Priam's Lens

by Chalker, Jack L

  She’d been very athletic and very confident, it was true, but she’d still emerged from the ivory tower and thought of this as something romantic, youthful fieldwork upon which to build a career. Most academics had never come face to face with situations in which split-second decisions might cause their own death. It had to be a tough awakening, and they were only starting.

  N’Gana looked at his watch. They had already synchronized on the island; now he checked each to ensure that the watches were still in synch at least to the minute. They were; computers might not govern these watches, but they had designed and built them.

  “We have at least six more hours of daylight,” he told them, looking and sounding like his old self. “I think we ought to make what time we can. The sooner we get to our objective and retrieve what must be retrieved and get that information up to the others, the sooner we can be concerned with getting back.”

  There wasn’t much argument on that score, and while they’d had a trying morning, it felt good to actually be doing something. N’Gana turned to Father Chicanis. “Which way, Father?”

  The priest pointed east. “Stay parallel with the coast and not too far inland. Since that was Capri Point back there, it means we’ve got a hundred and fifty or so kilometers to where we need to be, give or take. It will be difficult to get lost if we keep close to the ocean and keep going east.”

  “Remember that,” the colonel said to the others. “If anything happens and we become separated, that is the way there, and, from there, the reverse is the way back.” He thought a moment. “Allowing a bit for unforeseeable problems, I would say we have a week’s good walk here. Since I don’t have a backpack I’ll take the point, the sergeant will take the rear. You see or hear anything unusual, or anything helpful for that matter, don’t hesitate. And keep a good lookout for anything edible. We want to save the preserved stuff for when we absolutely have to have it. If humans can exist down here in the wild, then so can we. Father, you know the local and imported plants here, so you’re the one who says what’s edible and what’s not.”

  They started walking, and were quickly enmeshed in the tall grass that was two to three meters tall, well over N’Gana’s head. It wasn’t hard to follow the leader in this stuff since he was so large a man and trampled down quite a swath, but this made Harker start thinking about how easy it would be for any enemy to be there in the tall grass, even in force, and remain invisible until it was too late.

  “Was it like this when you were living here, Father?” Harker asked the priest.

  Chicanis shook his head. “No, not like this. These grasses were pretty well tamed, cut, managed, and in most cases we thought it was plowed up. It’s good protection, but it’s tough finding landmarks. I hope this won’t be the norm all the way.”

  “There were some groves of trees going along for some distance not too far inland on the survey photos, if I remember,” Mogutu commented in a low tone that the others readily took up. “They looked like fruit trees of some sort.”

  “They were. Tropical fruits, mostly,” Chicanis responded. “They were quite a favorite delicacy in the good old days. There were a number of fruits grown very near the coast because the regular sea breezes gave them added moisture year-round. I don’t know, though, how you’re going to find anything at all down here walking through this. Even I am lost.”

  “The colonel’s got a magnetic compass and there’s manual sighting gear adjusted for Helena in my pack,” Harker told him. “Good thing, too, since if it had been in the other boat we’d really be in a fix. The compass is adjusted to true north from its usual east-northeast on this planet, and should be adequate.”

  By the end of an hour or so they were all soaked with sweat and feeling the strain of the tropical climate and particularly the hot, humid air. Harker was just about to suggest a break when they stepped out of the grasslands and into a dense forest. There hadn’t been many noticeable insects in the grass, but now the very air seemed made of them, and it was nearly impossible to keep themselves from being covered in them. Harker and Socolov both began coughing from having breathed in tiny bugs.

  N’Gana came back and called a break. The others couldn’t imagine wanting to linger a single moment in that spot.

  “Let’s get back into the grass,” Harker suggested, feeling like his entire face and arms were covered with tiny insects.

  “Okay, just inside,” N’Gana responded. “Key to that large tree over there. Drop the packs and remain with them. I’m going to try and knock some of that fruit down, or climb up and get it.”

  “I can help,” Father Chicanis volunteered. “Wait until I drop the backpack. No use giving you all the local names for things, but you’ll all like those. Don’t pick up any that have fallen, though. The insects will have pretty well moved in. Most of them don’t touch fruit that’s growing, though. It has a kind of natural defense, even if it was genetically designed.”

  “Insects this bad in the old days?” N’Gana asked him.

  “Not that I remember, but there were always a lot of them. No big game, no big animals at all, plenty of insects. They aren’t really insects, either, if you examine them closely, but they occupy the same niche. We just called them all bugs. That’s the trouble with tropical climates—what’s great for people is even better for the pests.”

  It was clear that people hadn’t been in this area for a very long time, so it was pretty easy to pick enough of the oval-shaped fruit and bring it to the camp by the armload.

  “Funny the insects don’t like it over here,” Harker commented, glad to be able to breathe real air.

  “Oh, there are plenty in the grass, but they don’t go where they can’t eat. The range of most of those bugs is only a few dozen meters,” Chicanis answered him. “We’ll get some here when we crack open the fruit, but don’t let them bother you. Even if you swallow a few, just think of them as, well, protein. Most aren’t even native. They snuck in with the fruit. The native ones go more for the grasses and do a lot of tunneling.”

  “Thanks a lot,” Harker responded. In one brief comment Chicanis had managed to make him paranoid about where he was sitting while also making the swarms even less appetizing to think about.

  The one who seemed happiest about the bugs was Hamille. The feathery but serpentine creature opened that huge oval of a mouth and just seemed to inhale the flying bugs as fast as it could. When full, it would sink to the ground and start spitting. Out came tiny forms that looked like berries and others that looked like tiny gemstones that crawled or wriggled.

  “The ones spit out are the native bugs, I assume,” Mogutu commented more than asked.

  “Yes. Our friend can digest most protein-based bugs and such, even raw meat and what we would think of as carrion, but I think the native bugs are a bit indigestible even for it,” N’Gana replied. “At least Hamille will have the same ease with local cuisine as we, even if we eat different things. That’s good, because half or more of its food was in our lost packs.”

  He used the knife to slice open one of the melonlike fruits. It revealed a bright yellow-orange pulp with a core of tiny white seeds. The thing tasted quite sweet and proved very filling. The second one turned out to have some bugs in it and, as it turned out, about one in three of them had a lot of visitors.

  “I don’t understand it,” Chicanis said, shaking his head in wonder. “They used to avoid anything on the vine or die.”

  “They’re adapting,” Harker responded, a little worriedly. “They’re evolving to meet changing circumstances. Too much grass, food that’s too concentrated. Those things aren’t the most numerous of the bugs devouring the fruits that fall from the trees. Those silver things with the little pincers seem to be the boss, followed by the round black things with the four legs and the millipedelike critters. These little brown buggers had to adapt or die out.”

  “I wonder if perhaps the surviving people might have as well?” the priest asked worriedly.

  “I wouldn’t worry a
bout that,” N’Gana responded. “Evolution takes a lot longer in us humans. Us—all of us—now, we have these skin flaps and bony plates from running through the genholes for years, but they’re growths, not deformities. They stop when we stop, and most are pretty easily removed. Mental adaptation, now, that’s a different story. We adapted so much to technology we got soft. Very few could do what we’re doing, you know that? We’ve gotten too used to waving our hands and having the machines provide. Anything we want and can’t find, we can synthesize. Anything we need to know we just plug our heads into a net and direct-load from the libraries. Used to be everybody had to read for information. Now nobody even remembers how, at least in general. We get tired of our looks, we drop in a clinic and brown eyes become blue, fat vanishes and is replaced by muscle in a matter of days or weeks, no effort. Nobody walks anywhere anymore.”

  “Maybe so,” Father Chicanis said in a slightly dubious tone, “but not everybody. That’s what killed these worlds, of course. Stripped to the basics, only a very small number survived. Perhaps that is evolution. Perhaps the only ones who survived and bred did so precisely because they were either throwbacks or had qualities the others did not that allowed them to survive.”

  “Maybe, but if we meet any of ’em I bet they won’t be all that different,” the colonel asserted. “I mean, except for extinction, nothing evolves in as little as ninety years or so, not without artificial help. Isn’t that right, Doctor?”

  Eyes turned to the silent and sullen anthropologist. All had noticed her silence and somewhat shell-shocked look, but only Harker and Chicanis had been concerned about it.

  When she didn’t reply, N’Gana frowned and called, “Doctor Socolov? Kat? You must snap out of this!” When she only vaguely reacted, he walked over and looked down at her. “Doctor, I will put this bluntly, but you must believe that I am not making idle conversation. We cannot afford to have breakdowns or episodes. If you have gone psychotic, you are a liability and we will leave you here. If you are doing this out of some inner angst or too-late selfdoubt or whatever, then you are a liability. You went into this with as few illusions as we could manage. If you did not believe us, that is too bad, but if you are not a willing part of this team, then you are a threat to our lives and our mission, as much a threat as those things in the sand. We don’t have time for this, Doctor. Either grow up or walk off into the brush. I want your answer now. I want your response before we pick up and walk another ten kilometers. If you do not react, we will leave you. If you then follow, we will make certain that you cannot.”

  “Cut her some slack, Colonel,” Father Chicanis put in, concerned. “She’s been through a lot already.”

  “Stay out of this, Father! I am not doing this to be a petty tyrant. I simply wish you, both you and the doctor here, and anyone else who might think otherwise, to consider the cost of our failure. Ask yourselves just how many billions or trillions of lives is she worth? The mission is the only thing that is important here. Anyone who forgets that, or who gets in the way of that, will have to be cut out. There are worlds at stake here! Including hers—and mine.”

  She looked up at him angrily, but all she said was, “I’ll come, Colonel. I’m only here because they thought I could help. Just give me some space.”

  “I don’t have time for negotiations,” N’Gana responded coldly, then turned and looked straight into the eyes of the priest. “And, Father, this is the absolute last time I will explain a course of action. We don’t have the luxury of that now.”

  Harker looked over at Socolov and could not read what she was thinking. He sighed and hoped that she could work it out before things got even stickier. Even though he’d been as harsh as N’Gana in getting her out of the boat, he knew he couldn’t be as cold under conditions like these as the colonel had been. Even so, as a former company commander in hostile territory, he couldn’t find fault with anything the colonel had said, either.

  It ‘.s’ this damned heat and humidity, he thought. And how damned naked we are in just fatigues and boots toting anachronistic old blunderbusses through unknown territory. He missed the combat suit more than he’d thought he would. He would have bet most anything that, underneath, N’Gana and Mogutu wished they had theirs, too.

  Maybe slithering along like the Pooka would suit them all better than this incessant walking in the tall and masking grasses.

  In point of fact, the imposing creature could move along very rapidly, often outpacing everyone, and this was not lost on N’Gana. Although the Quadulan couldn’t yell and didn’t make a sufficient dent in the grasses to be the forward scout, it was very useful, when strange sounds were heard or when things just didn’t feel right, to be able to send it forward and wait for it to return with information on just what was there. It was unlikely to have any real enemies here save the Titans, and it could lay a trail of its own scent to guide it precisely back to the group.

  It was getting very late in the day when the creature returned from one such mission. “Follow to the grove,” it said. “Make camp. Good ground, food, water.”

  It was a welcome suggestion, and it turned out to be not ten minutes from where they were.

  The grove was clearly an old farm gone wild, with lush fruit trees all lined up for as far as the eye could see right next to bushes bearing large, juicy red and purple fruit. The insects were there, of course; in this climate it was inevitable. Still, they didn’t seem nearly as dense, and it looked fairly comfortable as this world went. There were even several small streams, all with swift-flowing if warm water nearby, possibly a remnant of some early irrigation system.

  “Nick of time,” Harker commented to everyone and nobody in particular. “The sun’s about past the mountains. It’s going to be very dark very soon, I think.”

  The camp was quickly laid out. Each backpack, once unloaded, became a kind of sleeping bag and the contents were in a series of plastic containers that fit together for maximum compression and easy organization and unpacking. The shortage of sleeping bags was not the disadvantage it seemed. There would have to be someone on guard, and maybe having two up at once wasn’t such a bad idea in this totally alien landscape. Night would be about eleven hours at this time of year and in this latitude; everyone would try to sleep at least six of those hours, maybe even eight, if they weren’t continuous. They ate and drank and washed and relieved themselves mostly in silence; there wasn’t anything more to say. A fire was forbidden, at least for now—at least until they knew why no small fires had ever been picked up by orbital spy satellites tracking the remnants of humanity on conquered worlds.

  “Sergeant, you and the good Father here will take the first watch,” N’Gana told them. “Three hours, then you wake up Harker and the doctor and when they get out of their bags, you two get in. Harker, three hours and then you awaken me. I’ll get Hamille up—he tends to be rather nasty when awakened suddenly, but I know how to do it—and we’ll take the final shift. We’ll get you all up a little after sunup and we’ll start breaking camp and get on the march. There is still a very long way to go.”

  About an hour after sundown, though, when it was so dark at ground level they could barely see their hands in front of their faces, they could all first hear and then feel the coming of the storms. And when they hit with furious thunder and lightning and great gusts of wind, there was little any of them could do but get wet in the almost impossibly dense downpour or huddle inside the bags. The clothing, boots, and sleeping bags were waterproof, of course, but where there was an opening or something was exposed, it got soaked.

  It lasted a good twenty to thirty minutes and seemed like forever. It wasn’t the steady tropical dumping all that time, but it only let up briefly, never stopping, then roared back again. And when it ended, it ended. Five minutes after the last drop fell, the wind was down to next to nothing and the clouds were breaking up and revealing an exceptional, spectacular sky.

  Mogutu and Father Chicanis walked around, to be sure that everyone was all right. E
veryone was waterlogged, but they were okay.

  Neither Harker nor Kat Socolov had been asleep; it was difficult to get comfortable, and the situation was still tense, with more unknowns than knowns about this strange new place. Neither had managed to keep water out of the head end of the sleeping bags, although it took only a couple of minutes to open them up, drain them, and let the inside liner dry out. Everything about and on them would have to air-dry, though you didn’t pack towels on this kind of trip.

  Once things settled down, the sounds of the night bugs rose to a crescendo, creating a background that was impossible to ignore. Note to outfitters on future expeditions, Harker thought, feeling a bit miserable. Pack earplugs.

  True to the colonel’s schedule, and in spite of the thunderstorm, Mogutu awakened Harker from a less than perfect sleep after what was, by their watches, precisely a three-hour shift, but which seemed to Harker to have lasted, at most, ten minutes. He felt worse than he had riding the keel, and much more vulnerable. Still, he heard Father Chicanis gently waking a probably more miserable Katarina Socolov, and he whispered to Mogutu, “Couldn’t you at least let her sleep?”

  “No exceptions,” the sergeant responded. “We have to get into this. It’s not going to get easier, you know. The priest volunteered to take an extra shift for her and I nixed that, too.” He reached down for something that turned out to be a low-grav sealed cup and handed it to Harker. You could suck on it, like a baby bottle, but otherwise it was tight. Harker took a pull and was surprised. “Coffee? Hot coffee?”

  “Self-heating canister,” Mogutu responded. “No heat signature. We don’t have too many, but I think you and the doc will both need it now.”

  In truth, he did, and the taste of the coffee, as military strong and black as it was, energized him a bit. It was still extremely hot and humid, but there were times when caffeine in a hot solution was the only thing that worked and this was one of them. He also checked his pocket, took out a small tablet, popped it into his mouth, and swallowed it. It made the aches and pains go away, at least for a little while.