Analog Science Fiction and Fact 01/01/11

by Dell Magazines

  This decontamination protocol would remain in effect until specific defenses had been developed against all the main pathogens detected on the planet. That could take a long time, thought Arnal Lepovsky, recently named chief virologist by virtue of his knowledge of microbiology, specializing in hydroponics. Lepovsky had protested his appointment, arguing that his knowledge was fragmentary and limited to plants, not animals. Diet aboard Diaspora was almost exclusively vegetarian, the animal kingdom represented only by a few pets (dogs and cats); a few goats, sheep, and chickens to produce milk, cheese, and eggs; and cloned embryos destined to be grown to create a farming industry on the planet where they landed, if they were compatible with the native life. But the Caretaker maintained that while nobody on the ship was an expert in animal biology, it was never too late to learn, and they would have to learn many things once they were settled on the planet. So Lepovsky accepted. The Caretaker’s words were invariably wise, being the expression of the ship’s own wisdom.

  The descent of the pyramids began first thing the next morning. Originally seen as just the first step in settlement of the planet, there were seven of them, preassembled and launched empty from Earth, stuck to the hull of the ship like barnacles. Each had a hexagonal base and seven stepped levels or rings. Six of them were truncated and intended for housing, with a capacity of up to 50,000 persons each. The seventh, the only one not truncated, had ten levels, dedicated to housing the central power plant, general controls, and all the associated services. They all fit together to form a solid circle of hexagons around the central service module, buried upside down so their bases formed a flat, smooth platform at ground level. Seven inverted pyramids to isolate the first colonists of Earth Two, after centuries of confinement, from the intimidating open space of the planet’s surface, and thus convert the first habitat on the planet into a new burrow, a prolongation of the cozy enclosed and protected environment of the ship.

  “You can’t expect someone who’s lived his entire life in the confined space of a ship to suddenly open up to the immensity of the open surface of a whole planet,” said Asbart Cohen to Captain Rhina Solomon. “Have you ever heard of agoraphobia?”

  The captain shook her head. Cohen sighed. “It’s the fear of open spaces,” he explained. “The opposite of claustrophobia, the fear of enclosed spaces. The first pilgrims needed more than five generations to free themselves of the claustrophobia that the ship caused in them. Now we’re up against the opposite. You can’t pretend that after so many generations of enclosure we can reverse the process overnight. We all instinctively seek the protection of enclosed spaces.”

  Fortunately, preventive measures proved to mask the general feeling of anxiety brought on by the enormous open spaces of the planet. The Caretaker did his part by imbuing the process of decontamination with an appropriate sense of mysticism through constant ceremonies of purification and thanksgiving, with ritual songs and dances drawn from ancient Jewish solemnities dug up for the occasion after centuries of neglect; and by prudently arranging things so that most of the future colonists would not descend to the planet until the pyramids were completely deployed and operational and people could take refuge in them as soon as they left the shuttles.

  “There’ll be plenty of time for everything,” he told the captain with his habitual machine pragmatism. “Nobody’s rushing us.”

  Nobody and nothing except perhaps the anxiety of the pilgrims themselves, who paradoxically longed for the very thing that they most feared, perhaps to free themselves once and for all from the intimidating prospect of encountering something completely new and unknown and the fear of what they might find “down there” after a life of secluded security in the ship, regulated and predictable from birth.

  The three to five weeks estimated for the installation of the pyramids stretched into eight: Excavation went slower and the work of settling the pyramids was more delicate than anticipated. The servants could have handled it all without human help, but the Caretaker’s opinion—the ship’s opinion—was that putting a growing number of pilgrims in direct contact with the reality of the planet they were going to occupy, right from the start, was the way to go, even though their work was often more an impediment to the efficiency of the machines. It was good for the travelers to get used to their new life as soon as possible, and the impressive tales told by those who had descended to the planet to those who hadn’t, on their return to the ship after completing their tours, were a constant font of inspiration. The nightly psalms and prayers to the god of the planet, in a great ceremony of thanksgiving for their good reception here, soon became one of the main collective activities on the ship, often climaxing with sacrifices of chickens and once even a number of lambs, which were then consumed ceremonially in homage to an ancient ritual of the old religion of their origins.

  But despite all that there persisted among many of the pilgrims a general feeling of caution and fear when they went down to the planet. It was something like a primordial instinct that impelled them, after their first glimpse of the open spaces around them, to automatically seek the comfort of enclosed, “protected” spaces. And the measures adopted from the beginning as hygienic precautions partly masked and justified that general sentiment.

  But a population can’t be kept isolated indefinitely from its environment. The toxicologists concerned with such matters—a few pilgrims specializing in medicine, aided by a group of medical robots (or vice versa)—didn’t take long to realize that total prevention of the possible illnesses endemic to the planet was impossible without first being exposed to them. So, in the fourth week after the beginning of the pyramid installation, the Caretaker, arguing that total isolation could never detect and identify the pathogens that could affect the pilgrims, much less immunize against them, decided to replace prevention with open but strictly controlled contact. Thus was eliminated the prohibition of direct contact with the planet, while taking great care with protective measures and watching for consequences.

  Not surprisingly, the habits of the pilgrims who descended to the planet didn’t change too much as a result. They still kept their direct contacts with Earth Two to a minimum. As soon as they left the shuttle on the great platform formed by the joined bases of the pyramids, set up as a landing zone and foot of the gravitational elevator, they looked around suspiciously and hurried into the decontamination chambers that gave access to the interior of the pyramids and the relative comfort and security of their metallic walls.

  Hardly a week had passed since the change of protocol when the first symptoms of infection appeared in one of the colonists: fever, aches, flushed face, slight tremors. The medical robots hastened to make an in-depth analysis of the patient, and the ship’s brain reviewed its extensive archive of terrestrial diseases without finding a match. Evidently, and logically, this was an unknown affliction endemic to Earth Two.

  The long-ago planners of Operation Diaspora, back on Earth, had foreseen this eventuality and given the brains of all their ships the resources needed for detection and analysis of any type of strange microorganism. Four days after the first symptoms, the responsible agent was detected, isolated, analyzed, and cultured: a new type of aerobic germ whose effect on the human body was to interfere with respiration by absorbing part of the oxygen for its own metabolism. The cultures proved it to be mild and easy to combat, since the very oxygen that it absorbed drastically reduced its lifespan. In two more days a vaccine was ready and given to all the pilgrims (by then twenty-eight were affected), from which they could then develop their own defenses. After five days of treatment the first victim had recovered completely and his body showed not the slightest trace of the germ.

  Over the next week there were five other cases of new infections native to the planet. The small army of robots and servants worked around the clock (the doctors rotated, the servants needed no sleep) seeking and finding the causes and antidotes. No patient died, none got worse, all recovered in a few days. Apparently, was the general conclusion, the
peculiar diseases of Earth Two were not very virulent.

  But that didn’t change anybody’s desire to hole up in the pyramids as soon as they went down to the planet.

  Six weeks after the descent and anchoring of the first pyramid, when they were all fixed in place and the colony was settling in, the first rollers appeared.

  One of the reasons for choosing that site for the first settlement had been the almost complete absence of animals in the vicinity. Earth Two was very sparsely inhabited, and from the first descent hardly anyone had seen any animals around the installation except some small groups of insects resembling something between ants and spiders, which made strange geometric webs among the branches of the slender trees of a nearby grove, the only sign of vegetation of any size except for some dry bushes.

  The rollers—nobody knew who gave them that name, but it couldn’t have been more descriptive—appeared abruptly one evening, almost at nightfall, and they appeared in droves. They descended in appreciable numbers from the foothills of the mountain, as if they had always lived there, and stopped, curious, at the edge of the platform formed by the bases of the seven pyramids, as if examining them. They were balls of golden-brown fur no more than forty centimeters in diameter, with no more distinctive traits than two little frontal slits that might have been eyes and two lateral orifices that might have been ears, and with nothing resembling feet or other means of locomotion. They moved by rolling themselves at fiendish speed and stopping so abruptly that it looked as if they appeared suddenly out of nothing. When someone approached them, they simply left in a burst of speed, giving the impression that they disappeared into thin air.

  From the first, they attracted attention and provoked curiosity. Appearing always toward dusk, they were a welcome novelty in the otherwise tedious process of settling in, and helped some of the pilgrims—who were beginning to call themselves that—lose some of their fear of the open air. There were a few attempts to catch one, always without the slightest result. They simply moved off a few meters, to be out of reach, and stopped again; or they fled as if sensing that they were about to be caught, and then no one could match their speed or their zigzag course. Some traps were made, but no roller ever fell into one; they seemed too clever.

  Soon they had become just one more part of the landscape around the pyramids. They seemed to keep gaining confidence, and soon ventured onto the platform, even settling right next to the access hatches, or forming a circle around the cargo shuttle after it landed or when it was preparing to take off, calmly observing the unloading of supplies and men or the preparations to return to the ship. But they always moved off as soon as the unloading was finished, or a few minutes before the take-off, as if sensing that the show was over. Sometimes someone tried to catch one by surprise while leaving the shuttle, always without the slightest success. Soon it became a game.

  Some even tried offering them bits of food. The rollers ignored them completely.

  At eight years old, Veronica Julia was a lively and smart girl, incapable of staying still for one moment. Being the granddaughter of captain Rhina Solomon and daughter of chief zoologist Melo Spiegel gave her certain privileges, which she always knew how to take advantage of. She belonged to that generation with compound names (one of the ways of distinguishing the generations aboard the ship had been to give each generation characteristic first names: exotic, mythological, literary, historic, imaginary . . .), and Veronica Julia was very proud of hers, to the point of always omitting her surname. She took a certain inner delight in letting people think that the second part of her compound name was her surname, although it didn’t have a Hebrew root. She never corrected anyone about that until they found out in other ways, and then she giggled to herself.

  Veronica Julia also belonged to the small number of pilgrims who from the start had never been troubled by agoraphobia. She liked to go out in the open air of the planet whenever she could, especially at night, and contemplate the star-spangled sky. They had warned her about the dangers of contracting some infectious disease among the many that undoubtedly infested the air, lying in ambush for possible prey, but she ignored the warning. She always took Claudia Antonia, her favorite doll, with her, and conversed with her in the pale silvery light of the planet’s two moons, letting time go placidly by until some adult asked her to come back into the pyramid because it was late.

  She often found herself surrounded by rollers. They formed a full circle around her, some four or f ive meters off, and stood motionless, a ring of little fur balls, as if they were studying her through the narrow slits of their maybe-eyes or listening through the little orif ices of their maybe-ears. People whispered that Veronica Julia had something that undoubtedly attracted them, because they didn’t act that way with anyone else. But then, nobody else spent so much time loafing around in the open air outside the pyramids, seated on the metallic ground, watching the comings and goings of people around her, watching the sky and chatting with a doll.

  Veronica Julia’s father had asked her on several occasions, since she seemed to awaken some interest or curiosity in the rollers, to try somehow to get close to them. The child had tried several times, without the slightest success, but neither did she get the usual result. They never fled precipitously when she tried to approach them; they just backed off a few meters, unhurriedly, and reformed their expectant circle. Only when some other pilgrim approached did they break their circle and leave—but they didn’t dart away at their usual devilish speed; rather, they moved off calmly and deliberately, as if in spite of everything the girl were still attracting them in some strange way.

  “For some reason they have a special interest in you,” her father insisted thoughtfully. “If only we could catch one. . . .”

  Veronica Julia didn’t like those words. She didn’t know what her father and his team might do to a roller if they caught one, but she imagined ugly and disagreeable things. In her whole life her only contact with the animals on the ship—except her cat, Mr. Whiskers, who was genuinely terrified of the open surface of the planet—had been sporadic and infrequent, limited to a few visits with her father to the pens and buildings where cows and chickens and goats and sheep were kept, and once to the cloning lab where he periodically did something to keep the equipment in good working order.

  Finally, one night when the combined light of the two moons cast a soft silver-gray glow over the landscape, it happened. The rollers had formed their usual circle some five meters from Veronica Julia and seemed to be listening with fascination to the story she was telling her doll, a fantastic tale in which Mr. Whiskers was a dragon and her father a powerful magician capable of the greatest feats. Veronica Julia had a boundless imagination, spurred by her constant reading of the ship’s fantasy disks. The rollers swayed lightly to the rhythm of words and gestures, immersed in her fantastic tale, as if they understood what she said and let themselves be rocked like a baby in a cradle by her voice and motions, a collection of little balls of gold-brown fur beating time to her story among the dry metallic surf of the platform.

  And suddenly one of them came forward. It moved very calmly, rolling slowly, almost as if not touching the ground. In fact, Veronica Julia thought, it didn’t seem to b e touching the ground. It came straight toward her and stopped less than half a meter away. The furball vibrated for a few seconds, while the circle of other rollers remained motionless, as if waiting, their rhythmic motion forgotten.

  Veronica Julia stopped gesturing and speaking to Claudia Antonia, and her story came to a halt. For several moments the scene stayed motionless, as if captured in a still photograph. Then, slowly, timidly, Veronica Julia extended her hand.

  The roller retreated a few centimeters and stopped again.

  “You know what, Claudia Antonia?” said Veronica Julia to her doll. “I’d like to pet one of these little animals. They must be as soft and cuddly as Mr. Whiskers. Do you think they’ll let me do it if I try?”

  It was evening now; they were alone on the platf
orm. She waited a few more seconds before extending her hand again. This time the roller did not pull back. The girl’s fingertips touched its soft fur. It was warm, almost as warm as her own body. For an instant she thought of her father, and that probably, if she let go of her doll and reached out her other hand, she could encircle the little ball that was the roller with both hands and prevent it from fleeing.

  But she didn’t do it.

  Nor did the roller pull away. It let the girl’s fingers gently scratch its fur while it emitted a soft sound, not exactly a purr like Veronica Julia would have expected from her cat, but something between a snort and a hiss, something like a pffft, yet nevertheless suggesting not alarm or warning, but rather contentment.

  And then the miracle happened: the roller opened, unfolded, unrolled. The ball of fur suddenly ceased to be a ball and stretched upward, blossoming into a long, thin animal some fifty centimeters high, with a goldbrown back and whitish belly, with four very short legs ending in tiny claws and a short, stout, flattened tail that it used with its hind legs to hold itself upright. It had a round head with a flat face in which the nose hardly protruded past the rest, and a lipless mouth that was just a small slit. At the sides were two short, rounded ears, and two enormous buttonlike eyes occupied almost the entire upper half of the face, with big, vertical elliptical pupils in the center of honey-colored irises that contracted and dilated as its gaze shifted.