“Okay.” Cal sounded calm, as though she hadn’t just confirmed his worst suspicions of her. “Go back and start from the beginning.”
She told him the rest, about the sabotage, the comms, and finally the Event—everything that happened, everything but sleeping with Tom. That still felt too shameful. Too much like everything that followed really was her fault.
“I didn’t want to kill him,” she said, after describing digging Tom’s grave.
“Catherine. Look at me.”
Catherine met his gaze.
“I believe you.”
Those three words, those three simple words, untied a knot that had been growing inside her. “You do?”
“If he was anything like what I saw from you that night in Johnson, he probably would have killed you before you could get home. You did what you had to do.” Cal reached out and squeezed her hand tight, and she clutched it like a lifeline.
“The stone,” she said, then shuddered. “All that time, there were aliens all around the Habitat. They were there the whole time and we didn’t know it. Pillars of stone, moving so slowly we couldn’t see it. I still don’t know how they infected us, though.”
“They called the lichen their children, right? What if that’s the literal truth? Lichen on Earth spreads by spores, and if you were exposed, and Addy was exposed, and Tom was exposed… You know, I bet he carried the same antibody, too.”
For a moment, Catherine felt a flare of hope. If this “possession” was just some form of infection, maybe they could treat it. But… “But how did Iris get infected? She never landed.”
“No, but she did send probes out and bring them back in. What was it that it said? ‘We are everywhere,’ and it mentioned traveling through a vacuum?”
“But that’s impossible. Nothing can live in a vacuum,” Catherine protested.
“We know of at least one living creature on Earth that can—the tardigrade. And just like a lichen spore, it’s microscopic,” Cal said. “It all makes sense. Science has thought for years that our first contact with an alien life-form was going to be with a microscopic organism of some kind. We just happened to find one that’s sentient.”
“But I don’t understand why they would want to infect us,” Catherine said. “They hate us. I can feel their revulsion. We’re soft; they see us the way we see slugs. Wrong, somehow.”
“And yet, they don’t want to destroy us completely.”
“What do you mean?”
“Catherine, they could have had you do something much more destructive than just destroying a spaceship.” Cal ticked things off on his fingers. “They haven’t had you sabotage the military. They haven’t had you cause massive death and destruction. They’re not softening us up for an invasion. So if they don’t want that, what are they doing?”
Catherine’s eyes widened, the implication suddenly becoming clear. “They destroyed our settlement, and they’re doing everything they can to stop Sagittarius II. They could have killed Iris, Tom, and me, but they let two of us come back… . Cal, they’re not planning to invade us. We invaded them. They’re defending their planet from invading aliens. Us.”
“Of course!” He let go of her hand and started gesticulating as he spoke. “We show up and build a place for our people to live; of course it looks like we’re about to colonize! I mean, that’s why we went, right?” Cal laughed. “God, we’re stupid. Do you know we didn’t even talk about any contingencies in case the planet was already inhabited?”
“To be fair, all our probes showed it was empty.”
“I know, but the thing is, we’re just assuming we can go out there and find any place we want and claim it as ours.” He shook his head, incredulous. “It’s like we haven’t learned a damn thing from our own history.”
Cal was already three steps ahead of her, and that shouldn’t have been a surprise. He was brilliant, already considering the political ramifications while she was still grappling with the idea that she had come in contact with aliens.
“What do we do?” she asked.
He smiled at her, a slow-dawning expression that caught her off guard. “Listen to you. You’ve been through a hell I can’t even imagine, and nobody would blame you if you washed your hands of the whole business and tried to get back to a normal life, but not you, no. You’re ready to jump right back into the fight.”
Catherine focused on her hands, unable to meet his eyes. “Well, considering that I’m partly responsible for us being in this mess…”
He covered one of her hands with his. “But you’re not.” He gave her hand a shake. “What’s going on is not your fault. If anything, it’s NASA’s. We might have sent you to an occupied planet. Any conflicts from that are our fault. You are one of the strongest, smartest women I know. And despite everything you’ve gone through, here you are.”
Their eyes met and held. Catherine felt a rush of warmth in her chest at his words, and at the way he was looking at her right now, his eyes soft and admiring. The moment lingered, then he cleared his throat. “Anything else you remember that I should know about?”
“That’s most of it.” Catherine smiled faintly. “You know, death, destruction, alien contact.”
“When we get back, we’ll go see Lindholm. He’ll have to listen to us now. We’ll have time to call back Sagittarius before they walk into the same situation you did, blind.”
“You really do believe me.”
“I do.”
Catherine wanted to relax, to tell herself that everything would be all right now. Cal believed her. The question was, would anyone else?
34
ONCE HE WAS sure she was okay, Cal left Catherine in her room while he got settled in his. She showered, washing away desert dust along with the feeling of being helpless and trapped. Someone believed her, she wasn’t losing her mind, and now, knowing the past, she was ready to move forward.
They wound up in a roadside diner for dinner. While they were waiting for their food, Catherine said, “Why does everything out here look like it was decorated about fifty or sixty years ago?”
“The Atomic Age,” Cal said. “It’s a side effect no one talks about—all the tests out here; the radiation froze everyone’s aesthetic in time.”
“Ahhh,” Catherine said, nodding with equal seriousness. “That makes sense. Given our motel rooms, I can see why the government wanted to hush that bit up.”
“Shh. Someone might be listening.” Cal cut his eyes left and right dramatically.
That was a little too much like Iris, and Catherine felt her grin faltering. “Yeah, you never know.” She toyed with the water glass.
“Shit. Too soon, huh?”
“Little bit.” Then she managed a smile. “Maybe give it another hour or two before we start joking about paranoia and eavesdropping.”
“Deal.”
They were rescued by dinner—or, in Catherine’s case, breakfast in the form of a western omelet. By silent agreement, they didn’t talk about their afternoon, but instead exchanged childhood stories.
As they were paying the check, Cal said, “Where to? You wanna turn in?”
“Don’t imagine there’s much nightlife out here.”
“It’s a desert. It’s full of nightlife.” He held the door for her as they left the diner. “Let’s go pick one of these side roads and see where it goes.”
“Cal, we’ve been in the car all day; are you really saying you want to go for a drive?” She couldn’t help but smile.