“Don’t be stupid!” Dulcie retorted, with even more scorn than Matthew could have contrived. “I have to try to make contact, now. I phoned you first because you need to listen in—to know what I’m doing in case it goes horribly wrong.” She didn’t have to ask whether the call was being recorded—all the phones would do that automatically.
“Absolutely right,” Matthew said, swiftly. “What do they look like, Dulcie?”
Lynn Gwyer was obviously still in a devil-may-care shoot-anything-that-looks-at-me-sideways mood, but Ikram Mohammed put a hand on her arm to clam her down. “We’d never find her,” he whispered, holding the mouthpiece of his phone away from his face. “Not quickly enough …” He broke off as Dulcie began answering Matthew’s question.
“Either we looked at the rock drawings with an optimistic eye or these aren’t the same folk,” the anthropologist said, her voice so unemotional and matter-of-fact that it seemed almost parodic to Matthew. “They’re all shorter than I am, none taller than a meter and a half, and they’re thin. Disproportionately long limbs, very odd hands. Looks to me like seven longish fingers, or five fingers and two thumbs, and the way they grip their spears and the stolen goods is very weird, always leaving at least a couple of fingers spare. Slender torsos. Purple skin, of course, not scaly but not hairy either. No clothes. No hair on the head or anywhere else. No breasts, no balls, no navels, no babes in arms, no toddlers, no kids at all. Like plastic dolls, in a way—except for the faces. We—I—always thought of them as having faces vaguely like ours, but they don’t. Very large eyes. Even larger noses—snouts might be a better term. Complicated mouth parts, almost insectile but soft—and real teeth. Bigteeth, but not sharp. No ears that I can identify with confidence, although I’m pretty sure they can hear. Something like a double crest lying to either side of the head, mostly collapsed but occasionally raised— mightbe ears but probably not. Other flaps of flesh under the arms, probably capable of extension—function unclear. They make noises, but nothing like human speech. Clicks and groans.”
She paused, but no one interrupted. Matthew was holding his breath.
“They’re clicking and groaning away like crazy right now,” she went on, “presumably holding a conference to decide what to do next. The discussion seems pretty democratic—no obvious signs of a pecking order. I’m showing them my open hand, and they seem to be reacting, but whether they recognize it as a peaceful gesture or think it’s a joke because it’s only got five stubby fingers I don’t know. They’re creeping a little closer all the while, but none of them seems anxious to take the lead. They all seem very nervous, even though they’ve got all the weapons, not to mention the advantages of height, reach, and home ground. Even if they didn’t see us with the chain saws they must have seen what the chain saws did. I’m trying to seem unthreatening, but I’m not sure they’d recognize anything I said to them as speech, let alone appreciate a soothing tone. I’m standing in the open, looking as harmless as I possibly can, but they don’t seem convinced. They don’t seem to have a clue what to do, although they’re going to have to do something when they come within touching range, if not before.”
She paused again. The silence on the line would have been profound had it not been for a faint background crackle. The microphone could not pick up the clicks and groans of the humanoids.
“Maybe it’s lack of imagination,” she continued, “but the only friendly gesture I can think of right now is to turn my smartsuit purple, matching the shade as closely to theirs as I can. It’ll have to run through a pretty wide spectrum before it gets there, but it won’t take long—wow! That got their attention. Everybody’s stopped. Lots of blinking. If anything, they’re more scared than they were before, but I’m there now. Short of growing a snout like an ugly bat with a mouthful of worms, there’s nothing more I can do to try to fit in. I’m going to try an approach, nice and slow. I’ll pick one that doesn’t have a spear—one that’s carrying some of our stuff.”
Matthew had to let his breath out, but he let it out slowly and silently. “I wish I had something I could offer as a gift,” Dulcie went on, “but I’m certainly not going to unfold the clasp knife from my belt or offer them my notepad or phone. I’m not sure they’d be able to decipher the gesture anyway. I’m still relying on the empty palm. The one I’m moving closer to doesn’t know what to do, but at least it isn’t making any hostile move. I’m reaching out now, palm first, inviting a peaceful touch, but I can’t tell whether it knows—oh no! They’re coming at me, Matthew. They’re com—”
Although the sound of her voice was cut off, the link was still open. Matthew could hear other noises, but very faintly. Either Dulcie had dropped the phone or it had been snatched from her hand.
Ike cursed; Lynn seemed utterly numb. Matthew had known before that there was no time to waste; now he had a giddy sensation of having been overtaken by events. He groped for crumbs of comfort. “If she’d screamed,” he said, keenly aware of the hammering of his heart and the difficulty of drawing further breath, “she could have made herself heard. She didn’t scream.” He didn’t lower his phone, and neither did Ike or Lynn. They all continued listening, while the faint susurrus of background noise taunted them.
“If they’d killed her,” Matthew said, stubbornly, “she’d have screamed. She didn’t scream. All they did was take the phone out of her hand.”
“We have to call the Base,” Ike said. “I should have done it before. I should have done it just then, to let them hear it.”
“No, you did right,” Matthew said. “It’s all on tape. You call the base. Tell Tang and the others. Lynn—you call Milyukov. Tell him we need that drop now. We have to have a camera with enough power to punch a signal through the canopy. Don’t let him stall.”
“Who are you calling?” Lynn asked, as she saw Matthew’s left thumb call up a directory.
“Frans Leitz.”
“Who the hell is Frans Leitz?”
“He’s a medical orderly on Hope,” Matthew told her. “Next best thing to a cabin boy. This is the only chance he’ll ever have to get the first shot at a really hot rumor. By the time Milyukov can make a start on putting his own spin on the news it’ll be all around the ship and leaking down to Base One like spring rain. When I go on air I want everybody watching. Everybody. Frans? Hi—this is Matthew Fleury. I’m uploading an audiofile—it’ll just take five or ten minutes to play back. Play it to Dr. Brownell, will you? And anyone else who might be interested. Got to go now.”
Lynn looked as if she wanted to ask more questions, but she decided instead that she ought to get on with her own part of the deal. Ike had already stepped to one side so that he could talk to Tang Dinh Quan. “Tell Base One,” he was saying. “Tell Andrei Lityansky. Tell everyone you can. They’re not just apes. They’re intelligent. They’re real aliens. No more doubts. They make tools, they talk, they steal, they don’t quite know how to react to alien invaders, and when their hands are forced they leap into action. They’re just like us in every department that really matters. And they’ve separated Dulcie from her phone. From now on, nothing else matters. Matthew and I are going after her.”
“Not yet,” Matthew was quick to say. “We can’t go in without the cameras. We should be able to get a fix on Dulcie’s phone ourselves, but we can’t go any further in without a reliable means of getting information out.”
Matthew’s phone beeped. The person on the other end was Godert Kriefmann. The news was already spreading, and the doctor obviously wasn’t content to wait for Tang to relay everything.
“You’ll know as much as we do when you’ve played the recording,” Matthew told Kriefmann. “Call Nita Brownell, and any crew member who can grasp its import. Tell them we need TV cameras. We need a rig that one man can carry, but it has to have enough clout to transmit loud and clear to Milyukov’s comsats. They have to drop it on the next overhead pass, because every second counts. Any delay might cost Dulcie her life and ruin our best chance of making a healthy contact.”