CROSSFIRE

by Nancy Kress

  But could the humans behind them, Naomi and Karim and the others?

  They did better than Shipley would have imagined. It was half an hour before he sensed two more people creeping up behind him and sitting down. He didn't have to turn to know that they were Ingrid and Naomi. Whatever the others in the camp were now doing, presumably under Gail's direction, they were doing it quietly.

  Another half hour passed.

  Shipley could feel the second stage of silence taking him. First, the sweet shared peace. Then, sometimes, if one was fortunate, the deeper meaning. He had never found words to adequately describe it. The closest he had ever come was in a poem by Andrew Marvel, whose life had been the reverse of tranquil:

  Meanwhile the mind from pleasure less

  Withdraws into its happiness;

  The mind, that ocean where each kind

  Does straight its own resemblance find;

  Yet it creates, transcending these,

  Far other worlds, and other seas;

  Annihilating all that's made

  To a green thought in a green shade.

  Now Shipley, a green thought in a green shade, had no idea how much time was passing. A deep joy pervaded him. Not the Truth of the Light, but something else, something of such beauty and humble gladness that—

  "Pheromones," George Fox said. "They're drugging us. No, don't get up, it's okay. Very light."

  Shipley stumbled upward, and his transcendence shattered.

  The other four stayed where they were. Shipley staggered back to camp and said to Gail, "George says they're using pheromones on us. To make us feel things..."

  "What things?" Gail demanded.

  He couldn't say to her, I thought I had touched my own soul. Instead he said, "Happiness."

  She frowned. "Artificial happiness? Like fizzies?"

  But he had never tasted fizzies.

  Lucy said, "That doesn't sound right, Doctor. Ingrid and George's tests said the aliens aren't DNA-based. How could they produce pheromones that affect our DNA-based systems?"

  Shipley didn't know. Shame flooded him, that he had not been able to tell the difference between a genuine religious experience and a drug.

  Gail said, "Should we go take them out of range? Whatever that is!"

  "George says not. He seems to think it's just a ... a light effect that humans can handle. Like caffeine."

  But Shipley could not handle caffeine.

  Gail frowned. "Well, all right ... I guess he's the expert. But if it goes on too much longer ... do you know how long you were just sitting there, Doctor?"

  "No. But I'm going back."

  "You are? Why?"

  He couldn't explain. Because of the shame. Because in some way Gail could never see, he still felt he was meant to make this contact, with these aliens. Because his own soul directed him to, and that was the only genuine prompting of the Light that he'd received for days. But Gail wouldn't have understood any of that, so Shipley said the easiest thing. "Because Naomi is there."

  Gail nodded, too disciplined to blush.

  Shipley started back toward the shuttle. But Lucy put a hand on his arm. "Doctor ... what do you think they want?"

  "So far, they merely seem to want to sit with us."

  "To sit with us," Gail repeated.

  "Yes," Shipley said.

  "Well, no harm in that, I suppose. But no gain either. Do you know you've been sitting there for six hours?"

  Shipley hadn't. He shook his head. Gail then said, "Just sitting there without saying or doing anything—weren't you bored?" and he turned to stare at her in astonishment, this alien who did not understand the first thing about him at all.

  Eventually the humans got hungry. Ingrid must have slipped away and then come back without Shipley hearing her, because a sandwich and bottle of water were quietly pushed toward him on the groundcover. He ate and drank both slowly, as did the others. This led to bathroom needs, and one by one the five people left softly and returned just as softly. The aliens didn't react, nor show any similar needs of their own. The joy-producing pheromones had stopped soon after they began.

  By twilight, nothing had happened. Naomi slowly pulled her translator out of its sack. Jake didn't object, so she put it in front of him, turned it on, and returned quietly to her place.

  "It's set to assimilate their language," she whispered, "and to put together a lexicon and grammar as soon as possible."

  "They're not using any language," Jake pointed out.

  "Maybe they will if we do."

  "If this thing is so good, why didn't you use it with 'your' Furs?"

  "They'd have smashed it," Naomi said.

  Jake raised his voice, although it was still a pleasant low tone. "Hello."

  Was there a response from the aliens? Shipley thought he saw slightly more branch/tentacle waving, but he couldn't be sure.

  "Hello. We are humans." Slowly Jake pointed at himself and then at Shipley and George, seated beside him.

  Nothing.

  "Hello. We are humans. We are glad you are here."

  Again the sweet, treacherous, drugged simulation of joy slipped into Shipley's mind.

  "That's a positive response," George said. "Keep on talking, Jake."

  "Hello," Jake repeated. "We are humans. We are glad you are here."

  Naomi said from behind Shipley, "Hello. We are humans. We are glad you are here."

  "Hello," George said, "we are humans. We are glad you are here."

  Ingrid repeated this, and Shipley felt he had no choice but to do the same.

  Regret washed over him. Silence as a form of communication was at an end.

  17

  For an hour, people went on speaking to the aliens, simple sentences about the trees, groundcover, sun, their bodies. Pointing and smiling accompanied the words. None of it seemed to make the slightest difference. Jake felt like an idiot.

  He dozed off sitting on the "grass"; he hadn't had much sleep the last few nights. Beside him, George said urgently, "Wake up, Jake. Something's happening."

  It was dusk again. One of the carts rolled toward the dead alien. Jake felt every muscle in his body tense. Was it going to come now, the retaliation?

  The cart stopped beside the shattered dome. From his angle of vision, Jake could just make out a slot opening in the cart bed. Something snaked slowly out.

  "Oh, bless my ears and whiskers," George breathed.

  The tentacle slowly—how slowly! These creatures did nothing in haste—didn't resemble the vines inside the dome. The tentacle was slimy and viscous, like a slug but more so. It crept leisurely along the ground and over the dead alien. Then just as leisurely it crept back and slipped into the slot in the cart. The slot closed. All three carts rolled up the ramp and the shuttle door closed. It was full night.

  George, Ingrid, and Shipley crowded around the body. "Glistening with residue," Ingrid said.

  "I think it's dissolving," George said. "They left behind an acid or toxin or maybe a bacterialike organism."

  Shipley said, "It might be infecting the environment."

  "Get away from there," Jake said sharply. "No samples, Ingrid, George—none. We have no idea what the significance of that is to these ... creatures."

  " 'Vines,' " George said. "We should call them 'Vines.' Actually, Gail suggested the name. I have some speculations I want to talk about, Jake."

  "At camp."

  Gail and Karim had prepared food more elaborate than the usual synth instabake stuff. Jake suspected Karim was responsible for this; Gail had never been much of a cook. There was a casserole of actual vegetables from the farm Thekla was pioneering. The food revived Jake, who hadn't realized how hungry he was.

  "Are the vegetables all right?" Karim said. "Thekla worries that the different soil will affect the taste of Earth produce."

  "It tastes wonderful to me," Shipley said, "although I don't know if it's the vegetables or this wonderful sauce." Karim beamed.

  Food didn't matter much t
o George. After a few hasty mouthfuls, he said, "Okay. Listen. I'd like to put together what we saw. Jump in when you want to disagree or augment me."

  "That bioarm that dissolved the dead alien—"

  "That did what?" Gail said, startled, and George had to backtrack to describe the event for those who'd remained the hundred yards away in camp.

  "Anyway, the arm that came out of the cart resembled a biofilm, a colony of bacteria that can develop properties far more sophisticated than a single bacteria. Terran biofilms produce a coat of slime that protects them from some antibiotics. They also develop complicated chemical signal systems and complex architectures of tubes and water channels to distribute nutrients and oxygen. And they're mobile, creeping along on pili.

  "Now, here's my reasoning: the Vines don't breathe our atmosphere, the domes over them argue that. They can't interact directly with the Greentrees environment. But they do have traces of that same slimy substance on them under the domes. An extension of that, controlled by the Vine, could seal itself inside the slime, protected from contamination by gas or solid outside the dome. It could also deposit on their dead fellow some chemical to dissolve its poor misplaced body."

  "A death rite," Shipley said.

  Lucy said, "But why did it take so long? We killed the Vine yesterday." She glanced around for Franz Mueller, but he was at the stove, not listening.

  Ingrid said thoughtfully, "The Vine might have needed that long to synthesize the bioarm. They seem to do everything very slowly."

  George was gathering enthusiasm. "They're not DNA-based, so—"

  "There goes panspermia as a galactic theory," Ingrid said.

  "—so even though they're something like animals and something like plants and something like bacteria, we can't assume too much analogous function. But at least that triple hybrid is a way to begin thinking about them."

  Gail said tartly, "And do these thoughts include what they might do to us? If they do everything so slowly, maybe they take revenge slowly, too."

  Jake had been thinking the same thing. "Tomorrow we should resume sitting there just the way we did today. Remind them that we're trying to make nonviolent contact."

  Ingrid said, "You don't know that's how they're interpreting what we're doing. You don't even know they're aware we're there at all."

  "Oh, great," Gail said. "Knocking at the door of aliens that can't hear. That's a good use of time."

  "It is, though," Nan Frayne said, and Gail made a face.

  Jake said, "Anything on your translator program, Nan?"

  "Of course not. They have to make sounds before sounds can be analyzed."

  Gail said, "I've been thinking. Perhaps a team should sit here and meditate with the aliens. But it doesn't need all of us to do that. Faisal has been comlinking all day, Jake. He's doing a good job of running Mira City, with Fengmo's help, but there's a lot of corporate information they just don't have. I think I should go back tomorrow, with maybe Lucy and Karim and Nan and Dr. Shipley."

  Nan said angrily, "I'm not leaving!"

  "Nor me," said Karim. "As long as there's a chance I might get inside that shuttle, I want to stay."

  Shipley said, "I, too, would like to stay, although I don't think I can sit all day on the ground again. These old bones are too stiff. I could stay in camp."

  Lucy said nothing. Jake hadn't spoken to or looked at her; he was still angry she'd come to camp against his direct orders. She flushed and looked at the ground.

  Gail said, "You mean I'm the only one leaving?" She looked directly at Nan, whose brows rushed together in a deep scowl.

  Nan said shortly, "Looks that way. Unless you decide to stay."

  Gail scowled, too. "I have obligations."

  Nan shrugged. Battle of the Titans, Jake thought. Two strong-willed lovers; it would never work. They would kill each other. This thought made him think more kindly of Lucy, usually so pliable. Although not about being here at camp.

  Gail said stiffly, "Then Lucy and I will return to Mira City tomorrow," and Lucy didn't contradict her.

  George was still theorizing. "Terran plants are amazing biochemists. They produce a huge array of complicated molecules, not only to sustain themselves but to manipulate animals. Scent to attract pollinators. Toxins to repel predators. Even methods of regulating other species' reproduction ... Did you know that there's a certain tree that includes in its leaves a molecule that prevents caterpillars from ever turning into butterflies? A way of limiting leaf-eaters."

  "So maybe now we're all sterile," Gail said.

  George ignored her sarcasm. "I'm thinking of that intoxicating scent the Vines released when we started talking. They wanted us to go on talking. They synthesized and released, probably from that same slot in the cart as the biofilm, a molecule that would please us. But we're DNA and they're not! Think about that a minute. They knew enough about us to create that molecule after a day's exposure to us, and without any direct physical contact!"

  Ingrid said, "They could have been sampling the air from the second the shuttle landed. The air swarms with DNA life."

  Jake said, "Or they could have been here before." The idea had just occurred to him, and it was appalling. "George, can you make a guess at the relationship between the Vines and the Furs, other than both having come to Greentrees from somewhere else?"

  "No," George said.

  "But the Furs are DNA-based."

  "Oh, yes. They're similar to Terran mammals. Not to any one species, but they're bipedal, warm-blooded, brain encased in a cranial membrane, and so forth. In fact, remarkably like us, which suggests there may be one basic optimum configuration for evolving DNA-based sentience."

  "What if," Jake said slowly, "the Vines are here because of the Furs? They're obviously much more advanced than Furs or—"

  "Plants are advanced?" Gail said skeptically.

  George said, "It depends on what 'advances' you value. We value language, writing, all that. But plants evolved on Earth earlier than we did, and have adapted to more niches. In fact, you could argue that plants have domesticated us and not the other way around. For millennia humans have improved plant species by artificial selection. We also carry their genes farther distances than they could themselves, and we nourish them for their flowers and fruit and grains. In one sense, we're the plants' servants. We've functioned to help them reproduce, conquer disease, and multiply. We serve them."

  "I'm going to bed," Gail said abruptly.

  If she expected Nan to follow her, she was disappointed. But Shipley said, "Me, too," and Jake saw how haggard the old man looked.

  George was unstoppable. "In fact, if plants hadn't developed flowers, humans might not exist. The majority of large mammals could only occur after fruits and seeds concentrated and multiplied the world's supply of food energy. Without flowers, the world might still belong to reptiles. Flowers created us, and they developed shapes and scents pleasing to us, and we in turn serve them. They enslave us with beauty and sweetness, just like women."

  Nan snorted. Despite himself, Jake looked at Lucy.

  "And these Vines," Ingrid said, and there wasn't quite the enthusiasm in her voice that there'd been in George's, "intoxicated us once. Already."

  Karim said, "And as toolmakers they're also better than we are. They have that ship that can accelerate/decelerate at rates we can only dream of."

  Private Mueller suddenly appeared. "Mr. Holman, I think we must have the guard again tonight, all the night."

  "Yes," Jake said, "I think you're right."

  He left George and Ingrid still talking botany and walked a little way toward the grove of tall narrow trees, hoping that Lucy would follow. She did.

  "Jake, I'm sorry that I disobeyed your orders and came here."

  "No, you're not. And I'm not either, not anymore."

  He put his arms around her and she leaned against him. She felt delicious in his arms. "Ah, Lucy, how can I tell you what to do, you or anybody else? This is an unprecedented situation. Whe
re in the Mira Corp charters do I look up 'Director's Behavior During Silent First Contact With Alien Plants'?"

  She laughed. "Do you think they're going to blow us all away, Jake? Is this our last night alive?"

  "If so, let's make the most of it." His hand moved to her breast.

  "But you don't really think—"

  "I think tomorrow will be exactly like today," Jake said. "More sitting, more meditating, more futile chattering. And nothing will happen."

  Her voice dropped, grew huskier. "Then maybe we should—"

  "Jake, Lucy," Ingrid's voice said, "I'm sorry to bother you..."

  "Then don't!" Jake snapped. God, couldn't he have even this one moment of unanticipated sweetness?

  Ingrid emerged from the shadows, her tone hardening. "Gail said to get you. Faisal just comlinked. There's a quee message from Earth."

  "Repeat it once more," Jake said, not caring if he sounded redundant. He was finding it hard to concentrate.

  Faisal spoke slowly and clearly from Mira City. " 'Third Life Alliance in charge in Geneva. War continues. Resources strained but hope to launch small scientific ship to Greentrees late next year to meet aliens. Meanwhile preserve good relations with aliens at all cost.'"

  Jake pulled at the skin on his face. Preserve good relations with aliens at all cost. Right. And the quee referred to the Furs; no message had as yet been sent to Terra about the Vines.

  Lucy said, "Who are the 'Third Life Alliance'?"

  "We don't know," Gail said. "Whoever came to power, I guess."

  "But will they still be in power late next year?" George said.

  Ingrid said, "It doesn't say who this Third Life Alliance are conducting a war against. Quee messages keep getting shorter and shorter."

  "Preserving resources," George said.

  Lucy's voice was troubled. "So the new scientific expedition can't arrive for at least six years, ship time? Seventy-two years to us?"

  "Not necessarily," Karim said. "It's been over seventy years since we left Earth. There might have been great scientific advances. They might have some new faster drive or space-time shortcut."