Extremis (16 page)

Rashid interrupted McGee’s glum thoughts with a polite cough. “I do, however, have a friend. With a cabin. In the mountains.” McGee looked up, filled his lungs with air, thought he might hug the wiry proprietor, who continued with, “But it’s a drive—about forty minutes.”

“Great, that’s great.”

Rashid almost smiled. “Okay. So, here’s how you get there—”

* * *

Jennifer Peitchkov looked down at the small blue bundle in her arms and pushed back a fold of the blanket with a gentle index finger.

Blinking in the light, the even bluer eyes of Alexander McGee looked up. The infant’s gaze wandered at first—until he found an object he knew: Jennifer. Or at least her rather long, straight, nose. Two small hands and smaller fingers came up from the folds of the blanket to explore, to confirm the return of that most protuberant and easily grasped part of the face he knew—and a smile suddenly creased the chubby folds of the broad face and high cheekbones that were unmistakable genetic inheritances from his father.

“Zander, Zander,” Jennifer whispered to him in a sing-song cadence, ignoring the not-mirrors that lined two walls of her accommodations. Hmm, not really “accommodations”: more like “habitat.”

At least it was better than the madhouse they had put her in for the first week of her captivity: its appointments were, to put it lightly, eclectic and often eye gouging. The array of personal articles would have been a source of considerable hilarity in a less dire situation: in their obvious ignorance of damned near everything human, the Baldies had thoughtfully furnished her with items both useful and bizarre. As an expectant mother late in her third trimester, she had appreciated the normal toiletries and the immense supply of moisturizers (although she suspected the bounty of emollients was merely a fortunate fluke). However, she was not quite sure what to do with the false eyelashes, the men’s aftershave, the pubic depilatory lotion, or the contraceptives—both male and female. What this outré selection of objects underscored to Jennifer was not so much that these beings were alien (for they were far less physiologically dissimilar to homo sapiens than other xenosapients), but that they simply were unable to make any sense of human existence. And somehow, that seemed to fit with what humans had seen as the Baldies’ apparent muteness, lack of facial affect, and very limited use of arms and hands—well, snaky limbs and tentacle clusters—as media for self-expression.

The tenor of Jennifer’s captivity had changed after the Baldy named Ankaht came in and actually managed to exchange some words with her. Jennifer had a lingering suspicion that Ankaht had been trying another form of communication as well. At the start of each of their four sessions together, Ankaht had sat in a pose that reminded Jennifer of a sphinx, but with an engine idling deep inside. But as the two of them sat motionless, Jennifer had felt tinglings, itchings, and hot flashes ranging from the back of her neck to the top of her head. At first Jennifer had dismissed it as a dermatological reaction to the dry, forced-air heat they used in her room. Then Jennifer attributed the sensations to anxiety, or maybe a rash induced by the presence of this alien invader with whom she had learned to exchange about a dozen words. Then she had dismissed it as one of the myriad symptoms of Her Delicate Condition. About which, the self-help books had not lied; with pregnancy, almost any complaint, ache, or craving was possible.

But at the beginning of her fourth—and last—meeting with Ankaht—she was alarmed when the Baldy pronounced her name very slowly and very clearly—“Jennifer Peitchkov”—and then she’d felt a pulse of that strange, hot tingling just above the base of her skull. It had faded. While Jennifer felt the tingling, Ankaht had changed color faintly, then reattained her black-brown leather appearance as the sensation subsided, all three of her eyes closed. Then her eyes opened again, fixed intently upon Jennifer, and Ankaht again said, “Jennifer Peitchkov”—who felt the itchy heat again. This happened two more times—at which point Jennifer began to think the unthinkable: Was this how the Baldies communicated? Mind to mind, or some species of telepathy? If it was, it would explain a lot.

Very pregnant Jennifer had stood—well, swayed—up, excited, forgetting her tentative resolve to withhold further verbal communication: she had reasoned that it might aid the enemy in their intelligence gathering. She pointed to Ankaht. “You? Ankaht? You are doing this to me?” She touched the back of her head. “You are trying to send your thoughts to me?”

Which had been just so much futile babble, of course. Ankaht had started back when Jennifer ponderously jumped up. Jennifer’s attempts to simplify and then reiterate her question were equally futile. After fifteen minutes more, Ankaht made a diffident gesture with her tentacle clusters—the Baldy equivalent of a shrug, maybe?—and left the room.

And that was the precise moment when Jennifer felt the first twinge that was not simply Alexander repositioning himself to reacquire his favorite sitting position atop her bladder.

She recalled the next eleven hours as a kind of hallucinatory madness. There was the first desperate hour when the Baldies seemed to have no idea what her trouble was. Her response—largely driven by the hormonal impulse and god-given right of all pregnant women to shout at anyone who Does Not Get It—was to let the aliens know what she thought of them and their whole, hideous, town-murdering, planet-stealing species. Then, as they backed away from her using that same slow caution with which sensible people attempt to distance themselves from rabid animals, Jennifer remembered:
Oh, right—they often kill people who start screaming and acting aggressively. Kind of like what I’m doing right now.

So Jennifer controlled herself—for her baby’s sake—and the Baldies eventually reapproached. She finally got the message through to them by digging around in the magazines they had brought her and by pointing—first, to an advertisement for baby formula, depicting an insipidly serene new mother and her gorgeous new infant—and second, to her own distended belly and other relevant regions of her physiology. There was some eye-dancing among the Baldies—some kind of hyperexcited staring match they seemed to engage in right before they changed any established routine—and off they went. Leaving her quite alone.

Her water broke about half an hour before the two hijacked midwives arrived. At whose appearance Jennifer cried like a child—as much for seeing other humans again as for the aid and comfort that their presence ensured. But that presence only lasted seventy-two hours, and Jennifer had neither the clarity of mind, nor training, to think of passing the two women any information useful to the local Resistance—whatever that might be. And the midwives—scared, out of their element, uncertain if the next minute was going to be their last—never brought up, or probably conceived a single thought toward, that topic. When they were removed—almost forcibly—from Jennifer and her infant, their faces fell inward, suddenly seamed and old with the surety of what they presumed would be their imminent execution. Jennifer felt that was a very unlikely outcome. But, unable to reassure them with absolute certainty, and unclear herself exactly
why
she felt so sure of their safety, she spent a critical moment floundering to craft a farewell that was both comforting and true—and in those two seconds, they were gone.

In the days following, things went along rather well—better than Jennifer had expected. The Baldies seemed to have either studied post-natal–care manuals or discovered that in this regard, human needs were not too dissimilar from their own. They were attentive but did not intrude unless something was clearly wanted. Things that were clearly wanted—Jennifer pointed to the items in the various magazines, and then online catalogs—they brought swiftly. Nothing else changed, and that was just fine with Jennifer, who focused on her new son and tried to believe that Sandro was not dead. The Baldies who had abducted her had roughed him up, but the blows had certainly not looked fatal, or even particularly serious.

Two days after the midwives had been removed, Jennifer was led to her new—and very properly appointed—accommodations. Interestingly, the eye-gouging color combinations of her former room were gone: pastels had evidently guided the aesthetic choices made for this environment, with everything being a variation on either blue or white or cream. It was rather dull, but it was also comforting, and she was able to settle into her new routine.

That routine alternated between caring for Zander and reciting lengthy documents for her captors. Once they were able to demonstrate—by rather pathetic pantomime—what they wanted her to do, Jennifer was never without a script in her hand: they had her recite stage plays; they had her recite public addresses dating back to Cicero; they had her read aloud from Aquinas, Aristotle, Sartre, and Seuss. After several days of this, they then encouraged her to share—vocally—her opinions regarding a short film they screened for her, a brief article they had her read, and then an endless array of essays, stories, and more. They asked her to name an insane number of objects—and now, with a baby to care for and a growing sense that the attempt at communication was genuine, she cooperated fully. But still, Ankaht had not returned, and Jennifer actually felt…well, not saddened, but disappointed. She had thought that Ankaht was somehow at the center of the efforts to establish communication with her. Jennifer’s belief in that conjecture arose not from any message that Ankaht had sent, but from her behavior: specifically, her dogged determination to bridge the gap between them. Likewise, the careful way that Ankaht moved and positioned herself in the room bespoke a studied, meticulous methodology.

Jennifer had also detected an undercurrent of desperation—but
how
had she detected it? Where had that impression come from? Jennifer could not identify its source, but it was strong—almost as though it were an emotion that had been sent to her by Ankaht. And, given what Jennifer had wondered and tried to ask in their last session—whether Ankaht might be trying to link minds with her—perhaps the notion of having been “sent” the impression of desperation was not entirely wrong, after all. But if this were true, and the two of them had been on the verge of making some genuine progress in communication, then why had Ankaht not resumed coming to see—

The door opened—and Ankaht entered. Jennifer took a half step in her direction…then stepped back, holding Zander closer to her. She fought the primal defense reflex. No, she would approach the alien—just not while holding her child. Jennifer put up a hand as if giving a traffic signal to wait and paced slowly back to Zander’s crib, where she laid him, carefully and gently, among his blankets. After covering him up, she turned and came back toward Ankaht.

The small, dark alien flushed very light—almost olive-drab for a moment—as she lifted her sinuous arms and fanned wide the ten tentacles in each cluster, so that the end of each of her arms suddenly expanded into a pattern very like the spokes of a wagon wheel. However, with each tentacle tapering to a point, it looked more akin to an opening star, or the welcoming gesture of some impossible anemone. And with the gesture came a tingle at the back of Jennifer’s skull that mounted, threatened to become almost painful, but then resolved into—

(Celebration.)

Jennifer started: Had she heard, or felt, that sense of…“celebration”? And then the not-mirrors to her left revealed that they were not just one-way observation windows: they were projectors of a sort. For across them, in light blue, luminous block letters, words slowly bloomed into existence: “Male child joy congratulations Jennifer Peitchkov.”

To which Jennifer Peitchkov responded: “Holy shit.” She stared at the words for what seemed like a very long time. They’d been very busy, these Baldies, and they’d come a long way. But she wanted to be sure.

Jennifer went to the beginning of the Baldy “sentence,” touched the words “male” and “child” in sequence—noticing that her fingers left a lingering orange glow behind—and then pointed at Zander’s crib. She looked back toward Ankaht. “Yes?”

Ankaht’s very physical response alarmed Jennifer, who feared that the Baldy was having some kind of fit…until she recognized the jerky up-and-down motions of the three-eyed head were not some alien version of an epileptic seizure but her visitor’s stiff and awkward attempts to mimic a human nod. Meanwhile, a tingling buzz at the top of Jennifer’s spinal column resolved into—

(Affirmative.)

—even as the wall blanked and spelled out: “Yes. Male child. Joy dam Jennifer Peitchkov.”

Jennifer smiled but wondered: Had they misspelled “dame” as “dam”? But no, they would be sticking to the dictionary, and come to think of it, the term “dam” did specifically refer to a mother—albeit among species of livestock. So why not simply use “mother”? Unless…

Of course. If they’re going through our dictionary, they’ve learned that a “mother” might have
adopted
a child, or has many other possible meanings—not all of which are pleasant. But “dam” is a word with only one meaning; it is not susceptible to the same confusions of context—

And another pulse intruded—gently—upon her thoughts:

“Affirmative. Clarity requirement.”

Jennifer looked up: Ankaht was almost tan. She swayed; Jennifer leaped forward, snagging a chair by its backrest and swinging it around and under Ankaht’s rather humanlike posterior. The alien sank into the chair, and Jennifer felt—without any tingling in her head whatsoever:

(Gratitude.)

It wasn’t a word…but it was more than a feeling. And predictably, on the mirror smart-boards of her cage-become-classroom, Jennifer saw the words “Ankaht thank Jennifer Peitchkov.”

When Jennifer looked back at Ankaht, she saw the three eyes focused on hers and was suddenly struck by how, studied closely, they were surprisingly like human eyes. She almost imagined they were glad, smiling even….

Jennifer leaned back, set her shoulders, nodded, and realized she had come to a decision. She was going to learn to communicate with this Baldy. This one felt—right. But before the lessons began, before she started down the path of complete communicative cooperation, there was one thing she had to have, and know, first. And getting this across was not going to be easy.…