Amalfi Echo (4 page)

“Chocolate
milkshake please,” Tessa said. A milkshake appeared on the
occasional table in front of the sofa. “No, make that a triple
strawberry, chocolate, and passion fruit sundae.” Obediently the
ship replaced the milkshake with the sundae. Tessa reached out and
dragged a finger through the sundae, had a little taste and said,
“Delete all that.” The sundae vanished.

“That’s just
wasteful,” Marion said.

“It doesn’t
matter
,” Tessa said and screamed with laughter.

Digby returned.
“Are we doing the news now?”

“S’pose,”
Marion said, finding that she didn’t care one way or another. She
looked at Digby suspiciously. “Is this food drugged?”

“Think about
where you were this morning and where you are now. In between, a
huge amount has happened. A yearning for bed at this point would be
completely understandable.” He sat down on nothing but before he
could fall very far, a webbed arrangement enveloped him and he
settled back into that. In front, the curved windows were replaced
by a multitude of screens displaying news presentations from every
corner of the globe. Tessa tried mucking around with them but
nothing much happened and she assumed that either Digby or the ship
was overriding her thoughts. They watched the news.

Only some of
the airline passengers would talk to the media, the rest were
either too traumatised to face the public, or afraid of being
disbelieved or ridiculed. The latter was a real fear. The world had
only the passengers’ testimony and hasty phone shots of the shuttle
which had been taken at night-time. The U.S. Department of Defense
refused to even acknowledge that it had footage from the jets and
helicopters at the airport. No one had seen aliens. There were no
alien spaceships in orbit around the planet. The sketches of the
jellyfish couldn’t be substantiated. Much of what the passengers
said was ascribed to the stress and trauma of their ordeal which
itself was in doubt. The big mystery was how the airline passengers
came to be in Washington, D.C., having taken off at Heathrow a week
before, the plane then disappearing without trace.

Arrest warrants
had been issued for both Marion and Tessa. Digby was regarded as a
person they wanted to interview although ‘person’ was being used in
quotation marks and they were arguing over jurisdiction.

Much yawning
later, it was bedtime.

-oOo-

In the morning,
which was now a relative term as they were on a spaceship, the
three of them had breakfast on a stone rotunda. The stone columns
of the rotunda were garnished with ivy and supported a marble dome
roof. Steps led down to a lush garden which spread out all around,
giving way to forest in the distance. A brook ran tinkling through
the garden. Birds sang joyfully. It was, as you would expect,
idyllic.

After
breakfast, they relaxed with coffee.

“Is today the
day we finally get told why we’re really here?” Marion said, idly
stirring her coffee with a spoon.

“Yes. But let’s
cover some other ground first,” Digby replied, ignoring the
long-suffering and cynical look from Marion.

The lush garden
disappeared and now the rotunda was sitting in a giant hangar
crammed with little lethal looking Starfighters and other high-tech
military equipment spreading out all around them into the
distance.

“These are
really cool,” Tessa said. “It’s my favourite place on the whole
ship.”

“I had sorta
gathered that,” Marion said.

“Do the
Starfighters look familiar to you?” Digby said to Tessa.

“Yeah. I was
trying to figure that out.”

“Think movie,
specifically, ‘Revenge of the Gorgons.’”

“That was it!”
Tessa said, snapping her fingers. And then her face fell. “Oh. Is
this just a made-up thing from my mind? I thought they were real. I
didn’t ask for this to be made.”

“The
Starfighters are very real,” Digby said. “You could fly them out in
space and all the weapons work just fine.”

“Digby, it was
a movie. The Starfighters were CGI. They don’t exist. I’m not
totally stupid.”

“Think about
the movie. It was never explained how the technology worked which
means that the ship was free to put in whatever technology was
required to actually make them work—.”

“Digby,” Marion
cut in, “you are not seriously thinking for even one moment of
letting Tessa fly one of these?”

“Oh my God,”
Tessa said, rushing to the balustrade to look at the fighters. “I’m
going to fly a Starfighter.”

“Maybe later,”
Digby said. “Right now, in my own long-winded way, I’m trying to
make a point about something else. Come and sit back down,
Tessa.”

Tessa seated
herself at the table again but her eyes didn’t stop shining.

Digby went on.
“The ship creates real, physical objects, which are fully
functioning. This hanger does not consist of images generated using
virtual reality. It really does exist. Now, a ship that is a sphere
eight kilometres across has quite a lot of internal space but if
you think about objects the size of this hangar, the ship will,
eventually, run out of space. So what it does, is create an object
and then destroy it when it is no longer required.” Digby turned to
Marion. “When you came on this ship yesterday you had the
expectation that it would have corridors and rooms and when you
went to your living quarters you expected that you would walk down
corridors to get there, so the ship created corridors for you,
creating them in front of you as you walked and then destroying
them behind you. When you left your quarters again, they ceased to
exist. All that existed was the piece of corridor you were walking
along.”

“You are
kidding, right?” Marion said.

“No, I am not
kidding,” Digby said. “Now that you know this, unless you really
want to walk down corridors, the next time you want to go to your
quarters, they will simply be created around you.”

“But what if
I’m here with you?”

Digby shrugged.
“You might want me there as well.”

“I really
wouldn’t.”

“In which case,
the ship would move you somewhere else and then recreate your
quarters around you.”

“If the ship
was reading my mind, why were my rooms so bare?”

“Because that’s
what you expected.”

Both Tessa and
Marion silently chewed on this, struggling to work out the
implications. Digby went on. “Think about the shuttle. It was an
empty sphere apart from the floor. This ship is a bigger version,
minus the floor. The mind of the ship is contained in a thin layer
on the inside surface of the sphere and the rest of the ship is
completely empty. Or rather, it is filled with a matter, or
substance, that the ship uses to create anything that it
needs.”

“The shuttle
was an object created like that?” asked Marion.

“Yes.”

“When can I fly
the Starfighter?” Tessa said.

“When you
finish High School,” Digby said. “I expect by then, though, you’ll
want something much more dangerous.”

“I have to go
back to school?” Tessa said in dismay.

“Yes, of
course. You
are
only 16,” Digby said.

“Please don’t
turn into a parent,” Tessa said. “I like you better when you’re
mysterious, from a distant galaxy, you know, a long time ago and
far far away.”

“You’ll like
school. You’ll do pilot training, weapons training, combat in zero
gravity, celestial navigation, lots of cool stuff.”

“I won’t accept
you turning Tessa into an Amalfi warrior, Digby,” Marion said.

“And also,
maths, physics, chemistry, English studies and so on. Probably
won’t bother with geography for reasons which, unfortunately, we’re
about to get to,” Digby finished.

“Which brings
us to why we are here,” Marion said. “It’s about time you told us
what this is all about, Digby.”

“It is kinda
obvious you want us to stay on the ship,” Tessa said. She reached
out and took Marion’s hand, looking for support. “There’s no way
I’m staying on the ship by myself. No offence, Digby. I don’t trust
guys.”

“My people
don’t prey on the young,” Digby said. “Nor do any of the other
human civilisations that I have come across. That seems to be
unique to your planet. Not a good look from where I’m
standing.”

“Like I said,
no offence. I’ve heard those promises before.”

“I’d like both
of you to stay but the decision is yours. You have a free choice in
this and I won’t stand in your way if you decide to return
permanently to Earth. I have reasons for wanting you to stay on the
ship and it isn’t anything to do with playing happy families.”

“You have our
undivided attention, Digby,” Marion said.

“I have an
obligation to the Amalfi. Perhaps we’ll talk about that later, and
perhaps not. Anyway, I’m obligated to protect the Amalfi Echo and I
could simply stick around and protect you from a distance, keeping
out of your hair, except that, unfortunately, that isn’t going to
work for the same reason that Tessa isn’t going to need geography.
I have some very bad news for you. Do you want the short version or
the long version?”

“Give us the
short version,” Marion said.

“An alien fleet
is on its way here and when it arrives everyone is going to
die.”

For a while
there was absolute silence until Marion said, “Does the long
version contain hope or rescue? Not that I’m believing any of this
just right now if you don’t mind.”

“No. The long
version has all the gory detail.”

Again there was
silence. Eventually Marion said, “Would you leave Tessa and me
alone for a while?”

Digby’s
response was to vanish. Marion disappeared the hangar and returned
to the comfortable sofas and view of the Moon which Tessa promptly
changed to pods of whales lumbering about majestically. Marion
ordered a cup of coffee and sat sipping it. Tessa gazed at the
whales, yet not seeing them at all. “Do you believe that shit?” she
said.

“I don’t know
what to believe any more.”

Tessa snuggled
into Marion causing her to slop her coffee on her dress.

“Tessa!” Marion
said, automatically looking around for a cloth. They both watched
the coffee stains fade and disappear.

“C’mon, Adult,”
Tessa said. “What are we supposed to do now?”

“Oh, right.
Give someone else the responsibility when it suits you.”

“I’m just a
little girl, all alone in the world.”

“I don’t have
any answers for you, Tessa.”

“You’ve got a
life down there on Earth but I’ve got nowhere else to go,” Tessa
said. “But I don’t want to stay here on my own.”

“Not as much
life as you’d think. I was making a fresh start,” Marion said. “I
ditched my man and my job in London and I didn’t even have a new
job to go to. I did have some people I could look up in New York so
I was going to try that. I don’t know how it would have worked
out.”

“We go back and
they’ll throw us in jail forever.”

“It could be a
lot worse than that. They’ll want to know about Digby and the ship.
Probably also the Amalfi Echo and they might not be too fussy about
how they find out.”

Tessa hadn’t
thought of that. “Like, experiments?” she said horrified. She shook
her head. “There’s no way we can go back.”

And as simply
as that the decision was made.

“I still don’t
believe all that crap about the alien fleet…I guess we’ll know soon
enough,” Marion said.

“We’ve got to
warn them,” Tessa said.

“I don’t even
believe it myself,” Marion said.

“We’ve got to
warn them and even if nothing happens on the date the world’s
supposed to end, don’t matter, life goes on and they won’t even
give it a thought. How many times has that happened before?”

“Probably means
they won’t take much notice either.”

“We need more
information,” Tessa said. “Let’s see what’s in the long
version.”

In her mind,
Marion could hear Tessa hailing Digby who appeared moments later,
chewing on a sandwich.

“We had
breakfast not 45 minutes ago,” Marion said, looking at the
sandwich.

“If you need
to, the ship can do a little trick with time, so for me breakfast
feels like ages ago. Maybe we can talk about that later. You want
the long version?”

Marion and
Tessa indicated agreement.

“Actually, it’s
not so long. Essentially, there is a species, let’s call them,
‘Bugs’, simply because it is a time-honoured name for a species
like this. The bugs are a two-stage species. The first stage is a
diamond-clad pupa that hatches from a diamond egg. The second stage
is a creature that is partly organic and partly crystalline and is
happiest breathing an atmosphere of sulphuric acid vapours. It is
the second stage which has built and occupies the fleets slowly
colonising the galaxy and now they are arriving in your neck of the
woods. When the fleet gets here it’ll install atmospheric engines
which will, over several decades, transform the Earth’s atmosphere
to sulphuric acid. However, this is not so they can colonise your
planet. Their real interest in your star system are the two gas
giants, Saturn and Jupiter which will provide ideal incubation and
nursery conditions for their eggs and pupae. Their only interest in
Earth is to provide a forward base for their long-term project,
constructing and operating the nurseries on, or more properly in,
the gas giants—.”

“They’ll kill
seven billion people just so they can build a base?” Marion said in
disbelief.

“You don’t
exist. You don’t even figure in their thinking.”

“Mars is closer
to Jupiter and Saturn,” Tessa said, hoping they would notice her
new research skills with the ship’s database.

“It certainly
is,” Digby agreed, “but building an atmosphere on Mars would be a
big ask and the extra distance to Earth is insignificant. They
could also use Venus and wouldn’t have to change the atmosphere
much but it’s a dangerous place to get in and out of and they’ll
need armoured pressure suits on the surface which is not very
relaxing when you’re on R&R—they’ll get enough of that on
Jupiter and Saturn. Earth is the ideal compromise for their forward
operating base. They’ll be here in about two years if they stick to
the speed and trajectories they were following when I last looked
in on them.”