When the song’s over and the Flutes retreat beneath the waters I stare over at Tia and – I can’t be sure because of the goggles she’s wearing – I swear her eyes have teared up. Sure, I’ve choked up a little myself listening to the Flutes and even a few of the guys are wiping their noses with the backs of their hands, but this is Tia we’re talking about.
“Show’s over!” someone barks. “Back to work.”
I grunt and scan the tools floating around our perimeter, searching for something sharper and lighter than a machete to tackle the thinner, knotted vines.
Ten feet away from us, the ammonia stench of one of the Mukes hits me hard. That’s their way of signalling us. The monster holds up a bladesaw in one of its red feelers.
“Are you looking for this?” it says, extending a slick appendage in my direction. “My name is Kanji-4.”
I glare at the Muke until it finally takes the hint and sets the tool down in front of me. As it turns away, I say, “Are you part of the new crew?”
“Yes, my pod arrived this morning. One hundred of us.”
“What?” How could I have missed that? I’d made sure to watch every other Muke ship touch down, studied each creature as it emerged from the crystalline vessels.
That’s when I spot another Muke standing a short distance from Kanji-4. It’d had its back turned to us the whole time while hacking methodically at the vines.
Kanji-4 says, “This is my podmate, Netl-3.”
When the Muke lifts its head I immediately notice the pictogram on its broad forehead. Rectangles within rectangles.
Him.
I’m shocked into paralysis. I imagine myself grabbing my bladesaw, charging at the creature. But I can’t move.
“Barb! Holy shit!” Tia says. “What have you done?”
The world spins; there’s shouting all around me.
I look down at my hand, which is drenched in red. I’ve severed off a finger with my bladesaw.
The next thing I know, I’m being rushed by Tia and two workers to the ship’s infirmary.
I lay in a gurney in the emergency ward while our project manager, Frank Ferguson, paces by my side, reading me the riot act.
“What part of Tool-Handling 101 don’t you get?” he says. “I can’t have you losing your concentration every time you see a Muk – Medusan. You’ve been absentminded your whole stay here. I’ve heard that other workers are worried you could hurt yourself.”
That sounded like Tia. I knew she had a soft spot for Ferguson, but I never thought she’d betray me this way.
I figure I’ve let him vent long enough. “The hand’s good as new.” I hold it up with the reattached index finger. “Medic says I can be back at work tomorrow.”
Ferguson takes the seat next to my bed. “Barb, do you want me to set up an appointment with one of the shrinks?” His tone softens. “I’d understand. It’s a bit of a wait, though.”
“Frank, I don’t need a shrink,” I say. “But if you want me to see one...” I shrug.
He sighs. “Look, I don’t like being around the Medusans any more than you do. But if their soldiers want to make reparations to the families of their victims, there’s nothing we can do about it under the terms of the treaty. They want to help build a new colony for the humans they displaced? We let them help.”
“We wouldn’t need their help if we deployed the bots. In fact, you, me, Tia, none of us would have to be out here...”
“It’s not my job – and definitely not yours – to question orders. The higher-ups think that working shoulder to shoulder with the Mukes will help both sides... atone for what they’ve done.”
I snort. “Atonement? Did you really just say – so this is about making them feel better?” I sit up in bed. I’m tempted to take a swing at him, but it wouldn’t be a smart move with my still-healing finger.
“I said ‘both sides’. Hell, some of our own soldiers are doing the same thing on their colony worlds,” he says. “Like it or not, we’re allies now. If we’re going to stand any chance against the Surge, we’ll need the Medusans’ help. In the end, we’re all solids. Don’t you forget that.”
“Fine.” There’s no point in arguing with him if he’s really playing the ‘solids’ card. What do I care if our new enemies are holograms? It doesn’t turn the Mukes into saints.
He points at me as if reading my mind. “The Medusans didn’t understand what they were doing.”
I’ve heard it all before. The Mukes had encountered the Surge, sentient simulacra. The holos were brutal, hostile – and operated real weaponry, capable of obliterating their enemies. Apparently artificial life of this sort infests this arm of the galaxy and when the Mukes encountered humanity, they thought we were just more of the same. It was all one big, tragic misunderstanding.
Now, in the face of a common enemy, we’re expected to forgive and forget and sweep the massacres under the rug.
“We need to find a way to turn the page, you understand?” he says.
“Turn the page,” I repeat. “Got it.”
He glares at me. “I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt. Stay focused, Jackson.”
“I will. I promise.”
“Glad to hear it.” He scratches his left ear, which has a long white hair sticking out of it. “Your team will be working closely with the new Medusan arrivals.”
My heart skips. I’m thrilled, but I have to find a way not to show it. “Bad enough I have to work with the Mukes, now I have to tutor them?”
Ferguson stomps around the bed and leans down so his face is an inch away from mine. “Let me tell you what’s going to happen. You’re going to politely welcome them. You don’t have to socialize with the things. Act like a sphinx around them, smile, laugh, frown, I don’t give a shit. But you and your team are going to put on your exosleeves and bust your ass working side by side with the Medusans laying that foundation. Understand?”
I nod.
He looks at me sceptically. “Happy to hear it. Now get some rest. I need you back at work in the morning. We have a colony to build.”
The next day, I’m standing next to Tia in the glare of the blue-white sun while she grills me about my meeting with Ferguson, which I refuse to discuss. I’m still sore that she ratted me out to him. I try giving her the silent treatment, but after a few minutes I finally cave to the urge to ask, “Why did you have to tell Ferguson you were worried about me?”
At this, she lets out a long sigh, sets down her carrysack of tools. “Because I am worried about you. I can’t have your lack of concentration result in someone getting hurt. Especially if that someone is me.”
“And did you really say I need to see a shrink?”
Silence.
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“Barb...” she says, after an extended pause. “That Muke? It’s him, isn’t it?”
I consider lying, but with Tia it isn’t so easy. “Yes, it’s him.” Just as I’d planned, just as I’d dared to hope for so many years. I’d come here for one reason: to kill the monster that had slaughtered my family.
“I could tell from your reaction. Look, I didn’t say anything to Ferguson about that. But I admit I was trying to find a way to stop you from doing something you’d regret.”
“Something I’d regret?” I snort. “You don’t know me at all if you think I’d regret killing that thing.”
“No, I know you better than you think.”
We both get back to work but after a few hours I’m faced again with the hard truth that I just can’t stay angry with Tia. Soon I’m complaining to her about the heat, about the uncomfortable rubber boots I’m wearing, and she’s telling me about all the fights that have broken out in the field. She’s in the middle of a story about two humans who jumped a Muke and held its head under the water – not realizing the freaks breathe through their skin pores – when we see two figures, one wearing a corporate uniform, splashing through the knee-high water in our direction.
“Holy c
rap,” Tia says. It’s Ferguson himself, with the two Mukes we talked to yesterday.
I have to fight the urge to charge the creature when it’s close enough for me to see the rectangles within rectangles carved into its slimy forehead. Taking deep breaths, I remind myself that they’d pull me off the monster before I could do any real damage.
“Barbela Jackson,” Ferguson says.
“Yes, sir,” I say.
“This is Kanji-4 and Netl-3.”
The monsters release an ammonia stench. “We search for balance.”
I struggle for the words, for any word, but nothing comes. After destroying my life, butchering my family, the creature doesn’t even recognize me.
“We all have our designated duties,” Tia says, after the silence stretches too long. “I suggest more work and less talk.”
Ferguson studies me and I want to look back at him, but I can’t take my eyes off the monster. “I’m not going to pretend I like this arrangement,” I say.
“No one is asking you to,” he says. “Tia’s right, we’re all here to do our job.” He turns and plods off with Kanji-4 in the direction of the next team, about a hundred yards downfield from us.
After an uncomfortable silence, Netl-3 powers up one of the power-axes floating on the swamp water. He starts chopping at the blue-vines, and we all get to work. I stare at his exposed, bare back, slathered with the orange ooze his kind wear.
The evening comes abruptly on this wet moon, as if someone’s yanked the drapes to block the blinding sun. It’s the Night of Remembrance, and though it’s strictly against the Corp’s feel-good protocols, the hundred and fifty-three humans from our camp, even the boss, Frank Ferguson, congregate around a blazing bonfire.
I sit and listen as the workers begin their memorials. Tia is the eleventh person to speak and, Tia being Tia, I half-expect her to tell everyone to mind their own damn business. But instead she says, “I lost my parents and my two sisters, Letty and Irena, on Northern Titan. I guess you could say we were a typical family of planet-hoppers. Mom and Dad started out on Luna, where I was born, before moving on to Mars and then Titan. Mom joked that my sisters and I resembled the worlds where we were born. I was as moody as Earth’s moon, Letty as stable as Mars and Irena, well, Irena was always on the run, a stereotypical Titanian.” She pauses. “I can’t help but think that if only I’d been there... Maybe I could have made a difference.” Others around the bonfire nod with a shared sense of guilt. “I spent way too much time trying to find meaning in their loss. Then I stopped feeling sorry for myself and signed up with EncelaCorp. I thought I’d be helping with the war effort. If I’d known that we’d be sent to construct colonies – with the Mukes, no less – there’s no way I would’ve signed up. But I’m here, and it’s done, and there’s a colony to be built.” She lifts a canteen in the night air and says, “To Mom and Dad and Letty and Irena.” I lift my bottle as well, and everyone takes a swig.
Almost as if on cue, the Flutes begin to harmonise in the background as the storytelling continues. Each nest of Flutes plays unique songs, only the tune they’re singing tonight seems inappropriately upbeat.
Not everyone speaks. But those that choose to speak of lost parents and dead children. Sisters tell of losing brothers and wives describe becoming widows. They tell stories of divorcing, and remarrying, of finding religion and losing hope, of relocating to other colonies, quitting their jobs and changing careers. Every one of them describes how they somehow managed to find a way forward, by joining EncelaCorp either through recruitment or enlistment. So many different stories with the same ending. But for all of them, the grief endures.
When it’s my turn, I consider saying something about Melanie’s dry sense of humour – so much like Jeffrey’s – or about how I’d read poetry to her at bedtime. Or about Glen’s first steps. But the words... No, the words would just bring them to life, and I couldn’t bear to lose them all over again. I decline to speak; instead I hold up a photo of Jeffrey and me wearing our Titanian security uniforms, a pig-tailed Melanie hugging my thigh. Glen hadn’t been born yet.
Others nod and the testimonials continue to my left.
I stand and leave the group. As I’m heading back to my tent, Tia chases me down.
“Hey,” she says.
We walk together back in the direction of our encampment.
“I had a feeling there was something you wanted to say,” she says.
I don’t respond, and continue forward.
“Then again, what else is new?” she says.
After a few minutes, I finally say. “It’s Glen’s birthday. The day of the attack we were having a party for him. He would’ve been eight years old today. And – I can’t imagine what he would’ve looked like. Do you know what I mean?”
“It’s the same with my sisters. They’re frozen in time at the age I last saw them.”
I look over Tia’s shoulder past a patch of overgrown weeds when I spot him crouching beyond the sight of the others.
Netl-3.
He’s observing the gathering while braiding and unbraiding his feelers, listening to the workers’ declarations. It’s an invasion of privacy. I’m about to call him out to the others when it occurs to me that I want nothing more than to have him hear those stories. I want nothing more than for him to understand, truly understand, the suffering he and his kind have caused.
Tia and I walk back to our tents in silence.
For more than a week, the Muke doesn’t say a peep during our daily labours. The monster toils by our side, taking only a brief ten-minute break at midday when it descends beneath the shallow green water and stays there. How does it breathe? It makes my skin crawl to think of the Muke at my feet, doing who knows what.
The three of us are hacking at vines when one day it addresses me. “Are you two... [unknown]?”
I shrug, and point to the translator node on his temple.
He taps the node with one of his feelers. “Is she your [searching]... lover/mate?”
“Don’t speak to me,” I say. Does he think he’s my friend that he can ask me such personal questions? Tia and I aren’t lovers, but she means more to me than even that. We share something deeper, the agony of lost family, the suffering of the Titanian Massacre. I had known her only casually before the Massacre but we’ve grown much closer ever since.
“I meant no offense. My own mate was killed on the battle of Europa.”
“I’m glad.”
I stare him down until he picks up his power-axe and goes back to hacking at the creeping vine.
When I turn to Tia she gives me a disapproving glare.
“What? Do you think I was too rough on him?” I say, my voice dripping with sarcasm.
She sidles up to me and speaks in a low voice. “I’m worried about you, Barb. Back at corporate training on Enceladus, when you first told me about your crazy plan, I figured I’d humour you. I never thought you’d actually find the Muke who killed your family. Look, you need to go talk to Ferguson. Get reassigned off this colony before you do something you regret.”
She’s never been one to mince her words, but then again, neither am I.
“I’m staying.”
A month later, the entire work crew is relocated a mile away to a spot where the waters cascade into a bottomless pit about fifty feet wide. ‘Orlando’s Pit’ everybody unofficially calls it, because an engineer named Mike Orlando detected it while doing his radar survey and it irked Old Mike to have his name associated with a hole in the ground. The construction plan calls for us to create a drainage path that will make it easier to clear the land of all vegetation to lay the colony’s foundation.
The hundreds of workers stand in groups of three about fifty feet apart and form a straight line through the vegetation-filled swamplands all the way from the Emerald Pond to Orlando’s Pit. The teams consist of humans and Mukes – part of EncelaCorp’s grand plan to bring us all together as one big, happy family. During the hours of backbreaking labour, Netl-3 tak
es his place next to me and Tia on the line. A powerful stream has already formed from the cleared vegetation near the pit, which we’re looking to extend back to the Emerald Pond. On the third day of the project, the Muke speaks to me again.
“Do you know of the [searching]...?” The translator bud on the Muke’s neck blinks off and on. “Warburn.”
“The what?” I immediately hate myself for answering the creature.
“When my people enter the field of battle we fall into a state of warburn. An... enzyme triggers our defensive instincts and casts us into a state of [searching]...” A pause. It braids several of its flagella. “A state of frenzy, of bloodlust. When I was warburnt...” He looks up and stares at me intensely with those hideous purple eyes. “I did horrible things. Committed unforgiveable acts.”
“Of that I have no doubt.”
“I asked to serve on this project to make amends,” he says. “Every one of us here asked for the assignment to do [searching]... penance. When the warburn extinguished itself, the memory of what I did... It still haunts me. Every night, I force my skin to moult, hoping to shed the guilt. But still I feel stained.”
“You should.”
“I hoped that by working here among your kind... I could [pending]...” The translator blinks on and off repeatedly. He flicks one of his feelers against the device on his throat. “Atone.”
At this, something snaps inside me and I charge at him with my particle-axe, but when I lurch forward, my boots slip in the mud. The next thing I know I’m upside-down in the scummy water, swept downstream. I’m sliding forward, only about a hundred feet from the pit, and I spot random workers pointing at me, hear cries for help.
Paradox: Stories Inspired by the Fermi Paradox Page 24
