Metamorph: The Outbounder Chronicles

by Chris Reher

  “We have brought our own modulators,” he said, his voice low and carrying a peculiar drone deep in the throat of his long neck. He tapped a flat device attached to where, presumably, his larynx resided. Like all Kalons, he had just three fingers and a sort of thumb but each finger split into two along its length, allowing them to move with great precision. “It is comfortable to us.”

  Ryle leaned forward as if studying it with polite curiosity, possibly to allow the synergic intelligence aboard the Nefer, linked to him by the implants in his eyes and ears, to record and examine the device.

  “We are pleased to join you here,” Laryn said, using words as formal as these people tended to. She indicated the meal delivery column near the door. “Shall we eat?”

  “We are not hungry,” the shorter of the two said.

  Laryn heard Nolan’s groan and silenced it with her elbow. These two intrigued her. Although she had studied the approved ways of dealing with the species, she had encountered them only a few times in the halls of the guarded upper modules of the station. They were not known to be social.

  And yet, here they were, two of them, not having dinner with a crew of prospectors on a commercial spaceport. Both wore elegant mantles over what she knew to be sinewy limbs that looked like skin and fat stripped from muscle and bone, wrapped up again with unyielding, brown-greenish leather. It was this armor of thick skin that allowed them to thrive in places too hostile for Human bodies. Their faces, too, seemed devoid of fat tissue and the skin there looked close to the breaking point. Most notably, they had no ears on their hairless heads and instead picked up sounds via sensors arranged in rough patches on their wide foreheads.

  “We came to talk,” the other Kalon said. “And to engage your service.”

  “The Kalons have ships,” Ryle said. “Why come to us?”

  The stranger’s eyes turned to him. The horizontal slits that were his pupils made him look strangely sightless. “We have few ships, and they are not agile. I’m afraid my people view our expedition as frivolous and a waste of resources. And so we offer our partnership to you.” He looked around the table as if studying, and then judging, them. “We hear that you can be trusted with… private matters.”

  Ryle glanced at Laryn. “We are not outlaws.”

  Azah’s snicker cut off abruptly as if someone had kicked her ankle under the table.

  “My name is Iko,” the Kalon continued, apparently not interested in further discussion of their trustworthiness. “My companion is called Toji. We believe that we have found the location of the Harla expedition.”

  “Whaa..?” Nolan started, agape.

  Ryle shook his head. “That ship’s long lost. Others have searched for it and failed. It disappeared almost six years ago.”

  “And its value is exaggerated, as these things become exaggerated over time,” Laryn added. “It was hauling settlers out to Terrica, and not especially rich ones. There is no treasure at the end of this search.”

  “We believe otherwise,” Iko said. “And not only do we believe that we know where the ship is, we also think it found a planet or moon upon which to settle. In that case, it is, indeed, a treasure hunt.”

  “Told you this was good,” Azah said. The bounty paid for finding a habitable, accessible world would let them all retire in comfort.

  “You think they’re alive?” Laryn said to Iko. “The colonists? Out there somewhere?”

  “It is possible.” Iko placed a projector on the table and a chart appeared in the air. He rotated it until it displayed a broad view of this region of space. He pointed at an orange marker. “We believe them to have made a transit to there.”

  Ryle leaned forward. “There is a reason we avoid that sector.”

  “Nothing there but dust clouds,” Azah added. “And the wrecks of a few ships, I’m pretty sure.”

  “Yes. We understand that Master Tanner is a skillful pilot and that your navigator is capable. The risk is not great.”

  “Doesn’t that pitch sound familiar,” Azah mumbled, using the Human dialect of her people.

  “We’d still be jumping into quite a soup,” Ryle said.

  “Soup?”

  “The captain refers to the nebula,” Laryn translated. “We rely on our sensor arrays to navigate local space.”

  “This will be worth the risk. We are only looking for the Harla. Any profit you gain from the discovery of a new world is of no concern to us. We will not claim it for the Kalon.”

  Laryn saw surprise and a fair bit of discomfort not only on Azah’s face, but also on Nolan’s and Ryle’s. Perhaps their new patrons did not realize that Kalon claims to any planet would not sit well with the Consortium. Humans regarded the Hub as private property and, even if no one had quite articulated this, anything found where its dark tendrils led. “What does the Harla mean to you?” she said.

  Iko’s answering gesture was incomprehensible to any of them. His companion, Toji, picked up the projector and came to his feet. He must have been kneeling on the bench because now he stood on the seat, towering above them. Iko stood up in the same manner and they walked behind Nolan and then stepped down onto the floor. “We’ll let you discuss this. Master Shelody has the means to contact us.”

  Toji leaned over Laryn to tap the control panel of the food server. She caught a drift of what smelled like cloves and earth, an oddly pleasant aroma, from him. “Accept this meal as a token of our sincerity. I hope we’ll meet again soon.”

  Ryle raised a hand but the two Kalons left the dining alcove without another look at any of them.

  “A token of their sincerity?” Nolan said after a silent moment. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Don’t they have chairs on Kalon?” Azah said.

  “They’re strangely fluent,” Ryle said, looking thoughtful. “Is this common?”

  “Yes,” Laryn said. “They learn fast and Pendra brought tutors in for them. I guess they had to since we can’t even start to figure out their language.”

  “What did he mean at the end?” Ryle tried to recreate the Kalon’s parting gesture.

  “We’ve been working on a catalog of their body language. I think it means something like: don’t you worry your pretty little heads over things beyond your understanding, you puny Humans.”

  “It does?” Azah said with narrowed eyes.

  A hissing sound drew their attention to the food server. The platters of roasted meats and aromatic herbs filled the room with scents that none of them had experienced in weeks. The galley aboard the Nefer offered little more than packaged food designed more to save space on a long voyage than to keep taste buds entertained. Of course, even before then, they rarely enjoyed meals like this unless someone had a good bit of credit on account.

  “Is that chakhi?” Nolan exclaimed when Laryn pulled bowls and plates from the lift. “It is! Hands off, all mine.”

  Laryn passed a tray of steamed vegetables and a basket of dumplings to Azah whose personnel file listed her as vegetarian. In fact, one anecdote suggested that she would rather eat her ancient boots than another creature. Having once bitten a piece of flesh from an opponent’s arm, she had developed an intense dislike for chewing through muscle and skin. “Those look good.”

  “Our new patrons are generous,” Azah said, pulling one of the dumplings apart to release a sweet aroma.

  “Let’s not be blinded by this gesture,” Ryle warned. “We know nothing about these two.”

  Nolan looked up from scraping tender meat from a bone. “They’re a bit creepy, aren’t they? Not sure I’d want to mess with them. They could probably tie my legs in a knot without trying too hard.”

  Ryle grinned. “Hell, I could tie your legs in a knot without trying too hard.”

  “Are you going to accept their offer?” Laryn asked him.

  He shrugged. “Yeah. We’ve had trickier jobs than ferrying a couple of treasure hunters around.” He turned to Nolan. “You’re all right with the target, Nolie? We’ll have limited sensor ra
nge out there.”

  The engineer nodded, too busy chewing to form words.

  Ryle pulled the com tab from his collar and placed it on the table. While he did not need it to communicate with the ambient intelligence that was the very soul of the Nefer, it allowed the others to follow the conversation. “Did you get all this, Jex?” he said.

  “I did, Ryle,” the AI responded at once, audible in the room rather than just within Ryle’s ears. The JX.9 aboard the Nefer linked almost inextricably to Ryle’s brain, heard with his ears, saw with the lenses embedded in his eyes. As long as Ryle lived, so did Jex, although, as Ryle’s chief mate, Azah also had control over the program. Laryn wondered if Jex, and others like him, chafed less under its imprisonment than Ryle did. Did it understand that, without their flesh and blood masters, the synthetic intelligence that made all of this possible would run amok? It had happened in the past and it would happen again.

  “Can we make that target?” Ryle asked.

  “Would you like me to plot?” Jex replied.

  “If you don’t mind.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  Laryn had to smile. The AI’s reply was so lacking in character that it seemed, to her, almost deliberate, perhaps a joke played on its overly emotional masters. Although tethered to their operators to the point of complete inability to act on their own accord, the JX.9 model came with a selection of personalities. She wondered if Ryle had restricted its access to those routines. Maybe the more creative programs became tedious after a while.

  Ryle didn’t seem amused by the bland reply. “Did you get anything on these two Kalons?”

  “Nothing unusual. The Iko Kalon is experiencing some physiological stress. I don’t have enough information to analyze it. It may be an illness or injury.”

  Laryn nodded. “I thought so, too. But they are strangers here, and not well liked. I’d be nervous, too.”

  “Kalons don’t get nervous,” Azah said. “They’re predators. I don’t trust them.”

  “Humans are predators, too,” Laryn said. “You’re responding to the way they look. They’ve been helpful. The survey of Ophet would take forever and cost three times as much if not for them. Our people have had some very valuable exchanges with them.”

  Azah pointed at herself. “Not this people. So why the Harla? Why would a couple of mummies care about Humans stranded on some planet?”

  “Maybe they like us, deep down inside,” Nolan said. He held up a crisped tanga eel dangling from the end of his knife, a rare import from Terrica. “Look how generous they are.”

  “I can plot a path to the edge of the nebula,” Jex interrupted. A representation of the Hub with its corona of filaments streaming in the directions of galactic expansion now floated above the com unit on the table. One of them, a quarter of the way around the Hub’s horizon, was highlighted in blue. “The filament specified by the Iko Kalon appears solid.”

  “I think our new friends can afford that,” Nolan decided. “Given our current position on the Hub, it’ll take less than a day to get out there. One slide through that pipe and we’re there.”

  “So do we take the job?” Ryle said, although, as captain of the Nefer and mission commander, the final decision was his.

  Azah shrugged. “Sounds like there’s coin to be made here. Don’t forget that we just cost the company a whole lot of it by that dive we took into nowhere. If this is a hit, Daddy might just forgive you.”

  “Let it go, Azah,” Nolan said when Ryle’s lip curled in a snarl, unwilling to see this scrumptious meal spoiled by one of their spats. “I can get the Nefer ready by morning, with a little help from the boss.”

  Ryle nodded and turned to Laryn. “So are you in?” he said, reminding her that, although assigned to the Nefer, she could refuse a mission if she wished. Something in his steady gaze underscored the hopeful tone in his question. No doubt, requesting another mediary now would cause more delays than he wanted to deal with.

  “I’m in.” She tapped her forehead. “I’ll ask for an update before we leave. See what I can find out about the Harla.”

  “Settled, then,” Ryle said. “Nolan and I will get the Nefer ready. Azah will see the old man to get us cleared and our passengers to the dock by early second shift. We can sleep once we get under way to the launch point.”

  Nolan looked mournfully over the still-full bowls on the table. “You think we can get this packed up to take with us?”

  Chapter Three

  Laryn still nibbled on a sprig of mossberries, brought to Pendra Station from Terrica, as she left the others to head to the Annex, the station’s research sector.

  At this end of the plaza, the transparent ceiling curved down to floor level to offer an infinite panorama of their galaxy disturbed only by an occasional passing ship or satellite. In a few days, the new arrivals from Earth would crowd this promenade for their first glimpse of the dark, impenetrable heart of the Hub. It went by many names, but most people referred to the anomaly as Bogen’s Well or just simply as the Well.

  Laryn relished the emptiness of the broad walkway along the window, glad to have this to herself today. Only the sound of the air exchangers and a distant murmur of voices intruded here. She slowed to walk close to these windows, as she always did, feeling as if she floated outside on her way to distant places.

  From here she could see a good portion of the station’s massive complex of modules, stuck together like a pile of blocks left floating in space by an inattentive child. The central body, with its gracefully curving gravity hub, domed plaza and the residential levels below, formed the main bulk. The shipping and smallcraft decks jutted out on one side while a bewildering array of instrumentation for the astrophysics division studded the other. Interchangeable modules, shipped in for various reasons and owned by several of the Pendra Consortium companies, attached to the station in what seemed haphazard fashion. Other components floated at a distance for privacy, security, or because they were still being constructed.

  All of it made for an irregular, messy complex and plans were underway to reorganize some of these into a separate orbiter. It would begin to make sense of the warren that formed the lower levels where neglected residences, parts of the station’s mechanical services, and black market businesses existed like a world apart.

  “Laryn!”

  It took her a moment to realize that Ryle Tanner had caught up to her. She turned, a question on her face, reluctant to smile in case the purple fruit had caught in her teeth.

  “Heading home?” he asked.

  She shook her head, still probing her eyetooth with her tongue. “Going to the cog lab,” she reminded him, hoping for the best.

  He matched her pace but seemed immune to the splendor of the distant stars. His eyes moved restlessly along the concourse, to some maintenance workers near the exit, and over the groups of station staff loitering in the open plaza. Laryn knew he had completed a few tours guarding the borders of the exclusion zones on Earth; the same zones that produced the refugees seeking new lives on distant planets. Perhaps absorbing the terrain until he understood every element had become a habit, even aboard the safe confines of a remote, somewhat seedy outpost station.

  “Must be nice to just plug info into your brain like that,” he said.

  “It can be,” she said. “Although there’s no plugging involved. We prefer to call it accelerated learning. You’re linked to Jex. That seems much more like plugging in than what we do. He can just tell you anything you need to know.”

  “It’s just a database,” he said. “Just facts and figures and calculations, there when I need them. Not very exciting. I can get that from my remote.” He raised a hand to indicate the band around his wrist, similar to the portable unit he had used earlier.

  “I guess that’s true,” she said, again struck by his refusal to refer to the AI as anything but a computer, a most unusual attitude for those who worked with them. Even if just for amusement, almost everyone talked with them, or about them, lik
e another person. Or perhaps a pet. Given that Jex was most intimately tied to Ryle’s senses, the distance between them was puzzling.

  “But you Cog folks are something else,” he said with a tone of wonder in his voice. “I wish I could learn like that. But tampering with my brain just doesn’t appeal to me.”

  She cocked her head. “You disapprove of augmentation?”

  “None of my business what other people do. But, yes, I think I’d rather have implants in my eyes and ears than my gray matter.”

  “I’ve not had to regret mine,” she said. “It helps me do my job.” She wondered if the captain had followed her to make some clumsy attempt at small talk or to share his views of Cogs. He would not be the first to express veiled contempt for neural upgrades. Humans had suffered when their trusted machines almost destroyed their world and prejudices still lingered even in the generation that had followed. She had not expected those feelings in someone permanently linked to a computer.

  “I didn’t know you mediaries needed that for your job,” he said.

  “Well, we don’t. My training is in biology. Exobiology, of course. I’m hoping for a place on a deep space mission. I missed out on the one heading to Yora Two. So they assigned me to the Intermediary.”

  “Not your first choice, then?”

  “Not really,” she said guardedly. Had the captain not bothered to learn these things about her when she was assigned to the Nefer? She slowed her steps to look up at him. The calm gray eyes now fixed on hers as intently as they had studied the occupants of the commons, this time searching for something in her expression. He knew all of these things about her, she concluded. One didn’t run a crew into utterly unknown space without knowing a great deal about each member. She forced an airy smile. “I prefer a microscope over politics, frankly, but they seem to think I’m suited for this.”

  “You went out with one of the Entrada ships last time. The Rowan.”

  “Yes?” she said, lifting her voice to show that she found his inquiry puzzling and perhaps a little inappropriate. Pendra, sometimes at the request of the Ministry, assigned and reassigned their mediaries as needed and she had been with the Entrada outfit for only a few outbounds. She waited for him to ask her for some detail that might give him an advantage over a rival. He’d get nothing for his trouble.