Damocles (19 page)

“You tell them to stop doing…that.” She waved a thick hand at the backs of the Urfers. Loul saw the black bands tattooed on her fingers, another pretentious status symbol, like the black overshirts. “You tell them they’re not running this show and if we want them to move or stay or serve us up a
mogi-ketcha
pizza, they’re going to get their bony legs moving, do you hear me?” She grabbed his arm tighter. “You tell them that.”

Loul looked her in the eye. “You tell them.”

And so after much posturing and bluffing and rationalizing the standoff as a win-win for everyone (Loul still couldn’t follow that logic, but that was hardly the issue); the original work crews were allowed to remain on-site. It had taken almost a full shift to come to the final terms, throughout which the Urfers remained perfectly still. Loul could see sweat trickling down the sides of their faces and he knew they had to be wanting water, but when he stepped into Meg’s line of sight, she had only looked at him and smiled. Note for the archives, Loul thought: the Urfers were stubborn.

The work crews had assembled around the argument site. The generals had stepped in, insisting that the original crews and the official black-clad crews stand on opposite sides of the Urfers. Not surprising, the original crews chose to stand in front of the unmoving Urfers, crouching low and probably sharing similar glances with their respective Urfer. The final arrangement declared that the original crews would continue to perform the bulk of the duties and the official crews would “stand by and oversee in an official capacity.” A badly hidden ripple of laughter had moved through the crews at that piece of bureaucratic candy-speak. General Ada clapped his hand on Loul’s shoulder and told him to break the news to the Urfers.

Crouching in front of Meg, Loul knocked his knuckles together, resisting the urge to grin. “Loul no move.” Down the line, the crews responded in kind, each Urfer face loosening into a smile. When each team had reported their status, Loul leaned in closer. “Okay?”

Meg’s little pink tongue slipped across her lips. “Okay.” With muffled sounds of discomfort the Urfers rose to their feet, unfolding their legs and twisting their backs. Long fingers brushed dirt off of flat backsides, and slender shoulder carriages rose and fell as they swung their arms back and forth. They did all of this with
their backs still to the official crews, who couldn’t see the wide smiles each Urfer shared with their Dideto crew.

The stiffness of the long standoff worked out of their muscles, Meg slammed her flat palms together, making that sharp snapping sound that always startled Loul when she did it.

“Okay, Loul.” She bobbed her head and turned to face the generals, Baddo, and the cameras. “Meg Loul move. Talk cameras. Loul? Effan Effan Cho talk camera?”

It shouldn’t have surprised him but Meg and Cho seemed the most relaxed at the press conference. They probably didn’t know that over a billion people were watching them all over the planet, their every utterance being translated into dozens of languages. Or maybe they did and that fact paled in comparison to the fact that they’d flown billions of miles through space in a spaceship. All things considered, that fact made a press conference a pretty small affair. Only Loul hadn’t flown anywhere. Sure, he’d bonded with an alien and stood up to the Cartar Administration, but the crowd, the purr of the cameras, and the mountain of microphones pointed at him conspired to entirely unnerve him as the five of them took their places at the press table.

A special platform had been constructed at the edge of the barrier zone, a long deep awning set up with industrial filters to correct the shifting colors of sunlight for maximum clarity. The microphones clung to the edge of the long table, and Loul noticed that at the front of the table, where an official banner would usually hang, the area was open. The press wanted to see as much of the Urfers as they could, including the way their long legs had to bend and fold to get comfortable on the portable chairs. Meg and Cho seemed perfectly at ease as the event started, looking calmly into the cameras that passed before them, even laughing under their breath as Baddo took center stage and held forth at some
length. He didn’t know how much they could understand of their speech, but he thought they could read their self-aggrandizing posture. Everyone once in a while Meg would shift in her seat, her thin elbow brushing against his arm.

He pretty much relied on those touches to keep himself from bolting off the platform. This wasn’t just some local news story on a turbine failure or missing livestock. This was the world media—the entire world. Every single person who had access to television was probably watching this live wherever they were. He tried to tell himself that all eyes would be on Meg and Cho. His certainly were, but when she turned to smile at him, her eyes crinkling around the edges, he realized that at that particular moment, all eyes were on him, including the dozens of cameras pointed his way. Baddo had just introduced him and now they expected him to speak.

“Mr. Pell?” Ba and Addo smiled at him and he couldn’t be sure who spoke. Then he heard Meg’s voice soft in his earpiece.

“Loul is okay.” And he felt the tension drain from his neck.

“Hello, everyone.” The technicians had told him not to lean too far forward into the microphones, an unnecessary warning since he felt like he was going to fall backward in his chair trying to escape their puffy points. “Thank you for being here today. Um, my name is Loul Pell and…and”—Meg’s elbow brushed against him and he took a deep breath—“I’d like to introduce you to my friends Meg and Cho.”

Meg smiled at him, those glassy white teeth picking up the light to maximum effect. He wondered what they must look like on the television screens, if people could see just how fragile they looked up close. The Urfers gave the cameras plenty of opportunity to capture the image, turning to face the crowd with the same broad smiles.

“I don’t know how much exactly you’ve been told,” Loul said, feeling less nervous seeing Meg so relaxed in the focus of
attention. “I assume you’ve seen pictures of their planet, Urf, and seen at least some of the footage the archivists have taken. To be honest, I’m not really sure what I’m doing up here.” Warm laughter rippled through the crowd. These were seasoned media pros who were all too familiar with official runaround and media speak. They must have been waiting for dozens of shifts, if not several rounds, for this press conference and probably sympathized.

“Can we get a close-up?” an older man with a shield of press badges shouted.

“I assume you mean of them. I’m not that photogenic.” More laughter and he found himself smiling along with Meg.

“How are you communicating?” a woman he couldn’t see shouted. “We were told they don’t speak our language and that this is the one with the tool that’s supposed to learn it. They said it has some kind of light screen?”

Loul leaned his forearms on the table. “First of all, Meg is a she. Cho is a he. Neither is an it.” He wondered just how little information had been shared and how much of that small amount was accurate. This press conference could deeply affect the world’s view of these visitors. He shuddered to think how much damage Baddo could have done already.

Effan Two, who was seated at the far end of the table next to her work partner, leaned in close enough to the microphone to make it hum. Effan One pulled her back as she spoke. “Our biology scans have already determined that genetically we and the Urfers are more similar than different. They are gender specific, male and female, mammalian, of a primate species.”

Effan One picked up her spiel. “Of course, there are distinctive differences and we’re still running a number of tests to determine nutritional requirements, evolutionary developments, neurological variances. Our work is just beginning.”

“But how do you communicate?” the reporter asked again. “We’ve gotten the bulletins and the data reports. We know at least some of what you’re learning but we don’t know how. If they don’t speak Cartar and you don’t speak…whatever it is they speak, how are you learning this?”

Loul cleared his throat. “That is what Meg and I have been doing. That seems to be her specialty. She has a translation program. We work together, trying to express ideas and words and concepts, and when we realize we’re talking about the same thing, she puts it in the program and we’re able to talk.” Trying to explain this made Loul realize just how little he understood the process.

“Why you?” someone else shouted.

“Excuse me?”

“Why you?” The crowd peppered him with questions. “Why is she working with you? Aren’t you in telemetry? Why isn’t she working with one of the administration’s interpreters? Can she understand what we’re saying?”

Meg squeezed his arm and looked at him, her smile gone. “Loul is okay?” she asked quietly enough to be heard only in the earpiece. Questions kept raining down on him from the reporters assembled, but Loul held up his fist to block them. “Screen okay?”

“Yes,” he said softly. Then he turned back to the crowd. “Give me just a second. I’ll show you the program we’re talking about.” He bumped his knuckles as Meg pulled the light screen from her wristband, tilting it up so it stood like a translucent shield between them and the press. The crowd surged, trying to get a better look at the wondrous sight, and Meg ducked her head closer to his.

“Loul is okay? Camera talk is okay? What is this talk?” She pointed to the question mark, letting the cameras capture the
image lighting up. Loul could see that Cho had opened his screen for the Effans, keeping it flat against the table and thus out of sight of the reporters. Meg had fitted the Effans with earpieces as well, and he could see the flashes of surprise on their faces every time Cho or Meg whispered.

“Camera talk is…” He struggled to find a way to explain it. There hadn’t been time to teach the word
reporters
. For Meg and Cho, the men and women who held the cameras were the cameras. Meg must have picked up on the aggressive tone of the questions. It never failed to amaze him how tuned in she was to temperaments and intentions. “Cameras ask why Loul talk Meg.”

“Why?” Meg tilted her head. “Meg Loul talk. Need/want talk.”

“Yes.” Loul touched the space between the
yes
and
no
buttons, a gesture they’d both come to understand as a kind of
maybe
or
but
, a gesture of indecision or lack of clarity. “Cameras ask why Loul. Cameras no ask why Meg. Ask why Loul.”

Meg’s face made a strange change, one of the fine lines of hair over her wide eyes lifting in a way he hadn’t seen before. He could hear Cho laugh a short laugh, and the two Urfers conferred in tones soft enough he couldn’t make out the words even with the earpiece. When she looked back at him, her expression was very similar to that she had worn after facing down Baddo. Before he could say anything, a reporter banged on his chair for attention.

“Is it saying something? Can we hear it?”

“She!” The Effans yelled in unison.

Loul smiled, happy that distinction irritated the Effans as much as him. It was crucial that the world understand these were people just like them. Okay, maybe not just like them. They were taller and thinner and paler and had odd smooth skin and weirdly long fingers and arms and legs and necks and really wide, wet eyes and glass-like teeth, but he and the Effans had to
prove that the more time they spent with these aliens, the less alien they became.

“Can she talk? Is that a she beside her? Can either of them talk to us?”

“Meg talk?” She still spoke only for the earpiece. “Meg talk cameras?”

Loul grinned at her. “Okay.” He saw her finger slide up the screen, activating the volume on her speaker patch. He addressed the reporters. “Meg is going to speak, using the program. You’re probably going to hear mostly my voice since I’m the one she’s been recording, but other words have been added from other members of the crew. It might sound weird at first, but trust me, you get used to it. Oh, and the concepts are still really rough so don’t expect complete sentences or anything.”

Loul wouldn’t have thought it was possible for this many people to become this quiet but every person in the crowd grew still. Only the cameras purred as Meg sat up straighter.

“Hello. I am Meg. This is Cho.” A ripple of excitement moved through the crowd followed quickly by shushing sounds. Cameras closed in, trying to capture the lack of synchronization between how her mouth moved and the sounds emanating from her patch. “Thank you, Didet, Urfers thank you. Urfers…” She paused, scanning the screen for the correct words. “Urfers like/happy Didet.”

A reporter stood to ask a question but Meg continued. “Cameras ask Loul why Meg talk Loul. Yes? This is question?”

Loul tapped his knuckles and explained to the crowd. “Cameras are you guys. She heard your question about why me. To tell the truth, I don’t know what her answer is going to be.” Another sympathetic wave of laughter poured out.

Meg laughed too, the microphones picking up the faintest sound of it, and Loul saw the crowd lean forward even more.
“Meg talk Loul because Loul talk Meg.” She bit her lip, a sign that she was thinking. “Loul talk good/okay.” Her finger hovered between the
yes
and
no
buttons. This wasn’t exactly what she meant. “Loul talk Meg this is good/okay.” She looked only at Loul, waving her hands out over the crowd. “Loul talk Didet is good/okay. Meg talk Loul. Urfers talk Dideto because Loul talk Didet is good/okay. Loul is Didet is good/okay.”

Someone shouted for clarification but Loul ignored them, watching Meg’s soft brown eyes staring at him, her smile not as wide but just for him.

“Mr. Pell, please!” Ba stomped on the stage, demanding his attention. “Can you interpret that? Does that even mean anything?”

“Yeah,” Loul said, bumping his knuckles against the table softly, turning back to the crowd. “She said that she talked to me because I talked to her first. It was sort of an accident. I was just supposed to be holding a microphone for one of the archiving teams and I sort of forgot myself and stepped forward too far. I came right up on Meg and the cap of the microphone blew off and hit her.” The crowd made a collective gasp. “I guess it could have been a disaster but instead she just handed me the cap back and smiled. And she touched me. That’s what she means that I told her that we were okay. That she could talk to us, that they all could.”