Lunar day 190
Morning
“How long have you known I’m an alien?” Zan asked.
“Not very long,” I admitted. “In fact, I wasn’t completely sure until right now.”
Zan smiled, and her big, blue eyes sparkled. It now occurred to me why I’d never seen any eyes like hers before.
They weren’t human.
“My planet isn’t that far in galactic terms,” she told me. “It’s only about ten light years away. You humans call it SG 61109b. We call it something that can’t be pronounced in your language. So Dr. Holtz and I just called it Bosco.”
“Bosco?” I repeated.
Zan shrugged. “Dr. Holtz said it was better than SG 61109b.”
“Good point.”
Above us the greenhouse roof had a large skylight in it. It had been one of the most expensive parts of MBA to transport and install, but it was necessary for the plants to have sunlight. I looked up and saw the earth above us, along with several thousand stars. “Where’s Bosco?” I asked.
Zan pointed northward. “That way. In the constellation Draco.”
I looked back at her. There were a thousand questions in my head, all vying to be asked at once. Finally I went with, “I’m the only one who can see you, right?”
Zan’s eyes sparkled again. “You figured that out?”
“The only time you’ve ever spoken to me is when we were alone,” I explained. “I’ve seen you near other people, but I just realized I’ve never seen you speak to any of them. Or interact with them. The only person you’ve done any of that with is me. And the other day, when Kira overheard us talking in my room, she could only hear me . . . not you.”
“Dr. Holtz was right about you,” Zan said. “You’re a smart kid.”
“He was talking to you that night in the bathroom, wasn’t he? But the cameras couldn’t see you, so it looked like he was talking to himself.”
“Yes. I probably shouldn’t have approached him there, but it seemed private at the time. I didn’t realize you were there.”
“I asked you before if you were talking to him then. And you lied to me.”
“Technically, I didn’t,” Zan told me. “You asked if I was on the phone with him that night, and I said that I wasn’t.”
I frowned, realizing she was right. “Well, you misled me. About that and a whole lot of other things.”
“I didn’t think you were ready for the truth.”
“I wasn’t the only one who overheard Dr. Holtz speaking to you. My mom did too. And some other people here. But they all thought Dr. Holtz was talking to himself, going crazy.”
Zan nodded. “Dr. Holtz knew that had happened. It was one of the reasons he wanted to reveal my existence. He didn’t think we could keep this all a secret much longer.”
Outside the greenhouse, across the hall, I could hear Garth Grisan being locked inside the medical bay. He was yelling the whole time, telling Dr. Janke and Chang they were fools for not seeing things his way. “When the aliens attack and we’re not prepared for it, you won’t be so pleased with yourselves!” he warned.
Then the door slammed, silencing him.
“What a nut job,” Chang sighed.
I stared at Zan. She didn’t seem remotely evil. In fact I got a feeling from her that I couldn’t explain, a sense that she was nothing but goodness, warmth, and light. And yet, somewhere in the back of my mind, I found myself wondering if this could all be a trick, as Mr. Grisan had warned.
“So how do you do it?” I asked. “How do you make yourself invisible to everyone but one person?”
“Because I’m not really here,” Zan said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
Only it wasn’t obvious to me at all. “What do you mean?”
“Your friend Roddy was right the other day about how difficult space travel is. Our civilization is far more advanced than yours, and even we haven’t figured out how to go from planet to planet in less than a generation. However, contrary to what your scientists tell you, there is one thing that can go faster than the speed of light. Much faster, in fact: thoughts.”
I’d been kind of proud of myself for figuring out who’d killed Dr. Holtz, and what Zan’s secret was. But this revelation caught me completely by surprise. “So . . . you just think yourself here?”
“In a sense. It’s not quite as simple as that. In fact the process is quite complicated. But yes, that’s the general idea.”
“If you’re only a thought, how can I see you? Or hear you?”
“Because thoughts are extremely powerful—if you know how to use them right. Has there ever been a time when you knew what someone was thinking without saying anything?”
“I guess.”
“It’s kind of like that. I’m communicating directly with your brain. And since your brain controls what you see and hear, I can let you see and hear me. Or at least I can let you see and hear a representation of myself that isn’t alarming to you.”
“You mean you don’t look like a human?”
Zan smiled again. “Not at all. I’ve merely tried to model the image I project to be as human as possible. Do you like it?”
I stared at her amazing blue eyes. “Yes. Though I don’t think you got the eyes quite right. You made them too good, somehow.”
“I couldn’t help it. Dr. Holtz told me something once: that you humans consider the eyes a window to the soul.”
The greenhouse was right across from the mess hall. I could hear Kira and her father in there.
Dr. Howard was saying, “Promise me you’ll never go out on the surface without permission—or do anything risky like that—ever again. I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you.”
“Trust me, Dad,” Kira said, “I’ve had enough excitement to last me a long time.”
I returned my attention to Zan. As amazing as her revelations were, I found them surprisingly calming as well. Many strange things from the last few days suddenly made sense. Like why Zan had never opened a door, or touched me—or touched anything, for that matter. Or why she had looked so alarmed when I approached her in the mess hall when other people were around. It was because she wasn’t really there. Every time I’d seen her, whether she was with other people or hanging out by herself, she had merely been pretending to exist physically.
“How long were you in contact with Dr. Holtz?” I asked.
“Only a few weeks. But my kind have been watching you humans on earth for quite some time now. I suppose you could say we’ve been thinking ourselves there without choosing to interact with any of you.”
“For how long?”
“We first became aware of humanity about a hundred of your years ago, when you started detonating nuclear bombs. Such violent activity has effects your kind hasn’t figured out yet. In a sense, it sends ripples through the fabric of space-time. When we realized that you existed and what you had done, we deduced where you were and sent out our first explorers.”
“You’ve been coming for a hundred years?” I asked, startled. “And you’ve never been in touch with any humans that whole time?”
“No,” Zan said. “We have decided to be very cautious about this. Besides, much can be learned about a species through observation.”
I heard Lars Sjoberg storm past the greenhouse. He was chastising Nina. “You promised us all space on that rocket home.”
“That was before I had a murderer to get rid of,” Nina replied. “Trust me Lars, I’d love to send you back on the same rocket with him. Even better, I’d like to put the two of you on a rocket together and send it off into deep space for the rest of eternity. But NASA’s saying no, so for the time being I’m stuck here with you and your horrible family.”
I waited until they were out of earshot before speaking again. “So why did you decide to make yourself known after all this time?”
“Because of this base. You humans are making a sincere attempt to colonize planets beyond your own. You’re a long way from getting out of your own solar system, but it’s a step. Which means that someday down the line, you might be coming our way. So we decided that a connection should be made. After a great amount of deliberation, Dr. Holtz was selected. I have to admit, given how many of your movies are about evil aliens attacking your planet, I thought Dr. Holtz might be frightened at first. I was pleasantly surprised by how thrilled he was to make contact. And then when he kept pressing me to let him reveal our existence . . . well, his enthusiasm was contagious. He was very convincing.” Zan lowered her eyes sadly. “I had no idea it would end so tragically. Sadly, I wasn’t aware it was even happening. . . .”
“Why not?”
“I can’t be here constantly. That requires tremendous thought and focus. On my own planet I need to sleep—and do other things. So I was busy when Mr. Grisan got to Dr. Holtz. When I returned . . . his death was as big a shock to me as it was to you.”
“So that’s why you came to me?” I said. “To try to find out what happened to Dr. Holtz?”
“Yes. It was a serious breach of protocol, but I feared there was no other way to find out. I wanted to know the truth, but no one else here seemed willing to investigate the death—except you. Though I figured you might need a little push.”
I now heard Roddy entering the mess with his brother. “I suspected it was Mr. Grisan all along,” Roddy boasted. “I never trusted that guy. He always seemed shiftier than a Neptunian Blorkbeast.”
“Roddy,” Cesar said. “Unless you want that new girl to think you’re the biggest dork in the universe, you have to stop saying things like that.”
I returned my attention to Zan, putting all the pieces from the last few days together. “You also picked me because I was a kid, didn’t you? An adult would have known there was no Zan Perfonic scheduled to come here. They wouldn’t have followed your orders so blindly.”
“Maybe not,” Zan said, “But I saw other reasons to choose you as well. Your intelligence, for one. In fact you proved to be much smarter than I expected. I didn’t think you’d figure out what I really was. I originally planned to learn what happened to Dr. Holtz, then pretend to return on the rocket today and disappear from your life forever.”
“So you lied to me. About pretty much everything. Your job. Why you wanted my help. What you really are . . .”
“I apologize for that. I didn’t know what else to do. Just because I’m highly evolved doesn’t mean I’m perfect.” Zan fixed her brilliant blue eyes on me. “Although, now that you have figured out what I am, you seem as qualified a human contact as Dr. Holtz was. Perhaps even better.”
I was so startled by this, I actually forgot to breathe for a moment. Finally I gasped, “Really?”
“Yes. Approaching a human subject is no easy task. Not everyone would handle it as well as you have. I suspect most would, as you humans often say, ‘freak out.’ Therefore, I would very much like to continue our discussions. Although, sadly, I think that given the events of the past few days, we must keep our contact a secret. Humanity doesn’t seem to be ready for this yet.”
“I’m sure Mr. Grisan’s reaction wasn’t a normal one . . . ,” I began.
“Even so,” Zan told me, “I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you. So, what do you say? Are you willing to continue human-extraterrestrial contact?”
Of course, I wanted to shout. I couldn’t believe Zan was asking me. I was so thrilled by the idea, I could barely contain myself. And yet I did. I stayed so calm I surprised myself. “I’m not sure.”
For the first time, Zan looked surprised. “Why not?”
Outside, I could now hear my own family in the halls, calling to me. Violet was back with my parents. I’d been in such a hurry to talk to Zan, I’d forgotten to tell them where I was going. Since I’d almost been killed less than an hour before, my parents sounded a bit worried. Violet didn’t. She was acting like it was a big game of hide-and-seek, singing “Dashiell! Come out, come out, wherever you are!”
I was going to have to show myself to them soon.
“I can’t do it because of them,” I said quietly. “Dr. Holtz lived on his own up here. I don’t. It’s going to be very hard to keep you a secret from my family. Sooner or later they’re going to catch me talking to myself and think I’ve cracked up.”
“We’ll take precautions,” Zan told me. “This would mean a great deal to my planet as well as yours. In fact, it is more important than you could possibly understand.”
I looked up through the skylight at earth once again. It suddenly occurred to me that, for the first time in months, I wasn’t longing to be back on my home planet. My anger at being stuck on the moon had vanished. But it wasn’t only because of Zan’s offer. I also had a new friend in Kira. And I’d finally stopped grousing about having nothing to do at Moon Base Alpha and started actually doing things there.
Although making alien contact was kind of a big deal.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll do it . . . with one condition.”
Zan beamed, her eyes brighter blue than ever. “Of course. What is it?”
“The way you travel between planets. Is that something only your species can do?”
“I’m not sure,” Zan admitted. “I suppose others could do it, although it isn’t easy.”
“I’d like to try. Will you teach me?”
Zan stared up through the skylight thoughtfully. For a moment it seemed that she was no longer with me. I could still see her body, but her mind appeared to be light years away. I got the sense she was communicating with someone back on her home planet. Her eyes were eerily vacant, the sun and earth and a million stars reflected in them.
Then suddenly she was back. The life returned to her eyes. She looked at me.