The Tau Ceti Transmutation (Amazon)

by Alex P. Berg

  “No, there’s definitely something out there,” said Carl. “Hard to see with all the trees in the way, though. Paige, let’s move the car forward a bit.”

  Paige rerouted the request to the car, and it inched forward. The scene outside the window moved at a crawl, the lines of trees shifting like shadows in the late day sun.

  “There. Stop.” The car did as Carl requested. The droid leaned forward and positioned his head down and to his right. Something flickered in his pupils as his eyes zoomed and focused. “Yes, I see someone. Multiple people, actually. Off in the distance.”

  “Really? More than one?” I asked.

  Well, it makes sense, said Paige. There’s a number of people besides Mr. Stein who all list this patch of land as their address.

  “Great. A whole clan of Brainless hippies. You could’ve mentioned this earlier. Carl, move. Let me see.” I brushed my pal to the side while I shifted to his side of the cab.

  “Despite your regular checkups with GenBorn, I doubt your eyes are that good,” he said.

  “Oh, ye of little faith. Despite your constant mockery, I did, in fact, anticipate a scenario such as this before we left.”

  I reached into the front shirt pocket of my guayabera and produced a slim black case with a microfiber coating. I cracked it open and produced a pair of connected lenses which I settled over my nose.

  “Spy glasses,” I said. “They’ll help me see whatever it is you were peering at. Now move aside and let a master work.”

  “The term is spyglass,” said Carl. “And those are binoculars.”

  “Whatever.” I tapped at the side of my glasses, trying to figure out how to work the suckers. So far, all I’d succeeded in was blurring my vision.

  “It would probably help if you put them on properly,” said Carl.

  “Huh?”

  They’re backwards, said Paige.

  “Dagnabbit,” I said, ripping the glasses off and turning them around. “There should be a sign on these things or something.”

  “Well, one side is convex and the other concave,” said Carl.

  “Not good enough,” I said. “They should be idiot proof.”

  Implying what exactly? said Paige with a snicker.

  I removed the foot from my mouth and held my tongue. Leaning into the spot where Carl had made his discovery, I scrunched my nose and scanned the horizon.

  “Yes. There they are,” I said. “I think I see them. A group of portly ladies, wearing yellow and orange sarongs, all clustered together.”

  “Those are the mangos,” said Carl.

  I gritted my teeth. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Paige, help me figure this dang contraption out.”

  I thought you’d never ask.

  The glasses finally focused, and a blinking spot appeared in the corner of my eyes. I turned to look at it, and the glasses automatically zoomed. In the distance, I spotted a modest one story log home with a roof fashioned out of dried grass. Outside the structure, a string looped between two poles bore the weight of several soggy articles of clothing, and a pit with charred embers smoldered nearby. There appeared to be several more homes clustered behind the first, but the intruding boughs of the mango trees made it hard to tell.

  As I watched, people flitted in and out of my field of view, men and women both. Most wore simple cotton shifts paired with shorts or skirts, and their bodies were muscled and tan, most likely from laboring in the fields. That they did their own labor instead of relegating the tasks to droids was difficult enough to comprehend, but another aspect of them jumped at me with even graver implications.

  Some of them were tied together at the wrists—with colorful sashes, oddly enough, but still. And not one, but many. Always a man to a women.

  I lifted the glasses off my nose. “Carl, did you see that? The people? Some of them…they’re bound together.”

  “What? I didn’t notice that.”

  “Yes,” I said. “At the wrist. Male to female. Why, it’s almost as if…” I gasped. “That’s what this is all about. Oh my god! They’re human traffickers!”

  Rich, come on… said Paige.

  “That must be the connection with Valerie,” I continued. “They tried to take her, but she got away, and now they’re after her. The whole relationship angle was a front to keep things quiet when she went missing.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” said Carl. “If she was a human trafficking escapee, she would’ve gone to the police and stayed there. And she would’ve been truthful about her situation if she’d somehow come to us. Not to mention human traffickers are in the business of kidnapping, not rifling through sock drawers.”

  I couldn’t deny my partner’s statements, but my intuition had been piqued and couldn’t easily be rerouted. “Good points, all of them. But I know what I saw, and my gut tells me something very, very wrong is going on over there. Now, come on. You have a responsibility to serve and protect. Come help me scout this place out so we know what we’re up against.”

  I opened the doors and stepped into the Cetie heat before Carl could dissuade me. I snuck across the grassy expanse between the trees, sliding from trunk to trunk to keep myself from being seen. It proved easy behind the big, leafy mangos, but after a few dozen trees, the orchard switched over to apples, which didn’t provide as much trunk cover.

  I paused behind a particularly fat specimen, waving Carl over to me.

  “See? There they are,” I hissed, pointing toward the compound. A couple bound at the wrist in neon green fabric passed through our view.

  “The woman doesn’t appear to be in any sort of distress,” said Carl. “In fact, I’d dare say she looks happy.”

  “Mind tricks,” I said. “Perhaps the victims are suffering from capture-bonding with their jailers. Or they’re hopped up on shrooms and goofy pills.”

  I tiptoed across another grassy expanse and angled my body to the side, reducing my profile as I slipped behind another tree.

  Carl followed me without any pretense of stealth. “This is ludicrous. And your attempts at subtlety are unnecessary. If they haven’t spotted us, it’s entirely due to their own incompetence.”

  “What are you talking about?” I said. “I’m like a whisper on the wind. Now get behind this trunk before they see us.”

  Carl sighed and moved behind me while I stuck my head out to get a better look. We’d closed within about a hundred meters of the camp. The captives and their kidnappers had assembled into a large circle, surrounding a young pair in the middle. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but I was becoming more and more certain drugs were involved. Many of the participants seemed oddly cheerful.

  As I tried to understand the ritual unfolding before me, I heard a buzzing and felt a prick at my neck. I shooed whatever insect was in pursuit of my delectable blood, but the buzzing persisted. Then the blighter had the nerve to bite me. I yelped and slapped my exposed skin.

  “Son of a…these damn mosquitoes are going to give us away,” I said, wiping my now sticky hand on my slacks. “This is why I rarely leave the city.”

  “Um…Rich? We may have a problem,” said Carl.

  “What? Don’t tell me the cultists heard me?” I glanced back around the tree toward the camp.

  “No,” said Carl. “That wasn’t a mosquito. That was a bee.”

  “So? I’m not allergic.”

  “It appears you’re not particularly well-versed in apiculture either.”

  Another couple of bees buzzed around in the leaves above my head. “Say what?”

  “Beekeeping,” said Carl. “Are you aware of the genetic modifications between Africanized bees and regular honey bees that occurred in the late twenty-fifth century to help combat dwindling populations?”

  “Get to the point, Professor,” I said.

  “Agricultural pollinization bees are highly territorial, intelligent, and emit potent alarm pheromones. They also don’t lose their stingers or venom sacks upon attack.”

  The pair of bees in the tree
above had morphed into an angry swarm. A number buzzed and flew around my face.

  “So, what you’re saying is—” Another bee stung me in the cheek. “Yah!”

  “Run!” said Carl.

  A quick succession of stings to my head and neck overcame any qualms I might’ve had about revealing myself to the unBrained hippies. I tore out of the boughs of the apple tree like a bat out of hell. My first instinct sent me racing toward the car, but a wave of bees materialized out of thin air and met me before I could reach the mangos. Panicking, I spun and run back the way I’d come, slapping and waving my arms as more bees surged at me from all directions.

  Quick, to your left, said Paige, her voice barely audible over the swarming anger of the bees. There’s an irrigation ditch. Dive into it.

  In my distressed state, I didn’t question her decision making. I took off in the general direction she’d indicated while irate bees and overzealous apple trees slapped and stung and grabbed at me with equal verve.

  There, said Paige.

  I dove, expecting a splash.

  I got a thump. Thick mud that reeked of decay and tasted like the inside of a boot sprayed into my mouth as my forearms and face made contact with the ditch floor. Bees hummed above me, granting me a temporary reprieve from their stinging as they paused to laugh at my asinine belly flop into the mostly dry creek bed.

  Sorry about that, said Paige. The satellite images must’ve been out of date. But this could still work. Try smearing that mud over yourself. The bees seem to dislike the odor.

  I wanted to make a remark about how they weren’t the only ones, but I followed Paige’s advice, rolling around in the rancid, foul-smelling paste and smearing it across my face and forearms. As I did so, a mechanical sound interrupted the buzz of the bees—liquid spraying through a nozzle. I felt a cool mist settle over my neck, and the buzzing subsided.

  I looked up. Standing at the lip of the ditch, next to Carl of all people, was a pony-tailed hippie, holding a backpack-mounted sprayer. A clear liquid dripped from the tip of the nozzle.

  I offered a salutation. “Um…hi?”

  The pony-tailed one raised an eyebrow and frowned.

  I gulped.

  13

  I sat in a primitive sweat lodge, a squat, dark, hovel of a building slapped together out of sticks and dirt and hippie spit. Steam from a rock pit curled around my bare toes. It mixed with smoke from burning embers and licked the soles of my feet before running along my legs and diving under the towel wrapped loosely around my waist. Sweat dripped from my brow, falling in heavy drops onto my bare chest. I took a deep breath, filling my lungs with moist, sticky air.

  “Feels good, doesn’t it?” I asked.

  Carl sat across from me, similarly clad in nothing but a rough, white towel. “I’ve never understood the appeal of saunas, to be honest. Then again, I don’t sweat, so perhaps there’s a sensory experience associated with them I’m missing.”

  “You didn’t have to join me,” I said. “Your clothes weren’t covered in mud.”

  Carl leaned forward and grasped a small cup. He dipped it into a bucket and poured the contents over the hot stones, letting loose another cloud of steam. “I know.”

  The motive for his choice to accompany me into the dark, sweat hovel remained unspoken, but I knew the reason. “Carl?”

  “Yes?” he said.

  “Thanks.”

  He nodded. He knew what I meant, too.

  As it turned out, Carl had been right. The long-haired, unBrained hippies hadn’t been involved in human trafficking. Rather, they’d been hosting a wedding—a wedding I’d so unceremoniously crashed. Instead of a cruel restraint, the colorful ribbons I’d noticed tied around everyone’s wrists were part of a community hand-fasting ceremony for the young couple undergoing their nuptials.

  The ceremony had progressed to about the halfway point when they noticed my yelps and heard me crashing through the orchard like a blind buffalo. Carl, having never suspected the hippies were involved in any for-profit kidnapping schemes, went to the camp for help. There, he managed to find the community beekeeper who doused me with aerosolized bee pheromones—essentially catnip for the little black and yellow pollination machines.

  Despite the beekeeper’s frown and the fact that I’d trespassed on their property, angered their bees, damaged a number of apple trees, and ruined a wedding, the hippies turned out to be quite the friendly bunch. Instead of stringing me up by my thumbs, they’d gone out of their way to offer me assistance. They hosed me and my mud-caked clothes off, gave me a sticky, homebrewed cream they claimed was a remedy for bee stings, and, while my duds dried on their primitive but effective clothing lines, they ushered me and my naked bottom into one of their sweat lodges.

  I took another deep breath of the hot steam and smoke mixture and my brain reeled momentarily. I started to wonder how hot it was inside the lodge and if such an experience might be dangerous, but I didn’t have long to ponder. As sweat poured down my chest, a heavy, canvas flap leading to the outside peeled open. A tall, weather-beaten man with dreadlocks and a bushy beard admitted himself, a towel draped around his midsection. He settled himself across from Carl and I, our spread legs forming an invisible and yet wholly unsettling equilateral triangle.

  “Nice little hut, isn’t is?” the man said.

  I nodded. “Hot, but nice. Yeah.”

  “The steam’s good for those stings, too,” he said.

  I glanced at one of the bumps on my arms. I thought ice might be a better countermeasure to the stings than heat, but I wasn’t about to say so. “Are you Gerrold Stein, by any chance?”

  The man nodded. “Heard you wanted to talk to me. Sorry for keeping you waiting.”

  “Are you kidding?” I leaned forward. “I’m the one who needs to apologize. I feel like a complete fool. When I spotted your ceremony with the ribbons…well, it doesn’t matter what I thought. Let’s just say my imagination got the best of me. I didn’t mean to crash your festivities. Honest. And then the bees came after me, and—”

  “Relax, friend,” said Gerrold. “It’s alright. We’re a pretty easy going bunch.”

  I slumped and settled my back against the wall. “Yeah, I suppose you must be. But really, I’d be happy to pay you back for any damages.”

  “No need,” he said. “Pay it forward to someone else in need. Although, there is one thing I require from you.”

  “Name it,” I said.

  “I could use a name, friend.”

  “Oh. Right. I’m Rich. Rich Weed. This is Carl.”

  Carl nodded.

  Gerrold raised an eyebrow. “Weed, eh? As in related to the Weed family?”

  “The ones who founded the ganja fields north of Pylon Alpha back in the day? Yeah.”

  Gerrold tipped his head. “Well, then, I guess I owe you thanks, friend. Welcome, both of you.”

  I didn’t have to inquire what he meant by the first part. One look at his dreads spoke volumes about his preferred pastimes, but I was curious about the last part. I shared a look with Carl.

  Gerrold noticed the shared glance. “I’m not sure what you may have heard about us, here, but we don’t have it out for droids. As a matter of fact, we have no objection to them whatsoever.”

  “Is that so?” I asked.

  Gerrold clasped his hands in his lap before him. His towel sagged under the weight of his grasp, stretching the towel and revealing an uncomfortable amount of leg. “We choose to live simply here, Rich. We don’t begrudge those who choose otherwise, so long as they afford us the same luxury of choice.”

  That seemed a noble philosophy, one that required a thoughtful response, but my brain felt muffled, as if it was slowly being packed with cotton, so I responded with all the wit I could muster. “Hmm. Ok.”

  Gerrold stretched his arms to the sides, resting them on a lip at chest height. “So…”

  “So, indeed,” I said.

  Gerrold chuckled. “I meant, I assume you’re here for a
reason. Care to share?”

  “Ah, right,” I said. “Well, believe it or not, Carl and I are private investigators.”

  “We have a license and everything,” Carl said.

  I chuckled. “That we do. And as it turns out, we recently accepted a case from a new client. Valerie Meeks.”

  Gerrold put a hand up to stroke his beard. “Ah. Well, that’s a name I haven’t heard in a while.”

  “We understand she was your girlfriend.”

  “Sort of,” said Stein. “We were close. But I haven’t seen her in about three months.”

  “Do you mind if we ask what happened?” said Carl.

  “No. Not at all.” Gerrold tugged at some loose beard hairs. “Although, let’s see…how should I put this? I suppose she left because she couldn’t find what she was looking for.”

  I must’ve looked befuddled, because Gerrold took pity on me and explained himself. “As I said, we live a simple life here. As difficult as it may be for you to believe, that appeals to a lot of people, especially those who’ve spent the majority of their lives in the hustle and bustle of the city. It’s not uncommon for strays, even those well into their two hundreds, to search us out. Most only stay for a few days, or perhaps a week. We let them. That’s fine. It’s part of their journey. Others stay permanently, becoming brothers and sisters. Then…there are those like Valerie.

  “When Valerie came to us, she seemed lost, as so many others do. But she had a good heart. I liked her. I’m not sure if we could be considered a couple, but we cared for each other. I taught her about our ways, our lifestyle. She expressed a great interest in our system of Tao Chi.”

  “I think you mean Tai Chi,” said Carl.

  “No, Tao Chi,” said Gerrold. “It’s a comprehensive belief system combining the focus on physical fitness and emotional wellbeing of Tai Chi with the teachings of Taoism. Valerie was particularly interested in the latter. She and I had many powerful discussions over the nature of qi—how it affects our corporeal bodies, how it governs our thoughts and emotions, how it manifests during rebirth. We even discussed topics I hadn’t given much thought to, such as the qi of the artificially created. People such as your friend Carl, here.”