Damocles (7 page)

A weapons carousel wheeled closer to the right of the generals, and a line of military police stepped together in tight formation waiting for orders. The generals conferred, talking over their shoulders with their counselors behind them, but Loul didn’t try to hear what they said. Instead, he ran over and over the words he’d heard. That stupid pie comment—that had been Baga’s voice, no doubt about it. But that first phrase—“What can I do to assist you?”—wasn’t Baga, but it was just as familiar. That was the voice of the automated service of Eastern Bank. Loul knew that voice as well as his own from the dozens of times he’d started to call Reno Dado to ask her out, only to chicken out, hang up, and try again.

Three different voices. Three different sentences. The first one a recorded voice, the second female, the third a famous broadcaster. All of them in perfect Cartar dialect. The second one even had a lower-county accent.

“This is General Ada of the Cartar Military Assembly.” The voice boomed out from a bullhorn pressed to the general’s lips. Loul could see a heavy flush of rage on the man’s throat as he barked out his orders. “You are under arrest for violating a protected archaeological site and for inciting public panic. Stand down immediately.”

The group of five didn’t move, and Loul found himself drifting closer to the front of the lowered barricade, transfixed on their strange, silent stance. Ada repeated his order, and after a few more silent moments, Loul caught the slightest turn of a head of the second figure from the end closest to him. He waved a hand back toward Mamu. “Give me a microphone.”

“What?” Mamu whispered. “Why?”

“Give me a microphone. A long one.” He kept his eyes on the two figures closest to him. “I think they’re talking to each other.”

Mamu handed him a wand mic with a slip-on padded windscreen. The wind from the Ketter Sea pounded across the plain and the padded cover helped block out the sound of it. Trying to be inconspicuous, Loul leaned forward, holding the wand mic out. All eyes were either on the generals or the five strangers and Loul was several feet clear of the barricade before anyone noticed him. When they did, several things happened all at once.

Someone shouted, an MP probably, as well as a few catcalls of “moron” and “what the hell.” Loul couldn’t hear them over the pounding of his pulse when the five strange beings before him also noticed him and turned their heads in perfect unison to face him with those strange gray shaded visors. And vying for even more terrifying, at that moment the wind shifted, catching the slip-on windscreen of the microphone, popping it off the end of the long wand, and sending it sailing like a bouncy ball directly to the feet of the figure closest to Loul, the alien at the end of the chevron. Loul could hear nothing then but his pulse and the sucked-in breath of the stunned group behind him.

He couldn’t have moved at that moment if he’d been shot in the gut by a pom-cannon. The wind made the only sound for several long moments. The figure closest to him, the figure he had just shot the windscreen at, just barely moved its head. As one, the five figures shifted slightly, and another surprised gasp
rose from the barricade as the gray shaded visors lifted, folding into themselves faster than his eye could follow. The helmets of the strange gray suits seemed to evaporate from the suits, revealing long, narrow but human-looking faces staring back at them. Each figure moved its arms and detached the gloves on each side, revealing even skinnier hands with long, flexible fingers that looked impossibly fragile. In perfect synchronization, the five figures slipped the gloves into unseen pockets and brought their hands to rest at their sides.

Loul didn’t know where to look. His eyes moved from face to face, taking in the thin cheeks, the large wet eyes, the strange pelt-like texture of what could be hair. All Loul could hear was his pulse, his rasping breath, and the pounding of the sea wind over the open plain. All he could see was the collection of alien life in front of him, and all he could think was “This isn’t Baga Baga.”

The figure at the end of the chevron moved slowly, bending its long legs in that waterbird-like way, lowering itself with an odd grace. Thin, pale fingers wrapped around the windscreen, their fragile grip delicate enough that it made no indentation on the soft foam. It brought the screen up closer to its face, and the wide wet eyes watched as the deft fingers turned the foam over and over. As slowly as they had bent, the legs straightened, bringing the creature up to its full height. It stared straight into Loul’s face, and he found he couldn’t blink, couldn’t turn his face away. He wondered if it was hypnotizing him or reading his mind or taking over his body, but he couldn’t seem to find it in himself to be afraid.

It made a sound, a soft whispering sound that blew away in the Ketter wind, and Loul sensed a ripple of movement through the five tall beings. He felt his pulse quicken and knew his mouth hung open as the creature stepped forward. They moved so slowly,
he thought. It took one step, then another, its spindly hands cradling the windscreen, its eyes locked on Loul’s, until it stood less than two feet from him. Now Loul could hear weapons cocking and cameras clicking but he didn’t move. He stared up into the eyes staring down at him, noticing details, noticing everything.

Its skin seemed almost translucent, smooth like the inside of a river shell. The eyes were amazing, a brown circle with flecks of color surrounded by white shot through with red filaments. They blinked like Dideto eyes although he couldn’t see any sign of the third inner lid. The mouth moved with small rippling motions, generating smaller movements in the narrow throat that would have been difficult to see if he hadn’t been standing so close. He was so close. He was so close he could reach out and touch the thing if he wanted to.

It turned out he didn’t have to. The creature broke eye contact with him, dropping its gaze to the windscreen in its hands and then moving to the wand microphone Loul forgot he was holding. Slowly, slowly, like something from a movie, the arms moved, lifting the thin hands toward him. One hand touched the tip of the microphone, tilting it forward. The other raised the windscreen and with no more than a simple flick, slipped the screen back onto the microphone. Loul had seen the machine the archivists had needed to get the windscreens on their equipment and yet these long, spindly fingers managed to do it effortlessly.

The fingers brushed softly across the end of the microphone and then drifted across his knuckles with no more pressure than a breeze. Loul didn’t flinch. He didn’t move a muscle, until he realized the slender hands rested once more at the creature’s side. He lifted his gaze to find the brown, shiny eyes meeting his once more. The creature lowered its head just a fraction, tilting forward and then straightening. The mouth broadened but remained closed, and with the same slow grace, the creature
reversed its steps, somehow walking backward until it took up its original position in the chevron.

Loul kept his eyes on the creature but turned his head enough to be heard by the generals.

“This isn’t a prank.”

It took all of Meg’s self-control to resist drawing her weapon. She’d been so caught up in the reactions to the recorded audio and then the vocals coming back she hadn’t even seen the man sneaking toward her. Sneaking was hardly the right word—the lumbering gait had little stealth—and she couldn’t be sure if the figure was male or female, but with that much facial hair she sure hoped it wasn’t a woman. Regardless, while she and the captain hurried through an assessment of the crowd’s reaction, the man moved within feet of her, pointing some sort of wand in her direction, and only Prader’s warning had snapped her to attention.

Wagner’s voice sounded steady and unpanicked in her com. “Any closer and we move. On my mark. Sidearms active. Watch the weapon. Watch the weapon.”

“Wait,” Meg said, trying to take in the entire tableau. Something was wrong. Something was off in the scene before her. The three portly figures stood at the center of the barricade. When the audio loop had been repeated, the shields lowered and all attention turned to the trio. Meg had heard her data pack recording and processing the vocals around her, hearing the beautiful pinging sound anytime a vocal matched a recognized
pattern. Whatever the central figure had shouted at them had mobilized a line of guards and captured the group’s attention. Everything before her spoke of group movement. So why was one lone figure out of formation?

“Captain,” she said when the figure stopped moving closer, “I think this might be a good time to lower our helmets and deglove.”

“What?” Wagner tilted his head just an inch in her direction. “Now? With that thing so close to you? I don’t like it.”

“I get the feeling he’s not supposed to be here. Look how nobody’s following him.”

Jefferson made a scoffing sound. “Great. So we’ve got a lone assassin. Let’s definitely drop visors and make ourselves vulnerable.”

“It might be a gift.” Meg stared at the broad rough face in front of her. “It might be a…hell, I don’t know what it might be, but he’s alone and he’s close. He might just be curious. If he’s brave enough to break ranks, let’s give him something to see.”

Wagner gave the go-ahead, and in unison they activated the helmet retractors. Once the visors collapsed into the ringed collars, he gave the sign to detach their gloves, talking them through the movements with a one-two-three prompting. Meg knew they could all hear and feel the shocked response from the crowd assembled before them, a thrumming sound that underscored every sound rising in pitch as faces were revealed. She could hear it clearly in the figure before her, her keen ear working to separate the rumble of machinery from the deep throat-humming sound. She desperately wanted to enter a programming note into her data kit but the proximity of the figure and the angle of whatever it was he held prompted her to stay still.

The wind shifted, blowing hot and dry across her damp forehead, and she nearly jumped from her boots when the round
tip of the stick flew off and bobbled in her direction. She heard Prader swear in her ear and knew that if their positions had been reversed, weapons would already be drawn. And protocol be damned, she probably should have drawn her weapon. An unknown figure approached her with an unknown object in its hand, pointed at her, hurling projectiles at her. But one thing Meg had learned in her diplomatic dealings was to trust her gut, and her gut told her this person, this guy, meant her no intentional harm.

“Stay with me,” she spoke low into the coms. “I’m making contact.” Ignoring Wagner’s warnings and Prader’s cursing, Meg slowly bent to pick up the round object. It looked like a windscreen, similar to the foam pads over a standard microphone, only the foam felt harder, more like Styrofoam than soundproof padding. It would make sense in the heavy wind. Maybe her visitor was a reporter of some sort. The planet had shown plenty of signs of broadcast.

Keeping her arms close to her body and her movements small and slow, Meg stepped toward the man. At five foot eight, she stood a head taller than him, but he had the same broad, solid build of everyone around him. She took in the coarse skin and small narrow eyes, knowing her suit camera downloaded visuals to Cho’s bio-file. As she got closer, she could see a pulsing beneath the man’s jawbone and heard a rapid humming hammering out a matching beat. Despite his lesser height, the man easily outweighed her by fifty pounds. If she frightened him, she had no doubt he could overpower her. And if that stick was a weapon, Meg knew she was screwed.

Putting this all out of her mind, she reached forward and tilted the sticklike object toward her. The foam ball had an obvious opening and she’d seen where it had launched from. It took only seconds to slip the cover over the end of the stick. When no
bullets or any sign of aggression came forth, she wanted so badly to let her fingertips brush over the man’s skin. It was stupid and Cho would probably rip her apart when he had a minute. There could be lesions, infections, bacteria. Her own training told her that uninvited physical contact could lead to disastrous breakdowns in social order. The possibility of taboo was astronomical.

But she was millions of miles from Earth. She stood face-to-face with a fellow human like none she had ever seen before, and he was just looking up at her, his gray eyes hooded but wide, a thick line of hair ringing the lids from nose to temple. He didn’t yell. He didn’t flinch. He just stared, meeting her gaze with what looked very much like wonder. And for just a moment, Meg didn’t hear the heavy rumbling machinery around her. She didn’t hear her crewmates breathing in her coms. She forgot the bewildering reality of multiple suns on the horizon. For several heartbeats, she just stood face-to-face with another human being. And she touched him.

Bowing slightly and coming somewhat to her senses, Meg carefully stepped back in line with Cho. Her friend, and that was how she saw him now, stayed still as she retreated, watching her with his mouth slightly open. Once she regained her spot, he shouted something to the three figures standing before the barricade. Two seconds later Meg bit back a smile. ProLingLang had put together another set of syntax.