Alien Earth

by Megan Lindholm

  “You have no idea of the immensity of the disaster you are fomenting.”

  “What?” Raef was peeling film from the top of a food tray.

  “It will all be dealt with later.” Even talking with Raef was a waste of time now. If Tug was ever to regain command, he had to act swiftly, before Evangeline could be subverted any further. Tug settled himself in position, extended his receptors. Evangeline’s ganglia rose obediently to dock with him. He fought to keep his feeling of relief from bleeding through to her. Instead, he put a very stern note into his command. “Evangeline, open communications with the shuttle.”

  Nothing happened. He sensed her there, knew she was aware of him and listening. But not responding. Her passivity woke in him an incredible rage. “Evangeline!” he repeated, not caring that he hadn’t sealed the channel, that Raef was probably listening in.

  “She’s not going to obey until you’ve listened to me,” Raef told him calmly. “We’ve worked out a password system. She can’t listen in on what’s going on between us yet, but she thinks she’ll figure out a way soon. Until she does, she knows that I won’t give you the password until you’ve heard me out and agreed to cooperate.” Raef picked up a chunk of food and bit into it.

  Tug mulled it silently. The whole situation was intolerable. For the first time he faced how criminally foolish it had been for him to maintain Raef, after his own species had condemned him. “Nurturing a viper in his bosom,” yes, the Humans knew how to express the treachery inherent in their own race.

  “Tug. I know you don’t like it, but you’re going to have to deal.”

  “Am I?”

  His nematocysts were completely refilled with venom. He lifted two high, knew she sensed his decision, and had the brief satisfaction of sensing how she braced herself against the pain. Despite her efforts, Tug felt her entire body flinch.

  “Stop it.” Raef’s voice rang with controlled fury. “I know what you’re about to do, and you’d damn well better reconsider.”

  Tug ignored him, and plunged the nematocysts into her. He’d let the barbs set and give her the full dosage. If Raef’s nervous system couldn’t withstand her response, well, Tug could accept his loss. But Evangeline would be brought under control.

  [It won’t work.]

  Tug ignored her, let the venom pump. Evangeline shuddered. Dimly he was aware of Raef’s screaming as he flung himself impotently about in the command chamber. The Human’s fists battered monitors, voice speakers, anything that was an indication of Tug’s presence. “Leave her alone! Stop hurting her! You have no right, you bastard, you son of a bitch!” Interesting, how the Human had become attuned to her. It seemed a genuine empathic response. Tug felt not a thing. He let the last measure of his venom pump into Evangeline, sensed her agony. Waited for her shrieking capitulation.

  [It’s only pain.]

  The ship suddenly steadied. She did not veer from her new course, did not even slacken her speed. The pain had to be all but paralyzing, but she was fighting it. He was baffled. How could a Beastship resist its conditioning?

  [Pain, as, of course, you know, is only pain.] A didactic tone, calm, rational, purged of whatever it cost her. A recitation of something learned but not yet understood completely. [Pain is only the body’s signal that something is amiss. The greater the damage to the body, the more severe the pain. It is the body’s way of letting the mind know damage has been sustained by the vessel that encloses it.]

  Long pause. She’d be feeling the full effects by now. She’d have to come around.

  [But pain is not damage, and damage is not pain.]

  Was this Evangeline’s voice? It did not ring true. It wasn’t only the vocabulary, there was a tone to it, a tremolo of feeling he had never encountered in any Beast. He listened in a kind of horrified fascination.

  [One does not die of pain. A torturer knows that, and uses the spur of pain rather than the threat of death to wring what he wants from his victim. But, if one is strong, if one has a reason to resist, if one can say, intellectually, “This is but pain, there is no damage,” and know it to be truth, why, then, one can ignore the pain and continue.]

  A coldness washed through Tug.

  [And it is truth, of course, that the most successful of parasites do not do extensive damage to the host body. The objective of parasitism is to live off the host without doing anything to impede the host from feeding, or defending itself, or mating to produce other potential hosts.] Her tone changed suddenly from lecturing to threatening. [Parasite, remember this. You cannot do anything that actually damages me without risking damage to yourself.]

  Tug forced control into his voice. “It is easy to talk of withstanding pain, but harder to do. How long can you do it before you must become reasonable again?”

  [Until we die.] Her voice was so calm—more than that, so mature, so thoughtful. [Until death becomes logically to be preferred to the continuing pain, and I choose it. Have you never wondered, Tug, what it would be like to fly into a sun?]

  Tug was very still. There was no mistaking Evangeline’s threat. She could kill them both, but he had, perhaps, one hostage she had overlooked. He looked in on Raef, who, exhausted, sprawled in a command lounge, but still thudded one fist dully against the board. Idly Tug wondered how much time had passed for Raef as he struggled within the Beastship. Humans measured time in such minute fragments.

  “And Raef?”

  [We have discussed it. It frightens both of us, but I think we could steel ourselves to it, if the alternative were lingering pain. We have a signal agreed upon. He would come back to me, seal himself within my womb. And we would be together when we died, helping each other. But you would die alone.]

  “Raef may say such things, but he doesn’t have it in him to do them. He’d die a screaming madman.” Tug put total disdain into his voice. How had Raef ever come to mean so much to her? She must be forced to see him as weak, insignificant.

  [He has not lived a screaming madman. Do you forget this death is a thing Raef has already faced, long ago?]

  “I forget nothing.”

  [Then I will open communication with John and Connie, and you will let Raef speak.]

  “Beast, you forget who is in command here.”

  [No. I, too, forget nothing. Will you let Raef speak to John and Connie?]

  “No!” If he gave in on this one request, all control was lost to him. They were dead anyway. Letting Raef attempt to speak to them would only give him an exaggerated view of his powers over Tug.

  [Then we’ll have to go to our alternative plan. It’s much riskier, but then a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.]

  Tug felt Evangeline begin a slow roll.

  He must have slept at last, exhausted by the agony. But even the pain couldn’t completely control the wonder. He’d not been in the womb, not in Waitsleep, and yet he’d felt her sudden fear of Tug, and then the pain he gave her. Damn, the incredible, incredible pain, like every nerve in his body had been dipped in acid. Separated from her, in the gondola, he’d still shared her feelings, not only her physical pain, but her hatred for Tug. He had no idea how long it had claimed him. But at last his frailer body had yielded, and he’d passed out. And from thence into sleep, he supposed.

  But not true sleep, nor Waitsleep, but something in between, peopled by the dreams he couldn’t control, the awful old dreams. Once sleep had brought him rest, but no more. Waitsleep only took him to Evangeline’s needs, and this sleep only took him back to his fears.

  He’d dreamed of Jeffrey’s body doing that slow horrid twist, suspended by the bright scarves he’d plaited together to hang himself from the open beams in his attic bedroom. Raef had been the first to find him, and he had stared long, speechless with pain. He had hanged himself naked, and his stretched pale body with its delicate bone structure and long, flat muscles reminded him coldly of a plucked bird hung in the window of an oriental restaurant. The body had turned slowly as Raef stared up at it, revealing the half-healed welts over
the knobs of his spine and down his ribs that were the tokens of his father’s disapproval.

  Raef could guess how it had gone. Jeffrey had run away again, down to the gay sector, and his dad had hunted him down again and dragged him home and beaten him again. “Not gonna dirty my name, you little faggot. I’ll make a man of you yet.” That’s how it would have gone. Jeffrey’s face had gone dark with strangulation; Raef couldn’t see the fist marks that would have preceded the belt.

  “Why don’t you fight back?” Raef had asked him once, and Jeffrey had laughed aloud, bitterly, at the image of himself standing up to his massive father. “So pretend to change, then,” Raef had offered him, and Jeffrey had only looked more incredulous. “Stop being what I am? Then what the hell do I have, Raef? I can take pain better than I could take that. In fact, the only real pain is when you can’t be who you really are.” And then he’d get into some long involved philosophical thing about how pain didn’t really have to hurt, it could be ignored. Yeah, sure. Raef’s dad had hit him once, knocked him clean across the room, just because he’d gone to visit Jeffrey. So Raef had learned to be sneaky about it. Why the hell couldn’t Jeffrey just learn how to be sneaky? Why the hell had he killed himself instead of just pretending to be straight?

  Sneaky Raef. Sneak away from the attic bedroom, leave as he had come, by the back door, so Jeffrey’s mom never even knew Raef had been there and had seen. Sneaky, like Jeffrey’s folks and like the cops who eventually came with the ambulance to take the body away while Raef hid in the alley across the street and watched. Sneaky like the newspaper that only said Jeffrey had killed himself and never said anything about the welts and bruises. Sneaky like Raef when the kids at school laughed about the faggot finally hanging himself, good riddance, and Raef hadn’t said a thing.

  Good old sneaky Raef, staying clear of trouble, never risking himself for someone else. Shame carried him into a new dream. Tug confronted him, a huge pink earwig of an alien, and said, “Dammit, I saved you, you owe me. Give Evangeline back to me.” And in the nightmare, Raef was so afraid of dying that his legs turned to jelly and he fell down and begged Tug to take Evangeline back, to do anything he wanted, just as long as Raef didn’t have to die, as long as there was no more pain.

  He woke up queasy with disgust at himself. He’d sweated through his clothes, and the damn synthetics clung to him like sandwich wrap. His fingers were stuck together with blood and scabs from where he’d hammered on the controls and screens. Tug had probably found that amusing as hell.

  Raef tried to move and couldn’t. Pain and nausea washed over him, dizzying him. Even the lights seemed to dim. For a moment he didn’t catch onto it; then he wrested himself from the lounge and staggered across the chamber. “Evangeline,” he muttered, and wished there were an easy way to let her know he’d received her signal. Go to plan B. He weakly cursed the lack of communication between the gondola and Evangeline herself. He suspected it could be remedied, but had no idea how to go about it. The lights dimmed again, and he felt rising anxiety. Hers or his, he wasn’t sure. Didn’t even have his own separate emotions anymore. He managed to work his way over to the console. The manual handle to the crew alert system was formidable, but he managed to grip it and drag it down. He set off the blaring horns and flashing lights three times, for three-second intervals, and then forced it back into the neutral position. Evangeline had told him she’d be able to detect that, and would take it as a signal that he had received her own signal. It seemed to work, for the lights didn’t flicker again.

  The success of the simple signal cheered him. He steadied himself against the console, and found himself grinning in spite of the myriad cuts and bruises on his hands and arms.

  “I don’t suppose you’d care to explain to me what that was all about.” It was Tug at his most haughty.

  Raef managed a shrug. He’d never known hate could feel so cold. It made him almost sociable toward Tug. He felt like rubbing his nose in his failure to break them. “Why not? There’s not a damn thing you can do about it. Evangeline just signaled me that we’re going down. I can’t get through to the shuttle by radio without your help. You’ve refused it. It might interest you that so far you’ve reacted exactly as Evangeline predicted you would. I was betting you’d come around, for John’s and Connie’s sakes. But you haven’t. So we’re going to our alternative rescue plan.”

  “John and Connie are dead by now anyway.”

  “What makes you assume that? I told you we set the shuttle down safely, in the most hospitable landing area we could find. The shuttle has emergency supplies. Evangeline told me it was supposed to be a first-class vessel, all the latest stuff on board.” Raef tottered back to the lounge. Damn, he hurt all over. He clambered into it and began strapping himself in. Working the buckles made his fingers bleed again.

  “It is. But you underestimate the hostility of your homeworld, and overestimate John’s ability to deal with it. Even if they had landed without injuries to themselves or the shuttle, there is too much danger down there for them to remain unscathed for long. When you lived down there, Raef, you moved with a learned regard for dangers, and had the support of fellow Humans, not to mention a multitude of structures and innovations that made shelter and food relatively easy to obtain. John and Connie are as babes in the wood, and alone. It’s unlikely they’d survive more than a day or so.”

  “There’s a quick way to find out who’s right.”

  “And that is?”

  “Open the damn radio channel for me.”

  “No. What you and the Beastship are doing constitutes mutiny. I will not be coerced by you in any way.”

  “Beastship. Talk about another stupid assumption. But we don’t have time to go into that just now. So you can suit yourself. The alternative plan will answer the question of John’s and Connie’s survival for us, too.”

  “Have you any objections to telling me what your alternative plan is?”

  “I told you already. We’re going in. Evangeline thought it over and she says she can do it. According to her, young Beasts spend a part of their growing years planet-bound. Evidently how your race originally managed to capture and infest them. So she thinks …”

  “We do not ‘infest’ the Beasts! It is a millennia-old relationship, one of nurturing on our part and service on theirs. I find the word ‘infest’ offensive.”

  “Yeah, well, Evangeline found the act offensive, once she realized there were alternatives. There’s a powerful intellect there, Tug, one that’s been waiting centuries for enough input to grow.”

  “Your interference will only bring her great unhappiness. As will her tampering only bring you misery.”

  “So you’ve noticed it, too. I’m not the same old Raef. It’s funny, how having a friend help share your thoughts can put things in perspective. Outside of my mom, she’s only the second real friend I’ve had in my lifetime. Outside of my mom—” Raef chuckled suddenly. “I’m not even sure I can say that.”

  “We are all going to die,” Tug announced with certainty. “You should be aware of that. Evangeline will not be able to land on the Earth’s surface. And even if she can, the toxins there will affect her. Think back, Raef. If Beasts were capable of landing on planets, wouldn’t we have conducted the evacuation that way?”

  “Maybe,” Raef said grudgingly. He picked at a scab on his knuckle, then forced himself to stop before it bled again. “Maybe not. Maybe Arthroplanas would do anything to keep Humans from seeing Beasts as organic or intelligent. Keep them out in orbit, keep them sequestered, speechless, mindless, and no one will ever interfere with your little slave trade. Maybe no Human will ever figure out that he could companion a Beastship in partnership just as well as an Arthroplana could, maybe better.”

  “What you are saying is nonsense….”

  “Nonsense? Face facts, Tug. You’re out and I’m in. Though not in a way you’d understand. This Beast is intelligent enough that she doesn’t need a partner at all. Hell, maybe they all are. Y
ou know how long it took me to teach her to read? Half an hour. And it wouldn’t have taken me that long if I hadn’t started by trying to teach her the alphabet. All I really had to do was open up and let her riffle through my memories of the first two years of grade school. Then she had it. And you know something else? I’ve got it, too. Whatever my learning disability was, Evangeline doesn’t share it. She could understand what my teachers were saying, and as a result, I do, too, now. How about them apples, Tug? I’m not the class dummy anymore.”

  “Don’t be too sure of that, Raef.”

  “Petty, petty. Tug … look, you’re just making this harder on yourself. You’d better be realistic. The sooner you realize that no one needs you anymore, you’ll see that you’d better become …”

  The shuddering that went through the gondola paralyzed Raef for a second. “What the hell was that?” he demanded involuntarily.

  “Evangeline, entering the atmosphere at the wrong attitude, I imagine. That’s another thing you overestimate, Raef: Evangeline’s ability to operate without the guidance of some more intelligent creature. Entry into an atmosphere such as Earth’s, with the gondola attached, will require many, many split-second decisions. Evangeline has never had to make such decisions on her own. Oh, and here’s an amusing thought, Raef. Even if Evangeline can withstand all this, what about the gondola? What if she manages to land on the Earth’s surface, but the gondola doesn’t withstand it? Theoretically, it was designed with the capacity to be brought down intact to a planet’s surface; I think your engineers visualized it as a sort of ark. But how many centuries ago was that? Will you really trust your life to such ancient technology?”

  Raef felt the gallows grin on his face. “So save us all, Tug. All you have to do is open the channel to John and Connie.”