The Eternal Enemy

by Michael Berlyn

  The Hydran was emitting a constant odor, similar in scent to the odor Markos was familiar with through the crystals. Perhaps their primary method of communication was through pheromones, he thought.

  He was fascinated by the creature, reveling in the process of deduction and speculation about its biological makeup. That was what he’d been trained to do as a Terran, using methods that were primitive in comparison to those he now had available. It had been so long since he’d done this—so many years, so many miles traveled, so many changes seen. Doing this was like putting on a comfortable old shirt, something familiar, something he knew how to do well.

  But there was an added depth to his abilities now, an added tool for measuring, for deducing correct answers. He looked at his hands, at his palms, their red and green and orange translucent skin, and placed them on the Hydran’s chest. He let his mind relax.

  The interaction started almost instantly as he felt his hands and its chest mingled. There was little to be learned from its exoskeleton—the shell was made up of a proteinlike molecule and a combination of common minerals. It was not yet fully formed, though. He could tell that the growth process was still taking place as he reached the inner level of the shell.

  He delved deeper, finding the internal organs of the creature. They had strange functions and an interdependence that would take him a long time to unravel. But one point was painfully obvious: None of the organs was fully formed, either. The growth rate seemed abnormally fast. Either the Hydran’s metabolism was extremely high in certain areas of its body, or else it was still growing.

  He pressed deeper, trying to gain more substantial information. He found what passed for neural pathways, connecting fibers that linked one organ with the others. He touched it, allowed himself to be there, to travel down its layers, peeling them back one at a time.

  He touched its conscious mind.

  It was truly chaotic. Seeing through its eyes, seeing through his own eyes, thinking an alien’s thoughts, proved too much for him. He broke contact.

  As he stood there staring at the creature, he knew it could never supply all the answers he needed. But it was the only example of Hydran biology and psychology he had, and he was determined to make the best of it.

  He wondered how Straka would take the news, though. They had captured a child.

  By the time Markos had completed his examination, he knew the following things:

  1.

  They communicated through sounds and through smells.

  2.

  They had sensitive hearing, ranging from about 20 to 80,000 hz.

  3.

  There were two distinct sexes, and this one was male.

  4.

  Their prisoner was a child.

  5.

  The markings on the heads indicated adults. Males had iridescent markings, while females had white markings. From this he deduced that the females were the warriors.

  6.

  They had several independent hearts placed throughout their circulatory systems. Each heart pumped autonomously. There was no central heart or pump.

  7.

  Their social structure combined militarism and a caste structure, as near as he could tell. Children had to complete a rite of passage that involved killing any form of intelligent life.

  8.

  They were egg layers.

  9.

  They ate protein exclusively. The child held a scene of adult Hydrans eating their dead enemies.

  10.

  They ate their own dead for the protein and to perpetuate their ancestors’ memories.

  11.

  Their basic life-molecule was simpler, less complex, than DNA and trivial compared with the Haber molecule.

  This last piece of information was unmistakably the most important. After taking a few moments to put the individual pieces of information about the race into a whole picture, Markos realized he would have to analyze the molecule carefully. He needed to know how much social interaction and instructions were passed from generation to generation as a function of instinct and how much was taught. If everything these creatures did was a direct result of instinct, or even closely related to instinct, he would have a far better understanding of why they lased down the Habers on planet after planet.

  He touched the Hydran again and delved down, singling out one molecule to unravel. He took his time, making mental notes about the chemicals, the way they would interact with one another, what effect they might have on a race, on a culture. When he was done, his original view of the Hydrans collapsed. He didn’t like that.

  And he didn’t like what he found.

  Nothing like a little cultural chauvinism, he thought. Nothing like drawing stupid conclusions from observation. The Earth is flat. The stars? Oh, simple. Points of light shining through a velvet curtain. The Hydrans? Hey, everyone knows they’re insects, nasty dirty insects hell-bent on taking over the Universe.

  The Hydran equivalent of DNA taught him some interesting things, especially about differences in cultural perspectives. The Hydrans were little more than complex breeding machines, designed with one purpose only—spread the complex molecule as far and as fast as possible. The molecule wanted to replicate itself, its own survival instinct honed and perfected over years of mutation. If it didn’t need to be carried around in a Hydran body, it would have covered its native planet like a fungus or like algae, leaving no room for other kinds of life.

  The Hydrans would breed and reproduce in one area until there was either no more room or no more food. Markos realized that on a planet with a limited food chain, this would create constant, natural wars. It was the only reasonable result. They couldn’t cut back and limit their population—the driving force of their beings wouldn’t allow it.

  He figured that civil wars must have been common among the Hydrans. They must have fought over their native planet time and time again, wars that spanned centuries, reducing the population to a point where rebuilding could begin again. They would overpopulate and then the procedure would start all over again.

  Genetic expansionists, he realized. They won’t stop breeding until every piece of habitable rock in the Universe has been claimed and colonized to the point of overpopulation.

  Sometime in this growth curve, when peace reigned for a few centuries, they must have developed space travel. An awareness of more rocks out there, just waiting to be filled up with more Hydrans. It must have appeared as a solution to their own planet’s mess, so they directed their efforts outward, to seeding the stars.

  Markos was grateful they had limited life spans. As a result of this there was only so far they could have traveled through space during their first wave of colonization. But still—once they’d settled their outer planets, establishing strong population centers and outposts, the second wave of expansion would have begun.

  All of which caught up to Markos, shook him to the core of his being. He had made a glaring error in jumping to a conclusion. The Hydrans were not at war.

  They, like the Habers, probably didn’t even know the meaning of the word.

  The Hydrans were doing something far simpler than making war. They were living life.

  The Habers on Aurianta and Gandji had had a better grip on what was occurring than he had.

  The Hydrans were an aggressive race, wiping out everything in their path like a plague of swarming locusts. There’s no thought behind what a locust does. There was no right or wrong to what the Hydrans were doing. There were no moral questions, no higher principles, no concepts of peace. There would be no way of talking to the Hydrans, of negotiating with them to keep their expansion limited. There was no way of stopping them from wiping out every last Haber in existence.

  It wasn’t even close to war.

  It was the change the Habers would never survive.

  Markos needed rest. It took all his strength to walk to his cabin, open the door, and collapse on the bunk. He lay on his back and watched the air currents drift between himself and the c
eiling, listened to the air-support systems’ dull throb, felt his body ache more and more with each passing moment. Explaining what he’d discovered to Straka, the crew, the Old One, and Markatens seemed an impossible task right now. It would have to wait.

  The Hydran still lived, and Markos knew he should have killed it. Keeping the creature alive made little sense; it had served its purpose and deserved better than being immobilized, paralyzed, frightened beyond understanding. He had seen its soul, its hopes and desires, and they had scared him. Its thoughts were too alien for him to grasp. He knew he should have killed it earlier, when he had been in the lab, right after he’d found out what he needed from it. But after the contact he had trouble reaching the necessary level of clinical detachment he needed to kill it without thought.

  He flashed on Kominski, his ability to kill Hydrans without any thought, and wondered if that might be why he hadn’t changed Kominski before examining the Hydran. Leave the messy murders to Kominski? Keep him around to take care of the distasteful cleanup details?

  No, Markos thought, it wasn’t like that at all. Examination of the alien had rightly come first. I’ll get to Kominski soon enough.

  And, if necessary, I’ll find the strength to kill the Hydran myself.

  He knew what had to be done. He knew about their aggression, now, their social structures, their psychology, and most importantly, their inherited attitudes. He remembered the disappointment he’d felt on finding out it was only a child. He had figured then that Straka would have to return to the surface to get an adult for examination. He could imagine the confrontation all too well.

  “You want us to go down there again?” Straka would say. “What are you planning on doing, starting a family?”

  Well, don’t worry, Straka. That was before I examined the genetic molecule. There’s no need for another specimen. I’ve learned all I have to know from the child. From one molecule.

  I’ve learned that we’re finished—finished before we’ve really started. How the hell can you fight something like this? If it was war, if it was something even like war, we could do something positive about it. We could make a dent in their population, make them realize that someone out here is fighting back, get their attention and negotiate for a peaceful settlement. But how do you negotiate with a laser speeding straight toward your chest? That’s what the Hydrans are like: single-minded, determined, unaware of the ramifications of what they’re doing. Talking to these creatures about peace would be like talking to the Habers about war.

  Even if we wiped out a few planets, which could be quite a mess, or even if we had the means to reduce their population by ninety percent, it wouldn’t solve a thing. It would only be a temporary fix, forestalling the inevitable. It would be like cutting out most of a cancerous tumor but leaving behind enough cancerous cells to start the process all over again. And knowing how weird these creatures are, they might even be grateful to us for reducing their population so that they could breed faster.

  Just thinking about it made him feel heavy, dense, as though his body was hardening from the inside out, turning from liquid to solid. He took a shallow breath, then tried to relax, to stop resisting his body’s need to process some food, his body’s strange way of reacting to emotional stress. His metabolism finally shifted.

  Energy trickled into his system slowly, like ice water melting in a spring thaw. He didn’t feel revitalized, though—not with the decision still facing him.

  Markos knew what he would have to decide. Still, he didn’t want to think it, to make it something real. He wasn’t a god, capable of deciding the fate of an entire race. And yet he knew he must, and he knew equally as well that he could never live with the decision.

  It all came down to this: It was either the Hydrans or every other sentient life-form.

  He would have to see it through to the end. He would have to wait for his ultimate peace of mind. And then, on some deserted section of Aurianta, he would meditate his way down to death.

  Van Pelt had had the right idea on how to deal with an alien race. Only he had elected to kill the wrong race.

  24

  Markos heard the Old One approaching the cabin. There was no mistaking the way he walked. He heard the Haber stop in the doorway, waiting to be asked in. Markos remained on his bunk, faceup, watching the air.

  He didn’t care what the Old One wanted. He needed some privacy. He needed to get back in touch with himself, with the core that gave him his sense of rightness. He’d done too many things recently out of guesswork, out of wishful thinking. The war wasn’t much of a war anymore, and he needed time to think about that.

  Time to accept the decision he had made to wipe the Universe clean of Hydrans.

  Let him stand there, Markos thought. He’s not bothering me, waiting in the passageway like some silent Buddha. He doesn’t know anything more about life or death than I do.

  “Markos?”

  Markos ignored him, calmly watching the changes in the air circulating, the patterns created by the Old One’s spoken words. There was a delicacy in the way the air moved that he was thankful for. Perhaps if Terrans were as aware of their surroundings as the Habers were, there’d be more meaning to their lives, he thought. But in his state of mind he managed to doubt even that.

  “Markos?” the Old One said again.

  Markos continued to ignore him. It was for the best, he thought. If they got into a discussion now, Markos was sure he’d say things he might end up regretting. Perhaps sometime in the future, when he had a better grasp of the decision, when he better understood its full scope, he would talk. The fact that every Hydran was a sentient creature, involved in doing the only thing their genes could command them to do—not something their social structure had devised—was still something he couldn’t deal with. They weren’t expanding through greed, through hatred, through a desire for racial extinction, through any misunderstanding—they were expanding because that was all they knew, because it was right, because it was the way it was intended to be.

  And that meant only one thing to Markos: They had to be destroyed.

  Not one planet could be overlooked.

  There was no other way.

  After a few more silent moments the Old One left, walking back in the direction from which he had come. Markos was glad that the Old One respected his need to be alone. He would be able to work out his feelings and face the massive lump in his throat, the tremendous cancer in his mind, the spreading emotion that blocked out everything else. He recognized the emotion once the Old One had left. He had felt it before, but only on a trivial level.

  He could barely deal with the guilt the decision itself brought. How could he possibly deal with the guilt once the real killing began? And then later, when the Hydrans were little more than a memory, a nightmare to scare children, a barrier between himself and every other living creature—how could he deal with the guilt then? How could he ever live with himself?

  He was beginning to understand what the Old One must have gone through on returning to Aurianta after having eaten, thus breaking their prime taboo.

  Well, the only way Markos could see out of it was to stick to his resolve, to return to Aurianta and do what every sane Haber does: meditate his way down to zero energy. A peaceful death. If there were an afterlife, he hoped he would be spared the memories of what this life had forced him to do.

  He wished he could shut his eyes and see nothing but blackness. He wished he had eyelids. He did the next best thing: He rolled over onto his front side and put his face down, into the bunk, blocking out all the light.

  He tried to relax.

  “Markos?”

  It was Straka, at the doorway. Several hours had passed since the Old One had come to his cabin, and Markos had done no thinking in that time. He had just remained facedown on the bunk, breathing every few minutes, letting his body metabolize a few molecules of food at a time.

  He could hear Straka walking into the cabin.

  “Markos? What’s
going on?”

  He remained silent, wishing Straka would just leave.

  Straka touched his back, right where his shoulders had been before he’d been changed. He felt Straka’s fingers probe his skin for signs of life.

  “What is it, Markos? What’s wrong?” Straka asked.

  Markos rolled his head so that he could talk. “Leave me alone,” he said.

  “What’s bothering you?”

  “Just leave me alone.”

  “Not until you tell me what it is.”

  “Leave,” Markos asked.

  Straka took a step back. “What is it? Is it something you learned from the Hydran? Is that it?”

  “Please, Cathy, I don’t want to talk. Do you understand?”

  “Frankly, no. We don’t have the time or the manpower for you to indulge yourself. If you want to hide in a corner and lick your wounds, let me know and we’ll drop you off someplace of your very own.

  “This is supposed to be an offensive move on our part. We’re supposed to be figuring out what to do about the Hydrans. Play your games when this is over. Not now, when we need you.”

  “Get out, Straka.”

  “Markos, please!”

  “Get out!”

  Straka stormed out of the room. Markos turned his head back down into the bunk. He could hear Straka’s muttered curses bounce off the bulkheads through the passageway.

  Straka really hadn’t understood, Markos thought. She’d been wrong. This wasn’t a case of self-indulgence, he thought. There are too many creatures, too many planets involved. How the hell were they going to wipe out the Hydrans, anyway?

  The others on board the ship would just have to leave him alone until he managed to accept what had to be done and had some clear idea as to how to do it. This wasn’t like planning a battle skirmish, or even like getting the Terrans to fight for him. This was something else entirely.