Alien Earth

by Megan Lindholm

  “You told me,” Connie replied softly.

  The old man stared at her suddenly, as if he had just noticed she were here. “You’re not like the others,” he accused her. “You’re no paid courier. What’s in this for you, boy?”

  “Girl,” Connie corrected him quietly, taking no offense. It was a common error. Her big-boned structure made her look masculine, she knew that. Maybe puberty would change that, but she doubted it. “Doing it as a favor for Tug. I work on his ship,” and she stopped, wondering if she had said too much.

  “You do, huh? Huh. How about that. That used to be my job, I was Talbot, the crewman. Until that prick fired me. Well, you watch these tapes, too, then. Learn a little about your roots, about what you really are. What we were.” He didn’t hand the pack to her. His old hand just let go of the straps, so they fell limply on the floor. He leaned his head back on the chair, sighed heavily. “Door’ll lock behind you,” he told her, and sat still, breathing.

  Connie accepted the dismissal and stooped to take the straps of the carry sack. It was heavy, too heavy for her to carry comfortably in station gravity. Weighed like old-generation plastic, the stuff that was illegal to possess in any form. She looped the woven straps over her arm and blundered her way out. After the metal grille swung shut behind her, she realized she had not said good-bye. It didn’t matter; he wouldn’t have noticed.

  She trudged off down the corridor, trying to walk as if she were used to both station gravity and the load she was carrying. Paranoia, she told herself, was making her imagine that all the old people loitering and chatting in the courtyard turned to watch her go, and that their eyes lingered on her sack and their withered pink mouths worked more busily after she had passed.

  She glanced down once at her burden and was dismayed at how the carry sack gaped open. The tumble of illicit plastic recordings was visible to anyone’s curious glance. She tucked it uncomfortably under her arm, hoping her sleeve covered most of it. She got back onto Main Corridor G and found a commercial sector. Here her bulging bag didn’t look so out of place.

  She entered the first garment shop she came to and attempted some hasty shopping. Up until this moment, she hadn’t intended to buy anything on this shore leave. The bright new colors and the gauziness of the new generation of fabrics almost overwhelmed her with indecision. She reminded herself that all she wanted was something to stuff in the top of the carry sack to conceal the plastic. Finally she selected a fluffy shawl, and then, in a sudden burst of impulsiveness, one of the new brightly colored long skirts and tunics so many of the women seemed to be wearing. She handed the bored clerk her consumer chit and then her credit card. He keyed in her purchases without looking at her, then ran her consumer chit to make sure she wasn’t over her allotment for clothing commodities. He considered his screen for a moment, leaned closer as if he couldn’t believe his eyes, and then looked up at her.

  “As near as I can read this,” he said carefully, “you have about thirty years of commodity allotment waiting to be used.”

  Connie smiled embarrassedly, wishing only that the transaction were over and that her purchases were in her bag covering her guilty cargo. “Mariner,” she explained, gesturing at her orange coveralls. “I’m out in deep space a lot. No time to use up my allotments when I’m in port.”

  “Oh, yeah?” A faint stirring of interest in the clerk’s brown eyes. “You sure you want to buy this skirt then? The degradable on it is only three years. Probably just rot away in your locker while you’re in Waitsleep. Unless you preservegas it. I hear you guys are allowed to do that.”

  “I’ll gas it,” Connie promised him, and tried to gather up her purchases. He let her get the shawl, tunic, and skirt billowed into her carry bag, but stood holding her cards.

  “You got a lot of back clothing allotment on here,” he told her, as if it were something she hadn’t understood.

  “I know.” She held out her hand for the cards.

  He ignored the gesture, but put an elbow on the counter and leaned across it to say quietly. “I know people who would be interested in that back allotment.”

  “What?” Connie asked stupidly, instinctively drawing back from him.

  “Everybody does it, anymore. You don’t need it, so pass on the allotment to someone who does. Gotta be your size, of course, but the customer tells us what she wants, she pays, but it racks up against your allotment, and she puts a generous credit to your account. Of course, you’re not exactly the most common size, but there’s still a market for all that unused allotment.”

  Connie tightened her grip on the carry bag. Had he seen the plastic? She didn’t think so. So why was he approaching her with something so monstrously illegal? “I’m a good citizen,” she informed him faintly.

  Something in his face changed. It wasn’t what she had expected. Instead of recoiling, his eyes widening as he realized he’d approached an honest citizen with his criminal plan, he just sighed and rolled his eyes, as if he’d told her a joke and she’d asked him to explain it. With a condescending sneer, he flipped her cards onto the counter so that they nearly slid off. She almost dropped her bag catching them. “Of course you’re an honest citizen,” he said sarcastically. “We all are. Aren’t we? Aren’t we all just perfectly adjusted and totally happy being good little citizens? Besides”—he leaned across the counter toward her and lowered his voice to a nasty register—“I didn’t offer to do anything illegal. I was just telling you that such a market existed. The very fact that you thought I was making you an illegal offer probably means that you are unadjusted, with illegal longings just lurking all through your brain. So think on that, good citizen.”

  He pushed himself back abruptly and stalked off across the shop, muttering to himself about “good citizens.” Connie stared mutely after him, then stuffed her cards into her carry bag with her new garments and the illegal plastic recordings. She hurried out of the store and down Main Corridor G, feeling obscurely shamed and guilty. But hadn’t she done what was right? Shouldn’t she feel virtuous and pleased with herself? The goal of the consumer allotment chit system was to prevent excess consumption of goods, a behavior that always resulted in needless harvest of raw materials and future waste. By refusing to sell her own excess allotment, she had worked within the system to prevent waste and discourage greed for consumer commodities. She had taken the correct action. So why did she feel foolish and embarrassed? Why was she hurrying away as fast as she could go with the heavy bag, desperately afraid that mocking laughter would follow her?

  She was halfway back to the dock before she realized she had hours left of leave time. Forget it. She just wanted to get back to Evangeline and a world where the rules were hard and fast. She shifted her carry bag, set her face, and walked on.

  Her orange coveralls were enough to get her waved past the safety lock that separated the docks from the station proper. She was halfway down the corridor to the security checkpoint when it suddenly occurred to her that she was carrying contraband. Incredibly stupid, not to have thought of this before. But she’d never before had anything to fear from the checkpoint. She slowed her step, not daring to stop and fearing to continue. Odd, how she had been aware of the illegality of her errand from the very beginning, but it only now dawned on her that this was where she would be caught. She kept walking, taking step after step toward her fate, her face set in stillness. Inevitable. No avoiding it. No turning back. Even if no one got suspicious at the lock, she had nowhere else to go. Might as well get it over with. This was where she paid for all her stupidity. They’d stop her, they’d confiscate the recordings, and the violation would let them access the confidential portion of her records. The Adjustment would be on there, and Readjustment would be mandatory. Only this time they would leave nothing untouched, not one memory would be unhandled, undiscussed, or unimproved. A coldness blew through her.

  The girl at the checkpoint had her eyes down, focused on something, probably a lap terminal. Connie watched the crown of her head
as she walked steadily toward her.

  “Wait!”

  The voice came from behind her, a half-hissed plea. She faltered, glanced back. John. He looked angry. She felt her guts tighten at the fury in his eyes. She retreated a half step closer to the checkpoint desk.

  “Stop!” he hissed, and she was suddenly aware of the effort he was making not to shout. She halted where she was, and glanced once more at the security clerk. She was still absorbed in whatever she was doing.

  A few strides of John’s long legs caught him up to her. He stepped between her and the clerk, glanced back down the hall, gave a half smile and a wave to someone else down there. Still smiling, he growled at Connie, “What do you think you’re doing? How stupid can you get?”

  She looked up at him, indecision and confusion freezing her. He casually wrested the handles of the carry bag from her hand. That galvanized her. “Hey, that’s mine!”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I know whose this is, and I know where it came from. What kind of a fool do you take me for?”

  Connie stared up at him, unable to speak. She had never seen another Human in such a pitch of anger before. It terrified her more than his words.

  He glanced back the way they had come. Another group of Mariners were coming along behind them. “Damn. No going back now. Okay, then. You shut up. Don’t say a word, no matter what. Maybe we’ll manage to get through this with our licenses and minds intact. Then again, maybe not.” His words were grim, his eyes bright with anger, but the forced smile never left his face. Still gripping the tote bag, he strode toward the security clerk. Connie followed in his wake as if towed.

  They stopped in front of the security check.

  The guard glanced up at them. “Ship?” she asked disinterestedly.

  “The Evangeline. Owned by Tug.” Connie listened to John calmly giving the answer.

  “Names?”

  “John Gen-93-Beta, ship’s captain.” John palmed in.

  His glanced nudged Connie. “Connie Gen-103-Castor-Horticol-six. Crew.” Connie set her palm to the reader panel.

  The attendant keyed in the information lazily, received a green flash to both. A match. “Station products?”

  “Uh, garments. Entertainment tapes.” John lied with practiced ease. Connie saw that suddenly. As she would have tried to lie, if he hadn’t come along. But somehow she knew she’d have been caught. And it would have been the last lie she ever told. They could do that, on a Readjustment, take away the capability to lie. What truths would I tell, Connie wondered. John swung up the carry sack, thumped it down on the counter. Connie heard the heaviness of the thud as an involuntary truth.

  “I have to clear it all,” the clerk told them. She seemed annoyed at actually having to work. She touched the fabric of the scarf, fingered loose a fold of the skirt’s lightness. “Pretty. Wish I could afford it on a stationer’s pay.” She glared briefly at John with unconcealed hostility for rich spacers. The clerk’s hands started to delve deeper into the bag.

  “So keep it,” John said, smiling down on the clerk. “I think it will do things for your eyes.”

  He tugged the scarf loose, leaned forward to lazily place it on the clerk’s shoulder. She goggled up at him, and Connie was suddenly aware of how tall John must seem to people unused to him. The clerk shifted suddenly, spilling an entertainment block from her lap to the floor. “Naughty, naughty!” John chided her as she scrambled to pick it up and hide it from the other oncoming Mariners. “Don’t want to get caught doing that on duty time! Remember, port security depends on you. Our lives depend on you.” He seemed incredibly sincere in his gentle rebuke. He picked up the carry bag casually, winked at the girl.

  “No, sir,” she all but gasped, and smiled sickly at him. Her hand stole up to caress the scarf at her throat.

  “Connie!”

  She realized she’d been standing there, staring at the clerk as John walked off. At his voice, she jerked and followed him, aware of the clerk’s venomous stare on her back. She had to hurry to catch up with John. Even then, she walked behind, not beside him. Neither of them spoke.

  For crew or passengers, there was a tube lift to Evangeline’s gondola. Connie stepped into it with John, felt the brief muffling as the door hummed shut and the air in the tube lift repressurized to match Evangeline’s gondola. Then she was moving slowly and smoothly aloft, away from Delta’s tunneled corridors and toward the ancient doming that protected her. A brief pause as fail-safes opened and closed, and they moved through a lock and into a second tube. The lift proceeded.

  “Let me tell you a thing or two about old Tug,” John said suddenly. He spoke softly, and she had to strain her ears to hear him. “He can be charming and warm. Comes across as a great person. You’ll think you’ve eliminated the barriers between Human and Arthroplana and found a true friend. Well, don’t believe it. He doesn’t give a damn about you or me or anything but himself. If they’d caught you at that checkpoint, he’d have denied all knowledge of what you were up to.”

  Connie found she had come to attention and was standing as still and silent as if this were a formal dressing down. From the moment John had called to her, she’d felt paralyzed by his presence. Now it came to her that if she had committed a crime, he had just aided and abetted her in it. A little tingle of anger ran through her, that he could act so superior about it. Her gaze met his and she saw the jolt of surprise he felt at the coldness in her eyes.

  “How did you know what I was doing?” she demanded softly.

  John recovered well. “You’re not the first crew member Tug has seduced. I recognized the type of carry tote that Talbot uses, and guessed by the weight of it. But you’re the most naive. The others usually had the sense to disguise what they were carrying for Tug. I guess that’s why I stepped in?”

  He said the last sentence wonderingly, almost to himself, as if he truly were not sure why he had intervened.

  “Thank you.” The words came from her reflexively, and then she realized she meant them. “I promise nothing like this will ever happen again. I realize you compromised yourself to get me out of a stupid situation. If there’s ever anything …”

  John signed and looked away from her, out the side of the tube over the bleak machinescape of Delta Station. “The last time you do something like this? I hope so, but I doubt it. Connie, don’t be stupid. You’ve given him a handle on you. Don’t think he won’t try to use it. Luckily for you, our next mission is an Earth reconnaissance. I don’t think he can find much trouble for you there.”

  They stood in silence, Connie too shocked to speak.

  “I’m … sorry.” John’s words sounded awkward, as if it were a phrase he had heard before but never had to say himself. “I suppose I should have found some way to warn you about Tug. But you wouldn’t have believed me.”

  “No. That’s true.” Even now her mind struggled with the idea that an Arthroplana could have asked her to do something so illegal. It came to her slowly that that was why she had gone through with the errand despite her misgivings: Arthroplana were so totally adjusted, so harmonious that she’d never totally believed what she was doing was wrong. Surely, there would be some explanation for this, some technicality that permitted Tug to request such things. Even now, she found herself clinging to a shred of hope that John was mistaken, that Tug would clear all this up when she delivered the recordings to him.

  Her mind veered suddenly. “Earth?” she said aloud to John. “Terra?”

  “Yeah. Should be different, huh?” He coughed and turned aside from her to speak as he gazed out over the station. “Uh, Connie. Don’t take this wrong. I know you value your privacy, because I value mine. But beware of solitary Wakeups, of time spent alone with Tug. He … toys with Humans. Long friendly talks that aren’t at all friendly. Not really.” His eyes swung back to her. “You know what the word ‘vivisection’ means?”

  She shook her head.

  “Look it up in an unabridged dictionary. Do it before we leave port; yo
u can access one from the ship’s terminal. And think how it could apply to a mind.”

  The doors slid open abruptly, and Connie emerged into the already-familiar corridors of Evangeline’s gondola. Pastel corridors, much smaller than any on Delta Station, radiated out from the embarkment lobby. She stepped out of the tube, held the door open for John.

  He didn’t move.

  “Aren’t you boarding now?”

  “No. I still have a few things I want to get done before we leave. That’s only seven hours from now. I want you to get down to cargo level and supervise some specialized equipment we’ll be loading. Make sure they stow it the way I showed you. And bring our basic supplies up to twice standard. I want a wide margin for error on this trip.” He was suddenly the captain again.

  “Yes, sir,” she found herself saying. His eyes met hers once, and she was puzzled by their opacity. She tried to find the honesty she had earlier glimpsed there. “About what I did for Tug …”

  He stared past her, eyes cold, into the empty corridors of the ship. “That subject is closed,” he told her flatly. And there was no mistaking the command when he added, “We won’t be speaking of it again.”

  She let go of the door and it hissed shut behind her. She took a deep and sudden breath, and realized she was shaking. She’d done it. She was home safe, back to the ship with her illegal tapes for Tug. Despite all John’s seriousness and warnings, a wicked excitement raced through her. For the first time since her Readjustment, she felt a savage little thrill of personal triumph. They didn’t fix me, she thought to herself. They didn’t get all of it. And then wondered why the thought brought her such gladness.