6

Oliver Bowen

July 2, 2029. Washington, D.C.

His shoes echoing in the big, dank corridor, Oliver picked up his pace. He was late, and he couldn’t easily explain why that was, because the truth was he’d been on the toilet, dealing with anxiety-induced diarrhea.

It was one thing to be drafted into the CIA, given the circumstances, but this—this was too much. Maybe his background made him the perfect candidate to attempt communication with this Luyten, but his disposition did not. He was not an action guy; he was a behind-the-scenes guy. He should be in Research, advising someone on how to approach the situation; he should not be approaching the situation himself. But so many of the action guys and gals were dead, and Oliver had to admit, on paper he seemed ideal for this assignment. He knew more about how to bend someone to one’s will with words and gestures, more about the use of language to gain power, than anyone alive. He just wasn’t sure how well that knowledge translated into action.

He watched the room numbers pass on the big steel doors, but it turned out that wasn’t necessary. Ariel Aardsma, his supervisor, was waiting in the doorway of the room he was looking for, her arm across the shoulders of Kai, the boy who’d talked to a Luyten. Assuming he was telling the truth.

Kai was big for a thirteen-year-old, but with a baby face, and long-lashed eyes. He was staring into the room where the Luyten was being held.

“Dr. Bowen,” Ariel said. “This is Kai.”

The boy went on staring into the room. As Oliver reached them, he peered inside the room as well.

The Luyten was unconscious in its cell. It was mustard yellow, its body housed in a thick, ornately ridged exoskeleton. Doctors had sealed the massive wound, injected binders to facilitate healing. Oliver eyed the stump, trying to imagine what it had looked like when the soldiers went under the church to get it. They’d said that after losing the limb in the crash, the thing had sutured the gaping wound closed with electrical wiring it pilfered from an air-conditioning unit under there.

Being so close to it was unnerving.

“Kai has been very helpful,” Ariel said. “We’ve had a good talk with him.”

Oliver had watched the interview remotely the day before. Incredible as it was, the boy’s story checked out in every detail. The woman’s corpse in the bus repair depot, the key under the flagstone, the hidden cache of food, his intimate knowledge of the local woman’s relationship with her daughter; all of it had checked out.

Beyond the facts, Kai looked scared to death. He kept swallowing, and he was blinking rapidly, his hands dangling limply at his sides. This was not a kid who craved the attention that came with making wild claims about telepathic conversations with Luyten. Under ordinary circumstances Oliver would have been repulsed by the idea of subjecting this child to any more close contact with the Luyten, but these circumstances were as far from ordinary as they got.

Ariel led them into the room, closer to the Luyten. Kai was staring at it like it might leap from the cell and tear him apart at any moment.

“It can’t reach us. Don’t worry.” It had to have been a kid. Oliver was clueless when it came to kids. He didn’t know how to talk to them, was uncomfortable in their presence. When his sister visited with her children, Oliver always found urgent work he needed to do.

“Well,” Ariel said, “I’ll leave you to it.”

Evidently Kai shared Oliver’s wish that Ariel stay, because he watched her leave with an expression bordering on panic. Ariel and others would be monitoring remotely, but Oliver was on his own when it came to getting Kai to relax.

“Why don’t you sit down?” Oliver gestured toward a chair.

Kai sat on the edge of the chair like a kid in the principal’s office. The room didn’t help things; it was bland and oppressive, windowless, nothing on the walls but an American flag in a wooden frame, and the ubiquitous population tracker, doggedly ticking back the dwindling world population.

“So it looks like we’re going to be working together.”

Kai swallowed, nodded.

“Maybe we should discuss procedure and strategies?” When Kai didn’t respond, Oliver forged ahead. “Here’s what I think might work best: Once the prisoner regains consciousness, repeat anything it says to you out loud. This way we won’t have to rely on your memory later. It’s important that you repeat word for word…” The boy was looking past Oliver, his lips forming a tight O.

Oliver looked over his shoulder. The Luyten’s eyes were open. It was watching them.

“Is it speaking to you?”

Kai shook his head.

Oliver stood, inched closer to the Luyten. “Say something to it. Out loud, like you did when it was under the church.”

It was clear Kai had no interest in speaking to the Luyten. He licked his lips and said, “I just wanted to get you help. You were hurt.”

Oliver studied the Luyten, then turned and watched Kai. “Anything?”

“No.”

Feeling simultaneously foolish and very uneasy, Oliver moved within a few feet of the flimsy-looking mesh that separated them from the creature. “My name is Oliver Bowen. I understand that you can communicate with us. Are you in pain? If you are, I may be able to arrange relief.”

He had no idea if the medical people had administered a painkiller. Probably not—they knew next to nothing about the creature’s physiology. He’d made the offer more as a generic gesture of concern.

Oliver turned and looked at Kai. “Anything?”

Kai shrugged. “No.”

There were a few possibilities. The Luyten might be staying silent because Kai could no longer help it, or because it knew they wanted to communicate with it to seek some advantage in the war. It was also possible the Luyten was communicating with Kai, and Kai was lying because he was on its side. Oliver thought that was unlikely.

“What’s that?” Kai asked, eyeing the population counter on the wall. At the moment it read three billion, seven hundred thousand and change. The numbers went on rolling backward, counting down.

“It’s an estimate of the world population.” The number shrunk by several hundred in the time it took Oliver to answer.

Kai studied it. “How does it know when someone dies?”

“It’s just an estimate, based on updates people here receive.”

Kai pressed his tongue to his upper lip, stared at the readout, mesmerized.

“Why don’t you try talking to the Luyten again?”

“He told me to call him Five.”

The idea of it having a name unsettled Oliver in a way he couldn’t articulate.

“It’s a he?” Oliver asked.

Kai shrugged. “I don’t know. It just seems like a he.”

“Why Five?”

Looking sheepish, Kai shrugged yet again. “I don’t know.”

Luyten tended to congregate in groups of three, when they congregated at all, so Five probably didn’t correspond to his place in a group or family, although it might. It was a prime number, but Oliver couldn’t see how that mattered. Maybe it wasn’t his real name, only one he’d chosen for Kai to use.

“Does the number five hold any special meaning for you?” he asked Kai. “Your lucky number? Your birthday?”

Kai couldn’t take his eyes off the Luyten. “Not really.”

Oliver stared at the Luyten. Looking at it was unpleasant, not only because it was large and terrifying, but because of the wound, the ragged stump.

Oliver folded his arms across his chest, leaned closer, counted its limbs.

Five. There had been six, now there were five.

It was a tiny insight, but it provided a glimpse into how the creature thought.

“Why don’t you try talking to Five again?” he said.

“What should I say?”

“I don’t know. Anything.” Oliver waved his hands, trying to come up with something. Topics of conversation were not his strong suit. “What did you talk about before?”

Kai shrugged. “Where to find food, how scared we were.”

That wouldn’t work now. What else could you talk about with an alien? Maybe they should try to win it over, with pleasant topics. Small talk. Fall back on standard CIA interrogation procedures.

“Tell it about your hobbies.”

“My hobbies?” Kai said it as if he’d never heard the word before.

“Things you liked to do. Before, you know, you couldn’t do them anymore.”

Haltingly, Kai began to talk about a water park near his house, where you surfed up a stationary fifteen-foot wave.

The Luyten remained silent.