by Set Wagner
He was waiting for me, incomprehensible behind his star shadow. I was witnessing how my shadow approached his, how the two shadows met, and then merged into one.
Disgust splashed over me like muddy water. No, I wasn’t going there because I wanted to. They were making me go! They were ravaging my soul so they could establish their alien presence in its place. Ravaging. I pressed my hands to my temples. Ravaging me. I desperately looked around. Started racing down the flowing slope—without sinking.
Elia was lying flat on her back when I reached her, her violet face beyond human expression and her open eyes reflecting only the darkness of the sky. The waves undulating down the hill were lifting her body, flowing their flaky flesh under her and lowering it again. Jerry, cuddled at her feet, was trembling.
I shook her shoulder. I called her. I yelled her name. To no avail. She wasn’t here. During these long moments she was not even a human being.
As I waited, hoping for her return, the forest in front of us continued to grow, building symmetrical constructions in the sky and wrapping them in transparent, yellow-violet raffia nets. It was forming gigantic cocoons and setting them in a maniacally regular, alien order. Jerry howled at them, his bared teeth reflecting ancient malice. I felt like howling as well.
When Elia came back to her senses, we didn’t exchange a word. We were aware that the alien presence had dissipated, but its engram would remain on our souls forever—and connect us.
We climbed together up to the ridge. Down there, in the valley, rags of stretchy fog surrounded the cones. They looked like giants wearing ragged coats. Their glassy bodies could be seen clearly at some places, while at others only their shapes could be vaguely detected through the fog. Their peaks were melting with a hiss, splitting the fog into fine fibroid strips.
We started walking along the edge of the ridge, our knees shaking. Jerry ran between us. The pores of the ground were shrinking, its light diminishing, surrendering its radiance to the black pressure of the sky. That darkness slowly approached us, touched our foreheads, and crawled down, further and further. Now we could see only our shoes and Jerry’s little paws. Then they too disappeared. We stopped. Jerry was panting between us. We felt around for him. He was collapsed in a ball and obviously needed a break. I reassuringly petted him.
“Don’t lift him up,” I heard Elia’s tired voice. “We don’t know who we are going to be—what we are going to be—next.”
We sat by our puppy, and she leaned her head on my shoulder. The fragrance of her hair mixed with the spicy Eyrena air. I closed my eyes, trying to forget the impenetrable darkness. But I didn’t forget it. When I kissed Elia, I realized that I was doing it to challenge whatever wanted to take me over. That sense of defiance reduced even this brief moment of human intimacy to something trivial.
Time passed, or flowed away from us, as we sat next to each other, helpless and silent. Something had to happen. Here and now.
Sure enough, in that black valley of the cones, lights began blinking. From them, as if on a signal, random fires blazed up. I watched them flicker and flare with incredible speed as if some satanic conductor coaxed fire instead of music out of the darkness with his waving baton, creating small bonfires that burst into flames and then grew into yellow-violet fire.
The cones in the valley bent and, with a loud cracking sound, split open. Wide, ugly gashes appeared on their tops, belching forth pent-up radiant force like monstrous sighs rising into the sky. As dozens of lightning bolts ripped at the flesh of that sky, the cones collapsed with a crash, leaving behind only clouds of light silver dust.
At that moment, Chuks’s vague figure emerged from my memory, hardly visible through the silver dust of the Yusian plant we had observed together in the starship.
“Elia,” I exclaimed. “The cones were plants!”
“What—these rocks?”
“Yes, yes! ‘Rocks,’ ‘cones,’ or ‘formations’—we had different names for them, but we have always known they were something else.”
“Of course—something else. But plants—”
“Yes! The ferns transformed into pillars, the pillars into trees, the trees—”
We stood up, surprised by this insight, and looked in the direction of the forest. There, in the dimming dark, huge cones now stood in an outlandish order.
“At some point, then, they turn back into dust,” Elia said.
“Dust?” I slowly repeated. “No—into some kind of spores.”
“Grass!” Elia pressed her palm to her forehead. “That grass will grow in their place! And fields of grass are probably now covered with ferns. There is only one kind of plant on Eyrena, Terence! The same plant goes through five consecutive phases.”
We both sighed at the same time, overwhelmed by the enormous magnitude of this metamorphosis. I bent down and, after hesitating briefly, picked Jerry up again; we had no reason to expect additional psychic invasions. At least not so soon.
We headed for the base.
Part Three
Chapter 26
“Last night, the Security Council called an emergency meeting to discuss my report on the Odesta Gomez murder.” Larsen’s voice was smooth and calm, his face devoid of emotion.
“Special Chairman Vey A. Zung introduced a draft resolution recommending immediate evacuation of the Eyrena base crew as well as suspension of all preliminary negotiations on the bilateral agreement between Earth and Yus.”
Larsen then scrutinized each of us, expecting some kind of reaction. None of us looked away or reacted in any way to his statement during the prolonged pause.
We were sitting at the table in the infirmary dispensary but not because of any health complaints. The planetary metamorphosis that had ended just an hour ago had only left us exhausted, nothing more. Perhaps.
After leafing through the documents in the folder in front of him, Larsen continued, “The resolution states, ‘We will commence evacuation following the order of the general secretary of the United Military Forces, signed also by the special chairman of the Security Council. Responsibilities are listed as follows:
‘Colonel Larsen, Eyrena base commander: archiving and protecting the database.
‘Associate Professor Vernie, technical head of the Defractor Project: emergency preservation of the sample material.
‘Professor Reder, science consultant in the Biosystems Sector: evacuation of live specimens and representative preservation of sample material.
‘Doctor Slade, medical expert of the Eyrena base: thorough examination of the staff and disposal of the corpses.
‘Inspector Simon, official representative of the International Bureau of Investigation: security precautions.
‘Deadline for completion of the preliminary phase: eighteen hours from receipt of the order.’”
This time only Reder had preserved his composure. Elia looked bewildered, although encouraged as well; Vernie was startled, even horrified. “But this is ridiculous!” He couldn’t restrain himself. “They’ve lost their minds.”
“Easy, easy.” Reder reached out and tapped him on the shoulder.
“But how can I be calm! We came here with an impossible mission, but we are still managing to meet our objectives! We’ve made greater advances here than anyone back on Earth can claim. And now what—‘preservation’? No! They have no right to do this!”
His reaction seemed surprisingly inadequate to me. Enacting the resolution would lead to consequences much greater than simply the closing of his Defractor Project.
Larsen took some time to peer at each one of us again before adding emphatically, “In the course of these procedures, we will maintain a permanent readiness for initiating Operation ‘polar cross.’”
This time it was Elia who was visibly shaken. “Initiate the self-destruct contingency? What good would that do? We obviously mean less than nothing to them!”
Vernie held his head in his hands, as if fearing it might explode at any moment. “I don’t understand. I can’t see
the logic—the reasons,” he babbled in his despair. “It couldn’t just be Odesta’s death that provoked all this. No, no! There must be something else! Otherwise—I understand we may have to be sacrificed, but why now? Why just before we—”
“Calm down, Phil!” Reder warned. “They would hardly resort to this.”
“How can you say that? In fact, they have!” Vernie continued in spite of him. “The Yusians are aware of that: the resolution, suspension of negotiations, and all—the end of the colonization! I find it strange that they even deigned to transfer this damned message to us! Why not just take us by surprise? Capture us? Take over the defractor! Who on Earth would ever know? They would assume we had moved to the ‘cross’ and that would be the end of it. Oh God!”
For the last few seconds, Larsen had been watching only me. I was under the impression that he didn’t interrupt Vernie’s emotional outbursts precisely because he wanted me to hear all this. He waited just a little longer, but when no one added anything more, he finally said, “The draft resolution was voted on after three rounds of discussions and debates. And it was unanimously rejected by the members of the Security Council.”
The silence that ensued was so overwhelming that everyone seemed to have simultaneously lost the ability to speak. Personally, I found nothing so surprising in the council’s decision, but I chose to reflect the group reaction. The dispensary, specifically designed for such top-secret meetings, was windowless and insulated with double soundproof panels, so the utter silence made my ears ring.
Vernie suddenly giggled, breaking the silence. Elia eyed him with sympathy and then abruptly turned to Larsen. “What’s the meaning of all this crap?”
“Well, the meaning is,” Vernie broke in, still laughing in a fit of hectic relief, “that Mr. Zung has sent us on yet another wild-goose chase!”
“I don’t care about Zung’s plotting,” Elia retorted. “I’d just like to know what I should think of your reaction, Berg. Why did you perform this little melodrama for us?”
Larsen shrugged his shoulders. “I’m just letting you know about the deliberations of the Security Council.”
“No, this was some vulgar provocation! Absolutely inappropriate for your position at the base, just as inappropriate as a number of things you’ve done!” Elia stood up, abruptly pushing back her chair. “I see that none of you here needs medical help,” she said with scorn quite unfitting for a doctor. She left the dispensary and slammed the door behind her. Hissing, it hermetically opened and closed again, this time quietly.
Still showing no emotion, Larsen leafed once more through the folder. “After the vote, the council approved the emergency powers of the inspector of IBI, Terence Simon, for investigation of the murders and the motives that led to them. He has also been entrusted with new unlimited powers, within the necessary safety precautions. That’s all.” He had finished the briefing.
“What else can you expect?” Vernie shrugged.
Reder grinned at me maliciously. His boss proved once again his talent for taking advantage of any situation. It was a tempest in a tea cup, but it had led to three rounds of debate at the highest level. That was what this meeting was really all about. Rather than compromise his policy toward the Yusians, this latest murder had consolidated opinions on that policy. The Yusians received a warning: “Beware, our loyalty has its limits too.” And there was a new, even more unpleasant, intrigue for my boss. Zung had, no doubt, by his vote of confidence toward me, positioned me to be as the next scapegoat in his wicked games.
Yes, I would bear the blame from now on since I had been awarded unlimited emergency powers, and no doubt Zung’s agent here would try to limit me. Zung was sure about that, even if he had not yet received the interesting information that I had killed Odesta. If he had received it, though, by extending my powers, he had gone so far as to commend me!
“Larsen, can you tell me how you came by this information?” I asked.
“The summarized report of the proceedings was delivered at the Yusian Embassy today at eight o’clock this morning. They then transmitted it to their Eyrenean base, from where it was personally forwarded to me at nine thirty.”
“That’s a ninety-minute delay,” Vernie explained to me with unnecessary gesticulating. “The connections along their information channels are instantly established in real time, regardless of the distance. That means that the Yusians discussed the recording before transmitting it to us.”
I turned to Larsen again. “What else did your report to Earth contain?”
“Nothing. I just broke the news of Odesta’s murder. Without any comment.”
“Among other things, how’s your investigation going, Simon?” Reder wanted to know.
“Yes”—I nodded—“that’s exactly how it’s going: ‘among other things.’”
He smiled again. After our morning scuffle, he looked terrible. The left half of his face was swollen, his chin bore a huge blue bruise, and his eyes were red with blood and bulged even more than usual. As a matter of fact, I didn’t look much better myself, but it wasn’t this fact that bothered me. What worried me, though, was the marked difference in our moods.
“Reder,” I began in an official manner, “I’m addressing you as the science consultant at the ‘Biosystems.’ I need your results from the cones analysis.”
“The results have been recorded on the server in great detail and are available to anyone interested.”
“Do they include the information that these cones derive from trees?”
“Of course not. That became evident only today. Regardless of their origin, though, they are not plants,” Reder insisted. “I still don’t know what they are, but Stein probably knew.”
I got the point—we both knew that Stein’s analyses lay in my restricted data bank—but carried on regardless. “Since the metamorphosis, the building section is in the immediate vicinity of cones rather than the forest. Do you think this change is dangerous for us?”
“The source of the euphoria is the forest. The cones can have no such effect.”
“My question didn’t concern the euphoria only. Could you elaborate a bit more on the so-called whirlpools?”
“The substance that constitutes the cones sometimes reacts this way when humans are present. That is, it absorbs them—for a short time. If you ask me why, I can only say again, ‘I don’t know.’”
“Seriously?” I raised my eyebrows with mock astonishment. “It seems to me, Reder, you’ve done nothing substantial here. You really must get down to business.”
He looked disgruntled enough, so I redirected my attention to Vernie. “What is the state of the defractor?”
“Normal. The metamorphosis didn’t have any particular impact on the equipment.”
“Very good. Now could you explain to me about the precautions against electronic surveillance that you mentioned when I arrived?”
“We use state-of-the art technology for that. We can only hope that they counter the Yusian communication disks and that these disks really are for communication only.”
“So?” I urged him.
“You know yourself that the best protection from spying has always been not to say or do anything of significance.”
Well, no one can argue with that, but I was sure that everyone said and did whatever they wanted in places they themselves, and not the Yusians, had constructed: the defractor site, the research field, the biosector, the infirmary, and so on. But might there be other such sites? Omitted on the map and unknown to me?
“I’d like to inform you,” I spoke in a calm voice, “that I intend to implement stronger requirements for our personal protection. That includes the electronic system for personal surveillance. Any objections?”
My catch didn’t work—there were no objections.
“Any technical problems? Vernie?”
“I don’t think so. Except when the shuttles are airborne. Then they are very hard to track. We regularly lose contact with them. But we don’t fly th
at much, Simon.”
I turned to Reder. “As far as I know, you don’t do any flights, right?”
Clenching his teeth, he simply stared at the wound on my forehead. I smiled at him and asked another irrelevant question. “Larsen, when are you meeting the Yusians?”
“I’m not meeting them.”
“Even now? Now that they owe us an explanation about the metamorphosis and why they gave us no advance notice?”
“My stand toward them remains unchanged.”
“Unchanged, yes, but can that be considered a stand?”
Larsen closed the file and stood up. “We are wasting time, Simon. If there is nothing else—”
“Wait for me in your office,” I said.
“Why?”
“So that you can me give me the Yusian effigy of Stein.”
I gave Reder a sign that he was dismissed as well, and he immediately followed Larsen out of the room.
“Vernie,” I began, “can you tell me when you’ll start testing the defractor?”
“We haven’t decided yet. In two or three days—could be a little more.”
“Or less?”
“No, not less. I won’t be able to catch up with all the work! Things are complicated enough as it is.”
“What things?”
He pressed his cheek with his hand as if he had a sudden toothache, made a sour face, and said nothing.
“Don’t worry,” I reassured him, “I was bluffing when I mentioned the personal surveillance. I have no intention to keep you under constant observation, so do your assignments at your own pace. After all, I didn’t come here to get in the way.”
This time around he managed somehow to cover his relief.
I added, “But since you don’t even try to establish any relationship with the Yusians, I really wonder why you’re here.”
“What’s to wonder, Simon? We’re researching the planet, testing its effects, studying the plants, and conducting various experiments. In short, we’re collecting information for the colonization.”
“Listen, Vernie, it’s quite clear to me that your job has no direct bearing on the colonization. That’s why I’d like to know what you, personally, think about—”
