by C. Gockel
Taking the envirosuit, Volka said, “Will I be able to smell through a helmet?”
“Not if it’s working,” said James.
6T9 could see her hair rising, and he stifled the urge to smooth it down.
“Oh,” she murmured. “Well, I guess I didn’t know if the Dark would smell any different…I mean, usually sick people do smell different, but this is an alien organism. I guess I’ll have to know by feel.”
Static flared beneath 6T9’s skin as the implications sunk in. They were going to determine the pathogen’s presence by a sense he didn’t possess and was close to “magic” in his opinion.
He followed Volka with his eyes as she made her way to the narrow aisle at the rear of the bridge. Sundancer was transparent, and the floor, walls, and ceiling of the aisle were nearly imperceptible. Volka appeared to be walking in open air above the trees. It was almost like magic. She turned to the right and disappeared into one of the ship’s tiny rooms, and he was staring at mountain peaks and empty sky.
James grumbled, “And maybe we’ll find our missing crew with a divining rod while we’re at it.”
6T9’s circuits sparked. James was just as uncomfortable with the werfle’s and Volka’s “sixth sense.” That they were uncomfortable didn’t mean it wasn’t real. “Any technology significantly advanced is indistinguishable from magic,” 6T9 said, quoting a twenty-first-century philosopher.
James rolled his eyes. “Telepathy isn’t technology, it’s…” he winced and shuddered.
“To ancient humans, the heightened senses of animals appeared to be magic,” 6T9 said. Cats had alternately been worshipped as gods and culled as demons, which, actually, knowing Carl’s kind’s ability to use felines as hosts due to their “wave sensitivity,” maybe wasn’t the best example. Instead, he said, “Dogs can smell tumors and recognize when seizures are coming on. They can smell fear and adrenaline and anticipate violence in humans because of it. Those abilities were seen as magical.” And human intelligence had seemed near magical to him before he’d had his Q-comm.
Shoving the gear at 6T9, James replied, “We’re going down to the surface. Get dressed.”
Taking the suit, 6T9 gazed through Sundancer’s hull. They were hovering perhaps fifty meters above the ground over purplish treetops on the slopes of a mountainous river valley. While working for his former employer, 6T9 had passed his spare time reading ancient books from her library. There had been a theory in the twenty-first century that carbon-based life, given the right conditions, wasn’t unusual. In fact, it was to be expected. Further, the theory had held that life would evolve in predictable ways, from amino-acid chains to multicellular organisms that would be similar to Earth life from similar environments. The trees looked very much like Earth pines despite their purplish color. 6T9 marveled that the early human scientist had been so prescient without the ethernet.
Young’s voice snapped 6T9 to the present. “Werfle—”
“It’s Carl,” the werfle declared.
“Can you get the ship to make sweeps so we can look for signs of human habitation?” the lieutenant continued.
Rising to his hind paws, suit in his forepaws, Carl spoke through his necklace. “I could do that.”
6T9 tilted his head and mused aloud, “Carl, you’re using the ether to talk through the necklace.”
“Shit,” someone said. “Time Gate 33’s scanners will pick us up.”
Carl’s ears went back, and the necklace crackled. “I’m a master of the quantum wave. I’ve confined my ether footprint to…well, my footprint.” He lifted a hind paw and wiggled it. “Which is quite dainty, you must admit.”
Jerome protested, “That’s not—”
“Check your readouts,” Carl hissed.
“Oh,” said Jerome, eyeing a tablet. “He’s right. There’s no reading.”
Puffing his chest, Carl continued, “As I was saying…Volka or I could instruct Sundancer to perform a search in a grid pattern, but—”
“But what?” Young thundered.
Carl sniffed. “But they’re only about 500 meters away…right…over…there.” Squinting one eye, the werfle pointed a paw toward a part of the harsh landscape that looked no different than the patch of trees they hovered above. Crossing his forelimbs, Carl said, “May I suggest performing a wider search after we check out the cave over there?”
Young’s eyes narrowed. “And you know they’re there because of your hocus pocus.”
6T9 looked between the man and the werfle and said, “We traveled here in a faster-than-light starship. No one in the Republic knows precisely how it works.”
“Your point?” said Young.
6T9 shrugged. “It might as well be hocus pocus. Still, it works.”
Young’s jaw got hard, but then, shaking his head, he said, “All right. We’ll check out the werfle’s locale first. Everyone, suit check!”
Sundancer rose into the air, depositing the team and Volka in a clearing a few hundred meters from their destination. Volka took her first deep breath of air on a truly alien world. It smelled like plastic. The hazmat-camouflage-envirosuit she wore filtered out all odors. It also muffled sound. Both were disorientating and made the hair on the back of her arms prickle. Was this what it was like to be human?
The visor was designed for superior human distance vision. It wrapped around her face so that she had a completely unobscured view. They’d told her that the visor would automatically give her night vision, too—and allow her to turn it off if it was too bright for her weere eyes. Her ears tried to twitch, but they were pinched by her helmet. A weere with a snout wouldn’t have been able to put the helmet on at all.
“At least you can move in yours,” Carl complained. His werfle envirosuit’s ten little legs were too short and stiff to be functional. He was riding in a pack on 6T9’s back just a few paces in front of her. James had said he looked like a “stuffed sausage.”
Volka blinked, and the Marines melted into the surrounding terrain. Their suits had become a mottled pattern of browns like the tree trunks and yellow ochre like the rocky ground. A Marine she thought was Young waved a hand, beckoning them to follow behind him. Trina set off toward him at once. 6T9 followed at a more leisurely pace, and Volka trailed him. The suit was not exactly uncomfortable, but the fabric was stiff between her legs from her navel to her lower back. There was a gel there that would recycle liquid wastes, absorb solid wastes, and pull both away from her skin. The gel didn’t feel wet, but it didn’t feel exactly dry, either. There was also a heavy, squarish section in the chest of the suit where the filtration of liquids took place. According to the lady Marine doctor, it added electrolytes and the barest amount of sugars and “it might taste a little strange.” There was a little straw to the side of her helmet from which she could sip said strangeness. She was determined not to.
It could be worse. She’d sometimes worn masks while varnishing Mr. Darmadi’s paintings, and they always were heavy, too hot, and hard to breathe in. The suit was light and climate controlled and had a ventilator in the helmet that was piping in air at just the right temperature. But she should be able to smell Sixty, Carl, and the Marines, as well as this alien world…without their smells, it was as if they didn’t exist.
A shadow moved over her, and Volka looked up.
Sundancer was hovering above them, bobbing like an anxious balloon. Volka’s stomach fluttered with the sense that Sundancer was ready to swoop down, trees or no, scoop them up, and whisk them off if necessary. She waved to the ship. Its pearlescent hull briefly flashed, and she smiled.
Carl said, “Volka, can you hear me?”
Her ears tried to perk. “Yes, I hear you fine,” she replied.
In front of her, Sixty turned around. “Did you say something?”
“I was being telepathic,” Carl said. “He didn’t hear my question.”
“Carl was being telepathic,” Volka said to Sixty. “I was answering him.”
She thought she saw him lift an eyebr
ow and the touch of a wry smile, but then he turned back around.
“I’m glad you picked up on my thoughts,” Carl continued. “I don’t sense the thing nearby…but when it approaches, I want you to notice. It’s good that your telepathy is getting stronger.”
“When it approaches?” Volka clarified. Not if?
She felt a flutter of tiny pterys in her stomach. Was the sensation a sign from Carl? His voice continued in her mind. “I brushed up against the thing and it wants, Volka. It devours worlds. It can control things the way The One cannot. It’s stronger.”
“Stronger?” Volka squeaked. Carl could create fires with his mind.
“It was a small fire,” Carl said.
“It caused an emergency landing,” Volka protested, remembering the harrowing last few minutes aboard the Leetier.
“It was in a very strategic place, but it was small,” Carl responded. “I’m a small werfle. E=MC2. Have you heard of that equation, Volka?”
She swallowed. She had, from Alaric.
“I sense you have. Well, it means that mass and energy are related. My mass is insignificant compared to the mass of the dark waters of the worlds we saw. That said, I do think it has some weaknesses. It—”
A streak of phaser fire tore overhead, and then another, emerging from the brush in the direction they were going. Each struck Sundancer from below. For a moment Volka’s heart stopped, but then the phaser blast fanned across the hull, turning the pearlescent exterior the color of a frozen confection on Luddeccea affectionately named an “orangesicle.”
Before she could blink, think, or breathe, the trees ahead began crashing down with such force the ground shook. Volka’s eyes went wide. Sundancer had plopped herself between the rescue party and the phaser fire—crushing the trees as she did.
Sixty’s voice, muffled by his helmet and hers, reached her pinched ears. “Get back!” She heard a sound like a thousand toothpicks crackling and made the mistake of glancing up. As if in slow motion, she saw a pine falling toward her. She jumped back and a tree crashed just centimeters from her toes. The ground shook, and she heard a few exclamations from the Marines. They were all in the vein of “Gosh,” “Gee,” “Oopsie,” and “Fiddlesticks.” Which isn’t how she thought of Marines talking at all. “Golly,” she murmured herself. She felt an incredible wave of sheepishness. If she were the type of weere that had a tail, she’d tuck it between her legs.
The ship was directly ahead of them, flat on the ground, in the midst of fallen trees. The pearly ivory hull had turned a distinctive shade of mustard.
“Oh, Fudge!” Young said.
“What the—?” said James. “You don’t say ‘oh, fudge’ in a firefight.”
Sixty pointed out, “Well, it isn’t a firefight anymore. Sundancer’s in the way.”
“Did the Lieutenant just say ‘fudge’?” someone asked.
“Did I just say ‘fiddlesticks’ after a tree nearly fell on me?”
Carl’s voice crackled from the backpack. “It’s Sundancer. She’s aware she almost squished us, and she is very embarrassed right now. Her emotions transferred. John’s phaser fire startled her.”
“John!” shouted Trina. The android sprinted around Sundancer, and then dropped to the ground as a streak of phaser fire flew over her head.
“Don’t come closer!” a man’s voice shouted. “That was a warning shot!”
“John, it’s me!” Trina cried, her voice muffled within her helmet.
“I have no idea who you are! Don’t move!” John shouted back. Even through the muffling layers of the helmet, Volka could hear his fear so clearly she could almost smell it.
Crouching low, Sixty pulled Volka toward Sundancer’s bulky shape. The shadows around her moved, and she realized the Marines were doing the same thing. The rescue party pressed their backs to the ship’s surface and waited.
Lieutenant Young went to peer around the back and called, “Dr. John Bower, we’ve been sent by the Galactic Republic. We’re here to rescue you.”
“The Galactic Republic doesn’t have ships like that,” John replied.
“John, it’s me, Trina!” Trina said.
“What is she doing? She’s going to get herself slagged,” Sixty muttered.
Volka whispered, “She’s in love with him. Even if she says she can’t be because ‘love is only a pheromonal illusion.’ She’s not being rational right now.”
“Well, the last I agree with,” Sixty said.
Somewhere beyond the ship, John shouted, “Trina’s not a person!”
“I am an android-avatar version of Trina,” Trina replied. Her voice had lost its muffled softness, and her desperation was more apparent. Volka peeked around the rear of the ship and saw Trina, back to Sundancer’s side. She’d taken off her helmet, and her black hair was falling out of the bun she’d tied at the nape of her neck. “I plugged the Q-comm that was located on Time Gate 1 into this form so I could help rescue you.”
A man beyond the treeline came forward, and Volka recognized him as John from the holos. He wore an envirosuit that was shades of gray and not as well camouflaged as the Marines’. His hair was longer than before, his face haggard. He wasn’t wearing a helmet. “How do I know?” he whispered.
Trina raised her hands and walked toward him. “I don’t know…I’d hoped this form would be reassuring.”
“Who’s with you?” John pressed.
“Fleet Marines,” Trina replied. “The spaceship, her name is Sundancer, and her friends: Volka, a weere from Luddeccean space, an alien named Carl Sagan, and Android General 1, he’s a 6T9 unit, and—”
“No rescue mission would bring a 6T9 unit!” John hissed, raising his rifle.
“He’s the 6T9 unit with a Q-comm,” Trina replied.
The rifle didn’t fall. John’s nostrils flared, and then he shouted, “I want to speak to him. Now!”
“I want to speak to him. Now!”
6T9 blinked at Dr. John Bower’s words. Why would he want to see him specifically? His eyes slid to the humans around him. He could hear John’s fear, and knew if he obeyed the doctor, he was very likely about to get shot. But he had to go, he had to take the phaser blast. His deepest programming compelled him to protect these humans who weren’t pirates or Luddeccean Guard members salivating for a torture session. Raising his hands, 6T9 prepared to go around the ship, but Volka grabbed his arm.
“Be…careful…don’t get in between them.”
6T9 looked at the position of Trina, the position of John, and whispered back, “I might have to go between them.”
“Has your Q-comm slipped out of its socket?” Volka whispered.
Tilting his head, Q-comm sparking, he tried to understand what she was talking about. 6T9 responded carefully, “Noooo…”
Carl Sagan’s voice snapped over his necklace. “She means don’t get between them emotionally, you idiot!”
“Sure,” said 6T9, deciding not to argue even though they were mistaken. Androids could be programmed to fall in “love,” an illusion of programming instead of pheromones. 6T9 was programmed to “love” all humans and his owner in particular, though he’d had no owner since Eliza. But Trina had chosen her own body and done her own programming. Why would she give herself such a weakness? Moreover, she’d denied that she was in love. Ergo, Volka and Carl were wrong. Holding his hands aloft, 6T9 walked around the ship. As he walked toward John Bower, he cast a furtive glance at Trina. Her lips were parted, her eyes were wide, there was a slight crease between her brows, and his Q-comm took all that information and diagnosed her expression as “shocked.”
“Take off your helmet!” John ordered 6T9. Up close, the doctor looked worse than he sounded. He was gaunter than in Trina’s memories, his hair was longer, there were dark circles under his eyes, and although 6T9’s sensors put the temperature as ideal, John was sweating.
6T9 took the helmet off, hoping that Carl was right, and he wasn’t going to get any bugs in his “gears.”
Nod
ding at him, John said, “How do I know you’re not Kowalski’s? He stowed one of you aboard.”
6T9 tilted his head. His particular make was a popular “classic” model. “My full serial number is—”
Cutting him off, John shouted, “‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’ Explain it, android!”
6T9’s Q-comm hummed. It was the same lines from Shakespeare's Hamlet that Alaric had quoted to him—a part of his Q-comm began calculating the odds of that—but another part, a bigger part, filled him with wonder. “It describes my life lately. How I wound up with a sentient spaceship—” He gestured back toward Sundancer. “And wound up the friend of a quantum wave-controlling werfle—”
“I consider you more a pet, actually,” Carl snipped from 6T9’s backpack.
6T9 rolled his eyes. “Things I never could have dreamt of, that all the time gates in the galaxy had no knowledge of, but they exist—and a playwright foretold it in 1599.” His eyes dropped to the ground. “Without an ethernet…it was genius.”
He jerked his gaze back to John’s, and the man lowered his rifle. “You are the 6T9 unit with the Q-comm. I’ve heard of you before.”
6T9 sketched a shallow bow and gave his most dazzling smile.
Scratching his head, John said, “I’d been informed you were unstable.”
A rapid sniffing sound came from Carl Sagan. 6T9’s Q-comm unhelpfully identified it as a werfle laugh.
John looked past 6T9. The Marines had drawn closer during their conversation. “Are we really being rescued?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” said Young. “Please take us to the others.”
John nodded, but his eyes went to Trina. “Trina…that is really you?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice tight.
John’s eyes stayed glued to Trina.
“Sir,” said Young, taking off his helmet. “We need to move.”
