Mitigated Futures

by Buckell, Tobias S.

  Her large brown eyes were filled with anger. “That son of a bitch has been lying to us,” she said, pointing in the direction Beck had gone. “Come with me.”

  ***

  “The gourds,” Cruzie said, pointing at a screen, and then looking at Beck. “Tell us about the gourds.”

  And Oslo grabbed my shoulder. “Watch the drone, sharp now. I want you to tell us what you see when he replies to us.”

  My contract would be clear there. I couldn’t lie. The scientists owned the contract, and now that they’d asked directly for my services, I couldn’t evade.

  Points on the package, I thought in the far back of my mind.

  I wasn’t really human, was I? Not if I found the lure of eternal riches to be so great as to consider helping the freelancers.

  “The Vesians have farms,” Cruzie said. “But so do ants: they grow fungus. The Vesians have roads, but so do animals in a forest. They just keep walking over the same spots. Old Earth roads used to follow old animal paths. The Vesians have buildings, but birds build nests, ants build colonies, bees build hives. But language, that’s so much rarer in the animal kingdom, isn’t it Beck?”

  “Not really,” the drone said calmly. “Primitive communication exists in animals. Including bees, which dance information. Dolphins squeak and whales sing.”

  “But none of them write it down,” Cruzie grinned.

  Oslo’s squeezed my shoulder, hard. “The drone is mildly annoyed,” I said. “And more than a little surprised.”

  Cruzie tapped on a screen. The inside of one of the pyramids appeared. It was a storehouse of some sort, filled with hundreds, maybe thousands, of the gourds I’d seen earlier that the Vesian had been transporting.

  “Non verbal creatures use scent. Just like ants on the mother planet. The Vesians use scents to mark territories their queens manage. And one of the things I started to wonder about, were these storage areas. What were they for? So I broke in, and I started breaking the gourds.”

  Beck stiffened. “He’s not happy with this line of thought,” I murmured.

  “Thought so,” Oslo said back, and nodded at Cruzie, who kept going.

  “And whenever I broke a gourd, I found them empty. Not full of liquid, as Beck told us was likely. We originally thought they were for storage. An adaptive behavior. Or a sign of intelligence. Hard to say. Until I broke them all.”

  “They could have been empty, waiting to be sealed,” Beck said tonelessly.

  I sighed. “I’m sorry, Beck. I have to do this. He’s telling the truth, Oslo. But misdirecting.”

  “I know he is,” Cruzie said. “Because the Vesians swarmed the location with fresh gourds. There were chemical scents, traces laid down in the gourds before they were sealed. The Vesians examined the broken gourds, then filled the new ones with scents. I started examining the chemical traces, and found that each gourd replaced had the same chemical sequences sprayed on and stored as the ones I broke.”

  Beck’s muscles tensed. Any human could see the stress now. I didn’t need to say anything.

  “They were like monks, copying manuscripts. Right, Beck?” Cruzie asked.

  “Yes,” Beck said.

  “And the chemical markers, it’s a language, right?” Kepler asked. I could feel the tension in her voice. It wasn’t just disappointment building, but rage.

  “It is.” Beck stood up slowly.

  “It took me days to realize it,” Cruzie said. “And that, after the weeks I’ve been out here. The Compact spotted it right away, didn’t it?”

  Beck looked over at me, then back at Cruzie. “Yes. The Compact knows.”

  “Then what the hell is it planning to do?” Kepler moved in front of Beck, lips drawn back in a snarl.

  “I’m just a drone,” Beck said. “I don’t know. But I can give you an answer in an hour.”

  For a second, everyone stood frozen. Oslo, brimming with hurt rage, staring at Beck. Kepler, moving from anger toward some sort of decision. Cruzie looked… triumphant. Oblivious to the real breaking developments in the air.

  And I observed.

  Like any good Friend.

  Then a loud ‘whooop whooop’ startled us all out of our poses.

  “What’s that?” Cruzie asked, looking around.

  “The Gheda are here,” Oslo, Kepler, and Beck said at the same time.

  The Path Less Traveled

  “Call the vote,” Oslo snapped.

  Cruzie swallowed. I saw micro beads of sweat on the side of her neck. “Right now?”

  “Gheda are inbound,” Kepler said, her artificial eyes dark. I imagined she had them patched into the computers, looking at information from the station’s sensors. “They’ll be decelerating and matching orbit in hours. There’s no time for debate, Cruzie.”

  “What we’re about to do is something that requires debate. They’re intelligent. We’re proposing ripping that away over the next day with Kepler’s tailored virus. They’ll end up with a viral lobotomy, just smart enough we can claim their artifacts come from natural hive mind behavior. But we’ll have stolen their culture. Their minds. Their history.” Cruzie shook her head. “I know we said they’re going to lose most of that when the Gheda arrive. But if we do this, we’re worse than Gheda.”

  “Fucking hell, Cruzie!” Oslo snapped. “You’re changing your mind now?”

  “Oslo!” Cruzie held up her hands as if trying to ward off the angry words.

  “You saw our mother planet,” Oslo said. “The slums. The starvation. Gheda combat patrols. They owned everyone. If you didn’t provide value, you were nothing. You fought the Sahara campaign, you attacked Abbuj station. How the fuck can you turn your back to all that?”

  “I didn’t turn my back, I wanted a different path,” Cruzie said. “That’s why we’re here. With the money on the patents, we could change things… but what are we changing here if we’re not all that better than the Gheda.”

  “It’s us or the fucking ants,” Kepler said, voice suddenly level. “It’s really that simple. Where are your allegiances?”

  I bit my lip when I heard that.

  “Cruzie…” I started to say.

  She held a hand up and walked over to the console, her thumb held out. “It takes a unanimous vote to unleash the virus. This was why I insisted.”

  “You’re right,” Kepler said. I flinched. I could hear the hatred in her voice. She nodded at Oslo.

  He raised his walking stick. The tiny grains inside rattled around, and then a jagged finger of energy leapt out and struck Cruzie in the small of her back.

  Cruzie jerked around, arms flopping as she danced, then dropped to the ground. Oslo pressed the stick to her head and fired it again. Blood gushed from Cruzie’s eyesockets as something inside her skull went ‘pop.’

  A wisp of smoke curled from her open mouth.

  Oslo and Kepler put thumbs to the screens. “We have a unanimous vote now.”

  But a red warning sign flashed back at them. Beck relaxed slightly, a tiny curl of a smile briefly appearing.

  Oslo raised his walking stick and pointed it at Beck. “Our communications are blocked.”

  “Yes,” Beck said. “The Compact is voting against preemptive genocide.”

  For a split second, I saw the decision to kill Beck flit across Kepler’s face. “If you kill him,” I spoke up, “the Compact will spend resources hunting you two down. You can’t enjoy your riches if you’re dead.”

  Kepler nodded. “You’re right.” But she looked at me, a question on her face.

  I shrugged. “If you’re all dead, I don’t have points on the package.”

  “Trigger them manually,” Oslo said. “We’ll bring the drone. We won’t leave him up here to cause more trouble. Bring him, or her, or whatever the Friend calls itself as well. Your contract, Alex, is now to watch Beck.”

  ***

  We burned our way through the green atmosphere of Ve, the lander bucking and groaning, skin cracking as it weathered the heat of our reen
try fireball.

  From the tiny cramped cockpit I watched us part the clouds and spiral slowly down out of the sky as the wings unfurled from slots in the tear-drop sized vehicle’s side. They started beating a complicated figure eight motion.

  Oslo aimed his walking stick at us when the lander touched down. “Put on your helmet, get out. Both of you.”

  We did so.

  Heavy chlorine rich mists swirled around, disturbed by our landing. Large puffball flowers spurted acid whenever touched by a piece of stray stirred up debris, and the black, plastic leaves all around us bobbed gently in a low breeze.

  Oslo and Kepler pulled a large pack out of the lander’s cargo area. Long pieces of tubing. They set to building a freestanding antenna, piece by piece. I watched Beck. I couldn’t see his face, but I could see his posture.

  He was about to run. Which made no sense. Run where? On this world?

  Within a few minutes Oslo and Kepler had snapped together a thirty-foot tall tower. I swallowed, and remained silent. It was a choice, a deliberate path. I broke my contract.

  Oslo snapped a clip to the top of the tower, then unrolled a length of cable. He and Kepler used it to pull the super light structure up.

  That was the moment Beck ran, as it hung halfway up to standing.

  “Shit,” Oslo cursed over the tiny speakers in our helmets, but he didn’t drop the structure. “You’ve only got a couple hours of air you moron.”

  The only response was Beck’s heavy breathing.

  When the antenna stood upright, Oslo approached me, the walking stick out. “You didn’t warn us.”

  “He was wearing a spacesuit,” I said calmly.

  But I could see Oslo didn’t believe me. His eyes creased and his fingers tightened. A bright explosion of pain ripped into me.

  ***

  My vision cleared.

  I was on my hands and feet, shaking with pain from the electrical discharge. A whirlwind of debris whipped around me. I looked up to see the lander lifting into the sky.

  So that was it. I’d made my choice: to try and not be a monster.

  And it had been in vain. The Vesians would be lobotomized by Kepler’s virus. Beck would die. I would die.

  I watched the lander beginning a wide spiral upward away from me. In a few seconds it would fire its rockets and climb for orbit.

  In a couple hours, I would run out of air.

  Four large gourds arced high over the black forest and slapped into the side of the lander. I frowned. At first, it looked like they had no effect. The lander kept spiraling up.

  But then, it faltered.

  The lander shook, and smoke spilled out of a crack in the side somewhere.

  It exploded, the fireball hanging in the sky.

  “Get away from the antenna,” Beck suddenly said. “It’s next.”

  I ran without a second thought, and even as I got free of the clearing, gourds of acid hit the structure. The metal sizzled, foamed, and then began to melt.

  A few seconds later, I broke out onto a dirt path where the catapults firing the gourds of acid had been towed into place.

  Beck waited for me, surrounded by a crowd of Vesians. He wore only his helmet, he’d ripped his suit off. His skin bubbled from bad chemical burn blisters.

  “The Vesians destroyed all the remote operating vehicles with the virus in it,” he said. “The queens have quarantined any Vesians near any area that had an ROV. The species will survive.”

  “You’ve been talking to them,” I said. And then I thought back to the comforting smell in my room the first night Beck spent with me. “You’re communicating with them. You warned them.”

  Beck held up his suit. “Yes. The Compact altered me to be an ambassador to them.”

  “Beck, how long can you survive in this environment?” I stared at his blistered skin.

  “A year. Maybe. There will be another ready by then. Maybe a structure to live in. The Gheda will be here soon to bring air. The Compact has reached an agreement with them. The Vesian queens are agreeing to join the Compact. The Compact gets to extend out of the mother system, but only to Ve. In exchange, the Gheda get rights to all patentable discoveries made in the new ecosystem. They’re particularly interested in plastic-based organic photosynthesis.”

  I collapsed to the ground, realizing that I would live. Beck sat next to me. A small Vesian, approached, a gourd in its mandibles. It set the organic, plastic bottle at my legs. “What’s that?”

  “A jar of goodwill,” Beck said. “The Vesian queen of this area is thanking you.”

  I was still just staring at it two hours later as my air faded out, my vision blurred, and the Gheda lander finally reached us.

  ***

  The harbormaster cocked his head. “You’re back.”

  “I’m back,” I said. Someone was unpacking my two bags. One of them carefully holding the Vesian ‘gift.’

  “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again,” the harbormaster said. “Not with a contract like that.”

  “It didn’t work out.” I looked out into the vacuum of space beyond us. “Certainly not for the people who hired me. Or me.”

  “You have a peripheral contract with the Compact. An all-you-can-breath line of credit on the station. You’re not a citizen, but on perpetual retainer as the Compact’s primary professional Friend for all dealings in this system. You did well enough.”

  I grinned. “Points on a package like what they offered me was a fairy tale. A fairy tale you’d have to be soulless to want to have come true.”

  “I’m surprised that you did not choose to join the Compact,” the harbormaster said, looking closely at me. “It is a safe place for humans in this universe. Even as a peripheral for them, you could still be in danger during patent negotiations with Gheda.”

  “I know. But this is home. My home. I’m not a drone, I don’t want to be one.”

  The harbormaster sighed. “You understand the station is my only love. I don’t have a social circle. There is only the ebb and flow of this structure’s health for me.”

  I smiled. “That’s why I like you, harbormaster. You have few emotions. You are a fair dealer. You’re the closest thing I have to family. You may even be the closest thing I have to a friend, friend with a lowercase ‘f.’”

  “You follow your contracts to the letter. I like that about you,” the harbormaster said. “I’m glad you will continue on here.”

  Together we watched the needle-like ship that had brought me back home silently fall away from the station.

  “The Compact purchased me a ten by ten room with a porthole,” I said. “I don’t have to come up here to sneak a look at the stars anymore.”

  The harbormaster sighed happily. “They’re beautiful, aren’t they? I think, we’ve always loved them, haven’t we? Even before we were forced to leave the mother world.”

  “That’s what the history books say,” I said quietly over the sound of ducts and creaking station. “We dreamed of getting out here, to live among them. Dreamed of the wonders we’d see.”

  “The Gheda don’t see the stars,” the harbormaster said. “They have few portholes. Part of my contract with them to be turned into the harbormaster was that I have this room.”

  “They don’t see them the way we do,” I agreed.

  “They’re not human,” the harbormaster said.

  “No, they’re not.” I looked out at the distant stars. “But then, few things are anymore.”

  The Gheda ship disappeared in a blinding flash of light, whipping through space toward its next destination.

  Acknowledgements

  As is usual, I'd like to thank my wife Emily for putting up with the crazy idea of putting together a collection, crowdfunding it, writing a new story, and trying to deliver it as quickly as possible. She is a patient human being. I would also like to thank the editors who, over the last several years, were kind enough to work with me, ask me for stories, and work to make these the best they could be. I stand on
the shoulders of giants. I particularly would like to thank Neil Clarke, Yanni Kuznia, Bill Schafer, John Joseph Adams, Brian White, and Gwenda Bond for bringing many of these stories into existence. I wouldn't have been able to do it without them. I would also like to thank my collaborators Karl Schroeder and David Klecha both for their awesome minds, but for allowing me to include these stories here.

  This collection was created by my readers and fans, who gathered together to preorder their copies. This collection, the new story, and the art within it would not have been possible without sponsors Doselle Young, Arachne Jericho, Fred Kiesche, Caroline Kierstead, Kevin Pratt of Black Tusk Books, David Chamberlain, Lunaro, Carl Rigney, John Devenny, John Wenger, Andrew Hatchell, Tara Smith, and Paul Atlan. My gracious thanks.

  Post-launch thanks for help spotting typos also go to Adrianna Pińska, Paul Atlan and Pablo Defendini.

  My thanks to Jenn Reese at Tiger Bright Studios for an incredible cover, and to Pablo Defendini for the interior design and print edition.

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Introduction

  Dedication

  A Militant Peace

  Lonely Islands

  The Rainy Season

  Mirror, Mirror

  Press Enter to Execute

  Mitigation

  A Game of Rats and Dragon

  Resistance

  The Universe Reef

  Placa Del Fuego

  Love Comes to Abyssal City

  A Jar of Goodwill

  Acknowledgements