Message from Gondwana

by David Wiley

CHAPTER 12

  A few days later things were back to their normal furious pace. The insecticide and Lani's inhibitor had worked, the patches in the roof were holding, and most of the rooms had dried out. The field crews were running the flitters ragged, trying to bring in as many samples as possible. Mumson was outside working on Bobbie, trying to repair a rough running-turbine before Bax and Juls took her out again. Lani and Emma were frantically processing samples, trying to keep up.

  Professor Jonze also helped in the benches (a pun, Lani eventually realized to her dismay), using Kiet's lab facility. Biochemistry was not Jonze's specialty (population genetics was), but, as the Professor put it, the two were within spitting distance. Seeing their leader working alongside them seemed to light a fire under Emma, so that helped. Hoover still monitored the scents and sounds from outside, trying to improve the language algorithms, but the AI did not have much new material to decipher. Everything had been calm since Lani's visit to the sentinel. Everybody kept one eye on the countdown timer in the bottom right corner of their monitor screens. It showed the Quaddie's approximate ETA, currently 17 days and 4 hours away.

  It was like having her own ravenous demon from hell, Lani thought as she bent over to feed another sample into Alfie's ever hungry mouth. "Uh, Professor? Where are you?" the Geek's voice came over the general loudspeaker. "We have a problem."

  There was a squawk and Candece's voice sounded from the loudspeaker. The Geek must have connected her. "Team 1 to Base, we're about ten klicks out. Alice's left turbine is smoking. It might be a bad bearing; we've been riding her pretty hard."

  "Team 1, this is Base," the Geek acknowledged. Lani could hear the footsteps leave the lab next to hers, Kiet's old lab. "Can you make it back to base okay?" the Geek asked as the Professor ran down the hallway to the command center.

  Candece sounded calm. "Sure thing, kid. We will take it low and slow. Looks like Renny will have his work cut out for him, though. See you in a few, Team 1 out."

  Chen's voice broke into the general circuit. "Wait, which direction is Team 1 coming from? Please confirm, which direction is Team 1 coming from?"

  "Team 1's sample location was due east," the Geek responded.

  Several voices spoke at once. "Chen, what's the problem?" Jonze sounded out of breath, having reached the comm center.

  "Oh, Goddard, Chen's Last Stand," said Soren.

  "There's a grove of those trees, you know, that shoot the seeds—yeah, Chen's Last Stand, it's marked on the map," Chen continued.

  "Call Team 1. They have to go around. Tell them to go—" Soren blurted.

  "Team 1, do you copy? There's a—" Jonze started.

  "What was that, Karl?" Candece was talking to her partner in the flitter. It sounded like she was in a hailstorm. "We are under fire, base. Repeat we are under fire. Karl, see if you can—no time. I've got no thrust, no control, I'm trying to turn away from base. We're going down. We're—"

  The sound of the explosion outside echoed from the speakers or was it the other way around. Lani looked down curiously at the blood dripping from her thumb, she must have bitten through the skin at the base. She didn't remember—

  Racing feet down the corridor. Two people flew by, Bax and Juls. Lani glanced up at her monitor. Zach had swiveled the overhead camera to face northeast. The flitter had plowed a furrow through the surrounding vegetation for at least half a kilometer, narrowly missing the slab. Candece had somehow managed to turn it enough to avoid the base.

  Lani could see Bax and Juls running toward the edge of the slab, followed by everyone else. But before they could reach the mangled wreckage the compressed hydrogen fuel tank gave way in a tremendous explosion.

  Almost everyone else. Emma appeared, wide-eyed in the doorway. "What are we going to do? We're all going to die, one by one, we're—"

  "Just calm down," Lani said, her face white watching on the monitor. There was a stirring among the plants closest to the flames.

  Emma noticed. "Go ahead and hide then, you freak! I'm not going to just sit here while they try to kill us! They hate us, the plants hate us, they're plotting against us, can't you see it? Don't you understand? They're going to kill us!" Lani watched as Emma ran down the corridor towards her hutch, still screaming.

  Lani swung her gaze back to the monitor. What about Bax and Juls, had the fireball gotten—No, thank Goddard. They were picking themselves up from where they had been blown off their feet. The wreckage burned fiercely. There would be no survivors. A figure tried to run towards the wreckage anyway. Mumson. Juls tackled him.

  A sound suddenly registered, growing in volume. She had never bothered to disconnect the alarms for the high levels of the aggressor volatiles. She glanced towards her monitor. The volatiles had exploded off the top of the graph, too high to plot. Hoover automatically adjusted to a logarithmic scale in order to track them. She wished the AI had not done that, the concentrations were still shooting up almost vertically. The acoustic sensors were going crazy too. She looked back at the video. No wonder, a large chunk of debris from the flitter, one of the turbines it looked like, had pinwheeled away from the wreckage and taken out the sentinel on that side.

  Lani punched in to the general circuit. "Bax! Professor! Everyone! Get the hell out of there! The plants, the signals, they're going crazy! Hurry!"

  Even as she watched, she could see vines reaching across the slab. It was going to be a race between the humans and the plants. The protective electrical grid kept arcing, but more and more vines kept coming until they overwhelmed it. It looked like the other flitter, Bobbie, was a prime target. Of course, Mumson had the turbines idling while trying to fix them. The plants were sensitive to sound. They must associate that frequency with a threat after Alice had exploded. At least if the plants went after the flitter they wouldn't—hold it! The cameras showed two figures running out of the building's other hatch towards the flitter, Emma and the Geek. It looked like the Geek was trying to tackle her. They both went down, but Emma kicked him in the face and bolted for the flitter's hatch. Marx, no! But now it looked like Bax and the others had spotted her. They were running over.

  Emma had jumped into the pilot's seat. Only then did Lani notice the thick vines that had crept in from the other side of the flitter and into the turbines, attracted by the sound of the idling engines. Lani could see Emma frantically working the throttles. Why hadn't the engines started? Oh, the flitter's sensors must have detected the blockage. The others were almost at the flitter. She saw Bax reaching for the handle as Emma punched the emergency start button. The miniature charges forced the turbines to spin. The flitter lurched forward as the turbines shattered. Shrapnel flew in all directions, impaling Bax and puncturing the fuel tank. Lani screamed as the hydrogen tank exploded.

  Her ears ringing, Lani climbed back to her feet. Smoke filled the corridors, rushing inward from the explosion along the side of the building. She coughed, her eyes watering. What was happening? There must have been a surge in the circuits. Her monitor was blank except for the stopwatch in the center showing that the system was rebooting. Long seconds later a badly pixellated picture showed three figures still moving outside near the hatch. The Professor, Mumson, and Chen. Thank—wait, they were moving away from the hatch, they had grabbed the flamethrowers from this end of the building and were heading towards what was left of the flitter. Vines were writhing everywhere, with more coming in. No! They must have thought the plants had attacked. They had not seen it like she had. The plants had only gone after the flitter. If Emma hadn't started up—Lani had to warn them. She toggled the switch for the loudspeaker, but nothing happened. The explosion must have taken the speakers out along with two of the cameras. She ran down the corridor to the hatch, but it was jammed. Something wasn't working. She started tugging on the manual release. Why wasn't it working? A flash through the porthole caught her attention. She looked out. She could
see the three figures wielding gouts of flame from the flamethrowers, but within seconds they were swarmed under by redvines, spiked snares, and—and everything else.

  She stopped wrestling with the manual release and slowly edged back down the corridor to her lab. The monitors were fully functional again, although the coverage was spotty with several cameras destroyed or not able to track. Still, it was enough. She could see a river of plants flowing across the slab towards the building. The far end of the building had been blown open; there was nothing to keep plants from coming in from that direction after the flames from the flitter bay died down. Tendrils were already at the near hatch, the one outside her lab. They were searching, prying along the edges. Oh Goddard, they were going to kill her. They were going to find her and kill her. Lani looked at the readout on the monitor, Hoover was still pumping the All-Clear mixture out, but the plants must have gotten used to it or maybe the updraft from the fires or—She caught herself rocking back and forth. Stop it, Lani. Think.

  Bax! Oh, Goddard, Bax! You didn't deserve to die. None of you deserved to die. Why didn't I die? I need a minute. Was it her imagination or could she hear the vines slithering around the hatch, down the corridors? Just breathe Lani, breathe. She looked up at her monitors. Hard to see from here. Wait, Hoover was still on line. Maybe the All-Clear volatiles no longer worked, but what about the volatile that had kept the vines off the sentinel's solar array. Had Hoover had time to analyze that? If she could have him download it to Alfie, synthesize it—and what about the acoustics? Correct syntax be damned, if she could just scream loud enough in the infrasound range, maybe, just maybe the plants would recognize her as intelligent life.

  Epilogue

  "Well that was a total bust," Qasim Khouri, Alchemistica's Chief Financial Officer shook his head.

  "No, not a total bust," corrected the Director of Research, Willemijn de Graaf, tracing her manicured nail through the condensation left by her single-malt scotch.

  The two were in the lounge on the Quadratic Equation bound for Memphis. A very nice lounge with the sinuous beauty of a hrssa wood panelling and table overhung by a large Zygocactus. The plant's segmented green stems hanging down bore a resemblance to an Earth crustacean, hence it's common name of crab cactus. The plant was a hardy one and helped cleanse the air—of some things better than others.

  "How was Gondwana not a total bust, Willie? We confirmed in the worst way possible what two previous prospecting expeditions found out. The place is deadly."

  "Maybe if we had left the Quaddie in orbit for them..."

  "Oh, come on, Willie. We didn't have a choice since Stromboli Lines cancelled our charter. We would have had to take a regular commercial liner out, and they stop in every blaggin' system. It would have added weeks to my—our schedule," Khouri took an appreciative swallow of Gandolyn brandy. It was the best. It had better be for the price Alchemistica LLC paid to keep it in stock for him. "No, I think we better accept that Gondwana is not worth the cost. There are way too many nasty, expensive surprises."

  "Which is why the planet is loaded with potential pharma compounds, Qasim."

  "Compounds which we still don't know shit about. I saw the photos. The AI's core memory was overrun by plant roots, leaching acid. Whatever the expedition discovered is lost forever along with our investment."

  De Graaf licked her lips, a habit she had when being careful about phrasing. "Not entirely lost. We did pick up Miz Callis."

  "Yeah, like that's going to help us. The recovery team found her comatose, covered head to toe with some type of branches."

  "Vines."

  "Whatever! If it hadn't been for her implanted transponder letting us know someone was alive, we would have slagged the place from orbit," Khouri shuddered, his mind replaying the video showing the facility overrun with vegetation, including a lump in the lab section, the vines parting, slithering away when the recovery team approached, only to reveal the gaunt form of the junior biochemist. Worse, seated across from her was what looked like a parody of a human male, made entirely out of plant material. "She was like a blagging vegetable!"

  De Graaf winced, remembering the same video. "Not a vegetable," she corrected. "She is lucid."

  Khouri snorted. "Right! Babbling on about talking to trees and shrubs with different smells. Then that bit about sentinels, some type of plant men. She obviously went psychotic—not that I blame her—but if word got out to any of the tabloids about intelligent 'plant men,' it would be a PR nightmare. Our pharma prospecting would be put under an Imperial microscope."

  "I don't think we have to worry about that anymore," de Graaf observed, her generous lips quirking. "She has clammed up about the 'sentinels' after that the first day. Besides, did you read the draft report from our recovery team?"

  Khouri shrugged and refilled his glass.

  "Well, I did. I found it interesting that the plants breached the control room only through the hatch."

  "How is that surprising? We build those things like bank vaults."

  "True, but how did the plants get the hatch open? The hatches are designed to close automatically in an emergency, to act as a safe room and seal the lab's AI brain."

  "Fat lot of good it did here."

  De Graaf ignored the interruption. "It was almost like someone opened the hatch for them. And remember that signal we got from the AI when the Quaddie entered orbit?"

  "So? An automated emergency broadcast, nothing more."

  "Actually there was more. We've found there was a qmail attached, designed to route through Miz Callis' personal account."

  "We intercepted it, I hope."

  "Not before it was sent out over the UniWeb." It was de Graaf's turn to shrug. "We had no reason to stop it. Employees are allowed to access the web through shipboard computers. Besides, we weren't expecting it."

  "If your little biochemist sent out trade secrets..." Khouri impatiently brushed away part of the crab cactus that was hanging down next to his face, annoying him.

  "No, the ship's AI automatically scans and deletes anything proprietary. Miz Callis' message was merely an announcement to a few family and friends that she had survived. Nothing against company rules. It is curious, though. Why did that part of the AI, the communications module, survive down there when its memory cores were completely obliterated? How Lani—Miz Callis was so positive she would survive and then why she set it up so her message was sent out so quickly. It was almost like she was afraid she couldn't get word out later after we had picked her up."

  "Why would she think that?" Khouri asked, curious in spite of himself.

  "I think she regarded it as insurance. After all, she doesn't have a very high opinion of Alchemistica right now and I can't blame her. She feels that the company is to blame for the deaths of the rest of her team, who I gather she felt very close to.

  "But I told you that the expedition wasn't a complete bust. In fact, I think we'll be able to reconstruct the majority of the most promising chemical compounds the expedition discovered, maybe as many as a hundred."

  Khouri's jaw dropped. "What? How? I saw the AI's memory cores. Marx, you said yourself they were completely obliterated."

  "But Miz Callis' brain is not. She apparently can remember almost all of their discoveries. We did hire her because of her advanced spatial skills, but I never expected this," de Graaf's voice was tinged with what sounded like admiration. She produced a small vial, filled with a green-tinged liquid and set it on the table. "This is just an example. I'm not sure what this particular chemical does yet, but yesterday, she provided us with a couple of formulas, one of which appears to dramatically decrease the formation of amyloid plaques in human neurons. Even you might need that one day if you don't want to go senile in your second century."

  Khouri grinned wolfishly. "This is great news. Pump her for all of the formulas she remembers, and you and I should come out smelling like roses!"


  "What about Miz Callis?" de Graaf asked, her tongue playing across her lips.

  "Oh, who cares? Give her a pat on the back and a small cash bonus like we usually do. You said she was autistic. She won't care."

  "I said she was borderline, but you know autism covers a whole spectrum and the genetics and our screening tests can only go so far. In this case, something seems to have changed. I'm afraid it's not going to be so easy to buy her off, Qasim. She's demanding hazardous duty death payments to the families of her deceased team members, a promotion, a pay hike, and one percent of the company stock."

  "Impossible! The little bitch! There's no way. Why I'll space her out an airlock myself first!" he pounded a fist on the table, knocking over the vial.

  De Graaf grabbed it before it could roll off the table and set it back upright. "How, pray tell would you do that? The Quaddie's crew knows we rescued her. She sent that qmail saying she survived, including to the parents of one of her team members, Juls Baor. Naturally, they want to meet with her, to hear how their darling son died. Do I need to remind you that the Baors are both high up in our marketing department? She only has to open her mouth about the intelligent plant men on Gondwana for all hell to break loose with the Church. Besides, those all-important formulas are locked up in her head. She's got us over a barrel, Qasim."

  Khouri grabbed the vial and flung it against the wall where it smashed. "Blag it! Who is she to make demands?"

  "A very smart little scientist," de Graaf said.

  "You sound like you actually admire her!" snarled Khouri.

  De Graaf shrugged. "I think she has potential and not only in chemistry." She cocked her head. "Did you ever try that holographic game that we use for aptitude testing? "

  "Why in Darwin’s name would I do that?" Khouri frowned.

  "Everyone assumes it is just about fast twitch response, fitting three-dimensional shapes into each other as they fall down the screen faster and faster, but it takes a lot of detailed planning to get very far in it. I only made it a dozen levels or so. Lani made it through all ninety-nine," de Graaf mused. "Not everyone can go through what she did and emerge stronger and with a plan on the other side. Whether I admire her or not, I don't see that we have a choice." The smashed vial was emitting a pungent odor that made her eyes water. She got up to leave.

  Khouri followed her to the door. "Maybe, but I sure as hell don't have to like it—or her!" he said.

  De Graaf glanced back as the hatch slid open. "Look!" she pointed.

  The volatiles from the smashed vial had drifted up far enough to reach the crab cactus along the wall above their table. Its dangling stems began to writhe in response to the alarm volatiles.

  Khouri's face drained of color. "Blag me! The little bitch did that on purpose!"

  "Maybe," De Graaf agreed. "If it helps, think of it as a reminder, a last message from Gondwana."

  ###

  Thank you for reading my book. If you enjoyed it, please take a few moments to leave a review at your favorite retailer. Plus, look for my other stories set in the same Eichi Testaments Universe.

  Thanks!

  David Wiley

  Excerpt from Make No Martyrs, the first book in the Eichi Testaments series:

  Rhiia took one look at Paul and Djuka as they joined the others the next morning. "What happened?"

  Djuka and Paul spoke at the same time. "Not much." "What didn't?"

  After Paul explained, Rhiia sighed. "I can only imagine the reception we'll get at our meeting today. Even the Minister of Trade will be ready to lynch us. A number of his constituents killed by offworlders and a business burned down."

  "It wasn't much of a business," Paul pointed out. "Besides, if it hadn't been for that slime, Erol, none of this would have happened."

  "He was our contact."

  "He was slime."

  Rhiia jabbed her finger at Paul's chest. "Listen, Mister Missionary, just how many model citizens do you suppose we talk into selling out their friends and relations?" She scowled at him for several seconds then turned away. "Okay. Now we need some damage control. I would like to blast off this jerkwater planet and screw the mission, but it's too soon after the incident. We'd look guilty as hell. So we stay and try to avoid attracting any more attention to ourselves."

  She scrutinized them closely. "Paul, you came out of it fine, but not you, Djuka. The ship's minidoc can work wonders, but even tissue patches need a day or two. Besides, with those vat-grown muscles we can't claim mistaken identity. So keep out of sight for the time being.

  "Paul? A little makeup and stay out of strong lights. I need you with me today. Unfortunately, you're the only one we've got who can snow them under with that technojargon crap. Too bad the University didn't pound some common sense into your skull along with the science courses."

  Djuka grimaced. "You're treating this like a total disaster. Erol would have talked anyway. At least Paul and I made it out of the False Harpy alive."

  "With the help of that mysterious girl," Greves pointed out. "A woman, saving your asses," she gloated.

  "Enough, Greves," Rhiia snapped. "We'll have to brazen it out." She turned toward the window. "That girl bothers me, though. Who was she?"

  "Who cares?" asked Djuka. "She helped us, right?"

  Rhiia turned back, a sly smile on her face. "So? Maybe she can help us even more. Maybe we can blame the whole thing on her."