A sharp pain in my ankle jerks me to a halt.
“Jackson!” a Muke shouts. It’s Netl-3.
The Muke has dived into the stream and snagged my left ankle with one of his flagella, which is stretched about six feet to its maximum length. His other feeler is also extended six feet in the direction of the stream’s edge, where Kanji-4’s outstretched flagellum locks onto it.
I’m coughing up swamp water – It’s dangerous to ingest too much of this stuff – and I spot Tia standing next to the Muke at the edge of the stream, asking over and over whether I’m okay. A dozen faces stand over me as I’m pulled out. My head smarts when I reach up to my temple.
“To the ship’s infirmary,” someone shouts.
“No! I’m fine,” I say. “Just take me back to camp.” No way I’m returning to the infirmary to have Ferguson rip into me again.
Later that season, the Emerald Pond has almost been drained by the directed stream, leaving behind a bed of mud and wet soil. Five hovercraft drop tons of dry sand over the half-mile of the swamplands we’ve stripped bare of all vegetation. Any chance of building a solid foundation on the potopoto requires clearing the marshes, then filling them with sand.
Netl-3 approaches when he sees me, braids four of his feelers, and asks how I’m feeling, as he does every day, despite the fact I never answer him.
I’ve been trying to play this just right, since Tia and several other workers have been watching me so closely. When I don’t respond, the Muke retreats. That’s when I call after him.
“Netl.”
He stops and turns to face me.
“Thank you,” I say. “Thank you for saving me.”
Over the next few weeks I pretend that my acid hate is diluting; I make small talk with the Muke. But I don’t get too friendly; I have to sell this act to Tia and being too chummy wouldn’t be believable.
The sand is processed from the mud, which we scoop up and lug in sacks to the ship for treatment. With our exosleeves on full power the labour isn’t too intensive, and digging into mud and wet soil sure beats having to deal with that damned vegetation.
We’re shovelling mud into hoverbarrows when I ask Netl-3, “That thing you all do... When you descend into the shallow water...”
“Our daily [pending]...” There’s a pause again while the translator searches for the word. “Prayers.”
“You pray?” I hadn’t heard of any Muke religion.
He hesitates and his purple eyes dart sideways in an unfamiliar expression. “Perhaps a better word might be [searching]... meditation. We seek answers from within.”
“Answers to what?”
“Many things. How we could have done what we did to your kind.” He stares at me, but I look away. “In the millennia that my people have searched the galaxy for other sentient life we have encountered only... [unknown].” He taps on the translator node and the word comes. “Remnants of countless civilizations destroyed by the Surge. Any sign of advanced biological life attracts the holographic forces. They lack [unknown]... They are like ancient recordings of the dead, taking numerous shapes and forms. But their weapons systems are real enough.”
“So there’s no other life in the galaxy?”
His purple eyes stare at me. “Any civilization that trumpets its existence through interstellar transmissions invites annihilation by the Surge. No, if other sentient life exists, it is – wisely – in hiding.”
“Have you tried to negotiate with the holos –?”
“They’re oblivious to any attempts at communication. They assume the forms of those they’ve vanquished, but they are not alive. They’re like...”
“Like ghosts,” I say. “The ghosts of the galaxy.”
“They have no ability to [searching]... empathize.”
I shake my head at his audacity.
“The irony... is not lost on me. In the throes of the warburn I became no different than a simulacrum myself. I committed obscene, unforgiveable acts. All of my people did. This is why we do what we do here.”
I don’t know how to respond. A few long moments pass and I say, “So, you mistook us for holograms? You expect me to believe you couldn’t tell the difference between an electronic program and flesh and bone and gristle and blood?”
Silence.
“You massacred more than three hundred thousand innocent people and you think that a little manual labour on this rock makes it all better?”
The Muke leans closer and releases a pungent ammonia stench. “Barbela Jackson, I expect no forgiveness from you or your kind. I don’t pretend to deserve it. I toil here to bring balance to my self.”
I decide that I’ve put on enough of a show for Tia and the others, so I cut off our conversation, and navigate a hoverbarrow filled with mud in the direction of our ship.
It takes another two months to prepare the land for posting. A geotechnical drill equipped with an auger had been used by the surveyors to determine the necessary height of the support beams. Grade beams will be placed over the piles to spread the load of the colony platform across the foundation.
Our work crew is on standby for the morning while the hovercraft drive the hundred-foot pillars into the sediment. A dozen such massive posts are pounded into the sandy terrain until met by the refusal of the shale rocks deep below. Only the upper ten feet of the pillars remain visible. A month after that, a large steel slab is positioned over the pile foundation, the beginning of the platform that will ultimately support this entire colony.
With the first platform laid, labouring side by side with the Mukes we’re able to start constructing yurts, temporary shelters that allow us to take down our tents and avoid hiking back to our respective ships so often. This enables us to work longer hours into the cool evenings and to speed up progress on the project. Each yurt is a cylindrical wall of poles in a lattice arrangement, no nails or other bindings holding it together, but rather simple gravity pushing each pole against the other and supporting the structure. It takes careful coordination with the Mukes to set them up. The slightest misstep can throw everything off balance and cause the shelter to collapse. The yurts also lend themselves to easy dismantling once construction of the towers begins.
It’s close to dusk and we’re completing construction on the fiftieth yurt when Tia buzzes me. She had wandered off for just a minute and calls for me and Netl-3 to join her at the edge of the platform, where the steel flooring meets the boundary of the swamplands.
We’ve fallen into the routine every night of taking long walks together. Me, Tia, Netl-3 and occasionally Kanji-4 hike to the border between the colony and the swamplands where we assess the outpost’s rate of expansion.
“Listen,” Tia says.
The familiar trills of the Flutes fill the air and when we peer below the platform we spot hundreds of the creatures squirming in the now-drained land.
“They’re trapped,” Tia says.
“What do we do?” I say.
She shrugs. “There’s nothing to do. We can’t touch them. They’re toxic.”
“The sound,” Netl-3 says. “Can you hear the change?”
What begins as a few soft notes from the nest create a canorous chorus that intensifies until it’s a full-blown symphony. The three of us stand there in awe. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard. And then the music fades and there’s silence.
The Flutes have dug into the sand where they’ll be dead by morning.
It’s been over a year since we first broke ground and the colony now stretches five miles long. The days are still blazing hot and they’ll stay that way until the dome can be erected, and that’s still a few years off. Tia and I have only signed up for the foundational work, but I’m wondering if it makes any sense to go off-world and then return in a year when the colony is complete. This is supposed to be our new home, after all, and I guess it’s starting to feel that way.
They say that Netl-3 and his people will be leaving us after the foundation is complete. An all-human crew
has been tabbed for dome construction.
That means time is running out. I’ve been carefully laying my own special groundwork over the past year, and if there’s ever going to be justice it has to happen soon.
Work has become easier, more routinized. The first phase of the extensions to the colony’s foundation is now complete. There will be future expansion, I’m sure, but the Sol economy has been ravaged by the costs of preparing for war with the Surge so the colony’s boundaries are set for now. With Kanji-4 having been reassigned to the northern end of the platform, Tia, Netl-3 and I continue taking long walks together every night after our shift is over. Netl-3 tells us stories about his home, a waterworld dotted with tens of thousands of islets, and about the members of his pod. Even Tia, who’s not exactly a chatterbox, feels comfortable enough to talk about her parents and her two sisters who died on Titan. I’m reluctant at first, but figure I’d tell them the story of how I first met Jeffrey at a hockey game – just to make it appear that I’ve finally let down my guard around Netl-3. Without even realising it though, each evening I find that I reveal more and more about my life. I suppose it’s because I’m pretty sure Netl-3 still feels tremendous guilt, and it gives me some measure of satisfaction to remind him of the enormity of what the Mukes have done to our people. I tell them about growing up on Titan with a demanding father, about Jeffrey’s awful puns, about Melanie’s obsession with virtual reality and her dream of becoming a code-poet. I even tell them how I decided to sign up with EncelaCorp for an exo-engineering position – like my father and his father before him – while Jeffrey stayed home and cared for Melanie and later, Glen.
Glen. He had just started babbling and sucking his thumb. For all I’ve shared with them during our evening walks together over these many months, I still can’t bring myself to say a word about Glen. Tia hasn’t brought up the subject; I guess she figures I’ll talk about him when – If – I’m ever ready.
My plan is coming along, slowly but carefully. I’m sure that Tia suspects nothing at this point. I’ve waited long enough that I can pretend now to forgive Netl-3. Anyone watching me would think I’ve done so a bit at a time, hour by hour, day by day. I’ve pretended that the seeds of friendship with the Muke have taken root, just like EncelaCorp dreamt: Mukes and humans, working together on a project and finding some level of tolerance, maybe even camaraderie, so they can have each other’s backs in their battle against the Surge. It was a neat idea, I think. But oh-so-exploitable.
Tia mentions that Ferguson had asked to see her tonight – he’d made up some excuse about ‘supplies’ that apparently had to be discussed off-hours. The man is transparent but Tia finds him amusing.
I stand outside Netl-3’s yurt, and whistle.
Netl-3 opens the door and pokes his head out. “I thought we had decided against walking together tonight,” he says.
“I really need the fresh air.”
A minute later he emerges and we began our familiar trek westward past the neighbourhood of lit yurts. The conical roofs of poles are covered with brightly coloured felts that give it a festive feel, which stands in stark contrast to the empty streets. The yurts will come down soon. Construction of towers made of soft-brick and mortar are already in the works in the south.
Netl-3 follows me silently. He says nothing when I head south, instead of our usual route westward, and in just a few minutes we stand on the precipice of the southern platform. Beyond lies only the dark swamplands. And something else. Fifty feet away from this spot we can hear the waterfalls of Orlando’s Pit. Anyone falling off of the platform would be swept away, just as I was a year ago, into the open maw, gone without a trace.
The air is thick with a heavy humidity; I find it hard to breathe.
I duck under the chains that cordon off this area and clamber to the rim of the platform. Netl-3 not only follows but trudges past me until he stands on the very edge, facing out into the darkness.
“Do you remember our first days working here on this spot?” he says. “There was nothing here, just [pending]... overgrown wilderness and marshland. And look what our great labours together have wrought!”
“Yes, that was the idea.”
I’m a foot away from him. It won’t take much. I have to do this.
I move a step closer. Netl-3 stands there motionless, his back to me, utterly vulnerable.
“Jackson,” he says. “There’s something I have to tell you. A truth you deserve to know. That story... about my people mistaking yours for the simulacra...” There’s a long pause. “You were right. It’s not true. It was devised by your leaders during treaty negotiations. They felt the fabrication might make it easier for your people to accept us as allies.”
My heart pounds against my sternum.
“Then... then why? Why did you –?”
“We were at war. There is no justifiable ‘why’.”
I move closer, start to raise my hands, when a high-pitched whistle directly ahead of us pierces the silence followed by several other notes. Flutes. I haven’t heard the creatures in months. Colony construction had driven them far away from this area. The notes harmonise and a playful melody grows larger and larger until it blares like a symphony. They play a song I know I’ve heard before. And then it hits me. It’s the exact song played by the Flutes that were trapped beneath the platform.
“That melody...” I say. “How can it be? I thought that each Flute nest played a unique song.”
“Yes,” Netl-3 says. “Those are the same Flutes.”
“But they were trapped –”
“I went back for them.” His translator makes a low beep that I’ve come to recognize as a chuckle. “After you and Tia left that evening, I returned later in the night. I wore a full protective exosuit with lighting, placed them in a container and transported them deep into the swamplands.”
I don’t know what to say. Why should I care?
After a long silence he says, “I know who you are. I’ve always known.” He braids and unbraids his feelers, still facing away from me. “Do what you must to find balance.”
Although only a few seconds pass before I answer, those seconds last an eternity.
“I... I don’t know what you’re talking about, Netl.” I exhale.
Netl-3 turns, stares at me with his purple eyes and says, “[Unknown].” Followed by silence. It’s his turn to pretend. “I’ve decided to stay on here until the colony is complete. The rest of my pod is departing, but I want to see this through.”
The air smells cleaner, less saturated with humidity, and I find I can breathe more easily now. For a few minutes I simply stand there. I think about what Netl-3 has just told me; if he stays, I can wait for another time, another opportunity, to make him pay.
I open my eyes, turn around, and head back toward my yurt; I hear Netl-3 shuffling a few steps behind me. If I could read his facial features I suspect I’d see surprise. I’m surprised myself. And when I look ahead I’m struck by the beauty of the colony, its bright lights, the endless rows of colourful yurts and, in the distance, the glorious new towers that rise into the star-filled sky.
About the Contributors
Rachel Armstrong is a Black Sky Thinker and 2010 Senior TED Fellow who is establishing an alternative technical platform to machines – by harnessing the potential of the natural world through natural computing processes – which speaks to a new kind of Nature that is native to the 21st century. Her work has been endorsed by such luminaries as Bruce Sterling and Steve Fuller.
Keith Brooke’s most recent novel alt.human (published in the US as Harmony) was shortlisted for the 2013 Philip K Dick Award. He is also the editor of Strange Divisions and Alien Territories: the Sub-genres of Science Fiction, an academic exploration of SF from the perspectives of a dozen top authors in the field. He writes reviews for the Guardian, teaches creative writing at university level, and lives with his wife Debbie in Wivenhoe, Essex.
Eric Brown has published over fifty books and his work has been trans
lated into sixteen languages. His latest books include the SF novel Jani and the Greater Game, the collection Strange Visitors, and the crime novel Murder at the Chase. He writes a regular science fiction review column for the Guardian newspaper and lives near Dunbar, East Lothian. His website can be found at: www.ericbrown.co.uk
Pat Cadigan has won the Locus Award three times, the Arthur C. Clarke Award twice for her novels Synners and Fools, and the Hugo Award for her novelette, “The Girl-Thing Who Went Out For Sushi”. While her novels are all science-fiction, she has also written two nonfiction movie books and several media tie-ins, and her short fiction runs the gamut from light-hearted fantasy to hard-edged horror. A former Kansas City resident, she now lives in gritty, urban North London with her husband, the Original Chris Fowler.
David L Clements is an astrophysicist at Imperial College London. He works in the general areas of extragalactic astronomy and observational cosmology, and has a special interest in the role of dust in galaxy formation and evolution. He writes hard SF to keep his feet on the ground, and has been published in Analog, Nature Futures, and by NewCon Press. He hasn’t been collecting cosmic rays, but does run a project that gets students to search for Dyson Spheres. They haven’t found any – yet.
Paul Cornell is a writer of SF/F in prose, TV and comics, and has been Hugo Award nominated for all three media. His latest urban fantasy novel is The Severed Streets, from Tor. He’s written Doctor Who for the BBC and Wolverine for Marvel Comics.
Rob Edwards studied biology and geology then embarked on a career in science communication, spending ten years at London’s Science Museum before joining the Royal Observatory Greenwich, where he is now Head of Science Learning and Public Engagement. In 2013 he curated the Royal Observatory’s exhibition “Alien Revolution: the changing perception of alien life”.
Paul Di Filippo lives in Providence, Rhode Island, with Deborah Newton, his partner of five decades (the 70s, the 80s, the 90s, the noughts and the twenty-teens). He has over thirty books to his credit (or discredit), many of which recently became available as ebooks through Open Road Media. He has no idea what he will do next.
Paradox: Stories Inspired by the Fermi Paradox Page 25
