by Alex Lang
“Thank you, Bill.” Beth turned to Skaggs. “So, you think it will take another six or eight weeks to finish preliminary probing of the substrata?”
“Yep. My engineers tell me we can drill several more test shafts. This planet looks promising for satorium, cadmium, gold and a dozen other marketable metals. The company should be very happy.” Skaggs almost salivated. “There should be some nice bonuses for everybody. Especially if Galactic strip-mines the planet.” He pointed to Bill.
“Well, that is everybody who contributes in some way to resource development.”
“My job is to work with the natives,” Bill said. He studied Skaggs. They were both about the same age, but Skaggs was a high ranking executive with money and clout. Ten years after his Ph. D. Bill was still struggling to survive.
“And I’m sure you’ll get a nice bonus for that,” Skaggs said. “Maybe you can pay off your student loans someday, eh doctor?” He let out a harsh laugh.
“My personnel file is none of your business,” Bill said.
“I didn’t look at your file,” Skaggs said. “Every damned professor I’ve ever met has student loans. Just throwing money down the drain, pal.”
“Mr. Skaggs, I’m running this briefing,” Beth said in a firm voice.
Skaggs chuckled. “Sure, Captain, sure.”
Bill cringed. They had been here half a year, months longer than any previous expedition. Every time he thought they might go home Corporate extended the stay. “Is our departure date definitely in two months then?”
Beth shook her head. “No. Our departure date is contingent on data analysis.”
On what Galactic wanted, Bill thought.
“I should mention, Captain, that my engineers have concerns about some unusual electromagnetic readings. They’ve been persistent for months. Last night they were off the charts and spiked ten thousandfold for a few seconds,” Skaggs said.
“Is there any danger?” Beth asked.
Skaggs shrugged. “I doubt it.” He rose and poured himself another cup of coffee.
***
Bill walked down the gangway into the knee-high grass that surrounded the ship. Monstrous tendrils of what resembled ivy snaked halfway up the massive ship supports. He wondered how long it would take the plants to cover the ship.
He couldn’t see more than twenty or thirty feet ahead of him through the shroud of mist.
It was hot like every other day on Carnegie. This place was worse than North Carolina in August. It must be ninety degrees already and the day had barely started. He wiped sweat off his face and sludged towards the village to find Earl.
Bill stepped on the slick mossy trail to Jugtown. He didn’t know the real name of the settlement, if there even was one, because he couldn’t decipher the natives clucking and chirping
language. Bill named the village Jugtown after the largest building that housed hundreds of hollowed out gourds. He suspected the building might be some sort of church.
Giant hairy vines slithered from trees higher than the tallest skyscrapers on Earth. He heard thrashing from the jungle that smothered both sides of the path.
A figure gradually came into focus through the fog. An old Carnegian hobbled down the trail. She sang an ancient Earth folk song, one that Bill had played for Earl many times. “My Uncle Mort is sawed off and short. He stands ‘bout four foot two. But he thinks he’s a giant if you give him a pint of that good old mountain dew.” She cackled. “They call it that good old mountain dew. Them that refuse it are few …” She saw Bill and her cat-like ears perked up. She was happy to see him.
“How do you know that song?” Bill asked. The only native who ever seemed interested in learning English was Earl.
The old woman’s eyes opened wide. “Good morning, Bill. You taught me. I am Earl.”
Earl was a young man, little more than a teenager. “Is Earl hurt? Why didn’t he come to the ship?”
The woman clucked her tongue.
“You don’t believe me? Fine. I will show you what I once was.”
She winced several times on the trek through the woods. She seemed to be in a great deal of pain.
They came to the village. Jugtown wasn’t much of a settlement by Earth standards. It had a handful of simple communal buildings, constructed of rocks with dried vines for roofs. From what Bill had gathered over the months, the Carnegians had no sense of individual property. They shared everything. There was no family structure that he could detect.
Earl sat by himself near the church. Bill ran up to him and held out the banjo. “Are you okay, bossman?”
Earl just stared.
“He does not understand your words,” a voice behind Bill said.
Bill turned around to face the old woman. “Of course he can. I taught him.”
“You taught me,” the woman corrected. She pointed to Earl. “Someday I may be back in there. Perhaps never.” She touched her chest. “Now I am in here. I may die in here.”
“I don’t understand,” Bill said.
The old woman sat cross-legged on thick moss. She wheezed. “Pardon me, but I am not used to this old skin.”
A strange truth began to dawn on Bill. “Are you saying that your mind has somehow changed bodies?”
The old woman paused to suck in a deep breath. “The storm did it. The storm comes every few moons, or every few years. Once I saw it twice in one day. Who is to say? But, it comes. It always comes.”
“Storm?”
“It brings the change. For some it brings youth. For some death. A baby may become an old man. An old woman may be granted a new life. At least until the next storm.”
“The electromagnetism?”
“I do not know that word. Last night I changed from the form you knew into this ancient body. We all changed. I hope I can survive until the next storm.”
Bill sat down on a rock and plucked out “Cripple Creek” on the banjo. It was one of Earl’s favorite songs.
The old woman hummed along in a wavering voice while the shell of Earl, the younger body, wandered off.
***
“Beth, we need to leave immediately,” Bill urged as he and the Captain sat in the conference room.
Beth showed professional concern. “Bill, we’d all love to go home, but the mining tests aren’t conclusive.”
“Carnegie is dangerous.”
Beth leaned back in her chair and looked up at the ceiling. “Bill, what are you getting at? I have a seasoned crew here. Nobody sees any problems.”
“It’s about Earl.”
Beth massaged her temples. “You found him?”
“More or less.”
Beth let out a little laugh. “Explain something to me. I thought that anthropologists were supposed to learn about other cultures. So, aren’t you contaminating the natives by teaching them about country and western?”
“Bluegrass,” Bill said. Beth rolled her eyes. “Fine. Bluegrass. Shouldn’t you be learning about their music?”
“They seem more interested in ours.” He cleared his throat. “Beth, you know that electromagnetic disturbance last night?”
“Yes,” she murmured.
“The natives call it a storm. This is going to sound nuts, but the storm affects the natives. Their minds switch bodies. Earl’s mind went into the body of an old woman.” Bill searched for the right terminology. He hadn’t exactly been a stellar student in biology courses in college. “I did some research on the ship’s computer and the best I can figure is that the storm somehow mimics or stores copies of the neuron centers of the brain and-”
Beth was staring at him.
“I’m just an anthropologist, but I think that these impressions might get kicked around by electro-magnetic fields and displaced so that people in close proximity to each other-”
“Switch brains,” Beth said.
“Yeah. I can’t explain it any better than that. Maybe something else happens entirely. Who the hell knows? Look, I know it sounds impossible, but Earl was the onl
y one who could speak
English. Now the old woman is fluent.”
Beth sat up straight. “So, he taught her.”
“I think Earl is telling the truth.”
Beth smiled. “Bill, listen to me. The natives are probably playing a joke on you. Or maybe they’re trying to con you. Maybe they want something.”
“They don’t want anything. I could never figure why their culture hasn’t advanced. Why they don’t have need of any possessions. Now I understand. They don’t even own their own bodies. It would be a nightmare trying to keep track of who owns what. Family units would be moving constantly from house
to house, if they had homes. It’s just easier for everybody to own everything.”
“Okay, Bill, maybe they don’t need any possessions. They might just want us to leave.”
The Captain might have a point. If Skaggs had his way, Galactic would lay waste to the planet. “I don’t think that’s Earl’s motive.”
She moved an errant strand of hair out of her eyes. “So why didn’t this storm affect us?”
“Maybe we’re shielded in the ship.”
“Bill, I think youre being conned. However, I do have concerns about the electromagnetism. I’ll order everybody confined to the ship if the electromagnetism reaches a certain level. But, we’re staying until Galactic Mining has finished their tests.”
***
Bill leaned back on a couple of stacked pillows on his bed and plucked away at “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.” Earl Scruggs had written the bluegrass song for a movie years ago. Bill tried to remember the name. It was about Robin Hood bank robbers stealing from crooked banks.
He practiced his picking as much as his banjo stance. The seasoned banjo player didn’t prance about, drawing attention to himself. His fingers worked at lightning speed, like a summer cloudburst. But, the player’s genteel posture remained calm and polite, like a warm morning in North Carolina.
The airlock hissed open. Skaggs stormed inside. “Why in the hell did you get my miners confined to the ship at night? They have work to do.”
Bill put down the banjo. “I wanted to go back to Earth. Confining people to the ship was the Captain’s idea.”
Skaggs sneered. “What a surprise. The big brave professor wants to go home.”
Bill shrugged.
“Go complain to the Captain.”
“My problem’s with you. Listen, professor, you better convince the Captain to change her mind or I’ll file a report about you.”
Bill sat up on the edge of the bed.
“Report?”
Skaggs smiled.
“Yeah, pal. You probably didn’t know it, but Galactic wants me to report on everybody. Troublemakers aren’t allowed back on another Galactic ship.”
“I’m not a troublemaker.”
“Galactic wants these trips to make money. Losing hours of work every day because some fraidy cat thinks we’re in danger from electromagnetism is trouble Galactic doesn’t want.”
“The electromagnetism is dangerous.”
Skaggs rolled his eyes. “The engineers say it isn’t.”
Bill knew it would be a waste of time to reveal what he knew. Skaggs would just ridicule him. Instead he pointed to his laptop. “I write reports too. Maybe I’ll say you’re the problem.”
Skaggs snorted. “You think I really care what a bunch of damned intellectuals at some college think of me? If I had my way they’d shut those crapholes down.”
Bill didn’t doubt Skaggs had no use for education. “Since you don’t care, I’ll just write it anyway.”
“Yeah, well if I write enough about you, maybe you won’t get any credit for being here at all.
That happened a few missions back. Some longhaired college type came back and got arrested for not paying his student loans. Seems he wasn’t taking his research duties on the ship seriously enough.”
“Get out of my room,” Bill said.
***
Bill sat on a boulder that served as the front stoop for the church of Jugtown and played
“Foggy Mountain Breakdown.”
Old Earl rested beside him and did her best to keep up with the hambone that Bill had taught her. She did not have the energy of her younger self. She slapped her hands against her legs and chest, trying to maintain the beat of the tune, but it wasn’t as good as a few days before.
A young boy stopped in front of Earl and clicked his tongue and made a sound like a long low belch.
Earl clucked back and nodded.
The boy marched into the church and sat cross-legged. He picked up a gourd and blew into it, making a high pitched squeak.
Then with increased speed the boy picked up gourd after gourd, blowing into each one, making a range of sounds. The boy was playing “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.”
When Bill switched chords, the boy followed. It was a jam session. And then the boy started to lead, jumping quickly from chord to chord, almost too fast for Bill. The notes were strange, but deep in the music’s roots.
Bill wondered what it would be like to listen to music with elfen ears like the Carnegians. How much fuller and richer it must sound.
Like most banjo pickers, Bill played fast, because the plucky notes faded quickly with little resonance. One had to be replaced by another or there would be a break in the song. The noise of the gourds lingered, creating a rich tapestry of sound.
Finally Bill had to rest. He put the banjo on his lap and wiped sweat off his brow. He laughed. “What a hootenanny!” He ran up to the boy and stuck out his hand. “Nice playing, son.”
The boy stood up and walked away.
“That boy’s got some talent,” Bill said to Earl. “I didn’t know y’all could play.”
Earl smiled. “That boy is the oldest among us.”
“Sweet Jesus,” Bill whispered. “How old are you, Earl.”
Earl picked up the banjo and strummed it gently. “Old enough to know it would not be unjust for me to die in this form. I have lived several lives, far longer than I should.” She crinkled her nose. “A storm is coming.”
Bill looked up at the sky. Today there was not much fog, just blazing sun. He could see no clouds, just brilliant blue. “It looks fine.”
She pointed. “There.”
Bill squinted. He could see the faintest hint of color on the horizon. Tiny pops of red and blue and green shot up into the sky, like sparks from a burning log. The flashes were growing.
The storm must be coming closer. Bill pointed to the communal building behind them. “Should we go inside?”
“Return to your ship. Unless you want to switch. You might end up like me.”
Bill grabbed the banjo and ran onto the pathway.
***
A football field’s length from the ship, Skaggs blocked Bill’s way. He held a laptop. “Thought you might be coming back, you son of a bitch.”