The Librarian: A First Contact Story (4 page)

1

Nick was carried from the examination room lying on a
gurney. Strapped down as if he were going to attempt an escape, he concentrated
on looking at the ceiling instead of the curious looks of the people moving the
bed. He didn't think he'd ever felt more vulnerable in his entire life, even if
there was no way they could hurt him. Under their gaze, he felt truly alien. He
arrived at his new room, was unstrapped and helped to sit up, hop off and sit
down on his new bed.

By the time everyone left him alone, he found himself
in a hexagonal cell with glass windows, that God knew what they were using for
when aliens were not running around.

He had to give it to them, though: they were highly
organized and professional. He had to admit that at least the General who ran
the show was keeping it together.

The other surprise in his new surroundings was a young
soldier assigned to be his "interpreter". Judging by the speed of his
typing, this kid's job was to write down everything Nick said as well as the
way he said it. Around his cell, more and more people came, monitors and
equipment being connected, hazmat suits passed along like candy at Halloween.

I'm going to miss that,
he thought. Candy and Halloween and handing out
stuff.

"Have you contacted my wife yet?" he politely
asked the Private who typed. Nick's eyes measured his cell and how easily it
couldn't hold him. Once he decided to go, no power on the entire planet could
stop him.

"We're… um… we're trying to… I mean, we—"

"It's a simple question," he said with an
encouraging smile. The more well-behaved he was, the easier to get through
this. Kind of like an airport, really. Smile, nod, present your papers, get
half-naked for the officers, keep smiling, get your stuff, get on the plane,
and get out of there.

"We're checking out some things," the guy
answered finally. He was probably the youngest person around here, but Nick had
to give it to the twenty-something soldier: he
was
keeping his cool. A
range of emotions filled the room: from fear to doom, from uncertainty to
caution. But this kid, who was not older than his youngest undergraduate, this
kid was
excited.

"What's your name?"

"I'm Private Connors, sir," he answered,
green eyes sparkling at being addressed.

"I'm not your superior, Connors. You don't need
to 'sir' me."

"Yes, sir." Connors winced.

Nick laughed. It felt good.

Dr. Fox came from the double doors, and he had the
kind of anticipation that comes when one has a very clear vision of the future.
The kid was amazed at the now. Fox was amazed at what was to come.

"We hope the accommodations are…
comfortable," Fox said, looking at the glass room. "We're unsure how
to react in the event the radiation levels go up."

"They won't, but I… I understand your
precautions. If this makes you feel better, I'm okay with it."

"We were wondering if you could answer—"

"No. Check all the stuff you need to check, take
all the safety measures you want. But make no mistake, doctor, I'll only answer
to my wife. And if I were you, I would hurry. I won't be able to hold this form
for more than 12 hours."

2

For someone who had memories that spanned several
millennia, and access to millions of accounts of thousands of worlds, Nick
found himself bored. His mind kept going around and around about what to say to
Jane, and although he knew he was imagining it, he swore he felt nauseous.

So much for not feeling anything…

His cell was large enough to allow him to do some
decent pacing. He went to every wall, all six angles, in an endless circle. He
felt like a goddamn hamster running around in a horizontal wheel. He kept
thinking how to tell Jane the truth. What would he like to hear if Jane was the
one leaving? No easy answer came to his mind.

In front of him, an older woman was getting into one
of the hazmat suits he was coming to find frustrating. They made him feel
dangerous.

An eternity later, the woman entered the space outside
his cell, and looked at him with the experienced eye of someone who is used to
measuring people. Like a fashion designer, he guessed, knowing how long his
shoulders were and what color would suit him best. 

"Hello. My name is Dr. Greenwood. Would you mind
if I ask you some…
references
about Nicholas Logan's life?" she
asked, wisely choosing to avoid the word
question
so he wouldn't shoot
her down from the start.

He thought about it for a moment. It wasn't like Jane
didn't know everything there was to know about him that he had to wait for her.
Sooner or later, these people would get all the dirt they would ever want on
him.

"Shoot," he said, sitting down. Someone got
her a folding chair, and she did the same.

"What's the last thing you remember before… well,
knowing
what you know now?"

Ah, I know that look,
he finally realized.
Here's the shrink.

"Nothing particularly interesting. Upper Lake was
still a ways away. I had to be careful with my water supply. It was a beautiful
day. I wished Jane had been there with me."

"Why were you hiking alone today?"

"I wanted… I wanted to reconnect, I guess. Do
something adventurous by myself. I think I somehow knew I had to get away so I
could leave Earth. Once it was safe, I knew it was time."

"That same… let's call it 'intuition', was the
same reason why you chose sociology? To observe us?"

"Hm?" he asked, thinking about Lena Lake,
remembering all too well the feel of the sunshine on his face, and the smell of
fresh air and cedar and pine. He'd missed many things before, many places, but
Earth was something special.

"Sociology. Why did you choose that field?"

"People-watching," he answered without a
second thought. "You sit down at a café and watch people window-shopping
and it's amazing. How women murmur to themselves. How men's eyes focus like a
hunter's over a particular object of interest. Children just make up their own
worlds when they are bored to death, and you can almost see it coming out of
their heads, floating around as they go up and down stairs and running around.
Honestly, Dr. Greenwood, we all do people-watching. I just happened to take
advantage of it and make a career out of a hobby."

"Was that how you met your wife?" Greenwood
asked, her face going a little bit softer. Nick chuckled at that.

"I guess I
was
people-watching. Jane
wasn't, she wasn't even looking where she was going. She bumped into me and
splashed chocolate over my shoulder and lap. She was terrified she'd ruined my
coat. And I thought,
well, as klutzy girls go, this one sure is cute.
"

"Does she know? Any of this?"

"You got to me before I could go to her,
remember?" he sighed, a long suffering sigh. "I told her all I needed
was a little bit of magic to make it better."

Greenwood frowned, not following him. "The coat.
She ruined that coat so badly I had to trash it. She didn't really believe the
bit about the magic, either, but she ended up buying me a coffee to make up for
it. We talked until the place kicked us out."

Connors chuckled a little at that, his fingers flying
on the keyboard. Greenwood barely spared him a disapproving glance.

"I read your thesis about urban behaviors."

"I'm impressed. It's been, what? Five hours since
you found me?"

"The military likes its answers fast."

"I bet," Nick said, standing up. He started
to pace, the weight of what he still had to do on his shoulders. "It had
nothing to do with this. Sociology, I mean. It's not like I'm
just
a
sociologist, you know? That's the whole point of the mission when we start a
new life. We record everything we are: I'm a husband. I was someone's son. I
like to play cards—I cheat, too—and I have all these childhood memories, as
well. Life was a good roller coaster this time around."

"Good enough that you're coming back?"

Greenwood watched him intently, interested, her hands
clasped on her lap, the hazmat suit looking kind of silly on her. She'd asked
something he hadn't wanted to think about.

"I don't know," he answered honestly, his
eyes diverting for a moment to where Connors recorded his words. "There
are… echoes of your lives, if you do the same world twice in a row. We tend to
avoid that. It gets too confusing for our 'living' selves when you're on your
next life, knowing things you shouldn't know. Wanting to go to places you used
to love before, but that you don't know now. It messes up the whole 'clean
slate' thing because somehow you're either trying to recreate that other life
or trying to avoid everything about it. You get unwanted glimpses, I
guess."

"A
déjà vu
?"

"It's stronger than that…" He smiled then,
"Please, don't go thinking that everyone who's gotten a
déjà vu
is
one of us. There's really no way to tell."

"I see… So how did it feel? When you realized the
truth about yourself?"

He stopped, the question bringing home things he
needed Jane to hear.

"Is Jane on her way here?" he asked instead,
effectively cutting the interview. This conversation was reminding him that his
time as human had, indeed, ended. If he didn't hurry, his time on Earth as
anything else would end too, and Jane wouldn't get to hear him out.

3

"Well, the good news is that, as far as I can
tell, he's got a good impression of us," Greenwood said, tucking one of
her gray hairs into her hairdo. "From what I can see, the body language
he's projecting so far, we're still dealing with a human being. His life as one
of us seems to have been fairly nice and well adjusted. That should speak well
of Earth as a whole, but we have no idea if there are others, or what their
lives were like."

"At least this one is a good start," Dr. Fox
said, writing down something on his phone.

"What's the bad news?" Mitchell asked, not
worrying about what kind of impressions aliens would get. All he cared about
was his men, his base, and his world
right now.

"If his wife doesn't take this the right way, the
last thing he'll know as one of us will be heartache. Not exactly the message
you want to broadcast to outer space."

1

"Mr. Logan?" the Private who
typed his every word asked after Greenwood had left him alone, his green eyes
intense with the kind of wonderment and curiosity he hoped Jane would have,
"Where did you go?"

"You'll know it when Jane knows it,
Connors," he answered, lying on his bed, looking at the white lights high
on the ceiling. He was starting to think of himself as more than Nicholas Logan
now, and although he'd gone through this process far too many times, this life
had been somehow different. He didn't want to let it go, didn't want to let
Nick Logan go. Not yet.

"I know, sir, I was… just wondering…
in a general sense… sorry," Connors whispered, dejected.

Crap, now I hurt his feelings,
Nick thought, closing his eyes.
He always made it a point to make his students feel like they mattered, or to
pull them down from the cloud when they thought they mattered
too
much.
He did want to tell this to Jane, but they were growing impatient and he was growing
angsty. Maybe giving just enough would be the trick for both parties. Besides,
Connors here was genuinely and personally curious, and not baiting him with a
false sense of guilt.

"It's not something I can describe
with human senses, since I'm not there in a physical sense," he said,
placing his hands behind his neck. For a moment there, he imagined he wasn't in
a cell, knowing he wasn't a human being anymore, but that he was on a beach,
with the sea and a blue sky on the horizon. If he'd been able to choose his
last moments on Earth, he would have chosen a beach in Tahiti. Honest. "We
call it the
Center
, where everyone goes back and registers their
stories, from beginning to end. Every word, every thought, every single
forgotten detail, like where you left your keys or what was the name of your
neighbor when you were four."

"You record everything like a true
explorer," the Private whispered. The typing slowed down as Connors'
attention diverted from recording to listening.

"That's the spirit," Nick agreed,
smiling. "Exploring is one of our highest rushes, you never get tired of
wanting to know, meeting new life, witnessing new events. And you go back to
old friends, all excited about sharing with you the things they know. They're
waiting for me now, actually…" Nick said thoughtfully, for the first time
giving some thought to what was next, once he left Earth for real. "I'm
holding up the party,"

he joked more to himself than to Connors.

"Sometimes, exploring gets
lonely," Nick added, his eyes no longer envisioning the beach in Tahiti,
but his house, his room, waking up beside Jane on a rainy Sunday. "And
you're born again not to find out more about life, but to escape your old one…
leave yourself behind for a little while, and let the intensity of memories
fade."

He held on to that image, to his home, to
his wife, to their love.
I'm so not ready to lose you, Jane. I'll never be
ready to lose you.

They grew silent for a moment.

"When I was younger," Connors
whispered—as if the entire hazmat team was not able to listen—and stopped
writing altogether, "I used to hunt for shooting stars. To know they had
traveled billions of miles, just to burn and be over in a matter of seconds…
that was what mattered to me, really. Not the brightness or the wishes… Just, you
know? To see the end of such well-travelled nomads. I didn't want them to die
alone."

Nick smiled, turning to look at the young
man. "That's quite inspiring, Connors." The Private blushed.
"Something tells me that speed on the keyboard was not gained while doing
essays for High School, but writing about more interesting subjects." The
blush deepened.
What do you write about, kid? Poetry, maybe? That is some
interesting shade of red right there.

"I'm gonna miss this," Nick
said, his eyes going back to the ceiling. "Teasing students, and
chocolate, and pineapple juice, and yes, shooting stars…"
And Jane.
Good Lord, what are you doing right now, Love? Are you at the library, ordering
some science fiction series that won't seem so much like fiction tomorrow morning?

"On the other hand," Nick added
to keep his thoughts from dragging him down, "What I
won't
miss is
traffic, and smog, and worrying about the economy, or politics or teaching the
right things. I'm glad that part is over. Even if I can't believe it's coming
to an end so fast."

Typing followed his last words, as Connors
kept up with the story, probably adding details as to his tone of voice and
emotional state.
Writing this whole thing must be hard
, he thought.

"You look so human," the Private
said, openly staring at Nick now. "I mean, I know what the monitors show,
and everything, but it's so easy to think… that everyone out there is just like
us. And you've seen them, you've lived with them… God, what would I give to
know your stories. I never—
never
thought I could be talking to someone
who came from out there."

Air rushed out of Nick's lungs, and he
closed his eyes.

"
That
. That right there.
That's the type of story we love to find. The first time you sat down to talk
to a being from another planet and your world got a little bit bigger. And it's
all worth it all over again, to go out and find those stories. To
live
."

"Because life is an adventure,"
Connors said, his eyes sparkling all over again.

"Every life is, kid. You can count on
it."

2

Mitchell couldn't remember a day where so
many people had wanted to talk to him—or had paid this much attention to his
Base.

"No, sir, he hasn't threatened us in
any way, though we don't discard the possibility that he could become
radioactive if he wishes to. We just don't know the extent of his physical
skills."
Hell, we don't even understand what he's made of,
Mitchell
thought as a dozen heads in Washington talked over the phone. Access to
Arlington Base had been changed to the maximum clearance level, so hardly
anyone was coming and
no one
was going.

"We have fifty scientists working on
this, General," a man spoke. Mitchell had talked to so many high commands
it was hard to keep track who was who. "From hostile to benevolent, we're
in an awkward position. Try to reason with him so we can reasonably know what
we're dealing with."

"With all due respect, sir, he seems
pretty set on talking to his wife. He doesn't care if we are there, he just
wants to tell her the truth."

"What do you think would happen if we
deny him that?" a third voice asked, a woman.

"Honestly, ma'am, I have no idea. I
get the feeling that his kind won't be very happy that he came, or at the very
least he's stated this is unusual behavior for them, but he has no reasons to
follow our rules. For all we know, he will just disappear and appear at his
house once his wife is out of the office."

"General," General Pearls said heavily,
"let's try another route, first. Let's see if he can be our ally."

3

"On behalf of the United States of America, and
the whole of humanity, we would like to extend the greetings of our planet to
yours," Mitchell said, his heart beating as if he had just run a marathon.
Even if he knew outwardly he was the very picture of authority, he realized
with trepidation that he'd just made a statement for 7.2 billion people to
their first certifiably alien resident.

"That was quite eloquent," Nicholas Logan
said with approval, his eyebrows risen. For the first time since this had
started, it was easier if Mitchell thought he was talking to a man and not to
an alien. 

"I realize there's little we can do about the way
you view our planet or how your conversation with your wife goes, but as the
time for you to go back to your world comes near, we would like your last
moments on Earth to serve as a bridge between our people."

Mitchell had to give it to the just-out-of-college guy
who'd written this First Contact speech. It did sound nice. He felt thoroughly
stupid saying it, but the truth was, they needed this. And as the highest
ranking officer on the Base, it was his responsibility to do it right.
"We're very interested in taking this step the right way."

"It's not supposed to be done this way,"
Logan said, sitting down on his bed. "We don't
do
First Contact.
That's not for us to get in the middle of. We record all the aspects of a
civilization, including their discoveries of other worlds. By getting myself
into this situation, I've forever changed that. I just… didn't think wanting to
talk to Jane would have such huge consequences…"

"What's out there, son? Do we have a
chance?" Mitchell asked, forgetting the script. Logan had to know this was
at the heart of their questions: who was out there, and how could they protect
themselves against it?

Logan's eyes went to the ceiling, recalling knowledge
so far and vast it baffled the mind.

"It's not a mirror of human societies, as you
like to imagine. We witness and we record, but most species are in it for
resources… You're too new to have much of value, so Earth… Look, Earth is in
the Archives, has been for a while now. This thing, now, between us… this will
speed up First Contact protocols. Some worlds like to keep tight records on
who's coming to play, that sort of thing. One will pick this up, they'll make
sure you go through the entire thing nice and easy."

"The entire thing?"

"It's done in stages… With small groups. First
Contact as a whole takes anywhere between a few decades to a few centuries. You
won't get giant ships sweeping into New York City, or a huge radio message.
You'll get something discreet, from someone who will even look human. They do
their homework right, and the Archives are very detailed. But you'll know it
for what it is: an invitation."

"To join the galactic counsel?" Mitchell
said with a dry smile. Logan smiled the same way.

"You'll see."

4

"We're starting to lose him," Dr. Greenwood
warned as Mitchell came back.

"We still have a few hours according to his
estimate," Dr. Fox said, alarmed. Mitchell looked thoughtful.

"No, we're losing the part of him that thinks of
itself as human," Dr. Greenwood explained. "He's slowly changing from
'me being Nick', to 'me being other'. He's no longer saying 'we' as in
humanity, but 'we' as in us, explorers. Soon, General, whatever level ground we
have, whatever understanding and communication we can have because we are both
humans, is going to be gone. You might find yourself with a true alien being
before he actually leaves."

5

For the first time since this had started, Nick could

see that things were finally moving. Mitchell was back outside his
cell, and he didn't look warm and fuzzy. Whatever was in his mind, was not
something the General liked. He told Connors to take a break, which meant this
conversation was pretty much off the record for the time being.

"Logan, we need to speed this up. It might be
hours before we're cleared to get your wife on board, and you might be gone by
the time she's here."

Nick arched an eyebrow. "I'll be happy to take a
car and drive myself there," he offered wryly. Mitchell was not amused.

"Listen, there are a couple dozen people in
Washington who are determining your future, the future of this Base, and the
future of your wife, right now. It's all good for you once you get to say your
good-bye and disappear into the ether, but she won't be so lucky. She gets to
stay behind. Do her a favor and make this easy—on you, on her, and the rest of
us."

Nick's non-existent heart accelerated. "What are
you talking about? Once I'm gone, Jane won't have anything of value to
you."

Mitchell sighed in a tired way. "Just give us
something, Nicholas. Give us something you wouldn't really tell her, that won't
matter to her but would mean something to us."

"Or what? You're going to punish her for what I
won't tell you? You think I'm glad to be here, trapped in this place, trying
not to make a bigger mess than I already have? I'm betting everything I've got,
everything I am, right this moment just to be able to see her one last time,
and you're going to hold that hostage for a few answers?!
Unbelievable!
"

"It won't matter to you—" Mitchell started.

"The hell it won't! You'll just keep me talking
as time ticks away and I fade. You want those answers, you tell those 24 people
a country away to get Jane here! And I swear to you, General, if my wife is so
much as looked at the wrong way, I'll make sure someone, out there, comes here
to settle the score right."

6

An hour later, Jane Logan walked through that door.