Fear and Aggression (21 page)

“
Yeah, what?” came Tammy’s
voice from across the lab.

“
No, Tammy. I didn’t call
you. She’s trying to learn our names. You should see this picture
that she drew of you.”

Tammy turned around, and looked a bit
irritated.

“
It’s beautiful,” said
Steve. Tammy shook her head and turned back to her work.

Aspiria then attempted, “Tammy.” Again, it
was very nasally, but she seemed to work extra hard. It seemed
extraordinarily important to her that she get Tammy’s name right.
Upon completion, she hurriedly drew two more people. The faces
though were left without any detail. She shrugged.

“
It must be Mike and Bob,”
said Danny.

Aspiria had not gotten a good look at either
of their faces, and they had left after their blood work. The men
were starting the process of teaching her Mike’s name, when Tammy
interrupted. “Guys, I need some space. I’ve got a lot to do. It’s
time to put your pet back in its cage. You can play with it
later.”

Steve looked up, and thought about
protesting, but as he saw the look in her eyes, he realized that
this was not a request, and it was not negotiable. “Let’s clear
out,” he said. James had put the tranq. down a long time ago,
without realizing it. Danny went up to Aspiria and indicated the
cell. Aspiria looked hurt, but only momentarily. She got up and
began to walk toward her cell. Danny escorted her, but did not put
his hand around her arm. Steve realized that they were treating her
with much less security. He felt torn. Part of him wanted to get
the men back into military form, but part of him wanted to treat
Aspiria with greater respect. He let her enter herself into the
cell, and did not ask James to pick up the tranquilizer.

Danny locked her in. He felt—different—doing
so this time. Aspiria looked at Danny and smiled. “Danny,” she said
in her nasally tone. He smiled, and walked away.

Soon the room was empty, except for Tammy.
Tammy did not look over at her, but kept at her work for hours.
Aspiria wanted to have the drawing device. She wanted to study
their writing. Instead she lay down and closed her eyes. She tried
to picture the sounds and characters in her head. Communication was
going to be difficult, but she had to try. Her thoughts soon turned
to Roloff and Caryell. Soft tears began to roll down her cheeks.
She didn’t want to show her emotions to Tammy, so she kept the
sounds and sniffles quiet.

Over the next several days, Steve spent a
lot of time in the lab. He had always been careful to not go to the
lab too much. He didn’t want to show undue impropriety. Now, he had
an entirely new motivation to be in the lab; he wanted to
understand Aspiria. Because his desire to be in the lab was
completely justified, he had no hesitation in spending as much time
there as he desired. Tammy was thoroughly involved in her studies,
and Steve was enjoying completely the time that he was spending
with Aspiria. Still, he and Tammy also found time to spend together
each day. She did not seem uncomfortable with the idea of sharing
affection with Steve when they were alone. Steve was less
comfortable, because he did not feel alone; Aspiria was there,
too.

Aspiria was more
foreign
than alien to
him now. Both he and Aspiria worked tirelessly each day trying to
understand each other. They would often laugh playfully with each
other. Steve felt like he was slaughtering her language, and the
looks that she would give him sometimes said the same. For her
part, she was not quite as nasally now, but still he could tell
that, to her, his voice and language must sound awful. Sometimes
when they would laugh hard, Tammy would turn around with
irritation. At other times, she would give Steve jobs to do. He
would feel a little annoyed about having his important work
interrupted, but he felt that Tammy was on the whole being very
patient.

On the first day, they passed the tablet
through the bars on Aspiria’s cell back and forth. Steve would let
her out for bathroom breaks, and escorted her without a weapon, or
any other security. The next day, he let Aspiria out, and they sat
next to each other at a work table. Tammy gave him a look of
concern, but Steve smiled at her reassuringly. Steve was very
strong, and this alien woman neither showed signs of hostility, nor
did anything to indicate that she could out run or overpower him.
Besides all of this, she seemed just as interested in getting to
know him and his language as he was in getting to know hers.
Cooperation was the working relationship, and he felt no concern as
he got to know her.

During their work, Tammy chimed in, “I don’t
understand.” Steve turned around and looked at her. “Not one of our
viruses has infected any of its cells. I tested them against my own
cells, and every one of the viruses is virulent. But they have had
no effect on its cells at all. Weird.”

“
I thought that you said
that you had infected her cells, and that she had a
cold.”

“
Bacteria, Steve. The
bacteria caused infection in vivo, and she did get a bacterial
respiratory infection. It cultured as earth bacteria, and it
cleared up quickly with antibiotics. But the viruses don’t seem to
be able to infect its cells.” Tammy was back to work, and didn’t
seem interested in any further conversation.

As fascinated as Steve was with Aspiria’s
spoken language, he was even more fascinated by her written
language. At first it seemed so simple: circles, triangles, and
squares. But as he watched her try and write the words that he
spoke to her, he began to notice subtleties. There were three
relative sizes to each of the shapes: large, medium and small. The
large shapes seemed to be in a line. The medium shapes could be
squared to the top of the large shapes, or the bottom of the large
shapes. The small, had this relationship to the medium shapes. The
small to the large could be either squared to the top middle or
bottom of the large shapes. She wrote from left to right, and the
size of the shape seemed to be relative to the shape directly to
the left of it. Accents were also clearly important. There seemed
to be so many accents. Shapes might get a back slash through them,
or they could get underlined or over-lined—sometimes, just a
vertical line in the center of the shape. Occasionally the whole
shape would get circled, and at other times the whole ‘word’ would
get circled. The other accent that was common was two dots. They
appeared horizontally over the shape, vertically to the right of
the shape, or horizontally within the shape. Sometimes a shape
would have multiple accents.

As Aspiria would work to pronounce a word,
she would change the shapes, relative sizes, positioning, and
accents feverishly. The slightest sound difference would produce
significant differences in how she formulated the word in her
written language. At this stage, Steve was lost, but he still found
it fascinating. Aspiria was equally lost on Arabic characters. At
one point he wrote out the alphabet, in lower and capital letters.
Aspiria gasped as she looked at it. She was lost, and he felt a
little better by this fact. Her spoken English vocabulary was
improving quickly. She had a fantastic memory and was clearly
focusing. It may have been easier to have just one teaching the
other, but they took turns: each trying to teach each other one
another’s language. By the fifth day, rudimentary conversation was
occurring, and they both felt exhausted and exhilarated.

Aspiria was working on asking questions. She
was learning the tone of questions, as opposed to the tone of
statements. All of the questions were simple, and asked just for
the sake of practice. That is, until she asked if they could walk
around. At first Steve just encouraged her that she had asked
correctly. But Aspiria looked at him in such a way, that he
realized that she was making an actual request. She repeated, but
differently this time, “May we go on walk?” and she indicated the
door by which Steve always entered and exited.

Steve was taken aback. He really thought of
her as a person, and a partner since they had been working together
on language. But he was also the ship’s Captain, and he wasn’t sure
that letting her out of the lab was a good idea. He hesitated, and
then said, “Not today.” Aspiria looked disappointed, but then
nodded and said, “Okay.”

Tammy had been out of the lab for a little
while and came rushing in. “It’s done! The genetic reports are
ready. Oh, it better not mess up again, or we’ll get
replaced—quick.”

Steve knew that she would want some space,
and he was a little concerned about the fact that Aspiria had
gotten comfortable enough to make a request. “I’ll meet you for
dinner in a little while. I’m excited to hear your report.” He got
up from the table, and walked over to Tammy. This time he initiated
and gave her a hug and a kiss. “Good luck, for both of us.”

Tammy put up her hand and crossed her
fingers. She turned back to her work and Steve walked back towards
Aspiria. Her countenance had fallen a bit. “You’ll go now?” she
asked.

“
Yes,” said
Steve.

Aspiria got up and walked herself over to
her cell. She got in and Steve came and locked the door. He turned
to walk away, and heard from behind, “goodbye.” He turned and
Aspiria gave him a sweet smile.

He nodded and said, “Goodbye, Aspiria;—great
job today!”

***

“
Tammy, what’s the word?”
Kenny was quick to the punch as Tammy walked into the dining
area.

Tammy raised her eyebrows. She looked white
in the face. “It worked. The machine’s fine. We’ve got perfect
results. Everyone had an exact match.”

“
Is Aspiria human?” asked
James.

“
James, even the
specimen’s report was an exact match.”

“
But you said that…” began
Steve.

“
I said that it was
nonsense—I thought that it was. It had no similarity, in pattern,
to any genetic code in all of our libraries. Humans and, say,
earthworms, have a lot of differences in genetic code; but compared
to this creature they are very similar. Everything on earth has a
high percentage of similar genetic material. The little genetic
differences make for huge differences among the various species. I
figured that this creature, which looks and acts so much like a
human, would only have small genetic differences. For instance,
like a human and a Neanderthal. We could determine, if it was a
human, how long we had been separated—or, if not a human, how
closely we were related. But this creature is
pure alien
. It is not human, and it
is not even remotely related to us. Humans are more closely related
to some of the strange creatures that have been dragged up from the
bottom of the ocean than we are to that specimen in my
lab.”

“
Tammy, are you sure that
something else isn’t going on? Aspiria is so human-like. She is
exactly like a human on every level. Are you sure it is not a
mistake?” asked Mike.

“
I thought that for a
second too—but an exact match—I mean, an
exact
match—from the first test to
the second, and everyone else had an exact match, as well. The
machine is working marvelously. Plus, it makes sense now about the
viruses. Viruses only work on species that are closely related to
them,
genetically
. In fact, they rely on the genetic code within the cell that
they infect to reproduce. Viruses that infect human cells
require
human DNA. This
creature does not have human DNA, or anything even remotely
similar; therefore, our viruses can have no effect on its cells.
Bacteria, on the other hand, don’t require a specific DNA: they are
working on the next level of the cell; the phonotypical level. If
the phenotype is within range, they can infect it. This creature is
phenotypically human, or as human-
like
as can be. It is genetically
alien, and phenotypically human.”

“
How is this possible?”
asked Steve

Blank stares surrounded him. “Aspiria’s an
alien,” said Bob somberly and broke the silence. This thought
seemed to occur to him for the first time since he first saw her
and feared to tranquilize her. “How can she eat our food? Won’t it
make her sick?”

“
This specimen requires
the same things that we do in its nutrition: fats, proteins, and
carbohydrates. It doesn’t matter what the genetic makeup of the
food we eat is. The creature is doing just fine on our food
sources.”

“
I don’t see how it is
possible that she is just like us, but doesn’t have our genes. I
thought that our genes make us how we are. If she doesn’t have our
genes, how can she be like us? Something is not right here.” Kenny
actually sounded irritated as he said this, and that was not
typical for Kenny. But, he was astounded, and he felt like the
carpet had been pulled from under his feet.

“
I think I get it!” said
James. “It’s like a book. What if you had two copies of a book—one
in English, and the other in, say, French? It’s the same book; if
you could read both English and French, and you read both books,
they would be the same story. The story is the phenotype. The
phenotype is the same. The letters on the page are the DNA. Both
English and French have the same letters, the same DNA. But the
language itself is completely different, the genes. However, the
story is the same, the phenotype. If you didn’t know French, and
only knew English, they would look like completely different books.
But if you knew how to read both, the story would be exactly the
same.”