Alien Earth (15 page)

“Tug.” Raef cut through the bullshit.

“Raef?”

“I want to see them. Not hear about them, see them.”

“They are in wombs.”

“I don’t care. The membranes are nearly transparent anyway. I want to see them. Light me a pathway.”

“Raef. You may find it excessively disturbing.”

That sort of thing was as close to saying “no” as Tug ever came to with him. Raef played his hole card. “You want to hear
The Wizard of Oz
or not?”

Light slowly came up in the corridor.

“Thank you, Tug.” Raef pushed off from the couch and headed down the corridor. For the first few minutes the activity actually felt almost good. Then he felt the vague crampings of a digestive system that hadn’t had any real work to do in decades. He slowed his pace.

His route took him through a series of corridors, in and out of utility chambers like the one where he had eaten, and through more corridors. And always, always past the darkened mouths of womb chambers. He tried to imagine how many Humans the Beastship had transported when she was fully loaded; could not. Many. Enough to populate a small world.

He was beginning to suspect that Tug was leading him on a wild goose chase when a womb chamber ahead on his left suddenly lit up. He slowed. Creepy. It was always creepy to go into a womb chamber and see Humans sleeping, lives suspended. Like something out of a dead teenager movie. Hah! Someday he’d have to tell Tug about one of those. It would probably completely revise his understanding of Human entertainments.

Raef realized he had stopped, just outside the chamber. Well, did he want to see a newly remodeled Human or didn’t he? He did. Well, inside then.

It wasn’t that different from the other times. The chamber felt warm and moist. The smell reminded Raef of the time the dog had birthed puppies in his room. Only two wombs were occupied. The others were slackly empty grey
sacs, anchored to the walls of the chamber by thick grey hoses like giant umbilical cords.

The two occupied wombs were like fat grey cocoons, only smooth. The cords feeding into and away from them were swollen with liquid. Raef thought he could see a slow pulse working through them. He jerked his eyes away, sickened as he always was by the gut look of them. He pulled himself into the room until he could look down onto one dormant face. The membrane that covered him was thin and greyish-pink. It was like looking at someone through a pair of dusty pink sunglasses. But even that wasn’t enough to disguise how ugly the guy was. Big nose and ears, all out of proportion to his face. And the face, hell, the whole man was small. Probably would just come up to Raef’s shoulder.

Raef pushed away, caught himself on a rung just short of the other womb. He glanced in at the second crewman, and quickly away. As bad as the first one. Baby face, round chin, but the same big ears and nose. Reminded him of chimp ears, pink and round and sticking out from their heads. The vague notions of ordering Tug to awaken them so he could talk to them evaporated.

“Questions?” Tug’s voice broke into his reverie. Raef thought he could hear a touch of sympathy in his voice.

“Naw,” Raef said abruptly and levered himself up the ladder and out of the womb chamber. He traversed the gently lit corridor again. The light, like Tug’s voice, was sourceless. Raef cast no shadow at all. “Why?” he asked after a while.

“Why what?”

“Why are they like that? Small, like kids, but with great big ears and noses?”

“They resemble children to you because they are small. The captain has not yet entered puberty. This adds to his young appearance. The process takes some years now rather than a few months. And the ears and noses are larger because they are Mariners. Spacers, you might say. So their lives have been extended by the use of the wombs, far beyond the ordinary life spans even of their contemporary Humans.”

“So what’s that got to do with the big ears and noses?” Raef swung along faster, suddenly eager to leave the sleeping Dumbos behind.

“The wombs, as you know, do not ‘freeze’ life. They
greatly retard the aging process that afflicts Humans and limits them to a short life span. But the wombs cannot halt aging, nor growth. Your hair, for instance. Despite using a retardant on your scalp, it still grows. As do your fingernails. Your beard is not a problem, as you used the stronger retardant on your face.”

“What’s that got to do with ears and noses?”

“On Humans, ears and noses are parts of the body that continue to grow throughout the life span. Those features became more pronounced on your elderly people, even when eighty or ninety was considered a long life span. Now, when Humans can survive to be two hundred years old, the ears and nose still continue to grow. It is an accepted mark of age. And, for Mariners, who continue to grow, even if the wombs do not let them age, large ears and noses are the marks of their trade.”

Raef had stopped moving. He started to lift a hand to his face, quickly quelled the idea. Ridiculous. The Arthroplana hadn’t changed his body; he didn’t look anything like those two freaks back there in the wombs.

“Raef?” Tug’s voice had a kindly note. “Move along to the utility chamber. I’ve had Evangeline fix you an energy sweet. And she has the recording filaments ready now. If you feel like telling us
The Wizard of Oz
.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

And he’d gone back to the chamber and eaten the cookie bars Evangeline made for him, and had recited the whole
Wizard of Oz
to them. And then told them all about the movie that had been made about it, and the horse of a different color and the ruby slippers and Judy Garland acting like a little girl for the movie. And everything. Probably had taken two or three days, only there weren’t days anymore. Only cycles. And then they’d flushed the last of the digested food from his system, and he’d gone back to the womb chamber and crawled in. And as he’d guided the connector tube to the permanently implanted fitting in his navel, he’d thought to himself, Damn right, Dorothy. There’s no place like home. And no home anymore at all.

Raef wasn’t sure how many Wakeups ago that had been. But he wasn’t the least bit curious to see his crew anymore.
Just knowing they were there, and subject to him. That was enough. Even if they were Dumbos.

[Dumbos?] queried his mother.

He sighed in his sleep and began the long explanation.

The floor of his chamber
quivered, and Tug was shaken loose from the Busted Flush and the plain brown wrapper on a dead girl. Another ripple convulsed the walls as he scuttled toward the central control. He felt Evangeline change directions twice, darting frantically as if pursued, before he was able to gain attachment with her. The energy of her raw emotions almost snapped his intellectual control of her. He discharged six nematocysts before he felt their calming influence spreading through her system. Still she shivered, trying to twitch herself away from whatever had disturbed her. He had a long battle to separate her emotions from the event that had sparked them. When he had reestablished intellectual control of the Beast, he checked the health of the Humans. All were intact.

No major damage done, he told her comfortingly. And when she expressed little interest as to the health of the Humans, he rebuked her. Had she stopped to think how she might hurt them all, reacting like that? Didn’t she know she had to control her emotions, for the harmony and well-being of all within her?

Well, yes, she did, but it had frightened her so. It was so much like that last time, and when the other Beasts had called the news to her, she had felt their agitation. Humans again, always humans, disrupting things, changing things, doing that ugly dying thing they all did, but many of them doing it at once, so disgusting, so disturbing, so disharmonious.

Two more nematocysts, carefully placed, and withdrawn before they fully emptied. His body would be months replenishing his supplies of the calming poisons. Her gibbering slowed. He had time to sort her thoughts. Tug grew still, crouched atop her neural trunk.

Many Humans had died again?

Affirmative. The response so lackadaisical. Had he oversedated her?

Where? Evangeline, where? Coordinates of where many Humans had died suddenly. No, more specific, not just the
star of the system. He knew it had to be near Castor and Pollux, they were the only planets that had many, many Humans to die. No, very, very specific. Tug studied her response. Conflicting thoughts in him, thoughts he kept carefully sealed from Evangeline. Anger and disgust at what Humans did, as part of their proto-carnivorous natures. And the same tingling excitement as when he read the first sections of a mystery. He contemplated the damage to Delta Station, calculated the amount of time that had passed since they had left there, then considered the accidental blast that had vented sub-subsection G-A-½ to the emptiness of space. It wasn’t so bad, he comforted Evangeline distractedly, don’t take it so to heart, these things happen, the important thing is to go on fulfilling one’s own duty. The part of the station that had been vented hadn’t been an essential one. The Humans living there were all the old ones, already beginning the process Humans called dying. In another blink of our time, they would have been gone anyway. Calm yourself. And resume the course.

He felt her respond, sluggishly but precisely, relieved to let him take her anxiety and fears and give her back calmness. He drew the unpleasant emotions out of her, as leeches in ancient Human medicine had drawn unhealthy humors from patients. Talbot would have liked that simile, Tug thought. He would have been pleased with my progress.

Tug tried to reckon it in Human years, to understand that Talbot’s whole life span had been used up since the last time he had seen him. One hundred and twenty-seven of his years ago, Talbot had been the crew on the Evangeline, for a single voyage. A brief voyage, only forty light-years round trip. But Talbot had chosen to take many, many Wakeups. And so he had passed nearly twenty years in Tug’s company, while John slept on, blissfully unaware that his crewman was introducing Tug to the true nature of Humanity. When John awoke and saw how much Talbot had aged, he had discharged him on the spot. But it was too late. Tug, and Tug’s relationship with John, had never been the same. Talbot had given Tug the tools to see right through John.

Talbot had steered Tug away from his exclusive study of Human mystery novels into a larger study of all Human literature. And poetry, with its elusive scents of mystery, had been the lure he’d used. From poetry, Talbot had moved, inevitably
it seemed to Tug, to Human political writings and thought. He’d closed the circle for Tug, showing him that you could not study one facet of Human literature; one had to have the entire Humanities as a backdrop before understanding could even be approached.

Even after Talbot was off the ship, Tug had kept track of him. John’s port visits to Talbot had alerted Tug to something interesting going on. It hadn’t been hard for Tug to discover his secret trade in black-market information storage, or that John was a steady customer. Talbot hadn’t wanted to let Tug become one of his clients. But, knowing what Tug knew, it hadn’t been difficult to force that issue. And toward the end, Talbot had overcome his resentment at Tug’s coercion, and gone on with his attempts to sway Tug to his misguided politics, by including unrequested materials with the recordings he sent Tug.

And now Talbot was dead. And Talbot had known it was coming. That was why he’d sent him the tape on Epsilon Station. It had been his last effort to swing Tug to his way of thinking. Foolish man. All his death proved was that he had been stupid. He had ranted of the injustices in the Conservancy’s system, rebelled against the Conservancy’s insistence on total control of Human existence. And he had died. Died proving himself wrong.

“I told you, Talbot,” Tug rumbled thoughtfully to himself. “Justice and injustice do not matter. Freedom is not the issue. The issue is survival. If a system for survival works, if a method of coexisting continues and the species involved continue to exist, then it deserves to continue. The race, not the individual, Talbot, is what counts. That’s all that has ever counted. You could have taken a lesson from the Evadorians, if you’d known about them. Sorry, Talbot. You were wrong.”

Tug made a mental note that he would have to find a new source for old recordings. He grumbled softly to himself. It was but another proof. So inconvenient of you, Talbot, to destroy that working system with your death.

“C
ONNIE
.”

“…….”

“Connie.”

It came to her suddenly that she was awake. She didn’t open her eyes. Her hand groped down to the umbilical coupler and unfastened it. She felt the neck of the womb lower and open in response. Summoning all her willpower, she slithered out of it, gripping the floor rung to pull her body clear. She stretched out, slowly, as the training had taught her, and systematically flexed her muscles. Snorting a few times helped to clear her nostrils. She took a deeper breath and opened her eyes. “Yes?” she asked the empty chamber.

“Hello,” Tug responded informally.

“Oh. Hello.” Surprise helped to rouse her. Wake up, girl, she told herself. You’re not on the training station. Not even on the shuttle Beast Trotter, making routine runs from Castor to Pollux. No. On the Beast Evangeline, traversing deep space on a marathon voyage. A belated jolt of fear shot through her. If this were a routine Wakeup, she should have been sleep-prepped for it, and come to consciousness knowing where they were and what her immediate duties were. She didn’t have any of that, so it might be an emergency Wakeup…. “Tug! What’s going on?”

“Nothing.” Soothing, deep voice. “I just thought you might enjoy a stretch, and a little time on your own to get to
know Evangeline and me. I’ve found that crew morale is improved by a few off-schedule wakenings during a long run.”

“Oh. Certainly.” Connie made a show of stretching again to gain time to think. This wasn’t in any of the manuals. All her training had stressed orderly communication for maximum cooperation. Communication should go from Evangeline to Tug to John. And John would relay to her whatever commands she needed in order to perform her tasks correctly.

But things were never standard on Evangeline. After their conversation in the tube, John had made no mention of the incident. It was as if he wanted to deny all knowledge of it. He’d gone right back to procedure, right up to the moment she’d wombed down. Somehow, after the brief glimpse he’d given her of himself in the tube, that seemed even more bizarre. How seriously should she regard his warning against solitary Wakeups like this? Had that been an order, or a bit of friendly advice? Well, she couldn’t very well crawl back into the womb; this Wakeup she’d have to handle on her own, and draw her own conclusions. Surely Tug couldn’t be that bad.

Tug had given her an “explanation” of why it was all right for her to have brought him the recordings. But after John’s warning, it didn’t ring true for her. She couldn’t decide if the reserve she’d adopted with Tug was practical caution or downright paranoia. In any case, Tug had responded by becoming more formal with her. She’d begun to think she’d misread his eccentricity, based on a few odd conversations and one strange request.

Until now.

She looked around the womb chamber. John still hovered in Waitsleep. So ask, don’t be shy. “Will John be awakening soon?”

“No. I think not. He can be so officious, and I have found that a great barrier to communication. Does this bother you?”

“I’m not sure,” she found herself replying honestly. Tug’s weirdness was contagious.

“I don’t mean to alarm you, Connie. I simply wished to get to know you better.”

“I see.” This Arthroplana had a peculiar way of speaking; his vocabulary made him sound formal, but he’d ad
justed his synth to sound casual. It was hard to decide how to respond. “I am not alarmed. Where do you wish me to report?”

“Well.” Gentle amusement, almost a chuckle in the voice. “I did not wish you to report at all. I thought you might want to refresh yourself, and then we’d just talk. Wherever you felt the most comfortable.”

“I see,” Connie repeated, and stretched again. She hated things like this, happenings with no specific rules. She felt the tightening all through her midsection that none of her meditation exercises had ever been able to control. Anxiety. One of her instructors had said she was “inflexible, too regimented in her thinking to be a truly good Mariner” but the good opinion of the others had been enough to override the woman’s doubts about her. All five had commented on her ability to be self-sustaining, her tolerance for isolation. Connie had graduated. And graduated well, despite Mariner not being in the top ten on her aptitude testings.

Despite her Readjustment.

With a practiced flex, Connie transferred from the floor rung to the transverse ladder. She flowed “up” it, using minimum effort to achieve maximum movement, altered her course effortlessly, and continued down the corridor. She enjoyed weightlessness. It let her forget she’d ever been a gawky kid, taller than anyone else in her generation, and clumsier, too. Out here, in a Beast, she could be graceful. She passed the graft scar that marked the delineation between the Beast and the gondola, continued “up” into the gondola corridors. The smooth biomeld of its walls were only marginally different from the rippled walls of Evangeline’s interior. Slightly cooler, perhaps, but that might have been a psychological sensation rather than a physical one. Somehow she always felt safer cradled within Evangeline’s body than in the gondola.

Her personal chamber was only a short way from the womb chamber she shared with John. The cleanser and rec area were just beyond it, opening into the command chamber. She ducked into the cleanser, gelled up efficiently, and then peeled the gel from her skin, taking most of the old skin with it. Fragments clung to her still. She scrubbed down quickly. Suction vents gathered the stray droplets of gel and the dead
skin she scrubbed loose. She was glad she didn’t peel after Waitsleep; at least not as bad as John did. She emerged moments later to blow her scrubber pad down the recycler. Her body felt new. She turned to the food prep and was about to request water when a tray plopped unexpectedly into place. She jumped, and looked hastily around, half expecting to find that John had awakened and ordered food while she was in the cleanser.

“I had Evangeline prepare it for you,” Tug cut in on her thoughts. “I thought a warm drink might clear your throat and make talking more comfortable.”

“Thank you,” she said awkwardly. “I’m not really hungry yet, but that was … thoughtful of you.”

“Yes,” Tug agreed.

She took the tray from the dispenser and snapped it to the holder on the lounger. She popped the suction tube on the hot stim drink and took some of it. Tug was right, it did open up her throat better than water would have. “Thank you,” she said again as she snapped it back onto the tray. “I feel much better. Now. Why did you waken me?”

“I told you. To talk. To allow us to become acquainted, independent of the constraints of crew duties and the chain of command. These lengthy trips grow tedious even for me. One longs for the stimulation of conversation. Don’t you agree?”

“I suppose.” She took another draw of the stim drink to cover the awkwardness. The food on the tray smelled good.

“So then. Let us talk. About you, if you don’t mind. Your records say your first aptitude was for Motherhood. But you selected your twelfth option, Mariner, instead. I find that fascinating, especially since I have always heard that the Motherhood career was an exceptionally desirable option, difficult to qualify for and held in high esteem. So why did you choose Mariner over it?”

Connie slowly returned the drink to the gripper tray. The anxiety, almost dispersed, suddenly became a tight knot in the base of her stomach again. Why did he want to know about that? Was this what John had meant when he’d referred to Tug as a “vivisectionist”? She could not think of a topic she’d be less happy to discuss. But she could handle this. For a moment she considered telling him what she’d seen of women who’d become Mothers; the rigorous exercise and
diet regimens necessary to keep an old uterus youthful enough for use. The frustrations of the numerous attempts at inseminations; only one in twelve usually “took.” The high rate of death choice and mental breakdowns among Mothers. No. She’d become too emotional.

“Well, there’s a lot to consider when choosing a career, Tug. One of my reasons for rejecting Motherhood was the relative shortness of the career. Most women bear three children or so in their careers. So after, say, fifteen years, a woman faces retraining before she can become career active again. That just didn’t appeal to me, whereas the longevity of Mariner, as a career and as a life option, did.” Connie couldn’t count how many times she’d rattled off this excuse. She paused for breath.

“Indeed?”

“Yes. You see, the increased life span of a Mariner lets me witness a number of generations of change in Humanity. So, if and when I choose to change career options, I can switch to my number four option, Historian, and bring the benefits of my personal observation to my career.” There. She’d skirted that nicely. John’s warnings about Tug now seemed a bit excessive.

“I was unaware of your interest in the histories. Do you have a specialty yet?”

“As of yet, no. Just a great interest in the history of my own species.” She felt as if she were being interviewed for this job all over again. What was Tug getting at, and why?

“Wonderful! It is a fascination we share. Connie, I think we shall become great friends and companions. Here is a question I have often puzzled over. Do you think Humans have changed a very great deal since they left their planet of origin?”

“Certainly.” She still wasn’t hungry, but the protein sticks smelled so good, she found herself picking one out of the gripper pack. “We’ve been adapted to a harmonious environment. Physically, we’re smaller, we mature later, one hundred percent of reproduction is by voluntary insemination, we live longer, we are no longer predators, nor carnivorous at all…. There’s too many changes to even list them. Tug, why do you ask?” She bit the end off the protein stick, hoping her question would keep him busy while she thought. It
wasn’t that hard to keep Tug at a distance. She wondered again why John had warned her.

“I am curious and interested. It will be so exciting to have you aboard, to finally have someone to converse with. We have so much to share. You are aware that I have writings by ancient Humans. Many are obscure and puzzling. I ask you about changes, for I wonder if a contemporary Human would be able to interpret what one of their ancestors had written?”

Connie shrugged. “I don’t know. My historical strengths were more in the areas of biotechnology and dirty technology. My aptitudes showed little strength in areas like literature and language. I think that’s one of John’s areas of expertise, though. Didn’t he have a option in Human literature? You might want to ask him.”

“No.” Tug’s response was flat.

“Oh?” Connie was intrigued by the Arthroplana’s sour tone. What, exactly, was between him and John?

“John has been a very great disappointment to me.”

“I see.” Connie suddenly decided she didn’t want to know why. Some things were better left alone. “Perhaps this is something better discussed with John,” she ventured cautiously.

“Perhaps not,” Tug replied gloomily. “John has little tolerance for what he calls my ‘dabbling’ in Human literature and arts. He maintains that one must be a Human to understand Humanity. I maintain that with sufficient time and studying, one can understand anything. But he scoffs at my efforts at poetry, and when I playfully alter any of the older writings to make them more currently relevant, he becomes incensed. He refuses to share his resources with me. I am well aware he brought a large selection of new recordings on board with him, but he restricts access to himself and has not let any of them be added to the ship’s library. It is simple selfishness on his part. It has reached a point where I can no longer discuss Human literature with John at all. As that was one of the primary reasons I hired him to captain aboard Evangeline, it is a great disappointment to me. I have even considered replacing him.”

“But you haven’t. Why?” Despite herself, Connie was fascinated. She picked up a second protein stick.

There was a long pause, as if Tug had not expected the question and did not have a ready answer. Odd. “He is a very able captain. I could not justify it to Evangeline.”

“And that’s important?” Connie tried not to sound too interested. Arthroplana were notoriously closemouthed about their exact relationship to their Beasts. The Arthroplanas that Humans had met face-to-face were of a different type than the ones that were enBeasted. Connie understood it to be some sort of cycle of molts and body forms they went through. What the Arthroplanas inside a Beast were like, no Human knew. Theories varied from that each Arthroplana and his Beast became a single entity to that they were symbiotic to that each Arthroplana was an internal parasite within an animal Beast. They had only the Arthroplanas’ word for it that the Beasts were independently intelligent or had any will of their own. No Human had ever communicated directly with a Beast.

“Of course it’s important. Surely you must know how highly Beasts value peace and tranquillity. If I were to dismiss John, it would cause Evangeline distress over our apparent discord. No, it is better she knows nothing of it. She approves of John, and is quite happy with his skills as a captain.”

“Beasts notice such things?” Connie finished the last of her meal and took the tray to the recycler. She found that she was relaxing. It seemed to her that she was drawing more out of Tug than he was out of her.

“Um. In that he finds good missions for us that result in ample nourishment for her. Not that she approves of our present mission, of course.”

“Evangeline doesn’t want to go back to Earth?”

“Exactly the problem. As you may know, she was one of the original ‘lifeboats’ and made every evacuation trip from Earth to Castor and Pollux. No Beast enjoys being in such close proximity to a dying planet; they sense the discord and become alarmed by it, even as they feel constrained to rescue survivors. She does not wish to return to the scene of such unpleasant memories. But just as compelling, to her, is her boredom with the idea. She has been there before, several times. Why visit there again? she wonders. Especially on a mission she sees no reason for.”

“Well, that’s a sentiment we share then.” The discordant words slipped out before Connie could edit them.