Message from Gondwana

by David Wiley

CHAPTER 9

  Another rainstorm moved in that night. Lani did not find it nearly as relaxing as the previous one. Soren had the first watch, followed by Candece, then Karl, but they were all on edge, fearing another plant invasion. They could not see anything through the sheets of rain, it knocked the volatiles down to nondetect limits, and its drumming meant the acoustic sensors were useless. Nothing seemed to happen overnight, however, and no alarms went off.

  The rain let up the next morning around dawn. Lani had joined the Geek to go over the programming for the acoustic trials. He was carefully choosing his words, obviously worried about setting her off again, just like the others she had run into in the corridor and galley that morning. The Geek's overly cautious approach was driving her crazy. She finally exploded, making a few, very unladylike comments on what he could do with his sympathy. After that, things improved considerably from Lani's viewpoint.

  Zach was the first to notice the change outside. He had the cameras zoom in on what looked like four white stumps, one along each side of the slab. "Those weren't there before, were they?" he asked.

  He and Lani went back and reviewed the video from before the rainstorm. There was no sign of the stumps. "Look at all of those roots," Zach pointed out unnecessarily. Each stump was a little over a meter tall, but had a dozen or so thick roots that emerged in all directions before diving into the soil.

  "They're called adventitious roots," Lani said, feeling the beginnings of a headache. She called up her volatile tracking program on the monitors in the control room. The alarm chemicals were still down, perhaps washed out of the air by the rain, but Lani had her doubts. A number of new, more complex molecules had appeared. Wouldn't they have been washed out first since they were heavier?

  The level of low-frequency sound outside also seemed to have picked up. She spotted Candece going past with a mug of that awful coffee and, on a hunch, Lani convinced her to go outside and help her re-orient the microphones to point at the stumps.

  When Lani and Candece came back in, Lani headed towards her lab. She was only slightly surprised to see Professor Jonze in her laboratory. Lani braced herself for a scolding about going outside without permission, but Jonze pointed to the traces on the screen that showed the stumps were the source of most of the increase in sound. "How did you know?"

  She listened to Lani explain that producing all those volatiles was expensive metabolically speaking, that the plants surrounding the base had to be calling someone or something important, that the sentinels, the stumps, were the most logical suspects.

  "I wish you would not use that term," the Professor slowly tapped her finger on the countertop. "It makes the plants sound like they have intelligence."

  "Don't you think they do?" Lani blurted out.

  The Professor smiled grimly. "Let's say I do. Let's say I put that in my official report to Alchemistica, that there is intelligent plant life, intelligent alien plant life, on Gondwana. What do you think will happen?"

  Taken aback, Lani thought. "I suppose it would fall under the Morrison Protocols, wouldn't it? The planet would have to be preserved for study."

  "Is that honestly what you think would happen?" Jonze's eyes bored into Lani, like a teacher with a particularly slow student.

  "That is what the law requires. There would be scientists coming to Gondwana to study the aliens," Lani smiled, playing along. "Lots of scientists. The chance of a lifetime. Of course Alchemistica would have to stop the pharma prospecting. All the kartels would. Anything new discovered would be owned by the Emperor." Her smile faded. "He might even Imperialize all the stuff we've found so far. Alchemistica could even be prosecuted if it was shown to know about the intelligent life beforehand. Or we could be held personally liable," she swallowed.

  The Professor gently prodded. "Not to mention that other kartels have also been here, prospecting. It makes you wonder what they know. And don't forget the Church Universal. They're not exactly fans of the idea of alien intelligence. So now, what do you think would happen?"

  Lani thought of sitting through sermons in the Church Universal cathedral her parents attended and her head started to throb again. Sermons about the uniqueness of human intelligence giving humanity the right, no, the duty, to exploit the universe for profit. Not that the Church phrased it exactly that way. She rubbed at her temples. "Alchemistica would come in and quietly exterminate whatever looked like it was intelligent, maybe with the help of the other kartels, in order to operate without restriction. The more useful compounds we discover, the more likely extermination would be because of profit. The Church would also do everything it could to keep it under wraps." She drew a rasping breath. "Oh, Goddard, being out in the real universe is hell."

  The Professor laid her hand on Lani's shoulder and gently squeezed. "No, not the universe, Lani. People. People are hell. Some people, anyway."

  The Geek tried to work his magic, enhancing the sensor files from the night before. But the storm had turned visual, sound, even chemical readings into so much hash. The stumps could have sprouted overnight or even high-stepped into position, he and Lani had no way of knowing. The Geek had given up and shifted gears to programming an acoustic decryption program when Lani came back from breakfast.

  Lani and the Geek entered the common room at lunch time. Conversations ceased as seven heads swung around to look at them. Only Candece and Karl, who were away on a sampling trip weren't present. Lani shook her head and went to sit down with Bax and Juls.

  Emma at the next table over snorted. "It figures the fat girl wouldn't find anything. Too busy hiding from the plant boogeymen," she told Chen, who tried to shush her. Bax tensed, but Emma flounced out of the room before anybody, including Professor Jonze, could say anything.

  Lani turned to Bax. "What did I ever do to her?"

  Bax squeezed her hand. "You're smarter than her, way smarter. Her family is kuan, they have the money and connections, the wasta. She went to the best schools, and yet you can think circles around her and she knows it."

  "I don't envy you, Lani. That woman is a massive pain to work with," Juls whispered. Lani nodded. She was afraid it was only going to get worse, since the Professor had just informed her that Emma would be doing all the pharmaceutical testing so Lani and Zach could concentrate on plant communication. Lani pushed her food around and quickly left when Bax started pestering her about actually eating something. Her gut always gave her grief when she was stressed out. Better to not tempt fate.

  Mid-afternoon and they were no closer to knowing what the increase in sound around the stumps meant. Lani's head pounded and she was convinced the Geek was simply changing variables at random, hoping for some sort of pattern to emerge. "We just don't have enough of a sample yet," he told her. "It's not random noise. There's definitely a pattern, but what kind of words do plants use? Do they have sentences? Grammar? Something like machine language?" he asked hopefully.

  Lani sagged onto a stool next to one of Hoover's memory banks. "Look, maybe we should give up. We're not getting anywhere. I probably screwed up again. I don't know. Why don't you just focus on correlations with the sounds our field crews recorded yesterday?"

  "I can't. Nobody is out there torturing the plants next to the base," the Geek's tone dripped with sarcasm. "Maybe if you send your boyfriend out with a flamethrower we'd see something."

  "Maybe her boyfriend would rather keep his skin intact," Bax interrupted them.

  "How long—" Lani spun around and immediately wished she hadn't the way her head was throbbing.

  "Long enough," Bax said, grabbing her before she could topple off the stool. "You two are making this too hard on yourselves."

  The Geek's hackles rose "Oh, really? I suppose you're an expert on Fourier transformation and Poisson summations?"

  Bax walked over to them. "Not at all; you need a little different approach is all."

  Lani waved off the Geek's incipient
protest. "What's your idea, Bax?"

  He grinned at her. "It's like a bad first date."

  Lani and the Geek both had puzzled expressions. Bax sighed. "C'mon. Think like a plant, my redheaded goddess. Outside of someone torturing it, what is a plant going to talk about? The weather. Just like a—"

  "—bad first date. Brilliant! I love you, Bax," Lani blurted out and blushed.

  "Well, I don't," the Geek groused. "What the hell is he talking about?"

  "Forget correlating with the distress signals from the other sites," Lani gestured. "Start by correlating the audio signals with the weather, temperature, humidity, soil moisture, evapotranspiration, insolation, or whatever the hell else you can think of."

  By suppertime, Hoover and the Geek had built up a good-sized plant vocabulary. It appeared the plants had plenty of experience with bad dates. By varying frequency and duration, the plants could describe typical environmental conditions that they encountered. The Geek even had Soren go out and spray some plants with water to record their signals. Lani figured that would probably be non-threatening enough to keep him from being attacked, but Bax stood by, just in case.

  Hoover was currently analyzing multi-tonal sequences that appeared to express more complex messages, sequences that the field crews had recorded the previous day. In the common room, the Geek was waving his arms as he explained that these sound sequences appeared to be built on the simpler environmental ones. A storm with high winds that tore off leaves or branches might be phrased as high winds, excessive evapotranspiration, and loss of fluid, for instance.

  "I think somebody is going to cream themselves pretty soon," Bax leaned over and whispered in Lani's ear. She started laughing, which didn't work well since she was in the middle of drinking.

  She glared at Bax as she mopped up the remains of her drink. "You're going to pay for this, you know."

  "Promises, promises," Bax intoned solemnly.

  After supper, Lani was on her way to Bax's hutch when Emma passed her. Worried about saying the wrong thing, Lani simply gave a brief nod. "You think you're too good for the rest of us now? You think this is just a game, stepping all over everyone to get ahead?" Emma said from behind her.

  "What?" Lani sputtered and turned around.

  Emma's look would have iced a solar flare. "You heard me. You think you're so smart, but you're just going off to hump like rabbits. No wonder you call them hutches."

  Surprised by the sneak attack, Lani was speechless.

  "If you're so bright, ever wonder what that 'boyfriend' of yours did on previous expeditions? No, of course not. He always blagged the young ones, the dumb ones, a new one every trip. Let me ask you, does he ever say anything about plans for after this expedition is over? No, don't bother to answer, I can see it in your face. Yeah, you're just so blaggin' brilliant."

  "What's the matter?" Bax asked. He reached to turn Lani's face to him, but she jerked her chin away.

  "Why don't you ever talk about what's going to happen after the expedition is over?" she asked tonelessly.

  "What's going to happen?"

  Lani turned to face him. "Yeah, what's going to happen with us?"

  "Oh, I didn't think anything was going to happen." There was no twinkle in his eyes now.

  Lani shook her head. "Emma is right. I'm just an idiot, a stupid idiot."

  "Whoa, what's this all about? Emma?"

  "Yes. I ran into her in the corridor just now. She said you always, you chose a young, dumb one, each expedition. I guess I'm the only one that fits the bill this trip, huh? She asked if you ever talked about plans for us, after—after this blagging trip."

  Bax looked her straight in the eye. "No I haven't and you know why? I was scared to."

  Lani scoffed. "You? Scared?"

  "Yes. I didn't think you were that interested in me or wouldn't be once we got back to civilization."

  "What, why? You're lying. Scared?"

  "Yeah, scared. Like I told you before, you're incredibly smart. I was afraid you'd think I was too stupid."

  "What? I would never—"

  "Lani, listen. You're a genius. You think of things that nobody else would even dream of. You're going to go places. There's no way you'd want somebody like me tagging along, even if we both happen to be Illinois Smith fanatics. That's why I haven't said anything. I assumed this was just one of those flings for you. You know, your first expedition. I wanted to enjoy it, to enjoy you, while I could."

  Lani opened her arms and Bax enfolded her in a hug. "I'm sorry," she said, her voice muffled against his chest.

  "I am too," he said, "for assuming that you were like everyone else, that you were that shallow."

  She lifted her face to his, "You should know by now to watch out for my riptides."

  He laughed. "You sure got that right."

  "Remember that scene in Illinois Smith and the Ocotlan Ruby? Where, in the end, Illinois rescues the princess at the oasis? Remember what they do then?"

  "Yes," Bax breathed.

  Lani kissed him. "Think we can try that?"