Грегори Бенфорд - Not One of Us - Stories of Aliens on Earth

Lucas took a step into cold, ankle-deep water, and another. Reached out, the tips of his fingers tingling, and brushed the surface of one of the plates. It was the same temperature as the air and covered in small dimples, like hammered metal. He pressed the palm of his hand flat against it and felt a steady vibration, like touching the throat of a purring cat. A shiver shot through the marrow of him, a delicious mix of fear and exhilaration. Suppose his mother and her friends were right? Suppose there was an alien inside there? A Jackaroo or a !Cha riding inside the dragon because it was the only way, thanks to the agreement with the UN, they could visit the Earth. An actual alien lodged in the heart of the machine, watching everything going on around it, trapped and helpless, unable to call for help because it wasn’t supposed to be there.

No one knew what any of the aliens looked like—whether they looked more or less like people, or were unimaginable monsters, or clouds of gas, or swift cool thoughts schooling inside some vast computer. They had shown themselves only as avatars, plastic man-shaped shells with the pleasant, bland but somehow creepy faces of old-fashioned shop dummies, and after the treaty had been negotiated only a few of those were left on Earth, at the UN headquarters in Geneva. Suppose, Lucas thought, the scientists broke in and pulled its passenger out. He imagined some kind of squid, saucer eyes and a clacking beak in a knot of thrashing tentacles, helpless in Earth’s gravity. Or suppose something came to rescue it? Not the UN, but an actual alien ship. His heart beat fast and strong at the thought.

Walking a wide circle around the blunt, eyeless prow of the dragon, he found Damian on the other side, talking to a slender, dark-haired girl dressed in a shorts and a heavy sweater. She turned to look at Lucas as he walked up, and said to Damian, “Is this your friend?”

“Lisbeth was just telling me about the helicopter that crashed,” Damian said. “Its engine cut out when it got too close and it dropped straight into the sea. Her father helped to rescue the pilot.”

“She broke her hip,” the girl, Lisbeth, said. “She’s at our house now. I’m supposed to be looking after her, but Doctor Naja gave her something that put her to sleep.”

“Lisbeth’s father is the mayor,” Damian said. “He’s in charge of all this.”

“He thinks he is,” the girl said, “but no one is really. Police and everyone arguing amongst themselves. Do you have a phone, Lucas? Mine doesn’t work. This is the best thing to ever happen here and I can’t even tell my friends about it.”

“I could row you out to where your phone started working,” Damian said.

“I don’t think so,” Lisbeth said with a coy little smile, twisting the toes of her bare right foot in the wet sand.

Lucas had thought that she was around his and Damian’s age; now he realised that she was at least two years younger.

“It’ll be absolutely safe,” Damian said. “Word of honour.”

Lisbeth shook her head. “I want to stick around here and see what happens next.”

“That’s a good idea too,” Damian said. “We can sit up by the fire and keep warm. I can tell you all about our adventures. How we found our way through the mist. How we were nearly run down—”

“I have to go and find my friends,” Lisbeth said, and flashed a dazzling smile at Lucas and said that it was nice to meet him and turned away. Damian caught at her arm and Lucas stepped in and told him to let her go, and Lisbeth smiled at Lucas again and walked off, bare feet leaving dainty prints in the wet sand.

“Thanks for that,” Damian said.

“She’s a kid. And she’s also the mayor’s daughter.”

“So? We were just talking.”

“So he could have you locked up if he wanted to. Me too.”

“You don’t have to worry about that, do you? Because you scared her off,” Damian said.

“She walked away because she wanted to,” Lucas said.

He would have said more, would have asked Damian why they were arguing, but at that moment the dragon emitted its mournful wail. A great honking blare, more or less B-flat, so loud it was like a physical force, shocking every square centimetre of Lucas’s body. He clapped his hands over his ears, but the sound was right inside the box of his skull, shivering deep in his chest and his bones. Damian had pressed his hands over his ears too, and all along the dragon’s length people stepped back or ducked away. Then the noise abruptly cut off, and everyone stepped forward again. The women flailed even harder, their chant sounding muffled to Lucas; the dragon’s call had been so loud it had left a buzz in his ears, and he had to lean close to hear Damian say, “Isn’t this something?”

“It’s definitely a dragon,” Lucas said, his voice sounding flat and mostly inside his head. “Are we done arguing?”

“I didn’t realise we were,” Damian said. “Did you see those guys trying to cut it open?”

“Around the other side? I was surprised the police are letting them to do whatever it is they’re doing.”

“Lisbeth said they’re scientists from the marine labs at Swatham. They work for the government, just like the police. She said they think this is a plastic eater. It sucks up plastic and digests it, turns it into carbon dioxide and water.”

“That’s what the UN wants people to think it does, anyhow.”

“Sometimes you sound just like your mother.”

“There you go again.”

Damian put his hand on Lucas’s shoulder. “I’m just ragging on you. Come on, why don’t we go over by the fire and get warm?”

“If you want to talk to that girl again, just say so.”

“Now who’s spoiling for an argument? I thought we could get warm, find something to eat. People are selling stuff.”

“I want to take a good close look at the dragon. That’s why we came here, isn’t it?”

“You do that, and I’ll be right back.”

“You get into trouble, you can find your own way home,” Lucas said, but Damian was already walking away, fading into the mist without once looking back.

Lucas watched him fade into the mist, expecting him to turn around. He didn’t.

Irritated by the silly spat, Lucas drifted back around the dragon’s prow, watched the scientists attack with a jackhammer the joint between two large scales. They were putting everything they had into it, but didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. A gang of farmers from a collective arrived on two tractors that left neat tracks on the wet sand and put out the smell of frying oil, which reminded Lucas that he hadn’t eaten since breakfast. He was damned cold too. He trudged up the sand and bought a cup of fish soup from a woman who poured it straight from the iron pot she hooked out of the edge of the big bonfire, handing him a crust of bread to go with it. Lucas sipped the scalding stuff and felt his blood warm, soaked up the last of the soup with the crust and dredged the plastic cup in the sand to clean it and handed it back to the woman. Plenty of people were standing around the fire, but there was no sign of Damian. Maybe he was chasing that girl. Maybe he’d been arrested. Most likely, he’d turn up with that stupid smile of his, shrugging off their argument, claiming he’d only been joking. The way he did.

The skirts of the fret drifted apart and revealed the dim shapes of Martham’s buildings at the far end of the sandbar; then the fret closed up and the little town vanished. The dragon sounded its distress or alarm call again. In the ringing silence afterwards a man said to no one in particular, with the satisfaction of someone who has discovered the solution to one of the universe’s perennial mysteries, “Twenty-eight minutes on the dot.”