Yngve, AR - Alien Beach Page 3

  The world watched, breathlessly; generals and tyrants ready to order the launching of missiles, poor people waiting for the salvation they had been denied - others just hoping for something new and different to change their predictable, aimless lives. One lumbering human, white armor shielding him against the cold of space, closing in on red-clad figures with soft arms.

  When they were just three meters apart, the closest Sirian halted and sat down in the dust. He measured a little more than two meters in height, and his face was dimly visible behind a brown visor-plate. An aged face peered out from the helmet, deep cracks running down from the small of his standing-oval, half-shut eyes, past the corners of a wide mouth. The alien face, aged as it was, retained a streamlined shape; its features seemed modeled onto an artillery grenade. Unexpectedly, the alien's cracked lips widened. He was smiling, and it seemed to come naturally. The astronaut halted, looked back toward his landing craft, and tried hard to control his bladder from bursting in a panic reaction. With an effort, he succeeded - and kneeled down on the dusty ground, documents in one hand. He waited a while for the alien to take the initiative. A radio communications link came alive in the astronaut's headset - unfocused at first, then sharpening into utter clarity.

  And for the first time, humanity heard the Sirians speak. A creaky voice, deep with large lung capacity, drawling, breathing heavily - yet oddly singing.

  SIRIAN ENVOY: "Goood mmmorniiing... Greetinnngsss... wweeelcome."

  ASTRONAUT: "Er... welcome to the Moon. You... you speak good English."

  SIRIAN ENVOY: "Thank youu..."

  ASTRONAUT: "My name is... Eric Bennon. I am an elected ambassador for the people of Planet Earth."

  SIRIAN ENVOY: "Hoow doo youu do, Aaambassaaador Eric Bennooon..? Mmy lannd-naame iss Ranmotanii..."

  ASTRONAUT: "I...I am doing fine, thank you... Ambassador Ranmotanii."

  MISSION CONTROL: "The letter! Hand him the letter!"

  ASTRONAUT: "I hereby give you this document of approval, signed by the most important leaders of my planet, which verifies that I am the elected ambassador for this first meeting.

  "The document also explains our conditions for your visit to our solar system... to our planet, Earth... up there."

  SIRIAN ENVOY: "Thank youu... weee rrread iiit."

  MISSION CONTROL: "What are they doing?"

  ASTRONAUT: "I think they're reading it... one of the three must be an interpreter of our language. He, or she, is using sign language and talking to them over their own radio. Houston, can you take in their conversation?"

  MISSION CONTROL: "Negative, Bennon. The Moonlander antenna can't pick up their internal comlink. Keep going, you're doing fine."

  SIRIAN ENVOY: "Thank youu...Aaambassaaador Eric Bennooon... I uuunderrrstaand the meeeaniiing thhhat builllt the... documeeent. Yyyou speeeak ffforrr yyyour ppeoplle. Yourrr leadersss... hear uss taallk noow?"

  ASTRONAUT: "Yes, Ranmotanii. Our leaders, and all the people of Planet Earth, up there. You can ask them anything... through me. Do you understand?"

  SIRIAN ENVOY: "Underrrstannnd. Yyyes."

  ASTRONAUT: "I am very happy that you understand. What do you want to talk about? We have much time.

  "Houston, Ranmotanii is discussing something with the other two. They are... taking something out of a pouch. An object, about the size of my head. Should I return to the lander?"

  MISSION CONTROL: "Just stay calm. They're not gonna eat you."

  SIRIAN ENVOY: "Ammmbassadooor Eriic Beeennon. Mmy ppeopllle giiive the... giift off frieendsship too youu aaand peoplle of Planeeet Earrth. Thank youu..."

  ASTRONAUT: "Thank you... thank you very much. What is it?"

  SIRIAN ENVOY: "A maaachiiine... to recooord aaannd repllayyy th...thoughhtsss."

  ASTRONAUT: "We will have good use for that. Ranmotanii... I have a gift to your people. It is harmless..."

  MISSION CONTROL: "Bennon, what are you doing? This is not in the plans! Stay with the schedule, that's an order!"

  ASTRONAUT: "Here..."

  SIRIAN ENVOY: "Thhank yyyou... thaaank yyyou veryyy muchhh. Whaaat iss iiit?"

  ASTRONAUT: "It is a flute. An instrument to make music. I wanted to give you a guitar, but this was the smallest thing I could get. The flute... needs atmosphere to work."

  SIRIAN ENVOY: "I knnnoww muuusic. I hearrr yourrr mmmusiiic... in rrradiiio. Yooour mmmusiiic is ssso diiifferrrent fffromm ourrr muuusic. Nooow... I caaan mmmake yourrr mmmusiiic?"

  ASTRONAUT: "Yes. Yes, that would be wonderful. We could play music together."

  The astronaut laughed, and the old Sirian made a slow, repeated clicking noise over the radio... laughter. The world made a collective sigh of relief; aliens who had a sense of humor couldn't be all that bad.

  Somewhere in a shady bar for Americans, that served alcohol in a predominantly Moslem country, the soldier sat and watched it all on TV.

  Among the laughing men and women, he heard one guest comment: "That doesn't prove anything! Anyone who sees us on TV for forty years must develop a sense of humor."

  The soldier said nothing. He knew the man was right, terribly right. The aliens were oh so polite. Of course: they obviously had to, knowing what kind of creatures they were dealing with. The circumstances - decades of TV programming - were dictating the encounter. What had he expected, anyway? The soldier felt the bile of disappointment swell in his throat. The greatest moment in human history was turning into a trivial talk show. And there was nothing he could do to alter it. How did this fit into his vision of another world? Was the universe populated with beings just like humans? Would it never get better than this?

  He grabbed the nearest glass he saw and hurled its contents down his throat.

  "Hey!" said the righteous owner of the drink. "Buy your own booze, weirdo!"

  The soldier grinned joylessly.

  "You talkin' to me?" he asked, turned away, then spun and punched the other man in the stomach before he could react.

  A confused, puke-stained brawl followed, but nobody was seriously injured. Before long, the military police were showing up. Among the MPs, the bloodied soldier recognized the private he had talked to days before, outside the hospital.

  "Sorry 'bout the mess, pal," he slurred to the MP as they carried him out to the jeep.

  "Just keep your bleedin' mouth shut, soldier."

  "I'm not in service anymore," the soldier protested lamely.

  "How come you're still fighting, then?"

  The soldier couldn't answer that. But then he fell asleep.

  Chapter Four

  DAY 51

  The CNN reporter tried hard to sound casual about her surroundings; she barely made it.

  "The scientists of the ECT have expressly denied journalists their legal right to disturb the alien visitors. This hasn't stopped scores of curious observers from circling the three-mile perimeter of the small atoll the Sirians have rented for their stay. However, the U.N. fleet of American and British ships cruising the waters outside the perimeter, will ensure the Sirians safety from terrorist attacks.

  "With me on the CNN cruiser I have tribal chief Jonah Fongafale, the legal owner of the atoll. He's the man who allowed the Sirian ship to land at his islet and let the Sirian crew live there.

  "Chief Fongafale, how did you first get in touch with the Sirians?"

  "I saw them on TV, like everyone else... then I saw what they looked like, and I knew they needed much water to live. The water-humans resemble the dolphins we have around our islands. Talking dolphins, they are. Listen to them speaking English! You hear a certain melody that can only come from living in the sea. The South Pacific is full of dolphins. It was the only right place. So I called NASA and they arranged the rest."

  "Did you do any face-to-face negotiations with the Sirians?"

  "I did. I met their... he's a kind of spokesman... Ranmotanii. He called me a 'land-human'. They call themselves humans, not 'Sirians'. He's a sympathetic fellow, but not a clever businessman. I struck a g
ood deal."

  "Can you tell our viewers how much you made on the leasing deal?"

  "I'd rather not answer that question. But the atoll has no value to us. It is merely a chunk of sand and a wide lagoon on a reef. They asked for a lagoon."

  "I see. Well, what do you think of this visit from space? Will both our races prosper from it, will there be a great cultural exchange?"

  "Our people have the scars of history on ourselves. We know what will happen."

  "Could you explain what you mean? Mr. Fongafale...? Well, thank you for sharing your time with us here at the CNN cruiser."

  "Thank you very much."

  "As you can see from our roving helicopter camera, the Sirian lander - not the mothership, that behemoth is still parked somewhere off Mars - is now permanently resting underwater for the rest of their stay. It appears to be used as a base camp for the twenty-odd visitors, who prefer sleeping in the lagoon. The human scientists, on the other hand, have just put up their jerrybuilt habitats on the island's surface. At a closer look..."

  Carl observed that as usual, the media messed up all the facts. Sick of watching his tiny pocket-screen, he switched off the news and put his sunglasses back on. He turned to the beach, and gazed across the glittering, soft-scented sea. Next to him stood the big signpost, just erected, facing the lagoon:

  Welcome to ALIEN BEACH

  This area is under the protection of American and British Naval Forces under the United Nations

  Disgust with the media's treatment of the whole affair, that's what the team felt and vented... and he had to agree. The dumb interviewer had entirely missed the point of Fongafale's ominous words. Carl sensed a creeping insecurity coming over him now, as he and his team waited for the Sirians to surface. He could put up with his own shaky knees, his restless stomach, the mindless phobia of the unknown. What really frightened him was the risk of disappointment. By now the team had accepted why these amphibians were so strangely humanoid: an old Polish science-fiction writer had offered a plausible explanation.

  "To travel through space," the writer had loftily explained over the Net, "to accept the vast expenses and sacrifices it demands, is something only certain kinds of animals will do. It is then reasonable to assume, that if other species develop space-travel they should resemble humans - if only in their obsessive restlessness.

  "To expect alien life to be ugly and misshapen is plain dumb. Bipolar symmetry is a universal advantage, and should appear in almost all evolved life forms. Two legs are better than three. Pairs of stereoscopic eyes are better than single eyes. Beings unable to grasp abstract thought and mathematics could never reach space. Thus, if an intelligent species is very different from humans, it is likely to stay put on its own world... unless it gets outside help."

  And yet it remained to be seen, just how like us the Sirians could be... the diplomatic stage show had ended and the real communication would - hopefully - begin.

  Carl wandered across the soft white sand, and joined the conversation of a small cluster of people. He knew only a handful of them personally, such as Ann Meadbouré and a few astrophysicists of his own profession; the Egyptian psychologist, Lazar Mahfouz, he had never met until the first team briefing. All were wearing light tropical clothing; Ann wore a wide straw hat instead of sunglasses. At least two scientists were filming the historical event - live-TV crews were banned, though.

  Carl sent a silent thought to the countless scientists who couldn't, shouldn't or wouldn't come near the islet: Arthur must be watching the whole spectacle on TV now, and Carl's family too. He wished his wife could have been with him now. At the horizon, a jetfighter roared off from a U.S. carrier, and shot into a sky that was already streaked with vapor trails in circles around the atoll. The sight worried him: one of those planes might be carrying a bomb he hadn't been told about...

  Carl switched on his pocket-sized screen again, flipped through the channels, looking for unexpected bad news.

  "...really be safe from extraterrestrial microbes, Dr. Watts?"

  "The evidence was approved by scientists, and the world leaders accepted it: the alien visitors have somehow expelled their own internal bacteria and replaced it with the intestinal bacteria of our own, such as the harmless E. Coli. We have as yet received no explanation of how this was done, or how they have adapted to our microbes so fast. Frankly, I expected them to stay in quarantine much longer."

  "So the ECT scientists run no risk of catching an infection from the Sirians?"

  "One cannot be completely safe. But the risks are mutual - perhaps greater to the extraterrestrials, than to us."

  "But if a handful of alien spores come into our atmosphere, what would happen?"

  "I cannot guarantee total safety, not even the Sirians can. But in an established, old ecosystem like ours, newcomer bacteria simply won't last long. It is not adapted to our planet and the other microorganisms - so it will be poisoned or eaten by the hostile majority."

  "And if one of these should survive, mutate, and gain a foothold on our planet? Could it threaten life on Earth?"

  "There is good reason to believe that alien spores have fallen to Earth in all times, and it hasn't meant the end of life as we know it. You could just as well expect all different species on Earth to start killing each other off, instead of co-existing together..."

  "Thank you, Dr. Watts. Despite these official assurances, the fear of alien contagion has caused an upsurge in demand for antibiotics, disinfectants, even penicillin. Hospitals report a wave of psychosomatic illnesses among patients since the landing of the Sirians on Earth: headaches, nervous fever, aching joints, insomnia and neurotic behavior. Nevertheless these are just nervous symptoms.

  "We now go live to the CNN cruiser outside Alien Beach, where the ECT seem to be preparing for..."

  Lazar hadn't said much since that briefing; neither did he now. But he was clearly following the scientists' conversation with great interest.

  "If the minerals in our ocean correspond to the composition of their own oceans, alien microorganisms could multiply from their bodily waste. These waters are warm, ideal for bacterial explosions or algae -"

  "But what about competition from the established biosphere -"

  "Carl, listen to this fool! He -"

  "I get diarrhea whenever I drink foreign water; why would tourists from another planet be different?"

  "You know nothing about their metabolism - you think they're stupid enough to go here unprotected?"

  "Why do you keep referring to the amphibians as perfect, infallible beings?"

  Carl interfered, before the argument could deteriorate into a passionate shouting-match between academics. He partly wished he could have gathered more down-to-earth people to deal with the visitors. It would have been great to have the Sirians all to himself, but... he simply had grown old and mellow enough to suppress such selfish impulses.

  "Lazar, what do you make of this squabbling bunch?" he asked. "Are they fit to confront our visitors?"

  The old thin-haired Egyptian made a face of benevolent confusion.

  "Who am I to judge? I am just as conflicted myself," he confessed aloud. Lazar Mahfouz, Nobel Prize-winning psychologist. They all looked - mute - at his leathery, lined face, as if he had betrayed their common weaknesses. He winked behind his thick glasses. "Just think of this when they arrive," he told them with sudden urgency, "both we and they are observers of another species! Observers! Don't forget!"

  Lazar must have glimpsed a movement in the lagoon. The dozen humans turned their full attention to the waters, as if directed outward by the curved palmtrees that pointed out to sea. A few of them stepped closer, but some innate caution stopped even Carl just meters from the lapping waves.

  Ann pointed excitedly toward the center of the lagoon.

  "Over there!" she shouted in French.

  A long glistening head, shaped like an asymmetric bullet, cleaved the waves and shot up, water dripping off it. The head was that of a female amphibian; she
pulled back a Mohawk mane of hair from her big, oval eyes, squinting at the sun, blinking nervously. Then another head bobbed up, and another. Twelve of them in all. Bald-headed males and females with horse-mane hair, all in varying shades of gray. They gained a foothold on the sand and waded up through the water, coming into full view of the group of humans.

  The first thing that struck the scientists was that the Sirians wore no real clothing. Only a few wore silvery metal discs and earphone-like gadgets on their bodies; others carried waterproof pouches slung over their shoulders. The aliens squinted as they looked about themselves, but made no efforts to cover their private parts.

  The second thing that struck Ann Meadbouré was that these were creatures of great beauty. The way they carried things, tentacle-like arms curling instead of bending, fingers making circular patterns instead of showing protruding knuckles. Their oval, slightly flattened eyes seemed taken from a Japanese cartoon, only these were real - the oldest Sirian's eyes were bloodshot with dark veins, yet they radiated no threat or senility. The oldest alien, Carl now saw, had to be Ranmotanii.

  The legs of the amphibians moved with great control despite their flapping, flat, dark feet, and with every step thigh-muscles flexed through the smooth blubber skin - skin like that of a dolphin or a seal. The females had large buttocks, full of muscle and fat; their breasts stood out like full, smooth swellings in their chests, not drooping sacks like those of humans. Their nipples appeared as dark spots in their skins. The males, oddly enough, lacked nipples - their inhumanly wide chests were perfectly featureless, only slightly paler than the surrounding skin.

  The male amphibians bore other differences: their coarser faces had thick, fishlike lower lips, whilst the females' wide lips more resembled those of human females. They lacked noses, the one frightening feature the Sirians shared: both nostrils were wide open, like on a naked human skull.