Chapter 13 – Dialogue
FOR A MOMENT Jacqui was struck dumb. Then she replied, excitedly, "Thank God! I was beginning to panic. So you can speak English, and I can ask you questions. Am I stuck here forever?"
"Not forever," said the Eel. "The air outside of this dome is not suitable for you to breathe: it has too much carbon dioxide in it. Our robots are still developing a filter: when it is ready you can wear it to go outside."
"Wear it, indeed! What have you done with my clothes? Can I have some, please?"
"Your artificial skin coverings? We are sorry: they could not be brought here. None of our kind wear skin covering: it is not needed on our planet. And most creatures on your planet do not wear any covering."
"We humans do. Nearly all the time. I would feel more comfortable in clothes. On Earth I would be most embarrassed. Well, most of the time," Jacqui added, reflecting on the intimate moments she had spent with Adam... Where was Adam? "Did you bring any more humans to this planet, besides me?"
"No. We cannot transport more than one of your species in our spaceships."
"Well, at least I shan't meet anyone to be embarrassed in front of. But where is 'here'? How far am I from Earth? And can I go back?" Remembering what little she knew of astronomy, Jacqui guessed that she might not like the answer.
"Using your planet's systems of measurement, our planet is about thirty-six light-years away from yours. Our spaceships can attain about two-thirds of the speed of light, so, allowing for acceleration and deceleration time, the voyage took about fifty-eight years, as measured by an observer on your planet, or ours. But because of the relativity time-dilation effect, you actually experienced only around forty-three years on board."
"Forty-three years!? You mean I was 'under' for forty-three years? Good Heavens, that means I must be seventy-seven years old! I don't feel it," she continued, looking at her arms, legs, and breasts, which seemed as smooth as always. "Do you have a mirror? Can I see my face?"
"No. But I can tell you, you did not age during the voyage. You still look exactly the same as when you left Earth. We used a different version of the 'sleep' field, one which suspends all bodily functions and metabolism. It was the only way to transport you here. We could not provide you with food or oxygen throughout the voyage. We have never used the field on a subject for so long a period. I am glad that you seem to have suffered no ill-effects."
"But—but—you are saying that fifty-eight years have passed on Earth? And if it takes another fifty-eight on the return voyage, everyone I know will be dead? Even poor little Nathan—and I don't even know whether he recovered from the accident: he was still on life support when you took me away. Why did you bring me here? Why?" And Jacqui burst into tears, as the truth slowly crystallised in her mind: whether he had lived on or not, she would never see her darling Nathan again. "You are horrible. Horrible! Don't you know what it is for a mother to lose her child?" she sobbed.
"Once again we are truly sorry. We do not have a full understanding of human emotions, but we recognise that you are in a state of grief—and were already in that state even before you left Earth. Yes, you will probably blame us for an inexcusable act. But our excuse is this: our entire species is in danger.
"We brought you here because we want to know why we failed on your planet. Oh yes, we failed. Our breeding programme is in disarray, and if we do not learn the answers, our race will in time become extinct. It will take many of your years, but without a solution it will be inevitable. We were hoping you could provide some answers. You know far more about your planet than our three kindred whom you met in Midwich."
"Oh yes: Wiggy, Wally, and Weeny," said Jacqui, composing herself once again. "Oh, I'm sorry, those were the silly names we gave them: we had to call them something. Did they arrive here safely? And did you have to keep them under during the voyage, like me?"
"Yes and no. Yes, they arrived in fine condition. No, we did not need to use the sleep field, and it would have cost us too much energy. Our kind live far longer than yours, and metabolise much more slowly. But your scientists had already discovered that."
"Yes, I suppose they had," said Jacqui, trying to recall everything that Bernard and Helen had told her. "At least, in the form you have now: the form we have named Trumpet-Eels. But the other form you took: the Children, as we called them—the beings who resembled us, apart from their golden eyes—those beings were monsters. They would have destroyed us, if we had not destroyed them."
"I understand. Please believe me when I say, this was not meant to happen. Something went badly wrong on your planet, and we need to know why. Perhaps I should explain how we reproduce our species, since the process is markedly different from yours.
"To reproduce, we must first implant some of our genes in a being of another species. In the early days, we used a non-sentient creature on this planet, but as that creature became scarce and we had meanwhile developed spaceflight, we found it better to use a species on another planet. The alien female whom we implant is called the first-phase host, as I believe you already know. We take an egg from the first-phase host, remove its native genetic material (what you call DNA), and replace it with a full set of genes of our own species, before replacing it in the host. However, we have previously modified those genes so that the young will physically resemble the first-phase host's species, not ours. That is the only way we can get the first-phase host not to reject its young instantly upon birth."
"I can well understand that," put in Jacqui. "If the women of Midwich had given birth to live Eels, they would have been horrified. But the Eels would have been swiftly disposed of."
"You must understand that the offspring of the first-phase hosts, whom we call second-phase hosts, must resemble the host species, but they contain our genetic material entirely. They are clones of a single pair of beings from our planet, one male, one female. Two different clones are prepared: one with the male characteristic and one with the female."
"How do you get genetic diversity, if you rely on clones?"
"That is determined before our spaceship leaves this planet, by choosing the males and females of our species to supply the original genetic material. I should point out that our spaceships are mostly crewed by robots. Apart from a few experts, we do not travel, ourselves, on the seeding missions. Besides, the robots are not affected by the sleep field which we only deploy if we have to: if the seeding process is likely to encounter resistance. The robots are well trained in the task they have to perform: the seeding itself."
Jacqui wasn't sure she had understood all this, but the Eels seemed highly intelligent—and genetics wasn't exactly her strong point! She was struck by another thought. "What sex are you? And what is your name, if I may ask?"
"I am male. But this is of no consequence to you: we do not exhibit sexual dimorphism and you would have no way of distinguishing our males from our females. I may as well tell you that the three of my kindred whom we brought back from your planet are all female. And we do not have names: at least, not names that could be expressed as any form of word you could pronounce. You may choose any name you like to address me by."
"OK. I'll call you 'Major', if you like. Reminds me of a friend of mine, who became a Major in the army."
"Major. That is well. You may call me that. And you may call our species 'Eels' if you are accustomed to that. But I am still trying to find out more about the second-phase hosts on your planet—and what went wrong."
"They did not completely resemble our species. They had golden irises in their eyes—something never seen in humans, although we do have a variety of different eye colours. You must understand that I am relating all this from hearsay. I never met any of the Children: they were all dead long before I was born."
"It is clear that with a highly complex species like yours, our genetic adjustments are not sufficient to produce an exact lookalike. We came pretty close, however."
"It wasn't the eyes that were the problem, though," continued Jacqui. "It was the way they acted afterwards: the compulsion. It got out of hand."
"We all possess that power: the ability to compel a 'lower' species (if I may use that term) to perform a certain task. But we seldom use it—and our second-phase hosts are certainly conditioned not to use it ever against other beings of the first-phase hosts' species. Something must have gone wrong on your planet. I must consult with others. I bid you farewell for now—but I shall return."
And with that, 'Major' furled his Trumpets, squeezed himself through the tunnel, and was gone.