3zekiel (First Contact) Page 4

  Lieutenant Jackson waves Garcia over, no doubt with an assignment. The two men talk, point, nod, and agree on something. Garcia jogs back.

  “Your dad isn’t happy.”

  “No. He wouldn’t be.”

  “He’s arranging to evacuate the villagers to Ubandi.”

  I nod, knowing what’s coming next. I’m not dumb. With all the assignments the lieutenant’s been barking out at various soldiers, it’s kinda obvious that Garcia’s not being given one because he’s already on one—babysitting the white boy.

  “I’m supposed to keep an eye on you until he gets back. Then you guys are heading up to Kisangani.”

  Yep. There it is. As friendly as Garcia is, his interest is in a job, not the teenaged son of a missionary. I don’t hold it against him. I always knew all this was leading somewhere, and apparently that somewhere is Kisangani, about fifty miles from here.

  “So we won’t get to see them land?”

  “Oh, you’ll get the best view of all. You’ll get to see it all on TV from some nice, cushy hotel lounge. Me? I’ll be crouching behind a tree, scratching at insect bites, staying the hell out of sight.”

  I feel a little disappointed, betrayed almost. This is my home. I don’t want to leave. Being forced to evacuate seems wrong. Before I can say anything, Pretzel storms over. He’s not happy. He drags another scientist in his wake, pointing at me.

  “I’m telling you it’s too high. You want proof? Here’s your proof.”

  I step back a little as the other man counters. “But the background radiation is barely 12 Roentgen. It’s hardly significant.”

  “Josh. Can I have some of your hair?”

  I knew Pretzel was a little eccentric, but I had no idea.

  “Ah, yeah. Sure.” My mouth may say those words, but my heart doesn’t believe them. I don’t know what I’m actually agreeing to. Pretzel leans in, grabbing a single strand by the root and plucking it.

  “Test this,” he says, handing the strand to the other scientist.

  I’m baffled. “I don’t understand?”

  Pretzel ignores my question, instead asking me, “How long have you been here?”

  “Ah, just on four years.”

  “Perfect. Josh is a perfect sample. Four years’ worth of accumulated protein capturing the impact of any background radiation. And don’t give me any bullshit about radon build up. We’re in the middle of a goddamn jungle. There’s a reason they’re coming down here, and it’s not to collect autographs. We can’t ignore the possibility they’re after heavy metals.”

  The other man wanders off, holding the strand of hair as though it were some prized specimen. I’m confused.

  Pretzel goes from annoyed to friendly in a heartbeat, which is just as bewildering to me.

  “Hey, don’t worry about anything. You’re fine. You’re giving us a baseline, that’s all.”

  I must look worried.

  “Hair is like one of those old-fashioned tape recorders. Every day it grows a little. Every day it tells us a little more about what you’ve been exposed to—things in your diet, radiation around you, isotopes integrating into various molecules. It lets us understand what’s normal for the jungle.”

  “Oh.”

  I didn’t understand any of that.

  “Hey, Pretzel. Tell him about the rope ladder.” Garcia points at the clear blue sky.

  “Oh that? Yeah, that’s clever. Our alien friends are smart. You see, getting on and off Earth takes a lot of energy. A helluva lot. Most of our rockets have a payload ratio of around three or four percent, so 96% of any rocket is fuel and engines. Big rocket. Little capsule at the top, right? Lots of waste.

  “So these guys are smart. Instead of flying down here, they’re are setting up an elevator. That’s why they captured the asteroid. They’re mining it to build the elevator cable, saving themselves a lot of effort. The ratio of what they can transport up and down from Earth will be pretty much the opposite of what we use for space flight. They’ll be able to shuffle stuff to and from orbit with remarkable efficiency.”

  I nod. “Smart.”

  At least, it sounds smart to me. I can’t figure out how the rope is going to stay up if it’s not attached to something like a tree or a cliff.

  “Yep. Why waste fuel flying back and forth when you can just drop a ladder.”

  Pretzel wanders off, talking to someone else. He’s like a whirlwind in the desert, dragging tumbleweeds along behind him. Garcia and I help set up the tents, unraveling nylon sheets and laying out poles but I’m intensely interested in Pretzel and the other scientists. They unpack computers and various pieces of equipment, run cables along the ground and build impromptu tables out of crates and planks of wood.

  Jana holds up what looks like a meter-long ruler, resting it on a large boulder in the center of the village. Pretzel peers through what seems to be a telescope mounted on a tripod, while another scientist sprays red paint on the tip of the rock.

  “I want a few more datum points.” Pretzel points at a couple of other boulders, one of which lies near the parsonage.

  The other scientist working with Jana is elderly. She has thin grey hair and wrinkled cheeks. I notice a few of the natives staring at her, mesmerized by her pale skin as though they’ve seen a ghost. People don’t grow old in the jungle. Life here is too harsh.

  Garcia and I unpack a crate, placing radio equipment and a variety of computer monitors on one of the impromptu desks inside the main tent.

  “Hey, uh, I, um,” Garcia says, which to me seems to be a leading question, suggestive of what’s coming next. I feel as though I can guess what he’s going to ask. “Are there, like, long drops around here? You know, where do the villagers go for Number Two?”

  “Ah,” I reply as we stand by a tent flap. “There are squat toilets over there, but you can use our toilet.”

  Garcia’s eye’s narrow. “It’s—you know—a regular toilet?”

  “Yeah.”

  “A regular flushing toilet?”

  “Yeah.”

  His brow furrows. “How?”

  “We have a rainwater tank.”

  “And there’s toilet paper?”

  Seems like an odd question, but, “Yes.”

  “Oh, Josh. You’re a legend.” I must look confused as Garcia elaborates. “For the past few months I’ve been shitting into plastic bags and carrying that stuff around with me while on operations in the Middle East.”

  “You poop into plastic bags?” I ask, trying to hide my surprise but not quite making it as my words are a little shrill.

  “The places we go—no one can know we were there, so yeah, we normally do crazy stuff like that to avoid leaving any sign. A toilet, though, a real goddamn toilet. That’s gold. There’s nothing like taking a good shit.”

  I can’t help but laugh. I’m not sure I agree with him on that point, but then again, I haven’t had to squat down and poop into tiny plastic bags.

  “But we’ve got to keep this from Lieutenant Jackson, okay?”

  I don’t know why it needs to be a secret, but, “Sure.”

  Garcia peers out of the tent, looking either way, probably trying to spot the lieutenant.

  I point. “Go in the back door, first on the left.”

  “Be right back,” he says, and he darts over behind the manse as though he’s on some super-secret mission. As for me, I don’t know that I’ve ever talked about pooping with anyone before. Not sure I ever will again.

  With nothing else to do, I join Jana as she sets up the meter ruler on another rock.

  “Hold it just there.” Pretzel notes something on a computer tablet. “Mark 487.18 meters.”

  Another scientist replies, “Got it—487.18.”

  I’m surprised by the amount of equipment the scientists have. There are several satellite dishes clamped onto the side of trees, all pointing in different directions, but they’re smaller than Raka’s and probably not used for watching television.

  “Is this
your friend Josh?” the older woman asks Jana, offering her hand to me in friendship.

  We shake as Jana says, “Yes.”

  “Nice to meet you, Josh. I’m Dr. Angela O’Brien.”

  “Hi, Dr. O’Brien,” I say, unsure why I’m suddenly a celebrity.

  “Angela, please. No formalities in the jungle.”

  Jana is excited. “They want to see the caves.”

  “The caves?”

  We’re not supposed to go to the caves, even though they’re near the local swimming hole. Jana and I like to sneak off exploring, but if my dad knew I’d been there he’d ground me for a month.

  Bats roost in the caves north of the village. They’re known to carry diseases like Ebola and viruses like Crimean Congo hemorrhagic fever. Dad had me memorize the names and the symptoms in case any of the villagers become infected. One scratch, just some guano getting into a cut, or even simply touching your nose, mouth or eyes with unwashed hands and wham! you’re dead. Whether that’s true or not, I’m not sure, but it’s what Dad says, and it’s a pretty damn effective way to make me paranoid.

  I don’t know why we sneak away there. Defiance, I guess—the exhilaration of dicing with death and feeling alive. I’m always a little nervous on returning to the village, wondering if a sniffle is something more. Why do it? If Dad knew, he’d scold me for being illogical—stupid. He’d say, Jana’s a bad influence, but we just want to be ourselves and not controlled by someone else, constantly being told what to do and how to think. Even my dad’s guilty of that, running off to the African jungle. He wasn’t sent here. He chose to come here when everyone told him it was madness. Is that why he came? To prove them wrong? Perhaps that same rebellious streak runs in me.

  “Why do you want to go there?” I ask the scientist.

  Visiting bats is about as far removed from greeting aliens as anyone could get.

  Angela gestures to Pretzel as he walks over. “Ask him. Going to the caves is his idea.”

  There’s something regal in the way Pretzel walks and talks. His voice has gravitas, while his soft Indian accent lends an air of mystique to his words, making it seem as though he’s imparting ancient secrets.

  Pretzel picks up on the conversation, saying, “I would love to see your caves.”

  Angela clarifies, “My team is part of the Earth Sciences division at ESA. Our job is to monitor the jungle during First Contact to ensure there are no unintended adverse effects.”

  Jana beats me to the obvious question. “So you don’t get to talk to the aliens?”

  She laughs, pointing at Pretzel. “Him, maybe, but not me.”

  Pretzel says, “No one will be talking to anyone at first. Not straight away. Honestly, at this point, we don’t even know what talking will involve. Speech? Sign language? Music? Strobe lights?”

  Angela elaborates. “My role is to observe what happens on Earth during First Contact. We know nothing about the biology of our visitors. We don’t know how our world will react to them at a cellular level.”

  Jana and I are silent. Angela pauses. I suspect she’d be happy to leave the explanation at that, but we’re clearly fascinated.

  “You’ve both seen movies like this, right?”

  We nod.

  “Well, this won’t be anything like what you’ve seen in Hollywood. Forget everything you’ve seen on TV. There won’t be any dashing heroes or aliens with acid for blood.”

  My mind wanders. We don’t have movie theaters in the jungle, but Raka gets films on DVD, so I know what she means. Mostly, they’re copies of a copy of a copy, so the quality is poor, but often that makes scary movies even more terrifying, as we can’t quite see what’s happening.

  Raka doesn’t like too much horror. Most of the movies he has are old and often quite simple. Star Wars is a favorite because it’s one of the few movies he has an original copy of so it’s high quality. There’s something surreal about watching stormtroopers and Jedi running through an astonishingly clean, sterile spaceship. Wouldn’t happen in the jungle. Light sabers and blasters, spaceships and robots are all somewhat hypnotic to look at—it’s the clearly defined lines, the clean-cut images that cast a spell over us. In the jungle, everything’s dirty. There’s always humidity in the air. Nothing’s ever really dry, so seeing worlds like Tatooine with its crisp desert sands, or Hoth with its pristine ice holds an almost magnetic appeal. To hear Angela say, forget all that, is surprising, as the allure is overwhelming. If aliens aren’t like that, I’m at a loss as to what they could be like.

  “We live in a microbial world.” Pretzel waves his arm toward the jungle. “All of this is an illusion. Trees. Monkeys. Snakes. Centipedes. Birds. None of that is real in itself. Every animal is a hodgepodge of individual cells—a collection of trillions upon trillions of microscopic lifeforms that combine like Lego blocks to form living creatures like you and me. Imagine a house made from Lego. Blue Lego stairs. Red Lego chairs. Yellow Lego beds and benches—that’s us! We are that house! You, me, the jungle, even the air we breathe, it’s all an assortment of tiny living cells.”

  Jana is taken back by the concept.

  “Even the air?”

  “Even the air. With each breath, you’re inhaling roughly a hundred thousand viral particles, along with maybe as many as twenty thousand different bacterial cells.”

  Jana and I look at each other in surprise.

  “And that’s what we call clean air. Most of these microscopic components—ninety-nine point nine, nine, nine, nine (stop me when you’ve heard enough nines) nine, nine, nine.”

  Pretzel isn’t kidding about the nines, so I raise my hand slightly and he grabs a breath. “Aren’t harmful to us at all. Most of them are helpful, keeping us alive and healthy, and they’re everywhere. On every surface. In our lungs, our guts, on our skin. There’s no surface on Earth that doesn’t harbor microbes.”

  “Even Mt. Everest?”

  “Even Mt. Everest. We’ve found bacteria and diatoms at heights of around fifty kilometers, that’s easily five times the height of Everest.”

  “How do they get there?”

  “Storms. Bloody big storms. The sky is basically a microbial highway.”

  “What about Antarctica?” I ask.

  “Even in Antarctica—often hidden in lakes beneath miles of ice, cut off from the outside world for tens of millions of years, but still thriving in the darkness.”

  He points at a patch of mud in front of his boots, saying, “Dig a hole in the ground. Dig down a couple of miles looking for gold or diamonds. Dig so far the rock becomes absurdly hot to touch and you’ll still find microbes in the water seeping through the cracks.

  “Eight miles beneath the ocean, in the eternally dark depths of the Mariana Trench, we’ve found microbes in astonishing abundance. The pressure there is eight tons per square inch. That’s like Superman balancing a bus in the palm of his hand, and yet still cellular life thrives.”

  Jana asks the question I’m thinking. “But not the aliens? They don’t have microbes?”

  “None of ours. Not yet anyway,” Angela says. “But as soon as they open the door and step out into our world, they will. What ever microbes inhabit our two biospheres will suddenly come in contact. In some ways, that’s the real First Contact. It’s inevitable, and that’s the problem. We don’t know what microbes make up their world, and we don’t know how they’ll interact with our microbes. I’d feel much more comfortable if these guys were landing in the Sahara. There are still microbes there, but it’s an easier environment for us to isolate and control.”

  Pretzel points at a monkey swinging through the trees. Branches bend beneath its weight, on the verge of snapping when the blur of fur switches hands, grabbing for some other branch as its legs swing wildly beneath it. Like a trapeze artist at the circus, it defies gravity, soaring through the jungle canopy with ease.

  “Here in the Congo, we’ve got an astonishing variety of species and an incredibly complex ecosystem. There’s so much energy, so mu
ch life.”

  Angela adds, “It’s my job to monitor it. I’m here to detect any impact. We suspect our microbial lifeforms will be incompatible with theirs, but we really don’t know for sure. Our environment could be lethal to them, just as theirs could be lethal to ours. Both biomes might ignore each other entirely, or they could compete against each other, with one aggressively winning over the other. It could be that there are battles played out at one level but not another. The complexity of what could happen is off the charts. The only way we’re going to know what’s happening is if we monitor the interaction closely.”

  Petty Officer Garcia comes jogging over, grinning like a kid at Christmas, clearly pleased with himself. He joins our group quietly, stepping softly and making as though he never slipped away, but he looks pleased with himself for having a poo, of all things.

  Pretzel gestures to the rest of the scientists setting up their equipment, saying, “If it was up to me, we’d undertake contact in space. Things would be much simpler in a nice, sterile, isolated environment.”

  “And the caves?” I ask.

  Angela holds up a small plastic box with a spike protruding from one end. Chrome screws and rubber seals protect the contents from the humidity of the jungle. There’s a digital display, but it’s in black and white, with an array of dozens of seemingly meaningless numbers on it. Resting on a boulder beside her is a box with easily a hundred other monitors neatly stacked within.

  “I need to distribute these out to a distance of five kilometers. They’ll monitor soil and airborne microbes within about two feet once shoved into the dirt. Getting these out there now will give us a good baseline during First Contact, allowing us to measure any change.”

  Pretzel realizes Angela hasn’t actually answered my question. “Oh, the caves will give us access to ground water and subsurface microbes.”

  “Microbes are our canary-in-the-coal-mine,” Angela says.

  Pretzel claps his hands together. “So? What do you say? Are you up for a little adventure?”

  “Ummm.” Garcia waves Lieutenant Jackson over. “There’s a few things we need to talk about first.”