by Greg Keyes
“I’m not coming any closer!” she suddenly found herself shouting at the thing. “You won’t sting me as you did my mother!”
In the following silence, she felt stupid, and more than stupid, embarrassed. This thing, whatever it was, was no Kachina, no ancestor-spirit of her people. It was a machine of some kind, no matter how far it had come. She had seen pictures of the Reed starships, and they were very large. They had to be to carry living things through the vast light-years of nothing. This thing could hold no living creature.
As she reached this conclusion, the cylinder reached another. An unseen seam parted, a section of the thing’s outer hull slid away. This left a small doorway just over a meter in height. Sand scrambled back, banged into the Dragonfly. The only thought in her head was to fly, fly until the night swallowed her, until she reached the end of the world. But she could not, would not take her gaze away from that open doorway, and so her movements to raise up the windshield of the craft were fumbling and ineffective. Something blue bumped and rustled inside of the Kachina; she could hear each movement with perfect clarity, as if the crater were a huge mirror, focusing sound in upon her.
The blue thing stepped up and poked its head into the light.
Sand stopped fumbling at the windscreen. She was looking at her mother.
Chapter Four
Hoku tapped a well-groomed fingernail against the delicate porcelain cup, savored the essence of the steam that drifted up from it. He lifted the cup and sipped, inhaling at the same time, so that the combination of pungent halia and vinegary apple cider filled his entire head. Hoku closed his eyes, wishing he could drink it all. Halia, the ginger liqueur that so few could stomach, was a rare and precious thing, and the cider just less so. Still, he needed his head clear. The taste was enough to evoke a mood, to calm him. A walk by the sea or through the tamarisk grove near the river would have done the same, but he had time for neither at the moment, any more than he had time to become leisurely drunk. He set the cup back down, content to let it spend its flavor into the air of his office.
So much to do, and only moments to do it in.
“Kewalacheoma,” he said, speaking to the dark cube on his desk. It fluoresced and presented him with an image of the Biology chief of the Tech Society. She was a young woman with round features and eyes a little too close together for his taste. Her hair, normally black, had been rendered somehow dark red since he saw her last.
“Mother-Father,” she responded.
Hoku liked the sound of that. Ten years had brought him to the top of his world, ten years of pain, betrayal, and suspicion. Though he had abolished the use of kin terms like “ibaba” as modes of address and the use of “mother-father” for lesser command positions, he disagreed with his illustrious predecessor on this particular point. Reserving the honorific for himself stressed the new order of things, that he, Hoku, was the last word in all matters. The council, while still existent, had little power, with the heads of the troublesome clans and society leaders bent to his will or replaced by those who were. Besides, after all of these years, he deserved the title, especially considering the truth of it. His people were like children, cowering before the Ogre Kachina of tradition, and he was both their mother and their father, liberating them. Even as he thought this, he scowled at his own metaphor. Kachina.
Hoku realized that Kewalacheoma was still waiting expectantly. Hoku snapped his teeth together behind his sealed lips. He was getting old.
“Kewa, I request to see the alien. It’s been fifteen years, and I need a briefing.”
The biologist nodded without expression and said something quietly to her computer. That would be the next thing, Hoku promised silently: to take the file autonomy from the societies and supply himself with direct and unquestioned access to all information. Not that he didn’t have that now, but it still rankled him to have to ask for it. Still, there was already opposition to his reforms; best not go too far too fast.
The image of Kewa was replaced by a scene that he had no need to see, imprinted as it was on the cells of his brain. The cylinder craft as they cut it open; the thing that fell out.
There were few animals on the Fifth World, and Hoku had little reference for comparison. Curled in death, it had reminded Hoku most of some sea creature, a mangled crab or shrimp. Yet its thick grey skin bore no real resemblance to an exoskeleton. Perhaps it was the way its head, so narrow and pointed in the front, bulged and flared into a thick collar and then folded forwards, a structure that formed something like a shell surrounding a hole that funneled down into the skull. Or the rounded, dark bumps there that the biologists assured him were eyes—these also reminded Hoku of a crustacean. But none of the Earthlife in the seas of the Fifth World had three more eyes along their “backbones”. The head hid a mouth beneath it, a horrible hole replete with wormy cilia. The rest of the alien was also like a worm, save for the legs and arms which emerged from the precise center line of its dorsal side and then twisted out so that they could function in pairs. There were three rear sets of legs, shorter towards the back so that in life it would have stood sharply sloping, head up. Just beneath the head, a fourth pair of limbs emerged, triple jointed, and terminating in seven-digit monstrosities that looked horribly like human hands.
“Tell me about this thing,” he said, quietly.
Kewa’s voice emerged, ghostly and unseen.
“There’s a lot we don’t know. It breathed oxygen, after a fashion, both through small nostrils above the mouth and through that funnel in its head. We think the funnel evolved from a sort of supercharger, designed to ingest atmospheric alcohol and create positive pressure in its circulatory system. The heart is a long, tubular muscle underneath the spine. It acted like a sort of linear accelerator, contracting in waves and forcing blood from one end to the other. It doesn’t have lungs, as such; air was passed through successively smaller networks of vesicles and then injected into the heart.”
The cube showed him the dissected corpse, the long yellow muscle she was referring to.
“The heart was protected by a bony cylinder lying just above it, and we think this housed the brain. It’s more like a very thick spinal cord, and there are various sense organs attached along it, though we aren’t sure what they all do. The strange thing is that there was much more empty space in the casing than nerve material. That doesn’t appear to be natural, but we can’t explain it. Our guess is that this individual had an atypically small brain, but that doesn’t make much sense.”
Hoku smirked sardonically. “That’s because you aren’t a politician. They obviously sent this thing down to see if the atmosphere was tenable. They sacrificed it. Would you volunteer for such a mission if in possession of all of your faculties?”
“Mother-Father, there is no evidence of surgery,” Kewa replied.
“Assuming you know what surgery would look like in such a beast. But perhaps you are right—perhaps it was grown or raised with only a minimal brain.”
There was a pause, and then Kewa stammered: “Th-that’s horrible.”
Hoku shrugged. “Judge them if you wish. It is not my concern. What I want to know is this: how intelligent would a fully functioning alien be?”
Kewa answered quickly, with a hint of indignation. “Impossible to tell. We don’t even know how its “neurons”—if that’s what they are—functioned. No, I could not hazard even a guess.”
“Why are its limbs arranged so?” he asked, avoiding frustration by changing the topic.
“The backbone is its central functional support. We believe that this creature evolved from animals with simple linear symmetry. The appearance that it is bilateral in nature—like we are—is illusory. Each pair of limbs emerges from the backbone, one behind the other. Only their peculiar articulation allows them to function perpendicular to the creature’s axis.”
“You’re saying that its ancestors would have had eight limbs arran
ged one behind the other.”
“Yes. Much like the worms indigenous to this planet. The two are clearly related.”
“This creature could have lived on this planet as our ancestors found it.”
“Undoubtedly,” Kewa affirmed, for once very sure of herself.
Hoku tapped his cup again. He had, of course, suspected that for fifteen years, but the Tech Society had known for sure all along. Clearly, they were due a come-uppance. But not now, not now.
All of his assumptions had just been validated. The original masters of the planet had certainly come back to claim it. And yet, they had an odd sense of propriety. For twenty Standard Terran Years they had rested in their high orbits, uncommunicative and apparently inactive. Until now, at least.
“Kewa,” he said. “Copy this to my personal files, please.”
The monster dissolved and was replaced by Kewa’s frowning features. “Mother-Father,” she began, “that is not in keeping with. …”
“Kewa,” Hoku interrupted softly. “This is very important. A short time ago, a craft of some sort emerged from one of the orbiting ships. Do you understand? Another one of them—perhaps more than one—is coming down here. Now I want you to make all information regarding this creature available to my personal staff. This does not represent a precedent, but a singular occurrence. Good?”
Kewa regarded him for a long moment.
“This could be rendered moot,” she finally suggested, “If I were a member of the immediate contact team.”
So. Hoku steepled his fingers before his face to hide his expression.
“Kewa, loyalty is my chief concern, now. Loyalty and security. As a member of the Tech Society, you have other allegiances.”
“Allegiance comes in layers, Mother-Father, each layer subordinate to the one above it. I can see my duties in this light quite clearly.”
Hoku uttered a calculated chuckle, devoid of any real humor. “You really want to meet one of these monsters, don’t you?”
“That’s very true.”
Hoku inclined his head. “Come up to my offices. And I still want those files. Don’t try to barter with them; you’ve convinced me.”
“Thank you, Mother-Father.” Kewa vanished, leaving the cube a sullen, lightless brown.
Hoku shook his head in self-admiration. Let Kewa think this subversion of the biology chief was her victory rather than his own plan. People who thought they were making their own clever decisions were better help than those who felt coerced. That much he had learned from the Old Woman, when she was manipulating him so.
Hoku was still musing over this, planning his next, careful steps, when the cube pinged for his attention.
“Go ahead,” he said.
“Mother-Father. The craft has entered the atmosphere and begun its descent. The flyers are on standby, ready to go.”
“Have you calculated its trajectory?”
“It will land on the plateau, not far from where the last one did, unless it deviates significantly.”
Hoku was already out of his chair, reaching for his coat.
“I’m on my way. Check the weapons once more and get me a sidearm. Also, Kewalacheoma Hoye will be joining us. See that she is properly outfitted but not armed.”
“Yes, Mother Father. Which craft should she ride in?”
“Put her in mine. And Kaya—keep an eye on the mesas. I don’t want any of the traditionals nosing around. I have gone to great lengths to keep this from them.”
“Okay.”
Very great lengths indeed, he thought, and then put that out of his mind. For the second time in his life, Hoku went to greet the unknown. He reveled in it.
Chapter Five
“No,” was all that Sand could manage.
“No” meant a lot of things. No, there could not be something alive in the tiny ship. No, it could not be her dead mother. No, she couldn’t be losing her mind. No, the world could not be this different from what she thought it was. No, no, no.
It also meant no, get away from me, let me think, damn it. But the ghost—or Kachina spirit—of her mother kept coming towards her, slowly, tentatively. But she was coming, dressed in an ugly robe of blue material (the same material as the parachute, one lonely, reasoning part of her mind noted for later reference). And her mother looked young, stripped of hard years.
“No!” Sand gasped again, and then she ran. She ran as if her own spine were the enemy, feet thuttering at the dusty crater floor. There was nothing in her brain to prevent this, nothing between her fear and her feet.
Breathless moments and maybe half a kilometer later, she tripped on a cyan barrel, some relative of the whiskyberry. Her knees and palms slapped against the earth, but she scrambled back up despite the bruising impact. Sand ran twenty more paces before she turned around. The Dragonfly sat still in the distance, a silver toy. Near it was the alien craft. A small blue figure stood, looking in her direction.
SandGreyGirl, get hold of your thoughts! She sat down, panting, eyes fixed on the distant figure.
Not her mother. That “woman” could be a million things, but not her mother. A planet somewhere where everyone looked like stocky Hopi women? No. A ghost or a Kachina? If the traditionalists were right, they would not come in space ships. They would not wear bad imitations of Hopi clothing. A two-heart?
Sand had to consider that last one, since her fine and beautiful world was now broken. She hadn’t believed in witches before, especially shape-shifting ones. Did she now?
But again, why would a two-heart need a spaceship?
But it was not her mother. She believed that. She could not, would not, accept such a possibility.
Sand sat, watching. The figure seemed to be wandering around, looking at the landscape, at the Dragonfly.
The Dragonfly! Sand came to her feet. This thing—whatever it might really be—had come before and stung her mother. It knew her mother, knew what she looked like. Knew what she looked twenty years ago. And that’s how it looked now, the way her mother had, one child and four handfuls of years ago.
“Damn you—get away from there,” she screamed, and broke into a run once again, this time towards the creature.
Fine, she thought, as her legs pumped her along. They know what mother looked like. This could be a hologram, a robot, something else. They want to appear human, and mom was their model.
But part of Sand believed in ghosts. This part controlled her breathing, her bowels, large portions of her spine and brain, and to some extent, her feet.
Ghosts don’t need spaceships, she reminded herself, seven times and then seven times again. That brought her back to the Dragonfly. Back to the mother-thing.
Thing was a wonderful word, Sand thought. It could abstract fear or focus it, depending upon your state of mind.
Sand looked, long and hard, the light of her new skepticism shining brightly on the familiar face. She expected that light to melt those features away, reveal something hideous and alien, but it did not. Pela’s face remained her face, though Sand was struck once again by how young it was. How much it was like her own, both broad ovals, though Pela’s tended towards round and Sand’s was more elongate. They both had the same almond shaped eyes, just touched at the corners by a hint of epicanthic fold. Pela’s orbs were black, however, while Sand’s held her father’s grey. Their mouths were most similar; wide and full, both of them, able to lift into smiles of stunning beauty or fold into awesome, froglike frowns. They differed more in body, Pela generally thicker through the hips, waist and thighs, her shoulders a touch broader, too. It was like looking at one’s sister; their apparent age was the same.
“I know you aren’t my mother,” Sand remarked, aware of the hideous, uncontrolled sound of her own voice, jerking and quivering like a wrestling match between crying and hysterical laughter.
The Pela-thing looked at her close
ly.
“I am not your mother,” the thing agreed—with Pela’s voice. And yet, finally, it wasn’t Pela’s voice. It had the same resonance and timber, but there was nothing else—neither inflection, modulation, nor tone—that reminded Sand of Pela.
“Then what the fuck are you?” This was upsetting Sand more, not less, though she couldn’t quite see why. She couldn’t quite see anything.
“I’m … I don’t have a name. Not one that I can say.”
The thing spoke with a lowland accent, used lowland slang and contractions. Pela had always spoken with the conservative mesa speech, even when she was drunk, despite a year or two down there, by the sea.
“You look like my mother. Why?”
The woman’s face twitched, as if trying to express something, but it never settled on anything Sand could identify as joy, puzzlement, or concentration. If it weren’t so utterly bizarre as to be frightening, it might have been funny.
“I don’t have all the words I need to explain that. I grew this body according to a plan I copied some time ago. Was this your mother?”
Sand just stared. It could be done. Almost anyone could do it. It wasn’t magic, but technology that was centuries old. No ghost, no Kachina.
“What do you want?” She whispered, an obvious question, but obvious for an excellent reason.
“I need to talk to some of you, that’s all. I need to know more than I can learn from your communications network.”
“Talk, then. I’m listening.”
“Yes. But first, I need for you to tell me something. Do I frighten you?”
“You scare me shitless.”
“Are the other people on their way here likely to be as frightened? How can I ease their fears?”
