The Flavors of Other Worlds Read online

  “Not ‘almost.’” His host made the correction reluctantly.

  Woozy but determined to hold his ground, mentally as well as physically, Morgan blinked at the stocky Inupiaq. “I don’t follow you.”

  “Then follow me,” Tungarook directed him. “Nobody will believe you anyway.” Turning, he headed for a closed door. “Casey is charging the batteries.”

  “I know. She told me.” Morgan tottered after his host. “What has that got to do with …?”

  As soon as the door was opened and he followed the shorter man through the intervening boot room, he saw.

  The wall of frigid air hit him the instant they stepped out of the changing area and he was tempted to retreat to the warm living room. Brain and body both screamed at him to scurry back to the realm of snug blankets and cozy couch. What he saw, however, held him transfixed. Transfixed and disbelieving. Transfixed and disbelieving and with his hair standing on end. Not in the metaphorical sense, either. Though the longest strands were little more than an inch in extent, each was now standing straight out from the sides and top of his head. Next to him, Albert Tungarook’s much longer black hair was also standing stiffly at attention, making him look like a relative to the porcupine.

  Two sleek but well-used snow machines dominated the tiny, constricted garage. Like an army of pawns surrounding their king and queen, everything from shovels to neatly-racked snowshoes lined and lay against the insulated metal walls. Armories of tools hung from the interior siding, coils of cable and hose were hooked to the walls like hibernating snakes, drums of gasoline huddled against the far wall like so many herded wombats, and in one corner, splayed pelts stood stacked like shoe leather. A rack of steel shelves welded to the rear wall held wired-together ranks of deep-cycle marine batteries. One tangle of cables ran rightward to resolve itself into the inner wall of the house. A second serpentine confusion emerged from a nearby floor-mounted transformer. A skylight dimpled the roof overhead. At present it was open to the cold and the stars.

  Her right arm upraised, fingers extended, Casey Tungarook stood directly beneath the opening. Seemingly unsupported, her long black hair was standing straight up, as if being tugged by the vacuum of space. Dropping straight down from the heavens, a tongue of cold green blaze entered the garage via the open skylight. It coursed down her upthrust arm, through her body, out her outstretched left arm, and into the transformer on which her open palm rested. The expression on her face was perfectly neutral. She was neither smiling nor frowning. Certainly she was not in pain. If anything, an awed Morgan decided, she looked bored.

  Seeing him gaping at her, she turned toward him and smiled reassuringly, her brown skin flushed celadon. “It doesn’t hurt,” she called to him above the soft hiss of the electric heavens that suffused the garage. “Though it does kind of tickle.”

  Morgan did not respond. He had no idea how to respond. What he was witnessing was so implausible, so physically far-fetched, that he was sure anything he might say would leave him sounding like a complete idiot. In the absence of a response, the girl adjusted her stance slightly. The slender downpour of green fire promptly shifted with her, shimmying like a drapery sewn of translucent satin.

  Behind their respective glass windows on the multiplicity of heavy-duty storage batteries, a multitude of individual red needles were steadily advancing from left to right.

  Morgan did not realize how long he had been standing in stupefied silence until the chill that had invaded his open mouth began to sting his jaws. He felt Tungarook’s hand on his arm.

  “Let’s go back inside,” his host suggested gently. “It’s cold in the garage when Casey is working. She’ll be finished soon.”

  “Yes,” Morgan heard a voice murmur. His own. “Back inside.”

  His hands had not trembled when they had taken the mug of hot chocolate from the girl’s fingers, but they did now. He did not even try to pick up the cup as he stared across the room at Tungarook.

  “I either just saw something impossible,” he declared immediately, “or else there’s a concealed film crew here making a movie and I just found myself in the middle of a special effect.”

  His host chuckled. “Yeah, that’s what everybody thinks when they see Casey doing her thing.”

  Morgan blinked. “I’m not the first?”

  Tungarook shook his head. “You’re the first non-Inupiaq. The others, they accept it. Living up here for ten thousand years or so, people come around to accepting all kinds of things folks from down south would call impossible. We have stories and legends for happenings that have never even occurred to you.”

  “So it’s—magic?” Outside, the green glow had vanished, but Casey did not reappear. Checking her wiring, perhaps. In the truest sense of the term?

  “What, are you calling me a superstitious savage?” At the stricken look that appeared on Morgan’s face, Tungarook laughed out loud. “Nothing magical about it,” he replied, taking pity on his guest. “It’s simple physics. Well,” he corrected himself, “maybe not so simple. But physics. I’ve discussed the basis with some of the scientists at the Arctic Research Center outside of town. Without mentioning my daughter’s unusual ability, of course. But process and effect. To put it succinctly, Casey can channel the aurora.”

  Morgan found himself longing for something to drink that was stronger than hot chocolate. “Still sounds like magic to me.” He found his gaze being drawn to the door that led toward the garage. “Looked like magic, too.”

  Tungarook set his mug aside. “What do you know about the aurora borealis?”

  “It’s pretty.” Morgan added apologetically, “I’m just a photographer, most of the time.”

  “And I’m just a hunter, some of the time,” his host replied. “But I have a singular daughter, and I need to know all that I can about her. How did you think we kept the batteries charged sufficiently way out here by ourselves to supply all this light and heat?”

  “I didn’t think about it. As you’ll recall,” Morgan added wryly, “when I got here I was nearly frozen to death.”

  “Oh yeah, so you were. Well, the scientists tell me you get an auroral display when charged particles in the Earth’s magnetosphere collide with and excite atoms in the upper atmosphere. These atoms get rid of their gained energy in the form of light. Because most of the emissions come from something called atomic oxygen, most auroras have a green or red glow. Nitrogen gives blue and purple. I’m told there’s also infrared, ultraviolet, and X-rays, but we don’t see those down here.” He poured himself a fresh mug of steam and chocolate.

  “Casey may be the first person, at least in our time, who can channel the aurora, but she’s not the first incident where it has happened. Back in 1859 a monster storm on the sun produced maybe the strongest aurora in your time and mine. Most of the telegraph lines around the world went crazy; in and out of service, because of the auroral discharge. But it turned out that some of the lines were just the right length and orientation to let a—it’s called a geomagnetically induced current—flow through them, and allow the lines to be used for normal communication.”

  Morgan made a face. “Oh, come on now. Not really.”

  Tungarook nodded. “A couple of operators communicating between Boston and Portland, Oregon switched off their station power and transmitted back and forth for two hours using nothing but auroral current. Said the line worked better on auroral power than it did with their usual batteries.” He waved his mug. “When she puts her arms and body just so, Casey can align herself the same way. Maybe her mother took too many iron supplements when she was pregnant. Maybe there was an impurity in them. I don’t know. “

  Morgan turned contemplative. “Every month there are stories about people conducting lightning through their bodies and into the ground, or into other objects. Then there are the tricks people play with Tesla coils. But I’ve never heard of anyone channeling the aurora itself.”

  Lifting his mug to his lips, Tungarook replied absolutely dead-pan. “You
should get out more. I could rent you a snow machine.”

  “Actually, right now, I’m thinking more of the bed in my hotel room back in Barrow. That, and a steak.”

  “Can’t do steak, but have you ever had uhnavik?” Morgan shook his head no. “I’ll get some out of the cold box. Whale blubber with the skin still on. Boil it ’til it’s soft enough to chew, put on lots of salt. You’ll like it. It’ll remind you of calamari. Eat first, then sleep. I’ll wake you before sun-up.”

  Morgan had to grin again. “I don’t think I’ll sleep ’til February.” More somberly he added, “What makes you think I won’t talk about your daughter and come back here with a news crew?”

  “Two things.” His genial host spoke confidently. “First, because you couldn’t get a news crew or even another photographer out to this place in winter without everybody in Barrow knowing about it first and letting me know in advance. It’s too far from Prudhoe or Fairbanks for a helicopter pilot to risk his machine in the dark and the cold and the wind to find one little house on the tundra.” For the first time since Morgan had made the hunter’s acquaintance, the man’s gaze hardened.

  “Second, I just saved your life. You owe me big time. So I ask you to keep quiet about this thing, and leave my daughter be. Sure she’s got a strange ability, but outside of that she’s a normal, regular teen. If word of what she can do gets out, the scientists will be all over her like mosquitoes on a caribou herd in summer. She won’t have a life worth anything. If you had a daughter, would you want her likeness and life plastered all over the media, every week, every month, until the day she died?”

  “I’m not married,” Morgan replied. He remembered the eyes of the wolf, substituted the flash of the media. “It hurts to say yes, but—I’ve photographed other things and kept them private. I guess I can do the same with this. And you’re right—I do owe you.”

  “Good man.” Turning, Tungarook raised his voice. “Hey Casey! The white guy says he’ll keep his mouth shut!”

  The girl reappeared a moment later. In spite of himself, Morgan could not keep from staring. She looked unchanged, unaffected, utterly average. Had long dead ancestors who possessed her ability once been burned as witches? He could not recall reading anything about the Inupiaq burning or sacrificing people. It was not part of their culture. Every life in the frozen north was too valuable to throw away on such nonsense.

  She came toward him, her expression a mixture of youthful shyness and special knowledge. “Thanks, mister. I really don’t want to be in the papers. I just want to graduate, get my degree, and have a family. You can’t do that if people are studying you like a bug under glass.”

  Morgan flashed on a sudden, unsettling image of a baby in a cradle teething quietly on green lightning. “I understand.” He eyed her up and down. “It really doesn’t hurt?”

  She laughed. “Like I said, it just kind of tickles.” Her eyes flashed mischievously. “Would you like to see what else I can do?”

  Morgan looked uncertain. “Power up a snow machine?”

  “Better than that. Let me put on my parka. You come outside.”

  Outside? He hesitated. He had just barely survived an extended period in a most unfriendly outside. A glance through the window showed that the wind had, at least momentarily, died. And he had not. He looked questioningly over at his host.

  “Go on,” Tungarook urged him, a twinkle in his eye. “I’ll come too, so you won’t get lost.”

  Jibe or joke, it was enough to motivate Morgan. “Where are my clothes?”

  The hunter rose from his chair. “On a grill over the stove. Should be nice and warm by now. I’ll get them.”

  The chill outside bit instantly and hard. Morgan had to fight down the urge to rush back into the inviting warmth of the house. The thin layer of ice and snow crunched beneath his boots as he followed Tungarook out through the boot room and then the side door of the garage. That was how you entered and exited the house. In the absence of neighbors a normal front door would have been superfluous, and leaked heat.

  In all directions there was nothing to be seen but mostly flat, occasionally bumpy ground. Not a tree, not a bush, not a sprig of grass. The latter would come with the sun and the Spring, both still months away from making an appearance. For now and for weeks ahead there would be nothing but ice, snow, killing wind, the occasional mournful cry of a wolf, and more stars than could be imagined even in Wisconsin. That, and the astonishing light storm that pranced and strut across the sky in rolling, mesmerizing waves of incandescent green and red.

  Having donned her parka and boots, Casey joined them. While her father and their guest halted not far from the house, she kept walking until she was a good thirty yards or so away. For what little good it did, Morgan had his arms folded across his chest. He managed to forbear from slapping his sides and jumping up and down. Very soon he was not moving at all, and hardly daring to breathe.

  Casey Tungarook had raised both arms toward the sky. Within moments, she was standing within a wavering spire of green radiance so intense it made Morgan blink to look directly at it. Perhaps a little brighter and wider, it was otherwise no different from the phenomenon he had observed in the garage.

  Lowering her arms until they were thrust straight out to the sides, she began to spin. Slowly at first, then faster and faster. Occasionally she would leap into the air. Though few Inupiaq had the build of a ballerina, Casey’s jumps were often impressive, and visibly enthusiastic.

  Leaning close to the enthralled photographer, Tungarook murmured from beneath the wolverine-rimmed hood of his parka. “Our people are great singers and dancers.” He smiled anew. “We have lots of time to practice, you know.”

  Morgan heard but did not turn to look at the hunter. In front of him, out on the rocky snow-swept ground, a single smiling, stocky sixteen-year old was singing a song in her own ancient language, spinning and twirling as she was enveloped in a softly hissing translucent tornado of light that spread farther and farther beyond her outstretched arms, until it seemed that the entire tundra was ablaze with red and green incandescence.

  As the shimmering aurora that had been brought to ground expanded to envelop him as well, the smile on the face of a thoroughly entranced Morgan grew wider and wider. There were many things he could have said, innumerable comments he could have made. Instead, like the proud father standing beside him, he said nothing. Merely looked on in rapt silence as the girl before them continued to dance away the arctic night, partnering with the fire from the sky.

  7

  Pardon Our Conquest

  I suppose in some ways this story could be considered a companion piece to “Unvasion.” Except that in this instance, as Pogo might say, the aliens is us. When we invaded Iraq, I remember writing that redoubtable international news magazine, The Economist, a letter to the editor that they printed in which I pointed out that one reason the invasion was a bad idea was because such a war would not be cost-effective.

  Traditional warfare is often self-defeating because the victor as well as the vanquished ends up impoverished by the effort expended. Surely there must be other ways to dominate an opponent that do not require the sacrifice of great treasure and thousands if not millions of lives? A more civilized form of combat, if you will. Gamers engage in it every day, with the only collateral damage usually being to the nearest refrigerator.

  If it can be done on-line and on-board, why not in-life?

  * * *

  Admiral Gorelkii shifted his seat on the meter-thick, jewel-encrusted, ceremonial golden cushion that rose behind the sweeping transparent arc of the solid crystal crescent moon, and fumed. His ample pale gray bulk was draped in a bloom of multihued embroidered standards, each one representing one of the ancient Great Hordes that together comprised the Empire of the Three Suns. They weighed on him physically as well as historically. The wearing of the standards was a great honor accorded to a select few only on the most extraordinary occasions.

  Unfortunately for him,
today’s extraordinary occasion was one of surrender.

  His courage and willingness in accepting the responsibility for heading the disagreeable negotiations was recognized on all five inhabited worlds of the three systems that comprised the Empire. That did not mean he looked forward to the impending ceremony. What the exact details would consist of he did not know. What specific protocol was to be followed he did not know.

  No doubt the conquerors of the Empire would be enlightening him in due course.

  The Falan had never been a species to hesitate. Imbued with the heady wine of discovery and an assurance of their own superiority, they had looked forward to the steady expansion of their Empire in the direction of the arm of the galaxy that held a greater density of star systems than their own immediate vicinity. Following initial exploration they had discovered, explored, charted, and engaged in the successful colonization of two new habitable systems.

  Then they had found Drax IV.

  So it was called by the short, multi-legged, hard-carapaced creatures who inhabited the cities and towns they had wrested from its jungles and forests. Mild in temperament, absurd in appearance, they claimed to be part of a vast interstellar dominion called the Commonwealth. Whether this unknown political entity be vast, small, or imaginary, their polite insistence on its existence did nothing to deter the aggressive Falan. It was announced that the system of Drax would be incorporated into the Empire forthwith, and any foolish resistance met with fire and destruction on a planetary scale. Declaring war, the Falan proceeded to open hostilities by unleashing a small example of their firepower on a little-populated corner of the planet.

  Subsequent to this ferocious demonstration, the inhabitants requested some time to contemplate their limited alternatives. While any military prowess on their part remained undetermined, they proved expert in the arts of obfuscation and delay. Eventually the patience of the Falan, never extensive to begin with, ran out.