Apex

by Robert Appleton

  Her first glimpse of Ricky Melekhin lit her in all the ways her talk of Ruben Intaglio had dimmed her. She was a natural flirt, without much guile, and blushed at the drop of a hat. It made her easy to read and easier to like, and it was no wonder Melekhin allowed her harpooning gaze to draw him toward her, or that he ensured every inch of his impressive height and shoulders dominated the lounge as she entered.

  He and Xiang were supposed to have waited twenty-four hours on Cunard’s Star to make sure the comms blackout was maintained, and then return to Ophir-2. But at the warp gate, Vaughn had received Jan’s message about the sat net debacle on Hesperidia. Without that vital orbital security measure, the Hesp would not be as safe as he’d supposed. Still pretty secure – there would not be any other ships allowed to land on the planet until the sat net was back online – but he’d decided to take extra precautions. And as Xiang’s only reason for accompanying Melekhin was so that the rookie wasn’t alone on so dangerous a protective detail, he could let Vaughn, a senior agent, assume that responsibility for him. Xiang had thus returned to Ophir-2, while Vaughn had brought Melekhin to double the protective detail on Hesperidia.

  He introduced them. “Joyce Horrigan, this is Agent Melekhin.”

  “Ma’am.”

  “Agent Melekhin.”

  “Ricky, please.”

  “Joy.”

  Vaughn interrupted, “And this is Gordy and Polly Masterson.” At which mention the couple also known as Cleeve Brougham and Kyra Stone reacted with admirable discretion. Joyce gave them a friendly welcome, more in line with her usual tour guide schtick, and it was clear that they liked her. From then on Vaughn’s mind rested easier. Procuring the supplies proved straightforward, as his credentials were known to the quartermaster. A quick ganders at the passenger manifest for the last shuttle arrival—indeed, the only shuttle arrival since the sat net snafu, apart from his—revealed only COVEX delegates, all cleared by the highest authority.

  So he flew Kyra, Cleeve and Melekhin to the Keys, following Joyce in her own ship. He almost regretted having to head north after that, from the best weather on Hesperidia to its bitterest climes. But he had a locker full of the warmest gear on the market. Not to mention the hot sauce waiting for him…

  Vaughn reached the rendezvous river first, set his bird down in a field of wispweed that rippled under the force of the landing thrusters. It overlooked a steep, tiered bank, each level of which was littered with washed-up lichen and bulbous seaweeds. The lowest was slick and damp, the highest petrified in the manner of the vast region of tundra that lay beyond the lake to the north. It appeared tidal to Vaughn, but he hadn’t realized this place was connected to the sea. A long, bar-shaped island, covered with shells and weeds, stood in the middle of the bay. The gradual curve of the water channel around this island’s southern half, and the cave at the apex of the bend, recalled a couple of phrases Jan had used when describing one of her field trips: something about “a horseshoe channel” and “a tidal bore”. He didn’t know what the latter was, but it fit his hypothesis about the tiered bank.

  He put on his warm gear and ventured out to stretch his legs.

  The wispweed was the last trace of temperate vegetation before the Arctic wilds. Scanning the perimeter of the river with his omnipod, he spied a copse of Ronkonkoma trees on the southwest bank. A few furry nests lay couched in the spiral, sponge-covered branches. That sparked another memory, from another of Jan’s excitable tales of discovery. A rare species of bird, whose nests were rarer still. He was damned if he could remember the bird’s name, but the associations piled up in his intuitive detective’s brain.

  It told him Jan would love to see inside one of those nests. And if he could do it for her, present her with an audiovisual record for her portfolio, she’d be doubly impressed that a) he’d taken a proactive interest in her work, and b) that he did listen to her geeky ramblings after all. It would be worth it just to see her eyes light up. And if he was quick, he might even be back before she arrived.

  The freezing water bit hard, several times per leg, as he waded deeper into the channel. Then his insulating layers began to nullify the icy grip. At least the water level didn’t rise above his groin – that kind of cold he could happily do without. The silty bed gave a few inches, had a slippery, mucky texture, and inclined sharply at the bar, so that he had to scramble a little to gain the summit. He used a clump of embedded weeds to pull himself up. The channel on the opposite side was shallower, its flat bedrock exposed by a faster-flowing current. Vaughn noticed what looked like a series of long notches – straight equidistant lines carved into the rocky river bed. They extended across the channel. Even stranger, they appeared to connect to several lopsided, wavery glyphs of a frosty silver hue, also carved into the bedrock.

  He blinked a few times, thought it might be an optical illusion. Then he concluded that some ranger or wayward tourist had graffitied. But the time and care it must have taken to carve something so precise, so extensive, and underwater – who would do that? Why, when it was only visible if you stumbled across it? The whole point of graffiti was to call attention to itself.

  He activated his wrist mount and freed a pair of germs – his trusty aerial surveillance drones, about the size of insects, that were invaluable for mapping crime scenes, spying on suspects, or detonating a surprise explosive charge in dicey combat situations. They’d saved his life countless times over the years. Now they could hopefully render a service to science: either this was a puzzling act of vandalism that had permanently scarred a natural beauty spot, or it was something altogether unprecedented on Hesperidia – a petroglyph. Either way, he knew Jan would want a thorough visual record of it.

  While the germs were busy circling and cataloguing, Vaughn made his way to the nests. The sponges lining the spiral tree branches looked delicate, so he was careful with his footing. Omnicam activated, he peered into one, then a second, then the third. All empty, damn it. Not even broken shells to prove the hatchings had taken place. Still, at least he’d tried.

  A distant roar of wind preceded a flurry of punchy gusts that threatened his balance. He hopped down and, not liking how exposed he was to the arrival of sudden icy weather, hurried back, collecting the germs on his way. But the roar had not abated. It intensified, and it brought a rumble that quivered the weeds on the bar. Vaughn was clambering onto that central island when a large wave muscled its way into the bay – an angry, foamy squall that swelled as it tore in a crashing arc around the northern edge. It brought with it the frightening volume and dimensions of a flash flood. But this had the unnerving feel of something expected, something rhythmic, something…

  Tidal!

  Tidal bore. Horseshoe channel.

  Jan’s words slapped him with the shaming force of unheeded warnings. This was alien nature, and he meant nothing to it. He was already wading into the deeper channel when the dilemma struck him: it might have been safer to go the other way, back across the shallow channel and the petroglyph. It occurred to him that the mysterious carving might be a warning too, a symbol of caution, though by whom or what he had no idea.

  Another four or five strides and he’d make the bank. The wave was too fast. It rolled in and hurled him off his feet and into its churning, crashing drive around the horseshoe. A relentless sweep of the tide that bore him with shocking urgency into the cave at the back of the bay. Its darkness loomed with frosty menace. He felt himself being thrust up by a force beyond his comprehension. Then he hit something ancient and solid.

  * * *

  Vaughn’s ship was there, but he wasn’t. Footprints led down to the water. High tide would be some way off, but the bore had already visited, flooding the bay to a height above the central bar. Jan swallowed her first guess and shook her head to dispel the notion, but her brow muscles only bunched tighter. If he hadn’t wandered into the channel and been caught by the violent wave, then where was he? Why wasn’t he answering her hails?

  Jan had done a stupid thing too.
She’d told Ruben to go on ahead with Frau Zeller, because she hadn’t wanted them to sully her reunion with the man she loved. This was to have been a romantic interlude far away from other people. But not checking in with Vaughn first and telling the others to skedaddle: well, that was just bad practice. Amateurish. Arrogant.

  “Vaughn, come in. Seriously, if you’re off exploring somewhere and your comms are down, you and me are gonna have words. Over.”

  No reply. Nothing. She dashed back to his ship, to see if he’d left a message or a clue to say where he’d—

  Stopper let loose his loudest bowowow from the southeast edge of the bay. She sprinted up and over the small hillock between them, and froze. Her first guess hatched its worst fears, turned her insides. There was a body down there. Stopper was telling her it was Vaughn’s. But as her legs moved unbidden, almost at a run toward the worst discovery of her life, Jan glimpsed puzzling anomalies. Things that shouldn’t be – not if he’d drowned and been washed up.

  First, his body was covered – no, wrapped – from head to toe. A thick blanket of wispweed, its strands woven together in intricate fashion, ensured he would not perish from exposure. Second, he’d been set on a rudimentary bed, raised several inches off the ground on a latticed wooden frame held up by a dozen crossed leg branches as supports. All very clever, all very boy scout.

  Then there were the embers. She hadn’t seen their glow before because they’d been placed on his opposite side, presumably to ward off the breeze trending from the south. But the closer she got, the more the mystery deepened. They were embers all right, insofar as smoldering hot rocks qualified; but these, bright lilac, lay in a pool of water dug into the silt at Vaughn’s side. The boiling water gave off significant heat – again, enough to keep him warm, probably well into the Arctic night.

  Lastly, several of his personal items had been set on the sand at his feet: his Kruger, his utility baldric torn at the shoulder, his wrist-mounted germ case, and the diorthus tooth pendant she’d given him as a present after he’d helped her save a beached geyerwahl and its calf from a frenzied attack on a sand bank in the Keys. It had been the first time he’d risked his life to save an animal, and witnessing that remained one of Jan’s proudest moments.

  Now someone had saved his life. But who? The actual tracks in the sand had been wiped away, but the sweeping pattern that had erased them was clear enough to follow. It trended around the bay until it reached the boulders before the cave at the southern point, less than a stone’s throw from Vaughn’s position.

  Six pink eyes glowed inside the gloom of the cave. They were equidistant, perhaps a couple of meters apart. Similar to the embers in the hot pool keeping Vaughn warm, only these didn’t appear to be submerged. As she watched, a hunched, silhouetted shape moved across them. Its motion was smooth – not quite a glide, more of a rolling, bobbing rhythm, like the strokes of a buoyant creature raising its head and shoulders well above the surface. But she couldn’t tell its shape, or even that it had a head or shoulders. It could be either bulbous or slender, owing to the strange way it seemed to flex. The only thing Jan knew for certain was that it wasn’t human.

  She was about to tell Stopper to stay with Vaughn – he might scare the creature away if he got too close and overprotective. Whatever it was, it had saved Vaughn’s life, and it was intelligent, far more intelligent than any other Hesperidian life-form she’d encountered. But it was also an unknown quantity. She knew from bitter experience that it was always better to err on the side of caution when it came to approaching new species. And anyway, it was Stopper’s job, the reason canines had been brought to the Hesp in the first place – to sense dangers that humans could not.

  She tucked Vaughn’s Kruger into her belt, and pocketed the diorthus tooth pendant for luck.

  “Easy, boy. Let’s take it nice and easy,” she said to Stopper as they hopped onto the lowest boulder still prominent above the choppy seawater. The others reached almost to the cave entrance, but for the final few meters she had to swim. The cold shocked her. Luckily there was a ledge that skirted the interior. Only a few inches submerged, it gave her and Stopper ample space to make their way around toward the pink embers, which had been placed on a jagged seam a few feet above the waterline. The fidgety sea lapped and plopped, the sounds echoing around this meagre sanctum. Jan spotted a higher chamber that appeared to delve into the hillside, and another, deeper access into the cave from underwater.

  The latter soon began to glow with a ghostly hazel light.

  Jan shuffled back a few steps, keeping her balance by leaning on the rock wall above the embers. The hairs on her already goosed skin now bristled in waves from shins to scalp, feeding a heady trepidation, but also unbearable excitement for what this encounter might mean for the future of humans on Hesperidia. Surprisingly, as Vaughn’s mysterious savior surfaced, revealing its full amphibian form for the first time, Stopper did not object. No barks, whines, not so much as a growl. He seemed to know, instinctively, that the creature meant no harm.

  That was good enough for Jan. She removed her palm from the Kruger and waved a greeting to the amphibian instead.

  Its form had the suppleness and aesthetic grace of the Asteriidae on Earth, but at three meters plus when erect, this was longer, slenderer than any starfish, boasted more than five limbs, and had several unique characteristics. Its head, neckless and bowed at rest, but able to rise to a remarkable degree, had a sleepy, downcast look. Crested, almost armadillo-like, with rough skin, it had no snout. Its conical mouth flexed open a little with each breath, revealing mandibles and an intricate spiral of teeth that extended down its throat. Half a dozen tubular proboscises hung from the underside of its jaw; they slowly curled up as they reacted to the air. Meanwhile, two slit-like cavities stretched around the sides of its head, dotted with eyes that blinked rough-skinned, rolling eyelids. The eyes were alert, penetrative – they blazed with fathomless depth in the pink ember light.

  The creature’s pebbled, starfish-like appendages were really protective sheaths for its true limbs. These extended out when needed, and were incredibly intricate. A myriad of slender, interacting tentacles were capable of twisting together to form various spined shapes for utility: strong “hands” to grab and lift, or toed “feet” to walk upon. They could also disperse to create hives of intelligent feelers. Jan counted six of these limbs. The lowest pairs were stouter, more compact, and had flippers at the back, while the upper pair extended further and seemed more dexterous.

  When the protruding tentacles began to glow and change color, they resembled fiber optic threads. Jan watched in awe as the starfish sheaths contracted around these spines of twisted tentacles and seemed to ripple something forth from inside the skin. Tiny tubes opened up in the sleeve ends. They jetted out a spray of seawater and something gelatinous at the cave wall above the pink embers. The action was accompanied by a sonar-like ping that left an itch in Jan’s ear.

  Here the rendezvous took an extraordinary turn.

  Before the spray hit the rock, it had to pass through a splayed configuration of the variegated tentacles. When it did, light blazed from the ends of the tentacles, projecting a beam of intricate colors onto the wall where the seawater and gel had just hit. The result was a remarkable pictorial representation of Jan and Stopper walking side by side near their beach home in the Keys – a fresco of light and color. It shimmered like a sunlit glimpse through a window ribboned by streaming rain. The detail was there, but it was fleeting. It melted away as the gel and moisture ran down the contours of the rock.

  The first instance of indigenous alien art ever seen on Hesperidia. And she – Jan Corbija – had lived to see it!

  But what now? How could she respond to that? Her own artistic abilities had crawled back into their crayon box at an early age, her teacher’s reports having described them with spooky prescience (for Jan’s ultimate career) with words like “chimpanzee”, “dog’s dinner”, “fecal matter”, and other disparagements linked to th
e animal kingdom. She did have her omnipod, though. Could that project images? Probably. But she’d never tried it, and what images would be appropriate to show? Communicating fluently in light and color might be tailor-made for a filmmaker or a photographer; unfortunately, she’d demonstrated her acumen in those fields with a stunning display of toe-stubbing and not much else that same morning.

  “Okay, boy, how do we go about this?” She knelt beside Stopper, massaged his ears. He gazed at the creature, mesmerized.

  “Hello.” She pointed to herself. “Jan. My name is Jan.” She gestured to the creature. “What is your name?”

  It didn’t respond. And there was no reason it should, she realized. Even Earth Nature was replete with species that had evolved without the ability to vocalize. This one, almost certainly the apex species on Hesperidia, in terms of intelligence, appeared to use an entirely visual means of communication. Apart from the sonar ping.

  She booted up her omnipod, and with rapid eyecraft cycled through the index of functions. Most she’d never bothered with. But she had seen one of the rangers host a seminar in the HQ conference room, during which he’d illustrated his travelogue with diary images projected directly from his personal ’pod onto a whiteboard.

  Product Registration…Product Services…Profit Flow Chart Templates…Projection App—

  “Gotcha!”

  Veins in the amphibian’s skin flickered a color slightly darker than the hazel it had introduced itself with. What did that mean in its language? ‘Take your time’? Or ‘For chrissakes, I haven’t got all day’? It appeared to be gearing up for a second projection when Jan hit on the linked folder to her personal photo album and a random image shone out through the front of her ’pod. It was distorted a little as it passed through the concave glass of her visor, and to Jan’s embarrassment, appeared inverted on the cave wall.