Mission 51, p.19
Mission 51, page 19
Zeemat held her tight, and she melted into his arms.
When she composed herself, she said, “President Kennedy’s dead, and everything’s changed.”
“You’ll have a new president,” Zeemat said, hoping for the best.
“I mean the moon deal. Your freedom. Everything’s changed!”
Zeemat sat up straight and cocked his head as if to better hear her. He kept his gaze steady on Deltare as she gathered her thoughts to continue.
“They’ve already ordered me to stop all work regarding the moon project. A new schedule of consultations is being drawn up by Morgan and the military men.”
“They don’t care about the moon, or about my freedom,” Zeemat said, his previous fears materializing once again.
“They care about weapons, war, and beating the Russians.”
“And I hate all of that.” Images of his warlike Torkiyans flashed through his mind before he saw yet another image of Kennedy’s assassination replayed on the TV. He lost his balance, overcome by a wave of dizziness, his mind reeling against reality. No matter how hard he tried, or how far the distance, fighting and violence somehow returned, and a better world eluded him.
“I’m sorry, Mat. Your freedom is off the table,” Deltare said, her voice shaking with another series of sobs and tears.
Zeemat didn’t quite understand the phrase “off the table,” but he knew exactly what Deltare meant. The promise of freedom had died right along with President Kennedy.
Thirty-Six
Everything Changes
Two weeks later, in mid-December of 1963, Zeemat stood at the window of his cell with his hands on the bars, gazing at the desert mountains in the distance—the mountains he had crashed into—the last time he’d been free. Now he might never walk along the ridge of those mountains like he had hoped. He may never see what was on the other side.
He pulled at the bars with all his might, knowing they would not give, like the thousands of times he had pulled at them before. A feeling of desperate loneliness returned, the same desperation he’d felt during his year alone on Janusia. His gut seemed to twist into knots, and he found it hard to breathe. He felt so lonely, he thought he might explode. He pounded the cinder block walls and screamed.
Since Kennedy had died, he’d had trouble sleeping. Day and night, he paced the floor, back and forth in the small space, trying to soothe the anxious feeling in his heart. He shook the rigid bars every time he reached that part of the room, each time shattering any hope he might have had. He felt like a complete failure—a disappointment to his parents, who’d preferred to ship him away rather than accept him as he was. He’d been resented by nearly everyone at the Academy, hesitantly accepted by his crewmates only because of his parents, and he’d been unable to figure out how to fix Janusia. And now he was imprisoned so he could provide information to evil human beings. It was all too much, and he fell into a dark depression, unable to see a way out.
He felt angry, too. President Kennedy had made promises, and those promises were broken by his captors. So, he made a decision—if he wasn’t going to be free, he wasn’t going to cooperate with their demands, even if they beat him to death. Yet his only friend, Deltare, kept pressuring him for the information he didn’t want to give, and the only person he wanted to please was her. He felt torn.
“You have to give them something,” Deltare implored. She had stalled Morgan with several of Zeemat’s old drawings that she took from her briefcase, but she didn’t want to give away any more of that valuable information.
“What’s the use?” Zeemat whispered, gazing off into space.
Deltare bit her lip, worried about Zeemat’s withering will to survive and not sure how else to motivate him. It hurt her to see cuts and bruises on his face, knowing the beatings had resumed. She pulled him away from the window, and they sat on the side of his bed, their bodies touching.
“Because if you don’t give me something I can give to them, they might end up killing you.” There was desperation in her voice.
Zeemat noticed Deltare staring at the cuts and bruises. “I survived Dooley before, and I’ll do it again,” he said.
“Mat, please. Do it for me,” Deltare said. “I don’t want to see you hurt like this.”
Zeemat softened, seeing the painful expression on Deltare’s face. He caressed her cheek and let his hand linger there, gazing into her worried eyes. After a few moments, he took a deep breath and relented.
“If they can make us a new deal, maybe I can help them with what they want.”
Deltare straightened up, and a hint of a smile returned to her face.
“Oh, that’s good. I’ll inform them right away,” she said. She gathered her things and scurried out of his room.
Zeemat assumed Deltare’s leaders would be glad to hear it, and that Deltare would feel better, though he had yet to decide how cooperative he wanted to be.
That night, Dooley and his men still came to Zeemat’s room. Zeemat hoped his treatment might change, but they yanked him out of his chair and began to shackle his arms and legs as usual. Zeemat was losing patience. He pulled his arms and legs away, resisting the shackling, but they managed to restrain him. He tried to hold his ground, but they forced him out of his room with the cattle prod and the butt of their rifles.
Once they secured Zeemat to the interrogation chair, he found that nothing had changed. Dooley donned his thick leather gloves and started talking.
“I know you understand me, asshole!” he fumed.
Zeemat had never spoken a single word to Dooley, but Dooley didn’t seem to care. He always asked a question, waited for a moment of Zeemat’s silence, then punched him hard.
“Tell me about your ship. Write something down. Draw something—anything.” Dooley waited a moment, but Zeemat remained quiet.
Bam! Dooley landed another heavy blow to the left side of Zeemat’s face.
“Describe the weapons on board your ship. Draw it. I know you can draw!” he said, pointing at the paper and pencil that were always on hand. Dooley drew an example, surprising Zeemat with how remarkably close it was to Janusia’s shape. Though it confused Zeemat, he didn’t show it. He kept silent. But this time he looked Dooley straight in the eyes and shook his head no. Dooley smacked him again.
Zeemat noticed that the nature of the questions had changed. Dooley now only asked about weapons and his ship. He found the series of questions confusing because Deltare had told him that his ship completely disintegrated when he crashed, yet Dooley seemed to have specifics he could not have known without examining a Torkiyan ship. He clenched his teeth and squeezed his lips shut, now even more committed to not cooperating. His head snapped right and left, absorbing Dooley’s repeated blows. He saw no evidence of a new deal, and now he had questions of his own—for Deltare.
Thirty-Seven
Awareness
The following day, Zeemat woke early and looked out his window in anticipation as the last of the fading stars surrendered to the dawn. He couldn’t wait for Deltare’s morning visit, yet he dreaded it at the same time. He wondered exactly what she knew, what she told her superiors, and if they had agreed on a new deal, why the beatings continued. Why had they taken everything out of his room, and—most importantly—what had she kept from him?
Deltare walked in at her usual time and immediately noticed that the room was emptier than the day before.
“Those jerks! They took your TV and stereo!” she said. “This is the new deal?”
Zeemat studied her, a scowl darkening his face.
“I told Morgan you would cooperate if they came up with a new deal,” Deltare said. “I reminded him of President Kennedy’s agreement with you . . . with us. But it didn’t seem to matter. Morgan said, ‘I know what he can do. I know you can communicate with him. So, no deal.’ Instead, I see they have a new plan, to take away things you’ve already earned.”
“They know about my ship,” Zeemat said with darkened eyes, carefully studying her reaction. “How do they know about my ship? You told me it was completely destroyed.”
Deltare paused for a moment, noticing a change in Zeemat’s usual tone. There was a certain rumble in it, like a lion’s growl, and it frightened her. He was upset. She answered her friend, noticing the higher pitch in her own voice and her trembling hands.
“L-Let me clear up a few things,” she stammered. “There’s something you should know that maybe I should’ve told you before . . .”
“You, Linda? You lied to me?” His body tensed, his English infused with Torkiyan buzzes and clicks that Deltare recognized as tones of anger, pain, and disappointment. His eyes flamed red before slowly diffusing to a deep purple. She sensed the same disappointment she had noticed in the first picture of him she’d ever seen, before they met—the picture of him she was shown in Roswell.
“I’m sorry, Mat. I didn’t exactly lie, but I wasn’t completely truthful either. I meant to tell you someday, but I thought the information would only be hurtful to you, and I was under strict orders not to tell you.”
“Tell me now, Linda! Where’s my ship?” His eyes flashed crimson again as he slammed a fist on the top of his desk.
“I didn’t lie about that. Your ship was destroyed. That’s what I was told, and I believe them.”
“Then I don’t understand. How do they know details about my ship?”
“Not yours. There was another ship. It arrived seven years before yours did, in Roswell, New Mexico. I saw it myself when they were preparing me to meet you. The ship was incomplete, half of it had been destroyed, but they reconstructed it from the debris they found at the crash site, and they mirrored the other half.”
Zeemat started pacing wildly around the room. “Now? Now you’re telling me this? I thought you were my friend!”
Deltare looked down to the ground, ashamed for keeping such important information from him. She looked up sheepishly to meet Zeemat’s glare.
“There’s more,” she said.
Zeemat cocked his head in the way he did when he was trying to understand things.
“What more?” he asked. He drew close to Deltare, the clicks and buzzes louder, and she cowered back. But he didn’t touch her. “Tell me. Now!”
Deltare could see that Zeemat was trying to keep his eyes from flaming red. He was trying hard to control himself.
“There was a body,” she replied. “A dead body. I saw him, too. He was like you . . . Torkiyan.”
Zeemat halted mid-step. After a moment, he walked to the window and put his hands on the bars. But this time, he yanked on the bars with all his might while letting out a loud, piercing wail. Deltare put her hands to her ears, and when the scream stopped, she gripped her hands hard to try to keep them from shaking. Her eyes clouded over with a torrent of tears.
At last, Zeemat regained some of his composure and turned around to face Deltare.
“A body?” he asked. “One body?”
“Yes,” Deltare replied.
“And what about the others?” Zeemat inquired.
“Others?” she gasped, raising a hand to her mouth.
“Tell me everything,” Zeemat demanded.
Thirty-Eight
Disclosure
Deltare started from the beginning. Zeemat learned all about her linguistics studies and her doctoral thesis on interspecies communication.
“That’s why they recruited me in the first place,” she said. “They thought I’d be able to learn your language.”
She described her “recruitment,” when she was abducted by two men in dark suits while window-shopping on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, then interrogated and analyzed over the course of an entire week before being whisked away in the dead of night to a waiting helicopter at Meigs Field.
“That’s when I first met Morgan. He later told me he was my ‘handler.’ I remember that the helicopter ride was cold and noisy—no way I could sleep—and a few hours later, before the sun came up, we were in the White House with President Eisenhower and two of his top military men. The president offered me an opportunity, but it was more like a direct order I couldn’t refuse, and that was that. Before I knew it, I had a job with the CIA, and I was on a plane, headed to Roswell, New Mexico, to learn more about my assignment—about you, really.”
Zeemat sat in rapt attention while Deltare described what she’d seen in Roswell, just before she was first brought to Area 51.
“. . . and in the center of the room there was a large, cylindrical glass tank filled with a clear fluid, and a body was floating in it. As I approached, I saw his back in close detail. The left side of his body and head were deformed, crushed. The right side was intact. I noticed a slender build, thin arms and legs, long fingers, like yours. To me, the body looked graceful even from the back, even in death. Then I walked around the tank to get a close look at the front.
“When I first saw his face, I remember feeling kind of dizzy, like this couldn’t be real. My whole body was shaking, and I gasped. His right eye seemed to be looking right at me. But then his head didn’t track me as I continued moving around the tank. I noticed the autopsy sutures on his chest and abdomen. Then my scientific training began to take over. When I stood directly in front of him, I saw that his head was bigger on his body than a human’s head would be. The head was rounder at the top, and somewhat pointier at the chin, with a fine jawline. Maybe because the head was bigger, the eye seemed to be lower set. And that eye! A black, almond-shaped structure without an iris or pupil.
“I have to admit, it was frightening. Because of the injuries—the left side of his face being crushed—I couldn’t get the full impression, but I thought the eye seemed bigger on the face than a human’s eye would be. And that was the moment! That’s when I was suddenly struck by the fact that I was noticing differences—the head and eyes a little bigger, the chin a little pointier—but a different idea sprung into my mind. I was amazed that this alien person was not so different, but so much the same as a human! He had a head, an upright body, arms and legs, fingers and toes. He had eyes, a nose, and a mouth. I tried to picture him when he was alive, how he must have moved and seen and talked and thought. I wondered about his personality.
“At that point, I remember Morgan interrupting my thoughts. He said something like, ‘These creatures have been invading us for thousands of years, gathering information. And now we know their plans are escalating after an attempted invasion here in Roswell in 1947, and now another in Nevada in 1954. We believe that a major invasion could be imminent. It’s essential that we find out who and what they are, so we can eliminate the threat.’”
Zeemat stayed silent as he fought waves of conflicting emotions. His eyes toned down to a dull rust color. He was angry at Morgan and his people for assuming the worst in him and for treating him so badly, even though he had to admit that they were right to be concerned about the other Torkiyans. And he was also angry at Deltare for having lied to him, though she was now being very generous with a detailed description of what she had seen. At the same time, he knew she was as close to a friend as he had on this planet, and that if anyone could help him, it would be her. But more than anything, at that moment, he felt heartbroken to learn of yet another fellow Torkiyan’s death, and likely the deaths of his fellow crewmates as well.
He assumed the Torkiyan in the tank in Roswell had been a member of Mission 50 to Cerulea, and the thought carried more hope than he could bear. During some of the time on his own ship, they had traveled at 5D speed. They certainly could have almost caught up with Mission 50 and arrived only seven Earth years apart. He knew one crew member of Mission 50 was dead—but what had happened to the other three? He interrupted his own thoughts to prevent himself from missing any vital information as Deltare continued to speak.
“They found remnants of their ship, and Morgan showed me an album of pictures detailing the ship’s reconstruction. There were pictures of a few men at work, in white full-body overalls. They placed all the ship’s debris in what they believed was the proper order and position, then shaped sheet metal to replace the missing parts of the ship. Other pictures in the album showed the men looking over prints and using tools to rebuild the ship. The final page showed the spaceship on heavy metal supports. They could access a door on top.
“Then Morgan took me to see the ship itself. I approached it slowly, not knowing what to expect. I could easily tell apart the sections that had been added by our people, and the smoother part of the original ship. We climbed a ladder and entered a small cabin from the door on top. The interior of the original half of the ship had two seats, and the desk space and wall were riddled with instrumentation. Morgan said that scientists couldn’t figure anything out. They didn’t know how the ship was powered. They imagined the instruments were designed for navigation and reconnaissance because they couldn’t find weaponry, so they assumed this was a specialized model of ship designed for gathering information. They also assumed that other ships would likely carry weapons.”
Zeemat couldn’t contain himself any longer.
“They made a lot of assumptions.” A short, harsh buzzing sound escaped his lips, but he clamped them shut until Deltare finished everything she had to say.
She nodded. “That’s exactly what I told them! Morgan said the assumptions were based on observations and opinions from the best military minds.”
She looked up at Zeemat, to gauge whether he was ready for what she was about to say. He seemed tense and guarded. She felt her own face and shoulders harden, but she proceeded, knowing this would be hard for him to hear.
“Then he showed me another album. This one was all about the person in the tank. The first pictures showed his crushed body in a bloody suit. They said he was dead when they found him. The next pictures showed a team of technicians cutting the suit off his body. Then there were a few pages of X-rays, showing broken bones on one half of his body, including his skull. There were pictures of him lying on a steel autopsy table. Then I saw pages of pictures showing him being cut wide-open with long incisions, dissected carefully, and all of his organs placed into glass specimen jars.”
