Alien Earth (8 page)

“Perhaps not,” Deckenson said in a suddenly mild voice. “But nonetheless, we do know. Instead of being terrified of our betraying you, think what we’re offering you: the chance to finally stand on the surface of a planet and look up at the sky. And that planet is our own homeworld, Earth.”

“Not my home.” John said it flatly.

“John,” Deckenson chided. “It is. Yours and mine,
and we could live there again. Earth Affirmed knows it’s true, despite all the official reports. All we need to do to prove it is sidestep the Conservancy. For years, they’ve given lip service to our requests for updates on Earth’s condition. We finance a Beastship there, we put up the money for the satellite surveillance and send in the probes. But the results always come back the same. Toxic. Poisoned. Dead and deadly. You know why? Because all our raw data becomes the property of the Conservancy, goes directly into sealed files. We aren’t even allowed to see the readings we get. All we’re allowed is the Conservancy’s interpretation of what the raw data meant. It’s been very frustrating and very expensive. But the solution is obvious. Get permission for another reconnaissance. But this time there’s a man on the ship who’s ours, one who can step in and pirate the data before they can steal it from us and ‘interpret’ it to their own liking. We’ve set up ways for it to be done.” Deckenson paused, and John wondered what worse thing he was about to introduce.

“And there’s one other possibility, even more exciting. We have reason to believe there exists a time capsule that was left for us, created by those who stayed behind when we evacuated, in the faith that someday we’d come back for it. Firsthand data about Earth’s ecology. We believe it’s there, waiting for us. You can retrieve it. Or try. That’s all we ask.”

All they asked. The words seemed to echo in John’s ears. He couldn’t imagine anything worse they could ask of him.

“Deckenson,” he said pleadingly. “It’s completely crazy. Earth’s dead. Any ‘time capsule’ that was left there is destroyed, centuries ago. And it’s treason. If I do it, I’ll return to condemnation. There won’t even be a pretense of adjusting me. They’ll simply eliminate me like a contagious disease. And my crew.”

Deckenson didn’t smile. The very flatness of his mouth was somehow more intimidating. “No. Because you won’t fail. And when the information you gather is released, eliminating you will be impossible. You’ll be a hero. We’ll see to that. Refuse us, and we’ll see you’re condemned. So focus on
this. If you serve us, you’ll return to wealth and acclaim. We promise.”

“There isn’t really a choice for me, is there?” John said slowly.

“Not really,” Deckenson agreed. His flat eyes smiled at John over the rim of his stim mug as he drained it off.

S
HE WAS WALKING TOO FAST
.
Connie consciously slowed her stride and surreptitiously glanced around to see if anyone had noticed her hurry. She caught one pair of eyes staring at her, but the young woman seemed to be studying her orange coveralls rather than her face. Normal, Connie told herself. She was in a residential section of the station. It wasn’t an area usually frequented by the merchant marine. The standard coveralls that blended in among the port traffic made her stand out here. That was all. Nothing to worry about.

She forced herself to take the relaxing breaths, told herself that her uneasiness was groundless. Her Adjustment counselor had promised her that these feelings of not belonging, of vague paranoia, would pass. A small side effect of the Readjustment, actually a very small price to pay for being adapted. Time, she had assured Connie, would erase all the uneasiness. Well, Connie had given it time. A year and a half, in her relevant time. Almost forty years elapsed time. And she still felt as if there were no place where she was truly comfortable and at home, no place where people couldn’t see she was a patched and mended thing, a repaired mind. Even if the corridor had been empty, she would still have felt the knowing eyes on her, the looks that pitied or condemned her.

“Connie.” She heard the soothing voice cut into her mind, the last fading vestige of all the post-hypno helps they’d placed inside her head. Guaranteed to expire within
ten years. Usually. But maybe it wasn’t even a post-hypno anymore. Maybe her mind had obediently replayed it so many times, whenever her thoughts turned this way, that now it was just part of her. “Connie, dear. Remember this, when you feel out of place. Over seventy percent of the population will undergo Readjustment at some time in their lives. And our research indicates that percentage is rising. Therefore, a readjusted person is the norm, not the exception. Seeking Readjustment is the act of a responsible citizen. Relax. Know that you belong, and that good citizens respect those among them who improve themselves.”

Sure they did, Connie thought sourly. They respected you. They just didn’t want to be around you much, or talk to you, or work alongside you. Like your instability might be contagious. She glanced around herself, at the other people hurrying past her, and realized she hadn’t been paying attention to where she was going. Too caught up in her own interior landscape.

She stopped by a fountain, sat down on a slag bench beside it. There were fewer fountains in this section of Delta, and the plantings around it looked homelier, as if the neighborhood maintained it rather than a professional. She shifted uneasily, feeling almost guilty at suspecting this. “Rules change,” the counselor had told her, “but not right and wrong.” Connie pulled her mind away from trying to understand that. Rules she could comprehend and obey. Rules were simple. It was right and wrong that mystified her sometimes and had led to her need for Readjustment. Last time she had been on Delta Station it had been illegal for plants to be grown for other than oxygen production. Only professionals handled fauna. Now there were plants everywhere, being treated as decorations, and obviously being handled by laymen. If it had been illegal, hadn’t it been wrong? And if it was legal now, did that mean it was right? She felt a light sweat misting her palms and the back of her neck. She got up and began to walk again, trying to remember Tug’s directions for her destination.

She felt a sudden, almost-dizzying homesickness for the ship and the Waitsleep womb. Rules didn’t change on shipboard, not on the Evangeline. John was abrasive and bullying, yes, but his strictness was in itself a reassurance. Nothing was
going to change on Evangeline, not as long as John was skipper. It was probably a personality defect, but ever since her Adjustment, she had found that she didn’t care how people treated her, as long as it was predictable. Consistency was all she asked anymore.

Unfortunately, consistency seemed to be the last thing she would get from Tug. Within the familiarity of the ship, his bizarre behavior had seemed merely capricious. Now that she was off the ship and performing his little errand, it had begun to seem strangely threatening. She took a calming breath and glanced around the unfamiliar corridor. She checked a clock set high in the wall. Seventeen forty-three. She wasn’t due back at the ship for another four hours or so. The familiar roilings of stress churned within her as she warred with the necessity of making a decision. She could pick up the recordings for Tug, and it would be behind her and done. And she’d have two or three empty hours to aimlessly wander the station before she went back to the ship. Or she could wander aimlessly for two or three hours, stewing about Tug’s errand, and then do it and go back to the ship. Neither schedule appealed to her. She finally decided to complete Tug’s errand and then simply go back to the ship. Would John notice how little time she had spent ashore and wonder about it? Probably not. As long as she didn’t bother him, he didn’t seem to notice anything about her.

For about the tenth time, she drew the memo from her flight suit pocket and consulted it. It was getting harder to read; the filmy paper stuck to her sweaty hands and tore as she peeled it loose. For an instant she shared John’s resentment at the efficiency of the newest biodegradables; then she sternly squelched such nonsense and studied the address.

“Melody Court, residence C-72. Main Corridor G until you reach Orchestra, left on Flute to Melody, down on Melody.” She smoothed torn edges back together. “Orange door, wrought-work grille.” Flute. That had been her mistake, then. She was on Piccolo. She sighed, turned, and trudged back the way she had come. Even the mild gravity of the station was bothering her. She’d better do more exercising on her next trip out.

She reached Orchestra and consulted a directory there. Flute was only a few intersections away. The walk would be
good for her, she told herself sternly. And no one was staring at her; it was all her imagination. People were moving briskly about their own errands, or chatting amiably with one another. She turned down Flute.

And felt the change. It wasn’t just that this corridor was being kept a degree or two warmer, or that the piped-in music gradually ceased. Those were subtleties she might have missed, but not the handrails that ran down the center of the corridor, or the increased frequency of benches and com stations. On one public patio, several old men and two old women were playing cards. A niggling suspicion began to form in the back of Connie’s mind. She passed a bald old man, and then a woman using a glide-support; Connie paused to wait out a wave of panic. Retirement residences. That’s what this section of the station was.

Melody Court opened out before her. She took the ramp down to it, then stepped off it and forced herself to keep walking. She had to look at the memo film again. Her hands were sweating so badly it clung to them like burn-wrap. C-72. Orange door. Find it, get in, get the recordings, and get out. Simple enough. No need to panic. They were just people, even if they were old. Horribly old. She didn’t have to feel bad about her uneasiness, didn’t need to feel guilty. Many prepubes like herself had a difficult time relating to anyone who was sexually mature; her Adjustment counselor had assured her she’d scored within the normal range of stress ratings there. Of course, that stress was minor compared to her anxiety attacks around the elderly; Connie had been guiltily grateful that they’d never thought to test her reactions there. She knew it was wrong, but she couldn’t help it. Old people scared her. She hated their restlessness, their constant questioning of the way things were, their numerous complaints. She hated the way they always seemed to focus in on her, as if they could sense her fear and distrust of them. She had only been twenty-three the first time it happened. She had been out on her own for almost the first time, walking alone in the University district. And some old person, so old she couldn’t even tell if it had been a male or a female, had tottered up to her and demanded, “Two hundred and seven years, and for what? For what, I ask you?” Connie had just stood there, frozen with anxiety by the strange behavior,
while the old person muttered and ranted and finally walked away, shaking a fist in the air. It had been her very first glimpse of someone that old; nothing she had seen since then had ever changed her opinion about them.

And Melody Court was full of them; this section of the station had been engineered for them. All the little tables with chairs where old people could gather and socialize, the open arcade of reader carrels, the large screen on the wall charting out Today’s Recreational Opportunities. And everywhere, old people, ignoring all these amenities to simply sit on the benches together and be old. Everywhere, the signs of their discontent. A bench had been unfastened from the floor and overturned. Sanded-out graffiti was bleeding through the finish on one wall, something protesting enforced retirement, and, farther on, an obscene sneer at the Medical Merit plan. A handwritten suggestion that if the Conservancy approved of Timely Termination, they should try it themselves. Connie jerked her eyes away from it, wondering if they were watching her read it, and studying her face to see how she felt about it. Annoyed, that’s how I feel, she wanted to tell them. You were born into this plan, you grew up within the system, but when you get old, you all want to trash it because it doesn’t focus on you anymore. Senile selfishness, that’s what it all was.

There was something about the wilting obsolescence of their bodies, the saggy breasts of the old women, soft hanging bellies, and wrinkled faces. The gravity of Castor or Pollux would have made it worse, but even in station grav it was bad enough. And the smell. No one else ever mentioned it, but she was sure she wasn’t imagining it. A used smell, like sweat and damp cloth and wet hair, a smell she somehow connected with sexuality past its prime. It seemed monstrously ironic that one had to endure the hormonal storms of puberty warping your intellect and logic, only to be physically ravaged by the withdrawal of those same hormones years later. It must be like surviving some terrible crippling disease like they had in ancient times, weathering it only to become a hobbling shadow of your former self. Connie averted her eyes from the sight of an old man leaning heavily on an old woman’s arm as they meandered down the corridor.

Orange door. C-72. And there was a wrought-metal
grille over it. She reached through the metal to pull the chime lever, then stood waiting to be let in. She let her fingers idly trace the wrought work, trying to enjoy the abstract design, only to be surprised by the sturdiness of the metal. This was no decoration. Forgetting herself for a moment, she took hold of the grille and tried to rattle it. It wouldn’t budge. It was cold and rough and real under her hands, and the most antisocial thing she’d ever encountered. If a prepube or a pube had put up such a barrier, they’d have been taken away for Readjustment before the day was out. But a postpube could get away with almost anything. And usually did. Frequently Readjustment for postpubes was just not cost effective. That was the most often cited reason. The one that was quoted in undertones was that Adjustment didn’t work after a certain age; the personality just gave way and withdrew under the pressures. And when that happened, a humane and timely termination was the only possible prescription left. What else could they expect?

Connie pushed the thought out of her mind and began to bargain with herself. I will wait twenty more seconds, she thought to herself, and then I will leave and tell Tug that I tried, but no one was home. She reached and yanked the door chimes hastily, as a gesture to prove to herself that she had really tried, that she wasn’t running away. But the door jerked back from her fingers, the chime handle rapping her knuckles as it moved away. Without thinking, she raised the injured fingers to her mouth, and there she stood, sucking at her fingers like an infant with the old man staring out at her.

“Well?” he demanded.

She snatched her hand down from her mouth, tried to find an answer to what wasn’t a question. “Tug,” she blurted stupidly. The grating still stood between her and the old man. Beyond him she could glimpse a very dim and untidy room. He kept staring at her. His eyes had been brown, but the colors seemed to have leaked out into the whites, giving his eyes a smeary look. “Tug sent me to get some recordings from you,” she finally managed.

“Idiot,” the old man hissed at her. “Do shut up, now.” He did something on his side of the door, and the grate suddenly swung out toward her. “Come inside, and quickly now. Quickly!” the old man barked when she hesitated.

She obeyed, stepping inside into the untidiness, feeling her bowels churn as first the grate and then the door shut behind her. It was suddenly darker, and an odor of closeness and spilled food swelled up around her. She stepped forward, stumbled on something, and stood still again. The old man ignored her hesitation and moved deeper into the shadows of the room. “Move something and sit down,” he advised her testily. “I’ll be right back with his things.” And then he was gone, vanished into some darker alcove, leaving her to bumble in the dimness.

The only light came from a single wall strip, set on minimum. It also seemed to be behind the couch or some long, low piece of furniture. She saw the shape of a chair, moved toward it. Something was on it, hard little blocks, many of them.

“Just put them on the floor, or anywhere.”

The voice so close behind her startled her, and she jumped, sending whatever-they-were cascading to the floor.

“Dammit, not like that!” the old man hissed, as if she had done it deliberately.

Her nervousness at the whole situation suddenly blossomed into anger. “I didn’t mean to knock them down. If there were a little more light in here, I could see what I was doing.”

“If there were a little more light in here,” the old man retorted sarcastically, “there wouldn’t be much left to move around. All the stuff in this generation was made photo-sensitive. Light is all it takes to start triggering the breakdown. Remind Tug of that when you give them to him. He’d better plan on using them in the dark, or on rerecording them immediately. Because they’re right on the cusp. Put them in light, and they aren’t going to last long.”