If I weren’t her son, would I think of her the way I did?
I should never have taken this assignment. The possibility that I might be too jaded, too close to the emotional core to see clearly over it. She was right—this was a living, breathing planet, with a beautiful biosphere just minutes from where the aliens stalked.
“We will retire now.” M’am nodded in agreement with herself and led the way back down the same trail.
“Are we going in?” I asked. “We haven’t had a chance to use our suits.”
“You don’t want that chance,” Rusty said.
M’am looked at him and said, “I suppose it’s good that you’re leaving, then.”
Her tone was sweet, but her eyes were chilling.
Was it just me?
We fell into a single-file line again and didn’t speak. Silence, unless broken by M’am, was part of the rules.
I had no problem complying, except for the occasional urge to mutter some remark to Clark. I had a lot of questions for Rusty, though. Why was he leaving? Was he lonely, tired, or afraid? And what was the core of his fear?
The way I see it, anybody who wasn’t afraid in this place was loopy. I don’t mind adventure, but nobody in his right mind wants to live his life in the middle of a spider’s web, trying to avoid the spider. You’d never get anything else done.
Good point . . . what kind of research could they possibly accomplish in an environment where most of the time they were fighting for their lives? Maybe that was why there were so many “I don’t knows” when we asked questions.
Gracie had said they were just beginning to do the research after finally setting up their camp and surveillance and other things. How long had they been here? The better part of two years? And they were just getting started?
All the way back to the blind, my skin was clammy with dread under the supersuit. Going into the alley was one thing, and turning around and walking out was another. I had always felt that knife between my shoulder blades, the one the thug sticks in your back after you think you’ve checked all the shadows.
I wished we’d been able to look around safely without the tour guide. How could I get back out there without my mother?
Seeing the projector curtain being held open by Neil, with Bonnie standing behind it and watching us approach—that was a good moment. We slipped inside, and the curtain was positioned artfully after us.
“It was beautiful, yes?” M’am asked.
“Can’t deny that,” Clark said.
She turned and said, “Rusty, if you would come with me for a moment?”
He nodded and followed her into one of the tunnels. The dinner table had already been taken down. The meal had been strained and quick. Nobody much wanted to talk after what they’d heard from Clark and me, and the party had broken up like a bad family reunion.“If you’ll come this way, Mr. Malvaux,” Neil said to me, “I’ll help you get out of the suit. We have to remove them and store them carefully so they don’t get damaged.”
“You can call me Rory.”
“Okay, thanks.”
I almost took a step to go with him, then got a flash of an idea. “Listen, why don’t you take Clark first? Captain’s privilege, and all.”
Clark smirked at me. “Privilege? I sleep last, I eat last, I get a shower last—”
I clapped him on the shoulder. “So this time you get to go first.”
“Can I have this moment bronzed?”
“This way, Captain.” Neil gestured to Clark, and they went off together, leaving Bonnie and me in relative privacy.
“What was it like out there?” Bonnie asked quietly.
“Breathtaking,” I admitted. “In a good way, I mean. Lots of native life, flora, growth, wilderness . . . real pretty and sort of sparkly.”
“Do you think I could see it? Tomorrow?”
I shrugged. “Think you’d look good in blue?”
She smiled in a clunky, awkward way. “You do.”
“Oh, yeah?” I twirled once and modeled the contraption.
“I’d love to see what you saw,” she went on mistily. “I love the diversity of life. What life is and why things are alive . . . space fascinates me because it has a chance for totally new life.”
“What do you think of the environment that created the aliens?” I asked.
She paused and thought about it. “Well, it must be incredibly complex, with a long food chain. If you look at them evolutionarily, they’re not all that different from us.”
“What?” I blurted on a laugh. “You’re crazy. Look at them!”
“Right, look at them,” she persisted. “Relatively comparable in size to humans, within a few feet of height and not that different weight-wise . . . they have the heads on top and the feet on the bottom, arms with fingers, and we still have our tail bones, you know. In comparison to, say, even an elephant or a sparrow, they’re much closer to us.”
“I guess. My sister says we’re just more animals.”
She offered another little smile, this one less convincing, but I think that was only because she was insecure about herself, while not at all about what she was saying. She shrugged, almost apologetically, and suggested, “We’re the only animals that care about other animals. Human life is the best thing evolution ever came up with. Humanity is what nature was heading for all along.”
She was an insecure person, or maybe just shy, and yet I found her so attractive right now that she represented all that was best about people. I’d grown up in a world of eco-heads, who thought people were just about the worst disease ever to strike the universe. I’d never believed it—I was the odd kid out—and my mother never approved of my approval of mankind. It was like coming from a religious family and just never seeing the logic in religions. I couldn’t help it. I was born that way. I always saw the underside of the plate that was put in front of me.
And here was Bonnie, in this goofed out nest of vipers and their herders, the only one with the universe completely in order.
“What are you looking at?” She broke out in a nervous giggle.
I pressed my lips together in appreciation. “Know what you are?”
“What?”
“You’re my mother if she were nice.”
* * *
We were interrupted when M’am and Gracie appeared on the other side of the stacked containers which created a maze of little semi-separate areas in this central chamber. I held my hand up to quiet Bonnie. I knew an opportunity to eavesdrop when I saw one. Had my stalling actually paid off?
“Send Rusty,” M’am said. “He still has his suit on. Put this recharged power pack in. We want no trouble in that sector.”
“Oh, I’ll send him, all right,” Gracie responded. “I’d like to send him down some deep hole somewhere.”
“As we have found, nothing stays the same. Better to shed the detritus than try to glue it on.”
“He makes me sick.”
“Send him immediately. And remember to have him code his suit to the new charge frequency.”
“Fine.”
They split up, and Bonnie started to speak, but I motioned her silent, and in a few seconds Gracie reappeared with Rusty.
“Just get it done. Replace the third and fourth broadbands and clean the lens.”
“Isn’t it kind of late in the day for Sector Nine?” Rusty asked. “Another hour, it’ll be dark.”
“Then I guess you had better move your useless ass, should-n’t you?”
“Aw, Gracie . . . ”
“Turn around, traitor.”
“Why?”
“Fresh power pack.”
“Oh . . . thanks.”
“Screw you.”
I saw the point of her shoulder and a flick of long braid as she exited through the tunnel just opposite from where we were standing. I put a finger to my lips, signaling Bonnie to be quiet and stay here. Then I slipped out of our seclusion and caught Rusty at the projector curtain.
“Rusty, where’re
you going?”
He glanced around, not expecting that anyone else was still lingering around here. “Huh? Oh—I have to go do some maintenance in Sector Nine. It’s my last official duty. I’ve done it before . . . just never alone.”
“Is it a good idea to go alone?”
He seemed dejected. “I, uh, no, we usually go in pairs, but I’ve got the suit on already, so—”
“How about if I go with you?” I suggested. “I’m all dressed.”
Rusty palmed his roundhead haircut and hesitated. “Doesn’t sound like a good idea . . . I don’t know, we’ve never had visitors. I don’t know what the policy is. Maybe we should ask Jocasta first.”
“I think I’m old enough to go out without asking my mommy. I’ll behave. I’ll be your rearguard. How about it?”
“I do have some fears about my rear,” he allowed. “Guess it’s okay.”
Then he paused, and a strange thing happened. His eyes brightened and he pressed his lips flat, and said, “Yes! Good idea! Come on!”
Well, that was an odd change . . .
On the way out, I cast a glance back at Bonnie. She bit her lip and crossed her fingers in silent well-wishing. I put my finger to my lips again. Don’t tell anybody.
She nodded.
Sector Nine was in the other direction from the way we’d gone with M’am. Rusty and I turned left instead of right out of the blind’s curtained opening, and within just a few minutes the story began to change from the rosy glory my mother had wanted me to believe. This area had no lush beauty to boast, but soon turned decidedly less attractive.
And that wasn’t just the landscape. Not more than seven or eight minutes out, Rusty cast me a glance at just the moment when a gassy odor struck me full in the face. I stopped walking, and sniffed. Rusty paused, his eyes wide.
I nodded at him. “I smell it.”
He didn’t say anything, as if wanting me to come to my own conclusion.
“As different as this planet is,” I said, “the one constant in the galaxy is the smell of death.”
Rusty closed his eyes for a moment of relief. He motioned me forward.
Within only a short distance, Rusty was leading me through a bone yard, the telltale leavings of assault. Skeletons and desiccated remains of fairly large beasts, maybe the size of adult pigs, littered the land, so prevalent we had to zigzag through them.
“What’s this all about?” I asked.
“The Xenos killed them,” he said. “It’s a whole herd, wiped out in less than four days. Hundreds of them. Even what they don’t consume, they slaughter. We don’t know why. They destroy just to destroy.”
“So much for the pretty picture,” I said outright.
“Jocasta just sees the pretty part,” he told me. “Keep your voice down.”
“Sorry.”
“Keep your eyes open.”
“Any my mouth shut. Right.”
“Yeah, mostly.”
The carcasses around us were grotesque, with their ribcages exploded or their heads torn off, limbs separated from bodies while still on the run, or spines pulled out from the bodies with shocking ease. They told a story of gratuitous violence that most animals didn’t engage in.
That was it—I’d never thought about it that way before . . . these aliens were violent for the sake of violence, for the joy and pleasure of it. I was sure my sister would tell me humans had been engaging in that hobby for eons, and that was probably true, but other humans policed the violence and were disgusted by it. This killing field around me spoke of a unified delight and unrestrained purpose that was species-wide. The Xeno-morphs had no self-restraint, no moral guardrails, and no sheriffs among them. There was no controlling factor. They just killed to kill.
We moved with dispatch through the field of slaughter, and by the time we moved on to the next area, I was disgusted beyond measure. We moved into a narrow passage flanked by what appeared to be very thin trees almost like fringe.
“Rusty, why do you want to leave?” I asked. I sensed he was afraid I’d want to know this, but also that he wasn’t surprised to be asked.
“Just done my time here, is all. Ready for something different. Watch out for this web. Don’t step in it.”
I sidled away from the wide complex web he pointed to, which was spread across almost the whole path.
“Thanks. Look, I need a break, okay? I don’t have all the time in the world. Can I get a couple of straight answers?”
“Like what?”
“Those people in the huts,” I ventured, “were they locked in? Those huts were prisons, weren’t they?”
He didn’t answer right away. His hesitation stiffened my suspicions that things were darker than my mother wanted portrayed.
Rusty met my eyes as we came abreast of each other and picked our way through more bodies of animals, this time a flock of the flightless birds.
“You won’t say I told.”
“What is this, a Boy Scout troop?” Sarcasm didn’t help. I chided myself with a glower and said, “Sorry. I won’t tell.”
He didn’t seem reassured, and even lowered his voice, as if anybody could hear us out here. “They were incubation chambers. We took care of them the best we could. Jocasta said it was as kind as possible. Watch out for this crevice. Don’t get your foot caught.”
“So they were implanted with the . . . what do you call them, larvae? You shoved them into the hut and left the doors open to put food in?”
He blushed with humiliation. “We didn’t feed them. It would’ve been—”
He cut himself off.
“What?” I demanded. “A waste of food?”
Ashamed, he nodded. We came around to a pathway that was actually a ledge. With a motion he warned me of the cliff we were now standing on. Rusty stopped and pointed.
Cliff . . . that was a crystal clear accuracy. The drop was shear and straight. We stood on the precipice of a two-thousand-foot ravine. Across the ravine, which was another thousand feet wide, was the floor of the Blue Valley. We were now level with the lush blue-green space, with its population of undisturbed herds and flocks, and from here I could see that the Blue Valley was actually a shelf. This ravine prevented access to it.
My mother had deceived me and Clark on purpose. The Blue Valley wasn’t pristine or undisturbed by the Xenos . . . they just hadn’t reached it yet. It was protected only by the huge protective gap now open before Rusty and me.
Rusty’s eyes shifted to mine, and we understood each other. Postponing the inevitable didn’t make it any less inevitable. He wanted me to see this.
“In a month,” he said, “they’ll be over there too.”
He moved on, only another twenty feet to a sensor/transmitter array that had been drilled into the edge of the cliff, supported on a tripod. Rusty got down on his knees to reach the array and began to service it after rolling out a small set of very surgical tools. All I could do was watch.
“Why were the huts’ doors open?” I pursued. “To hear their screams?”
“No . . . no. Even with the creatures in us, we were told we had no right to make our end swift and easy . . . no right to kill what was inside us. The infected people were locked in and the doot was left ajar for the young to get out.” He hung his head briefly. “Jocasta kept them inside so the rest of us wouldn’t see the torture. Wouldn’t see the young Xenos burst out of their chests or the blood . . . she treats us like children. She ritualizes the bad things and makes them holy. Like the Catholic Church celebrates the torture and mutilation of Christ, makes it into some kind of nice holiday with little bunnies and pictures of sunshine. If you sanitize something enough, people will embrace it.”
The grimness of the moment betrayed many other dark truths about this place and the way of life the scientists had discovered here.
“I’m sorry, Rory,” Rusty quietly said. “I shouldn’t talk this way about your mother. I wasn’t brought up that way.”
I knelt beside him. “That’s probably the
best description I’ve ever heard, from anybody.”
The compliment seemed to do him some good as he went on with his work.
Scanning the Blue Valley, way over there and seeming now like an oasis in a deadly desert, I asked, “I’ll bet the doors were left open because she wanted the little gargoyles to live. Right?”
“She doesn’t believe we have a right to kill them,” he confirmed. “I don’t blame her for that.”
“Don’t you?”
“We always knew that. She didn’t hide that part.”
“It’ll be good to go home, won’t it?”
He rolling his eyes and communicated a thousand fears and fatigues in that one moment.
I had a golden opportunity here. Like those times interrogating a witness, sometimes you have to know just how far to push—and when to take a leap.
“How many people have you lost, Rusty?” I asked, careful with my tone. “They’re not in other outposts, alive somewhere, are they?”
Slowly he shook his head. His mouth worked as if he were about to throw up.
Again, I prodded, “How many are dead?”
“God, I really shouldn’t be telling you this.”
“I’ll find out anyway. There’s no more hiding about things like that. How many of the original fifty-two are dead?”
Like a valve releasing, he said, “Thirty-six.” He turned to me in desperation. “We can’t live here. We can’t research here. They found every one of the other outposts. They never give up. They understand psychological warfare.”
“My sister said you waited them out. That it took five months for them to forget.”
Once again he shook his head, but not as if Gracie were wrong. It was as if Gracie knew the truth and had lied to me.
“They don’t forget,” he said. “It’s impossible for us to wait them out.”
“Then what is my mother up to?” I murmured, almost to myself. “If she knows you’re all doomed if you stay, what’s she trying to prove?”
He flopped back, knees folded under him, and stared down into the deep ravine. “She really seems to love them.” He sighed a couple of times, then suddenly perked up. “Let’s go back to your ship! Let’s go right now, okay? Why go back to the blind? We can launch tomorrow, right? Can we leave tomorrow?”
The Complete Aliens Omnibus Page 38