Encounters 1: The Spiral Slayers (9 page)

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In the back of one of the observation vans parked at the
site, Leewood leaned back in the leather chair and stared at the flat forty-five
inch display. On it were icons mixed with images representing every piece of
information they had gathered since arriving here – it was the modern version
of a tack board. Some of the icons and images were linked together with lines
and/or arrows. He had just entered another piece to the puzzle, the latest
statement by the Loud, the one they had received when he and Harrington had
discovered the force field was down and had entered the dome – which was now being
called the listening chamber. When the Loud had again demanded Adamarus be
brought to them, Harrington had asked it, “What’s wrong with us?” The Loud had
paused and said, “Nothing is wrong with you. Adamarus has been scanned,
approved and prepared. Others may be at a later time.”

Scanned, approved and prepared
, he thought. He opened
the icon for Adamarus and a window opened with links to all known information
about this fifty-two and now suddenly thirty year old Captain. “Prepared,” so
they had done something to him to prepare him. He touched a rectangle labeled,
“Known Loud Alterations to Subject” and a list opened.

Subject: Adamarus Maximus

Treated Injuries

Physical Changes

Cellular Changes

History

He knew that the “Physical Change”’ – Adamarus’ restored
youth – was due to the “Cellular Changes” which were actually doing much more. Adamarus
was no longer aging. He returned to the Loud’s statement and created a link
between “Prepared” and “Cellular Changes,” and then entered a note on the link:

[Prepared = Not aging, but prepared for what?]

He went back to the Loud’s statement, tapped on the word “approved,”
and added a note to that.

[Approved for what?]

His notes continued with the word “scanned." Scanned for
what?
Whatever they scanned him for caused him to be “approved” and then “prepared”,
he thought. They had detected something about Adamarus, something that was
already there. He returned to Adamarus’ folder and browsed through it. What had
they found? He paused under ‘Psych Evaluation Summary,’ opened it, and glanced
over it.

Just then the door opened and Harrington came in. He showed
her the information he’d added as well as the links and notes he’d made. Then
he showed her the Psych Evaluation Summary.  Harrington looked closer,
“Extremely high levels of honesty, dedication, loyalty, drive, creativity and
adaptability.  G7-IQ.”

“And thrifty, brave, clean and reverent,” Leewood added. “What’s
the G7-IQ?”

“I’m not sure. Wait…” Three menu items down from “Psych
Evaluation Summary” Harrington found "IQ." She clicked on it then
whistled. “Adamarus’ IQ is way up there – well into the genius range.” She
looked back at the two words from the Loud’s last statement, “scanned” and “approved."
“Call it woman’s intuition but…he may have been scanned for many things, but
I’ll bet the bank that his psych evaluation and IQ played a big part in getting
him approved."

“Okay, I’ll go along with that for now,” Leewood conceded. “Now
we just have to figure out what he was ‘approved’ and ‘prepared’ for.”

“The doctors said that he was not aging?” Harrington asked. “Does
this mean that he’s immortal?”

Leewood rubbed his face with both hands; he looked tired. “Hadn’t
looked at it that way – I guess that’s right. But I bet a bullet or getting hit
by a train would still stop his clock.” They both stared at the display for a
minute. Leewood cleared his throat then got up and sat on the corner of the
desk. “Well, whatever he was prepared for, it seems obvious that it has
something to do with the Loud.” He reached over and touched the scroll bar
scrolling down the information on the Loud. He stopped and read an item he had
spotted.

We can assume that the aliens come from a star that:

Is local (within 432 light years of us*),

Has rock planets in the bio-zone with between point four to
four gravities,

Is not a binary system which would pull planets out of the
bio-zone.

There are fifty-two stars that meet these requirements and
they range from five light years to 172 light years distance with the most
likely twenty-one stars having a range of ninety-five to 125 light years.

Leewood asked, “432 LY, is that light years?” Harrington
nodded. “I wonder why 432?”

Harrington pointed to the note in small text at the bottom, “432
LY is the number of years we’ve been putting out transmissions that would reach
other stars. They’re assuming that the aliens picked up the transmissions and
that’s what led them here.”

“So this says that they most likely live ninety-five to 125
light years away. Wow,” Leewood said. “That means it takes over ninety-five years
to get there! You’d need to be immortal to make that journey. Think that’s it?”

Harrington looked thoughtful for a minute then snapped her
fingers, “Trade.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look, they’ve already told us that they want Adamarus as
their liaison or go-between, right?” Leewood nodded once. “One of the most
likely things they’ll want to do is trade with us. Certainly that’s what we
want with their advanced technology.”

“That doesn’t explain this immortality thing," Leewood
said.

"Yes, it does! If their planet is 100 light years from
here, a round trip would take over 200d years and so…”

“Of course,” Leewood punched his hand. “They wouldn’t want to
deal with a different person every time they pulled in here. They’d want the
same person. And with his traits…honesty and so on and so on…”

“Exactly,” Harrington concluded. “They’re grooming him to be
the person, or I should say one of the people – clearly more than one person
will be needed—but probably they want him as their main contact.”

“And let’s not forget, they saved his life,” Leewood added.

“Damn,” Harrington looked thoughtful. “You know…things
couldn’t have been more perfect for the Loud if they’d planned it all out.”

---

Adamarus stared at the bright green floor and walls of the
completely empty dome. After a moment he decided to get up and walk to the
window for a closer look. He took a deep breath and started to get up, but was
stopped midway by the soft but powerful and unmistakable sound of great
quantities of air being inhaled.

Frozen half out of his chair he waited nervously. Then it
came, a terrible screeching sound that he had heard before in his “dream",
his memories while in the boogieman’s ship. It went on for several seconds.
Adamarus didn’t need to cover his ears – the walls reduced the sound to a
manageable level, but a vibration still reached through the insulation and sent
shivers down his spine. He could feel the hairs on the back of his neck stand
up and goose bumps rise on his arms. And then it ended.

In the silence that followed, Adamarus noticed he was sitting
down again. Looking up he saw a small box above the window with lights on it. Along
the bottom was a progress bar. It reached 100 percent. He jumped when a
mechanical voice began speaking. “Hello, Captain Adamarus Maximus. Forgive me
but I am staying out of view until we’ve talked for a while. Your species is so
alien and so small – you… well, you resemble something on our planet called a
raba-worm. The raba-worm is extremely revolting and disgusting to us. It will
take time to adjust myself. Please do not take this personally. I am sure that
you find us strange to look at as well and will also need time.  Behind your
seat you will find something that may help with our first meeting. We have been
monitoring your video broadcasts for some time. According to our studies, in
your culture, meetings such as the one I hope we will have are often helped
with this substance. And we have heard that…appearances of the other party may
improve with continued ingestion of this substance. I have already ingested a
quantity but I’m bigger than you and may still need more.”

Adamarus followed the instructions the mechanical voice had
issued. He reached around behind his seat and grabbed the paper bag hidden
there. He opened it and smiled. It contained a six-pack of beer. He set it on
the seat beside him. After the way the Loud had staged their arrival at the
hospital, playing the theme song from a popular ER reality show, he should have
expected something like this. “Appearances of the other party may improve with
continued ingestion,” indeed! He laughed out loud. At the same time, unknown to
him, the lights on the translator were having a fit. He heard another screech
coming from outside and struggled to get himself under control.

Then the sound of inhaled air came again and another screech.
“Adamarus, the translator may be malfunctioning. It could not translate what
you just said.”

Adamarus calmed himself and spoke for the first time. “I’m
sorry. I was laughing. Can you understand me now?”

“Laughing. Yes we know about laughing. Yes, I can understand
you now.”

The Loud came out from his hiding place directly behind the
suspended room Adamarus was in. It turned around and faced Adamarus, and then,
without leaving the floor, its body shot up 100 feet, expanding and sucking in
air. Adamarus gasped. Then the Loud’s muscles flexed and it shrank again
forcing the air through boney chambers which made up its head. Again the ear splitting
screech reached into the sound-proof chamber causing his body to vibrate. Lights
on the translator above the window blinked and a status bar made its way across
the bottom. “At last, we meet face to face.”

Adamarus’ face went slack, a frozen smile remaining in place.
He remembered the dream he’d had though he knew now that it was a memory;
moving hills in a strange place, and he knew he was looking at one of those
hills. He had seen the reproductions from his descriptions and had asked for
the memories to be restored but there hadn’t yet been time.

He realized that the silence was growing uncomfortably long. He
glanced at the seat next to him and made a decision. He grabbed one of the
bottles of beer, opened it and took a large drink.

He still didn’t know what to say so he lifted the beer bottle
towards the creature in a mock toast. “Here’s looking at you.” Unbelievably, a
long tentacle appeared from somewhere along the creature’s side holding a beer,
and the alien mimicked the action. Adamarus took another drink watching the
alien. The creature also took a drink, its long tentacle carrying the bottle up
and pouring the beer into the oval hole at the front of its head.

Adamarus studied the creature noting as many details as
possible. He guessed it was about twenty feet wide, thirty feet long and twenty
feet high. It seemed to glide along the floor on a layer of dark red rippling
flesh that the creature’s massive body rested on. Above this was a dark gray
layer with puckered holes running along it. As he watched, more tentacles
emerged from the holes. There were three on each side near the front of the
creature as far as he could tell. The tentacles extended twenty to twenty-five
feet and were about four feet in diameter at the base, tapering out to their
ends. Above this layer things got more complicated.

 The front three-quarters of the Loud was a fleshy wrinkled
gray with long sharp thorns. They were dark gray, about four feet long, lying
flat and pointing downwards. This was the area which expanded upward and filled
with air before the Loud spoke. This area was a single large lung Adamarus
correctly guessed. When it expanded, the large dark gray thorns lifted and
pointed outward much like a blowfish.

Adamarus realized that their two species were so different
that they would never even be able to get physically close to each other, let
alone sit down at a restaurant and dine! Behind the lung area, making up the
rear of the animal, was a large muscle extending from the bottom layer upward
to the back of what Adamarus thought of as its head. In front, just below the “head”,
were what looked like remnants of hands or perhaps flippers; six large bony
fingers extended about twelve feet down in front over the gray thorny lung
area. Each had three joints and for all the world looked like the bones within
a human finger enlarged many times. Later he would learn that these were the
Loud’s equivalent of ribs – they protected vital organs.

On top was the “‘head." There was no neck. It was perhaps
sixteen feet wide, twenty feet long and eight feet high. If you could imagine a
very large eroded hollow bone and then flatten it and folded it over upon
itself three times, making the upper fold round and twice as large, you’d have
most of it. A crest ran along the top of its head from the front to the back.

In the front was a gaping hole which contained wet, slimy
looking, black tentacles which always seemed to be in motion – this was the
mouth. It never closed.

Embedded on either side of the upper head, running on either
side of the crest from just behind the “mouth” to a point three-quarters back,
were green translucent sacks – obviously eyes, though they were nothing like
any eyes he’d ever seen. Within each, instead of a pupil and iris, there were
dozens of small receptacles which looked like pale cream-colored mushrooms. These
waved back and forth, gathering together in groups seemingly when the alien
wished to focus on something. Now that he watched them, he realized that the
receptacles could divide into smaller groups; its “eyes” could focus on several
things at the same time.

Looking the alien over, Adamarus realized many aspects of it
were superior and more evolved. This creature was incredibly different from
anything in his experience. The fact that its height varied constantly between
twenty and 100 feet whenever it wanted to communicate would have implications
he could not begin fathom.

Adamarus took another drink. He could feel the alcohol taking
effect and realized the beer had been a brilliant idea. “So, you know my name.
What’s yours? What do I call you?”