The Ninth Circle: A Novel of the U.S.S. Merrimack

by R. M. Meluch

  A sense that he had sent them too late.

  Something wicked was already there.

  Every major media source across the human-explored region of the galaxy carried the report of the discovery of independently evolved DNA on a planet at the outer edge of the Outback.

  “Zoe,” said the com tech as the bulletin came in to Merrimack. “Isn’t that where we’re going?”

  Because her XO was somewhere in port on liberty, Calli had her Chief Engineer issue the recall of all her scattered personnel.

  Flight Leader Cain Salvador received the recall while on patrol.

  His two flights, Alpha and Baker, were broken up into vics of three all over Port Campbell. Cain sent to all: “Red Squadron, this is Alpha Leader, pack it up. Find your best way home.”

  “No, wait, Cain. I got something.” Sounded like Dak Shepard.

  Cain answered, annoyed, “Alpha Two, what do you got?”

  “Looks like a dinner plate,” Dak sent. “Or a hub cap.”

  Alpha Five: “Qué?”

  Alpha Six: “What’s a hubcap?”

  Cain: “Red Squadron, this is Alpha One. Pick up the plates before you head to ship.”

  Rhino: “I am not the wait staff. If they’re throwing dishes they can go get them themselves. We got a recall, Cain.”

  Cain: “Rhino. You weren’t at the siege of Fort Ike.”

  Rhino: “Don’t rub my nose in it.”

  The Voice of God from on board Merrimack: “Red Squadron. This is Wing Leader. Pick up the plates.”

  Calli’s XO returned to the command deck bruised, cut, sporting two black eyes and a broken-toothed smile.

  Calli had promised the port governor there would be no brawling. She beheld her XO, mortified. “Commander Ryan. You did not get into a bar fight.”

  Dingo gave a cheery jagged grin. “No, sir. Friendly game of rugby.”

  The exec’s teeth would have to wait until the ship was underway. Mack would be running hotter than normal. Zoe, a planet no one heard of, was suddenly the center of galactic attention. Calli wanted to get there before it became crowded.

  “Are we all here? Colonel Steele?”

  “Captain,” said Steele. “My last patrol found something.”

  “Found something?” said Calli. “Your Marines were just supposed to be showing the colors.”

  “They found landing disks in space,” said Colonel Steele. “Between the stations.”

  “Squid shoes!” said Dingo. He didn’t want to believe it.

  “How many?” Calli demanded.

  “We’re not sure how many are out there,” Steele said. “My patrol picked up twenty-four before obeying the recall.”

  “Who has the ones we collected?”

  “Displacement department, sir.”

  Calli hailed Displacement. “You have disks. Talk to me.”

  “Captain,” the D-tech responded. “The disks are functional. Rzajhin manufacture.”

  Dingo murmured to Calli, “Rome uses Rzajhin disks.”

  “Everyone uses Rzajhin disks,” Calli replied. The Rzajhi sold to anyone. Rzajhin disks had no memory. A displacement technician couldn’t tell you the last time they were used, by whom, if ever. It was what made Rzajhin disks popular with people who had something to hide.

  The D-tech recited the litany: “No marks. No serial numbers. No tags. They are functional. No one is claiming them or reporting their lost signals when we turned them off.”

  Dingo ran down to the Displacement department in person to retrieve a sample disk. He brought it back to the command platform. “No one leaves displacement equipment floating around between space stations. That stuff’s not cheap. Well, these are.” Dingo flexed his thin exhibit. “But this can’t bode well.”

  Calli looked to Colonel Steele. “Were the disks stationary when your dogs picked them up, or did they have momentum?”

  “Dead still, sir.”

  That was ominous. It was easier to get correspondence on a stationary disk. These disks were out there to be used.

  “Commander Ryan, notify the admiralty. I’ll advise the governor myself.”

  The governor didn’t understand. “Who puts landing disks in space?” Kidd asked. “Smugglers?”

  “Not inside an outpost, sir. Never,” said Captain Carmel. “We have seen this twice before,” Captain Carmel continued. “Both times as a groundwork for an invasion. Last time we saw this, Fort Eisenhower was attacked by the forces of Caesar Romulus.”

  “Port Campbell isn’t a fort,” Kidd protested. “We don’t have a perimeter to guard. We don’t have any enemies.”

  “You don’t need enemies,” said Calli. “You just need someone who wants to run a blitzkrieg through your Boomerang.”

  “Well, this can’t be Romulus,” said Kidd. “He’s an incapacitated root vegetable. It took a very clever patterner to design those nanites that took him down, and it would take a better patterner to get them out. And we both know Rome is just not making patterners any more.”

  Director Benet checked in on the medical doctor, Albert Cecil, who was madly testing Zoen biologics other than bull feathers in an effort to prove Sandy Minyas’ Earth-shaking discovery wrong.

  Cecil’s test results came back as DNA-based every time. He kicked the analyzer. “Piece of Roman crap.”

  The medical analyzer was a PanGalactic product. Roman-made.

  “Well. That solves that,” said Benet. “This is a Roman hoax.”

  “The analyzer is working fine,” Cecil snarled in rising frustration.

  “Then Rome is here, and their genetic butchers have been playing mad scientist,” Director Benet said. “Rome is perfectly capable of inventing DNA-based life. They’ve created strange creatures and planted them here.”

  “They planted a lot of them,” Dr. Wynans sang from the back room, truly dubious.

  “It’s shameless. Unconscionable.” Dr. Cecil sneezed. “And possibly lethal.”

  Dr. Minyas leaned in the doorway of the medical hut, twirling a long mammoth feather. “Izzy. Why won’t you just accept the fact that these things are native life?”

  “Because of the DNA! DNA is terrestrial. Your test subject can’t be native to this world. If the mammoths are DNA-based life, then they are transplants.”

  “Bad news for you, Izzy.” Dr. Minyas reached into her pocket, pulled out a piece of bark. “This tree fragment that Cecil already tested for DNA? It’s three thousand years old. And no, I didn’t use a Roman machine to get that reading. I used a Swiss-made machine to carbon-date it. Three thousand years. That’s older than human space travel. It’s older than—than—” She searched for something old enough. “Bicycles.”

  “Bicycles?”

  “I’m saying it’s old. It’s older than Rome. And when I say Rome, I mean the first empire. Nobody brought this here.”

  Benet considered the tree fragment that was Dr. Minyas’ test subject. “That is a fake. It cannot be separately evolved DNA.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a self-evident truth. I can’t begin to explain it to you because it is obvious and absolute. I won’t stand here and explain axioms to you. Dr. Minyas, you went public with a hoax.”

  The arguments had been going round and round, day and night in the expedition camp. They were bracing for a media siege.

  Glenn asked Patrick in private, so she wouldn’t sound ignorant in front of people who already thought she was ignorant, “Why can’t the DNA just be native to this planet?”

  “You don’t get it,” said Patrick.

  “Didn’t I just say that?”

  “The discovery is revolutionary. It’s beyond Earth-shaking. It’s the Holy Grail.”

  That answer didn’t tell Glenn anything. She said blankly, “It’s the blood of Christ?”

  Patrick cocked his head, considering. “In a way. Yes. DNA is the base code of life on Earth. ‘Alien DNA’ is a faulty term for what everything else has. DNA is our genetic code. Ours. Earth’s. Only ours. Eac
h life code is unique to its world of origin. If you find an apple on an alien world—a real apple, not something apple-oid—If you find a Granny Smith on another planet, you must assume someone brought it there. You do not assume you found a second Garden of Eden. You dismiss it. Until you just can’t possibly dismiss it anymore.”

  “And this is a second Garden of Eden?” asked Glenn.

  “It’s sure as hell starting to look like it.”

  Too soon to be someone coming to investigate the alleged discovery of alien DNA, a Terra Rican ship arrived in the Zoen star system. When Director Benet learned its sole pilot and passenger was the esteemed Nobel Laureate, Jose Maria de Cordillera, Izrael Benet gave the ship the landing pad meant for Spring Beauty.

  The sleek space yacht Mercedes descended majestically to join the ring of boxy ships around the LEN camp.

  Jose Maria de Cordillera was past sixty Terran years old now, unreconstructed, still greyhound slender, taut-muscled, and agile as a cat. His hair was shorter than last time Glenn had seen him, his black ponytail only down to his shoulder blades now, but still swept back into the same hand-wrought silver clasp. The silver blaze at his temples was wider than ever.

  Izrael Benet was not pleased to see Glenn Hamilton get kisses on either cheek from the revered Don Cordillera. Even Jose Maria’s dog wagged her entire stern to see Glenn. The Doberman bitch was overjoyed to see Patrick Hamilton too, completely oblivious to Patrick’s attempts to wish her dead.

  Before Jose Maria’s arrival there had been no microbiologist in camp to examine the native organisms on a molecular level.

  “I am not here for the DNA,” said Jose Maria. “As profound and astonishing as that discovery is.”

  Patrick asked Jose Maria blithely, “Are you here to make field observations of the territorial displays of Homo sapiens academiensis? It’s a rich environment.”

  Benet’s face became stony. Looked like he wanted to muzzle Patrick. But Patrick had the august visitor’s regard, so Benet held his tongue.

  “I imagine the conversations have been lively in recent days,” Jose Maria said, ever the diplomat. “But no. The young admiral asked me to come. I understand there are extraplanetary aliens on world.”

  Director Benet said, “I’m afraid to disappoint you there, Don Cordillera. There are no extraplanetary aliens on Zoe.”

  “There are,” Glenn said wearily. Felt as if she were being flogged.

  Jose Maria’s hand landed warm and reassuring on her shoulder. Glenn saw two white-gold rings on his left hand, one a wedding band on the third finger, the other a more delicate band of identical design on the second joint of his forefinger. That had to be his late wife’s wedding band.

  Jose Maria told Glenn, “I know there are, young lieutenant. Perhaps not on the surface of Zoe herself, but at least they are around her. I met your visitors on the way in.”

  Director Benet looked like he’d swallowed a live ferret.

  Glenn cried out, relieved and horrified at the same time. “They attacked you!”

  “They tried,” Jose Maria said, tranquil. His Mercedes was built for racing.

  Benet rounded on Glenn. “They followed you here. Those things were never here before you came.”

  “How could they follow Glenn?” said Patrick. “They don’t exist.”

  Benet hissed, teeth on edge. “Don’t be obtuse.”

  “I shall try. I always saw myself as more of a reflex angle.”

  “Dr. Hamilton, shut up,” said Benet. “Don Cordillera, I am sorry you had a rude welcome. But you must know those weren’t real aliens. Whatever assaulted you were fakes. A hoax.”

  “This is possible. I cannot know without a test subject in hand,” Jose Maria allowed. “But even a fake invader has to come from somewhere other than here.”

  18

  BY NIGHTFALL IT WAS RAINING squids and muskrats in the LEN camp. At least the pouring rain was falling straight down. The tents in camp were set on raised platforms. Glenn could hear the runoff trickling underneath her tent in rivulets. Big drops tapped on the tarp.

  From the surrounding forest carried chirps, cricks, and peeps like nineteen kinds of frogs. The air had cooled.

  Patrick slept hard. Glenn lay awake.

  She heard a sound like sniffing around the perimeter of their tent. A tent flap nudged inward. Glenn thought the wind had picked up.

  Then saw a wet furry face lifting up the tarp. And another.

  Foxes.

  Two drenched young bachelor males slunk up and under the flaps into the tent. Glenn ducked under the sheet as both foxes launched into doggy shakes.

  Brat jumped onto the bed, tracking muddy paw prints over both sheeted bodies. When Glenn peered over the top of the covers, Brat’s face was there, smiling. Tanner tunneled under the sheet. Patrick gave a gagging cry, came out thrashing.

  Brat and Tanner had come on a daring raid inside the human circle. They grabbed Glenn and Patrick by the scruffs of their bedclothes and tried to drag them away until Glenn and Patrick got through to them that this would go much easier if the foxes let them walk on their own.

  Patrick hummed them to calmness. Brat and Tanner let them get dressed and pack some items. Patrick turned on a small light. Everywhere Glenn moved, there was a busy nose in the way. The boys had to sniff everything.

  Brat saw himself in a mirror on the camp table. He knocked it over to see the back of it. Pawed at it. Hummed.

  Patrick laughed and told Glenn, “He wants to know how I made the water do that.”

  Foxes only ever saw their reflections in water. The mirror must have seemed an odd sort of ice.

  With her splinter gun holstered behind her back, rain slicker on, pockets jammed with snacks and a heat stick, Glenn was ready to escape.

  They stole away into the night forest under the cover of rain. Creatures whistled and cheeped and sang. Glenn felt as if she were a teenager again, baling out her parents’ window.

  A snake darted out from underfoot, fled up a tree trunk in a slithering spiral.

  Patrick and Tanner hummed nonstop as they climbed over rocks in the vale to the uplands.

  Glenn finally asked, “What’s this about?”

  “Belly rubs,” said Patrick. “The pack wants belly rubs.”

  Sometime during the climb the rain stopped.

  Desiccated growths that used to look like dried dead sponges plumped out in the rain. They were now bright fungi that would not look out of place in the company of a caterpillar with a water pipe.

  Glenn, Patrick, Brat, and Tanner arrived at the upland meadow in the wet hazy dawn. Silhouettes of pointed ears in the fog lifted above the mist-bound grasses. Foxes greeted their return with delighted yips.

  Conan, the pack leader, stood up, planted his paws on Patrick’s shoulders, and hummed happily.

  Patrick ruffled Conan’s mane. “Well, hey there, cuz.”

  Funny how not alien Conan looked now that they knew he came out of the same chemistry set.

  Conan licked the top of Glenn’s head. Her red-brown hair was growing back in. When she’d first come to the foxes, she’d been nearly bald.

  The mist burned away with the sun’s rising. New flowers had just come into bloom, and Princess wanted her fur done. She had combed out the old blossoms.

  Glenn walked the fields to see what was in season now that wouldn’t wilt too fast. Princess knew what to look for. She went bounding through the tall grass and came back with a mouthful of hardy red flowers on nice supple stems.

  Glenn got to work weaving a crown. Patrick sat beside her in the damp grass, watching mammoth signals on his omni. Princess sunned herself at their feet.

  “Patrick,” Glenn started, a question in her voice. “Princess knows her name. I mean she knows the name I gave her.”

  Princess turned her head at the sound of her name.

  “Sure she does,” said Patrick.

  “Do I have a name?” Glenn asked. “In fox talk?”

  “Yes. It’s a quarter
tone above middle C.” He hummed her name for her.

  Princess turned her head again, repeated the hum, smiling at Glenn.

  “Does it mean anything?”

  “You mean like Running Bear or Laughing Wife? Not that I know. I think it’s just you.”

  “Now I feel stupid,” Glenn said. “These animals can learn my language, and I can’t pick up a note of theirs.”

  She had tried. Patrick had keyed in a couple of basic fox words for Glenn’s reference, but it hadn’t helped. She couldn’t hold on to the notes long enough to hum them back. Parrots and myna birds could do better.

  “They’re just a different kind of smart,” said Patrick. “And they have their priorities in order.”

  Glenn agreed. “What can be more important than belly rubs and daisy chains?” Glenn placed a lei around Princess’ neck.

  “Should we be afraid of infecting them?” Glenn asked. “Are they safe from our germs?”

  Patrick wasn’t a medical man any more than Glenn was, but he could answer that one. “We didn’t bring any disease with us.”

  They had been thoroughly screened before boarding the LEN expedition ship Spring Beauty.

  “But what about our natural microbes?”

  Patrick paused, answerless. He said, “Don’t kiss anyone.”

  When she’d decorated Princess, greeted everyone, and rubbed a lot of bellies, Glenn told Patrick sadly, “You know your colleagues are just going to come after us again.”

  Patrick shrugged, resigned. “Eventually. When they notice we’re gone. They might be too busy burning Dr. Minyas at the stake.”

  It was not Sandy Minyas’ discovery that so set off her colleagues. It was the way she did it. And the amateur hack way she announced it.

  And it was jealousy. Sandy Minyas did not deserve a revelation this important. The other xenos were so busy backbiting and criticizing that they forgot to feel awe.

  “There is a line that separates chaos and inevitability,” said Patrick. “And here it is.”

  He spread his arms at the smiling foxes playing on the meadow.