Fluency (3 page)
“Why now?”
He sighed and sat down on the step next to her. “A NASA astronomer recently discovered there’s an asteroid on a collision course with the ship. The asteroid’s got an unusual orbit, thrown off by Jupiter’s gravitational pull. Earth’s orbit and the Target’s orbit only line up every 28 months, so we’ve got two shots, just two launch windows, before it’s obliterated. NASA wants you for the first mission, the Alpha Mission, to assess what’s there. If necessary, they’ll send a second mission to tow the Target into one of the Lagrangian points for further study.”
“Why not just let the asteroid call their bluff, if someone’s there? Doesn’t that eliminate the threat?”
“The threat’s only a small part of this. It’s the fucking holy grail of technology and knowledge about what else is out there in the universe. We need to bring this thing home and spend lifetimes studying it, reverse-engineering it.” He shrugged. His enthusiasm was showing.
She smiled a half smile and scrutinized him with an inquisitive look, “Well, that is some incredible story. Tell me what this means to me, exactly. Why is NASA looking for linguists? Why me?”
“I would think the need for a linguist is obvious. We need someone who can attempt to communicate with whoever or whatever is there, if there is someone there. And if there isn’t…well, there’s still going to be the need to decipher and document a new language. The focus has been on finding a linguist who has actual field experience learning languages from scratch.”
“It’s called a monolingual field situation, a scenario where there’s no common language to build from. It’s pretty rare. On
Earth, anyway,” she shook her head and blinked, for the first time showing disbelief.
“You’re one of the very few
who’s done this kind of thing before. Under some pretty difficult circumstances.”
She took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “Yes. I have.” She rose and started walking again.
He followed. Something had changed. Her mood was different. The curious, teasing air had evaporated. Now she seemed serious, almost melancholy. She paused in front of a creepy, marble monument surrounded by rusted wrought iron and a sea of broken black and white tiles. It towered over the two of them. Probably seven feet tall, it depicted an angel, kneeling upon a funeral altar, shrouded by its wings, head buried in its arms, weeping. It made something prickle in the back of his brainpan, and he didn’t want to turn his back on it when Holloway moved on.
“So, when should I tell them to arrange the flight for you?” he called after her.
She stopped and turned, an incredulous look on her face. “What?”
“To Houston—the Johnson Space Center—for the interviews. You’re the top candidate. There won’t be much competition. It sounds like it’s yours, really.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. He shouldn’t have said that—but it was true—so, what the hell.
“I’d be glad to consult from here, but I’m not the right person for that job. I can give you a few referrals of people who would be better suited.”
That wasn’t the reaction he expected. “You’re wrong. I had a chance to look over the other files. You’re the only person for this
job. You’re the only one with the kind of stamina, talent, and sheer guts it will take to do this.”
Her expression was skeptical. “I’m sure it looks like that on paper—”
He let his frustration bleed through. “Look, they’ve spent months looking at linguists—we’ve been working with plenty of linguists already, on another, similar project—and none of them can match your level of natural ability and experience. Come on! You’re a goddamn living legend in your field—and you’re what? 35? Do you know what we’ve been calling you at NASA? We call you Indiana Jane.”
The smile snuck back, just for a second.
“Well, ok—I call you that—but it’s fucking true.”
She snorted softly and looked away.
He rolled his eyes. They’d warned him not to curse. “Sorry. You were right when you guessed I don’t spend much time around women.” He eyed her, and dropped the exasperation. But he couldn’t stop sounding perplexed. “I don’t understand—why wouldn’t you want to do this? You’ve already seen most of this planet, why not go see part of the solar system and an alien space ship, too? I mean, I’d expect you to be salivating to get into that rocket!”
“You are.” It was a flat statement, an observation.
“Yes!”
“Are you going?”
He rubbed the back of his neck thoughtfully. “That depends.”
She shot him a shrewd, evaluating look. “On what?”
“There are five slots plus a linguist. They’ve got us narrowed down to twelve. That’s out of an original 108 possible astronauts. They’re still testing us, quizzing us, deciding. It’s down to the psychs now. The final decision will be soon. Then the training starts. We have a little over a year to get ready.”
He watched while a variety of expressions flickered over her momentarily unguarded features. Some, he couldn’t name. Some, he recognized.
Indecision, for one. Longing, for another. She hid it quickly, but he’d seen it. She wanted it. She wanted to go.
He smiled at her, a slow, rakish smile, in recognition of a ki
ndred spirit.
Her face went blank and she pushed by him. “I’m sorry you came all this way, Dr. Bergen. I won’t waste any more of your time. I’ll drive you back to your car and let you get back to your work. It sounds important.”
“What?” Damn it—he was chasing after her again and totally clueless about what was going on.
She didn’t reply. She was marching, fast, back toward the par
king lot.
“Wait a minute!”
Heels and that skinny skirt weren’t made for the kind of flight she was trying to take on the gravelly path. She stumbled a bit and he caught her arm. She pulled herself upright and wouldn’t meet his gaze.
“What’s holding you back? You were born for this mission.”
She laughed without humor. Her golden-blonde hair was starting to unravel from its tidy arrangement.
He still had a hold on her arm. He squeezed it. “That little trip you took to South America took balls.”
She cocked an eyebrow at him.
He shrugged helplessly.
She shook her head and more hair came loose. “That wasn’t supposed to be me.”
She seemed steady now, so he dropped his hand away. “What? Your file doesn’t say anything about that.”
“I study endangered languages, yes, but mostly among the remnants of the native tribes of Canada. I wasn’t the one slated to go to Brazil three years ago. It was one of my students. She was the perfect candidate—excellent language skills, fearless, always ready for a challenge. But she turned up pregnant two weeks before she was due to leave. The project was funded. It was important work. It is so rare to find a tribe so untouched by the modern world. We knew that the things that could be learned there could potentially rock the foundations of what we thought we knew about how language forms in the human brain. We hoped it would—and it did—overturn entrenched ideas about recursion….” She stopped herself, probably realizing he didn’t have a clue what she was talking about.
Her lips were tight as she spoke, “She wanted to go anyway. She wanted to
…. I couldn’t let her! The only way to keep her here, to keep her safe, was to go myself. That’s why I went. My hand was forced. So, I went. I—”
“You proved what you set out to prove.”
She shuddered. “Yes, but at what cost? Was it worth the lives that were lost to prove some ancient, pedantic academic wrong?”
“That was a bad break.”
Her expression was bleak, full of anguish. “A bad break? People died. They left families behind—people who needed them, relied on them. I couldn’t prevent it. I couldn’t protect them. I couldn’t save them.”
He frowned. “They were adults. They knew the risks when they signed up—just like you did.”
She shook her head slowly, her lips pursed together in a thin, white line. “Look, I’m not some wild adventurer. I’m not who you think I am.”
“Your childhood would suggest otherwise,” he said sardonica
lly.
“That was my parents. That wasn’t me.” She resumed a crisp stride back to her car.
He trailed behind her, bewildered. He was going to catch hell when he got back. They were going to assume he’d made some kind of off-color remark that put her off. They were going to think he’d fucked up a sure thing. He’d failed their test.
When he came out of the park, she was in the car and the motor was running. He got in and she took off, her driving no longer measured and controlled. She was going a little faster, taking a few more risks.
“Is it fear?” he asked quietly. “Because we all…I mean, it’s normal….”
“No.”
It was a forceful answer. She didn’t say anything more. He had to take that at face value. She parked on campus and sat there, staring straight ahead.
“They’re going to ask me why. What should I tell them?”
“When people take risks, they do it for selfish reasons, for their own personal indulgence. They don’t consider how their actions will affect others.”
“Who will you affect, Doc? We’ve done our research. There isn’t a thing about you we haven’t considered. You tick off every box. You’re divorced, have no children. Your one surviving parent appears to be off the grid and the grandparents you spent your teens with are both deceased.”
She looked down at her lap.
He fished in his wallet for a business card. She took it silently and he got out. The car was already getting hot in the sun and he didn’t know what else to say to her. He was just about to slam the door when he thought of one last thing, “Are you going to be like this girl, this student of yours, with regrets? Or are you going to fulfill your potential and do something absolutely amazing that will benefit the human race?”
She didn’t reply, only closed her eyes.
He retrieved his ID card from inside the building and reme
mbered he needed her to sign the confidentiality agreement. As he headed for his own car, he noted that hers was gone. So, he’d screwed that up, too, dammit.
* * *
Partway back to Pasadena, his cell rang. It was Holloway.
Her voice sounded cold, formal, rehearsed. “Dr. Bergen? This is Dr. Holloway.”
He checked his mirrors and decided not to change lanes just yet. “Yeah, this is Berg.”
She cleared her throat. “Have your people contact me about the arrangements.”
He sat up in his seat a little straighter. “Oh, you changed your mind?”
“I’ll go to Houston. That’s all I’ll agree to, for now. And that’s just to satisfy my curiosity.”
3
Bergen cursed.
“Sorry, Doctor Holloway—but it looks like you’re out of a job,” Walsh said flatly.
Jane let out the breath she’d been holding. She told herself she should be relieved. “Don’t be too quick to make assumptions,” she found herself musing aloud. “This could be a social custom that we don’t understand. Visitors may be expected to follow the lights to a designated location. It could be a welcoming gesture.”
“Like walking the red carpet, or something,” Gibbs suggested.
“Think there’s any paparazzi?” Bergen said.
Walsh shook his head. “The docking lights, the airlock opening, the interior lights—are probably automated, triggered by proximity. I think we’re looking at the ‘vacant’ scenario here.”
A gut feeling insisted he was wrong. There was someone in there. Jane eased forward, reaching to pull herself through the opening.
Bergen was grimacing. “So, where does that put us on the flow chart of doom?”
Walsh grabbed Jane from behind before she could go further. “Wait. Compton—getting any response to the radio transmission?”
“Negative, Commander. No joy,” Compton said evenly from the cockpit.
Jane spoke up, “They’ve welcomed us. They know we’re here. I think, maybe, they expect us to—”
“Run like rats through a maze?” Bergen put in with an arched brow.
Jane swiveled to face him, scowling. “Don’t judge them, Dr. Bergen. We don’t know anything about them. You jeopardize the mission with comments like that. They could be monitoring us, even now.”
“You think they speak English, Doc?” Bergen said dryly.
Had they forgotten all the training? Jane put some snap in her voice, “We’ve been through this. It’s a mistake to assume an
ything. We have to remember their culture is completely foreign. They don’t think like we do. Perhaps they fear their appearance will frighten us. They may be shy—eager to observe our behavior before they show themselves. There could be hundreds of reasons that I’m not equipped to imagine.”
Walsh turned toward the base of the capsule. “I don’t think there’s any ‘they’ to be worried about, Holloway. It’ll be our job to figure out why that is.”
Jane grit her teeth.
Walsh pushed off for the cockpit. “We’ll give this some time.”
Bergen fiddled with an instrument. “It’s pressurized. We’re at about 12 psi now. I should go in there and take some air samples, at least.”
Walsh said, “No. Stay put for now.”
“But—” Jane started to argue, though she knew she was pushing it.
Walsh turned, an eloquent pirouette. “Under the protocol of this scenario, you’re working for me, Dr. Holloway. We’ll do this my way.” He proceeded to send another transmission to Houston, detailing what had occurred so far.
An elaborate “If this, then that” chart had been hammered out in Houston. Depending upon the circumstances they met at the Target, either she or Walsh were in command at any given time. Walsh wasn’t going to hand over the baton without proof that there was someone in there, which was fine. Jane had never wanted the command, but she did care about getting this right. First contact was a delicate thing, even back home, among humans. And this was far more precarious.
Walsh was following the protocols they’d hammered out in Houston. At some point, though, she’d developed doubts that h
uman logic would mean anything out here.
Jane lingered with Bergen at the apex of the capsule. Bergen was peering into the ship, getting as close as he dared without i
ncurring Walsh’s irritation. He was getting twitchy, checking his instruments and reorienting them on his suit. Through her helmet, she could hear the muffled scritch of the velcro peeling apart repeatedly.
“Which way is up?” she asked Bergen.
He thwacked her helmet with his gloved knuckles. “Turn on your comm, Doc.”
Damn.
She’d hoped he could hear her speaking quietly. Must every word, every movement, be public? At least her thoughts were still her own. She turned the comm back on. “Which way is up?”
“Hm.” He gazed at her thoughtfully. “I was just wondering the same thing. In microgravity, it doesn’t matter. Yet, we still like to think of an up and a down orientation. They may as well.”
She nodded, as much as the stiff suit would allow. “Well, you’re the engineer. What do you think? Did they put the lights in the floor or the ceiling? There aren’t any other cues, are there?”
“Hard to say, since the lights are flush with the surface. It could really go either way.”
“Gibbs’ comment about the red carpet, though—and the way they turned on—made me think floor. You?”
“Mm. I’d like to get in there and take some measurements, but
….” He glanced back toward Walsh with frustration.
Walsh studiously ignored their conversation.
“Does it resemble the craft at Area 51 in any way?”
“That’s minuscule by comparison. So far I don’t have anything to compare.”
Jane inspected the smooth material that lined the alien craft. It was a gloomy color, not quite beige, not quite green, and darker than she would expect for a vessel in deep space from a purely psychological point of view—it didn’t reflect light. But the passageway itself was spacious.
“It seems to be roughly human in dimension, doesn’t it? If we were to construct a vessel of this size, wouldn’t our hallways r
esemble this in size and shape?”
Bergen’s eyebrows shot up as he considered. “Not really. You’re comparing it to structures on Earth with gravity—where people are standing upright. I’d expect something a bit smaller for us, to conserve space and air. That looks to be about two and a half to three meters from floor to ceiling. I’d design something closer to two, or even less for a hallway.”
Jane stayed alert, hoping someone might still come forward. If the vessel were manned by a skeleton crew and the controls to open the hatch were far away, they could arrive any minute.
The bizarre sensation she’d felt before hadn’t lingered. What had that been?
Some physical manifestation of fear? She considered that until she looked up and saw that Bergen was studying her intently.
“What are you thinking about, Doc?” he asked softly.
“I…well, I was thinking about when we opened the hatch. I—I felt so strange there for a few minutes. Did you—”
A hiss of static came over the comm and they turned toward the others. It was a broadcast from Houston, the voice of the NASA Administrator, Gordon Bonham. “Providence. Houston. Acknow
ledged. Received audio transmission. Awaiting video transmission at this time. Our recommendation: proceed with caution. Operation: Delta Tango Uniform. Houston out.”
Jane shook her head. The message was in code, telling them to explore the ship with weapons drawn—expecting hostiles. Walsh would follow this order to the letter, she was sure.
* * *
Walsh made a show of handing Jane a weapon. She refused it, as he knew she would. She had always objected to any contingency that called for weapons use.
Jane blinked hard. The buzzing had returned, though it was softer this time—a little easier to ignore. Something about it ni
ggled at her. She’d never felt anything like it before. Not when she was struggling to drag her colleagues to safety by canoe, deep in the Amazon River basin, flushed with fever and starving, forced to push on despite the death of their guide. Not when she’d encountered giant snakes or carnivorous insects that swarmed over a person’s body while they slept, nor when she’d stumbled upon hostile tribesmen who would just as soon deliver a poison dart as a greeting. Even in those horrifying, desperate, exhausted moments she’d never felt a fear like this, that tapped into her ability to reason.
Walsh and Gibbs were poised near the meter-wide portal b
etween the two vessels.
“What color would you call that, Jane? Split pea? Bilge green? Puce? Ugly as hell,” Gibbs commented with a wink, gesturing t
oward the Target.
Jane nodded distractedly. She couldn’t answer Gibbs' call for levity. He was too excited to look disappointed.
Walsh pushed off and half a second later, Gibbs did as well. She pulled herself closer.
A strangled cry and a yelp resounded in her ears as Walsh and Gibbs crashed into a heap on the surface that housed the greenish lights.
The floor, evidently.
“Shit,” Bergen muttered, his blue eyes lighting up. “Artificial gravity. Wasn’t expecting that.”
“Really?” Jane asked. “I was sort of—”
Compton shoved his way in, pulling Ajaya to the opening as he repeated, “Walsh, Gibbs—report.”
Ajaya’s fine features were pressed into a mask of worry. “They’ve passed out. Clearly. They shouldn’t be out long. I dearly hope they haven’t broken bones.”
Bergen huffed through tight lips. “We have no idea how many G’s that is. Even if it’s only one-G—they’re wearing 230-pound suits. They’re going to have a hell of a time getting up. If that’s more than one-G, this could be a serious problem. We still don’t know if that’s breathable air in there.”
They peered into the Target, helmets gently tapping.
“They’re so close. Shouldn’t we try to pull them out?” Jane asked the others.
Ajaya frowned. “We could try—but I suspect we would pass out before we could get a hold on them. Let’s give it another moment.”
Walsh moved his arm.
“Walsh, report,” Compton barked.
“Ffffthff,” was all Walsh could manage. Then he groaned, “Dammit, Gibbs, get off me.”
Gibbs didn’t respond.
Ajaya leaned in. “Commander, are you hurt?”
“Just my pride. Bergen, were you keeping this as your special little secret for me, or what?” Walsh wheezed.
Bergen was miffed.
“He was just as surprised as you are, Dr. Walsh,” Jane put in.
“Would it have killed you to throw something in here to test for it?” Walsh groused.
“What should I have thrown?” Bergen countered. “This million dollar instrument or that—”
Jane placed her gloved hand on the side of his face shield and he went quiet, visibly stewing.
“Oh, man—that was a rush!” Gibbs sprung up suddenly, his startled, dark-skinned face looming close to the opening before he fell back toward the floor and jounced around, out of control—at one point landing squarely on Walsh’s abdomen.
Walsh let
out an “Oof,” and scrambled back. “Son-of-a—someone’s playing around with the settings on this gravity-thing and it’s not funny!”
Bergen pulled closer, clearly intrigued. “What’s going on in there?”
“A bouncy-house comes to mind,” Gibbs said, grinning. He righted himself and took unsteady, springy steps toward the hatch, his smiling face bobbing up and down in front of the opening. He gestured at Compton, “Ha! Come on in, Pops. Tell us how this compares to the moon.”
Compton, always good-natured, snorted. He’d never been on a
Lunar mission, but had been selected to the astronaut program late in that era.
“You ok, Ronald?” Ajaya asked.
“Oh, fine, fine.” Gibbs chuckled softly and glanced back at Walsh, who was getting to his feet. “Walsh broke my fall. It felt like a lot more than one-G when we fell in. Now it feels like a lot less. It just changed on a dime.” Gibbs would know about the transition to gravity. He’d been back and forth to the International Space Station three times in his career.
“Huh,” Bergen uttered, his eyes roving back and forth, analy
zing what that might mean about the technology, Jane supposed.
“They must be observing us.” Jane whispered. She turned to Bergen. “They don’t know what to expect from us any more than we know what to expect from them. They adjusted the gravity when they saw it distressed us—it was a friendly gesture.”
Bergen looked unnerved. “Either that, or they’re enjoying toying with us.”
Gibbs’ smile faded. “I like Jane’s idea better.”
“Me too,” said Ajaya. She hovered on the lip of the hatch, ready to slide in to check on her charges. “Commander, do we move forward now, or regroup?”
Walsh’s expression was grim. He turned away from the ca
psule. He raised his weapon. “Forward.”
One by one they slipped inside, springing uncertainly, cautiou
sly, like kids on their first trampoline, down the hall. Jane reveled in the feeling of gravity tugging on her again, even though the effect was small. She could feel the long muscles in her legs stretching in a way only gravity could replicate and wished she could get out of the suit so she could fully enjoy it.
She was a little unsteady, a little dizzy, had some trouble hea
ding in a straight line, but that was expected after such a long exposure to microgravity. It wasn’t as bad as it could be. She’d been told some astronauts had trouble walking, turning, focusing their gaze.
Gibbs paused in front of her, made an about-face, and sketched a salute at Compton. “Keep the motor runnin’, the home fires burnin’, and all that jazz, Pops.”