Down was behind me. Down was back where my stomach still wanted to be. I flew forward like a straw in a hurricane.
The world squeezed as I plunged down the gullet of the Worm, the Sperm. The squeezing was gentle, but unstoppable. My body compressed obligingly.
Outside the Sperm, the compression would have killed me: bones would snap and poke splinters through internal organs; eyes would burst; muscles would be kneaded to thread. Inside, however, the laws of physics were daintily overruled. I was a thing infinitely malleable.
Down was inside me, a point halfway between navel and groin. The Chinese call that point the dantien, the center of the soul. I fell toward my center like rain.
The center of my soul. The center of my soul. If I conceived a child, this was where it would grow. When I died, this was where I would run.
Down was everywhere around me. I flew outward. I exploded into my body. My skin snapped taut like a sail catching a gust of wind. I felt blood surging through my brain. The world burned red outside my closed eyelids.
Down was the vector of my descent. My eyes flickered open.
I rolled with the impact of my landing. Grass lashed wet streaks across my faceplate. In that moment, I remembered how grass smelled on summer afternoons, when I was young and would live forever.
But I didn't smell the grass; I smelled only my own sweat. My tightsuit and I were a closed system.
Breathing the odors of my body, I stood up.
Down was the pull of gravity beneath my feet. Melaquin.
Melaquin Without Stories
Overhead, a cloudless blue sky surrounded a yellow sun. Around me, a grassy field danced with wildflowers. Black-eyed Susans. Daisies. He loves me, he loves me not.
A few paces to my left, Yarrun scrambled to his feet. Green grass stains were streaked across the white of his suit. He shrugged off his backpack and began to rummage through it.
I powered my throat transceiver to maximum strength. "Jacaranda, do you read?"
"Loud and clear, Explorer," Harque answered, with just the faintest tone of insolence.
"Christ, I love that ride!" Chee's voice said over the com-set.
I looked around. A few meters away, Chee lay spreadeagled face-down in the grass. He made no effort to get up, but his feet kicked enthusiastically like a gleeful child. Good — no damage to his spinal cord. "Jacaranda," I said over the radio, "the Drop was successful. Proceed to record."
"Roger. Recording."
Idly, I wondered if Harque was lying; but I had stopped caring. I would do my job, I would make my reports, and I would be professional to the very end.
Formally, I announced, "Explorer First Class Festina Ramos, TSS Jacaranda, reporting initial survey of Melaquin, AOR. 72061721, Inter-date 2452/9/23. Other party members: Explorer Second Class Yarrun Derigha and Admiral Chee. Any comments for the record, Admiral?"
"The High Council of Admirals can kiss my—"
"Thank you, Admiral. On a more immediate note, Melaquin appears to be an extremely Earthlike planet with local weather and flora similar to the temperate zone of New Earth… the Lake District of Novatario, I'd say. Thick grass growing calf- to knee-height. Wildflowers highly reminiscent of daisies and black-eyed Susans. About a hundred meters away, this meadow falls off into a ravine with deciduous trees on its side. And in the opposite direction, we have bluffs descending to a sizable freshwater lake.
"There is a good deal of insect activity apparent here: I can see several on the wildflowers around me. They are highly reminiscent of terrestrial bees." In fact, they were exactly like terrestrial bees, big fuzzy bumblebees in yellow and black… the kind we all ran from as children, even though adults told us not to make sudden moves. "I can also see three butterflies not too far away. Two are a greenish-white, wingspan about three centimeters; the other is highly reminiscent of a Monarch butterfly."
It was a Monarch butterfly. Orange and black, landing on a milkweed plant whose pods spilled creamy floating seeds.
"In short," I said aloud, "one's immediate impression of local flora and fauna is that they are visual duplicates of Earth species. Do you concur, Admiral Chee?"
"The High Council commits unnatural acts with poodles."
"Duly noted, Admiral. Thank you."
The Bumbler
"Bumbler operational," Yarrun said with exaggerated diction. (He was always self-conscious about having his voice recorded. A typical exploration report from the two of us consisted of a steady stream of blather from me, with infrequent one- or two-word interjections from Yarrun.)
The Bumbler — officially our "Portable Wide Spectrum Amplification and Analysis Datascope" but only called that by quartermasters — was a hand-held scanning device about the size and shape of a flat-topped coffee pot. It served two functions:
A. Its screen could be tuned to display any range of the electromagnetic spectrum in a visible form… handy if you wanted to check the neighborhood for the IR glow of warm-blooded fauna, or take an X-ray shot of some animal specimen's skeleton.
B. The machine was constantly analyzing incoming data for hints suggesting the approach of hostile lifeforms. The Bumbler broadcast an alarm if it detected anything moving toward us. It had saved my life at least twice, and I was grateful; I was not, however, overwhelmed with the Bumbler's acumen. It was a kindly little machine that meant well in its bumbling way, but it was not as bright as one might hope — it took so long to do a risk analysis that the alarm sometimes went off after the first attack.
Surveying
"Infrared scanning," Yarrun said, turning a careful circle with the Bumbler in front of him. "Cat-sized creature," he said, suddenly pointing off to my right; but almost immediately, he lowered his hand and muttered, "Went down a hole."
"Another rabbit?" Chee asked. He was sitting up now, working at the release catches of his helmet.
Yarrun didn't answer. He completed his sweep, then reported, "Negative warm-bloods now."
"Then we'll begin standard sampling," I told him. I reached into my own backpack. On top of everything else lay my stunner, and I slid it into my hip holster. In entertainment bubbles, donning a weapon is always a portentous affair; but that's because in entertainment bubbles, weapons have a more tangible chance of stopping whatever is trying to kill you. In my case, I was only moving the stunner out of my backpack because it lay in the way of the plastic bags we used to hold samples.
Yarrun traditionally took plant samples while I dug up packets of soil. I wasn't particularly interested in dirt, but I had sat through four soil analysis electives at the Academy because geology was one of Jelca's majors.
My own major was zoology. It meant that whenever we shot an animal, Yarrun made me decide what to do with the carcass.
"Ahhhh!" Chee sighed, inhaling deeply as he removed his helmet. The sight of him, naked to the planet's microbes, filled me with envy and anger… like the time when I was a teenager, and watched girls with normal faces go skinny-dipping as if it were the height of erotic sophistication. I knew it wasn't, and I knew it was.
"It smells wonderful out here!" Chee cried in delight.
"Could you please describe the smell, sir?"
"It smells real. Grass. Air that hasn't been through anyone else's lungs. Glorious."
"And you feel well?"
"Better than I have in months." He arched his back in a happy stretch. "Forget the damned samples, Ramos. Let's go for a walk."
"Begging the admiral's pardon," I replied, "but we are conducting a survey mission here."
"You're conducting an execution, Ramos. The survey is nothing but horseshit."
"Any information we gather may assist other parties who land here," I insisted. "No Explorer is an island."
"Don't give me that John Donne crap," Chee grumbled. "Do you know what he said about Shakespeare?" Turning his back on me, the admiral headed in the direction of the lake, taking ostentatiously deep breaths.
"Admiral," I called out, "please don't wander off. You don'
t understand how risky—"
"I understand fine! I'm just going to look at the water."
I considered tackling him. Or shooting him. But the edge of the bluffs really wasn't far for him to wander. If our goal was to use him as bait for whatever danger lurked on Melaquin, I had to give him his lead.
It took real effort to watch him walk away from me. Explorers don't let go easily.
The Worm
The first soil sample I took contained an earthworm. Technically speaking, I suppose it was a Melaquinworm, but it looked like an earthworm to me: brown, annelid, roughly ten centimeters long, with the familiar thick clitellum band partway along its body.
"Greetings," I said to it, feeling ridiculous. "I am a sentient citizen of the League of Peoples. I beg your Hospitality."
"Find something?" Yarrun called.
"A worm," I told him.
"You're talking to a worm?" Chee cackled over the com-set.
"I am talking to an alien lifeform that may prove to be sentient. Don't be so narrow-minded!"
"I bet it's just a worm."
Almost certainly, Chee was right. On the other hand, you never know when you might be scoring goodwill points with the League. They supposedly keep constant watch on all human activities.
I let the worm crawl for a moment, then nudged a stone into its path. It bumped its nose into the stone and seemed confused.
Proof enough for me. It was stupid; it was just a worm.
I shot it with my stunner and put it in a plastic bag.
The Bird
As Chee walked toward the cliff, a bird suddenly dashed out of the grass near his feet with a great panicked chirping. Yarrun and I both drew stunners and aimed. But the bird simply scuttled several meters away and made no gestures we could interpret as a threat.
In fact, it ran clumsily, one wing drooping.
"I didn't touch it!" Chee said with aggrieved innocence.
"I'm sure you didn't," I told him. "Stay where you are, please."
Carefully, I walked toward Chee. The bird flopped about, squawking loudly.
"What's wrong with it?" Chee asks.
"It's a… it displays the appearance and behavior of a mother killdeer. She's pretending she has a broken wing. She wants us to chase her rather than snoop around her territory." I searched the grass near Chee's feet. Autumn seemed late in the year for what I expected to find, but every species has individuals who are out of step with the times.
Two paces away, I found the nest the killdeer was protecting. There were three eggs in the nest, their shells dirty white with brown speckles.
Three beautiful eggs.
Eggs
I took the Bumbler from Yarrun and crouched beside the nest. Melaquin's atmosphere blocked most of the X-rays emitted by the local sun, Uffree; but the Bumbler was extremely good at amplifying what little there was.
Inside each egg was a tiny bird. (Their mother squawked frantically at me from a distance.) The Bumbler showed only their skeletons, curled into positions that seemed impossibly cramped. The little birds filled the eggs completely; within hours, they would hatch.
"Greetings," I whispered softly to them. "I am a sentient citizen of the League of Peoples. I beg your Hospitality."
The mother squawked in anguish, dashing back and forth with her feigned broken wing.
Gone
"Where's Chee?" Yarrun asked suddenly.
My head snapped up. Yarrun and I were alone in the meadow.
"Admiral Chee, come in, admiral," I called over the radio, keeping my voice calm.
No response.
"Maybe he fell off the bluffs," Yarrun suggested.
"You check." And while Yarrun hurried toward the edge of the bluffs, I switched the Bumbler to IR, and did a fast circle. Nothing showed up anywhere near Chee's size. He wasn't hiding in the grass. "Admiral Chee, please respond. Admiral Ch—"
A force closed on my windpipe like a strangling hand. I stopped talking mid-syllable. I could not breathe, I could not speak.
Oh shit.
Oh Shit
My throat transceiver. Was that it? Was that all?
Oh shit.
It was something in my throat implant. It was killing me. How stupid. How mindlessly stupid. Shit.
No monsters. No sentients. No deadly physical phenomena. Just crude treachery.
And I was fool enough to feel disappointed. I had a little Prope inside me who thought death should come glamorously. How juvenile. How stupid.
Shit.
Where had Chee gone? Over the bluffs? Did it matter?
A few paces in front of me, Yarrun was ripping off his helmet. He hadn't figured it out yet; he must have thought his suit had a malfunction.
I turned the Bumbler on him, its sensors still keyed to read X-rays. Yes, his transceiver had twisted itself around his windpipe. And now he understood — he turned to me with a look of bitter sorrow.
Shit.
They must have built the implants to kill us. Did the choking mechanism activate in response to some natural transmission generated on planet? Or did someone somewhere turn a dial? Had Harque pushed some button, just following orders? Did he know what he'd done?
Shit.
Yarrun's hands reached for his throat. I wondered if he would try to pull off the transceiver assembly. No good, I could see that on the X-rays — the mechanism was wrapped so tightly in place, he'd just rip out his larynx.
Shit. Oh shit. Yarrun was tapping out SOS in Morse code. Tapping on the transceiver itself. Gazing hopefully at the sky. And he couldn't know if the transceiver was still broadcasting, and he couldn't know if any of those goddamned Vacuum assholes on the bridge had even heard of Morse code, and he was still trying the only thing he could think of to save our lives.
Shit.
I blasted him with my stunner and he went down in a spiraling slump, as if he was turning to look at me one last time.
Forget it, forget it. I dropped to my knees beside him, upturning my whole backpack in search of the scalpel from the medical kit.
Maybe I could stay conscious long enough to perform an emergency tracheotomy. Cut through Yarrun's throat into his windpipe, below the point where the transceiver was strangling him. Open a new breathing passage.
I had done a tracheotomy once before. At the Academy. On a cadaver. I couldn't remember what grade I'd received.
The first cut had to be vertical — less chance of hitting a major vein or artery. Blood spurted as I worked the knife, but after that it slowed. I hoped that was a good sign.
My vision was clouding. Didn't matter. If I screwed this up, what was the difference?
No. There was a difference.
The medical kit contained no tracheotomy tube, but it did have an esophageal airway. The airway was so wide. Who had the nerve to cut a hole that big in someone's throat?
I did. I had the nerve.
My head was spinning. My eyes wouldn't focus. I pulled what I hoped was an ampoule of blood coagulant from the medical kit and sprayed it around the incision. I didn't know if I'd killed my friend. I'd die without knowing.
I thought, Yarrun, don't hate me. I don't want to be hated.
Then I thought, Shit, here I go.
Oh Shit.
Part VI
AWAKENING
Up
Up. Fight. Fight. Harder. Up. Up. Light. Here.
Ow, Shit
My head was pounding.
My throat felt raw and shredded.
Swallowing was like being clawed by some angry animal. As soon as I swallowed, I felt the urge to swallow again; surely, it couldn't hurt as much as the last time.
But it could.
Ow. Shit.
I was alive.
Alive
I was sprawled facedown, still in my tightsuit. The suit stank of urine and worse, but the blue OK light still glowed on the inside of my visor: no breach in the suit's skin, and at least an hour of canned air left. For what it was worth, the suit's monitors conside
red me in perfect health.
Monitors are stupid. I tried swallowing again, and regretted it.
Sloshing inside the suit, I pushed myself up to my hands and knees. My body cast an elongated shadow across the grass of the field; sunset was coming. We had landed an hour or two after sunrise and the season was early fall, so I'd been unconscious nine or ten hours.
And nothing had eaten me all that time. What a wimp-ass planet.
A moment later, a stab of memory jolted me. In a panic, I scrambled to my feet and looked left, right, all around.
Yarrun was gone.
Searching
The Bumbler and the medical kit still lay where I'd dropped them. The scalpel… the empty drug ampoule… even the esophageal airway I thought I had inserted into Yarrun's throat… everything was there except Yarrun. Flecks of dried blood dotted the grass where he had lain, but he was nowhere to be seen.
From reflex, I tapped my throat transceiver and called, "Yarrun! Yarrun!"
My words stayed muffled in my suit. Usually, I heard some trickle of feedback on my audio receiver, a tinny echo of my broadcast voice. This time, there was no such echo.
Radio silence. No-comm. My transmitter had gone Oh Shit.
Perhaps that was why I was still alive: the effort of strangling me had been too much for my throat implant. It had blown its circuits before finishing the job. Equipment burnouts were not a novelty in the Outward Fleet; the Admiralty tendered supply contracts to the lowest bidder.
That still didn't explain Yarrun's absence. If the tracheotomy worked, he might have woken before me. Had he pulled out the airway, then wandered off? He might have done so if he was dazed. With his helmet off, he'd been exposed to local air for hours — plenty of time to get infected by an alien microbe and go delirious.
Damn. How long would he stagger about before he fell off the cliffs into the lake?
Fighting the urge to race forward, I picked up the Bumbler and walked slowly to the edge of the bluffs. Rushing wouldn't help Yarrun, especially if I tripped over the edge myself.
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