Symbiosis

by R S Penney

  He paced across the floor.

  Pinching his chin with his thumb and forefinger, Jack closed his eyes. He exhaled through his nose. “All right,” he said with a curt nod, “let's get on with the Q&A portion of our date.”

  He went to the couch.

  Anna chose a chair across from him with its back to the TV, where she sat primly with her hands folded in her lap. For a moment, she was silent. Perhaps she thought it appropriate for him to begin.

  Licking his lips, Jack stared down into his lap. The words were there in his mind, but he had to work up the nerve to say them. “How did you do it?” he began. “How did you make the bullets veer off course?”

  Anna watched him with a face that might have been carved from ivory, perfectly serene in every way. “I'm not from this world,” she said at last. “My people are well versed in the mechanics of bending space-time.”

  “You're an alien?”

  “Not in the sense of the word that you mean.” She stood, turning her back on him and facing the wall. Her posture was stiff, tense. “Genetically speaking, I'm as human as you are. I was just born on another planet.”

  “How is that possible?”

  She froze in place, taken aback. Clearly she had expected him to know the answer to this question. That fact alone had several interesting implications, the most pertinent being that human civilization must have flourished on multiple worlds across the cosmos. Jack felt a rising sense of elation. Space travel was possible! There were other worlds to see and expl-

  “My people were brought to Leyria by the Overseers,” Anna replied. “Just as your people were brought here.”

  “Overseers,” he said. “I've never heard of the Overseers.”

  Anna turned partway around, looking over her shoulder. “You think your people evolved here?” she mumbled. “You honestly believe that?”

  “Anna, we did evolve here.”

  “That's not possible,” she said. “Terra Prime was lost.”

  Jack leaned back against the couch cushions.

  Throwing his head back, he grinned up at the ceiling. “Well, congratulations, sweet pea,” he said, eyebrows rising. “Because you've just found it. This is the planet where our species evolved.”

  “You have proof of this?”

  “There are extensive fossil records,” Jack explained, “tracing our lineage back to our primate ancestors. I can't produce them for you right now, but no matter what those Southern preachers tell you, the theory of evolution is quite sound.”

  He found himself transfixed by the expression on her face as she worked her way through this new information. How would Anna's people have learned about evolution? If what she said were true, there would be no fossil records for them to examine, not for their own species anyway.

  Then again, it could all be lies. True, he had witnessed something fantastic this evening, but fantastic events can have many explanations. Perhaps Anna was part of some government program investigating new weapons tech. That wouldn't quite fit in with her strange accent, but it was plausible. You couldn't just look at something fantastic and then accept the first explanation that came along. And if he thought the word fantastic just one more time, he would have to find himself a TARDIS.

  Jack got to his feet.

  He marched across the room – right past Anna – and let out a frustrated sigh. There had to be some way to make sense of this, to verify the woman's claims. Something that would appease his inner skeptic.

  He stood before the wall with arms folded, chewing on his lower lip. “Something occurs to me,” he said to himself, “you never answered my question. The one about how you bend the bullets.”

  He turned.

  Anna stood in front of the couch with hands clasped behind her back, head cocked to the side as she studied him. “I carry a symbiont,” she explained. “A life form called a Nassai that can bend space-time.”

  “A symbiont.” Jack had to admit the thought left him with a queasy feeling in his belly. The human body wasn't really meant to be paired with another species. “So, what? It's like a worm in your belly?”

  She actually giggled, shaking her head with amusement at the notion. “It doesn't work like that,” she said, dropping onto the couch. “The Nassai are very different from what you would have imagined.

  “The moon that orbits my planet has an atmosphere. On its surface, we found a thin mist with trillions upon trillions of tiny organic cells communicating with each other through a series of electric pulses. Naturally, human hubris kicked in, and we took a small sample back to be studied.

  “This…sample…became a distinct consciousness, an individual being separated from the whole. It broke out of its containment unit and bonded with one of the scientists. That was its only option; the Nassai cannot survive in our atmosphere. Only then did we learn that the creatures were sentient.”

  Hugging herself, Anna rubbed her upper arms. Her eyes were downcast as a shiver passed through her. “The Nassai is not localized within my body,” she went on. “Its cells are bonded with my own, throughout my nervous system, my blood, my bones.”

  “And it warps space-time?”

  Anna nodded.

  “The Nassai sometimes share with us fragments of their collective memory,” she explained. “From what we've seen, they were engineered by the Overseers for that very purpose. Millennia ago, the Overseers experimented with organic technology, living ships that could bond with their pilots and be controlled with nothing more than a thought. The Nassai were part of their attempts to allow a living vessel to travel at speeds faster than light. Exactly how they do it has always been a mystery to us. Some of our physicists speculate that the Nassai can tap into vacuum energy.

  “Even so, the process is very taxing for both symbiont and host. Overuse could kill my Nassai, and if it dies, I won't be far behind. That is why we only use a Bending when all conventional methods of defense prove ineffective.”

  This was just…

  Jack was speechless. Absolutely speechless. Never in his wildest imaginings would he have dreamed up a story like this, and he had come up with some doozies. In his youth, he had turned in a Western story involving gunslingers calling upon the electromagnetic force and infusing their bullets with lightning. His sixth-grade teacher had not been very impressed. “The assignment was 'write about your weekend,' ” her shrill voice echoed in his head. As if anyone wanted to read about Super Mario speed-runs and reprogramming the TV's parental controls to lock out the Justin Bieber concert. Lauren had thrown a fit. I make no apologies, Jack thought to himself. What I did, I did for the good of humanity.

  But…aliens. Did he believe Anna's story? She sat there on his couch with the most earnest expression, like a girl trying to convince her teacher that the dog really had eaten her homework. “Why did you come here?”

  Anna's face crumpled, tears streaming over her cheeks. “The man that I fought in the street,” she said, shaking her head, “he captured a Nassai and took off in a shuttle. I pursued him to this system.”

  “Worst of all, he's dead,” Anna went on. “Those implants he carried sometimes break down, and if that happens, they can short out your nervous system. Just one of the many reasons such devices are outlawed. Still…he's gone and I have no way to find out where he took the…”

  She sniffled, rubbing her nose with the back of her hand. “I'm sorry,” Anna hissed, turning her face away so that he wouldn't see her tears. “Normally, I don't have quite so much difficulty keeping my composure.”

  Jack approached the couch.

  He dropped to his knees in front of her, then craned his neck to meet her gaze. “You think it's your fault,” he said, blinking. “You blame yourself for whatever happens to that poor creature.”

  She stiffened.

  So now they came it. Did he trust Anna? Was he willing to get mixed up in what was either a life-threatening situation or the biggest con of all time? Something about this woman seemed genuine. Oh, to hell with it. What
good is life if you never take any risks? He just prayed it wasn't hormones fuelling his decision. “I will sleep on the couch,” he said. “You can take the bed and I'll make sure you have clean clothes.”

  Anna stared at him with her mouth hanging open, blinking in confusion. “I don't…I don't understand.” Another shiver escaped her. “You want to help me? Even knowing the risks? For all we know, Denario may have friends who want me dead just as much as he did. I've disabled the transmitter on my multi-tool, but they may still find me.”

  “A criminal kidnapped a sentient being,” Jack replied. “Call me cynical, but I don't think he had anything pleasant in mind. If I can do something to prevent the Nassai from being harmed, I will.”

  He stood up and turned away from her, wheels spinning in his head. Anna had not been carrying the bag of clothes she had purchased; she must have dropped it after saving him from Tyler and his buddy. Another reason to help, Hunter, he noted. You owe her.

  She tugged on the back of his shirt.

  Jack spun around to insist that he was willing to help, but before he could speak, she stepped forward and slipped her arms around him. The hug took him by surprise. “I think I should point out that on my world, 'thank you' is usually sufficient.”

  She leaned her cheek against his chest and smiled. “Thank you,” Anna whispered. “It's been a harrowing few days on this planet. I'm glad I found a friend.”

  No, this won't be awkward at all!

  The instant she pulled up the covers, Anna felt the tension drain out of her body like water through a hole in a bucket. Aches and pains she had been ignoring for days slowly faded away. She suspected that a large part of it was the glorious feeling of being clean! After getting settled in, she had taken a shower, a real Companion's truth shower with hot water! Her heart went out to the beggar she had seen in the street. How long since he had been given a chance to bathe?

  She snuggled into Jack's bed with the covers pulled tight. Her new friend had been kind enough to lend her a pair of his shorts and a t-shirt that dropped almost to her knees. A bit too big but it would do for sleeping.

  The apartment was pitch black with blinds over the windows to shut out the street lights. She could hear Jack breathing in a slow and steady rhythm. He must have fallen asleep on the couch.

  It surprised her to realize she felt at ease. She had expected an internal struggle in which she had to suppress the urge to stay awake and keep an eye on her host – sleeping in alleys tended to have that effect – but something about this little apartment made her feel safe.

  Twenty-four hours ago, she had been willing to see the worst in the people of this world, but now she was ready to trust a man she hardly knew. What did it say about the human condition when a full belly and a warm bed made up the difference between optimism and cynicism?

  She didn't know. And she was too tired to consider the question. Three nights on the street and another three in the cramped bunk of a shuttle.

  Dex…

  She had barely known the young pilot from Petross Station; they had not said very much to each other on the long trip through Dead Space. It had been nothing more than pure dumb luck that Dex had been assigned to her team when she had come charging through the docking bay.

  He was a quiet man. In truth, she knew very little of what had happened after she passed through the SlipGate. Their shuttle had been shaking, the lights flickering. In the frenzy, she remembered hearing Dex say that Denario was firing on them. Then the trip through SlipSpace and her arrival in the storage room.

  Three days on this planet had not given her much time to mourn. Dex popped into her thoughts from time to time…She wished she could feel a stronger sense of grief. He deserved better.

  Anna said a quick prayer for the young pilot, then relaxed her mind. She needed to let herself rest. It wasn't your fault… The words rang hollow, but she said them anyway. They had been trying to save the life of an innocent. Dex had agreed to follow a pursuit course. It wasn't her fault.

  Somehow, she just didn't believe it.

  Crickets chirped in the distance, the sound carrying through the window on a breeze that made the blinds sway. It was still dark, but the odd birdcall made Jack aware that sunrise was only an hour away. He had slept soundly, but his body seemed to be used to short naps.

  Temporarily energized by a few hours of rest, he found his mind wandering. A total stranger slept not twenty feet away, a woman with the ability to bend space and time, with a talent for kicking five kinds of ass. How did he feel about that? Was it strange that he was mostly okay with it?

  Despite his usual tendency toward skepticism, he found himself starting to believe Anna's story. Aliens on Earth…and Jack Hunter, the smart-ass kid from Manitoba, was the one to stumble face-first into one of them. Amazing just how much could change in the brief span of twenty-four hours.

  Just one day ago, his biggest concern had been scraping together enough cash for rent, and now he was fretting about the well-being of some gaseous life form. He had never considered that life could exist in a gaseous state, much less that it could be a thinking being.

  He wondered what it meant in terms of the bigger picture. How would the people of Earth react when they learned that other human beings were zipping about the galaxy and bonding with aliens? Would it cause a crisis of faith for some?

  Jack had never been a religious man – unless you counted a vague sense that there existed a level of reality beyond human perceptions – but he had seen Lauren recite the Lord's Prayer. Would this knowledge affect her? His sister was a bright woman with a keen grasp of science, but what about those people who believed the Earth was a mere six thousand years old?

  The image of riots in the streets passed through his mind, protesters with big neon signs that read, “God hates E.T!” Hell, he himself had to chew on the issue to really wrap his brain around it, and he wasn't all that wedded to any particular philosophy.

  Even now, a part of him still resisted it, still looked for other possible explanations for how Anna had deflected bullets with a thought. Not to mention the strange man with the force-fields. It was as though some part of him wanted to deny what was right there in front of his face.

  Was this what it had been like for the people of seventeenth-century Italy when Galileo told them the Earth went around the sun? It was so easy to just dismiss them as a bunch of backward savages, but had human beings changed all that much in the last four hundred years? A troubling thought.

  He mused on it for half an hour before drifting off again.

  Chapter 8

  Soapy water filled the basin of the sink nearly halfway to the top with the odd plate popping out from under the surface. Through the window above the tap, Harry could see a starry sky and the shadow of the house next door. A beautiful night. Even the chirping crickets seemed to agree.

  Harry frowned as he stared through the pane. He blinked, trying to put his thoughts in order. Unless your ex despises you, he thought. If that's the case, it's not at all perfect.

  He scrubbed a dish with a sponge, wiping the last suds away from the floral pattern. Della had insisted on taking the dishwasher when she moved out – it had been a gift from her father, after all – but Harry didn't mind. Doing the dishes always left him with time to think and wind down.

  His small galley-style kitchen was little more than a narrow corridor between two lines of cupboards with the sink on one side and the fridge on the other. Not much room to maneuver, even for someone who had never really learned the art of cooking. It was a common feature in houses built in the eighties, and another sore spot for Della. Even now, he could hear her complaining that her father would gladly buy them a larger house. That might be so, but Harry had wanted to make it on his own.

  “Dad!”

  Claire came running through the space between the cupboards. Barely more than three feet tall, she was an angel in her blue dress. Paternal bias perhaps, but Harry wasn't about to amend that statement.

  A
grin bloomed on his daughter's round face as she stared up at him with big brown eyes. “Miss Collins said my painting was good.” She lifted up a picture of a stick-figure cat on a field of green grass.

  Harry cocked his head to the side, examining the painting. He felt his eyebrows try to climb up. “Miss Collins is a smart woman,” he said, dropping to one knee. “You might be a famous artist one day.”

  Claire's smile was infectious as she came closer. She threw her arms around his neck, burying her nose in his chest. “Will you drive me to school tomorrow?” she asked. “I don't like taking the bus.”

  “I can't, sweetie,” he replied. “Missy will look after you.”

  Harry sucked on his lip, nodding slowly to his daughter. “Now, you need to get to bed,” he said, mussing her hair with the palm of his hand. As always, Claire let out a little squeal when he did that.

  She stepped back.

  Planting fists on her hips, Claire lifted her chin. She squinted at him. “You're in a lot of trouble now,” she teased. “The other day, you said that messing up someone's hair was against the rules!”

  Yes…he had told her that. Of course, 'the other day' had been last month, and at the time he had been trying to get Claire to stop tormenting her sister, but the rules were the rules. Amazing how much children retained. “Yes, I did say that,” Harry conceded. “You have a very good memory.”

  “You told me if I kept doing it, I was grounded,” Claire added. “Doesn't that mean you're grounded, Daddy?”

  He pinched her nose, and Claire squeezed her eyes shut. She squealed like a pig in a frenzy. “I am grounded,” Harry agreed, “which means I have to go to bed early, and you get to pick what we watch on movie night.”

  Fortunately, that probably meant nothing worse than a Dora the Explorer marathon. Missy would be annoyed, but she was usually good-natured about that sort of thing. She'd probably spend most of the night on her iPad. Of course, that meant frequent glances over her shoulder to keep an eye on what she was reading. He would never have imagined that parenthood would turn him into the Gestapo.