AS SOON as Helen was gone the Sous became even more agitated. They coiled and uncoiled themselves many times: the big one, ‘Wiggy’, winding itself so tightly that it looked more like a coiled spring than an open spiral. ‘No brass bandsman could get into that!’ thought Jacqui—and she couldn’t suppress a brief giggle at the idea. But if the creatures sensed her amusement, they took no notice.

They did not look in the least dangerous. Was there any chance that they could exert the ‘disintegrator’ power which had wreaked so much havoc in Wistbourne, all those years ago? Helen had said they could not.

All of a sudden Jacqui felt a spell of dizziness. Her first thought was, perhaps they’re ‘planting’ a dream on me like they did on that corporal. Should I get out of here and lie down? But she didn’t feel in any way drowsy—and ‘Wiggy’ made a gesture which seemed to be asking her to position herself lower down. There were no seats in the habitat, but she squatted on the walkway as best she could. The dizzy feeling abruptly ceased, but she felt as if she was ‘frozen’—unable to stir from this position. ‘Wiggy’ approached her, with Big Bell elevated, until it was almost touching her breathing mask.

Was Jacqui being hypnotised in some way? She had experienced hypnotherapy just once in her life, and the feeling had been rather similar. She felt that she still had the muscle power to move, but no will-power to do so. It was as if the brain had somehow become ‘disconnected’ from the muscles.

Best to relax. The hypnotherapist had explained that there was no danger in this sort of feeling—it was normal during hypnosis.

And then she heard a ‘voice’.

Yes! A voice, speaking to her in English—an English that was fluent if somewhat stilted. No human voice that she could recognise, it was a sort of whispery, wheezy sort of sound—neither male nor female—but she had no trouble understanding the words. The creature was ‘speaking’ to her, but via no speech organ that she could see. Perhaps the sounds were being formed inside her head.

> “We are glad that you have come. We urgently need your help.”

“Can you hear me?” asked Jacqui, nervously. “And how can I help? Perhaps I should introduce myself: my name is—”

> “We know who you are, and yes we can hear you, Jacqueline Hartmead. We do not have names that you could pronounce in your language. You can address us by the names your leader has given us. Yes, we need your help. We are lost.”

“Lost? How do you mean, you are lost? You have been living in this habitat, in this village called Wistbourne, without ever moving from it, for—for how many years?”

> “Thirty-four revolutions of your planet around its star—yes, thirty-four of your ‘years’—since we were brought into existence. And yes, what we mean is, a ship from the home planet of our kind should have arrived before now to collect us up and bring us home. But no ship has appeared. Also, there should be more of us. According to the plan, we should number over three eights of individuals—twenty-four in your numbering. There are only three of us, and we cannot sense the presence of any more of our kind on this planet.”

Jacqui was silent for a while. She knew she could explain why that was so. Should she do so—and risk upsetting or angering these creatures? After a while Wiggy ‘spoke’ again:

> “We believe you have knowledge of why there are so few of us. Please tell us—even if the explanation is difficult.”

“All right. You know that when your—species—first showed up on our world, they resembled young of our kind, and were accord­ingly taken in as if they were our own children.”

> “No. We did not know that. There is much we do not know, even about our own kind. Once we reach our native home, we shall learn more.”

“All right. I will explain,” said Jacqui, rather nervously. “Although these beings so closely resembled our kind that even our doctors and scientists were fooled, they possessed a mysterious power to cause damage or injury—a power which my own kind do not have. This caused a man in our village to become very angry, and he killed all but three of these children: two boys and one girl. That girl event­ually gave birth to the three of you. That is why there are only you three.”

> “We understand. We now fear that our home planet has learnt of this event and come to the conclusion that none survived, so they did not send a repatriation ship.”

Jacqui again fell silent at this unwelcome news. So these three Sous were doomed to spend the rest of their life in this room, unable to breathe Earth’s normal atmosphere? But what on earth was she to do about it? After a long pause, she ventured:

“I understand. But how am I able to help you?”

> “We had hoped you would know. Perhaps a message to our home world…?”

“But why me? I am no kind of expert. I know nothing about how to send a message to another world. You should be seeking out the technical guys.”

> “We asked for you because we have knowledge of one of your kin who treated our progenitors kindly, early on in their life.”

“Yes, that would be my Grandma June. She was just doing her job as a nurse. So—you called for me out of gratitude? I am honoured and humbled. But—how on earth can we send a message to your world? How far away is it—and in what direction?” Jacqui knew that these beings must surely come from outside the Solar System—and even the nearest stars beyond our Sun were several light-years away.

> “We do not know? We have not been given that information, and of course we have never been to our home planet. All we know is that it is a world mostly covered with water, like this habitat.”

>

> This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Jacqui was at a loss, and she sensed that so were the Sous. There didn’t seem to be any more she could say of any use.

“May I leave you now? I cannot see any way that I can help you.”

> “We understand. We wish you farewell. But if you discover any­thing useful to us, please return.”

Jacqui found that the hypnotic influence had gone, and she could now stand up, although she felt rather stiff and cramped. The three Sous retreated to the middle of the pool and resumed their gently-weaving behaviour. Jacqui knocked on the door and Helen opened it. She looked flushed and excited. Jacqui followed her out of the building, stumbling painfully on her stiff legs. As soon as they were outside and had taken off their masks, Helen burst out:

“This is excellent! I was watching you all the time. So you were ‘talking’ to the Sous? I could hear your side of the conversation, but I could not hear anything coming from them. So you could actually hear what they were saying?”

“Yes, I could. Perhaps they were impressing the words directly on my brain, without using sound waves.”

“Can you remember what was said? We really need to make a transcript.”

“I’ll try.”

So a few minutes later Jacqui was seated at a table with Helen and the Sergeant, repeating verbatim into a miniature recorder all that she could recall of the conversation. “Not a lot of help, is it?” she concluded, “but I’m certain these Sous mean us no harm.”

“It’s a huge advance on what we’ve managed in thirty-four years. We are extremely grateful. And you must come again, see if you can coax some more out of them. You are clearly the ‘link’ into making contact with these beings.”

There seemed little more to be done. Helen explained that she would be staying behind in Wistbourne for now, so she profusely thanked Jacqui, who was then driven back to the helicopter for the flight back to Northolt.

Back home, Jacqui sat down in a bemused state, thinking about all she had seen and heard that day. She was mentally and physically exhausted, and was glad that Paul would not be home for some time to tease her. She could not eat but made herself several cups of strong coffee.

What the creatures had ‘asked for’—presumably help in contacting their home planet—was surely impossible. They did not even know how far it was, nor in what direction it lay. And although the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft—far on their way out of the Solar System and unreachable—would eventually encounter other star systems, they were almost certainly going in the wrong direction, and it would take them thousands of years to get anywhere. The Sous may be long-lived, but they could not survive that long, surely.

If by any chance, another alien spacecraft, similar to the ‘blimp’ that had landed at Wistbourne years before, did indeed appear in the skies above Earth, the combined military forces of this planet would surely shoot it down. Earth could not tolerate another clutch of ‘Changelings’ with these supernatural and dangerous powers. So the dim prospect of ‘rescue’ seemed as remote as ever.

Despite the coffee, Jacqui found herself dozing off, and was barely wakened by Paul’s arrival some hours later. With a sigh, he set about preparing dinner, as he had done before. Once they were sat at the table, the banter began afresh.

“So how was the flying-saucer trip this time, my dear? Did they take you as far as Uranus?” He deliberately used the comical—and risqué—pronunciation: ‘your anus’—another wind-up.

“Paul, I did go on a flight today—but not in anything saucer-shaped: just a common-or-garden helicopter. If it really is common-or-garden: I’d never been in one before. We only went as far as Wistbourne. And I learnt a lot—but I’m bound by secrecy not to reveal anything. So please shut up, my dear.”

“All right, Jacqui. Peace! But I’m beginning to get really curious now. You’re on to something, I can tell that—and as your husband haven’t I a right to know?”

“In this case, absolutely, no, Paul. It’s a State secret and I’d go to prison even if I told only you. So please don’t pester me. And after dinner I’d like to go straight to bed. It’s been an exhausting day.”

Over the next few days, Jacqui gradually recovered from her strange adventure. She resumed going in to work, but her editor was not happy, and after a few days Jacqui was summoned into her office.

“It’s this Ministry vetting of everything you submit,” she com­plained: “even the match reports, for heaven’s sake! It holds things up no end. Readers want to see the match report the day after—not two weeks later. I appreciate you’ve been up to things in your own time which you’re not allowed to tell us—but surely they don’t imagine there could be anything subversive in the football results! So can you please get these Ministry chaps off my back?”

“I’ll try,” replied Jacqui, wistfully.

“Well, you’d better—otherwise I may have to let you go. It’d be a shame: you’ve been a good worker here.”

With the threat of dismissal hanging over her, Jacqui was in a quandary as to how to set about it, but as it happened Helen phoned her that same afternoon. Jacqui put her dilemma to her.

“I’ll see what I can do,” said Helen. “Perhaps the Minister will change his mind. I wanted to tell you this: I went into the Sous’ habitat again, and sat down at the water’s edge, just like you did, bringing my head as close as I could to Wiggy’s Big Bell. But nothing happened. The Sous sort of ‘looked’ at me but didn’t ‘say’ anything: that is, I didn’t hear any ‘voices’ inside my head, the way you did. And they didn’t seem to react to anything I said. Corporal Townsend also tried again—but with no effect this time. So that confirms it: you and only you have a special power of ‘rapport’ with these creatures which I don’t have; Corporal Townsend has a sort of connection but it’s of a different kind and much more tenuous. But I agree with you on this point: they don’t seem to pose any threat.

“In the meantime, I’d like you to come to Wistbourne again. You’ve become our communication vector with these creatures, and we don’t want to lose you. How about this: I tell the Minister that you’ll cooperate just so long as we pull the security guys off your editor?”

“Yes—please!” replied Jacqui. “Anything to smooth out the ruffles…”

So things turned out. The vetting of Jacqui’s sports reports ceased, and the Mercury was once again full of the finest reports of the finest goals, finest saves, most brutal tackles, most inexplicable offside rulings, most controversial yellow and red cards, that the local teams could come up with—just as the readership wanted.

And three weeks later Jacqui was back in Wistbourne, back in the Sous’ chamber, once again trying to ‘talk’ to them. But it was a disappointment, and frustrating. The Sous had nothing more to tell her: they merely pleaded with her once again to try and find a ‘way out’ for them.

The visits continued sporadically for several months, with no improvement, until in the end it was agreed by all: Jacqui, Helen, the Minister, and even the Prime Minister—that further visits were fruitless. So they were called off: but Helen promised to keep in touch, and made it clear that she would summon Jacqui at a moment’s notice if there were any new developments.

Besides, Jacqui had other things to think about…