The Envoy

"Your hands are dirty again. You are aware that this is sensitive equipment?" the Colonel asked.

The technician, Sergeant Third Grade Quint, examined his fingers and found there was indeed a layer of greasy film on them. "Some kind of machine oil, I think," he responded, "from the alien machine." He smelled his hands and exclaimed, "It really stinks."

"Well I hope it's not fatal," the Colonel responded, his gaze wandering back out to the shore of the lake just beyond the window. A small stand of sickly looking trees rocked in the breeze. There was a broad gray smudge on the horizon.

Quint wiped his hands with an equally filthy rag and said, "I hope the storm doesn't delay our guests." *How do machines that come from an underwater race have so much oil on them?*

"Delay?!" the Colonel said in false astonishment. "These things come from many light years away. I doubt a little storm will dissuade them." 

Colonel Vanntine was a small man, thin with little facial hair. And what he did have was fastidiously groomed and shaped. He put on an air of nobility and spoke in either a high indifferent tone or a low menacing growl when he wanted to be heard by someone beneath his station. But his posture was imperfect. Though he tried to hold himself erect there was a slight slump to his upper back and shoulders. His smartly starched uniform never seemed to hang on him correctly.

Quint knew his background and how he attained his rank to be more than a bit muddy and clouded with salacious rumor. His father was an NC, after all, a non-Corps. That kind of generational leap never, or rarely, happened as far as Quint knew. While trying to affix a wire conduit to the primary control box per the diagram he idly said, "Will it just be you here to receive the aliens, sir?"

Through his peripheral vision, Quint saw the Colonel swing about on his chair and sweep his arm over the dais while growling, "Can you not see these six other chairs?" Now back to the high voice, "I would like to know when you will be done. I obviously need to examine your work."

"I'm about ready to finish up and do my final check. My eyes are professional enough, but thank you for the offer." Internally he recoiled at his own bile. But the feeling didn't last long. He was technically in a different branch from him. And Vanntine had made an absolute public career out of being indignant, but taking it on the chin nonetheless. The fact that the news was allowed to say what they said about the man without retaliation from the Command Corps means they knew exactly where the smell was coming from. True to form, the Colonel grumbled and turned back to face the open panoramic window at the far side of the room. 

There was a large platform built flush with the floor at the center of the room. Below, Quint could hear some distant clanking and thudding. The rest of the crew was finishing their assembly of the holding tank, per alien schematic just like the one he was using. They had sent ahead several instructions and pre-fab materials to construct their habitats and communication devices. They were to stay for several days, then leave all this equipment behind. A great noise was made in the Technical Corps about the fact that they hadn't explicitly asked for their technology back. Should we inquire or should we stay silent so we can break it down and examine it, was the question. Quint could see nothing radically advanced about the equipment. In fact, to his eyes it was quite crude.

A side door opened and out strode Sergeant 2nd Grade Hoilo. Quint was underneath the machine on his back, trying to turn the conduit to lock it into place, though it didn't seem to be working. He grunted and grumbled at the device, which should be simple.

Hoilo stood at his feet with his hands in the pocket of his dark gray jumpsuit uniform. He whistled and rocked back and forth on his heels.

"What do you want, Hoilo?" Quint barked.

"Just waiting for you to figure it out," he responded casually.

"This isn't a game. We need to get this done. Out with it."

"Fine, but let the record show you're a quitter. Try turning it the other way."

Quint blinked at the absurdly simple revelation. He turned the conduit clockwise instead and it snapped into place with a satisfying pop.

Hoilo continued, "I guess you could be forgiven. There's twelve of us downstairs and it took us hours to figure out that they thread things the opposite way."

Quint had stood up and was wiping his hands again. "So much oil," he said. "I'm still shocked that an undersea race uses such clunky mechanical systems."

Hoilo responded, "Odd. Everything down below is neat as a pin. We steam cleaned the tank, per instruction, but it barely seemed to need it. Anyway, are you done up here? We're just about ready for the riser test."

"Yes, I think so. Haven't given it the once over, but it's built to spec."

"What would you even be looking for to give it the once over?"

"I don't know. It's protocol."

"This isn't our work, Quint. There's nothing to check."

Hoilo simply pointed his nose and nodded at the Colonel's back. Quint just raised his eyebrows in return.

Hoilo, with significant volume, said to the Colonel, "Sir, we're about to test the tank riser system. Would you perhaps be more comfortable in the ready room? I understand Major Theodom has arrived and is there now with his new attaché."

"I am fine where I am," the Colonel said, not turning.

"I see sir. It's just that this test will be quite loud and our guests won't be here for a few hours."

The colonel again turned abruptly in his chair and growled, "Is insubordination the cause for your retention in the enlisted ranks, Sergeant Second Class Hoilo, or are you just following in your father's tepid footsteps?" He slowly turned back to the sea.

Hoilo shrugged meekly at Quint and said, with a little quaver in his voice, "Shall we begin the test?"

"Yes, sir," Quint responded.

Hoilo turned his head to speak into a bronze disc at his epaulet. "Are we ready for alpha shakedown?"

A high strung voice came out of the disc, "No time, sir. They're here! ETA 1 minute!"

"What?!"

He rushed to the window with a wobble and a jiggle, this was not a man used to physical exertion. They could hear the crafts scudding through the lowering cloud cover before they could see them. Then, the ships broke through the cloud haze and, almost as a harbinger, the rain starting pattering on the upturned glass window panes. 

There were three vessels. One small cylindrical pressure hull ringed hemispherically with propulsion of some kind. It was flanked on either side with ships that were significantly larger and that seemed purpose build for space combat. They were also vaguely cylindrically, but with a narrower frontward profile and much longer. They had numerous outboard hardpoints on them on which were mounted what could only be weapons, Quint thought. They had been told that this was a supremely peaceful race who always preferred negotiation over combat. At the very least, they seemed well prepared for a breakdown in negotiations.

The sound of the crafts was unusual. Rather than the tearing sky sound of their aircraft, these hummed deeply but oddly quietly in a monotonous warble. As they drew close, their soft sound was betrayed by an obvious rushing downforce of air. It pushed rain, mud particles, and bits of vegetation into the open windows. You could smell that warm wet earth, something not entirely unpleasant to Quint.

"The windows, Quint!" Hoilo yelled back over the rushing sound of air.

Quint lept back to the control panel on the wall and selected the agreed upon pre-set: windows close, opacity up, lights dimmed. Suddenly it was serene and quiet in the room, though Quint could still faintly hear the thrumming of the alien ships.

"They're coming in," the voice said somewhat frantically over comms. "What do we do?"

Hoilo responded, "Hold for now."

"Sir," he continued, addressing Colonel Vanntine, "what are your orders?"

Vanntine again turned slowly, "What orders do you think I would give you that you don't already have?! Follow the protocol as it was given to you, dammit!"

"Yes sir!" Hoilo barked back, then said into comms, "Follow procedure dammit! Lift them up when transfer is complete."

"Yes sir," was barked back at him through the disc.

Quint stood at the absurdly simple control panel. It was merely a panel with one small lever and a light, which was currently blinking brightly red in the darkened room. It flicked to solid green and he shrugged and as instructed he pulled the lever. *This can't be necessary,* he thought.

It took a moment, but the mechanisms below hummed. The access panel withdrew and a large holding tank, half again as tall as a man, rose from below. The tank was made of an adjustable opacity transparent type of glass. As it came up it was completely black. The tank was ringed around the top by bar with various devices. It looked like life support, communications, and monitoring devices.

As the tank locked into place with a thud and the opacity went out of the glass just as a dim light encircling the inside of the top rim came on. There they were, these creatures that everyone was talking about. In their minds they had been built up to giant hulking beasts with eight arms or legs that could wrap you up with their multitude of serpentine appendages and crush you without a thought.

But these were no hulking beasts. They were small and squishy, two together no larger than a man's head. Though they did indeed have an absurd number of arms, but those arms were wispy and thin. Their color was an almost sickly gray-green with dark blotches all around. 

When the lights came up, they were all clinging to the top rim, their suckers up against the mechanism at the top. They "said" nothing, though Quint could barely tell how they would speak since they had no obvious mouths. They shuffled back and forth across the top mechanism, their tentacles occasionally flopping over the top and flipping around in the air, something that vaguely turned Quint's stomach.

Hoilo was standing next to him now, mouth agape, staring at the tank. He elbowed Quint and whispered, "I wonder what they taste like." Quint only shook his head at him.

Then, suddenly, they all sank to the bottom and began feeling around the bottom of the tank. It seemed chaotic at first glance, but as Quint watched, he could see a pattern and they moved more or less in a synchronous fashion, each sweeping clockwise to cover the ground again of the one ahead. Then, just as suddenly, they stopped and began floating languidly around the tank, their arms undulating ever so slowly.

Quint began to notice that the dark blotches on them were moving and morphing slowly, rotating around their bodies. Then they went from dark gray to a light pale blue. Then to an iridescent blue. Then a luminescent blue. Quint noticed light refracting through the glass and bouncing off the shiny floor in front of the tank. Soon, these blue blotches hardened in shape and began modulating in hue from a bright green to a duller greenish blue. The pulsing of these colors and luminescence quickened rapidly. At first as a chaotic static, but then the flashing synchronized in some pattern so that the whole of the tank was pulsing and undulating in blues, yellows, and greens back and forth swirling around the tank. 

It was almost blinding and the rapid flashing was giving Quint a bit of vertigo. Vanntine had stood up and was arms-length away from the tank, staring in wonderment.

Five of the individuals in the tank sank down to the bottom front and put their tentacles into small divots on the floor. A speaker a the top rim said, at first too loud but then modulated down, "Are the lights too much for you? I can dim the glass to make it easier."

"A little if you please," Hoilo exclaimed, shielding his eyes with his hand.

There were controls all along the inside upper rim and on the floor. A few of the individuals whipped out an appendage gingerly and the opacity blunted the swimming organized chaos in the tank.

"Thank you," Hoilo responded.

"You are quite welcome Sergeant 2nd Grade Hoilo. I understand you led the team that assembled my temporary habitat. I thank you. Your work is exemplary," the speaker said. There was something just a little odd about their pronunciation, but Quint had to hand it to them because casually they sounded like a native speaker.

"The exemplary work is yours," Hoilo responded, "these devices were easy to assembled and manufactured to a very high standard."

Vanntine, still an arms-length away from the tank now straightened up as best as he could and cleared his throat. He seemed poised to begin speaking, but the speaker preempted him.

"I am sorry for my early arrival," it said, "the storm will grow to be quite large and I wanted to land ahead of it."

"Quite all right," Vanntine replied formally, "but I regret to inform you that our cadre won't be complete until 1500. In the meantime, would it be acceptable to ask you some questions? We know so little about you yet sent you so much about us."

"I understand your curiosity. However, I require a refractory period after super-light travel. I would have normally taken time aboard out interstellar vessel, but the storm necessitated haste. I have transmitted some files to your personal devices that you may find interesting. You may also feel free to examine my tank. My eyesight is quite a bit poorer than yours in these conditions and we do not have the same conception of privacy as you do. Now, please, we will rest now."

The individuals who were at the fore of the tank pulled their tentacles out of the slots and all of the beings again floated freely in the tank, save the occasional whip of an arm here or there to adjust a setting.

Vanntine pulled out his pad and went "huh" at the fact that a huge amount of information was instantly deposited on a device that was allegedly secured for high ranking military personnel. He sat down and began to study the device, deep in thought. 

Hoilo and Quint rushed up to the tank. The creatures now floated languidly down to the bottom, arms and body still undulating gently—puffing up, then shrinking. Quint watched their gentle and almost hypnotic rhythm and got lost in thought. What must their ships be like? How do they communicate? What do they eat? They had returned to their drab gray-green splotchy colors. But Quint noticed that the splotches still blurred and moved gently across their bumpy skin. And, as he peered close to watch the blotches move, he notice that the texture of their skin changed from bumpy or even spiky at times to perfectly smooth and glossy at times. And even across their bodies, they could be presenting multiple skin textures. Here like the skin of an aged Wiseman, here like the skin of a Freshman. But still other places like the raindesert floor, spiky and rough.

"They have total control over their skin texture," Quint said.

"I know," Hoilo said, looking at his handheld device. "Color and texture of the skin is how they communicate."

"It's on your device too? How did you get it?"

"They put in there, same as Vanntine's. You should check it out."

"They're right here in front of us now. There'll be time to read later."

"You were never a very good study," Hoilo laughed.

Quint ignored him and said, "I wonder if they feel vulnerable or trapped in that tank."

Quint had noticed, during his back and forth with Hoilo, that one of them had risen to the top and was "face to face" with him. These things, having so many arms, had only two eyes. They were an odd asymmetrical eye, portions of which could change color with the rest of their skin. The pupils rotated in the sockets and changed shapes as fluidly as their skin.

"Did you notice," Quint asked Hoilo, "that they refer to themselves as 'I'?"

"I did notice. I was told they are some sort of hivemind or the like. Not necessarily autonomous beings."

The individual that was at Quint's eye level suddenly turned a dim white then descended to the bottom. It put 4 tentacles into some slots on the floor near to Quint and Hoilo. Out of the utility band at the top came a voice, softer now than the one they had heard before, said, "We are individuals. We know each other as you know us."

"Was it your leader that referred to itself as 'I' then?" Quint asked. "Or are you acting as a collective?"

"We have no notion of individual hierarchy as you do, though we are familiar with this concept. We were speaking together, as one, towards a purpose. That is why we use 'I'."

"What purpose are you dedicated towards?"

"At this time Diplomacy, of course."

"Do you choose to be a diplomat or is that chosen at birth?"

"Choice is an illusion. And I go to whichever task needs me. Before arriving to this group, I was in the Industrial-Livestock Group, deciding the next kelp forest to plant so our Crabstock could flourish. When in such groups, we communicate serially as you just witnessed and refer to the group as 'I'."

"Do you have a name individually? Or are you associated with whatever collective you're in?"

"My name cannot be vocalized as such and is not a 'name', but is a flash of a pattern. In this pattern there is something of my genetic heritage as well as my aptitudes. My name changes over time. Watch me and I will show you my current name."

The individual flashed all-white now, then bands of dull red came back-to-front over the creatures head. Each successive wave began to form an elargening arrow of blue-gray on the creatures snout until it's whole body flashed again gray then back to pale off-white. The process took only a second or two.

"Amazing. Beautiful," Quint said.

The Colonel was watching the two technicians now. Their conversation with the individual had been quiet, but the Colonel pushed his voice out to say, "Why did you fly in before we could set up the Air Guard?"

"I have no need of your Guard," the speaker said more firmly.

"Nonetheless there's a war on and we can't be too cautious," Vanntine returned.

"I have no need to heed your war."

The Colonel flinched at this, then straightened himself against his bad posture. He pulled his jacket downwards and said brusquely to the technicians, "Let these creatures rest. I will go and hasten arrangements." He made a quick counter-turn on his heels and strode out to the side door. Upon stepping through the door into the darkened storeroom, he turned again to glance back at the tank and the men, his three eyes shimmering in the gloom. The door shut and Quint and Hoilo looked at each other. They were vastly different men, but they grew up together and so shared an unspoken language of their own.

When they turned back to the tank, they saw that the individual they were talking to had floated back down among the others and was now indiscernible to them.