Alien Earth (16 page)

“Indeed? Please enlarge on your feelings?”

Was there something else behind the politely interested voice? Just how bluntly could she speak to Tug before he would construe her as mutinous? He seemed to sense her uncertainty, for he suddenly added, “You know, when we are alone and talking like this, I do not think of myself as owner, nor you as crew. I consider us friends, even confidantes. That is, as ones who do not betray each other’s secrets. Shall we be that?”

“I … suppose so.” She still couldn’t believe any of this was happening.

“For, of course, John might be angry if he found I had awakened you off schedule, and that we had conversed casually, like this. For the sake of harmony, you will not tell him?”

“No. Of course not.” That was Tug’s trade then. He’d admitted to her that he shouldn’t have awakened her, and asked her not to tell. It was his way of assuring her she could speak freely and not have it get back to John. Well. Maybe she would. Maybe Tug could explain what looked like obvious gaps in the mission briefing she’d received.

“Here’s what makes me nervous about this mission. John and I are supposed to go back to Earth, gather data, and return to Delta with the information. Right?”

“That is a correct summation of the mission goals, yes.”

“Why?”

“It surprises me that you’d ask. Earth Affirmed’s politics are well known. They seek to prove that Terra is viable, and could be an alternate living area for Humanity, and …”

“Not that,” Connie sighed. “That’s obvious. Why did the Conservancy grant the permit for this mission? Everyone knows Terra is dead. I never understood why they let groups like Earth Affirmed go around stirring up discontent and unrest, let alone something like this. I’m not sure I like being a part of it.”

Tug chuckled affably. “Maybe I can put your mind to rest, there. Do you really think I’d allow my ship to leave on such a mission without making sure it was completely cleared with the Conservancy first? Their position is quite simple;
they’ll grant the permit and allow Earth Affirmed to expend their own resources to prove the Conservancy has always been right. The proof will be undeniable and will dispel the notion that Terra is a reclaimable place. The idea that there may be an alternative to living harmoniously within the bionet of Castor and Pollux has become more and more unsettling to Human civilization in the past few generations. Humans are a restless, some might even say ungrateful, race. Living on Castor and Pollux requires restraint and self-control, the surrender of the excesses that Humans once regarded as their ‘rights.’ The Conservancy knows that, and seeks to constantly remind your people of it. But Humans seem to need to be reminded, over and over. Anyone who has observed the Human race for more than a few generations can see the danger signs. You are becoming careless. Some few of you become greedy, others think willpower alone can overcome natural limits and boundaries. Some think that their wealth allows them to buy ecological privileges, that someone else will do without to allow them to satisfy their hunger for excess. It is the same pattern seen before Terra had to be abandoned. The same pattern we Arthroplana have seen destroy three other civilized races: the Evadorians, the Thetans, and the Caraks-a-lan.”

The fervency in Tug’s artificial voice surprised her. She faltered. “But I still don’t understand. How can our mission to Terra change any of that?”

“To use an ancient idiom, it will rub the nose of Earth Affirmed in the smelly truth. That the same excesses and wild dreams of Human immunity to natural laws totally destroyed the last planet entrusted to Humans. The Conservancy will use Earth Affirmed’s own data to prove it. Humans will have to recognize the necessity for the firm controls the Conservancy applies; it may even lead to a new austerity.”

“And if they’re right?” Connie asked softly.

“Pardon?”

“And what if Earth Affirmed is right? What would happen then?”

“In the opinion of the Conservancy, total destruction of the social system on Castor and Pollux and the orbiting stations. Too many Humans accept the constraints and discipline of the Conservancy only because they are offered no alterna
tive. The Conservancy’s mandate to govern is founded on the disastrous example of Terra’s destruction. Remove that, and you open the door to the overthrow of the Conservancy. Some say it would be the end of the Human race, for Humans could never readapt to Terra. It was an unimaginably harsh place, Connie.”

A small pang of disappointment surprised Connie. “So all this is so we can prove, once again, that Terra is dead.”

“We only gather the data,” Tug reminded her. “The Conservancy will prove that Terra is dead. The Arthroplana will back their decision. There will be no more visits to Terra.”

“It doesn’t seem worth it,” she declared suddenly. “Going so far, to look at a planet that, at departure readings, was almost totally poisoned or sterile. Those Humans who had to be left were making frantic efforts to save bits of their ecology by transplanting plants and lower life-forms—”

“Animals. The correct word is animals.”

“And animals into the cleaner areas. But they knew that they were only staving off the inevitable. They knew Humanity could survive on Earth for only a few more generations, and that the planet itself was moving toward a totally lifeless state. All the historical records say so.”

Connie paused for breath. The knot was back in her belly.

“‘The death of one’s home planet is a tragedy that transcends time,’” Tug suggested.

“Exactly.” Connie tried to sigh her tension away.

“I was quoting, actually. From one of the early poets on a recording I have. It still troubles you, then? Even though it happened long before your birth?”

“It … I had this philosophy teacher. I took the course as a recreational thing. I’d never taken a course like that before, so I didn’t realize how strange he was. His whole focus seemed to be Humanity’s destruction of Terra. He told us it was the Original Sin of the Human race. He had this old book of myths, only he claimed they were prophecies. He said we’d been cast out of Paradise for destroying it, and that the radiation in the atmosphere was an angel with a fiery sword. He said it was a sin that would never be forgiven, and that Castor and Pollux were actually eternal damnation for our race. All kinds of stuff like that. With every class session, he
got stranger. Finally, someone reported him. Later, it turned out he was unadjusted. Totally unadjusted. He’d grown up on a dirty-tech satellite, and been to a lot of therapy, and for a while he did okay there, but then he’d faked credentials and somehow ended up teaching philosophy, planetside. No one ever found out how he’d managed to get off a dirty-tech station and to Castor, and he wasn’t telling. He was terminated, of course, and all the people who’d taken his courses had to be adjusted.”

“My quotation made you recall all this?” Tug sounded mildly perplexed.

Connie shook her head and took a deep breath. “Something about it transcending all time, I guess. But here’s the thing, Tug. Even before we poisoned Terra, it was a dangerous place. Animals would suck your blood, or kill and eat you. Just the touch of some plants would poison you. Sometimes you’d get too hot and the sun would burn your skin, and in other places you could freeze to death. And that was normal, was what it was like before Humanity poisoned it. We’re talking about a very hostile natural environment. Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten, survival of the fittest. That’s what competitive evolution was all about. I’ve seen holos of it. The schools used to get the really good ones you could walk into. Not anymore. Too many kids had screaming nightmares. It’s nothing like Castor or Pollux. No serenity or order, all strife. In one holo, there was this dead animal, with other animals biting pieces off it, and there were plants growing right out of another plant and sucking away its nutrients. Everything just grew every which way, with no plan or order. Different colors and shapes of leaves everywhere, and up overhead, there were these other animals screaming while they jumped from one tree to the next, ripping live foliage from the trees and eating it, and seed-bearing fruit that was still viable, they were eating that, too. And …”

Connie paused. She shut her eyes against the memory of that awful lesson. Don’t think about it, she counseled herself. Think of a curtain grove, soft dangling fronds gently stirring to pollinate the creme moss that always carpets the soil beneath curtain trees. Think of the ordered ranks of marcher palms in their precise rows. Every nine hundred twenty-seven days they sent out a questing tendril, to bore into the soil
about twenty meters from the parent tree. A new rank of marchers would spring up from the tendril, and the old tree would die and return its essence to Castor. That was ecology, that was harmony. Not some place where men had once ripped the skin of the planet open with iron blades, forced seeds into the soil and ruthlessly torn up every other plant that tried to compete with the favored crop. That wasn’t home to her, could never be. Home was Horticolony Six on Castor, and a Humanity that harvested fallen foliage and nonviable seed-fruits, a place where nutrients were returned in exact balance with what had been harvested. Not a place where men kept animals penned ankle deep in their own excrement, and then slew them with hammers, to have bloody meat on their tables.

“Connie?” Tug asked gently.

“Maybe you can’t understand how I feel, at the prospect of actually going there. Maybe we evolved there, maybe in some weird sense it’s ‘home’ to our species, but it isn’t to me. I grew up on Castor, Tug, in a cooperative environment. I’m a different creature from those which the Earth spawned. I’ve got no desire to see the place. It’s like a sort of … shame in my past, or something. Hostile as it was, it was a living place, and my ancestors killed it. That’s wrong.” Connie ran her hands through her short hair, standing it up on her skull. It was damp. Tension sweat. She was getting too worked up over this. She wished she’d never gotten into the discussion. Was this what John had been warning her about?

“Interesting.”

The very restraint of Tug’s response was like a rebuke. With a jolt she realized who she’d been spilling her feelings to.

“It’s just something I have strong feelings about. If I’d have known I was this distressed by the topic, I’d have gone in for Adjustment on it. Believe me, it will be one of the first things I do when I go back.” A lie, but a correct lie. She wished she could undo the whole conversation.

“Being well adjusted is of very great importance to you, isn’t it?”

“Isn’t it to everyone?” Connie got up and took her tray to the recycler to clear it.

“No.” Tug didn’t notice that she had not answered his
question. “When John had friends, they took pride in being borderline unadjusted. I used to listen to their conversations. They spoke their unharmonious thoughts proudly. ‘I’m a Human being, not algae. I have a right to self-determination, even if it means I’m not totally harmonious with every leaf and root on Castor.’ So one said and another laughed aloud at his words.”

Connie racked her tray. “Oh?” she said a moment later, hoping she sounded no more than politely interested. The food in her stomach was sodden and heavy. Tug listened in on John’s private transmissions. That shocked her.

“I confronted John with it,” Tug went on blithely. “He maintained it was a cultivated attitude that did not necessarily mirror their true feelings. They aspired to a rebellion they could not truly feel, and expressed it as an infantile posturing, a pretense, an assuming of character for their own amusement.”

“Is that last part another poetry quote?” Connie asked.

“No, it’s from John. Did you really think it good enough to have been a poet’s quote?” Tug sounded mildly offended.

“Well—I’m not really the best person to ask, Tug. Poetry always mystified me. My teachers always said it made things clearer, but to me it seemed to deliberately obscure the message. I have no interest in poetry,” she told him firmly.

“I see.” Disappointment. “Then you would not enjoy discussing an old poem with me, to try to find the heart of it. I understand. But perhaps you could do me a small favor. John has refused to share any of his new acquisitions with me. Do you have access to them? I would love to scan them.”

“I don’t,” Connie said frankly. The avidity in Tug’s voice was disconcerting. Obviously Tug wanted her to go into John’s quarters and “borrow” the recordings for him. She refused to recognize the hint.

He sensed her sudden retreat. “I did not mean to make you uncomfortable. Let’s not discuss poetry, then. Let’s talk about your Adjustment. I admit, malleability of the Human mind fascinates me. Did it take long for you to be returned to normal? I wonder that it didn’t show up on any of John’s résumé information about you.”

Connie went cold. Was it a threat? She didn’t want to find out. Better to just play it his way. “Actually, I am rather
curious as to which poems you find so interesting, Tug. Perhaps we could discuss one.”

“Well”—Tug paused deliberately—“if it would please you, perhaps we could. Tell me, how do you interpret this: ‘Eliza, Elizabeth, Betsy, and Bess went on a walk and found …’”

Toning cycle
.
Again. John awoke almost enough to stretch. He’d been dreaming of an Earth he’d never known, of green rounded hills and hairy animals frolicking on them and feathered animals flapping through the sky over his head.

He could feel the warm membranous push of the womb against his curled back. Dammit, he wasn’t supposed to be this much awake. All the manuals said too much aware womb time could be damaging. It awakened too many memories the conscious mind had deliberately buried. Rumor had it you could go screaming crazy if you managed to consciously remember being separated from the Human womb and put into the mechanical one. Another stupid myth, he was sure. Tug was probably doing it to him on purpose. None of his other levers had worked to turn John into his errand boy.

“Go ahead and turn me in,” John had replied to his last threat. “Tell them you scanned my private recordings, listened in on my conversations. They’ll take my license away, maybe terminate me when they decide Adjustment won’t do it. But the Conservancy will decide you’re contaminated, Tug. They can’t do much to you personally, of course. Only prohibit all Humans from shipping aboard the Evangeline or communicating with you in any way. And then what happens to your Great Study? Pretty difficult to complete without any contact with your subjects.”