by Nancy Kress
The longer he was left alive, Kaufman reasoned, the better the chances of staying that way. Still, there was a self-imposed limit. The s-suits carried only so much air. The Fallers might prefer to let the humans die and merely harvest their dead bodies for examination.
But they’d harvested dead bodies before. This was a chance for them to acquire living ones, at no cost except a robotic spaceship. If they had such things.
More time passed. Kaufman could no longer see Marbet, nor the tunnel behind him. He saw stars, and one of the system’s distant, lifeless gas giants, and his own thoughts.
Magdalena. Dead.
Tom Capelo. Possibly dead.
Marbet Grant, whom he had loved. Possibly dead.
Admiral Pierce. Possibly sending a force right now to Q space, to set off the human artifact at prime thirteen and thus, from greed and arrogance and stupidity, possibly destroy spacetime itself.
The entire Solar System, wiped free of life as spacetime reconfigured into new fundamental particles.
He checked the wrist display on his suit. Ten minutes of air left.
Kaufman closed his eyes and drifted in mind, sped on in body. There were worse ways to die. He had done what he could. It wasn’t enough. There were also better ways to die.
When he opened his eyes again, it was to see a ship, peculiarly shaped and brightly colored, silently flying alongside him. It matched his speed and trajectory. As he watched, incredulous, a door on the ship slid open and a net emerged, made of thin filaments, and it too matched his speed and trajectory, slightly in front of him. Then the net slowed, and he was caught like a salmon stopped in its wild plunge upstream toward what the poor fish hadn’t the wit or memory to visualize at all.
* * *
He came to all at once, with no transition, like a holo snapping on. He sat up, a quick movement that made his vision darken from lightheadedness. The gravity was half a gee or slightly less. His head cleared and he looked wildly around.
Kaufman sat naked in a small, featureless room. Naked … but he was breathing all right, so the Fallers had analyzed and duplicated the air in his tank. Marbet lay unconscious beside him and, against the wall, Tom Capelo watched him.
“Hello … Lyle,” Capelo said, and a sudden wave of gladness swept over Kaufman. Capelo was alive, although he spoke like a man in considerable pain.
Kaufman moved toward Capelo. The physicist tried to grin, failed. “We … made it. Sort of. I think we’re aboard a Faller ship, or station, or whatever.”
“What are your injuries, Tom?”
“Broken arm, for sure. I think cracked ribs—it hurts when I breathe. But nothing’s bleeding, unless it’s doing it inside where I don’t know about it.”
There was nothing in the room to even make a splint for Capelo’s arm, which hung at an unnatural angle. The Fallers were taking no chances with their captives. Kaufman wondered what sort of body searches they’d performed while he’d been unconscious, and was glad he didn’t know.
Marbet stirred. Capelo said, “Go. She’s … the reason for this … lunacy, right? Get her … going.”
Kaufman moved back toward Marbet. She opened her eyes, saw him, and clutched his arm. “Lyle.…” In her voice he heard the depth of her feeling for him, and instinctively embarrassment took over.
“Tom’s here, too,” he said brusquely, “but injured. Are you able to work, Marbet? We don’t know how long before human troops show up with the other artifact.”
“Yes.” As always, she read more from his body than his words, and understood his brusqueness and her task. “Where is the surveillance stuff?”
“Not visible.”
She sat up too abruptly for the lighter gravity, corrected herself, and carefully studied the room, coming to some decision Kaufman didn’t follow. “Go sit by Tom, in that corner. Both of you stay still and quiet. Don’t provide any distraction from me.”
He did as she told him. Marbet stood up and faced an adjacent corner. She gathered herself for a moment, her head down, her small, perfect, naked body alert but not tense. Kaufman heard her take a deep breath.
Then she became somebody else.
He had seen this before, but it amazed him nonetheless. Amazed him, disturbed him, disgusted him. Marbet half crouched, holding her torso and limbs at peculiar, distorted angles. Her facial muscles contorted. Her eyes assumed a different look (how?). She began to sway off rhythm, her hands flailing in small, inexplicable gestures. In a few moments she went from a beautiful human woman to something alien and distasteful.
Kaufman knew, but only because she’d told him, that in addition to communicating Faller gestures, Marbet was doing her level best to communicate Faller femaleness. Three years ago, she had tailored her responses to the enemy prisoner in order to provoke lust displays, as she understood them. She mimed submission, pleading, total lack of threat. It was the only way the Faller, xenophobic to a degree unknown even among the most parochial humans, had been able to “listen” to her. This had worked two years ago; Marbet and Kaufman and Capelo were gambling on it working again.
Beside Kaufman, Capelo moaned softly. His eyes had closed. He grimaced in pain.
Was the enemy artifact aboard this ship? Was it a ship they were on, or some sort of station? How much time had passed, time more precious than the enemy could know, since the three humans had been plucked from space?
No answers. And no response to anything Marbet was doing.
She started doing it with more intensity. Her head wobbled, and her feet moved in tiny, trembling patterns. Kaufman had no idea how much of what she was “saying” concerned a simple desire for response, and how much concerned their actual dilemma. How did you communicate that an enemy was in great danger? And why would they believe you?
Still, the Fallers had to be amazed that a human could imitate their body language at all. That had to at least make them take notice.
Marbet had been working for at least thirty minutes. She was visibly tiring. He had almost given up hope when a mesh wall began to descend from the ceiling. It came down swiftly, neatly dividing him and Capelo from Marbet. He forced himself not to react. Then a door on Marbet’s side of the mesh opened and what could only be a robot came through. It held her own helmet and air tank, presumably refilled. Marbet put on the helmet, and Kaufman had a bad moment as he saw it seal itself around her delicate throat. The robot kept the air tank. It encircled Marbet with a mesh gate and led her out the door.
She had succeeded in communicating something. But what, and to whom? And what would the Fallers do about it?
* * *
Perhaps another fifteen minutes dragged by. Capelo seemed to be asleep, which was undoubtedly a good thing. Sleep muted pain. But when Faller robots finally appeared, it was Capelo they wanted.
They stood on the other side of the room, two alien robots, as the mesh wall ascended into the ceiling. One robot moved toward Kaufman and Capelo. It handed a helmet and air tank to Capelo, who tried to reach for them but fell back onto the floor with a cry of pain. The robot halted.
Kaufman said, careful to make no sudden or aggressive movement, “He’s hurt.” Kaufman mimed a straight arm and then a bent, dangling one; easy breathing and then labored rasps while he clutched his chest.
The robots froze. Receiving electromagnetic instructions? Probably, because after ten seconds one robot left, returning a few moments later with a second helmet and air tank and a mesh container of what looked like junk. He handed everything to the first robot, who handed it to Kaufman. The junk, he saw, included cloth, metal rods, small circular pillows, shell-shaped objects he couldn’t imagine a use for, and a sharp, oddly curved knife. The robot waited stolidly.
“This is going to hurt, Tom. Try not to faint. It’s you they want, and that has to be a good sign. Either they know who you are or Marbet succeeded in telling them. Now hold still.”
“All right,” Capelo said, and scowled fiercely. Kaufman saw what it cost the physicist to appear weak and de
pendent. Kaufman could respect Capelo’s pride.
He used the knife to cut the cloth, which was amazingly resistant, into strips. The arm first. Capelo cried out when Kaufman probed it, then forcibly aligned the broken bone and bound it to a metal rod. Fortunately the fracture wasn’t compound. Kaufman bound Capelo’s ribs. Capelo was fading in and out of consciousness.
“Stay with me, Tom.”
“Y-yes.”
“You’d have made a good soldier.”
“N-n-never.”
Kaufman finished. God, for just a single pain patch! “Now I’m going to put on your helmet and lift you.”
“I … can stand.”
“No, you can’t. Commencing operation.” Kaufman fitted the helmet on Capelo, then put on his own. Airflow started automatically. He grasped Capelo around the waist and hauled him to his feet. The physicist was small-boned, not heavy. He leaned against Kaufman.
“Steady, Tom. You can do it. Here we go.”
Half carrying, half leading Capelo, Kaufman followed the robots out of the featureless room and into the heart of the Faller station.
TWENTY-EIGHT
ABOARD A FALLER STATION
Something soft and purple underfoot, with tendrils growing up rough walls. No clear distinction between corridor and rooms, just spaces flowing into each other in crazy shapes. Holes halfway up some walls and not others. And everywhere, small flying insects, or insect analogues, landing on his naked skin and hovering in front of his helmet and making a low persistent buzz.
Insects? Something else? If only Ann could see this!
Kaufman saw no Fallers, but the walk was a short one. They stopped in a large space with something huge in the corner. As Kaufman watched, the something heaved slightly, then settled down again. It was an amorphous mass the size of a bus. It didn’t look like cytoplasm, or plant life, or hardware, or anything else Kaufman had ever seen or imagined. Maybe it was a computer. Or a food supply. Or a pet. Or a living bedroll. Impossible to tell, impossible not to feel amazed.
Two actual Fallers walked into the room. They ignored the mass, which continued to heave silently every, few minutes, shifting against the rough wall.
Maybe it was scratching itself.
Kaufman had seen a Faller up dose before, on the Alan B. Shepard. He recognized the cylindrical bipedal bodies, the powerful kangaroo-like tail for balance, the tentacled hands and alien faces. These two, in bright-colored clothes (uniforms?), stood on the far side of what Kaufman at first thought was a table. On the near side, Marbet waited, still naked except for her helmet.
It wasn’t a table. It was a horizontal screen, a flat triangular surface on a slim pedestal. Marbet and one alien held curved rods that had to be styluses of some sort.
“Tom,” Marbet said rapidly, “they showed me these things but I don’t know what they’re trying to tell me or what I should draw to tell them about Pierce bringing our artifact into Q System. I don’t think I connected. Can you hold this thing?”
Capelo’s voice sounded stronger than Kaufman had heard it yet. “What the hell are these bugs flying around for?”
Marbet smiled behind the clear plastic of her helmet. “I think they might be intelligent symbiotes. Part of the Fallers’ biology.”
“Intelligent? Am I drawing for the bugs or the bastards?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Kaufman said. “Just draw!”
Marbet dosed the fingers of Capelo’s good hand around the stylus. Everything drawn on the tabletop vanished. Kaufman hauled Capelo over to the table, and now Kaufman noticed something he’d missed before. Neither Faller wore a helmet, since this was of course their air, but both had what looked like plugs stuck in what Kaufman had thought was their breathing holes.
We smell horrible to them.
Or maybe not. Marbet had speculated that the Fallers might be more sensitive to pheromones than even humans. Maybe the Fallers were blocking the smell of humans to damp down their own instinctive, overwhelming aggressive responses to human odor. The nose plugs might be a sign of cooperation.
Capelo leaned forward, staggered, and almost fell on top of the table. Kaufman steadied him at an angle so his good hand could draw. Ceaselessly the “insects” buzzed and circled and alit and hovered.
“All right,” Capelo said, evidently for his own benefit, “this is Tunnel Number Two-one-eight, you bastards. See the doughnut floating in space? How the fuck do I know what you see? Here, five planets on the Artemis side of the tunnel. Now over here is Tunnel Number Three-zero-one leading right to your home system. See the little teeny Faller I drew on your side of it? Ah, that got you, look at you look at each other. I’d like to laser you right where you stand.”
Kaufman said to Marbet, “Is there any chance these two understand English?”
“No. I tried it with them.”
Capelo said, “Here’s your artifact, right here in Q space in your big front yard.” He drew a sphere with the familiar seven protuberances on it.
One of the aliens made a loud screech. Kaufman saw Marbet jump and he felt himself tense, but Capelo barreled on as if he hadn’t even heard. He was a fantastic sight: A skinny naked man in a clear bulbous helmet, dangled precariously over a table, one crudely splinted arm flopping at his side and the other sketching frantically to save several worlds.
“Your artifact is set at prime two, isn’t it, you fuckers.” He scribbled hard on the setting with two tiny dots beside it. “All ready to detect our artifact if we’re stupid enough to bring it into Q space. Which Pierce is, but you don’t know that yet. But you’re ready anyway. So … watch!”
Now Capelo began to draw even faster. Where was he getting the energy? Pure adrenaline, Kaufman guessed, released by tension, by fear, by hatred. Capelo’s endocrine system might even be pumping out enough endorphins to deaden pain. But it couldn’t last, Capelo couldn’t keep it up much longer. The maddening insects buzzed and circled.
“See, this is our artifact coming through the tunnel from Artemis System … that got your attention, didn’t it? We set it off at prime thirteen—” scribble, scribble “—and you see—watch!”
Capelo abruptly drove the stylus at the tabletop, again and again, making thick black marks all over Q space, except on the artifacts themselves. “Kaboom!”
Marbet said, “Don’t make loud noises, Tom. It’s an aggression trigger.”
“Tough,” Capelo said. “Now, look, you assholes come in from your system—” delicately he trailed the stylus through the tunnel from the Faller world to Q space, “and you get to pick up both artifacts. See? Now, Marbet, blank the screen.”
“I don’t know how,” she said helplessly.
“Then we’re fried,” Capelo said. Kaufman slowly … very slowly, don’t trigger aggression … swept his hand over the tabletop, looking at what he had decided was the higher-ranking Faller. The alien did something and the table blanked.
“Good show, Lyle,” Capelo said. Quickly he redrew the two space tunnels, but this time he drew the alien artifact in the Faller home system, blackening in setting prime eleven. His hand trembled. He was tiring.
“Steady, Tom,” Marbet said, her voice full of encouragement. Capelo ignored her.
“Scenario number two. Are you listening, slimebutts? Your artifact is quietly doing its little job, protecting home sweet home. We come through with ours … see? We pass right by you in Q space because we’re on setting two, a nice shield … now, we’re inside your territory, we set off at thirteen … and nothing happens. See? Stalemate. So we go home.” The stylus trailed back through two tunnels to Artemis System. “Marbet, how the hell do I know if anything is getting through to these pricks?”
“It’s getting through,” she said.
“Fine, hate to waste a good tutorial … hate to…”
“I’ve got you, Tom,” Kaufman said. “You won’t fall. Keep going.”
“One more. Here are both … both…” Capelo slipped sideways against Kaufman’s body. The stylus fell to th
e floor.
“Take him, Marbet,” Kaufman said, and picked up the stylus. Would they let him continue in Capelo’s place? If Marbet was right, their aggression responses, so strong as to be barely controllable, were activated by men like Kaufman: big, used to command. They can tell, Marbet had said, and Kaufman waited for the unknown weapon to hit him.
It didn’t. But he didn’t have to be a Sensitive to notice the shifts in Faller muscles, the rise of neck ruffs. More unsettling, the clouds of insects buzzing at his face suddenly grew larger and louder.
“Crouch, Lyle!” Marbet said. “Don’t look at anybody and start drawing quickly!”
Kaufman bent over, dropping his eyes to the table, hating both actions. Human instinctive responses. He tried to copy Capelo’s style, drawing both artifacts inside Q space, blackening both settings prime thirteen. How did you show the tearing of spacetime? He settled for wavy lines obliterating everything, and this time he extended the lines on both sides of both tunnels, wiping out not just Q space but Artemis System and the Faller home world. Everything.
“Don’t look up, Lyle,” Marbet said. “I’ll tell them to clear the slate.” Carefully she swept her arm over the table. Again a Faller did something and Kaufman was looking at a blank screen.
This was the crucial part.
Capelo and he had shown the Fallers three scenarios: two Faller victories and a stalemate, and the enemy had seemed to agree. Or at least hadn’t done anything that Kaufman interpreted as disagreement, such as shooting him. Now he was going to show them a fourth scenario, and it had better be convincing because it was all lies.
He resketched Space Tunnels #218 and #301, with Q space between them and the Faller artifact floating in Q space. He put in the five planets of the Artemis System on the far side of Tunnel #218 and the teeny Faller figure on the far side of Tunnel #301. And then he drew in another tunnel floating in the Faller System, and coming through it he drew a human ship with the human artifact inside. He blackened setting prime thirteen.