Backyard Aliens Read online

  “Observing,” she said. “They must be scientists, too.”

  He stopped for a moment and looked around. “Over there,” he said. “In those tall plants.”

  “At least they’re like us,” she said, close on his heels.

  “Even scientists have the capacity to engage in experimentation. You know that. Perhaps they won’t kill us outright like one of their protectors, but they could do worse.” He looked directly at her stomach as he said the words.

  His attention excited her, but she made no move to show it. “You are right, of course. I want to trust them. I want to trust something.”

  CHAPTER 11

  NEIL NOTICED CONCERN in the sound of her voice. They were on the move, so he couldn’t address it at the moment. She knew something, though. “Even if this feels like the end of it, it isn’t,” Neil said. He shook his head. His right brain talked while his left brain analyzed the situation. The aliens’ trajectory through the development coincided with a grove of trees the construction team had left between building phases, some sort of common ground by the looks of it, for added aesthetics. “I know where they’re going.” He shot off in a direction away from where the aliens appeared to be heading.

  “You sure?”

  “Come-on, he said. Takki lomo ebb.” He glanced back at her.

  She held her jacket closed in the front and produced a wide smile. “I like working with you.”

  Neil waited for her to catch up, watched as she moved closer. “There’s a grove of trees. That’s what they’re aiming toward. A lot of foliage this time of year, and since it stands in the middle of the development no one would suspect they’d go there. Either they’re brilliant or they know not to go back into the woods. They probably saw the grove while traversing those house roofs.” Neil rushed behind a short hedge and waved for her to follow suit. Their faces close together, he could feel her warm breath. “We wait,” he said, then threw an arm around her.

  “You are always so warm,” she said.

  His left brain focused on what they might do next, which occupied his attention. It didn’t give him a lot of room to respond to her. She’d understand. He lay on the ground and peered through the brush the best he could. When he found that the moonlight didn’t stretch into the grove as well as he’d hoped, he scooted so that he could see around the bushes.

  The aliens were hard at work, almost mechanically, like they didn’t fully understand what they were doing, but were following some preset plan. That couldn’t be true, Neil thought. If that egg was as old as it was thought to be, how would any alien know what technology would develop? Unless…

  Neil sat up and stared at Mavra.

  “What?”

  “Thinking,” he said.

  “I guessed that.”

  “What if intelligent life always evolved the same way?”

  Mavra gave him a quizzical look, eyes squinting and teeth showing. “What are you talking about?”

  He delved deeper into his left brain, then opened his right brain. It was a trick he’d learned while growing up, a way to get the two halves to work together more efficiently. He didn’t understand what really happened inside his head, but he knew how he envisioned it. “How would those two know what to do with our equipment unless technology, through intelligent life forms, always transpired in the same way? Technological evolution mirroring physical evolution?”

  “That would mean that every planet with life had the same chemicals, the same materials,” she said.

  “We expect that’s true. Well, life like ours anyway.” He turned his head back toward the grove of trees. “That’s why they know what to grab and how to use it. It has to be the answer.”

  “That’s kind of depressing, isn’t it?” she said.

  “It is and it isn’t.” He couldn’t make up his mind. Besides that wasn’t the issue at hand. “It means we’ll have the technology to travel through space, to create little creatures like these. Eventually, I mean. We’re looking at our future capabilities.” But was that good or bad? He could worry about being depressed over the truth later. At the moment, he had to figure out what they were up to, and how it could affect the Earth. He lay back down in the grass and stared toward them. “It’s too fucking dark.” He sat back up.

  “You can’t see them?”

  “I can see them, but I want to know what that equipment was that they took into the trees with them.”

  Mavra climbed over him. “Let me see.”

  After a few minutes, he said, “It’s a dashboard computer isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. It does look like that.”

  “I should have let them keep my phone. They could have learned our language easier than us trying to piece together theirs.”

  “You really think so?” She sat back up.

  “That’s the most logical.”

  She reached for him and held his hands. They sat facing one another. “I went into a trance while you had Harkins on a wild goose chase.” She shook her head. “I don’t know if I should tell you what I got or not. I don’t want to influence your deductions.”

  He shook his head. “Let’s get it all out on the table. I know not to accept everything you get as fact. I can deal with it.”

  “Their race died out,” she said.

  Neil’s shoulders slumped and he lowered his chin to his chest. That was depressing. Was that the human race’s trajectory, too? Extinction? He scratched his head. “Come again?”

  “I saw spaceships again, but realized they were empty…just floating aimlessly through space. They’re probably billions of miles from us.”

  “Ha. No amount of equipment from here will reach them for hundreds of years. Is that what you’re saying?”

  “No. What I’m saying is how sad this is. If their planet went through an ice age like ours except that they traveled through space and dropped these self-contained eggs on every other planet in the universe—”

  “Galaxy probably.”

  “Okay, galaxy. The point is it’s sad. This is it. They’re all they’ve got.” She glared at him. “Think about it.”

  “I get it, honey. It’s sad. But no more sad than to think that all life in the universe is on the exact same technological trajectory. That means there’s nothing new or different out there. I don’t know if I like that.” Neil sensed that he felt the same as Mavra, even if it was for different reasons. “And they have no one but each other,” he said, repeating her words.

  “Exactly.”

  “Then we have nothing to worry about,” Neil said. “They can phone home all they want. It’ll never get them anywhere.” He perked up. “Do you feel one hundred percent sure of this?” He asked the question even though he knew the answer.

  “I know what I saw and felt. I saw their planet burn, ice over, and then grow plants again.”

  “Could they be us? Is it possible that we populated our own world, that we’ve been doing that, over and over again?” He shook his head. “No. Archaeologists know what’s been going on for a long time and this planet hasn’t gone through multiple cycles where human life occurred. Has it?”

  Mavra sat quietly as Neil rambled for a moment.

  When he stopped exploring out loud, he took a breath and drew her close to him. “We can’t know any of this for sure. Not yet. Maybe we do need to capture them, take a small blood sample, see how close our DNA strands are.” He cocked his head. “Can you pick up information like that if they don’t have it? That’s not really how psychometry works.”

  “That’s how psychic works, though.”

  “Especially if it turns out they’re from Earth. Blood tests might not tell us anything more than what we already assume. Maybe there’s only one path to intelligent life; it needs the same minerals and chemicals; it needs the same temperatures, the same DNA, all of it the same, the same, the same. We’ve already sent private space ships to all three space stations. We’ve got an elevator to the moon. What more is there? Isn’t it possible that we’ve already
produced something like these two guys? That somewhere, maybe in Area 51, our scientists are repeating this situation?” She looked at him for confirmation.

  “So, if technology takes the same trajectory, so does our thinking on other levels,” Neil said. “Even if we find out that they’re from some other planet out there, we’re all the same.” He reached out and hugged her. “I hope that’s not the truth. I hope there’s more to it than that.”

  “The same class wars, the same religious wars, the same medical sciences, everything,” she said, repeating where she had left off a few minutes before.

  Neil lied down in the grass and looked around the bush at the aliens in one of the trees working hard to mount the antenna, to wire up the rest of the equipment. He turned back to get Mavra’s attention. She sat cross-legged, upright, eyes closed. “You trying to get something or just thinking?”

  “Neither.” She opened her eyes. “I’m tired.”

  “Me, too. Look, if we’re that alike, what would you accept as a friendly gesture if we were in opposite places?”

  “What do you mean?” she said.

  “If we tried to talk with them gently, if they tried to talk with us…would we, or they, run away or stay and listen? You know what I’m trying to say here?”

  “I do. And it probably depends on if they were militarily-trained or scientifically-trained, wouldn’t it? A scientist might be curious about you, whereas a soldier might try to kill you.”

  “They are trying to protect their race. Or save it,” he said. “It’s a touchy situation.” He took a deep breath and sat up. “I’m going in.”

  “Don’t.” Mavra put a hand on his leg to stop him. “Let them find out about their race first. After that, they’ll be more apt to talk with us.”

  “Even if they put out a signal, it would take quite a while to get an answer back. What if they just sit there? Do we wait? Harkins will find us eventually and try to take over.”

  “Not if we tell him our theories,” she said.

  “They’re theories. He won’t care. He’s got to get these things out of here, and you know it. Mavra, these aliens aren’t going to find anything. What if they feel as depressed as you do about their predicament, or more depressed? What if they commit suicide? What if that’s how they’re programmed? We’d learn nothing.” He stared at her. “They can talk. We can talk to them.”

  “Sometimes it’s not about learning. Sometimes it’s about a moral obligation. They are as human as we are. And what would we learn anyway? They have no history, Neil. Look at them. If they’re programmed like you suggest, then that’s all we have, their program on how to wire electronics equipment together, how to create a signal to call their kind. That’s it. They haven’t lived long enough to have any kind of experience.”

  “Unless it’s instinctual. Body memory. Or programmed into them.” He used terms he thought might add to their capacity to communicate with their own species, but even he knew it was no good. If they’d been programmed, they’d stop when the program ended. Wouldn’t they? “We still need to get them somewhere safe so we can talk to them.”

  “You mean test them, don’t you?”

  “That too, but you know we won’t hurt them.”

  “You wouldn’t hurt them. I wouldn’t. But we don’t know what the army will do.” Her eyes pleaded with him. “They’re just babies really. Nothing more.”

  “But they’re not human—not really. Right?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “This just means it’s more important that we try to make contact. At least before Harkins finds us.” He looked at his watch. “I’d say we have maybe four or five hours.”

  Mavra leaned in to kiss him. “That should give them plenty of time to find out there’s no one out there to hear their signal, right?”

  “Let’s say yes,” Neil said.

  “After that we go in,” she said.

  “I hope they listen to me.”

  “Not you, honey, me. I’m the female; I’ll offer them comfort, where you’re more intimidating.” She smiled at him and reached up to touch his cheek.

  He never could resist her kindness. “Unfair advantage,” he said, and they kissed again. He scooted around beside her and asked her to move a little toward the bushes so that he could see through them in case the aliens went on the move again. “You can lay your head in my lap and sleep for a while, if you like.”

  “You’ll wake me when we need to make contact?”

  “Of course. You’re going in, remember.” He stroked her hair and rubbed her temple. The motion relaxed him as much as he was sure it relaxed her. She’d be asleep in a matter of minutes.

  “Just make sure you wake me,” she said. Her eyes closed and her breathing became deep and even.

  “I love you,” he said.

  “Me, too,” Mavra said in a quiet mumble.

  ***

  Chit-Chit-ta climbed the plant in front of her while dragging the equipment behind him. She reached to help him steady the antenna while he braided wire around a limb. “Will this work quickly?” she asked.

  “If my bio-accelerator is correct, they’ll be able to pull-in our signal no matter how faint it is. They’re scanning for us. Thanks to these aliens’ communications networks, I should be able to put out a signal that jumps from transceiver to transceiver, perhaps all over the planet.”

  “That’s a yes, then,” she said.

  “They should receive quickly and, if they’re out there, an instantaneous return signal will answer. This data device,” he held up a flat square device with a glowing screen, “will do everything I need.”

  “I’m not sure I understand,” she said.

  “You don’t have to.” He turned back to his work and wired the components together. “There’s a micro-transmitter inside my program.” He tapped the back of his neck. “I can actually integrate with this device, but in a very primitive way. I can push out a signal through this.” He tapped the device in front of him now. He closed his eyes. “It’s time to make contact,” he said.

  CHAPTER 12

  WHEN MAVRA WOKE UP, Neil’s hand lay gently across her cheek. The moist air made her feel cool. She wished she could roll over and draw blankets around her and go back to sleep, but Neil put a light pressure against her cheek to move her head. Then he let her head roll back, more pressure. The movement helped to draw consciousness back into her body. She opened her eyes, and drew in a long deep breath. Darkness still clung to the area, but the sky showed a beginning glow in the east. “Oh, it’s time, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What are they up to?”

  Neil leaned into the bushes and said, “It looks like they’re waiting for a miracle. I’ve been watching them for a while. They wait and then they play around with the equipment as though they can’t believe it’s not working. Then they wait again. It’s been going on like this.”

  Mavra got up and parted the thin branches to look through. “They’re sad.”

  “I know. I don’t blame them.”

  “Look at them. They’re not talking. They’re separated from one another as though they don’t want to touch. The reality of their situation, why face it? They’re waiting for their comfort to come from a return signal. I just know it.” She shivered and pulled her jacket tight around her. She stretched her arms to her sides and pushed her legs out in front of her. “I’m pretty stiff.”

  Neil stretched as well. “Me, too. Holding you all those hours isn’t easy.” He reached out and rubbed her shoulders, then ran his hands down her back.

  “That feels good.” She sighed “I’ll be going in a minute.”

  “Still going to try to make contact?”

  She pointed at the horizon. “Before it gets too light out here.” She pointed at the houses, one beside the other in a long row. “They’re starting to stir, too. You know we’re going to be noticed. And if we’re noticed, our little buddies up there will be, too. Let’s get to this before we have real problems.”

 
Neil got to his knees and lifted up so he could see over the bushes.

  Mavra matched his height.

  One of the aliens jerked its head toward them. The other one just sat quietly. “They saw me,” he said.

  “Get down.” She dropped down and pulled at his coat. “We don’t need you frightening them.”

  “That’s not all,” he said. “I could have sworn I saw someone moving around the side of one of the houses.”

  “I should have known you weren’t using both eyes to look at them. No wonder you miss things.”

  Neil turned to her. “That’s uncalled for. I’m usually more aware because I can process twice the information as normal people. I may need both eyes to focus completely and see what they’re up to, in detail, but that’s not necessary now, is it?”

  “All right, all right. You don’t have to keep on talking, I know.” Mavra felt irritated, probably from the lack of sleep, the lack of comfort, the stress of the situation. But she couldn’t help herself. She needed to calm down, and Neil trying to convince her that he was doing the right thing wasn’t helping.

  He glared at her.

  “Don’t,” she said. “I have to relax if I’m going out there.”

  “Then do it fast,” he said. “Harkins men are right behind you.”

  “Dammit. I don’t like this.”

  “They’re tough little buggers. I hope they don’t get mad.” Neil unzipped his jacket and reached for his gun.

  “What are you doing? We can’t go threatening them. They’ll take off, and those soldiers will pick them off.”

  “You do what you must, and I’ll do what I must. This is for protection only. If they attack you, I’ll have no recourse. Let’s not forget that we know nothing about them. Not really. They’re like wild animals.” His phone vibrated. “Hold on.” He looked at the text and shot her a look of satisfaction. “They’re waiting for us,” he said.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. I’ll text them back that you’re going to try to make contact with the aliens. That you think you can get them to trust us.”

  “Do you think we’re surrounded?” she said.