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Transmission
CHAPTER TWELVE
“You don’t need to come, Mom,” Kevin said as he and the others found themselves waved through security at the San Francisco airport. She was just a step away from him, as if afraid that moving further would mean losing him in the chaos of the airport. Ted was close by too, although Kevin suspected it was for different reasons.
“Of course I need to come,” his mother said, wheeling along a small suitcase that made it look as though she’d packed for a vacation. “One moment people are trying to murder you, and the next, you’re flying off to the middle of a jungle? Do you think I’m going to let you do that alone?”
“I wouldn’t be alone, Mom,” Kevin pointed out. If anything, it seemed like the entire institute was heading to Colombia, packing itself aboard not one but two chartered airplanes, and taking with it an array of equipment designed to search for the escape capsule.
“I’m still coming,” his mother said, and Kevin knew better than to argue with that tone.
One person who wasn’t coming was Luna, and Kevin found that he was already missing having her there. She’d gone home, because her parents apparently had stricter views about her flying to South America in search of aliens.
Professor Brewster stood toward the front, marshalling the scientists and the soldiers, the agents and the occasional reporters as they loaded onto the plane.
“Are you all set, Kevin?” he asked. “We have a long flight ahead of us.”
Kevin nodded. “I can’t believe we’re doing this.”
“We nearly aren’t,” Professor Brewster said. “A lot of people are having to pull a lot of strings to let us fly into Colombia for this. Now, hurry and get aboard.”
Kevin got onto the plane and found a seat where he could look out of the window. His mother took one next to him, while Ted took one just in front of him.
“It’s a long way to Colombia,” Ted said. “It’s been a while.”
“You were there before?” Kevin asked.
“Officially?” he said with a faint smile. “Never been there in my life.”
“And unofficially?” Kevin asked.
“Oh, it was very unofficial the last time I was there,” Ted replied. “Things are a bit more peaceful there now though. There are still a few cartels, but without the civil war going on, the government can pay a bit more attention to them.”
“It sounds cool,” Kevin said.
His mother didn’t agree. “It sounds like a dangerous place to take my son.”
“I’m sure it will be fine,” Ted said. Kevin heard the doors to the plane shutting as the last people climbed aboard. “Besides, it’s too late to turn back now. Nine hours from now, and we’ll be in Bogota.”
Nine hours. How did you spend nine hours cooped up in a confined space with a bunch of scientists? It seemed to Kevin that practically everyone there was having to find the answer to that question. Some played games on phones, or read, or watched movies. Kevin’s mother mostly slept. Kevin alternated looking out of the window with trying to get some rest and occasionally putting on the headphones with the signal stream, just in case there was anything to hear. There wasn’t.
“I don’t even know if these will work so far from the research institute,” Kevin said, after the third time he’d done it.
“I asked the scientists that before we left,” Ted said. “They’ve set it up so the base signal is relayed over the Internet. Anywhere you have a connection, you can access the signal.”
Kevin supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised by that. Of course they would want to make sure that he could hear it, whatever happened. They wouldn’t want to risk missing an important message. Even so, the idea of being able to listen in from anywhere in the world seemed impressive.
Kevin spent some of the time looking down at the places they passed over. He’d never even been out of state before, yet here he was flying over deserts and thick rainforests, cities and patches of ocean. He thought about the people down there. Did they know about the escape capsule? What did they think about the possibility of actually finding alien life?
He got part of an answer when they landed in Bogota. He immediately saw a dozen similar groups, all carrying equipment that looked suspiciously similar to the gear they’d brought with them.
“Looks as though we weren’t the only ones who worked out where those coordinates led,” Ted said as he looked over the collection of them. He seemed fairly relaxed about it, but Professor Brewster was anything but calm.
“This is simply unacceptable,” the scientist said. “The Swiss are here, and that looks like a group from the private tech sector, and those are the Canadians. After all the effort we’ve put into uncovering this information, I can’t believe that they’re planning to snatch the capsule from under us.”
Kevin wanted to say that they didn’t know for sure that was what the other groups were there for, but he couldn’t think of another reason they might be there. He wasn’t sure how he felt about their presence.
On the one hand, he wanted to believe that the aliens’ message was intended for the whole of humanity, and that it should be shared. He was happy that he’d had to shout the coordinates to the news cameras or risk losing them for that reason. At the same time, Professor Brewster was kind of right: Kevin was the one who had been able to translate the alien signal, not the others, and he wanted to at least see the escape capsule now that he had.
“We’ll just have to be the first to it,” Professor Brewster said, although Kevin suspected that it was going to be easier said than done. He couldn’t see how they were going to get through the airport any quicker than the others, or get to the jungle quicker, or even search quicker.
They tried, though. Kevin would have laughed at the sight of a dozen sets of scientists conducting a strange kind of race through the Bogota airport, except that he had to keep up with them all, trying to find gaps in the press of people and making sure that he didn’t lose sight of his mother at the same time.
“This way!” Professor Brewster called, leading the way toward what looked like a rental car desk. “Hello, we need to rent… let’s see, probably a dozen off-road vehicles and a small truck.”
“I’m sorry,” the woman at the desk said. “As I told the last gentleman to ask for that, it is simply not something that we keep here at the airport. Most people… well, they do not need this for their vacation, you see?”
“This is not a vacation,” Professor Brewster declared. “This is a scientific expedition of the utmost importance!”
“Even so.”
Dr. Levin stepped in. “Come on, David, you know we’ll need to rest first, and then we can work on the actual expedition after that.”
“And meanwhile the Canadians will be getting ahead of us!” he complained. “How did they even get here so fast?”
There didn’t seem to be an answer to that, but Kevin found himself swept up as they made their way from the airport to the spot where the American embassy stood waiting, looking like a large gray block in the middle of Bogota.
The ambassador was waiting for them within. He shook Professor Brewster’s hand, and then shook Kevin’s, much to his surprise.
“I got the call that you were coming from the President a couple of hours ago. It will be a little cramped with so many of you here, but I’ve had rooms prepared for you all, and I’m working to arrange transport for your team to the rainforest. You should be aware that the Colombian government isn’t entirely happy about this, but we’re working to smooth the way for you.”
It didn’t sound good that the government of the country where they were looking didn’t like them being there. By that point, Kevin was too tired to worry about it. He fell asleep almost as soon as the embassy staff showed him to a room, and didn’t wake up again until he heard Professor Brewster’s voice shouting from outside.
“Come on, everyone! The embassy has managed to get us some transport, and we need to be ready to go before everyone else beats us to the prize!”
Kevin did his best to get ready in a hurry. Even so, by the time he got out there, most of the others were already ready. Professor Brewster had acquired a khaki shirt and trousers that made him look the way someone might think an explorer looked if they’d only ever seen pictures of them. His mother was wearing her normal clothes, augmented by a wide sun hat. Ted just looked like Ted.
“Quickly,” Professor Brewster said, clapping his hands. “Quickly! We can’t allow anyone else any more of a head start.”
He hurried off, trying to get everyone out of the hotel.
“Will everyone else already be at the capsule?” Kevin asked Ted. Professor Brewster might be in charge of the expedition, but Ted was the one who knew what he was doing. Half of the people there already seemed to be looking to him to find out what to do.
The former soldier shook his head. “I doubt it. The rainforest at night is tricky. It’s easy to get turned around, even without the wildlife. The sensible move was for everyone to stay put overnight, then move this morning.”
Kevin guessed it was also the move they’d all made, at least if the sold out hotels were anything to go by. There must be people from all around the world trying to find the escape pod, and all because of the numbers he’d managed to translate.
“Well, kid,” Ted said. “You’ve brought us this far. I guess it’s time to find out what’s at the end of all of it.”
They went downstairs, to where it turned out that the embassy had managed to find them trucks and SUVs, a couple of old Jeeps, and a few older cars.
“Just stay close,” Ted said, as he picked out a Jeep and jumped into the driver’s seat.
They drove, sticking together in a convoy that snaked back at the speed of the slowest car, which was, Kevin thought, pretty slow. A part of him didn’t mind that too much, because Colombia was beautiful. More of him wanted to curse the slow vehicles and the increasingly pitted roads, because he wanted to see the vessel the aliens had used to carry themselves. He wanted to see the outcome of everything he’d done.
They kept going, and as they got nearer to the area of rainforest the coordinates pointed to, the roads got worse. Then, as trees started to hem the road in on either side, they were blocked entirely by traffic, and it took Kevin a few moments to realize what was going on.
A truck lay on its side in the middle of the road, another having dents in it big enough to suggest a collision. There were more trucks and cars all around, with people standing there waiting, or trying to work out what to do, or arguing in a dozen languages. Kevin recognized some of the people there, and he knew who they had to be.
“Aren’t they the other research groups?” Kevin asked, as they pulled up. He saw Ted nod, but before the former soldier could say anything, Professor Brewster was there, moving up from another vehicle.
“Why are we stopped?” he asked.
“You can see why,” Ted said.
“But can’t we just drive around them?” Professor Brewster asked.
Ted gestured to the trees that grew close by either side of the road. “If you can do it, be my guest.”
Professor Brewster looked as though he might say something, then shook his head and set off to join the argument.
“Do you think it will make any difference?” Kevin’s mother asked.
Ted shrugged.
Ahead, Professor Brewster started arguing with half a dozen other people, some pointing fingers as they tried to work out exactly who was responsible for dealing with the problems there. Since Kevin couldn’t imagine the research institute’s director settling for talking to someone who wasn’t in charge, he guessed that the other people there arguing on the muddy road must be directors of their own organizations. Sometimes adults made no sense.
He jumped down from the Jeep, as much because he wanted to see what was going on as because he actually thought he could help. He walked forward to where two or three people were arguing over a winch, while a crowd of bored-looking scientists and soldiers looked on.
“If you have a winch, why isn’t anyone using it?” he asked.
A man with a thick Scandinavian accent answered. “Because it is our winch, and our director doesn’t want us helping others to get to the… object first.”
“But that’s stupid,” Kevin said.
“Kevin,” his mother said, catching up. “All of these people are very clever. They probably all have PhDs.”
“They’re still being stupid,” Kevin said, and he was surprised to find them looking at him rather than just ignoring him. They knew who he was, he realized, and they seemed to be looking at him as if waiting for him to decide what to do.
“Why don’t you just work together?” he asked.
“I told you,” the man who’d spoken before said. “We can’t let them use our winch until—”
“Not the winch,” Kevin said. “The whole thing. The aliens sent their escape capsule to this planet, not to one country, so why don’t we work together to find it?”
“And see it taken back to America?” one of those there asked.
“Well, we could find somewhere else,” Kevin suggested. “Somewhere we could all look at it.”
The men were quiet for a few moments as they started to think. One took out a map.
“There’s a UN facility a few miles from Bogota,” he said.
Another nodded. “I’ve done some work there on newly discovered plants. It has good facilities.”
“Our bosses might still want to argue,” the first said, a little uncertainly.
Kevin had an answer to that. “Then they can argue while we’re all opening the alien escape capsule.”
When he put it like that, the others didn’t seem to want to argue anymore. Instead, they started to connect up the winch, the researchers who had been standing around moving in to shift the truck from where it had toppled.
“Well done,” Ted said as Kevin returned to him. “Not many people could have talked them into working together.”
Kevin shrugged. It had seemed like the obvious thing to do.
“What is all this?” Professor Brewster asked. “What’s going on? Why are they moving again?”
“We’re going to go find the escape capsule together,” Kevin’s mother explained.
“But no one authorized that,” Professor Brewster said. “I didn’t authorize that.”
“But it means that we’re moving,” Kevin’s mother said. “Is it so wrong that we’re working together?”
“No,” Professor Brewster said. Kevin guessed that he was just a bit surprised not to be the one making the decisions for once. “I suppose not. But this doesn’t mean that I trust them. When it comes to the cut and thrust of academic debate, I wouldn’t trust those Canadians as far as I could throw them. Be on your guard, all of you.”
He walked off, calling out orders to their people, and to some of the other groups as well. Kevin wondered if anyone was paying attention. He looked over to Ted.
“Should we be suspicious of the others?” he asked.
The former soldier shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. Sometimes you work with people and you don’t know what they’re going to do down the road. For the moment, only one thing matters.”
“We’re going to find the capsule,” Kevin said.
Ted nodded. “We’re going to find the capsule.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Kevin had never been in a jungle before, but it was nothing like he’d seen on TV. There, jungles were just a few palm leaves in the background, with plenty of space for people to run and fight, and they moved quickly. In the real thing, plant life pressed in on all sides, with only a few tracks worn by animals, and soldiers having to hack a route for them as they got deeper into it.
They didn’t show the rain either. That came down as they walked, steadily soaking their whole party in bursts that seemed to fill the whole world beneath the canopy.
“Is it always like this?” Professor Brewster called out.
One of the guides shrugged. “It is called a rainforest for a reason, sir.”
Kevin wasn’t sure how quickly they were moving, but it didn’t feel that quick. He’d assumed that, as ill as he was, he wouldn’t be able to keep up with the rest. Instead, he trekked along with them, the slowest of the scientists moving far slower than he did. Maybe it didn’t help that half of them wanted to stop every few hundred yards to take samples of insect life or unusual plants.
“They can’t help themselves,” Ted said. He kept pace with Kevin, never more than a few yards from his side, as if afraid that going further would mean losing him in the jungle. “Cleverest people you’ll ever meet, but it just means that a place like this is too full of potential discoveries. They think about being the one who spots a new species of butterfly, or finds a substance that will cure cancer, and they forget about how big the thing we’re here to do is. All they can think about is how full of life the jungle is.”
Kevin couldn’t blame them, because the jungle was full of life, in a way he couldn’t have believed. It seemed that everywhere he looked, there were plants he hadn’t seen before, from the giant trees that formed a canopy to the creepers that wound their way between them and the lower level things that snatched what light they could on the jungle floor. There were insects and lizards, small mammals and occasional rustles in the brush that suggested bigger things.
Oh, and spiders, big enough that Kevin didn’t want to go anywhere near them. The only fun part of that was that it seemed Professor Brewster was particularly afraid of them, jumping so high every time he saw one that Kevin thought he might reach the canopy.
“What do you think about when you’re here?” Kevin asked Ted.
“Aside from the mission?” The soldier shrugged. “Mostly memories of the last time I was here. You need to be careful, Kevin.”
“I’m not going to wander off,” Kevin said. Sometimes people treated him like he wasn’t thirteen. Like he was just… a child or something.
“Not what I meant,” Ted said. “Things are better after the peace with FARC, but there are still cartels out there who don’t like people coming into their territory. Even the army. A collection of different scientific groups? We’d be easy prey for the wrong people.”
He shot a look to where a group of soldiers from half a dozen different nations were helping to clear the way, hacking their way through with the certainty of people who’d had to do it many times before in other places.
“It’s not just that, is it?” Kevin asked. “You don’t trust the people we’re working with.”
“After they’ve spent the last day racing to be the first one there?” Ted shook his head. “But that’s common enough. We’re all going for something valuable. We have a valuable asset, in you, because you can translate the signals. Maybe nothing will happen. Maybe this will all go fine, but you know what they say: hope for the best, prepare for the worst.”
Put like that, the jungle seemed a more threatening place than it had before, full of spots where it might be easy to reach out and grab someone. Kevin did his best to ignore it.
One thing he couldn’t ignore was the heat. He’d thought that, since he was from California, the difference wouldn’t be too much, just a few degrees hotter, at most. He hadn’t thought about the effects of the rain, which combined with the heat to turn the whole place into a kind of giant pressure cooker, steam visibly coming off people as they walked.
“Are you doing okay, Kevin?” Dr. Levin asked.
He nodded. “I’m fine.”
“You’ll tell someone if you aren’t?” she asked. She looked over to where Kevin’s mother was making her way along the track behind them. “Your mother is pretty worried that we’re doing the wrong thing, bringing you here.”
“I want to be here,” Kevin said. He knew that the scientist was just trying to look out for him, but he wanted to see this. He wanted to find the object that the aliens had sent to Earth. He wanted to see where everything he’d translated led.
“Well, I just hope it isn’t too much further,” Dr. Levin said. “You might be fine, but I’m melting in this heat.”
“Not much further to the spot we saw,” Ted said, checking a robust-looking GPS readout. “Just a little more that way.”
They kept going, finding a clearing to use as a base while they searched. Some of the soldiers started to set up rough awnings to keep the rain off, while the different groups of scientists set up equipment that they had carried through the jungle. They brought out what looked like metal detectors and strange devices that fit onto small carts that could be pulled by hand. Some set up enough computing equipment that they could probably have run their usual labs from there if they hadn’t been so cut off from the world. The strangest part of it was watching half a dozen sets of nearly identical equipment dragged out
“The object that came to Earth fell somewhere in this vicinity,” Professor Brewster said, obviously assuming that he was in charge. “We need to find it. That means that we spread out and locate the general area of a crash site by looking for damage, then use our equipment to locate the object.”
“Stay safe,” Ted said, and Kevin suspected that if he didn’t say it, no one would have. Professor Brewster would happily have sent people off into the jungle with no more direction than that. “Always work in pairs, so that if anything happens, the other one can get help. Stay close to camp, and stay in contact. The jungle will try to get you lost. Watch out for the wildlife, and don’t go into any watercourses. There are caiman and snakes in this area.”
The scientists moved out cautiously, accompanied by soldiers and whatever local guides they’d been able to find.
“Do we go and look?” Kevin asked.
Ted shook his head. “It’s better to wait for now. Let other people do the work of finding it. You’ll see it soon enough. Now, I’d better go make a phone call.”
He got up, taking out a satellite phone that would probably work now that they were in the clearing, with a clear path to the sky. He walked a little way away, talking quietly. Kevin thought about creeping closer to hear what he was saying, but something about the way the soldier was talking suggested that it might not be a good idea.
“I think we’ve found something!” one of the scientists called out, from within the jungle.
Kevin couldn’t sit there, and neither, it seemed, could any of the others in the small camp. He found himself just one of those rushing forward, hurrying to keep up through the jungle, the soft earth underneath giving way as his feet pushed into it. He followed the scientists into another small clearing. Kevin had been half expecting a crater there, surrounded by desolation. Instead, there were just a few scars on the earth, hinting at something coming through there.
The strange part was that the trees around it didn’t seem to be damaged. If something had fallen to Earth in the recent past, shouldn’t there have been damage, wreckage, even smoldering embers?
Then Kevin realized that he was thinking about it the wrong way. The aliens had sent their messages years ago, even traveling at the speed of light. Why would their escape capsule have only just arrived? Why wouldn’t it have been here years, even decades, waiting for someone to discover it? He found that he liked that idea, of something secret waiting there for him to uncover it. It made him feel like a treasure hunter.
The scientists had already started to work their way along it, working with their various devices. From what Kevin could hear, he didn’t think it was going very well.
“I’m not getting any responses from the metal detector,” Phil called. The researcher had sweated clean through his Hawaiian shirt by now. “I haven’t heard it this quiet… well, ever.”
“I’m not getting any response looking for a heat signature,” another of them called out.
“Well, we wouldn’t,” Phil called back. “It’s been cooling all the time since it landed, and we don’t know when that was. What about the magnetometer?”
A scientist dragging the thing that had looked like a handcart shook his head. “The ground’s too uneven. I can’t tell if I’m getting signals or just interference.”
Apparently, the ground-penetrating radar had the same problem, although Kevin hadn’t known before then that such a thing existed. He didn’t really know how half of the scientists’ equipment worked; it could have been magic, although he doubted they would have liked that comparison. From where he was standing, it just meant watching a bunch of scientists run about with devices and wires, watching screens or listening to things beep. It was fun to watch, for maybe the first hour.
“We will just have to dig,” Professor Brewster said eventually. “It must be here somewhere, so if we dig up all of it, eventually we will find it.”
It seemed that “we” in this case didn’t include Professor Brewster, because the institute’s director made no move to pick up a shovel. Plenty of scientists did, though, and even a few soldiers helped, attacking the earth around them as if it might reveal its secrets if they just worked hard enough.
There didn’t seem to be anything for Kevin to do except wait. He didn’t have a shovel, and in any case it didn’t seem like the best way to find anything. It was just digging randomly in the hope that something would happen. It seemed a bit like digging random holes on a beach in the hope that one would contain a pirate chest. He stood there instead, trying to keep out of their way as they dug.
That was when he felt the whisper of connection through the trees, almost indefinable. It felt a little like the pulse of the countdown within him, except that this pulsing seemed to get stronger as he took a few steps along the path the falling escape capsule must have taken. When he stepped the other way, it grew weaker.
Kevin stopped, trying to be certain. He didn’t want to say that he knew what he was doing until he was sure it was more than just some random feeling inside him. What if it was just the heat?
“It isn’t,” Kevin told himself, wishing he were as certain as he tried to sound.
Kevin started forward, trying to follow that pulsing, staying with it as it grew stronger, picking his way between the trees. Every time it got weaker again, he stopped, walking around in a circle until he found the direction that felt strongest. It wasn’t long before he had a clear route, which brought him out onto what looked like a small deer track. Kevin followed it along until he reached a space where it opened out to reveal a large natural pool, as wide across as a swimming pool, its water green-brown. Instinctively, Kevin knew that the object that had come to Earth was there somewhere, beneath the surface. He could feel its pull so strongly now that he took a step toward the pool, then another, trying to remember the reason why he’d been told he shouldn’t do exactly that…
A scaled shape came up out of the water, teeth snapping in a lunge that sent Kevin backpedaling, barely fast enough to avoid it. He would have thought of alligators if Ted hadn’t given them all a warning earlier. This creature’s snout was too long and pointed, its shape a bit too sleek. The caiman kept coming, moving out of the water low to the ground, its tail dragging an S-shaped track behind it.
“Help!” Kevin called. He wanted to turn and run, but he guessed that the moment he tried to, the thing would be on him. Instead, he continued to back away, while the caiman advanced with a growl that promised that Kevin would be its next meal. Kevin felt the press of a tree against his back and knew that he’d missed the trail, which meant that the caiman was gaining ground. It opened its jaws, showing what seemed like endless teeth—
The roar of gunfire came, so loud against the jungle that Kevin thought he might go deaf. The caiman made a hissing sound of pain, then slumped. Kevin slumped too, only the tree holding him upright as Ted moved into view with a rifle raised to his shoulder. He only lowered it once he seemed certain the beast was dead.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
Kevin managed to nod, in spite of the fear that still gripped him. “I think so.”
“What were you doing? I thought I told you not to wander off.”
Kevin wanted to say that he wasn’t a little kid. Instead, he nodded to the pool of dark water. “I had to, I sensed… I think that it’s in there.”
He saw the soldier blink, then look toward the water. “You’re sure?”
“Yes,” Kevin said. “I don’t know how I’m sure, but it’s there.”
To his surprise, Ted didn’t question that any further, just called for the others. They came, in just as much of a hurry as when they’d found the initial signs of damage. They weren’t quite as quick to plunge into the water, though, obviously afraid of what might still lurk there. Eventually, Ted and three other soldiers, two Scandinavian and one American, stepped into it, wading around with a tarpaulin for a net.
“We have something,” Ted called back, and they wrapped it around the thing, hauling together to lift it, dragging it from the water. It seemed to take forever, and Kevin found himself expecting something huge as they worked to pull it out, a dozen of the scientists moving to help them.
When it finally rolled out from the tarpaulin onto the ground, it wasn’t what Kevin expected at all. He’d been thinking it would be bigger, for one thing. His imagination had told him that there would be a vehicle bigger than a car, maybe close to the size of a house. He’d thought it would be silver and shining, or so black that it looked like the space through which it had flown.
Instead, a perfectly round sphere of rock sat there, still slimy with the water, but smooth beneath. It looked as though someone had fired a rocky bowling ball across the universe, or perhaps shot it out of some great cannon toward the Earth.
Even so, the scientists clustered around it until Kevin could barely see it because they were so many of them.
“Is this it?” Professor Brewster asked. “Let me through, let me through. Have we found it?”
“We found something, definitely,” Dr. Levin said. She sounded as though she was trying to force herself to stay calm, not get too excited. “Now we just have to work out exactly what.”
Ted was shaking his head. “Before we do any of that, there’s at least one other thing that we need to do. We need to get it back.”
