The Gods We Seek Read online

  “I suppose so,” Chad said. “What difference does it make?”

  Sara pivoted to face him. “The one implies a brilliant machine searching for a way to communicate with you. The other implies a sentience with its own objectives that may or may not align with ours.”

  Dylan focused on Sara. “And we’re relying on it to not only keep us alive in deep space but to save the planet. What happens if we piss it off?”

  “Or if it simply has conflicting goals,” Sara said.

  Chad considered her words. “We have one thing going for us.”

  Sara raised an eyebrow.

  “It signaled us, reached out to us. The timing’s not a coincidence.”

  “How’s that?” Dylan asked.

  “If we can detect that behemoth skirting the solar system, something as advanced as the Quadriga would have detected it far sooner. It knows what they are, or at least knows we should fear them. It could have avoided the aliens altogether by staying quiet around Jupiter, or by warping the hell out of here.” He looked at each crew member in turn. “It chose to intervene for us.”

  “A guardian angel?” Dylan asked.

  “Use whatever metaphor you want,” Chad said. “Its actions so far are undeniably linked to the appearance of that demon ship and are undeniably to our benefit.”

  “Demon ship?” Sara asked. “There’s that word again. Is it your word, or something the Quadriga implanted in your mind?”

  Chad shrugged his shoulders. “It feels like it’s mine, but I can’t rationally explain why I would choose that term.”

  “All right,” Dylan said, “assume the Quadriga wants to help us against the, er, demons.” He pivoted toward the ship’s center and shouted, “How the hell do we stop them? Well? Come on. Tell us what we’re supposed to do.”

  The bridge was silent as the vacuum outside.

  Sara edged forward. “We’re ascribing intelligence to the ship, and maybe it is alive. It might also be an instinctual entity, or a machine programmed to act like one. We’ll have to accept what help it can or will grant us.”

  Dylan grunted. “I suppose. What’s our next move?”

  “Alpha Centauri,” Dr. Skye said. “It’s the closest star.”

  “No,” Dylan said. “It’s a stretch to find intelligent life there. The conditions are too rough. Gleise 832’s a better bet.”

  “I disagree,” Chad said. “Intelligence may flourish in ways we can’t comprehend.” He waved a hand. “I never would have thought we’d discover intelligence orbiting Jupiter. However, that’s not why I suggested Alpha Centauri. No human ever traveled to another star. I’d rather make our interstellar shakedown cruise a short one.”

  Sara studied the crew. “We’re going to Alpha Centauri.”

  #

  The Centauri trinary star system consisted of Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B, two main-sequence stars similar to Earth’s sun, orbiting each other roughly as far apart as Sol is from Saturn. Proxima Centauri, a red dwarf hardly an eighth the sun’s mass, followed a wide, leisurely path around both, so distant that Earth’s astronomers needed years to determine it was gravitationally bound to its larger siblings. The nearest stars lie below the sun along the galactic plane, so the Quadriga departed the solar system toward its southern hemisphere. The crew watched from the bridge, a rear-facing camera showing the sun rapidly vanish behind them.

  Several hours into the flight, Sara pushed up from her chair on the bridge and stretched, her body performing slow-motion flips until she willed the microjets on her belt to stabilize her.

  “You’re getting the hang of it,” Dylan said.

  “Thanks.” She scanned the stars ahead. Even traveling sixty times the speed of light, they hardly move. “I’ll be in my cabin.” She made her way down the semi-organic corridor to her quarters along the upper spine of the ship. Open. The door unwound like a sphincter and the micro get-around carried her in.

  Jake was nestled in her zero-G bed, reading a book. “About time,” he said, letting his novel go.

  “Jake.” Sara shook her head.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “We can’t. It’s not the right time.”

  His face darkened. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? It’s never the right time.”

  “That’s not fair!”

  He shook his head. “Look, I’m sorry. It’s just, well, we will be on this ship for a month before we reach even our first stop. There’s nothing we can do for the mission until then. We’ve put our relationship on hold too long.”

  She edged toward him. “I know. I’m sorry. It’s not appropriate for us to sleep together on this mission. There’s too much at stake.”

  Jake locked eyes with her and shook his head. “Yeah, OK. You’re right.” He unlatched from her bed. “I’m sorry I’m so emotional. I want our relationship to work, and I’m frustrated.”

  “I want it to work, too,” Sara said. “Come here.” She scooted toward him, wrapped her arms around his muscular back, and whispered in his ear, “Just this one.” She pressed her lips on his, sucking his mouth and nibbling his lips.

  Jake pressed against her, grinding against her hips and kissing her neck and ear. He ran a hand over her back and rear, sending them gently tumbling through the room.

  Sara moaned.

  He pulled her hips to his, leaned back, and ran his hand over her chest.

  She pushed his hand away. “I want it, too, but we can’t. I promise we will, but we can’t now.”

  Jake frowned. “I’ll hold you to that,” he said, forcing the words to sound playful, his eyes revealing hurt.

  “Sorry.”

  “I understand,” he said. Jake held her face with both hands, tenderly kissed her lips, and left her room.

  Do you, Jake? Do you understand?

  #

  Jake’s book still tumbled near the bed. Sara took it. A View of Mars. The book Ian Weemes wrote about his time constructing Mars Station. She leafed through it then read the first few pages.

  There was a knock at the door.

  Can’t I just relax for an hour? Sara tucked the book into a pouch tethered to the bed. “Yes?”

  Ji-min’s muffled voice came through the unusual door. “I don’t think I can make it open.”

  Sara envisioned the door relaxing to admit her old friend, and it did so.

  Ji-min drifted in. “Can we talk?”

  “What is it?” Sara asked in a soft voice.

  “Dylan referred to the ship as a guardian angel. That’s exactly how I think about Unje.”

  Sara’s eyebrow shot up. “You think Unje is related to the Quadriga?”

  Ji-min pulled her legs into a lotus pose, moving elegantly despite the absence of gravity. “Both possess other-worldly ability. Both are benevolent. Both appeared within a few decades, a mere blink of an eye in the history of humanity.”

  Sara nodded. “Perhaps.”

  “The ship moves by distorting surrounding space,” Ji-min said. “Unje did precisely the same thing to secret me across the Korean demilitarized zone.”

  Sara’s eyes widened. “She did what? You only said she sneaked you across.”

  “You already doubted my account of Unje. I didn’t want to give you another reason to think I was crazy.”

  “What exactly happened?”

  “We were touring the room in the Peace Village where the armistice was signed, on the North Korean side, blending in with a group of Westerners. Somehow, she convinced our minders we belonged there. She held my arm and smiled, confidence and compassion in her expression. The room turned inside out as if I was looking at it reflected from the inside of a shiny soup ladle. I could see out, through the distortion, but nobody saw us. Everyone else seemed strangely far off. We strolled across the world’s most fortified stretch of border as if we weren’t there.”

  Sara chewed her bottom lip. “Is there anything else about the Quadriga that feels familiar?”

  Ji-min shook her head. “Unje is
a paragon of humanity. Warmth, compassion, love. This ship is technology. Tech with a purpose, but it is still technology.”

  “You don’t think technology can be compassionate?”

  “People have a hard enough time being compassionate.”

  “True,” Sara said. “We have the potential to be so much more than we actually are.”

  #

  Almost two weeks into the journey, the Quadriga approached the midpoint, outracing light that left Sol two year earlier. The star they left and the star ahead were dim points of light among the Milky Way’s three hundred billion stars that painted the empty blackness of space with spectacular and intricate patterns. The crew gathered for a meal on the bridge to mark the milestone, each member preparing a favorite dish as best they could given the provisions on board.

  “Pass the mashed potatoes?” Dylan asked.

  Musa pressed shut a Ziploc bag filled with cornsilk-colored goo and tapped it toward Dylan.

  “Thank you.” Dylan undid the seal, squeezed a portion into his meal bag, and enthusiastically sampled with his finger. “Who made the potatoes?”

  “That’s my dad’s recipe,” Sara said.

  “Well, it’s delicious.”

  “It’s simple, really, but it was one of my favorite Fourth of July foods.”

  “I should have thought ahead,” Ji-min said. “I’m making kimchi, but it will take a week.”

  “We have the ingredients for that with us?” Jake asked.

  A polite smile formed on Ji-min’s lips. “Not exactly, but I found some canned vegetables that should suffice. We don’t have any of the right spices, but I found packets of Tabasco in the MRE’s the Army gave us.”

  “Isn’t kimchi a fermented dish?” Dylan asked.

  “That’s right,” Ji-min said. “Sydney helped me grow a culture that should work.”

  Dylan’s expression soured. “No offense, but I’ll stick to potatoes for my side dish.”

  “Kimchi’s great for digestion and gut health,” Sara said. “If you pick up an alien bug somewhere, you might just wish you’d been eating it.”

  “I’ll take my chances.”

  With a slight twist of her hips, Sara rotated toward Ji-min. “I’ll be your first customer.”

  “I’m delighted,” Ji-min said. She sampled the potatoes when they came her way. “Salty.” She diluted them with boiled vegetables. “We’ve hardly had an opportunity to learn about each other. Everyone’s been working on projects, taking shifts. It’s nice to share a meal.”

  Dylan nodded. “That it is.”

  Ji-min turned toward him. “Do you have family back home, Dylan?”

  “My parents passed long ago,” he said.

  “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s OK. That old wound’s long since healed. I do have a sister. She’s married now and has a daughter, my niece.”

  “You’re not married?” Ji-min asked.

  “No. I was engaged once. It didn’t work out.”

  “Dating then?”

  Sara’s eyebrow inched up and the others seemed amused by the line of questioning.

  “No,” Dylan said. “Before you ask me why not, well, I suppose I could tell you a story about being too busy flying spaceships to settle down.” He scrutinized Ji-min. “From what Sara tells me, you’d see right through that, so I may as well tell you the truth. You see, most of the women old enough for me to date either want to have kids or they already had ‘em but things fell apart. Either way, they want a man they can depend on, who will be around for the long haul to raise a family. That’s not me. It wouldn’t be right to lead a lady on, so I’m single.”

  “That’s a commendable attitude,” Sara said. “And a damn rare one.”

  Ji-min sipped a pouch of green tea. “Jake, how long have you and Sara been dating?”

  “What?” Musa asked. “They’re dating?”

  A suppressed chuckle echoed around the table.

  “You’ve got to work on your powers of observation,” Dylan said. “It’s plain as day.”

  “We’ve put that on hold during the mission,” Sara said, her cheeks tomato red. “The mission’s too important. I won’t jeopardize it.”

  Jake swallowed down a lump of peppered beefsteak.

  “I’m sure that’s not an easy thing to do,” Dylan said.

  “Can we please talk about something else?” Sara asked.

  The conversation turned to the faint trinary system that seemed to grow brighter as the meal progressed. The crew spoke of their hobbies and careers, carefully avoiding personal topics that might turn the feast awkward again. Bellies full and minds relaxed, the crew took leave from one another and headed toward quarters, except for Musa who offered to stand watch.

  Sara followed Ji-min. When clear of the others, Sara asked, “Got a minute?”

  #

  “What the hell was that?” Sara asked. “Why did you embarrass me like that?”

  “Everyone already knew,” Ji-min said. “Well, except for Musa.”

  “That’s not the point. I have the relationship handled. Everything is under control.”

  “I don’t think you do,” Ji-min said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I have a hard time reading Jake. When I can pick something up, I see conflicting signs.”

  “You mean he’s conflicted?” Sara asked.

  “I don’t think so. It’s like during the research project. In the years after you brought me to the United States. There was a CIA man who studied how to evade my powers. After a while, he was pretty good at it.”

  “I recall,” Sara said.

  “Jake’s like that. Like he somehow learned to hide his thoughts from me.”

  “How’s that possible?”

  “The most plausible scenario?” Ji-min asked. “He has access to the research.”

  Sara shook her head. “Impossible.”

  “Is it?” Ji-min asked. “I created that situation to put him under stress and throw him off guard. I didn’t get a perfect read on him, but I don’t like what I saw.”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “Be careful,” Ji-min said. She touched Sara’s forearm. “Be careful.”

  Proxima Centauri

  Proxima Centauri was like the embers of a campfire after the evening’s last ghost story. The star was a feeble, orange-red ball of plasma barely able to warm the rocky planet that orbited twenty times closer to its star than Earth does, even closer in than Mercury to the sun. Its brighter, binary companions Alpha Centauri A and B glowed in the distance beyond.

  “Twenty-six days,” Dylan said. “A journey that should have taken humanity a generation, even if we threw all our engineers on it, done in under a month.”

  “And we passed the star chips a day into our voyage,” Jake said. “Six months ago, those thumbnail-size probes were supposed to be the first things humanity sent to another star, if they defied the odds to make it there in working order. They would have taken twenty more years to arrive plus another four to relay their information back at the speed of light.”

  “Too bad our epic journey is to a radiation-charred rock,” Musa said.

  Dr. Skye put an arm on Musa’s shoulder. “The red dwarf must have irradiated the surface, but the same is true for the exterior of Europa. Jupiter’s radiation belt blasts it, yet we found a thriving ecosystem deep under the ice.”

  The feeble star blossomed into a fiery ball as the ship drew near, becoming almost as large in the heavens as Sol as viewed from Earth. A dot appeared below and to the right of the star, growing to a large, indigo-and-ultramarine ball in the blink of an eye. Proxima was faint compared to our sun even though the planet orbited so close. The result was a world bathed in perpetual twilight.

  Dr. Skye’s eyes widened to fascinated pools. “Oh, God. It has an atmosphere. A deep, rich, glorious atmosphere.”

  “What?” Dylan asked. “How can that be?”

  “Chad, please, take us closer.” Dr. Skye pushed o
ff Musa, drifting toward the Quadriga’s nose where she looked down upon an ocean world punctuated by land masses, islands ranging from a hut-sized rock to a tick larger than Madagascar, covering a fifth of the planet’s surface.

  Chad brought the Quadriga into a low orbit. “Let’s break out those instruments of yours, Sydney.” He pivoted and fired his get-around to race toward the cargo hold, a broad smile across his face. Dr. Skye followed close enough to feel his jet pulses. They returned moments later, a train of impact-resistant rubberized crates in tow, lashed together with shoelaces.

  Dylan grinned at the arrangement.

  Sara caught the expression and smiled at him. “They’re in their element. Just imagine you discovered a factory-new biplane in an abandoned barn.”

  “You know me well,” Dylan said, chuckling.

  Dr. Skye and Chad scurried about the front of the Quadriga, arranging all manner of instruments along the transparent nose. The gear established a wireless connection to the portable holographic display and data emerged, cyan and orange symbols floating in front of the two forward chairs.

  “The atmosphere is dense, and it’s rich in oxygen!” Dr. Skye’s excitement was contagious. The crew huddled to examine the data stream. “The equatorial temperature on the daylight side is about like a summer evening in California,” she said. “Look, there.” She pointed at an image from a high-resolution infrared camera. “Heat signatures moving through the ocean.” Eight white lines wiggled through a deep-blue background in a lazy, snake-like motion.

  “How big are they?” Chad asked.

  With a twisting hand gesture, Dr. Skye added a scale. “A hundred meters. Three times longer than a blue whale.”

  Chad mouthed the word, “Wow.”

  Dr. Skye turned to Dylan, a triumphant smile on her face. “They’re not exactly microscopic underground life forms.”

  Dylan smiled. “No, Sydney. I’ll say it. I was wrong.”

  “How can this world still have an atmosphere?” Chad asked. “When the star flares up, the stellar wind should be thousands of times stronger than what hits Earth. Even when the star’s quiet, the wind should be howling. The planet would need an insanely strong magnetic field to stop the atmosphere from being blown into space, like what happened to Mars after its internal fires cooled.”