Alien Earth (43 page)

She waited, devoting most of her strength to blocking Tug’s efforts to take control of the womb chambers. Here, within her own body, it was much easier to stand him off. Still, she wondered desperately what was taking them so long to enter Raef into the womb sac. She knew Tug was continuing to speak to them, but could not sort out how to block him from that. It was what she needed so desperately, a way to speak directly to the Humans. If only she could talk to them. Raef was so weak. She sensed, more clearly now that they were actually within her and in closer proximity to the womb ganglia, both the anxiety and fear of the other two Humans. She surmised Tug was threatening them. If he frightened them, if he made them wait too long, Raef would be gone forever. [Ignore him. Just hurry with Raef. It will be all right, I will take care of him. But please hurry.] Their agitation increased. It seemed then that even these two had some awareness of her thoughts. She tried to convey to them the need for speed and at the same time soothe their fears. No. That’s too complicated. Instead, concentrate on soothing them, all of them. Raef is still existing, bright as a distant star, but there nonetheless. She forced herself to calmness. [It will all be well. Entrust him to me. Entrust him to me.]

They stretched Raef’s body
out on the womb-chamber floor. In the artificial light of the chamber, his color was even more ghastly. Perhaps, Connie prayed, it was a trick of the light. She helped John to strip away the tattered remnants of his clothing, trying not to feel revulsed at the profusion of body hair that was revealed and the gross disproportions of Raef’s body. He’s just old, she told herself sternly. Immensely old, as well as of natural human stock. That accounts for how strange his body appears.

“I forbid this.” Tug spoke each word separately, laboriously. They ignored him.

“Damn!” John exclaimed suddenly, savagely. Connie flinched to the sound.

“‘What’s wrong?” she asked quietly. Raef was still breathing. It was harsh and uneven, but he was respiring.

“Skin’s grown up over the umbilical coupler. There’s no way to connect … Tug! We need help here! Tug!”

There was no reply. “Damn you! Tug, answer me! That’s an order!” Tears sprang suddenly to John’s eyes. The Arthroplana remained stubbornly silent.

Connie took a deep breath, felt calmness spread through her body. She put a steadying hand on John’s shaking shoulder. In the past few weeks she’d taken to wearing a thin tool belt at her waist. Small knives and scissors intended by Earth Affirmed for taking biological samples had proved adaptable to shucking clams and cutting food plants. She selected a small knife with a thin curved blade.

“Hold him still in case he can feel this,” she cautioned John, amazed at how steady she sounded. “I’m going to cut away around it. It looks like mostly scar tissue anyway.”

“Okay.” Her calmness seemed contagious. John took a deep breath, then sat flat beside Raef, taking one of his hands and putting a restraining hand on Raef’s chest. “Go ahead. We can handle this. It’s going to be all right, Connie.”

“I know,” she said. It seemed ridiculous to feel so self-assured, but confidence flooded her. For the first time in her life, she set a blade to flesh. She put her free hand flat on Raef’s belly, ignoring the repellence she felt at the coarse hair under her fingers. She cut. The blood welled bright and sudden, and not so long ago it would have terrified her. But she continued to work carefully, freeing the edges of the coupler from the surrounding flesh that had sought to engulf it. Blade and fingers grew both sticky and slick with blood. She could hear John’s breathing, as loud and rasping as Raef’s, but not even that rattled her. An almost-unearthly calm filled her.

“That’s good enough,” John said suddenly, almost roughly. He stood, gripping Raef’s body under the shoulders, and dragged him closer to the womb mouth.

“John. Connie.” Tug’s voice was ragged with effort. “Stop this now. Our survival depends on it.”

Startled, Connie dropped the small knife she’d been in the process of sheathing. It made no sound as it landed on the floor of the womb chamber. John froze, incredulous of the weakness he heard.

“What’s going on?” John demanded angrily. “What are you talking about?”

“Raef is dangerous to us all. Not just his disease. He’s corrupted Evangeline, driven her to mutiny against me. Why do you think it took me so long to force her to come back for you. I’m fighting for control even now. If you give Raef back to her, I’ll be powerless to control her. She’ll kill us all.” His voice had gone very strained, somewhere between fearful and weak. It was enough to make John pause. He looked at Connie, uncertainty in his eyes.

A driving urgency suddenly assailed Connie. “Let’s get Raef into the womb, and then talk,” she suggested suddenly. She moved to help John drag him over to the womb mouth.

“It’s the worst mistake you can make,” Tug declared. “It’s the only thing we have that she wants. He’s our only bargaining chip. Give him to her, and she’s totally beyond our control.”

Connie saw John’s hesitation. “Maybe we should go to the medic chamber. Stabilize him, talk to him first.”

“No,” she said decisively. “Raef wanted to be put back in a womb chamber. He wants to be with Evangeline. He says she’ll take care of him.”

“At least … hear me out.” Tug’s voice faded suddenly in an odd way, came back pitched slightly lower. “Let me explain the situation. Let me tell you what you’re throwing away.”

“While Raef dies?” Connie challenged him.

John set a calming hand on her shoulder. “Talk fast, Tug,” he warned him.

“I’ll try. It’s harder for me than you think. I’m … she’s already killed me, essentially. I won’t live much longer. I know I won’t survive another lift-off. This gravity, and the additional G’s of leaving it … my body is crushed, John. I’m dying right now. All I’m asking is that you get my segments back to Home, so they can be fertilized and my memories saved. That’s all I’m asking of you.” Tug’s pause grew long. “You owe me that much, both of you,” he added suddenly.

John’s face, grown white and strained at first, suddenly hardened. “I owe you nothing.”

Connie crouched by Raef, took both his hands in hers.
Were they cold, or were her own hands sweaty? She held them firmly, tried to pour her own strength into him.

“The nature of a Beast,” Tug said ponderously. “Is that they require a companion. By some freakish accident, she became … aware of Raef. He usurped my place with Evangeline. His unbalanced ideas.” Tug paused, collected himself. “Have unbalanced her simple nature. If you give him back to her, she has no need for me. Or for other companionship…. Leave her lonely. She’ll be forced, eventually, to seek out other Beasts. She’ll be recaptured, retrained…. My segments will be rescued and fertilized. My ideas will live on.”

“Will Evangeline?” Connie asked softly. John seemed transfixed by Tug’s dragging words. Tug ignored her question.

“You’ll be rescued. Taken care of. Forgiven. But if you give her Raef, you will never see home again. Never see other Humans. You’ll die on this ship. Alone.”

“Castor and Pollux aren’t home,” Connie pointed out softly. She looked up at John as she added, “I won’t miss the company of other Humans.” She touched Raef’s face, felt the pulse that jumped at the corner of his jaw. “Raef is our friend. And I believe what he said about Evangeline. She’s no more a beast than I am.”

“So you’ll murder me for Raef’s sake,” Tug accused her bluntly.

“From what you say, you’re already dead,” Connie declared. “Letting Raef die won’t keep you alive. And keeping him alive might let Evangeline be free.”

Tug’s voice changed suddenly. The effort was still there, but there was a hard, cold edge as he suddenly offered, “I’ll make you a trade, John. Give up Raef’s life for me. There isn’t much left of it anyway. And I’ll give you all the life there used to be on Terra. Everything you need to start it over again.”

“What kind of fool do you take me for?” John asked slowly. “You can’t offer what you don’t have.”

“I know where it is, John…. Earth Affirmed’s precious time capsule. All the biological data, all the samples. Get my segments safely Home and fertilized. They’ll have the location in their memories. They’ll tell you.”

A terrible wave of agitation swelled through Connie. “No!” she declared suddenly. “He has to be put back in a womb.” John seemed transfixed by indecision. She set her own weight, dragged determinedly at Raef’s bulk. A little spittle bubbled at the corner of Raef’s mouth with each delayed breath he managed. “John, help me,” she demanded, and saw him startle as if from sleep.

“We’re going to womb him, Tug,” John said abruptly, quietly. “Earth isn’t dead. It doesn’t need a time capsule. Everything that could live there, is. You aren’t offering me anything. And Raef’s life isn’t mine to trade.”

“You’re betraying your whole race,” Tug accused him. “And me. For a Beast. A creature capable of only the most fuzzy thinking, the most selfish living. She’s not what you think. And Raef.” Tug’s words came in broken snatches. “He’s not just diseased, he’s damaged. You’ve heard him talk. He’s all memories, with scarcely a thought of his own. For those two, you’d let me die. Me, who sheltered you from the Conservancy, even when I knew you weren’t fit to captain this ship. Me, who gave you the chance to become what you are, who …”

“Get him into a womb!” Connie cried out frantically. The lights in the chamber winked out suddenly, then restored themselves. Flashed again.

“Tug, stop it!” John growled. “Stupid stalling games won’t work now.”

“You owe me,” Tug began desperately, angrily.

“It’s not Tug.” Connie made the intuitive leap. “It’s Evangeline,” she declared wildly. “John, she wants Raef in a womb. Now.”

As if in response, the chamber lights strobed.

“Don’t do it,” Tug warned them. “You’ll regret it. You’re killing me, for the sake of a … madman and a beast. Ones who’ll never be able to repay you with anything! What do you gain from this? Nothing. And you lose all … everything!”

“Womb,” Connie said to John. He nodded mutely. It was odd to work against gravity, odder still to be entering someone else into a womb chamber instead of herself. Connie had never before realized how much weightlessness aided one in entering and exiting the clinging confines of a womb. John
opened the womb mouth, inserted his own head and shoulders, and then reached for Raef. Connie pushed as John hooked his hands under Raef’s arms and heaved. The big man’s body began to inch into the womb. John had to crawl inside with Raef, dragging him along. Connie watched helplessly as the walls of the womb flexed as John struggled to make the umbilical connections. Now he was sticking the monitoring nodes to his skull. That Raef’s hair had grown so rapidly could only complicate things. She heard John cursing as he struggled.

Tug’s voice was an odd counterpoint. “You don’t know what you’re doing,” he told them. “It’s not just the time capsule. You’re exiling yourself from the Human race.”

The lights in the chamber flashed wildly, and Connie felt only a surge of encouragement. Gratitude, she might almost have called it.

“Everything you ever dreamed of is in that time capsule, John. All the poems you ever read or wrote. Mighty oaks and nodding poppies. Dappled horses and panting dogs. You could start it all again, your whole world. It’s not impossible.”

John’s feet and legs, still projecting from the womb’s neck, suddenly grew still.

“John?” Connie asked questioningly after a moment. “John, are you all right?” There was no response.

“John, Connie!” The desperation in Tug’s voice was bared now. “Remove Raef. It’s not too late. Please. Remove Raef. Without Raef distracting her, Evangeline can be made to see reason….”

Strange, how quickly it became easy to ignore his voice. From the flexings of the womb wall, Connie judged that John was managing the skull monitors. Already the fat grey tubes that fed the womb and removed wastes were swelling and pulsing reassuringly.

“And I promise you, all will go well …” Tug’s voice was more desperate. Connie heard him, but felt only satisfaction. Her own or Evangeline’s? She was not sure.

“The Conservancy will be made to understand, no one will be punished. Earth will be restored. Listen to reason.” Tug was babbling now.

“John?” Connie queried again as the swollen womb
grew still. His feet stirred suddenly and began to scrabble against the floor. Connie helped him struggle out as soon as she realized that was what he was trying to do. The womb reflexively sealed up around Raef. John dropped to the floor, and leaned back against the walls of the womb chamber as if exhausted. He sat silently for a moment. Then he smiled wearily at Connie. “We were in time. She’s got him now and he’s stabilizing.”

“You’ve condemned us all!” Tug’s voice seemed a distant thing, unable to penetrate the sudden welling of joy Connie felt.

“So I see,” she told John, and took his hand to help him up, heedless of the red stickiness on his fingers.

John laughed oddly. “I didn’t need to see. I know.” He grinned up at her. “She told me. Inside there, you can hear her. No. Not hear. But it’s like someone whispering right behind your ear. She called me by name. Knew it was me. Raef was right, and I thought he was crazy.”

“Take me Home. Have my segments preserved. Do this, and I promise you’ll get the time capsule, and the help of the Arthroplana in recovering it. You’ll be shielded from the Conservancy’s anger. But refuse, and the Conservancy will know all. And you’ll return only to face Readjustment or termination. Without me, you cannot go back. Don’t you see that? Even if Raef could manage Evangeline …”

“She said we have to get into the gondola, into loungers and strapped in. She wants to get up, get Raef into weightlessness as soon as possible.”

“Won’t the increased G’s of takeoff kill him?” Connie asked, but she was already following John out of the chamber.

“I won’t survive takeoff. That’s what you should be worrying about. I’m your only hope. Without me, you have no hope of ever returning to Delta, or the planets. You’ll never see your friends, your home again.”