Message from Gondwana

by David Wiley

CHAPTER 10

  Lani wanted a closer look at the white stumps. "Are you sure you're up to this?" Professor Jonze asked. Lani frowned, crossing her arms.

  "Okay, calm down," Jonze motioned with her hands. "I'm sorry I asked."

  They discussed strategy. The Professor tried to insist on a handful of flamethrower-wielding bodyguards, but Lani had objected that the sentinels might recognize them.

  "Sentinels still?" the Professor asked with raised eyebrows.

  "I can't help it." Lani waved a hand. "Look at where they have positioned themselves and the incredible amount of signal traffic revolving around them. They seem to be hubs of communication, kind of like nerve networks. And if you look at where they're positioned, almost halfway along each side of the slab, that can't be accidental."

  "Remember our little chat, I still think you're anthropomorphizing them a bit too much," the Professor protested, "but I still don't want you going out unarmed."

  "We've been misting the area with the All-Clear chemical for more than two days now," Lani protested.

  "Weren't you the one who told me that you expected the effect to wear off?"

  They eventually compromised, with Lani liberally festooned with what she hoped was non-threatening monitoring equipment; Bax and Juls armed with canisters of a new, improved formulation of the All-Clear chemical; and Soren, Chen and Jonze positioned up next to Alice in the flitter bay with flamethrowers at the ready. Candece had volunteered, but Jonze decided that it would be safer to deploy her away on a sampling trip with Karl. Mumson and the Geek were in the control room, monitoring things. And Emma?

  As Lani walked with Bax and Juls past Emma Wale's workstation, she purposely linked her arm through Bax's and pulled him down to whisper in his ear. Emma's glare warmed her heart. With Kiet dead and Lani working on the plant communication problem, Emma finally had to work a full shift and more at the insistence of Professor Jonze. The fact that nobody else seemed to be sympathizing with her incredibly increased workload had not done a thing to improve Emma's mood.

  As they approached the stump on the west side, Lani felt a chill run down her spine. The stump appeared chalky white. With its truncated form and all of the adventitious roots running out from the trunk to plunge underground, it reminded Lani of severed vertebrae with the bottom half of the skeleton buried. She shuddered.

  "Aha, I saw that," Bax said from behind her.

  "Saw what?" Lani asked chirpily.

  "You're not fooling me, you feel it too. It's like when Juls and I did our sound sampling up in the hills, only worse."

  Her unease grew the closer she got and the vertebr—stump hadn't even done anything yet, but sit there and silently communicate with its neighbors.

  "Infrasound," Lani realized.

  "What sound?" Bax asked.

  "Infrasound, very low frequency sound waves. Most of the plant communication is at frequencies at the bottom end of human hearing or less. Your ears can't hear it, but your body can sense it. That's probably what did poor Mumson in. The sentinels use infrasound to help make you scared like the directors do in some of those horror holos that you like so well."

  "Ah, now you've spoiled the mystery for me."

  Juls snorted. "I've seen your collection of horror holos, Bax, there's no way she can spoil anything."

  Lani grabbed the acoustic meter slung around her neck and turned it on. She watched the dial for a minute or two. "There, did you feel that?"

  "Yeah," Bax said.

  "Me too," echoed Juls. "Was that infrasound?"

  "Yep, a nice big spike in activity."

  "Hey, look at the top of the stump," Bax pointed. "It's breathing."

  What looked like gillslits were slowly opening and closing. Lani quickly brought another meter to bear. "No, it's communicating. Those 'gills' are pumping out volatiles. Like I suspected, the sentinels are the source of those new, more complex molecules Hoover has been detecting."

  "I wish you would stop calling them that," the Professor's tinny voice came through Lani's zuno hanging next to the electrical multimeter. Lani had forgotten the others were tied in via the computer/comm devices. "Maybe you'd better back up a few steps. You seem to have attracted their interest," Jonze added in a dry tone.

  "Yeah, I see it," said Juls. He and Bax moved to put themselves between Lani and a large number of questing vines.

  "Oh, relax, they aren't going to attack," Lani said holding up the air sniffer. "The aggressor volatiles are still well down in the normal range. The acoustic density is increasing quite a bit, though." She tapped the appropriate meter. "Zach? You and Hoover getting this?"

  "Roger that, Lani. Hoover should have lots of new sounds to add to his vocabulary after this. So far he hasn't flagged anything that seems to be related to the alarm signals."

  "That's good," Lani let out her breath. She thought she was right about the plants, at least this time. But if she wasn't....Hold it, roger that? It must be some secret geek language. She'd have to ask Zach later because she did not have time to worry about it now. Part of her deal with Jonze was a half-hour time limit. Her meters recording, Lani walked completely around the sentinel, careful to avoid its roots or whatever they were. She then stepped closer, held the volatile sensor through the next puff from the gills, then stepped back, repeating the motion several times.

  The dials showed slight increases in both sound and volatiles when she got closer, but not a big difference. She looked around. They were surrounded by a thicket of vines, weaving an intricate dance about waist height. "Juls? Give that bunch near you a quick spritz from your canister." She waved at a particularly active clump of vines to his right.

  "Are you sure—" began Professor Jonze's voice, but Juls had already done it. The vines quieted.

  The Geek's voice broke in. "Interesting, the acoustics not only decreased in strength, but it's a simpler pattern."

  "Good," Lani thoughtfully regarded a clump of redvines almost within reach. She held out her right arm to Bax. "Here, give me a shot of that."

  "What?"

  "Give me a quick spray." Before I chicken out, she thought. "Right here," Lani swept her left hand along her right arm, from elbow to hand.

  "You're not planning on doing what I think," Bax said, hesitating.

  "What is she planning on doing?" Jonze asked over the zuno.

  Lani nodded. "Just do it."

  Bax shrugged and gave a little squirt.

  "Oh come on, you need to soak it," Lani held her arm up further.

  "Soak what? Why is she holding her arm up? Would you please tell me what you are up to?" Jonze was sounding more than a little perturbed.

  Bax grinned and saturated her arm. Satisfied, Lani took a step forward and reached towards the vines.

  Professor Jonze had finally seen what Lani was doing, judging by the incoherant spluttering coming over the comm.

  The vines stopped writhing and slowly drifted back and forth, as if caught in a gentle breeze. Lani held her breath as she lightly touched the nearest. It froze, rigid for a moment, before darting around her wrist.

  "Lani!" Bax screamed, lunging for the vine. The group with the flamethrowers started across the slab.

  "Back!" she commanded. "Everybody back! I'm okay. Don't touch it."

  "But," Bax watched helplessly as several more vines joined the first in looping around her wrist and slowly crept up her forearm. It reminded Lani of sitting still for hours until the snake came out of its hole and slithered across her legs until her mother spotted her and run screaming out of the house to save her mute toddler.

  "They're tasting me," Lani said in wonder. "See how each of the vines is different? A different color, different texture, different size? I can feel tickling, like a lot of really fine hairs."

  Her arm bound, she couldn't check her meters, but Hoover was hooked into them remotely. "What are the sensors reading, Zach?"

  "Wow. I mean, wow," came the
Geek's voice.

  "Zach! Wow doesn't exactly do it for me," Lani said, her arm almost completely covered by vines.

  "Wow. It's the most complex signals yet, both volatiles and acoustic. In fact, the acoustic volume has also shot up. I'm surprised your head isn't exploding from the bass."

  "A rather unfortunate word choice, Mister Rakowski," the Professor observed in very dry tones.

  "But you should see this Professor. There's a sequence that's repeated several times, getting louder each time, Hoover thinks the sentinel is either giving a command or asking a question."

  "If you and that AI would try not to let your imag—"

  Lani tuned them out. She could indeed feel a distinct buzzing. It was rather jarring, like an old-fashioned mechanical drill. No wonder the plants had been attracted to Mumson and his power tools. They—

  "Lani? Lani?! Let's get you out of there before you're completely tangled. Lani?" Bax sounded worried. Odd. What was there to worry about? Oh, well, if he insisted.

  "Try dousing my arm with the canister, it may loosen the vines up enough for them to let go."

  Bax vigorouly began spraying her arm and the rest of her for good measure. She spluttered and sneezed. Damn, but that smell was overpowering. At least the vines did loosen and drop limply to the ground. Bax grabbed her and started hustling her back towards the slab. The vines were parting in front of them, probably because of the stink.

  Something off to the side caught Lani's attention, and she started towards it. Bax tried to yank her back but lost his grip on her slick arm. "This looks new," she crouched over several big leaves. They were unusual not only because of their large size, over a meter in length and half as broad, but also because of their dark color. Almost all of the vegetation on Gondwana had small, pale leaves because of the incredible bright light from the blue-white Draco overhead. The bases of the large leaves converged into a single branch, leading back to the sentinel, and, remarkably, the whole branch was clear of vines or other plants that might have shaded it.

  "The sentinel has its own power source," Lani breathed. She turned to Bax, "It needs more power to run its network, so it put out its own solar array. Look, it even has its own plant repellent." She turned back to the array and extended one of her meters towards it.

  "That's great, Lani. Let's get you back in one piece, okay?" Bax grabbed her and firmly herded her towards the safety of the slab, this time holding on to her equipment harness.

  "Just what kind of chittaka-brained stunt was that?" The Professor did not even wait until they were back inside the building before starting in on the lecture.

  "Chittaka?" Lani was puzzled.

  Jonze propelled her into the control center. "Out!" she told the Geek.

  "But we're right on the verge of a breakthrough with all the new data that Lani collected. Hoover is running a fractal analysis of the—"

  "Out!" she repeated firmly. The Geek scrambled out the door.

  "Sit!" she pushed Lani into one chair and took another.

  The Professor ran her hand through the close-cropped gray kinks that served for her hair. "What is a chittaka? I was on an expedition to Demeter once, looking for more rejuv drug analogs. A chittaka is a lizard about the size and taste of a chicken. Not any more brains than that either. At least with a squad of leathernecks they pretend to obey orders." She sighed.

  "So it's true? You really were in the Imperial Marines?" Lani ventured.

  "It sounds like somebody's been repeating old stories. Yes, I wore the old blue and green what must have been a lifetime ago."

  "So you've never had another expedition with this much trouble?" Lani asked.

  Jonze shook her head. "Not even close. Not with the leathernecks, not even on Demeter with all those dinosaurs, those chaeneths, drizliths, and skrell. We always had a ship standing by, one that could pick us up, let us use the sickbay. Now, the idiots upstairs had to go and—

  "Anyway, what you did out there was absolutely the dumbest blagging thing I have ever seen, and I've seen some real contenders for the Darwin Award over the years."

  Lani opened her mouth, "But—"

  "What the hell would you have done if the sentinel—stump, whatever—hadn't released your arm? We couldn't very well have flamed it off, now could we?"

  "But—"

  "Listen to me, Miz Callis. I'm a firm believer in karma. What goes around, comes around. When I go to meet my maker, whether it be tomorrow or decades from now and she looks me in the eye and asks if my conscience is clear, I want to be able to say, 'Hell, yes, Sir.' So, I don't want any more heroes dying on my watch, got that?"

  "Hell, yes, Sir," Lani studied the toe of her boot.

  The Professor raised an eyebrow, but let the silence drag out, the only sound that of Lani's boot scuffing across the floor.

  "Good. Now that I've put the fear of, well, something in you, where do you recommend we go from here, Miz Callis?"

  Lani looked up, "What?"

  "You heard me, what's our next step? You've had better ideas than anybody else in this Spirit-forsaken expedition so far, especially me, so any suggestions?"

  "Uh—"

  The Professor held up a hand. "Let me clarify, any suggestions that do not involve you going on any more field trips?"

  Professor Jonze escorted Lani to the door. "Now remember, look properly chastened. After all, I have a reputation to maintain."

  "Yes, sir," Lani put on her best brow-beaten expression.

  "Better," Jonze grinned and then surprised her by giving her a quick hug. "Take care, Lani."

  "Really read you the riot act, huh?" asked Bax as Lani joined them at their table.

  "Let's just say I won't be going on any more field trips any time soon," replied Lani glumly.

  "Oh, that's nothing then," said Juls. "Did I ever tell you about the time after our first prospecting trip that Bax and I got busted for taking the University President's teenage niece off to this nude beach. We used a school flitter that we'd borrowed from her school. Trouble is we forgot to take the logo off. Saint Agnatha's Preparatory School for Girls."

  "You promised you'd never bring that up," Bax protested. "You said you'd take that story with you to the grave."

  Juls looked around and shrugged. "Gondwana, grave, close enough. You see what we also didn't realize is that a travel channel was filming—"

  Lani couldn't help the grin spreading across her face. Juls and Bax were doing their best to cheer up an obviously whipped Lani. She couldn't ask for better friends than that.