Providence

by Max Barry

  He hesitated. This ship had killed salamanders. That was correct. “But not Gilly. Gilly was along for the ride. I’m not even a real soldier.” The salamander didn’t respond. “Nok,” Gilly said. “Gikky nok kik Mak-tak. Sik kik Mak-tak.”

  “Gikky nok.”

  “Gikky nok,” he agreed.

  “Sik.”

  “Yes. Sik.”

  The salamander made a noise in its throat that he didn’t recognize, then twice more.

  “I don’t understand.” Its head bobbed. The sounds were unintelligible but seemed inquisitive. “Are you asking a question?” He mimicked the movement. “You mean, ‘What?’”

  “Wak,” the salamander said. “Wak sik kik Mak-tak.”

  “What ship kill Martin? I don’t know what that means.”

  “Wak sik kik Mak-tak.”

  “That doesn’t make sense, Martin. You know what ship.”

  “Wak. Wak.”

  He hesitated. “Do you mean ‘Why?’”

  “Wak.”

  “Why ship kill Martin?”

  “Wak,” said the salamander.

  He had been thinking about that himself. “I don’t know,” he said.

  * * *

  —

  “Martin uses words interchangeably to mean either individuals or the species,” he told his recorder. “Sometimes when he says ‘Gikky,’ he’s talking about me. But other times, he means the whole human race. In the same way, he seems to use the term ‘Mak-tak’ to refer both to himself and to all salamanders. This suggests to me that he sees little difference between the two.”

  Martin was hunched near the far wall. What Martin was up to right now, Gilly had no idea. He had been silent awhile.

  “This would make sense, since salamanders are genetic clones, and motivated to prioritize the survival of the hive as a whole over their own lives.”

  Martin said nothing.

  “I’m studying you,” Gilly told him. “Maybe one day someone will hear this and use it against you.”

  Martin didn’t answer. Martin didn’t know what he was saying. Gilly almost felt guilty, because Martin probably hadn’t done anything. As far as Gilly knew, Martin had spent his whole life on this planet, minding his own business. If he had been contributing to the war, it was likely in the same way as Gilly: as a small, replaceable cog in a war machine. If anything, Gilly had done more than Martin, since he’d actively contributed to the Providence program. Although that could have been anyone: If it hadn’t been Gilly, it would have been someone else. He imagined this was true for Martin. He remembered telling Beanfield that the real war was between salamander genes and human genes, and this felt true, especially the part where he and Martin were abused pawns in someone else’s grand strategy. Whoever that was, genes or Service or some ultimate salamander-brain creature, they should invent a way to go to war with each other directly and leave him and Martin out of it.

  When he had nine hours left on his core, another salamander emerged from the tunnel. It was larger than Martin, with thicker, darker skin, and angular where Martin was soft. A soldier, with folded wings. It stopped in front of Gilly and didn’t move. He could smell it very strongly. After a minute, it turned toward Martin as if noticing him for the first time. Then back to Gilly. During this time, Gilly kept as still as possible, because it was terrifying.

  The soldier moved closer. It rose onto its rear legs. It had no nostrils Gilly could see, but it moved its head as if seeking sensory input. It fell forward, its front legs landing on his arms, and he stifled an exclamation. The salamander’s head swung to face him. He saw himself reflected in its dark eyes. Then, slowly, it closed its jaws around his arm.

  He screamed. “Martin!” He could see the smaller salamander against the wall. It was doing nothing. The pressure on his arm became unbearable. “Martin!”

  Eventually, it released him. It turned and departed. Martin remained hunched against the wall.

  He wept. His arm was a song of pain.

  “Martin,” he said. “Hey. Martin.”

  What was in Martin’s eyes, he had no idea. Martin was an alien. Gilly had no way of inferring his thought processes.

  “I’m going to kill you,” Gilly said.

  * * *

  —

  Of course he couldn’t kill Martin. He couldn’t even scratch his own nose. But he imagined. He stared at Martin’s bulbous head and found things to hate. Tiny hairs. A bulge like a mole. Things beyond the obvious, i.e., that he was a disgusting xenoform with ugly white scars on his back and tentacles around his mouth and skin that smelled like a dead cat. Because that wasn’t enough. He wanted to hate Martin on a personal level. As an individual. He wanted to feel that even if Martin were human and they were on the same side, he would still despise him.

  His arm precluded sleep but he slipped in and out of consciousness. He dreamed or hallucinated that Service and Surplex were coming for him. Not as a fleet or even as a collection of people but as a god, immense and powerful, and the rock split open and a face appeared above, ancient and ageless, its eyes blazing light. Everything the light touched burst into flames, and he realized too late that it had come not with salvation but with wrath. The light washed over him and he screamed and burned and died.

  * * *

  —

  He came to a place of peace. “Martin,” he said. “I know why we’re at war.”

  Martin regarded him with his soulless eyes. Gilly would like to know what Martin did when he didn’t have a prisoner of war to interrogate. He seemed to be taking a decent chunk of time off from whatever that was.

  “I have human genes. You have salamander genes. That’s it. That’s the whole explanation.”

  “Jek,” Martin said.

  “Genes fight each other, Martin. That’s all they do. They’re different, so they fight. That’s why we kill you. That’s why you kill us. It doesn’t matter what we think. What we feel. Who’s right. That’s illusion. Gikky. Mak-tak. Different. War.”

  Martin said nothing.

  “That’s why,” Gilly said. “You asked.”

  Martin rose. He shuffled closer and scratched a crude line in the dust. “Mak-tak.” He made a second line. “Gikky.”

  “Yes. Two alpha species. Can’t coexist. You got it.”

  Martin made a third line. “Han-hek.”

  He squinted. “I don’t know what that is.”

  “Han-hek.” Then Martin made a fourth line. “Pak-tar.”

  “What are those two?”

  Martin’s head lowered toward each line in turn. “Mak-tak. Gikky. Han-hek. Pak-tar.”

  “Are they . . . other races?”

  “Han-hek. Pak-tar.”

  “Have you met other aliens? Not Gillys? Not salamanders?”

  “Nok Gikky. Nok Mak-tak.”

  He checked that his recorder was still running. “That’s . . . what do you call them again? What are their names?”

  “Han-hek.” Martin obliterated the line in the orange dust. “Nok.”

  He blinked. “Gone?”

  “Pak-tar.” Another line vanished. “Nok.”

  “What happened to them?”

  Martin was silent.

  “Did you kill them, Martin?”

  “Kik.”

  “Salamanders wiped them out? Two other species?”

  “Mak-tak kik Han-hek,” Martin said. “Mak-tak kik Pak-tar.”

  “You did.” He felt numb.

  “Mak-tak kik Gikky,” said the salamander.

  13

  [Jackson]

  THE HUNT

  They moved through fissures during the day, when their heat signatures would be obscured by sun-warmed rock. At times Anders again carried Beanfield across his shoulders, which was not merely mind-boggling in 1.4G but actively dangerous, since a fall could
injure them both. It was also a waste of resources, with Anders sweating out twice as much water. But Jolene wanted to keep moving toward that volcano.

  For two days, they made steady progress. In all that time, the tornado at its peak didn’t move or dissipate. Sometimes individual tendrils broke away, especially near the top where it disappeared into the cloud, but never for long. She had developed an idea of what it might be, but didn’t want to think about it until she was sure.

  Every half hour, they rested. Anders checked the lightning gun over and over, as if it might spontaneously charge itself when he wasn’t looking. Beanfield sat bent over, looking at the ground. Jolene amused herself by wondering how Service was going to spin this. She was almost sad she wouldn’t get to see the enormous snow job that would be required to sell the idea that losing a Providence and its crew was actually some kind of victory. Or, she supposed, an inspirational and valiant loss that nothing could have prevented except perhaps increased military funding. Maybe she didn’t need to see that. Maybe she could imagine it.

  On the third day, she poked her head out of a fissure to check their surroundings and saw a low depression. It was only a few hundred yards away, and a rare feature in an otherwise empty landscape, so she resolved to investigate. She and Anders left Beanfield, who couldn’t move quickly, climbed the fissure wall, and crossed the open rock, Anders carrying the lightning gun, the converter bouncing against the small of her back. The horizon remained clear both of land-bound salamanders and fliers. Now that she was above the heat haze, she was able to confirm something she’d suspected for a few hours: There was a second hill, farther away than the first, also with a twisting tornado at its peak. They slowed as they reached the crater. Anders raised the gun. Whether the thing would even work, they had yet to discover. But there were no salamanders here, either. The depression was full of liquid orange gunk.

  “So what’s this, now,” said Anders.

  She stared at it. It was thick, brighter in the center of the pool, darker at the edges, where it seemed to be congealing. It wasn’t at all like what they’d swum through as they fled the jetpod. It actually put her in mind of lava, a substance that rose to the surface and formed a hard crust. Which made sense; that was how planets formed. Hot stuff bubbling up from below, then cooling and going hard. But seeing it in glutinous form made it impossible to deny the conclusion that had been forming in her head for days.

  “Maybe this is a volcano, too,” Anders said. “A baby one, just getting started. It’s making rock, see?”

  “This isn’t rock.”

  He looked at her. “What?”

  She gestured at the landscape. “None of this is rock.”

  “It looks like rock,” he said. “What is it?”

  “Resin.”

  Realization crossed his face. “The whole planet?”

  “It’s not a planet,” she said. “It’s a hive.” She turned to look at the two hills and their tornadoes. But of course they weren’t tornadoes. They were salamanders, coming out of the ground in streams, venting like gas.

  Anders followed her gaze. “Ah, fuck it.” He turned in a circle as if seeing the landscape for the first time. “Fuck me.”

  How many salamanders? They had vented at this rate for days. Must be hundreds of thousands. Millions. Which meant that it wasn’t even correct to call this a hive, she realized. It was the hive. A planet-sized salamander factory.

  Her body felt abruptly heavy. She sat. Everything was heavy right now.

  “This is what we’ve been looking for,” Anders said. “Since the start of the war. If Service knew . . .”

  Every Providence would converge and burn this place to ash. But there was no way to tell them. They were in VZ. She, Anders, and Beanfield wouldn’t even survive another twenty-four hours unless they found something to feed the converter.

  Anders hunkered down beside her. “So what do we do?”

  She didn’t want to answer, but there was no other option. “We go there.”

  He looked, in case something else had appeared on the landscape recently. “What are you talking about? There are a million salamanders.”

  “We can try to slow them down.”

  “Come on,” he said. “Jackson, that’s a Providence job. That’s not a three-person, one-rifle job.”

  She rose to her feet and unstrapped the converter. She doubted the pool would prove more fruitful than resin in its hardened form, but had to try. The pool’s edges were smooth and the footing treacherous and she slid in up to her knees. She unfolded the converter and dipped it beneath the surface. There were salamanders below her, she figured. More than she could imagine. They had a smooth breeding operation down there, she bet. A production line of killers.

  “Anything?” Anders said.

  She waited for the converter to confirm it. She shook her head.

  “Well, shit,” Anders said.

  The goop burped. She froze. A series of small bubbles rose to the surface and popped one after another.

  “You should get out of there,” Anders said.

  She emptied the converter of liquid and tossed it to him. When she tried to move, she discovered that her boots were stuck. She’d been stationary for a while and had sunk into the muck. Anders slung the gun to his back, bent, and offered his hand. She took it. The pool burped again, a larger bubble.

  “One,” Anders said. “Two. Three.”

  He pulled. Her boots were dragged free and she sprawled onto the rock like a landed fish. She rolled onto her back. Before her, the surface rose. A salamander heaved itself out of the pool. Its body flopped forward. Its legs reached for purchase. She tried to scramble away but the gravity was hungry and her wet boots had no traction and she slid back into the pool. She went under and orange gunk closed over her head. Panic seized her. She couldn’t see. Her feet slipped repeatedly until finally she found purchase. She broke the surface.

  The salamander had climbed fully out of the pool. It was a soldier, she saw, with black, leathery skin, folded wings, and a rough, blocky head. It seemed disoriented. Liquid resin ran from its body, spattering the rock. Anders had the lightning gun. One charge, she remembered. Or zero, depending on how it was feeling at that moment.

  “Shoot it!” she said.

  The air burst and crackled. The salamander screamed. Its body convulsed. Before she could reach it, it heaved to its feet and began to lumber away. Anders simply watched it go.

  “Shoot it again!” she screamed.

  He blinked and took aim. The gun emitted a short, dispirited tone, red lights lighting along its side.

  She grabbed the converter and began to run. The salamander was fifty feet ahead, wounded but moving fast. After a moment, Anders caught up with her.

  “Shoot it again,” she said.

  “No juice.”

  “Just try,” she said. It had unearthed a charge despite reading zero before; maybe it could again.

  He raised the gun, stopped running for a moment, and took aim. The warning tone sounded again.

  She hadn’t paused, and Anders caught up to her again. The salamander was continuing to draw away, and now had a lead of two hundred yards. Ahead lay a plain of baking rock.

  “Shit, it’s fast,” Anders said. “Do we stop?”

  Her suit fan began to whine, cooling her skin. “It’s hurt. We won’t get a better chance than this.”

  He was silent. They ran. The salamander moved farther ahead until it became a smudge against the rock.

  “We’re exposed out here,” Anders said. “And we should get back to Beanfield.”

  She didn’t reply. He didn’t seem to realize it, but the situation had become very simple. They had to catch this salamander and kill it or else die in their suits.

  “Jackson. It’s got six fucking legs. We’re not going to catch it.”

  For the last few mi
nutes, she had suspected the salamander was drifting to the left. Now it became unmistakable. “It’s heading for the volcano. We can cut it off.”

  They adjusted course. Within a few minutes, they’d made up enough ground for her to make out the salamander’s individual limbs again. It was loping painfully, she observed. Then it noticed them and changed direction, beginning to draw away.

  “Fuck!” said Anders. “I can’t keep this up. How are you doing this?”

  “I used to run track. It’s practically why I joined Service.”

  He panted.

  “You can do this.” She remembered Nettle’s painting: the hunter and the gazelle. “Humans are built for running.”

  “Not this human.”

  “Whatever you’re feeling, it’s feeling worse.”

  They fell into a rhythm. The salamander attempted to veer left again, and again they cut the angle. But it wasn’t slowing. Anders’s panting became painful in her ears. He started lumbering. Every other moment she expected him to stumble and fall. She expected more dark shapes to appear on the horizon, or fliers overhead.

  “I have to stop,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Take the converter, then. I’ll keep going.”

  “You have to stop. You can’t . . . kill it. By yourself.” He sucked air for a few moments. “We’re done.”

  She shook her head. They couldn’t be done. They would die if they were done.

  “Shit,” Anders said, and began to run straighter. “How did you . . . get like this? Why can’t you . . . let shit go?”

  “We can’t let it go,” she said. “It’s our only chance.”

  To his credit, he didn’t argue. She was pleasantly surprised at how Anders had performed since the jetpod. She’d often questioned how Service chose crews, both before she shipped out and afterward, and Nettle had assured her that it wasn’t just about public relations and feeds: They really were chosen to be an effective team who could perform in high-pressure scenarios. They couldn’t always tell why the algorithm believed that, but it did. She was starting to see why it might be true of Anders.