Jeanette followed Bernie under the wide blades of a Sikorsky helicopter. The tarmac was radiating heat from the equatorial sun, making sweat bead between her shoulder blades.
“I was offered half a desk in the hangar,” Bernie said, as they rounded a cargo container, “but there’s more space out here and better air flow.”
The container had a green tarp tied to the roof on its open side. The tarp was tacked up with poles to create a sunshade. An optical microscope was set on a crate with several laptops stacked next to it.
“They gave me the whole pod, and then added a weight restriction. I had to leave a spectrometer on the tarmac in Wellington. But I’ve got the basics, and I brought my own tent,” Bernie added. “I’ve got room to share — to spare! — if you need it.”
Jeanette didn’t respond to the invitation.
“The footage is all here.” Bernie pointed at the set of laptops. “And I brought the cameras should we need them. But first you have to see this.” He beckoned her to the microscope, illuminated the sample, checked the view and stepped aside.
Jeanette looked into the objective lens, adjusting the focus slightly. “What is it?”
“A little bit of alien.”
“Seriously?”
“Look at the filaments. I thought they were structural. Then I noticed the periodic branching, smaller and smaller.” He handed her a high-resolution image from a scanning electron microscope. “What does that look like?”
Jeanette saw a series of tiny fiddleheads, but the spirals curled the wrong way for ferns and the coiled fronds had finely structured curls on their edges. She tried to supplant this view with a cellular analogy, but didn’t know what answer Bernie wanted.
“We thought these were inert flakes,” he continued, “like dead skin cells, but I think they’re the key to how they communicate. What if that’s a multi-band high-frequency fractal antenna? High sensitivity to electromagnetic fields, I can accept. The advanced signal processing you’d need to interact with a completely foreign brain? That’s a ridiculous stretch, but two days ago I met a guy who talks to squirrels.”
“Estlin,” she said.
“You know him?”
“We used to date.”
“Really!” Bernie’s eyebrows rose, but he held his questions to complete his thought. “Our space monkey could tell Estlin was coming before he stepped in the room. That’s a problem. There’s a point where physics shunts it all into the realm of improbability, where the signals we emit are so small that a single distant point of detection — the alien itself — could never catch them. The background noise would be too great. But then I found this.” Bernie waved Jeanette closer and peered through the objectives of his stereomicroscope. “Imagine compressing all the components of a cell phone into a particle smaller than a speck of dust — power supply, receiver, amplifier, transmitter. Release these and let them drift where the air currents carry them, each relaying the signals collected through each other all the way back to their point of origin, maybe transforming them from our frequencies,” he tapped his head, “to theirs. It’s just a thought, but it would explain a lot of what we’ve witnessed so far.”
Bernie yielded space at the microscope. Jeanette saw the wealth of unknown structures in the compact particle, but couldn’t assemble the picture in her mind because she was missing the central piece. “Can I watch those videos?”
* * *
“They dropped a box of squirrels on the Americans.” Harry laid out the contents of Vaska’s bag in Stodt’s office. There was a Yagi antenna and a multi-channel receiver. The frequencies programmed into the receiver channels were printed on a sheet of paper. He couldn’t stop smiling. He believed that Lyndie was alive because he had to believe it. The Russians had the resources to know and the proof was in his hands. “The transmitters on the squirrels have about a ten-mile range. I’ll have to go ashore to track them.”
“How?” Stodt interrupted.
“The easy way or the hard way,” Harry responded. “The Russian damn well said that I should be over there doing the job.”
“I need an operational plan.”
“I want to pull Jeanette in on this,” Harry said. “She’s American. Behnke can fly us back to the Esperanza. We’ll beg, borrow or buy a Zodiac from Greenpeace and head for Pago Pago. They haven’t closed the harbor. If we get turned back, I’ll power up the receiver as we leave, and you’ll hear from us sooner rather than later.”
“The gear is likely bugged six times over.”
“I don’t think I care,” Harry answered.
“Harry….”
“I don’t need your permission.”
“Yes, you do,” Stodt answered. “How much did you tell the Esperanza?”
“Nothing,” Harry said. “The story was breaking on the news. They inferred enough to see the advantage in helping. It’ll be harder this time.”
“And Jeanette?” Stodt asked. “Are you sure about her?”
“I’m sure,” Harry said. “The best way to pretend to be a Greenpeace biologist washing ashore is to be a Greenpeace biologist.”
“I’m going to regret this,” Stodt said.
Harry didn’t offer any false assurances. He packed the equipment. “Whatever happens, it’ll get me closer to the situation,” he said.
Stodt dismissed him with a wave to the door.
Harry stopped outside the office to refill his water bottle. Leaving the hangar, he decided to find Wilhem and send someone for Jeanette when they were ready for take-off. If she wanted to kick his plan in the teeth, it’d be best if they were already airborne.
* * *
Sedatives make it difficult to sustain anger, Estlin thought. He couldn’t focus his eyes, but he was consciously trying to keep them open, because he didn’t want to leave the hangar. Sprawled on the concrete, he bitterly appreciated Liev’s assurance that, despite the swiftly spreading heaviness in his limbs, she hadn’t suddenly and unexpectedly killed him. But she was wrong; her ‘refined variant’ didn’t turn off his odd talent so much as shift its frequency. It felt like being caught in an undertow, yanked down to where sap was rising in the grass as worms slid beneath the turf.
The contractions echoed the actions of his finest blood vessels and the ever-moving walls of his guts. He did not like this confusion between what was outside and inside and tried to separate himself from the living carpet. He wanted the faster world of deep breathing creatures. He wanted the rhythm of heartbeats and footsteps. He demanded it. He yelled at the grass and felt the field shudder as though the wind had shifted, as though each blade was turning to follow the sun.
His mind slipped further, sliding into the lagoon to settle on the bottom where he became camouflaged. He took on the color and texture of sand as he stared through the clarity of water at the world above. His presence was noted. He was abruptly forced from this skin and had nowhere else to go.
* * *
“Harry! Wait!” Bernie sprinted to him. “Jeanette says you’re leaving.”
“That’s right.”
“I need a favor.” Bernie dug through his pockets. “Hold still.” He placed a hand against the side of Harry’s head and poked him in the eye.
“Bernie!” Harry swatted the cotton swab away.
Bernie looked at the swab in his hand. “I missed.”
“No, you didn’t.” Harry blocked the swab’s return. “What are you doing?”
“I need a tear drop,” Bernie answered. “I think I know how they’re swinging the long range communication. It’s completely creepy, and I might be wrong, but I’m probably not wrong because I’m very smart.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Half the people we sent ovoids have lost their samples. They escaped. So, here’s the question: do they float or do they fly?” Bernie bounced on his heels. “They fly, swim, roll, and I think they can burrow. But if they have the option between air and water, they choose water — and we have a nice air/water interface right next to where we keep all our electrical brain juice. I know it’s creepy, right? But remember, Estlin? His eyes watered when he met them.”
“You think I’m walking around with alien bits stuck to my eyeballs?” Harry demanded.
“It’s a theory,” Bernie responded. “The ovoids contain structures that I think can catch and relay signals across a massive bandwidth. And they move around, mostly passively, until you try to pin them down for an experiment and then they wiggle away.”
“Have you seen them wiggle?” Harry asked.
“Not exactly.”
Harry took the swab and pressed it to the corner of his eye. He dropped it into the vial Bernie held. “I don’t want to know.”
“Yes, you do.”
“Bernie, figure it out. And watch your mouth. I don’t want to hear any second-hand rumblings about this until you’ve pinned the details down.”
“Got it.” Bernie walked away, holding his vial with both hands.
* * *
“Where’s Beth?” Dr. Liev swept through the seating area on the C-17, passing Bomani and Sanford. Beth was resting in the forward cabin. “Beth, get up. It’s your turn.”
“I can’t. I won’t,” she answered. “That man—”
“He’ll be quiet,” Dr. Liev assured her. “I took care of that. Now you can show everyone how good you are.”
Bomani blocked Liev’s path. “I must come.”
“Beth doesn’t need any distractions.”
Bomani answered with unyielding silence.
“Step aside.” Dr. Liev looked for Sergeant Pollock who was at the desk under the forward stairs.
Bomani took Estlin’s page of equations from Sanford and presented it to her. “This is a small fragment,” Bomani responded. “They were correcting a mistake, a gap, in our equations, our clumsy scratchings. They have more to tell us. If they try, you will need me.”
“No interference,” she conceded, and Bomani let her pass.
“Sanford, can you call Livermore? Ask them my question again,” he said.
Sanford nodded. “It’s good how you look out for her.”
“Is it?” Watching Dr. Liev guide Beth down the ramp, Bomani could find no nobility in his collusion. He followed them.
In the hangar, the creatures in the rafters were buzzing as they had on the flight. Estlin was on the floor, and his unnatural posture drew Bomani immediately. He appeared to be neither asleep nor awake, breathing evenly, his eyes were open only to the finest slits. Bomani made eye contact with Sergeant Malone, who sat watchfully next to Estlin.
Beth stood in the center of the hangar with her head tipped forward, looking down instead of up. The creatures were suddenly silent.
“They are responding to her,” Dr. Liev announced her vindication.
Bomani saw that Estlin’s eyes had closed. He looked to Malone, who acknowledged that he’d also noticed. Malone reached out to check Estlin’s pulse.
“They’re coming down!” Dr. Liev was triumphant.
The waetapu slowly descended, moving like geckos, flat against the wall. Bomani watched them transition onto the hangar floor with the same slow steps. They paid no heed to Beth. Her arms fell to her sides and she bent at the waist, looking at the Waes.
“You will talk to me,” she told them.
The waetapu continued, now moving like lumbering sloths. Bomani felt the urge to back away and give them the space, but Malone held his ground, so Bomani did, too. The creatures took positions on either side of Estlin and settled into a statuesque stillness. From their posture, it was a vigil.
“They hear me,” Beth said. “I know they hear. I can be loud. Boom, boom!”
Bomani felt her yell between his ears. He refused to fear her. “Hush, little one, hush.” He raised a hand, wanting her to stay back.
“No,” she said. “It is my turn.”
Beth skipped across the floor with small quick steps. The alien with yellow eyes rose on its hind legs, straightening to its full height. Bomani wondered if the light had somehow changed, its eyes seemed darker. The orange-eyed one crouched deeply and started crying with its spines — a sound unlike any Bomani had ever heard. He briefly saw a lioness with her teeth bared.
“Stop, Beth,” Bomani said. “Stop.”
Beth surged forward, and Bomani moved, too. He knew not what impulse drove him, but he was on his knees sliding to her with his arms spread wide before he knew that she was falling. He caught her, thinking she had fainted, but the word that came from his mouth was sleeping.
“She’s sleeping,” he said with such certainty that he convinced himself.
Dr. Liev was frozen across the room, unwilling to approach the aliens more closely.
“This is over,” Commander Fleckman said.
Bomani shifted Beth in his arms to lift her. He stepped back several feet. The orange-eyed alien straightened and turned away from them, focusing its attention on Estlin.
“Put her down!” Dr. Liev protested.
Bomani locked eyes with her. “Do not speak to me.”
Fleckman closed the distance between them. He checked Beth’s pulse and lifted her eyelid. She shifted in Bomani’s arms but did not wake.
“Take her out to the Cascade.” Fleckman was absolute. “Dr. Liev, I want a word.”
* * *
Pago Pago harbor welcomed them with a smiling billboard of Charlie the Tuna and the reek of fish from the canneries. Harry had contacted harbor control on VHF and asked directions to Customs. He eased the Zodiac alongside the concrete wharf, their wake rippling through a trapped patch of surface grunge, a mix of plastic bags, detergent bottles and finer detritus. He stepped off to secure the Zodiac, and then stepped back aboard.
“Now, what?” Jeanette asked.
“We wait here. Quarantined until inspected,” Harry echoed what harbor control had said. They hadn’t been summarily turned away, but this was going to be the tricky bit.
The single customs officer walked out onto the wharf.
“Talofa,” Harry said. The greeting was the only Samoan word he knew.
“Where you coming from?”
“Greenpeace ship, MV Esperanza.”
“Last port of call?”
“Wellington.”
“Citizenship?” he asked.
“American.” Jeanette offered her passport.
“And you?”
“New Zealand,” Harry said, displaying his passport. “I’m just a chauffeur, bringing the lady ashore.”
“Purpose of your visit?” he asked Jeanette.
“To get off the Esperanza,” Jeanette answered. “Domestic dispute with the captain. I’ll spare you the details.”
The officer examined the passport she had offered him. “No luggage?”
Harry was ready to put both oars in the water. “Captain had her pack, then chucked it all over the side.”
“Harry,” Jeanette hushed him. She was good.
“He’ll lose his job over this one.”
Jeanette used a glance to tell him to drop it.
“I’m reporting it,” Harry cut back. “We got one bag out of the water. It’s radio gear for tracking seals. She’s a biologist, see. It’s the one bag she had to save.” Harry opened the salt-stained rucksack to reveal the gear wrapped in heavy plastic.
“Open it.”
“He’s lucky he didn’t ruin it.” Harry worked the knotted plastic open. “If it can’t come ashore, I’ll get it back to her.”
The officer inspected the gear and seemed to accept it. “To land as a tourist, you are required to have proof of exit. If you aren’t leaving by ship, you need a plane ticket.”
“Can I phone a travel agent?” Jeanette asked.
“Maybe. Usually.” The officer scrubbed his chin. “But the airport’s closed.”
“Why?”
“A cargo plane popped a couple of tires — scratched a groove in the runway. Do you have funds for accommodations and a flight out?”
“Yes.”
“Thirty days,” he said, stamping her passport and marking in the date. “If you overstay, you’ll be fined.”
“Thank you.” Jeanette hefted her bag to disembark.
“Jeanette, wait.” Harry dug out his passport. “Could I spend a day or two here and see her off?”
The officer accepted his passport. “The visa’s not a problem.” He looked at the Zodiac from end to end. “The boat’s a problem. I can grant you thirty days, but only with a cash landing bond.”
“Sounds good,” Harry said.
“Refuel. Resupply. Don’t cross your captain,” the officer advised. He pointed at the Zodiac. “If he wants you for theft, you won’t be hard to find.” He offered Jeanette his hand as she stepped onto the wharf; she looked brilliantly relieved and grateful. “When you’ve settled with me, you’ll have to see the harbor master for a moorage.”
* * *
Bomani knew that Beth had woken in his arms. “I have you,” he whispered as though she were still sleeping.
“I tripped, Bomani.” She took hold of him. “I fell.”
“I have you.”
“They wouldn’t talk to me.”
“I’m glad, Beth. They are very dangerous. The men they attract are dangerous.”
“Imogen said I could help.”
She’s wrong, Bomani thought and sought a way to express it.
“She’s very smart.”
“Sometimes very smart people aren’t very smart.”
Beth nodded. She prodded Bomani’s shoulder. “You’re having dumb ideas right now.”
Bomani was thinking that he had Beth in his arms and he should just keep on walking. “I want you to be safe,” he said.
“I make you think of your mother.”
“Yes,” Bomani answered. “I was once a child in her arms.”
“I’m too big to carry.”
“I will put you down soon,” Bomani agreed. He’d reached the tail ramp of the C-17. Beth squirmed in his arms, and he placed her on her feet. “Do you want to sit here for a minute?”
“We could.”
Dr. Liev emerged from the hangar. “Beth.”
“I’m fine,” she said, tolerating the doctor’s attentions.
“You should rest,” Liev said.
“I’m staying here for awhile,” Beth said. “Do you want to sit with us?”
Dr. Liev glanced at Bomani. “Don’t leave the ramp. I’ll wait for you inside.”
Bomani sat as the doctor carried on into the C-17.
“I am fine,” Beth said.
“I’m glad.” Bomani looked at the runways and thought of how these paved stretches of earth had changed his life. The intermittent flights into Karonga had taught him, from his earliest remembrance, that the world was a place you could go. If not for the runway, he would never have imagined leaving and his life would have been very different.
“You’re sad,” Beth said.
“Great events press against my sorrows because those I would share them with, who would advise me, are gone,” Bomani answered. “But I still hear them. They whisper to me as I think of them.”
“How did your mother die?”
The question startled Bomani as did the strength of Beth’s intuition. “Her heart faltered, then it failed,” he answered. “I was far away. I woke one morning struck with the deepest homesickness.”
“Your sister called,” she said it simply, trusting him, acknowledging that she’d taken more of the story than he had intended to tell.
“I was at my computer looking at flights when the phone rang. It was my comfort that I could say exactly when I would be home.” He remembered that morning with sharp clarity, particularly the rain falling as he had carried his bags to Elise’s car. The wiper blades had been left on past need of them, but were the only thing that broke the silence of his leaving.
“There was a bird,” Beth said.
“My friend drove me to the airport. A starling struck the windshield of her car,” he said. The sound had been sickening. It had closed the door on his hope, forcing him to accept that he would not be home in time. “It was hard, Beth.”
“But you went.”
“Yes.” Bomani tried not to think too deeply of the times.
“You went to dig.”
Bomani knew he answered even as he chose not to answer.
“They wouldn’t let me go,” Beth said. “I was too sick. My uncle took her white flowers. He said they were from me, but they weren’t. After, he washed dirt from his hands and remembered. I didn’t have to push.” She pressed her fist against her forehead. “Her grave was too small. I was so angry. He didn’t understand. I thought he had to be remembering wrong, that my mother couldn’t fit beneath a stone.”
She let Bomani’s hand fold over hers. Bomani caught a glimpse of Estlin’s limp form on the hangar floor. He wanted to assure her that Estlin would be fine, but could not lie.
“She shouldn’t have done that to him,” she said. “I didn’t ask her to.”
“I know.”
“He said that I can’t help because I’m….” She grabbed her trembling fingers and squeezed them to stillness. “He’s wrong. There’s something wrong in his head. He’s breaking. You will need me.”
“I hope not,” Bomani said, because he couldn’t stop thinking it.