He noticed Jordan staring at the animal. “Pets can be a very good relaxation implement,” he said, almost apologetically.
Is he nervous? Jordan wondered. Worried?
“What is it that you want to know?” Adri asked.
“All this is not what it seems, is it?” Jordan began.
Adri blinked. “I don’t understand you.”
With a wide sweep of his arm, Jordan said, “This planet, your city, you yourselves … it’s all an illusion that you’re producing to make us feel comfortable about you.”
“Oh no. No, no, no,” Adri said, his voice soft but the expression on his face troubled, distressed. “I assure you, this is how I look. I’m as human as you are, truly.”
“It’s so very hard to accept.”
Smiling gently, Adri said, “I believe you have a saying, ‘What you see is what you get.’”
“How can you have exactly the same form as we do? It goes against everything we know.”
Adri’s smile widened slightly. “Then you are learning something new. That is progress, isn’t it?”
Jordan stopped and planted his fists on his hips. “Adri, my friend, I’m afraid that I don’t believe you. I can’t believe you.”
Adri stood in silence for a few heartbeats, stroking his furry pet, apparently thinking it over. “Would it help if I went back to your camp with you and allowed your people to examine me?”
Surprised by his offer, Jordan said, “Yes, I believe it would.”
“Then let’s do that, by all means.” Adri turned around and started heading for the camp.
Jordan caught up with him in a few strides and walked alongside the alien, who slid his pet back inside his robe.
“I appreciate your willingness to let us examine you,” Jordan said, almost apologetically.
Adri murmured, “Doubting Thomas.”
“From the Bible.”
“Yes.”
Suddenly embarrassed, Jordan stammered, “I … I don’t mean to call you … I mean, well, it’s only natural for us to doubt such coincidences.”
“You’ve been to so many worlds that you know that this one is anomalous,” Adri said, almost seriously.
“No, this is the first—” Then Jordan realized that Adri was bantering with him. He laughed and the two of them walked side by side back to the humans’ camp.
Adri patiently allowed Meek and Longyear to examine him. X-rays, magnetic resonance imaging, tissue samples, neutrino scans: all revealed a completely human body. Even his tiny pet, which Adri clutched in both hands through the examination, closely matched a species of miniature terrestrial prairie dog. Scans of Adri’s brain were strikingly similar to scans of the humans in the computer files.
The alien seemed to take all the prodding and scanning with good grace. He accepted lunch with Jordan, Brandon, and Elyse while Meek and Longyear studied the results of their tests. His furry pet remained hidden inside his robe.
“Aditi was asking about you,” Adri said as they sat in the dining room, munching on sandwiches.
Jordan felt his heart leap.
“About your name,” Brandon said, his face showing suspicion. “And hers.”
“They are from your Hindu culture,” Adri replied easily. “I’m afraid you would find our names, in our own language, impossible to pronounce.”
“We seem to have the same vocal equipment,” Brandon said, almost accusingly.
Adri acknowledged the point with a dip of his chin. “Yes, of course. But it would take you quite a bit of time to learn how to make the sounds we make quite naturally.”
“You learn your language in childhood, of course,” said Jordan.
“Of course,” Adri said.
They spent the afternoon in more examinations, more tests. Dr. Yamaguchi gave Adri a standard physical exam, testing his reflexes, muscular coordination, even his eyesight. Adri accepted it all with an accommodating smile. Through it all his little pet sat in a corner of Yamaguchi’s cubicle, silent and still, its bright eyes watching.
At last, late in the day, they had gone through every test they could think of.
“If there’s nothing more,” Adri told Jordan, “I should return to the city now.”
Jordan walked with him partway along the trail through the forest.
“You must come to the city tomorrow,” Adri said, once Jordan stopped. “Aditi would like to see you again.”
“I would very much like to see her,” Jordan heard himself admit.
With a smiling nod, Adri said, “Tomorrow, then. Perhaps you would be good enough to let our people examine you.”
Surprised, Jordan burst into laughter. “Certainly! Turnabout is fair play.”
Adri laughed too. Then he turned and started along the trail once more. “Until tomorrow, then,” he called to Jordan.
Once Jordan got back to the base he found Meek, Longyear, and Thornberry waiting for him at the entrance to the main shelter. They looked grim.
“Well,” said Jordan, “Adri’s as human as you or I, isn’t he?”
Meek said, “More than you know.”
“What do you mean?”
“Come with us,” said Meek.
They led Jordan to Longyear’s biology lab. The biologist called up the scans he had done on Adri’s DNA.
Jordan peered at the screen’s display. “It looks perfectly normal to me. Of course, I’m no expert—”
“It is perfectly normal,” said Longyear, almost in a growl. “That’s human DNA. From Earth.”
EARTH
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.
Washington, D.C.
The president of the United States turned to the sweeping painting that covered one wall of the Oval Office and angrily called out: “Show Honolulu!”
The painting—portraits of all the presidents of the twentieth century, from Theodore Roosevelt to Bill Clinton—dissolved into an aerial camera’s view of a city devastated by an immense typhoon. Streets were flooded, roofs torn away, windows smashed, the line of luxury hotels along Waikiki Beach empty and dark while waves surged up the broad beach to smash through shattered glass partitions and into their lobbies.
The television’s sound was muted, but the president and his visitor both winced as if they could hear the roar of the waves, the howl of the wind, the crashing, ripping sounds of destruction.
“That’s my home,” said Kaholo Newton, from behind his gleaming broad desk. His voice choked with a mix of misery and anger, he added, “I grew up there, right there, in Waikiki. Now it’s all gone. All gone.”
“Mr. President,” said Felicia Ionescu, in a hushed voice, “I know there are many demands on you—”
“But you’re here to add one more, aren’t you?” Newton said, practically sneering at the woman.
The two of them were alone in the Oval Office: no aides, no secretaries, no one to record what they said. Kaholo Newton was a native Hawaiian, a small brown-skinned man with luxuriant thick dark hair and iron-hard eyes of ebony. He seldom got up from behind his desk when visitors arrived in the Oval Office: to do so would have revealed his diminutive stature. He was especially wary of standing in the presence of Ionescu, who towered over him.
“Mr. President,” Ionescu began again, “there are twelve men and women on the exploration team at New Earth. They are alone, farther from Earth than any human being has yet gone. They expect a backup mission to be sent to help them.”