Xenophobia (25 page)

This was the first opportunity she’d had to observe the alien’s locomotion in detail.

Although the tips of the spikes appeared rigid when the alien rolled forward, they flexed as they brushed the concrete, almost slapping the ground for grip. Bower figured the creature could race in any direction it chose without appearing to change its orientation. It could probably turn on the proverbial dime.

“Escape,” the creature said, using her voice as it weaved its way around a crate and out of sight.

Bower and Elvis stood there for a few minutes. Her heart was racing, her palms were sweaty.

The alien headed to the far side of the floor. It seemed the creature wanted to keep its distance, to stay away from them. Well, she figured, honestly, that was probably through mutual consent.

“Magnificent,” Elvis said as the creature disappeared into the shadows.

Bower was silent. She was still struggling with what the alien creature was and how to communicate with it. The alien appeared to be just as flustered with the communication gap. Although the creature used human terms appropriately, it seemed it had to learn them first. Somehow the creature had a grasp of the fundamentals of speech. Perhaps not speech as she understood it, but it knew how to associate human sounds with distinct concepts, and to her surprise, the creature got those concepts right.

Bower had just interacted with a creature from another world. As the realization settled in her mind, she felt jubilant, as though a weight had been lifted.

They hobbled away from the kitchenette.

Bower felt chatty, overwhelmed by a desire to articulate what had just happened, to make sense of the encounter for herself if for no one else. She distinctly remembered the same feeling of exuberance following her first encounter with a dolphin as a teenager.

“My mother is from Berlin,” she began, barely able to contain herself. “I used to spend my holidays there with my grandmother.

“I speak three languages, but I’m only fluent in English. Several of my friends are truly bilingual, and although I can speak French and German, I struggle to make the mental switch between thinking in English to thinking and reasoning in French or German.”

Elvis listened. He seemed to appreciate how she was working through what had just happened.

“I can translate with ease and occasionally I think in German, but English is home, so I think I understand how this creature feels. I used to be so envious of those that could make the switch effortlessly. Perhaps this alien creature feels the same. Language has to be a universal constant, differing only in how it is communicated.”

Elvis was silent as they staggered on through the darkness.

In her mind’s eye, Bower was back in Germany, a wide-eyed young lady on summer break. She could remember the sights and smells, the sweltering humidity, the lush farmlands, the fresh fruits. She remembered how difficult it was to order coffee or to find her way around the city as she stumbled over the language.

Bower’s grandmother had worked at the Helen Keller school in Berlin. She was a teacher and had introduced Bower to several blind students her age. Bower had been impressed by their agility of mind, their ability to compensate for the loss of sight. Now, in the gloomy shell of an abandoned factory, the pieces of the puzzle seemed to fall into place.

“Think about it,” she said. “Even on Earth there are several different ways of sharing concepts. As closely related as speech appears to be to writing, they’re really worlds apart. We’ve largely settled on dark marks on paper to represent speech, but raised dots on a page work equally as well for the blind, while hand gestures and facial inflections convey the same versatility using nothing more than sight to speak to the deaf. For this alien creature, human speech probably feels a little like sign-language would to you or me.”

“Huh,” Elvis replied.

Bower was working herself into a manic state, a kind of euphoria. If she didn’t know better she’d have sworn someone just slipped her some hash cookies.

“Whether it’s words spoken in the air, letters on a page, or fingers curled and tapped on the opposing hand, language is about taking abstract, meaningless grunts, markings and gestures, and using them to express our thoughts.”

Bower marveled at the implications.

“Instinct requires little in the way of thought. Instinct is reactionary, but even the most instinctive of creatures need some versatility beyond reacting, and that’s how intelligence first emerged.

“I used to volunteer in the dolphinarium in Berlin as a teenager. We could see dolphins were intelligent, but communicating with them was frustratingly difficult and limited. There was no doubt our dolphins were smart, but they were smart in an entirely different manner to humans.

“Over the last century, we’ve studied tens of thousands of dolphins in a variety of settings, from marine biology laboratories to sea world theme parks. We’ve observed their physiology, their habits, their interactions with fishermen and children, their culture, their language, and yet we can’t speak with them. They’re intelligent mammals like us, and yet we can’t converse with them. They can learn from us and communicate on our terms, but we’re yet to learn anything about their language, if their communication could even be called speech. Perhaps we’ll have the same difficulties talking with creatures from another world.”

Bower laughed at the thought, adding, “That alien probably thought it was dealing with the galactic equivalent of dolphins.”

“Eek, eek,” Elvis replied, joking.

Bower laughed. She hoped the alien couldn’t hear them. What would this interstellar being make of that? Humor worked only if you were in on the joke.

“And music,” she continued, her mind firing rapidly as it extended logical connections. “Written music is as much a language as any other, communicating harmonic aesthetics rather than words, emotions rather than ideas.”

Her mind was buzzing with these concepts as they approached the mattresses over against the steel shutters.

Elvis said, “If we’re going to get out of this hell hole, we need to work together, and that means being able to communicate with the creature.”

He slumped onto the one, remaining good mattress.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

“Exhausted.”

“I’ll get you some more water.”

Bower took the plastic jug and worked her way along the wall, looking for the leaking tap. A couple of soldiers walked past talking. Bower was silent, not wanting to give herself away. She took her time filling the jug, trying not to make any undue noise.

With the sun high in the sky, the heat within the darkened factory was oppressive. Sweat dripped from her brow. She drank and then returned with a full jug.

“Adan is dead,” Elvis whispered as she handed him the water jug. That got her attention.

“I heard a couple of soldiers talking while you were gone. They’re trying to figure out what to do with the creature.”

“What are they planning?” Bower asked, her eyes widening with fear.

“They weren’t in earshot for long, so I only picked up on a fraction of their conversation, but they’re going to burn down the factory. From what I could tell, sounds like they’re having problems coming up with enough fuel to flood the floor. They don’t want that thing escaping. I suspect they’ve got plenty of diesel, but need some gasoline to get the party started.”

“We’ve got to get out of here.” It was something they both said at once in almost perfect unison. Bower smiled and gestured to Elvis to continue.

“We’ve got to make a move tonight.”

Bower held up the butter-knife, saying, “The steel door at the far end of the floor; the hinges are on the inside. I tried to budge them but they’re too stiff.”

Elvis scratched the stubble on his chin, saying, “OK, that’s good. We can work with that. Try to find a large stone, something you could hold in your hand, preferably with a flat surface, and we’ll use that as a hammer. The hinges might have seized, but a few sharp taps should get some movement.”

“And then what?” Bower asked, trying not to be too idealistic about their escape. Getting outside the building was one thing, but that didn’t mean they were free. It could be the reverse; they could be going from the frying pan into the fire.

“We’re going to need a truck.”

“A truck?”

“For our friend. And, besides, we’ll stand a much better chance being mobile than on foot.”

“We’re taking the alien with us?” Bower asked, surprised by the notion. They’d loosely discussed freeing the creature, but she hadn’t considered taking the alien with them. “Why?”

“Because it doesn’t stand a chance alone.”

“But it can tear people apart,” Bower reasoned, not understanding his point.

“Do you know how you hunt a lion or a tiger?”

Bower was silent.

“In packs. Either one of them is more than a match for a lone hunter, but against a group of men working together, they don’t stand a chance. No, our buddy wouldn’t last more than an hour out there alone. He’d attract too much attention.”

“He?” Bower asked, objecting to the arbitrary assignment of gender.

Elvis smiled, looking very much the rock star he did when she first met him, albeit one that had been partying hard for several days non-stop.

“OK, Honey,” Elvis replied, “It ... It would attract too much attention.”

“So, where will we take her?” Bower asked, being deliberately provocative. She suspected the whole notion of gender was irrelevant, it certainly looked that way, but she liked stirring Elvis, and it was good for his morale, she could see that from the grin on his face.

“We take her with us,” Elvis replied, resigning himself to her not-so-subtle spin on the creature’s anthropomorphic gender identity. “Jameson’s out there somewhere. We need to hook up with him and get the hell out of Dodge.”

“With a creature from another world in the back of our truck?”

“Why not?”

“Why not indeed,” Bower replied. “Best idea I’ve heard all day.”

Bower had fallen asleep.

The sound of trucks driving down the alleyway beside the factory woke her from her slumber. Elvis was standing by a crack in the steel shutters, peering outside. It was good to see him on his feet.

“Tankers,” he said softly. “They’re getting ready for the party.”

Bower got to her feet and peered out of another crack. She watched as a soldier climbed down from the cab of a truck and slammed the door. The sign on the side of the tanker read “Water,” which confused her.

“Water?” she asked.

“It wouldn’t go down too well if they torched the entire neighborhood,” Elvis replied. He pointed further down the alley. “I got a glimpse of a gasoline tanker as well. It’s going to be quite a show.”

“We’ve got to get out of here.”

“Not so fast,” Elvis replied. “We don’t do nothing till all’s quiet and everyone’s asleep. Patience, Doc. It’s a fundamental of good military strategy.”

Bower knew he was right, but she didn’t like waiting. She was stir crazy. It was irrational and she knew it, but she had to get out of their oppressive prison. She no longer feared the darkness, but she was hungry, her back ached, she had a headache, and none of that made being patient any easier.

“Moonrise occurred less than ninety minutes after sunset. When the moon is directly overhead, it’ll be around one or two in the morning. That’s when we’ll make our move.”

“How will you know,” Bower asked, straining to see the sky through the thin cracks in the seal windows. She couldn’t see the moon.

“Shadows. When the shadows are shortest, the moon is at its zenith. There will come a point where the shadows stop shrinking and start growing again, changing direction, when that happens, the moon has begun to descend. That’s when we’ll make our move.”

Bower gritted her teeth. She was anxious.

“You could never wait for Christmas, could you?” Elvis asked.

“Nope.”

Bower sat down again on the edge of the mattress. She was feeling weak from a lack of food and the stress of running on adrenalin. Her legs were shaking, but not out of fear, just fatigue.

“So,” Elvis began. “What about Stella? How do we get her to come with us?”

“Stella?” Bower asked in surprise. She knew who he meant, she was surprised by his choice of name.

“She needs a name,” he replied

“And that name is Stella?”

“It means star.”

“I know what it means,” Bower said gently. She shook her head. In a serious tone, she added, “Just remember, cute and cuddly Stella can rip your arms out of their sockets. She can flay your flesh quicker than a Great White Shark. Were she to come up against a full-grown African lion or a thirty-foot crocodile, my money would be on her walking away without a scratch.”

“And yet she didn’t hurt me,” he protested. “She saved my life.”

“You’ve seen her in action. Remember, she no more identifies with you than you do with a wild Bengal tiger or an Arctic polar bear.”

“But this is different. She’s intelligent,” Elvis protested. “You saw the way she treated us in the kitchenette.”

Oh, what a turn of events, thought Bower. Previously, the appeal to reason had been her position during the truck ride. Back then it had been Elvis that had been warning of danger, now the roles were reversed. Thinking about it, she figured, having your arm rebuilt at a molecular level would probably melt your heart as well.

“Look, I think she’s intelligent too, but we need to be careful we don’t read our own thoughts and feelings into her actions or the consequences could be disastrous.”

Elvis pursed his lips in the soft light. Bower could see he was thinking carefully about his words, choosing his terms with precision. “She could have left me to die, but she didn’t. I think we owe her the benefit of doubt. We can’t leave her to die. I owe her my life.”

“I know,” Bower replied. “Believe me, I know. We’re all in this lifeboat together, fighting against the storm around us, but when that door opens, our world will change. She may come with us, but then again, she may not. She may not trust us. She might choose to strike out on her own. When that door opens, all bets are off.

“Like you, I’d like to see her come with us in the truck, but, honestly, I doubt she’ll go for it. You can lead a horse to water, you cannot make it drink.”

Elvis looked hurt. For all his tough exterior, he seemed fragile.

“There’s a gulf between us,” she said, clarifying her thinking further. “A void as big as that distance that separates our planets. It’s all too easy for us to interpret her actions as those of a human, but they’re not. Listen, I want her to be one of us, to be a good guy or whatever, but she’s not, she never will be. When she speaks she uses my voice but there’s no conversation. She’s mimicking me, that’s all, copying me like a parrot.”

Tears rolled down his cheeks.

“She’s smarter than a parrot,” Elvis said in rebuttal.

“I know. But just like a parrot, her physiology reinforces the differences between us. There’s a chasm separating us, an impassible ocean. She can no more understand what it means to be human than we can understand what it means to be alien.”

The tone in his voice stiffened.

“You’re wrong, Doc. Maybe I can’t describe what I’m feeling in scientific terms, maybe I am projecting my own feelings on her, but I never asked her to save my life. She did that herself. She chose to do good. I’ve got to believe there’s more to her than some wild animal. You said it yourself in the truck, there’s an intelligence there. And that’s more than having the smarts to know two plus two is four or to fly between stars. She cares.”

Bower breathed deeply, unsure how to respond to his emotive plea.

As if on cue, the alien creature rolled softly into view. Bower wondered what the alien had heard and how much it understood.

Elvis walked fearlessly toward the creature. There was a mutual affinity between them. They both reached out for each other. Bower watched as his fingers touched at the waving fronds. His hand skimmed across the tips as though he were running his fingers over a field of wheat.

The pulsating core of the creature hummed like an electrical substation. Bower was in two minds as to the alien’s composition. It moved and acted so fluidly, as though it were an individual, and yet the tiny creatures at its heart suggested otherwise. She couldn’t figure out which it was, but then, she realized, perhaps both models were wrong. Perhaps some other alien rationale held true and the creature, as she saw it, was more of a symbiotic whole.

The creature dwarfed Elvis, but that didn’t appear to bother him. They both seemed to relish the soft touch.

The strength latent in the fronds was apparent. Being spherical, there were fronds drifting through the air above and beside the big man, but he held no fear of the creature.

“We’re going to help her, right?”

At that point, Bower didn’t feel she had any choice in the matter, regardless of how uneasy she felt. She was alarmed by the relationship between Elvis and the alien. As docile as tigers could be in captivity, there was always a very real danger of them turning on their trainers, regardless of how long a pair had worked together, and she felt his disregard for prudence was reckless. The possibility of a reactionary temperament hadn’t occurred to him. Stella had dismembered Bosco with ruthless efficiency. She could turn on either of them without warning, without any humanly intelligible reason. She could be using them, playing them. They could be a novelty, nothing more than a pet in this alien’s mind.

Every instinct within Bower cried out, no, but she said, “Yes ... We’ll help her phone home.”

Bower watched as the creature pulled Elvis closer, its dark, scarlet tentacles wrapping around his arm, enveloping him. He wasn’t afraid, he was receptive, perhaps even enjoying the encounter. The alien towered several feet above him as its fronds enclosed his arm, reaching his shoulder, and yet still he showed no fear.

“Phone home?” Elvis said. “Do you understand? Home? Come with us. We’ll help you get home.”

“Home,” the creature replied, but it hadn’t mimicked his voice. The alien had retained Bower’s distinct tone, duplicating both her soft pronunciation and her British accent. Bower found that even more perplexing. As long as she’d been the only one communicating with the creature it made sense that it duplicated her voice. But now, when it was clearly comfortable with Elvis, it still chose to retain her vocal persona. There was a complex dynamic at work, one Bower didn’t understand, and that frightened her.

Bower recalled the term ‘home’ being used three times in his sentence, four times if she counted her initial use of the concept. The alien had simply repeated the most commonly used word back at them in mimicry. There was an assumption at play. How could they know what the creature had actually understood? Words were only ever meaningful in their context.

When Europeans first encountered primitive cultures, translating languages had been a painfully slow exercise, relying heavily on visual clues and comparisons. Translation efforts went on for years. None of that had happened with the alien. This could all be guesswork on the creature’s part, nothing more than an intelligent guess as if playing along with the curious chimps. When the factory door opened, Bower thought the alien would bolt into the distance.

The creature released Elvis. Bower was curious as to who had initiated the separation, had Elvis pulled away or had the alien let go?

“Home, Stella,” he said as the alien moved back into the shadows, staying just on the edge of their vision. “We’re going to get you home.”

Bower didn’t even want to ask how Elvis proposed to do that. For now it was enough to escape their dungeon.

Time passed slowly.

Elvis stood watch, peering out into the night through a thin crack between the steel panels welded over the window. Bower watched the alien as it appeared to preen itself. Tiny insects scooted up and down the fronds, pausing on occasion to focus on a particular part of a certain strand in much the same way as a cat would lick its fur and pause to rid itself of a parasite.

After awhile, Bower decided to try to talk with the alien. If they could converse, they could reason. If they could reason, there would be nothing to fear.

“How much do you understand?”

Sitting there on the edge of the mattress, looking at the seething mass of insect-like creatures pulsating at its core and the supple fronds swaying with the slightest breeze, Bower knew she was out of her depth. She’d been out of her depth long ago, ever since the Osprey lifted off, abandoning them in the village. Somehow she’d bluffed her way through until now, but she felt as though she were sinking in quicksand; one wrong move and she was dead.

“Do you know what I’m saying? Can you grasp our speech?”

The alien was silent.

What intelligence lay in that contradictory, vast nest full of so many tiny creatures? Was it one entity or thousands? Did it think? Did it feel? Certainly, she felt as though she’d seen fear within its actions, but that was probably her own fear being played out before her.

What senses did the alien or aliens have with which to interact with the world around them? How had they survived on Earth? In an environment that was surely hostile to them in some sense, either through chemistry, or pressure differences, or the strength of gravity. Did the spiny carriage offer any more than transport and weapons? Was it in some way analogous with an astronaut’s spacesuit? Why hadn’t any other alien creatures come looking for this one? Why hadn’t they mounted a rescue mission? Had they assumed Stella was dead? Or was it that they didn’t care?

“Just because someone is mute doesn’t mean they don’t understand,” Elvis finally replied, cutting through the silence.

“Understand,” the creature replied, again repeating the most common noun in a series of sentences, recognizing the topic if not the content. Bower could have kicked Elvis. If he’d remained silent, if the creature had replied with ‘understand’ having only heard the word once, then that would have been progress. As it was, she had no way of knowing if the alien was still just parroting concepts back at them.

“There has to be an intelligence at work here,” Elvis continued. “We’ve seen too much to think otherwise. She’s like a foreigner, like an American in Paris that can’t speak French.”

Bower caught a slight change in the throbbing hum of the insects and raised her hand, signaling for Elvis to be quiet.

“Intelligence,” she said, addressing the creature. “Yes, we’re talking about your intelligence.”

The creature was quiet.

After almost a minute, Elvis said, “Well, there are a few things we need Stella to understand if we’re going to get her out of here. We need her to understand the basics of movement. We need her to respond to instructions. Let’s see if we can get her to associate sounds with actions, kinda like the kids game, Red Light, Green Light.”

Elvis beckoned for Bower to stand. She got to her feet, feeling a little silly.

Elvis moved back about ten feet and said to Bower, “Green light ... Red light ... Green light ... Red light.” With each phrase, Bower either walked forward or stood still. When she reached him, he turned to the imposing alien creature and asked a simple question with a single word, “Understand?”

The alien was silent.

“Again,” he said, and Bower returned to the mattress. Elvis said, “Green light ... Red light ... Green light ... Red light ... Understand?”

“Understand,” the alien replied, retaining Bower’s voice.

“OK,” Elvis said, turning to the creature. “Green light.”

The spindly alien structure, some nine-feet in height, swayed as it rocked forward on its thin legs, rolling unnaturally toward him.

“Red light.”

The words had barely left his lips when the creature froze.

“Green light.”

Again the prickly orb moved forward. Elvis stood his ground, waiting until the last second before saying, “Red light.” The creature was almost on top of him, its fronds waved just inches from his face.

“This is good,” said Elvis. “We’ve taught her two key concepts; red and green, stop and go.”