Alien Earth (27 page)

She unhooked the safety retainer, stood up slowly. It occurred to her then that they’d hardly spoken. They hadn’t needed to. She didn’t spoil it by talking as they headed back toward the hatch, or as they cycled through the air-lock. They helped each other unsuit, and then racked the heavy garments.

“So I guess we just re-release it, and then we can head back to Evangeline,” she finally ventured into the silence.

“That’s putting it a bit simply, but you’re right,” John conceded. There was an easy bantering to his tone that Connie had never heard before. It was almost as if he were suppressing laughter.

Returning the satellite to orbit was a great deal easier than picking it up had been. Yet Connie went carefully, checking and double-checking every move she made. She wanted it to be perfect, as John’s repair had been perfect. Not a wasted moment, not a false movement. And wonder of wonders, it went that way. A deep satisfaction welled up in her when she finally released it and carefully retracted her grapplers. Not a wobble. She leaned back in her lounger, then swiveled toward John. He raised one eyebrow and gave her a nod of congratulations. For the first time she noticed how light glanced off the fine hairs on his skull. She watched him thumb open the communications link.

“Tug, all repairs are completed. We’ll be heading back your way now. Have the welcome mat ready.”

Connie switched her gaze, stared greedily out of a real porthole to the Earth below. This was no screen image but the real thing. Blue and green, brown and yellow and white swirled over the face of the planet, so unlike Castor’s and Pollux’s green and brown visages. It was only two-thirds the size of either of the twin planets, but there, framed in the
window, it loomed larger than eternity. Now that the tension of repairing the satellite was past, she felt she could really look at it. It made her shiver, though she couldn’t say why.

“Tug, cut out the games and answer me. We’ve finished our work here and we’re headed back to you. Have the bay ready to receive us. Over.”

Connie blinked her eyes, and turned to stare at John. Like him, she listened to the silence. He glanced at her and their eyes met in his unspoken request. The edges of her newfound respect for him crumbled slightly at his appeal, but she obeyed.

“Tug. Please answer. We’ve finished our work here and we’re headed back to you, but we need to know the bay is ready for us. Please reply.”

The silence grew very long.

John cleared his throat. “Two possibilities. Tug is either playing games, or our communications equipment is acting up. Connie, punch in ship-to-ship communication. See if Evangeline will respond to the shuttle on the Beast channel.”

She nearly asked what message to send. Then, turning to her console, she punched in a simple hail from shuttle to ship. She watched her readouts, expecting to see the shuttle’s computer register Evangeline’s acknowledgment. She watched for several long seconds past normal response time before she lifted her eyes to John’s. “No reply, sir,” she said, and the formality of the words took a little of the shakiness from her voice.

“Probably our communications system, then. Tug loves his little needling jokes, but I’ve never heard of a Beast ignoring a hail. Well, let’s proceed back to the ship. I’m sure Tug is monitoring us as best he can. In fact, now that I think about it, he’s been unnaturally silent for so long, he’s probably aware we have a problem. If we just go for a normal docking procedure, he’ll probably match us pretty well.”

John moved as he spoke. Connie watched his hands travel the board, summoning up information on the screens, comparing data, and making corrections. His hands moved surely, with only the barest of hesitations, and yet she could not, somehow, see the surety that had characterized his earlier actions. She didn’t doubt his competence, but somehow he
didn’t seem as certain of the outcome as he had earlier. He glanced up at her and read her doubts.

“Keep trying to make contact, with Tug or Evangeline,” he directed her.

“Tug, please respond. If you can hear us, be aware we cannot hear you. We are going to attempt a normal docking. Please have the bay ready and do all you can to assist us. Be aware we are also trying to reach Evangeline, but showing no response. Tug, please respond.” She paused, gave him a long count, then began again. She watched the back of John’s neck as she spoke, saw the slow tracery of sweat begin. The old familiar clenching began in her stomach, worked its way up her spine.

Damn
.
It had all gone so well. The satellite had failed precisely on schedule, and he had repaired it exactly as planned. It had all been going so perfectly. And now this.

John tried to imagine that the communications breakdown was somehow part of the plan, but couldn’t convince himself. The sleep prep from Earth Affirmed had been very detailed, and meticulous in outlining every possible variation. With no communications, there was no way to get a possible landing site out of Evangeline. No way to even ask them to look for one, to tell them the kind of troubles they were in. The sleep prep was supposed to have left him ready for anything, covered every foreseeable circumstance.

This wasn’t one of them. Without communications with Evangeline, how the hell was he going to find any kind of a landing site on the planet? How were they going to return to Evangeline after their little stopover? He handled his controls as if they were made of the flimsiest film. There was, perhaps, the barest chance that the “scheduled” breakdown wouldn’t occur, that he’d be able to get the shuttle back to the Evangeline, and get her safely docked to the gondola. Worry about Earth Affirmed’s mission later.

He scratched the back of his neck, felt the tickling sweat there. He glanced at Connie, caught her looking at him with wide stricken eyes. He felt a sudden flash of irrational anger at her; what the hell gave her the right to look at him like that, like it was all his fault? She was the one who had nagged him into letting her come. He still couldn’t believe
he’d been so stupid. He’d given into an impulse, told himself it would keep her safe from Tug. Safe. He tried to remember how he’d thought it would go, how he would land the shuttle and manage to take his samples without her being aware of what he was doing. Incredibly stupid. But at the time, it had seemed so logical. No, not logical. It had been the way she’d looked, alive and excited in a way he’d never seen her, so full of purpose, so eager to be part of what he was doing. He’d been flattered by that, and listened to his hormones, not his brain. They were right, it was just like being a kid again; it made you want what you wanted right now, with no recourse to logic or consequences. Despite all his training, all the warnings, the first time he’d had to deal with emotion versus intellect, he’d failed. And now he felt the weight of her expecting him to somehow miraculously fix things like a three-G drag. Stupid crew. Couldn’t she see there wasn’t a damn thing he could do?

He knew his anger wasn’t justified, but that only spurred it. It’s the change, he told himself, and couldn’t decide if that should excuse it or prompt him to control it. He glanced at the instrument panel, made a minor correction. He couldn’t afford to be angry right now, not at Connie, not at Earth Affirmed, not even at himself. Right now it was going to take all he had just to rendezvous with Evangeline.

And maybe more.

He forced himself to check the instrument panel. There it was. The warning light winked on, just as scheduled. It was the scheduled malfunction, loss of the automatic docking systems that communicated directly with Evangeline. A malfunction barely big enough for him to opt to land on the planet instead of going back with his ship. If he’d still had vocal communication with Tug, he’d probably actually have been able to dock anyway. He wasn’t that rusty as a pilot. Some little demon in his head wondered to him if this was Earth Affirmed’s way of assuring he’d complete their mission. No. That was stupid. They’d have known he’d have no way of getting a landing site from Tug. This whole mess was unforeseen, unplanned by anyone. A genuine crisis, and no one was going to get him out of it but himself. His hands moved automatically over the controls, performing the corrections he’d been schooled in during the sleep prep. His sub
conscious tried to feed him the feelings of competence and optimism that were also part of the Mariner training, designed to keep panic at bay. He rejected them. All he felt was a cold sickness in the pit of his stomach as the shuttle’s flight became more and more erratic, wobbled ever farther from the preset course. The warning light began a rapid flashing as a buzzer began to sound. He reached numbly to slap it off.

“What was that?” Connie was out of her lounger, holding to a brace behind him.

“A warning buzzer,” he told her, coldly sarcastic. Why couldn’t she leave him alone? How could he cope with anything with those huge scared eyes focused on his hands?

“What’s it mean?” Breathless little voice, scared of him but determined to have the truth.

“That we’re in a mess.” He didn’t try to keep his feelings out of his voice. “Have you reached Tug yet?”

“No.” She whispered, but a wail lurked in her voice. He felt her hands grip the back of his neck support.

“Then get back to your post and keep trying.” He tried to bark out the command, but couldn’t keep the edge of desperation from his voice. The hope that she could get through and that Tug could do something to help them, to keep them from spiraling down to Earth blind clutched at his thin control of himself. “Dammit, Crew, I mean now!” he added savagely.

His harshness seemed to reassure her. She returned to her station and took up her litany. “Tug, this is Connie. Please reply. We’ve lost reception, we’ll need your help to dock. Please, Tug, reply. Please, Tug …”

John hunched his shoulders, tried not to hear the imminent tears in Connie’s voice. He felt a sudden overpowering anger that flooded him with physical strength. Heedless of common sense, he slammed the controls over, then overcorrected wildly, all in silence. The coldness came back to him and he watched numbly as his actions made only a minor difference in the board.

“We’re not going to be able to dock,” he heard himself say. Some part of him still blithely followed Earth Affirmed’s script. “We’re going to have to land on the planet. Make repairs there.”

“We can’t!” Connie wailed. “We’re blind, with no link to Evangeline. If you try to land down there, we’ll die!”

Her voice was breaking under the stress of her emotions. He said the next prescribed line. “If we try to dock like this, we’ll wreck the gondola. Maybe even injure Evangeline. And if that happens, we definitely die. Landing on Earth and attempting repairs is our only chance.” Even to him, it sounded stupid.

“John …” she protested.

“Shut up.”

He couldn’t listen to her and keep command of himself. Not when he wanted to fall apart just as much as she did. “Keep trying to make contact with Tug.”

A whole bank of indicators blinked out. No readings for fuel, temperatures, atmosphere … just as suddenly, the panel came back to life, functioned steadily for a moment, and then began to flutter. Digital readouts changed illegibly, warning lights danced over the board, then died. Whatever little sabotage Earth Affirmed had scheduled had somehow fed over into the other biologics, triggering their decay as well. Wonderful.

“It’s okay now?” Connie asked hopefully.

“We can’t trust anything now,” he told her truthfully. “Damn degradables. This new generation of equipment is too damn easy to break down biologically. Something’s decided to rot ahead of schedule, and it’s taking the rest with it.”

No use in confessing now, no use in telling her it was all a conspiracy gone wrong. It wouldn’t calm her down any. It would probably only make her mad as well as scared.

He suddenly realized his hands were still, perched on the edge of his board. He ran his eyes over the instrument panels. Meaningless. What one indicator told him, another contradicted. He was still breathing, but cabin pressure was zero, according to the board. None of it made sense. He suddenly realized there was nothing constructive he could do here. He was going to die, and not quickly. He was going to have plenty of time to think about it as he was doing it. Might as well do it correctly and by the book. He unstrapped his harness, oddly calm.

“Connie, it’s time to get into our suits now,” he told her gently.

S
UMMONED
.
He wanted her to … chocolate. Brown, thick, sweet bitter salt, texture chewy, teeth breaking it down, saliva encountering sugars … too much, too much. She couldn’t do both, she had to choose. She could say yes or no, she could make deals, she could choose. Choose Raef and the dream then, just shut off the other….

Lemon. Yellow, thick, sticky, sweet, sour, smooth thick, tiny shreds of, oh, the peel, bitter tang, smelling the taste, tasting the smell, volatile oils they called them in chemistry class, oh, it all relates, that old memory of his to this pretense in the bake shop—“Shall we wrap those up for you?” Nice voice, deep timbre, man the color of chocolate, voice like chocolate, lemon girl at the cash register. “Yes, please,” Mom says and …

Pain. Breaking it, disrupting the pattern like O’s defeating X’s in tic-tac-toe. Make it harmonize. Eliminate the O’s. Disregard pain. Block nerves, block input, just like blocking the ones that Tug said she must never move, never use as it might kill the Humans. Pain still there, but refuse to acknowledge it, refuse to respond to it. Could beg to make it stop, could say, “Please, Tug, make it stop, I’ll be good.” Then Tug would make it stop, but would scold. And no more chocolate, no more lemon, no more choices, no more deals. Don’t choose that. Choose pain instead, but keep dreams on top. Choose crunch of nuts, and maraschino cherry, fat red juicy,
drips, makes a red spot on the whipped cream, eat it first or save it for last, choose, choose, choose.

Death was on top of her
,
it had its hands pressed on her face, pushing hard, pushing the skin right off her bones as it pressed her back into her lounger. The vibration was a second assailant, shaking her mercilessly, like someone trying to shake her awake and out of this nightmare. Connie wanted to cry, but she couldn’t get enough breath.

Everything was gone. John, the shuttle, and Tug, the whole damn universe was too far away. She was left alone inside her body. The suit that contained her, the lounge her body compressed against were distant things as well. Connie had shrunk to a tiny little spot inside her skull that screamed, a little place in her throat that clutched at breath. All alone.

It wasn’t fair. She’d chosen this once, chosen death. In the hot, hot bathwater with her old pruning shears, she’d snipped at her own flesh, catching up the purple veins in the curved blades and squeezing the handles. Remember the pain? No, not really. Only the clouds of released blood as it tinged the hot bathwater and diffused through it. Letting her life out, she’d thought dreamily then. Let it out to join with the rest of life on Castor, stop keeping it all bottled up and separate and unclean inside her Human body. Let it out, to flow back into a recycling tank, to be cleansed and finally be at peace with the planet. No more having to be careful, to follow all the rules, to be ever vigilant against disrupting the natural life of the planet. Let it out.

Then she’d wanted to die, and they hadn’t let her. They’d forced the life back into her, forced her back into this body, and made her continue. She’d come awake saying, “Please, please, let me go, I want to die.” But they hadn’t. They’d made her go on, and she had, and she found she could go on. And lately she’d almost liked it. But now they were spiraling down to the dirty planet where so many had died before them, and Death was squeezing her out of her body. And all she wanted to say was “Please, please, let me go, I want to live.” But she didn’t have the breath.

Tug had never been
so totally alone.

Arthroplana were a colonial species. When the rare
drone emerged who could tolerate separation, he was systematically prepared for parasitic encystment in a Beast. There, in isolation, he could focus on a subject considered worthy of his concentration. And at the end of his encystment, he could return to his colony, to share the fruits of his long studies with fetal candidates. If his studies were impressive, he might be honored with fertilization of his segments. If his Beastship accrued wealth for the home colony in the meantime, so much to the better.

Such was Tug’s mission, and he had believed it was going well. Perhaps he had been a little overconfident, but he’d admit that freely if the Elders ever questioned him. Such interrogation could hardly be harsher than what he subjected himself to now. Had his rule bending, his cavalier attitude toward the regulations that governed an Arthroplana’s relationship with his Beast led to his present difficulty?

It was odd. He had often considered Evangeline’s demands for attention as interruptions to his concentration. Her need for his companionship had been proof of the primitive nature of Beasts, of the simplicity of their intellects. A Beast could not even amuse itself. Left alone, it suffered. A Beast needed the Arthroplana encysted inside it for companionship. He had never considered that the reverse might also be true.

Tug regarded the chamber Evangeline’s original occupant had carved out within her, and the alcoves he had added. One alcove held the Human-made monitoring equipment that let him contact the crew within the gondola without using Evangeline as a go-between. Another held his few personal artifacts, the third his artistic efforts, scarred into the living walls of the alcove. This was the extent of his mansion, and his prison.

The equipment that let him speak to the Humans was useless now. Connie and John had left in the shuttle. The last words he’d had with them was just prior to their departure. When he’d attempted to ask them how the repairs were progressing, he’d discovered that Evangeline had shut down external communications. He suspected she’d shut down all the radio frequencies that were a Beast’s normal emanation, completely severing herself from communication with the shuttle and its passengers. And when he’d tried to contact her to explain this, she’d ignored him. No matter how he’d stung her,
she’d refused to acknowledge him. The effort had exhausted him.

And now he had time to consider his isolation. Time. It suddenly seemed a slippery thing. Whose time? The brief tickings of John’s and Connie’s lives, or the slow undulation of his own. What did time mean when you were alone? Perhaps this was Evangeline’s time he experienced now, the empty time that stretched forever until some other being saw fit to interrupt it.

No. Foolishness. He was no beast to be dependent on some other being to entertain him, to give him a sense of self. No. He was Tug. He would face this and handle it. Besides, what were the worst possible consequences he could imagine from it?

Only an eternity of this. Connie and John would die out there in the shuttle, unable to reenter without his cooperation. Raef would sink ever deeper into his dreams; he probably wouldn’t know when he died. And Tug would continue, blindly feeding inside Evangeline, as simple a parasite as his ancient ancestors had been. Only this Beast’s natural cycle had been broken by her training. She’d never migrate with her herd, never lay eggs, never return her young to a planet’s surface to rear them. He’d never have a chance to emerge from her body, to see his own kind again. Alone inside her, gradually growing, until his body reached optimum size and his reproduction segments were ready for sloughing. And then what? He didn’t know. He imagined the chamber full of himself, packed tightly with his swelling segments….

No. That couldn’t happen. He refused the thought. She’d have to get lonely, she’d have to reach out for him long before that. That was what he had to be ready for. He had to have a definitive plan of action in mind, one that would leave her no doubts as to who was ultimately in charge. He had to decide now: forgive or punish? Comfort or condemn? He had to decide what would be most effective. This was no time to give into senseless ditherings, to trembling what-ifs. Keep in mind who was master here. A pity about the Humans, and he would not enjoy answering for them. But what he learned from this about Beasts would be enough to ensure his immortality among Arthroplana. Focus on that, and continue as befitted one of his race.

[
More banana cream pie?
]

Raef felt vaguely queasy. Only imagination, he told himself grimly. Imaginary food, imaginary nausea. “No, thanks, Mom.”

[She cuts another piece of banana cream pie. She lifts it out of the foil bakery pan and sets it on the plate. She picks up her fork and cuts a bite off the pointed end of it. She puts the bite in her mouth. She tastes it.]

Raef dared to let his attention wander. She was good enough now to do it for herself. She’d been through the whole damn bakery at least twice now, plundering his oh-so-complete memory of the food there. She had it all, image, taste, smell, touch, even the sounds of doughnuts sizzling in the hot fat and the chatter of the counter girl, and the beeping of the register. And she had replayed them for him, insisting that he participate. Raef couldn’t help but wonder what her real life was like that she would be so enthused of such a simple scenario.

Wondered, too, at what had suddenly changed her.

He’d felt Tug trying to break into their pretense. Her attention had wavered, and he’d had a sense of distant pain. Very, very bad, but muted somehow. A peculiar sensation, and he had felt how she separated it from him and their pretense. How she protected him. He didn’t understand it, but wondered what it meant for the Human crew and their repair mission.

She’d finished her banana cream pie. She wiped her mouth on her napkin, just as he’d taught her.

[Would you like an eclair, Raef?]

Time to take action.

“No, thanks, Mom. I’m really full.” The boy pushed his chair back from the kitchen table, being careful not to knock over the stacked white paper boxes of bakery goods. “I think I’m going to go take a nap for a while. Okay?”

[You are going to pretense a nap? Will this pretense be for me, also?]

“Actually, Mom, I’m sort of tired of this pretense. Uh, how about you tell me what’s happening back at the shuttle and all?”

A long pause. Overlong.

[I do not know, therefore I cannot tell you.]

“How can you not know?”

A tickle of dread ran through him. Raef knew enough about the Beastships to know that they communicated constantly among themselves and with the electronic communicators aboard all spacecraft. He remembered hearing it compared to whale song: incomprehensible to the Human listener, and untranslatable, but fraught with meaning nonetheless. It was spoken of as a constant, all Beasts broadcasting and receiving simultaneously, with each Beast having its own distinct song and special variation of its “language.” Reception, it was said, was across a wide spectrum, from so great a variety of sources that it could no more be compared to hearing and seeing than a black and white photograph could be compared to the best sensory holograms. It was how the Beasts knew what planets supported life, and if that life was intelligent. Yet somehow all of that input could not compete with the simple human scenarios he pretended for her. He still couldn’t figure that out, but right now the fate of the shuttle and its Humans was most important.

“How can you not know?” he demanded again.

[I choose this. I can choose, so I choose the pretense. It is better. More entertaining, more interesting …]

He sensed a fumbling for ideas and words.

[Delicious. I have never had delicious before. Your sensing compares and relates. It puts things together. Like delicious touching with hands, tongues. I have no such hands and tongues. In pretense, I know yours, and it is better than … than the big outsideness.]

For a moment Raef experienced space as a Beast did. It was a stark experience, of Emptiness, Sustenance, Obstacles, and Other Beasts. All input came in equally, was of equal importance. Like living in a laser show. Other Beasts were companionship, mating, play. But no other Beasts were near so there was only the great emptiness, sustenance she didn’t crave, and obstacles to avoid. That was all. She saw no beauty in the myriad stars, no wonders in the vast distances she traversed; not even the diversity of the planets and races she had encountered impressed her as interesting. It shook Raef, and filled him with as deep a sadness as when his biology teacher had insisted that his dog could only see in
black and white. But at least Sheppie had had his sense of smell and keen hearing to bringing wondrous images of the world that Raef couldn’t share. These Beasts had nothing. No. They had everything, and nothing to compare it to. No feeling about any of it. Feelings they had to get elsewhere. From their Arthroplanas.

Or from him.

She wasn’t stupid. That electrified him. He’d been treating her like people used to treat him, as if she were simple or stupid, but she wasn’t. It was just all new to her. Not just pretending something, but the entirety of every human experience: tasting foods, loving someone, casual conversation, constructed dwellings, everything. Once he realized just how much she was absorbing to understand him at all, a new dread washed over him. She was damn intelligent, and learning fast. He didn’t know how many years she’d been listening in on his dreaming, but she’d reached a foundation of understanding now. There was no telling how fast she’d learn and change from now on.

Or how fast she’d change him.

He could feel that happening, too, when he thought about it. Two minds couldn’t be joined as intimately as theirs were and not affect each other. Raef couldn’t tell what she was doing to him, but the anger and frustration he had leaned on for years had lessened. All his life, he had depended on his anger and pride to get him through. And what did he have now?

[Raef has Evangeline.]

Great. He was going steady with a spaceship, one that could read his every thought when he wasn’t consciously guarding against it. Like now.

The shuttle!

For just those moments, he had forgotten it and the two Humans it carried. What had happened to it? Had equipment failed as John had expected? “The shuttle, Evangeline. You have to choose to know about it. They need you to get back.”

[This is not of great interest to me. Chocolate cream is better.]