Xenophobia (30 page)

She sat down again and slouched in the seat. Before long the rhythmic pulse through the fuselage caused her to drift off to sleep.

It seemed as though no sooner had she closed her eyes than someone was saying, “We’re five minutes out,” waking her from her slumber.

Three hours had passed in the blink of an eye.

The headphones hurt her head. Like everything military, they were designed to be functional, not comfortable. She lifted them away from her ears for a moment, wanting to free her head from their vice-like grip, but the deafening sound of the engines overruled her discomfort and she put them back on. Five minutes couldn’t come soon enough.

Bower was tempted to get up and watch the landing out of the window, but that probably wasn’t the smartest move, and besides, what would she see? Probably just the ocean. Looking sideways, she wouldn’t see the ship until they touched down.

A couple of minutes later, the pilot said, “Fifty meters.”

Bower could feel the Osprey slowing its descent, hovering as it picked its spot for landing. The wheels touched down gently and she breathed a sigh of relief as the engines powered down.

Stella had been quiet throughout the trip, but during the descent the alien must have realized they’d arrived. The tiny insects swarming over Elvis returned to the bulbous heart of the spindly creature. Elvis looked at his arm. It looked entirely normal, as though nothing had ever happened. Bower shook her head in admiration. There was a lot she could learn from Stella in regards to medical science.

The engines dropped to a whine and Bower removed her headphones. The rear ramp lowered and Bower could already feel the gentle sway of the ship beneath them as it rolled through the swell of the open ocean. The smell of sea spray filled the air.

Several officers stood on the deck well beyond the Osprey’s open tailgate, but Bower’s eyes were drawn to the film crew. There were three cameramen, at least Bower assumed they were men, she couldn’t tell at first.

“Green light,” said Elvis, getting up and putting his shirt on.

Bower and Elvis walked
side by side
down the ramp. In some unspoken agreement they were shielding Stella. It was a token gesture, but Stella seemed to appreciate their slow walk. Out of the corner of her eye, Bower could see Stella edging forward behind them, weary of a new environment. Could Stella swim? This could be terrifying for the alien.

For the most part, the flight deck was empty, but Bower could see sailors further up the craft working with a crane. The welcoming committee gave them plenty of room to step down onto the deck.

“I’m Captain Helen Lovell,” one of the officers said, introducing herself. “This is my XO, James Davidson.”

Bower was pleasantly surprised to meet a female captain of a warship. Both she and Elvis introduced themselves. Bower shook hands with Captain Lovell, while Elvis saluted.

Stella kept her distance, but she was on the deck of the ship with its rough, painted grit surface designed to keep sailors from slipping in the wet. Stella looked magnificent against the drab, battleship grays surrounding her. Her red fronds glistened in the sunlight.

Bower was sure Stella was aware of this amiable exchange and hoped the pleasantries would put the alien at ease. In shaking Davidson’s hand, she could feel his fingers trembling slightly. It had to be nerve-wracking to put on a pretense of civility with a massive alien creature looming blood-red behind them.

The film crew were wearing NASA polo shirts.

“Dr. Anish Ambar,” said an older man, speaking with a distinct Indian accent. His face was kind, his skin a soft shade of brown. He was impeccably groomed, with a neatly trimmed mustache and short black hair. Soft grey highlights peppered his mustache but his hair still retained its youthful vigor. “Director of Astrobiology with SETI, based out of Mumbai.”

“It’s a pleasure,” Bower replied. She went to introduce herself, but Dr. Anish continued speaking.

“Dr. Bower, we are deeply indebted to you and your colleague for preserving the life of this remarkable creature.”

Bower turned to one side, “Dr. Ambar, this is Stella. Stella, Dr. Ambar.” There was a nice introversion in a formal introduction. Bower hoped Stella picked up on that, with the repetition of both names making it clear these were proper nouns.

Over the past day, Bower had observed how the alien could alter its apparent height by flexing or softening the blades that carried it onward. Here, on the deck of a US warship, the creature raised up on the tip of its blades, giving it an impressive height of almost ten feet. It’s medusa-like head of scarlet fronds swayed like a snake sampling the air with its tongue.

The cameras were rolling, catching footage of the majestic red blades and the swarm of creatures at Stella’s heart.

One of the cameramen stepped out to get a clear shot of the alien and Stella reacted, bristling with her fronds stiffening like sword blades.

“You’re going to have to put those away,” Elvis said. “She may think they’re weapons.”

“Of course, of course,” Dr. Ambar replied. The cameramen didn’t have to be told, they took the cameras off their shoulders and held them next to their thighs, still recording but without appearing threatening. Lovell and
Davidson looked uncomfortably nervous.

Stella ambled closer to Elvis and Bower.

“Easy girl,” Elvis said, his hands reaching out and touching her sharp spear tips. Stella responded, her fronds wrapping gently around his hand like leather straps. She relaxed her legs as well, allowing the fronds that held her up to flex and settle on the deck. The NASA film crew caught the interaction on video, and Bower could see Dr. Ambar was fascinated.

“If you’ll excuses us,” Captain Lovell said. “We need to get this deck cleared and report in to the task force. The alien craft is no more than seventy nautical miles out and I want to make sure we’re not in breach of our obligations.”

Both Bower and Elvis went to speak at the same time, stunned by what they were hearing. Elvis let Bower continue.

“I’m sorry, could you explain?”

Lovell and Davidson had already turned. They climbed a set of stairs leading from the flight deck to the com-tower. From there, they wasted no time in disappearing inside the bowels of the ship.

“It’s OK,” Dr. Ambar replied, seeing the concern on Bower’s face. “We should be fine here, they just want to dump the Osprey.”

“Dump the Osprey?” Bower said, confused.

She looked back. Several sailors dressed in chemical warfare suits were working with a low-profile, heavy-duty tractor to push the Osprey toward the edge of the ship. The flight crew from the Osprey were standing to one side, watching as the squat looking vehicle with beefy tires pushed on the wheels of their aircraft. One wheel on the Osprey slipped, crashing with a thud on the edge of the landing deck and Stella flexed.

“Green light,” Elvis said, remaining in physical contact with the creature to provide some reassurance.

The tractor repositioned itself, pushing on the front wheel of the aircraft and the Osprey plunged overboard, disappearing over the side of the ship and splashing into the water.

The NASA film crew discretely recorded Stella’s reactions from several angles, watching as she again bristled defensively at the sharp crack of noise and the motion of the tractor.

Bower walked to one side and looked down the length of the ship as crewmen and women dumped various pieces of military hardware over the edge of the USS William Lawrence. Although she didn’t recognize most of the equipment being dumped, she did catch sight of a platform-mounted Gatling gun. The gun was easily the size of a compact car, with a large steel plate at its base and some kind of radar dome near the multiple gun barrels. The crane released the Gatling gun and it plunged into the sea, disappearing beneath the waves in a burst of spray.

“What’s going on?” Elvis asked.

“We’ve been in contact with the mothership,” Dr. Ambar said. “They’re coming to get her.”

Bower heard that. She jogged back over. She didn’t know whether to be excited for Stella or weary.

“You’re using her as bait?” Elvis asked, clearly defensive.

“Not as bait,” Ambar replied in his distinct, Bombay accent. “She is a peace offering. We are trying to show this interstellar alien species that all this was a mistake. Returning Stella is a goodwill offering, something to let them know we are sorry for what has transpired, we’re making amends. This is a repatriation.”

“You’ve been in contact with them?” Bower asked, seeking clarification. “So you can talk to them?”

“Not so much talk as make declarations. They understand far more than they let on when they speak back.”

“But they talk back?”

“Yes. But their replies are often just a bunch of nouns thrown together. There’s no grammar or syntax, just blunt nouns and the odd verb. After we made it clear one of their kind had survived they sent a floater. We observed the craft enter our atmosphere about two hours ago, over water rather than land.”

Dr. Ambar pointed behind the ship. “We should get our first glimpse of the rescue craft from somewhere over there. In the meantime, the USS William Lawrence is under orders to demilitarize. They’re throwing all their weaponry overboard along with anything that could be mistaken as a weapon.”

He paused for a moment. His voice sounded introspective, sad.

“But they’re leaving. They’re abandoning the petulant children of Earth.”

“I don’t understand? Why would they leave?” Elvis asked.

“They said they have what they came for.”

“What did they come for?” Bower asked.

“We don’t know. We were hoping you might be able to help us figure that out. I have my own ideas but nothing concrete. If they came to examine our intelligence they’ve surely concluded we’re barbarians. We have overreacted, we’ve ruined our first contact with life from beyond this small orb.”

“What were the pods?” Bower asked. “Did you get to examine any of them?”

“Yes,” Dr. Ambar replied. “But they broke down rapidly in our highly oxygenated atmosphere.

“We were able to examine some of the organic residue. In nature, there are roughly twenty or so amino acids that make up the bulk of the proteins we observe in the animal kingdom, but we know of over five hundred amino acids in all. These alien creatures and their pods incorporate roughly three hundred of these acids in their biology, making them distinctly unique from any form of life on Earth.”

He adjusted his glasses as he spoke.

“It’s no surprise, of course, after all, they are aliens, but it was important to observe as it rules out any kind of panspermia relationship between us and them.”

Bower nodded, struggling to keep up with the concepts he was posing.

Dr. Ambar gestured with his hands as he spoke.

“
We think the pods were probes.
A team of researchers out of MIT detected a faint electromagnetic signal from one of the pods, and they were able to observe the signal change as the pod was exposed to different kinds of organic substances. Just someone entering the room was enough to elicit a unique transmission. These probes appear to have been sampling Earth.”

“So they were dropping probes like sonar buoys?” Elvis asked.

“Yes. They weren’t seeding Earth, they were surveying our biology, gathering information on our ecosystem in much the same way we would conduct a survey of life in the Amazon rainforest. Well, it’s only a theory, my theory, but I think that’s why they left. The survey was complete.”

“But that makes no sense,” Elvis said. “They’ve come all this way, why leave so soon?”

“Look at us,” Dr. Ambar said. “We’ve been acting like spoiled brats. We’ve been throwing tantrums, carrying on like they owe us something. They owe us nothing. Our focus has been so insular, so egotistical. Earth is about us, humans, homo sapiens. Maybe, just maybe, they disagree.

“We can rage all we want, but they don’t owe us anything. As hard as it is to accept, there’s a lesson here for humanity: the universe does not revolve around our every whim.”

Dr. Ambar stepped slowly past Elvis, reaching out toward the alien creature.

“We killed hundreds of them, but we’re not even sure how in most cases. Once the decay process starts their bodies are gone within days, leaving nothing but trace elements. Most of them died in the crashes. Those that survived were hunted down and killed by fearful soldiers from all countries, and yet our bullets never so much as scratched their magnificent frame. So curious.”

Stella allowed Dr. Ambar to touch her stiff legs as they spread wide across the deck to keep her stable.

“This specimen is the first one I’ve heard of that’s docile.”

“Oh,” Elvis replied. “Docile isn’t a word I’d use to describe Stella. You don’t want to see her when she gets angry.”

“And yet it wasn’t anger,” Bower added. “It was fear. She was afraid of us.”

“Fear?” Dr. Ambar said, somewhat lost in thought at the concept.

Hundreds of tiny creatures streamed down the alien’s fronds, touching briefly against Dr. Ambar’s fingers before retreating again.

“Magnificent,” he said without any hint of fear in his voice.

One of the cameramen standing with Ambar said, “I’m picking up oscillating shades in both infrared and ultraviolet.”

Dr. Ambar and Bower looked down at the cameraman’s screen as he held his camera low. The screen was divided in two, with false color representing the various spectra. The patterns differed from each other and from those they were seeing in the visible spectrum.

“Multitasking?” Ambar suggested.

Bower shrugged, she went to say something but Elvis cut her off, pointing at the horizon as he said, “They’re here.”

A floater was visible on the horizon, moving parallel to the USS William Lawrence. Even at a distance of roughly twenty miles, the bulbous head was apparent as were the trailing tentacles.

“I want footage from multiple angles,” Ambar said as Captain Lovell stepped back out onto the flight deck. “James, get up to the bridge. Stay on the wide-angle as long as you can. Stevens, head to the stern. Campelli, you stay with me.”

The cameramen split up.

Lovell walked over, saying, “We’re currently steaming due north at 18 knots with a slight headwind. We’ll hold this course until after the rendezvous is complete. The alien vessel is gaining at a steady rate so I don’t see any problem with this heading. Do we have any idea how the craft will land?”

Ambar and Bower looked at each other; neither had an answer.

“We’re 509 feet in length, displacing 6,800 tons light, with a total displacement of just over 9,000 tons, with our current loading we have roughly 1200 tons leeway. Do you have any idea how heavy that floater is or if it will touch down in its entirety?”

Bower bit her lip. The prospect of being accidentally sunk by the weight of the alien craft hadn’t crossed her mind. She just assumed everything would be OK.

“I’m sure we’ll be fine, captain,” Dr. Ambar replied. Bower knew that tone of voice, that was the ‘I have no bloody idea, but I’m in charge so it will be fine’ pseudo-authoritative tone she’d used so many times before as a doctor. It was a bluff, the bravado of a mind confident of tackling whatever may come, only in this circumstance it was sorely misplaced, and she knew it.

Captain Lovell didn’t seem to question Dr. Ambar’s rather vague judgment. In a bland, matter-of-fact tone, she said, “We have two other destroyers, the USS Dewey and the USS Sampson, roughly fifty nautical miles to our north-east, ready to render assistance if needed. My crew is on standby for evacuation. If the order to evacuate is given, you will be issued with a life-vest and life-rafts will be deployed.”

Ambar nodded, saying, “Understood. Thank you, captain.”

Lovell excused herself.

Stella had spotted the floater. Her core lit up with rolling patterns, glistening in the setting sun.

“Green light,” the creature said, and Dr. Ambar had a double-take, looking at both the alien and Bower, recognizing Bower’s voice. Bower smiled. Dr. Ambar seemed to want some kind of explanation but that was beyond her. Bower simply shrugged her shoulders.

“Yes,” Elvis replied. “Green light. You’re going home, Stella, home.”

“Home.”

The alien’s fronds no longer waved with the breeze, they stiffened momentarily, but not in a manner that seemed hostile. It was as though the creature was stretching and then relaxing. The core of the alien continued to display an astonishing variety of patterns, moving in a pattern reminiscent of a kaleidoscope.

Bower, Elvis and Dr. Ambar stood alone with the cameraman, watching Stella as she scurried around the deck of the warship in excitement.

Stella couldn’t sit still, Bower noted, smiling at the realization of just how human that seemed. Perhaps they were more alike than she thought. Could it be that intelligent life everywhere felt at least the same base emotions? Fear, excitement, joy, sorrow and satisfaction; these were primal parts of human intelligence. As much as she liked to think of herself as coldly logical, she knew that was a myth of her own choosing. There was no Mr Spock. For the most part, those that considered themselves logical were blind to the emotions that drove them on. And here, she could see the same effervescence she knew she’d feel setting foot in England again, or on seeing her Mom and Dad again. It was the excitement of life.

Stella’s fronds slapped at the deck. She raced from one side to another, back and forth, zigging and zagging. For the first time, her fronds changed color, pulsing from red to blue, passing through every hue in the rainbow.

“She’s as excited as a puppy dog,” Elvis said.

“We have so much to learn,” Dr. Ambar added.

The cameraman moved to one side, getting a shot of them with Stella racing around and the floater in the background. Bower found herself wondering who was watching. She’d already seen dozens of faces at the various portholes and windows behind them, each vying for a clear view, with camera phones held up to capture this extraordinary moment.

Was this encounter being broadcast live? Bower felt like she should be doing something other than just standing there.

“Isn’t she beautiful?” Dr. Ambar asked.

“Yes, she is,” Bower replied, not having thought of the alien in such terms before. Dr. Ambar awakened the sense of awe she felt when she first saw the alien spacecraft in orbit so high above the atmosphere.

They stood there watching Stella as the floater drifted to within a mile or so, slowly moving closer to the Lawrence.
Bower marveled at the brilliant plumage displayed by the alien vessel. The extended bladder kept the floater buoyant within Earth’s atmosphere. The rich purples, yellows and reds stretching across the bladder were accentuated by the last rays of the sun slipping below the horizon.

The alien craft paced itself so it would reach the warship without overshooting them. By the time the floater was overhead, the alien craft matched both their speed and direction. As the floater reached the Lawrence, it descended, coming down from several hundred feet. This was a larger craft than those Bower had seen in Africa, easily dwarfing the warship. Her heart pounded within her chest.

The wind howled across the deck. Sea-spray hung in the air. The warship rolled slightly with the swell of the ocean. But all eyes were on the tubular proboscis descending from beneath the floater.

To Bower, the proboscis looked distinctly like the trachea of a human. There were dozens of seemingly cartilage rings evenly spaced, providing the proboscis with structure, allowing it to form a tunnel large enough to drive a car within. There was no differentiation between the base, sides or roof of this windpipe-like structure. It would have looked the same from any orientation and Bower wondered about its function when it wasn’t rescuing stranded aliens.

“Here we go,” Dr. Ambar said.

The underside of the floater rested on the mast extending above the bridge of the USS William Lawrence. If the captain wasn’t already freaked out, she would be now. Bower watched as the radar domes on either side of the mast disappeared into a thick mat of blood red organic matter. As the proboscis extended down to the lower flight deck, the sound of metal groaning under the weight of the alien craft filled the air. Bower felt the warship shift beneath her feet, skewing slightly to one side beneath the imposing alien craft.

As the proboscis reached to within a few feet of the deck, Stella raced up to it, clambering onboard with astonishing agility. Within a fraction of a second, she was gone. The proboscis rested on the deck, oozing a sticky, transparent saliva, for lack of a better word.

There was no goodbye, no acknowledgment of all they’d been through, no emotional parting. Stella was gone.

Dr. Ambar stepped back while Elvis and Bower remained where they were, barely ten feet from the fleshy alien appendage. Bower wasn’t sure what the alien craft was waiting for, but the seconds passed, turning to minutes. Elvis looked at her but he didn’t speak. Words failed them. Looking down the empty alien trachea, Bower could see what seemed to be mucus lining the inside of the fleshy tube.

Over the howl of the whirling wind, she heard two words, “Green light.”

There, rolling down the inside of the
proboscis, was Stella. She was moving around the tunnel, racing down through the trachea in a corkscrew motion that took her over the ceiling several times.

“Green light. Understand? Green light.”

“What do you ...” Elvis never finished his sentence. Like Bower, he had to have known what she meant. The alien creature wheeled before the two of them, its gooey fronds gently slapping at her arms and raking across his chest. Again, Stella cried, “Understand. Green light. Understand.”

Bower hesitated. Stella rocked around behind her, gently urging her on with her fronds softly tapping her back and shoulders.

“Understand,” the creature said again.

From behind her, Dr. Ambar said, “Go.”

Elvis was already walking forward. He reached out with one hand as he stepped inside the
proboscis, saying, “It smells like musty socks.” Looking at the slimy substance sticking to his hand, he added, “This is going to get messy.”

Bower swallowed.

“Come on,” Elvis yelled, already clambering inside the organic alien structure. “What are you afraid of?”

“How about, everything?” Bower cried in reply, to which Elvis laughed.

“What’s the worst that could happen?” he asked as she walked forward and stood in front of the proboscis. Mucus oozed around her boots.

“We could die.”

“We could,” he agreed.

Why did he have to agree? That really didn’t help. He was supposed to say something encouraging.

Bower stood there realizing that with one step she would move from her world to another, from the coarse, gritty, battleship-grey flight deck of the USS William Lawrence into a living creature that had traversed the heavens. She took a step, feeling the soft, spongy inside of the trachea beneath her boots, a stark contrast to the firm deck of the warship.

Bower reached out with her hand, leaning to one side so she could use the inside of the proboscis for balance as she stepped into the creature. It didn’t feel right to be standing on soft tissue. Everything about what she was doing screamed, No. She wanted to turn and run, but Elvis was right. There was nothing to fear. Her fear was of the unknown, it was irrational. The inquisitive doctor within pushed her onward.

No sooner had Bower’s other foot left the deck of the warship than Stella rushed past, twirling across the side and then the roof of the windpipe as she passed Elvis.

Bower felt the proboscis lift off from the deck of the Lawrence. She couldn’t help but look back. She watched as the deck of the warship dropped away rapidly. The proboscis was being withdrawn, its mouth closed like a sphincter, forcing her to move on. The cartilage-like rings were no more than twenty feet apart, but Bower struggled in the soft tissue in between. It was hard to keep her footing and she fell to her knees. Thick mucus covered her trousers.

“Well,” she said, accepting a sticky, gooey hand from Elvis to help her stand. “I guess things could be worse.”

“That’s the spirit,” Elvis replied.

Stella returned. Bower assumed it was Stella, but she wasn’t sure when another two creatures appeared beside the first alien. It was impossible to tell them apart, although they probably thought about human’s the same way. The creature she assumed was Stella picked up Elvis and carried him away, only he was floating on a sea of constantly moving fronds gently slapping against his back. As the creature moved, its arms became legs, wheeling backwards and transforming into arms again as they came around yet again to carry Elvis on.

“Oh,” he yelled. “Crowd surfing. I love it.”

Bower held out her hand, wanting to say she was fine, that she’d make it on her own, but there was no discussion to be had. Another creature wheeled toward her, engulfing her and raising her up.

She lost sight of Elvis, which worried her.

As she was carried along she called out, “This is like being massaged by a car wash.”

“Just go with it,” Elvis yelled back, and Bower felt comforted hearing his voice.

To her, being carried by these creatures was the wrong term. Rather than being carried, it felt like the creature never really got her in the right position to hold her properly. She was constantly falling backwards, sliding off as the mass of fronds gently prodded and slapped at her back, keeping her from slipping to the gunky floor. If walking was falling and not hitting the ground, being carried by Stella was akin to being a lumberjack rolling on a log without slipping and getting wet.

And which one was Stella?

Bower noticed the third creature remained between her and Elvis, traveling upside down on the ceiling, and the central core of the creature was larger than either of those that carried them on. That had to be Stella. Rather than committing herself to either of them, Stella was overseeing both of them.

A rhythmic pulse filled the air, deep and resonant. Bower knew the limits of human hearing extended from a mere twelve cycles per second up to twenty thousand hertz. Whatever this was, it only just reached the lower register. Each pulse was roughly thirty seconds apart, but with each pulse, Bower felt the alien craft push higher into the sky.

“Feels like we’re climbing a roller-coaster,” Elvis cried from somewhere ahead of her.

“Yeah,” she yelled, trying to compose her thoughts. “Did I ever tell you how much I hate roller-coasters?”

Although she couldn’t hear Elvis clearly, she was sure he was laughing. And in some ways that was good, that was what they both needed, to distract each other from all that was transpiring around them.

They emerged from the fleshy proboscis into the inside of a large dome towering hundreds of feet above them. It took Bower a few seconds to realize where they were. Whatever this creature was, they were in or on what seemed to equate to the head, but they were still inside the creature, inside the giant bladder providing buoyancy.

Stella’s companions let them down gently, rolling them over the top so they descended on their feet. Bower was relieved to find the ground was dry. She wiped the mucus from her trousers and hands, hoping she wasn’t breaching some alien protocol by wiping her hands on the warm, leathery ground.

“Home,” Stella said, coming before them, confirming for Bower that she had been guiding the others as they carried the two humans up from the warship.

Bower watched in awe as the tiny insects that comprised the heart of the three alien creatures abandoned their spiky red structures, leaving them standing to one side, inert. The insects swarmed across the uneven ground, moving toward the front of the massive floater. As Bower and Elvis walked forward, they saw a cavity before them filled with millions of the tiny creatures, spanning an area easily the size of a basketball court. What had been Stella, to their minds, mingled seamlessly with the sea of tiny creatures below them.