Woodsman

by Thomas A Easton

  He fell silent. In tribute to his courage, the audience in Hannoken’s office said nothing to break the speechless quiet. They could only watch as…

  The screen flickered, and a new voice spoke, jovially avuncular: “We shouldn’t be alarmists, folks. The Engineers say they represent the will of the people, and I can’t believe the people could be that destructive. The Engineers are single-minded, but they’re not monomaniacs! Surely they know how essential gengineering is to modern society, and…Why look! The firing is dying down already.”

  Nothing moved in the building’s windows. The snipers were falling silent. The missile-men were setting down their launchers, standing, stretching. No one was making any move to cross the street and invade the bots’ ravaged preserve.

  The new voice resumed: “Only a few of the bots in the building were actively resisting the will of the people, as interpreted by the Engineers. They have given up now, and all that remains to be done is to round them up and bring them out for trial. The rest of the bots in there are surely innocent. They will be left unharmed. Just watch.”

  The veedo screen showed three figures rounding the corner of the block. Two of them were carrying a heavy crate in a sling. The third was gesturing, pointing toward the nearest missile-man, stopping his porters beside the launcher, removing a pair of knob-headed, phallic missiles. When the trio moved on, the missile-man loaded his launcher and knelt, awaiting the command to fire.

  That command came as soon as every missile-man was armed with the new missiles. Together then, simultaneously, they fired. The missiles smoked across the street and into broken doorways and windows. The ground floor of the bots’ apartment building erupted with smoke and flame.

  “Incendiaries!” Hannoken’s voice was shocked.

  The newscaster who had replaced the alarmist said nothing at all. The missile-men reloaded and fired again, this time at the third-floor windows. Minutes later, the entire building was an inferno in which nothing could possibly be alive. Flaming lengths of honeysuckle vine were falling from the walls, landing in the street and even on the doorsteps of those buildings that had harbored the Engineer snipers.

  The crackling sounds of burning wood and the roar of the flames themselves covered any special sounds that burning flesh might make, but the smoke from the fire had a greasy look to it. “I’ll bet it stinks,” said Renny.

  Only then did the sound of sirens come over the veedo’s speaker.

  Only then was there any sign that society recognized any responsibility to protect its members from catastrophe. Sadly, “catastrophe” did not seem to include what society, through its members, could do to itself. Only fire, and the danger that the flames might spread to other buildings.

  The fire trucks arrived, immense, walking water bladders from which grew muscular hoses; their ancestors had once been elephants. A few police Roachsters accompanied them. Even though there seemed no attempt to pursue the Engineers, the latter melted away, around corners and into alleys. The camera followed them as they regrouped a block away, and then as they began marching down the street.

  “Where are they going?” asked Lois McAlois.

  “Oh, no,” said Donna Rose. Frederick sighed and rested his forehead on his arms where they crossed his seatback. “The park,” he said. “That’s the way to the park. Again.”

  The view on the screen lifted to show several logoed media Bioblimps, all following the parade. No one, not even on the veedo, said a word until Hannoken finally broke the silence with, “Athena, com center.”

  The voice that answered sounded shaky. “Yes, Director?”

  “You were watching?”

  “Yes, sir.” There was no hesitation, no question of what he meant.

  “What’s happening elsewhere? Have they really stopped the news embargo?”

  “Here’s the feed.”

  The veedo flickered, showing other cities in their own land: nothing so bad, just riots and small massacres. But elsewhere: In Europe, a bot ghetto lay in ruins while military bombers circled overhead, their booming cries the sounds of demented, bass gulls. In England and Italy, green figures dangled from lamp-posts. In Asia, Tokyo, Singapore, Beijing, Seoul, and Ulan-Bator were all aflame.

  Frederick could not stand it. He left his perch so abruptly that the stool toppled. He turned off the veedo set. The room was suddenly dominated by Renny’s panting, Donna Rose’s sobs, Alvar Hannoken’s and Lois McAlois’s and his own harshly syncopated gasps.

  For long moments no one spoke. Hannoken stamped one black-stockinged foot as if he had the polished hooves of the goats he had modeled his legs on. He turned once more toward his window as if he could indeed stare directly into space, as if there were no glass and no mirrors between him and the void. He reached toward one side of the window’s frame, touched a control, and the distant radio telescope began to drift toward one side. He had turned off the mechanism that kept the outside mirrors tracking a stable view. Now the rotation of the Station showed. Earth rolled into sight. He and the others stared at the world that had given them all birth, down at chaos and pain and death.

  As abruptly as Frederick had knocked over his stool, Hannoken spun on one foot, stepped to the wall, and opened his liquour cache. He grabbed a bottle and glasses. He poured. “Here,” he said. “It’s my only single-malt Scotch, but…”

  Frederick sipped and choked. “No water?”

  Hannoken shook his head. “No. Never. ‘Whiskey’ comes from the Gaelic, you know. ‘Uisgebeatha.’ ‘The water of life.’ And life…” He paused. He lifted his glass as if in a toast. He tossed its amber contents into his throat as if he were a Russian with a tumbler full of vodka. “We’ll have to do something,” he said. “I wish I knew what.”

  Lois McAlois imitated the Station Director’s gesture. So, with a skeptical expression, did Frederick; this time he managed not to choke. “We have to get them up here,” he said. No one asked him who he meant. “As many as we can.”

  Hannoken nodded jerkily. “I’ll talk to the other station directors. See how many that is. And what else we can do.” Setting his glass on his desk, he walked out of the room.

  Donna Rose was standing beside the trough of soil that was her bed. Her arms were folded tightly across her chest, her head bowed, her blossoms awash in sunlight.

  Frederick stood beside her, staring at the limited view of the universe that their porthole provided. The sun, its brilliant fire softened by filters, filled most of the glass, and the stars were invisible, but still there was a sense of vast black distance beyond.

  He was thinking: His first glimpse of the Engineers, the very day Tom Cross had trundled him down the road and into the city, had revealed them as greedy, short-sighted, destructive, violent. He and Tom had come upon them barbecuing litterbugs, and they had seen him, the pig from under the sink, as no more than a second course. He and Tom had only just escaped.

  Later, years later, other Engineers had slaughtered Tom, Tom’s wife, his own wife, and more. The public’s horrified reaction had helped get Frederick his human body. But now? He shook his head silently. The public was no longer horrified by Engineer atrocities. It joined in. Reactionaries persecuted sentient genimals such as Renny. Sympathizers carried weapons to the city park and helped to slaughter bots, or they looked aside when Engineer troops marched on an apartment building. Anyone who objected, like that newscaster who had dared to forecast a massacre, was silenced.

  Donna Rose must have been having similar thoughts, for her shoulders shook and a small moan escaped her lips. Frederick reached out and laid one hand on her shoulder. He squeezed. She turned. Her arms went around his chest, desperately constricting. Her tears soaked his coverall and were warm upon his skin.

  Her blossoms were just below his nose. He looked at them. They were pale yellow, the central pistils paler, the tiny anthers darker, almost orange, the fragrance subtle but warm, musky, hinting of violets and cherry blossoms. He let his own arms fold around her, feeling for the first time the fi
brous texture of her leaves, the firm meat beneath, the knobs of bone, the warmth.

  Neither of them ever knew how long they held each other, except that it was long enough for Donna Rose’s tears to slow and finally stop.

  That was when Frederick spoke his first words. “I’ll have nightmares tonight,” he said. “If I even sleep.” Such things, such atrocities, whether he was involved as he had been when he had given Donna Rose refuge after the massacre in the park, or only saw the slaughter on the news, always left his mind roiling with the pain of memory. Rest came late or not at all. The bot only squeezed his chest more tightly and murmured something into the wet cloth of his coverall.

  “What?” he asked.

  She shifted her head, freeing her mouth. “I won’t sleep either. I know it. How could I?”

  A long moment later, she added, “Maybe. If we just held each other. Like this, Freddy.”

  The muscles of his legs were protesting, informing him that he had been standing far too long. He sighed and watched the petals of her blossoms flutter in the breeze of his breath. “All right,” he said. “Let’s lie down.”

  They turned together toward his bed. It was not long before they sought a comfort deeper than simply holding tightly to each other could provide. As Donna Rose had promised, her bulb did not get in their way. Nor did the way her roots twined involuntarily around his ankles or her leaves enfolded them both in a green cocoon.

  Just before he fell asleep, Frederick wondered whether their mating could possibly be fertile. The bots themselves relied on their head-top flowers and seeds for reproduction. But their human genetic component was large, and they might well, he thought, have more animal apparatus than met the eye. Ovaries. A uterus.

  What might their child be like?

  “We launch this thing tomorrow,” said Arlan Michaels. His short figure straddled one of the cables that held the Quoi, the first crew-carrying Q-ship, the prototype, in its bay, his legs holding him in place. He gestured toward Lois McAlois. “The tanks are full. Make sure it’s ready, and let’s get it outside.” Three technicians leaned over open panels in the ship’s long central spine, bracing themselves in the gaps between the tanks of reaction mass that girdled the spine. They were making final adjustments to the Q-drive itself.

  “What’s the rush?” asked Renny. Both he and Lois wore vacuum suits, the faceplates of the helmets open. His had been tailored especially to fit his nonhuman form. Lois held in one hand the end of a tether clipped to his belt, and when she let go of her own cable, the two of them began to drift toward the ship’s cabin hatch.

  “Director’s orders,” said the pilot. “He said we need it now.”

  “It can’t help them down on Earth, can it?” asked the German shepherd. “Even if it works. It’s too small.”

  “It’ll work. Never doubt it.”

  Michaels grimaced. “It’s a machine. Maybe he figures, if it works the way it’s supposed to, it’ll calm those Engineers down a little.”

  “Huh!”

  “Maybe he’ll offer it to them. A bigger model, a trip to the stars, a hunt for a world with enough resources to let them live the way they want, at least for a while.”

  “It’ll take too long. They’re not that patient. And there’s too many of them to move.” Renny was growling his words.

  “What else can we do?” said Lois. She did not sound hopeful, but now the hatch was open and she was pushing the dog into his niche, the space her missing legs would not occupy. She slid in behind him, strapped herself into her seat, and began the process of bringing the controls to life. A computer ventilation fan began to hum. Indicator lights lit up. A computer-synthesized voice said, ‘“The hatch is open.”’

  Metallic noises from behind the cabin suggested the closing of access hatches. Lois touched a control and the cabin hatch swung shut, sighing into its airtight seal. She closed her helmet and reached toward Renny’s. As soon as they were both thus shielded against any loss of cabin pressure, Michaels’ voice came from speakers beside their ears. “The techs are clear.”

  “Power on,” said Lois, and she fed the necessary commands to the Q-drive. Probabilities shifted. Particles materialized from the vacuum, and a digital meter spun out its report of available energy.

  Renny twisted, more awkward than ever in his suit, to position his head near her truncated thigh, where he could watch her face. She did not look at him, for the controls demanded all her attention. “Just like the simulator. Is everyone out of the way?”

  “The bay is clear.”

  “Release the cables.” Someone obeyed the command, but the cables did not let go of the ship quite simultaneously. The Quoi lurched and began to drift toward one side of the bay. She fed the merest trace of lunar dust to the drive, routed the mildest possible thrust to the appropriate side, and recentered the ship.

  “Pull the air.” The throb of air pumps faded rapidly as the air that carried the sound grew thinner.

  “Open the bay.” The great door that closed one end of the bay irised open. She fed more dust to the drive, and the Quoi moved slowly out of its shelter, into the environment for which it was meant. Black filled the ports, and stars, and the bulk of the construction shack, and further off Probe Station itself, the separate research labs, the radiotelescope, the Moon, and Earth. The sun was not in their field of view.

  “No problems.”

  “Then bring her around,” Michaels said over the radio.

  The other end of the construction shack held a dock, an elastic tube with a mouth like that of a lamprey. Carefully, Lois swung the ship. The ports darkened as they came to face the sun. They cleared again as the Quoi swung its nose still further. A touch of thrust, the merest feather, then pushed the ship. More feather touches, more swings, and finally the dock’s lamprey mouth could fit over the cabin’s hatch. Then, at last, she could shut down the controls once more and say, “Tomorrow, Renny.”

  When Frederick opened his eyes that morning, he found Donna Rose staring at him. He blinked, and he almost smiled. “No nightmares,” he said.

  “None at all?” She did smile.

  “None.”

  * * *

  PART 3

  * * *

  CHAPTER 14

  The place was like a gravel pit or crater, its high walls marked with the strata of civilization, its floor a day-baked, night-chilled puree of dust and sand and small stones and fragments of garbage, studded except near the working face with the shacks of the imprisoned workers. The air reeked of a thousand stinks, of rot and sweat and smoke and ordure and ancient chemicals. The only moisture lay in small, glistening puddles, oily, acrid, plainly toxic, that no one dared to touch. There was no trace of green plants, not even of the ubiquitous honeysuckle, though there were within the crater a very few skins marked by chlorophyll. Most people whose modifications were so obvious had not survived to be confined in the camp.

  One side of the crater was open to admit a road, though it was blocked by chain-link fence and armed guards. More guards patrolled the crater rim. Beyond the fence, their cinderblock barracks sheltered in its lee a few small, dusty shrubs. Trees were visible in the distance.

  Naked except for a strip of tattered cloth wrapped around his hips and a pair of crude sandals cut from rubber tires, Jeremy Duncan crouched in the sun beside the shadow cast by a fragment of pumpkin shell. He sniffed at his arm, detecting in his sweat the odor of malnutrition. There was food, but it was not enough to maintain both life and strength. To make up the deficit, he had already used up all his fat; now he was using protein, muscle, and the wastes he generated in the process accounted for his body odor. When all the muscle he could spare was gone…He stared alternately at the ruins of his home and at his neighbor, as naked as he, as naked-ribbed scrawny, though he didn’t have the festering sores that marked the edges of Duncan’s gills.

  What he did have was a small, smoky, reeking fire, its fuel bits of ancient, punky wood, organic pulp, and his own manure, all dried in the
sun. He also had a shack, a hovel, pieced together from bits of ancient plywood, a rusty automobile door, a tattered shower curtain. It was barely more than a burrow, but it helped to contain his body heat at night and it provided a minimum of shelter against the wind and rain.

  Duncan had had a shack like that himself, but he had made the mistake of using a piece of pumpkin shell for one wall. That morning, early, dawn barely in the sky, three guards had come to roust him from his sleep and chide him. They wore tan shorts and shirts, polished black shoes, black socks, broad-brimmed hats. The smallest had stood to one side, an automatic weapon held ready in his arms. The other two had carried heavy sticks.

  “You know better, genny,” the one with the mustache had said, backhanding him, kicking him, striking him on the gills with his stick. “No more gene shit. Never. I should even rip these things out of you. With my bare fingers, or an axe, or…”

  While the guard raved, while he cowered, hiding his face with an arm as much to conceal his defiant, hating glare as to protect his eyes, another guard, the largest of the three, had torn the shack apart. He had kicked the rusty doorposts until they fell. He had peeled the roof off and hurled it sailing through the air until it sliced into a nearby shack; a shriek marked protest or pain, though it cut off immediately, as soon as the victim peeked through a crack and saw what was happening. He had pushed at the walls until they fell, and then he had stomped, shattering ancient glass, crumpling rusty sheet metal, breaking half-rotten wood. Finally, all that was left was the piece of pumpkin shell, jagged-edged, too heavy to hurl, too thick to break with feet or hands alone.

  “Don’t use it again,” the one with the mustache had said. “We’ll bust you up next time.” He had grinned as if he would enjoy the job.