Vatican Ambassador (25 page)

BC is trying to digest more than just his lunch. “Okay, so let’s see. You guys have a secret asteroid base, you’ve met aliens who are like vampires and imprisoned one, pissed them off, negotiated with them by giving them your Transpace drive, adopted their tech to advance your technology beyond what the general public could imagine... that sound right?”

“Are you taking it all in?” Anita asked him.

“It’s a lot to absorb,” BC admits. “Hey, could I go to the bathroom?”

It’ll be good to stretch my legs and think.

All three of them nod and Anita says, “Sure.”

“Go out the door and to your left, down the hall, then take another left. The door’s at the end of the hall,”

Krish tells him.

BC takes his time. By the time he gets back to the conference room they’ve cleared the table. BC sits back down.

“Let the briefing continue,” BC says with a flourish.

Dell cracks a half smile. “Very well. Since we’re through eating, Anita suggested it might be all right to tell you about Doctor Kwan’s theories on the Domo.”

“There’s more to the Domo?” BC asks.

“Yes. More we’ve guessed at than they’ve told us. Doctor Kwan spent a great deal of time among the Domo, on their nearby world. He made extensive observations.”

“He was your spy!” BC figures out.

“He was a scientist. Scientists observe,” Dell states.

“It’s what we do,” Krish adds. Dell gives him a look.

“Just trying to help. Tell him about Kwan!” Krish says, laughing.

“Kwan’s evidence suggests that when the Domo came to Earth for the first time, in what would have been about the sixteen hundreds, they probably did eat human flesh and drink human blood. In accounts of their travels to other worlds, Kwan found mention of them consuming the local protein sources to adapt to the local species. They take in the planet’s native DNA and assimilate it,” Dell says. “It stands to reason that the way they came to look like us...”

“...was by eating us. I get it,” BC nods.

“The Domo, of course, deny this,” Dell says. “They admit to consuming DNA, but insist they can get it, and did get it, from plant life and food animals. Kwan’s studies lead him to believe that was simply impossible. He studied their adaptability, to the extent he was allowed to by the Domo.

“For the Domo to adapt and become more human, they would have had to have consumed human DNA repeatedly, over a long period of time.”

BC feels his stomach shift ever so slightly.

Damn. Vampires and flesh eaters... and bears, oh my.

“As they no longer need to adapt to look like us, there should be no reason for them to consume our flesh and blood now, even if Kwan’s theory is right,” Dell says, by way of small reassurance.

“They still drain your energy,” Krish interjects.

“So, why do you deal with them?” BC asks.

“We didn’t know any of this, not at the start,” Anita says. “Wanna see a picture?” she asks BC.

“Sure.”

“Hold on,” Anita says. She activates some controls in the tabletop in front of her. A three dimensional head appears in front of BC, making him jump.

Krish chuckles. “Ugly bastards aren’t they?”

“Nice fangs,” BC observes. “Their mouth does go the wrong way, doesn’t it? Kinda pointy headed. Are they all bald like that?”

“Yes. None of them have hair,” Dell says. “Not anymore. Some of the first Domo we met did, but they’re long gone.”

“Ones who’d ‘adapted’ in the past by chowing down on us?” BC asks Dell.

“Probably,” Dell confirms BC’s deduction. “But you’ve got to understand. After our first misunderstandings, we thought we’d found an ally in the Domo. They helped us go to the stars!”

“How? You’d developed the Transpace drive,” BC asks.

“Sure, but that was just the start. The Domo were very nice to The Project, once they realized they weren’t being exposed to the general public. Our Transpace drive was faster than their faster-than-light drive. But their reactors and ship’s systems were far more advanced than ours.

“We pooled our resources. They helped us soup up our ships, and we helped them travel between their planets faster than they ever had before.”

“Planets?” BC asks.

“The Domo control a handful of planets. They run a part of our galactic ‘neighborhood’,” Anita fills BC

in.

“They brought some of us from The Project to their ‘homeworld’ as they called it at the time. It turned out it was not their planet of origin, more like a new permanent base. The Project set up an outpost there back in ‘95. Kwan was on the original staff. I myself spent two years on the Domo ‘homeworld’.”

“You’ve been on another planet, in another solar system?” BC asks.

“I’ve been to several planets, Mr. Campion. Although, I wouldn’t call them other ‘solar’ systems, that’s our sun’s name, better to call them star systems,” Dell corrects him.

“I stand corrected,” BC says.

“The Project built ships with both the Domo drive and our Transpace drive. We use the Domo’s drive to get to a system for the first time. It’s still faster-than-light, after all. And thanks to the Domo, our ships have the shielding needed to withstand those speeds. They taught us how to manipulate gravity fields to create a safe pocket around the ship as we went that fast.

“Once we got to a place, we could set the coordinates within the Transpace drive to get back there, and jump easily back and forth. And the Domo gave us directions and star charts to find our way there. They helped us get to twenty different worlds. They introduced us to other alien races, more alien looking than the Domo.”

“Can you understand now why we first warmed up to the Domo?” Dell asks BC.

“Sure,” BC says. “All the best toys and aliens, too!”

“You know, though,” Krish cautions, “even though they look a little like us, the Domo are still utterly foreign, completely alien. And totally creepy.”

“Thank you for your keen insight once again, Doctor,” Dell dresses down Krish, voice dripping with sarcasm.

“How did you keep all of this a secret?” BC asks.

“Easy,” Dell explains. “We worked out of the asteroid base. We were on distant worlds. We weren’t here to give away any of our secrets.”

“But what about the military,” BC protests. “Didn’t they check up on you?”

“You’d think so,” admits Dell. “But they were satisfied with the little dribs and drabs of tech we’d dribble out to them. As far as they were concerned, we were just their little R & D labs on the Moon.”

“As far as they still know,” Anita says, bringing things into the present tense. She locks eyes with BC.

“That is all they know. Now
you
know more, much more, than
they
do.”

“I’m not UTZ military,” BC insists. “I barely have any authority in the NcC!”

“You’re an ambassador!” Anita says, slightly raising her voice.

“By default!” BC answers.

They don’t need to know about the whole potential “Cardinal” thing…

“Kids?” Dell cuts them both off. “I think Anita was just trying to let you know just how privileged this information is, Campion.”

“Believe me. I know! I know. I get it,” BC insists.

“We’ve never opened up like this to anyone outside of The Project before,” Dell tells him. “Who knows, maybe it’s time to let the rest of humanity know who else is out here in the ‘neighborhood’.”

“Why now?” BC asks.

“Because of what I told you when I contacted you,” Anita answers him. “We think an alien race may be responsible for the plague that’s now killing humans on Earth, on Mars, on the Moon and Earth Orbit.”

“Why would the Domo want to kill us?” BC asks, confused. The others shake their heads.

“It’s not the Domo,” Anita says. “The Domo introduced us to another race that we think are behind this.”

“As we traveled with the Domo, we began to notice they seemed to enjoy subjugating other races. Most other races. They were nice enough to us, I guess, especially early on. But every other planet we went to, the Domo were in charge. Other aliens deferred to the Domo. All except for two: The Flaze and The Eldred.”

“The Flaze and The Eldred?” BC asks.

“Yes. We met them through the Domo. The Domo and Flaze treat each other as equals. The ones the Domo call the ‘Eldred’ they actually defer to,” Dell says.

“We’ve only met the Eldred recently,” Anita adds.

“The Flaze we met right after we met the Domo,” Dell says.

“The Flaze were hauntingly familiar, too,” Krish says. “They look like old sci-fi UFO aliens! All spidery limbed, bony, with gray skin pulled kind of tight over the bones. But they’re always in pressure suits, so it’s hard to see for sure. Big heads, big eyes.”

“More science fiction?” BC asks.

“Maybe not so much fiction,” Dell says. “It turns out the Flaze paid visits to Earth in the past, too. It was some of their ruins that were found on the Moon.”

“I knew that was true! They really did find alien artifacts on the Moon, here, didn’t they!?” BC says, excited.

“They did,” Dell nods, “Flaze artifacts. They and the Domo had their fun with us, before the Eldred interceded, as far as we can tell. The Flaze followed the Domo here, visiting several times back in the nineteen hundreds and messing with us humans.”

“Really? But you said these other aliens made them stop?” BC asks.

“I don’t know that they
made
them stop. Somehow, just the Eldred knowing that the Flaze and the Domo were meddling with our planet was enough to make them stop, from what I’ve heard.”

“Okay, something’s bugging me,” BC says. “You spent two years on the Domo’s planet, right Dell?” BC

asks. “How is it you’re okay, then, with all their energy draining and vampiring and all?” BC challenges him.

“I’m okay now,” Dell says with emphasis. “I suffered some serious depression and exhaustion and poor health after my stint on their base world. No one could ever stay there longer than two years, although Kwan tried to. After his suicide, we kept the staff at the base in a constant state of turnover.”

“He committed suicide?” BC asks.

“He did,” Dell says. His head drops for a moment. “He was a colleague and a good friend.”

“I’m sorry,” BC says. “But with all that… you still have a base there?”

“Actually, we don’t, not like we used to. Not as large a one, anyway,” Dell tells him. “After we began to explore beyond the original twenty worlds the Domo introduced us to, we found that the Domo’s base planet wasn’t central to the worlds we were discovering for ourselves.”

“We have four of our own interstellar outposts,” Krish says proudly, “Rigel Four, Cat’s Eye, Dimwit and Crankshaft.”

“Nice names,” BC cracks.

Dimwit and Crankshaft?

“Two of the names are ours,” Krish says. “’Dimwit’ and ‘Crankshaft’ are approximations of the old Domo names for the planets.”

“I get it,” BC says. “Nice names. So you guys and this ‘Project’ actually have five bases besides this one? How many people work for your ‘Project’, anyway?” BC asks.

“About two thousand,” Anita says. “Only about four hundred work in this solar system. There’s a handful here. Most work out on the asteroid.

“The other bases have staffs of between four and five hundred,” she says. BC shakes his head, “I’m sorry, but I’ve gotta tell you, that shit is really hard to believe.”

She’s gotta be exaggerating those numbers...

“It’s been fourteen years, BC,” Anita protests. “We’ve had time to recruit.”

BC is still shaking his head. “Fine. So. What about this other race of aliens you mentioned, The Eldred. Are they called that because they’re old?”

“I guess they are the ‘oldest’ race we’ve met,” Anita says. “But their name is again an approximation of a Domo word, the name they call them. It sounds to us like they’re saying Eldred. Funny, though, when we say, ‘Eldred’ back to them, they insist it isn’t the same word at all.”

“That’s the thing about alien languages, they’re so alien...” Krish muses out loud. Dell and Anita just look at him. “What?” he says. “Jeesh.”

“We’re just beginning to get to know the Eldred,” Anita tells BC. “They seemed almost like they were afraid of us when we first met them.”

“They did react... strangely,” Dell admits.

"We’re beginning to think that we don’t know them at all,” Anita admits. “We think it was The Eldred who infected the delegations at the peace conference.”

BC sits in stunned silence. Anita has a, “there, I said it out loud,” look on her face. Krish and Dell watch BC absorb Anita’s news.

Is this for real? Eldred Flaze, Domo, Do Re Mi...

“Anita said she’d already told you the plague was non terrestrial,” Dell confirms with BC, who nods.

“We thought it might be the UIN,” BC tells them.

“Yeah, and they thought it was you, big surprise there!” Krish snorts.
They know about the UIN? How? More spies? More ‘triple’ agents?

“Nice,” Dell says. “Anyway, it’s not the UIN, not this time.”

“It’s the Eldred?” BC asks, to confirm.

The three scientists nod.

“Are these Eldred all-powerful aliens?” he asks them.

“We don’t know,” Anita answers. “They didn’t seem to be, not at first.”

“But they could be,” Dell says.

“Or not,” Krish chimes in.

“Quality information,” BC mumbles out loud. “How many times have you met them?” he asks.

“We’ve had a few visits with them,” Krish says. “We thought we were getting to know them better. But they used us!” He seems heated. He shoots a sideways glance at Anita. She glares back at him.

“We were,” Dell says, cutting the tension between the two, “perhaps a bit too hopeful.”

“What do you mean?” BC asks, puzzled by the suddenly darker mood of the room. No one answers him. The room is silent.

“Huh,” BC grunts.

There’s more going on here...

“Okay,” BC says, leaning back in his chair, arms open wide, “What aren’t you telling me?” BC can see from the looks passed among Anita, Krish and Dell that he’s on to something. Krish and Dell stare at Anita. She looks at BC, then back and forth between Krish and Dell, then back at BC. He can see the anguish in her eyes. Finally, she speaks.