by David Coy
John listened stoically to the news; and when the telling of it was done, he rose silently from the table and walked away. Rachel had a few questions, but not many.
They sat and did not speak since there was little to say at the moment that had meaning.
The quiet in the chamber was slowly filled with the jungle’s sounds; sounds of insects that hummed and hissed and clicked and did not care a whit that humankind had fallen into the chasm.
“My family is probably dead,” Rachel said flatly. “They lived right in New York City. It was my father and brother. They're all I had really.”
“Mine, too,” Donna said. “Los Angeles.”
They sat for a few silent moments more, and Donna didn’t cry until Rachel did. Neither sobbed, but the tears streamed down and were wiped away on a cotton sleeve or sometimes were missed and splashed with sounds too light to hear on a breast or lap.
“Oh well . . .” Rachel said. “Oh well . . .”
“Yeah . . .” Donna said.
John went over to the chamber’s massive opening. His eyes fixed on a single leaf some meters away and wouldn’t let go; he simply stared. He stood there for some minutes like that and was dimly aware that the others had drifted into their own protective fugue state. He let the growing din from the jungle fill his head with its chaotic noise, drowning the dark thoughts of human chaos and destruction, like some nightmarish echo light years away.
The jungle insects filled the air like flying ash brought to life by darkness. Only a few entered the chamber; little harmless ones that were not warned off by the chemical barrier. He watched as a massive beetle, one of the ones Rachel called Axolotise Grominea, plowed through the undergrowth and moved tank-like to within a few meters of the chamber’s opening. He knew this one. As it had, almost every night since their arrival, the creature stopped there, antennae waving, sniffing the chamber’s contents, testing it. John was sure the thing knew they were there and could smell the fresh meat, but dared not enter. He’d wanted to shoot it since the first night, but Rachel had rightly pointed out that its carcass, weighing perhaps three metric tons, would be hell to move and would rot there.
He could imagine the damage those enormous mandibles could do and, as if to show him just how, the thing opened its maw and stretched the dark apparatus out wide and back again. The parts came back together like machinery that clicked and snapped.
“Get out of here,” he said to it. “You’re not a member.” It stood there as if only its antennae were alive, waving at random, smelling him. Then, finally, it turned on its huge brown insect legs and moved off, back to the jungle’s anarchy in search of more promising fare to rend, tear and eat.
He waited until it vanished completely before he went back to join the others.
“Your friend was at the door again,” he said to Donna.
“He’s not my friend. I want to kill it, too.”
“Leave it alone,” Rachel said. “It’s a beautiful insect.”
“You wouldn’t say that if you’d had one trying to eat you all damned night.”
“There won’t be any more transports,” John said, changing the subject. "No more supplies. No more packaged food or equipment or material of any kind. Maybe the Bondsmen saw it coming, and that’s why they’ve been stockpiling so much goddamned stuff.”
“That makes sense,” Rachel said.
“All the livestock, too,” Donna said. “They’ve got all those sheep, cattle and chickens in Warehouse Three.”
“Well, I’ve got news for them,” Rachel added. “Those species won’t survive here—not unless they plan on totally isolating them from the environment. They have no immunity. The parasitic species on this planet will literally eat the stock alive.”
“It also explains all the farming equipment and seed in Number Five,” John said. “They were never planning to rely on a flow of resources from Earth. It looks to me like they planned to become independent from the beginning.”
“I doubt farming will work either,” Rachel said. “From what I can see, any species, plant or animal that you tried to transplant to this environment from Earth would be devoured by it. We humans can survive only because we have the tools and medicine to fight the planet’s life with. But things like crops, animals—any native species from Earth will croak here. You couldn’t take enough measures to protect them. Eventually, they’d succumb to something ugly.”
“Then the Bondsmen are doomed, too,” John said.
“Not necessarily,” Rachel said. “Humans have an incredible ability to adapt. They’ll just have to figure out how to live on what’s already here, like we have. This place is one huge green salad with lots of meat mixed in. The problem is figuring out how to eat it before it eats you. That’s what the biological surveys are supposed to do—provide a foundation for all that. I hope they’ve got some good biologists among their ranks, but I doubt that.”
“Why do you say that?” Donna asked. “They’ve got everything else. I bet they’ve got the best technical people and equipment. They proselytize like all hell.”
“Yeah, but I’m talking specifically about biologists,” Rachel said. “Biologists have a unique view. It’s just a personal opinion I have about mixing theologies. Some things don’t mix.” Finally, the talk of collapse and survival died to the sound of Verde’s jungle, and the talkers drifted away to their private places, thoughts, and overwhelming grief.
Rachel was sure the last few minutes of talk, though somewhat useful, had been only a mask, a temporary barrier against the coming grief. The conversation had helped them choke down the worst of the news, to nibble tentatively at its awful edges when its freshness was the most debilitating and toxic.
Sometime later she found herself in bed crying silently. She heard Donna’s occasional sniffing and knew she, too, was weeping for the loss of home and family. She could see Donna’s form on the bed across the chamber, a tight knot with arms pulling her knees up to her chest.
With a long sniff, she wiped her eyes, rose up and saw John staring out into the green from the entrance, a mere shadow in the dim light. The shock of the earlier news, now unfettered by talk of other things, seemed to have rendered him motionless and silent. She thought he might have been there for hours, but couldn’t be sure. She had lost track of time as if it had vanished completely.
She hoped when morning came the world she lived in would ground her once more, or perhaps let her forget, at least a little. She wasn’t sure anything ever could again.
Finally, she slept.
* * *
Donna thought her patient was doing better. His breathing was regular, and his temperature was up to normal. When she checked his pupillary response with a sweep of her light, she thought she felt him move, just his left arm, ever so slightly. She couldn’t be certain it had moved; but ever the optimist, she took it as a good sign. She made a few notes and decided that tomorrow she would irrigate his wounds again and decrease the flow of antibiotics. It had been five days since Rachel brought him to her; and although he was still in a state resembling a coma, she was fairly sure he would live, if not fully recover. He would have to wake up first; but she had decided that, if he did, she would put some effort into trying to restore his hearing.
The organism had penetrated both ears, ruining any chance of him ever hearing without the help of technology. She had never actually installed an auditory prosthesis before but had seen the operation a few times. She had some reference material that described the procedure in detail. She was pretty sure she could do it. All she needed were the devices themselves. They weren’t all that common, but she’d wager there were some, at least one set, somewhere in the Bondsmen’s stores.
She took another look at what used to be his auditory canals.
There was no need to close them off; they were completely healed. They were nothing more now than two extra holes in his head. Fairly smooth and as big around as her thumb, they terminated deep inside with no remnant of his hearing apparatu
s in sight.
“Is the guy going to live or what?” Eddie asked from the doorway.
“I think so. I was just thinking about how to get his hearing working again. I need some equipment to do it with.”
“What kind of equipment?”
“They’re hearing devices made by Siemens called AUD's. If I had a set of them, I think I could fix his hearing.”
“I know how to find those things if they’re on the planet,” Eddie said.
“You do?”
“All I have to do is get on a terminal for a minute. I can find them.”
“Just how’s that?” she puzzled.
“I know just about all there is to know about how stuff comes in, where it goes and who gets it. I was the lead on the first crew from Transportation.”
“You don’t say,” she said with a frown of appreciation.
“If they haven’t changed the system too much, I can locate ‘em for you. If it’s in a warehouse, I can tell you the container number and where it is. If it’s been delivered, I can tell you who’s got it and where they are.”
This was an unanticipated bit of luck. If what Eddie said were true, they could inventory the entire settlement. A portable terminal or pad could be a veritable shopping list for a bunch of thieves like them. All they needed was a pad and rights to the system. They had their pads. Even when useless, pads were something one never discarded. Donna’s was about six feet away, stuffed in a locker.
“Do you have the rights?” she asked.
“They’ve probably been suspended by now, but I know how to get them back.”
“You do?”
“Sure. It’s easy, especially on the trans system.”
“What’s in it for you?” she asked with a grin.
Eddie didn’t grin back, and Donna got the feeling she’d accidentally strummed a nerve. He stood there for a moment looking at the ground as if some ugly memory was taking shape just in front of his shoes.
“Nothin’,” he said finally. “I’ll do it for you for free.”
“Deal?”
“Deal.”
As if to seal it, Donna went right to the locker and fetched her pad and handed it to him.
“Do your stuff, then,” she challenged. “Show me what’s on this planet.”
“It’ll take a few minutes to queer the system so I can use it,” he said sheepishly.
“Take your time,” Donna said, stepping behind him so she could look over his shoulder.
Eddie turned the pad on, thumbed it, and then keyed it. A few minutes later he was attached to the trans system.
“Very nice,” she said, looking over his shoulder.
“I’ve done this a few times.”
“Like riding a bike, huh?” she asked. The comment brought a brief smile of pride to his face.
“What’s the part name again?” he asked.
“A-U-D," she spelled out the name.
Eddie keyed it in. An instant later the system responded. “Two sets,” he said. “Both in container YTEG778 in Warehouse One.”
“How do we find the container?” she wanted to know. “The place is a mess.”
“It only looks like a mess. If you know how it’s organized, it’s not so hard. I can find it. What else do you need?”
She almost said, “Booking on a transport back to Earth," then remembered there was no Earth to return to; nothing you could live on anyway.
“Hmm . . . this is interesting. You really can find anything we need—or want. All we have to do is steal it.”
That solemn look came over him like a cloud. “Yeah. All you have to do is steal it.”
“Can you tell what’s been ordered—what’s on the way? Just curious.”
He checked.
“There’s nothing in the queue. No shipments at all. It’s blank.”
“So that’s it then. John was right. It looks like nothing’s coming from Earth ever again.”
“Looks like it.”
“It seems they’ve brought everything worth bringing with them, anyway. Damn, they must be loaded. All that shit's just for them.”
She thought for a moment. Eddie watched her blue-brown eye flash as if there were a fire behind it.
“Eddie? How many occupants are there in the cloister?”
“You mean the Bondsmen’s place?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know. I’d say maybe a thousand, maybe more.”
“And how many contractors now, do you think?”
“Two hundred. They sent some back, I heard.”
“That figures. So about twelve hundred reside on the planet. And what? Ten or twelve million metric tons of foodstuff, another ten million tons of just stuff—not including the heavy machinery?”
“I don’t know. I guess so.”
She thought some more.
“They could last a long, long time before they ever had to leave the cloister.”
She could see them now, peering out the windows, sanctimonious noses pressed flat against the glass, safe behind their sacred walls. Nice and cool. Plenty to eat. No bugs. No reason to go outside. Reading their Scripture. Eating. Praying. Eating.
She wondered who their leader or Grand Poobah or priest or whatever was now. She tried to remember who the last one was.
They seemed to change leadership quite regularly, if memory served her. She’d never looked too closely at their doctrine and had only a cloudy picture of it. It seemed to have lots of rituals, dogma and weird practices involving that plus-sign-thing in it. But a few things stood out in the fog in sharp relief. The stuff about procreation was one of them. She wondered if proliferation was still the Sacred Bond’s first call to duty. That tenet wasn’t too hard to understand. Offspring made the best, the easiest and longest-lasting converts. That’s why they made it a commandment, a responsibility, to breed. You could start children out at an early age and give them a lasting, lifetime dose of dogma. You could drip your theology into their veins for their entire lives. You could mold them like putty anyway you chose. They would be a continual source of labor and a bottomless repository for any doctrine you could dream up. Never questioning, rarely thinking. Believers—true believers, who in isolation, would spawn no counter-culture, no new or different ways of thinking. Their dogma would grow into the planet itself like an invasive plant, impossible to remove.
They would breed; breed while they could. Safe behind those sacred, plastic walls, they would pray, eat and breed.
“Call up all the medical supplies, do a query and use the sub-qualifiers pediatric or infant and show me a summary by part name.”
“Can you spell that first word for me?"
“You bet,” she said.
3
“We don’t work for Smith’s organization anymore,” Bill Habershaw said.
“That’s the part you don’t understand. He’s not in control.”
“The receipts for the pay downs come from his company.”
“I know, Joan. But it’s the Bondsmen who control everything. They’ve got everybody’s contracts now. There’s not a goddamned thing that gets done without the Bondsmen’s Council making the decision to do it.”
“I don’t know what it matters anyway,” she said, close to tears. “Why are we bothering to do anything for them? What’s the use? There’s no place to go after this. This is it. This is all we’ll ever get. There’s no place to go. Every other planet is dead. We’re trapped on this ball, and our contracts don’t mean shit.” He could forget about retiring on Cunningham. He could forget about retiring at all.
“I don’t know what the hell we’re supposed to do,” she went on. “What are we supposed to do now?”
She buried her face in her hands and growled into them. “I’m so mad I could kill something. We need to call some kind of meeting—call up all the contractors or post a bulletin.”
“Hell with that!” he snapped back. “The Council would squash us like bugs if we went against them. You even start talking about
calling a meeting, and they’ll find some reason to send you back to Earth—or something worse.”
“Oh, bullshit. They can’t stop us from talking.”
“Yes, they can. This isn’t the Commonwealth anymore, Joan. It’s The High Council of The Sacred Bond of the Fervent Alliance. They’ve got just enough security and weapons to back up any goddamn thing they want to do. Don’t you go calling any goddamn meetings—you’ll get us both killed.”
“From what—a few lazy, do-nothing guards. Shit . . .”
“They’ve got guns.”
“We can get guns.”
“How? Where?”
“I could find them on the manifest.”
“I doubt they’d show up.”
“They do. I’ve got one now.”
“What?” he asked, frowning, not believing what he was hearing.
“I’ve got a gun,” she said. “It came in a container addressed for one of Smith’s assistants, and I took it.”
“You stole it?”
“That’s right. And I’m keeping it.”
“What kind of gun?” he wanted to know.
“A little pistol.”
“A little pistol? A little pistol won’t do much good.”
“Maybe not,” she said. “I’ll tell you what, Bill, when you think of something, let me know. I’m out of ideas.”
Habershaw stared at the wall past her head, his mind swirling with frustration.
“I’ll talk to some of the guys,” he said finally. “Maybe we can get together with just a few—just to hash it out some.”
“Great,” she said.
“Go hash it out some.”
That pushed him over the edge.
“Why are you mad at me? What have I done? Shit!” he yelled, pushing up from the table. “You’re just making it worse!”
“Oh, sit down!”
