Alien Earth

by Megan Lindholm

  As the lift descended, John leaned his forehead against the transparency of the wall and tried to find some shred of calmness or complacency within himself. But as he looked out over the clockwork busyness of the multilevel port around him, he could only grasp that the coolness of the wall felt good against his sweaty forehead. Forty-eight hours ago, he’d been in the warmth and peace of a Waitsleep womb and all had been right with his world. Now it was crumbling around him, and he was helpless to stop it.

  His “lunch” with Deckenson had been followed by a briefing at Earth Affirmed offices that had only left him more sure of how untenable his position was. Their instructions had been precise to the point of insulting; they’d had no doubt that he’d obey, that they owned him. He’d walked away from it feeling both numb and shaky, and convinced that nothing much worse could happen to him.

  Only to arrive in time to spot his crew engaging in a felony at the behest of the ship’s owner. He’d had a brief but alarmingly detailed vision of the consequences of Connie getting caught; the port investigation that would turn up not only his own collection and the fact that half of the ship’s library space was devoted to contraband, but also dig into his recent dealings with Earth Affirmed. Some of the cargo they’d be loading into the Evangeline would be distinctively unusual. None of his recent doings could bear a sniff of inquiry, let alone a full-fledged investigation. And so he’d acted, extricating Connie as best he could. Only now did he wonder if it had been the wisest thing to do, or if he had just given another person a handle on him.

  He became aware of the tube lift’s transparency and straightened himself, trying to resume a little professional decorum. And what now? Caution dictated he avoid his rendezvous to pick up Ginger’s wares, that he cancel his meeting with Andrew as well.

  Caution hadn’t worked too well for him lately.

  Besides, how could it get worse?

  He nearly changed his mind when he found that the package left for him to claim at a port pawnbroker contained not only his requested volumes, but a “complimentary” copy of Shaw’s Androcles and the Lion. It was the only one in button rather than Ginger’s standard tube format, yet the package had shown no signs of tampering. In a waste recycler stall he transferred his purchases and the gift to the lining of his collar, save for Crime and Punishment, which fit neatly into his left cuff. The packaging went down the waste recycler.

  He tried not to think about it as he walked to his meeting with Andrew. Had someone from Earth Affirmed added Crime and Punishment to the package? They’d known the drop off point. Or had they their own ways of contacting Ginger, and having it added? Would Ginger consider him a poor risk now? Was Ginger allied with Earth Affirmed? Was Ginger a part of Earth Affirmed? Did Ginger exist as anything other than a name? After this contract, would any of it matter to him anyway? He batted the questions away irritably and tried to walk briskly, but was fifteen minutes late meeting Andrew.

  Andrew straightened from where he’d been leaning against a corridor bench to shake John’s hand. The only sign of his receiving the recording was a slight widening of his grin. But a few years John’s junior, his substantially smaller body and cheerful face made him appear generations younger. The first time they’d met, he’d insisted he remembered John from an Academy prep class, and John had never discouraged his delusion. Andrew was one of the few people John bothered to maintain contact with. His boyish enthusiasm and openness had always been a marked contrast to John’s notoriously somber moods. Usually John found his company and easy conversation relaxing. Today Andrew’s cheeriness was like a mockery to John’s problems. “No luck getting Norwich back?” Andrew guessed shrewdly.

  John gave him a black look and Andrew held up a conciliatory palm. “We won’t talk about it yet. I’ve found the only place on this station that still has decent stim. Come on. I’m buying.”

  “Damn right you are,” John informed him sourly, but let Andrew take his arm companionably.

  Andrew’s stim shop was in the port district, and largely frequented by the maritime trade. All aspects of the port were represented, from longshoremen to oilers to other Beastship personnel, with a corresponding spectrum of sizes and ages. The fixtures ranged widely in styles and sizes to accommodate the varying trade. John sank gratefully into a proper sized chair. Two cups of stim and the familiar surroundings let some of the tension out of him. Andrew’s casual gossip of doings on the Trotter and the other short-run Beastships needed no more than a grunt and a nod in reply. He only realized how wandering his thoughts had been when a mixed platter of fresh greens and fruits was set before him. He glanced up at Andrew in confusion. Andrew’s dark eyes were frankly amused.

  “The waiter asked you twice what you’d like. I ordered it for you, the second time you didn’t hear him.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ve a lot on my mind.”

  “No contract yet?”

  “Actually, that’s not the problem. I’ve got a client.”

  “Good one?”

  John shrugged. He didn’t want to get into it.

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  John hesitated, wondering how much, if anything, he wanted to tell Andrew. But Andrew’s own face darkened and he set his cup down with a thump. “It’s Connie, isn’t it? Damn, John, I can’t tell you how sorry I am. I swear I didn’t know when I recommended her.”

  “So you’ve said,” John answered, content to let the conversation wander down this channel for a while.

  “So. What’s she done?” Andrew leaned forward, ready for a choice story.

  “Exactly what she’s told, and no more,” John informed him grimly. He reflected it wasn’t exactly a lie. Tug had undoubtedly sent her out on her latest ill-advised errand.

  Andrew looked confused. “So?”

  “So tell me what the rumor was?”

  Andrew looked acutely uncomfortable. “It was only a rumor, John. I heard it from Luis, and you know what he’s like. I wouldn’t give it much credit, except …” Andrew hesitated.

  “Spill it,” John advised him. He took a thin slice of taro root from the plate, seasoned it, and crunched into it.

  “Well, you know how she’s always muttering to herself?”

  John didn’t, but he nodded to let Andrew continue.

  “Well, Luis says that when a person has had really intensive Readjustment, they do that. It’s part of the hypnotherapy. They give the person set dialogues that kick in to relieve stress, you know, built-in pep talks from the subconscious.”

  “I’ve heard of it,” John admitted.

  “Yeah, well, Luis said he overheard enough to know it wasn’t the standard stuff. He had the bunk right above hers; you know we don’t get separate awake quarters like you’ve got on the Evangeline. He said it sounded to him like she’d been involved in, uh, some kind of violence. Something bloody. And after Connie left the Trotter, and Luis got more open about talking about it, Trey said she’d used to live in the same building as Connie, back when she was a shoresider. She’s not positive it was Connie, because she didn’t really know her then, but someone got taken out of the building one afternoon by emergency personnel. It wasn’t the kind of thing to be too curious about, but Trey said there was a lot of blood on whoever they took out, and the room was a mess with it.”

  Andrew paused breathlessly, waiting for John’s reaction. John didn’t have one to give him. Instead he sat silently, thinking of how Connie clasped stillness and disappeared herself into it. He tried to picture her in violent motion, energetic, engaged in some passionate act. He couldn’t. Then he tried to picture her as the recipient of violence, as the stunned victim of some unadjusted person’s wrath. He winced. He said softly, “Don’t they do a Readjustment sometimes on a person who’s been badly hurt? You know, traumatized by violence?”

  John watched Andrew absorb the idea, saw the flickering of emotion over his boyish face. “Damn,” he said softly. “I’ll bet.” After a moment he asked, “You going to keep her on?”


  John took another bite of taro root, to give the appearance of considering the question. In reality, he didn’t have time to do anything about Connie except keep her. Hiring a new crewman would take time. Time spent in port was time vulnerable to the Conservancy; and Earth Affirmed had stressed that a speedy departure was essential. He had no choice but to keep her. No damn choice about anything anymore.

  “I’ll just have to be careful of her,” he said, and only when Andrew nodded did he realize he’d spoken aloud.

  “Just don’t put much pressure on her, and she’ll probably do fine. She did okay on the Trotter. And the Evangeline is a lot quieter than the Trotter. Less stress. She’ll do fine.”

  “Probably,” John agreed glumly, thinking of Tug and their present mission. Less stress. Sure. He took a sip of stim, watching Andrew over the rim of his mug. “Ever think about getting off?” he asked seriously.

  “What?”

  “You know. Get off the Beast. Retrain. Get a real job, a real life, one that goes day to day, where you have neighbors and friends….”

  Andrew shifted uncomfortably. “No,” he said shortly.

  “Why not?” John asked.

  “Are you serious?” And when John nodded, Andrew frowned. “Because, as frustrating as it all is, it’s still as close as I’m ever going to get to the real thing. The old dream, you know, the freedom of the stars. I doubt any man will ever really ‘captain’ a Beastship, or any other interstellar ship. The ancient technology that we once thought would get us to the stars: it was too messy, too inefficient. Too damn slow. And even it’s been lost. The Arthroplana have it all sewed up. Beastships are the only practical method of interstellar travel. And whatever they are, neither you nor I are equipped to really captain one. So we’re along for the ride. And it’s frustrating, and sometimes it’s humbling, but it’s still as close as I’m ever going to get. So we take the crumbs and are grateful. But sometimes we stop and wonder, What does that make us?”

  John closed his eyes for one aching instant, and wished Andrew hadn’t been able to verbalize it so well. But it was true, and once in a great while, the Humans who worked the Beastships would speak of it. Quietly. Bitterly. Crumbs. They got only crumbs, but they’d cling to them fiercely. Because it was as close to the dream as they’d ever get. “Human,” he told Andrew softly. “It makes us Human.”

  4

  TUG FINISHED THE SEARCH of his archives. He signaled Evangeline to retract the memory filaments that served as his records and withdrew into himself to contemplate. Montemorossi. There was simply no record of him, anywhere in Tug’s library. Not even the most teasing reference. And yet John’s latest acquisitions had seventeen poems ascribed to him. More baffling still was that Tug’s extensive knowledge of linguistics couldn’t pin the poet’s work down to a particular time. Late nineteenth century, Earth-reckoned date, was his tentative decision, but then again, there were certain idioms used in the work that hadn’t come into common usage until the twenty-second century. It was totally baffling, and therefore totally delightful.

  Boredom was Tug’s greatest enemy. As an enBeasted Arthroplana his intellect should have developed beyond the point where mere solitude could bore him, yet he had welcomed this diversion that John had unwittingly provided during the first twenty-seven years of their trip out from Delta toward Terra. After John and Connie had secured their Human quarters and settled into Waitsleep, Tug had occupied his time well. First, there had been the relatively minor matter of deciphering the language-based lock John had placed on his personal library access reader. That done, he had plundered the latest collection of ancient poetry that John had stored in the reader’s immediate memory. And since then there had been the methodical storage, referencing, and cross-referencing of the new material into his library, along with lavish notations on possible interpretations of the works. It had been an enjoyable, if brief, entertainment. But now it was time he turned his attention to his Human charges. He reared up from his customary perch over the section of Evangeline’s nerve trunk that ran through his chamber, and moved to where he could monitor the Human’s Waitsleep. They should be in their dreaming cycles right now.

  Raef moved slightly in his womb, a shuddering, twitching movement that was a response to gentle electrical stimulus of his muscles. Raef was in the toning cycle. Heartbeat and respiration gradually accelerated, blood pressure came up to a carefully calculated level. The dormant body must be stimulated without being aged or stressed. Random eye movements reassured Tug that Raef was dreaming, the mind being allowed enough self-stimulation to prevent psychic damage from too long a period of disuse. Within his own chambers, the Arthroplana checked the reciprocal pulse points that let him monitor Raef’s womb. All was well. Evangeline controlled Raef’s dream cycle herself after all these years, but it was a thing he always monitored; there was something peculiar about it, but he had never been able to determined exactly what. Perhaps the great age of the specimen had something to do with it, or perhaps it was Raef’s own mental peculiarities showing up in a physical way. Whatever it was, Tug always watched it, and handled all of Raef’s Waitsleep time with solicitude. Tug’s greatest fear was that something would befall Raef and he would die before Tug could solve the mystery that the man represented to him. Tug had already planned that when his own enBeastment ended and he stood once again before the Elders of his race to present his findings on Humans, an analysis of Raef’s abnormalities would make an interesting sidebar to his research. “Dreams: the Wellsprings of Human Creativity” he was thinking of calling that dissertation.

  As always, Raef was intact, in superb condition, and actively dreaming. This longer journey they were presently embarked on would give Tug more opportunities for waking Raef and discoursing with him. Perhaps even enough opportunities for Tug to finish extracting his knowledge and memories of old Earth. Those factual accounts would provide a marvelous backdrop to his analysis of Human fictions regarding that time. He was sure that the final product would be a multifaceted presentation such as the Elders had never seen before, and a certain guarantee of a comfortable old age and many breeding cycles. Tug gave a gurgle of satisfaction.

  Captain and crew; John and Connie. It would be the longest cruise of John’s career, and Tug would have to be particularly careful of the Humans’ health during the longer Waitsleep intervals. It was time for more than a cursory check of their readings. Tug drifted across his chambers, rested feelers on two separate sets of pulses. Both Humans were fine. John’s temperature was half a degree cooler than Connie’s, but that seemed to be the norm for him. Tug carefully positioned two smaller feelers over each pulse point and stimulated Evangeline’s system, simulating her body’s reaction to a mild scare. Within a few moments the pulse nodules on his chamber walls quickened their pace as Evangeline’s body responded to his interference. The increase in stimulation was passed on to John and Connie through the tubes of their wombs. Both bodies responded as expected as they entered the toning and dreaming cycle. As Evangeline recovered, their metabolisms would gradually slow back to a dormant state.

  A separate bank of instruments, Human made and laboriously installed by Arthroplana centuries ago, let him monitor their Human quarters inside the gondola. All readings there were normal. All readings there had always been normal. Even after all this time, there were moments when the artificiality of the Human equipment, its geometric shapes of metals and plastics, struck him as bizarre. All of his own interfacing with the Beast was done biologically. He wondered how long Human evolution would have to be guided before their mechanical barriers between species were replaced with biological interfaces.

  For a moment Tug toyed with the idea of awakening Connie and talking with her. When she had returned to the ship with the tapes, he had sensed a subtle change in her attitude toward him. It should be explored; it was probably John’s doing. But the Beastship’s schedule didn’t call for her to be awakened for another five Human years, and he had no real justification for breaking schedule. O
nly his own curiosity, and John never considered that a valid reason. John was dry as old bones when it came to curiosity. He wasn’t fresh meat like Connie. Tug savored his simile and metaphor proudly. He was becoming certain that he had mastered the forms, regardless of John’s contempt for his efforts. John was old bones in that he and Tug had conversed so often that there was nothing new in his mind to nourish Tug’s curiosity. And Connie was fresh meat in that she was much newer to the crew, and offered much new information and anecdotes to nourish Tug’s curiosity, just as fresh meat had once nourished Humans when they were predatory carnivores. Yes, dry old bones and fresh meat. He almost awakened Connie just so he could try the simile and the metaphor out on her.

  She intrigued him. Her satisfaction at bringing him his recordings had astonished him. So much triumph to attach to the minor circumventing of a rule. He had tried to explain to her that what they had done was not wrong. The tapes would be biodegraded, in fact Evangeline’s physical system would break them down far more completely than the standard methods prescribed by the Conservancy. All she had really done was to postpone their processing until Tug could scan them, and make duplicates of the more interesting ones. But her elation had not faded with his explanation. Like Raef, there was much about her he could not understand. He sensed a reserve within her that would bear careful exploration. But this voyage would allow him the opportunities to break down her barriers, too.

  She was very young, and the Evangeline was only the second Beast she’d been within. When John was awake, she tried to be all business. And when she was alone, she always seemed surprised when Tug spoke to her. Still, he was convinced her reticence hid secrets rather than hostility like John’s. He would prise them out of her, but with patience and tact. His long-ago baiting of John had been an error. He had thought that in anger, John would reveal more of his true self. Instead, he had shut down communication with Tug almost completely. Tug expected it would take him another century before he could wear through John’s resentment and finish exploring the man.