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Authors: Tim Lebbon
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scanned photograph, several questionable testimonies, and a doctor’s written report with much of its detail redacted. The photograph was black-and-white, out of focus, and hazed by battlefield smoke and chaos. The testimonies had been translated from their original Russian by a German soldier, and in turn translated again by an American academic several years after the end of World War Two. It had been a place of terror, a confused and hellish landscape, hardly the scene for trusted eyewitness accounts.
Finally, the doctor’s report had been hacked to pieces by his superiors. It was this more than anything else that convinced Svenlap that she might have something.
She stared at the photo on the holo frame before her. After putting it through every focusing, adjustment, and clarification process she could think of—and allowing her computer to assess it with several approaches that hadn’t even crossed her mind—she had returned the image to its original, seven-hundred-year-old form.
The shadow of a blasted building on the left. A street, piled with rubble and corpses and the blazing remains of a military vehicle of some kind. On the right, another ruined building, and framed in an open doorway, a figure. Too tall for the doorway, it seemed to be standing back and observing the chaos. Wide chest. Jutting jaw. The silhouette of a hairstyle quite unlike any worn by people of the time, men or women. In its lowered right hand, something that might have been a spear.
“Gotta be,” she muttered for the dozenth time. Even though accounts provided hints, it was the photograph that gave her most faith. She had come to know the Yautja well, and was determined that this shadow would not haunt her. It was time to close the case.
“Confirmed Yautja sighting,” she dictated, the computer recording every word. “Case study number three-three-nine. Location and time—Stalingrad, January 7th to the 11th, 1943. Number of kills…” She trailed off, thinking of those questionably translated accounts again, the heavily censored doctor’s report. “Number of confirmed kills, twenty-eight, with more than a hundred more possibles.” She paused again, then nodded.
The shadow in the photograph stared back, almost as if listening to her every word. It stood tall. Looked proud. She wondered what had happened to the alien—whether it had been killed and pulverized in that terrible battle, or escaped to hunt, stalk, and kill another day.
She was about to turn off the holo frame when a message arrival chimed in. Her heart stuttered. She gasped, half-stood, and reached for the frame, as if to pluck the message she so craved. Sweating like a phrail addict, she forced herself to sit back down and catch her breath. It had been almost ninety days since the last communication, and she’d begun to wonder if they had forgotten her again.
No
, she thought.
They never forgot us. Never!
“Message status?” she asked in a shaky voice.
“Private,” her computer said. “Identifier, Beatrix Maloney. Duration, nineteen seconds. Broadcast source unknown.”
“Play,” Svenlap breathed.
The message played.
* * *
It kept playing, again and again, and as she remembered the words and their echoes they filled that empty place inside her, making it whole and heavy, a solid mass whose gravity drew her in and down, almost smothering the Svenlap she had become beneath the Svenlap she needed to be. Her thoughts belonged to this new person, and yet she felt herself more whole and complete than she ever had before.
The Founders have not forgotten you, and your patience is our power, your faith our strength. Build for us. Create for us.
It was inspiring stuff, and Svenlap grasped hold of the sense of belonging these words gave her. The final, more poetic sentence made her cry.
In the deep, in the dark, let light blossom to illuminate our way home.
“Home,” she whispered as she rummaged, drifting from room to room in the deserted east wing of
Finally, the doctor’s report had been hacked to pieces by his superiors. It was this more than anything else that convinced Svenlap that she might have something.
She stared at the photo on the holo frame before her. After putting it through every focusing, adjustment, and clarification process she could think of—and allowing her computer to assess it with several approaches that hadn’t even crossed her mind—she had returned the image to its original, seven-hundred-year-old form.
The shadow of a blasted building on the left. A street, piled with rubble and corpses and the blazing remains of a military vehicle of some kind. On the right, another ruined building, and framed in an open doorway, a figure. Too tall for the doorway, it seemed to be standing back and observing the chaos. Wide chest. Jutting jaw. The silhouette of a hairstyle quite unlike any worn by people of the time, men or women. In its lowered right hand, something that might have been a spear.
“Gotta be,” she muttered for the dozenth time. Even though accounts provided hints, it was the photograph that gave her most faith. She had come to know the Yautja well, and was determined that this shadow would not haunt her. It was time to close the case.
“Confirmed Yautja sighting,” she dictated, the computer recording every word. “Case study number three-three-nine. Location and time—Stalingrad, January 7th to the 11th, 1943. Number of kills…” She trailed off, thinking of those questionably translated accounts again, the heavily censored doctor’s report. “Number of confirmed kills, twenty-eight, with more than a hundred more possibles.” She paused again, then nodded.
The shadow in the photograph stared back, almost as if listening to her every word. It stood tall. Looked proud. She wondered what had happened to the alien—whether it had been killed and pulverized in that terrible battle, or escaped to hunt, stalk, and kill another day.
She was about to turn off the holo frame when a message arrival chimed in. Her heart stuttered. She gasped, half-stood, and reached for the frame, as if to pluck the message she so craved. Sweating like a phrail addict, she forced herself to sit back down and catch her breath. It had been almost ninety days since the last communication, and she’d begun to wonder if they had forgotten her again.
No
, she thought.
They never forgot us. Never!
“Message status?” she asked in a shaky voice.
“Private,” her computer said. “Identifier, Beatrix Maloney. Duration, nineteen seconds. Broadcast source unknown.”
“Play,” Svenlap breathed.
The message played.
* * *
It kept playing, again and again, and as she remembered the words and their echoes they filled that empty place inside her, making it whole and heavy, a solid mass whose gravity drew her in and down, almost smothering the Svenlap she had become beneath the Svenlap she needed to be. Her thoughts belonged to this new person, and yet she felt herself more whole and complete than she ever had before.
The Founders have not forgotten you, and your patience is our power, your faith our strength. Build for us. Create for us.
It was inspiring stuff, and Svenlap grasped hold of the sense of belonging these words gave her. The final, more poetic sentence made her cry.
In the deep, in the dark, let light blossom to illuminate our way home.
“Home,” she whispered as she rummaged, drifting from room to room in the deserted east wing of
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