NanoSymbionts

by Joseph Philbrook

  “Yug!” Questor said, after a couple of bites. “Now I ‘am’ sorry I didn't explain it sooner. These taste like...”

  “Yeah, but it serves you right,” BillSong interrupted him. “Now shut up and eat. Then I think we need to try for some sleep.”

  “You're not from around here,” BillSong continued. After they had washed down the foodbars with the contents of the water pouches. “So maybe I should warn you. I do hope nudity doesn't shock you. Because I'll be following the local custom. Of hanging up my clothes to air out while I sleep.”

  Questor chuckled again.

  “Do you hear yourself now BillSong?” he said. “As if anything your local customs prescribe might actually shock a questor... Or even surprise one.

  I've not been on XenDar long but the guild's files on the place are more complete than you might think. Though I'll admit that technique you used to tickle a grip out of the BranchCritter, wasn't in them.”

  While he spoke he watched BillSong disrobe and tie his clothing to some of the overhead vines. As soon as he was finished speaking Questor did the same. BillSong couldn't help but notice that Questor was extremely well endowed. Then he pushed the thought out of his mind. Half a subcyclet later they crawled into their leaf piles and were soon asleep.

  BillSong woke to the silence around him. He hadn't heard a sound. That was the problem. He realized it had been too long since he had heard any of the small critters make any noise at all. Without seeming to move BillSong looked around the nest. Then he spotted it. A fair sized StingRat had crept out of one of the openings in the sides of their nest. It was almost within striking range of the Questor. BillSong estimated it's weight at a full lift as he silently drew his belt knife. Even as BillSong threw his knife, Questor suddenly snatched up his stick. Which he swung at the StingRat. Knocking the startled creature off the vine it was clinging to. The knife whished through the empty spot where the StingRat had been. It sunk to the hilt in a vine. The StingRat landed between them on the platform, near the entrance.

  It was obviously angry but before it could strike either of them with it's barbed tail. Questor had sprung to his feet and struck it again with his stick. This time knocking it out through the entrance where it fell from sight. A fraction of a subcyclet later a prolonged shriek of rage reached their ears from a considerable distance below them. BillSong judged by the sound of it that the StingRat had missed the vines that hung down around them. Then it must have caught hold of some other vines. That must be hanging from another BranchCritter, somewhere below them.

  Questor pulled BillSong's knife out of the vine with little perceivable effort and handed it to him.

  “Well it's nice to know, you're on my side,” he said. “Thanks anyway.”

  BillSong thought about the shear force that Questor had mustered with a seemingly casual swing of his stick. Enough force to knock the StingRat clean out of the vine cluster.

  “I don't think that one will be back,” he replied with a shake of his head. “It's probably safe to go back to sleep until the light starts to fade.”

  BillSong tried laying on one side then the other. Then he tried laying on his back but sleep wouldn't come.

  “Pardon my intrusion BillSong,” Questor spoke softly. “But I can't help but notice that you're not sleeping. Perhaps you'd get more rest, if we shared a bowl of blue asulrod.”

  “But that doesn't exactly promote sleep,” BillSong objected.

  Questor chuckled.

  “Sleep? No!” he acknowledged. “But a bit of quiet friendly conversation, under it's influence, is likely to provide more rest than all that tossing and turning you been doing.”

  “Yes,” BillSong said. “I suspect you're right about that.”

  Hardly had he finished speaking when he saw a spark of light. As Questor ignited the asulrod. BillSong was glad to notice that the bowl was only half full.

  It would be enough to relax but perhaps not so much as to prevent them from eventually getting a little more sleep. Before long they were lost in pleasant conversation.

  BillSong found himself explaining how it was. That most of the colonists came to be called Nesters. He didn't really think he was telling Questor, anything he didn't already know but he felt he needed to explain something and it was what came to mind.

  Questor, for his part listened patiently. Suddenly BillSong changed the subject.

  “But that's enough about us Nesters,” he said. “How about your people? When you reformed the guild, how did you ever come up with the name ‘Cosmic Sailors’? I mean your ships don't actually have sails now. Or do they?”

  “Very well, If you must know,” Questor said. “It does indeed have to do with the new technology we built into our ships. You see the old style ships generated a wormhole of sorts that went directly to the destination point. They had to already have all the energy needed for the whole trip at the very beginning of it. Our new ships work differently, in that we use the power of the cosmic winds to fuel our flight.

  And while they don't exactly have sails, we follow the course of the cosmic winds, so that we might harvest it's bounty of charged particles. We zig and zag our way there. Even as an ocean sailor would tack back and forth to extract the power of the wind, when it wasn't blowing in his direction.

  We needed to change the guild's name for other reasons that I shall not talk about. However, once the idea of describing our new mode of travel as a form of sailing was thought of. Nothing else sounded right...”

  Questor went on talking about the parallels between cosmic sailing and actually sailing on some ocean. To BillSong it seamed as if Questor would keep talking forever about it. After a while his voice seamed to fade away.

  The next time BillSong awoke, the air was noticeably cooler. He quickly realized that what woke him was the smell of FlingAt meat cooking... Not, he realized, the muted slightly soured smell produced by FlingAt meat that's had it's proteins converted but rather it had to be the smell of fresh meat. He sat up to find Questor crouched over a three legged pan. Which straddled the flaming, oil rich fleshy parts, of a few FurNut husks. The FlingAt fillets in the pan looked ready to eat. Next to the pan was a small pile of freshly shelled FurNut pits.

  “I take it you couldn't sleep?” BillSong said with a shake of his head. “It's gonna be a long nights walk you know.”

  “Actually my host-mind instructed me,” Questor replied with a slight grin. “Not to rouse him until you woke.”

  It took BillSong a moment to realize that it had been Questor's nanosymbiont that had answered.

  “It disturbs me,” he said. “That you sound so much like him. How's anybody supposed to know when you're on autopilot anyway?”

  Questor just chuckled. Then he shook his head.

  “My nanosymbiont thinks it's amusing,” he said. “That you'd expect to detect any difference.”

  After a subcyclet of silence BillSong decided to believe it was the real Questor speaking.

  “Wait a cyclet,” he protested. “Do you really expect me to believe that it actually has a sense of humor?”

  “You're free to believe what you want of course,” Questor began. “But the fact is ‘he’ was already laughing when he woke me up. He is a part of me. And I'm a part of him. His personality formed around mine. It fit's me so well that it almost doesn't matter which of us is talking.”

  “It matters to me!” BillSong replied hotly.

  After a brief pause Questor spoke in a monotone. With a steady rhythm that almost sounded mechanical.

  “Would you be more comfortable if I sounded like this?” Questor's nanosymbiont asked.

  BillSong looked closely at Questor's face. His eyes looked like he was near laughter. Though the rest of his face bore a serious expression.

  “Actually,” he said. “It might at that. That is, if I thought I could count on it.”

  Questor sighed.

  “I'm afraid that under certain circumstances,” he said in his normal voice. “It wouldn't be advisab
le for my symbiont to sound like that. But I think we can promise that whenever my symbiont is speaking to you privately. He will either sound like that or find some other way to explicitly let you know that he's the one speaking. Now I do hope that will do. Because I for one, would like to enjoy some of the breakfast my symbiont fixed for us.”

  “I guess it will have to do,” BillSong said. “I must admit the aroma is making me feel ravenous.”

  Without another word Questor produced a pair of forks from one of his pockets. Then handing one to BillSong, he used the other to pick up one of the fillets and he gestured at the other one meaningfully as he took a large bite. BillSong did the same with the other fillet.

  “This is delicious,” BillSong admitted right after he took his second bite.

  When they finished eating Questor began packing up the pan and utensils. Which he stuffed into a backpack like pouch in the back of his shirt that BillSong hadn't noticed before.

  “I expect we're in for another long walk,” Questor said. “Would you care to share another bowl of red asulrod?”

  They stopped at the TreeCrawler only just long enough to confirm that with the environmental controls set to ‘unoccupied’, the previous day's drain on the auxiliary power cells had been marginally exceeded by the power yield from the remaining solar collector. Then they began the long, slightly downward slope of the third glowing ShellWay.

  They didn't talk much. There wasn't much to say until they learned if there would be an old forgotten BarkWay carved into the last trunk. As they walked, Questor stopped briefly a few times to remark again on the beauty of the night forest. Then just as they resumed walking after the third such stop, Questor's hand suddenly dipped into a pocket. He produced something which he threw so quickly, BillSong almost didn't see that it was some kind of dart. Then Questor quickly ran ahead about 10 arms to a spot near the edge of the ShellWay. Where he extended his hand just in time to catch the FlingAt that fell dead, from the dark mass of foliage above, before it could fall into the darkness below them.

  Questor placed the FlingAt on the ShellWay and began to carve out the best cuts of it's meat.

  “This time, when you pick a spot for our next nest,” Questor said. “Let me try my hand at building it while you gather some veggies to go with my kill, would you?”

  By the time BillSong agreed, Questor had carved out half a sublift of meat and flung the remains into the foliage below, confident that none of it would be wasted by the local scavengers.

  This would set the pattern for many a nights walk to follow. Questor's enhanced vision would allow him to spot game in the dark before BillSong's eyes could. So Questor hunted while BillSong gathered some fruits and vegetables to go with it. A situation BillSong would soon find difficult to accept but on this occasion BillSong was far too curious to see how good a nest Questor could construct to mind.

  BillSong had spent much closer to one subcycle than two, foraging, before he returned to the spot he had pointed out to Questor as a good place to build the nest. He was surprised to find that it was nearly complete. It was almost an exact copy of the one he had built. Though the lashings that held it together were tied with a less traditional style of knot. Which he decided would serve the purpose. Though he did ask Questor how he had built it so quickly.

  “It is because I can do such repetitive work so much faster, that he had me do most of it,” Questor's nanosymbiont replied in a mechanical sounding voice.

  With a shudder, BillSong looked again at the lashings and grudgingly decided that they would hold up. They were not disturbed by any StingRats that night.

  This time Questor didn't say a word as he held the loop of his stick in front of BillSong's face. After a few seconds BillSong just sighed and began to unpack his crossbow-grapple from his pack.

  “Wait a bit on that would you?” Questor requested. “There's something I'd like to point at about a cyclet's walk behind us.” BillSong shrugged and followed him back the way they had just come.

  As he walked, Questor kept looking through the loop of his stick. He looked through it in one direction after another. Then suddenly he swung the stick around in mid air, catching it by its handle and pointed it at the underside of another BranchCritter that was a considerable distance above and to one side of them.

  “That one leads in the general direction of a navigable TreeWay,” Questor said. “Which I think we could reach in half a days walking. When we get there, perhaps you will get your bearings sufficiently as to point us in the right direction.”

  Then he reached into a pocket and removed a nano-morphic pellet which he put on the junction of his stick and it's handle. It clung to the shaft of his stick as if by some magnetic force. It shimmered slightly as it took the shape of a dart.

  Again Questor pointed the stick at the overhead BranchCritter. Then he adjusted his aim to point at a section of the trailing foliage vines that hung from it. There was a soft swishing sound ‘pfffst’ when the air was pushed aside by the dart. As it was accelerated along the length of the stick and flew at the vine. A thin thread of some substance was tailing behind the dart, keeping it connected to the end of the stick. The dart seamed to split into three pieces as it struck and embedded itself the vine. Each piece connected to the thin thread by more of the same material. Two of the three pieces wrapped around the vine with their connecting thread, before striking and embedding themselves in it.

  Questor took another nano-morphic pellet out of his pocket and fired it as a dart, at the ShellWay at their feet. This dart liquefied on impact forming an unevenly shaped puddle of adhesive gel that was about half an arm across. The thread that stretched from the puddle to the stick was attached to the junction of the stick and it's handle. The thread now passed through a small opening that BillSong hadn't seen before. The threads attached to the either end of the stick were both pulled taunt.

  Meanwhile Questor pulled a third pellet from his pocket which transformed into a lasso like rope which he suddenly tossed over BillSong's torso. Waiting for just the right moment to tug it back upwards as it's loop shortened. It was pulled in to form a snug fit above his waist and just below the elbows of the arms, which Questor had somehow avoided snaring in the loop.

  “Hang on!” Questor said.

  Then he attached the other end of the lasso to the outside of the junction of the handle and his stick. Questor held on to the loop of his handle with one hand while he used the other to guide BillSong's form. So that he missed hitting any of the foliage that got in the way as the thread rapidly became thicker and much shorter. While the other line got longer and somewhat thinner. This rapidly pulled them up the line.

  When they reached the section of vine, where the first dart was attached, the adhesive gel pulled off the ShellWay they had just left and formed a small blob on the end of the thread. Which was rapidly pulled up the shrinking thread until it reached the stick. Where it again became a small pellet which Questor pocketed. Questor pointed just above them to the edge of the BranchCritter's OverShell.

  “Think you can climb up that?” he asked.

  BillSong glared at Questor for half a subcyclet before he glanced at the spot Questor had pointed at. Then without a word he grabbed hold of a small vine sprouting down from just inside the edge with one hand while he anchored his leg against the stoutest vine within his reach. He looked Questor squarely in the eyes and reached out with his other hand tugging at the lasso.

  Questor shrugged slightly and the lasso almost seamed to fall away leaving only a thin coil of thread attached to the knot that held it looped around his torso. When it was evident that it wasn't going to hinder his movements, BillSong released his grip on the lasso and reached up to the spongy underside of the BranchCritter near the edge. With the back of his hand he slowly stroked it as one might pat a family pet. Slowly a slight ripple formed in the TreeCritter's underside as it contracted exposing a ridge in the very edge of the OverShell where he quickly secured a grip. enabling him to extend the arm that
used to hold on to the vine around the edge to where he knew he'd find another ridge to secure the grip he needed to pull himself up over the edge.

  No sooner had BillSong stood up on the top side of the OverShell then Questor swung like a ball on a string over the edge, landing on his feet. He held up his hand and the remains of the lasso fell away from BillSong as it and the rest of the nano-morphic material slithered along the thread like tendrils back to Questor's hand where it all reformed into pellets that Questor stashed in his pockets.

  By then Questor noticed the change in BillSong's mood.

  “Sorry, I should have at least told you what I was doing,” Questor apologized “Before I dragged you up here like that. But you wouldn't have believed what my nanites could do to get us here.”

  BillSong just glared back at him.

  “That's a neat trick you use to secure a grip on the underside ridge of the OverShell,” Questor tried again. “How did you ever learn to do that anyway?”

  BillSong knew Questor was reaching for a way to break the ice that had formed in his attitude towards him. Yet he couldn't resist the chance to rub it in a little that there were still some things about XenDar that Questor didn't seem to know.

  “Now that we are standing on it, we should refer to it as a ShellWay.” He said in an icy voice. Then BillSong sat on top of one of the ridges in the BranchCritter's shell and began to speak in a more conversational manner.

  “That wasn't much of a trick for a kid who grew up in the trees of NesterVille, don't you know?” he said Then with an icy edge back in his voice, he continued. “Speaking of which, did you really think I couldn't have climbed up the foliage vines myself?”.

  Questor sighed.

  “I'd no doubt that given a few tools and all day to work with, you could have gotten here,” he allowed. “But then we wouldn't have had time for this discussion, don't you see?

  And speaking of tools, now that your aware of what a nano-morphic dart can do, I'd like to offer you a few tools that I think you might just find useful. First, do tell me if I got the basic design right of the type of TechnoBow favored among nesters?”