by Rob Rowntree
“Look Alan, it’s not easy for me to be here. To say that I’m torn would be an understatement. But I can’t stand the skulduggery any more. All this damned subterfuge is bound to get somebody else killed.”
Alan poured the water onto ice, the cracking cubes, loud and sharp. When Gibson remained silent Alan prompted by saying, “Being loyal becomes ingrained. Something that’s not easy to break free from. I can understand how difficult this must be for you to break rank with Conway—”
“There’s no need to patronise me. And your assumption that I’m here to discuss anything to do with Conway is a leap of logic on your part.” Gibson’s face reddened, whether through embarrassment or anger, Alan couldn’t say. “However, in this case it is a lucky guess.”
Lucky guess my arse. Alan moved over and sat near Gibson, passing over the drink. “Nothing would shock me Gibson, anything Conway’s done or is planning to do holds no surprises for me. Take that show of bonhomie earlier. It fooled no one. No my friend, I don’t have any illusions where Conway is concerned. I expect him to do things his way; after all it’s his ship, his expedition and his dollar. The fact that I have control of the vessel is to him an inconvenience. A man like Conway can’t help himself.”
Gibson looked wistful, “I’ve known him for quite some time and not all of the decisions he’s made have sat well with me; unethical, sure, unscrupulous, manipulative, pedantic, but also, magnanimous with his friends, supportive, protective and flexible.”
Alan suddenly understood, “You admire him. No wait, it’s more than that, you revere him.”
“He’s done a lot for us, for me.”
Gibson squirmed a little in the chair. Alan noticed inner turmoil tearing at Gibson’s resolve. “Look everybody has doubts and usually, doubts are a good indication that something needs to be thrashed out. Or at the very least be satisfied. It’s a natural and normal reflection of concern.”
“It’s easy for you Alan. You have no one to betray.”
Alan thought immediately of Jimmy, swaddled in hospital blankets, the twinkle still in his eyes, a physical representation of Jimmy’s belief in his own brother. Betrayal? What would Gibson know of betrayal? Without warning, and maybe because he couldn’t help himself Alan spat out, “You’d better get on and say what you have to before you change your mind.”
Gibson wrung his hands some more and glanced at the door. Did he expect Conway to come marching in? “Alan, do you remember Mr Conway asking me to work on resolving our communication problems?”
“Yes.”
It poured out, “Well I’ve been pretty busy, at it most of the time, including my free-time. Through a bit of hard work and scrounging I managed to rig together a lab test-bed. It seems to function too.”
Gibson stopped abruptly as if he’d revealed all his troubles. Alan said dumbly, “It works.”
Gibson nodded, “Yes, I have full communication facilities; they’re not stable, but for the moment we have a way to get a message out.”
Some friggin’ good news at last. Alan felt elated. Almost overcome with relief he neglected to notice Gibson’s wild stare and sweaty brow. “That’s great news Gibson and a damn good job too.” Gibson’s demeanour remained unchanged, so Alan said, “You don’t appear to be overjoyed.”
Gibson stared at the deck and muttered, “I’m not overjoyed because there’s a problem.”
“Conway?”
“Yes. I went straight to him, told him the news, expecting him to be really happy, but...”
“Did he give you a message to send? Ask you to write one?”
“No...the opposite. He expressly forbade me from sending a message, going to great lengths explaining his reasoning and why it might influence his decision when it comes to funding and postings inside his organisation next year.”
“He’s a real peach of guy ain’t he.”
“Alan I... I’m frightened out here. This system’s feels out of whack, and I thought we should be sending a message, especially as it could take a couple of weeks or longer for any sort of rescue. But Conway’s in charge right? Well, I thought so, but then I felt you should know and—”
“Okay, Gibson, take it easy. In your predicament I’d be concerned too.” Smiling, Alan added, “I think we should send a message home. I’ll write one now. I want you to take it with you and go immediately to coms and send it. Don’t be distracted.”
Gibson relaxed a little; passing on his information appeared to have increased his sense of purpose. “I will.”
“Do some standard information, condition of vessel, no immediate danger, position and some data on the system too. Request EVAC at earliest convenience; don’t be shy with it, if your rigged gear blows I want to make sure we’ve sent a good representative bag of material and have made it clear we need assistance.”
“Thank you Alan.”
“It’s okay. If there’s flak from Conway I’ll deal with it, and thanks for bringing this to my attention. If you need to verify anything Conway might say in the future, please feel free to talk with me. I’m only trying to ensure that there are no further fatalities. There’s been enough.”
Gibson’s eyes narrowed as he quietly said, “Yes.”
“My offer still holds. If you want to talk about Shepperd’s death...”
Five hours later, and the world put to rights, an intoxicated Alan watched Gibson struggle to his feet and leave the cabin.
***
“There. There and there.” Woodland’s irritation at having to point out the structures to Pickering punctuated his words, his hand slapping into the virtual image like rocks into water. Alan almost felt his frustration.
To be fair, unless you’d had the necessary training and experience, high resolution long distance images were difficult to fathom. Only with time did recognition become second nature. You look for straight lines and regular patterns, snags in the natural order.
The view they were observing was from a drone at high altitude, the structures almost at the limit of its system’s resolution. Honing the image with Haqiqa’s software, Woodland and Conway had found order from the chaos.
Several thin buildings rose from the green land. They clustered around what appeared to be an intersection of tracks or dirt roads.
Pickering said, “The image is so grainy I can’t make things out. And there’s no need to lose your temper.”
Woodland ignored his remark and Alan winced as Pickering continued, “You were saying that the buildings are unusual in that they have a triangular cross-section. Do you mind explaining a little further? Personally I don’t see anything remarkable in that.”
Rather than launching into a lecture for one, Woodland asked, “Does anybody see anything unusual in this cluster of buildings? Go on, anybody?”
Murmurs and a chair scrape indicated reluctance before Stowe said, “Well, Pickering’s right, they are hard to define, but if I had to hazard a guess I’d say they all had the same orientation; the apex of each build points the same way.”
Once mentioned the fact became obvious. Uniformity lay about the buildings and if viewed from above would have looked like a flight of arrowheads pointing in the same direction.
Woodland smiled, “That’s it, they all have the same orientation. That puzzled me for a while. I wondered why. Could it have been a religious moor, a design aesthetic, something implied by the contours of the land? What do you guys think? Take another look, the clues are there.”
“Oh come on Woodland, cut out the games.” Gibson appeared dejected. “Just tell us what you’ve found.”
Woodland shrugged before saying, “Where’s the fun in that?”
Alan gazed at buildings ranged into the air like a copse of bamboo saplings, all with an air of delicacy about them, all elegant. What was Woodland getting at? Beyond the buildings, forest bled over small hills, the foliage too indistinct to make out. Before the buildings, small narrow banded stretches of ground, many meters in length, followed the contours of the terrain. The str
ips held the same orientation as the buildings. There was something...
“They’re tall, yet... look flimsy... Are you saying something about their construction?”
Woodland laughed, “No Kiki, it’s more in the location and surrounding environs. Think back to the images we saw in Maslov’s recording.”
“Maslov’s recording,” Kiki said, surprised. “I can’t remember too much.”
Alan tuned out. Something in the image caught his attention. Behind each building sat a tiny speck of brown sandiness, a smudge positioned identically relative to all the buildings: along the flat edge of the triangular cross-section. Could it possibly be refuse...squatter’s dwellings...gardens?
Away from the tapered point of the structures, desert stretched several kilometres to meet a small mountain range. Growing understanding brought forth a stunned, “No.” Grinning, Woodland acknowledged Alan’s sudden revelation and then asked, “Does anyone have the answer? Come now don’t be shy.”
Alan felt awkward. Nobody else appeared to have made the connection. “It’s windy. Not just a little.” Was it the only explanation? It appeared to be, especially when you took into account the wooded areas seen in Maslov’s recording with tree tops swept in one direction, plus the Aeolian rock formations and now the aligned buildings. This little world supported fierce weather and high winds. “But what’s generating the winds? The planet’s tiny, where’s the energy coming from?”
Woodland thought about it, but before he could continue, Conway said, “I thought winds were produced by Coriolis effects from a planet’s spin and temperature differentials between the poles.”
Woodland jumped in, “Yes, that’s for normal, everyday winds, a few hurricanes and so on, but not ones of long duration, constant winds, winds that can create the Aeolian formations we’ve seen. This is something else, perhaps there’s a larger than normal deal with pressure gradient forces than at home, can’t be sure. But we need to look into this, there’s something unexplained going on.”
Alan added, “Okay so we know there’s a wind issue and we know where there’s a settlement. I suggest we draw up some specific targets for, A, surveillance and B, atmospheric measurements. We probably have a lot of data already from the drones regarding wind and weather patterns. I’ll get the AI onto it; it will allow us time to draw up tighter measurement protocols.”
Woodland looked energised, “Good, I’ll get the surveillance bugs loaded into a drone ready for seeding while you crunch some numbers. If we can get a descent weather profile it may help us understand the planetary mechanisms a whole lot better. But like you, I’m interested to know where the energy is coming from to drive winds like that. It’s going to be interesting to find out.”
Conway coughed and stood. Turning to Alan he said, “Shall we move Haqiqa into a more reasonable orbit? Passing over the target might prove enlightening and afford us better image resolution.”
Alan wanted to agree, but felt it unwise until they knew the level of the native’s technology. He said, and couched it as a kind of warning, “Conway, that would be an ideal and somewhat desirable objective, but let us proceed with caution. The longer we remain unobserved the better our chances of retrieving information. The bugs and drones will give us what we need.”
“Do you think so Alan? What possible harm could these stone-age beings bring to bear on my ship?”
“I’ll remind you that because a people, or species, are not technologically advanced, it doesn’t mean that they are not clever, or able to deduce or reason. I don’t want the new star in their sky to damage the world-view these beings hold. Let’s take it slow, build our picture carefully, thoroughly and accurately. Let’s be right?”
“Damage their world-view!” Conway laughed, “They already know about us, or rather the Peterson’s crew. How could our presence influence their perception of the universe further?”
“Okay, I see your argument, but how are we to judge that? I mean, how do we fathom the workings of their minds, they are alien and by definition their thought processes are alien too. We’ve seen evidence that they have a propensity to violence as witnessed in Maslov’s message. And need I remind you that they did manage to subdue and possibly kill the crew the Peterson left behind. Sight of lights in the sky might... Do you see where I’m headed with this Conway? No more fuck-ups. We plan, we take our time.” Across the room Gibson coughed and spilt his drink.
Woodland interjected, “Conway, he’s right. What difference will it make? Our gig and shuttle can take us anywhere we want to go. There’s no need to change our orbit.”
Shrugging Conway said, “Very well. Let’s stand-off and spread our spies.”
At the corner of Alan’s mind something tickled. Conway’s behaviour appeared casual and acquiescent. He argued but folded; had done so more than once now. Did Conway care about the details? Care about the planet fall? An air of inevitability and perhaps duplicity hung about Conway’s remarks and feeble arguing.
The Peterson’s cargo. The prize. That could be it, let the mutineering pilot have his way, act the part of responsible voyage coordinator, and then when the dust settles and the shuttles depart, go after the cargo. But what could it be?
***
“...we’re screwed. There’s no way we can translate that.”
Gibson and Woodland stopped talking as Alan entered the observation lounge. Four days had passed since they seeded the settlement with recording devices, and now the ship’s AI had established that they had an acceptable collection and representative sample of native speech.
In the semi-darkness of the lounge the speakers clicked and chattered, high pitch tones flowed under and over the snapping cacophony. Alan found it mesmerising.
Moving towards Gibson and Woodland, he gave a curt nod and hello to Stowe who sat in an alcove earnestly painting. To the two men he said, “You called me?”
“Have you heard this?” Gibson sounded defeated. “Even if we can translate this, and I don’t think that we can, we’ll never be able to reproduce those sounds ourselves. How are we going to ask questions? This system is one nightmare after another.”
Woodland stayed silent and Alan thought he saw a hint of amusement there.
“Gibson,” Alan said, “let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I’ve been listening in my cabin. The interesting thing is that the ship’s AI recognises this as a language. That’s a step in the right direction and we need to give the software time to try and sort out the sounds.”
Stowe piped up from her corner, “Shh, listen. It’s beautiful, like birdsong and crickets and ivory flutes. The sound forms colours in my head. We should use such depth and tone. Perhaps we could sell recordings?” She laughed and said, “The Healing Colours of Sound, yours to own for only seventy five credits.”
Instead of answering, Alan listened to the speakers. Stowe had a point though, the chattering flowed and ebbed, pushed around by whistling harmonics; it drew you in, seduced you with bursts of sudden vibrancy. But for Alan the most magical thing about this had to be the fact that he was listening to a real, living, alien tongue. Here, after so many years of searching, his obsession waited.
“It sounds cold, heartless.” They all turned to see Kiki standing in the doorway. “Locusts before the storm.” Clutching her arms about her body she came over to stand by Alan. “Why can’t we just observe from here? Conway’s had me readying the shuttle for a landing expedition. But listen, what’s the point? We’ll never be able to communicate.”
Woodland stepped up, “Kiki I think you are underestimating our and their intelligence. Here, look at these.” Woodland brought down a virtual and began scrolling through several images from the grounded spycams. “They are tall and anatomically quite different from us, but there are similarities. They walk on two feet; they’re bilateral, right down to the eyes being front and centre. They have hands and fingers, fingers like ours that can draw pictures in the sand, on rock and on slate. We will be able to communicate, but the question is, at wh
at rate the information will be exchanged.”
Kiki moved over to the images. “They look like stretched Orcs with mother of pearl blades for teeth.” Waving her arm, she pointed at a couple of natives seated uncomfortably on a squat bench. “And what in the hell are those protrusions from their shoulder-blades? There’s something not right.”
She had a point. They looked out of proportion and when walking they waddled. Although they were bipedal and walked upright, the ecology here had neglected to endow them with a reasonably efficient method of walking. The equipment just wasn’t there; the legs were short in comparison with the body-length and several bony protrusions covered in tight skin sprouted from their shoulders and lower back making sitting on the bench difficult. Were they growths, disease, and deformity?
The scene, though disturbing, had a subliminal ring of familiarly about it. Two men on a bench, chewing the day’s fat. Many of the images retrieved held parallels to scenes from home. Like Kiki had observed, Alan too found the comparison disturbing.
Stowe joined them and said to Kiki, “Did Conway let you know who he’s chosen for the first landing?”
Kiki smiled, “Hmmm...now then, if he had, would it be fair to pass on the roster? It’d be breaking a trust and I wouldn’t want to do that.”
Woodland laughed, “Teasing us won’t earn you any favours, Kiki. I guess, though, that we’d all like to be along for the ride. It’s something not many people get the chance to do. Apart from the Peterson we are the only people in the entire history of the world to have met a tool using, technologically competent alien race. I’d call that pretty special.”
Kiki blurted, “That’s one thing I do know. I won’t be going down to the surface. The notion of meeting those savages sets my survival impetus to overdrive. Just look at them, there’s no way humans and those, those things are meant to be in the same room with each other.”
Stowe said, “That’s a bit extreme Kiki. Obviously there’s a need for caution, but ultimately we must build bridges. Our first step is to leave the past where it is. We need to understand these beings in order to better understand ourselves.”