GROUND / CH. 10:WAITING

GROUND, THE UNIVERSITY

[Mick, you've been very quite recently.] Lana thought to him.

[Have I?] Mick replied.

[Yes.]

[Oh.]

[That was supposed to be the beginning of a conversation.]

[I guessed,] Mick thought.

[Talk Mick.] Lana commanded.

[It's been longer than I thought it might be, since Magdalena left. It's been a year since she arrived.]

[Oh, right. You mean, 'where are they'?]

[Not really. But... sort of. I've just started thinking... if they do come, then what?]

[You get to grow a new body, you mean? Is that a problem?]

[No. It'll be a long painful, process, lying in a bed, but no, that's not it.]

[I could leave you with some organisms, you're getting better at organising them.]

[Unless I'm asking you to do it for me, subconsciously. But I wouldn't accept them, not if you can't or won't take them back if my immune system starts killing them off, once I've got one. That doesn't seem right.]

[Send organisms to be killed? No, that would be... unthinkable betrayal.]

[But you wouldn't accept them back either, would you?]

[Re-absorb my podling's organisms? That's as bad as wrong-podding, worse.]

[And I'm automatically your podling if we separate?]

[Urm... I think so.]

[In which case, since I'm not going to survive long enough to get back home to get to a hospital to grow a heart, skin, blood, etc. if you just spit me out, and we no idea what regrowth stuff would do to you, let alone antibiotics or pathogens, how does this separating thing work?]

[OK, I admit it, it sounds tricky,] Lana thought.

[And, if we do somehow separate in an ethically acceptable way, then what? I'm going to need to be a translator or whatever for the next five decades, aren't I?]

[What's a decade?]

[Ten years.]

[five decades?]

[Until I get too old.]

[Mick, how long do you live?]

[Normally about eighty years. Some people live to a hundred and twenty.]

[Gulp.]

[What?]

[How old are you now?]

[Thirty-five years.]

[Oh. Me too.] Lana said.

[How long do you live?] Mick asked

[It's different. Collective organism, you know. Mostly... we just get slower, hang on to too much, don't like to learn new things. Something about podding clears that up. Some people will do a complete podding, splitting into four or even ten podlings, but that's rare, egotistical. Most others... just give up fighting infection, or concentrate so hard on something they forget to breathe. But you won't find many of us older than sixty.]

[When do you reach reproductive maturity? Oh, that's probably instantly possible, isn't it?]

[Not quite. You can't do it without organised thought. And it's really bad to do it while a kids and at school still, so eight to twelve years, something like that.]

[Among us, it sort of becomes possible around thirteen to fifteen, but it's dangerous and children that age are too young to take wise decisions. Legally possible from eighteen, recommended is more like twenty, which is when most of us we leave school. Risks of genetic problems increase after forty, and it's pretty much impossible for a woman to have children after fifty, they run out of eggs.]

[You lay eggs?]

[What? No, live birth. After forty weeks.]

[Forty weeks of what?]

[Growing, after the fertilisation of the egg.]

[Sorry, I'm forgetting how odd you are.]

[Have I told you how odd you are? Well, I suppose we do have some creatures a bit like you on our world. Colony creatures.]

[You do? Really? Are they sentient at all?]

[No. Sorry, they're only like you in the sense that they're collectives, and you're probably going to say I've horribly insulted you. They're members of a roughly similar style of life. Like I am to... urm, a simple multicellular organism.]

[So, not similar at all.]

[Only in the category that I worry that some of our cleaning products might be chemical weapons for you.]

[What's a chemical weapon?]

[I've told you humans can be very nasty. A chemical chosen to kill, wound or maim people, loaded in a bomb.]

[You use airborne poisons against each other.] Lana couldn't imagine it.

[It has happened. Wars between land-people. My people stayed away, terrified they might find us.]

[And that's what you've been quiet about? The thought that your landpeople might decide to kill us all and take over our planet, like in plays?]

[What, no! No, we wouldn't do that. There are thousands of planets we could live on. We've been looking at how wonderful God's universe is and failing to find intelligent life for more than twenty years. Number of human inhabited planets? Still two. No plans to inhabit any others I know of. Ultimately, we came because some of us felt God was telling us to bring news of what he'd done to you and people like you. But the reason I've not been saying much is more personal.]

[Personal?]

[Before I left home, I made a promise, that I'd spend a lot of time with someone, a woman, and hope we got on well enough to marry.]

[And you don't want to keep your promise?]

[I want to. But she probably thinks I'm dead, she's probably married someone else. But... what if she hasn't? She's got important things to do where she is. She made most of my spaceship, that's not exactly a common skill. How can I just turn up from supposed dead, and ask her to come and sit beside me and talk to me while I'm in a regrowth ward for the next year and a half or something like that, and then come back here so I can be an interpreter? How can I marry her when we're going to work twenty one hundred light-years apart? How can I keep my promise to her, and leave the people who come here to struggle without me as an interpreter?]

[Well, presumably they'd not expect you to be alive, so they're planning for that.]

[Yes, OK, but.. wouldn't it be selfish of me to leave you and them struggling to communicate?]

[You don't think she'd come with your sister, when she comes back?]

[What's she going to come in? There are twenty five ships like hers. Maybe Sathie's made some more like mine, so let's say there are thirty now. I don't expect many of the pilots will want to drop their research into the life on other planets to come and look at this one. Well, maybe just for a quick look, not to stay. Not to do useful work. But... I don't know. Maggie shouldn't really have come down in person. Too dangerous for your people. She might bring some kind of infection. It's not like she can lead a group of people to start farming here. She'll need some kind of space station, if she's going to come back like she said she'd like to. How is she going to come back in less than ten years?]

[I don't know. You need to pray, though.]

[I know. I wish my wrist unit had survived. Then I could read my Bible and remind myself that God's in charge.]

[You could read mine] Lana suggested. [God is the same here there and everywhere.]

[Thank you, Lana. You're a very kind sister to me.]

[Sister?]

[You're not my mother or my wife. We're closer than friends. You must me my sister.]

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

[You, Mick, amaze me sometimes. Thank you. I've never had an alien brother before.]

They'd just finished reading a song about God being in control when there was a knock at the door; it was Thek. He'd been running.

“Have you looked at the sky in the last fifteen minutes?” he asked.

“No. Why?”

“Strange things. Lak asks if you want to join him at the telescope. You might need the predator-engraving tool, though. Things are getting fraught.”

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UNIVERSITY TELESCOPE BUILDING.

The dome was crowded, the debate was in full swing, there were several lines of conversation going on and tempers seemed to be very thin.

“It shows a crescent. It can't be a supernova.” The astronomer at the telescope said.

“It must be a supernova! You can see the thing unaided.”

“Well it wasn't there an hour ago, I'm telling you, I just took a plate of that bit of sky.”

“It's not a crescent, it was a definite ball when I saw it.”

“So something that size just blinked into of existence?”

“It's an alien ship,” someone said. He was looking with his unaided left eye, but he'd changed his unaided left eye to turn it into a small dimensioned telescope.

“Shut up you freak. There's no such thing.”

“Are you sure you didn't just knock the focus?”

“The stars are in focus, and that ball of rock is in focus. It's just not a point source. It's a ball. Showing a crescent.”

“You're going to prove a negative by resorting to the proof by intimidation, are you?”

“I said shut up.”

“It's too bright to be a rock. It must be a comet.”

“If that's a comet, where did it come from?”

“Stifling of observation by threats isn't going to get us anywhere.”

“Maybe it's just started emitting gas.”

“If it's really a crescent it's got to be closer to us than the suns.”

“What? It can't be.”

“I still say it's alien, and it's just podded.”

“You're imagining things, let me get at the observer's chair.”

“It's my turn. You've had your minute. But he's right. Double-podded. Two tiny dots next to it.”

“I suggest we pray for peace and unity,” Lak said.

“And victory against the alien invaders. Ow! You collaboration of putrefaction! How dare you!”

“Almighty God, holy and gracious father, give us peace and unity, and I beg you keep the people from panicking,” Lak said.

“That barbarian just poked me in the eye! I want witnesses!”

“I demand respectful silence during times of prayer,” Lak stormed.

“No one agreed. You can't demand silence when you just start praying.”

“I demand witnesses to an unprovoked attack.”

“There are three podlings now. I give up my observer's seat.”

“Not to him! He attacked me!”

[Are you going to say anything?] Mick asked.

[Me? Get involved in this riot?]

[Well I saw the alien-invader guy getting poked in the eye, the one that looks like a telescope.] Mick said.

Lana mentally sighed and took to the air. “I, Academcian Lana of the University Safety Office, witnessed an attack on the enhanced eye of the guy who's unable to stop obsessing about alien invasion forces. I observe said victim looking like he's on the verge of changing to war-form. He will stop or be permanently barred from the university. A formal complaint concerning the attack may be made at the appropriate time and place. I observe unsafe crowding around a delicate piece of university property. I observe distinguished scientists acting like a bunch of podlings. Do I need to close this facility on safety grounds?” That threat seemed to bring a modicum of order in the group. “Can I patiently remind you that about ten moons ago this university received a note about a visit from a helpful alien, who indicated she would return? Can I point out to you that the author of that report has sent the university rubbings and sketches from cave engravings that this reported alien made, indicating the bit of sky she came from, and that unless my memory is incorrect that object is coming from the same direction? Do I need to remind my astronomer colleagues that last week there was great debate in the dining hall about the fact that the pattern of faint stars only observable with the latest generation of plates exactly match the dots on the cave rubbings? Why is this department so sure an advanced civilisations can't do things you can't? We can do more than our parents' parents' could, after all. Maybe they've had two or three thousand years of progress uninterrupted by inconvenient wars.”

“You can't change the laws of physics, woman!”

“I know. What are they? How does light travel? What is gravity? How do the suns burn? What are unstable isotopes sending out that makes plants die or grow deformed, plates fog, and researchers' organisms sick? Don't you think they might find that the things we think are laws are mere approximations? Might they not know more about physics than we do?”

“Who made you such an expert?” A voice in the crowd asked, rudely.

“I have been in communication with the young man who was shown the cave. Along with pictures showing creation, fall and redemptive history of God's interaction with them, and a lot about the biology of their home planets, it shows a copy of the periodic table with no gaps, samples of most of them, including the valuable ones, and numbers that seem to correspond to the lifetime of unstable elements. He's perfectly willing to prove to the university that the cave is real, gentlemen. It's apparently even got a water source, so a survey group could have been staying there and studying it for a while. But its not very easy to get to, because of nearby predators. Let's join the reverend Lak in praying that these visitors are the same friendly ones, and that no one will panic. Of course, I don't know why he's worried, most people will probably ignore it, like they did when the first ship was parked in our sky for a month and a half.”

“You saw it?” Telescope-eye asked, excited. “Low on the horizon, South-East of us, at dawn and dusk?”

“Physical impossibility,” someone muttered.

“You did too, did you?” Lana asked, “I was beginning to think I was the only one.”

“What about the one before that? Five or six harvests ago? It crashed, in the forest. But I couldn't find it.”

“See, he's got an alien fixation, it is just fantasy!”

“I've been to the crash site, once when I was distracted and didn't give it much attention, and then a second time,” Lana said, glancing at Lak.

“I went with my sister the second time. I have no doubt that these aliens exist, but I had no desire to force the issue. I have enough problems in my field of research.”

“What did you find? Weapons?”

“No. We found some personal items, and some bones, scattered by predators and mostly gnawed to pieces. We buried them. We're not sure what the ship is made of but it was transparent and is still mostly intact.”

“We could learn a lot from it!”

“Or die because you accidentally blow up the power source, or from a predator attack.”

“The large unusual object has just vanished.”

“What about the little ones?”

“I can still see them.”

“They're missiles!”

“Can someone please find me a gag before I'm tempted to violate university procedures?” Lana asked.

----------------------------------------

SPACE

“Urm, Maggie?” James interrupted the planning meeting, “You asked me to check if we'd been spotted before we went back into the bubble?”

“Uh oh.” Maggie said, “I did, yes?”

“In the city, in a circular building that houses what looks like a telescope, there are a about twenty dots. One or two in the countryside.”

“Oh great. So much for sneaking into position during daylight. Anthropologists! I want some uninformed guesses from you experts. Is it better for us to pop back into sight now, or should we wait until we're masked by daylight to move closer to the planet, like we'd planned, and potentially scare them when they look up at night?”

“Please add to your deliberations,” Kyle said, “that based on my readings of their atmosphere, we're going to be a daylight object whatever happens. That's to say, they won't just see us when the sky's dark and we're in the sun, but we'll reflect enough light to be visible all day long."

“So, whatever we do they're going to see us when we're in position?”

“Unless we hide around the far side of the planet,” someone suggested.

“Since the probes we've just launched don't have radios that can communicate through planets, that's not going to work.”

Rachel stood up and said “I don't think they get afraid of strange things. Unless the ones we met are really unusual, anyway. When they saw the probe they came close and one of them prodded it with a stick. And there was a bit of fear when you went running through the town with your knife in hand, but I think that was more the scary weapon than scary invader from outer space.”

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GROUND, UNIVERSITY TELESCOPE BUILDING.

“The three podlings are still separating,” said one.

“Let me see, you've had ages,” said another.

“You've forfeited your turn, you knocked the telescope, and poked a fellow astronomer in the eye,” the head of department said. “It's my turn.”

“You've only just got up!” yet another one said.

“Hmmm-mmh” said Telescope-eye, through his gag, his hands were also bound, but he'd been allowed to stay. He was bouncing up and down, and not looking towards the three probes, Mick saw. He turned and grinned. [Lana, expert binder of hands and mouths, look what I see.]

“Oh podlings!” Lana called, “look behind you.”

As far as Mick could judge, the spaceship was taking up station just where Maggie's ship had been parked. That was good news as far as he was concerned. Very good news. He wondered how long it would be before the sensors picked up the homing beacon from his ship, and someone went to investigate. He hoped the first thing Sathie heard was that the beautiful ship she'd made had saved him from burning up in the atmosphere, not to mention saved the city from a nasty case of a strange ball with antimatter in it ending up in the hands of curious physicists. If it hadn't been for the hole in the nose and the fact that three quarters of the drive elements had burnt off in the plummet through the atmosphere, he could have flown up said hello to whoever just put that... leviathan into the upper reaches of the atmosphere. Thinking that raised another thought.

[Lana, can you ask them to work out how big it is? Assume it's at the top of your atmosphere.]

[Where's the top? It just fades away, doesn't it?]

[Where you can't fly because you need to go so fast you're in orbit, but urm... I presume you don't have artificial flight, do you?]

[No. What does 'in orbit' mean?] Lana asked.

[Orbit is planets do around the sun, that sort of thing. But Jakav said it wasn't visible from where his home, didn't he? Probably because of the hills. Can we work on that basis? Geometry?]

[Is it important?]

[I can't guess what it is until I know how big it is. It must be bigger than Maggie's ship, but is it five times bigger? Ten times? A hundred?]

“Out of curiosity,” Lana asked, “can someone please guess how big that is? Jakav, the man with the cave, said the last ship could be seen from the cave, which is two hours walk past their village, but couldn't from the village itself, because of the barrier hills. I know it's just guessing to say it's in the same place as the last one, but it certainly looks like it from here.”

“Hmhk mm-mm-mm “, said Telescope-eye.

“I'd bet your life they're not planning to kill you, if that's what you said,” Lana said conversationally.

He bit through the gag, but controlled himself enough to speak quietly, “I said, where's the village?”

“Oh. It's right on the edge of the desert, two weeks by wagon, little place called Yasfort.”

“Yasfort? That thing's invisible from Yasfort?”

“Yes. You know it?”

“Don't you know anything?” Telescope-eye asked, rolling his eyes.

“Not much about Yasfort, except it's a long way away, and some clever people live there.”

“'Yasfort, little Yasfort, your time will come?' Ring any bells? The last prophesy of Zah?”

“That unapproved, not-submitted prophesy,” Lak said, “is not a part of any school curriculum, the last time I looked.”

“Of course he didn't submit himself, it was granted to him on his deathbed. My great grandfather heard it, though.”

“And you know it off by heart, I presume, Kalak?” Lak asked.

“Yasfort little Yasfort, your time will come. The star you will not see, but the light of truth will burn. Yasfort's daughter, Yasfort's son, guard your borders well; through pain you'll learn salvation's song, with writing on the wall. The scholars foolish arguing, two heads will rise above. Stop shouting all your pettiness, and listen to what God's done!”

“Well, Lana!” Lak said, “Did you know you were famous?”

“It could mean hundreds of different things, Lak.” Lana said.

“Kalak, I don't think they heard you,” Lak said. And then he thundered at the top of his voice, “Be silent and listen to the last prophesy of the great prophet Zah, and know that Jakav whose life was saved by the alien, lives in the village of Yasfort, from where the ship just before harvest was not visible.”

Kalak repeated the prophecy, and then Lana found that talking to a crowded room, something she'd always hated, was a lot easier when the topic was God, her brother was standing beside her and she knew that Mick was praying.

She was quietly amazed when she saw Kalak and several of the others weeping, she hadn't done much except talk about Magdalena's message about God's amazing grace, and the love he had for his creation. Then she realised that was why they were crying. They hadn't known, hadn't understood. By the end of the evening, the entire astronomy department had put their trust in God's grace.