By that time the two sailors holding him were beginning to wilt in the sun.
“So, Jacob,” Captain Constantine said eventually, growing impatient for some kind of input from the scientist and his seeming obliviousness to the welfare of the sailors, “do you have any idea what we are looking at here?”
Jacob reluctantly dropped the binoculars and equally reluctantly ordered the two sailors holding him to turn around so he could face the others. He thought for a moment before replying, “Ideas? No, I have no ideas, but I do have a theory.”
“Well, what is it? Spit it out for God’s sake would you, man?” said the captain, a tight smile crossing his lips as he refused to be baited by Jacob’s truculence.
“We’ve been terraformed,” Jacob said eventually, quietly, his voice flat, as if the words he had just spoken were wrong in some way, as though they did not quite fit the space within the air they had to occupy. “Our planet has been repurposed, reconstituted, and retooled. It’s the only possibility.” Jacob’s hands swept across the red landscape. “I mean, just look at all of this.”
Nobody spoke.
“It was always a possibility, I suppose,” Jacob continued. “I mean, we’ve talked about it for years as a possibility for colonizing Mars and eventually other planets, but we are… were… nowhere near it as a possibility technologically. And this, this is light-years beyond how we theorized we could do it. I mean, it’s simply amazing.”
“Mr. Endersby,” the captain snapped, as his patience finally wore thin. “I have no idea what the hell you are talking about. So how about you explain it to us, how should I put it, less scientifically adept people: What exactly are we looking at?”
Jacob eyes fluttered to the other survivors gathered on the observation deck, moving from one to the other as though he had only now noticed them.
“Let’s get below,” he said finally, as if the words he had previously said had never been spoken. “I need a drink.”
“Good God, man. Would you just tell us what you think?” the captain said, finally beginning to lose his temper with the man.
“Captain. What I need right now is a stiff drink, and I think when I tell you what you want to know, you’re going to need one too. Besides, this is for your ears and for you to tell the crew, so just have these two oafs carry me down and I’ll be happy to explain everything. Okay?”
For a second, Emily thought the captain was going to order his men to toss Jacob into the sea. His face flushed a bright crimson. This was probably the first time anyone had spoken to him in such a manner in a very long time, if ever, and she would bet her last dollar that no one had ever spoken to him in such a manner in front of his crew before.
Captain Constantine sucked in a deep breath of the ocean air, his gaze never leaving Jacob, until finally he nodded to the two sailors carrying him. “To my cabin,” he said brusquely. The sailors disappeared with Jacob back down the tower.
MacAlister posted two armed guards on the observation deck before descending down the conning tower. Emily and the captain had gone below ahead of him and they had been met by the throng of crew eager to learn news of what waited for them beyond the outer hull of the sub.
“As soon as I know more, I will let you know,” the captain was saying, his voice raised to be heard over the barrage of questions. “Right now, I do not have enough information. Mr. Endersby is about to brief us and when we know, you will know. Now get back to your posts.”
Emily could tell from the look on the men’s faces that they were not happy, there was even some barely concealed anger on the face of one or two of them. They quieted down when MacAlister stepped off the final rung and eyed them all with an ice-cold stare.
“You heard the captain. Don’t you all have somewhere else you’re supposed to be?”
The group of sailors slowly dispersed, but not without a few furtive glances at the conning tower ladder and the daylight leaking in from above.
The two sailors carried Jacob to the conference room and placed him a little roughly in his wheelchair before waiting to be dismissed by the captain.
When the door closed behind them, the captain spoke, “Okay, in small words so you will be sure we understand exactly what you are talking about, Mr. Endersby: What can you tell us about what’s going on out there?”
Jacob had parked himself next to the captain’s small wet bar. Emily watched him pull a bottle of Glenlivet whisky from the shelf and pour himself a shot, downing it in one sharp gulp. He poured another then raised the bottle toward the others but no one wanted to join him. Jacob shrugged.
“Perhaps after you’ve explained what’s happening we might feel the need to partake, but right now, all I want to know is what you know,” Constantine said.
Jacob wheeled himself to the head of the conference table, carefully balancing his glass between his knees. He took a swig of the whisky and began to explain.
“Our climate, our planet, along with every form of life on it, has been co-opted. Every major ecosystem appears to have been manipulated toward supporting some other form of life. In short, we’ve been terraformed.”
“Terraformed?” Emily questioned, her eyebrows furrowed. Constantine and MacAlister looked on with equally questioning expressions.
Jacob wheeled himself back to the wet bar and poured another shot of whisky, spilling some on the surface as he observed the blank expressions on the faces watching him. He sighed deeply and continued.
“We’ve been invaded,” he said, his words beginning to slur around the edges. “You know, like in the movies. Planetary engineering.” He gulped down another mouthful of whisky. “They sent the red rain and transformed humanity and most every other life form on this rock into self-assembling biological machines. No need to ship complicated machinery here, like we’d have to do, just send in the red rain and use the indigenous species as the building blocks. Have them follow an encoded blueprint for making bigger, more complex organisms, and poof! Out with the old and in with the new.”
Jacob sank the remaining whisky and stared at the empty glass.
“They used those biological machines to build the equivalent of atmospheric processors, the trees Emily saw. And in just days they accomplished what would have taken decades for us to have even theoretically achieved. I mean, it is genius. Pure fucking genius. No, it’s bigger than that; it’s fucking God-like. They didn’t even need to come here themselves. Jesus! It’s just magnificent.”
Jacob tipped the empty glass toward his outstretched tongue; when he realized it was still empty he poured another shot into it, this time spilling more on the wet bar than he got in the glass.
While Jacob was speaking, Emily had watched Mac pace back and forth, his normally unfazed demeanor obviously stretched thin by what he was hearing. “You’re telling us Earth has been taken over by an alien race?” she said when Jacob paused to refill his glass.
Jacob shook his head and polished off the shot. “Not by some alien race, for some alien race. The only question now is who they are and when we can expect them to show up.” He paused, then laughed as he reached for the bottle of whisky again. “Wait, that’s two questions,” he said, his words slurring into one.