Asimov's Science Fiction: April/May 2014 (33 page)

She stoppered her panic. Tried to breathe through her nose.

Then she realized her mistake. If no one was stung, Lefevre would guess she'd rigged the bet with male wasps. The briggers would know she lied. They wouldn't listen to her.

That was death for sure, and sooner, not later.

Looking up, she found Lefevre staring at her. Lefevre pressed her lips shut in a fierce grimace. She stepped closer to Rios. Her eyes dared Rios to quit, dared her to keep going. The wasp thumped its abdomen against Rios's cheek. Rios twitched.

She felt the weight of the briggers' gaze prickle her skin. This gamble wasn't stupid to them. Badassery eased everything. Boredom, illness, abandonment. Badassery was a moment of clarity. A win.

Rios had never wanted to be a badass. Wasn't sure she wanted to be one now.

The wasp crawled slowly on her tongue, legs pressed, searching. Its head butted her teeth: click.

Lefevre's eyes widened. Her cheek shuddered.

Perhaps, Rios thought, she might win another way. By not being stupid. The briggers might follow someone who changed the rules. They might see it as a promise. Survival instead of going down fighting. Rios hoped they would. She drew a deep breath in through her nose.

With her tongue, she flicked the still-drowsy wasp toward her molars and bit hard. She ground down, crunching its abdomen. The taste was sour and sharp. Thick fluid oozed through the broken sheath of wasp. Rios fought the urge to gag as she mashed the wasp into a paste. Unstung, she swallowed.

Rios opened her mouth: empty.

Lefevre spat her wasp out into her hand. "Damn." She frowned. She sounded relieved.

Around the circle, briggers clapped Deece's shoulder as he swept up their chits.

Someone pumped Rios's hand and someone else pounded her back and whooped. Surrounded by briggers, she laughed.

A dust-laden breeze swept through the garrison as five briggers took the black corporate tent apart. They dragged one of the bigger apartment sections over to Rios's med station and began sealing the tough fabric to the faded brown canvas of her tent, more than doubling the space inside. Jersey carried a box of corporate equipment into the tent—tablets, a micro-spectroscope, optical lenses, and medical supplies—and placed it on top of the expensive desk Cabrese had called her own.

"You'll get a good lab going with this gear," he said.

Rios nodded agreement. She brushed a finger over the fine corporate micro-spectroscope and waited for Deece to bring the first batch of fungus-exposed female wasps from the vespidary. Two rash-covered briggers sat on the medlab's bench, scratching while they waited to help her test the cure.

To pass the time, she walked through the new section of the medlab and discovered that the corporate tent had embedded micromesh windows sandwiched between layers of black cloth. She opened the panels and let E-17's daylight pour in.

Beyond the tent, more briggers redistributed corporate's gear under Lefevre's watchful eye. A pile of broken communication equipment and spare parts grew beside the mess tent.

Another crew of briggers built awnings and wind barriers beyond the garrison perimeter, using more of the corporate tent. Rios and Lefevre had agreed on one thing: briggers needed something to do.

Rios came up with the plan to dig foundations for more permanent individual quarters. Lefevre had grudgingly admitted it was a good idea.

"We'll spread out a bit, make some tunnels," Lefevre told the crews. "But keep the mess for everyone." She'd used the back of a ration chit to sketch an example hut, set low to the ground. Briggers were miners, after all. Then she'd drawn an interior complete with something Rios didn't recognize at first.

"Game room," muttered Lefevre. Rios swore Lefevre looked almost embarrassed.

Deece passed by one of the medlab's windows, carrying a box of clear vials. Rios met him outside the tent.

"First generation," Deece said, lifting the vials into the light. Tiny chitinous bodies made soft tapping noises inside the vials. The wasps twitched their abdomens and flexed their wings at Rios.

No sense being afraid of you anymore, she thought. We're stuck with each other.

Rios lifted a vial from the box and carried it, a jab of antihistamine, and a freezpack to the waiting briggers. Her pockets were still filled with epi.

She had the first brigger hold out his hand, palm down. She turned the vial over on the back of his hand and pulled the slide-lid free. Then she tapped the vial and waited for the wasp to crawl down the side. The brigger shifted his feet.

"What's your name?" she said.

"Bannon," he mumbled, his eyes on the wasp.

"Your first name? Mine's Diana." Briggers didn't share first names. But, Rios realized, we're not really briggers anymore. We're colonists.

"Jenson," he said, then hissed at the wasp's sting.

She slid the vial's lid back in place and handed Jenson Bannon the freezpack.

"Stay here for a bit, until I know you're not going to react badly to the venom."

Jenson nodded, shaking his hand.

The second patient, Bane, first name, Mirlo, bellyached and groused, but she held out her hand for the sting too. Rios tried to ease her pain as best she could. Then Rios packed up the wasp vials and handed them back to Deece. She ran her hand across the stubble on her scalp.

Deece waited with her as she observed the two patients. Over the next hour, the stung colonists began to show one sign of relief, much as Deece had: they stopped scratching at their rashes. If all went well, their welts would disappear in a day.

And then? More fungus-exposed wasps, more stings. Perhaps, with corporate's tools, a vaccine for those who hadn't been infected yet. Could she make a vaccine that didn't require a sting? Rios hoped so.

"The next generations will be better able to process the fungus," Deece said.

Lefevre stepped through the tent flap, catching the drift of the conversation. "Couple generations will change everyone, likely. If we survive it."

Rios looked out the tent window at the red, pitted landscape. At the colonists digging foundations. She turned around and looked at her lab. The wasps hummed and knocked their heads against the clear vials Deece held: Click.

"We'll survive," she said. "We'll adapt."

Jersey's shout carried into the tent on the breeze. Another voice replied, filled with anger. Fighting over the components of a broken tablet.

"I'll put a stop to that before they kill each other," Lefevre said. "We barely have enough people as it is." She started for the tent exit.

Rios moved to catch up with her.

"You know corporate will be back someday," Lefevre said.

Rios didn't doubt it. They'd return to E-17, looking to sweep away the past, like she'd swept up the dead wasp that had stung Deece. But maybe it wouldn't be that easy.

Rios remembered the crackle of the wasp nest she'd broken apart with a stick as a child. The angry hum of wings against her hands.

"Tell you what." Rios smiled at her old adversary as she held the tent flap open. She looked past the people walking beyond the boundary of the former garrison, and at those gathering the first of the edible grass. "I'll make you a bet. When corporate returns to E-17, I wager we'll teach them one hell of a lesson."

M. Bennardo is the writer of over forty published short stories. His newest is a tale about true determination. It marks his fourth appearance in
Asimov's.
The author lives in Cleveland, Ohio, but people everywhere can find him online at
http://www.mbennardo.com.

She knew little, but she knew she had been put here by some god as a safeguard. The god had no name, or no name that she knew. Perhaps it hadn't even been a god. She only understood it as a being of immense power who lived above, an unknowable being who entered the water only when it wished, who had put her here as a safeguard, and who had then left. But she stayed, even though the god had never returned. That she had been put here was one of the few things she knew, and so she stayed.

The waters were dark and cold. She preferred it thus. At times she swam higher, into waters that were warmer and lighter, and she recalled the times when all the waters had been dark and cold. In those seasons she had swum high or low as she pleased, seeking scraps of food. Great storms had often lashed the sea, and angry rainfall turned the surface to a boiling blanket of lighter, fresher water. In places, close to the coastal shelves, great torrents of this fresh water poured off the land and brought much nourishment into the ocean, clouds of food particles blooming across the surface as far as anyone could swim. In the dark and cold times, she had ventured almost to the surface itself, feeding in great gulps and thriving amid this unexpected bounty.

But the bounty had not lasted. It had given out before the dark, cold times ended. Season followed season, and soon she had descended into the depths of the ocean again—not because the surface was too warm or light yet, but because there was no more food there. In the ocean the top dies first, and it was not long before all the surface became like a desert. It was only in deeper, darker places where life still survived on the remnants of dead things drifting down like rotting snow from above.

Though she swam in one direction, she found herself pulled in another. She was being dragged tail first through the water. Soon she bumped and collected against others—against other fish and other creatures. She was larger than most, a giantess of the deep now. Had she had any notion of time, she might have thought that she was older than most as well. But time was not important. There was simply the cycle of instinct and the same motions day after day, season after season. There was no progression, no end to look forward to, no beginning to recall.

The dragging stopped and she felt herself lifted now, pulled slowly upward to the warmth and the light, as the pressure around her steadily decreased with each second of ascension. She was pulled up along with the other denizens of the ocean, gathered and netted indiscriminately—pulled up to regions she almost never chose to visit anymore. Some part of her protested. Had she not been put there as a safeguard? That was why she had never left, and she did not want to leave now.

Then, at last—the cataclysm. The breaking of the surface and the strange stinging as streams of water poured off her scales and out of her gills, rushed in a thick rivulet from her wide open mouth. Her gills flared at the open air, gaping vainly for breath. She hung a moment and then fell heavily, along with all the others, into a shallow tank. She lay still, sullenly, heaped on top of others, water barely covering her gills and mouth.

There was a noise, a voice, and almost immediately she felt herself lifted again— this time by five rough points inserted into each of her gills. She flopped rudely onto a dry, flat surface. Instinctively, she tried to wriggle off again, to fall from the high place to the lower—for water always collected lower. She had never been out of water before, but instinctively she knew where to seek it. But instead she was pressed out flat, and suddenly felt a thin, irritating blade pierce her belly. Before she knew what had happened, it had traveled the length of her body, and blood was flowing freely from her insides. There was no pain, just the irritation of penetration and then the surprise of evacuation.

Just before she slipped into complete darkness, she felt two rough probes slip inside the newly made cavity and extract—yes, they extracted the little glowing pebble that she had carried as a safeguard so long, season after season, as the surface water changed from light to dark to light again.

And then, with that, she was a fish no more.

She felt, for a moment, a strange affinity for all these things. There was some recollection of ships and people, some reassurance that she had been here before. She could not feel what it meant to be a human, but no more could she feel what it meant to be a coelacanth. She floated in between and unconnected, but there was some assurance somehow that she had done this before as well.

Suddenly she could see everything at once, and somehow she was even aware that the gutted fish had lived for a hundred and fifty years. She had lived for a hundred and fifty years. Circling, swimming, answering the call of dumb instinct—but with that one variation, that one iota of knowledge that she had been put there—put there by a god—put there as a safeguard.

Then at once the world collapsed and she was pinioned by straits of heavy flesh once more.

There was something new this time. The flesh was different. It had a different configuration and different capabilities and somehow a different scope. This last was the most troubling. The limbs and the lungs were unusual, but she felt that over time she would grow used to them. After all, they seemed fitted to this new body, and she felt her old fins and gills would have been less appropriate.

But there was a distinct shrinking of her horizons. Where once she had serenely let time wash through her, season by season, she now felt anxiety at every passing moment. There was only just enough time. Perhaps she would be vouchsafed more, but it could not be counted on. She needed to act now—needed to eat, to grow, to mate, to lay eggs. It was all imperative.

Then she remembered she was meant to be a safeguard. She looked around herself. There was moist earth and a small pool. There was a clump of wriggling earthworms—food. She ate. Beyond, there was confusion. Brightness and movement. Tentatively, she ventured toward it, pushing against the earth with her delicate, translucent orange limbs. She struck something—something invisible—and could go no further. This was the scope of her domain. It was here, clearly, that she had been placed as a safeguard.

Again, she was liberated from the flesh. Another blade penetrated her—this one accompanied by real pain, flashes of sharp feeling coursing along her nerves. The large creatures outside her domain—she sometimes recognized them as humans— probed her insides and again that bright pebble was extracted. As the flesh melted away, she wondered that she had ever felt it to be part of her. Her sojourn there had been so brief, and now she looked in wonder down at the newt body, inert and flaccid on the table. She looked almost with repulsion—what a strange creature to have been, this newt. Surely she had never been meant to be such a thing.