Contamination Event (Short Story)

by Adam Wasserman

  “You mean, as in countries?”

  Dalia nodded. “Children were trained to feel that they belonged to a group defined by this arbitrary geographical unit. Remember that before the Troubles societies were divided into the small, privileged elite and everyone else. Education – and chiefly topics like history and religion – was used as a tool to shore up this elite's position.”

  “How?” I asked.

  “By pitting one group against the others, of course!”

  Sergei pushed his plate away and sank back in his chair. “The concept of the nation-state always struck me as primitive and tribal. And yet –” he paused as if unsure he should finish his sentence.

  “Now, now,” Dalia pressed him. “There are no ridiculous ideas among argonauts. Out with it!”

  Sergei pursed his lips. “Well, it's just that one benefit of a system such as theirs is that students were taught discipline and conformity. Subjective information isn't like learning to calculate orbital trajectories or how to synthesize organic compounds. To succeed, you have to learn to spit out what is expected of you whether you agree with it or not.”

  His suggestion was met with a moment of uncomfortable silence.

  “And is that a good thing?” Esther finally asked.

  Sergei shrugged. “Not really, I suppose. Perhaps I'm not explaining myself. What I mean is – we have the perfect life on Earth, don't we? There is food and energy and medicine, finally enough for everyone. Machines do most of the labor. No one has to work unless they want to.”

  “Yes, yes,” Dalia agreed, nodding emphatically. “Every human being is free to pursue her own interests.”

  “We've become so used to doing whatever we want, we take offense if anyone wants to impose rules we don't agree with.”

  Another moment of silence followed, but shorter this time.

  “Sergei,” I began, “I don't know what you're on about. Look at us! We're living examples right here before your very eyes that what you're saying isn't true.”

  “Not at all.”

  “Our entire day is governed by rules – rules that IFEDS has laid out for us! From how long we're allowed to sleep to when we must bathe – we can't even go outside without following an hour's worth of procedures!”

  “True, but we like the rules. We agree with the utility of the rules. And by following the rules, we get to explore space. Those students from ancient times – not so much. If they managed to complete their schooling, it also went without saying that they could follow directives and conform to social situations that weren't to their liking.”

  “Perhaps that is true,” Dalia agreed slowly. “But those people were being exploited. I don't think that is an enviable condition at all.”

  Sergei threw up his hands and smiled wanly. “You shouldn't listen to me, of course. I've become a grumpy old man years before my time.”

  “Hoorah!” I called out and slapped the table loudly.

  We all preferred to agree with him than think he was being serious.

  The next morning we gathered around the table to study a map of the vicinity. The bright, sharp markings appeared to be embedded within the thick, transparent tabletop. Contour lines were in drawn black, and – contrasting with them – atmosphere pressure lines in dashed white. A cold front was approaching from the northeast. The fungal fields were colored in burgundy, exposed rock in grey, and the ocean – bleeding off the edges – in blue.

  An orange cross near the center of the map indicated our position. It was located at the top of a finger of rock jutting fifteen meters out from the fungal fields.

  I pointed. “The cybers completed a stairway down last night.”

  Dalia was pleased. We both knew that meant no more scaling the rock face.

  Esther leaned on the table and casually asked about the planetary sea. “Isn't it about time we sent one of the scouts?”

  She was teasing Sergei, of course. Everyone knew he was hesitant to risk valuable hardware until he was sure it would return unharmed. He curled his bottom lip and stubbornly shook his head. “We don't know anything about the shoreline,” he said.

  “Then let's get some data.”

  “What's the big fuss about the ocean?” Sergei protested. “Isn't there enough of interest up here?”

  A loud buzz from the comm station announced a high priority dispatch from Hornet. I hurried over, pressed my thumb to the reader, and words began to flash across the screen.

  “Amateurs,” I announced. “They came out of the portal and are descending to the surface. They didn't respond to a hail, but Hornet thinks they're on their way here.”

  And sure enough, there came a rumbling from above us, a flash of light, and the clouds parted.

  The billowing, yellow-tinted clouds of Zarmina comprised a thin layer starting some twenty kilometers above. As the landing craft broke through, it left behind a rapidly collapsing cylinder in the cloud deck. Through the top of our transparent dome, we caught a hazy glimpse of the large, orange disk of HO-Librae. Then it was gone.

  Dalia followed the ship's track at the comm station and watched it land. “Smack in the middle of the fungal fields,” she said in disgust.

  Sergei shrugged. “They have every right.” Then, turning to me and suggested, “Why don't you and Esther go down and welcome our visitors, eh?”

  I knew why he wanted Esther to go. After all, we had no idea who we were dealing with and Esther was our best shot. But why me? Like Dalia, I had no patience for amateurs.

  After the Troubles ended on Earth – two centuries of war and famine spurred on by nationalism and destructive climate change – there was a great deal of cleaning up to do. Radiation poisoning from nuclear explosions and breached power plants was the most obvious problem, but chemical seepage into the soil and ocean from submerged industrial complexes was just as acute.

  No one is required to work on Earth, but most choose to. Some become athletes, academics, or artists, while others perform less interesting tasks. From monitoring the behavior of the cybers to picking up litter, from socializing with the elderly to caring for orphaned children, their work is vital to society. Perhaps the most important involves the ongoing cleanup.

  As abundant as they are, resources are still limited. The production of basic consumer goods and services – housing, clothing, energy, agriculture, electronics – is given the highest priority. Next come the needs of the academics, athletes, and artists. Whatever is left over is apportioned based on how much work a person performs.

  Some people work a great deal to acquire the resources they need to venture out into space. There is, after all, nothing to prevent them. If they form groups, they can even reach the frontier of human exploration. Occasionally, we argonauts run into them.

  Most amateur space explorers defer to our expertise. Whatever they thought about coming here, landing on a lonesome, threatening world and not understanding why it never gets dark outside is a sobering experience. Usually, we can convince them to go back. But not always. Some of these cowboys – none of whom have had the proper training in dealing with alien environments – read up on how to operate a Biological Safety Zone and consider themselves our equals. That's when we argonauts – fierce trailblazers and hearty survivalists – transform into interplanetary babysitters.

  After all, in the twenty-third century ignorance should never be fatal.

  Esther and I fetched vacuum suits and blasters from the utility closet, took down the landing coordinates of the newcomers, and exited through the outer lock.

  The flattened droplets of rain had settled into a pitter-patter. One of the cybers could be seen near the 3D printer's feeding duct, adjusting the water basin. The 3D printer required a source of base material, preferably one lightweight and abundant element such as hydrogen or helium and something heavier like carbon or oxygen. Water – when it was available – was the perfect source.

  Another cyber was visible inside the membrane protecting our ship, blurry and indistinct. The general
shape, however – a squat, irregular cylinder with a number of extensions – was unmistakable.

  In the distance, the dull roar of the towering waves crashing on the beach could be heard.

  The stairwell cut into the rock by the cyber was easy enough to find. We started our way down.

  Below, the undulating mass of the fungus. There was no breeze, but it was moving anyway. Not all at once, but in many small patches. They slid across its surface, increasing and decreasing mysteriously in size, changing shape, sometimes disappearing altogether or reappearing someplace else. It was impossible to discern a pattern – even the computer couldn't find one.

  “It's not really a fungus,” Dalia told me over the comlink as we slogged through it. “I mean, it looks like fungus. And it's a clonal colony. Each cell has the same genetic makeup. But so far I haven't been able to nail down its biochemistry. All I can tell you is that it's carbon based life. My hunch is it forms an ecosystem together with the reeds and the local strains of bacteria.”

  I looked around at the stuff. It consisted of thin, wavy pads like huge sheets of bracket fungi layered on top of one another, angling down towards the bedrock.

  Each time I put my foot down, I sank up to my knees in the stuff. The fungus – for that's what we were calling it – gave way, but I could feel through my boots that it wasn't crushed. There was a surprising firmness and strength resisting my weight. As soon as we moved on, the pads sprang up again. Looking back, there was no trace that we had passed. Except the stain on our legs: burgundy red smears. They were difficult to remove.

  Despite the gravpads, our going was slow. Eventually, we passed another finger of rock. On the other side we came upon the newcomers' ship.

  We stopped and stared incredulously. “We can't go in there,” I said.

  They had put down in the middle of the fungus. Three of them in vacuum suits were clustered near the cargo hold of their ship, watching the cybers pulling out crates. One of them spotted us and waved.

  Their ship was unprotected by a membrane.

  A mesh of strong, insulating strands of a durable polymer, the membrane allows simple molecular compounds to pass through (such as air and water) but nothing as large as microbes, viruses, or bacteria. It does, however, give way to significant pressure. A human being can pass through simply by pressing on its surface.

  Without a membrane to isolate them, the microorganisms these neophytes had brought with them from Earth were freely mixing with the local environment.

  Esther activated her comlink and patched through to base. “Sergei! Sergei, answer, damn you!”

  A few moments later he picked up. “I'm here, Esther. No need to be rude. What is it?”

  “We've got a contamination event.”

  When he responded, Sergei's voice had acquired a sudden seriousness. After all, the entire world's pure, untouched ecology hung in the balance. “How far along?”

  Esther looked at me. I held up a hand.

  “Jonathan thinks twenty minutes.”

  “Okay, there's still time. And remember, Earth microbes aren't likely to last long in Zarmina's crushing atmosphere. Now here's what you're going to do.”

  Moments later, Esther found the frequency used by their comlinks. “This is Team 2, IFEDS Insertion Unit, HO-Librae-IV. Do you copy?”

  The three of them turned to us. I could tell from their body language they were having the time of their lives. “Howdy, neighbor!” came the jolly reply. “We saw your camp on the way in. Fancy dropping by later? We brought beer!”

  Esther grated her teeth. “I don't think you understand. You're endangering the environment.”

  They laughed. One of them started to approach.

  Esther drew her blaster. “Stay where you are.”

  The laughter stopped. “Listen, sister, you have no right to threaten us.”

  “You will go back to the ship and discharge the membrane. Then you will get your cybers to start setting up the Biological Safety Zone. Once it's completed, you will go inside and stay there. And make sure to strip all your equipment in the outer lock and –”

  “– take a sterilization bath. We know. We're not stupid newbies or anything.”

  “We'll be watching to make sure you do it properly.”

  They didn't like it, but they followed Esther's instructions.

  An hour later, we took took out our scanners and approached their camp. The three of them were inside the Biological Safety Zone, glaring at us unhappily through the transparent walls, two young men and a woman.

  The sheets of fungus stirred uneasily around the ship. We focused our efforts there first.

  “Yep,” I reported. “There's terran bacteria all over the place. Some of it's gone pretty deep.”

  “We'll have to burn it,” Esther said.

  I looked at the blasters. “We can't do much with plasma bolts.”

  Fortunately, our Level-II programming would be enough to override the cybers' security systems.

  A few minutes later, they brought us a significant quantity of nitrogen tetroxide and hydrazine. Using spare parts from the cargo bay, we were able to fashion a crude flamethrower.

  We took turns. Bright yellow flame belched forth from the makeshift device. The fungus beds blackened, shriveled and broke apart. The flamethrower kept overheating and we had to shut it down from time to time, but eventually we managed to expose the bedrock in an area one meter around the ship. Tiny, bright yellow deposits of sulfur dotted its suface.

  When we tried our scanners again, there were no traces of terran life forms. Nor were there any in the vicinity of the Biological Safety Zone.

  Esther got back on the comlink with the amateurs. She lectured them briefly on the importance of sterilization, reminded them that they had put down in the middle of an alien biosphere, and pointed out that there was ongoing scientific research in the vicinity. If they wanted a party, there were certainly less volatile and more spectacular star systems from which to choose.

  The rain had resumed. Large, flat droplets struck the fields all around us. The dark, burgundy sheets vibrated angrily.

  We marched back to base in silence. I was exhausted. Each step was a determined struggle, as if the fungus were latching on to my feet and trying to hold it down.

  After the sterilization bath, Esther and I went immediately into suspension. Hanging upside-down like bats, much needed blood rushed towards our heads.

  The gravpads were excellent for aiding skeletal muscle, but the strong gravity of Zarmina worked on bones and circulation, too. Our hearts had trouble pulling the blood out of our feet.

  “They got in touch with us while you were away,” Dalia reported. “They were apologetic, but they're staying. At least for now.”

  “Which means we'll have to check up on them,” Sergei added.

  “It will interfere with our work!” I said.

  Sergei shrugged. “Perhaps if we keep showing up, they'll get sick of us and move on.”

  The next day, Dalia and I set out for the newcomers' camp. Perhaps by way of compensation, Sergei also took up my suggestion and sent a scout down to the beach. “Perhaps when you return we'll have some data to chew on,” he told us as we suited up.

  The going was even slower this time. Our feet kept getting stuck in the fungus. And Dalia wanted to take samples.

  “So far I haven't had much success identifying specialization on a cellular level,” she told me as she tucked away a tiny vial. “But I think I'm getting close.”

  “How does the fungus absorb moisture? Does it have roots?”

  She shook her head. “Directly through the cell membrane. It's almost as if each cell were it's own individual entity, and they all work together.”

  “Well, maybe they do!”

  “I suppose there's no reason why not. But look around. The stuff isn't some formless jelly. It has shape. The surface is smooth.” She squatted and pulled the top layers aside. “There are stalks, see? But their purpose is merely to root the macro
organism to the bedrock. The individual cells are indistinguishable from the ones on top. And look how orderly they are! Rows of soldiers from the twenty-first century.”

  “That reminds me,” I told her as we continued on our way. “The reeds didn't come up while we were sleeping. That's odd, isn't it? I thought we had established a regular pattern. What was it, twenty hours or so?”

  “Nineteen hours, forty-six minutes. Give or take a few.” She bit on her bottom lip. “I guess we'll have to throw that particular theory in the recycler!”

  We rounded the finger of rock and came upon the amateurs. As it turned out, they were on their way to pay us a visit at our base.

  The couple, Yong and Priya, were leading the way. Behind them was Chan, Yong's older brother.

  Yong and Priya apologized for being such a nuisance. They assured us they'd been following the sterilization procedures to the letter. I reminded them that they were meant for their own safety.

  Chan remained in the background, scowling at us through the visor in his helmet. But when I inquired how long they would be staying, he laid into us.

  “You argonauts don't have a monopoly on scientific interest! We're intelligent people. We're conducting experiments of our own.”

  Yong looked embarrassed, but the young couple didn't disagree with him, either.

  I had to choose my words carefully. “It's not a question of intelligence. It's a question of training. Don't you remember what happened on Mars?”

  Blank stares in reply.

  “You know there used to be life there, right? Bacteria deep in the Martian crust. But they were destroyed by microbes carried along by the first colonists from Earth. No one ever got a chance to study them. We don't want that happen here, too.”

  “We'll be careful,” Chan told me and then motioned to the others. “Let's go down to the beach. Have you ever seen an alien beach before?”

  We watched them go, more than a little jealous that neophytes like those were going to set eyes on the Zarminian coast before we did. Then we took a moment to examine their camp.