by Eric Flint
"We'll be a long time counting all the casualties," Gray said. "The people—slans, tendrilless, and humans—require strong leadership. They need to see that we are united and intent on rebuilding."
"The tendrilless will never stop fighting," Joanna pointed out. "They can hide so easily among humans."
Cross gave a mysterious smile. "After this day is over, they shouldn't be much of a problem. I guarantee they won't have any further interest in killing slans. They'll have nothing to complain about." To his astonished audience, he and the slan scientists explained what was at that moment happening in Cimmerium.
A squadron of advanced technological vessels had already launched from the Moon toward Mars—research probes bearing a new sort of transmitter, a ray generator developed by slan geneticists.
"What kind of rays?" Kathleen asked.
One scientist, a man named Dr. Philcroft, said in an awed whisper, "Mutation rays!"
Anthea was the one who piped up. "Mutation rays? Like the ones Dr. Lann supposedly used to create the first slans? But that was just propaganda—no truth to it at all. I've studied the tapes and records in the archives. Slans were a natural mutation."
"We know, but it doesn't have to be that way. In our lunar base we had many centuries to expand our medical science. What was originally imagined as a wild rumor, we were able to turn into reality. Slan geneticists did indeed create a device that would do exactly what the ignorant mobs accused Dr. Lann of doing. Recall that the tendrilless hated us in the first place because they felt we had denied them their rightful powers. Thus, we found a means to activate the latent genetics frozen in the tendrilless slans. They always had the potential within them, but it was masked. Within a few generations their children would be born with tendrils anyway. So, we just accelerated that schedule."
Commander Cross picked up the story. "We fitted our scientific ships with transmitters to disperse those mutation rays widely, and those vessels are flying over the glass ceilings of Cimmerium even now. Every tendrilless soldier in the occupation ships has already been exposed." He grinned. "The results should be quite readily apparent."
"You mean the tendrilless on Mars are even now—?" Jommy tried to fit all the pieces together.
"Yes. The mutation rays are engendering the growth of tendrils. The Tendrilless Authority and all the people remaining in Cimmerium are rubbing the backs of their heads and finding quite a surprise. Everyone aboard the occupation ships is doing the same. They're all true slans now."
Jommy pictured what must be happening in the Martian city and aboard the giant wheel-shaped vessels. Tiny strands would emerge from the backs of their heads, growing like fine antennas. They would suddenly be able to pick up each other's thoughts—and what chaos that would cause! But the newly awakened tendrilless wouldn't know how to use their new skills. It would be a cacophony in their heads and an uproar in Cimmerium.
Kathleen shook her head wryly. "If Jem Lorry were still alive, I can just imagine the expression on his face as he transformed into one of his most hated enemies."
"And he would suddenly know just what everyone else thought of him," Joanna added.
"So, you see, there is no longer any need for conflict because the two parties can't tell each other apart," Cross concluded.
Jommy touched the back of his head, gathered the courage to ask his question. "And what about me? Can you regrow my tendrils? Can I be a normal slan again?"
His grandfather shook his head sadly. "Alas, it isn't the latent genetics to be triggered in you, Jommy. The mutation rays won't do anything to you, or to humans."
"We don't know how to convert humans yet, but the key is at hand, I'm sure." Philcroft looked at one of the other slan doctors, who nodded.
Kier Gray responded with a tired smile. "People can always find a reason for conflict, Commander, but you've just removed one of the largest ones."
Joanna looked from the military commander to the slan scientist. "You mean . . . I won't have to be tendrilless anymore, either? You can transform me as well?" She scratched the back of her head as if searching for delicate tendrils there. "I'll know what it's like?"
"You have the genes," Dr. Philcroft said. "All tendrilless slans do."
Anthea was also intrigued, holding up her baby. "Even those of us who didn't know we were tendrilless slans."
* * *
While the political delegates worked with President Gray to hammer out the details of an interim government, Commander Cross sat with Jommy and Kathleen.
"I miss your father terribly," the older man said. "He was such a brave and brilliant young man. Peter and your mother insisted on staying on Earth even though we could have brought them—and you—to safety on the Moon. But Peter was too dedicated to his work, and your mother refused to leave him. She clung to her hope. They both wanted to make a better world for you." Commander Cross shook his head. "I'm so sorry that I couldn't keep them safe, that I couldn't protect you, Jommy. I can't imagine what it must be like to lose your tendrils." His voice quavered.
"I survived," Jommy said, sitting straight, "and I'll continue to survive. Those tendrils defined what other people thought of me, but they didn't define me."
"What was Jommy's father working on that was so important down here?" Kathleen asked. "We have his disintegrator weapon, and we read many of his journals and lab notes."
"Peter was laying the groundwork for the return of the real slans and the conversion of the tendrilless, but he knew it wouldn't be easy. He understood that slans had to defend themselves in the meantime, which is why he invented that horribly destructive disintegrator. He was a good man, Jommy."
Jommy smiled. "I remember that much."
Anthea walked in holding the baby boy. Commander Cross looked at her, his tendrils raised and waving; he seemed to be in contact with the infant.
"That child is a sign that the waiting is over. More and more true slan children will be born again. This is the start of a new order, a new hope." His brow furrowed. "But that baby is so young, what psychologists call a tabula rasa—a blank slate or empty vessel, just waiting to be filled."
Anthea kissed the baby's pink forehead. "Maybe he's waiting for a safe and happy life."
Suddenly the scientists shouted from across the underground chamber. Dr. Philcroft's voice rang out clearly. "Commander Cross, come quickly! And Jommy, you too—this is important. You'll never believe what we found!"
CHAPTER 43
Inside one of the underground medical labs, the slan scientists had discovered equipment they had not expected to find away from the lunar complex.
"This is some of the best slan medical technology that we've developed," said Philcroft. "Peter Cross, or someone with him, must have built them according to our designs from the Moon. And the machines are still operational."
Kier Gray had also come running, hearing the urgency in the scientists' voices. "That's the same sort of technology we used to save my daughter." He gave Kathleen's shoulder a warm squeeze. "Otherwise she would never have survived the bullet wound in her head. But with a slan miracle device like this, we brought her back. I was sure the only such machine on Earth was destroyed when the tendrilless leveled the palace."
"I saw the tendrilless use that technology in Cimmerium, too. They reconstructed a woman with a severe head injury." Jommy looked at Dr. Philcroft. "But why the sense of urgency? You called us in here—"
Philcroft blinked his eyes. "Don't you see? It's a reconstruction device." Clinically, the doctor touched Jommy's head, turned him around to inspect the scabbed-over ends of his severed tendrils. "We can use it to grow your tendrils back." The other slan doctors agreed. "Given this equipment, it should be a simple-enough procedure."
Kathleen threw her arms around Jommy. He had not dared to hope, not even imagined a miraculous solution. "I'm ready right now," he said. "Let's not delay."
The reclining medical chair had armrests and an array of probes, mirrors, crystals, and a dishlike metal cap that lowere
d over Jommy's skull. It looked like a bizarre torture device that John Petty might have created.
Dr. Philcroft adjusted the equipment. "Just lean back. We've already run diagnostics, so there's nothing to worry about. You'll hear a pulsing sound and feel a tingling. I doubt it'll hurt . . . much."
"It could never hurt as much as when they cut my tendrils off." He closed his eyes, and Kathleen took his hand.
The slan medical specialists discussed the various settings and readings; the machine was already powered up. Lights blinked furiously, and the crystals glimmered. Jommy could indeed feel throbbing transmission pulses like tiny electric ants crawling over the back of his head and inside his brain. He imagined his cells dividing furiously, healing, growing. The reconstruction device worked with incredible speed.
"I see them!" Kathleen cried. "It's working."
As the seconds passed, the room illumination seemed to grow brighter to Jommy, and every background noise became clearer and sharper. Moment by moment, his senses increased by orders of magnitude. The new-grown tendrils spread out, questing, drinking in impressions.
Philcroft and his companions clucked excitedly amongst themselves. Then a shift happened in Jommy's mind, and he felt his primary sensory input starting to come from the back of his head. Suddenly, beginning as a whisper that grew to a roar, he could hear other thoughts, fresh impressions.
And there, like a bright light at the end of the tunnel, he found Kathleen's mind and her heart. They were connected again, mentally reunited at last. He felt a surge of love.
Philcroft switched off the machines, and Jommy sat up, breathless. He was healed—aware, and alive, and intact. He gingerly touched his tendrils, then Kathleen's. He climbed out of the chair and drew a deep breath. "For all the misery and prejudice I experienced because of these tendrils, I'm certainly glad to have them back!"
* * *
For the rest of the day, President Gray, Commander Cross, and Joanna Hillory made joint announcements to the public at large. The three of them worked carefully to reassure the survivors in the cities. They described their plans for rebuilding Earth and creating a bright future for everyone, with peace among the races.
Meanwhile, now that Jommy's tendrils had been healed, the slan scientists were intrigued by the rest of Dr. Lann's ancient equipment, which had been installed so long ago down here in the secret base. They devoted their studies to understanding the brain-pattern records and mental storage devices, mounting intact dataspools on the bulky generators. "Even we haven't concocted innovations like this." Dr. Philcroft ran his finger along the transparent covering that shielded a set of spinning information disks.
Anthea Stewart, feeling safe but somewhat lost, took care of her baby and tried to plan ahead. She entered the research room, watching Philcroft and his unsuccessful attempts to activate the strange, ancient device. When Anthea brought the infant close to the great machine's embedded detectors, though, the datadisks began spinning faster, lights flashed. The machinery hummed with furious energy.
Philcroft cried out to his partners. "Did you do that?"
"I didn't touch a single switch! It responded by itself."
"It can't activate spontaneously—there must have been some trigger." Then the men looked over at Anthea.
"I didn't do anything!" She set the baby down in his blanket to keep him safe from the machinery. His tiny tendrils were questing in the air as the old machinery spun and buzzed.
"The sensors detected a new presence," Philcroft said. "It's the baby."
Anthea remembered how the Porgrave signal in the library archives had activated because of her baby, how the whole underground base and its locator beacon had awakened from dormancy when she had carried the child inside.
The pulsing continued. The slan doctors rubbed their own heads. "Can you feel it? A targeted transmission, but I can't understand it."
Suddenly, the machinery stopped, the datadisks halted, the lights went dark on the control panels.
"Did it short out?" Philcroft said.
"No, I think . . . I think it was just finished."
Anthea glanced back down at her baby—and to her astonishment he lifted his head and looked around with hungry curiosity. Using his small hands, he propped himself up, sitting in his blankets. His tiny lips curved in an amazingly adult smile.
Then, in a perfect voice, he said, "The memory storage and transference worked perfectly. I am Samuel Lann!"
* * *
Kevin J. Anderson is the author of many books and stories. A. E. van Vogt died in 2000 and was the author of Slan as well as many other books and stories.
The Ancient Ones, Episode 4
Written by David Brin
Illustrated by Chantelle Thorne
Again and again, during my years of service, I have reflected upon the high likelihood that I must be insane.
Perhaps it is a job requirement. For, among the inhabitants of Earth and all her colonies, only completely out-there optimists are qualified to be assigned as Human Advisors, dispatched to live in full-time contact with our beloved allies, rubbing elbows and other close-packed parts amid the mostly-Demmie crew of some mighty Alliance starship.
They take this trait very seriously at the Academy, testing for it rigorously, by hooking candidates up to a Voltaire meter. In order to be accepted for advisor-training, you must view reality through rose-colored VR specs. Taste life's candide-coating. Perceive this as the best of all possible universes.
Still, on this occasion, it was hard even for me to look at the bright side. What cause had I for optimism? Zooming just above alien rooftops that positively glittered with pikes, broken glass and countless other implements of paranoia, suspended in mid-air by a mere slender cable that thrummed and jerked and vibrated unnervingly as I slid along—while singing at the top of my lungs—plunging through the night toward a great, dark pyramid, where awaited (almost certainly) many, varied monsters who shared one common trait . . .
. . . a ravenous taste for blood.
Any sensible person might lapse into silence at such a moment, perhaps curling into a quivering ball. But I could not. For it was the singing itself that made the cable dance and hum, thrusting me across the night. A sonic-amplifying wire of impressive technological sophistication, it responded to just the right melody, exactly the way a laser does, when an excited medium is provoked by specific frequencies and patterns of light. And if the ditty that I had to bellow was coarse and immature? One fit for boobs? Well, I've been corseted in tight situations before. There was nothing new about having to use a brazen gambit, in order to bust out of a breathless predicament. Anyway, I work with Demmies.
No, that wasn't what forced me to re-evaluate my sanity. Nor was I much daunted by two days of loneliness, or several near-death pummelings by a planet of the danged. Look, our service isn't called SNAFU for nothing.
There are always times like this, when you ship out on one of the Alliance Star Cruisers assigned to the great unknown. Like when the drives are out and you're plummeting toward some deadly black hole, and singularity tides have stretched your vocal chords so much that you sound like a thirteen-year old chanting yotzer on helium, or a castrati screeching Salieri on speed. Or when you're swerving through teeth-rattling evasive maneuvers, with plasmonic disruptor explosions bursting on all sides, struggling to escape some nefarious Spertin ambush. At such moments, it is important to stay positive and composed around Demmies, maintaining their favored image of us humans as stout fellows, wise and steady, if stereotypically priggish and stiff.
Even in the middle of a crisis, Demmies do love their stereotypes.
Only now, were Captain Olm and the crew of Clever Gamble even still alive? Or had they fallen prey to the many kinds of garish monsters that roamed this strange world? In order to find out, I must plunge through eerie darkness, skimming just above the rooftops of a metropolis that had every good reason to cower in fear—racing toward certain danger, while bellowing vulgar lyrics that were written
(long ago) specifically to undermine solemnity. As if the force propelling me forward were distilledanti-gravitas.
As I grew hoarse, inventing new lyrics to the theme song from The Road to Transylvania, it occurred to me that—if truth be told—I was rather tired of playing The Role. That of a mature and dignified human. Straight man to all the Demmie punch lines.
An "ancient one."
In all of our ancestral legends about space travel, didn't old-time authors envision humanity as the brash young upstarts? Intrepidly setting forth into the unknown, facing dire threats and deadly foes, making countless mistakes, but always persevering, brilliantly, against the odds? Moreover, in myth, weren't we often assisted by some wise elder race? Admirable, patient beings, unresentful of our success and irreverent gumption. In those early romances, movies and threevees, from Roddenberry space operas to Tolkien fantasies, there were always kindly older brothers, unjealous and dependable; perhaps a bit stuffy and exasperated, but always sagacious, forebearing and kind.
