Alien Earth

by Megan Lindholm

  His route took him through a series of corridors, in and out of utility chambers like the one where he had eaten, and through more corridors. And always, always past the darkened mouths of womb chambers. He tried to imagine how many Humans the Beastship had transported when she was fully loaded; could not. Many. Enough to populate a small world.

  He was beginning to suspect that Tug was leading him on a wild goose chase when a womb chamber ahead on his left suddenly lit up. He slowed. Creepy. It was always creepy to go into a womb chamber and see Humans sleeping, lives suspended. Like something out of a dead teenager movie. Hah! Someday he’d have to tell Tug about one of those. It would probably completely revise his understanding of Human entertainments.

  Raef realized he had stopped, just outside the chamber. Well, did he want to see a newly remodeled Human or didn’t he? He did. Well, inside then.

  It wasn’t that different from the other times. The chamber felt warm and moist. The smell reminded Raef of the time the dog had birthed puppies in his room. Only two wombs were occupied. The others were slackly empty grey sacs, anchored to the walls of the chamber by thick grey hoses like giant umbilical cords.

  The two occupied wombs were like fat grey cocoons, only smooth. The cords feeding into and away from them were swollen with liquid. Raef thought he could see a slow pulse working through them. He jerked his eyes away, sickened as he always was by the gut look of them. He pulled himself into the room until he could look down onto one dormant face. The membrane that covered him was thin and greyish-pink. It was like looking at someone through a pair of dusty pink sunglasses. But even that wasn’t enough to disguise how ugly the guy was. Big nose and ears, all out of proportion to his face. And the face, hell, the whole man was small. Probably would just come up to Raef’s shoulder.

  Raef pushed away, caught himself on a rung just short of the other womb. He glanced in at the second crewman, and quickly away. As bad as the first one. Baby face, round chin, but the same big ears and nose. Reminded him of chimp ears, pink and round and sticking out from their heads. The vague notions of ordering Tug to awaken them so he could talk to them evaporated.

  “Questions?” Tug’s voice broke into his reverie. Raef thought he could hear a touch of sympathy in his voice.

  “Naw,” Raef said abruptly and levered himself up the ladder and out of the womb chamber. He traversed the gently lit corridor again. The light, like Tug’s voice, was sourceless. Raef cast no shadow at all. “Why?” he asked after a while.

  “Why what?”

  “Why are they like that? Small, like kids, but with great big ears and noses?”

  “They resemble children to you because they are small. The captain has not yet entered puberty. This adds to his young appearance. The process takes some years now rather than a few months. And the ears and noses are larger because they are Mariners. Spacers, you might say. So their lives have been extended by the use of the wombs, far beyond the ordinary life spans even of their contemporary Humans.”

  “So what’s that got to do with the big ears and noses?” Raef swung along faster, suddenly eager to leave the sleeping Dumbos behind.

  “The wombs, as you know, do not ‘freeze’ life. They greatly retard the aging process that afflicts Humans and limits them to a short life span. But the wombs cannot halt aging, nor growth. Your hair, for instance. Despite using a retardant on your scalp, it still grows. As do your fingernails. Your beard is not a problem, as you used the stronger retardant on your face.”

  “What’s that got to do with ears and noses?”

  “On Humans, ears and noses are parts of the body that continue to grow throughout the life span. Those features became more pronounced on your elderly people, even when eighty or ninety was considered a long life span. Now, when Humans can survive to be two hundred years old, the ears and nose still continue to grow. It is an accepted mark of age. And, for Mariners, who continue to grow, even if the wombs do not let them age, large ears and noses are the marks of their trade.”

  Raef had stopped moving. He started to lift a hand to his face, quickly quelled the idea. Ridiculous. The Arthroplana hadn’t changed his body; he didn’t look anything like those two freaks back there in the wombs.

  “Raef?” Tug’s voice had a kindly note. “Move along to the utility chamber. I’ve had Evangeline fix you an energy sweet. And she has the recording filaments ready now. If you feel like telling us The Wizard of Oz.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

  And he’d gone back to the chamber and eaten the cookie bars Evangeline made for him, and had recited the whole Wizard of Oz to them. And then told them all about the movie that had been made about it, and the horse of a different color and the ruby slippers and Judy Garland acting like a little girl for the movie. And everything. Probably had taken two or three days, only there weren’t days anymore. Only cycles. And then they’d flushed the last of the digested food from his system, and he’d gone back to the womb chamber and crawled in. And as he’d guided the connector tube to the permanently implanted fitting in his navel, he’d thought to himself, Damn right, Dorothy. There’s no place like home. And no home anymore at all.

  Raef wasn’t sure how many Wakeups ago that had been. But he wasn’t the least bit curious to see his crew anymore. Just knowing they were there, and subject to him. That was enough. Even if they were Dumbos.

  [Dumbos?] queried his mother.

  He sighed in his sleep and began the long explanation.

  The floor of his chamber quivered, and Tug was shaken loose from the Busted Flush and the plain brown wrapper on a dead girl. Another ripple convulsed the walls as he scuttled toward the central control. He felt Evangeline change directions twice, darting frantically as if pursued, before he was able to gain attachment with her. The energy of her raw emotions almost snapped his intellectual control of her. He discharged six nematocysts before he felt their calming influence spreading through her system. Still she shivered, trying to twitch herself away from whatever had disturbed her. He had a long battle to separate her emotions from the event that had sparked them. When he had reestablished intellectual control of the Beast, he checked the health of the Humans. All were intact.

  No major damage done, he told her comfortingly. And when she expressed little interest as to the health of the Humans, he rebuked her. Had she stopped to think how she might hurt them all, reacting like that? Didn’t she know she had to control her emotions, for the harmony and well-being of all within her?

  Well, yes, she did, but it had frightened her so. It was so much like that last time, and when the other Beasts had called the news to her, she had felt their agitation. Humans again, always humans, disrupting things, changing things, doing that ugly dying thing they all did, but many of them doing it at once, so disgusting, so disturbing, so disharmonious.

  Two more nematocysts, carefully placed, and withdrawn before they fully emptied. His body would be months replenishing his supplies of the calming poisons. Her gibbering slowed. He had time to sort her thoughts. Tug grew still, crouched atop her neural trunk.

  Many Humans had died again?

  Affirmative. The response so lackadaisical. Had he oversedated her?

  Where? Evangeline, where? Coordinates of where many Humans had died suddenly. No, more specific, not just the star of the system. He knew it had to be near Castor and Pollux, they were the only planets that had many, many Humans to die. No, very, very specific. Tug studied her response. Conflicting thoughts in him, thoughts he kept carefully sealed from Evangeline. Anger and disgust at what Humans did, as part of their proto-carnivorous natures. And the same tingling excitement as when he read the first sections of a mystery. He contemplated the damage to Delta Station, calculated the amount of time that had passed since they had left there, then considered the accidental blast that had vented sub-subsection G-A-½ to the emptiness of space. It wasn’t so bad, he comforted Evangeline distractedly, don’t take it so to heart, these things happen, the important thing is to go on fulfil
ling one’s own duty. The part of the station that had been vented hadn’t been an essential one. The Humans living there were all the old ones, already beginning the process Humans called dying. In another blink of our time, they would have been gone anyway. Calm yourself. And resume the course.

  He felt her respond, sluggishly but precisely, relieved to let him take her anxiety and fears and give her back calmness. He drew the unpleasant emotions out of her, as leeches in ancient Human medicine had drawn unhealthy humors from patients. Talbot would have liked that simile, Tug thought. He would have been pleased with my progress.

  Tug tried to reckon it in Human years, to understand that Talbot’s whole life span had been used up since the last time he had seen him. One hundred and twenty-seven of his years ago, Talbot had been the crew on the Evangeline, for a single voyage. A brief voyage, only forty light-years round trip. But Talbot had chosen to take many, many Wakeups. And so he had passed nearly twenty years in Tug’s company, while John slept on, blissfully unaware that his crewman was introducing Tug to the true nature of Humanity. When John awoke and saw how much Talbot had aged, he had discharged him on the spot. But it was too late. Tug, and Tug’s relationship with John, had never been the same. Talbot had given Tug the tools to see right through John.

  Talbot had steered Tug away from his exclusive study of Human mystery novels into a larger study of all Human literature. And poetry, with its elusive scents of mystery, had been the lure he’d used. From poetry, Talbot had moved, inevitably it seemed to Tug, to Human political writings and thought. He’d closed the circle for Tug, showing him that you could not study one facet of Human literature; one had to have the entire Humanities as a backdrop before understanding could even be approached.

  Even after Talbot was off the ship, Tug had kept track of him. John’s port visits to Talbot had alerted Tug to something interesting going on. It hadn’t been hard for Tug to discover his secret trade in black-market information storage, or that John was a steady customer. Talbot hadn’t wanted to let Tug become one of his clients. But, knowing what Tug knew, it hadn’t been difficult to force that issue. And toward the end, Talbot had overcome his resentment at Tug’s coercion, and gone on with his attempts to sway Tug to his misguided politics, by including unrequested materials with the recordings he sent Tug.

  And now Talbot was dead. And Talbot had known it was coming. That was why he’d sent him the tape on Epsilon Station. It had been his last effort to swing Tug to his way of thinking. Foolish man. All his death proved was that he had been stupid. He had ranted of the injustices in the Conservancy’s system, rebelled against the Conservancy’s insistence on total control of Human existence. And he had died. Died proving himself wrong.

  “I told you, Talbot,” Tug rumbled thoughtfully to himself. “Justice and injustice do not matter. Freedom is not the issue. The issue is survival. If a system for survival works, if a method of coexisting continues and the species involved continue to exist, then it deserves to continue. The race, not the individual, Talbot, is what counts. That’s all that has ever counted. You could have taken a lesson from the Evadorians, if you’d known about them. Sorry, Talbot. You were wrong.”

  Tug made a mental note that he would have to find a new source for old recordings. He grumbled softly to himself. It was but another proof. So inconvenient of you, Talbot, to destroy that working system with your death.

  6

  “CONNIE.”

  “…….”

  “Connie.”

  It came to her suddenly that she was awake. She didn’t open her eyes. Her hand groped down to the umbilical coupler and unfastened it. She felt the neck of the womb lower and open in response. Summoning all her willpower, she slithered out of it, gripping the floor rung to pull her body clear. She stretched out, slowly, as the training had taught her, and systematically flexed her muscles. Snorting a few times helped to clear her nostrils. She took a deeper breath and opened her eyes. “Yes?” she asked the empty chamber.

  “Hello,” Tug responded informally.

  “Oh. Hello.” Surprise helped to rouse her. Wake up, girl, she told herself. You’re not on the training station. Not even on the shuttle Beast Trotter, making routine runs from Castor to Pollux. No. On the Beast Evangeline, traversing deep space on a marathon voyage. A belated jolt of fear shot through her. If this were a routine Wakeup, she should have been sleep-prepped for it, and come to consciousness knowing where they were and what her immediate duties were. She didn’t have any of that, so it might be an emergency Wakeup…. “Tug! What’s going on?”

  “Nothing.” Soothing, deep voice. “I just thought you might enjoy a stretch, and a little time on your own to get to know Evangeline and me. I’ve found that crew morale is improved by a few off-schedule wakenings during a long run.”

  “Oh. Certainly.” Connie made a show of stretching again to gain time to think. This wasn’t in any of the manuals. All her training had stressed orderly communication for maximum cooperation. Communication should go from Evangeline to Tug to John. And John would relay to her whatever commands she needed in order to perform her tasks correctly.

  But things were never standard on Evangeline. After their conversation in the tube, John had made no mention of the incident. It was as if he wanted to deny all knowledge of it. He’d gone right back to procedure, right up to the moment she’d wombed down. Somehow, after the brief glimpse he’d given her of himself in the tube, that seemed even more bizarre. How seriously should she regard his warning against solitary Wakeups like this? Had that been an order, or a bit of friendly advice? Well, she couldn’t very well crawl back into the womb; this Wakeup she’d have to handle on her own, and draw her own conclusions. Surely Tug couldn’t be that bad.

  Tug had given her an “explanation” of why it was all right for her to have brought him the recordings. But after John’s warning, it didn’t ring true for her. She couldn’t decide if the reserve she’d adopted with Tug was practical caution or downright paranoia. In any case, Tug had responded by becoming more formal with her. She’d begun to think she’d misread his eccentricity, based on a few odd conversations and one strange request.

  Until now.

  She looked around the womb chamber. John still hovered in Waitsleep. So ask, don’t be shy. “Will John be awakening soon?”

  “No. I think not. He can be so officious, and I have found that a great barrier to communication. Does this bother you?”

  “I’m not sure,” she found herself replying honestly. Tug’s weirdness was contagious.

  “I don’t mean to alarm you, Connie. I simply wished to get to know you better.”

  “I see.” This Arthroplana had a peculiar way of speaking; his vocabulary made him sound formal, but he’d adjusted his synth to sound casual. It was hard to decide how to respond. “I am not alarmed. Where do you wish me to report?”

  “Well.” Gentle amusement, almost a chuckle in the voice. “I did not wish you to report at all. I thought you might want to refresh yourself, and then we’d just talk. Wherever you felt the most comfortable.”

  “I see,” Connie repeated, and stretched again. She hated things like this, happenings with no specific rules. She felt the tightening all through her midsection that none of her meditation exercises had ever been able to control. Anxiety. One of her instructors had said she was “inflexible, too regimented in her thinking to be a truly good Mariner” but the good opinion of the others had been enough to override the woman’s doubts about her. All five had commented on her ability to be self-sustaining, her tolerance for isolation. Connie had graduated. And graduated well, despite Mariner not being in the top ten on her aptitude testings.

  Despite her Readjustment.

  With a practiced flex, Connie transferred from the floor rung to the transverse ladder. She flowed “up” it, using minimum effort to achieve maximum movement, altered her course effortlessly, and continued down the corridor. She enjoyed weightlessness. It let her forget she’d ever been a gawky kid, ta
ller than anyone else in her generation, and clumsier, too. Out here, in a Beast, she could be graceful. She passed the graft scar that marked the delineation between the Beast and the gondola, continued “up” into the gondola corridors. The smooth biomeld of its walls were only marginally different from the rippled walls of Evangeline’s interior. Slightly cooler, perhaps, but that might have been a psychological sensation rather than a physical one. Somehow she always felt safer cradled within Evangeline’s body than in the gondola.

  Her personal chamber was only a short way from the womb chamber she shared with John. The cleanser and rec area were just beyond it, opening into the command chamber. She ducked into the cleanser, gelled up efficiently, and then peeled the gel from her skin, taking most of the old skin with it. Fragments clung to her still. She scrubbed down quickly. Suction vents gathered the stray droplets of gel and the dead skin she scrubbed loose. She was glad she didn’t peel after Waitsleep; at least not as bad as John did. She emerged moments later to blow her scrubber pad down the recycler. Her body felt new. She turned to the food prep and was about to request water when a tray plopped unexpectedly into place. She jumped, and looked hastily around, half expecting to find that John had awakened and ordered food while she was in the cleanser.

  “I had Evangeline prepare it for you,” Tug cut in on her thoughts. “I thought a warm drink might clear your throat and make talking more comfortable.”

  “Thank you,” she said awkwardly. “I’m not really hungry yet, but that was … thoughtful of you.”

  “Yes,” Tug agreed.

  She took the tray from the dispenser and snapped it to the holder on the lounger. She popped the suction tube on the hot stim drink and took some of it. Tug was right, it did open up her throat better than water would have. “Thank you,” she said again as she snapped it back onto the tray. “I feel much better. Now. Why did you waken me?”