by Robert Reed
It was Jordick, and Cornell’s first instinct was to stay quiet, feigning sleep. But it wouldn’t work, and it wouldn’t be nice. He felt an obligation, one of his bodies stepping through the hanging doorway, saying, “How’s your mansion?”
“Oh, okay. Yours?”
“Comfortable enough.”
Jordick’s body was smaller than Cornell’s. Not frail, but with a frail man’s posture. Toes curled in the dust. Hands held out a half-shredded sack made from woven greasewood bark. Jordick withdrew a chunk of leather. No, it was dried meat. Instinct made Cornell sniff. It was rat dried over a dung fire, and it smelled lovely. Gorgeous.
He suddenly was starving, and Jordick said, “Be my guest.”
The body ate, sharp teeth slicing and no chewing required. The taste mixed alien and ordinary, lingering in the mouth. Smiling afterward, he said, “Thanks.”
“I can’t sleep,” Jordick offered, his smile lopsided. “Want to walk?”
Cornell saw no harm.
“Keep the rest.” Jordick handed him the sack. “I’ve had my share.”
“Thank you.”
Again he smelled smoke, stronger now. Familiar. Just the two bodies strolled through New Reno, the rest left behind, feeding themselves and their minds. Minds required no more calories than any hard-working body, despite being larger and packed with neural tissue. No limbs; few muscles. The ultimate invalids. And doing several things at once proved easy, astonishingly easy, making both men a little giddy as parts of them walked along the street.
Logan had come this way. Cornell knew the man’s scent; when Jordick realized that they were following him, he said, “Maybe we shouldn’t.”
“Shush,” Cornell warned.
There was a massive structure near the town square, sprawling and thick-walled, bleeding firelight from its tiny windows. In the first days, before the surrounding terrain was thoroughly explored, it had served as a fortification. Now it was the administrative headquarters. There still were rumors of gray bodies watching New Reno from a distance, still fears of attack; but there was no official paranoia anymore, no bodies standing guard in the night.
Again Jordick said, “Maybe we shouldn’t.”
And again Cornell said, “Shush.”
Logan was nearby. First came a strong fresh scent, then the sound of his voice. Voices. Several mouths were speaking simultaneously. They were close enough that the sharp, berating tone shone through. Cornell edged up near a window, hearing, “—a few fucking days, and you make a mess of things. I leave orders, strict and clear, and what happens?”
Someone responded, a single mouth muttering some excuse.
“Shut up. Just shut up.” A pause. “I don’t believe it. You’re claiming we aren’t behind schedule? That delays aren’t delays? That every last goal is being met, regardless of appearances?”
Cornell’s body took a breath and held it inside.
“You think I was on vacation? Who here thinks I was sunning my ass by the fucking pool?”
Little whistles; silence.
“Meetings,” said Logan. “And more meetings.” Something was thrown, or it was dropped. Thud. “You don’t know how they’re pushing. They want results. Solid, bona fide results. ‘Why do we keep flooding your world with volunteers?’ they ask me. ‘What makes you special?’ And I tell them about the artifacts, again. I remind them that the goddamn fish worlds aren’t exactly giving us new technologies. And I tell them how we keep feeling something. Something big living deep in the Breaks. Practically calling to us, I promise, and give us more time. Please, please.”
Someone spoke, asking a question.
“Two came,” said Logan. Then he groaned, adding, “More like one and a half, really. I pulled a recruit off the fish detail. He’s warm, he’s upright. Don’t complain.”
Cornell glanced at his companion, Jordick’s eyes dropping, focusing on his new toes.
“Who’s going to be famous?” Logan asked his audience. “Think. We’re one team in a dozen, our necks on the cutting block. You tell me. Who matters in a thousand years? It’s the team that makes First Contact. The team who can claim shaking paws with the first intelligent race. Second place is the same as last place. Keep that in mind. You ball-less wonders are going to do better, or I’ll replace you. Understood? I’m not going to be cheated out of this prize. Not now, not ever. Do you comprehend?”
There were muttered, intimidated responses. Then silence.
Then someone opened a nearby doorway, without warning, the skin making a dry sound and a sputtering dung fire throwing a wedge of light across the open ground. Jordick broke into a run; Cornell trotted after him. It was like being twelve again, spying on Mr. Lynn and his girlfriends. Only this kind of excitement tasted different. A richer brew, every one of Cornell’s bodies shivering.
Some kind of cage stood on the west edge of New Reno. Neither man remembered it from the computer images, which was strange, since the greasewood was old, bleached by wind and sun. It might be a jail, Cornell guessed. But Jordick pointed out, “It doesn’t look used.” He meant that in a positive light, adding, “They’ve never needed it.” As if his fellow explorers were too decent, too honorable. But what if it was being saved for a different kind of prisoner? Cornell touched the wood. His companion said, “Look. Someone’s moving out there.”
People stood on the open desert, under starlight—
—and Cornell realized it was one person. Three bodies, but all the same shape and color. He remembered the rumored strangers, cautiously approaching. Then he saw the wooden tube and how one body would kneel, peering into an eyepiece; and he trotted forward, asking, “What do you see?”
“Pardon?” A woman’s startled voice.
“That’s a telescope,” he stated, astonished to find one here.
She had built it herself, they learned. She was the entire astronomy division on High Desert; but no, she wasn’t a true astronomer. She’d gotten only halfway through her graduate work, ending up teaching high school science. “Not that this work needs a Ph.D.,” she joked. “I mean, look at it. Iffy lenses. Bad focus. Chromatic aberrations, and I’ve got to keep readjusting my direction.”
Cornell touched the wooden tube with a fingertip.
“Galileo had better equipment,” she told them.
Yet she sounded happy. Excited.
“May I?” Cornell asked.
“Please do.”
It had been ages, and this was a different set of eyes. Yet it felt natural enough. He found himself gazing at countless stars, the brightest ones near enough to touch. Spectrums were twisted apart by the clumsy lenses, making little rainbows. And the colors were different from the ones at home, purples and blues less intense, oranges and reds full of subtle new shadings.
He stepped back, breathed hard and made a cloud of dust rise. Then he looked up, feeling the stars as much as seeing them. He had been here his entire life, he kept thinking. Some new part of him did nothing but assure him that this was the sky of his childhood.
“What kind of work are you doing?” Jordick asked.
“With parallaxes,” she reported.
“What’s that mean?”
Cornell explained, “It’s the motion of stars against a fixed background. It’s a way of estimating distances.”
Jordick made a puzzled sound.
“Some aren’t a tenth of a light-year away,” said the woman.
“If this is a cluster,” Cornell asked, “can you tell where it is?”
“Give me a radio telescope. Let me find some millisecond pulsars, then match them with the pulsars we see from the moon. And maybe. If this is within a few tens of thousands of light-years.” A big laugh. “If that kind of measuring applies.”
Jordick was squinting into the eyepiece.
“Where do you gentlemen work?” she asked. “Have I seen you?”
Cornell gave a sketch of himself. Jordick had to point out, “We could be anywhere in the universe. You’ll never know just wher
e this is.”
There was a pause, then one of the woman’s bodies spoke. Ignoring Jordick, she recounted school stories and her marriage and divorce, no children and nothing exceptional. “Who’d have guessed this?” She laughed. “Not bad for an old broad with varicose veins, huh?”
The sky began to brighten in the east, all but the closest stars washed away by the ruddy glow. And Jordick had to say, “This entire sky could be a phony. Just like the earth’s was.”
Cornell blinked, the inner lids shutting and then the outer ones. Then he turned back to the astronomer, asking, “How long have you been coming here?”
“Two years,” she reported. “Short shifts, long breaks.”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t have much aptitude being alien, honestly.” Her smile seemed more human, the muscles of her face having more practice with the expression. “A few days on, then a couple of weeks off. Sometimes longer.”
“What if you stay here longer?”
“I get strange.” She lifted her hands and shook them as if nervous. “I sleep badly. My thoughts jumble. I start losing coordination among my bodies. I guess you’d say I just generally collapse.”
First light struck the Rumpled Mountains, spreading down from the rough gray peaks. They resembled someone’s titanic blanket kicked to the foot of the bed.
“We should go get our postings,” said Jordick.
“Soon,” Cornell allowed.
“I want the Breaks.” With authority, Jordick said, “That’s the best posting. That is.”
Cornell watched the woman’s faces, aware of her silence.
Then after a long pause, she was saying, “It’s strange. Some people can stay here forever. And others, most of us…we’re just missing something, it feels like. Not even practice helps us.”
A pause.
She looked at Cornell with every face, telling him, “It’s as if some of us belong here and everyone else doesn’t. It’s that simple. And after a while, it’s easy to see who is who.” Every head nodded, and she squinted into the fresh sunlight. “I see a recruit, and it’s as if I can foretell his future. Which is about the worst part of being here. To me.”
7
A long body stood in the street, dust swirling around it. Cornell squinted, sensing something was wrong. The body was too thin, fragile and moving as if painfully weakened. Cornell and Jordick were dragging their minds toward it, on the way to the town square; a single hand was extended, palm up, the vaguely human face capable of a feeble longing.
“It’s begging,” Jordick realized, astonished and then amused.
There wasn’t any intelligence in the eyes. They were dull and slow to react, and it didn’t speak save for a soft meaningless whistling.
“Its mind must have died,” Jordick offered. “I bet so.”
Died or left without it. Although he couldn’t believe—
“Remember? They warned us about these fellows.” Jordick laughed, one body kneeling, picking up a random stone. “Watch this.”
Cornell felt uneasy.
His companion offered the stone to the begging hand, and the hand closed on it and lifted it to the mouth, a tentative bite followed by a vigorous sideways spit. Then the hand reached out again, nothing learned, the dead face staring at them, incapable of even the slightest anger.
Jordick laughed louder.
“Come on,” said Cornell. “We’ve got to go.”
A dozen people were scattered about the square—“scattered” had a whole new meaning here—long shadows overlapping and the thin air warming fast where there was sun. People spoke, laughed, and sang. Most of them were veterans between assignments, a palpable sense of familiarity hanging on them. Logan and a couple of subordinates were at one end of the square, and Cornell kept his distance, trying to watch everything. A dozen people—no, he counted fourteen minds—and he found he could keep them separate at a glance. Bodies had a characteristic shape and size, fur color and bearing; the minds had the same color cues and telltale variations, each one marked by personal touches. Decorative braids. Adornments of shiny stones and rat bones set in artful patterns. One person’s mind was sprinkled with the dried yellowy husks of flightless bees. Strange, strange. And what’s more, Cornell could feel the connections between bodies and minds. It was as if there were spiderwebs strung across the square, bizarre energies running through them and almost visible. He was so busy mastering this new sense that he didn’t notice someone coming up behind him.
“Novak,” he heard, “you look different.”
He started to turn his heads—
“Change your hair, did you?”
—six tall bodies smiling at him, hands holding spears made of greasewood and sharpened bone. They were brown bodies, and a big brown mind shone in the morning light. “Porsche?”
“And you’ve lost a couple pounds, haven’t you?”
This had to be Porsche. The bodies had her stance and height—on a relative scale—and they moved with her confidence, long legs well-muscled and every mouth giving a sharp toothy smile. Tied to her mind were an assortment of sacks made from skins, plus dried greasewood blossoms, thin and golden, lending her a strange femininity.
“Got your assignment yet?” she asked.
He shook several heads.
“Good. Let me talk.”
A pair of Logan’s bodies were talking to Jordick, one body writing on a crude piece of paper. Or parchment. “I’m taking a big group to the Breaks. That’s our priority now.”
Black-furred bodies nodded, eager to begin.
“Novak.” Logan glanced at Porsche, then back at him. “Think you can help do some bridge building?”
“No, I get him,” said Porsche. “I need him.”
The bodies approached, one hand squeezing the charcoal pencil. “Need him where?”
“I found a grove of greasewood.” She pointed with several spears, the bone tips drawing precise circles. “West and south. Nuts and wood and plenty of both.”
“Take someone else,” said Logan.
“No.”
The voice was mild, but solid.
“Jordick’ll go. Won’t you, son?”
“I was promised Novak,” she claimed.
“Who promised him?”
“His case officer,” Porsche reported. And she was lying, her voice sounding just false enough that everyone listening would know it. “I need someone strong, and you need the wood. Am I right?”
Logan made a low sound, one head shaking. Cornell could see the paper, his name written in clumsy black letters.
“All right,” said Logan. “Take him.”
“Thanks,” she sang.
Then Logan came closer with one body, the one not playing secretary, and it laid a hand on one of Cornell’s crotches, whispering, “How’s it feel, having a slit?”
Cornell backed away, fur lifting in anger.
“I’m teasing!” Logan laughed and snorted, then said, “Sure, Porsche. But you train him. Teach every trick, darling.”
He left, and she said, “Idiot.”
“Idiot squared.”
“When I was on the other side, once or twice—?” She paused and grinned. “He made passes at me.”
“And?”
“No and. Nothing happened.” Shrugs, and she added, “One time here he tried fondling me. Just once.”
Cornell looked at her bodies, tall and obviously strong. “How did he lose his body?”
“I don’t know.” She laughed. “The one I hit had broken ribs.”
And he was laughing, too. He had missed this woman.
Logan’s pregnant body was sitting in the sun, its belly already bigger than it was just hours ago. And Porsche was saying, “He lost it in the Breaks, I heard. Someone got pissed about something. Which is hard to imagine, I know.”
“Thanks for helping me,” Cornell told her.
She smiled, snaky tongues showing behind predatory teeth. “Wait till you work for me,” she warned him. “A fe
w days from now, and the Breaks might look awfully sweet.”
Cornell wished Jordick good luck.
“See you soon,” his companion promised, arms lifting his newly tied harnesses, fitting them over his shoulders and jerking his mind into motion.
Porsche led Cornell in another direction, to an abandoned hut where she had hidden equipment and food. They dug them up, and she made him ready for the open desert, lending him spears and sacks full of dried meat. She showed him how to secure the sacks to the mind. She gave him tips on how to position the harnesses, how to lean and pull and reduce chafing. She promised to teach him how to hunt, and he mentioned the classes…which caused her to say, “Knowing it wrong is worse than knowing nothing.”
They were outside New Reno by midmorning, past the empty cage and soon out of sight of anything human, and it was like no march he could have imagined for himself. The alien day seemed to last forever, and they moved without pause, shadows turning short and the air almost warm, the clear cloudless sky a washed-out bluish purple. The novelty was exciting, then it would vanish. There were unexpected moments when he felt as if he’d always lived this way, dragging his mind across dusty wastelands. He mentioned it to Porsche, who replied, “We’ve all had brain-dragging days.” And she laughed, enjoying everything. Nothing seemed to bother the woman.
Cornell grew tired and thirsty, and confessed to both.
“You’re not thirsty,” she warned him. “That’s habit talking. You were hydrated when you came across, so you’ve got plenty of water stored in your fat, camel-style. Believe me, a couple of sips a day are too much.”
He tried to ignore the dry mouths.
She used three bodies to pull her mind. “Practice helps,” she promised. “But a lot of what we do is by guess and by golly.”
He asked, “Why not build wagons?”
“Wheels in this dust? With wood scarce?” She told him, “It doesn’t work. I know because I tried it. Several times.”
“Yeah?”
“Did I tell you? I was part of the first team across.” A pause. A wave of spears. “This is easiest. This is what nature wants us to do.”
