Third Rock

by S E T Ferguson

  They just seemed to be the only two people in the universe who couldn’t see that.

  “I know our crew here would love to hear about everything that happened on Columbina when the Earth AI arrived.” Around the blond man who seemed to speak for the group, seven other heads nodded assent. “Would you like to come over to Ivy when we get settled in orbit for dinner?”

  “That sounds like an excellent plan.” Iris smiled at the Civitians, but Heming saw a tell there. Iris did not want to go over to the other ship, and Heming knew it even if no one else did. She may have been the smartest being among them, but it didn’t make her a good liar.

  “Great. We will see you this evening.”

  The screen went blank, and Iris waited a few seconds before talking, as if she was making sure the connection between the two ships was closed.

  “What’s wrong? Why the slashing gesture with Whit? And why don’t you want to go to the other ship?” Heming spoke up immediately, not able to keep the question in any longer.

  “I never said I didn’t want to go over to the Ivy,” Iris protested.

  “Just because you haven’t said it doesn’t mean it isn’t obvious.”

  “Fine. I don’t want to go over to the Ivy. But we can’t say ‘no’ to the invitation, either, or they will get suspicious.”

  “Why don’t you want to go? And why would they get suspicious if we didn’t go over there?”

  “Because the Civitians are here to capture Whit. And I’m pretty sure if that requires killing all of us, they are ready and willing to do so. If we don’t go over there, they will know we know that already.”

  That was definitely not what Heming had expected to hear.

  Suddenly, he didn’t really want to go over to the Ivy, either.

  Chapter Twelve

  Vlad passed the plate of food to the man on his left—Wolf—the blond man who had done all the talking when they had first communicated with the Civitians. Wolf greedily spooned the food on the passed plate to his own, just as the rest of the Civitians had done before him.

  “What do you call this again?” Wolf asked.

  “They’re mashed cinnakin.” Vlad took a bite of the mashed potato-like food on his own plate. The cinnakin tasted like a pumpkin with pie spices already in it, though Iris assured them it was far healthier than pumpkin pie. On Columbina, the cinnakin plants grew underground like potatoes. They were so potato-like that someone had suggested calling them pumptatoes, but it sounded a little too dirty. And so, they became cinnakins.

  Thankfully, unlike the host of venomous, poisonous, and otherwise killer animals on the planet, the cinnakins were not a danger to humans.

  While the name “cinnakin” had seemed fine back on Columbina, now, when they had to tell a group of Civitians the names of the various foods they had brought along—things with names like tomapples, cucumcarrots, and mananas—it seemed to Vlad that maybe they should have been slightly more creative with the names.

  However, it appeared that the foods were such a welcome respite from the limited diet that had followed humans since leaving Earth, the Civitians didn’t care what everything was called.

  “If we had food like this on Civitas,” one of the Civians, a tall brown haired man whose name Vlad couldn’t remember—it had something to do with a bird from Earth, maybe Finch?—said, “I would never have left home.”

  Around the table, the Civitians nodded their agreement. His eyes briefly rested on one of them—Vlad thought his name was Quince—who was the largest man Vlad had ever seen, and not by an insignificant amount. He was nodding along with everyone else, but he had not said a word since they had arrived.

  If the big man not speaking was an intimidation tactic, it was working. Vlad kept glancing at the man, wondering what he was capable of. He looked as if he could take on all of them at once.

  “Beryl, that’s a beautiful emerald you have there.” Wolf turned to Beryl, sitting on his other side, with Camp at her feet. Vlad watched Beryl’s eyes flash as she smiled at the man. Vlad knew there were two things Beryl appreciated compliments on—anything related to her work and the emerald she wore everywhere.

  “Thank you.” Vlad watched Beryl’s cheeks flush slightly, the freckles on her cheeks accented by the color. “It was a gift from my father.”

  “It suits you. I’m not sure if it’s the emerald that brings out the color in your eyes, or your eyes that bring out the color in the stone.”

  Vlad couldn’t help but roll his eyes at the cheesy statement from Wolf. Then he saw that Beryl’s cheeks had turned an even deeper red.

  Was she really buying this?

  Beryl reached out and touched Wolf’s arm next to hers, letting it rest there for a few seconds, which was a few seconds longer than Vlad thought necessary. “Does that cheesy line really work on the women back on Civitas?”

  “As soon as I find someone back home with an emerald like that and eyes like yours, I’ll let you know.”

  At the second statement, Beryl’s smile widened.

  Beryl looked like she really was buying it. Did she not hear that these people wanted to capture her father? And were willing to kill them all to do it? Including her?

  Perhaps this was part of an elaborate act on Beryl’s part. But Vlad didn’t really want to find out one way or another.

  “So, Wolf,” Vlad said, not willing to let the flirtation continue. Beryl stopped smiling and threw Vlad a glare he knew well from the many times she had done it to him before. He wasn’t going to worry about that for the moment. If anything, he liked that she was mad at him right now. After all, he wasn’t the one shamelessly flirting with someone willing to kill all of them. “What brings all of you to Libertas? It seems like an odd choice of a planet to randomly visit.”

  The question garnered the attention of everyone at the table.

  Vlad hadn’t intended the question to come out in such a blunt manner. Iris had wanted them to see what they could find out without pressing too hard.

  “The same reason you’re here. We need Whit.”

  Vlad tried not to look surprised, but he knew the surprise was going to show on his face. He hadn’t expected that direct of an answer. Across the table, Heming’s face remained calm and restrained, but every other Columbinian looked shocked, Iris included.

  Looking around the table, though, the Civitians looked just as surprised as the Columbinians at the revelation—except for the one woman with them, who Vlad remembered was named Oly.

  Apparently it hadn’t been part of their plan to reveal that particular piece of information, either.

  “Don’t look so shocked. Is there any other reason to come to Libertas?” After Wolf spoke, he took a bite of the mashed cinnakin, as if to emphasize how little he cared that he had just told everyone about their plans.

  “Not really,” Vlad admitted. “But why?” Vlad figured it was worth a shot. He didn’t expect an answer to this question, either.

  “Look, there’s no reason for me to be coy. You can stop asking questions as if you think you’re going to sneak something past me and force me to give you information that I don’t want to give you.” Wolf finished the cinnakin on his plate before continuing. “It’s no secret why Whit got exiled. If he has the technology we think he does, it will be invaluable for Civitas.”

  “But what about the rules against what Whit was doing?” Iris spoke up.

  “Those are the rules we came to space with. No one ever said we had to live with the same rules forever. Wasn’t freedom to make our own rules one of the reasons humanity left Earth in the first place? So that we wouldn’t have to live with the rules others arbitrarily made for us?”

  No one argued with Wolf’s statement, though something about the forced casualness suggested to Vlad that Wolf wasn’t being entirely truthful with them. Still, it wasn’t surprising that one of the planets would quickly change the rules, or lack thereof, under which they had lived for so long. It was more surprising that it hadn’t happened earlier.


  Vlad briefly wondered why they hadn’t heard about this change in the way the CIvitians were living before. This wasn’t the sort of thing that an entire planet’s population failed to mention in their daily communications.

  Unless, Vlad realized, the Civitians hadn’t wanted the Columbinians—or anyone else, for that matter—to know of the change.

  There might be a whole lot going on in the universe none of them were aware of.

  That was not a comforting thought to Vlad.

  “Do you have a plan to find him?” Heming asked.

  “Not a good one. I figure we’ll just get down there and hope he is at the compound of his we saw on our satellite images of the planet. Presumably you have a similar plan? Unless you’ve already contacted him?”

  Vlad was suddenly glad the poker player among them, Heming, had asked the most recent question. The Civitians may have been telling the truth, but there was no way the Columbinians were about to tell the Civitians they had already spoken to Whit and knew he was long gone from the compound.

  “Nope, that was our plan as well.” Heming replied. “I think we’re going down tomorrow to check things out.”

  Iris nodded, confirming Heming’s statement.

  “And what happens if you find him before us?” Vlad asked. There were a lot of assumptions in what Vlad said, including an implied statement that they were in some sort of race to find Whit.

  “Ah, we’re getting somewhere now. That’s a good question. It implies we may have different motives for looking for Whit. And that there is a competition here to find him first.” Wolf smiled. With his large teeth, the smile almost overwhelmed his face. “It’s almost as if you don’t trust us.”

  “Should we trust you?” Heming asked.

  “I wouldn’t trust us. Just like we don’t trust you.” With Wolf’s answer, the tension in the room became palpable. “Look, that came out as a threat when I didn’t mean it as such. I just meant, we don’t know each other. I’m not one to trust people I don’t know. I hardly know you, and it takes a lot more than mere acquaintance for me to trust someone. That said, I don’t have any reason to ascribe bad motives to you, particularly as you were very clear before you came here that you were looking for Whit because you wanted to see if he had technology that could help you defeat the Earth AI. You sent those communications out to the rest of the human universe. I’m sure there were more than a few people who weren’t happy to hear that because, like us, you no longer seem to be playing by the same rules we agreed to when we came to space.”

  Wolf’s statement eased the tension, though it did create some new undercurrent of worry in the room. Vlad didn’t think of themselves as wanting to break the rules humanity had agreed to long ago, but it was true. That was exactly what they were doing.

  Was it just that, thinking their motives superior, they had been able to justify doing something that they wouldn’t allow under different circumstances? Was it really something they could justify?

  “You have us there,” Heming said. Vlad still couldn’t read his little brother’s face. It was too bad there weren’t professional poker players in space. Heming would have cleaned up. “Still, we’re planning to find him first.”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to do anything else. Our only hope is to find him before Beryl does. Something tells me, no matter what we offer to have him come with us, our arguments will not be as persuasive as whatever arguments his own daughter will offer.” Beryl blushed again at the comment. Vlad couldn’t help but think the Civitians had some very effective methods of persuasion, probably involving violence and the threat of the same. “But that isn’t going to stop us from trying.”

  “I wouldn’t expect it to.” Heming pointed his fork at Wolf, who smiled at the gesture. “Don’t be upset if I don’t offer you good luck wishes.”

  “I won’t be.” Wolf turned at the sound of a drone entering the room. “Now, unless someone has more questions for me, I see a serving drone coming in with something that looks delicious and like nothing I’ve ever seen before.” The group turned toward the drone bringing in a large platter of what Vlad knew to be a garnich salad. Wolf turned back to Beryl to ask her what it was, and Vlad tried not to watch her go back to flirting with him.

  Vlad definitely did not trust this Wolf character.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “I’m just saying. You were a little too convincing for someone who was not interested in him at some level.” Vlad had not meant to start this conversation with Beryl, and yet, he had somehow started it as they were getting ready to head down to the planet the morning after meeting with the Civitians on Ivy.

  “How about, we don’t discuss how convincing I am at flirting or pretending to flirt. As I recall, we aren’t dating. I will flirt or not flirt with whoever I want, in whatever way I want, and you’ll just have deal. Also, he’s not an unattractive man. Excuse me for noticing someone other than you.” Beryl was not happy. Vlad knew it, and he knew what he should do. What he should do was shut up about the whole thing—or better yet, not have brought it up at all—but he couldn’t help himself. “And, let me just say, for the record, that even if we were dating, I would still flirt with whoever I wanted, because it’s just flirting and you should trust me enough that said flirting is never going to amount to anything beyond some harmless fun.”

  “Fine. That still doesn’t explain why you were becoming the best of friends with someone who, as you will recall, is willing to kidnap your father and kill you for their own benefit.” Vlad adjusted his backpack of supplies on his shoulder. It wasn’t heavy, but he was not used to carrying a bag after a couple months on a ship. Back on Columbina, he carried things into the woods on a daily basis, usually for Beryl and the work she did researching the plants and animals of the planet.

  “Jesus, just get a room already.” Heming rolled his eyes. Vlad looked at Heming fast enough to see the gesture and flipped him off in return. “Oh, come on. You both know there are only two possible ways whatever your relationship is currently classified as ends. Either you end up together and live happily ever after, or one or both of you dies in some tragic way.”

  “How about you shut up or I punch you in the mouth?”

  “Your anger is just a reflection of the truth in the statement.”

  “OK, everyone, I think we have bigger problems than whether or not Beryl and Vlad are in imminent danger of getting back together.” Iris immediately held up a hand to stop Beryl from protesting the statement. Vlad considered jumping in on her behalf, but decided against it. Iris was right, at least for the moment. “First things first, I have something I need all of you to drink.”

  On cue, the door to the landing platform of Rediviva opened. A serving drone came in, carrying a tray of small glasses.

  “Shots!” Heming said, grabbing one of the small glasses and downing it. “Iris, you’re really starting to show some style.”

  “Well, that wasn’t exactly my intention. Don’t expect to get drunk off of that, Heming. It’s for your health. Whit sent me up the recipe before he went dark. It’s something to protect you from something on the planet. I’m not exactly sure of the full parameters of what it does, but he really wanted everyone to take it.” Heming looked disappointed in Iris’s explanation.

  Vlad took one of the small, shot glass-like glasses and downed the concoction in a single gulp, as if it was a shot. Beryl and Fawn did the same. The taste of the drink wasn’t bad or good. It was neutral, like something boring and good for you. It did, however, seem to immediately heighten Vlad’s focus. He didn’t know what it was, but if that was a side effect, he would happily drink many more of the non-alcoholic shots.

  Mimi hesitated at taking one of the drinks. She was not going to the surface with the rest of them. She knew as well as the rest of them that her age was more of a liability than anything. They all knew her knowledge of Earth might prove invaluable if they ever got there, but for now, she was mostly a passenger. “But I’m not going planet
side.”

  “Just in case,” Iris said. “We don’t know if you’ll have to come down at some point. And who knows what we might bring back from the surface. If Whit said it was necessary, I’m going to believe him.”

  Mimi picked up one of the last two glasses on the tray. Iris convinced Beryl to give the final one to Camp, who happily lapped it up as soon as Beryl offered it to him. The serving drone sped off with the empty glasses, headed back out of the landing platform the same way it had arrived.

  “Do we have any idea where Whit is?” Vlad asked, looking at the planet below the landing platform. When they had been a potential future home, the vastness of the land on the planet had seemed an asset. Now, it seemed like anything but.

  “We know where he was when he communicated with us. Since then, nothing,” Iris said.

  “You can’t, I don’t know, come up with some way to find a person on a planet?” Heming asked.

  “Yes, I am sure I could come up with a way to find a person on a planet. I just don’t have a system to do that here. It’s not as easy as, I don’t know, hurtling you people through space at faster than light speeds and also managing to keep you alive.”

  Heming gave Iris a look suggesting she move on. “Fine. Do you know why I can’t find a person on this planet right now? You’re dealing with a planet with millions of living creatures and a huge amount of land and sea where those creatures live. I can conceive of some ways to monitor everything, but it could take weeks just to get an image of Whit, even using those methods. And once we had that image, he is likely still a moving target. By the time we could get to him, he could be long gone from where we spotted him.” Iris sighed. “Do you think I haven’t thought about this? You all live on a planet with a thousand different creatures that want to kill you at all times. If there was an easy way to monitor the animals at the same time, I already would have done so. I’m just thankful you all love your phones so much I can use them to track you all the time. But Whit doesn’t have anything like that on him here, as far as I know.”