Extinct Doesn't Mean Forever

by Phoenix Sullivan

  Endless Power is at the forefront of exploration, research, harvesting, and development of nucleite, rapidly converting old fossil-fuel and nuclear power stations to nucleite reactors. In the near future, everything from flashlights to space stations will be powered with nucleite batteries. You and your fellow team members are the brave pioneers who will blaze mankind’s trail across the Solar System. Exterminating the pests that infest nucleite deposits is the first crucial step in harnessing this revolutionary energy.

  The manual sits under a bottle of sunblock. Angel knows he must read it before he reports to training in two weeks, but right now he and the other men would rather play volleyball and drink beer.

  “You worry too much,” Darren tells Lisa. She folds her arms over her chest.

  “Get him,” she says, and Angel drops his beer can. He charges Darren and tackles him. All the men laugh and kick sand at the wrestling pair. Angel stands, brushes off, and strides over to Lisa. Wrapping his arms around her waist and slinging her over his shoulders, he trudges off to the shade where they kiss.

  “Promise me,” she whispers, her lips brushing his cheek and ear, “Promise that after you’ve done this job, we can get a nice house and live a normal life.”

  “Promise,” whispers Angel, kissing her on the nose, the chin, the jaw, the neck. Lisa’s pleasure mingles with her worry; her love for this silly and lighthearted Angel Perez swirls with her fear that he will return from the Asteroid Belt a different man — or not return at all.

  ~~~

  Clown yelps and curses. A glob of white acid bubbles on the back of his suit. Stomper tears an aluminum can from the pack on his hip, rips it open, and sprays neutralizer over the acid. For a stretched-out time, the acid gnaws into the protective lining, but the spray takes effect, and the bubbling stops.

  “Systems check!” Clown screams, and two seconds later Queen Bee replies, “You’re clear. No leaks.”

  “Where’s the Spitter?” asks Zappy.

  “Nest, fifty meters to the right,” says Splash. “Incoming!”

  Globules of white, viscous acid come lobbing in from a rocky outcropping. The squad scatters, and the acid floats past. The Spitters are neon tubes protruding from the rock. They swell, then spit more acid, like cartoon blunderbusses. Clown and Zappy crouch and aim their EP-19s, firing pulse after pulse at the nest. Stomper and Custer swoop in, swinging blades. Like scythes, the J-4s slice through the Spitters. The foamy tubes drift upward, becoming debris in the Belt. Stomper’s arms and shoulders and back work fast, slashing and swinging. His body feels electrified, rushing. When the Spitters are dead, Stomper drops a detonating charge on the nest. Rock blasts away, exposing a chute below. The squad rushes in.

  Clearing the Spitters leaves Stomper sluggish, weak, and thirsty. “Boost me!” he shouts to Queen Bee, whose signal sends the needle back into Stomper’s arm. The amphetamine rush lifts him, and he screams down the chute, stabbing everything inhuman that moves, hacking at Wasps and Spitters. Boots pound the rock as the squad uses magnets, gravity and muscle to navigate. Hearts beat insanely, pumping blood to muscles working too fast to ache. Like ichor-stained knights of old, the acid and fluid-spattered squad from Endless Power charges into the depths of C13398. After seven months of training and service together, the quintet butchers Wasps and Spitters with hyper-efficiency. Always, they watch for Mantises. More machine than organism, Mantises are supposed to be death walking on jagged joints. Better to see them before they see you. But they find no Mantises.

  Nucleite crystals glow like dew in moonlight. Splash reports to Queen Bee, who congratulates them and orders them to clean up. He sends boost signals to all five men, who wince at the pricks of needles inside their suits. In cleanup, speed is critical. If one organism were to survive and reproduce, when the harvesting teams came to C13398, they would be swarmed by hundreds of new, angry Wasps. The men hack the Wasp and Spitter bodies, probing every surface with maniacal efficiency. Stomper’s dilated eyes flash at every movement, seeing Wasps and Spitters everywhere. They have never seen a Mantis. At the surface, all is still, and Splash calls to Queen Bee.

  “C13398 clear. Ready for evac.”

  “Copy, Splash,” says Queen Bee, and the men hear the smile in his voice. “Prepare for—”

  Clown screams and the men whip around. A Wasp clings to Clown’s back. Its stinger has thrust through the suit and shattered the polarized visor. Blood oozes and hangs in the air. Zappy fires a pulse that hits Clown, spinning him end over end. Custer lunges out and grabs Clown’s leg. Stomper slashes his J-4 at the Wasp, chopping through the armored body. He hacks again and again, his limbs supercharged, and Splash pulls him back. Clown’s lower body lies on the rock; the upper half is a grisly, spattered mess.

  “I’m sorry!” Stomper screams at no one. “It was a Wasp! I had to—”

  “It’s cool, man. It’s cool,” Splash says. “Clown was dead. You had to.”

  Splash reports to Queen Bee, who orders the evac vessel to pick up the squad and Clown’s corpse.

  For three hours Stomper feels no emotions, only the momentum of the amphetamines. Once the drugs drain from him, though, and he realizes what he has done to the body of his friend, he sobs and shakes. Queen Bee places a hand on his shoulder, tells him not to worry, that he was doing his job. The consolation does not help. Stomper feels older, harder, emptier. The hollowness comes from the broken promise of adventure — the knowledge that he was racing along the vital edge of some frontier.

  ~~~

  Angel stands among rows of cultivated nucleite on Mars. Eighteen months have passed since Endless Power released him from active scouring duty. In his hand, a monitor counts the ever-growing crystals and transmits data to the Endless Power satellite. Researchers discovered years ago that nucleite self-replicates when “planted” on barren rock. The first nucleite “farmers” on Mars joked that it was an easier crop to raise than dandelions.

  Angel stares ahead, focusing on nothing. Under his pressurized atmosphere suit, he wears a collared shirt and the silk tie Lisa bought him before they moved to Mars. Clown is dead. So are Custer and Splash. Zappy lives in the Mars colony, but never speaks with Angel. Queen Bee still coordinates scour missions.

  Angel has still to see a Mantis, but he knows the stories of how they can eviscerate a man with a single stroke. In his dreams, it’s a Mantis’ metallic claws that hack Clown into pieces. And sometimes, alone in the nucleite fields, he sees Mantises crouched low among the crystals, their polygonal carapaces camouflaged among the jutting angles of glittering crystal. His heart thumps and rises and the twitch in his legs explodes and he is running, running down the rows to get away until he realizes he is quite alone, that the Mantises are far away in the Belt and not on quiet Mars. Quiet, cold Mars, whose centuries-old mystique has withered into red, dusty, sterile disappointment.

  Mars reminds Angel of Little League, before the Energy Wars. His coach would push the chalk spreader that draws white lines from home plate to the outfield wall. At game’s start, the lines were fresh and crisp. After four or five innings, though, they blurred and disappeared. Angel, a fast runner but a weak hitter, would run hard with every hit. Legs burning, eyes watering as he pounded into the dirt, he would run along the white line that was invisible but understood.

  The insistent beeping of the monitor finally draws Angel’s attention. He transmits the report and packs his gear into his transport, a six-wheeled vehicle that looks like an enclosed golf cart with a joystick. The tires crunch against the rocky surface as he drives in silence. There are no roads on Mars, just designated routes marked with flags that Martian colonial law requires drivers to respect.

  Feeling an itch around his neck like his tie is choking him, he claws at his pressurized suit. His cheeks tingle and sweat beads on his forehead. He swerves from the flagged route, slamming his foot onto the accelerator, and the engine buckles and grinds into new life, whipping the landscape by in an orange rush. The transport heaves like a panicked
animal, charging across the Martian wastes. Angel sucks in air as his fist clenches the joystick. Tiny rocks clatter against the windows. He sees a ridge ahead, a sharp line on the horizon, and his leg spasms out, flattening the accelerator. A hissing squeak escapes Angel’s throat, and for a brittle second Angel is Stomper again, rushing and raging with power. The transport speeds closer to the peak of the ridge, leaping and bucking with every bump, gaining speed. The squeak grows into a full-throated scream, and the transport bucks as it soars over the precipice. The ground falls away, and Angel rides the high, feeling like electric current, feeling his brain come alive again. For a deathless moment the transport hangs suspended in air, without momentum, tricking gravity. And then they plummet, Angel and his transport — a little red wagon for the little red planet — and the surface rises up and smashes them.

  The wreck lies a few hundred meters from the colony where Lisa and Angel live. Their home is the EnviroDome 4002, the most advanced artificial environment dwelling available. Angel purchased it for Lisa delighted at how easy it was to make her happy. Now, Lisa sits at the formica countertop with a cold cup of coffee, decidedly unhappy. Darren sits opposite her. She has invited him over to discuss why she is not happy with Mars or with Angel. Distracted in her kitchen, Lisa does not see the crash.

  ~~~

  As a new recruit for Endless Power, Angel’s pride is apparent: his spine is straight, his smile is wide, and he laughs easily. He slaps friends on their shoulders and kisses Lisa in public. Like the other young men being initiated into manhood, he is vigorous and sharp-minded. Mornings are spent in physical training; in his afternoon classes he learns about the Asteroid Belt, about nucleite, and about the challenges they will face.

  “You are not soldiers,” says the instructor. “Soldiers kill. You exterminate.”

  One recruit raises his hand. “I don’t understand, sir.”

  The instructor, a thickly built, crew-cut man places his hands behind his back and paces across the classroom. “Sentience, recruit. Sentience is everything. Taking the life of something that can think is killing. That’s what soldiers do. But you didn’t join the army. You were hired by Endless Power. Your job is to exterminate the vermin that impede our expansion to the Outer Planets. Wasps and Spitters don’t think; they just build nests and eat nucleite and shit out corrosive acids. They’re no better than termites.”

  “But sir, they must think. The Wasps build homes. The Spitters are like garbage collectors. The Mantises are guards. They cooperate; hell, they practically have a civilization. Sounds pretty smart to me.”

  Biologists who had aired similar qualms in the early days of nucleite exploration were quickly labeled as weak-thinkers who were anti progress. A few specimens of Wasps and Spitters were preserved for study, but the appeal of nucleite technology dazzled even the impartial eyes of science. Because Wasps and Spitters reproduced so quickly, most agreed that exterminating the few that lay in the way was more than justified. Such was the spirit of the times.

  The instructor slams a fist on his desk. “A civilization? Goddamn. For them to have a civilization, they’d have to be human. And if they were human, then this would be a war. And if this were a war, then it would be fought by an army. And if this were an army, then you’d be soldiers. But you aren’t soldiers, and you aren’t in the army, and this is not a war, and Wasps and Spitters are not humans, and they sure as hell don’t have a fucking civilization! You’ve got to draw a line, recruit. Killing Wasps, or Spitters, or Mantises or a goddamn ant at a picnic is a god-given right. Even an old lady could do it and not feel a thing! If you’re going to be a pussy, maybe I’ll call up your momma and have her pick you up and take you home.”

  The instructor is panting. The recruit shuts his mouth. Angel looks at his paper, taps his pencil. He draws a line down the middle. On the left, he writes SENTIENT. Under it: HUMANS. On the right side of the paper he writes WASPS, SPITTERS, MANTISES. He crumples the paper and shoves it into his jacket.

  ~~~

  Angel sits at the kitchen table in his EnviroDome 4002. He pulls threads from a dishtowel, mutilating it. He and Lisa have not met eyes all morning.

  The home is sound-proof, self-contained and thermally controlled, with adjustable humidity and airflow levels. The advertised “more Earthlike than Earth” quality brings Lisa comfort against the loneliness of Martian living. Angel considers puncturing a hole through the barrier of the EnviroDome 4002.

  Bandages, slings and titanium pins hold his body together. Though Lisa calls the crash an accident, Angel knows better. He soared over that ridgeline and smashed into the red rocks to drive toward something, to find something indefinable. The crash has placed a wedge of understanding between the two. Though Angel and Lisa once exchanged thoughts freely and easily, now Lisa wonders about Angel’s mind while Angel yearns for the innocent ignorance Lisa once possessed.

  Angel knows nucleite is responsible, to some degree, for this loss. The quickly accessible energy source allowed the colony on Mars to prosper and exploratory vessels to venture to the Outer Planets. Probes now refuel in depots right in the Belt, allowing them further reaches into the frontiers of space. Angel knows nucleite has saved mankind, not only solving but erasing the energy problem. Only a couple of decades ago civilization was sinking into a culture of bandits and savagery, when his own father was killed over a few hundred gallons of Alaskan oil.

  Yet he cannot help but compare this age of Endless Power to two centuries earlier, when eager young men had torn across the United States in search of gold, heedless of native landscapes, wildlife and tribes. When the continent was conquered, and the lust for gold faded, those rugged, ruthless men struggled to find new purpose. By the mid-twenty-first century, the eyes of Manifest Destiny, which had grown restless since running against the Pacific Ocean, gazed into the night sky.

  Lisa jumps at the electronic chirp of the telephone. She answers and, after snatching the mangled towel away from him, hands the receiver to Angel. He listens, acknowledges, looks down, acknowledges again and hangs up.

  Lisa stares at him. “Well?”

  “Zappy’s wife.”

  “Zappy?”

  Lisa only knew the men before they had call signs. Angel cannot remember Zappy’s original name. He tries to explain, becomes muddled, and Lisa places her hands on her hips and frowns.

  “Zappy’s dead,” Angel says. “Amphetamine OD.”

  “How’d he get it?”

  “We have connections in the Belt. It wouldn’t have been hard.”

  “We?” Lisa says. She reaches out for the sugar bowl, not with an ebony arm but with a neon yellow proboscis, swollen with corrosive acid. Angel twitches, his fingers playing around the handle of a butter knife.

  “He. Whatever. I do too.”

  “You make no sense,” Lisa says. Angel looks at her arm, which is normal again.

  “Don’t worry about me, Leese,” he says, trying to sound light. He blows her a kiss. She turns away.

  “You’re not back yet, are you?” she asks. Angel says nothing. “Let me know when you are.” She walks out of the kitchen, slamming the door.

  Angel crosses to the closet. On the door is a sticker, reminding him that in case of an emergency, one can enter the closet and seal it from the inside. The closet/emergency pod has enough water and oxygen to support human life for 96 hours. Angel digs at the sticker with his nail, then peels it off. Safety wrapped in safety, he thinks, and a shiver of shame runs through him. His friends had died in the Belt; he had not. Other men are still dying in the Belt; he is alive and safe. He flicks the sticker away and opens the closet.

  Each movement stirs pain in his broken body as he dons his pressurized suit and goes out to the new transport. He sits in it, not thinking, just hating the safety he cannot escape. Then he turns on the ignition and, obeying all Martian colonial traffic laws, drives along the flagged routes to Zappy’s home. His head feels stuffed with insulation.

  Angel parks in front of Zappy’s
EnviroDome 3090. It is surrounded with a white plastic picket fence, a standard EnviroDome feature. Angel wants to kick the fence down. At the front door he buzzes the intercom. There is no reply, but he is not expecting one. Zappy is dead because his heart exploded, and Zappy’s wife is at the hospital with him. The front door is unlocked; Angel opens it and walks to the bathroom, where he knows he will find his old comrade’s remaining supply of amphetamine.

  ~~~

  Angel is a boy of eleven, reading a beaten paperback on his front step. Though his friends tease him for reading when he isn’t playing ball, he cannot read enough fantasy stories. This book is a tale of adventurers who seek dragons and slay them out of duty to their king. All day long, Angel daydreams of the thrill of traveling to a distant, unforgiving land; hunting dragons; and slaying them. But at night he dreams he is a dragon being pursued by cruel, armed men. When he wakes he feels cold and confused, one question nagging him above all: After the knights slay the dragon, after so long training and practicing the ways of killing, what would they do in life? Could they ever return to their old lives, or to any sort of life at all?

  ~~~

  Stomper squats between two jagged rocks on asteroid S093, his pupils wide in the darkness, his fingers twitching, his mind flashing like heat lightning. Custer floats around the cavern.

  Zappy glues legs from dead Wasps on his pressurized suit with super-strength adhesive. He extends one of these dead legs to Splash, who is writing a report for Endless Power in corporate jargonese. “Welcome to the neighborhood,” Zappy says with an affected rasp. “Don’t know if you’ve met the mate and larvae yet—” Splash floats away to finish the report.

  Clown’s replacement, Lizard, fires meaningless energy pulses into the rock. The other men rarely speak to him. S093 has been a grueling, confusing mission. A dense asteroid with narrow crevices and sharp angles. No nucleite. No Wasps or Spitters. Every shadow might be a Mantis, and turns out not to be. Stomper wonders if the Mantis is real. Reports insist that it is. Just like reports insist this rock is loaded with resources — and the crew is not allowed to evac until the resources have been secured. Stomper buffs his J-4 blade with a micro-abrasive cloth, like a knight of old polishing a longsword.