by Eric Flint
Yet again, strident alarms made me jump. System after system aboard the lander screamed electronically: catastrophic failure. Text scrolled faster than I could absorb it: alerts and warnings. Mostly obscured on screen by the blur of dire notifications was a frenzied, axe-wielding figure. Amanda. Sparks, flame, and black smoke spewed from shattered consoles.
"Stop!" Had she heard me over alarms shrieking in the lander and echoed here? "Amanda, stop!" My shouts had no effect. "Please," I implored. Why was she doing this? From orbit, I could only send an acknowledgement of the alarms. Electronic warbling faded. Great sobs became audible between crunching thuds of the fire axe. "Amanda!"
Either my yelling or sheer exhaustion finally stopped her. She tottered, leaning against the wooden haft of the axe. Sooty garments clung to her, sodden with sweat. Her eyes glinted insanely. "I . . . I . . ." she coughed.
"Please," I pleaded again. I fell silent in confusion. Please what? Stop? She already had. Tell me I'm going mad, that I'm imagining things? "Please tell me why you are doing this."
The choking sobs subsided a bit. Her eyes streamed tears, whether from smoke or emotion I did not know—and that I couldn't distinguish was bitter. "I . . . I had to do this before I lost the will."
"Do what, Amanda?" Coughing preempted any answer. The crackling of the flames grew louder. Alarms rang anew, as fire suppressant sputtered futilely from ceiling nozzles. "Get off the lander." She nodded and stumbled to the open airlock.
Outdoor sensors imaged her from all sides as she stood, stoop-shouldered and weeping. Wordlessly we watched the lander vanish in a geyser of flames. Comsats relayed the scene, low-res and shimmery for lack of landing-site amplification. "Amanda." No response. "Why?!"
"I can never leave. I made certain that, if my resolve weakens, I never do." It had to be blisteringly hot so near the still-burning wreckage, but she was shivering.
My mind raced. Whatever momentary lunacy had made her wreck the lander need not doom her. Our starship was fine—if unbearably empty. I could go for help, for a team of biologists to somehow make things right. "At least tell me what this is about."
She explained a lot now, with one word.
Replaying the video, the fronds of the seedlings all around Amanda had been perfectly still. There had been no breeze; her spontaneous trembling in reaction to my question about eco-pheromones had been horrified insight. The long time she had spent puttering with the plant, staring at the ground and away from the camera, masked frantic thinking.
"For some reason, you feel you can't leave." I could not yet imagine what the reason might be. I did not care. It was Amanda. "Then I'll join you. I'll come down in the other lander."
"No!" Tears that had subsided welled anew. Mucus bubbled from her nostrils and ran down her chin. "Don't you see, Cameron? That would be worse. If I see you in person, I'll be repelled." A shudder made her pause.
"If you leave, at least we'll have our memories."
* * *
Pheromones, it turns out, are much more than sexual attractants. More broadly, they are biochemical stimulants of behavior, like the scent trails left by ant scouts to lead worker ants to food. Not only animals secrete pheromones; so do some algae, slime molds, and fungi. But pheromonal effects were largely intra-species—on Earth. Eco-pheromones, Amanda had realized, must involve wide-ranging biochemical signaling among species.
And that mechanism resolved so many of the unanswered questions about Paradise.
* * *
Only science far beyond even the Firsters' usual unattainable standards had kept the ship's biosphere viable long enough to reach Paradise. With the scattered and incomplete records that were recoverable, we had not a chance in several lifetimes of recreating their achievement. By we, I mean the Corps and all its resources.
I did not have several lifetimes.
Still, what had happened was finally clear, if only in barest outline. The Firsters had synthesized two of what they called retroviruses. These molecular machines were benign as far as the immune system was concerned, which made them invisible to our biohazard sensors. Both retroviruses implanted designer genes into terrestrial mammals. The spliced genes from the first retrovirus expressed the proteins that, by allowing the colonists to digest local life forms, enabled survival. Given that adaptation, however, there was nothing to stop the highly evolved immigrant species from out-competing all native fauna—which the colonists were unwilling to permit.
Hence the second retrovirus: It implanted the genes that let the survivors live with themselves.
"We will not prolong our time through the wanton extinction of those who belong on this beautiful world," declared the slowboat's log, in an entry recorded as the shipboard biosphere was in its death throes. "Nor will we abandon to their fate those who have been such loyal shipboard companions.
"We will co-exist, or we will perish."
Perhaps they knew what they were doing. I prefer to think they ran out of time before testing could be completed. Either way, the crew descended to Paradise's surface, committed to being stewards of the land.
They had succeeded brilliantly. Earth animals coexisted everywhere with native forms, and, as the records from planetfall proved, the indigenous biosphere was now far lusher than before humanity's arrival.
But genius does not preclude unintended consequences. Such as: Biological imperatives that made caged mice, their enforced proximity unbearable, fight to the death once a fickle wind stopped wafting plant and animal scents, eco-pheromones, from the nearby forest. The same imperatives that drove uncaged cats and dogs—and humans—far apart.
Humans are meant to be social creatures, not territorial like cats.
Biological imperatives the colonists had created rewarded ecological stewardship above all else. Healthy regions exuded a rich trans-species stew of pheromones, and the body responded to immersion with an endorphin-like reward. Even a brief absence from a healthy, balanced ecosystem interrupted secretion of the endorphin, and began production of its opposite, some type of repellent. Too late, I understood Brian's evident headaches—drug withdrawal—when he ventured into the forest-fire zone. I remembered him meeting Amanda in her envirosuit and sniffing in puzzlement—at her lack of pheromones.
Only in a broad expanse where many species flourished did the density and diversity of pheromones enable small groups to form, and then only temporarily. Puberty began pheromone production; only an exceptionally fecund region could sustain eco-balance in the presence of pheromones from more than two adult anythings. Puberty caused dissolution of the family unit.
When Amanda shed her suit, Paradise's ubiquitous retroviruses began her transformation. No mere garden could prevent her altered body's production of the anti-endorphin. Whenever the prevailing wind shifted, whenever steady currents of pheromones did not arrive from Brian's ceaselessly cultivated and much larger domain, she became abhorrent.
Unapproachable.
As I would be, if, against Amanda's express commands and wishes, I were to join her. . . .
* * *
Luminous orbs dominated an ink-black sky, mirrored in a glass-smooth sea. The nearer moon, larger than Earth's and closer to its primary, seemed to fill the sky. The other satellite, appearing half the size of Earth's, also full, hovered above its companion. An evening star sparkled like a ruby just over the paired glowing disks. Music swelled as celestial spheres swung into alignment, a visual harmony observable at this spot but once every three hundred nine Paradise years.
The image is computer-generated, because the next physical alignment is not due for twenty years. Amanda and I silently shared the moment. Needing above all else to parallel her experience, I too witnessed it on a portable computer, shunning sensory immersion in the starship's holographic theater.
We watched each other watching through tiny inset windows of our computer screens. She recovered the power of speech first. "It's stunning, Cameron, a gift I will cherish always." Her voice quavered. Left unspoken was that this
new composition, like that last night of passion, was meant as a keepsake for the long years to come. "When alignment comes, Cameron, I'll be playing your music and thinking of you." Tears flowed, and her voice grew husky. "Still loving you.
"Now, go."
* * *
Loneliness rends me. Protocol, the mission commander's orders, and common sense all insist that I leave. My preparation, such as it is, is complete.
I look for the last time around the empty tavern of the slowboat. Hundreds of blue-and-green-and-white reflections of the globe below mock me.
This history is almost complete, recorded for some improbable resurgence of civilization by the primitives below.
Can the humans of Paradise ever cure what their mad, desperate, genius ancestors did to them? A cure is what's needed. The retroviruses, more than an ecological adaptation, are a devolutionary trap. In a scant few thousand years, the surviving colonists—addicted to healthy-ecology endorphins, unable to congregate—have regressed to near-instinctual behavior.
Most of the planet's surface is already in bloom; there is no basis for population expansion. Culture and science have been forgotten. How much longer, in a "society" that can support even family units only occasionally and temporarily, will traces of language survive? How few generations remain until the mute descendants of starfarers become mere tireless servants to ferns?
There is little left to say.
"If you now viewing this history come from afar, from the Reunification Corps, perhaps, a sincere warning: Do not land! If you reached this ship from the planet below . . . then surely you understand the nuances of your biosphere better than did Amanda or I." In case of that eventuality, computers were rendering my rambling oration into English. The translation had to use the full Firster language—that which I needed to impart was far too complex for the pathetic scraps of speech still in use below. "Somehow, you have escaped the trap. I salute you."
I like to believe that somehow involves me.
I have set my landing coordinates for the fire-ravaged area in which Amanda now makes her home—but at the opposite extreme. If we can make bloom our separate ends of that desolation, can expand them until they merge, the reclaimed region, bountiful with its own eco-pheromones, will make possible our reunification.
My lander's lab computers contain the finest of modern and recovered Firster biotech. Long after I become a grubber in the dirt, lab automation will simulate, and wherever there is a chance, synthesize, possible counter-pheromones and anti-retroviruses.
I do not delude myself: Much of the search will be by trial and error. Mere neutralization of the Firster technology, as unimaginably difficult as that would be, is not my goal. A new bioagent must be limited in its effects to humans—anything less specifically targeted would destroy the biosphere the colonists sacrificed so much to preserve. Extrapolation suggests that the process could take hundreds of years, but it could still help someone.
I have purged all interstellar navigational data from the lander. That precaution, this recording—and the dispatch of the Corps starship to its fiery death in the nearby sun—are necessary to protect my civilization from the eco-madness below.
Hundreds of blue-and-green-and-white reflections of the globe below mock me.
I will not be mocked.
Amanda's first words to me were, "You act like the world is against you."
Slowly, I had turned toward at her. Smiling, I had peered deeply into her blue, blue eyes. "If we can be together," I had answered her, "I'll take those odds."
I stride confidently to the lander. In twenty years, we have a celestial wonder to share.
* * *
Edward M. Lerner is a physicist, computer scientist, and curmudgeon by training. Now writing full-time, he applies all three skill sets to his science fiction. His web site is www.sfwa.org/members/lerner/
Science Fiction Weekly says, "In his novel MOONSTRUCK, physicist Edward M. Lerner operates proudly in the classic hard-SF tradition of John W. Campbell and Robert A. Heinlein." SFRevu writes of MOONSTRUCK, "This is a terrific book by an emerging talent."
Baen Books will re-release MOONSTRUCK, a unique first-contact tale, in mass-market paperback around February 2007.
To see this author's works sold by Amazon, click here.
Demonstration Day
Written by Ian Creasey
Illustrated by Andy Hopp
"Roll up, roll up! Get your antimatter here! Gravitons, superstrings, Higgs bosons—all going cheap. Every proton has a lifetime guarantee! Buy caloric, aether, and nebulium while theories last. Special offer on orgone and vril! Dried ghosts, astrographs, universal meters. Superconductors and Bose-Einstein condensates. Athanors and alembics. Test tubes and Bunsen burners, if anyone still uses them."
I switched on Markor's Domestic Star to spotlight the stock. It had taken all afternoon to set up the booth, and I didn't want to have to take everything home again. As the scientists began walking in, I mentally assigned a sales target to each experimenter.
Pale from lack of sun, or tanned scary colors from exposure to strange rays, the early arrivals stared at each other as if they'd forgotten what other people looked like. Their expressions told of the despair of failure, or the voyeuristic exhilaration of uncovering the universe's secrets. Only a few remained unmarked, as if they'd discovered an anti-aging drug or been silently replaced by a robot they'd foolishly made in their own image. I recognized most of the arriving scientists, but one face was missing.
"Any sign of Rankin?" said Audran, who'd been browsing my stock of entangled photons.
"No," I said. "You think your device can find him?"
He looked hurt. "You saw it at Demonstration Day last year. Given the right input, it can find anything. Grab one of those tables and I'll set it up."
Let the sleuthing begin, I thought. Audran had been nagging me to stock his latest device ever since he invented it, and this would be a good test of whether it worked in the real world, as well as in carefully contrived demonstrations.
"I need something close to him," he said, returning with his laptop computer.
"That's the problem: all his personal stuff disappeared with him—notebook, everything. But we do have this." I reached into one of my cases and brought out a dead dog in formaldehyde.
He burst out laughing. "Is that the best you could do?"
"Don't laugh. Occam here was his constant companion in the lab and acted as point man in his experiments—or point dog, you could say."
"What experiments?" asked Audran, curious.
"No one knows, not even his daughter; only the dog, and he's not talking. Margaret reckons he died of a broken heart after Rankin disappeared, but I think lack of food and water might have had more to do with it. Anyway, she preserved old Occam in case her father wanted to do any tests when he returned. But he didn't come back. And so—"
"And so you called me. I still think a ten percent royalty is pitifully low."
"You'll be getting a hundred percent of nothing if this doesn't work. Do we have to take the body out and drain off the formaldehyde? I'd rather not."
"We'll try it the easy way first." Audran booted up the computer and plugged a homemade device into the back. "Got any Z-leads?" he asked.
I passed him two from my stock, making a mental note to get them back after the test. Audran clipped one end of each lead to his device and attached the other ends to the big specimen jar with sticky tape.
"Woof!" said a passing scientist. "It's alive! Run! Run, I tell you!"
I glared at him and he slunk away.
"The classical world is an illusion," said Audran, looking at the screen and typing away. "The universe is a single quantum system in which everything is connected. Nonlocal entanglements—"
"Spare me the spiel," I said. "I heard it last year."
He sniffed, annoyed at being cut off. But he shut up and typed for five minutes, without seeming to get much joy. Eventually he said, "Can you open it up? No need to
take anything out; we'll stick the leads in at the top."
I didn't enjoy the task—I'm a salesman, not a vivisectionist—but after some ineffectual poking, we snagged two leads on the remaining patches of fur, and Audran said that would have to do. Then he looked at the screen and shook his head. "Nothing. Are you sure it's his dog, and not a stray?"
That wasn't worth answering, so I didn't. Audran shrugged. "I'm not getting a damn thing off it. If this dog ever had an owner, right now he's seriously unavailable. I've had livelier readings for corpses."
"Looks like you need to improve performance before worrying about a brand name," I said. I recovered my leads and wiped them clean.
"I've decided to call it the Quent," he said.
"Snappy name. Shame it doesn't work."
He looked devastated. "I don't understand what's wrong. Can we test something else?"
