loaded for bear.
Something here is definitely not right.
Ghosal isn’t taking Jeryl’s implication very well. “I am not sure I understand what you are saying, Captain Montgomery,” he says. The translation doesn’t put an edge to his voice, but I’d bet my other lower wisdom tooth that there’s on in his original clocks and pops.
“Oh, well, you know,” says Jeryl, being rather elaborately casual, “it’s simply that I wish my people could afford to build such an impressive vehicle simply for scouting purposes.”
“Captain,” says Ghosal, “I believe that the best course for you at this time would be take the information we have gathered form our study of your lost ships wreckage, and return to your home world with it.”
“Yes, I appreciate your position, Command Legate Ghosal, but I’m afraid I can’t do that. We’re sticking around here until we determine exactly what happened to our people.” His voice grows very hard. “And we mean to collect their remains, if at all possible. They have families and loved ones back on Earth who will want to know what happened. I will do my best to tell them.”
There is silence from Ghosal’s end of the conversation. Then the alien says, “If I may suggest, you would do better to understand that this is Sonali space, and you are here only on our forbearance.”
“Thank you, Command Legate, I will take that under advisement.” And with that, Jeryl reaches out and taps his controls.
The communications link with Ghosal’s ship is severed.
“Well,” says Jeryl, sitting back and smiling at us. “That was an interesting little chat. What do you suppose they’ll do now?”
Jeryl
Admiral Flynn isn’t so sanguine about the encounter when I report it to him, which I do shortly after I break the link between The Seeker and Command Legate Ghosal’s ship.
I make the call via slipstream in my office, because I have a feeling he isn’t going to approve of my actions. At first, he doesn’t.
“I ca
n’t believe this is happening,” Flynn says, smoothing back his hair with both hands. “Montgomery, do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
“Yes,” I say, as calmly as I can. In the face of his outrage, I'm having second thoughts. Have I screwed up humanity’s first contact with an alien species? No, I won’t allow myself to think this. “I’ve faced down an authoritarian by adopting an even more authoritarian stance.”
Flynn glances to one side as though appealing to an off-camera observer for help. “Listen, Captain...I know you have a reputation for thinking outside or above the parameters of a given problem. You were showing flashes of tactical brilliance as far back as your first year in the Academy.” He leans closer to the camera, which has the effect of bringing his face closer to mine. “But all the problems you faced in your schooling were hypotheticals...against human antagonists, whose responses you could rely on as being on a spectrum calibrated to human emotions. You could, in other words, use hunches and guesses to determine how an antagonist might respond.” He shakes his head. “You’ve tried to finesse your confrontation with Ghosal in human terms! You can’t be certain that he’ll react as a human being would react.”
“I was willing to take that risk,” I say.
This is not the right thing to say. Flynn slams his fist down on his console, and the picture wavers for an instant. “You took that risk on the part of your entire crew!”
Well, when he puts it like that...A commanding officer must take the welfare of his people into account. He cannot put them in harm’s way. It’s possible that I didn’t have that fact in the forefront of my mind when I cut off communication with Ghosal.
But when I look around at my CNC officers, I see no scowls or looks of fear. They glance at me with approval on their faces, and I take heart from that. They trust me.
“They trust me,” I say to Flynn, with confidence. He glowers at me, but then a grin breaks through.
“I know they do, son, I know they do.” Thank the stars, he is settling down. He’d never call me “son” if he wasn’t; Admiral Howard Flynn didn’t rise to his level of authority by being easy-going, but I have always had the ability to “read” him, and he me. We understand each other. He once told me, after a couple of drinks at some diplomatic get-together, that I remind him of himself when he was young. I took that both as a compliment, and as a confidence. I’ve never shared it with anyone.