The Genetic Imerative

by P. Joseph Cherubino

  “Tell me about these items,” Nina said.

  “The cushions you are sitting on are called ‘bean bag chairs’”

  The alien words she used sounded strange and flat. They had none of the soft consonants and rising or falling guttural inflection of the Advocate tongue. She went on to explain that they were essentially sacks made from synthetic fibers derived from petroleum. They were filled with fine, very light, aerated pellets of dried petroleum foam. And then she stated a fact that struck Nina cold.

  “They are about forty years old.”

  Forty years. The next seed retrieval was scheduled for this very year. That meant these two items came from Earth just before the end of the quarantine cycle. How could this be?

  “We should talk later,” Cordelia said, and with that she rose gracefully from the cushion and slipped into the crowd.

  Another soldier took her place. Nina studied her rough-featured face with its heavy brow, thick eyebrows and gray eyes. Her small nose was pushed to one side and her eye socket also looked like it had been broken. Her build suggested Infantry, but a small insignia pin on her right breast indicated she was an engineer. Nina smiled cordially and relaxed in spite of the mystery. It seemed the train ride wasn’t quite over. She began to suspect there was more than one reason for Chanise bringing her here.

  Chapter 9: Earth, Arizona, The Exile

  While General Breslin assembled for the unscheduled incursion in the desert, Rachel was making her way from White Sands, New Mexico to a small town in Arizona called Williams. Her car reached the highway at five in the morning while the military police from the White Sands Range were just beginning to shut it down for the day. This was standard practice during missile tests, and that was the cover the Unit used that day. Just a routine test to which the locals were accustomed. Rachel left a very terse meeting with a bleary-eyed, but sharp-minded General Breslin the hour before. The night before, they had agreed to meet before Rachel left base. The General wanted regular reports throughout the day. He wished her well, they exchanged daily encryption keys for their secure cell phones, then parted ways.

  Rachel’s driver was a young corporal named Penny Makon, from Missouri. Penny was very young, just twenty-five. She was an average-looking woman of slightly below-average height and medium build. Her reddish brown hair was just long enough to be arranged in a regulation Army bun at the back of her head. Rachel noticed that she’d taken the time to place it that way this morning in spite of their early departure. Corporal Makon had been at Rachel’s side since three thirty that morning. They were wearing civilian clothes, but Penny was looking very squared-away. From her freshly-ironed, casual button-down blouse, to her loose-fitting and pressed khakis, right down to her pristine and unblemished sneakers, she wore her civilian outfit like a uniform. Rachel gave her a detailed briefing, then told her to untuck her shirt and, at least, put some wrinkles in her khakis. They were trying not to stand out. They didn’t want to look like military or police. Penny gave a sharp ‘yes ma’am’, then untucked her shirt and adjusted the concealment holster on her right hip that held a compact model Beretta 9mm pistol. She also let down her hair.

  While Corporal Makon looked average, she was anything but. No members of the Unit were average. They were hand-selected for very specific traits and even more specific reasons. The Unit had their eye on Penny since her junior ROTC days in high school. She had all the traits the Unit looked for: openness to a faith-based belief system that wasn’t rigid but open to questions, a flexible and sharp mind along with a sense of honor and commitment, and most of all resilience. Penny was recruited just after her second enlistment. She had been with the Unit about a year, and she just had her true orientation the month before. She was holding up well under the burden of knowledge that humanity was not alone in the universe and that the nature of that reality was much direr than most humans realized. She was ready to do her part. The knowledge was always a shock, but a mind like Penny’s was up to the task. Rachel wanted her close during the early stages of her acclimation to this new reality. There was also the fact that Penny was an excellent soldier. She reminded Rachel of herself in many ways. Rachel had confidence with Corporal Makon by her side.

  The drive from their camp deep inside the desert test range took them about forty-five minutes. Penny wheeled the black Ford Crown Victoria down the dark desert road of hard packed white sand with a sense of enjoyment. She was pushing the big sedan as fast as it could go without sliding off the curves to the point where Rachel felt the car begin to drift a bit on some of the sharper turns. Penny eased back on the throttle to bleed off just enough speed to stay on the road.

  Rachel had always hated human transportation machines. She’d never gotten used to them even though she arrived on Earth soon after they were invented. She did consider that it may have been the fact of her witness to the origin of human things that burned fuel to spin wheels against roads and churn air into flight that produced such distaste. She just didn’t see much progress there. The things had grown faster and slightly smoother; she would agree, but they were still primitive, trembling things that reeked of burnt hydrocarbons. Not to mention the fact that they were dangerous. She had been in more crashes over the years than she cared to count. But pondering these things would not help her on their eight-hour road trip through the desert from White Sands New Mexico to Williams, Arizona.

  The town of Williams sprang up from the desert soon after America’s frontier days. It rose to some degree of prominence a century ago as a whistle stop town for tourists on the way to the Grand Canyon. It was a bit more than fifty miles nearly due south of the Canyon. There were still many hotels there serving tourists on their way north. The trains still ran regularly from Williams to the Canyon. The town attracted small businesses and a little bedroom community for people in the region’s agricultural businesses. Rachel was going there for a different reason. She intended to visit an old friend who ran one of those small businesses. Time spent with Corporal Makon was just a bonus. It would be a light assignment for the Corporal—simple escort duty, but it would be possibly the most important errand Rachel had done in her time on Earth.

  Their car passed through the Unit’s internal security perimeter, through the base and onto the highway where they were cleared by the regular Military Police. The sun was just coming up over the desert. The clouds were still resting low, and the colors were spectacular. The desert turned golden before them as the moon finally disappeared behind the dry hills and the sun took its place to bring heat to the sands once again. The morning was still cool, and they enjoyed keeping the windows down while they could. The temperature in August would be likely be searing by the time they reached Williams.

  “Colonel, when we are in public, what should I call you?” Penny abruptly asked about an hour into the ride. They had just left the old Route 70 Highway West to merge with the newer Interstate 25 North at Las Cruces.

  She had received the mandate to keep a low profile, so they didn’t want to stand out by using their titles, but Rachel hadn’t thought of this. It occurred to Rachel that Corporal Makon probably didn’t know her first name.

  “Use my first name, which is Rachel.” Penny thought about this for a moment. “That will be kind of weird ma’am.”

  “Well, you can get some practice by not calling me ‘ma’am.’ In fact, why don’t you give it a try… Penny.”

  “Ah… OK … Rachel …” and they both laughed, but Rachel did have to agree that the situation was weird. Rachel had lived all her life within a strict hierarchy.

  “Yes, it does feel strange, but these are the sacrifices we have to make, I suppose.”

  They sat in companionable silence for a long while. Rachel saw a sign for a town named “Truth or Consequences” and thought that was an apt name for the mission they were on.

  “Even though we’re on a first-name basis for this mission, Penny, I’ll now exercise my officer’s prerogative and take a nap. Wake me if something interesting hap
pens,” Rachel announced, then leaned back into the seat.

  She also exercised the special talent that many soldiers throughout history and space seemed to develop for seizing opportunities to rest whenever and wherever possible. The engine hum and the white noise of tires on the road cast her off into a sleep just deep enough for dreams. It may have been her earlier thoughts about the nature of human motorized travel that caused her to dream about the plane crash. The dream of violence and fire was not enough to wake her, because this was something she knew all too well.

  It is the twenty-ninth of July in the year nineteen eighty-four. Rachel is about to board a commercial flight from New Orleans to Las Vegas. She has just left Lev at the hotel with Chase and Chase’s second wife, Claudia. It is a rainy afternoon and as she is sitting in the boarding area waiting for the call to board. A very portly and slightly drunk photocopier salesman begins to flirt with her. Her hands are concealed under her raincoat, which is folded across her lap, so he can’t see her wedding ring. She sits and listens to the salesman deliver his pitch. He is harmless, and she finds him amusing. Outside the wind picks up and presses the rain against the windows. It seems to be raining harder.

  After twenty minutes of heavy flirting, the salesman asks her what she will be doing in Nevada. Rachel shifts in her seat, moving her raincoat away from her hands so that he can see her wedding ring. She announces that she’s going back to duty at her Army post in Nevada. She also mentions that she is a bit sad that her husband is not on this trip with her. She explains that he has business in Washington, DC, which is the only reason he won’t be flying with her. She goes on to say that they have just celebrated their anniversary, but she is careful not to say that they’ve been married thirty years. Rachel still looks to be in her early thirties.

  The look on the poor man’s face is priceless. He flushes, he stammers and makes apologies for his blatant flirtation. He hopes he does not offend. No, she tells him, she should have let him know earlier. She explains that she is very flattered and that he is very funny and cute, and this is the reason she let him go on. She ends up apologizing to him, which he says he can’t accept because the fault is his. She likes him. They laugh and become travel companions. By coincidence, he is also in business class in the seat beside her.

  As they board, she makes the gesture she always does just before entering the plane. She pats her hand on the fuselage where the gangway meets the aircraft door. It makes her feel better. It is raining harder. Rain is pouring down the side of the plane.

  She makes more small talk with the salesman. He has funny stories about airplanes and travel and his customers. She is grateful for his company because she hates flying. He reassures her and tells some very bad jokes as the flight attendants go through their routine. The pilot announces their takeoff.

  They taxi down the runway. The wind picks up and lashes sheets of rain against the skin of the plane. The force of the engines pushes them back into their seats. The plane rumbles down the tarmac. The sensation of lightness arrives as the plane lifts off the runway and the ground becomes a forty-five-degree line in the windows. The plane passes through an inversion and suddenly drops fifty feet. Its nose is pointed well past stall speed. There is a booming sound as the wings slam into steady air again, but it is too late. The tail clips trees. There are screams. The nose pitches down.

  Metal bellows when it rips apart, and it is louder than the human screams that suddenly burst forth around Rachel like a symphony of pain and terror. Rachel does not scream. She takes a deep breath and holds it just as her energy sheath flashes. She notices that the man is holding her hand. He grabbed it when the plane made its first drop. He started to tell her that it would be OK. He tried to reassure her. That was his instinct. She catches a glimpse of his face, and his expression is one of wonder, not terror, as he sees her skin glowing with blue light.

  Violence replaces perception with the random impressions of bedlam. Objects fly at her, bounce off her head, her face, her chest—bits of trees, metal, plastic and some things that may be body parts. She has the vague sense of the plane disappearing around her and her body pitching forward. She doesn’t think to unbuckle herself and ends up face down with her neck at a very painful angle. She is still attached to the seat, and the entire assembly is pushing her face into the mud. She is still holding her breath. She is surrounded by flames. She knows she can hold her breath for a long while, but wonders if she can make it through the flames. They look like they go on forever. The screams are everywhere.

  She manages to get her hands beneath her shoulders and pushes off hard as if she is doing a pushup. The seat flies back, and she goes with it. Now the seat is on its back, and she is looking into a sky of flames. The fire pounces immediately. Where before the seat shielded her, now she has given the flames something to consume. They take passionately to the synthetic fibers of her jacket and blouse, slacks, and shoes, but the flames are nothing to her energy sheath. Her skin is barely warm.

  She reaches down and snaps the seatbelt as if it were an annoying loose thread. She is upright and looking for a way through the flames when she begins to understand the screaming. People. They are burning. Many have already stopped screaming. She feels a clenching in her chest. The people are Humans. This is not a drop pod. She is on Earth. Vulnerable humans with no defenses are dying.

  She spins in circles. There are too many. Some are still alive, still moving. She can’t save them all. She runs toward a stumbling form. It’s the salesman. He is on fire. He paws at the flames and claws at his face trying to scrape the flame away. She tackles him hard. They go down. Her body puts out the fire where they make contact. She pulls him up by the arms and drapes him across her shoulders like a sick lamb. She hunches down to keep his bulk on her back, but he is a very light burden. She is running toward the sounds of sirens. The mud of the field slows her progress. She almost falls.

  By the time she makes it through the flames, she sees the rescue vehicles. Why are they so far away? They can’t make it across the muddy field. They are dragging hoses to the plane. She runs to them with the man on her back. She remembers to breathe again when spots appear in her vision. She is gasping when she reaches the ambulance. She sets the wounded person on the asphalt by the feet of two paramedics. They are staring. She is naked. She looks down at her skin and sees her sheath swirling in colors of bright blue and violet. She takes a deep breath to refill her lungs and screams.

  “Survivors!”

  She grabs an air tank from a nearby fire truck. The rescuers are still staring. She screams again.

  “Let’s go! We have survivors!”

  She turns the air valve to full, grips the breathing hose and rips off the mask as easily as pulling a flower from its stem. She puts the breathing hose in her mouth and clamps it closed with her teeth. She throws her arms through the air tank straps. She turns back and runs into the flames. When she needs air, she loosens her bite on the tube to breathe.

  She makes four trips back into the flames. She could only save four more. She couldn’t save any children. She stops going back when she realizes there are no more screams. They are all dead.

  She is weeping by the front wheel of a fire truck when the military helicopter arrives. She is naked but for her energy sheath. She folds into her body. She is conscious of her small breasts pressing into her knees and the hard asphalt at the base of her spine. The rescue workers are trying to give her water, to check her for injuries even though they can’t figure out what is wrong with her skin, or how she survived or who and what she is. They are scared of her, but they try to help her because she is in distress. That is what humans do. She loves them. She believes she failed them.

  Suddenly Lev is there. He is in his army uniform. They activated the Unit.

  “I’m sorry!” She wails over again as she sobs. She is sorry she couldn’t save them. She wanted to save them. She let them die. They reached out to her in the flames. She begs the living and the dead alike to forgive her.r />
  She is in Lev’s arms now. She is still wailing. She is heavy, but he carries her like a small child. Her Bear. Her skin is still glowing, and his arms are burning. He doesn’t seem to notice. He carries her to the waiting helicopter as she releases her energy sheath.

  “You saved five, Rachel. Listen to me! You saved five, do you hear me! Five!”

  She sobs and he holds her, covers her with a blanket, tells her she is his heroine, his warrior, his Goddess. She loves him.

  Penny stared straight ahead at the highway as she drove. They were about six hours into their trip, leaving two hours to their destination. Her Colonel slept in the seat next to her but Penny was uncomfortable. The colonel is very still and breathing evenly, but tears are streaming down her face. Should she wake the Colonel? Maybe this was normal for Rachel’s kind. Maybe it’s just allergies. She decided to leave it alone. A short while later, the problem solved itself.

  Rachel pulled herself out of the dream like a person leaving a mud pit. Her limbs were heavily coated by sleep. When she rubbed her face, it was wet, and she remembered the dream. She’d forgotten it for a moment in her effort to wake. She wished it had stayed forgotten.

  “Well, that nap was a mistake,” she declared with a conversational voice and immediately began fishing through the glove box.

  “Ah, excellent. Napkins,” she pulled out some fast food surplus napkins and used them to wipe her face and blow her nose.

  “There’s an empty bag in the back seat…” Penny said, and began to reach back to get it. The car shifted left as Penny reached back.

  “No no!” Rachel said, a little bit too sharply. “I’ll get it.”

  Penny gave her an oblique look. Rachel retrieved the bag and disposed of the napkin full of tears and snot.

  “Sorry, Penny. I was just dreaming about a plane crash.”