Acts of Conscience

by William Barton

  And what else could they do? Where would they go? Out onto the Opveldt, to live among the Groenteboeren? To the Adrianis Desert, with its savage Hinterlings? Les Iles des Français, perhaps?

  The library said, A recent white paper by the office of the Basileïos of Orikhalkos has suggested the populace of Vapaa might like to found a new colony, on one of the new worlds sure to be found, now that faster-than-light travel is a reality.

  Sure to be found.

  I wonder.

  There, a pale, faded afterecho of desire. Once upon a time, I dreamed that dream. Dreamed myself a great explorer, wandering the byways of an unknown universe, finding the new worlds myself. Now? I have the starship with which to carry out my dream, and yet... who’s going to pay for all this voyaging? I could manage to finance three, maybe four such gallivantings, off into the star-spangled yonder.

  Would I find a spanking, empty new world in that time?

  If not, what then?

  Sell the ship, go back to work?

  Is that what it’ll come to?

  And what if, somehow, I did find a new world, a planet of my own? What then? In all the old stories, you become a rich, rich man, found your own settlement, leader of the people, die and are remembered as the Father of His Planet. Nice. I pictured myself coming home, surveys in my database. Ready to... what? With whom would I file my claim?

  About three seconds after my claim became public, some terrestrial government ship would be on its way. Or, worse, if, by then, the promised B-VEI fleets have been marketed and sold, some other ship, some ship from ERSIE or Harmattan or... hell, almost anybody, would be on its way out, loaded with corporate settlers, ready to stake an unbreakable squatter’s claim.

  What instrumentality would protect the rights of a lone Gaetan du Cheyne, master and owner of the starship Random Walk? While I thought, we rode on in silence.

  o0o

  By late afternoon we were out on the plains, moving through nearly treeless country, finally pulling up by the banks of the Somber River, having bypassed Vapaa of the terrible gangs, pulling up on a grassy shore, settling our vehicles in clouds of dust and old grass. I got out and stood by the side of the camper, stretching, arching my back, slightly stiffened from sitting in one position too long. It’ll be over quickly, now that the symbiotes know something’s wrong.

  Tau Ceti was already skimming the horizon, beginning to set, blue sky striated with long streaks of red and gold, sun backlighting a few low clouds, turning them dark, sharp rays streaming in all directions like angelic light.

  I’ve... gotten used to this. Feels like I’ve been here, or somewhere just like here, living in a natural world forever. Stardock seems lost, fading like some kind of fever dream, the kind of dreams that happen when you fuck up really bad and the symbiotes have to work hard to set things right.

  Suddenly, a squeezing hand in my chest, a familiar pang. There, in the long, ruddy grassy, things like horsetails and pussy willows growing at the river’s edge: Shining, mottled eyes, gleaming at me from a flattened face covered with reddish-bronze fur. Long white fangs, curved, serrated-edge teeth set in a permanent grin...

  The white wolfen were jumping out of the pickup bed now, jumping to the ground, going over to their red wolfen... cousins. Purring. Purring like so many steel-throated cats. Like cats with ball bearings caught in their throats. The dollies, I noticed, were staying put.

  The red wolfen came out, mingling with the white, purring in a different tone, flatter, with a wooden crackle to it. Touching muzzles. Touching tongues. Every now and again I’d notice a red’s eyes on me, teeth flashing, colored pink in the sunset light, and I’d feel my bowels clench, feel an urge to get back in the camper and lock the God-damned door.

  Now, the Arousians were getting out of the pickup cab, seeming to bunch together, as though nervous. Well, the wolfen can’t... digest them or anything, but a few hard bites would break those skinny arms and legs and... I imagined red wolfen gagging and spitting, growling the wolfen equivalent of, What the fuck is this shit? before they got sick and died.

  One of the Arousians seemed to be holding a portable camera, recording the milling of the wolfen, red and white getting all mixed up, like some kind of patchwork quilt.

  Doing their job, that’s all.

  More wolfen looking at me now. Sputtering things to the white wolfen. Answered by their metallic purr, whites looking at me as well. Can they talk to each other? I remembered what they’d told me at the killpit, about how, if they put two from the same species in the ring together, they’d cook something up, spoil all the fun.

  The other door of the camper cab popped open and the Kapellmeister jumped down, seeming very springy on its spidercrab legs. The red wolfen, for their part, seemed to recoil, as though ready to run. Imagined: What the fuck is that?

  But they stood still and waited, looking so obviously suspicious, while it walked over to them. Surely, you could almost see them thinking, this little fucker can’t harm us? The Kapellmeister was keeping its three arms well tucked in, those sharp, silvery chelae looking more like a plucked chicken’s wings just now than the deadly shears they really were.

  Finally, it marched up to one of the white wolfen...

  Limbcracker, whispered the translator AI.

  Walked up to Limbcracker and extended its tentacle-hand for a quick headtouch. White wolfen stiffening briefly, until it was released. More crackling wood, clinking steel. Another white was touched and released. More crackle-clink. Another white. More. Finally, one of the reds seemed to slink forward, pressed very close to the ground, like a scared dog. The Kapellmeister touched its head for a few seconds, then let go. The wolfen jumped, seemed to shrink back, looking around wildly, eyes wide, then it said, Clatterclatterchatter...

  Silence, all the red wolfen looking at me for some reason.

  The Kapellmeister’s pod made a soft, Greekeegreekee...

  One of the Arousians started walking slowly over, limbs rasping on one another like so many dry sticks. Rustmold-on-Pale-Snow perhaps? I...

  The translator AI said, His chief assistant, Altostratus-by-Moonglow.

  A sudden, stark realization that those two names alone conveyed a fairly detailed image of what the world of Arous, Sigma Draconis 3, must be like. Perhaps I can go there someday, some way, and see rustmold on pale snow, watch altostratus clouds strut their stuff, drifting high in an alien sky, backlit by the glow of a faraway moon...

  The Kapellmeister’s pod said, “Gaetan? Perhaps you could come over and meet our new friend now. Her name is Humanlegs-are-Eaten.”

  Great. Wonderful name. I swallowed hard, squared my shoulders and walked right over, ready to meet my new friend.

  o0o

  Nightfall, sun sliding westward, gradually getting below the horizon, though at such a shallow angle it seemed to take forever, sky growing redder, then darker, stars coming out slowly, air growing cooler, but never quite cold. We’re already pretty far north, here on the upper Somber, where the Opveldt begins.

  If I stood, turned and looked toward the south, I would see the lights of Vapaa shining like so many red-orange torches, beyond, dark against the edge of the sky, the low, rolling hills of the Koudloft. I didn’t stand, instead merely sat in my camp chair, by the side of the pop-up, watching, waiting, eating a sandwich I’d made, some kind of cold, tasteless pressed white meat, chicken perhaps, sipping from a bottle of cheap beer. Watched the yellow flames of the campfire the Arousians had made leap and dance, throwing diffuse shadows this way and that. Listened to the crackle of the fire, which almost covered up the soft gurgling of the river.

  Watched the wolfen, red and white, directing...

  In this light, the dollies looked even more pathetically like little girls dressed up in party costumes, separated into groups, lined up, facing each other, along the sides of a hexagon. Behind them, the wolfen sat in small groups, red, white, red, white, looking like so many huge, malformed dogs.

  The Kapellmeister came out of
the darkness, riding its stiff, stalky limbs, from the direction of the Arousians’ camp and settled with a soft crackle in the dry grass beside my chair. There. Outside the circle of the firelight, I could see technicians setting up their cameras and sound equipment.

  Three white wolfen, at the corners of three alternate apices, made quick, metallic barks, short, precise, one, two three. Six adjacent sets of dollies snapped to attention, making their half-sides seem taller.

  Now, three red wolfen, duller, more wooden sounds, with a choked-off quality, skipping around the hexagon, awakening movement from the remaining dollies. Air filled with some electric anticipation now. Filled with... That certain something, reaching down into my heart, to the thing which pretends it is my heart, and makes me feel...

  Abruptly, an alien dogpound cacophony began, the metal sound of the white wolfen, wooden sound of the red, giving the whole something of a sawmill quality, and the dollies began dancing out, stamping time to the... music. Dancing out, whirling round, dancing back to a new place in line.

  Getting all mixed up.

  I looked down at the Kapellmeister, wondering what, if anything, to say.

  One of its eyestalks seemed to float my way, though there was really no way to tell what it was looking at. Even in daylight, no pupil, no iris. It said, “Individual decision making, done through solitary initiative, is possible.”

  Granted. All you have to do is... decide.

  It said, “Difficult. But it can be done.”

  So. Why tell me? Should I interpret this as... some kind of invitation? I thought about the software in the translator pod.

  The spacesuit AI whispered, The pod imago is willing to be pinged, but little else.

  OK. Security still in place. Across the way, dark shapes leaping in the night, leaping close to one another, touching, dancing away. I sat forward suddenly, listening to the rapid tempo of the wolfen’s barking, watching the dollies’ movements. What the hell are they doing?

  Touching each other... down there.

  Pausing now, in the middle of that central whirl, rubbing their... cloacas together, then dancing away. I started counting dancers, trying to remember the patterns they were weaving.

  The library AI whispered, If the pattern continues long enough, each dollie will have mated with every other dollie.

  Hmh. I took a long pull on my beer, undiverted alcohol in my blood interfering slightly with my brain chemistry, finished it, burped softly, and said, “Why are they doing this?” Slightly greasy feel to my skin now, perhaps a sheen of sweat on my face.

  The Kapellmeister said, “A small trade mission, apparently.”

  A most unpleasant feeling at the bottom of my belly, a distant awareness... I said, “Trade?”

  It said, “Apparently, from what we’ve been able to find out, what the wolfen, whose culture is sans technology and hence sans material goods, trade is the germ plasm of the various dollie breeds.”

  I said, “Interesting. What do they...” Abruptly, I remembered the little ceremony in which one of the dollies had been eaten. So much for why they practice dollie husbandry. “How long have they been... doing this?”

  The Kapellmeister said, “The wolfen oral tradition, of course, is without a viable timescale. They have no legends of a time, apparently, when they were without the dollies. A time when they themselves were not precisely as they are now.”

  I felt a slight start as one of the white wolfen suddenly bounded into the middle of the dollies’ dance, watched it whirl through them, go back to its place, felt myself relax slightly. What the hell was I expecting? Tearing claws? Rending fangs.

  A white wolfen danced out and back.

  The spacesuit whispered, In a few more passes, the mating pattern will be complete.

  Meaning, I guess, that every dollie will have fucked every other dollie. What does that imply? Boys with boys and girls with girls, as well as the more usual and utilitarian sort of... Two wolfen danced out, one red, one white, whirled around one another in the midst of the mass of spinning, humping dollies, danced on back, having traded places.

  Then two more danced out. Then four. Then six.

  The spacesuit said. Assuming linear growth, all the wolfen will be dancing simultaneously just as the last pair of dollies completes its mating act.

  One of the dollies, one I was sure had already mated, suddenly cartwheeled through the middle of the dance, making a handspring completely over a pair of dancing wolfen, coming to rest on the far side of the now thoroughly trampled patch of grass.

  Now another one, then two, then four, then eight, looking like so many small, female gymnasts.

  The spacesuit whispered. This exponential growth rate will also converge on the dance completion. This is exceedingly well planned.

  The Kapellmeister said, “Impressive, even for sentient animals. Practice does indeed make for perfection.”

  I suddenly realized that, even as they danced and whirled, the wolfen had continued to bark out their raucous music. I looked closely, trying to decide if the wolfen were fucking each other as well.

  The library AI whispered, In most eusocial species, only certain members of the group mate and breed. Among terrestrial wolves, for example, its usually only the alpha male and female who mate. The others remain celibate. Among bees, the queen has her harem of drones, while the workers are developed from immature females, lacking the capacity for copulation.

  Well. How nasty. Then I thought about my own situation and was amused. Maybe humans are on their way to a eusocial order as well? Or is it only me? I opened my mouth to ask the Kapellmeister a rather obvious question...

  The spacesuit whispered, Now.

  The dollies froze in place.

  And then the wolfen fell upon them.

  I jumped to my feet, suppress an urge to rub disbelief from my eyes, and shouted, “Why the hell are the wolfen fucking the dollies?!” Surely. Surely that’s what’s going on. Dollies pressed flat to the ground, wolfen arched over them, hindquarters moving, in, out, in, out, wolfen eyes gleaming in the firelight, tongues lolling from their toothy mouths, mouths with fixed grins that looked...

  The library AI whispered, No data.

  One of the wolfen whimpered softly, then collapsed on its dollie, like a man whose orgasm was spent. Then another. Another. Another. And, all the while, the leftover dollies, for there were far more of them than the wolfen, formed a circle, a double circle, inner one dancing this way, outer one that.

  And I remembered that these wolfen were, supposedly, all female, the males hidden away... elsewhere. I wondered if these were sterile females then, like so many worker bees.

  The Kapellmeister said, “Dollie egglets are... deficient. Genetic material without a nutrient supply. At first, we wondered if the dollies weren’t more or less like marsupials or even monotremes, that the egg would attach to a cloacal nipple, in order to continue its development beyond the blastula stage. This, apparently, is not so.”

  More wolfen collapsing now, moaning softly, as though exhausted. I wondered if the dollies would be smothering underneath them.

  The Kapellmeister said, “The Arousians’ research indicates the dollie eggs are simply the stripped remains of a standard egg, not so different, in fact, than the eggs of many Salieran species.”

  Including Kapellmeisters? The library whispered, It seems likely.

  It went on, “Apparently, the wolfen provide additional material, a nutrient sac derived from their own unfertilized egg structure, which surrounds the dollie egglet, protecting it as well.”

  The wolfen were done now, groaning like Romans in the endstage of a feast.

  Library: An unusual coevolution scheme.

  I thought about wasps and spiders, decided it was more unusual than that. Thought about the little fish that live up bigger fish’s assholes. Not even close.

  The library brought up mitochondria, the commensal bacteria living in human cells, reproducing with the cells, having lost the ability to exist outsi
de cells, without which the cell could not survive. It pointed out that this symbiotic relationship was the basis of all higher life on Earth.

  OK. That’s a little more unusual, I...

  One of the wolfen, a white, stood, stretched gently, walked to one of the dollies in the inner ring of now motionless dancers. Leaned forward and delicately bit off its head.

  “Shit.”

  The dead dollie collapsed, spouting dark blood, The wolfen bent and began to eat, making little liquid gobbling sounds. Another wolfen, this time a red, got up, stretched, stepped forward, did the same. Then another. Another. Another.

  The ring of dollies remained motionless, waiting.

  The spacesuit noted, There are many more dollies than wolfen.

  The Kapellmeister said, “We assume the dollies being eaten are expendable males, their job complete. We assume the female dollies lying in the middle of the circle are now pregnant. The outer ring of dollies...” standing by, watching, wide-eyed, “...are never eaten.”

  I turned away, very short of breath and stood looking up at the stars, acutely conscious of a heavy miasma filling the air, stealing the breath from my lungs. God damn it. Why the fuck do I still have this pathetic erection?

  I don’t know.

  I found I couldn’t stand to hear the soft gobbling noises, sound of the wolfen contentedly eating their... what? Sex partners? Rape victims? Commensal... shit. I turned and walked away into the darkness, walked away from the camp quickly, breathing hard, feeling an urge to run, suppressing it, walking at first along the banks of the Somber, southward upstream in the direction of Vapaa, whose lights made a sullen orange glow against underside of what few low-hanging clouds there were. Paused, looking up at the sky. Stars. No moons. Should they be up now?

  Four hours, whispered the spacesuit, exhibiting its link to Random Walk’s navigation software. Right. On the other side of the planet now.

  Seems colder out here than it did back at camp. Warmth radiating from the pop-up habitat, from the Arousians’ fire, from so many breathing bodies, their breath a... miasma. That’s the word I like. When I get away from the miasma, my nuts will calm down, this damned ridiculous hard-on will go away and...