Earthrise

by Craig Delancey

  She closed the closet and, in her tattered briefs, crossed the room to sit on her low bed. She picked up Fluff, her stuffed bear toy, and held it in her thin, pale arms.

  “I said, it worked. Old Ninth is gonna give me the food I need. If I do the job. So thanks for telling me about that problem with my nutrition and all.”

  “You have several nutritional deficits,” the ship said.

  “Yeah, thanks for telling me.”

  She felt a little hungry, but didn’t much want to get up and start the food processor. Instead, she lay back against the padded bulkhead. “I was thinking. Who would win in a fight? A polar bear or a Rinneret?”

  “Excuse me?” the ship asked.

  “A polar bear for sure.”

  “Shall I show you pictures of a polar bear?”

  “No, something else from Earth. Some animal that’s really dangerous, though. A land animal. Like a polar bear.”

  An image of a crouching tiger appeared before her. It peered at her from between the pale fronds of tall grasses, growling with a low rumble that shook her chest. Her mouth fell open in admiration.

  “This is a Bengal tiger. It is rated a very dangerous organism.”

  “How big is it? Compared to a Rinneret.”

  The image of the tiger rotated, so she could see its full length. Then a Rinneret appeared next to the tiger. The Rinneret was larger, but its thin legs, evolved for low gravity, looked frail next to the Bengal tiger, which was now smelling at the air, its black nostrils flaring.

  “I wish one of those were on this asteroid. It’d give the Rinneret a nice scare.” She watched the tiger a moment. Then she said, “Could you show me that picture of my mother and father again?”

  “There are many images of your mother and father on file.”

  “That last one that you showed me.”

  The tiger faded, and another picture shimmered into view before her. A small woman, with short dark hair and a sharp nose and watery but attractive brown eyes, smiled widely to show perfect small white teeth. A tall man with reddish hair stood beside her, looking down at his wife with pleasure.

  Margherita stared a long time before she said, “Ship, how long have I been here? I mean, away from my mother and father?”

  “Doctors Calvino have not been on this ship in three hundred and eighty Earth days,” the ship answered.

  “Yeah.” Margherita stared a long time, before she said, “Maybe they’re still alive. I’m sure they are. And out here looking for me. I just wish they’d hurry up and find me, you know what I mean?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Yeah. They’ll find me, and take me to Earth. I don’t remember Earth at all. I only lived there a year, you know. But when they find me I think they’ll take me to Earth. I’d like to go to Earth. You think they’ll find me, ship?”

  “Excuse me?” the ship repeated.

  “You’re really stupid,” she said. “I said, do you think my mother and father will find me here, with the Rinneret?”

  “Humans have no jurisdiction in Rinneret occupied territory. Humans have no jurisdiction outside the domain of the Galactic Alliance. This ship is currently beyond the territories of the Galactic Alliance. This ship is in contested Rinneret territory.”

  “Because I think, you know, I get this special food from the old Rinneret, old Nine-Four, and then I can stay alive till they find me. Old Nine-Four is gonna expect me to earn my keep, still, but I can do that. These Rinneret can’t handle acceleration, you know? They’re terrible pilots. I can hunt around these asteroids much better than them. I work a little, I eat the right things, and I can stay alive till mama finds me, don’t you think?”

  “Excuse me?”

  Margherita sighed and squeezed the bear toy. “Show me some more pictures of Earth.”

  “Which pictures of Earth would you like to see, Miss Magarita?”

  “This time the ocean. And that white stuff by the ocean.”

  “Do you mean a beach?”

  “Yeah.”

  A short movie replaced her mother. People stood by crashing waves with towering cliffs of sand behind them. A white mist softened the horizon. A child ran by, pulling a kite in the sharp wind.

  “I’d be heavy there, huh?”

  “Earth gravity is seven times the apparent gravity we currently experience.”

  Margherita nodded. She touched the small radio. She turned it on, listened a moment to the hiss, and then thumbed it to silent.

  “Is that real?” she whispered. She remembered nothing of the Earth. Her earliest memories were of the crystal cities of the planet of Neelee-ornor.

  “This place is called the National Seashore of Cape Cod,” the ship said.

  Margherita stared at it a long time, wondering at the people outside without breathers or spacesuits, under a sun that was bright but somehow not deadly. She felt a lump rise in her throat. Finally, she whispered, “But you’re sure that’s real?”

  “Excuse me?”

  She ran one finger over the smooth skin of her long scar. “It’s not just a story? A made-up story? Like a movie? A place in a made-up story, I mean.”

  “This is the Cape Cod National Seashore.”

  “Because,” she whispered, “I don’t think anyplace, anywhere, is that nice. Not even Earth.”

  CHAPTER 2

  “Open wide and say ‘ah’,” the doctor told Tarkos.

  Sitting on the edge of an examination table, Tarkos opened up but growled in response. He’d been poked and prodded for an hour, made to pee and defecate in a talking toilet—“thank you for your sample”—run through fMRIs and a dozen other scanners, and finally had yielded up a pint of blood to a robot that stank of antiseptic and that looked like some medieval nightmare, all blades and needles.

  This was not what he expected for his first hours after landing on Earth. He had imagined immediately going to a restaurant. Or walking in a park and seeing properly green vegetation from which came the songs of familiar feathered birds. Or going someplace where many young women were talking and he could just look at them and marvel and eavesdrop on their Earthly cares. Instead, this: Bria had received orders not to go to the headquarters of Earth’s Harmonizer Corp, housed in the Centre de Defense Terrestre, a silver tower on the outskirts of Paris, but rather to report to the Galactic Embassy, a tower recently built across the central plaza from the United Nations. Constructed in Neelee style, and shaped like a snail shell set up on its muscular foot, most of the the building’s materials were translucent. Tarkos found it disorienting, though he had grown accustomed to the Neelee style.

  Inside, Tarkos shuffled from one desk to another under pale soft light, until some AI or functionary learned that Tarkos had not had a physical by a human doctor in more than three years. Orders promptly appeared in his personal network, and he reported to this Japanese-American doctor, who exuded a clinical enthusiasm as she inspected him, delighted about the prospect of possibly discovering some terrible alien ailment. Tarkos struggled with his indignation and impatience, on the one hand, and the rather disarming curiosity of the doctor, whose name was the unlikely confection of Suzanne Murakami.

  “How’s your exposure to radiation been?” Dr. Murakami asked, balanced on the edge of a stool as she shined a painfully bright light into his eyes.

  “Terminal,” he said, blinking. “Our armor is very good but on my last mission I received a terminal dose of gamma radiation. I need monthly gene restorative therapy or I’ll die. I can’t live more than a few weeks away from Galactic tech.”

  “Hmmm,” she intoned, skeptically. “That explains it. But you shouldn’t be so sure that Galactic Tech is always better.” She turned off the light and picked up a computer tablet, shaking her head so that her queue of very thick black hair, streaked with gray, waved back and forth. She frowned at the data on her screen. “Those bacterial balance cocktails they give you are of course a disaster. I’ll have to rebalance your whole bacterial ecology. But what about exposure to t
oxic atmospheres?”

  “Uh... atmospheres?” Tarkos hesitated. “Wait a minute, what did you mean before by, ‘That explains it’?”

  “Yes,” the doctor said, thoughtful. “Have you been breathing alien atmospheres?”

  Tarkos shrugged. “I guess on every planet where I saw trouble—which is most of them—I ended up with a lungful. Especially gas giants. I spent most of the last three years falling into gas giants. Or so it seems. Usually I got a few breaths leaked through some damage to my suit. Or a few breaths that got trapped in the airlock.”

  The doctor nodded knowingly. For a moment her demeanor of dogged curiosity waned, and she put the edge of her tablet computer against her thighs, folded her arms neatly along the top edge, and leaned forward. “You’re a lucky man. I’d love to see all those different species.”

  “Yeah?” Tarkos asked. “You’re in the Auxiliary Harmonizer Corp, right? They surely will let you do time out in the Galaxy.”

  “What?” the doctor said. “I’d never go into space. Space is dangerous.” She waved one hand as if swatting away the notion. “Besides, I’m needed here.” That seemed to remind her of their task. She held up the tablet again and pointed one corner at him, as if to aim its data at him accusingly. “Do you cough often?”

  “Yes,” Tarkos said. “I guess I do, now that you mention it. I mean, we keep the atmosphere on our cruiser a mix, a kind of middling compromise, between Sussurat and Earth. It’s mostly oxygen, and that’s really dry. I have a sore throat from the dry air, most of the time. It’s not ideal. I tend to cough. Or, anyway, I thought that was what made me cough.”

  The doctor looked up at him, her dark eyes opening wide. For a moment, Tarkos thought she had realized some deep insight about his health. His heart began to beat faster in expectation of some terrible diagnosis. But, instead, she asked, “You mean your partner is a Sussurat?”

  “Commander and partner, yes.”

  “I’ve never examined a Sussurat. Do you think he—”

  “She.”

  “Do you think she needs a physical?”

  Tarkos laughed. “Sorry, doc, no way Bria is going to come in here and pee on command and then give you blood. She’s... very reserved. Very formal. Kind of prim and proper, in the usual Sussurat way. And, frankly, she might not trust a human doctor. Us being savages and all.”

  The doctor’s wide-eyed expression of hope collapsed. “Oh. Hmm. Too bad. Still....”

  “Listen, doc,” Tarkos said. “What’s all this about coughing and radiation and ‘that explains it’?”

  “Oh,” she said. “You have lung cancer. Fairly advanced.”

  Tarkos held his breath. The room seemed to swoon. He gripped the edge of the examining table, crinkling its paper cover.

  Lung cancer. The most deadly cancer, as far as he was concerned. Lung cancer killed his father, when the otherwise strong man had been a mere fifty-four years old. It had been a terrible, slow death, and Tarkos had watched it all.

  Seeing the blood drain from Tarkos’s face, Doctor Murakami held up a placating hand, this time waving it to brush away his worry.

  “No, no! No worry! It’ll be fine. Really. I’ve a good sample of your DNA on record. We’ve sequenced you down to the base pairs. We know the mutations for typical lung cancers. I’ll check yours to ensure a match, and then program some nanobots to attack all and only the cells with those mutations. One injection of those, and in a few days the bots will have killed all the cancerous cells. Then, in a week, you’ll take another shot to program tissue regeneration, so that you don’t get scarring in your lungs as you grow back the proper tissue. Finally, as a backup, to prevent remission, we’ll also program your own immune system to attack the cancers.”

  Tarkos felt his whole body relax. He almost collapsed back against the wall. “That’s it?”

  She nodded. “You’ll be A-OK fine.”

  “Thanks doc,” Tarkos said. He met her dark eyes and smiled. “Medicine has definitely improved while I’ve been away. My father died of lung cancer. If he had lasted a decade longer, he’d be cured.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that your father died before we could help him.” The doctor furrowed her brow. “Medicine has progressed, but don’t get the wrong idea: we didn’t learn everything from the Galactics. It’s mostly us. I designed some of these nanobots myself.”

  A brisk knock sounded at the door. The doctor had opaqued all the walls of the inspection room, making them glowing white. But it meant they could not tell who or what waited in the hall.

  “Come!” the doctor said.

  The door opened a crack. A voice with a strong Irish accent called through, “Tarkos?”

  Tarkos jumped down to his feet and, though it seemed a bit ridiculous in the flimsy hospital robe, stood at attention.

  “Vice Commander McDonough, sir,” he snapped.

  Conor McDonough slipped into the room. “At ease,” the lean red-head said. He wore the gray uniform of a Harmonizer, but trimmed with the gold claw insignia of an officer. He looked around the room, as if inspecting the place. Then he said, “Good work on the space lift, Tarkos. You took some chances, and I’ll have to do a fair bit of explaining why you were there at all, but I reckon you just might have saved the elevator car, and our diplomats.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  McDonough looked to the doctor. “Doctor Murakami?”

  She slipped off the stool and set down the tablet and looked squarely at McDonough, crossing her arms. Tarkos was surprised that she adopted a slight tone of disapproval, if not scolding, with the vice commander. “He’s got some serious problems. I can fix them. But only because I’m good and he got in here in time. You need to bring all the human personnel through here, if we’re going to keep them alive. I’ve been telling you that, and this proves it. Space is not healthy.”

  McDonough nodded. “Aye, space ain’t healthy. That’s the Lord’s truth. I’ll see what I can do about getting a full physical for all humans doing Alliance work. But in the meanwhile, can Amir go?”

  “For now. He needs to come back in tomorrow, and then in a week.” She took a step toward the vice commander. “Sir, do you think that, well, perhaps I should also check out his partner? Perhaps you should order her to have a check up.”

  Tarkos suppressed a smile. He had to admire the doctor’s persistence.

  McDonough furrowed his brow. “Doctor, I don’t think she’d fit ’ere in your office. But tell you what. I’ll keep an eye on her. I see any signs she ails in any way, I’ll send her here.”

  McDonough nodded at Tarkos. “Get dressed, Tarkos. Time for your briefing. That Sussurat of yours is ready to eat an intern out of impatience. She thinks it a grand insult that we wait on the likes of you. We’re going across the street, to the UN.”

  Tarkos nodded. “I’ll hurry, sir.”

  “Good.” Conor McDonough went to the door, but before he pulled it closed he looked back at Tarkos and smiled. He had recruited Tarkos into the Harmonizers, three years before, and had given Tarkos that same broad smile the day the young man had said ‘yes’ to the invitation to join the corp. “It’s good to see you again, Amir. I’ve enjoyed reading your reports. You’ve had a colorful few years.”

  “That we have, sir. That we have.”

  _____

  They met in a circular room without windows. Hidden lights cast a pale glow over the dark wood panels of the walls. Conor McDonough sat at the far end of an oval table, with a young woman at his side. She had blond hair, cut short, and wore a dark suit. The woman’s blue eyes went wide, when Bria padded into the room, shoulders brushing the frame of the wide door. It wasn’t fear, Tarkos could tell. Or, anyway, not only fear. Her expression mostly betrayed the same kind of curiosity that Dr. Murakami had shown. Aliens, he realized, were still a relatively rare sight on Earth.

  Tarkos took a seat at the table. Bria pushed a chair aside and sat on her haunches, which still put her head far above the table top. The door slid closed behi
nd them.

  “I just sealed this room for maximum security,” McDonough said, speaking smoothly in Galactic. “You have been called to Earth for a sensitive mission.”

  He turned to the woman to his right. “This is Dr. Karen Yeats. She’s a—what is it?—a bioinformaticist. She’s not a member of the Corp. She comes from US intelligence, but she has worked for the UN extensively. She has the highest UN security clearance, and the Alliance is clearing her for all information relevant to this mission. Dr. Yeats, this is Harmonizer Amir Tarkos and this is Commander Briaathursiasaliantiormethessess.”

  Tarkos almost coughed. He’d never heard a human pronounce Bria’s name so well. Tarkos butchered it every time he tried, to his own shame and to Bria’s annoyance. Bria continually hoped that Tarkos would learn and then he could stop calling her simply “Bria.” Tarkos instead felt certain that the nickname had saved their lives a dozen times: they’d both be dead the first mission on which he had to yell, “Briaathursiasaliantiormethessess, duck!”

  Yeats looked at Bria and then Tarkos. She tipped her head in greeting, but said nothing.

  “They,” McDonough continued in explanation to Dr. Yeats, “are the two Harmonizers who stopped the attack that targeted Neelee-ornor. They destroyed the mysterious gravity weapon that was used against the planet.”

  The woman’s blue eyes settled on Tarkos. She pulled back her lips in thought, giving them a thin appearance. She seemed to size Tarkos up, and find him wanting.

  “Do you know about the biological weapons?” she asked, in English.

  Tarkos looked to Bria in question, knowing that she would be running a translation program. When she did not answer, he said, “We knew that biological weapons had been dropped on Neelee-ornor during the gravity attack. It seems every kind of weapon was dropped: nuclear, anti-matter, and biological, all while the gravity weapon was deployed. But we don’t know details.”