by Scott Rhine
“An interesting species.” Omar remarked. “I envy you the opportunity to live so closely among them.” Omar kept Bella occupied with small talk and she could feel the tension in her back receding. By the time she broke the connection, Bella was almost smiling.
Perhaps the best thing to come of that conversation was a purpose. Tolma had been right that she knew little about the Fleet. Research would benefit her ability to help both the Locan and Omar.
Bella began by reading the logs of the Fleet captains’ meetings over the years. Slowly she pieced together the swift and pragmatic manner in which decisions were made. She built dossiers on the major players based on how they had voted in the past. While there was no real rule of law, she found precedents for patience and identified those who could be swayed in that direction.
She shared what she learned with Omar and together they formulated strategies for curbing the Fleet’s violent tendencies. As the representative for the Locan, Bella was tolerated but generally hated. Still, some captains found the allure of influence with the powerful alien vessel worth trying to curry favor with her. This included some of Captain Conrad’s closest allies. Omar had some influence as well, though he never spoke of how he had garnered it. The captains of both the Westinghouse and the Sikorsky tended to hear his calls for peaceful resolutions.
With the aide of subtle manipulations, a little bribery and months of work, They began to convince the Fleet to act in a more thoughtful manner. Progress was slow, but little things changed.
When the Fleet needed to show its strength to a moderately advanced world, Omar was able to convince them to fire warning shots outside major cities before landing troops. Many times the local governments simply needed a show of force to capitulate. The Fleet found that supplies were gathered faster if the infrastructure of the local civilization was left intact. Primitive worlds could be swayed with a more personal and visceral display of power, small but still effective. Slowly, Omar was able to bend the system, as long as the Fleet profited in the end.
Still, there were holdouts, men and women like Captain Conrad who enjoyed the killing and were in a position to force their views on the Fleet. Many times the balance of power was on their side simply because of inertia. Bella knew what Omar needed was a big win and in every new system they searched for the opportunities to show how strategic use of force and diplomacy could be more effective than the methods preferred by Conrad and his ilk.
Chapter 13
As weeks turned into months, the isolation Bella felt on the Rchald grew oppressive. Even on worlds where the Fleet was welcome Bella had to be careful. After an attack by crewmen from another ship while on a planet, Bella began to take special preparations. If the Fleet was letting its people out in one city, Bella would go to another far away. Omar would meet her there and for a short time she would be ok but there was always the inevitable return to the Rchald and its eerie silence.
Tolma for her part tried to make Bella feel welcome. She took time to talk with Bella whenever she was shelled. While Bella appreciated the effort, the conversations often felt more like lectures. She chafed under the Locan tendency to talk down to her as though she were a child. For a woman approaching eighty years old, it was hard to take. She finally said something about it one day.
“You know, I’m actually quite old for a human.”
“So? What is a human lifespan?”
“Generally a century, though some live as long as two hundred years.” The Locan squirmed in its tank, an action which Bella had begun to associate with laughter. “What?”
“Converting this number to our system makes you an adolescent.”
“How long to Locan live?”
“An exact number is uncertain. Our genetics do not have a programmed death cycle as the human genome does. We do cease procreating after a century or so. We associate this time with the beginning of adulthood. Once one no longer has children to care for, one can finally begin a vocation without interference. To answer your question, there is no one on this ship younger than five hundred of your years. I am…” Tolma paused, “approximately seven hundred and fifty of your years old.”
Bella took that news in. She really was a child to the Locan. It made her feel quite small.
“I must bore you then.”
“Not at all.” Tolma replied. “You remind me of my fifth child. She was willful as well in her first centuries. I am pleased at your progress. It has been a long while since I had an opportunity to mother, if you will excuse the phrase.” Bella shook her head ruefully while chuckling.
“All this time living here and I really know very little about the Locan. How did your kind come to travel the stars?”
“That story is a long one but I would be happy to tell it. Our deepest ancestors were blessed with intelligence and they lived along the shorelines of our world. The tools they used were simple ones but they sufficed for a time. Once their numbers began to grow, they decided to explore the ocean depths and the land past the shorelines. They learned to copy the little creatures who had grew shells to protect themselves. Ill adapted to land but possessing a desire to expand their influence, the ancient Locan dug channels in which to travel and built lakes and ponds in which to experiment with the dry land. Such artificial environments made it imperative to develop and maintain an ecosystem capable of supporting them. Our understanding of symbiosis with our environment comes from that time.
“Advanced technology came to our ancestors long after civilization. They had known of electricity long before fire, though its uses were few. Once they had begun to explore the land though, they found its properties more useful than previously thought. Dry mechanical tools were developed to interact with the dangerous substance safely. Advances in this science allowed them to develop the first shells capable of sustaining a Locan on the land indefinitely if not comfortably. Much as humans had learned to adapt to the void of space, we adapted to the land.
“Once the gaseous phase had been conquered, our advancement to space travel was comparatively rapid. The technology which allowed our ancestors to work on land adapted seamlessly into working in the void of space.
“This ship was, at the time of its construction, the greatest engineering marvel of our kind. With it we have explored far beyond the worlds settled by our kind. We have seen marvels beyond measure and worlds with life so unlike our own that it makes us question where the barriers are which separates life from unlife. We have even begun to question what separates a single mind from a group consciousness.”
“You mean beings like Pulan?” Bella asked, fascinated by the Locan’s words.
“Indeed.” Tolma continued. “The creatures we know collectively as Pulan came from a world almost beyond imagining. In some ways the entire world was a single organism, in other ways it contained multitudes. The chemical signals the Pulan use to integrate into a single consciousness are not exclusive to their species.”
“They’re not?”
“No, most of the lesser species from that world also interact in this way. The Pulan were simply the ones with an aptitude for intelligence. To them the lines which separate their kind from other species are simply distinctions of type. Their beasts of labor are more extensions of the whole than anything else. Even their food crops mingled with the whole in some ways. Pulan encourage them to grow as they desire, directing their entire biochemistry. It is as though all o the life is joined into this consensus of which they speak.”
“You call the entire species Pulan? I thought he was a creation of their kind made to interact with others.”
“They had no name for themselves, no language as we understand it. Even with their great intelligence it was difficult for them to believe in the existence of beings which were not of the whole. It took us much time to convince them we were sentient, almost as much as it took us to realize that they were as well. We named them Pulan and they accepted the name as they accept many of our ways. When they elected to travel with us we simply continued to
call them Pulan.”
Once Tolma left, Bella used the terminal in her room to look up Pulan’s homeworld. The images she found astounded her. It was as though someone had made cities out of flesh alone. Structures grown from creatures like coral climbed toward the sky, fed by other species which climbed the walls with nutrients. Great beasts dug into the earth while other, smaller creatures planted crops behind them without apparent guidance. Bella recognized creatures like Pulan huddled together in mounds of writhing flesh larger than the Moving Finger, tendrils snaking outward to connect with other mounds like some macroscale version of a neural net. Bella began to see why Pulan said his mind was so small. Compared to these networks of thousands of minds he was tiny and alone, even if he was smarter than any human she had known.
In some ways Bella lived two lives during her time aboard the Rchald. In one she was a human and she did human things like talking to Omar or the other Fleet captains, researched human things. In the other she was an alien living among the Locan, meeting other species and learning new ways to think, ways incompatible with human ways. She felt herself becoming less the human and more the alien every day. Human ways began to seem stranger and more foreign than those of the Locan.
After a few months, another Locan named Mariq came to her with a proposition. The Locan offered to modify her genetics still more, to enable her to survive in aqueous environments. In this way she could join the Locan for a time in the rest of the ship. The modification would allow her to store oxygen in a gland near her lungs. It would even allow her to survive hard vacuum for a short time with the aid of her regenerative ability. Though the Locan also offered to manufacture a breathing apparatus for her, Bella agreed to the alteration without question, trusting the Locan’s judgment.
The standard airlock through which the Locan normally entered was far too small for Bella, but there were several freight airlocks which could accommodate her. Bella fought an urge to hold her breath as water filled the chamber, trusting the genetic engineering of her aquatic saviors. Instead she did as Mariq had instructed her, simply breathing out the occasional bubbles of carbon dioxide and not breathing in at all.
Once the lock filled with water, Mariq opened the casing which had contained her writhing tendrils. For Bella the experience was breathtaking. In its shell, the Locan had looked like a dish of spoiled seafood. Freed from that enclosure, the creature before her took on an ethereal beauty. Mariq’s tentacles stretched outward and shimmered in the wan light of the cycling lock. What had been a mess of jelly-like goo became a loose framework of webbing between those tentacles. Fully extended the creature neared Bella’s own size.
The lock finished cycling and the Locan swam outward in a synchronized expression of all its limbs. Bella followed as best she could, feeling awkward by comparison. The world she entered confused and astonished her. She had, perhaps foolishly, expected the Locan to live in somewhat sterile conditions as humans did. Instead life flourished in the enclosure.
The surfaces were covered with reef-like structures, alive with the tiny actions of myriad creatures. Most were diaphanous like the Locan, wisps of being floating aimlessly through the nooks and crannies of the enclosure. Some had hard shells though, reminding Bella of the nautilus from human worlds. Bella tried to take in all the beauty as she followed Mariq. Turning a corner, she found herself in a small clearing. Floating in the center of the clearing were perhaps a dozen of the Locan arranged in a circle, the tips of their tentacles touching.
Her companion moved to join the circle, which parted easily to accept her. Bella watched them for a moment as they shimmered, realizing that what she had taken for random changes in color were in fact patterns, language of some sort. The tentacles of the nearest few Locan began to beckon her inward. Bella moved forward and the circle parted to accept her as well. She stretched out her arms and her fingertips touched the Locan on either side. Though she could not understand the Locan, Bella found herself more fully at peace than she had been in a long while, content to watch the patterns of color her companions displayed. Time slowed to a crawl and it was with some disappointment that she realized that the circle was disbanding.
One of the Locan remained by her side as she floated in the water aimlessly. As the rest dispersed, that one beckoned for her to follow. Soon she entered another lock and her companion settled into a shell. Bella found herself no longer thinking that the alien was hideous in the shell. Instead it made her simply feel that it was a beautiful creature contained, like a seed.
Though she was lonely at times, Bella found herself falling in love with the life the Locan lived. She swam in their world often, its quietly symbiotic ecosystem calming and serene. The short stops in human occupied systems which she could visit seemed chaotic and noisy by comparison. Humans, too, seemed brash and inelegant when compared to the Locan. During this time, Bella began to feel a little alien herself, less human and more otherworldly.
Even so, the brightest times were when Omar would contact her. Though he was somewhat taciturn by nature, Bella appreciated his calls as they reminded her of her humanity. At the end of each call, Omar would reaffirm that he was doing everything he could to rectify her exile. After a few months passed though, the words had started to sound hollow. After a few more, she started to wonder if she even wanted to return to the human ships.
During this time, the Fleet had traveled to the furthest edge of human space along the galactic arm. A decision was made to travel outside the human realm for at least a while. The Locan, while unfamiliar with the region, were tasked with contacting the worlds they found there. Bella could tell that the Locan were growing uncomfortable with their position in the Fleet. It was obvious that the Fleet captains were hoping to acquire technologies from alien worlds in order to fashion better weapons. The Locan felt that humans needed to grow as a species before gaining more advanced technology. They had joined the Fleet as a matter of pragmatism and now that they were outside human space there seemed no further use to traveling with them.
The situation came to a head when the Fleet entered a red giant system which had been broadcasting signals indicating intelligence. No one in the Fleet had been able to decode the signals but it was undeniable that they were unnatural. Upon their arrival, the Fleet found themselves caught in a web of energy and matter beyond anything they had encountered.
Bella listened as the Fleet captains, notably Conrad, blustered and demanded immediate release. They threatened to unleash all their firepower upon the worlds of the system. There was no reply to any of their demands.
The Fleet sat immobile for a period of three days, unable to fire any of its weapons or move an inch. In all that time there was no contact from the worlds which had snared them. When communication did come it was not well received.
“Your records have been scanned and your intentions determined. The following vessels will be allowed to depart in peace: The Westinghouse, The Foxtrot, The Rchald, The Domash and the Rosy Cross. All others will be taken into custody and their crews made to pay for their crimes.”
Chaos erupted over the comms at the announcement. Accusations flew as the condemned blamed the spared for their fate. Bella found Tolma in the control room of the Rchald.
“We have to do something!” She said. Tolma frothed in her shell in a manner Bella had begun to associate with her being upset.
“What can we do?” Tolma asked. “We can no more break this web than the rest of the Fleet.”
“Why have we been spared then? There must be a reason. Perhaps we can use that to negotiate, to talk to them. That is our job after all, speaking to alien worlds on behalf of the Fleet.”
“They have made no indication that they wish to communicate.”
“Well we have to try. There are good people out there, Omar and Pulan are out there. I won’t leave them behind.”
“I’m sorry Bella. It appears there is nothing we can do. What would you suggest?” Bella thought for a moment.
“I’ll force them to
talk. Will you permit me the use of a lifepod?”
“For what purpose?”
“I’m going to set it to try to land on their homeworld.”
“Our pods are not designed for landing.”
“I know. Either they will have to let me die or they’ll pick me up. Then I can talk to them.”
“We would grieve if they let you die.”
“Thank you for saying so but I must try.”
Tolma finally acquiesced and Bella found herself cramped into a lifepod designed for a Locan shell. After the pod fired its engines there was a long wait while it sped toward the planet. As the pod entered the atmosphere and began to heat, Bella lost consciousness.
Waking was immediate. There was no period of drowsiness. It was as if she had simply blinked and now found herself in an empty room for which there seemed to be no entrance or exit.
“Why have you left your ship?” A voice came from nowhere. It sounded soft, feminine.
“I have come to ask for you to release the ships of the Fleet. I beg you for mercy”
“Begging is irrelevant. The guilt of those ships is beyond question. Their lives are forfeit.”
“Guilt? Guilty of what?”
“It is in their records. They have caused the deaths of millions of sentients on dozens of worlds. We cannot allow them to continue their path of destruction into this region of space.”
“What of the Moving Finger? They have murdered no one.”
“Captain Omar Hadi has caused the deaths of no less than seventy thousand sentients. His guilt is certain.” Bella reeled from the number. She knew that Omar had once been a fighter pilot but never dreamed he had killed so many.
“And Pulan? What of those that serve the captains but have committed no crime of their own?”
“They are accessories and accomplices to the actions of those they serve. The beings known as Pulan have aided in the placement of trackers which allowed sentients to be murdered more precisely.”
