“You don’t like this?” Hanah asked Adrien.
Adrien shook his head.
“We value our privacy,” Lori said.
“Too many times we’ve been burned by disclosures that make people uncomfortable,” Ella said. “When that happens, something bad can happen.”
“And we recoil,” Lori said.
Adrien studied his feet. “Yet Lori let the cat out of the bag.”
Lori looked slapped.
Adrien exhaled a little. “Throughout the aeons, when people around us would age—or if we had to leave for other reasons—we’ve been able to make up new identities by moving, with a few changes. Then we began—we humans, as we are too, now—began record keeping, and we had to start forging documents to integrate, which led to felonies. That’s no good. And now in the digital age, where records are being increasingly integrated, it’s becoming much more difficult to fake real I.D.s. Where did this new person come from? We can’t really hack everybody’s systems and create ourselves. We’d be found out. But with Lori’s disclosures to the planet, all that has been rendered rather moot. People are not worried about it, and I don’t think it can be hidden much longer.”
“So,” Hanah asked, “Cadence Jorgensen and Star Trek where there to prepare us for being here?”
Adrien smiled at her. “The old social systems, fears, even prejudice, are fading to the point where now, trying to remain stealath can actually become counterproductive, make us look eccentric or paranoid, which can interfere with integrations. As much as I hate to admit it, being open with it at this point may be the best way to integrate. And with that,” Adrien said, “I think we need to hurry up and get the planet accustomed. If it’s only half done, something could happen with some regime that could threaten us. If the planet fully integrates transmutation and Ahleth, then we stand the best chance from here to continue.”
“You’re like the Mexican immigration bill that Congress finally put through,” Oliver said.
Adrien nodded.
“Something like that,” Ella said. “We’ve been here longer than any of you, but we’re very much a minority, and as far as your awareness, you’re new to us. It’s a change, and we’re seen as outsiders.”
Adrien looked thoughtful. “And Lori’s about right.”
“A genius?” Hanah asked.
Adrien smiled. “She is. But I think she just got lucky with this one.” He looked at them all. “After twelve thousand years, we’re not just visiting any more. At some point, we need to be accepted for who we were and who we are now.”
“You’ve been in the closet as it were?” Hanah asked. “Because you sound like trans who were stealth worrying about coming out.”
Ella nodded. “I guess we are.”
“Lori didn’t have permission to release transmuters to us, or talk about you,” Oliver said. “Did she?”
Adrien shook his head. “She should have talked with us about it. But, honestly—” He looked at Ella who nodded. “It was time.”
“You’re Athden?” Lori asked Adrien, though she had been listening, pronouncing it “AH-den.”
Adrien nodded.
Lori glanced toward Ella, who confirmed. “Just the same, tell me?”
“The last thing I said to you, Lorleth,” Adrien said, “was, more or less, in English ‘Now, be good,’ and then I kissed you goodbye.”
Lori looked at him encouragingly.
He continued. “It was when we decided to stay. I’d just been released, here.”
“Where was that?” Lori asked.
Adrien continued, “On the hilltop, near what is now Gobekli Tepe.”
Lori turned back to Adrien. “You could have gotten that information from him, if you’re someone else—God, it doesn’t seem right calling Athden ‘him.’ We change sexes so much— Ah!” Lori corrected herself. “We’re usually intersex. I mean we present as different sexes so much.”
Hanah smiled.
Ollie asked about that site. “The famous ancient archaeological site in Turkey?”
Lori nodded.
“So,” Ollie asked, “Did you guys start Gobekli Tepe?”
Ellie shook her head. “That was later—people who were coming to us did it. And then it got too crowded, so we felt we should move the com.”
“The ‘com’?” Wood asked.
“You’ll see. We’re going to it, now,” Lori said. “What about the coder?” she asked Adrien.
Adrien looked to Ella. The three Ahleth all looked at each other.
“Telepathy! Ahleth have telepathy!” Ollie said.
Lori laughed. “No! But sometimes we get inklings.
“We could go get the coder ourselves,” Ella told Adrien.
Adrien nodded and glanced at Lori.
“But, honestly, there’s no reason to,” Lori said. “Maybe we could send Alexander to get it, with Cory maybe. He’d enjoy this.”
Adrien smiled a little. “Always need to play a little?” he asked Lori.
Lori smiled with him.
Adrien nodded. “I forget, sometimes, how important that is.”
“Quality of life,” Ella said to them.
CHAPTER
23
Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, west of Albuquerque: High on a butte to the southwest of the ancient Anasazi archaeological site, on the opposite side, out of view, a portion of land opened and another shuttle slipped silently out to the west, nap of the earth flying between other buttes, then arcing up to LEO altitudes to make its way west.
Cory Peck stepped out of his shower, drying off, his full manhood on display for Estella to see.
“I tell you,” he said to his wife, who was sitting on the toilet near him, “I mean, like, wow! My God I’m gonna vote for Lori for President, I swear!”
Estella’s smile was fading. “Yes, but—”
“Whassamatta, pumpkin?” Cory asked, planting a quick one on her lips, walking into the bedroom to get dressed.
A shadow descended over the house and Cory peeked out the window, looked up.
“Honey?” Cory called. “Did you order a space ship?”
“What?” Estella came out of the bathroom to look with him out the window. “What’s that?”
Cory looked at it. “Flying saucer,” he said matter-of-factly.
“How do you know?” Estella asked him.
“Because I am trans, chickadee. We know things like that.” His smile didn’t work on Estella. “We know space ships when we see ‘em. I got worked over by her transmuter—like you well know! So, yeah! Why the hell not? A space ship.”
“CORY,” came a loud man’s voice.
“Sounds like Sean Connery to me,” Cory said to his wife. “A real man.” Cory’s smile was sardonic. He was playing with everything.
A neighbor peeked over a fence.
Cory opened the window. “Hi Mable! Good morning!” Then he shouted up, “Yes?”
“What’s that?” Mable asked. “It’s as big as your house!”
“I’m just talking to my space ship, Mable. It’s okay.” He looked at the ship again. “I think I’m going on a little trip, and it’s the only way to fly.”
“Oh, yes! Go!” Estella said. “Good to get out for a while!”
Cory stood in the shuttle. The display showed them rising to several thousand feet and arcing toward Lori’s compound near Santa Barbara.
“So,” Cory said to the ship. “Nice display you have here. What’s up?”
“Good morning,” the ship said in Sean’s familiar Scottish accent. “You’re new to me, but I’ll introduce myself.”
“Yeah good. Do I need a chair?”
“Not unless you’re tired.”
“No, I’m good. As long as I don’t fall over.”
“You look like you’er about ready to fall over, already.”
“That’s my wife’s fault!”
The heads up display showed a large smile.
“I’m Alexander, the A.I. on this shuttle craft.”
>
“Oh, how lovely,” Cory said. “Whose ship are you?”
“I’m not anybody’s. I’m me! Ruddy human thinks I’m not real because I’m A.I.?”
Cory held up his hands in defense. “No offense, man. You’re great. Glad to know you. So, then: Who sent you for me? Lori or somebody?”
Alexander filled him in, over the two minutes it took them to reach the compound.
“Maybe you learned that story from Athden?” Lori asked Adrien.
Adrien’s look to her was incredulous. “You may not trust another person, but you could trust Athden’s discretion. I wouldn’t reveal our intimacy.”
True.
“Over time, you’ll come to see it’s me. Lwaxana could confirm it, if we connected with her.”
“That’s hard to do from this shuttle,” Ella said. “No transmuter on board so she can compare him. Just repair, here.”
Gadin, Marie, and Cory all stood in the shuttle in front of Alexander’s 180 degree display.
A Sean-Connery face appeared on the display and looked them over.
All three of them were glowing.
Alexander’s face showed a smirk. “I hope you all used condoms.”
Gadin looked surprised.
Marie laughed.
Cory reached over and gave Marie a high five.
“Organic life forms are frail.”
“Were you ever a secret agent?” Gadin asked Alexander.
“My whole bloody life. Hello, Marie. Welcome to the human species.”
Marie reached down and out with both hands, palms up, then let them sweep back toward her own thighs in a common Ahlath greeting.
“You got at least some of your mom’s memories,” Alexander said.
“She remembers seeing you a long time ago.”
The display showed them in LEO somewhere over the Pacific. Blue water was everywhere below.
“So where are we going?” Cory asked.
“It looks like Asia, dude,” Gadin said.
“Tibet,” Alexander said.
“Just for a lark?” Gadin asked.
“You mind if I fly?” Marie asked.
“If you can, go ahead,” Alexander responded
A seat formed in front of the display and Marie sat there to move her hands in front of the display.
The shuttle craft went inverted. The earth below was now at the top of the display. Everyone was looking up at the planet as they flew under it.
Gadin’s expression went to alarm. He looked to his feet, everyone’s. He felt his head and measured the distance to the ceiling. “We didn’t fall up? We’re still planted on the floor!”
Marie giggled.
They all heard the sound of an old-fashioned telephone ring—the kind with the high pitched, annoying bell.
“Hello?” Alexander said, answering his ‘phone.’
Alexander’s HUD faded to opaque and super-imposed the image of the 6 on Bessie.
“Lori!” Cory said.
“Mom!” Marie turned the ship right-side-up again as if embarrassed.
“Who are those—? Wood, hi!” Gadin said. “Hanah? Mr. Vice President? Who are those others? Where are you?”
“That’s Ella Gomez, Science Advisor,” Cory said. “And that’s—Adrien Archambeau?”
“Hob-nobbing with brilliance,” Ella said.
“We’re on the other shuttle, guys,” Lori told them.
“Alexander, where are they?”
The heads-up-display changed to show a 3-D globe of the earth with their present location, then rotating to show them descending from LEO toward a large lake.
“You’re at the Dead Sea?” Cory asked.
“Not quite,” Alexander said.
“Will Smith would like this ship,” Gadin said to Marie. “He gotta get him one of these.”
“Now we’re talkin’,” Ella said.
“But we have a problem,” Lori told them all, getting their attention. “You know fighting has broken out in several places since the transmuters went down.” She glanced at Ella who changed their view in her HUD.
An area nearby expanded into view, showed what appeared to be a mob in the desert beside a town. A man was on his knees. Another man gave a signal, and a man with an automatic rifle fired several times into the head of the man on the ground. His brains blew out the front, hitting the dirt a mere second before his head.
Everyone in both ships became serious.
“What are we doing?” Cory asked. “We’re going for a ‘coder’? Like, where is that? And what is it, and what do we do with it?”
Alexander’s HUD showed them still in LEO flying over Japan, still heading west.
On Bessie, Ella talked to Alexander’s crew imaged on her HUD. “Alexander will take you to the coder. You guys get it, and Alexander, will you bring them and it to Site T as soon as you can?”
“We’ll meet you there as soon as possible. Get a move on, okay guys?” Lori asked them. On Bessie’s HUD, a serious Cory answered for them. “Of course. Right away. Where is Site T?”
“Alexander knows,” Lori said. “Just work with him and meet us as soon as you can.”
“Yeah! Sure!” Gadin said.
Marie switched off their view of Bessie’s cockpit and back to their own heading.
China had turned into Tibet—
“Mount Everest?” Gadin asked. He looked at Marie. “You guys hid the coder at Mount Everest?”
“Not me, silly. I wasn’t even born yet.”
Cory shook his head no. “I doubt it. That would be too obvious a place.”
“It’s a land mark,” Alexander said in his thick accent. “A post from which to find the way. There!”
Alexander put a pulsing dot on one of the snow-covered mountain peaks about a hundred miles to the west of Mount Everest.
“You couldn’t set us down on Mt. Everest for just a minute and let us step out onto that for a picture could you?” Gadin asked.
Alexander’s HUD displayed severe eyes.
“Never mind,” Gadin stood behind Marie.
“How long to that spot?” Cory asked Alexander.
“Sixteen seconds, roughly,” Alexander said. “I’m slowing down.”
The mountain peak came into view, grew larger.
“Your wife still cis, Cory?” Gadin asked. “I read Janet Mock.”
Cory nodded.
“You wear her out?”
Cory nodded again.
“She’ll need to T-up to catch-up,” Gadin said.
“God, it’s beautiful,” Marie said.
The world was a bright blue sky above, and brilliant white snow on gray rocky outcroppings.
Alexander descended the shuttle to nap of the earth flying, below neighboring mountain peaks. They swooped up and over crests and ridges, nearly brushing the snow off the sides of canyons.
All three humans inside the shuttle rocked unnecessarily with perceived motion they saw on Alexander’s huge HUD before them. One crest seemed to be getting too close—
“Watch it, Alex!” Cory said.
They skimmed the ridge so closely all three humans stood taller.
“What you think you’re doing?” Gadin chided Alexander.
Alexander laughed.
A mountain seemed to be in their way. Alexander’s course corrected slightly. The mountain grew closer, rapidly.
“Alex!” Gadin said.
“Don’t call me ‘Alex.’”
The mountain was right in front of them—
“Alexander!” Cory creamed.
The shuttle flew straight at the side of the mountain—
“Alex!” Cory screamed.
Just before impact, the two men inside the shuttle reached out with their arms to brace themselves, though there was no wall close enough to touch.
The shuttle flew into the side of the mountain, through the rock face to find themselves inside a cave.
They rapidly slowed.
“Go right over there,” Alexander showed
them by putting a dot on the side of the cave wall.
Gadin was sweating. “So what the hell do you think you’re doing, Alex!?”
Alexander and Marie both laughed at him.
“I told you not to call me ‘Alex,’” Alexander said.
Gadin touched his heart with his right hand. “Good God Great Heifer!”
Cory scowled at Marie. “Funny.”
“So where is it over there?” Gadin asked, regaining composure.
“I’ll show you when you get there. Just bring it here.”
“So it’s not large?” Gadin asked.
“It’s about the size of a Rubik’s Cube. Which I can work in 0.00000823 seconds, by the way, in the dark, with a hangover.”
“I’m sure you could,” Cory said to him. “Okay! Away team?” Cory said as if he were Captain Kirk. “Lets keep this tight. Get out; get it; get in. No window shopping. Marie, you want to stay here on the ship?”
She nodded.
“Any yetis in the cave?” Gadin asked.
“They’re waiting to eat you,” Alexander said. “You’re probably going to die. Get on with it.”
Gadin leaned closer to Marie. “He is such a smart a—”
“Okay, Gadin. Remember where we parked.”
The door opened in the side of the shuttle. Gadin and Cory exited. It was cold. The air was rarified, thin.
“We won’t be out here long enough for it to matter,” Cory said.
“If he leaves us here, we would die, quick,” Gadin said.
“Interesting idea,” Alexander said from behind them, which drew a smirk from Gadin and a chuckle from Cory.
They walked over to the place Alexander had marked. It was just a wall.
“Well?” Cory said.
Part of the wall blurred, faded, and the coder was revealed sitting in a small alcove.
Cory picked it up. “It actually looks like a Rubik’s Cube?”
“Rubik’s ‘Cute,’” Gadin corrected.
They ran back onto the shuttle, which closed, lifted, turned and exited the cave like a shot out of a gun.
CHAPTER
24
The dead sea grew on Bessie’s HUD.
As the shuttle descended everyone inside could see people near the sea. Some were in the water, more were on some shores.
“They’re going to see us,” Hanah said.
Ella nodded. “Yes, I think they will.”
“But then they’ll know where it is!” Wood said.
Adrien nodded.