Parker Interstellar Travels 6: The Celaran Ruins

by Michael McCloskey

  Jason nodded and propped himself up.

  Imanol flicked through some attendant feeds and saw a Blackvine.

  “Blackvine!” Imanol exclaimed.

  “Ah yes, we found that one. Appears to be friendly,” Siobhan said.

  “Just now? Is that a coincidence?” he asked reflexively.

  “I don’t know,” Telisa said.

  Imanol almost demanded why they had not told him. Had he been out of contact that long? Then he remembered he had not reported what he found to them, either.

  “We found some tools. Celaran, presumably. Though I guess they could be Blackvine.”

  “Where are they?” Telisa asked eagerly.

  “I have a funny grasper tool in my pack. Or it’s a grabbing rope, or something. It could even be a kid’s toy. We put a more dangerous looking artifact into a scout and sent it back.”

  “Siobhan?” Telisa asked.

  “We didn’t find anything.”

  Imanol considered making a crack about the pair doing something other than searching, but with Jason hurt even he did not feel like causing any more trouble.

  “I feel better now,” Jason croaked.

  “Let’s get him back and see what we’ve learned,” Telisa said. “We searched most of the houses today for just a few clues.”

  Jason pulled himself up on the platform, leaning on the rail. He could not stand up straight. His legs stayed slightly bent at the knees.

  “The suit may have made sure you’re not in pain, but that doesn’t mean you’re all patched up,” Imanol said.

  Jason faltered.

  “Take it easy, Jason, let us help you,” Telisa ordered. “Could there be poison?” Telisa asked Cilreth.

  “No, it’s from the electrocution,” Cilreth said. “The scanner warned that there may be some delayed symptoms. I think he’ll recover most of the way on his own. If there’s remaining nerve damage we may need to get him back to the core worlds to fix him up.”

  “Dammit. I bet the Clacker would be able to fix him up,” Telisa said.

  Or Shiny’s Trilisk AI.

  “This will be rough going with injured. We’ve all been climbing around like monkeys,” Cilreth said.

  “Caden, keep watch for attackers. We know of at least two types now. Siobhan, go ahead with him and plot an easy route back. Imanol, help Jason make his way.”

  “And the Blackvine?” Caden asked.

  “Cilreth and I will go back to the Blackvine and see if it wants to be our guest. As you noticed, I left an attendant to keep track of it.”

  “It’s an intelligent being, so we should name it,” Cilreth said.

  “Okay, go ahead. Anyone but Imanol can name it,” Telisa said, smiling.

  Oh, I’ll name it, all right. How about Leafy, Destroyer of Worlds?

  Cilreth was silent for a moment. “Vine... Vincent. It’s Vincent.”

  “Is Old Leafy really coming back with us?” Imanol asked.

  “We’ll see. We have to let Jason rest, and see if we can find what attacked you. There’s some chance it was a Celaran.”

  Chapter 10

  The PIT team clustered around the ship’s mess. The ship was so small there was barely room for the entire group. Even the Blackvine named Vincent had come aboard, though no one could speak with it. Telisa stood in a doorway. Everyone focused on her.

  “Okay, everyone. I gotta admit I’m getting impatient. What the hell does a Celaran look like? Siobhan?”

  Siobhan looked surprised. “They look like bats. Think of that little robot you found as a Celaroid. When it’s in flying form. Maybe their natural bodies can take different forms too, so it’s all natural to them that everything should have a bunch of functions.”

  “Jason?”

  Jason looked like a squid before the propeller. His face compressed.

  “They look like those things outside,” Jason said slowly. “You know, those things have those creepy fingers on each end. And I noticed today, all those racks on the walls in the houses, they were almost always in pairs, facing across from each other. About two meters apart. And we found the grasper tool. It looks just like those things, except it’s round in the middle instead of flat. But the three fingered hands are just too similar.”

  “So you’re saying... they hung there, one hand on each of those rails, slightly sagging across the middle,” Telisa said.

  “Yes.”

  “I also had the idea they look like those things out there, the eels,” Caden said without waiting for Telisa to ask him. “In fact, the eels could be the Celaran children. A seed ship came here, dropped some machines to make a colony, and they hatched a bunch of those things, or birthed them, or whatever, from a big gene bank like facties, but something went wrong. The computers failed to educate them or something, so now there’s just a bunch of wild Celaran children out there running through the woods.”

  Siobhan laughed. “Crazy,” she said, but she smiled.

  Telisa smiled. “I’m impressed! Interesting ideas there. Imanol, your turn.”

  Imanol shrugged. “Well, I would say the net creatures and the electrical things ate them. But those things seem at home among these vines, meaning they come from the Celaran’s home planet. The Celarans would not be surprised by them. So... it was something else. A predator, or a disease, or our buddy Old Leafy.”

  Telisa checked in on the Blackvine from an attendant video feed. It was carefully examining every bit of equipment in the bay. Telisa wondered what she would do if it caused a disruption by stealing something, or taking apart a critical piece of equipment.

  “So where are our alien bodies?” Telisa asked.

  “This is an advanced society. Either none of them died, or they had automated clean up,” Imanol said.

  “What did they look like?” Telisa pressed.

  “Well, actually, you know what? I’m changing my mind on the fly. They brought those predators from their home planet. So that means, to them, they’re not dangerous? That could be a clue. Either the Celarans are naturally one step up on the predator chain, or maybe they’re like plants and those predators don’t hunt them at all. That kind of points toward the Blackvines being the Celarans after all. Or maybe the silvery thing that attacked us. More like a plant to us than an animal.”

  “Cilreth said they left, and they had adequate warning,” Telisa shared. “As for me, I say they never arrived in numbers. There were only a very few, like the ones who lived in the one house. The colored streamers could be children’s play vines. I don’t know what they look like, except they’re about our size or smaller. They have vision, because they have windows. I’m thinking they’re jumpers or gliders, because of the doors and, well, they grew up among the vines. So they have claws or grippers to manipulate things that came from hanging on the vines. They don’t have jaws, because I think that food in the tower building is for them, so I think they basically suck up nutrients.”

  “You pressed us: what do they look like?” Imanol said.

  “Vampire bats,” Telisa said. “Flying, vine-hanging, and fluid drinking.”

  “The grasper device?”

  Telisa was quiet for a moment.

  “I think those glider snakes are the Celaran’s dogs or cats. Domesticated creatures they lived with turned feral. The doors keep them out though, so they weren’t house creatures. The doors recognize those things and keep them out. So they aren’t Celarans or Celaran children. So they could be like creatures brought for food, or just things the Celarans liked.”

  “Well back home my door doesn’t let strangers in,” Jason said. “It only lets me in.”

  “Well, you and Core World Security, to be fair,” Imanol said.

  “That is strange, wouldn’t it be more logical to let in things you recognize and want in, and keep everything else out? Why let unknown things like us in by default?” asked Siobhan.

  Telisa nodded. “I don’t know. Aliens. Either the doors are malfunctioning, or it made more sense to them to let anything
in except known dangers?”

  “Maybe Old Leafy hacked them out of their own buildings,” Imanol said.

  “Well don’t despair, we still have the largest ruins site left to check out,” Cilreth said. “And I’m not going to let the Blackvine hack this ship. Not that I believe that’s what happened.”

  “Let’s ask Vincent what the Celarans looked like,” Jason said. “He might know.”

  “Obvious question: how?” Cilreth asked.

  “Vincent can see. So let’s use pictures,” Siobhan said. “We can create a picture of us in one of the houses. And a picture of a Blackvine in one of the houses. We could put a picture of various local creatures in there, too. If we can somehow give him means to create a picture of his own, if he knows what they look like he might well draw them in the house.”

  “Primitive. But it’s worth a shot,” Telisa said. “Once we make progress we can rig some way to go high tech with it. We’re not able to speak with it at all so far, even though Cilreth knows some of their over-the-wire protocols.”

  “The fact it moves when we’re there means it’s one of the insane ones,” Imanol pointed out.

  “Ah yes. It is aware of us, and not terrified by our existence. Which is crazy for a Blackvine, apparently,” Siobhan said.

  “Yep, he’s a brave one if he moves around Fast and Frightening here,” Imanol said.

  Siobhan made an obscene gesture.

  “You can teach Vincent that one first,” Imanol suggested.

  “See what you can do. I’ll be looking at our new toys,” Telisa said, heading for the cargo bay. As she walked out, she opened a private link to Cilreth.

  “Cilreth,” Telisa said. Cilreth connected. “I wanted to talk about your reaction to the attack.”

  “I know. I’ve been trying to think about how to make it up to you,” Cilreth said.

  “Just explain what happened.”

  “The emotion controller cycle ended a second before the attack. I had it on because... I’ve been feeling some anxiety on the ground. I kept thinking about that damn thing that almost killed me on Chigran Callnir Four.”

  Of course. I’m so stupid.

  “When that thing attacked us, suddenly I couldn’t handle the fear that came flooding in. The suppressor somehow left me vulnerable. It took half a minute for me to be able to handle strong emotion again, like whatever part of my mind that can control emotion had completely relaxed. It was bad timing. I didn’t know it could happen. I won’t use the controller on the ground again.”

  “I see. Live and learn.”

  “No. We could have died and not learned,” Cilreth said.

  “I know the lure of the suppressor. For different reasons. I won’t use it either. If I can go without mine you can go without yours. Deal?”

  “Yes.”

  “Actually, you should set it up for the panic trigger I mentioned. Then it turns on if you really start to lose it.”

  “Okay, I will,” Cilreth said.

  “I’ll explain to the others what happened. That will help them to understand, so they won’t doubt you.”

  “Thanks.”

  ***

  Jason met Telisa in the bay as she pored over the alien cylinder.

  “Quite the toy you guys found out there,” Telisa said. “Though I just started looking at it.”

  Jason’s leg twitched a bit. The pain was a distant ache now.

  “That’s why I’m here. How do you figure it out?” Jason said.

  “Well, we start with a few canned procedures, like an EM scanner, the spectrometers, and simple visual analysis. After that, it’s a black art.”

  “But you have a lot of experience,” he said. “Teach me.”

  “You can watch. This is better done virtually. You should catch up on some training I have later. I made a lot of virtual models I can give you for things to practice on. You’ll kill yourself a few times.”

  “So this could definitely kill us,” Jason said. “It looks like a weapon.”

  “It does,” Telisa agreed. “Not sure yet.”

  “Well what isn’t it?” he asked.

  Telisa smiled. “It’s not a bomb. To many complex parts and no real chemical payload. Well, I guess I should say it’s not a chemical bomb.”

  Telisa turned it over on the table. “It also does not appear to have any foldaway arms or antennas or anything like that. As far as the outside structure, it’s pretty much what you see is what you get. I thought at first it might be like the little robots we found: able to radically change shape.”

  “It takes power right?”

  “Yes. There’s a cell in it that resembles the same technology as the batteries in the houses.”

  Telisa sent Jason’s link a pointer to her model of the device. He started to explore through its innards.

  “The hole is an important part of it. Something comes out of the aperture. Not air or liquid, either, I think,” he said. “I don’t see any parts like bullets.”

  “Which leaves us with light, probably,” Telisa said. “But we should keep in mind maybe it is supposed to receive something. We decided it was a weapon too quickly.”

  Jason nodded.

  “Did you get a chance to follow up on those supervine clusters you and Imanol found?”

  “Yes,” Jason said. “We did some revisiting of the orbital scans, and sent some attendants. Though we see large vines sourced in the ground all around us, it seems the largest, oldest, and longest vine networks start from these huge husks. They are pretty evenly distributed across the planet. There’s one about every 120 square kilometers.”

  “Well that just solidifies our theory that this place was Celaraformed. At this point, I’m willing to accept that as fact,” Telisa said.

  “It sure seems like it. Which makes me wonder: what was here before that?”

  “Exactly. Did they destroy an ecosystem already present here? And did it have any surprises for the Celarans?”

  ***

  Huornillel spotted an alien approaching at midday. It came through one of the square tunnels and came upon Huornillel in the metal room. It seemed likely the creature knew of her presence. It probably had a network of tools that let it track the others. Most likely including the mysterious sphere which had followed her since the aliens appeared.

  Huornillel wondered how the creatures could swarm around each other and get anything done. Truly alien, they did not use any of the higher strategies of peer interaction: They neither displayed hostile confrontation to elimination, nor mutual avoidance, nor did they form dominance and avoidance pairs. Instead they irrationally kept functioning together, suffering from the n-fold division of resources available among them, essentially stifling all of them at once. They were large, sentient creatures that operated on mass consumption and side by side uncontrolled function, just like giant bacteria. It was hard to believe. Together, they were doomed to be so much less than any one of them could be individually given all the available resources.

  How could they evolve like this? Hrm. Only if the resources where they came from were very high relative to their numbers. So they came from an unbelievably rich planet, or their numbers are very low. I could be looking at their entire race right here before me!

  The alien was once again closely focused on Huornillel. This had happened from time to time since she had met them: they would stay close and look only at her with those odd paired light sensors of theirs. Lensed sensors, even, like some of the primitive crawling creatures of her own home planet. The poor things could probably only focus on light coming from one distance at a time!

  The alien simultaneously sent bursts of electrostatic noise which Huornillel could sense with her toolkit at the same time it changed some colors on a flat surface. The alien began to emit patterns of basic mathematic principles.

  I have to destroy this thing, Huornillel thought. Otherwise, my resources will be leeched and I will be crippled as they are. These things will not flee or go dormant. Perhaps if I kill o
ne, the others will become avoidant.

  The thing persisted. It tried some more sequences. At the same time, Huornillel heard the alien interact with its tools along narrow bands of electromagnetic emissions. Huornillel felt far superior to the creatures. This one thought Huornillel was just another tool to be programmed! These aliens had concluded they had merely to send the proper codes and Huornillel would perform tasks for them!

  A moment of inspiration flitted across Huornillel’s nervous system.

  The aliens think they can use these codes to control me. They have that thought for a reason: this must work among themselves! They then assume it can work on me too.

  This new insight expanded further: this was how the creatures shared resources without killing each other or running away: One of them used their interaction protocols to dominate the others in some complex manner that had been unseen by Huornillel. Evolution must have provided them a simple route to efficiently diverting resources to one individual. The control codes probably allowed for dominance with no need for physical violence. That way none of them risked being harmed.

  Amazing. Elegant and efficient, in its own twisted way.

  So this was a dominance and avoidance system after all! Except the avoidance part was not necessary. It turned peers into tools. One of them had control of the others. This was probably the dominant one before her, unless there was actually a complex hierarchy. The possibilities of such a massive system built upon the interaction protocols boggled the mind. Huornillel doubted she could grasp all the ramifications at once.

  This had one very useful conclusion: If Huornillel knew how, she could program and command these creatures! As an alien she did not need to play by the rules placed upon them by evolution. Once she knew how they worked, she could use what she learned to her advantage. As an outsider she would come with none of the disadvantages. This was a very familiar concept: when a new species was introduced into a new ecosystem, sometimes it flourished rapidly, dominating the competition which had evolved together with the surrounding flora and fauna. Huornillel could be that invader.

  She began to respond to the alien inputs with a new plan in mind: first, learn the protocols of inter-alien command; second, to use it to gain dominance among them.