The Trojan Horse

Chapter Four

New York

USA, Day 5

“What is that they’re playing?”

Jason Lucas had to shout over the racket. The police and National Guard had kept the throng of spectators and protesters back from the landing site near the UN Building, but the roar of the crowd had merged with New York’s most popular orchestra to produce a deafening racket. Everyone in the city and for miles around wanted to see the aliens land. The NYPD had reported that thousands of people were flooding into the city, not all of them with friendly motives. New York had been seeing something of a crime wave as criminals took advantage of the confusion to raid empty houses and steal whatever they could find.

“It’s the theme from Close Encounters,” one of the SETI scientists shouted back. As the official Discoverer of the aliens, Jason had been guaranteed a place on the reception committee; SETI’s other members had had to depend on the luck of the draw. Local politics, Jason had heard, had influenced the selection process, despite its seemingly random nature. SETI drew researchers in from all over the world and the scientists included in the reception party included men from Europe, Japan and even China. “They picked it because of its positive implications of alien contact!”

Jason had to smile. New Yorkers had turned out to welcome the aliens, with their famously independent Mayor Hundred leading the parade. There were hundreds of people wearing facemasks and posing as science-fiction characters from Mr Spock to Chewbacca. The fact that most of the aliens portrayed in human culture tended to be unfriendly had seemingly escaped most of the greeting party, including the dozens who wore grey face masks. Jason had even heard a rumour that victims of alien abduction had been gathering together to file a class action lawsuit against the Galactic Federation, although as far as he knew there was no proof that alien abductions even existed, let alone that the Galactic Federation was somehow involved. It beggared belief that there were two such disparate societies within reach of Earth, but the human race knew nothing about FTL travel. The Galactic Federation might span the galaxy, or even beyond.

Silence fell as the official loudspeakers hummed into life. “We have just received word from the military,” Mayor Hundred said, his famous voice booming out over the crowd and even silencing the musicians. “The alien craft has just entered the atmosphere and is heading towards New York. Their ETA is twenty-seven minutes.”

Jason felt a new rising tide of anticipation. The average American wouldn’t understand just how remarkable — and advanced — alien technology had to be. Even the Space Shuttle — before it had been withdrawn from service — had needed a long runway to land; the aliens, it seemed, had developed technology to land in the midst of the city as casually as one of the helicopters flying high overhead. It was awesome — and terrifying. The human race would have nothing to offer the aliens, no technology, no scientific knowledge… perhaps they were doomed to be a perpetual Third World state in space. Or maybe not; the Japanese had mastered Western technology before they could be crushed and colonised by the West.

Sure, the darker side of his mind reminded him, and then they were crushed after picking a fight they could not win.

SETI had long puzzled over the strange silence from the heavens. If aliens existed, they had reasoned, and if they had possessed technology similar to humanity’s, the human race should have detected some sign of their existence. And yet nothing — apart from a single signal that might have been nothing more than an unexplained natural phenomenon — had ever been detected. Quasars, once thought to be alien navigational beacons, had proved to be entirely natural in origin. The aliens, if they existed, appeared to be too far away for their radio signals to reach Earth without being lost in the background noise.

There were other theories, of course. Some said that no aliens existed, that the human race — created in the image of God — was the sole form of intelligent life in the cosmos. Others said that the aliens had simply failed to break through the technological barrier to developing high technology and eventually heading out to the stars. Still others said that there was no means of travelling faster-than-light, sharply limiting a race’s ability to colonise other stars, or that races evolved beyond the need for colonisation sooner rather than later. And some speculated that the first alien race to develop was stamping out other alien races before they could become a threat. It was the theory that kept a handful of SETI experts awake at night. The human race could not survive if any alien race arrived intending to exterminate the human race.

And then there was the final theory. The aliens intended to allow Earth to develop at its own pace, preventing any of their people from visiting Earth and contaminating the native culture — and ensuring that no signs of their presence reached Earth before the human race was ready to welcome the aliens. He looked over towards a small crowd at one end of the massive space, the Witnesses. They believed that the aliens weren’t just friendly; they believed that the aliens had actively interfered to help shape human development and were — effectively — gods, the creators of the human race. It said something about the degree of credulity in humanity’s nature that — for an internet meme that had existed slightly less than five days — they already had hundreds of thousands of followers. They were ready to welcome humanity’s patrons — to borrow a term from David Brin — but Jason was much less sure of their grounds. There was a reason ‘patron’ was the root of ‘patronise.’ The world-famous science-fiction writer had understood that perfectly. It was unlikely that the Witnesses shared his understanding.

“Ten minutes,” the loudspeaker boomed. “They’re coming!”

Part of Jason’s mind braced for disappointment. He’d read stories where the world had been hoaxed into believing that the aliens were about to land, for all kinds of motives. SETI had wanted to check and recheck the data before making any kind of public statement, if only to avoid being turned into a laughing stock by being hoaxed again. But now… the crowds around him seemed to share his anticipation as the alien craft slowly came into view, followed by a trio of F-22 Raptors. Rumours on the internet suggested that the fighter jets were unarmed, merely providing a deterrent to any media aircraft that might fly alarmingly close to the alien craft. The aliens, as far as SETI was aware, hadn’t offered any objection to the military escort. Indeed, they seemed to be bending over backwards to avoid panicking the inhabitants of planet Earth. That, the general consensus of SETI agreed, was a very good sign. The aliens didn’t have to be kind to the primitive humans, who were staring at their craft as the Aztecs or Incas must have stared at the sailing ships that had brought the Europeans to the New World. It had been a sight beyond their comprehension.

The media had speculated loudly on what an alien landing craft might look like. They’d pulled up hundreds of fanciful designs from science-fiction, ranging from flying saucers to the Starship Voyager. The alien craft was almost a disappointment; it was little larger than a large truck, an ugly craft shaped almost like a brick. Two glowing lights appeared at the stern as the craft tilted over New York and started to slow to a hover, flying without the aid of wings or rotor blades. The human race had built far larger aircraft, even heavy-lift helicopters used by the military, but none of them could hope to reach orbit. For all of its ungainly bulk, the alien craft seemed to float through the air with the greatest of ease. The aliens had certainly not specified that they needed a runway long enough to take the Space Shuttle.

A dull whine, just high-pitched enough to be irritating, echoed over New York as the alien craft sank gracefully towards the ground. Dogs started howling and scrambling away as the sound tore into their far more sensitive ears. The band played louder as the alien craft touched down, the whine fading away to a duller note before it finally vanished. There was a dull clunk as the alien craft reached the ground, suggesting that their shuttle, for all its tiny size, was actually quite heavy. Jason felt excitement spinning through his mind. The complete lack of wings on the shuttle suggested that the aliens could control gravity itself; they might even be able to produce an antigravity generator. It would revolutionise spaceflight if the human race mastered the same technology. The bottleneck had always been lifting a cargo out of the Earth’s gravity well, a task requiring extremely powerful boosters which had to be capable of boosting the mass of their fuel into space along with the cargo in the nose cone. If the aliens taught humanity how to develop antigravity… nothing, absolutely nothing in the entire world was too high a price.

The crowds surged against the lines of policemen holding them back from the alien craft. On the surface, there was something oddly mundane about the alien ship, despite its origins. A second whine echoed through the air briefly as a hatch began to open, rising up like an aircraft hatch and revealing an illuminated interior. The aliens seemed to like similar lighting to the human race. And then a figure began to step out into the bright sunlight…

Jason stared, forgetting everything, but the alien. Even the band had stopped attempting to play a suitable tune for the first meeting of humans and aliens. And as soon as he saw the alien, he knew that it was no hoax. The alien was very alien. The similarities between his — or her; there was no way to tell — physical form and the human form only added to the sense of unreality. It was almost surreal. The silence grew longer, as if no one — human or alien — dared to break it.

Jayne Rowling watched from the press pool as the alien stepped out into the light. She’d been trained to observe and report on what was actually happening — as opposed to what people thought was actually happening — and even as part of her mind gibbered in shock, the rest of her focused on the monumental event in front of her. The alien was humanoid, yet utterly inhuman. Her mind couldn’t quite process the surreal scene in front of her.

Television producers had faced inevitable logistical problems when creating aliens for the hundreds of science-fiction shows produced for the domestic and international markets. An utterly inhuman alien was hard — and expensive — to produce. Mr Spock had been little more than pointed ears and tinted skin, a tribute to the skill of the actor who’d played him. No matter how optimistic or pessimistic the TV serial, the vast majority of the aliens had been almost human. Even Babylon 5 had been forced to use humanoid actors for most of its vast array of alien life. The number of non-humanoid aliens could be counted on the fingers of two hands.

The alien was humanoid, but there the resemblance ended. He — she decided to think of the alien as a male until proven wrong — was tall, standing almost two meters in height. His skin was a mass of green scales, almost like a snake’s skin, which seemed to move and flex over his weirdly-angular legs. No human could have worn such a costume; there simply wasn’t room for human legs. The alien’s legs appeared weak, almost spidery, flexing oddly as he moved forward, down the ramp and onto the soil of Earth. His eyes reminded her of the pet hamster she’d owned as a kid, but the alien’s eyes were a dark red, almost seeming to glow. He moved with a gait that almost suggested a bird, hopping forward on the ground and preparing to peck seeds up in its beak.

He wore a white tunic that covered his chest and upper arms, leaving his legs bare for human inspection. There were no decorations, apart from a single glowing device just below his inhumanly thin neck. His mouth opened into what might have been intended as a smile, but it was immediately clear that his mouth was nowhere near as flexible as any human mouth. Behind the half-smile, sharp white teeth glittered in the sunlight, suggesting that the alien was used to eating meat — perhaps even suggesting that they were as omnivorous as the human race. That made sense, according to the science-fiction writers who had been writing blogs about their creations and how aliens might exist in real life. The human race was the most adaptive species on Earth — with the possible exception of the cockroach — and it was only logical that any other intelligent race would be equally adaptable. She doubted that the aliens would possess superpowers — unlike Superman and other comic-book aliens — and it was quite possible that they were, on average, just as intelligent as the average human.

A second alien appeared at the hatch, followed by a third. Jayne almost winced as they inched their way down the ramp and onto the soil of Earth, watching their legs bend and flex in a manner that would have resulted in broken bones if any human attempted to copy their mannerisms. She found herself glancing at their chests, wondering if the slight bulges she could see under their tunics were breasts, suggesting that the aliens were actually female, before abandoning that train of thought. There was no way to know for sure. Human societies tended to be male-dominated — men were, on average, stronger than women — but the aliens might be female-dominated, or they might have more than just two sexes. There were just so many possibilities.

The first alien stopped in front of the small welcoming committee. Jayne had heard reports that the United Nations had practically turned into a war zone over who should greet the aliens first. There had even been a suggestion that the Pope should join the greeting party, a suggestion that had been howled down by representatives from almost every other religion on Earth. Some of the Witnesses — she could see them at the far edge of the field — had suggested that the aliens would inform the human race that their religions were nothing more than nonsense, dreamed up by men who had wanted power over their fellow men. She could just imagine the social upheaval that would be caused by the aliens discrediting the world’s major religions.

In the end, seven people had been chosen to greet the aliens first. The Secretary-General of the United Nations had taken the lead as the only person with even a tenuous claim to represent the entire human race. Beside him, Mayor Hundred had bullied his way onto the greeting committee by fair means and foul, having waged a skilful media campaign that had won the support of New York’s population and the backing of the Federal Government. A representative from the European Union, the Russian-dominated Commonwealth of Independent States, the African Union, the Organization of American States and the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation completed the welcoming committee. The Arab League had wanted to put forward their own representative, but infighting over which country should have the honour of sending the representative and vigorous opposition from Israel had defeated the proposal.

The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kareem Choudhury of India, stepped forward. He was an elderly man with a neat goatee, wearing a simple black suit; an experienced diplomat holding down a job that required nothing, but diplomacy. Jayne was familiar with the fears that the UN was somehow a supranational organisation that was bent on subverting freedom and democracy, yet common sense proved that the UN was nothing more than a talking shop, a forum to air grievances and issue largely-unheeded resolutions that were rarely enforced by concentrated military action. And without force backing up the resolutions — and the absence of will to use military force — the UN was useless. It was something that galled those who believed in international development even as they sought to raise more and more money for development plans that went nowhere.

“In the name of the United Nations of Earth,” Choudhury said, very calmly, “I welcome you to our world.”

The glowing device on the alien’s chest sparkled as the alien spoke, his mouth moving in odd twitches that suggested that the alien couldn’t quite form human words. Jayne had seen portable translators before, but she’d never been very impressed with even the best of them, not when local dialects and even basic structure could produce widely disparate translations that made little sense. But it stood to reason that the aliens would have better translation technology and their messages had proven that they could speak English. Conspiracy theorists had had fun coming up with all kinds of theories — the one about the government having known about the aliens since Roswell was very popular — but Jayne suspected that the real explanation was simpler. The human race had been beaming transmissions into space for over a century and most of those transmissions would have been in English. And some of them had even been intended to teach English.

“I am Ambassador Haffash of the Galactic Federation,” the alien said. His voice was flat, almost — but not quite — atonal. There were few hints of emotion, something that puzzled Jayne until she realised that the alien computers were almost certainly checking, rechecking and updating their language databanks. The alien sounded… pleased? It was impossible to tell for sure. “In the name of the association of intelligent beings that have formed our unity, I welcome the human race into the galactic community. May you find friends and cousins among the stars, as so many have done before you.”

The crowd burst into cheers. Jayne watched as the alien turned and waved at the crowd, one oddly-jointed hand passing through the air. Just how closely had they studied humanity, Jayne wondered, to know what that gesture meant?

Once the remaining members of the welcome committee had greeted the alien — the other two aliens were not introduced, something that puzzled Jayne — the Secretary-General of the United Nations invited the aliens to follow him into the UN Building. The aliens, who were still looking at the crowd, turned and followed, their necks twisting oddly in a way that would have proven fatal to any human neck. As they passed the press pool — the reporters, for once, were silent, staring at the aliens in front of them — Jayne caught a whiff of scent from one of the aliens. He smelled hot and spicy, yet something about the scent made her hair stand on end. She told herself that she was imagining it. Who expected an alien to smell pleasant?

Puzzled, uneasy despite herself, she followed the aliens into the UN Building.