Analog Science Fiction and Fact - Jan-Feb 2014

by Penny Publications

  His eyes rapidly scanning the surfaces of the near-plants at his side, he called the camera over. It floated down the path, halting next to his shoulder. Jensen shrugged off his backpack, set the lens to macro and raised the camera's agrav tripod so it floated level with his face, then tilted it downward with a quick voice command. Bright and sharp, the gravlens system threw a thirty-two segment critter no bigger than his hand onto the screen in mottled green-orange relief. Thirtytwo segments! The design gods had gone crazy for powers of two on Sulla IV, but even so, anything over sixteen segments was rare. Excitedly, he asked the camera to query the satnet for an ID of the critter. Unidentifiable, its AI returned, automatically uploading the image and the creature's measurements to the data pool. If it really was unknown, perhaps he'd get to name it. Even after so many years on survey teams, he still got a kick out of naming new creatures.

  It sat, motionless as a rock, on the bright green and purple... limb? frond? branch? leaf?... of the less mobile organism, several tiny, common eight-segmented critters pinned, or perhaps carried, beneath its twelve legs. Two grasping appendages and two mouth parts completed its allowance of sixteen limbs. This arrangement was a common body plan on Sulla IV. Even the bush (he idly counted as the camera captured images) originally had sixteen branches with 128 fronds, each composed of 256 broad segments. Damage from parasites and weather had reduced those figures considerably, however. Was the dash of red in its fronds a sign of disease? He reached out, frowning, for a closer inspection.

  There was a rustling sound and his survey partner, Mukesh Balan, the expedition's exobiologist, huffed up behind him, his backpack stuffed with equipment and both hands holding full bags of samples. Short, and wiry, with licorice-colored skin and fine sharp features set off by the company-issued fatigues they both wore, he nodded at Jensen. "Don't worry, CJ, nothing around here is toxic. In fact, it's just like the initial surveys reported, almost everything on this plateau appears to be edible to humans. I've been randomly popping things in the analyzer for hours. Bing! All carbon-based, all edible. Prelims indicate—"

  "—Medicinals too, right? That's really wonderful, Mike," Jensen replied sincerely. "I think our tiny little slice of the production rights is going to be huge for once." He grimaced, pointing. "You mean I can eat this leaf thing?""Well, it might have parasites we haven't found yet. But yeah, you can probably eat it."

  "Tried any yet?"

  "Actually, yes. You know those really common sixteen-part thingies with the blue segments and red-fringed legs? About ten centimeters long?"

  "Sure, got about a thousand images of them already."

  "I roasted a few for breakfast. Delicious; sweet, like fine shrimp."

  "The colonization evaluation teams will love that," Jensen grunted absently, one eye on the camera.

  "A couple of thousand kilometers of cool upland, high percentage of edibles, decent weather, good air, and no predators or apparently, interesting parasites. No technology anywhere, no agriculture, so no unContacted humans and thus, no political complications. Perfect." Balan set the bags down and grinned infectiously. "It's just like you said on the sled coming over here this morning: survey in paradise."

  "Well... there's no whiskey for five hundred kilometers."

  "True," Balan agreed amiably. "Still, it's a nice change from our usual contract." He bent and retrieved what looked like a gleaming magenta fruit from one of the bags at his feet. "Taste this, perfectly safe."

  Jensen took it from his hand and eyed it suspiciously.

  "Go on. Oh, I forgot. You New Zealanders only eat barbecued meat, right?"

  "We do eat vegetables," Jensen protested, as he took a nibble, "provided they are grilled between slices of meat, the way all decent foods should be prepared." He smacked his lips. "That's excellent. Like... like... a mango or something!"

  Balan nodded and grinned. "They'll be brawling in the streets to get in on this colonization program."

  Jensen opened his mouth, about to reply, but his comlink interrupted him with a polite squeal. He yanked it out of his utility belt, his stubby fingers slipping across its buttons.

  "Jensen here."

  "Gomez. Everything ok?"

  "We're both fine. Been munching our way around the local scenery."

  "Just remember: you are what you eat." There was a long pause. Gomez's voice returned, leaden. "Look, there's something weird going on. You know Chidimbaram and her team have dropped camera traps all over the plateau, right?"

  "Sure."

  "She's reported that nothing's moving."

  "Come again?"

  "All the near-bugs and near-plants. Ceased activity. All across the plateau. Have you noticed that in your area?"

  Balan nodded, looking around. "Come to think of it..."

  Jensen glanced back at the creature on the frond. It hadn't moved. "Still life with earthquake?" he quipped.

  They could hear the wry grin coloring Gomez' voice. "Something like that. She's thinking quake, or maybe a huge storm. The local organisms often know."

  "Shit," replied Jensen, blowing out his breath. "Over the entire plateau? That's a couple million square klicks. Must be pretty big."

  "Yes, that's right. So dig in tight, keep your handhelds nearby in case we have to retrieve you."

  "I hear you."

  "Also, thought you ought to know. That hot spot Siriyasa picked up north of the plateau rim turned out to be an old Earth evac ship. Crashed. Radioactives suggest it was fission powered. No records." For a moment Jensen pictured the passengers, escaping an Earth heated to death by humanity, navigating the p-space void in the most primitive FTL technology imaginable, only to die right on the rim of paradise. Poor bastards.

  "Twenty-one degrees predicted tonight," Gomez added, breaking across his thoughts. "You'll be missing the beaches of Marius."

  "Twenty-one? We should be drawing hazard pay or something," Jensen complained. "What's the temp in New Brundisium today?"

  "Thirty-nine, as always, and the girls aren't wearing hardly anything."

  "Shit. First a disaster, and now that. I'm signing off before you depress me any further." There was a laugh, and a click. Jensen turned to Balan, thinking—

  Something flared behind his eyes.

  Pain.

  Discontinuity.

  Blackout.

  What was that? Jensen was on his back, limbs splayed listlessly about. He tried to roll over, failed. Groaning, his tongue thick and dry as if someone had stuffed a rag down his throat, he attempted to stagger to his feet, and again failed. There was a twenty-one gun salute going off in his cranium, over and over again. His chest ached, and a great weight lay across it, holding him down. His eyes opened, one atom at time. Darkness.

  Am I blind? He blinked.

  No, it was night. Overcast. He could barely make out the gray outlines of the local near-plants. Where was the rest of the survey team? He finally remembered who he'd just been talking to.

  "Mike? Mike?" he called softly.

  A voice, distant, probably from another galaxy. "Trouble in paradise, man." A hand, gently holding his shoulder. "Take it easy, you've been knocked out. Don't try to move."

  "What... what the hell happened?" He lifted his hand, and realized that the weight on his chest was one of the emergency blankets. "What time is it?"

  "Near dawn, I think," his friend replied soothingly. "Slowly, man, slowly. Feels like we've been out eight, maybe ten hours. Hard to say."

  Jensen managed to sit up and miraculously, his brain started functioning again. He groped at his face, and wondered at the massive bruise he found there. Fell on my face, did I? "Thank all gods there are no predators up here, us lying here like that." He flexed his hands, peering out to find Balan crouched next to him, peering back ghostly in the darkness. He gingerly touched his solar plexus. "My chest is killing me, mate. What hit us?"

  Balan shrugged. "My guess is some kind of freak electromagnetic effect." There was a crik of hard plastic hitting the groud as he t
ossed their comlinks in front of Jensen. "All the electronic equipment is knocked out. Gone. Comlinks are dead. I think we got a massive shock as well. My chest is sore and my head feels like someone stirred my brain with a spoon. Like our bodies got rebooted or something."

  "Same as me, mate," Jensen thought for a minute. "It's probably not a freak storm," he offered, at last, compelling his dilatory tongue to obedience. "Must happen relatively regularly. The organisms appear to be evolved for it. I mean, they all stopped moving—" He sat straight up, suddenly remembering. "Wait, everything is dead? The camera!"

  "Hope it's insured, Chris." Jensen felt, rather than saw, the other man's sympathetic look.

  "That's a forty-two thousand rupee gravitylensed camera! I bought it myself!"

  "It's a forty-two thousand rupee heap of plastic casing now," Balan replied with mock cheer, inclining his head down the trail. "Having crashed to the ground when its agrav unit failed. It's lying right over there. And that's not all that we had parked on an agrav unit." He paused, meaningfully.

  "Oh shit," Jensen groaned. "We suspended all the camping gear over the river on the agrav sled."

  "It's SOP," Balan spat, bitterly. "Keep things out of reach of local organisms. If nothing can fly, then park the agrav over a body of water. Perfectly safe."

  "Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. How deep is the water there?"

  "You'll need pearl divers to find our stuff now."

  In spite of himself, Jensen chuckled. "Did you talk to Gomez?"

  Balan looked at him expressionlessly.

  "Right," Jensen continued, rubbing the top of his head vigorously as if to stimulate his brain. "No comlinks."

  The two men stood, Balan supporting Jensen with one hand. It seemed that dawn, like the men, was groping uncertainly at the jungle. After a few minutes Sulla IV's sun, satisf ied with its fingerhold on the new day, hoisted itself above the jungle. Feeling the heat travel up his arms, Jensen realized he was cold. "It's freezing out here."

  "Twenty-one cee. Not even close."

  "Freezing," Jensen repeated peevishly. "On Marius it never falls below thirty-two."

  Balan laughed. "On Second Home, it never gets above thirty-two, at least where I live." They both chuckled, then fell silent, watching the sunrise. The forest began coming to life as the sun played across the near-plants. Noises of scuttling and scurrying, whistling sounds, leaves rustling. Shapes flitting across the scenery.

  "We'd better inventory our things," suggested Balan. His eyes widened at a string of alarming thumping sounds. "We need to get off this trail."

  "Good idea." Jensen counted off on his fingers. "I don't have much. Concentrates, water, utility knife, jacket, emergency kit. Almost everything else I packed is electronic. GPS. Computer. Stunner. Transponders. Even my timepiece." He twisted— damn! That hurt! — and spotted his backpack lying on the trail a few yards from where he'd left it... yesterday. He frowned. And speaking of yesterday, why hadn't anyone come to pick us up? Base is only 500 klicks south of here, two hours by agrav sled. Images are GPS-tagged so they have our location. They should have been here hours ago. Suddenly it hit him. "Base got knocked out too," he breathed, aloud. "This thing was planetary." His skin prickled and a wave of cold flashed from abdomen to chest. "We're alone out here."

  Balan bent to pick up his own pack. "Yes, it seems that way," he nodded, grunting, as his hands flailed about inside the bag. "Couple of liters of water, utility knife, emergency kit," he reported. "Less than you. Well," he said, indicating the jungle with a wry grin, "we won't lack for food."

  Jensen inclined his head in agreement, his mouth twisting up in thought. " Siriyasa isn't due back for a couple more weeks," he murmured. "She was jumping back to Naeghara for more survey teams and equipment. She'll be back early though, the old man likes a fast turnaround, no expensive assets loitering in port. I'd say ten days, tops."

  Balan shrugged wearily. "Survival situation. At least ten days. You know the drill. Water, fire... "

  "... earth and air. Elemental, my dear Watson," finished Jensen. They gathered up their things, and moved off. He threw one last pained glance back at the glistening heap of parts that had been his camera.

  "Damn!"

  It took them a couple of hours of hiking to cover the dozen kilometers back to the insertion site where their agrav sled had disappeared. They slithered along the edge of the game trail, nerves ajangle, ready to spook at any moment, as if they were game animals themselves. The local fauna left them alone.

  They halted where a landslide scarp had yanked out one side of the game path, widening the river bank to form a little lake over which they had parked their gear. Jensen glared over the edge as they huffed up and dropped their packs to rest. There was no sign of their belongings.

  It's really true, he thought. Our stuff is gone. He felt his knees turn to dough, and reached out to the smaller man for support. Balan threw him a sympathetic look.

  "Ten, twelve days, man. We can do it." He turned, waving a hand to the north. "I've been thinking. Looking at what's happened to us, it's pretty clear what must have happened to that Earth ship way up yonder."

  "Right. They must have encountered that electromagnetic effect," Jensen nodded, rubbing his cheek. "And then—"

  "Imagine it. They break orbit, enter the atmosphere—"

  "—And WHAM! suddenly every system on the ship fails. A minute later they're a crash site."

  "Or maybe they landed, set up camp—"

  "—And WHAM! every system on the ship fails. Reactor melts when cooling system fails, radiation burns 'em down. But they couldn't run away—"

  "—Because they were unconscious," continued Balan. "For hours. Those who didn't die right away, at least. Remember how much our chests hurt? Heart attacks killed the weak, and then everyone got a lethal dose of radiation anyway."

  "Right. So they got all the way to paradise, and then died."

  "The primary form of communication between gods and men," intoned Balan, eyes glinting, "is historical irony."

  "Heh." Jensen gave a wry smile. "I think I am going to have a seat over there and watch the day roll by. Got any more of those purple mango things?" The two men clambered down a bit, off the game trail, and lowered themselves onto the ground. It was a stunning day, Jensen realized. Below them, the weird shapes of the low-growing near-plants formed an amphitheatre around the lake, and beyond the lake the ground rose and fell in little hummocks studded with bushes, as far as the eye could see. Balan passed him a couple of fruits, and Jensen munched contentedly, gingerly exploring the bruises on his face.

  "Sooner or later," remarked Balan as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, "we're going to have to bestir ourselves and find a place to camp for the night."

  "I was just thinking about that." Jensen's finger reached out, traced the river that fed the lake. "Further down, there's a section with some shallow pools, I remember seeing. It's only a few klicks away. We can set up on one of the little spits of land there and string some of the metal stuff across the neck as noisemakers. Anything big enough to splash across the river would probably make enough noise to wake one of us." He shrugged. The second pair of appendages on all the common sixteen segmented creatures are prehensile, Jensen thought. And if they are safe for us to eat, our food is probably safe for them. "Should be safe from raiding animals," he argued aloud. "Though there don't seem to be any critters in that weight class, eh?"

  Balan nodded, craned his neck. "Looks like our game path eventually meanders down there. What say we go reconnoiter?"

  "Don't have anything else to do," Jensen answered with a sigh. They stood and slung their packs over their shoulders.

  Forty minutes of brisk walking down the game trail brought them to a set of shallow pools that formed a gently falling, sparkling stairway in the river that appeared to run for several kilometers. The clear water formed braids that ran in the channels alongside them. In the pools flitted a host of flamboyant creatures in brilliant hues of red, pu
rple, yellow, and green. Heaps of gray-white rock lined the edges of the pools and spilled across the channels.

  "That's gorgeous," breathed Jensen. "They'll be making a park out of this for sure!"

  "Best of all," said Balan, clapping him on the back, "the red ones are delicious. If only we had a way to catch them."

  "Ha!" Jensen ejaculated. "Watch this." He set down his pack and sprung across a trio of channels until he was balancing on a large flat rock in front of a pool. "If we just move this rock here," he described, grunting as he did so, "and put a couple of these fat rocks right here and here... we can drain the pool and divert the water that would fill it." Jensen used the rock to scrape out a miniature ditch. The two men watched as the water ran out the gap, leaving the near-fish crammed into a shallow puddle. "Voila!" He spread a hand out, inviting. "You can just reach down and scoop them up."

  "No kidding?" Balan hopped across to inspect his partner's work. "You're a genius."

  Jensen beamed. "Go ahead, Mike." Obediently the shorter man put a hand in the pool and lifted out one of the near-fish, wriggling to get free. Composed of eight segments, it looked like a cross between a trilobite and a fish. "Water's cold," he commented as he gave it a twist that ripped it in half. He let its circulatory fluids drain into the river, then swished it around in one of the channels at his feet to clean it. "Have some lunch. The central pairs are good, but I wouldn't eat the cognitive organs. Haven't tested those." He handed a set of segments to Jensen, who popped one tentatively into his mouth.

  "Not too bad," he pronounced. "Needs a sauce."

  "... And barbecuing."

  "Goes without saying," Jensen growled as the other man laughed. They caught several more of the creatures and feasted, standing in the stream. Entertainment was provided by the bright yellow near-fish preying violently on the red ones. "Hey!" Jensen started as realization dawned. "I thought there were no predators here."

  "Evidently there are, in the water," Balan called, skipping back to the bank. "But survey found none on land. Camera traps didn't see any either. We're safe as long as we don't try swimming." He spun, checking the ground. "We're far enough from the game trail here, I think. We can string our makeshift warning bells on the fishing line in the emergency kits here, here, and here," he indicated several near-plants. "The emergency tents can go here." He looked up at Jenson. "Assuming nothing goes wrong, we can just park ourselves here until Siriyasa returns. The first place they'll look will be along this river."