A.R.Yngve
ALIEN BEACH

Chapter Twenty-One

DAY 113

The mood of communal meals of the ECT group was changing, especially for the seven who had agreed to share their dreams by way of the Sirian thought-recorders.

They felt like the chosen few, said little, but exchanged knowing glances that excluded those who were not in the know. Takeru and Ann, Stone Pound, Edmund Soto, and Mats Jonsson were among those who had stubbornly refused to take part in the mind-sharing sessions; each had his or her public excuse, neither of which the others really cared about anymore.

A certain air of giddiness was about Carl when he passed the food around the lunch-table; he was at the forefront of a revolution of the mind, which he would soon get to share with his own family back home. He had hinted some of this discovery, but not all, to his wife over the phone. Oh, how he longed to know her like never before... as soon as the risk of long-term injury had been investigated. The cell-phone vibrated in his shirt-pocket; the display told him the President was calling.

"Carl speaking..." he said in a relaxed voice.

"Hi, or should I say good morning, by the time over here? There is something we haven't brought up for a while, Carl, because our other scientists have been busy ever since it happened. Do you recall the moon landing ceremony, when Eric Bennon received the first thought-recorder?"

"Yes, I do. We have of course been examining our own ones, and the results so far are very positive..."

"I'll read your report later. We know the machines work, and they have no obvious side effects - fool-proof technology. But we tried to take apart and examine Bennon's copy, just in case. The device has no seams, so it had to be cut open - the metal cells consist of, lessee, mercury, titanium, aluminum, magnesium, copper, and a gazillion other alloys. The machine resisted being cut! It had a life of its own, and it tried to crawl away when it felt the heat of a laser. Eventually it started to self-destruct, and just melted - as if it was programmed not to give away its design."

"With due respect, sir, that doesn't surprise me at all. The amphibians are very careful not to give away too much knowledge too fast."

"But you are on good terms with them?"

"As good as they can get."

"Then try to make them understand we need their superior technology to defend them against their enemies here on Earth."

Both men were silent for a moment.

"Then the rumors are true," Carl said. "There is a war coming."

"Afraid so," the President said. "I wouldn't be this blunt otherwise. Hell, I don't know what the Sirians really want. Some of my generals are still saying it's a setup for invasion. But those damned Arabs have made up their minds, and right now they are the greater threat! If only the Sirians would lend us one small weapon, not a deadly one, just enough to stop the enemy missiles from detonating - then they could keep the rest of their secrets."

"But these are peaceful beings. You saw them use their high-frequency screams to fend off the crowd in New York -"

"Anyone who'd visit such a violent world as ours, would be an idiot to come unarmed. Ask them. I take full responsibility."

The conversation ended a minute later. Ashen-faced, Carl pocketed his phone and addressed his colleagues.

"It's no use keeping secrets anymore, so I'll give it to you straight. There's something we need to discuss."

They hadn't agreed on the meeting-place; Ann showed up at the same southern spit, and waited among the low rocks until Oanss' familiar shape appeared in the surf.

She was melancholy; so was he, or so he appeared to her. He immediately asked her to explain to him where she was born, about her life, and what would happen to her in the future. She couldn't stand still, but wandered around as she talked; Oanss squatted upon the top of a jagged rock and followed her movements with his eyes.

"My full name," she began, "is Ann Catherine Cláve Meadbouré. I was born thirty-four years ago on Sri Lanka. My mother, Ann-Christine Cláve, was a scientist like me. My father... died when I was one year old; I have no memory of him, but he was a soldier in the Vietnam War, which you know about. So I grew up on Sri Lanka, away from the cities, with very few other children for friends. My mother was... I think now, that after my father's death she became withdrawn from the world. So she took us to the most isolated village on the coast, where I could grow up while she did her work with Arthur and explored the sea life just nearby.

"Arthur is... here's a picture of him with me when I was nine years old. He and his friends taught me to swim and dive safely, and introduced me to the scuba diving gear. I met Arthur when we lived on the coast, and he was a good teacher of mine. I followed his work, and learned all I could about sea animals... and dolphins. I always used to think dolphins were leading so much happier lives than land-humans, and they are so intelligent... they liked me just as much as I liked them. Have you seen people playing with dolphins? On television?"

Oanss nodded.

"There are so few other animals that my people can become true friends with. Dolphins, dogs... that make you feel someone other than a human cares for you, understands you. Do Sirians have pets, or like, animal friends?"

The Sirian blinked repeatedly, and said: "I thiiink nnno."

"Of course, you have so much better things instead. Metal pets... Anyhow... I met Carl Sayers on Sri Lanka once, when he was visiting Arthur. We just said hello, he gave me a few books to read, that's all. Later I went to a university in America to complete my education in biology and anthropology... that's when I met Carl a second time, when he held a lecture there. What he said about his work to find extraterrestrial life made me very interested. I felt that we were both looking for intelligent life, only in separate places... he was looking to the stars, I was looking into the sea. Do you understand this?"

Oanss said he thought he did.

"We talked and became friends, not close friends, but enough to take an interest in each other's work and write letters to each other several times a year. Of course, it helped that we both knew Arthur. So over the years, after I returned to stay in Sri Lanka, we kept up the correspondence. You see, land-humans have been using letters for many thousand years, to communicate over great distances. Sometimes people who write to each other become friends, without ever meeting in real life."

"I doo nnot uunderstannd thhis. Explaain wword 'frriend' innn thiis conntext..."

"A friend can be many things, all of them good. It is someone who you help, and who helps you."

"Alsooo iif a frieend iis nnot ablle to reallly touchh youu?"

"Yes... yes."

He asked her to proceed with an account of her future.

"After... after your people leave, I will continue to work as a scientist. Many years I will spend understanding all the information we gained from your visit. We will probably start working on our own space travel to other planets, maybe one day to Sirius..."

"Thhere iis nno life iin thee Siriius syystem," he said.

"What?"

He told her: Earth scientists ought to know the double-star system was uninhabitable in the long run; the 'Sirians' had been living there for thousands of years but were now moving onward as had been intended all along. Ann didn't know what to say; this was crucial information that the amphibians had refused to reveal before.

She calmed down when he explained, without her asking him to, that the main migration was directed toward an altogether different star system - which one, he wasn't allowed to reveal. There were other ships than the one that had entered the Solar System.

"You understand that I must tell this to my friends?"

Again the amphibian made his alien laugh. "Iit iss diffiicuult foor mme too... adaapt tto thhe ffact thhat you doo noot shaare thhhoughts wiith otherrs. Yees? I offten maake a mmistake aand... thhhink yoou knnow all I thiink, beecausse iit is llike sso wiiith Siirianns. Thhis is aa jjoke? Go oon..."

"It is confusing. Well... I will grow older, then perhaps I will move to France. My mother has asked me to move to France where she lives now... and in fifty or sixty years from now, I will probably die of old age. And that's all."

"Expllain 'diie off ooold age'."

"Our machines, our science has its limits. A few of us can get as old as a hundred and twenty years... then the body just stops working. The heart stops, the lungs stop, the brain stops. The cells of the body cannot regenerate anymore. The cells start to decay. Bacteria start to eat the body. The body falls apart to dust. Only the bones remain. That is death to us."

Ann halted, and looked at the reflection of her own face in a puddle at her feet. The lifelong exposure to tropical sunlight had tanned and wrinkled her skin early, though it looked soft and healthy; the lines around the eyes were starting to run deeper. Her half-long hair was bleached by the sun and salt, making her skin appear almost brown by contrast. Old age? It hadn't even started on her yet. Arthur was really old; he might pass away any day. Carl was dangerously close to too old to lead the ECT. She wondered what her mother looked like now, living in retirement in France. They hadn't been on speaking terms for ten years. Oanorrn was about two hundred years old, or so the Sirians had told them - if one didn't count his time spent in suspended animation.

Oanss, Ann thought, would still be in his prime when she was a dying, bitter old crone in a wheelchair.

A tall, breathing shape behind her grasped her gently, and she imagined she was weeping. She wanted it to be a dream, and shut her eyes, trying to wish it so. "I did nnnot undeeerstand reallly buut noww... lllittle laand-humann doo not diie yyyet. Iit iss ssso alllone iif yyou doo..."

"But you will die too."

"No. I wwill becoome, rreally, nnot inn fiictioon, but llike in scieence aan Annceeestor. Decaay thhen... vvery muuch slooww. A trraditioonn... ffor many thoussaaand yyears."

The words sounded inadequate, the vocabulary inane, in a language not made to describe the facts he attempted to communicate. But it was so simple. Not a surprise to her at all. The surprise was that she didn't react to it. His hold ceased; Ann turned around at the sound of a splash, and he was gone.

Ann came to Carl's barrack late that night; she repeated to him Oanss' words about the Ancestors. She had to go through it several times before Carl was sure she had heard it right.

"I need more proof," he told her. "You must keep quiet about this until we learn more."

She agreed, but added: "I couldn't keep this from you. If... if there was a chance to save you, if your cancer comes back, I... thought you deserved a chance more than any one of us."

They hugged each other hard, and Ann left for her own barrack. She wasn't feeling quite as alone as before.

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