A thinker scurried past not more than ten feet from them, its millipede-like feet carrying the alien smoothly over the roots. Trixie's heart pounded in her chest. They waited for a few minutes before continuing on in silence.
Further along the shaft, water pooled in the shallow gaps between the roots. A slippery moss grew on the twisted vines winding around the roots. After ten minutes spent creeping along in the shadows, Berry paused, taking a rest.
“Look at you,” he said softly, staring back at Trixie for the first time since they left the dust chamber. “You're covered in pollen or something.”
He reached out and brushed her shoulders and arms, knocking the dust off her jacket, but it was everywhere, on her face and in her hair. Trixie liked the attention. She liked being groomed and would have loved the opportunity to clean herself. She liked wearing Berry's jacket. It was baggy, with the shoulders hanging down over her arms, but the leather was warm. Even with the cuffs rolled up, her hands barely poked out the bottom of the sleeves.
“Look at you,” repeated Trixie, and Berry laughed. He ran his hands through her hair, stroking her gently, which felt strangely comforting to her.
“You look like me,” Trixie said. Even simple sentences were a struggle, but she felt compelled to make the comparison.
Berry ran his fingers through his own hair and watched as a flour-like dust settled around him. He smiled.
“Yes, look at me too.”
His bare chest was coated in the fine white powder.
It took another forty minutes of creeping through the twisting main shaft before Trixie noticed any change in the textures within the tunnel.
It had been a long time since she'd seen any of the dusty chambers that seemed to be the focus of attention for the workers and thinkers in the heart of the craft. The roots began to get thinner. The side branches spread out in a variety of directions like the veins on Berry’s muscular arms. None of them struck out at a right angle, which seemed curiously inefficient. The bark changed in texture. Now it flaked off easily, breaking into thin wafers. Any loose scraps were quickly picked up by workers and squirreled away into the shadows.
“We're getting close,” Berry whispered. “By my reckoning, we were easily two miles beneath the surface, but I think we're almost there.”
A thicket of branches blocked one of the minor shafts further down the tunnel. Berry picked his way around the entrance, moving to what, moments earlier, had been upside down. He was following a trail of workers streaming in and out of the tangled mesh.
“They're repairing the damage,” he said softly. “This is where they rammed my ship. I think they’re absorbing it, trying to assimilate it like some kind of food.”
“And me?” Trixie asked. “My ship?”
“And you,” Berry replied. “Your ship. You were there too. Do you remember?”
“No.”
“You were there, Baby,” he said, squeezing her hand, trying to reassure her.
“I don't ...”
“Don't remember?” Berry asked tenderly.
“Just ...”
“Just a little?”
“Yes,” Trixie said.
Gnarled roots twisted around them, slowly sealing off the side tunnel at an imperceptible rate. White, sticky sap oozed from their tips, coating the roots in a thick resin.
Berry took care to avoid the sap, staying in the damp recesses of a root ball on the outer rim of the narrow tunnel. He tugged at the branches reaching up to cover the area, bending them so the two fugitives could squeeze through.
On the other side, moisture condensed on the rough ground, and they found themselves clambering over the wreckage of the torn, shattered shell fragments of the outer hull. Their progress was slowed by the new growth sealing the rupture. A thicket wound around them. Further down the darkened tunnel they came across the thin, semi-transparent skin of the outer hull. It had grown back over the impact site. Trixie rubbed the cold surface with her hand. The skin was still soft and flexible, almost like a sheet of rubber, but barely an inch thick. The leathery patch she rubbed clean revealed thousands of stars in the distance, tiny specks of light glowing in the black void of space. Trixie gasped at the sight.
“Pretty trippy, huh?” Berry said, looking at the stars.
“Pretty,” Trixie replied, confusing his choice of words with her own interpretation of the view.
“We're in a star cluster, babe.”
Berry pulled her on, ducking and weaving along the scars carved into the alien craft by their capture. Trixie got her foot caught between some of the roots. Slowly, but painfully, Berry helped her wriggle free. All the while, workers swarmed through the area like an army of giant ants.
After what seemed like forever, Trixie saw the titanium hull of the Swift , the scout vehicle Berry had piloted through the star cluster.
The Swift had only been a hundred yards away through the new growth, but it seemed like miles to Trixie. It had taken them less than twenty minutes to traverse the jungle of vines, but in Trixie's mind it had taken an eternity. Her hand ran over the smooth, shiny surface of the Swift. She appreciated the stark contrast to the alien craft. Just to feel the cool metal beneath her fingertips, the straight edges and gentle curves, felt good. For the first time, she felt as though they were going to escape.
Vines wrapped around the Swift , growing up from the roots. A mess of chaotic scaffolding crisscrossed the outer hull of the alien ship above the Swift .
The Swift was designed for traveling in space, and having been built in space, she lacked the sleek aerodynamics associated with planetary shuttles that had to contend with flying through an atmosphere.
There were no windows. There was no need for windows. The Swift was built for reconnaissance. She could see far more with her electronic eyes than any human eye could ever register within such a narrow band of the electromagnetic spectrum. Her smooth hull was intended to act as a Faraday cage, isolating the internal electronics from the sophisticated eavesdropping arrays extending out from the craft on its twin booms.
A boom arm extended fifty feet on either side of the Swift to allow for the surveillance of star systems considered potential targets for intelligent life. With an array of dishes and antenna jumbled together in a practical rather than an aesthetically pleasing manner, the Swift looked awkward. She was designed as a pre-contact reconnaissance vessel, intended to spy on any alien civilization detected by the large array on the Rift Valley .
Small enough and nimble enough to evade capture by anything man-made, the Swift was considered the first option in close surveillance, but she hadn't stood a chance against this alien war craft. The violent capture had snapped both boom arms, leaving the twisted wreckage of the antenna arrays crushed within the superstructure of the alien vessel.
Trixie watched as Berry examined the crushed array.
“We’re not going to be able to make contact with the Rift .”
Berry ran his hand along the side of the Swift as he clambered over the vines. The airlock was positioned forward of the engines. Trixie could see the excitement flooding back into him. His face lit up. His stride widened. His arms found new vigor.
“I'm surprised there aren’t any guards,” he said to her. “I guess they never thought we'd escape. Or they figure that if they caught us once, they can catch us again. But this time, things will be different. This time, we’ll forget about trying to outrun them, and use our lateral thrusters to out-maneuver them and hide from them. This old hunk of driftwood they command must steer like a brick. We'll deploy mimic decoys and get them chasing shadows. I think we can do this, Trix.”
Berry opened the airlock, a small circular hatch barely large enough to clamber through without a spacesuit, let alone while wearing one. He slid inside and opened the inner hatch, waving for Trixie to follow as he brought up the lights inside.
The airlock looked claustrophobic and cramped, but all things considered, it was better than being in the alien ship. Trixie climbed
awkwardly inside.
“Pull on that lever to close the hatch,” Berry said, and Trixie complied.
Watching the metal hatch shut gave Trixie a feeling of being trapped, caught in a metal cage again, but Berry didn't seem fazed by the lock.
The light inside the cabin surprised Trixie. It didn't bother Berry, but she found herself squinting in the neon glow, overwhelmed by the intensity of the light, surprised by how it reflected off the white surfaces throughout the spaceship.
The inside of the Swift seemed small, much smaller than she remembered. There were glimpses, flashbacks rippling across her consciousness, images of different parts of the interior, but she struggled to grab hold of them. Her memories were fragile, fleeting fragments. The more she tried to remember, the more distant her thoughts became.
The first thing Berry did on entering the Swift was to slip on a singlet. He climbed over the central console, wriggling down into the pilot's seat. Trixie watched, fascinated by how difficult it was to move about the small cabin, but the craft had been designed for zero-gravity, where such movements would be more fluid and natural. Berry grabbed a stick of chewing gum. He twisted around in the cramped seat, wedged in between banks of switches, computer holo-monitors and keyboards. After a few preflight checks, he started the core systems.
Trixie leaned forward, squeezing between the bulkhead and the navigation console just as Berry had, looking intently at the cockpit. She could see the joysticks used to make course corrections in flight, the holo-monitors arrayed like windows around the cockpit and the touch-screen interface exposing dynamic controls.
Berry had a few personal effects dotted around his seat. A Bonsai plant in a shallow ceramic pot had been taped down on one side of the cockpit, its soil shrink-wrapped in clear plastic. Its tiny trunk and petite green leaves had been carefully sculptured to look like an acacia tree. Trixie wondered how long that would be kept around given the organic, tree-like structures within the alien spaceship and the horrors they evoked in her. She was sure Berry felt the same way. She couldn't imagine that well-groomed, miniature tree having quite the same appeal after this ordeal.
There was a color photo of Berry and his cat on the other side of the cockpit, taped on the edge of one of the monitors. The cat looked like it was a Burmese. Next to that, Berry had stuck a few scraps of paper with quotes on them. The letters were ornate. Trixie wondered what they said, but she couldn't read them. The words looked like symbols, meaningless scribble carefully arranged. They were clearly important to Berry.
“Gum?”
Trixie had no idea what gum was, but she accepted anyway. If it was good enough for Berry, she would happily give it a try.
Berry tossed her a stick of gum. She popped it in her mouth and chewed, surprised by the burst of flavors on her tongue. She didn't recognize the taste, but her mouth salivated for more.
“Nice, huh?” Berry said, bringing the engines online.
“Yes. Nice.”
“A blast from the engines and we should be able to break free,” he added.
Trixie backed out, away from the cockpit and into the general purpose area. She wondered how they had both fit into such a small craft. There seemed to be barely enough room for Berry, let alone her. The general area, beside the airlock, was covered in small removable panels. A couple of them were open, revealing the complex subsystems that controlled the Swift . A sleeping hammock hung vertically beside her. It was oriented such that it would only work in zero gravity.
Trixie was fascinated by the details around her. She was quite happy to let Berry figure out how to get them out of there, she wanted to explore the panels, to open all of them and see what lay behind them. Trixie was intensely curious about this new, small world.
“Something’s not right, Trix.” Berry said, looking at an image of workers swarming around the outside of the craft, ignoring it as they went about their business. “This makes no sense. Where are the thinkers? Why haven't they realized we've escaped? Why aren't they trying to stop us?”
Trixie could see Berry was hesitant about leaving and that surprised her.
“We go,” she said, with panic in her voice. “We run.”
She wanted this to be over with, to get away from the insects, to get as far away as possible.
“No. It's too easy,” Berry replied, his hand resting on the control panel.
“Go,” Trixie insisted, feeling she had a right to cast her vote.
Berry pushed off, sliding out of the command seat and twisting as his back slid on the navigation console. He turned around as he slid, so he could drop down gently beside her, making his dismount look easy. To Trixie, the cockpit was claustrophobic, but Berry was at home in the cramped quarters.
“We can't go, Babe. Not just yet.”
He placed his hand gently on her shoulder. From the look in his eyes, she could see he wanted to explain his thinking, not only to her but to himself.
“It's a setup, a trap, it has to be. You see, Trix, for all of their mind craft, their ability to tap into our thoughts and translate our thinking, they weren't able to find the Rift Valley . They know this is a scout ship, it's too small to be out here alone, so they figure there's a mother ship somewhere nearby, but they don't know where.”
He laughed.
“They don't know where because I don't know where, so when they read my mind, there's nothing there. They must think I'm dumb. It must be so strange for them, so alien to have a pilot that doesn't know his way home, but that's not the way we work.
“We humans delegate complex information processing to computers, letting machines handle the navigation between galactic spatial coordinates. But these guys have no such concept of computing. For them, everything is biological. It seems they never discovered the semi-conductivity of silicon and the ability to build complex logic gates into programmable machines. I guess they never had to, their prowess with biotech has meant they've never explored these mechanical possibilities. It must confuse the hell out of them to capture an explorer who doesn't know where he came from, so they're letting us go.”
“Go,” repeated Trixie, she'd struggled to follow his explanation, but she knew that word. She understood its meaning and she agreed. It was time to go.
“We can't go, Trix. They'll track us back to the Rift Valley , and from there they'll track the Rift back to Earth.
“Don't you see? They're pirates, strip-miners, conquistadors. They harvest the most precious commodity in the universe, life. They're after our genetic material, the knowledge of billions of years worth of Natural Selection stored within our DNA. And they mean to use it against us.”
Although Trixie was struggling to understand the concepts being described by Berry, she could see his eyes opening as his mind pieced the puzzle together.
“Trix, they're the reason for the silence. For centuries, we've stared at the sky and watched the heavens, listening to the stars, searching for the faintest trace of intelligent life, but there's nothing, nothing but silence. We thought we were special, that we were unique, the first form of intelligent life to reach out into local space, but we're not.
“We launched the Savannah , the Serengeti , and the Rift Valley , all to explore the cosmos, to find life, any life, but hopefully intelligent life, and finally we have. But it's a form of intelligence more brutal than our own. I know, because I've been inside their minds. They've already analyzed our DNA, using my DNA, your DNA, the DNA from the bacteria on our skin, from the microbes in our gut, from the dust mites in our hair, from the protein strands in our food, and they've pieced together not only our common ancestry, but our molecular rates of change to partially build our evolutionary tree of life. And they're hungry for more. For them, this is like discovering buried treasure.”
Trixie was lost in his words, mesmerized by his logic. Her eyes glazed.
“We thought we were unique, Trix. The first to arise out of stardust, but we're not, it seems we're the latest, perhaps the last. You don't shout in a jungle
, babe. You stay quiet. But we've been blundering through the interstellar foliage making as much noise as we can, and that's dangerous. There are lions out there, leopards stalking in the dark.
“It's typical, really,” he continued. “We've always thought that creation was all about us, as though the universe revolved around humanity, but we're latecomers. We've arrived to find the party's already over.
“You see, intelligent life didn't flourish on Earth, it was suppressed, held back for hundreds of millions of years by terrible lizards. Well, the name is a misnomer, but the brutal dominance of dinosaurs suppressed the rise of intelligence. A big old T-Rex didn't need smarts to survive, just teeth and claws.”
Trixie got that. She bared her teeth and held up her hands, making claws with her nails, scratching at the air.
“Yes, that's it, Trix. Teeth and claws. So it seems the rest of the galaxy must have flourished around us while we were silent, awaiting the rise of intelligent apes.
“And that was quick, we went from swinging through the trees in packs, to building campfires for a tribe, all inside of a million years. From there, we went from gazing at the stars in wonder, to plowing through the heavens at close to the speed of light, all within a few thousand years. And the silence we found was not emptiness, it was devastation.
“These guys are worse than any carnivore or any acid-dripping monster we've ever imagined. They're not after our lives, they're not after our resources, they're after our genetic past. They mean to steal our future, to harvest it, to exploit it.”
“We run,” Trixie said.
She didn't understand. He held her face gently in his hands, saying, “Oh, Trix. If we run, we risk everything. They want us to run, they're counting on it. If we run, everybody dies.”
“We fight.”
“Yes. We fight.”
Berry searched through the maintenance cabinets in the Swift , pulling out a portable welding kit, a handheld spotlight and some nylon cord.
Trixie looked inquisitively at each object, realizing from their shape they held some specific purpose and would have to be used in a precise manner. She wasn't stupid, she was ignorant. Her intelligence craved understanding. She desperately wanted to soak up as much as she could from interacting with Berry. His every motion was the subject of intense scrutiny on her part—what he selected, what he chose to leave, how he handled each item, the way he checked equipment was in good working order. There were clues there for her, revealing the nature of these tools. She examined them quickly, making mental notes before placing them carefully on a bench beside her.
Trixie & Me Page 3
