Quiet Invasion

by Sarah Zettel

  Stillness and silence. The wind buffeted T’sha, urging her to motion.

  “How did they try to communicate?” he asked, finally. His voice was small and tight, as his body was right now, T’sha was sure.

  “Visually. They have created a display with images.” The detail was very fine for all its lack of color. She could see the New People had five fingers on each hand, that they had crests of fine, long tendrils on their heads, that the elbows of their forearms bent in two, maybe three places, depending on how you counted.

  “Effective. We’re not certain they hear as we do, but they can see the same wavelengths we do.” She heard the rustle of movement. “They have a written language. We have been working on deciphering it and have made great progress, we think.”

  “Good,” she said firmly. “Then you can come and interpret.”

  “T’sha, we must report this to the Law Meet.”

  “As soon as we have something to report we will. We must address them now. They are waiting for us.”

  Yet another silence. “You are pleased with this, aren’t you?”

  T’sha hesitated, clutching the camera a little too tightly. It squeaked, and she eased her grip at once. “It is what I wanted, yes. I am not pleased with how I’ve gotten it. You must come here now, D’seun.”

  She heard him whistle, low and disapproving, but in the end he said, “Very well. We will be there soon. Good luck, Ambassador T’sha.”

  “Good luck, Ambassador D’seun.” The connection died, and she was left alone with the New People waiting below her.

  Vee sat in the copilot’s chair on board Scarab Three, which looked exactly the same as Scarab Five. Helen Failia sat in the pilot’s chair as if it were the most natural place in the world for her to be. Adrian Makepeace and a woman named Sheila Whist had brought them down, but they were both in the back now, running diagnostics and suit checks and generally keeping themselves out of the way.

  Through the main window, Vee watched the sheltered holotank with its trio of images—her own picture, taken from her image gallery, a set of prime numbers, and a miniature of the solar system with Earth highlighted. She’d been frustrated by the lack of color, but lasers were, by definition, monochromatic, and if they were going to make the one-week deadline, they had to work with what was available.

  The tank connection was one of the biggest jury-riggings she’d ever built. The lasers’ beams had been directed out of the Discovery through two ceramic-metallic tunnels. One for writing, one for display. The display screen consisted of some of her best films on a refrigerated platform between slabs of doped quartz.

  It looked like somebody had set up a view screen in the middle of a desert.

  The pressure wasn’t the real problem. Years of oceano-graphic mining had resulted in the creation of pressure-resistant materials and provided collateral research on the effect of pressure on a whole world of substances. The real problem was the heat. The entire communications station had to be constructed so it wouldn’t vaporize out there.

  “How are we doing?” came Josh’s voice through the intercom. He and his assistants, Ray and Heather, were down in the Discovery with the laser, making sure the Cusmanoses’ machine worked and stayed working.

  “No change.” Vee craned her neck so she could see the circling black dot the scarab’s cameras showed as a sparkling, golden, winged alien. Vee had wanted to fly the scarab straight to their base and get them to follow along, but Helen had nulled out that idea. She worried the aliens might take it as a threat or a challenge of some kind. So Scarab Ten had gone out on the ground and flashed lights.

  It had worked, though. One of the aliens followed Scarab Ten back from wherever they had found it. Then it had dropped a little jellyfish down. The jellyfish had hovered over the holotank and shot back up to its owner. Since then, the alien had stayed where it was, tracing circles in the shifting, leaden sky.

  Waiting.

  “How are things down there?” Vee asked Josh, to keep the conversation going. Waiting and watching were starting to get to her. She oscillated between wonder and an involuntary fear that she couldn’t make go away. This kind of thing is tough on the sensitive artist’s stomach.

  “No change here either,” answered Josh. “But I’ll tell you what. If we’re going to keep this up, we need to terraform this room. I’ve got sand in my eyes.”

  “Ouch.” Vee grimaced in sympathy. Not being able to touch your own skin was definitely a design limitation in the hardsuits, and when Josh had locked himself into his, there had been bags under his eyes.

  Neither one of them had gotten a full night’s sleep for a week. They’d spent the entire time in his lab trying to find ways to make this work. They had cannibalized half-a-dozen survey drones and simulated eight different kinds of protective covers and cooling systems before they found one that looked like it would work.

  Their setup was that it not only had to function under conditions that were literally hellish, but it also had to be flexible. They had to be able to write and rewrite the images and do it quickly with minimal help from a computer. They had put so much work into the hardware that there had been little left for the controlling software. Vee would be typing in most of the commands by hand and most of those commands were recorded nowhere but in her own head.

  There were going to be so many bugs to work out of this system that it wasn’t funny. The biggest was that the whole lash-up was computer controlled from inside the scarab. How would the aliens be able to answer?

  “Let me know when you’re going to start making demands on this thing,” said Josh. “I am not happy about some of these connections.”

  “Will do,” Vee told him. Josh had a camera of his own down there. He could see what was going on. He just wanted some contact. Vee couldn’t blame him. In fact, she was kind of glad.

  “Coffee?” Dr. Failia asked Vee, reaching for the thermos stowed in the holder on the pilot’s chair.

  “No thanks,” said Vee. “I’m wound up so tight right now I think caffeine would tear me in two.” And you didn’t think to stock any tea for the trip, did you? Where are your priorities, Vee?

  “Ah, youth.” Helen unscrewed the thermos and poured herself a cup. “You need to learn to relax.”

  Josh chuckled on the other side of the intercom. “Forgive me for saying so, Dr. Failia, but the only reason you’re offering around the coffee is because you can’t stand to sit in silence anymore.”

  “Tact,” said Helen, sipping a cup of the thick, black liquid, “is another thing that comes with age.”

  Vee smiled. Josh had a good sense of humor, and he could dish it out and take it with equanimity. She liked that. She liked him. It felt good. He’d gotten out of her way like an old pro when her ideas had run ahead of her explanations and she’d just typed furiously, bringing the simulation up to speed, or had raged, unfairly, she knew, against his lab preparation because they didn’t have the specialty parts she needed.

  Good guy. Steady. A friend. Just what they’d need when…

  A dark blur flew over the volcano’s rim.

  “Heads up.” Vee leaned forward, squinting at the sky and ignoring the camera. “They’re coming in.”

  The kite rode ahead of the winds, guided by a competent mind. T’sha resisted the urge to turn loops in the sky to say “Over here, over here.” They knew where she was, and they were heading there at full speed.

  “We will meet down beside the transports, T’sha,” D’seun said through her headset.

  T’sha whistled her assent.

  The dirigible slowed its forward progress and descended toward the crust. T’sha pulled in her wings and deflated, settling further and further into the thickening air. There was no real wind this far down, just faint strugglings in air that was so solid you could perch on it. It was grossly uncomfortable, but T’sha had done plenty of deep work in her time. She could accommodate herself to it.

  The New People’s transports still waited side by side. They
made an amazing amount of noise, all high squeals and long snores. But if they were speaking to each other, T’sha could make no sense out of it. A piercing metallic smell surrounded them, reminding T’sha sharply of the scents in the World Portal complex.

  D’seun launched himself from the dirigible’s gondola, leaving Br’sei, D’han, and P’tesk to drop the moorings and wrestle out the toolboxes.

  D’seun didn’t even acknowledge T’sha. He flew straight to the New People’s display. He hovered around it for a long time, looking at the images from every possible angle.

  T’sha glanced at the transports. What were they doing in there right now? Were they pleased? Bored? Worried?

  “Grow the viewer,” said D’seun to the engineers. “Make sure it faces the transports, not this screen. I don’t know if this thing can see.”

  The engineers flew to obey. While Br’sei tore open a dish of growth medium, P’tesk opened the stasis cover on a box of seed crystals. Br’sei laid the seeds into the jellylike medium. The seeds responded instantly, fusing and replicating until the jelly swelled up out of its dish, forming a glistening bubble. The bubble grew until it was nearly the size of the New People’s screen. P’tesk poured the neutralizer into the dish. Br’sei rooted a works box onto the side, running through the standard checks. The crystal was good. The medium was adequately conductive. No flaws in structure.

  D’seun, meanwhile, pulled two cortex boxes out of the portable caretaker. He weighed them in his forehands and put one back. He laid the one he selected onto the works box, letting its sensors reach into the works and twine around the neural net. D’seun fanned his wings and backed away.

  He spoke rapidly in the cortex’s command language. T’sha was not surprised to find that she did not understand a word of it. The crystal lit up and a set of symbols printed themselves across its surface. D’seun looked toward the transports and the New People’s screen.

  “What are you saying?” asked T’sha.

  “I am stating our purpose,” D’seun said. His voice was slurred, suspicious. “Now we will see what they will do.”

  Inside the scarab, they watched the aliens arrive, watched their transmitter grow as if by magic, and saw bright-red letters coalesce inside it

  WE SERVE LIFE.

  Vee had to swallow before she could force any words out. “It appears,” she said slowly, “that they’ve been watching us a lot longer than we’ve been watching them.”

  “So it would seem,” agreed Josh. “Now what?”

  Vee looked to Dr. Failia. The older woman had set her coffee down. She watched the aliens, her hands on her knees, immobile and yet at the same time incredibly alive. Every line of her body sang with eagerness. She was looking out onto something magnificent.

  Vee knew exactly how she felt. She thought of the portrait file waiting in her briefcase. She’d have to start all over. She didn’t do their beauty, their grace, their sheer otherness justice, not by light-years.

  Dr. Failia cleared her throat, coming back to the everyday acknowledgment of her fellow human beings reluctantly.

  “Well, since they’re chatty, let’s try the basics. Ask who they are.”

  “Cross your fingers over your connections, Josh.” Vee’s hands hovered over the keys while she remembered how they had this all coded in. Mentally crossing her own fingers for the solidity of their improvisation, she typed in a set of commands. The introductory images vanished and the holotank showed the words, Who are you?

  The aliens stayed as they were. Helen reached across the command board and punched up the zoom on the camera. Now they could see the muzzle moving on the smallest of the group.

  The words shifted inside the glass bubble to read The People.

  “Well, that’s helpful.” Vee almost giggled. She swallowed. Too much wonder obviously had similar effects on the human psyche as too much fear. “First contact. Complicated stuff. How about I try a more detailed question?” Without waiting for an answer, she typed in a new set of commands. Their screen read:

  I am Doctor Veronica Hatch. What is your name?

  More conferring between the aliens. One of them, whose feathered crest was mottled crimson and ivory, flapped its wings restlessly. The smallest turned toward their screen and spoke again. More new words.

  I am Ambassador D’seun Te’eff Kan K’edch D’ai Gathad. With me is Ambassador T’sha So Br’ei Taith Kan Ca’aed. We are ambassadors of the High Law Meet of the People. We have with us our engineers and assistants. Are there others with you? What is your purpose?

  “Loaded question,” said Josh.

  Vee paused with her hands over the keyboard. “Can I ignore it?”

  Helen raised her eyebrows. “I don’t think so.”

  Vee nodded, chewed her lip thoughtfully, and typed.

  With me are Doctor Helen Failia, Mister Adrian Makepeace, and Miss Sheila Whist. In the underground chamber are Doctor Joshua Kenyon, Mister Ray Sandoval, and Miss Heather Wilde. We are from Venera Base, which is a research colony for the people of Earth. She added a few extra commands. The pictorial diagram of the solar system reappeared with arrows and labels.

  “Now may not be the time to get fancy,” remarked Helen.

  “Now is exactly the time to get fancy,” shot back Vee. “One picture, one thousand words, you know? How are we doing down there, Josh?”

  “It’s green and go in here.” His voice was both hushed and strained. Vee could practically feel his excitement vibrating through the connection.

  The aliens flapped and hovered around the new scene shining in the holotank. They came within centimeters of its quartz surface but never actually touched it. Their control was incredible. Part of Vee’s mind was already designing the movement codes, trying to work out how to show them to the rest of humanity.

  The words in the alien’s bubble changed.

  Are you ambassadors? Do you speak for the New People?

  Vee looked quizzically at Helen.

  She puffed out her cheeks. Vee could almost hear her rehearsing different answers. “I don’t think we do.” She sounded slightly disappointed. “But we know who does.”

  We call ourselves human beings. No, we ourselves do not lead, but we would like a message to take to our leaders. “Since I don’t think we can take them—” added Vee.

  “You can be tactful after all,” murmured Helen. “I’m impressed, Vee. Would you do me a favor, please, and get the big question out of the way?”

  “Right.” Vee knew exactly what she was talking about. She typed and the screen responded.

  What are you doing here?

  We serve life, answered the aliens, no, the People. Life helps life.

  This time Vee didn’t bother to check with Helen. She just typed.

  We don’t understand.

  Three of the People had retreated from the screen. They perched in the contraption of sails, struts, and cables that had brought them here. It looked like a cross between a box kite and the old Wright brothers’ airplane. Smallest, Ambassador D’seun, etc., and Crimson-and-Ivory remained by the bubble, which probably meant Crimson-and-Ivory was Ambassador T’sha, etc.

  The ambassadors seemed to be having a discussion. They leaned close together, muzzles almost brushing each other. As they spoke, their bodies swelled and shrank. Was that their breathing? Or a way of showing emotion? Dominance maybe? Even this far down, where the light was gray instead of clear, they sparkled. The black lines on their bodies and muzzles stood out sharply. Maybe they were tattoos. Wouldn’t that be a good one? If what humans had in common with aliens was body art?

  A decision seemed to have been reached. D’seun spoke to T’sha and then the screen. Their spherical screen relayed the words.

  We wish only community and cohabitation with the life of this world.

  “Oh, my,” murmured Vee. She typed.

  You are colonizing?

  D’seun pulled his muzzle back momentarily before he spoke again.

  We do not know that word.<
br />
  Vee considered a moment. Definitions had never been her strong suit. She was aware of someone standing close behind her, of warm breath on her ear. She typed.

  You are moving People here? You are going to live here?

  Yes.

  “Oh, my.” Vee’s hands went suddenly cold.

  Helen touched her shoulder. “I think it’s time to bring in the U.N.”

  “Yeah,” said Vee slowly. “I think you might be right.”

  “I’ll go back up with Scarab Ten.” Dr. Failia straightened up. “I’ll contact Mother Earth myself. Ms. Yan should be able to call together an emergency meeting with the C.A.C.”

  Vee turned to look at her. “Shouldn’t this go straight to the Secretaries-General?”

  “Bureaucracy will have its way.” Helen’s smile was humorless. Vee watched her eyes. She was calculating something, planning, working the variables. “It will get to them soon enough.”

  “Whatever you say,” Vee said with a shrug. That was not her field, and she didn’t particularly want it to be. “What should we do here?”

  Helen was silent for a moment. She watched the People, hovering like living kites out in what Vee knew Helen thought of as her world. “Keep them talking.”

  “Dr. Lum gave me permission to visit the Cusmanoses,” said Grace to the security guard outside Kevin Cusmanos’s door. She held out the screen slip with Michael’s authorization and seal on it.

  “Right, Dr. Meyer,” said the very thin, very brown man. “You can head on in.” He touched the override pad.

  The suite door swished open. Kevin looked up, startled, from his seat at the dining table. Derek was sitting in a strangely forlorn-looking chair in front of where the desk used to be. They’d hauled all the communications equipment out in preparation to turn Kevin’s home into a cell. It had been Ben, of all people, who had talked Michael out of keeping them locked in Venera’s minuscule brig.