Catch and Release

Stavros Berezhnoy was caught. The trap was clamped around his foot, crushing flesh and nerves, creating a swarming, itching sensation that caused his entire leg to thrash. He gasped with shock and

-- woke up on the ship. He had stretched out a little too far in his sleep, and his foot had pushed into the restraining field. Stavros knew all too well how intense and instant the pain of the field was. He'd tried to thrust his arm through, thinking he could take a little electrocution... or whatever it was... if that meant testing the invisible walls of his tiny, conical prison, but it wasn't so easy. The invisible field not only tormented him, it pushed back, resistant and unbreachable.

Stavros rubbed at his foot though his leather boot. He'd considered taking his boots off, but he feared losing them to the aliens. It was nuts to think this way; the aliens could take anything they wanted. They had taken him without difficulty, he thought ruefully. The shotgun was in his hands even as the door to his shack had gone flying off its hinges, but he couldn't get his hands to work. It was just like in the movies: A brilliant white light, a mechanical droning hum that filled with air at ear-splitting volume, and the pencil-thin intruders, tall and impossibly frail looking, that came swarming into his tiny home...

Stavros took a look around the cargo hold... what he assumed was a cargo hold. For a compartment aboard a spaceship of extrasolar origin, the place was shockingly ordinary. Boxy shapes were stacked here and there, some of them sloppily half-covered with what look like tarps. Cables lay coiled elsewhere, and a few even snaked across the floor. Smaller craft were parked clear across the large enclosure; Stavros could only presume he had been brought aboard in one of those little machines, which didn't even look like flying saucers. They looked more like helicars, or maybe helicars crossed with dragonflies - without any wings or rotors, that is.

Stavros had never paid much attention to tales of alien abduction. There were movies about the subject - a bunch from fifty years ago, in the 1980s, and another spate from the past decade, when the World Web Service chatboards suddenly got going on UFOs, grey aliens, sinister agendas, and people who'd been snatched into the sky and then returned days or months later... or never.

Stavros had lived through the reign of Putin and its aftermath. He knew all about propaganda and cover stories. Crazy yarns about space aliens would be perfect for the job of disguising government schemes that involved kidnap, torture, mind control, truth serums, brainwashing, or even the murder of dissidents. Writers went missing a lot; gays went missing even more. Stavros was both of those things, and though he tried to keep his sexuality a secret he doubted he was fooling state security.

Still, he'd sharpened his efforts at caution and concealment as the wild stories about creatures from the stars spun up online. These days, just having a Greek name - thanks to his mother, a beautiful �migr� - well, that alone could get a guy killed. More than once Stavros had thought he was going to be involved in a barroom brawl when some over-excited (and drunken) patriot of Mother Russia challenged his loyalty, or called him "half-blood," or invited him to go back where he'd come from. Stavros, born in St. Petersburg, laughed at such words. But he also made sure to keep his knife - the big one - strapped securely to his chest, where he could get to it quickly if things escalated past the shouting stage.

The knife was gone. More proof that the aliens could have taken his boots if they had wanted. But what would an alien do with human boots? Stavros admitted that it wasn't hard to understand why they would have taken his knife, but all his clothes were still intact and his few ruble notes and spare coins were still in his pockets. Stavros decided this spoke to a certain civility on the part of his captors. He determined to think of them as hosts. He was their guest, that was all. They were aliens, unclear on terrestrial courtesies. It was all certain to end up happily.

Such were the things Stavros thought about as the days went by: Six, eight, twelve days. He traced calligraphy on the warm, dark metal of the floor. He did yoga, pushups, and sit-ups, trying to stay active despite his confinement. It was important, Stavros had always believed, that one remain physically and mentally active, and mentally cheerful. Outlook was everything, after all. Growing up in Russia, one could either pretend that the possibility of close confinement wasn't a possibility, or one could chart out in advance how one might survive it. Stavros, always practical and a little pugnacious, had chosen the latter path -- though it had never occurred to him that it might be creatures from a different world, and not the creatures in the Kremlin, that would lock him up, and in an invisible cone of force no less.

The thought occurred to him that he'd get a better book deal out of being kidnapped by aliens than he would as just another one of the disappeared.

Stavros didn't know very much about space travel. What he did know tended to argue against the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence paying Earth visits, seemingly for the purpose of kidnapping human beings. Space was so very large and empty, for one thing. Stavros recalled from his university days that there were limits to how fast matter or even energy could travel -- and even at the speed of light it would take years, if not decades or even centuries, for a space craft to cross those distances. What sort of beings were these, that they had the resources for such visits to the Earth?

Another problem: International projects to identify extrasolar planets had mostly come up with worlds that seemed as though they would be uninhabitable. But these creatures seemed to have no difficulty surviving on Earth, at least for short periods of time. The cargo hold seemed to have a breathable atmosphere -- or at least the conical force field did; so if the aliens breathed ammonia or something equally toxic to humans, they kept this area humanly livable for his benefit.

Stavros wondered what the aliens did about gravity. If they did spend years out in space, how did they manage life in weightlessness? Perhaps they had some sort of artificial gravity. If so, it must be lighter than Earth standard. At the moment, with the ship evidently still in the Earth's gravity field, Stavros didn't feel heavier or lighter than usual. But would the aliens pilot their craft into orbit? Would Stavros end up floating around, bouncing off the force-field that bottled him up? did weightlessness really cause nausea and vomiting? He didn't relish the prospect.

So many questions, all tumbling through his mind like asteroids in the void. The one thing Stavros could hold onto as factual was his presence here, on the ship, in a pen made of energy, a cage that he couldn't escape. There must be an explanation for all of this, but the idea that this whole ship had been built just to ferry aliens to Earth and imprison him didn't seem reasonable, especially given how pleasant the environment was... well, pleasant compared to how inhospitable it could have been, and probably should have been, given the nature of his hosts. If he was a pet of some sort for them, they had certainly taken pains to see to his comfort and safety.

But there were exceptions that caused Stavros concern. One morning... evening? ...afternoon? ...Stavros woke up feeling especially groggy. Had they anaesthetized him? He hadn't felt so out of it since he'd first awoken in the cone-shaped holding cell.

Thinking back the two weeks to the night of his abduction, Stavros didn't remember how the aliens had gotten him out of his shack. Through the ravaged front door, he supposed, but had they carried him? Levitated him with an anti-gravity ray? Had he indeed flown with them in their little craft, or had they "beamed" him aboard, like the heroes in the American show about the Starship Enterprise?

Why hadn't Captain Kirk ever encountered any thin grey bad guys?

Stavros peered carefully around the cargo hold, looking for Leskov. That was his nickname for the big, mean-looking alien who stood guard. Unlike the tall, thin greys, Leskov was burly. His skin was shiny, hard looking and charcoal-gray. Stavros wondered if Leskov were wearing armor, or if he might naturally be built like a beetle, with a protective carapace. The alien's shoulders crowded his head, making it impossible for him to turn his head, whereas the thin, light-grey aliens could rotate their heads until it seemed their windpipes must be corkscrewed shut.

Did they have windpipes? Did they breathe? Stavros wondered again whether the Earth's atmosphere bothered the aliens. He'd seen a science fiction show once that posited aliens who breathed methane. Did that make sense, biologically? Stavros wasn't sure. Maybe Leskov's armor was actually some sort of pressure suit.

What had ever happened to the first Leskov? -- the bully in school who had bothered Stavros for months until the day Stavros snapped, picked him up bodily, and threw him down a flight of stairs? The human Leskov hadn't been hurt by the tumble... actually, he had, but it was a matter of a sprained knee, nothing too serious. Stavros had cursed himself for losing his temper; at that age, he had been like his mother, very religious. His intention had not been to pitch Leskov down the stairs; the stairwell had simply been there, right where Leskov's flying body was headed. The bully's subsequent attempts to harass Stavros had been half-hearted at best.

Could Stavros lift and toss the alien Leskov? He looked pretty heavy, much stouter of frame than the tall, thin aliens, who were gracile and birdlike. The thin fellows looked like Earth's gravity should snap their bones. How did they manage to stand upright? Maybe they were made of stronger stuff than Stavros would have thought. Maybe Leskov was another birdlike alien under that suit. Maybe what he was wearing was a mechanical shell that allowed him to function in Earth-standard gravity for long periods of time.

That idea brought up more thoughts about the gravity problem. If weightlessness during spaceflight was a concern, what about the time they spent here on Earth? Did they have to counter gravity with anti-gravity? Were there other areas of the ship where Earth's gravity was somehow deflected? Maybe so. Maybe that was why Stavros hadn't seen any tall grays since he'd been brought aboard.

Gravity and space travel and flight through the Earth's atmosphere. There must be answers for all of these questions. And these were just a few of the things Stavros wondered about. How did the aliens hide, staying invisible by daylight only to materialize at night and strike? Where did they park their ship between raids on people's shacks, anyway? How long would their mission to Earth last? Stavros felt uneasy about this line of thought. Surely they would return Stavros before they left for home, but when might that be?

Not for a while yet, it seemed. Twenty-one days went by. It was amazing to Stavros that he hadn't needed a toilet. Was it because of the crumbly little wafers they were feeding him? Did they simply digest into biological energy with no troublesome residue left over? A trio of tiny, white aliens brought him a bowl of wafers every other day. Stavros never felt hungry or thirsty, even though they never gave him water to go with the wafers. He joked to them about it: He asked for the wafers that contained the vodka molecules instead of the water molecules. The little white fellows didn't make any response in turn. They simply reached through the restraining field and handed him the bowl. The first time they did this, Stavros tried to reach back out toward them, but with the same result as always: Resistance coupled with blinding pain. Was the field like a one-way mirror? But no: The little aliens would reach in later on and retrieve the empty bowl. If the bowl could pass back and forth through the field, then why did the invisible barrier corral Stavros so effectively?

Questions were his companions. He engaged in debates with his questions and his doubts, constructing theories and then picking them apart. Nothing seemed to make sense. It was like those math puzzles he loved to solve: There had to be an answer, some logical progression that linked all these strange things together and allowed things to make sense.

One afternoon... about thirty-three days into his stay with his alien hostellers... Stavros hit upon the logical answer to all of the questions he had been puzzling over.

They weren't aliens at all. They were from Earth.

This, of course, raised a whole new slate of questions and possibilities. But it made more sense than the idea that aliens came all the way from wherever the Hell, only to deal with Earth's air and gravity and contend with easily spooked natives who were so familiar by now that the aliens didn't even bother to probe them any more.

Or did they? Stavros thought back to the times, several of them now, when he'd woken up feeling sick and disoriented and unable to remember having gone to sleep - which seemed strange, because bedtime was a deliberate and systematic process that involved curling up as compactly as he could to avoid the punishment of the restraining field.

He put that whole line of inquiry out of his mind. If they were sliding their grotesquely long fingers, or alien probes, or anything else up his bunghole, he'd rather not know about it.

Stavros focused on his new insight. If the aliens weren't aliens... if they were from Earth... well, they still weren't human, so what did that make them? They might be some sort of artificial intelligence - maybe one of these new semi-biological machines everyone was always talking about, the ones based on self-replicating nanotechnology. Autoconstructs, they were called: Machines that grew their own components out of silicon and polymers and then assembled themselves in specialized manufactories.

Or maybe these monsters were genetically engineered? Maybe Stavros was in the custody of Mother Russia's long-rumored space corps, an army of specially designed men who could endure the challenges of life in space? Needing very little air or food, these rumored beings were said to be resistant to cold and hard radiation, their eyes developed with the goal of being able to see in near-total darkness or withstand the fury of sunlight not filtered by atmosphere. That might fit the look of the aliens very well. Stavros gazed across the hold at Leskov, who remained motionless in his usual place, bound to that patch of floor by duty as surely as the invisible barrier of the force field hemmed in Stavros.

Whatever these beings were, if they originated on Earth then they must have some Earthly sensibilities. Mustn't they? That was the key to his escape. Find commonalities - appeal to their mutual status as creatures of the Earth. Could an autoconstruct have fellow feeling? Or a genetically engineered space-soldier? Stavros decided to try and find out.

"Hey!" he called to Leskov. "Hey, comrade! Hey, hey Leskov! Ha ha, you know, that's my name for you, but I don't know if I got it right. Maybe you can tell me, da? So how about it, Leskov? Do you have another name I should call you?"

Stavros kept his patter up for an hour, then took a break. His voice was sore. He'd barely spoken in over a month. Leskov didn't so much as stir. What kind of guard didn't respond when his captive was hollering? Was he a guard? Stavros realized his assumption about this might well have been in error. Maybe Leskov was standing over there because he was manning some sort of duty station that had nothing to do with Stavros.

More questions to ponder, but they could wait. Stavros needed to work on what he was going to say, and in what order he would say it. He thought over what he know about rhetoric, and persuasion, and psychology. He dredged his memory for long-disused French and English. Who knew that these beings might not be Americans, still seeking to control the world through superior technology? If they didn't know Russian, they would surely know English. Or if they weren't Americans, then perhaps they knew Greek, the official language of the European Union, and a tongue Stavros had learned on his mother's knee.

"Hey there buddy!" Stavros cried out in Greek during his next attempt. "Where are all the pretty girls in this joint? Do you like girls? No worries if you don't. Or maybe your kind don't have males and females?"

Still nothing. Stavros pressed on. He put another hour into it, resorting to poetry and folk tales learned in Greek when he could think of nothing else to say. It was tiring, and a little disheartening, because even after all that the alien still showed no sign of having heard him at all. For a brief, enraging instant, Stavros entertained the idea that Leskov wasn't a live being at all, but an empty shell of some sort -- a power suit for heavy work, or a space suit for EVAs. But no: He'd seen the guard moving around performing various operations, shifting boxes and equipment.

The next day, Stavros gave it a stab in English and French.

"Hey! Hey, friend! You know, I could really use a chance to stretch my legs. This is a small accommodation, you know? It's only maybe three meters across, a three-meter circle, and not much more than two meters tall. Good thing I am a small guy, yes?"

Leskov didn't stir.

"Say, do you have a drink to share with a fellow? Do you drink at all yourself? Get a bottle, let me out of here, and let's talk over old times. Do you have old times? Were you a child once? A young man? Maybe you have brothers, sister? Parents?"

At least, this was what Stavros was trying to say. But English was a tough and tricky language, all those irregular verbs and strange vocabulary words. He wasn't too sure he was making sense. He kept it up for a good long time, but finally gave up, his voice sore and his head throbbing.

But Stavros wasn't one to sink into defeat or despair. A few hours later he was crying out as lustily as ever. "Hey ami ! O� sont les jolies filles autour d'ici? �coutez, je ne veux pas me plaindre de la nourriture, mais ne vous servir quoi que ce soit d'autre ici? Est-ce que je peux au moins obtenir un peu de sel? Et peut-�tre un peu de vin? Certains vin rouge? Ou un valium?"

Maybe Leskov understood him. Or maybe he was irritated at how poorly Stavros spoke French. Or maybe he was just sick of listening to his guest carry on so much. Whatever the case, Leskov slowly crossed the expanse of the cargo hold and drew closer than Stavros had ever seen him. He peered at Stavros, and the man felt an ice-cold thrill creep down his backbone.

"Okay, oubliez le valium," Stavros joked weakly. "Je ne pense pas que vous avez un volume de Proust � part?"

Leskov said nothing. Stavros, uneasy, followed suit. Even up close, he couldn't tell if the shiny, dark grey carapace was biological or some sort of artifice. But he could see plainly that Leskov was a very different sort of alien: Powerful, thick, and with hands that lacked the long fingers of the tall greys, shaped instead like broad, stubby paws. Stavros realized that part of this was due to the number of fingers on each hand: Eight fingers, if you counted what looked like two opposable thumbs. The eyes were similar, but they, too, were different: The tall guys had classic alien eyes, elongated ovals slanting up their narrow faces. Leskov had eyes that were shaped like black bananas, as unblinking and jewel like as those of the tall grays. Stavros didn't want to look too long into those eyes, in case Leskov really was a genetically engineered being and retained the primate response to staring. If so, he might grow belligerent.

After six minutes or so, Leskov completed his inspection of Stavros - or maybe got tired of doing his intimidation thing, if his actions reflected some sort of dominance ritual - and he walked away.

Stavros gave up on the yelling for a few days. But, ever creative, he started singing. And when he ran out of songs, he began talking conversationally. Leskov came by again, and then again, always to stand there and stare; was he actually listening? He came by more frequently as a week passed, and then another week.

Stavros talked about his life, his early scholastic promise, his mother's attempt to get him into seminary, the money for bribes she raised that turned out not to be sufficient. He talked about his university days and then his post as a university professor in Magadan. He talked about his classes, autumn days walking along the Kolyma river after a long drive to get to the most scenic areas, and how he'd simply fallen from grace one day, as so many had. He was never sure what he'd said or done to trigger his disfavor, which of his published or unpublished books or essays might have caused the wrong person affront. He lost his house, and ended up living in a friend's tiny cabin... the friend called it a cabin, but it was a shack, and colder than Hell itself in the Siberian winter... but it was remote and got Stavros away from people, which suited him fine...

"But even the shack was better than this tiny little spot on the floor," Stavros said, taking a chance and looking right into Leskov's eyes. "I had a book or two, I had a sheaf of paper to write my thoughts, I had a samovar. I had a blanket. Not that it's cold in here, but sleeping on the floor..." He gestured around at his cramped area, unadorned, empty of anything but himself. He was still unreasonably afraid of taking off his boots. He worried about fungal infections, but he also figured that he'd never had a bath since he'd been here and he didn't feel itchy or dirty, so maybe his feet were fine.

"Friend, I'll put it to you plainly: I don't think I can stand this much longer. It's not uncomfortable here, but it is very confined. I've played all the word games I can think of, all by myself; I've written a book in my head; I've parsed old traumatic memories and practiced yoga and deep breathing. What else can I do in this little bit of space I'm given? I have to move, stretch, and occupy myself. But this is like solitary confinement. I thank you for your company, but... I do all the talking, don't I?"

Leskov stared at him.

"I... I appeal to you. I appeal to your humanity, even if you're an autoconstruct, or a genetically designed organism... or even a real, live alien. Whatever you are, you must have some kind of fellow feeling. Yes?"

Leskov didn't contradict him.

"So it follows that you must have a heart, human or alien or synthetic. I appeal to your heart, my friend. Ask them to let me go. What harm can I do you? What need do you have to keep me here and haul me around from place to place? Next time you land the ship, just open a hatch and give me a nudge, and I'm away. Surely whatever study you're conducting on me must be done by now? Yes? Will you ask them for me, please, my friend?"

Leskov shuffled away.

But some days later - on his 42nd day aboard the ship - Stavros felt a tiny shift in the ship's vibration. He had felt this many times before, every few days; he had started to think it meant the ship was setting down. Could this be the day they would release him from this goddamned cone of torment and let him range freely?

Leskov approached. Several Leskovs - all the same size, shape, and color. Had Stavros been talking to the same creature all this time, or had he addressed a whole squadron over the course of his charm offensive? They paused near his cone in a cluster, and then one of them raised a broad, stubby hand toward a shiny black nub in the ceiling that Stavros had assumed was the field emitter, the source of the invisible walls that kept him confined.

There was a brief, cone-shaped flare all-around Stavros. Was that the field shutting off? He reached out and met no resistance, suffered no pain.

Stavros muttered a short prayer to The Virgin.

The phalanx of Leskovs surrounded Stavros and herded him away from the spot he'd occupied for more than a month. Stavrov stumbled a little, not used to walking, and made his way toward a corridor. After a short walk, they came to a hatch - a simple hole in the hull, which pressure doors had irised open to reveal. The ground was a meter or so below. One of the Leskovs nudged him, and Stavros crouched in the round frame of the hatch, trying to see where he was. He expected it would be someplace remote; and indeed, it looked like a prairie or a desert. The sky glowed with a scarlet light. Was it dusk? Dawn, maybe? It was hot. This was not Russia.

"This freedom thing, it could be unpleasant without a flask of water," he said to his honor guard.

As if in reply, one of them reached out and gave Stavros a shove that sent him tumbling out onto the ground. The hatch irised shut behind him.

Desert or no, this was his chance, and Stavros took it. He dashed away as quickly as he could, laughing, crying out praise and thanks to Leskov - to all the Leskovs. "May whatever gods you worship look kindly upon you!" he cried toward the ship when finally, after a mad dash across half a kilometer, he came to rest. He had scurried up a gentle slope, from which he could look down on the ship. It really was a saucer, he realized; one with bony-looking patterns radiating from hub to rim, almost an organic looking machine. Was the ship itself some sort of autoconstruct? Which of Earth's governments could have engineered such a craft?

That reminded Stavros of an earlier thought, the one he'd had while crouching in the hatch: Where was he? Was this the Sahara? Was he maybe in China? Or America's wild west? He hoped he might be in Wyoming, the setting for his favorite illegal movie, the romance about the two cowboys.

Stavros kept climbing up the slope, looking around to gain a sense of the landscape. Maybe he'd spot a river he could follow to a city. Maybe he'd see a road, or tire tracks... Then he crested the slope, and what he saw paralyzed him with fear. The sun was low in the sky -- an immense red sun in a deep crimson sky. Only a third of the great red star was visible above the jagged, sharply delineated horizon, its huge arc otherworldly in the extreme.

"This is not Earth," Stavros gasped, terror jolting him into action. He turned back, dashing and rolling down the slope. The ship, emitting the same humming roar he'd heard that night in his shack, rose off the ground even as Stavros ran back toward the landing site. He was screaming as he ran, cursing and pleading, the thundering thrum drowning out every syllable.

The ship was leaving him. It really was an alien craft. It really did cross interstellar distances - as mundane as it looked on the inside, it really was a technological marvel built by aliens whose thoughts he could not hope to fathom.

They were simply dumping him here, wherever here was, light years away from the Earth -�on a desert planet, with no supplies, with nothing, not even a crumbly wafer -

"Cassocks!" Stavros screamed after the rising ship, now high up and grown small, its roar the sound of a zephyr or the buzz of a bee. His words roared out, blotting the ship's drone. "Sons of slatterns! Mongrel dog-cur bastards whelped by whoring mothers! Come back! Come back!" And then, as the ship only kept rising: "Fuck you! You hear me, Leskov? Fuck you! Fuck all you Leskov mongrel pigs! Miscreants! Monsters!"

The ship disappeared into the vast red sky.