With Other Eyes Page 2

  “I got it,” I promised. “And, thank you.” I knew it wouldn’t be that easy and that she was sure to take some heat for Lazz being along.

  “Thanks, hon,” Lazz echoed. “And don’t worry. I’ll face the music when we get back. I just don’t want to miss—”

  “I know,” Liza admitted softly. But then her tone turned dangerously sweet. “But, Lazz, honey? There a catch.”

  “A catch?” He sounded worried for the first time.

  “Yes, dear. You’re not going unless you give me the access codes to the hidden computer files where you have that recording stashed. I thought I found and deleted every copy, but apparently I was wrong. I will be rid of it!”

  She was joking, but she was also dead serious, and I could see that Lazz got the message because his hands had been flashing over his Braille pad as she spoke, and with a final, firm press of the send chord, he looked up.

  “There were two encrypted files, stashed in different sub-systems, and they’re both gone. I sent verification to your mailbox.”

  “Thank you.” Liza’s voice turned genuinely intimate as she moved close to him. “And, Lazz?”

  “Yeah, hon?” His hand cupped her face lightly.

  “Be careful?”

  “I will. And I’ll behave.”

  I turned away, feeling like a shit for intruding as they kissed briefly. But “Commander Josarro” was back in charge before I knew it.

  “Now, both of you,” she ordered briskly, “get your asses to the Transport bay, into your atmosphere suits and onto the Transport. Geneva is going crazy trying to reach you and I can only stall them so long. I’ve politely told them to buzz off since you’re getting ready for your meeting and can’t be disturbed because you don’t want to ‘overlook any of your protocol instructions’.” She rolled her eyes. “But remember,” she warned. “I know nothing!” And with that she left us to get ready.

  “Yes!” Lazz let out an ecstatic drawl. “We’re off to see the Wizard.”

  II.

  The rotating ship we were approaching was obviously a deep space vessel. It consisted of a slender triangular shaft that was nearly a kilometer long and thirty meters in diameter, and it was capped by a three-sided and trunctuated pyramid, base forward and facing us. The instrument-dotted, thirty meter-wide base of the front pyramid was pitted and scarred in contrast to the shiny sides which narrowed until they merged with a circular plate in the front end of the central shaft. The plate and bow-unit were counter-rotating to be stationary relative to us.

  Just aft of the bow-unit were three enormous equilateral and pyramidal pods extending base out from the central shaft, and rotating to provide maximum gravity at their triangular two-hundred-meter bases now that the ship was at rest. Each of the huge rotating pyramids was perfectly smooth and unmarked, fusing seamlessly with the central shaft about thirty meters from where their tips would have been. At the far end of the smooth central shaft loomed a large dish, nearly half a kilometer in diameter, that faced away from us. The circular shape of the dish was in jarring contrast to the angular shapes and straight lines of the rest of the ship.

  We were both plugged into the control board since sonic signals wee obviously useless in space. Instead, a sophisticated radar set-up was being translated and fed into computers controlling our eyes, and we ‘saw’ the alien ship thanks to them. It was a slightly different type of vision, but the Traveler ship clearly visible—and an awesome sight. It was the first time I had seen the ship with my new eyes, and it was almost more impressive than the relayed probe pictures I had seen before the operation. Looking at it this way, the ship seemed somehow more sharply etched and intensely real.

  “It’s incredible,” Liza’s voice commented from the overhead speaker in a hushed tone as we approached. She was plugged into a set of standard monitors and following our progress from the station. “I’d love to know what the hell type of propulsion they use. They used reaction thrusters for the final approach, but their main drive system is something out of this world.”

  I nodded silently, remembering the relayed probe photos that showed the ship decelerating stern first at a constant .8 gravity, the huge pyramids lying parallel to the sides of the central shaft so that the deceleration supplied the gravity the rotation now provided. The tips of the pyramids had been pushed out by some sort of extension rod arrangement.

  Lazz was at the controls of our van-sized Transport, and at the Travelers’ direction we were approaching the motionless bow-pyramid where a large opening gaped. As we entered the cargo bay and slowed to hang several feet over the deck, unseen grapples reached up to snag the bottom of the Transport to pull it down to rest on the deck with a solid, echoing thunk. The wide bay doors behind us had already closed, and a slight hazing of our vision revealed that air of some sort was being pumped back into the cavernous chamber of the Traveler ship.

  After a seeming eternity, external sensors indicated that the air pressure outside was almost up to normal and I recorded the external pressure and took an air sample as a signal came for me to exit. I closed my helmet and switched to suit-air, seeing Lazz echo my actions.

  I toggled my radio. “Well Liza, here goes! Keep your fingers crossed.”

  I wasn’t sure if she could still hear my signal or not—I doubted it—but the pretense of outside contact was comforting. Lazz’s soft chuckle let me know he understood. Cycling through the airlock, we stepped out of the Transport nervously and blessed our good fortune that our magnetic boots were holding onto the plain and unmarked deck of the hold. I had wondered about the lack of decontamination procedures, but when I had passed on questions about it from nervous U.N. Science Team staffers, a curt, “not necessary, you are no source of contamination,” had been the only response before the Travelers had pressed on to other preparations for our meeting.

  I had a feeling our return wouldn’t be so informal.

  But we had no sooner left the Transport, Lazz letting me go first, than it was as if someone had flipped off a light switch. I almost tripped and fell flat on my face in surprise and I heard a soft curse behind me as Lazz grabbed my shoulder briefly.

  Darkness. Once again, a blackness so complete that I couldn’t describe it. It was a double shock now because the first time I had expected it. But here on the Traveler ship, I had been counting on my electronic eyes and signal-permeable visor. The darkness seemed even more threatening because of the insulating layer of our atmosphere suits. The sound of my breathing seemed unnaturally loud and after my initial moment of panic, I reached behind me for Lazz, getting angry. I’d need his guidance again—just as I had become comfortably independent. For Lazz, this wouldn’t be as much of a shock because he had been blinded in a plane crash twenty years earlier and had only used his invention for the past six months, as the first test case of them. I was the second.

  “Relax, Mitch. It’s okay.” Lazz grabbed my arm as I touched him, mistakenly thinking that I was nervous.

  “I’m fine, buddy. Just pissed off because I’m suddenly back to lesson one!”

  “Just think back to the first few days,” Lazz advised. “Remember the visualizing lessons?”

  I did. We had an advantage, he had lectured: we had lived some or most of our lives sighted and had a vast storehouse of visual memories to draw on. If we knew what we were looking at, then the use of other senses, combined with imagination and memory, could fill in the blanks, even removing any imperfections that might exist. If we didn’t know what we faced, we could select an appropriate memory image and work from that, modifying it as we learned more. Feel the texture, hear the sound, breathe in the scent, and use all available clues to build a comfortable image.

  I relaxed and started ‘feeling’. I whistled, and from the feedback from the external speaker and microphones, confirmed the size and emptiness of the large cargo bay. And turning up the microphone gain, I could hear our escorts. I concentrated. Slight rustling up ahead and to the left, and also to the right. Two Travelers. No scent
clues obviously, other than my own lingering nervous perspiration that was quickly removed by the environmental control of my suit. It helped that the suit was loose around me because of the slightly lower external pressure.

  “That’s better.” Lazz must have realized I was thinking clearly. “Now, think about what they look like and make that image clear in your mind. There are two of them—”

  “Eleven and one o’clock, I know, but did I mention that I have no idea what they look like? They never sent any pictures or self-description.”

  “Oh.” A moments silence, then: “Well, you also collected classic comics, so picture pink Shmoos or anything else ridiculous that you can think of. It’s better than building up scary images. If all else fails, improvise. Hell, I’ve been married to Liza for ten years and I still don’t know what she really looks like. But she’s beautiful to me. From her voice and what I can feel, I picture a lush Marilyn Monroe. I’ve always had a thing for her old movies.”

  His advice made sense, and instead of the shadowy and looming predators my imagination had been trying to tickle me with, I saw two of Al Capp’s bowling-pin-shaped beings with tiny little feet and happy grins and big eyes. How the hell could anyone be afraid of them?

  “Got your braille-pad handy?” Lazz broke in.

  “Yes.” I nodded, feeling briefly stupid. “A good thing I learned this before I was blinded.” Speech recognition, as good as it was, had been vetoed because of fear that an accidental homonym error might confuse things in real-time conversation.

  I reached down and pulled up the pad, feeling the locations of the buttons out before I started typing in my question so that the tiny computer could vocalize my question in halting Traveler speech. The six character buttons and space bar of the Braille pad were a hell of a lot easier to handle than a full keyboard, now that I had learned to use it.

  We had painstakingly worked out a compromise language based on the audible portion of the Traveler language since they were unable to communicate as we did. It was limited and dependent on a sophisticated parser and on fill-phrases to try to simulate a more normal conversation, and it meant that there were major nuances of their language we were totally missing. For one thing, much of their ‘speech’ consisted of visual and tactile sonic imagery incorporated into their ‘words’. Our eye-sets were simply not sophisticated enough to perceive that degree of complexity. But as basic as our translation program was, it was the best we could do, and I let my fingers do the talking.

  “Why are you blocking our ability to ‘see’?” I asked. The speaker on my suit echoed what I was typing with a warbling squeal combined with a rhythmic clicking.

  The return squeal was immediate and my helmet speaker responded after a split second with a stiff male voice.

  “You are a race of one, and I invited one. You are two. What other violations?”

  “Okay, you said you could explain,” Liza’s voice cut in with a burst of static. “Now’s your chance. Do it.” Apparently she was still able to monitor us.

  “Yea, go to it,” Lazz chuckled nervously. “What a marvelous way to start first contact!” I heard him swallow. “I’m starting to regret crashing this party. And… ah… shouldn’t we be answering them?”

  I had actually been prepared for a negative reaction, and I reached down for the keyboard again as my idea focused.

  “There are no violations. Only balance. The second one is here because I am not fully trained in your type of seeing yet. There are two of you, there are two of us. If I was alone, there would be no balance and I would be at a disadvantage instead of you. I let myself be injured to assure balance. My teacher must remain to preserve it. I will allow the imbalance of two of your crew who are able to see better than I am. But as long as you block all of our vision, there is no balance. You asked to speak to us. I say restore our vision or we leave.”

  “Hot damn, kick ass,” Lazz muttered next to me.

  “Well, they do say that the best defense is a good offense. I hope they’re right! Whoever ‘they’ are. But I do know that the Travelers want me here for some reason.”

  I wasn’t sure exactly what had come out of the speaker, but the darkness around us vanished and I reeled as I was suddenly surrounded by the eerie three-dimensional vision my new eyes gave me. It felt strange since the signal I was now using came from external transmitters and receivers installed on the suit, and it was is if my eyes were a couple of inches ahead of me and unable to look anywhere but straight ahead.

  “They do look like Shmoos!” Lazz exclaimed, trying not to laugh. “Sort of.”

  It took me a second to focus on our hosts, but I had to agree with him and face the fact that I had lost my mental bet. Based on the preponderance of triangles, I had expected some kind of three-legged critter like in a couple of classic science fiction books, but Lazz’s “Shmoo” joke had a certain accuracy to it.

  The Travelers were only around two-thirds our height and had very stable-looking and bulbous lower bodies with six thin, stubby legs with broad flat feet that had multiple fringed toes. The apparently naked body narrowed about halfway up and the long neck extended up to a top crowned with a bush of short cilia-like hairs. I could ‘see’ no mouth or eyes, no matter how hard I focused my vision, but there seemed to be a large round organ in the center of the body that gave me the same sick headache from looking at it that I got from facing Lazz when he was looking at me. I really couldn’t make out a great deal of detail, though. When I described what I was seeing to Lazz, he couldn’t add much. I guess he was right about us facing a pair of multipedic alien Shmoos. Except that they had a single folding arm that extended up from the lower front of the body, tipped with tentacle-like ‘fingers’. I wondered if the Travelers were pink.

  But as I thought about their comics counterpart, I was suddenly a little worried.

  “We better not tell them what we think they look like!” I had just remembered that Al Capp’s Shmoos were very obliging in turning themselves into anything edible that was desired.

  “Ouch!” Lazz obviously realized what I meant. “You’re right. I forgot about that. When I was collecting, I was more into the Japanese comics.”

  “Violence and sex. That figures.”

  “Well,” he defended. “We all need our little distractions. Of course, I have Liza now.”

  Another burst of noise from one of the Travelers interrupted, I couldn’t tell from which one, but after a moment we heard: “Balance is restored. You can stay.” It was a new voice this time; an equally mechanical female one. My computer gave a different, randomly selected, ‘voice’ to each new Traveler speech input.

  I was suddenly reminded of the fact that there was no difference between the collective and the singular “you”, but Lazz just grumbled.

  “Gee, very nice of you.”

  I nudged him with my elbow and typed: “Thank you. May we meet with your leader, now?”

  Lazz gave a snorting laugh. “Gee, I never thought we’d be the ones to say that!”

  “Hey guys, your signal is fading…” Liza’s voice disappeared with a final popping sound.

  “Now what?” Lazz asked nervously. “Pitch a bitch again?”

  I shook my head, wishing I could see through the face-plate of his suit. “No, I can just hear the answer. Our having contact with the space station is an advantage for us. They’re just maintaining parity. We’re on our own.” I reached down to type: “What is next?”

  Squeal, and then: “You must follow.” They spun in unison and headed for the back wall of the hold, where a large triangular door waited. The shape was beginning to make a little sense now that we had seen what the Travelers looked like: they were also tiny on top and wide on the base.

  The doorway turned out to be the first in a pair of heavy, automatic doors leading into a large room about six by ten meters in floor area. I began to suspect what it was and I warned Lazz to hold on, since we didn’t have the lower body stability of the Travelers. Sure enough, without warni
ng I found myself lurching to the side as my feet tried to pull away from me and I grabbed for the door frame as Lazz locked onto my arm with an iron grip.

  “We’re in a spin coupler,” I explained belatedly. “We’re matching up with the rotation of the rest of the ship, and I guess the next step is to go down into one of the pyramids.”

  Before long, my feet stopped trying to escape from me and I was able to let go of the doorway. The Travelers had been oblivious to our imbalance, and as the far doorway opened they led the way out into a large room where we found ourselves drifting up into the air, our magnetic boots no longer gripping. The room had three triangular corridors about four meters in diameter extending out, one in each wall—now that we were floating, the term “floor” didn’t really apply to any of the surfaces around us. Our hosts continued to ignore us, and used fine guide-wires crossing the room to rotate and float gracefully towards the right, turning to push themselves, feet first, into one of the corridors. As they turned in mid-air, I noticed that they were also wearing some sort of boot arrangement made of metal.

  Feeling light-headed, I turned to Lazz. “Here we go, buddy: down and out.” I followed the Travelers’ example only to find that the corridor was apparently an elevator, because my feet quickly touched floor, adhering as they found magnetic grounding again. And as soon as Lazz snapped in place next to me, we began to drop outwards. It felt strange to be so close to our bizarre hosts, but I quickly found a distraction.

  After we had been dropping a little while, I discovered that our ‘elevator’ was nothing more than a guided platform provided with guide-rails that kept it on track and powered it. Instead of continuing down a shaft as expected, we were suddenly in mid-air, dropping down towards a wild jungle that occupied the inside of the pyramid.

  With all the open air around me I suddenly felt almost as nauseated and disoriented as on my first shuttle trip, and my hand clenched on Lazz’s arm as I backed towards the center of the platform nervously. Compounding the effect of the dizzying view around us was a familiar sensation: the mild disorientation one felt in moving from hub to rim on the station that was the combined effect of Coriolis force and change in gravity. I couldn’t help myself but swallowed hard as I squeezed my eyes shut, relieved that the action cut off the eye-set input. Technically, I could easily have been able to keep seeing almost as well with my eyes shut as open, but to my relief the programming of my eyes simulated reality.