In the Company of Others (72 page)

“You were snoring,” he said with reassuring levity. Gail climbed to her feet, pulling what she hoped were blades of grass and not Quill bits from her hair. “And I missed you. How many hours of sleep do you need? It's almost dawn.”

Almost being the word.
She walked over to him, stretching as she went, peering at the glow behind the mountains—its light insufficient to reveal color, although one of the paired moons helped. “Implying you didn't sleep at all,” she mock-scolded.

“I don't need much,” Aaron reminded her. His hat had fallen or been blown off. Gail went in search of it; the exposure to yesterday's sun had already burned his nose and forehead. “Here,” she said, taking her time close to him, letting herself bask in the warmth of his smile.

“I watched the stars. They jiggled.”

“Twinkled,” Gail corrected.

“Explaining much about a certain rhyme which always puzzled me,” the 'sider said with a laugh, then grew serious. “Susan and I had—well, I think it was a conversation. She's quick to learn. Quicker than I am.”

“What did you talk about?” Gail asked, waving cheerfully at Bob as she grabbed a ration tube out of the pack on the sled.
Amazing what even a partial night of sleep—despite the dreams—could do.
She patted the gear. It might be lonely on Pardell's World, but camping out was easier without flies or mice.

He accepted a squirt from the tube with a nod of thanks. The Quill might be sustaining him, but the idea wasn't comforting either of them. “I was trying to convey how we—humans—are independent beings, but work together in a society. The concept of identity, of oneness.” He hesitated. “It seemed a place to start talking about living together. Coexisting.”

Gail swallowed her own share thoughtfully.
Coexisting?
This from the 'sider who'd wanted the Quill eradicated from his people's worlds—who was, at the very least, being forced into the role of diplomat by both sides.
Perhaps
, she thought,
this was more 'sider philosophy: share and move on, survive together or not at all.

“How frank can I be, Aaron?” she asked bluntly. “Will it hurt you if Susan objects to something I say?”

“She's become quite good at sparing me the worst of her reaction.” Calm words, but Aaron looked unhappy, as if he'd whistled her awake because he'd made some kind of wonderful discovery or pact—and now doubted she'd be pleased.

Gail pretended she hadn't noticed. “So, did Susan grasp this idea? It must have been difficult to express.”

“I found it difficult—she didn't. There's a similar concept in her nature . . . an awareness of multiplicity. I couldn't make sense of it until I began thinking of music.”

“Music?” Gail glanced at the Quill now rising up the stalks on all sides. They must spend the hours of true darkness in the soil. “Does she hear?”

“No. Her fragments sense vibrations and movement, but not sound as we do. But that's not what I meant—her conceptualization reminded me of music. It contains an awareness that existence can consist of different parts in combination. Like the way a group of singers can sing different keys but together produce one unique note.”

“Harmony.”

“Or not. Right now, she feels great loneliness, as though she is only one, from one, like a single string being plucked over and over. There aren't other ‘sounds' in her consciousness. I think that's why she felt such joy to learn I was something separate—but it hasn't worked, Gail. I'm not distinct enough to ‘sing' with her, maybe because I'm—part of her.”

“What about me?”

“You aren't Quill. She longs for—needs—more Quill, but somehow I don't believe she means more of her own fragments. So I thought, maybe there's more than one ‘sound' of Quill—or more than one entity—on her homeworld.” Aaron nodded his head in enthusiasm. “It made it easier to help her understand there can be more than one intelligence in a place, and those intelligences can work to a common goal. A good start, don't you think?”

Gail stared into the distance, her gaze caught by a beam of sunlight as it broke over the mountains, streaking living green down the hillsides.

“Gail?” Aaron sounded a little hurt, as though she should have responded to his accomplishment.

He was right
—but she held up her hand for patience; she dared not disturb the thought slipping into her mind like that beam of light.

What was thought . . . how did it move through a mind, a consciousness? What made it possible for an organism like Susan-Quill to think, but not the grass?
What if
. . . Gail's lips parted . . .
what if different Quill fragments produced their defensive Effect at slightly different ‘frequencies?'
What if those frequencies normally interfered with one another, dampening the Effect, reducing it in strength and distance? It would be reasonable, possibly essential, in order for the different Quill to react to local situations. But then, the Quill Effect couldn't be a carrier of thought—it would be like a jumble of white noise.

She looked out at one Quill, all its parts operating at one unique frequency, all its parts able to produce the same Effect at the same time.
Thought?
Nothing would stop it traveling around the planet and back—nothing would interfere with it. Given a conceptual model, such as a human host—perhaps Quill intelligence had been—inevitable.

As was something else
, Gail realized with a shock. “Aaron, from what you're saying . . . I believe Susan is able to think for the same reason her natural defense has turned deadly,” Gail whispered. “It's being the only Quill of her type here. It's not normal for her kind. On some level, she knows it.”

“Gail, you're frightening her.”

She turned to look at Aaron. His face was troubled, flashing between fear and determination.
Was she witnessing a conversation based in emotional parameters?
“I'm sorry, Susan,” she said quietly. “I am, like Aaron, trying to understand you. Part of that understanding is how you came to be.”

His face subsided into something more like melancholy. Gail decided it was probably a shared feeling. Could Aaron see the deeper possibilities in what she'd said? He'd confessed he wasn't as good as Susan in keeping his reactions to himself

Gail didn't know if Aaron or Susan saw the full consequences. With Bob hovering nearby, she wasn't about to ask. They were the only two humans on this planet, but had never been less alone. Hundreds, millions, could be listening to every word—possibly as far away as Sol System and Titan. For all she knew, they could be on the evening news.

First contact? Who was she kidding?
They'd be the
only
news.

And of all of those listening—would any hesitate if they reached the same conclusion she had?

Gail's mind felt as though it was on fire. If there were other Quill here, different Quill, there would no longer be a single Quill entity—
and no deadly Quill Effect.

The flip side of the coin?

There would no longer be a Quill entity capable of thought.

“What the hell is that?”

Gail, shaken from her dark thoughts by that shout, looked at Aaron in time to see the alarmed expression on his face turn to dread. He swung his head as far around as he could to follow a blaze of light across the dawn sky. She watched with him, as the light turned in midair to become a focused cone directed downward.

“Dr. Smith! Dr. Smith!” From the 'bot, Grant's voice yelled, full volume and desperate. “We have an unauthorized landing. A station ship, the
Mississauga
, slipped past the patrol—they claim to be out of fuel. Can Aaron protect them from the Quill?”

“I don't know!” that worthy said before closing his eyes, his face screwing into a tight knot of concentration.

Gail walked away, numb, knowing there wasn't anything she could do but avoid being a distraction. She could see the
Mississauga
, already fin-down on the flat plain, midway between the base of this hill and the distant river. She couldn't make out much detail from here, except that it had burned a landing pad for itself as well as starting a series of small grass fires in every direction.

“Aaron's doing his best,” she said to anyone listening, but mostly to Aaron himself, in case he could still hear. Gail hugged herself, trying to keep her emotions from adding to whatever milieu the Quill tapped into, trying to observe. It was hard to keep calm. On the thought, she bent over and offered her wrist to the Quill around her feet; it didn't seem a good sign when they slithered deeper into the soil rather than approach.

“We're sending the 'bot over there, Gail,” Grant informed her. “Before I do, and we lose voice contact, I wanted you to know the
Payette
's pod has docked with the
Seeker
. We're going to load her up for a drop.
Seeker
out.”

“Copy that,” Gail said, but to herself and posterity, watching Bob zoom toward the distant starship, like a hummingbird to a flower garden.
Funny
, she missed the little thing immediately. The hilltop felt barren and desolate, no sound but the rising wind in the grass.

Then Aaron screamed.

Mind you, Malley reminded himself, the slug corner on the recycling floor didn't have chairs like this, or any lighting that stayed on consistently, but there was the same comforting sense of being out of authority's sight, doing something authority wouldn't want you to do.

“Okay. I've got the 'bot's feed back up.” Stan Temujin tended to cower and whisper a bit too much for a proper coconspirator, but Malley was prepared to be tolerant. The man had the toys.

So he, Aisha, and Temujin huddled over an impressive, if homemade, screen and comm system. The three of them were tucked inside what Aisha referred to as a parts closet and the stationer considered big enough for quarters, even though their knees were usually in the way of his.

Close quarters and comfort.
He admitted he needed both, if only to himself. Those weren't strangers squatting on the dirt-ball below—
they might be idiots whose necks he'd cheerfully wring
—but they weren't strangers.

They were friends and family.

The image on the small screen plunged down, then stopped as the 'bot came to rest over the
Mississauga
's ramp. Someone in the command sphere modified the settings so the usually inconspicuous Quill leaped into view like a sea of red, lapping at an island of scorched earth, inhabited by a lone ship. Malley didn't think it was particularly helpful, unless anyone doubted it was a hopeless situation.

“What's happening?” he growled impatiently. Aisha laid her hand on his knee. Malley turned to glare, only to find her face crumbling as she tried to say something and failed. He managed to get his arm around her shoulders despite the tight space and pull her close.
Too many hours of giving strength to everyone else—including him.

“They're coming out.”

Malley could see that for himself. The oldest led, of course, the ones who'd been born under a sun. Made sense, of a sort. They'd find the conditions easier.
Sense be damned
, he thought. They wanted it most—dragging their families with them in the crazy belief nightmares could just disappear.
Poof.

Damn Rosalind.
It was becoming a habit.

“Oh no. Frasier ...” He'd hoped not to recognize the very first to ease her feet over the ramp's ridges. Bethany Frasier—one of the less cranky old women, the type who could transform rations into sweets as easily as she repaired electrical systems or anything else broken. She used a cane but didn't have it with her—relying instead on the strong arm of her son, Gregory. Gullible Greggie: brunt of a dozen Malley-special practical jokes, the latest the night before the Earthers had arrived onstation.

Malley refused to close his eyes. Someone who knew them had to watch.

He didn't close his eyes, but he buried his face against Aisha's hair when the figures on the ramp started to scream and collapse.

Let it keep the rest away
, Malley prayed silently.

“Wait. Malley. Aisha. Look!”

She moved first at Temujin's urging, so he had to lift his head and stare at the screen.

They were sitting up—all of them—some rubbing hips or elbows, perhaps bumped when they fell—but no one was unconscious or worse. Several, particularly the younger ones, were heaving up their stomachs' contents at the opposite side of the ramp. Reaction to the Quill Effect, or merely to being under a sky?

It didn't matter.
“No one's dead!” the stationer roared in amazement, hugging the two Earthers until a faint squeak reminded him others tended to break if squeezed too hard. “Aaron did it!”

“Switch to the
Athena
's vid,” Aisha said when she could breathe again. “We can try and see how Aaron's doing.” Temujin's hand flew to his makeshift console.

Before he'd succeeded, there was a loud crackle as Gail's voice blasted into the storeroom. “Grant! Temujin? Malley? Anyone!”

Temujin frantically lowered the volume, muttering something about amateurs and ship comms, while Malley answered quickly, his mouth dry: “We're here. How's Aaron?”

“Malley? Aaron's stung, but okay now.” The words tumbled out, too fast—
not
, Malley thought,
as if out of control, but as if Gail feared being stopped before saying what she wanted to say.
“Unharmed—as far as I can tell. But what about the people in the ship? Aaron's saying something, but it's confusing—and I can't see them from here.”