Many Moons

by Scott Azmus

  She pressed one hand to the bulkhead. As did the Vah.

  Iselle hummed the first few lines of some melody that may have been popular somewhere back home. I know I’d never previously encountered it, although it instantly and forever became “that song you can’t get out of your head.”

  Drawing away from the bulkhead, the Vah then left a Rorschach blot that reminded me of a butterfly. As each component blemish solidified, its outer sheen went from putty gray to gradually match the refractive index of lead crystal.

  “Zeke?” asked Iselle. “What are you waiting for? Touch it.”

  And, like an idiot, I did.

  As with listening to stereo music, the tune stabbed between my ears and toward the deepest heart of my mind. Still the same tune that Iselle had provided, it had somewhat transformed in nuance and meaning.

  Body heat rising, backing away, I felt a flutter push through my belly. Mind racing, I was trying to rationalize this, to connect some greater meaning to the whole event, when my subdermal again tingled. Iselle’s shuttle had arrived. Our famously reclusive treaty partners had blessed her lonely venture to their inner worlds.

  Minutes later, Sark and his senior staff gathered to see Iselle off. While she made the rounds of handshakes and warm wishes, Sark verbally—and quite correctly—berated me. I had failed to “gain any reportable information.” I had spent more time “gazing into that young woman’s eyes” than doing my job.

  I was still simmering over Sark’s rebuke when Iselle turned for one last farewell. Almost instantly, my attention cut to the package in the crook of her arm. Carved from soft stone, it was a thin-walled presentation box the size of a dehydrated ration pack. According to Sark, I could still save face by determining the nature of Iselle’s cargo while shepherding her to the landing field via sled. Both ice crawlers were down hard. Someone had methodically sabotaged each one while simultaneously robbing our supply bins of repair parts.

  “How was your day, Easy?” Our operations officer nudged me in the ribs. “How did it feel to be escorting Commodore Chastain’s sweet baby girl all about the place?”

  “Commodore Chastain?” I whispered, idiotically.

  “Of course. The man who sponsored the treaty you and I’ve sworn to enforce. She’s his youngest daughter. I swear. Go ahead,” another nudge. “Ask her.”

  Feeling confused, but trying to put the pieces together and remain fully ready to be the butt of some joke, I caught Iselle’s elbow. “Weird question. Are you at all related to Commodore Chastain?”

  Her eyes sparkled. A smile germinated and widened to the most delightful grin. “You didn’t know? Are you serious? But you’ve been so sweet!” On tiptoe, she gripped my forearms and planted a soft kiss on my cheek.

  My goodness, but wasn’t she wonderful!

  Minutes later, Dizzy greeted me with the usual bump and rub against my hip. First off, his scales were not at all reptilian. Deeply furrowed, they reminded most people of tree bark. Among his kind, Dizzy stood out as tough-minded and capable of negotiating vast swaths of wind-ripped tundra without supervision. The most independent and curious of our Vah, he was a meter tall and easily massed sixty kilos. Matching the blue-white of glacial ice, his vertical body scales carried a bright sheen. The dense fur running like a ruffled shirt cuff, “wrist” to “elbow,” attested to his overall good health.

  For my first few weeks on station, lonely and unsure where I might fit in, the Vah pens were where I first felt at home.

  “Good morning, Dizz. How about I give you a little scratch behind your ears?” I scratched the old guy along the horny structures that I had always thought of as ears.

  The first to approach Iselle, he reached out to touch her fresh, one-size-fits-all neoprene survival suit but at the last minute withdrew. Retreating, he touched palms with his companions. Reassured, returning, holding the others back with a look, he reached out to make contact and this time successfully explored the suit cuff enclosing Iselle’s wrist. He looked to me. The fabric was identical to that of my suit, though much less timeworn.

  Tossing his head proudly, Dizzy invited his companions forward. Deeply pigmented, his deep-set eyes revealed unexpected awareness. Ordinarily slow to give their trust, the Vah gathered around Iselle. A heartbeat later, they were all touching palms.

  What’s next? Preening? Petting? Love letters?

  I loaded saddlebags. Checked gang lines. As Iselle crooned phrases direct from the wall scrawls, I again made out complementary reverberations at the edge of consciousness. I couldn’t understand what she was getting out of this, but I was again suffused with a shared swell of happiness and, I must admit, tinges of jealousy. I’d known these Vah for years, and here they were accepting her within seconds as they might some lost member of their tribe.

  When prepping a pulling team, I tried to match speed, strength, and gait. Dizzy ran up front and had always demonstrated an uncanny ability to avoid thin ice and deep snow pockets. Iselle’s belongings barely added any weight to the sled and she kept her secret cargo in hand as she boarded. When I open the pen’s outer doors, ice pellets ricocheted from our goggles. The storm had worsened, but the Vah took little notice as we ramped toward top speed.

  As the aurora sent curtains of tourmaline light dancing across the permanent twilight, ridges and jagged seams flashed behind vast tidal pools of silver reflectance. I tilted my head back to better peer under my outer parka’s fur-rimmed hood. Closer than I would normally prefer, cottony snow and overhanging icicles marked the edge of the great crevasse. Thin ice glowed pale turquoise. I’d always found the sound of sled runners on snow soothing.

  When we unexpectedly cut hard right, I had to trust Dizzy’s trail knowledge and instinct. Even though I had lost the ability to gauge our progress, the Vah feathered their scales against the punishing wind and forged on like a rowing team pushing against heavy current. From what I’d been able to tell, some of Dizzy’s favorite days were the crappiest out on the glacial surface if only because on such days he had to be that much more focused.

  “Iselle?” I meant to discuss her private cargo. I was, after all, under orders. Instead, I asked, “How long will you be gone? I mean, maybe we’ll see each other when you head back home.”

  “Sadly,” she said, “this journey is meant to be a lifetime commitment.”

  We rode less than a meter apart, but something in her voice held me at greater distance. In the near silence, I eventually gained the feeling that we had drifted off course; a sensation confirmed when we stopped at the cusp of a rising cutback. There, we gazed out over the tops of Vah homes and community gathering places, hexagons and circles in shades of slate gray and silver.

  “Do not be frightened,” said Iselle. “Please, Zeke. It may take a while, but you will come to accept all you see. For now, skip all intervening emotion and try to enjoy.”

  Wild Vah surrounded us. Dizzy shattered a rind of clear ice and unclipped his harness. He expertly released the rest of his team. Meeting my gaze and thoroughly matching the tone of my usual greeting, he straight out stated, “Afternoon, Easy. How about I give you a little scratch behind the ears?”

  I could not respond with anything more than a bracing of teeth. I felt oddly nervous; oddly exhilarated.

  Without setting out to do so, we toured what I took to be Dizzy’s home away from home. It was sparse and furnished with an odd assortment of human artifacts. I saw several vital parts belonging to our ice crawlers. Pieces of heating duct. Cooking utensils ill-formed for Vah hands.

  So much for all the mysterious breakdowns we had blamed on climate, hard radiation, and gravitational flux.

  But if the parts shortage and incidents of sabotage turned out to have—who knew?—some strategic purpose for the Vah, I had to wonder how far they would go to keep us dependent on them. Who was keeping whom?

  Dizzy brought us to a deeply-nested meeting hall. Raised bowls, large and small, cupped bright, glowing embers. A peninsula of dark stone thrust into a large cir
cular yard of shallow seating. Out of the at-least 1000 Vah spectators, I recognized few familiar faces.

  The architecture both surprised and shamed me. I had treated “my” Vah well, but always always as animals.

  My God! Some of the old-timers, the first humans upon this moon, visitors well before the treaty, had once stopped dominance fights among the Vah by whacking the aggressor directly and forcibly across their face. Survey officers had even controlled their first Vah teams by knocking out the teeth of all but the breeding males! Some had once killed all who refused to obey!

  Iselle’s gaze found mine, her expression both a question and a lingering invitation. The chamber’s light held the exact spectral color of the system’s distant sun. The recirculated air warmed bare skin and carried the odor of cooking, washing, and child rearing. As Iselle unpacked, something in her eyes made me think that she would rather run back to our sled and, Vah willing, head straight out and keep right on running.

  Her package contained twin jewels the size of chicken eggs.

  “Our survey teams found these gems several star systems from here but within a city with architecture exactly matching that of the Vah. Negotiations via probe uplink promised something quite special in return for their delivery.”

  The oldest Vah I had ever seen, flesh and deeply-scarred scales white on gray on white, exchanged the brilliant gems for a small bundle wrapped in rubbery, yellow leaves. Tree leaves of some kind...on a moon one-hundred percent devoid of anything naturally photosynthetic.

  Warm vapor issued from amongst the leaves. Someone delivered a silver bowl that matched those in our station’s galley. Spilling from the leaves and from Dizzy’s cupped hands (I almost said “paws”) the gray-green, red polka-dot lump bobbed in liquid amber. A segmented globe, it glistened as if velvet to the touch. The accompanying fluid held the viscosity of warm honey, but with the fragrance of sea salt and citrus.

  Fighting the grip of minute cilia, Dizzy drew the pod to the back of the bowl. Its dorsal surface bunched as it rolled an erratic figure eight. Flexing, it squirmed along the bowl’s lip. From three paces away, I got the feeling it was trying to reach out with waves of déja-vu and tangible desire.

  Dizzy salted a prominent suture with gray dust. The pod quivered and rolled like a blob of mercury while its outer casing oozed into a gelatinous sheath. Fingers gleaming, Dizzy drew a strand of milky connective tissue into a girdle. He dusted an exterior suture and paused while translucent polygons sagged and gave way.

  Before I could ask, Iselle whispered, “Yes, Zeke. A symbiont.”

  I caught a note of mental anguish as the symbiont’s neural mass spilled from its casing. Gold speckles on some shade of yellow over buff-white, the creature was insubstantial. Almost invisible. A mass of tightly plaited threads. Enough complimentary nerve tissue to more than duplicate any sentient creature’s central nervous system.

  Dizzy teased the fibers into a loose skein.

  At this point, something like anxiety seemed to force Iselle’s tongue. “I’ve been taught that a flash of mutual examination may precede a loss of awareness as the Vah symbiont weaves through all three divisions of the human nervous system. Tissues fuse with the spinal cord and elements of the peripheral nervous system. Meanwhile, the autonomic nervous system, the chain of interconnected ganglia controlling involuntary functions—heart action, respiration, digestion—remains largely unaffected. The outward, physical changes should be less…drastic.”

  Hyperventilating, I wanted to knock the bowl from Dizzy’s grasp and crush the damned thing under the heel of my boot. “Isn’t there someone else? Someone else willing to attempt this? Why you? Couldn’t your father intervene somehow?”

  Iselle silenced me with a look. Tears welled but hung unshed. “The stipulations of our treaty remain clear. No human may probe deeper into this planetary system. Unless.” She nodded at Dizzy and at the symbiont. “The Vah can, if you are willing, provide a second—”

  She broke off, palmed a free-running tear from her cheek, smiled shyly, even contritely and added, “I might be allowed to bring a companion...if I so choose.”

  This had all happened way too fast for me. Draft animals had just become, what? People, in their own right? And what of this symbiont of theirs? I couldn’t even look at it. There came a burning in my throat and I wanted to spit. Why was I so afraid? Why did my…repulsion, why did all of that seem to so easily and so thoroughly paint Iselle?

  Not at all feeling a chill, I shivered. The idea of letting some creepy-crawly thing set up housekeeping inside my skull made me want to—

  Never mind.

  I met Iselle’s gaze for an all-too-brief sliver of time before an ignorant tremble made me break contact.

  “Be well, Ezekiel Stillman,” said Iselle, voice frosty. “But know that we are only allotted a single lifetime. If we make good decisions along the way, a single span of decades may be more than enough to grasp all of the goals within our reach.”

  Curtsying and then bowing somewhat to the gathered Vah, she stood as though anchored by some great weight.

  Dizzy carried the fibrous mass to her lips. Wispy tendrils brushed her cheeks. And then, the instant Iselle’s eyes flashed with regret over loneliness over fear, the damned thing lunged straight up her nose.

  She staggered back. “I am losing...focus. Thoughts...fray. Images intertwine. Perceptions...mingle.”

  Expression slack, she gripped Dizzy’s hand. Turning it palm up, she rubbed his nib creases as though keying an urgent text message.

  Dizzy whistled something.

  When Iselle responded in similar tone and cadence, I looked away. For an instant, time stopped. Reality…shifted and the wave of revulsion I’d somehow postponed finally hit. Everything seemed so wrong! So hideously wrong!

  Somehow deeply compelled, I turned away and blindly sought exit, any exit, as the collected Vah, “domestic” and wild, lifted all their happy voices in song.

  One last look?

  I just…couldn’t.

  What should I have done? I mean, were Iselle and I supposed to be in love or something after spending just those few hours together?

  The Vah took her to the orbital lifter.

  One or more of them must have guided me home.

  The weather changed the next day. The storms passed, as did the months and years. I push away from Sark’s desk, now my desk. My windows frame a healthy, growing colony. The Vah do not work for us any longer. We are trading partners, though very few of us are yet allowed any degree of travel inward toward the warmth of their sun.

  Over the years, I’ve noted changes in the Vah. As they more and more resemble Iselle in their hearts, I realize that my life needs change. To that end, I have plunged all my savings into the illegal purchase of a rather plump symbiont pod. The nutrient fluid is not as sticky as I recalled. When the pod brushes my knuckles, I sense the symbiont’s presence as an aura of casual intimacy. Its flesh is blood warm and its attempts to invade my feelings...obvious.

  Memories of Iselle wrench at my soul. I suppose that I had very much grown to admire her in that one single day. Not because she was in-your-face gorgeous or anything, rather more for her poise in a new situation and for her strength in making me better see the Vah.

  Will the symbiont help me find her? Or will I have to be satisfied with my memories of her?

  Time for a decision.

  Too many hours in the neighborhood of this gas giant have accelerated the onset of dementia. Tiny areas of my brain have died for lack of blood supply. I forget things. I can lose the thread of a discussion or even forget the point toward which I had intended to steer our scientists’ thinking. My ability to maintain and manipulate information “live” in a multistep process has faded. Now and then others have puzzled over certain conversation-inhibiting lacunae in my everyday discourse.

  Dammit, I keep forgetting things!

  But now, given a choice of forgetting me or forgetting Iselle, I choose me.

  P
reface: Oceans Above

  I have encountered whales, porpoises and dolphins far out in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, at marine parks, and while snorkeling in the Philippines and Maldives Islands. Somehow, their mere presence always brings a swell of joy that I’ve always had to struggle to adequately contain.

  Yes, I sometimes can’t quite breathe when we’re up close and personal. Yes, that’s a stupid, even painful grin. Yes, those may be happy tears welling.

  Mia and Jute are out there somewhere. I hope you each get to meet them in person sometime. This story is new to this anthology.

  Oceans Above

  The objects scored fine white trails against the sky. Others followed over every ocean and major sea. They were spacecraft. Starships. Or parts of starships. Immense orbs which settled amid and then easily dwarfed the greatest sea swells. Clearing ducts and pipelines, they flushed vast holding tanks before gathering fresh reaction mass.

  They ignored all hails and calls.

  Six days passed before their silent exodus. They left no calling card. No artifact. The only sign of their passage: a contamination. The introduction of displaced ecosystems.

  Uncounted new bacteria. Fourteen varieties of dinoflagellate. A bivalve species resembling the extinct phylum Brachiopoda. The larvae of nautiloid creatures with spiral shells of gleaming, viridian glass.

  A planetary invasion? An oversight?

  In the end, it didn’t matter. As the alien fauna displaced niche communities, the nautiloids found an adversary. The dolphins and toothed whales found them...delicious.

  The chemical imbalance showed up in the third generation. The fins were changing. Smarter, faster, they quickly incurred humanity’s jealous wrath.

  2049:

  Mia surged into the jump waldo. Resilient pads gripped each flipper. Air hissed. The expected moment of anxiety came and went as the respirator gripped her blowhole. Her flanks were deep blue above white. A dark border ran from each eye to the corners of her beak. Circular scars traced the arc of her lower jaw.