The Galactic Circle Veterinary Service

by Stephen Benjamin

  Belinka shook her head. Her disdain was tangible. “Petor is afraid of Punkums. I’ll hold my little sweet.”

  Oh, great. Just what I needed. Maybe I should beg off and get Fur. My procrastination allowed Belinka to sweep Punkums onto her lap.

  “I’ll just hold him here. Is that all right, Doctor?”

  I stared at her. “This could be messy, you know. And it will stink. Maybe I should go and get my assistant?”

  “You mean that huge bear of a man?” Belinka shook her head. “He would scare poor little Punkums to death. No. I’ll hold him.” She cradled the Ploofle to her ample bosom.

  Despite my misgivings, I donned surgical gloves, and said, “Petor, would you please get some towels and put them under Punkums on Belinka’s lap?”

  Wielding large gauze pads to catch the odorous secretions, I went to insert my lubricated index finger in Punkums nethermost orifice. As soon as it met skin, the Ploofle yowled, spun, and turned my hand into a chew toy once again. Fortunately, he did not hold on, or I might have throttled him right then. I peeled off my glove and examined the four neat punctures. The crimson blood matched my state of mind. I applied pressure to my hand with a gauze sponge, then wiped the bites with alcohol and bandaged it.

  I did not look at Belinka as she crooned to the little monster. “Oh, poor Punkums. Did the doctor scare you? That’s okay little one. Mommy’s right here.”

  I opened my bag and loaded a hypospray with a liberal dose of tranquilizer. I slapped it on Punkums’ rump before Belinka could move.

  “What are you doing?” she yelped.

  I dropped my bedside manner. “What I should have done to begin with. I gave him a tranquilizer. Give him a minute or two and we’ll finish up here. It won’t hurt him, just put him to sleep for a few minutes.”

  She crooned over the dog until it collapsed in her arms. I took it, placed it on the table, and expressed the anal sacs. As I cleaned up, Belinka tapped me on the shoulder. I turned.

  “I suppose I should have told you that the veterinarian always puts Punkums to sleep before he works on him.”

  “That might have been nice.” I now knew why her vet wouldn’t see Punkums more than once a year unless absolutely necessary. “Mrs. Steckel, I must be going now. Have a nice day.”

  “I am sorry for your injury, doctor. I apologize.” She was actually contrite.

  I looked at Petor and sensed his chagrin. “I can find my own way out,” I said.

  ***

  The next morning, I arose early. Bleary-eyed and half-asleep, I stepped out of the bunkhouse I shared with Fur and several Ulmians. The sharp, nutty odor took me a moment to recognize, and that was almost my undoing. I halted in mid-stride and looked up. Right into the mouth of a hydra.

  As I turned to leap for the door, I heard the tongue whistle past my head and felt it wrap around my arm. I grabbed onto the doorframe and screamed. I felt another tongue seize my leg. People boiled out of the bunkhouse, Fur in the lead. He grabbed me as the hydra’s tongue ripped loose my grasp on the doorframe and hauled me toward its mouths. I faced away from the monster, but my mental image of those mouths made me lose control of my bladder. Even with Fur’s strength, he was losing the battle, and I waited for agony as the teeth came together on my body.

  Suddenly, the thing released me and Fur stumbled and fell backwards, with me on top of him.

  “Oh, phew.” were his first words. “You pissed yourself.”

  I rolled off him onto the ground. I looked up to see two men with heavy-duty lasers. The hydra was now just a trunk, its nine necks scattered on the ground around it. Pink sap oozed out of the severed neck stumps and down the sides, like some bizarre fountain. It had already started to lose its color. I looked away. I had seen enough of that process.

  Fur reached down and helped me to my feet. I noticed a weight on my ankle, looked down, and saw a decomposing mass of black hydra tongue still attached. Bile rose to my throat and I bounced around like some berserk groundhopper, until I dislodged the disgusting mess. I retched, then I collapsed.

  ***

  I stood at the rail of a corral that confined hundreds of cenoxen. At the opposite end of the corral was a chute, much like the one on the Sammaran crematorium during the EPD epidemic. The cenoxen, one by one, funneled into the chute. As they walked, they cried. Shed actual tears and sobbed.

  “Help me. I am just as human as you,” they wailed.

  My stomach heaved and I puked down the front of my tunic. Not for the first time. The fresh acid-laden vomitus formed a new layer over the coagulated remains of previous episodes. Every cenox in the corral turned and stared at me. Their communal telepathic voice cut through my brain like a scalpel.

  “We will die because of your failure. We are not cattle. You know this but have done nothing.” They turned away as one, dismissing me and everything I stood for.

  “ No,” I screamed. “No. I tried. I tried.”

  Then I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned. Levi stood before me, holding one of the lasers used for euthanasia. Crimson light strobed from his twitching left eye, and his scar opened to reveal a mass of writhing hydra-like tendrils that latched onto my face. I could not move. He raised the laser to the side of my head.

  “This is what you deserve, Berger,” he sneered. “For all your failures.”

  I startled awake and cried, “No. It wasn’t my fault...” I stopped as I realized it was a nightmare.

  A nightmare. “That’s all,” I whispered to myself. “Just a nightmare.” My eyes stared at a white painted ceiling. Sweat poured down my face.

  Opposite my bed, pale blue curtains fluttered feebly in an open window that showed a darkening sky. I rolled over and screamed as waves of agony coursed through my body.

  Voices outside the room preceded an influx of bodies, Fur in front.

  My entire attention focused on my arm and ankle. It felt like a demented goblin troop was sharpening their teeth on me.

  Fur grabbed me by my good shoulder and said, “Stay still. Movement only makes it worse.”

  “Makes what worse?” I gritted my teeth as I spoke.

  Petor came to stand by my bedside. He would not meet my eyes. “It is the, um, secretion of the hydra. A digestive enzyme. On your skin, you know.”

  I didn’t know. I didn’t want to know.

  Another voice broke in. It came from a tall, fair-haired Ulmian woman. “I’m Dr. Schaffler. The hydra’s saliva, if we may call it that, is quite toxic. You are very fortunate that only one tongue contacted your skin on the ankle. Your sleeve protected your arm, to a degree, so it’s not as bad. You were rescued quickly, otherwise, you might not have survived.”

  “Have I been out all day?” I asked.

  Schaffler gave me a rueful smile. “You’ve been unconscious for three days.”

  Good lord. Three days? I tried to sit up. A thousand hot irons pierced my flesh. I held in a scream with difficulty.

  Schaffler said, “Please remain as still as possible. I’ve ordered a powerful painkiller. My assistant is fetching it now.”

  “Did the toxin put me into a coma?” That would be some powerful stuff.

  “No,” replied the doctor. “I had you kept under. The pain would have been far too severe for you to tolerate.”

  “You mean worse that it is now?” I asked, incredulous.

  “I’m afraid so. We have had enough experience with attacks that we know how best to handle those who survive.”

  I mulled over that thought as I lay immobile. Fur gave me a few words of encouragement and, surprise, surprise, Levi came in. He got a perplexed look from the doctor as he began to rock back and forth in prayer—in Hebrew, of course. I wondered if he prayed for my recovery.

  Schaffler gave me a shot in my good arm and I faded from consciousness.

  ***

  A week passed before I recovered enough to be mobile. Even then, it hurt to walk. My arm blistered and peeled like a bad sunburn, but the surface tissues of my ankle had slou
ghed. It looked like a case of gangrene. Even Levi was sympathetic. At least he did not make his usual snide comments about my family’s safety. Thank God for little things.

  Worse news, the hydras had become more active; the number of attacks had increased in the time since my encounter. Whatever lay behind the behavioral change affected more and more of the creatures. The communities near hydra territory had gone into panic mode. People were evacuating, even though the likelihood of attack was quite small for any individual. It was more the horror of the phenomenon. I could relate to that. Some vigilante groups penetrated the jungle and took vengeance on any hydras they found, but this did little to resolve the problem.

  Fur, Petor, and I racked our brains for reasons to explain the activity of the hydras, without success. We sat over fresh, real coffee—the tropical climate here grew wonderful beans—and strategized.

  “The way this is spreading, it seems like an epidemic,” I said.

  “But we haven’t found anything in the hydras that even resembles an infectious organism,” Fur said. “Not even like the weird enzyme bug on Pronac.”

  Petor’s eyebrows rose in question, so I related the story of the Pronacian epidemic.

  “You have had rather unique experiences, to say the least.”

  I grimaced. “I guess ‘unique’ might describe them. But there has to be something that’s spreading, moving from one hydra to another.” A piece of the puzzle was missing. “Are there areas where no hydras show the disorder?” I asked Petor.

  “Yes. On Astrasia—that is the southern continent—this does not seem to be a, um, problem.”

  I thought for a moment. “Can we take our ship down there?”

  “I think so. I will get the necessary military clearances for you.”

  “Good. Let’s do it. But that raises another question. What’s with the military? Who in hell are you fighting or even worried about here? You seem to have a peaceful society...except for the hydras.”

  “Ah. That goes back a bit in our history. Our planet was settled relatively recently by immigrants from the New Prussian worlds. There were groups of settlers from Rhineland, Bavaria, and Holstein who, um, did not quite agree how to divide the land and how to govern it. This led to a period of, er, civil warfare. The Bavarians were victorious and consolidated Ulm to the system we have now. The military retained the governmental authority.”

  I shrugged mentally. Humans managed to foul their nests no matter where they built them.

  ***

  Petor came with us, and Ruthie landed the GCVS at a tiny jungle outpost a couple of thousand kilometers south of our first location. Fascinated by our AI, he had a long conversation with her about the meaning of intelligence during the flight. “Your technology is rather, um, spectacular, Cy. I did not know something like your AI existed.”

  “Yeah. I suppose spectacular is one way to describe it.”

  “I should be granted a higher status than ‘it,’ Cy,” Ruthie complained.

  “Just take care of the ship,” I muttered, as we exited via the ramp. The anthropomorphizing of Ruthie made me distinctly uncomfortable. I made a mental note to ratchet down her higher functions a notch.

  The jungle did not look much different to me, and Petor confirmed that the ecology was consistent on all the continents.

  Fur speculated, “The continents must have drifted apart fairly late in the evolution of life on the planet for this to be the case.”

  I wondered at that. There should have been some variation.

  We toured the jungle and observed a dozen hydras at play. None of them exhibited any of the signs we had seen in their northern counterparts. That subliminal buzz and queasiness I felt whenever I was in the jungle was present here, too. I had the nagging feeling that I was on the verge of understanding something, but what I couldn’t fathom, so I shoved it to the back of my mind.

  “Petor,” I asked, “can we sample a few of these guys?” I added, “We would have to kill them first, of course.” My heart rate shot up and I started to sweat when I thought about getting close to one of the things again.

  “We can have them, um, dispatched if you desire.”

  “Yeah. I desire.”

  He had the courtesy to turn a bit red. Although he had apologized multiple times over the past week for underestimating the dangers of dealing with the hydras, I was not about to let him off the hook.

  We ‘dispatched’ four of the beasts: two young ones that were sedentary, and two adults that were mobile. I took tissue and fluid samples so that we could compare them with their ‘sick’ analogues. Then we headed back north.

  ***

  “Damn it. There’s not a thing that’s different between the southern and northern hydras that we can find.”

  Fur nodded and pursed his lips. “Not that could explain why the ones around here have changed behavior. But there has to be something that’s caused it.”

  I shook my head. “I’m still bugged about the incredible similarity between the hydras and the entire flora on the two continents. The data on continental drift show it’s been at least fifty million years since the two landmasses split. There ought to be some evolutionary variability.”

  “I wonder,” Fur said, his brow creased. “These are plants, after all. Maybe they didn’t evolve on the two continents. Maybe they evolved on one and then spread to the other.”

  “Are you thinking airborne seeds?”

  He raised his eyebrows and shrugged. “That, or carried by some other vector. We haven’t seen anything like a bird analog, though. I wonder what might move between continents. Let’s ask Petor.”

  ***

  Petor introduced us to Anna Zeller, a middle-aged botanist with curly, graying hair. Tall and slender, she had a brusque demeanor, but answered our questions with the thoroughness that bespoke her knowledge of her subject. She reminded me a bit of an older Roxanne, and I recalled I was overdue for a hyperwave message. I sighed inwardly.

  I pulled my thoughts back to Zeller when she answered our query about the jungle.

  “You are perceptive,” she said. “I surmise that the floras of both continents are similar because they have emigrated from one to the other relatively recently. It is not certain which continent the hydras and the other flora originally evolved on and to which they emigrated. The ecosystems are now almost identical.”

  “Do you have any idea of just how this migration took place?” I asked.

  “That is more difficult,” Zeller answered. “The jungles were established in both places when humans arrived.” She paused. I sensed suspicion. She was not quite sure whether to trust us, and I wondered why. “I’ll give you my own speculations, but they are not accepted by the Ulmian bureaucracy.”

  This might be interesting.

  “From the early descriptions of the planet, I believe that the jungle flora was better developed on the southern continent. There, the forests were unbroken from one coast to the other. Here, there were open areas. Since the jungle growth is rather rapid, I think that the flora moved north, rather than evolving here. Humans took over the open areas and have kept the jungle at bay. If we were not here, I think the jungle would fill in what was open.”

  “But that still does not answer how it might have gotten here?” Fur prompted.

  “That’s even more speculative,” she said. “There are no flying creatures, although many plants do have seeds and spores that are airborne.”

  “But not the hydras and other predators?” Fur again.

  “No. To get the entire ecosystem reproduced as it is, something momentous must have occurred. I think...” She stopped and her expression froze.

  I read her misgiving. “Excuse me, Doctor Zeller. Is there a problem with telling us?” I recalled Steckel’s military-enforced reticence. “We don’t mean to put you on the spot.”

  “No. That’s fine.” She straightened her back and looked into my eyes. “I believe that the jungle is a single entity, a group mind with a basic sentience.”r />
  “It’s what?” I could not believe what she said.

  Zeller’s face darkened. “Your reaction is much like all the others.” She stood. “If I have answered your questions, I’ll be going now.”

  Fur jumped up and towered over the fragile-looking woman. “Please, don’t. I’m sure Dr. Berger was just startled. As I was. It’s not that we don’t believe you.”

  I followed suit. “I’m sorry. Please, sit down. We want to hear what else you have to say.”

  Mollified, she sat and continued, but her thoughts remained defensive, with a touch of bitterness. “I admit that my theories aren’t believed or considered important. This is a very insular and pragmatic world. If things work, there is little interest other than to keep them working. Science, other than what applies to agriculture and the engineering necessary to our basic lives, or what applies to military matters, is a luxury. My work does not contribute to the needs of our society.

  “But I believe that there is a very basic, instinctual sentience that underlies the flora of Ulm. It’s not at a level that we can communicate with it, at least for now. I...I have tried. I haven’t told others of this. They already think me strange. This would only make it worse.”

  I sensed her plea to keep this quiet. There was a long silence as I processed her words. Then I blurted, “My God. That’s it.”

  Both Fur and Zeller looked at me as if I had nine heads.

  “Dr. Zeller, what you just said makes all the sense in the world. You’ve leveled with us. I’m going to return that favor.”

  I told her about my empathic ability.

  “So you aren’t crazy,” I finished up. “I didn’t know what I was hearing and feeling when I was in the jungle so I just shoved it aside, attributing it to my nervousness about the weird predators or the narcotic perfumes. But I was hearing the jungle—its thoughts. And feeling its emotions, if I can call them that. The consciousness is incredibly diffuse, but it’s there. I never had contact with plants before, and it was nothing like what I receive from animals.”

  Zeller’s eyes were wide. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  I nodded.

  Fur grinned. “He’s serious, all right.”