Life Sentence (Forlani Saga Book 1)

by John M. R. Gaines

  It was not till dawn when, as Klein suspected, a Local emerged from the reeds near camp and stood stock still at a distance of dozens of meters. Jahangar immediately raised his Kikkonnen, but Klein caught him in time, set the safety, and warned the barber that if he fired, the next shot would be coming his way, and Klein never missed a man target. Unless I choose to, he added to himself, thinking back to Cashman. He went over to within a few meters of the Local, sat cross-legged on the ground, laid his rifle on his lap, and put his hands on his knees, smiling contentedly. After a few seconds another Local came out of the prairie cover and held up a foreleg for Klein to see. It was a stump that was apparently growing back from where the end of the leg once extended.

  “Stumpy, welcome,” said Klein, pointing at the newcomer. The Local answered with the yes sound.

  He pointed to his own chest, adding somewhat comically, “Me Klein.” Again the yes.

  The Local stretched his other foreleg and drew a straight line in the soil.

  “One,” ventured Klein, and the Local acknowledged.

  Klein reached out and made a pair of lines with his finger. “Two,” he said, and the Local said yes.

  Klein reached again and drew three lines and said, “Two,” but instead of making the yes sound, the Local waived his feelers.

  “Right. So I guess we understand each other about as far as yes and no are concerned. What next?”

  Stumpy gestured to the other Local, who slowly edged up until he was next to Klein, as Stumpy said yes several times in a relaxed way. Local Number Two stretched out one of his feelers in front of Klein, as if to offer it for inspection.

  “Am I supposed to touch it?” he asked, and Stumpy answered in the affirmative. It was not hard and shell-like as Klein had expected, but pliable and rather soft, like a fiber-optic cable.

  “You want him to do something to me with this, don’t you?” asked Klein. Same answer.

  “And I suspect he’s not going to do anything that will hurt me and make my friend nervous?” The gesture for no.

  “John,” Klein said over his shoulder, “We’re going to try a little experiment and whatever happens, I do not want you to be concerned for me or to make the slightest move. In fact, I want you right now to go put the Kikkonnen over by the thallops and come back where you were. Nice and calm.”

  “OK, I’m tip-toeing over now, and I’m placing it on the ground and now I’m tip-toeing back, but if you don’t mind, I’m going to be saying some prayers right now.”

  “That’s fine. Just remember: absolute submission, infinite mercy.” He looked straight at Stumpy and said, “I’m ready.”

  Slowly, Number Two inserted the feeler into Klein’s ear. He could feel it working around and very gently resting next to the eardrum. He was waiting for something to happen when suddenly he felt a series of mild shocks. Then another, and he saw stars in front of his eyes. It’s a good thing the brain doesn’t feel anything like pain. To his surprise, Stumpy said yes. Then he began to see images in front of his eyes, but they were weird and unarticulated, sort of like a bad drug trip.

  “No, Stumpy, no. I’m sorry, I can’t make out what you’re trying to tell me.”

  “Are you all right, Klein?” Jahangar jabbered nervously.

  “Yes, fine, don’t worry. Momentary problem. No harm done. Stand down.”

  Meanwhile, Stumpy made a few new noises and two more Locals came out from the reeds. They moved over next to Number Two and the three of them went into a new pose with their middle pairs of legs slightly lifted, exposing a small aperture in what might be called their armpits. Number two put a feeler into slot Number Three and Number Three to Number Four, making the arrangement look like an animal display of a direct current electrical hookup. Stumpy said yes and right away Klein began to see outlines of images that were much more distinct than before, a savannah landscape with bunches of trees and unknown kinds of beasts.

  He was moving, bouncing along high into the air. Next, he began to feel pure joy. He realized he was a Local and was bounding along with a whole host of Locals, experiencing unadulterated happiness. Creatures the size of Volkswagens, resembling a cross between a pig and a hippopotamus, ambled along fearlessly amid them, along with hordes of smaller life forms that might have been rabbits or kangaroos. There were pools of water, too, with groups of reptiles sunning themselves like giant iguanas. This was some distant past.

  All at once the joy disappeared. In the sky, a slightly different tint from present-day Domremy, fireworks began to go off. However, suddenly there was searing heat and an odd feeling inside him. These were not firecrackers, but neutronic explosions. He was seeing the day the Locals’ universe died, the day Hyperion came. It was the terraforming.

  Then there was a new feeling impossible to identify. It was like earthly sorrow, but something else. Local bodies and those of other Domremy creatures lay everywhere, rotting without even carrion eaters to dispose of them. Survivors were dragging half-charred survivors back into holes that others were frantically excavating in the ground. Not just fellow Locals, but the other life forms, too. They were trying to save everything, but failing because now creatures were choking all over the landscape. The afflicted pulled themselves from the grasp of the charitable survivors, preferring to die immediately and end their torture. The holes went deeper and deeper but even as they were being lengthened, the excavators were dying along the way. Then there was long, cold darkness and a feeling that must have been Local Hell. Finally, there was sunlight again and the endless, monotonous plain, where Locals were leaping again, but this time they were under attack by a patrol and Kikkonnens were blasting them to pieces as they rushed to abduct human bodies. Suddenly, Klein gave a start because he was looking at himself, mounted on a thallop with his sniper rifle, aiming at the kidnapped humans as the Locals somehow said, “No, please, no, not this.”

  The next thing he knew, the feeler was being withdrawn from his ear and his short course in Local History was at an end. He looked up at Stumpy and said, “Do you know how sorry I feel for you? All of you? Sorry? It means compassion.”

  Stumpy said, “Yes. Yes.”

  Klein got up and went over to Barber John. “Don’t worry, Jahangar, they haven’t erased my mind. Instead they’ve made it much, much bigger. Now it’s really imperative that we get to Fielder’s Crossing with all speed. I’ve got to share what they told me with the Dissenters and see what I can do to help, maybe to atone. Let’s break camp.”

  At the end of three months’ time, Klein and Barber John reached Fielder’s Crossing and parted ways. The shadow group of Locals had followed them most of the way, occasionally reappearing out of the prairie grasses, but had vanished about three days distant from the straits. Klein sold his thallops and his gear, including the sniper’s rifle, before crossing over with his back pack. The ferry operators had informed him once they reached the terminal that it was only about thirty miles on land to the experimental station and he could most likely hitch a ride with any Dissenter wagon. Klein walked. He found the station to be a sprawling compound with groups of Locals all around and even inside. Walking up to what he judged to be the director’s building, he was delighted to find Dr. Patak’s name on the little sign. The bronze-faced man rushed up to him and embraced him as soon as he popped his head in the door.

  “Mr. Klein, so happy to see you, sir, after such a long time. I must say, you’re looking unexpectedly well-groomed after your epic meanderings.”

  “I had a great barber for the last seven hundred kilometers or so. You look well, too, Patak.”

  “I have to admit I’m not entirely surprised, because rumors about your survival have been buzzing around since the blimp pilots brought back word that an odd hermit had been sighted in the Middendorfs. Luis will be especially overjoyed, since he has made bets on your reappearance all over the sites. Not that the money matters more than simply knowing you still exist. I have so many people to tell that I hardly know where to begin. Will you be staying a
while now?”

  “Hopefully a long while. Listen Patak, I had an incredible breakthrough with the Locals. I need to tell you about it.”

  “And we will be most eager to hear it, since we’ve been conducting research along those lines of communication ourselves for some time.” Patak called in some other personnel with recorders and they began the debriefing right away. It went on long through the afternoon, with tea and sandwiches brought in to keep everyone fresh and attentive. Patak’s face lit up when Klein told him about the encounters with Stumpy. He began nodding vigorously at Klein’s account of the ear tap, whispering hurried remarks to those around him. His eyes widened at Klein’s descriptions of the telepathic visions.

  When his testimony finished, Patak rolled his eyes and exclaimed, “Absolutely remarkable! You can’t realize how far you have just pushed us ahead. Oh, we had been able to obtain some telepathic visions, but the quality was nothing like yours. You see, we were trying to tap through the nose and sinuses, assuming it would shorten the gap to the cerebral cortex, but there was always too much mucus and sneezing, so the most we could receive were still photos that were hard to interpret because there was no dynamic element or scale. We had never tried the triple hook-up, but I can see now in retrospect that the Locals were trying to suggest something like that. Our insistence on scientific controls had limited us to individual encounters, which did not even work well for you.”

  “So you think the visions were true and accurate?”

  “Most assuredly. I will show you something soon that will confirm it.”

  “On the way to the crossing, Barber John and I had to slow down to cross several little rivers that flowed into the sea. In two of them we found bones. I brought some with me and left a few larger ones in a locker at the Crossing. I suppose they must have washed down and been buried in silt and dust, then uncovered when the banks eroded or the river changed course slightly.”

  “Yes,” agreed Patak, “It’s just like what happened with the dinosaurs, except it’s only an interval of a bit over a century. We’ve found bone specimens here in the South Continent Hills, as well. In fact, we found some bits of hide and tissue that have allowed us to look into cloning and genetic reconstruction.”

  “I thought you folks didn’t believe in that.”

  “In principle, the Circle does not. But we also believe in trying to restore the pre-terraform ecology of Domremy, so exceptions have been made in extraordinary cases like this.”

  “And you have personnel that can do that?”

  “Not enough, alas. Mainly a few people like myself who received genetics training before joining the Circle. After so many of the GMO projects on Earth went awry, that sort of education was mostly taboo for us. However, with old timers like myself and a handful of crossovers from Hyperion operations, we have been able to get a good head start. Come see.”

  He led Klein across the compound to a distant building and around back to a huge corral where Klein was astonished to see two of the creatures from his vision, alive and wandering contentedly through the foliage.

  “Those are the pig-hippos I saw in my link-up!”

  “An apt description, and from this moment forward and in honor of your discoveries, we shall call them pippos.”

  “But why don’t you have more if you can clone them so well?”

  “It’s true we did wonders with DNA from some desiccated hides found in a cave. But we didn’t want to create a lot of them until we knew if we could feed them. You see, most of the flora as well as the fauna was also wiped out in the terraforming. We have parallel experiments with plants in the fields over there and we have been able to discover enough to keep these alive. When we started, we didn’t even know if they could breathe the air and the first attempts failed until we could find a way of adapting them embryologically. We have enough on the way to form a small herd soon.”

  “This is marvelous. Look, doc, I’m no biologist, but I want to help with things here and I’d consider it an honor if you let me do something for these creatures.”

  “I think that can be arranged. Let me introduce you to the head keeper. I believe you’ve met him somewhere.”

  He led Klein around a corner and right up to a familiar smiling face.

  “Peebo!”

  “Pardner, I’m so happy to see you again. I just knew you’d come back sooner or later. I’m lucky to catch you here while I’m on assignment for a few months. Next week, I’m heading back home for a year. But we’ll have plenty of time to get caught up before I do, and maybe by then you’ll get to know these critters…”

  “Pippos!”

  “I like the name. And I’ll hand over all my secrets for caring for them. But first, a tall glass of cider.”

  In the days before Peebo left to return home to Stafford Station, Klein tried to learn all he could about pippos and their care. He was astonished at the scientific sophistication of his farmer friend, who obviously had a deep understanding of the genetic research furthered by Patak and his team. Klein had always known that Peebo had an instinctive grasp of ecology that revealed the relationships of all living organisms. The extent of his friend’s biochemical knowledge went far beyond that, putting him in a league with professors Klein had encountered in his university training, foreshortened as it had been. In any case, Peebo dubbed Klein fully qualified to care for the pippos and left several files of instructions of things to watch for and experiments to perform until he could return to the southern continent.

  Months passed quickly. No sooner had Klein gotten used to his pre-terraform pig-hippos than Patak presented him with a couple more clones to raise, with a view to extending the herd. All the while, Klein was also busy with Local encounters. Each afternoon he passed his pippo duties to an assistant and went to join the team in charge of Local communication, working in an expanded new area that allowed for triple and eventually quadruple feeler hookups with a human subject. Klein trained others to do as he had done with Stumpy and company. During and after the active sessions, a group of up to ten evaluators scrambled around trying to relate the new visions, which were becoming more and more narrative, with the background material they had already assembled. They became convinced that what was being communicated was far more than individual life experiences and that Locals had the ability to share in a collective consciousness that spanned untold generations. Locals regularly did feeler hookups as part of their social life, passing on vast quantities of lived history between groups to create a racial record. It was as if humans could each possess the entire knowledge of all their species’ libraries and data banks in eyewitness form. As the record grew, Klein became more and more impressed by the struggles the Locals had undergone in order to survive the coming of Hyperion and its settlers. The insectoids acquired a status of honor and even moral superiority that he had always been loath to grant to his fellow earthlings.

  Throughout this busy and quickly changing time, Klein could not forget the letter from Amanda. He began and tore up a succession of responses where he tried in vain to express his appreciation for her and even the word he was so reluctant to pronounce – his love. Everything sounded trite, stupid, and contrived as he read it over. Finally, over a year into his stay on the continent, he approached Patak with the request to set up a comlink. It would have to be one-way, of course, but at least he might be able to speak to her as though they were in person. Perhaps the tone of his voice and the sight of his face could provide what abstract words seemed incapable of conveying. Patak shook his head at the impossibility of such a thing, given the Dissidents’ renunciation of electronic communication with their own brethren on the other planets where they had settled. The equipment and power sources simply didn’t exist on Domremy. He merely replied with his typically Asian patience and steadfastness that he would look into it and see if an opportunity could present itself.

  Months later, it did. Patak came puffing down to the pippo compound to announce that a one-way comlink was being arranged for two ho
urs later. A Blynthian diplomatic corvette had entered Domremy orbital space to make arrangements for some food shipments to the resettlement camps on Earth. They were equipped with extremely powerful transmitters and agreed to alter course for a bit over the southern continent so that the experiment station could emit a message that they would boost via contacts through Tau Ceti and down to one of the Earth receivers to relay to Greenland. It would arrive much later, naturally. Klein regretted he could not see Amanda’s surprise when she played back the message. He wondered if it would have the effect he desired.

  He hardly had any time to prepare. When the technician gave him the signal to begin, he suddenly forgot some of what he had intended to say and stammered through the first five minutes ad lib. When he finally caught his breath, he looked back at the notes he had scribbled and tried to fill in as best he could in order to make a coherent message. Too soon, the technician was holding up three fingers for the minutes left, then two, then one, and as Klein frantically babbled his goodbyes, the techie gave the cut sign ending transmission. Ten minutes to express a lifetime of emotions. Klein was sure he had failed.

  As soon as he was summoned to view a reply, months later as another Blynthian ship passed, he was sure he had not. There was his little candy-striper, grown to blossoming young womanhood, wearing her anorak and bubbling with joy at being able to speak face to face to her father, despite so many parsecs distance and a time delay that only Einstein could appreciate. She ran on about her life and her hopes, repeatedly excusing herself for forgetting things and sounding absurd, and interjecting bits about Helga’s successes with post-plague triage. By the end, she was babbling worse than Klein, blubbering too, as tears rolled down her cheeks. She threw an awkward kiss his way through the camera lens as her transmission ended.

  From that point on, Klein was constantly reminding Patak and the techies at the experiment station about checking passing ships for another transmission opportunity. He made a rare personal trip to the few sites that served as improvised spaceports for supply shipments to make contacts and to enlist them in his network, as well. An added rationale for the trip was to stop at Peebo’s place with his son Mel, who had been doing a four-week stint at the experiment station and was returning to help with the harvests. Peebo’s second son, Moe, cornered Klein at every opportunity to pepper him with scientific questions. Having taken over the varoney project from his father and gone on to become recognized as one of the top ecologists among the Dissenters, Moe hinted so obviously at his interest in the pippos that Klein took it upon himself to invite him down to take a role in their care and eventually become the top pippo keeper. After the fact, Klein worried that he might have offended Mel, the elder child, by offering such an opportunity to the sibling, while Mel had already done valuable work on the southern continent. He needn’t have worried, because Mel was delighted at the idea, revealing to Klein that he had an off-planet project he was working on that required all his attention for the next couple of years at least.