Strangers from the Sky

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Strangers from the Sky Page 7

by Margaret Wander Bonanno

Yoshi told himself he wouldn't care, if it

  weren't for Tatya. He had a violent allergy

  to controversy; it was one of the reasons he'd sought the

  seemingly lonely life of the

  agrostations. Was he so caught up in Tatya's

  romanticism about other planets that he was suddenly

  willing to risk his life to prevent what could only be

  the misunderstanding, the

  hysteria, the detention and interrogation and possible

  exploitation or worse of two total strangers

  who just happened to look vaguely human, who just

  incidentally spoke a human language, and about

  whom he knew absolutely nothing else?

  What if they had incredible super powers which, once

  awakened, could crush two

  isolated humans like bugs on a wall? What

  if they were criminals escaping from their own world, bent

  on murder and mayhem? What if they were the

  vanguard of an invasion force, whose mission was

  to infiltrate, win over poor

  unsuspecting humans, and conquer Earth?

  And what if they were just two innocent star

  travelers

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  who had lost their way and almost died and were now

  totally dependent upon the kindness of strangers?

  Well, what if?

  There were very few things Yoshi would risk his life

  for; he'd be the first to admit it. Unlike his

  adventurous partner, he'd never aspired to anything more

  grandiose than what he had

  here. The twenty-first century with its crowds, its

  noise, its technology, its potential for getting

  a person too deep into things too big and too

  complicated, intimidated him. All he'd ever

  wanted was to spend the rest of a long and uneventful

  life contemplating the sea, counting the stars, worrying

  about nothing more

  threatening than kelpwilt, and staying out of harm's

  way.

  He might have turned the aliens in himself as soon

  as they'd gotten back to the station to at least get them

  medical help, he'd reasoned if it hadn't

  required more assertiveness than he

  possessed. And if he hadn't been certain

  Tatya would break every bone in his body.

  And if the female alien hadn't spoken to him, in

  his own language.

  Yoshi sighed, and flipped the channel.

  "dis . . reportedly a defective recon

  satellite believed to have splashed down somewhere to the

  westnorthwest of Easter Island . . ."

  Yoshi stood up abruptly, capsizing his

  beanbag chair and making his sore ankle throb

  violently. He dialed the volume up.

  "dis . . Aeroationav vessel dispatched in an

  attempt to recover any portion of the satellite which

  may have survived. In other news . . ."

  "Well, there it is," Yoshi said aloud.

  "I'll bet it's the Whale," Tatya said from the

  doorway of the sleeping room. Yoshi hadn't

  realised she was there; they seemed not to have seen each

  other for hours. "She's due tomorrow anyway."

  They had always called Delphinus the Whale, as

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  play on her name, because of the size and shape of the

  ship itself, and as an affectionate joke at the

  expense of her captain, though never to his

  face. Jason Nyere was sensitive about his size.

  Suddenly the Joke wasn't funny anymore.

  Nothing was.

  "How are they?" Yoshi nodded toward the room behind

  Tatya; no need to specify who "they" were.

  "Stabilized, I think." Tatya looked

  drawn, exhausted. "The male seems to be coming

  around a little. I don't dare medicate either of

  them, not even painkillers. As nearly as I can

  tell their entire physiology is different from

  ours. Organs in the wrong places, vital

  signs all screwy. I can't get accurate

  readings on

  anything, not even a blood pressure . . ."

  Her voice trailed off. Yoshi had never seen

  her too exhausted to talk.

  "Yoshi, what are we going to do?"

  Yoshi shrugged. He didn't want to do

  anything. He wanted to fall into the Mayabi

  Fault and disappear.

  "Pass them off as a couple of my

  relatives?" he suggested, groping for humor.

  Tatya was not amused.

  "I'd like to see you try telling that to Jason,"

  she said grimly.

  "I don't hear any brilliant ideas from your

  corner of the room," Yoshi snapped back.

  Alone out here, they were accustomed to arguing as loudly

  and as often as they chose, but the presence of their

  unwanted guests had changed all that. Argue they

  did, but softly, counting on the rising wind stirring

  up

  whitecaps and howling around the corners of the station

  to keep them from being overheard should one of the aliens

  waken.

  It did not occur to them that pointed ears had

  evolved on other worlds for a reason, that the wind had

  already wakened one of their guests, and that one such pair

  of ears was absorbing every word.

  * * *

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  "They seem so primitive," Sorahl had said

  to his mother the first time she observed the frown with which he

  studied his private viewer and inquired as to what

  might be puzzling him. "I mean no disrespect, but

  I cannot help

  wondering why you and my grandfather find them so

  fascinating."

  They had been two days from the Sol

  system, the scoutcrafttraversing the Oort Cloud

  where so many of the comets visible from Earth

  originated. T'Lera and Sorahl were in the living

  quarters, she at the beginning of her offshift, he

  nearing the end of his. Shortly he would take over

  from Selik, who, with seemingly effortless

  proficiency, navigated with one hand while

  recording new comets with the other.

  ""Primitive"?" T'Lera had inquired,

  making no effort to disguise her dryness of voice; of

  all beings, surely her son was most accustomed to it.

  "Specify."

  Sorahl's gesture encompassed a number of

  record tapes strewn about his workspace,

  particularly those gleaned from Earth's

  holovision broadcasts by previous expeditions.

  "Their forms of entertainment," he began, with the

  wariness of youth expecting to be criticised for its

  naivete. "Their obsession with violence, with maudlin

  emotions, with humor at the

  expense of others. If these are the things they

  value . . ."

  "Is this what your study indicates, my son?"

  T'Lera allowed herself to address him informally when they

  were alone and off duty. were her father in

  attendance she would have refrained; where Savar had

  commanded, formal mode had been all.

  "Mother, I am aware that I lack the experience of

  those who have made this their life work, but my observations

  indicate that this is a species perpetually on the

  verge of self-destruction."

  "So many
of its great thinkers would concur,"

  T'Lera said dryly. "But what you have observed is

  not the sum

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  total of what they choose as diversion for their

  leisure, much less what they consider of value."

  Sorahl lowered his eyes. His observation had been

  naive, and presumptuous. Before he could ask his

  mother's forgiveness she interrupted him.

  "And what would you suggest, my son? That we

  abandon our efforts to learn of them?"

  Sorahl's eyes came up to meet hers,

  barely masking the fire behind them in time.

  "Not at all, Mother. Rather that we take the first step

  to which all our research has been leading. That we

  make first contact."

  T'Lera hid her bemusement at his eagerness behind

  a careful sternness.

  "Forgive my inability to follow your logic,

  Sorahlkam, but if this is as you suggest a

  violent, unready, or to use your word tilde

  rimitive species, of what benefit would revealing

  our presence be to them? Would they not resort

  to precisely the violence you suggest in order

  to protect themselves from that for which they are unready?"

  "I do not think so," Sorahl said quickly.

  Curious, his mother dropped her pretence of

  stemness.

  "Please explain."

  "A recent paper by the political scientist

  Sotir . . ." Sorahl began carefully,

  watching his mother's face. Between them they always

  referred to his father and her former consort as an

  impersonal entity. There was a certain irony in this,

  Sorahl thought, in that much of his childhood had been

  spent under his father's care while T'Lera was off on

  yet another space voyage, but to refer to another's

  divorce, even within the family, was a serious breach

  of the proprieties. "dis . . promulgates the

  theory that benevolent intervention in the evolution of a

  less advanced culture may actually spare

  another species the aggressions and 65

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  loss of life which we as a species endured before

  finding the Way. In short his

  "Logic suggests that there are as many

  theories as there are theorists," T'Lera said

  abruptly. "And Sotir has never been offworld."

  This fact among others, she did not need to say,

  had been one of the reasons for their estrangement.

  "Does this necessarily mean his theory is without

  validity?" Sorahl asked with a familiar

  stubbornness his mother always found curiously satisfying.

  It was not Sotir's stubbomness, which could be both

  pedantic and strident, but her own and Savar's, a

  stubbornness that was

  nonaggressive, invisible until challenged, but

  then immovable.

  "Any theory logically arrived at possesses

  its own validity," T'Lera admitted, masking

  her pride in her willful offspring. "Nevertheless,

  one is not free to test it on unsuspecting

  outworlders."

  "Then why are we here?" Sorahl demanded with the

  impatience of youth, which even a Vulcan could fall

  prey to. "Why study these Earthmen for most of my

  grandfather's life and all of yours yet refrain from the

  logical next step?"

  "It is not yet time," T'Lera said, in a tone

  that indicated the topic was not open for debate.

  "In whose opinion?" Sorahl dared to ask, where

  one who knew his mother not quite as well might

  hesitate. "Yours, or Prefect Savar's?"

  Destruction before detection. It was not Sorahl's

  question that gave his mother pause but the manner in which it had

  been asked. She had had cause herself to question whether

  after a lifetime under the aegis of that principle she

  could separate her own motivation from her father's.

  "Saver and I are as one in our "opinion,""

  T'Lera said quietly, believing it. Her

  far-seeking eyes had gone hard. "But you, it would

  seem, prefer PK-AHR Sotir's

  "interventionist" theory?"

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  Sorahl's jaw tightened imperceptibly beneath the

  full brunt of his mother's irony.

  "I believe," he began, as if he had

  rehearsed it, expecting challenge, "that ff

  Earthmen, or any intelligent species, were offered

  incontrovertible proof that it is possible to abandon

  violence and live by logic, millions might be

  spared the need to destroy each other. They

  could not help but see the advantage of our

  way$'a

  "Despite their "primitivism,"" T'Lera

  added.

  "Mother, I am not suggesting that we are superior

  to them." Sorahl's voice had risen despite his

  best efforts and he lowered it forcibly. "Merely that

  we are different That is consistent with IDIC."

  "Precisely," T'Lera said, as ff he had

  led himself to her side of the argument, which in fact he

  had. "And IDIC leads to Savar's Prime

  Directive, not to Sotir's interventionism. We

  are too different to judge what is "best" for

  another species. And it is not yet time."

  She stood abruptly, intent upon a sonic shower

  and sleep.

  "Sotir may theorise at his leisure," she

  concluded. "It is 1, as commander of this vessel, who

  must confront the reality. And you, as a member of this

  crew, who must obey.

  Before we enter Sol 111 orbit,

  Navigator, you will complete a thorough study of

  all record tapes designated

  "Colonialism." I will expect a full

  report."

  Sorahl's voice, borrowing generously from the

  irony that was his birthright, reached his mother over the sound

  of the shower.

  "Understood, Commander," he said.

  Which of them had been correct? Sorahl

  wondered now in the strange and utterly alien

  place where he found himself upon awakening. Or, rather, more

  correct, since logic dictated that no single

  individual could possess the whole of any truth.

  And what did it matter,

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  now that circumstance had given them both into the

  Earthmen's hands?

  He could hear them arguing in the room

  beyond.

  "dis . . hide them here for how long? Even if they

  somehow magically recover all by themselves his

  "I don't know, Yoshi, I just don't know! But

  you said it yourself: we're committed. I feel

  responsible for them. And I won't have them hurt .

  . ."

  Savar's precepts had never made provision

  for the situation his grandson found himself in, but like any

  Vulcan beyond seven years Sorahl was

  well trained in survival. Immediately upon awakening,

  he had assessed his circumstances and his surroundings,

  and attempted to rise from the waterbed. His

  unpracticed movements on this alien device,

  however, set it to

  undulating violently. The motion threatened

  to awake

  T'Lera, who lay beside him, co
matose as he had

  been, but in no immediate danger. Sorahl

  ceased his movements and considered what to do next.

  He had been intrigued by the notion of a

  liquid-filled sleeping mat as soon as he

  determined its nature, added the sensation to the

  multiplicity of alien sights, sounds, and smells

  that assailed him. There was also the lighter gravity, with

  its accompanying strange sensations. Every waking moment

  increased the young Vulcan's knowledge about Earthmen and their

  world considerably.

  This tiny room, safe haven from the strange and

  tumultuous seascape he glimpsed through the window

  port, spoke more eloquently of this world and its people

  than decades of long-range study. The homey

  furnishings and simple decor, jars filled with

  seashells and water-worn rocks, dog-eared paper

  books in several languages and on a

  variety of topics, bits of driftwood and

  Tatya's Ukrainian artifacts (sorahl did

  not yet know them to be either Tatya's or

  Ukrainian, but would leam such things in time), the

  ordinary clutter of 68

  STRANGERS FROM THE SKY

  personal effects kept in the privacy of a

  sleeping room where one did not expect

  strangers to venture . . .

  Sorahl did not move, touched nothing, would not

  presume to violate the privacy of those to whom he

  owed his life. Nevertheless their artifacts surrounded

  him, and he could not help contemplating them. Given

  an opportunity to examine his room at the

  Academy, what would Earthmen surmise about him and

  his kind?

  He did not intend to eavesdrop on their argument,

  either, but how could he avoid it? Their voices

  assaulted his sensitive ears; their discordant

  emotions were more strident still. Yet their struggle to come

  to terms with what had been thrust upon them struck the young

  Vulcan profoundly. At last he began to understand

  his grandfather's obsession, his mother's fasci nation, with the

  species. He remembered that he had called them

  primitive, and was

  ashamed.

  His shame was short-lived. There were things he must

  do. Gingerly he made another attempt to get out

  of the waterbed. This time he was successful.

  Standing, he realised he was weak from

  hunger and shock (how long since the crisis that

  had brought them here, how long had their craft floated

  unnoticed in this alien sea?), but his youth and

  Vulcan stamina would work in his favor, and the human

 

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