Alien Earth (31 page)

Wind lashed the plain, beating some of the plant life flat. A driving rain backed it up. Connie could see the force of the splattering drops as they hit the red earth, and were immediately absorbed. For a moment the wind lessened, and then hit with even more force. Connie saw one bush uprooted and sent tumbling away, a plaything for the storm. Its bare black
roots clutched pathetically at the soil, and its branches tangled desperately as it clung to its companions, but the wind ripped it away.

She glanced up at John’s face and saw the furrows in his brow. Even he had not been prepared to witness natural violence on this great a scale. When the lightning struck again, they both flinched and drew back from the window.

John looked at her for a moment. His hand reached for the control that would shield the window and shut out the view of the storm and bring up the cabin lights.

“No,” Connie requested softly. There was no logic in it. The storm frightened her, but it also fascinated her. There was an exhilaration in its force. She felt smug in being inside while it raged outside, and the bare edge of fear that the shuttle would not stand up to its force, yes. But there was also the excitement of the storm, and the satisfaction it gave her. It was as if all the fury she constantly had to contain within herself were vented outside. It was her first sense of kinship with the world outside the shuttle. She sat on the arm of John’s lounger and watched the world rip itself open with light and bellow with thunder as evening surrendered to night.

The shuttle became a small place, surrounded by the night and storm outside, and lit only by the gentle glow of the control instrumentation, and the occasional wild blast of lightning. The rain and wind blended into an almost-hypnotic rhythm of sound and motion. She sagged deeper into the lounger, felt all the weariness of the day’s tension turn into a heaviness of lax muscles and warmth. She had never known that rest could feel so good; but then, she had never been this physically tired before.

She had almost forgotten John when his voice broke the monologue of the storm. “Looks like you took over and got it all under control.” He paused. “Thanks. And congratulations.”

John was easier to take as a soft voice in the darkness. She didn’t jump. She only ran her eyes over the instrument console and realized he was right. All the readings were within the normal range, bio repairs were proceeding as well as could be expected, and the indicator for the emergency beacon still flashed insistently. Everything that could be done, she had done. Efficiently. Without supervision. And John ap
proved. She became aware of warmth and weight against her left side, and realized they had both sagged into the lounger and had been so for some time. A few hours ago, the touch of him against her shoulder and hip would have been unimaginable. But the storm and the darkness and the Earth outside made it right and natural.

“Thanks,” she finally responded to his compliment.

He either chuckled or coughed slightly. It sounded the same, and she felt too warm and comfortable to wonder which. She sighed heavily, the last venting of the day’s tensions.

She felt him take a deep breath.

“Connie, there’s something I have to tell you about.”

She stiffened at his tone.

“What?” she demanded.

“Oh … nothing that critical. Relax. It will keep until tomorrow. It’s nothing we can do anything about anyway. I’d just feel more comfortable if you were filled in on it.”

She could feel the hesitancy in his voice, and knew he was holding something back. But suddenly she was just too tired and warm and comfortable to care. “Okay,” she agreed blandly, and stared out at the storm until she felt her eyes close of their own accord.

B
OREDOM
.
Tug’s anxiety had finally given way to an all-consuming boredom. He’d spent some time wondering idly that no one had ever considered that a Beast might become intractable in just this fashion, and built in some sort of fail-safe. All it would have required would have been some mechanical method, independent of the Beast herself, that would allow communication with the outside world. It could have utilized the old Terran technology. Granted, he’d still have had a long wait before rescue, but at least he’d have had some way to summon help and the prospect of eventual rescue. He’d argued before that the Human technology should have been mined for such usefulness before it was removed from their records and discarded.

That had inspired him to move to the console that communicated directly with the Humans. Restlessly he’d spied from room to room. Amazing, how empty they seemed without Connie and John. He had never considered he might miss them.

Now he pored through their empty chambers, Connie’s Spartan and obsessively tidy and John’s organized, but awash with reader tapes and objects that related to them. Tug had rescanned all the poetry in Connie’s auto-load reader. Nothing new there; Tug had been responsible for the selections, and she have given them only a cursory reading. Her library had enlarged substantially since the beginning of this trip, but
most of it was either technical manuals, or archaic works relating to the natural history of Terra, or the volumes he had recommended she add to her access. Boring. The music in her quarters was likewise uninteresting; bland, and some of it prescription sound soothers.

But John’s quarters were another story. Tug had been aware that John’s library had increased substantially right before the beginning of this trip. He’d also been aware of John’s newest innovations in his security system aimed at denying Tug access. Since the humiliation of the ersatz poetry, Tug had considered it too much trouble to break into the system again. None of it could be trusted, he’d decided, except perhaps whatever John was sleep prepping. Surely he wouldn’t force feed his brain false information. Early in the trip, Tug had broken into that system as far as cracking the directory. The titles listed there hadn’t inspired him to go any further. Most of it sounded like natural history relating to Terra. Much of the rest had been technical manuals relating to the new shuttle.

But now, faced with boredom and isolation, he turned his attention to John’s puny attempts to block him out of his sleep-prep library. He reminded himself that it wouldn’t be the first time John had used misleading directory titles in an attempt to confuse Tug. There might yet be something amusing in there.

His task would have been a lot easier if Evangeline had been helping him. But Tug consoled himself it was still just a matter of time, and that was something he had in plenty. He immersed himself in the intricacies of the library and its loading codes.

It was almost disappointingly easy to break into John’s security. One had only to reflect on John’s current fascination with Jeffrey Shelstein’s
A Farewell to Earth
. Tug then tried every first line from every sonnet in the volume to find which one supplied a random pattern of numbers for the lock. Once he’d forced the system, Tug could take his time plundering it. He made one desultory effort at communicating with Evangeline.

“I know you’re listening to me, even if you’re not responding,” Tug told her. “Perhaps you think your wickedness and disharmonious behavior disturbs me. In fact, I am re
lieved to be rid of you. I have no need for your company. With no Evangeline to burden me, I have time for other, more interesting things. Perhaps I shall choose never to respond to you again.”

It was the ultimate threat, that of isolation, usually used on only the most recalcitrant young Beasts. Tug awaited a response for a few of what the Humans termed hours, then turned aside from her. Now he would be forced to ignore her first two attempts to recontact him. The delay would be annoying, but it was the recommended course after such a threat; there must be consequences to disobeying. That the delay might be the difference between the Humans living or dying could not concern him now; regaining control of his Beast was the main thing.

John’s auto-load was filled to capacity with several weeks of sleep-prep tapes. Tug decided to scan his most recent readings first. It took no more than one reading for Tug to realize what he’d found, but he listened to all of them three times before he allowed himself to consider their significance.

Tug had thought he could not feel more alone. But as he shut off the playback of John’s auto-feeder, his isolation encased him like a pupa’s cloak. Betrayed. John had deliberately betrayed his trust, taken on a mission that endangered all of them. The immensity of it, both in stupidity and daring, was almost more than Tug could grasp.

There was a delicious irony to it as well. They’d led John to believe he’d be saving the Human race, when actually he would have been responsible for their complete annihilation. And all their plans brought to naught by the disobedience of a Beast. Yes, there was humor in that.

John had been no more than a tool, and he doubted that even Earth Affirmed had ever foreseen the long-range possible consequences of their little conspiracy. Mandible cilia curling in amusement, Tug set the chain reaction in motion for himself. If John had succeeded in returning alive to the Evangeline, and if the samples had been undetected in the shuttle’s hidden compartments, and if Earth Affirmed had been able to retrieve them without the Conservancy’s detection, then they probably could have proved Terra was reclaimable.

And thus wiped out the Human race. Any reclamation attempt would have required the cooperation of the Arthroplana and their Beastships, and that would never happen. Was Earth Affirmed so blind that it had never seen that? The Arthroplana had discovered long ago that maintaining a monopoly on interstellar travel was the only way to neutralize all threats from other sentient life-forms. Just as the Humans were the most dangerous species they’d ever encountered, so were they in a particularly vulnerable position, as they required vegetation from both Castor and Pollux in order to synthesize a balanced diet for themselves. Certainly, the Arthroplana had been willing to rescue the Human race from certain doom on Terra; in the act, they’d been careful to strip them of their budding space-faring ability, to remove both the records of such technology, and to deny Humans capable of perpetuating such technology access to the Beastships.

Once contained and controlled, Humanity had been useful, not to mention entertaining; still was. Their manufactured goods fueled an interplanetary trade that was sumptuously taxable. The discards from their asteroid mining provided a cheap source of feed for the Beastships. Their mobility within their protective suits had enabled the Arthroplana to investigate and classify newly discovered planets at no risk to themselves.

They were not, however, intrinsically necessary to the Arthroplana. On the twin planets, dependent on the Beastships for interplanetary trade, they were useful, and if they became intractable, they could be disposed of. Tug imagined that would have been the final outcome; that the knowledge John’s samples would have furnished would have triggered unrest, rioting, and rebellion on the Human planets. John would have been responsible for the death of his whole race.

Unfortunately, the Elders would probably have seen it as Tug’s laxness being responsible for the ending of a very profitable relationship. The ant that killed all the aphids, so to speak. He’d have been deBeasted, demoted to the status of worker drone, suffering the much shorter life span their diet induced. And none of his segments would ever have been fertilized. When he died, all his memories and thoughts would die with him.

For a brief instant he imagined a Humanity restored to self-sufficiency on a planet that could be healed to support them. It wouldn’t take any hidden time capsule of ancient knowledge; a generation or two of artificially aiding seed-bearing plants to extend their range would probably do it. Humans could have had a planet once more capable of supporting them without the cooperation of the Arthroplana. A Humanity capable of rebuilding its technology if freed of Arthroplana and Conservancy restraints could eventually reach for the stars, compete for the desirable planets to colonize, compete for trade. Eventually conflict must result. War, that most dreadful and incomprehensible of Human inventions, would occur. Could the Arthroplana, with their much narrower range of adaptability to changing conditions, have survived? Tug doubted it.

It would never have gotten that far, he assured himself. It would have been stopped as soon as John’s samples were analyzed, Humanity would have rioted in isolation on the planets, would have spun down and dwindled into dust once the Arthroplana cut their supply lines.

And Tug would have been blamed for it.

Not that any of it mattered now. It was all might-have-beens, all equations that equaled zeros when the variable was the disobedience of a Beast. John and Connie were dead now, and even Raef would die soon and be absorbed by Evangeline’s womb. When Tug regained control of Evangeline, he would see that all evidence of John’s true mission was eliminated. Start now, by dumping all his sleep-prep recordings into erase mode. When Evangeline came back to him, he’d purge the rest of the ship’s library of anything that related to this mission. That would leave only the old tape that fit that ancient reader Connie had operated for him. He had no way of destroying that, but somehow he couldn’t see it as a real danger to himself. Except …

It clicked. Just like Nero Wolfe, or Sherlock Holmes, or Encyclopedia Brown. He had a sudden grasp of the mystery novel that had always eluded him, that deep sense of satisfaction one must feel when the disparate clues suddenly came together. That was the significance of that recording. John hadn’t realized it, not even Earth Affirmed had realized what they’d given him. They’d had the treasure map in their hands
all these generations and never realized it. But Tug did and he’d decipher it. He almost forgot the reality of his own isolation as he bent his mind to the last Human mystery left to him.

“It was fun, wasn’t it?”

Tonto nodded and drank some milk.

Mabel had been restored to her father’s loving arms. Then he and Tonto had ridden off into the sunset (“Who was that Masked Man?”), and Raef had brought them both back to Mom’s kitchen, because it was a place where they felt comfortable. Both of them. Though it took an effort now to sort himself out from Evangeline. He tried not to let that scare him. He had to let that go right now, and concentrate on the task at hand. But even that kind of resolve didn’t seem totally his. He couldn’t quite understand what she was doing to him, but his mind felt, well, more organized and less distractable. Anger, which had so long been his major motivating force, was waning. What drove him now was purpose. What purpose? To prove himself.

[To prove himself what?]

“Worthy.” He gave up trying to think without including her. “Real. A real hero that they all should have loved. Someone they all should have wanted.”

[Jeffrey loved Raef.]

He winced. So she knew about that, too. It shouldn’t surprise him. He doubted there was anything about him that she didn’t know. “I cared about Jeffrey, too. But it wasn’t enough to save him. And when he was gone, I was worthless to everyone.”

Tonto reached across the table, took The Lone Ranger’s gloved hand in his. [You have value to me, Kemo Sabe.]

For an instant The Lone Ranger looked into dark, earnest eyes. Then it was too much like someone else had been, too long ago, and he nervously shifted them, made them Mom and young Raef again. Mom patted his hand.

[You’re the best boy in the world.]

“Thanks, Mom.”

It was getting to be uncanny, how quickly she could adapt, could shift with him from pretense to pretense. He hoped she could follow him now.

“Listen, Mom. There’s something we have to do, something very important. Life or death.”

[Save Mabel again?]

“Almost like that. But real, not a pretense.”

Long pause. Something about his announcement surprised her.

[We can do real things together? Not just pretense?]

“Of course. We saved the shuttle, didn’t we? And now we have to finish that job. Listen to me. You put John and Connie down safe on Earth, and that was good, that was very good. That was not letting them die, and that’s being a hero. A real hero.”

[Raef is a hero.]

“Evangeline … that’s the real you, you know that. Evangeline is a hero, a wonderful hero for saving them. But now we have to do more. Listen to me. They are down there, and we don’t know what kind of danger they are in. And they probably don’t know much about taking care of themselves down there. They need to come back here, where they’re safe. And soon.”

A sulky silence.

“You know what we have to do.” He used the “we” carefully. “We have to talk to them. We have to find out if they’re okay, and we have to help them get back to us. Okay?”

[No. This is a thing Tug cannot do without me, and also a thing I cannot do without Tug.]

“And you won’t talk to Tug, even if it means John and Connie will die?”

[Why should that be important to me?]

He kept his temper. No. It wasn’t anger anymore that he fought to keep down, it was fear. “Why do we have to save John and Connie? Well, I have to help them because they are Humans and so am I. So … well …”

Why the hell
did
he have to help them?

“So, it feels right for me to help them. I mean, if another Beastship were hurt, you’d want to help her, wouldn’t you? Just to do the right thing. To be a hero, like with Mabel.”

[To help another Beast—I still do not understand how that could be. But John and Connie are not Beasts. They are Human. Why must I help them?]

“Uh, because I can’t do it without you. I need you. And because we’re friends, and friends help friends. I don’t know how I could ever help you, but if I could, I would. You know that.”