Alien Caller (22 page)

It still seemed
strange to him that she was so artistic. It wasn’t something he
would have expected of a technologically advanced people. But Cyrea
told him it was normal among her people. For all their progress and
scientific achievement, her people valued expression and beauty
over technology and progress. The thing she liked about his house
more than anything else was its simple, almost primitive nature.
But he figured everyone valued what they didn't have. So she didn't
want modern, machine finished, high tech stuff. She wanted hand
crafted, flawed and natural.

So Cyrea could
paint and draw something wicked like nearly everyone else of her
people. Her chosen love though was a sort of rhythmic spoken poetry
called Ca'flu. The painting of mental pictures with prose and tone
and inflection. One day he might actually understand enough of her
language to understand her work, but for the moment it was enough
to simply sit and listen and enjoy the way the alien words simply
flowed almost like music.

Religious,
artistic, loving, she seemed determined to shatter his every
preconception of what an alien should be, and he didn’t mind a
bit.

It had been a
good two weeks.

Cyrea hadn’t
gone to work in all that time, requesting leave as she had claimed
that she was in urgent need of a holiday, and her request had been
granted, though suspiciously quickly in his view. He was half
worried there was another bug in the place and that the scientists
were still watching and enjoying. Certainly they were curious about
the relationship. All aspects of it. Cyrea said it was normal
though as all new couples got time off. A strange but not unwelcome
custom.

Still it
couldn't last. Today while he was heading into town, Cyrea was
going back to the ship and her quarters, for only the second time
since their fight. They both knew she was also heading into a
debriefing. She dreaded it almost as much as he dreaded his next
debriefing, which fortunately wasn’t due for another four or five
months and he knew his would be thorough. Even retired agents got
debriefed at regular intervals, just in case someone attempted to
get at them. His chances of hiding his knowledge of the Leinians
were next door to nil.

But there was
no choice for either of them. Cyrea had washed her only set of
clothes as many times as she could in the house, and she needed a
new wardrobe. Also she intended to find out for certain whether
they had got all the bugs, or whether there were more left to seek
out and destroy. For all they knew they’d been watched day in day
out for the last week and a half. After all, none of the scientists
would have told them. And then she’d be learning whether her
request for a relief on the recordings, something that could be
done when a recording was made of an intensely personal or private
event was publicly aired. If it had been, and he hoped for her sake
that it had been granted, then the images would have been censored
and restricted. But it was far from certain that it would be. Her
people didn’t value privacy in the same way as human beings
did.

David knew she
would be interrogated, though not in the same way as he would be.
Instead she would be given the third degree about their physical
relationship rather than their information sharing. Leinians were
by all accounts, remarkably open about everything. But while that
might be good from a liberal perspective, it could sometimes be
very bad from a personal one, especially when they had embarrassing
footage of Cyrea and him making love. No secrets meant that footage
was available for all to see. Literally every Leinian on Earth or
the rest of space for that matter could view it. And they probably
had. Even if Cyrea’s request had been granted, it had been
seen.

To make matters
worse for her and perhaps him, Cyrea had told him she would also be
expected to undergo a medical, just in case they had found any
unexpected side effects or discovered any new diseases. A very
public medical. Those results too would be public knowledge, all in
the interest of science naturally. They were both starting to
seriously consider the scientists on her ship as perverts in
disguise.

But at least he
knew she wouldn’t suffer. When his turn came, it would not be so
easy. He’d already been through it half a dozen times. Polygraphs,
bright lights, leading questions and if he wasn’t lucky, extensive
drug based psychoanalysis. He’d passed each time so far, mainly
because he had nothing to report, but in four or five months’
time…, he was dreading it. Of course, many of the same techniques
he had been taught to help him defeat enemy interrogations he could
use to defeat them. It might be rough but with some preparation and
maybe a few high tech devices if her people could spare some, it
should be possible.

Was it right
that he should be making such plans? He had to wonder about that.
He had to wonder if he'd been turned. If a pretty face had
undermined his sense of duty. And yet despite all his doubts he had
to admit that the Leinians had given him no cause for concern.
They'd done exactly what they said they would and nothing that
they'd promised not to. They'd been true to their goals. Perhaps
they deserved his trust. Perhaps they needed his protection. His
neighbours certainly did.

It was what
happened if he failed that worried him more. He couldn’t avoid the
interrogation. Not without drawing extensive suspicion and then
bringing the agents to him. And there was no guarantee that even
with all the preparation in the world and maybe some Leinian
technology if he was willing to risk it, that he would pass. So
failure had to be considered an option. But what then?

His preference
was to carry a bug on him, so that the Leinians would have the most
advanced warning he could give them. It might be treason but he
wasn’t about to let them be exposed without knowing and perhaps
even attacked by his people. That would be a far greater crime. But
after that he knew, they would leave. Cyrea would leave. And he
would be alone again. Something he feared even more than the
endless interrogation he would undergo afterwards. And if his fate
was questionable, what about the fates of all the others who knew
of them? His neighbours, his friends? What would happen to them
afterwards?

Redwood Falls
would be decimated.

And then the
world. If what the Leinians had told him was true, and he had no
reason to doubt them, if they left the Earth would lose. If there
was violence it would lose more. He did not want to be responsible
for that.

He put the
troubling thought out of his head and concentrated on driving. It
was a sunny day and he was out in an open topped four wheel drive
pick-up driving among some of the most beautiful scenery in the
world. This was not the time or the place for such dark
thoughts.

*****************

The supermarket
proved to be more of a challenge than he’d expected. Shopping for
two was a whole new experience after years of living alone. For
once he realized he wouldn’t be able to rip round the supermarket
shelves in five minutes or less. That was his usual definition of a
successful shop.

Cyrea liked a
different diet to him, less meat and much more fibre and cereal
despite her canines. Dairy was wonderful, especially cheese and she
was absolutely crazy about vegetables and fruit despite her
formidable dental array. Maybe he should do more than just think
about putting in a vegetable garden. But he figured he could adapt
and it would be good for him. After all, her diet was exactly what
every doctor in the world had been preaching for the last few
decades. The problem wasn’t that he had a rough idea of what she
liked; it was just that he needed more detail. Much more.

Modern
supermarkets had so many choices, he slowly realized as he stared
at the endless shelves stacked to overflowing with food. Yoghurt in
at least fifty different flavours, hundreds of different breads and
cereals, tinned fruits by the score and so on. He really wanted to
get things she’d like, but how to be sure? In a compromise born of
desperation, he ended up buying practically everything. Five types
of cereal, dozens of different fruit and vegetables, tins of every
imaginable food group, every dairy product he could lay his hands
on, and so forth. In short order the trolley was starting to look
top heavy and he began thinking about getting a second. But then
maybe he’d need a new larder as well.

Finally as he
pulled the overloaded trolley through the checkout he had the
feeling that he’d done the best he could. There should be enough in
there for her to enjoy at least something new every day, and most
of the rest could be shelved for winter or thrown in the freezer.
The cupboards might be overflowing, but with winter coming, well in
six more months or so, it would be good to have plenty of food on
hand. Just in case the roads became completely impassable as they
too often did.

The checkout
girl, a local girl he had seen around town a few times before,
looked at him and his trolley with the beginnings of a smile on her
face. A smile that said she had some idea of why he was buying what
he was and he suddenly felt self-conscious.

Quickly he
looked around at the other customers, making a mental note of those
who were staring back at him and their expressions. The trolley
itself was piled high with groceries making it ungainly and
difficult to wheel, while the coming bill was something he didn’t
want to think about and likely to be some form of record both for
him and the store. But more interesting and embarrassing to him was
the number of people who were smiling or smirking when they saw
him.

Redwood Falls
was a small town, with just over two thousand permanent residents
and a single supermarket which wouldn’t have survived if it wasn’t
for the tourists. They surely doubled or tripled their numbers in
summer and winter as they came for the lakes, the hunting and the
skiing. Yet five or six of the customers that day wore a knowing
grin. Five or six out of the twenty people he could see, who
potentially knew that he was shacked up with Cyrea and having to
restock on everything because of it. That translated to maybe five
or six hundred people who knew about the Leinians in the town
itself, and of course a gossip network more efficient then the
internet. Many of them he guessed had also seen the video.

Unfortunately
it wasn’t a complete surprise. The locals in what had to be one of
the craziest things he'd ever heard of for a secret expedition,
visited the ship whenever they wanted. They met with their friends
on board it, made plans for helping them with the research, and
even enjoyed concerts there. These people had no security at
all.

Cyrea had told
him as much, and he’d somehow put it out of his mind as impossible
before forgetting it, though it was anything but forgettable. Not
for the first time he wondered just how he’d been fooled so badly
and for so long. It was embarrassing for him. A trained
investigator who’d completely missed such a huge event, while
perhaps a quarter of the town he lived in knew about the greatest
discovery in human history. They not only knew about it, they
treated it as if it was the most ordinary thing in the world.

He also had to
wonder how they’d managed to keep their presence on Earth secret
for so long. Six hundred people and no-one had talked? It made no
sense, except of course that it hadn’t started out that way. At
first it had just been a few, and slowly that number had grown,
year by year. Each year the risk of exposure was surely becoming
more precariously balanced than the last until now it had to be
standing on a knife edge.

And to add to
that they were having other problems. Cyrea's craft had crash
landed. It could have been in the middle of a city. They'd had a
computer melt down, and for a time even a school kid could have
hacked into their system. Even their cloak had failed and if it
wasn't for the fact that they'd somehow buried their ship when
they'd arrived, satellites could have spotted it.

Despite their
fears he wasn’t the danger they faced.

In their favour
though, they'd chosen their landing site well. Redwood Falls was a
remote town and the people were very often uninterested in much of
the outside world just as the rest of the world paid them no mind.
And of course the Leinians had come with gifts, major gifts such as
advanced healthcare and reducing the pollution all around. The
locals knew that the Leinians would leave if they were exposed and
they didn’t want that to happen. So the people were very careful to
keep their secrets. In fact he was beginning to think that they
were the security system the Leinians simply didn’t seem to
have.

Yet perhaps the most important
of their security techniques was in choosing who they told, telling
only those they thought they could trust, and then swearing them to
secrecy
.
Actually the locals did that for themselves, the Leinians did no
such thing
.
They just asked.

Fortunately they'd bought those
people they'd brought on board. Though the Leinians didn't seem to
think of it that way.
But
t
here was so
much to gain by having them here as well as so much to lose if they
left. Everyone knew that if and when they left they would take
their gifts with them. That was a powerful incentive for
silence.