Jillian vs Parasite Planet

by Nicole Kornher-Stace

  Then, after another few thoughtful minutes of walking, she remembered something else.

  “They don’t bite people usually. They keep to themselves.” She began counting off facts on her fingers. Just having facts to count was oddly comforting. “The field crews usually don’t see them. And we only know about them because another team captured some for study a few months ago. They attacked my parents yesterday, but they’re not attacking me now. At least, this one isn’t.”

  SABRINA’s voice came from the tall purplish grass brushing Jillian’s knees. For several minutes now, Jillian had only been assuming it was still in its green ferret shape. It could have been anything. “Affirmative,” it said, only slightly muffled by the swishing of the grass.

  The idea was taking shape in her head even as she spoke. “SABRINA, were you there on that trip? When they first found the worms?”

  “I have attended almost all of the surveying expeditions,” SABRINA said. “I am very useful! I would even go so far as to say I am extremely—”

  “Can you, um, access those records?” Jillian asked. “Like you did for the place that didn’t use to be the swamp? Show me when they first found the worms?”

  “Honestly,” SABRINA said. “I wouldn’t be extremely useful if I couldn’t at least do that.”

  Immediately the green ferret-shape was floating in the air to her side, projecting the video before her as she picked her way through that empty field of grass.

  In it was another field crew. This one looked to be two men, but it was hard to tell because they both had podsuits on. They had a few of the worms in a glass jar, and one of the crew was holding one in a gloved hand. The worm didn’t bite, didn’t melt a hole through the glove and into the flesh beneath. It just hung out there in the person’s hand like a regular worm. After a minute or so, it seemed to get bored and squirmed off the hand and fell into the orange dirt.

  “Whoops,” Jillian heard a man’s voice say. “Get back here, little guy.” Then he picked the worm back up, again with just the gloved fingers, again without any burning acid bites to show for it, and plopped it into the jar like nothing.

  “Huh,” Jillian said. “I didn’t know anybody collected these for study. Are there some back at the lab on Earth?”

  “No,” SABRINA said. “The field crew kept them for a few days for observation. That’s how they found out about the acid saliva, and that the worms use it to get nutrition from dirt. But eventually the crew decided there wasn’t anything else all that interesting about them. Bringing actual live alien life-forms back through the portal without prior authorization—you think the idea of two hours of decontamination protocol is bad—not to mention the paperwork—”

  “But these worms stayed put underground? Then how’d the team find them?”

  “They were digging,” SABRINA said. “They were hoping to find some kind of undiscovered food source that future surveyor crews could make use of.”

  “Alien potatoes?”

  “At the time I congratulated them on their find. After all, the worms were an undiscovered food source! But that fantastic idea was met with a lukewarm reception at best. Humans are so picky.”

  Jillian swallowed. She had to feed three people for a week on a supply of food packets that might last half that long. Eating worms was not something she wanted to think about until she absolutely had to.

  Instead she paid more attention to the scenery as she walked. They were at the edge of the forest now, under the overhang of the first trees. She remembered her dad mentioning this planet’s fruit trees, but she had no idea what they might look like. Was it like on Earth, where some wild- growing plants were good to eat and some were poisonous?

  “I would have put that in the documentary,” she said. Not like the StellaTech people could hear her back on Earth, or like it would have mattered. The documentary was about the company, not the flora and fauna of 80 UMa c. What she really needed was a field guide. A book that could tell her what she could eat and what she couldn’t. But she didn’t. No field guide for random non-Earth planets had been written.

  Or had it?

  “Hey, SABRINA?”

  “Shoot.”

  “You were just talking about food sources. Are there any food sources here on 80 UMa c that aren’t worms?” Then, realizing she’d have to be a whole lot more specific than that if she didn’t want a horrifying answer, she added, “Fruit, for example. My dad told me there were fruit trees around here somewhere. He said the fruit was edible.”

  “Everything is edible if you chew it long enough,” SABRINA said pleasantly.

  “Edible as in ‘nonpoisonous,’” Jillian said patiently. “As in ‘it won’t make me sick or kill me if I—’”

  She broke off, gasping as she toppled off-balance. SABRINA had glued her boots to the ground again. But this time it caught her. It was hovering behind her, pulling back on the fabric of her podsuit to keep her upright as she windmilled her arms to regain her footing.

  “Hey—” Jillian began, but then came SABRINA’s voice in her ear.

  “Hush,” it said. SABRINA was in front of Jillian now, but pointing with one wingtip to something off to a diagonal behind her. “There.”

  Jillian began to turn around, then stopped. This reminded her of so many scenes in so many scary movies, and none of them ended well. “What is it?” she whispered.

  “I could tell you the scientific name given to it by the survey crew that discovered it,” SABRINA said. “But that wouldn’t mean anything to you, and it doesn’t have another name. Just look at it. It’s neat.”

  Jillian wanted to. Didn’t want to. Had to. Couldn’t. Signaling confusion, she thought wildly.

  “One hundred and twelve degrees to your left,” SABRINA said. “No, your other left. Thirty meters and closing. Oh, just turn around.”

  “Is it dangerous?”

  “To you? On my watch? World’s best bodyguard? Please.” Then, when Jillian still hesitated, it added, “It’s not going to hurt you. I should know; I discovered it. I mean, the field crew got the credit, but I saw it first.” SABRINA rolled its spider-eyes, all eight of them. “Humans, am I right?”

  Jillian wasn’t really listening. Turn around, she commanded herself. It’s better to know. It’s always better to know.

  Jillian took a deep breath, got a death grip on her spiky rock, and spun around. At the same time, the thing behind her stepped into a space between two trees, and she saw.

  “Oh,” she breathed. “It’s pretty.”

  It was slightly taller than Jillian, walking on four long legs. Her dad’s words in her head: something maybe the tiniest little bit like a deer?

  Tiniest little bit still felt like a stretch. The body shape was similar . . . ish, if taller and spindlier than a deer, but the resemblance ended there. Its head was somewhere between reptilian and birdlike, but near neither of those at all. For one thing, its tiny nostrils rested directly between its eyes, because its mouth ran vertically up the middle of its skull.

  It was such an odd color that even at that distance it blended in among the shadows of the trees almost perfectly: a kind of grayish blue like the smoke over a campfire, but with a silvery brightness that made it hard to tell at first whether it had fur or feathers or scales or something completely different. Darker shadows rippled across it—Jillian squinted—no. It was changing; the creature itself was changing as it moved. It was colorshifting from that smoky blue-gray to the near-black color of a deep bruise, depending on the specific darkness of the shadows it passed through. Not only that, but it moved in time with the rippling of those shadows as the breeze shook the trees, making it nearly impossible to track where the shadows’ movement left off and the creature’s movement began. If Jillian didn’t squint hard, it was almost like the creature was flickering in and out of existence, having invisibly traveled a few more feet each time it flickered
back in.

  Jillian had seen enough nature documentaries to know this deer thing’s camouflage was deeply impressive. It was better than chameleon camouflage, better maybe even than octopus camouflage. It made Jillian’s brain itch in the same way SABRINA had in the lab yesterday, shape-shifting faster than her eyes could keep up with. If SABRINA hadn’t mentioned it, the creature might have gotten close enough to touch before Jillian saw it.

  As it was, by the time she’d gotten over the initial shock of its presence, the alien deer was crossing Jillian’s field of vision, maybe ten feet in front of her. It had its wrong-mouthed head raised into the breeze. It was looking or scenting or listening for something.

  Whatever it was, the alien deer was paying it total attention. It walked straight past Jillian and SABRINA, oblivious. It traveled in a straight line, flickering from shadow to shadow, not looking where it stepped, just aiming its weird face into the wind like it was attached to a string reeling it in from a distance.

  Food, Jillian thought. It’s probably going after food. Deer on Earth eat plant stuff. Maybe this one knows where there’s edible fruit. Maybe I should follow it. No. I should get SABRINA to send a probe thing after it while I go get the water. Then I can look for fruit on the way back.

  But she’d been turning, one shuffle-step at a time, to track it with her gaze. Now that it was pointing itself off in the distance in front of her, she realized that the alien deer was already headed in the direction they were going. Maybe the fruit trees grew near water? She could get SABRINA to bring the worm over, see what it was doing. If it was signaling water, that might be it.

  She was about to whisper-yell over to SABRINA when then that train of thought evaporated entirely, because now the alien deer was close enough for Jillian to notice something else.

  There were patches on the shifting colorscape of the creature that didn’t work. Patches on its back and along the bunching muscles of its legs. They didn’t change when the surrounding . . . skin? . . . changed. They were blank and pale, and reminded Jillian of dead pixels on a screen.

  They were the exact shape and size of the burn marks on Jillian’s mom and dad.

  Chapter 10

  Jillian tracked the alien deer for another half mile or so before she said anything to SABRINA about what she’d just seen. She was beginning to learn the trick of asking SABRINA anything—be painfully specific, expect ridiculously literal answers—but even so, it felt a lot like flipping a coin. It might come up hey, super useful, I’m so glad we had this talk, but it was equally likely to land on wow, am I ever sorry I asked.

  Rather than taking those odds, Jillian was trying to put things together on her own. Mystery-solving was a satisfying way to pass time as she walked, even if she didn’t come up with any answers.

  As long as she didn’t let herself get too distracted. The grass grew higher here beneath the trees, whip wiry and tough, and it slashed clean little tears in the podsuit legs if she wasn’t careful. The alien deer seemed to know how to walk through it gracefully, but Jillian was lagging farther and farther behind. She started off trying to hack a path with the spiky rock, but that didn’t work nearly as well as just taking huge, heavy stomps to flatten the grass underfoot.

  Then she remembered how the worms had come boiling up out of the dirt when something—or someone—shook the ground. She immediately stopped stomping. But walking normally in that grass meant she had to concentrate. Plan each step before she took it. She’d set a foot and slowly, forcefully lean her weight into it to crush the grass without stomping it.

  Still, it seemed like a good idea. The alien deer’s steps had been precise and delicate, and she hadn’t seen any worms following it through the forest. Jillian did her best to copy its style of movement.

  The extra padding of the grass underfoot ended up muffling her footsteps really well. If her stomping had gotten the worms’ attention, the careful stepping on crushed grass must have made them lose interest, because none appeared.

  However, it took much, much longer than normal walking. Jillian lost the alien deer, then caught sight of it again in the distance, then lost it again. She told herself that didn’t really matter. The deer might be headed for food, but water was the priority here. Everything else had to wait.

  But she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t keeping her eyes peeled for that alien deer, wasn’t keeping her fingers crossed that they’d catch up with it at the waterfall. Jillian was a space explorer now, and the deer was the first type of life-form she’d seen on 80 UMa c that she could trust not to attack her. If it thought she was food, it would have had plenty of opportunity to try to eat her. But it’d walked right past her, just like SABRINA had promised.

  Even if it had looked normal, she would have wanted to study it a little longer. The marks on its back and legs made her extra curious. The worms had bitten it, and yet it seemed fine. It didn’t have as many bites on it as her parents had, but still, seeing it walking around like nothing had happened gave her hope that her parents would be fine too.

  “Did you see the marks?” she asked SABRINA after a time. “On that animal? They looked like the burns my parents got from the worms.”

  “Unsurprising,” SABRINA said. “If the worms attacked your parents, which I can verify they absolutely did, in all probability they go after other prey too.”

  “But they don’t,” Jillian said. “My dad told me they don’t. They get their food from the dirt. That’s what’s weird about it.” Finally, something clicked. “And they didn’t eat the alien deer. They didn’t try to eat my mom and dad. They just bit them. And then left them alone. And the one you’re carrying around never tried to bite me at all.”

  “Well, there you have it,” SABRINA said. “They get their food from the dirt, and they bite humans and what you insist on calling the alien deer for fun. Mystery solved.”

  “No. Mystery not solved. Mystery worse now than before.” Jillian, who had seen dozens of nature documentaries, felt sure of this. “Wild animals attack because they’re hungry, or in self-defense. Not for fun. Do they?” Suddenly she was unsure. “Maybe, like, a predator toying with its prey?” She made a face. “But worms?”

  “If it makes you feel any better,” SABRINA said, “your alien deer over there barely seems wounded. Vitals look good. No sign of infection. And it’s certainly not moving like it’s injured.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Jillian said. “It’s hard to keep up with it. The grass is so sharp.”

  “It’s just going in a straight line,” SABRINA said. “We’ll catch up. Are the boots okay?”

  Jillian glanced down at them: still shiny, blue, winged. “They’re great.”

  “I really wanted to do another mech suit,” SABRINA said. “That was fun. None of the other surveyors are ever going to let me make one for them.”

  “They’re missing out,” Jillian said. “That thing was awesome.”

  “I know, right?”

  They walked another little ways, silent except for the rip-swish of the grass.

  “All the other field crews that have been coming here,” Jillian said eventually, “the worms never bit any of them?”

  “Never,” SABRINA said. “You saw the footage.”

  Jillian thought back on it. That surveyor, holding one of the green worms in his hand, unharmed. Was there something about her parents that made the worms attack? But no—they’d gone after her too, when she went back to the pod. Hundreds of them. Thousands. But the one SABRINA caught by the swamp . . . didn’t.

  “And the last crew that came here was when?”

  “Two months ago,” SABRINA said. “They were testing other sites for a while, but they decided this one was the most efficient for harvesting, so now we’re back. Home sweet home.”

  “SABRINA, you live in the lab.”

  This was met with exactly two seconds of uncharacteristic silence, as if
she’d somehow caught SABRINA off guard, and then out of nowhere it blurted out, “Why can’t you hear a pterodactyl go to the bathroom?”

  “Huh?”

  “Because the P is silent.”

  “What?”

  “Get it? Get it? Because the P—”

  “Oh. Oh.” Jillian paused. “That’s awful.”

  “Awfully funny.”

  Jillian’s mouth quirked. “I guess.”

  SABRINA beamed. “I have twelve hundred and eighteen more where that came from, equally excellent. You’re in for such a treat.”

  The next mile was full of much the same. Trees, grass, shadows. SABRINA made it through fifty-three more jokes from its collection before Jillian lost count. The alien deer never deviated in its course, never slowed, never paused to rest or eat, so that Jillian and SABRINA followed it for a while but eventually lost sight of it completely.

  Eventually they reached a break in the trees, and above them, suddenly, was the waterfall. It was short and wide and sparkled in the sunlight on its way down from its highest point to a rocky pool below, and right that very moment it was the most beautiful thing Jillian had ever seen.

  She picked her way through the last of the wiry grass, and then there were small rocks like gravel that crunched underfoot as she tried her best not to break into a run and draw the worms up from underground. She forced herself to walk lightly, cautiously, mindfully. She counted her steps to make sure she didn’t lose focus. Eighty steps, ninety, and at ninety-four she was beside the pool.

  She looked at it, and her heart sank. It was full of dead worms.

  Of course it is, she told herself. It’s water. You should have known.

  More worms were crawling into the water from the rocks as she stood there and watched. None of them paid any attention to her.

  “We can’t use this,” she told SABRINA. “Look.”

  “Hmm.” SABRINA floated over. It made itself an arm and stuck it into the pool, then the falls. Then it did it again. Then it came over and sat on Jillian’s shoulder. “I think the water that’s actually falling is okay.”