Xenophobia (33 page)

“Yes,” she said, knowing the certainty in her voice would give him confidence

“So they’re like scientists, or something?” he asked.

“I guess so. I suspect if we examined this tree in detail, we’d be able to trace life back to its origins. See those inner nodes, devoid of light? Those are the extinct parent species that led down to this point. Once, they shone like these species do today.”

“So this is like missing links and stuff?” Elvis asked.

His voice carried a slight hint of disdain, and Bower wondered about his upbringing, if he’d been exposed to creationist dogma instead of science.

“There are no missing links,” Bower replied gently, feeling she needed to take some time to clarify this point. “We may not have seen all the links, but none of them are missing. Chronologically, the chain is unbroken. If it weren’t, these life forms wouldn’t exist.”

Elvis was silent, and she suspected he wasn’t convinced.

“Evolution can seem a little intimidating, but it’s actually quite simple. Animals are like a lump of soft plastic. You can shape them. We do this all the time. Ten thousand years ago, there were no dogs. Wolves roamed the wilds. Not only did we tame them, we molded them to suit our every whim and fancy. We bred them selectively over countless generations to form Chihuahuas and Great Danes.

“And today, you might ask, where are the missing links between them? Where are the Great Chihuahuas? And of course, there are none. Chihuahuas and Great Danes aren’t linked to each other, they’re linked backwards in time, through some distant, common ancestor not too far removed from a wolf.

“When it comes to natural selection the only difference is, nobody chose to have thousands of species of beetles. They are the result of selective pressure from predators and disease, limited food and even things as seemingly innocuous as fussy females or feisty males.

“I know it’s hard to imagine, but the largest trees on Earth were once seedlings, and the same is true of life springing forth from its humble beginnings billions of years ago.”

“Huh,” was all she could get out of Elvis. He was non-committal. Well, she thought, we all need baby steps.

The Stellas were becoming agitated, circling around them in the air.

“Come,” they said in unison.

Although this was a request, Bower felt herself pulled away from the tree as though she were caught in a rip at the beach, being dragged with the swell of the waves.

“No! We need more time,” she cried.

Bower and Elvis were caught in an updraft, swirling high above the massive tree-like structures with their clusters of star-like lights glowing beneath them.

From up high, they could see the breadth and length of the alien vessel, if it could be called a vessel. To the rear of the craft, easily a hundred miles away, a vast rocky cliff arose. At that distance, the sharp shapes were impossible to resolve into anything other than a ragged mountain range breaking through the cloud tops.

The transparent dome stretched out overhead. Beyond the dome, Bower could see the gently curving slope of Earth passing to one side of the craft. She had given up on trying to figure out which way was up. In space, all ways were up, and yet without realizing it, she’d instinctively assumed up was aligned with the craft, but the alien vessel must have been positioned almost side-on to Earth, making her feel lopsided once she saw the planet. Earth curved away before them.

The sun set. For Bower, the view was counterintuitive. On Earth, sunset was marked by a tiny glowing ball of fire slowly dipping below an immense horizon. In space, sunset was sudden. Earth simply blocked the nearest star for a short while.

As they flew on within the vast alien craft, Bower felt she could have reached out and touched the dome, but the slick surface was probably still hundreds of feet above them. The dome was comprised of interlocking hexagonal tiles as clear as glass, with just the finest of seams running between them. Bower felt as though she were on the inside of a gigantic compound eye, looking out from within some vast insect as someone else looked in.

Their flight-path took them forward to the bow of the great interstellar ship, where most of the alien activity seemed to concentrate.

“I will never get used to that,” Elvis said, pointing at hundreds of spiky red aliens blowing past them like tumbleweeds.

They descended into what looked like an open football stadium, with thousands of tiered levels enclosing a low platform. The three alien creatures they’d once affectionately referred to as Stella touch down gracefully before them.

As her altitude fell and her forward momentum slowed, Bower turned to land on her feet. She found herself reaching for the ground but not feeling it as she slowed to a pace no quicker than a light walk, drifting just inches from the platform. Finally, her feet touched gently on the ground. Sand crunched beneath her boots.

The three creatures that were once Stella wheeled around the edge of the platform some thirty or forty feet away. Their behavior was erratic, as was that of the crowd before them. Bower couldn’t help but wonder if they were appealing to the vast alien audience, telling them something about their harrowing escape from Earth.

After several minutes, they returned to her and Elvis and spoke as the crowd settled.

“You.”

“... Must.”

“... ... Speak.”

Elvis looked at Bower. She wasn’t sure what these creatures wanted them to say, and she felt a little cheated that Elvis had looked at her before she could look to him. Somehow, she’d been volunteered.

Bower raised her hand, hoping a flat palm was a universal gesture of openness and friendship, although she doubted that kind of body language extended beyond Earth.

There was considerable noise within the stadium, and Bower doubted her voice would be heard.

Thousands of alien creatures thronged the tiered platforms enclosing them, their fronds waving, slapping against each other and the ground as they moved around.

“Ah, hi.”

Bower cringed, but she took solace in the fact no one could hear her.

In that instant, the amphitheater fell deathly silent.

A blinding light shone down upon them as darkness descended on the stadium. Bower covered her eyes, struggling to adjust to the influx of light. She squinted, barely able to see Elvis less than a couple of feet from her. In that moment, the pitch-black darkness beyond the light seemed to stretch on into eternity.

She turned, but couldn’t see anything beyond the small halo of light surrounding the two of them. It was as though reality had dissolved, leaving them isolated.

A voice spoke, uttering one word.

“Why?”

The voice was male. For the first time, this wasn’t Bower’s voice repeated back to her. That one word echoed throughout the stadium, having come from all around them.

Elvis turned through three hundred and sixty degrees, half-crouching as he did so, as though he felt threatened. Bower felt it too. The tension in the air was unbearable.

“Why?” she repeated softly, aware the acoustics within the amphitheater were carrying her voice. Honestly, she felt this was a question these alien creatures should be answering. She wasn’t sure what they wanted to hear from her. One word could not be considered a sentence, let alone a question, while hers were the only actions she could speak to, so she cleared her throat and spoke with measured deliberation.

“We were trapped, captured. We had to escape.”

The silence within the stadium was eerie. Bower felt she had to speak, if only to break through the haunting quiet.

“We were imprisoned with your pilot.”

Was that it? Was that what they wanted to hear? Did they want to know what motivated her to help Stella? Even with Elvis standing just a few feet away, Bower felt alone, vulnerable. She felt as though the white light shining down upon them passed straight through her, as though this alien species was sitting in judgment of her.

“Your pilot killed our friend, but I knew ... I knew there had to be more ... I couldn’t believe she meant us harm ... I couldn’t believe you had come all this way to destroy life ...”

Bower paused, wondering how much they had understood.

“Why?”

Although it was just one word, the tone was different. A woman had spoken.

Bower was confused. She needed more context. A single word was not enough. They wanted her to explain herself, but she didn’t understand why she needed to. And there was no interest in how, no interest in what she and Elvis had gone through. Motive and intent were the only priority.

“Why did I help your pilot? Because that’s what it means to be intelligent. Anything less would have been wrong. Sure, I was frightened. I was afraid.”

Elvis spoke up.

“Fear makes people do stupid things, but we knew we had to help your pilot.”

Pilot or pilots? Was that an accurate description of the three Stellas? Did the term pilot translate? Bower wasn’t sure.

“War.”

Bower swallowed. At the very least, they were moving away from interrogatives and on to nouns, but she’d have preferred a noun that wasn’t so pregnant with meaning. She wanted a sentence, a conversation, a discussion.

“We were at war,” Elvis said. “You must understand war, the clash and conflict that follows power. But war is not our default. The war in Malawi was forced on us.”

Elvis paused. Bower could see he was looking for a response but none came.

“To have not gone to war would have been to give in to those who would abuse their power over others. War is never symmetrical. The strong prey on the weak. We chose to stand up against that wrong.”

Bower held her hand out, signaling for Elvis to stop. He may not have felt it, but she thought they were asking why humanity had waged war against them. She doubted they cared for Malawi.

For Bower, the terrifying thing about standing there in the light was the implication of the darkness. The pitch black beyond tormented her. She wanted to see them, to observe this alien congress as it made its deliberation, but instead she faced the cold night. For humanity, black had always represented death, but why? Darkness held the unknown. Darkness was beyond sight. Darkness was beyond control.

Stella and her kind were out there in the darkness. They weren’t dumb. They clearly understood English and could communicate, and yet they chose to get her and Elvis talking. Bower couldn’t shake the feeling her words were being weighed carefully, with judicious precision.

Elvis must have sensed that too, as he continued softly, saying. “When you arrived, we mistook your floaters for an invasion fleet, for an act of aggression, but that was a mistake.”

“Peace,” echoed out from the darkness.

“Yes, yes, I know,” Bower snapped, surprising herself. She wanted to see them, to address them in person and not from this prison of light. She slowed herself down, saying, “We heard you, but we did not believe you. We were afraid.”

She swallowed the lump in her throat. The thought of speaking on behalf of humanity as a whole intimidated her. The pressure bore down on her like a lead weight.

“You must have seen the hornets,” she began, pointing out into the darkness, gesturing toward where she imagined the tree of lights stood. “For you, arriving on Earth must have been like knocking over a hornet’s nest.

“All of life on Earth is hostile. Life fights to survive, surely that is the same elsewhere.”

The silence that followed her statement seemed to condemn her.

“But now we understand,” she said. “We’ve seen the tree of life. Your ship is one of discovery, a research vessel. We have had many such vessels ourselves. From the Santa Maria to the HMS Endeavor and the Beagle, we too have explored in peace. We too have sought to learn, to explore, to understand.”

A dark shape moved on the edge of her vision, staying in the shadows. Bower squinted, making out the silhouette of a man standing just outside the light.

“They are endemic, diseased,” the man began, speaking with a neutral English accent, one she couldn’t place. “They war against themselves, they decimate their own planet. They are barbarians, base and brute, to be culled for the better of all.”

“There is intelligence,” a woman’s voice replied, and Bower could see her vague outline next to his.

Bower went to move forward, but her feet wouldn’t respond, leaving her stranded, bathed in the brilliant, white light. It wasn’t that she couldn’t move, but that her strength faltered and she found herself shaking.

“Where there is intelligence,” the woman continued, “there is hope.”

“They are mindless,” the male voice replied. “They destroy habitat, drive species to extinction.”

“But there is reason,” the woman protested.

“Reason enslaved by instinct,” the man said.

Bower turned, following them as they walked around her and Elvis, staying in the shadows.

“Who are they?” Elvis asked.

Bower was silent.

The woman replied coldly, saying, “We ... are you.”

As she stepped forward into the light, Bower got her first good look at this strange woman. She was well over six feet tall and dressed in a long, flowing garment accentuating her height. Light played on her silky, white dress, giving off the subtle hues of the rainbow. Her arms were thin, almost anemic, while her skin appeared jaundice. Her long straight hair was jet black in stark contrast to her soft features, while her eyes were a soft brown.

“I don’t understand,” Elvis said. Even he looked short compared to her.

Bower stood a mere five foot six inches and felt dwarfed by the thin woman.

The man stepped into the light beside her, easily seven feet in height, but equally as thin.

The woman spoke again, saying, “Based on our observation of naturally selective and sexually selective pressures within your species, and taking into account previous rates of genetic mutation, we are your future. Within fifty thousand stellar orbits, your species will approximate this state.”

Bower was stunned. She was speechless. Elvis, though, seemed quick to realize there was something cryptic and implicit in their appearance. He was astute, asking, “What is it you mean to do?”