Starship Winter

— TWO —

Spindizzies are beautiful creatures.

The females of the species leave the shola trees in great swarms at twilight and hover over the bay, their four-part wing systems catching the light of the setting sun as Delta Pavonis dips, swollen and bloody, into the sea. The insects present a beautiful sight then, as a panoply of golden light plays across their flickering wings, but this is merely a prelude to the show that will follow. Minutes later they are joined by a cloud of males. They mate in mid-air, and together they pulse in a polychromatic display like diamonds on fire. Imagine millions of these individual points of strobing, multicoloured light strung out along the coast, and you can understand why visitors flock to watch in silent wonder.

I was sitting at a table on the cantilevered patio at the exhibition centre, looking out over the Mackinley straits. Maddie, Hawk and Kee were with me. I had grabbed a table by the rail in order to have a ringside view when the spindizzies arrived. It’s a sight that I never tire of watching.

“Here come the ladies,” Maddie said, her eyes wide. She looked stunning tonight in a long black dress, her golden ringlets framing her pale, heart-shaped face.

“Look at that!” Hawk laughed. He might have presented the façade of a macho buccaneer, but it couldn’t conceal the romantic streak that ran close to the surface.

We gasped as a mist of scintillating spindizzies swept over the domed roof of the exhibition centre and roiled above the straits. Experts have calculated that over a million female insects swarm in the overture to the show, their shimmering wings refracting the light of the setting sun. Cries of delight rose from the watchers around us.

Kee, a tiny blonde Ashentay, gripped Hawk’s arm like a child and stared open-mouthed. She might have looked human to the uninitiated eye◦– though human in miniature, with bird-like bones, a thin face and unnaturally large eyes◦– but Kee was as alien as the spindizzies, and the insects held a sacred place in the mythology of her people.

“And here come the males of the species,” Hawk said.

A dark cloud, thick as ink, rolled over the exhibition centre and headed straight for the vast, reflective mass of their prospective mates.

Kee raised a hand to her forehead in a quick, reverential gesture, murmuring something in the language of her people. Gazing at the spindizzies, Hawk murmured a translation, “Summer and Winter, the year turns, the kalay◦– the spindizzies◦– conjoin in wondrous harmony. We are blessed.”

Over the straits, the male and female spindizzies met, swirled, and seconds later it happened.

The spindizzies mated, and the bodies of the females lit up suddenly like tiny, coloured neon tubes. Multiplied a million-fold, the spectacle was staggering. No human firework display could match the vibrancy or the extent of the pulsing, shifting play of colour as the insects swarmed and surged in paroxysms of coital joy.

I found myself laughing in pure delight. Around me, others were crying at the sight.

The display lasted perhaps ten minutes, followed by the aftermath, which I always found subtly moving and melancholy. The airborne glow died as suddenly as it had begun, to be replaced by the last glitter of sunlight through the females’ wings. The males, dark shapes like massed iron filings, then fell away, spent and dead, and floated down to the surface of the sea. For the next few weeks their husky carcasses would be washed up on the beaches along the length of the coast.

The females, for their part, returned fertilised to their lairs in the shola tress, where they would lay their eggs and hibernate for the winter. In spring their young would be born and take wing in another, though lesser, display of alien biological wonder.

We drank our beers and watched the female spindizzies pass overhead in small groups.

There was a murmur of comment in the crowd behind us, and we turned to see Matt moving through the parting press towards us. He was accompanied by Chandranath, the director of the exhibition centre, and◦– I was surprised to see◦– none other than Darius Dortmund.

The off-worlder wore the same white suit as the other day, and in the fading twilight he seemed even paler than the first time we met.

Dortmund bent towards Matt to say something as they approached, and Matt was scowling at the off-worlder’s remarks.

I did not notice the fourth member of their group until they were almost upon us. She was walking in their wake, a slim blonde woman I judged to be in her late thirties, elfin and smiling. I thought at first that she was a native Ashentay, and that she was partnering Dortmund, an idea I found disconcerting.

They joined us and a waiter dispensed drinks. Chandranath introduced Dortmund, redundantly, as we’d all made his acquaintance, and then the woman, who I now saw was not alien.

“Lieutenant van Harben of the Mackinley Police Department,” Chandranath said.

We exchanged handshakes and small talk, and I found myself standing next to van Harben at the rail while the others discussed art-related topics amongst themselves.

She smiled up at me, playing with the stem of her wine glass. Her eyes were startlingly green. “I read about you and your friends before I came to Chalcedony,” she said. Her voice was soft, tinged with an accent I judged to be Northern European.

I smiled. “Don’t believe everything you read,” I quipped. A lot had been reported about how Matt, Maddie, Hawk and I had stumbled on the secret of the Yall, not a quarter of it accurate.

“I didn’t,” she said. “Anyway, it’s nice to meet you in the flesh.”

I gestured towards Dortmund, who was pontificating on some subject in his characteristic manner: that is, speaking but not visually addressing his audience. He was gazing out to sea at the female spindizzies drifting inland.

“Did you come to Chalcedony with Dortmund?” I asked. It was the most diplomatic way I could think of ascertaining whether or not they were together.

She stabbed a glance at the off-worlder, saying, “That… man? No. No, of course not. I came here six months ago to take up the post of Lieutenant with the Mackinley Police Department.”

I nodded, sipping my drink to hide my reaction: I had that involuntary, sexist male response of surprise when I encountered a woman in an unexpected role. Call me ignorant, but my image of Detective Inspectors was of burly, middle-aged, cynical men with alcohol dependencies.

“But I take it you’re off duty tonight, Lieutenant?”

“Wrong, Mr Conway,” she said. “I might be out of uniform, but I’m working. I’m heading a team to ensure that everything here runs like clockwork.”

I smiled. I hadn’t heard that archaic expression since my childhood.

I think it was then that I knew I was going to screw up my courage and, at some point in the evening, ask Lieutenant van Harben if she would care for a drink, or even a meal, later that week.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your first name,” I said. “And it doesn’t feel right calling you Lieutenant all night.”

She laughed, and proffered her hand again. “Of course, I’m sorry. I’m Hannah.” And it might have been my imagination, or hope, but I detected that she held onto my hand for a moment longer than etiquette required.

“So you’ve made the acquaintance of Mr Darius Dortmund,” I said.

She leaned towards me and said in a lowered tone, “Can’t stand the man. There’s something about him… he’s not only arrogant, but creepy.”

I raised my glass. “I’ll second that, Hannah.”

“He got into an argument with Matt Sommers ten minutes ago about the validity of his artwork◦– and particularly this exhibition. Dortmund claimed it transgressed art and strayed onto the territory of cultural profanity.”

“What did Matt say?”

“He was brilliant. He said all art was about broadening human◦– and alien◦– understanding of experience, and as such his current artwork was doing that. He cited the compliance of the Elan themselves in the project. Dortmund started to object, but that’s when Director Chandranath suggested we go outside to watch the spindizzies.”

“What did you think of them?”

She shook her head. “I can safely say I’ve never ever seen anything quite so beautiful.”

“Have you ventured out of Mackinley since your arrival?”

She shook her head. “Too busy with work.”

“The coast, especially north of here, is spectacular. I live up at Magenta Bay.”

She nodded. “I’ve read about your ship, the Mantis.”

“You should come up some time. I’ll show you around. The foothills have a series of incredible waterfalls…” I stumbled to a halt, blushing like a schoolboy.

She reached out, gripped my hand, and tipped her head to one side. “I’d like that,” she said.

She released my hand just as there was another commotion among those gathered behind us. Heart racing, I turned to see a tiny, blue-green figure step daintily through the crowd towards us.

He was perhaps three feet tall, and thin, with long spindly legs which had two sets of knees. His torso seemed disproportionately compacted, and his arms◦– again with double joints◦– too long. His facial features were almost reassuringly normal, in that he had two large eyes and a long mouth. I found myself thinking the alien’s head resembled some kind of bushbaby or lemur.

He paused before our group, bobbing slightly on the suspension of his bi-jointed legs.

Matt made the introductions. “This is Heanor, Ambassador of the Elan. Heanor, I’d like to introduce you to my good friends.”

As Matt spoke our names, the alien Ambassador looked at us each in turn, shaping a graceful gesture in the air before his chest. “I am pleased to meet you,” he said in a high, reedy voice, then looked up at Matt and went on, “I am happy with the conjunction of events, Mr Sommers. I am happy to see the exhibition commence. I would be pleased if you might commence the opening ceremony.”

Matt nodded graciously, cleared his throat and said, “Ladies and gentlemen…” A hush settled over the assembled guests. “I’m not going to make a big speech. My art speaks for itself, I hope. I will say, however, that this piece marks a radical departure in my work, as you will shortly appreciate. Also, I would like to thank the kindness and understanding of the Elan people in affording me the opportunity to bring from their homeworld the Epiphany Stones that comprise this installation, entitled Concordance.” He bowed his head to Heanor, and murmured something I took to be in the Elan language, and then, “My eternal gratitude.”

I happened to glance at Dortmund, then. He was watching the artist with an expression which mixed annoyance and disgust.

Matt raised his arms. “Please, if you would care to make your way to the main hall…”

Hannah caught my eye, tipped her head and gave a quick smile. “Shall we?”

We moved with the crowd towards the entrance.

The exhibition centre was a big, low-slung dome, perhaps a hundred metres in diameter. Usually it was divided into sections for exhibitions and shows, but tonight the entire floor space was given over to Concordance.

The interior of the dome was dimly lit, to begin with. Then, as the guests entered the exhibition, a centrally mounted ceiling light, like some kind of giant pendant ruby, began to glow. As we watched, perhaps fifty individual beams of crimson light spoked from the ruby and struck the faceted surfaces of as many stones located on plinths around the dome.

There was a gasp from a guest up ahead. I made out a woman in her fifties, who had approached one of the faceted stones.

Beside me, Hannah grabbed my hand and squeezed. “Look.”

A nimbus of verdant light surrounded the woman, and within the circumference of that light I could see the shapes of small, moving figures. They were Elan, a trio of the small beings seemingly addressing the woman, phantom figures gesturing with their long, bi-jointed arms as she stared at them in wonder.

Other guests had approached the plinthed Epiphany Stones and were similarly bathed in light and confronted by the ghostly alien figures.

I moved to a vacant stone, pleasantly aware that Hannah was at my side. I glanced at her before entering the stone’s activation field. “You first,” I said.

She touched my arm. “Let’s do it together, David.”

Side by side we took a step forward. Instantly a bright light hit us◦– sky blue this time◦– and I experienced an odd, and unsettling, sensation of being disconnected from my immediate surroundings. Not only did I no longer seem to be in the exhibition centre, but I had the intimation that I was no longer on Chalcedony. I looked out, beyond the central radiance emanating from the stone, but could not make out the rest of the dome.

I glanced at Hannah. “Do you feel that?”

She nodded, a pinched expression of concern on her elfin features. She had taken my hand. “It’s… where are we, David? I feel as if I’m on another planet.”

The odd thing was that, although I knew we were in a nimbus of light no more than two metres across, it was as if we were standing upon a vast plain without boundaries, as if we might set off walking and never step from the encapsulating light.

I laughed. “Me too. Hey◦– look.”

In the distance I saw three alien figures approaching us. They were Elan, and for some reason I gained the impression that they were aged and wise. They came within a metre of Hannah and me, stopped and gazed at us with their big, round eyes.

And I was flooded with a sensation of… how can I express this without seeming insane or gullible? I felt then that I was in some kind of communication with these beings. No words were exchanged, not even gestures. It was a mind-to-mind thing, a meeting of emotions, perhaps. I was overcome with a sense of peace, of harmony◦– an intimation of the universal oneness of all things in existence.

I felt Hannah’s small weight against me, almost as if she were swooning. “It’s like… like music,” she gasped.

That was, I thought, the best way to describe the sensation. It was wordless, thoughtless, a communication that transcended species barriers and the need for the normal channels of explication.

The figures gestured, and there was something reassuring and gentle about the grace of their movements. They retreated, backed away, and the blue light surrounding us suddenly vanished, pitching us into the stark reality of the exhibition dome.

“Good God,” I said as I staggered from the plinth. Hannah was with me, and I realised that we were still holding hands. I looked around, shocked by the fact of my sudden translocation back into the real world.

All around, others were undergoing the same shocked transition. Hawk and Kee came up to us. They were speechless. We stared at each other, smiling inanely.

At last Hawk said, pointing to the stone he and Kee had just stepped away from, “Try that one, it’s… it’s magical…”

Hannah nodded and like an eager child dragged me over to the plinth. We stepped into its embrace.

This time, the light that surrounded us was cerise, and again I experienced that odd sense of dislocation, as if we were no longer on Chalcedony. Two figures approached us, two bent and stooped Elan, who regarded us with their massive eyes and gestured with their oddly articulated arms. And the mood communicated this time was of loss◦– I was filled with a moving sense of bereavement, not for an individual person, but the universal melancholy of that inexplicable and inescapable pre-emptive grief, almost terror, that grips you in the empty early hours when the preoccupying details of daytime are gone and you apprehend the unavoidable fact of your mortality and the fact that you will be dead for all eternity. Beside me, Hannah was weeping quietly.

And then, suddenly, the aliens reached out, one to Hannah and the other to me, and their ghostly hands seemed to brush our brows. And how to describe the rush of nameless emotion that assailed us then, for I was sure that Hannah was undergoing the same.

The sense of loss and fear was banished, and I knew◦– I knew with a certainty beyond all doubt◦– that life would not end with my death; that existence was ongoing and eternal, that the ills of the physical were but a passing phase that would be transcended when I passed from this life to the next.

I was filled with a joy beyond description◦– and then the light ceased and Hannah and I were back in the mundane surrounds of the dome.

Tears tracked down her pale cheeks and we came together suddenly in an embrace that celebrated what we had just experienced.

Hannah shook her head. “But how does Matt do it? I mean… it’s more than just art!”

I laughed. “What did he say, that art was all about broadening human and alien understanding of experience? I’d say he’s pretty well succeeded in doing that.”

“Me too. I can’t wait to ask him how he managed it.”

“Knowing Matt”, I said, “I think he’ll want to keep the secret to himself. Like a magician, you know?”

She tugged my arm. “Shall we try another one?”

“Try stopping me.”

For the next hour we moved from stone to stone, as entranced as the rest of the guests. We passed through three very different experiences. One communicated to us the joy of birth; it was as if the essence of the feeling I experienced at the birth of my daughter had been somehow distilled by alien alchemists and poured into my soul.

The emotion conveyed by the next stone seemed to be the futility of hatred, at least that was how I interpreted it: I was assailed by vengeful feelings, swiftly followed by a notion of the negativity of these feelings.

The next stone communicated an emotion so alien, so inexplicable◦– yet always hovering on the very cusp of my apprehension◦– then it vanished, like the content of a dream upon awaking, as the light ceased and returned us to the dome.

“David!” Hannah said, thrusting her wrist in front of my eyes. “Look, we’ve been in the dome for more than an hour and a half. And yet… I could have sworn we’ve experienced each stone for no more than five minutes.”

“Yet another wonder of the things,” I murmured.

I was about to suggest we take a break and have a drink when I noticed a commotion at the far side of the dome. One of the guests had evidently found the experience too much and collapsed. A couple of first-aiders had hurried to assist, followed by Matt Sommers and the Elan Ambassador. As the guest climbed to his feet, waving away all offers of help, I saw that it was Darius Dortmund. He hurried for the exit to the patio, accompanied by Matt.

Hannah was frowning to herself, and I wondered if she was thinking the same as me: that perhaps, due to his heightened empathetic ability, Dortmund had found the extraterrestrial displays just too much.

“How about a drink?” Hannah suggested, taking the words from my mouth.

We moved to the patio, where the last rays of the sun were playing over the waters of the straights. Dortmund and Matt were at the rail, speaking in lowered tones. The off-worlder was clutching a whisky.

Maddie, Hawk and Kee were seated at a table in the bar area. Maddie waved us over. “Well, what do you think?”

“Amazing,” I said, then laughed at the inadequacy of my response. “I thought Matt’s emotion crystals were great, but these are something else.”

“I’ve never experienced anything like it,” Hannah said.

I ordered a couple of beers from a waiter. “But how does he do it?” I said.

Maddie said, “Well, why don’t you ask the man himself?”

Matt had joined us, clutching a glass of beer and looking thunderous. Now Matt is usually the most pacific of people; I’d rarely seen him angry about anything. I looked beyond him. Dortmund was at the bar, ordering another whisky.

Maddie laid a hand on Matt’s arm. “What is it?”

He gave a tight smile, shaking his head. “I just find Dortmund’s attitude arrogant and… ignorant,” he said. “Let’s forget him, anyway.”

Hannah said, “We enjoyed the exhibition, Matt.”

“It’s exceeded all my expectations. Even when I was setting it up, I never dreamed the experience would be quite so… so powerful.”

“David was wondering how you achieved the effect,” Maddie said, smiling. “Come on, your secret’s safe with us.” As an aside to us, she went on, “I live with him, and he’s not said a word to me!”

Matt relented. “It’s no secret really. The Epiphany Stones are religious relics to the Elan. They contain the essences of their ancestors◦– each stone housing, if you like, the lineage of certain families.”

Hawk, ever the materialist, was frowning. “You mean, they believe the stones contain these essences, or that they really do?”

Matt pursed his lips, tipping his head. “The Elan believe”, he said, “and so do I. Of course, I didn’t before I went to Epiphany. I’d read about the stones. I was intrigued. But what I experienced on the planet…”

“When you were with the elders in the cavern?” Hawk asked.

Matt nodded. I looked at Hannah. She was wide-eyed. Matt said, “The Elan believe that when they die◦– that is, when their bodies die◦– their souls migrate to the stones. Of course, the stones have to be in the vicinity. It’s considered a tragedy if an Elan dies away from a stone. Anyway, when they die, their souls or essences are imprinted within the atomic matrices of the stones◦– and their descendants are able to commune with the stones, with their ancestors.”

“And you experienced this with the elders?” Hannah asked.

“Not as such. They gave me a drug, a sedative, which sent me into a trance. An elder then communed with his family stone, and with the facility of the drug I was able to apprehend a small part of the wonder he was experiencing.” He shrugged. “After that, it was a technical problem I had to solve: how to make something of that experience available to a human audience. That’s what I’ve been working on for the past year, before my second trip to Epiphany to formally request from the Elan the loan of fifty stones.”

Hawk was still frowning. “But do you really think the stones contain the souls of the aliens, or are they merely recording devices which store an impression of their essences?”

Matt pointed a stubby forefinger at the pilot. “Now that, my friend, is the big question. I suppose it depends on your philosophical standpoint.”

“But how were you able to communicate what’s in the stones to us?” Hannah wanted to know.

Matt shook his head. “I don’t think I have. That is, I haven’t been able to communicate the full experience. What I’ve done is suggest, through piezoelectric enhancement, a small part of the content of the stones. You can’t really communicate with the spectral Elan you see when in the vicinity of the stones, merely understand a mood or feeling.”

“Whatever it is”, I said, “it’s damned powerful.”

“But”, said a new voice to the group, “is it art?”

Like a ghost, Dortmund had joined us. He stood beside the table, clutching a tumbler and looking superior. He drew up a seat◦– a barstool was all that was available◦– and sat down side-saddle, looming over us.

He did not look at any one of us, as was his habit, but rather stared down at the centre of the table as he said, “I mean, I don’t wish to demean Sommers’ technical accomplishment in staging this… ‘show’, but I would question whether it is really a valid rendition of what it is to be Elan, or whether it’s merely a meretricious, I might even say sensationalist, pantomime.”

Matt said, reasonably, “I never meant it to be a comprehensive statement on what it is to be Elan◦– that’s impossible. How can the member of one species really apprehend what it’s like to be another? I meant to give some approximation. To communicate this fundamental fact◦– that despite the differences between the Elan and humans, we have a lot in common.”

Dortmund smiled to himself. “I think that answers my question satisfactorily, then. The exhibition is no more than a pantomime.”

“Don’t be so bloody sententious, Dortmund!” This came from Hannah, seated beside me, and I stared at her in surprise. She was sitting back in her chair and staring at the off-worlder.

Dortmund then did something odd◦– odd, that is, considering his previous aversion to eye contact. He stared at Hannah, piercingly. “Sententious?”

I expected his gaze to flick away, to rest on the centre of the table again, but it remained fixed on Hannah.

She said, “Just because your ability enables you to commune with the stones and thereby gain a heightened experience of what they contain, that doesn’t mean you have the right to demean the experience the rest of us have had.” She held his gaze, unflinching.

He remained staring at her. He wore an odd expression, as if trying to read something in her features, but was unable to do so.

He said, “But my dear, I don’t demean the value of your experience, I merely criticise the value of the exhibition as a work of so-called art. After all, if criticism has any validity, then surely the considered opinion of a critic with honed expertise and insight ought to be respected.”

Matt joined in. “But you’re not bringing artistic criteria to the exhibition, Dortmund. You have your own agenda. I present Concordance as a work of art, not of xeno-ethnological fidelity.”

“Which brings me back to my initial question,” Dortmund said. “Is it art?”

Hannah said, “What is art, anyway, but a means of communicating experience? I’d say that Matt’s exhibition pretty much fulfils that criteria.”

Dortmund gave his maddeningly superior, frosty smile. Oddly, his gaze hadn’t left Hannah since she’d first spoken. “It brings a tawdry, diluted vaudeville of second-hand emotion to a jaded, bourgeois audience,” he said.

Maddie said, “Well, we could be arguing this point all night. Who’s for another drink?”

While she collected orders, Dortmund slipped from his stool and moved across to the rail. I noticed, as he did so, that his stare never left Hannah.

I looked at her. She was watching him as he turned and stood with his back to us, gazing out across the waters of the straight.

I murmured, “I don’t think he likes you, Hannah.”

She took my hand and squeezed. “Then the sentiment is reciprocated.”

Maddie ordered drinks and we chatted of other things. At one point, as Hannah was in conversation with Hawk and Kee, Maddie touched my arm and murmured, “You two are getting on rather well, if I might say?”

I smiled. “She is rather wonderful, Maddie.”

Later that evening, after a few more drinks, I screwed up my courage and said to Hannah, “Ah… you said you’d like to see more of the exhibition. It opens officially tomorrow, and I know a great restaurant on the seafront. I was wondering…”

She tipped her head to one side and smiled at me. “That would be fantastic, David.”

“Great. And there’ll be another show of spindizzies to watch.”

For the rest of the evening I felt like an adolescent on the eve of his first date.

Much later, as we finished our drinks and were about to leave, I happened to glance across at Darius Dortmund, still standing by the balcony rail. I think I was the only one among the group who saw what happened next.

The last of the female spindizzies were making their way inland, and one or two had lost their way and strayed into the bar area. One approached Dortmund by the rail, the insect a thing of scintillating beauty. As it sailed by him at head height, the bar lights catching its iridescent wings, the off-worlder reached out quickly, snatched the spindizzy from the air, and crushed the hapless creature in his fist.

Which was shocking enough, but even more so was the expression of satisfaction on his cold, pale face.

I looked across at Kee to make sure she had not witnessed this arbitrary act of cruelty, but she was hanging onto Hawk’s arms and laughing at something he was saying.

The evening was at an end and I followed the others from the patio.