We Are Stardust (pt. 3)
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Before the shuttle touched down, a ring of Petrans had formed around the clearing. As Nyoka stepped onto the alien world, she could not shake the lightness she felt. Beyond the weaker gravity of a less massive planet, standing on the bluish grass surrounded by indigo leaves, something in Nyoka lifted. She held no religious beliefs, but was tempted to describe the feeling as a burden lifted off of her soul. Had Massoud and Rivera experienced the same? Did Hughes experience it with her now?
“Wow,” Hughes said as he disembarked behind her. “I can’t believe we’re here.”
Soon, the Petrans had closed in around them. Nyoka wanted to be on guard, she wanted to be wary and make sure they couldn’t box her in, couldn’t trap her… But at the same time, she now understood Massoud’s judgment call. Somehow, Nyoka was unable to feel at risk. Something about standing there felt right. It was as though all her life, every decision she’d ever made, the prudent and the foolish, had all been leading her to this exact moment. To doubt the perfection of the moment would have taken herculean effort. She didn’t have it in her. Nyoka, who was distrustful by nature, wanted to trust the goodness of this new species and new planet.
The crowd began to chatter and hum with the spoken words of an unknown language. Orange hands began to direct the two humans away from their ship. Their strength was insurmountable, but they did not use it harshly. Little by little, the Commander and Hughes were carried away by the sea of giants. Nyoka began to laugh. She didn’t mean to and had trouble stopping it. Hughes joined in, and the Petrans as well.
From deep in her subconscious mind, the rational part of her brain which had been silenced by Petram II raised one question. Will I still laugh if they begin to hurt me?
The undulating waves of Petran hands finally stopped when Hughes and Nyoka had been ushered into a grove of trees. The sun had begun to descend in the sky, but days would be much shorter on the dwarf planet. DAISy assured her they had landed less than an hour ago.
Around them, Petrans, including children, gathered in what Nyoka assumed must be family units. A male, a female, and a few offspring. Nyoka scanned the area and saw dozens, maybe even a hundred, of such units.
From her right, a female Petran approached. The crowd grew quiet, waiting to hear what she would say. As she began to speak, Nyoka tried to breath more shallowly, more silently, somehow feeling that if she were quiet enough, she’d be able to hear and understand the alien language. Of course, she still could not. The tall, muscular being did not talk for long. When she stopped, she lowered her arms and the groups erupted into cheers.
I hope what she said is as good of news to us as it seems to be to them.
Then, the towering… woman—Nyoka hesitated to let herself think of them as women and men, but increasingly found she couldn’t help herself. The not-technically-humans were too familiar not to categorize in ways her brain could make sense of—the woman crouched down into a squatting position and lowered her head. She held her hands before her, palms up. Was something expected of Nyoka? Should she lay her hands on top? Should she place something for those large, waiting fingers to grasp? Nyoka looked at the other Petrans, desperately hoping for a clue. None of them made any movement, but all of them looked eager. Soon, the moment passed and the leader stood up again. She looked lovingly down at Nyoka and placed her large hands on Nyoka’s cheeks, cradling them as a mother would a child. She whispered something, and then turned to watch as a Petran man came and repeated the entire process standing before Hughes.
The two Petrans then stood side by side, arms wrapped around one another’s waist, staring intently at the humans. Their patience seemed limitless, and they stood nearly motionless, content to just be there. Nyoka was again unsure if she was expected to respond in some way.
Soon, Hughes stepped forward towards the male and did his best imitation of the ritual movements, though he wasn’t quite tall enough to reach the man’s face, and so the giant knelt when it was time for Huges to cradle his cheeks and whisper.
When Hughes stepped back again, Nyoka asked under her breath, “What did you say to him?”
Hughes chuckled. “I said, ‘I have no idea what’s expected of me, but I hope this is a gesture of friendship.”
The Petran woman looked expectant, but Nyoka shook her head, smiling; unsure, but not uneasy. The Petran smiled, touched her nose, then her chin, then her nose again, and raised her voice to address the crowd. They responded with a joyful shout, before a number of Petrans brought forth a huge variety of fruits, which they lay before Nyoka and Hughes. And again, they waited to see how the two humans would react. Again, Hughes eventually made a move. He lifted an oblong green fruit that resembled a papaya and took a bite. Beneath the green skin, bright pink flesh leaked bright pink juice, which streamed down Hughes’ chin as he ate. He turned and offered some to Nyoka, who shrugged and picked out her own large fruit.
Rivera had been right all along. The fruit was delicious.
By the time Nyoka and Hughes arrived back on the ship, Nyoka was already cursing herself for allowing the excitement of the moment to carry her away. None of the fruit they studied before making contact had been toxic in any way, but everything about her behavior on world was questionable at best. At least now she understood how Massoud had felt. She wanted to look over the atmospheric composition again. Maybe there were measurable amounts of nitrous oxide or something like that. There had to be an explanation for the euphoric feeling of being on the surface.
“It seemed like they were offering friendship. Why adopt such a vulnerable position if it was supposed to show dominance or institute a rivalry?” Massoud said after the footage of Nyoka and Hughe’s expedition had concluded.
Rivera nodded in agreement. “I can feel in my bones that they aren’t dangerous.” Then, as if she could feel Nyoka’s doubt, “I know it’s not scientific, Commander. I just… I don’t know how else to say it. They don’t want to hurt us. I don’t even think they have weapons, much less hunt.”
Nyoka hated to admit it, but now that she’d spent time on-world, she agreed. The Petrans were large and strong, but everything about them seemed gentle and non-violent. It was the least human thing about them.
As they spoke, a green notification light illuminated the corner of the display. “DAISy, you have a language analysis update?”
“Yes, Commander. Based on the recordings collected so far, it seems their spoken language is 53% similar to human languages. It is predominantly verbal, with 12 vowel-like phonemes and 35 consonant-like phonemes identified so far. However, based on the limited video data available to me, I have identified what appears to be a significant somatic element to the language; certain gestures and postures seem to alter the meanings of otherwise identical or nearly identical sound-phrases. I created an algorithm to detect and categorize somatic components to help me quickly determine their meanings as they relate to verbal components. Would you like additional information, Commander?”
“No, thank you. Let me know when you are able to translate messages.”
“With current parameters, I should be able to translate messages by tomorrow.”
“And if you set your confidence level to 99.4% with an interval of half a percentage point?”
“Increasing the confidence level and decreasing the margin of error will add approximately 20 weeks to the timeline.”
“Do it. We can’t risk sending mixed signals.”
In the meantime, Nyoka forbade the crew from making return trips to the surface. Rivera seemed the most disappointed by the news, but none of them were thrilled by the order.
“I don’t like it any more than you do,” Massoud had said, “But the Commander is right. Until we can reliably communicate with the Petrans, it’s too risky to traipse about down there assuming we won’t offend them or pledge ourselves to serve them or otherwise botch this thing.”
After their third week away, Hughes noticed that the clearing where they had landed the shuttle was newly lined with stones. Two nights later, Rivera noticed the stones had been painted with a phosphorescent pigment.
“They’re guiding us back,” she said. A tremor of melancholy shook her voice.
“For all we know, it could be a warning to stay away,” Nyoka said without conviction. The look Rivera shot in response stung Nyoka, but she absorbed it without breaking her stoic stare. She wanted to apologize. She wanted to further explain. She wanted to mitigate the damage to Rivera’s view of her. But she was unwilling to risk further contact without reliable communication, and the words of her old commander played on loop in her head: Never apologize when making the right call is unpopular.
Her grandfather had a similar saying, one that functioned as a useful corollary: An apology without a remedy is a tragedy.
Manufactured daylight slowly filled her cabin as Nyoka’s wake-up sequences initiated. She stretched, yawned, and stood, wiping sleep from her eyes. As she walked from her room, a small panel slid back revealing a freshly laundered towel, which she grabbed on her way to the washroom.
She heard the other crew members starting their routines as she showered. Waiting for DAISy to finish analyzing the Petran language had left ample room for them to develop daily habits. They slipped into the comfortable numbness of familiar patterns even while standing at the boundary line of fantastic discovery.
Hughes’ heavy, slapping footfalls echoed off the white tiles, and soon Nyoka heard his characteristic sigh when he first stepped into the hot water. Then came Massoud, whose initial arrival was less noticeable—she practically tiptoed to the shower—but whose presence couldn’t be missed, as she liked to stand just outside the shower and methodically crack the first knuckle of each finger while the stall filled with steam. Next up would be Rivera, who always strode into the communal bathroom whistling the same tune.
Nyoka once asked her about it. “It’s an old song. My great-grandmother used to sing it to my grandmother, who sang it to my father, who sang it to me. But it’s much older than that.”
The commander waited for the melody to ring out. Rivera was the only one among them who often snoozed past her initial wake time. Today must be one of those days, Nyoka smiled to herself.
Her brain, expecting the music, kept hearing the first few notes.
But the whistling never came.
“Excuse me, Commander,” DAISy’s soft voice interrupted Nyoka’s musing. “Private Rivera has taken a personal excursion pod to the surface.”
