“What arrogance?” cried the ambassador. “You thought you could contain this forever? You thought no one else would discover the craft? The alien spaceship threatens all of mankind, not just the US.”
“But it’s not a threat,” Dupree pleaded. “Don’t you see? They weren’t using the sun to cover their approach, they were using the sun to slow down, they swung around the sun to shed their excess speed. They always intended to come to a rest beside us. They—”
A squawk on Jameson’s handheld military radio snapped the three of them back to reality. They weren’t sitting in the safety of the US heartland listening to some theoretical debate. They were in Africa, in a country smoldering, about to burst into civil war.
“Sarge? This is Mathers. I’ve got two vehicles approaching, maybe four clicks out. Looks like they’ve pulled off the road.”
“Roger that,” Jameson replied into the radio. Turning to Bower, he added, “You need to get your staff and patients ready for possible hostile contact.”
With that, Jameson grabbed his M4 rifle and ran down to Elvis and Smithy, yelling at them to finish up and grab their weapons.
Chapter 03: Tears
Darkness fell.
Nothing happened for several hours.
Sitting there with her back against a low stone wall, Bower struggled to deal with the tension. The night air was stuffy. A hot, humid breeze blew in from the west, negating the earlier, cooler breeze from the south. Dark clouds sat on the horizon. Flashes of lightning rippled above the hills. The crash of thunder was but a distant murmur, but it was growing louder as time passed. Bower wanted to feel the storm burst overhead, breaking through and bringing relief from the sweltering heat. With no word from the soldiers, all she could do was to sit tight and wait for the impending storm.
The moon rose after sunset, softening the night. Dark shadows stretched across the village. Huts and fences cast elongated shadows on the ground, appearing as silhouettes against the horizon. Occasionally, Bower caught a glimpse of movement and her heart stopped. The soft crackle of a radio would assure her she’d seen a soldier moving about the desolate village and not a rebel sneaking into the camp. The stars were radiant, with the planets Mars and Jupiter glistening like diamonds next to the Moon. Bower couldn’t appreciate their beauty, her eyes barely noticed the fine pin-pricks of celestial light.
“What are they going to make of all this?” Kowalski asked, his back leaning against the low brick wall outside one of the huts.
They who? Bower vaguely wondered, but she was distracted, thinking about the patients who had fled, wondering how they were faring.
Bower and Kowalski had housed the remaining patients inside the empty huts, rigging mosquito nets over them.
The nurses and doctors wore long sleeve shirts with loose elastic bands around the wrist, along with gloves to protect their hands. In addition, they wore broad-rim hats with mosquito netting to protect the face and neck, but still mosquitos buzzed around trying to find a way in. They’d sprayed repellant, but Bower swore the mosquitos had come to savor the smell.
Bower missed Kowalski’s question. She’d worked with him for the past six months, ever since he transferred from Sudan. Bower liked him, but she found it hard to understand what he said at times. Kowalski was originally from Czechoslovakia. His English was technically correct, but his speech was clipped. The rhythm with which he spoke and his sharp accent meant Bower had to concentrate on his words or she’d miss his points entirely.
Kowalski pointed at the sky. “You think they’ll think we’re nuts?”
“They’d be right,” she replied, casting her eyes up and recognizing the constellation of Orion.
“It must be quite something,” he added, with his natural cadence slightly accentuating the close of each sentence. “Do you think they’ll help us?”
“Well, if Africa is any yard stick to go by, it’s clear we can’t help ourselves. We can do with all the help we can get.”
“Their space ship, what do you think it looks like?”
“I don’t know. Big, I guess.” Her mind cast back to the various radio broadcasts they’d listened to, and although there had been some mention of telescopes being pointed at the alien spaceship, there hadn’t been any descriptions offered. Bower figured their little corner of the world was probably among the few places on Earth that hadn’t seen any images of the alien spacecraft. In her mind’s eye, she could imagine the hype and borderline panic that must be gripping the Western world with its 24x7 media frenzies. Overnight, such images would have become ubiquitous, with every television network pundit offering an opinion on the weird shapes. Bower could understand why NASA kept the alien presence secret for so long as the media had a way of encouraging hysteria.
“I think they come in peace,” she added in soft tones. “Maybe it’s just me reading my own hopes into their intents, but they have to come in peace. After all, they’re intelligent, more intelligent than us. Anything else wouldn’t make sense.”
“Really?” Kowalski replied. “Technical achievements and intelligence are not synonymous. I mean, here we are, by far the most intelligent species on the planet, and we’re forever waging war against ourselves. I don’t know that intelligence counts for much. Look at the warring tribes of Africa, the tension between China and Japan, Israel and the Middle East, it seems we’re all too keen to drive each other into the ground.
“To be more advanced doesn’t mean someone’s necessarily more intelligent. They may be advanced enough to cross the vast expanse of space, but I don’t know that makes them any brighter than us, just as you and I couldn’t be described as smarter than Galileo or Aristotle.”
“Yeah, I guess not,” Bower replied, surprised by the notion.
“If anything, technology allows us to be dumb without consequence.”
Bower laughed, saying, “You think they’re dumb?”
Kowalski laughed as well. “Not dumb, but there’s a danger in reading too much into how technically advanced they are. Morals rarely keep up with technology, and collective intelligence can drop away. As life becomes more abstract, more divorced from reality by technology, it’s easy to lose sight of what’s right and wrong.”
“You think they’re evil?”
“I don’t know what to think. I doubt anyone does. And I doubt it’s as clearcut as our black and white stereotypes portray. I mean, all we have to go on is Hollywood and their depiction of aliens with acid for blood and massive armies ready to invade the planet. So I guess my point is, any assumptions we come up with are probably going to be absurdly off-key. This morning, I doubt anyone expected ET to turn up on their doorstep, and yet, here he is.”
Bower watched as Kowalski swatted a mosquito trying to get under the netting bunched loosely on his shoulder.
“Think about our fairytales,” he continued. “Whether it’s Snow White or Star Wars, there’s always pure evil against naive innocence, the black knight riding against King Arthur, but real life is never that clear cut. Reality is complicated.”
Bower lowered her voice, trying to sound masculine as she added, “Kind of like, Luke, I am your father.”
Kowalski laughed, and she figured he appreciated the irony in how she chose a fictional example of the complexity he was describing. She knew precisely what he meant. Africa was neither black nor white. Some days the continent seemed nothing but a murky, thick-as-pea-soup grey.
Joking around with Kowalski help distract Bower from the tension of the night. Sweat dripped from her brow. Dark clouds swirled overhead, blocking the starlight. Humidity hung in the air. At any moment, the storm would break. She should have headed inside the hut but the nurses were quite capable of caring for the remaining patients. Besides, the tension of waiting for the unknown kept her outdoors. She had to know. Would the rebels attack? Or would they pass them by? One hospital and a couple of doctors were small fish in a big pond, and she knew it.