Alien Earth

by Megan Lindholm

  “Complete or summary?” it inquired.

  Did she want to listen to a long string of numerical readouts on every system in the ship? No. “Uh, in regard to query only, unless there are priority ones to report. Any priority ones new since last report?”

  It considered. There was another worry, the computer was taking perceptibly longer to respond. “None,” it said at last.

  “Any foreign biologics detectable within system?”

  Another even longer pause. “None detectable yet, but alert still in effect.”

  “Continue alert. Is the check of ship-to-ship communication system completed?”

  “Four tests remaining.”

  Damn. Those tests should have been completed by now if the computer was functioning at full capacity. “Any detected malfunctions yet?”

  “None.”

  She was getting sick of its flat voice. She wished Tug were here to interface with it and make its information into a concise report for her. She longed to hear his voice. She pushed down her growing suspicion that nothing had been wrong with the shuttle’s radios. But that would mean that something was wrong on Evangeline’s end, and Connie didn’t want to consider that. Better to plod on with the computer’s report.

  “Outside temperature?”

  “Twenty-seven point three degrees.”

  It was dropping. That was a comfort. At last report it was twenty-nine. Since she had retracted the emergency slide and shut the hatch, the shuttle had maintained a warm but not uncomfortable interior temperature. She’d been outside three times to look for John. Each time, the solar radiation had driven her back. Solar radiation. That’s how she thought of it. It was far too intense compared with the friendly warmth of the sun that nurtured Castor for her to think of it as sunlight.

  And John was out there in it. And she didn’t know where, or why. Had some animal attacked and dragged him off? It was the only reason she could think of for his disappearance.

  Each time she had gone out, she had forced herself to make a complete circuit of the shuttle, scanning to the horizon in all directions. There had been no sign of him. On such a barren piece of terrain, she’d have seen him if he’d been within walking distance. The soft undulations of the dry red land couldn’t conceal a standing man. Could they? But there had been only the faint wind with its distasteful odor that reminded her of spoiled protein blocks, and the ugly plants that caught at her boots and the endless red soil.

  She shut her eyes against the mental images, and swallowed. Finally, she understood it. Now she did. For every condition on this planet that fostered life, there were those that opposed it. Harsh conditions shaped whatever survived. With every step she took out there, she wondered what toxins smeared her boots. Stepping on living plants was unavoidable; they grew in disorderly profusion. She had tried to ignore the soft crunchings as their structures gave way to her weight. Even more disconcerting was that some sprang up again when she stepped off them, heedless of her abuse. In the wake of the shuttle, the crushed bushes gave off a pungent odor. She had seen no sign of animals, but had wondered if she would recognize them if she did. There had been a noise, a persistent, sourceless chirring noise that had increased with the heat, but she had decided it was the wind over some geographical formations. Nothing alive could make a sound so consistently annoying and omnipresent.

  The Conservancy had been correct. The Earth was a dead planet now, save for those scrubby grey-green bushes. Animal life in thousands of forms had once swarmed over this planet. Now it was empty, just red rocks and wind. Surely if any sizable animals had survived, she would have seen some of them on the flat plain. Not much emphasis had been given to the natural history of the Earth in her education. Why study something that no longer existed? But she could recall something about immense flocks of large beasts congregating on plains such as this. Well, there was nothing like that now. She couldn’t decide if she was relieved or disappointed.

  But if there were no animals left alive, what had happened to John?

  She was sick of her mind chasing itself in the same circles. Sick, too, of the secret guiltiness that haunted her. She should go look for him; perhaps he had ventured out of sight, for some idiotic reason, and then been overcome by solar radiation. Perhaps he was lying out there in a depression of the earth somewhere, dehydrated, his skin burning, unconscious…. But, dammit, there was no way for her to tell in what direction to search. All she could do was go out and get burned and dehydrated herself.

  To busy her mind, she went to the communications panel, flipped the activation switches. The sight of John’s helmet on his lounger renewed her irritation. Stupid man. Probably a direct result of his entering puberty. “No amount of adult-level experience can prevent an adolescence of the attitudes when hormones begin to stir….” She remembered that line from a play, a farce about two generation mates entering puberty together. Farcical or not, it described John’s behavior perfectly. Irresponsible, unreliable adolescent. Forget about him for now, she’d just do what she could. “This is the Shuttle Arcadia calling Beastship Evangeline…. This is the Shuttle Arcadia calling anyone. Will anyone within range please reply?”

  She listened to the silence. Stupid. The emergency beacon had been activated for hours, and no one had contacted them. Not that Earth was near any of the trade routes. In fact, she could think of no good reason that anyone would be out here, unless they had some stupid mission like checking out a long dead planet. She leaned over and shut off the transmission channel.

  Af the first thud, her whole body convulsed. She leaped clear of her lounge and then stood perfectly still, listening. It came again, a muffled thud at the access hatch. Her heart pounded as she headed back to it and worked the interior catches. As the hatch retracted, John fell in.

  His skin was a uniform and virulent red. He had taken his tunic off and tied it around his head, probably as sun protection, but it hadn’t done much good. Tiny swollen areas stood out on his back and around his bare ankles. She stepped back from him, afraid to touch him.

  With a tremendous effort, he pulled himself up to his knees, crawled a little farther into the shuttle. In a daze Connie worked the hatch behind him. He had dropped to his side on the floor. He rolled to his back, whimpering slightly as his skin made contact with the floor panels. As he looked up at her, his eyes seemed very pale in his reddened face. There were tiny blisters on his nose and the tops of his cheeks.

  “Water,” he said.

  She brought him a bubble of it, working the straw loose for him as she carried it over. When she saw that he was going to drink the entire liter, she brought out another one. He sighed as he set down the empty one, then took the full one and proceeded to drench his tunic with it. He hissed with pain as he touched it to his body, then sighed as he spread the cool wet cloth over his back. He leaned down to scratch the swollen lumps at his ankles. He scratched hard, until blood came. “Don’t,” Connie begged him softly, finally finding her tongue. She snatched up a medical kit and knelt beside him, but found she could only hand it to him. She’d never been good with injuries.

  John broke open a dispenser of anti-inflammatory and began to apply it to each little bump. “There were these tiny little animals,” he said suddenly, in an almost-normal voice. “They could fly. And they kept flying up to me and landing on me. I thought they were just curious about me. But they left these bumps. I think their feet must secrete an acid or something.”

  “That’s disgusting,” Connie said faintly.

  “So tiny,” John said, his voice musing softer. “But alive. Their legs were as thin as hair, and light shone through their wings, as through the finest bio-film. Connie, animals are so strange. Not at all what I thought they’d be. I’m still not sure I understand how they function. But they’re not at all like plants or Humans. I guess I should have known that, but somehow, until you actually see it …”

  His eyes were unfocused and he swayed softly where he sat.

  “Where did you go and
why?” she asked, not really expecting a sensible answer. He was out of his head.

  “I followed a bird,” he said. He turned to her and smiled beatifically. “I followed it to where the ground fell away, and there it was, waiting for me. The ocean. I slid or fell most of the way down to it. Oh, the smell of it, like the biggest chemistry lab that ever was. You can smell life happening. The water is so many colors, and moving. All of it, at once. Moving in a way the pictures can’t show. Connie, it’s alive.”

  He smiled again, and in dismay Connie saw his eyes brim with tears. Then he lay down, very slowly and gently, and fell asleep.

  The Lone Ranger and Tonto crested the rise and looked down into the wide valley that spread out below them. There, just as Black Bart had confessed to them when they’d captured him, was Mabel, the rancher’s daughter, tied to the railroad tracks. They pulled their horses to a halt and looked down at her in horror. The black smoke of the oncoming locomotive could already be seen against the blue sky. The sun beat down on them, and the dust was dry in their noses and mouths. The horses, big and warm and muscular, moved uneasily beneath them. The drop-off was almost sheer; there was no easy way down.

  The Lone Ranger looked at Tonto. “We have to save Mabel,” he told her.

  [There is no good way down. We may be injured.]

  “It doesn’t matter. We have to risk anything, everything, to save her. It’s what we do.”

  [Why?]

  “We are heroes.”

  It seemed to satisfy her. The Lone Ranger breathed a sigh of relief and wished she’d never learned to ask the question “why?” It was all she seemed to say lately.

  He gave his big stallion a nudge with his heels. (No spurs. Tonto had been very distressed at the idea of spurs.) and they began the sliding, bumping descent to the valley below. Dust rose up around them and choked them, and small rocks that Tonto’s horse dislodged rattled past The Lone Ranger. In the distance, the train itself was now visible, chugging along the shining track. The horses scrambled awkwardly down the rest of the way, and suddenly they were on the valley floor.

  “We have to hurry!” The Lone Ranger cried, and again he kicked …

  [nudged]

  nudged his horse, and the mighty stallion sprang forth, with Tonto and Scout right behind them. They galloped wildly over the uneven valley floor, jumping sagebrushes and swerving to avoid gopher holes. Foam flew from the corners of the horses’ mouths …

  [Why?]

  Uh, because horses can’t spit.

  Ahead of them, they could see Mabel struggling against the ropes that wicked Black Bart had used to tie her to the tracks. Her pale blue dress fluttered slightly in the breeze. They were getting closer, but so was the engine. Over the sound of its chugging, The Lone Ranger and Tonto could hear Mabel’s frantic cries for help. “Faster, boy!” The Lone Ranger called to his horse. Behind him, he heard Tonto encouraging Scout.

  [Maximize effort, my horse!]

  The horses’ hooves barely touched the ground as they raced along. But the engine was getting closer and closer. Would they be in time to save her? They didn’t know. They only knew they must be willing to try anything, do anything to save her.

  [Why?]

  “Because we are heroes!”

  [Tonto stopped her horse.]

  “What’s wrong?”

  [This pretense does not feel like the doughnut one. Sensory images are not as rich.]

  “I’ll try harder. Okay, there are gloves on their hands, and through them they feel the leather reins that go to the bits in the horses’ mouths. So when the horses move their heads, the riders feel the reins tug in their fingers….”

  [Something is still different.]

  “Maybe it’s because when we were doing the doughnuts, it’s something I really did used to do, when I was a kid. Oh, not go and buy the whole store out, but eat doughnuts and pie, and go shopping, and talk at the table with my mom and stuff.”

  [But you have not been The Lone Ranger.]

  “Well, I’ve ridden horses. And my dad was a Lone Ranger fanatic, he had the whole series on videotape, and I used to watch them over and over. He had Disney’s Zorro movies, too, and Pancho and Cisco, and a few of the A-Team series …”

  [Why are we The Lone Ranger and Tonto?]

  “Because you asked me why we had to save the shuttle, and why I was so excited about it when you did … we did. Because you wanted to know what I meant by being a hero, and why I wanted to be one.”

  [I still do not understand. Why do heroes do these things?]

  “To be kind to other people. To do what is right. To feel good. If a Beast were in trouble and called for help, you’d go help. And it would feel good, wouldn’t it?”

  [Eating feels good. Touching feels good. To place one’s physical body in danger of dismemberment … this does not make sense. To go to another Beast who needed help; I think this would be a forbidden thing. I still do not understand.]

  “Well, if you’d quit interrupting the pretense, maybe I could show you!”

  Raef was getting tired, and the strain was showing. He closed down into himself as much as he could anymore and mustered his fraying patience and dwindling strength. Some things she learned so easily, and others she seemed incapable of grasping no matter what he did. Why did those things have to be the ones he most needed to impart to her? If he concentrated, he could be aware of his heartbeat. And every beat of his own heart meant another heartbeat of time gone by, real time, time in which Humans on the poisoned surface of Earth could die.

  He could feel her trying to reach him, sort of like a small child tugging at his sleeve. He turned back to her.

  [Please do not go away again. I shall not interrupt our pretenses anymore.]

  Raef froze within himself. As simple as that, he had her. Something in the plaintiveness of her communication made him suddenly realize how important he had become to her. To bend her to his purposes, all he had to do was withhold his contact from her. Run a game on her, just like a teacher ignoring an unruly child, or kids excluding someone who was different until he came around or …

  No.

  “I’m sorry, Evangeline. I didn’t mean to leave you alone. And if you need to interrupt to understand, then interrupt. It’ll be okay.”

  Pause.

  [You change what you asked of me? You allow me to interrupt?]

  “Sure, interrupt. It’s just your way of asking for what you need. And when I give it to you, it’s the right thing to do. Just like in our pretense. It’s all part of being a hero. Getting for people what they need, helping people. It feels good to the people you help, and it feels good to you.”

  Raef waited, and could, in the end, not distinguish if the amazement was his or hers.

  [This feels good to you, to let me do what I need to do to understand?]

  “Sure. It’s like our other pretense, when Raef’s mom feels good when she takes care of Raef, and makes him feel good.”

  He sensed a contagious excitement, a mind on the brink of a discovery, an understanding.

  [Then we shall continue the pretense?]

  “We shall. Where were we?”

  The horse was solid and warm and sudden under him, the sun just as hot. With a jolt, he realized she had continued the action without him, that the train was closer to Mabel, too close. They weren’t going to make it. How the hell was he going to handle that? If the train ran over Mabel, he didn’t know if he could handle explaining death to Evangeline. He had to stop this. But Evangeline had the scenario in hand now, he couldn’t just will the train to slow down. He thudded his heels against Silver, but the big stallion was already stretched to his limits. Mabel’s face was a white mask of terror, her mouth opened red in a scream as they raced toward her.

  They were still ahead of the locomotive, but he could hear it gaining on them. How the hell was he going to explain it to Evangeline when the engine ran over Mabel? But even as the thought appeared in his mind, he felt the pretense reject it. Now they race
d neck and neck with the locomotive. No way a horse could outrun a train. He tried to change the pretense, make the train see Mabel and slow down. Instead, hard by his left side, Scout’s nose appeared. With a sense of muffled outrage, he watched his sidekick draw alongside, and then Tonto passed him. Her long black hair streamed out behind her; her eyes were squinched nearly shut in the wind of their passage. A breath ahead of the locomotive, Scout leaped across the tracks, and as he did so, Tonto leaned down, slashing Mabel’s bonds and scooping her up in one fluid motion. Scout’s aerodynamic leap carried Tonto and Mabel to safety on the other side of the tracks.

  In a daze, Raef watched his planned actions robbed from his mind and performed superhumanly. He pulled Silver to a halt as the locomotive slashed between himself and Tonto, pulling its rattling string of Lionel passenger cars. The red caboose went careening past, and a grinning brakeman idiotically waved a lantern at them. She was plundering his mind, stealing images of trains at random to complete the pretense. He knew a giddying moment of terror when he realized she had completely taken over the pretense, could plunge him into any experience she dared dredge up from his mind, in perfect and horrifying detail.

  Then the train was past them and disappearing down the track. And Raef wanted to laugh and shout in amazement. On the other side of the track, Mabel was being comforted in Tonto’s arms. Scout had already helped himself to a doughnut from the white cardboard box on the table beside him. A table complete with red-checked tablecloth.

  “You can’t do this!” The Lone Ranger objected. But he grinned as he dismounted and helped himself to a chocolate eclair.

  [Yes, we can. We are heroes. Heroes can do whatever they must to help other people. And, Raef, it feels good. It does.]

  Raef, AKA The Lone Ranger, hooked his thumbs in his gun belt and rocked back on the heels of his cowboy boots. “I guess a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do,” he told Tonto. And Tonto smiled at him and stroked Mabel’s hair.

  They should have built a fail-safe into the system. Tug saw that now, and wondered if any other Arthroplana ever had. Probably not. In all of the recorded history of his race, there had been no incident similar to the one he was now involved with. Or there had been no survivors to tell, anyway.