Confrontation (The Seamus Chronicles Book 4) Read online

  The process plays out a second time in reverse, with Sofie asking my name. I erase the characters for Sofie from the ground and replace them with my own. It’s a bit of a struggle. I don’t like my name in this language, neither the raised eyebrows nor the jagged line.

  “Good. Let me ask for one of their names. Pay close attention in case it’s some complicated facial twitch or intricate drawing,” I instruct Sofie before turning toward the natives.

  This is where the rubber meets the road: our first question to an alien species.

  While I try and muster enough courage to ask, I am reminded of a conversation from third grade.

  Our teacher asked us to each come up with one question to ask a stranger who had just arrived from another country. We all set to work thinking of clever questions about climate, geography and sports. There was some assumption that we were being challenged to determine where this stranger was from.

  Jason was the only one who wanted to ask the stranger’s name. The teacher wanted to ask the stranger where he was from. It was all a bit of a setup, because we had a new kid coming into the class and the teacher wanted us to introduce ourselves and get to know her. Still, it makes sense.

  My chin juts out at the large native in the center, and my shoulders rise in question.

  I think I detect a subtle nod before he kneels to the ground and sticks out a finger. In the dirt he draws a triangle with a wavy line through the middle.

  Sofie lets out a breath, but I wait for a sound. I want to hear the name spoken.

  Chapter 27

  In high school I struggled with remembering names like “Tucker” and “Jeb.” Keeping track of a raised cheek with a slightly closed eye and half a smile compared to the same thing with a full smile is going to be tough.

  Now that we know names, kind of, the next question should be “where are you from?” Unfortunately, we know the answer to that, too. They are from here.

  Maybe that’s what they are trying to ask us?

  “Hi, I’m Seamus” was tough. “We’re from Earth. You know, a small planet a few solar systems away? The one we destroyed on purpose? Yeah, that’s the one.” Well, that’s not a conversation I even want to start.

  Where the hell are David and Sonjia?

  They didn’t stop us from leaving the compound. There was no warning that the natives would be upset if they found us walking around. As fascinating as it is to engage with aliens, the behavior of our own species if downright puzzling.

  “Let’s try something with directions okay?” Sofie asks me.

  “I’d rather find out what Sonjia and David are doing,” I answer in a singsong whisper.

  “Not sure why you’re singing at me, but if you can figure out how to tell them that it was nice to meet but we’re just going to walk away, by all means, chin up.” I can’t believe she’s making jokes at a time like this.

  “Fine. Let me know what to do.”

  “I’ll point at you and then point in one direction. Just take a few steps in the direction I’m pointing. Then we go back the other way. Basic, right?” She wants validation of her idea.

  “Good plan. I’ll do my best.”

  I really wish that we were tight enough to skip the explanation. Would mom and dad need to talk through something like this, or could they just wing it? I suppose mom could wing it, but dad would need explanation. Sofie and I have a similar relationship, in that sense.

  We go through our little dance, with Sofie directing me with chin and fingers. I don’t know what the next step is, though. Symbols for “Sonjia” and “David” are unknown to us.

  Do we need them to come up with symbols for the rest of the humans on this planet? We are years away from having enough understanding to come up with our own symbols.

  Speaking of the other humans, how do we tell the natives that there are more of us? We need to learn about numbers.

  Not just numbers: colors, shapes, plants and weather all need symbols. More accurately, we need to learn the symbols for all of those things.

  Do they have “zero”? It’s a very powerful number, but it should not be taken for granted. My mind is racing again.

  I have never been this interested in something I couldn’t wrap my brain around. With my reactor, when the ideas came fast and furious, they were filling in blanks. My brain was coming up with answers to questions all on its own.

  But the reactor work didn’t start like that. It started with a pretty basic project plan. I wanted to do build a dark energy reactor, so every question was a step toward making that happen.

  Here, my end goal is far less than concrete. I don’t do well with less than concrete.

  “Sofie, this is an unbelievable amount of work in front of us. Remember how Jane said my warp technology would have made lifetimes of careers’ worth of study for hundreds of scientists? That’s what trying to learn this language is like,” I say, and let the defeat come through in my voice.

  “You ever hear that joke ‘how do you eat an elephant?’ That’s what this is, but it’s no joke,” she replies soothingly.

  “I have never heard that joke. What’s the answer? With a fork and knife?”

  “No. ‘One bite at a time.’ There are probably a thousand stories about how to accomplish the impossible. Basically, we just have to keep at it. With enough baby steps, you can cover a great distance.” She smiles and touches my hand.

  The warmth comes coursing back through my body. I don’t just feel it for myself though; I feel it from all the natives standing around. Touch could be yet another aspect of their communication.

  Facial expressions, hand movements and touches all work together to convey meaning. Humans add inflection, pitch and volume differences to our spoken words, but I’m not sure if it is the same thing. I wonder if an expert on sign language would be able to communicate better.

  Unfortunately we don’t have an expert on sign language. I don’t think that we even brought information about sign language with us. It’s not exactly short-sighted, but it’s another impressive concept that will be lost to future generations of humans.

  “I’m going to tell them that we’re going back to David and Sonjia. Are you ready?” Sofie asks me.

  “Yeah, I guess so.” Ready for what?

  Suddenly I’m back to thinking about running.

  “Hey, how do you chin to yourself?” The question burst out of my mouth.

  There is no answer from Sofie. I look at her and she appears stunned.

  “You have to ask that now? I have no idea how to reference myself,” she answers with a trembling voice.

  “Easy. I think they are going to be forgiving of mistakes. It was just something I sort of randomly thought of. A better question would be around the concept of ‘and.’ We’re going to be fine; just do what you were planning to do,” I say, trying to settle her down.

  “Seamus, we don’t even have ‘yes’ or ‘no’ down. Don’t you think those come before ‘and’? I can ask them if you can go, and I can ask them if I can go. It’s not as efficient as asking if you and I can go, but it works. If we don’t know what their answer means, though, we could easily wear out our welcome.” Sofie is a people person and it shows.

  “Right. How are we going to tell them we’re leaving?” I ask.

  “Not leaving. Moving. I’ll chin at you and then point. You move in the direction I point. Like we did earlier, but this time we’re communicating, not learning. Do you think you can handle being told what to do for five minutes?” She honestly isn’t sure.

  “Watch me work.”

  I give myself a little distance from Sofie and wait. She chins at me and points to my left. Shuffling cautiously, I move about three feet over.

  Sofie pauses to smile at the natives, and then turns back to face me. The process it repeated to the right, and I feel like we’ve done a good job of describing directions.

  The whole act reminds me of the choppy black-and-white footage from vaudeville. Whenever Liam was in a phase that
involved fart jokes or slapstick humor, dad would make us all watch old-time comedy online. An obvious exception here is that no one is laughing.

  We look from one another to the natives several times. I have no idea when things will be ‘right.’

  “Here goes,” Sofie mutters.

  Her chin juts out at me, and then points toward the place where David and Sonjia are staying.

  The aliens give no noticeable permission or denial.

  Slowly we begin to walk back in the direction of our friends. I don’t know if we are allowed to stop looking at them, but I cannot. We turn a corner and our pace quickens.

  When we get back to the door that leads to David and Sonjia, we stop and face each other.

  “It was you,” she says. Sofie takes both of my hands in hers. “Somehow you knew that if we showed kindness toward one another, it would tell them we were good. The simple act of holding hands was all it took to break through.”

  “I had no idea. I swear it was just dumb luck.” I don’t need to pretend to be smart with her.

  “Well, I think it’s a definite sign that we should be more affectionate from now on.” Sofie leans forward and kisses me deeply.

  When we separate and I open my eyes, I notice the crowd of aliens has followed us. They watch intently, and their presence distracts me from thinking about next steps.

  “Let’s get David,” Sofie says. She either doesn’t notice the aliens or doesn’t care.

  Chapter 28

  We finally found Luke and Sonjia in the courtyard space. They were blithely sitting and snacking on fruit. Sonjia’s mouth moves rapidly; they must be engaged in conversation.

  “Sonjia, Luke, did you miss us?” I ask with a bit of an edge.

  “Hey guys, welcome back, I guess? We didn’t realize you had gone out,” Luke says in greeting.

  “The aliens are back,” I announce.

  “I thought we were calling them ‘natives’?” Luke responds.

  “Whatever,” I say. Usually I am the stickler for word choice and semantics. “Maybe we should just say they are non-humans. But we had a nice chat and I think we are starting to be able to communicate with them.”

  “Wait. You spoke with them and they understood?” Luke is stunned.

  “We communicated,” Sofie replies. “Our voices made them uncomfortable, but we were able to pantomime some things and get a few basic concepts back and forth.” She is more measured in her tone.

  “Pantomime. You mean like playing charades?” Sonjia asks. “What did you act out? Or better still, what did they act out?” She is excited.

  “Well, we learned the symbols and facial expressions for our names, and we learned how they point at things.” Sofie makes it clear that we really didn’t accomplish much.

  “We also told them we were leaving, and they didn’t get mad or try and stop us,” I add, hoping to make our feat more impressive.

  “I can’t imagine anyone being too upset when you announce that you’re leaving,” Luke jabs.

  “That’s probably true. But the real point is we engaged with them and no one ran or fought. To me, that is good news.” I could not have taken an insult, real or otherwise, this well even a year ago.

  “You guys should come through and get a drink. You actually look dehydrated.” Sonjia leads the way out to the courtyard where the fountain is located.

  “I can’t believe we don’t have anything to record data with,” I say, thinking out loud.

  None of the others respond to my comment, so I am left to think alone.

  Before the tablets and computers we have become so comfortable with, we would have had no chance to learn the language of these creatures. Writing the nuances of a how wrinkled a nose is for a particular word would have been difficult in longhand. Now we can record a video of a facial expression and overlay the English equivalent. We’ll make an alien-to-English dictionary.

  Mentally I am working through a process for lining up items and have an alien tell us how to say each of them in their language. Alphabetical ordering makes less sense than functional ordering. I’ll need to build a database with rich meta-data fields so that we can search from both directions.

  I sense their presence before I see or hear them. In fact, I never hear them; they are silent. Four of the aliens from the boulevard are in the courtyard with us.

  Did they send in the four that best match up with each of us? Are these the strongest four, or the smartest four?

  My thirst is suddenly overpowering. If they were humans, it would be disrespectful for me to ignore them in their own building. But I do it.

  I walk directly to the fountain and turn my back to them. There is a small scoop on the side and I pick it up and dip it into the water. I pour a scoopful of the water onto my face and into my mouth. I drink down greedily and feel the moisture in my throat.

  Disrespect is not my intention. Strength is. We need to show them that we are kind, sensitive and strong.

  “Heads up there, Seamus,” Luke says, more loudly than I would have.

  Turning, I am face-to-face with a native. I assume it was one from the street, but I have no way of distinguishing it.

  The coloring across its chest is purple. Its eyes are so close that I can see into them and realize that they are very similar in appearance to a human eye.

  Something is going on. That’s probably the understatement of the day. It feels like they have something to tell us or say to us. It may not be good news for us, and they could be nervous about how we will react after everything is understood.

  There is also a possibility that they don’t care how we react and just want this whole ordeal over with. I think I read once that many Native American communities were neutral on Europeans at first, mostly wanting to be left alone. It would be logical if these creatures just want to be left alone.

  Sofie is waving me over. I should have gone to her without having to be told.

  Quickly I walk over and stand beside Sofie.

  “You two get behind us, okay?” I say softly to Luke and Sonjia.

  “You don’t have to protect us, Seamus,” Sonjia answers, at a volume that causes visible discomfort to the aliens.

  “Keep the volume below a whisper, and we’re not planning on protecting you,” I whisper back.

  We are in a classic standoff position, us versus them. Who is going to flinch first?

  Sofie pivots her body and juts her chin out at Luke and then turns to face the native in the center. Her face moves roughly as she conveys a name for Luke.

  A string of expressions race across the leader’s face. My guess is he wasn’t saying “nice to meet you, Luke.”

  Before I can ask Sofie what she thinks, the leader slows down and takes a deliberate step in our direction. His chin juts out at each of us in turn. Then the chin juts out further than I could imagine and completes a giant circle in our direction.

  The chin dance is followed by a rapid succession of winks, nose wrinkles and mouth contractions. None of it makes any sense to me.

  “He’s saying the group of us… something,” Luke whispers, thinking he’s helpful.

  One of the other natives becomes very animated with its hands. For a moment I am afraid it is going to attack us, but the big one pulses the colors on his chest and makes one simple facial movement that puts the hysterics to a stop.

  Again the leader chins at our group. This time there are no facial expressions; he simply turns to look at the wall of the courtyard.

  Slowly his arms rise and a finger extends. He’s pointing.

  “He wants us to leave,” Sofie whispers out the side of her mouth.

  No. We’re making breakthroughs, and he wants us to leave? There is still so much to learn. Hiding our heads in the ground is not going to solve the problems between our two species.

  My head shakes no. It’s done subtly because I don’t think they understand it or will care, but it makes me feel better.

  I step forward strongly and chin at the leader.<
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  Deliberately I chin at each of the four walls of the courtyard. Then I kneel to the dirt floor and draw a simple rectangle. With my finger I point to one side of the rectangle and then chin toward a corresponding wall. When our eyes meet, I nod. We can learn some of their language and they can learn some of ours.

  Both of his eyes close about halfway and his lips form a downward curve. I think he gets my point, but is effectively asking “so what?”

  Quickly I draw four more rectangles and then point to each of them and pretend to start a new rectangle. But I don’t start the new rectangle; I pause and look at the leader, doing my best to ask, with my expression, if there are more courtyards.

  My question is dismissed with a slight shake of his head. Great. He’s learning our expressions, and has already mastered “get out of here with that.”

  He steps forward and kneels down to the ground with me. I don’t feel like I am in danger, but I’m not getting the warm fuzzies either.

  The larger creature quickly chins around the courtyard and then points to my original rectangle. It’s good to reestablish a baseline.

  His next action surprises me a little. A single, basic line is drawn off to the side. The symbol that we thought was for Sofie is drawn on the other side of his line, away from my rectangle.

  A quick chin point to the four of us is followed by him pointing to the symbol. Before he moves on, I know what he is saying.

  Get out and stay out.

  They don’t want to kill us or fight about anything, but they would prefer to be left alone. Humans can live on one side of the line and natives will live in their city, alone, on the other side of the line.

  Sofie shakes her head slowly. Having us banished from their village is not the outcome she was hoping for. We were supposed to connect, become friends.

  The Native Americans helped the Pilgrims plant crops and survive the first winter. We didn’t come across the great ocean, but we arrived on their shores unfamiliar with their land. This was supposed to lead to our first Thanksgiving.

  Much as the stories of the first Thanksgiving were distorted by history, this day too may become something of mythology. I can see our ancestors playing out the meeting on a school stage: the aliens dressed in scary, unwelcoming costumes while the kind and familiar-looking humans shuffle away, temporarily defeated.