Alien Caller (23 page)

It wasn't just
miracle cures, it was a complete healthcare system. A free one. One
which would not just stay the nasty grip of cancer and disease, but
actually make people younger. Life expectancy would rise
astronomically for the locals as long as the Leinians stayed.

There was
wealth too. The Leinians were purchasing some things, and they were
using gold that they manufactured to do it. That was a huge thing
in a destitute community. As were the jobs they were providing.
Redwood Falls had lost a lot since the mines had closed and then
forestry had died. It had become a town that people left. A town
where the only industry was tourism. And even that was suffering
because of the pollution.

Though the
Leinians didn't seem to understand it they had effectively bought
the town.

Because of that
the locals in the know had formed themselves into a little
community, Alice funnily enough was their unofficial leader and
they regulated themselves far more carefully than the Leinians ever
could. They made it their business to know about everyone who lived
or moved in to the region.

They also
controlled tourist activities as through their connections at the
town hall they restricted the access of tourists to sensitive
areas, as well as organising the tours which were always guided by
one of the locals in the know. They even controlled the local
paper, making sure certain stories never saw the light of day.

The Leinians
just thought they had a security system; the locals actually had
the real thing.

Of course there
was a reason for that. One thing he was beginning to understand
about the Leinians and their surprising ability to remain a secret
was that they walked the talk. They did what they said they would
do, always, and that was a powerful weapon in their arsenal.

Most people
wouldn’t have any real desire to spill whatever secrets of the
government that they might know to anyone under normal
circumstances. Most people were decent, responsible and law
abiding. But in return for keeping their secrets people needed to
have trust in their government. Unfortunately trust was severely
lacking in the country. And so the NSA, the CIA, the DOD and most
other government agencies couldn’t rely on people to do the right
thing. So instead they chose the harder path and used suspicion,
coercion and threats, thereby completely destroying any trust the
government might otherwise have had.

Any hint that someone knew
something they shouldn’t and the agencies came down hard on them.
Even the innocent were required to sign all sorts of documents in
relation to non-disclosure. And that was followed up with threats
of severe legal action if there was a breach and of course spies to
make sure people didn’t do anything so stupid.
It was effective, but still it
would have been better if instead they could simply have trusted
the people, and in turn been trusted by them.

While it was
the way things were done – after all, he’d helped to cover up
secrets the same way - he knew it often just made things worse.
When the people believed the DOD were lying to them and suspected
that they were involved in all sorts of illegal and immoral
activities, they lost what remained of their trust. And if you
didn’t trust someone or something to have your back, why should you
keep its secrets? The Leinians kept faith with the locals and the
locals kept faith with them. That was a major asset in the world of
secrets.

It was a policy
he also planned on following. Now that he was no longer an
agent.

Still, the
Leinians had been lucky in his opinion. More than lucky, but they
had been careful too. They had landed in a backwater and had
fortunately only made contact with good, reliable people. They had
dealt with them openly and honestly and had only gradually widened
their circle of confidants when necessary. Moreover they had
“rewarded” those who kept their secrets with the gift of excellent
healthcare and employment. People like David who had a background
in security they had generally steered clear of, and David would
never have known anything had it not been for the crash.

But while the
Leinians had been lucky and careful, it still wasn’t enough. Their
circle of confidants had grown so large that sooner or later it had
to spring a leak.

David was
determined not to be that leak.

He’d been
careful with Cyrea, making sure he hadn’t asked all of the
questions he wanted to. Not because he didn’t want to know, because
of course he did. But he also didn’t want to compromise either her
or himself. Having been in the secrets game for so long he had a
fair idea of what she could and couldn’t tell him, and more
importantly, what she shouldn’t. All he really knew about her work
was that she and most of the other security people were there to
observe the researchers, keep them safe and make sure the
researchers didn’t breach any of the conditions that had been
placed upon them. Things like making official contact with the
Earth’s governments, or spying on its citizens for example.

This group she
told him, had become particularly lax, which was why she had been
called in from home. She was simply the latest in a string of extra
officers who had been brought in to beef up the security of the
party. It wasn’t just the fact that they were breaching protocol,
it was the frequency with which they did it, and the way that they
abused even those permits that they had.

Making contact
with individuals was often considered acceptable for research
parties if the proper safeguards were maintained. However, these
researchers had gone beyond the normal one or two that might be
contacted. Way beyond. Then there were the unauthorized flights, as
they almost routinely seemed to want to fly over major cities,
despite the risk of being seen. They had also begun spying on
individuals, namely him, which had already earned some of them
another wrap over the knuckles. Worse still, they had brought in
advanced medical care for too many of their contacts. Far too many.
One or two miracle recoveries were acceptable. But when lots of
people in the region started recovering from incurable ailments or
living longer than the norm, that was something else. It would be
noticed.

Sooner or later
if they weren’t both lucky and careful Cyrea told him, they were
going to get found out and while the party could leave, those they
had made contact with would have to stay and deal with the
authorities. And then maybe the press and agents from other
governments. It was a sobering thought for David, who had a better
idea of what might lie in store for them than Cyrea.

He’d asked her
if they could perhaps take the others with them when they left. All
things considered, he thought it might be for the best and she’d
happily agreed which surprised him. It was a big thing to take so
many refugees, surely, and for a single low ranked security officer
to agree to it so easily seemed above her pay grade. Then again
maybe they’d already made that decision long before he asked. Or
maybe it was just what they would do naturally. It wasn’t
impossible. But they both knew that most of the locals wouldn’t go
even if offered the chance. It was a difficult and terrible thing
to leave your home and everyone and everything you knew for the
great unknown. Most would stay and risk it no matter how much they
liked their visitors, believing that the law would protect them.
Maybe a little too much of the Leinians' idealism had rubbed off on
them over the years.

Cyrea had also
told him about the researchers’ work and about their time on
Earth.

The Leinians
were doing exactly what Alice had told him that first day. They
were studying the Earth and humanity, preparing for the day when
mankind finally arrived in space. They had to be ready. As such
there were two key questions they had to answer. How far was
humanity away from space flight? And how would they react to other
races?

The Leinians
had every technological edge at their disposal and they used them.
They could intercept all communications across the planet, and were
able interpret most of them, which was a nightmare for him. Cyrea
had promised him again and again that whatever military top secret
codes they might have found or cracked, that that information would
stay with the ship and not the crew. That sort of knowledge was a
no no for the party, just in case one of them ever got caught. It
could ruin lives, destroy the balance of power, maybe even start a
nuclear war and they understood that much at least. So far the
scientists at least had respected that rule. Mainly out of fear of
the penalties he suspected. They couldn’t really accept the concept
of nuclear warfare.

That their
scientists could be so naive was a comforting thought for David as
was Cyrea’s belief that the scientists were actually following the
ethical guidelines and laws, and also being properly policed.
Mostly. It was completely different to that of the world he knew
where scientists seemed to do pretty much as they wanted, while
rules and ethics were considered as and when the scientists felt
like it. It was just another of those things that kept reminding
him that these people really weren’t human. But then so did many of
the issues that had caused them alarm. Things that humans generally
took for granted.

Despite their
huge technological advantages it hadn’t been an easy study, and as
a result a five year mission was looking like becoming ten. If they
lasted that long. They’d had several huge setbacks from the very
beginning. The first and strangest was when they had first heard
about UFOs and alien abductions.

The first few
times they’d heard about them the party had been worried, thinking
that their craft were somehow being spotted despite their extensive
camouflage. After all many of them were saucer shaped. But when
they finally managed to track the sightings down to times and
places they discovered their craft had been nowhere nearby. It
wasn't them. So they had finally decided it must be local effects
such as ball lightning and swamp gas that people were seeing,
exactly as the air force had found many years earlier.

But then the
stories of alien abductions had come to their ears, and they had
started wondering all over again. There was no way such stories
could be explained away so easily. Instead they’d started working
on the hypothesis that there was another race on Earth, one that
looked nothing like any people they knew of according to the
descriptions. They’d termed them ‘the others’ and immediately
started searching. It was a big thing. Another space going race in
the galaxy that they’d never met. That didn’t happen every day.

Immediately
they’d launched a major investigation that had lasted nearly their
entire first year. When they should have been studying humanity
they had searched the skies for other craft, examined the stories
in incredible detail, filtered out any common elements and then
rigorously assessed them.

It had become a
work of increasing paranoia, as the less they found the more it
convinced them that these other visitors were incredibly secretive.
More and more of their energies began to be sucked up in the search
for the others, until everything else was being neglected. Nearly a
year had passed before someone finally reached the conclusion that
the reason they couldn’t find anyone was that there was actually no
one else out there. David could have told them that on the first
day. Of course the day before that he wouldn’t have believed there
were any aliens on Earth at all.

In their second
year the biologists who had finally been free to work again on
something more productive than mythical aliens, started making
discoveries that left them speechless. After having initially found
that human and Leinian organ systems were stunningly similar and
that they performed the same functions, the party learned that
human metabolisms and their own were almost identical. Many, in
fact most medicines that would work on the Leinians would work on
humans and vice versa. That was unheard of among the alien
races.

So it turned
out that David could have used the antibiotics on Cyrea that first
day, as well as some of the other medicines he kept in his
emergency kit which would have perhaps helped her to heal more
quickly. Not that she was complaining. Similarly, they could eat
the same foods, mostly, though fish was a no no for Leinians. With
too much protein and the omega 3 oils, it didn’t digest well,
giving them gas and diarrhoea. The two races could even engage in
sexual relations, though nobody had ever thought that it would
happen. After all, the humans were distinctly bald and clumsy.
Again, the work of the social scientists was neglected as the
biologists demanded all the time and resources.

The computer
technologists started to dominate in the third year, as they
started to assess the capabilities of the Earth’s computer
industry, and became awed. Despite their huge technological
advantages, the Earth’s microchip industries were almost on a par
with their own, and improving at an ever accelerating pace. A dozen
of the most modern home computers could have controlled their star
ship, if they’d been used correctly. But thanks to the consumer
demand, the machines were used largely for gaming, something their
scientists found unbelievable. The incredible computational power
of the human computer chip was simply being wasted on peripheral
graphics. The flasher graphics cards themselves had massive
computer chips of their own, something that appalled them. Waste
piled on waste.