Acts of Conscience (33 page)

The library AI whispered, Perhaps, Gaetan, it would be a good idea if you broke off contact with the dollie. Human skin is fairly permeable and, as you know, the biochemistry of this creature may affect your hormonal matrix somewhat strongly.

The spacesuit said, Given the limited bandwidth available through the transponder, it will take us some time to program your symbiotic mechanisms for the necessary...

No. For God’s sake don’t do that.

A touch of panic from somewhere deep inside. And an eerie conviction that it wasn’t
my
inner voice that had spoken. A bleak, bizarre feeling that, just now, I’d been taken over by a dybbuk.

I could sense the artificial personalities still in my head, disquieted, disquieting, but silent. The dollie in my lap seemed to sniff delicately at my mouth, just the way a dog will sniff at your mouth. Felt its tongue touch my lips briefly.

I lifted it off my lap and laid it back in the grass, the outline of a small woman sprawled before me. Sprawled just so. Just right. You know what I mean.

Soft flutter of dense panic crawling around my heart.

Oh, Christ, you’re not going to do this, are you?

Certainly not my dick talking. It had already decided, decided long minutes ago, just what it thought I was going to do.

And why not? Why shouldn’t I...

Because it’s not... right.

Says who?

Everyone?

Who’s that? What’s
everyone
done for me that I should forego... Nobody’s ever done a God damned thing for me, I...

Dollie looking up at me out of empty, featureless eyes, as though waiting. I put my hand on its belly, petting soft fur, felt it squirm with what seemed like pleasure, listened to its resumed purr. A cat, they say, does not purr out of pleasure. Human’s don’t care why it purrs, merely make the assumptions that please them most.

No reason to do this. You’re just full of alien pheromones, pheromones tricking your reproductive physiology into thinking... hell. Think of it like a nice drug. Like a masturbation aid. Like the netvid girls. Just get your dick out and take care of it yourself, that’s all. No one will know but you and the dollies. Who would they tell? Who would care?

And what about that other thing, then?

Unbuckled my belt. Unzipped my fly. Got the damned thing out, warm in my cold hand.

What about it? What difference does it make? At best, the dollie will breed with its own kind, be fucked by wolfen. At worst, it will soon be eaten. Or captured by humans and put in a dollhouse. Someday soon it’ll be dead. Hell, someday
you’ll
be dead. What difference will it make then, what you did or didn’t do?

Maybe no difference at all.

The spacesuit whispered,
Gaetan
.

Shut the fuck up. Go away.

I crawled on top of the dollie and, just like that, I was in. Wet. Warm. Sticky like raw eggwhite. Just like a woman. That’s it. In. Out. In. Out. The dollie looked up into my face as I fucked it, eyes like bits of glass, purring steadily away, as though I were still only...

My orgasm let go in a succession of quick pulses that filled me, momentarily, with something indistinguishable from happiness. Then. Then I sat back on my heels, looking down at the dollie. Nothing.

I zipped up my fly. Buckled my belt. Looked up. Jumped slightly. The other dollies had sat up under the tree, were sitting huddled together, whispering softly, had watched what I’d done.

Christ.

The dollie on the ground, legs splayed, cloaca still popped open, a black hole to nowhere, was quiet. Finally, it sat up, stood, stood still for a moment, staring at me, then turned and walked slowly away, back to sit with the others. Whispering. Dollies whispering together, looking at me for the longest time.

I lay back on the hillside then, staring at the sky, feeling nothing. After a while, my cheeks began to feel cold, and I realized I’d started to cry.

Thirteen: I awoke with a start

I awoke with a start, lying naked on my bunk, looking up at the camper’s no-color flexible plastic ceiling, bright Cetian sunshine streaming in through the window, making a pattern on the far wall, desperately trying not to think. Useless.

Sat up on my elbows, looking down the length of my body, pretending it was only my toes I saw sticking up. Managed a wry grimace. Well? Do you want to go on feeling bad about it? People do things like this all the time. Why should
you
be any different, Gaetan du Cheyne? Excuses seemed to present themselves, neatly arrayed, as though in a database display table.

I got up and went over to the little refrigerator, protruding from the little floor well where it would later retract, looked inside. Took out a bottle of what looked like fruit juice and popped the lid. Strong smell of ginger and melon. Took a swig. Thin. Cold and sweet, with a slight afterbite. Looked at the label.
Muisenspis
.

Mouse urine, whispered the translator AI. Evidently, the word
muis
has been transferred to a native animal.

Swell. Great sense of humor the Groenteboeren possess. I took another swig, decided I liked it, turned and went to the shower cubicle with the bottle clutched in my hand. Get under the water.

The spacesuit whispered, Gaetan, it is
possible
for the artificial personality matrices available to you to reprogram your symbiotes such that parts of your memory can be masked. However, it really would be advisable for you to check into a well-equipped hospital. One on either Earth or Kent, if...

No thanks.

I got in the shower and turned on the water, which warmed up quickly, stood still and let it run over my back and shoulders and belly, carry away all the leftovers, invisible taint streaming down my legs and into the drain.

o0o

Outside, Tau Ceti was already fairly high in the sky, warmish wind getting to work on the task of drying my hair, sky a burnished blue overhead, flecked with a fair number of small white clouds, like so many little flowers drifting on the breeze. People... um, sure. People, not things, already up and about, Arousians setting up their camera tripods, Wolfen. Dollies...

Over at the area of trampled grass where last night’s dance had been conducted, the dollies were arrayed in a tight semicircle, looking almost as though standing at attention, silent. Facing them, a little distance away, the wolfen sat in two little packs, one red, one white. In the space between them, two more wolfen, again one of each race, crouched, quietly digging a modest hole, reaching out with heavy-clawed paws, taking turns scooping out big clods of dark brown soil.

Near them on the ground, in a messy pile... I looked away briefly, unable to catch my breath. Small white bones, scraps of hide with disheveled, rusty white fur. An intact skull or two.

When I looked back, the hole was dug and the wolfen appeared to be waiting. Wind blowing. River gurgling. Clouds slowly drifting overhead. The dollies began to whisper softly, delicate voices in unison, a whispered chant.

Muted,
uff
from one of the wolfen, I couldn’t tell which one.

One of the dollies came forward, clutching an irregular greenish-brown object about the size of a football in its hands. Dropped it into the hole. Retreated.

The two wolfen began pushing the remains of last night’s dead dollies into the hole on top of the object, whatever it had been, bones, hides, hair, what looked like scraps of meat.

“They are planting the seed of what the Groenteboeren call a
baarbij
bush,” The Kapellmeister’s generated voice made me jump. It said, “It would appear that the leaves, roots, and fruit of this bush are the dollies’ principal fodder.”

The wolfen were taking turns coming forward now, squatting over the hole, shitting a little bit, trotting away.

The library AI whispered, This dung will likely contain the remnants of digested dollies.

Great. I can just imagine. Or is it merely anthropocentric of me to think the dollies believe wolfen shit contains the souls of their departed loved ones?

The Kapellmeister said, “Even across the great gulf that divides our species, it is clear that something is bothering you, Gaetan du Cheyne.”

Care to make a list? I watched the last wolfen shit, watched the two representative wolfen start pushing dirt back in the hole, gently packing it down. The dollies chant was momentarily louder, then stopped abruptly.

The Kapellmeister said, “Gaetan, the artificial personalities associated with your starship are quite concerned about you.”

I turned and looked. Nothing. The Kapellmeister was so alien it hardly even looked like an animal, much less a sentient being. Vegetarians have a saying,
We never eat anything with a face
. Well. They might be happy to know that Kapellmeisters don’t have faces. I said, “Everything’s all right. I don’t want to...” Talk about it? Fine.

There was a long silence, while we stood and watched the Arousians break camp, pack up their truck, white wolfen and their dollies getting back up in the pickup bed, red wolfen slipping away into the tall grass, dollies marching stolidly after them, like a band of little girl soldiers.

“So where are we going now?”

Silence. Finally, “The Arousians will be taking the wolfen to another rendezvous, much like this one, then back across the Koudloft to their home range.”

“Why? Aren’t the dollies pregnant already?” I looked down at the Kapellmeister, for some reason expecting to see it shrug. Stupid. What the hell would it shrug
with
?

It said, “Most likely, but the female dollies of the next band will not be. And the Arousians have found that bands of wolfen do trade the actual dollies as well.”

“What for?”

“We don’t know. The Arousians think this helps the dollies maintain a common culture, with a common language. The value of that... It may be that the different species of wolfen, who cannot physically reproduce the sounds of each others’ language, can only communicate through the mechanism of the dollies.”

Interesting. “Why are the Arousians here?”

Silence. Then, “They are concerned about what’s going to happen to them, to their species, their world, in the context of a burgeoning human presence, in their star system, throughout all the surrounding stars. It may be that they feel the wolfen/dollie relationship is a significant model.”

I thought about that, suddenly felt myself getting the creeps. “I guess the Arousians are pretty unlucky, at that. Too bad they didn’t work on their technologies earlier. Maybe they could have found
us
.”

The Kapellmeister said, “Worse things have happened in the past, to more species than one. I remember...” It stopped.

Remember? I remembered some of the mysterious things it had alluded to the other night. And, of course, remembered what it’d said about...

The Kapellmeister said, “Gaetan, I have decided to trust you.”

Trust me
. Fine. Why? And trust me with what?

It said, “I hope that you will trust me as well.”

I said nothing, just staring at it.

Suddenly, the Kapellmeister unfurled its middle hand, black tentacles flexing, uncoiling like so many wet rubber snakes. “Gaetan, it may be that I can help you, just as I hope you will be able to help me.”

I took a step back, remembering the way it’d... touched the wolfen. Remembered its hand wrapped around the heads of the little animals it ate, just as it killed them. Remembered the way it’d... listened to the womfrog’s death. Tried to remember what I knew about the neural induction capabilities of...

The Kapellmeister said, “It may be that in this way we can answer the concerns of your artificial intelligences.”

Concerns... I felt a little spark of anger, old, old anger, reignite, somewhere with, coalescing around an old memory.
I’m sorry about Lara, Gaetan
... my father’s voice. Mother in the background, sullen, withdrawn. Memory of her anger, of myself shocked at the way my mother shouted the word cunt at me, denouncing poor Lara Nobisky... My father then,
Perhaps the school counseling system
...

I said, “Ah. Well. Perhaps some other time.” The hand withdrew, flattening against the Kapellmeister’s chest keel, more or less disappearing against matching leathery black skin.

Across the way, the Arousians started their truck, lifting off in a cloud of dust and loose, dry stalks of grass, slid down the bank and out onto the waters of the river, raising a misty spray in which rainbows briefly sparkled.

I gestured. “Guess we’d better get going.”

The Kapellmeister said, “It will only be more of the same, Gaetan. There’s no real need for either of us to go along.”

I looked down at it, wishing mightily that there was something, anything at all, for me to read in those floating eyes. “What did you have in mind?”

“I’d... like to have a look at the rest of the Opveldt, maybe go on down river to the Mistibos forest for a while. This is as new a world to me as it is to you.”

I shrugged. Turned and looked out across the wide plain, watching the Arousians recede. A new world? I suppose I came here for a reason, though that reason seems shallow now, a shadow, almost lost. The truck was just a fleck now, reddish against the metallic green-brown of the open countryside, carrying away stickbug men, carrying away wolfen, dollies... tight little pang in my chest, extending a pseudopod of sensation to my crotch.

Oh, shit. How wonderful.

I said, “All right.”

The Kapellmeister said, “I’m glad you trust me, Gaetan.”

Do I?

It said, “Most of my own kind frown on interspecies trust, perhaps with good reason. Not many share my faith in the dawn of a new day, after the long, long night.”

o0o

For the rest of the day, we drove along the road by the river, following a rutted, primitive track, ruts reminding me of the incredible reality of Green heaven. Sure they have nice hovercraft like this camper, like the Arousians’ pickup truck, but... wheeled vehicles? Jesus! Like I’d somehow gone to sleep and, on awakening, found myself in Medieval America, like some kind of reversed Rip van Winkle.