by Unknown
Then the tears came.
Through blurry eyes she saw Scooby hovering before her face, covered with crawling lice. But alive.
“Go away,” she snapped.
“Please deactivate me now,” he said.
She covered her ears, curled into a ball and lay for a long time, as the same ugly thought kept surfacing through her anguish. Rachel had worshiped her father. Umma would have to bear the brunt of her daughter’s pain and anger. In losing Ian, she had probably also lost her daughter.
A while later, Scooby bumped her. “You’re almost to the Cochran. You can see it from here. You don’t need me. I have no function now that-”
She shoved her grief aside, sat up, grabbed the little AI and shook him. “Stop it, Scooby! That’s a direct order. You’re still alive - just like me - and you’re stuck with that responsibility. You can’t abandon Sinacola’s colonists just because Ian’s dead! They need you. There’s too much at stake. Ian gave his life to see this world and these … damned animals. That should mean something to you.”
Umma sat for a moment, staring at the blinking AI in her fist and considering her words, then released him and wiped her eyes.
“Those damned animals have built a travois,” Scooby said from beyond her reach.
“What?”
“They’ve built a new travois. A better one.”
She turned toward Ian, who lay on the frame she had half torn apart. Another travois - built from the same kind of reeds - lay beside him. On hands and knees, she crawled the short distance and examined the gift. It was roughly the same dimensions as her design, but the crossbars tying the assembly together were bonded with a flexible, plastic-like putty. The whole frame was quite sturdy and could not be pulled apart.
“Porky called while you were … incapacitated,” Scooby said. His little speaker sounded deflated and tinny. “Maggie died too.”
“Tell him-” Umma ran her fingers along Ian’s face and then sighed. “Tell him I’m sorry.”
Sudden doubts crept into her thoughts. Ian had been stable before the jamming. Had the parasites been keeping him alive? Would he still be alive if she had left them alone? And if she had instead left Ian and rushed back to the ship to help get Maggie into the MockDoc vat, would she have survived? Umma sat down and ran shaking hands though matted hair. All she wanted was to mourn Ian, to hold her daughter, but she didn’t know when or if that would ever happen.
“The MockDoc wants to talk to you when you’re able.”
She took a deep breath and then struggled to her feet. “Okay.”
“I’m patching him through.”
“Umma,” Doc said in his wizened male voice, through Scooby’s speaker, “I’m sorry about Ian. Are you hurt? Are you going to be able to make it back to the ship on your own?”
She sighed and looked around. The herd had left about a twenty-yard buffer around her. The path to the ship was clear. “I can see the Cochran from here. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“I’ve informed the Sinacola of your situation. Of course, they want to talk to you as soon as you’re able.”
“My suit is dead. I’ll call them when I get back to the ship. Tell Rachel … that I’m sorry.”
“Will do.”
She strapped Ian to the new rig, then picked up the handles and started walking. The little bastards were still crawling all over and though Umma, but this time they didn’t try to stop her.
She took a deep breath and opened the hatch leading to the control cabin. Her friends, people she had known for more than half her life, lay scattered on the deck and draped over chairs. The knowledge of their deaths hadn’t prepared her for seeing them that way.
A cloud of AIs lifted into the air from their places of vigil near their dead mates and immediately launched into a plaintive chorus.
“Please deactivate me.”
“This is too much, please turn me off.”
“Jacque is dead. Please deactivate me.”
She inhaled, preparing to yell at them to be quiet, and instead just raised a hand. They eventually stopped. “I’m sorry. I know what you’re feeling, but you can’t deactivate. I need your help. We have work to do. We … can’t just leave everyone like this.”
She left them hovering and limped across the cabin to the storage hold hatch in the floor. One rung at a time, she eased herself down, then, at the bottom, sat to rest before looking for the body bags.
She woke eleven hours later, oddly twisted, with one numb arm and a Medical Diagnostic Unit strapped to the other. Her stomach demanded food and her muscles would barely move, but she resumed her search. Scooby reminded her repeatedly that messages from the Sinacola were waiting, but working was easier. She couldn’t face Rachel yet.
She removed the frogvarks, but could do nothing about the lice, so she sealed Ian and the rest of the crew into bags along with their parasites and moved them to storage. She cleaned up the dried blood and vomit, then showered and ate.
With her excuses all gone, she stood before the communications console, not wanting to talk to anyone, especially Rachel. Lice crawled in and out of the equipment racks, from behind panels and through cooling vents.
“So why are the electronics still working with these things gumming up the works?”
Scooby floated nearby and answered. “Porky says they seem to avoid the actual electricity, including circuit cards of running equipment. So we leave it running. They have had mixed results with operating devices that have been powered down.”
Since Umma didn’t know how long they could count on the electronics, communicating with the Sinacola now, while she still could, suddenly seemed like a good idea. For over an hour, Umma listened to recorded messages from the Sinacola. First she heard the pleas for clarification after they’d received chaotic and panicked calls from the survey team. Then replies to messages from various AIs, reporting the deaths of their charges. The last recording was from the mission commander.
“Hang in there, Umma. The MockDoc sent your status while you were sleeping to reassure us, but we’re still worried. We think we have plenty of ways to protect the next landing party and even have some ideas on how to rid you of the lice, but we don’t want to try anything now. We want you in a fully-functioning medical bay before taking the risk. Call us when you can.”
There were no messages from Rachel. That hurt, but she also felt relief at not having to talk to her daughter yet.
She stared at the camera. How could she even begin to explain what had happened? But she had to try. Since she couldn’t carry on a real conversation with a seventy-one minute time lag, she just told her story, in a long rambling monologue. She ended her message with a warning that they should land no one else until they could make sure their landing area was totally free of the lice and included her thoughts on killing them en masse.
Three hours later, Scooby hovered just out of arm’s reach. “You have two new messages from Rachel.”
“Could you play them for me? On the large wall screen. Please.”
Rachel’s face was blotchy and her eyes red, but she was more than just upset over her father. Umma knew her daughter and the set of her mouth said she was furious.
“I just found out that you’re working with these idiots up here to find a way to kill the lice. You’re a biologist, Mom! A xenobiologist! We came to this world to understand these creatures, not kill them. I know you’re upset about Dad. So am I. He was a part of me. My own flesh and-” her face screwed up and she looked away from the camera for a second. “And unlike you, I didn’t even get to say goodbye to him. So if I can look at these parasites as a possible sentient species, without planning revenge, then you should be able to as well.”
She laid both hands on the table and leaned into the camera.
“From your and Scooby’s accounts, there is plenty going on with the lice to make us go slow. They don’t have technology like us because they’ve never needed it, but they’re still showing signs of intelligence. They’
re just primitive. As far as we know, we’re the advanced intelligence here, so the onus to show them we’re not just herd animals falls on us.”
Then her anger flared. She leaned even closer to the camera. “And who’s acting like an animal in this encounter? Lashing out because of anger and instinct, not reason? Do you think we can just come in here and kill them all? We can’t do this again, Mom! We can’t keep coming to new places and wiping the slate clean. You know Dad would never have done that.”
The message ended.
Umma jumped out of the chair, threw her water across the cabin and kicked the side of the comm console.
Scooby and Porky moved away.
“What the fuck does she know? She hasn’t seen these things! She doesn’t have them living inside her! She didn’t watch them kill Ian.”
“Perhaps that gives her a more unbiased perspective,” Scooby said softly from his position near the hatch.
“Unbiased? They killed her father. Well, she can be a self-righteous child if she wants, but I’m going to do everything I can to protect her from these little monsters. They killed my husband. They will not get my daughter too!”
“She has valid points. Maybe you should listen to her.”
“She’s twenty. And she always takes a position opposite mine. Always!”
Scooby drifted closer, but still out of arm’s reach.
“So you think this is just youthful contrariness? She may only be twenty, but she is still a degreed biologist. Like it or not, she is your professional peer and deserves a fair hearing, for that reason if no other. She left a second message, twenty minutes after her first one. Do you want to hear it?”
Umma paced the small cabin, then eventually stopped before the console. “Play it.”
Tears trickled down Rachel’s face and the angry set to her mouth was gone. She paused to wipe her nose on her sleeve, like she had when she was six, and Umma felt her own heart melt. Rachel was suddenly a little girl again.
“I’m sorry, Mom. I shouldn’t have said those things to you. I’m just scared. I feel so alone here. No one will listen to me and no one is on my side. Please, just take a while and think about it. We’ve had a bad start, but we have time to do it right this time. I love you and I’m glad you’re okay.”
The message ended and Umma slid down the console to sit on the floor. She buried her face in her hands and tried to concentrate. It was hard when all she could think about was ridding herself of the nasty little bugs and never itching again. But her daughter needed her and she had to think it through.
She got up, climbed the central ladder and exited the Cochran through her uppermost hatch. The wind whipped her hair and felt cool and damp. Rain was on the way. This might some day be a nice home, thought Umma, but as she gazed out at the herd surrounding the ship, she didn’t see how. She was on a very small island in a vast, living sea. But she would try it Rachel’s way. There would always be time for killing, if it came to that.
Scooby hovered above and behind her. She realized for the first time that he had not left her side since Ian’s death.
“Scooby? I think our little jamming experiment proved that these things communicate by radio signals, at least on some level. I need your help. I want to implant something in myself, as well as in the frogvarks and herd animals, to intercept and record the signals these things use to communicate.”
“That should be easy enough. Sorting them into some coherent pattern will be the hard part.”
“Good. And please record the following to send to Rachel: ‘I’m sorry too. I am on your side and will help all I can. We’re going to try some things here, but please send me your thoughts about the lice. I love you.’”
Three days and nearly a thousand hours of AI research time later, Umma took a finger-sized herd beast from the box of models they had generated in the Cochran’s nano-constructor vat. She set it on the aluminum plate before a puddle of lice, then through the metal, sent the signal they thought the lice used for ‘herd beast’.
The lice examined the model and repeated the lone signal.
“Well, crap,” Umma said. “What does that mean?”
With MockDoc’s help, they had determined that the parasites didn’t exactly send radio signals through the air, but instead passed electro-chemical pulses through long chains of their own bodies. There were always enough of them packed close together for the signals to have a path. They used similar pulses to trigger firing in the nerve and pain centers of their hosts. The AIs had collected, sorted and cataloged over four thousand signals. Some complex but repeatable patterns had begun to emerge.
Not unlike human data transmission packets, the commands sent to control their host animals each had common headers: one for humans, a different one for the frogvarks and another for the large herd animals. Each command seemed to have a signal combination. Some of the communication strings, or data packets, contained hundreds or even thousands of parts.
She replaced the model with one of a frogvark, and sent the header signal for ‘frogvark’. The lice simply repeated the signal again.
“This is going nowhere fast.”
Scooby hovered nearby, watching and recording video to send back to Sinacola. “Have you noticed that the headers for their host animals, while different, still have a similar component?” he asked.
“Hmmm… That’s because to them, we’re all just mobile homes. Maybe it is their word for ‘host’. Let’s try something.”
Umma placed three models - a human, a frogvark and a herd beast - in a group and sent just the common component of the header. The lice repeated the signal. Then she put the louse model in a location separate from the others and sent the same ‘host’ header. The lice advanced, examined the model parasite, then formed back into a clump and to her surprise and shock, returned a signal that was different.
“Holy shit! Did you get that, Scooby?”
“Yes. It is a header we’ve seen before but didn’t understand.”
Umma picked up all of the models, then set down the frogvark and herd beast and sent the ‘host’ header. Next, she set the human model and the louse down together and sent the signal they now suspected meant ‘louse.’
There was no response. No repeated signal. Nothing.
“Well, I think we managed to confuse them. Maybe we should give up and try tomorrow. I’m getting really-”
Then the parasites sent a new signal.
“Bingo,” Scooby said. “It’s a combination of ‘louse’ and ‘human’ headers. A new category.”
Before Umma could even vocalize her amazement, her skin suddenly felt as if were on fire. She gasped and started to wipe away the sudden flurry of lice, until she realized they were erupting out of her, from every pore and opening.
She fought the urge to cough or sneeze and tried to remain very still. They left her by the millions, in wide, snaking lines that seemed to merge, then pass through the clump that still waited on the metal plate.
Almost simultaneously, the other AIs reported from all over the Cochran. The lice were leaving every part of the ship, even through the supposedly airtight seals of the body bags. Frogvarks arrived by the hundreds and the parasites waited patiently to board and leave.
“Do you think they finally recognized us as peers and not just herd animals?” Umma said, to no one in particular.
Scooby dropped down beside her face and said, “It appears so, but we still don’t know enough to be sure.”
“It’s a start. Maybe someday we’ll understand each other. I assume you’re recording all of this?”
“Of course,” Scooby said.
“Maybe Ian was right. Maybe we were born for this. Send the video to Rachel along with this message: You were right on every point. We do have time to do this the correct way. You’re a wonderful scientist. I wish your father could see this. He would’ve been so very proud.”
PROMISES
BY GREY FREEMAN
Sarah was always more woman than I could handle.
It’s what gives us chemistry, what makes us work; a fact that’s never more obvious than when she laughs.
First comes that smile, slow and perfect, her head tilts to one side, her shoulders begin to shake and then her eyes roll up towards the ceiling before she lets out a loud, boisterous guffaw that fills the room and turns heads.
It sets my heart fluttering, though I should be long used to it by now, an intoxicating mix of embarrassment and excitement that only she can provide.
She’s doing it now and, bang on cue, the heads turn.
My eyes dart, meeting each of their gazes, a slight blush creeping to my cheeks as I note their disapproval. But I make no apologies, for myself or for her; there’s no time, because, if I love her laugh, I love what comes next even more.
I slide my hand across the table in anticipation.
The waiter has just taken away our plates and the only things that stand between us are two glasses of wine, their colour almost matching the small red candle set in the centre of the table, the tiny flame flickering in its little glass bowl, its reflection on the window competing with the lights that dazzle the Thames from the north bank.
Her laughter soon rolls to a stop, stemmed with a sip of wine. Her hand slides luxuriantly across mine, just as it always does, and she fixes me with a look that sends electricity through my body from scalp to groin. It’s an almost serious look, there’s a slight pursing of her lips, as though she’s … I don’t know, evaluating me and, what’s more, liking what she finds.
It’s a look that makes me swell, makes me feel like the man she’s seeing. Enjoying the afterglow, I trace her fingers with mine, pausing to toy with the small diamond that shines on her engagement ring. Catching me eyeing it, she makes a small noise of contentment and leans in across the table, her black dress revealing plenty of cleavage. I can’t resist taking a peek. She knew I couldn’t, and a small smirk twitches her lips. “So,” she purrs, “what are you going to … do with yourself while I’m not around?”