Five by Five

by Aaron Allston

  Gersen climbed to his feet and went to the old man. Bolivar never introduced himself as the village hetman, or as a chieftain. Maybe he didn’t have such an official title, but he definitely had the role.

  “What is it, my host?” Gersen asked.

  “I have a favor to ask of you.”

  Gersen nodded, unsurprised. Here it was. He was to be asked to wed the man’s daughter, or to go and deliver a message, or some such nonsense. He was almost glad this moment had come. He felt it was best to get it over with. He was not overly concerned, as he knew himself very well. He was a wanderer, a rare breed on Faust. If Bolivar wanted too much, he’d agree with a smile, and then begin planning his stealthy exit from this odd, friendly little place.

  When Bolivar’s question finally came however, he was surprised by its nature: “Do you value your life, sir?”

  “Why, yes. I certainly do.”

  “Pity,” Bolivar said. “I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do about it. The whole thing is quite unfair. I’ve consulted the ancestral files, and there can be no doubt of their meaning.”

  Gersen shook his head. “What are you talking about?”

  Bolivar gestured toward the entrance to the village. “You come from outside—from lands beyond ours. Is this not so?”

  “Of course.”

  “I investigated the items in your pack, you know that. I’ve scanned them, and recorded them. A full log was produced.”

  “How?” Gersen asked, reaching for his pack, which had never strayed far from his person.

  Bolivar laughed. “Don’t worry, everything is there. A man’s possessions are his own in this settlement.”

  Gersen nodded, frowning. His eyes were already roving the walls. There were ramps here and there, mostly built to service the torches that lined the wall top. The task of getting out of here looked easier than getting in, at least.

  Bolivar studied his own worn boots and talked in a low, sorrowful voice. “You must understand who we are,” he whispered. “This is drop zone six.”

  Gersen returned his attention to the old man. He frowned. “Drop zone six? The third ship landed at a single point, to my knowledge. Somewhere near the equator.”

  “Yes, of course. But we aren’t from the third ship. We were brought here by the sixth lander—of the first ship.”

  Gersen laughed at that. “Every child knows the first two colonies failed. Everyone died. We are the last—descendants of refugees, not really colonists.”

  “I’ve heard that,” Bolivar said. “We do get a rare visitor out here, once every year or two. And we’ve never argued about it. But it is not true. Allow me to explain.”

  He stood up and walked away. Gersen followed him doubtfully into one of the domes. The old man snapped on a system. It was an observation tank. Inside, in three dimensions, various scenes played out. Gersen watched with interest. He knew most of the story, every survivor on Faust did. The story of the colonization explained why more ships never came, and why those who survived here never summoned them. Faust was believed to be a dead world, the graveyard of two early colonies. No one had bothered to send another ship to the doomed planet, and Old Earth had stopped sending out colony ships decades ago in any regard.

  First, the Faustian Chain swam into being inside the tank. Gersen was awestruck by the technology. Just to possess the generators to power such a device—much less to possess the device itself. It was priceless!

  He tried to put aside thoughts of greed and wonder, and instead focused on the presentation. The Faustian Chain was a loose collection of stars that drifted at the outer rim of the galaxy. Originally colonized by Earth separatists during the third expansion, the stars served as warm suns over numerous inhabitable planets. One such world was none other than Faust itself, the sole planet of note circling a burning red M-class ember.

  Faust was one of the first planets discovered, due to its nearness to Earth. The entire chain had been named for this ill-fated world.

  One of the earliest colony ships had arrived and discovered a seemingly idyllic planet. Faust was rich in growths, with warm seas and placid skies. But a year after the first colonists had settled here and a second wave of jubilant immigrants arrived—the grim truth was discovered. The colonists from the first expedition were all dead and gone. Only bloodstains and scratch marks were to be found in their wake. They had disturbed the pods during the wrong season shortly before the second ship arrived.

  Cautiously, the new arrivals set up housekeeping, suspecting a natural force unknown to them. After a few months they relaxed, shrugging off the mysterious disappearances. The world was lush and there was so much work to be done!

  Some three years later, when a patrol boat had moored in orbit over the world, the second colony settlements were found to be as empty and derelict as the first. The ship had fled, broadcasting the news to every colonial seedling in the cluster. It was decades before another splinter group dared to land on the infamous crust of Faust. These people were a respectful sect of humble souls who clung to rocky islands off the shores of the primary continent. Never did they dare enter the interior, harvest the mangrove fruits or capture any of the flapping skitter-fish, unless they were far out to sea. They eked out a thin existence derived from the goats, barley and fruit trees they’d brought with them. Even their soups were tasteless and bland.

  But they had survived. Being refugees, they made no attempt to contact other worlds and let them know they’d successfully colonized a haunted world. Years passed, and they’d finally mastered the trick of surviving on this harsh planet.

  “I knew most of what you describe,” Gersen said, walking around the tank full of flickering images of ships, officers and planetary vistas from above the atmosphere. “But you are claiming the histories are wrong?”

  “Yes,” Bolivar said. “We are from the original colony ship. This single settlement is the only one that survived.”

  Gersen smiled at him thinly. He had decided it was best to humor Bolivar. “All right, Captain. Were you on the original colony ship yourself?”

  Bolivar chuckled. “What? Do you think me mad? I’m talking about my mother’s father. And I’m not a captain, either. I’m a warden, nothing more. But I’m the only survivor from an officer’s family.”

  He produced his silver whistle and eyed it wistfully. “They blew this on Old Earth as the throngs were pressed aboard. Hard to believe, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Gersen said, standing suddenly. “But I’m afraid I have to be leaving now.”

  “Don’t you wish to know the rest of the tale?”

  Gersen hesitated. He was fairly sure that he didn’t. But he thought of Estelle, and the excellent food he’d been given. The skies were darkening outside, and the plants would be no less irritable than they had been the night before. “What more can you tell me?” he asked, sitting down again.

  “How we survived, when all else died before us?”

  Gersen nodded and gestured for Bolivar to continue.

  “It was simple enough, really,” said the old man, looking pleased to have a captive listener. “We did not truly understand this place at first, this deadly planet. The fact that the plants here have primitive minds and motive power, that they are more akin to starfish back home than they are to true plants. That they are not truly flora or fauna, but rather something in-between.”

  “They are mindless, yet they move.”

  “Yes! That is because they have ganglia, you see. They are like small insects or other simple creatures. Like a man with a spinal cord, but no brain. They live, and respond to stimuli in a predictable fashion.”

  “So, somehow your relatives figured this out and came up with a way to survive?”

  “They built this fortress, for that is what it is, and they devised a set of rules which all who live here must follow. Can you show me the contents of your pack?”

  Gersen hesitated.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Bolivar said. “It was scanned as you came in. Y
ou possess plant materials.”

  “They are sterile, and were harvested when it was safe to do so. The pods will never know, and won’t seek revenge.”

  Bolivar nodded. “Clearly, you speak the truth, or you would not have survived this long. But it does not matter.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You see, you have broken our rules. We cannot welcome you here, although it pains me to say it. Our rules have kept this colony alive when all else failed for many, many years. At some point, the people will learn of your countless crimes—the harvesting of pods. These are things we never do here. Things which go against the dictates that have kept us alive against all odds. I can’t keep your secret for long.”

  Gersen became uncomfortable. “I’ll leave then. I’ll leave tonight.”

  Bolivar nodded and looked apologetic. “Wait a week or so,” he said. “Oh, and would you please lie with my daughter repeatedly before you go? We need seeding from outside, you see. That is—if you don’t mind?”

  “I …” Gersen licked his lips and tried not to look eager. “No. No, I wouldn’t mind.”

  –5–

  Gersen spent several pleasant nights with the lovely Estelle. She was without skill, but he found her shy, earnest nature very stimulating. They coupled repeatedly until Gersen lay stretched out on their goat-leather bedding and sighed heavily.

  Estelle ran her hands over him in the half-light. On the fourth evening, she found his injured legs. He’d forgotten to cover them, but did so quickly the moment she touched his ridged scars.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Did I hurt you?”

  “No.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be, it’s nothing.”

  “May I see? Perhaps I can help.”

  Gersen hesitated, but then relented and threw off the leather flap he’d pulled over himself. What did it matter? The girl seemed kind enough and he would be leaving soon in any case. He felt a pang at that thought. He’d visited other places like Zone Six, but never one so welcoming. It would be a shame to leave here. Perhaps, after the ripening had passed, he would return for a visit.

  “Did the pods do this to your legs? It makes me sad.”

  Gersen looked at her. He almost laughed, but she wouldn’t have understood. She was innocent, in a way. He supposed it came from living within a circle of boulders for her entire life.

  “Yes,” he said, “the pods did this. A pod-walker, to be exact. Do you want to hear the story?”

  Estelle looked at him with wide, solemn eyes and nodded. Pod-walkers were always the subject of haunting tales on Faust.

  “I was crossing a river—that’s a body of fresh water that moves downhill.”

  She laughed. “I know what a river is! We have vids, you know.”

  “Of course. Anyway, it was on the mainland, long after the ripening. I was passing through a forest and—”

  She could not contain her amazement any longer. She slapped his knee, which made him wince. “You lie to impress me!” she said. “No sane man would walk the forests on the mainland. Never.”

  He shrugged and smiled. “I never said I was fully sane.”

  “But you said it was after the ripening. Why would pod-walkers travel then?”

  “There are pod-walkers among the biggest fields in every season. They don’t all hibernate until the ripening. Do you ever see them on this island in the off-season?”

  “Rarely,” she said. “They come up from the sea sometimes, but never get close to the walls. Father says the beds up here are too thinly-soiled and so they don’t bother. They only seem to be interested in the new plantings, anyway. They do their business, tending to the newest plants and seeding fresh ones with substances from their bodies, and then move on.”

  “Well, on the mainland, things work differently. One of them caught my scent, and I had to run from it.”

  “How could you outrun such a monster?”

  “There’s only one way, you must run through the thickest growths. They will scratch you, but as the pod-walker pursues, the plants will grasp at it more desperately than they would a man.”

  Estelle stared at him, her big eyes distant. He could tell she was beginning to believe his tale. “They would all reach up to be fed. But how did you live?”

  Gersen shrugged, and indicated his legs. “The pods were more interested in the walker than they were in me. They lashed my legs badly, shredding my clothing. But there was no venom in their stings due to the season.”

  “If they’d tripped you and you’d fallen—they would have scratched you to death.”

  “Of course, but even that’s better than being peeled by a walker.”

  She looked horrified. Gersen smiled and kissed her. He could see she was impressed by his story, and he was glad he’d told her about the experience. He’d always hidden his injuries, fearing the scars would repel others, particularly women. It was a relief to have found out otherwise.

  Getting up, he went outside into the darkness and walked down the hill to a dusty area to relieve himself. He thought of Estelle, and smiled as he walked. She was going to haunt his thoughts long after he’d left this village, he knew that now.

  As he turned dust into mud, Gersen looked up into the sky. He saw something there, something he’d forgotten about. His smile faded.

  It was the streak—a strange line of light in the sky. He recalled now it had been there a few days earlier when he’d first arrived at the village. He tilted his head to examine it further. It glimmered brightly. His first impression was that it had to be a comet. They were fairly common in the cluster, much more so than back on Old Earth.

  The Oort cloud of Earth extended about a lightyear out in every direction, but in the cluster, the stars were much closer. The cloud of icy debris orbiting each star reached out far enough to interfere with the next system. The closely huddled stars often shared comets, tossing the icy chunks from one gravity-well to the next, like a circle of men playing catch with a stone.

  But this streak in the sky was different from comets Gersen had seen in the past. It had changed its nature since the previous evening. This wasn’t just due to the nearness of Faust’s star, either. It took him a moment to realize that the angle of the object’s tail was wrong. The light streak wasn’t pointing in the correct direction. Gersen knew what most thought of as a comet was really a tail of melting debris, dragged out behind the dirty snowball nucleus. As one approached a star, the tail changed directions as it was blown back like a long rippling scarf by the blasting stellar winds. But no matter how it was viewed, a comet’s tail always pointed away from a star as it passed by. This comet’s tail was pointing out into space at a random angle. In fact, it wasn’t even straight. It seemed to curve noticeably. Which meant the object wasn’t a comet at all. Gersen frowned up at it, thinking hard.

  At that moment, he heard a crunch to his left side. He glanced in that direction. A hand reached for him out of the darkness.

  Gersen had not survived for years as a vagabond by having slow reflexes. He did not cry out or stumble in surprise. He didn’t even reach to pull up his pants. Instead, he stopped the descending hand with one of his own, grabbing the man’s wrist and yanking him closer. He met the surprised face with his second fist. The man staggered away, blood flowing.

  Another hand from a fresh attacker latched onto his shoulder from behind. Gersen rocked back and jabbed hard with his elbow. He heard a retching sound. He turned and rained blows on the second man.

  But then a flash of light went off inside his head. He spun around, stunned.

  Looking up from the ground, he saw the heavy face of Kerth grin down at him. There was a stout stick in Kerth’s hand, and blood outlined each of the man’s big teeth. Kerth had been the first man to lay hands upon him.

  Then the kicks and punches rained down on Gersen, until he no longer felt them. At least, he thought, he’d managed to land one hard blow.

  –6–

  The new Engin
eer worked tirelessly on the ship’s stealth drive, but he soon realized the task was hopeless. The drive could not be repaired without returning to Talos. The technology was unknown elsewhere in the cluster, as far as the records showed. The idea that spare parts could be found on some backwater hole like Faust was laughable.

  But the Engineer wasn’t laughing. He knew, unlike his predecessors, that his very existence was in jeopardy. The Captain was not easily swayed by facts or sound reasoning. As the Captain was fond of saying, he was only impressed by results.

  The technical problem itself wasn’t all that daunting. The fields that dampened the emissions were out of phase, and they needed to be recalibrated. The trouble was with the nature of technology itself in the cluster. Unlike other, more organized regions of human-colonized space, the Chain had diverged. Without centralized interstellar governments and regular trade, each world had grown their own local industries to create spare parts and solve technical problems. Although they shared theoretical knowledge and many possessed advanced science, their industrial development was isolated. There were few standards that reached beyond the range of a single world. A generator produced on one planet worked on the same principles as those built elsewhere—but they were incompatible, producing power of a varied amperage, with mismatched couplings and fuel types.

  The nature of the particular component that had broken down exacerbated the problem. It wasn’t a simple power unit, or a sensor. It was the field governor, a part of the stealth drive that was a homegrown device developed on Talos. Privately, the Engineer wasn’t sure that the ship could be quickly fixed even if they were able to make planetfall at the famed orbital docks of Old Earth itself.

  “Engineer?” the Captain transmitted over the ship’s net. “It is time to make your report. You will do so in person.”

  Responding to the summons, the Engineer put down his instruments and headed for the bridge. He didn’t hesitate, and he didn’t prepare any documentation. He already knew what he was going to say.