CHAPTER ELEVEN
In the light of all three suns shining down upon Communion, a few gangly Novacadians were strolling slowly along the man-paved streets and the dusty dirt roads. Anthony rode into town on the back of a large land vehicle holding a half dozen armed men. When the vehicle came the an abrupt stop, he hopped off.
"Just be careful with that one," one of his peers said. "That whole family has caused trouble for us."
He nodded and started walking towards the hut where Eve's family lived.
The doors and windows were all closed. Even though it was daytime, the force fields on this house were still activated. Anthony asked the astronaut standing guard to deactivate it.
"If you need help, call for me," the man said.
Anthony was unarmed. As soon as the force fields were deactivated, he lowered his head and walked inside to a cool, dark interior.
It was tomblike, he noticed, with little light coming through and having the atmosphere of thick silence. He looked around at the room he had stepped into, and took note of the strange decor: the walls were bare except for some drying herbs which had been strung up loosely by some threads, and the floors were made of compressed dirt. The table in the center of the room was made of very dark wood, surrounded by what looked like stumps. There was little about the room, besides the table, that resembled what a human might use. The Novacadians needed no fireplace to cook their food, and there was no running water. He remembered that they required little fluids. There were no decorations in the place except for a tapestry made out of dyed fern leaves, which was hung up on the far wall.
He walked further into the hut, searching for the room where Eve was supposed to be.
When he approached the door, the force field flickered off and he then entered. Eve was inside, sitting on her bed. She lurched backwards.
"It's only me," he said.
She wasn't in her restraints. He came closer to her, shaking his head. "It's alright. It's only me."
Recognition flashed in her eyes. "Oh, thank God," she said. Slowly, she stood up from the bed onto shaky legs. She walked over to Anthony and grasped his hands. "I was hoping that you would come."
He looked down at her. "How did you get free of your restraints? You are lucky that I was the first one who saw you."
"It was my brother," she said. Her eyes widened. "Anthony, you have to watch out for my older brother, Autumn. He is very dangerous right now. I fear that he is the next one who is going to retalliate."
Anthony looked at her with concern. "Will he succeed?"
Her voice was quiet. "He might succeed in killing someone, but he won't succeed at freeing us, like he says he will."
The feel of her hands in his was familiar and soothing. As he stood with her, looking down into her eyes, into her inquisitive face, he felt absolute trust that he had not felt since Kate's death. "Why do you want to help me? I thought that humans were the enemy."
"Hatred is the enemy, Anthony. Humans are only the vessel that carries it. If a human dies at the hand of it, it is the same as if a Novacadian does. I could not live with it if I could have put a stop to it."
"Even though we are imprisoning you?"
"Anthony," she said. "You are unique. I don't know how and I don't know why, but I know that you are not willingly a part of it."
"But I am a part of it, then."
She turned her head away. "I sense hatred in you, Anthony."
He then felt disappointment surging through him. Wasn't he different from the others, considering that he could hear the Novacadians' voices?
"It's in all of mankind, Anthony. It's human nature."
He knew it was the truth. "But how is it that a race that has already been saved by a messiah can have hatred, while a race that has not yet ushered in a messiah can be pure? It doesn't make sense to me."
"We are not pure," she said. "We are vulnerable to outside influences. Your race has the power to choose between sin and righteousness, but our race has not been given that chance yet. We are left to the forces that may claim us."
"So in other words, you are different."
"Yes, we are."
Anthony always thought of himself as a good person. He shuddered at the thought that there might be hatred within him, and he wondered where it came from. He realized, then, that that was the one difference that separated him most from Eve, even though he was beginning to think that there were more similarities than the humans ever could have dreamed. But there was one thought that he could not get away from: he feared, deep down in his heart, that he was falling in love with her.
General Garrison was tired of making the trek back and forth from the airbase to the surface. But necessity required him to be both places at different times, and at this time, he was needed in space. Some of his technicians had detected an anomoly in the upper atmosphere, and they wanted him to be there when they checked it out.
It was probably just a false reading on the part of the robot they'd sent out, but nevertheless, it was worth taking a look at.
"We've lost three probes so far, sir," a technician said, who was looking at a picture of the area on his monitor. "They've just vanished into thin air."
"What do you think it is?"
"Well, it looks like an intense electrical storm, but we can't say for certain. Whenever one of our probes gets too close, something happens and all the visuals get shut off, then we lose it for good. When we sent the robot, it just turned around."
"Could it be an electrical storm if it's lasted for days?"
"Probably not, sir. We're trying to get to the bottom of it."
"Keep an eye on it. Has it been moving?"
"Slowly. But it hasn't touched down onto the surface."
"Keep an eye on it," he repeated. "If it's a storm, then we can warn the people below before it happens."
"Yes, sir."
The sky was overcast in the town of Communion. The weather: dark, gray, seemed to mirror the mood that was permeating the natives. As they shuffled along the lonely, dusty streets from building to building, they looked unusually depressed and worn. But there was also an air of tension that was unmistakable. Like an impending thunderstorm, there was an electricity that brought intrigue, but also fear, into Anthony's imagination.
He feared, not only for the welfare of the peaceful residents, but also for what might lay ahead for them: what Eve had talked about--submission to hatred and violent retaliation. And this retaliation, he knew, would end in death; not only the lives of human astronauts, but also the lives of Novacadians.
As he was driving past Communion in the back of a large land vehicle on the way back to camp, he could not help but feel sorrow as he looked at the forlorn faces of the natives. No doubt part of their depression was a result of Eve's recapture. For how long, he didn't know, they had been putting their faith in this one person to be the answer to all of their prayers. To save them from the humans? Or to save them from the humans' sinful hearts?
The book was still open, as far as Anthony was concerned, as to whether or not he believed any of it. What he was certain of was that these people were so certain. Not even the world of Jesus' time could claim the universal acceptance that Eve had gained. In that way, Earth and Novacadia were different.
As they rolled away from the town, distance steadily growing between them and the scattered landscape of thatched huts that looked like mushrooms on a meadow from a distance, Anthony shivered when he thought of Eve.
It was true; he had never met another person which such fire in her eyes, with such dignity in her presence, with such quiet courage. There was something about Eve that set her apart from every human and every alien that Anthony had ever known.
When they got to camp, a man in fatigues was there to greet him and his peers. "We can show you the experiments, now," the man said. Anthony had been waiting for this moment almost since before they had touched down on the planet. Exactly how far did their cruelty--if it was cruelty--extend?
Jackson and Smyth joined them just before they went into the large building--a makeshift IAST headquarters built by astronauts--that was hidden behind some rocky cliffs South of where the tents were set up. Once they were all inside, a scientist led them to the main laboratory.
"All our anatomy research is done in here," the scientist said.
Anthony had to stifle a wretch. A corpse that didn't look at all like a corpse was lying on the table. Its skin was a shimmering pale blue, like mother-of-pearl, and its face was perfect and doll-shaped. But if nothing else, the dead Novacadian looked like he was in utter peace. He looked around. Three other bodies were in body bags, waiting to be given autopsies. In a weak voice, Anthony managed, "Did you...kill these people?"
The scientist, Dr. Edward Grant, gave him a glance. "Personally, no. They all have their own stories."
"But, I mean," he said, still feeling sick, "Were they killed solely for the purpose of scientific research?"
"Of course not," the man said. "Those two right there," he said, pointing to two of the bodies on the other side of the room, "died when they almost snapped Lieutenant Waller's neck. We wouldn't have killed them otherwise. That would have been unethical use of force."
Anthony paused. "Don't you think it's unethical to be performing autopsies on them if we don't know what their practices or beliefs are concerning death?"
Edward Grant pointed to him with his latex-gloved hands. "How would we know if we can't communicate with them? These scientific experiments are going to make all that possible. And with these autopsies, our research is going to be a lot swifter."
"But you also need live Novacadians," Anthony said.
"Of course," Edward Grant said. "You can't do everything on a cadaver. For instance, we would never know if the communication chips are working if we hooked it up to a dead alien. We need both--the live and the dead specimen." Snapping off his powdery gloves, he said, "Come this way and I'll show you what we're doing with the live specimens." He then led them down a small, dark hall that led all the way across to the other side of the building.
Entering through a thick metal door, the air inside was chill and damp. Anthony's first reaction was that it looked like an execution chamber. In the corner, a scared-looking Novacadian was strapped down onto a stretcher and various wires and gadgets were coming out of his head. A laboratory technician was typing into a console while another one was fiddling with the gadgets.
"As you see here, the subject is conscious while we make adjustments to his communication chip."
The Novacadian's almond-shaped eyes drifted to Anthony. "That seems cruel to me. Can't you tell that he doesn't like that, just by the expression on his face?"
The scientist was quick to answer. "You're thinking in human terms. Quite possibly, these aliens have entirely different expressions for different emotions, and for that matter, an entirely different set of emotions. We have psychologists working on the problem."
Anthony was almost at the point where he couldn't bear to watch it anymore. Quietly, he said, "I don't think any person, nomatter if they are human or not, deserves to be treated in this way: imprisoned in their homes at night, experimented on during the day. We're not even giving them the right to live the way they did before we got here. They've been nothing but peaceful, except for a couple of exceptions, and something--" he wavered, "--tells me, humans may be at fault for that."
Again, the scientist was quick to answer. "But you've got to understand, Private Harding, it's a scientific finding. If not for preserving the entirety of humanity, if not for communing with extra-terrestrials for the first time ever, then by God, we've got to do this for the sake of Science."
Anthony's questions were answered. As far as he was concerned, the experimentations on the Novacadians, even if they had been tested on humans ahead of time, were cruel and unnecessary. No wonder they believed they needed a savior.