Lost Past

by Teresa McCullough

  “How did they evolve?”

  “It’s lost in time, of course,” said Arthur, “but the most accepted theory is that they evolved here.” He pointed to a spot on a map of the world he brought up on his computer. “They theorize there was an antelope where the males fought extensively over the females. The females came from miles away to the location where the males staked out small territories. The losing males were often sufficiently wounded so they were easy prey for the Plict, who were not very good at hunting land animals. Each tribe of Plict wanted to kill as many of these as possible to survive the winter. The antelope’s breeding season lasted just a few days. Anyone who could come in with an expendable army to keep other Plict out was guaranteed survival.”

  “And the Buds didn’t have to live long,” John suggested.

  “Right. A short-lived, fanatically loyal fighter, who knew he wouldn’t live long, was key to survival. In addition, the Plict had a summer to get fat. The first Bud was probably reproduction gone wrong. It’s a very similar process.”

  The Buds were curious about Aipot, and agreed to investigate the region of Earthlike plants when they visited.

  Ghorxal Bud XIV returned, rather shaken, and described his trip. “Mackeli Bud III and I came in a small boat, pretending to have engine trouble. After landing, I went to a store, shopping for feeding and dialysis supplies that all Buds need. The store claimed to be out of them, and sent us to another store. When we got there, the shelves were being stocked and there were fresh labels on the shelves. There were some other things in a basket that probably were on the shelf before.”

  Mackeli–Bud chimed in and signed, “The supplies were outdated. We pretended not to notice and bought them. You were right. there were no Buds there.”

  “Did you investigate the area of Earth vegetation?” Arthur asked.

  “No. We were really frightened when we saw. . .” He turned to Ghorxal Bud and signed, “Show them what we saw.”

  It was a surreptitiously recorded picture of a Bud wearing loose clothing and a hat. Buds rarely wore hats because it interfered with their blowholes, but sometimes they wore hats with breathing space in bad weather.

  John looked at the few seconds recording and said, “That doesn’t look like a Bud.”

  “It’s a mouthed Plict with a mask!” signed Mackeli. “We saw him only briefly and he ignored us, but I’m sure he was planted to ease any suspicions we had.”

  “You agreed . . .” Arthur said.

  “I don’t care what we agreed. Do you realize this is the Buds’ worst nightmare? They are living without us. I was afraid they would kill us.”

  Ghorxal Bud XIV signed, “We’ve always assumed they needed us, and couldn’t stop making Buds. Aipot is proof that they don’t.”

  “No, it isn’t,” John said.

  “Why not?” Ghorxal Bud XIV signed.

  “Because Aipot is an artificial community,” said Arthur. “Yes, they need plumbers and janitors, police and firefighters, but they don’t need miners or factory workers.”

  John saw that Arthur understood, but the Buds didn’t. “Show them, Arthur.” He gestured toward, Arthur’s computer. Arthur brought up a screen showing Aipot. “Are there any buildings over two stories? Roofers and construction work is not so dangerous. There are only about 3000 Plict in the town, and there are no roads leading out. Someone could walk through the mountains on foot, but if a crime is committed, the criminal can only run by sea, and there’s only one small dock,” said Arthur.

  “Which means policing is not very dangerous,” John added. “The town only survives because of Buds elsewhere.”

  After the Buds left, Arthur said, “We didn’t convince them.”

  “They don’t think in terms of economics,” John said. John could see Arthur was unhappy with more than just this situation. “Did you hope to find something to help us escape?” John wrote.

  “I hoped to find Natalie,” Arthur said bleakly. He erased the board and turned to the computer, gesturing John to sit beside him. He looked at the aerial view of Aipot and rotated the image. It wasn’t terribly clear, but the plants made a picture of three letters: SOS.

  Arthur tried to get a closer view, but the network connection went down, although his computer still worked. John gave a massage to get information, but he didn’t have to ask what the problem was. There was a computer virus all over the world. They thought they cut the outside connection in time, but they weren’t certain.

  John told Arthur about this, and Arthur wrote: “I think I can do it here? Can we use this? Linda gave me the code, and I’ve stored it on my computer.” Two Buds came in, one grabbed their slate, but John had time to erase it first. The Bud signed, “They think the computer problem is of human origin. We can’t have you conspiring.”

  The second Bud reached for the computer, but Arthur had time to mouth a few words to it.

  “What did you say?” John asked after the Buds left.

  “Linda’s Armageddon. I don’t have a plan, though.”

  John smiled and nodded to Arthur, expecting that the Buds wouldn’t guess his meaning. He had a plan, but wasn’t sure it would work. The lights went off a half an hour later.

  “Now what?” asked Arthur.

  “We escape.”

  John led them out into the hall, and confidently turned toward the stairs. “Twenty-three steps until a right turn, and then it’s the third door on the left.” They bumbled slowly along the hallway. Once John bumped into a Plict, but since the Plict couldn’t communicate in the dark, John said, “Since the lights are out, I thought I’d give a massage to some Buds in their rooms. I’m headed downstairs. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine.” Arthur was silent, and John suspected the Bud wasn’t aware he was there.

  John was pleased he was able to escape with relatively few feelings of guilt, but he rationalized that in disobeying some of the Plict, he wasn’t going against all of the Plict.

  The first exit door was obviously unproductive. It was open, and about a dozen Buds were gathered there in the light. John and Arthur crept by to the second door. No one was there and it wasn’t locked. They felt their way, moving slowly through the room and bumped into something large. John felt the object until he found a door. When the door opened, the ship’s lights came on. The ship was the kind that could carry them home.

  “They had to have one,” John explained. “How else could they get the food for us? They probably stole the ship.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I’m sure there are ships that don’t go into space. This one can be used on the planet as well, which is all they need. If they bought one, they wouldn’t need space flight, so they’d get the cheaper ship.”

  Arthur went over to the controls that opened the door to the hangar. He fiddled around for about two minutes, while John tried to conceal his impatience. The lights came on. Shortly afterwards, the door started to open and the lights went off. Arthur ran back to the ship, and climbed in. As he did so, two Buds entered the hangar. One went for the controls and the other ran toward the ship. The door opened just enough for the ship to exit, and John sent the ship through the door.

  “Aipot?” John asked.

  “Aipot,” Arthur affirmed.

  Arthur disconnected the ship’s computer, worried that the virus would cause problems. They passed over a region where a broadcast was telling all air traffic to land, because computer problems made it unsafe. John ignored it and continued to hug the coast, knowing he would recognize Aipot from the air. He found it easily and headed for the patch of Earth plants, landing in the center of the O, crushing some beans. A circle of cabbages made the letter O. One S was onions, surrounded by tomatoes. Another S was peas, surrounded by corn.

  A lone woman of perhaps fifty came out of the building. She was deeply tanned and had long brown, gray-streaked hair, caught in a ponytail low on her neck. “Natalie?” Arthur said tentatively. “Natalie!” He ran toward her, catching her in an embrace, which she
returned. They half-separated to look at each other, both smiling at the sight.

  “This is sort of a rescue,” Arthur said. “But we’re in trouble ourselves and also have to rescue Linda. Get in.”

  “I can’t leave Patience,” Natalie said. John saw she recognized Arthur’s confusion. “My daughter. Our daughter. She’s not here, but she’ll be back soon.”

  “Can we hide the ship?” John asked, ignoring Arthur’s startled expression.

  “In the pines. They’ll see it from the air, unless we cover it with branches or something. They won’t go there.” Her English had an accent.

  John moved the ship to the location Natalie indicated. The trees were surprisingly tall, considering they must be less than ten years old. They broke small branches off other trees and covered the ship. Natalie had an agricultural robot and a household robot helping them. John arranged the branches, not only to hide the ship, but to make it so they would fall off if the ship was moved, to facilitate escape.

  While the three of them worked, Arthur filled Natalie in on what was going on, never demanding she explain herself. He mentioned Mary Chen, his marriage, and her death. Natalie listened, but didn’t comment. They walked toward the house, passing a henhouse as they went.

  They sat in a comfortable living room of an Earth-style house. Or at least Arthur and Natalie sat comfortably. The extra chair was clearly designed for Plict and didn’t quite fit John’s anatomy, like the chairs on the rebel base. Natalie served them apple juice in plastic glasses. She spoke in English with a bit of hesitancy.

  “The Vigintees were testing me for telepathy and couldn’t find it.”

  “But . . .” Arthur interrupted. He paused and let her continue.

  “They went about it wrong,” she said with a gentle smile. “They tried to force it, but it doesn’t work that way. I can only read people I love, but they didn’t believe that. They’d taken out my IUD, which is why I was pregnant. I wasn’t even sure Patience was your child at first.”

  Rape, as well as torture, John realized. Natalie must not have known that all male Vigintees have vasectomies before they are two. How can I know that and not know about myself?

  “They decided to kill me after Patience was born. They didn’t care that I heard them. I might have been a pig they decided to slaughter. I mean, who cares about talking about bacon around the pig you’re going to eat?”

  “How did you escape?” Arthur asked.

  “I’d broken the chain and slipped out a few times. They were really sloppy about locking me in. I made myself a raft of sorts. They never think of escaping by water, for some reason.”

  “I’ve noticed, but I already had a life jacket,” Arthur said.

  “It didn’t go all that smoothly. One of Hernandez’s four clones caught me. He started to drag me back and I stabbed him with a knife I’d made. There was a little bit of metal I found. I used a link of the chain to sharpen it into a knife. He wasn’t dead when I left him, but I just took off in the raft. I found out later that he died. I’m not sorry.”

  “How did you find out?” John asked.

  “The Plict here let me read the news feeds. He was found and brought up, almost dead. He named me as the one who stabbed him, and the whole thing came out.” She turned to John and said, “How come you need to ask? That’s when you went to Earth and took care of Linda and Tom.”

  John started to explain about his amnesia, but she interrupted with, “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize your amnesia was real.” She continued, “I brought plenty of water, and a bit of food. I thought anywhere was better than where I was, and I knew the shore was east. I had a paddle and tried to move east, but it was cloudy and I couldn’t tell what direction it was. It took me days before I landed here. It was night and they didn’t see me. I hid at first and overheard some things some Plict said. I really didn’t understand the implications of them and didn’t know the language very well, but when they found me, they assumed I had understood. I gave birth to Patience about two weeks later. They thought she might become another scientist like Arthur and didn’t want her to leave. We reached sort of a compromise. They are teaching her math and science, I am teaching her English and history. They give me books from Earth and built this compound.”

  She fingered a necklace she wore. “If I leave, they’ll know it and track me down. They said they’ll kill me if I do.” She shrugged. “They’re part of an anti-Bud conspiracy and feel Patience might become important. She’s a bright child, but she’s not going to solve their problems.”

  “What do the conspirators want?” John asked.

  “I don’t think they know,” Natalie replied. “They say the first step is to show that mouthed Plict can live without Buds. They are making jobs safer, so mouthed Plict will be willing to do them. They feel the Buds are taking over the world.”

  “Mouthed Plict can easily stop making Buds,” John said.

  “They have, here. It’s illegal to keep Buds from visiting a public community, so they pretend Buds are here.”

  “The pretense isn’t very good,” Arthur said. “Some Buds spotted it very quickly.”

  “They have a secret rule that no one can bud. Everyone has to be seen by a government official about once a month. If they’ve gained too much weight, they’re starved to thinness.”

  John asked, “What happens elsewhere if a Plict buds without a permit? In general, I mean.”

  “His Bud owes him no loyalty. Usually they are loyal anyway for a few months, but they all know, because the progenitor knows,” she explained. “They are not allowed to pay him any money and the progenitor is kept thin after that. There are also some pretty big fines.”

  While they continued their discussion, Natalie prepared salads with goat cheese and hardboiled eggs. Both men helped.

  “How is it that we were kidnapped by the only two conspiracies that are on the opposite sides of an issue?” Natalie wondered.

  “We weren’t,” Arthur said. John realized Arthur’s smile was not limited to when he said things from John’s past. Arthur also enjoyed telling what he figured out, but others hadn’t.

  Both John and Natalie looked at Arthur, waiting for an explanation. “It’s too wild a coincidence. I don’t believe it for a minute. There must be hundreds of these conspiracies.”

  “But they don’t seem to know about each other,” Natalie protested.

  “That’s because they’re better at keeping secrets than at recruiting.“

  John asked Natalie, “What do the Plict here fear the most from Buds?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What’s the worst case scenario? I gather the Buds are afraid they’ll stop making Buds. I mean, they don’t have to, do they?”

  “They did that once,” Natalie said. “It was centuries ago. All the soldiers and police were Buds and they took over, or nearly so. The Plict simply stopped making Buds. They waited until all were dead before starting over again.”

  “I presume that’s what the Buds fear. What do the mouthed Plict fear?”

  “Becoming Bud-making machines. Some of them are, but imagine being kept a prisoner and required to make Buds, but nothing else,” Natalie replied. “Why do you want to know?”

  “Because someone is doing it,” John replied.

  “What makes you say that?” Natalie asked.

  John turned to Arthur and asked, “Arthur, are the Plict more moral than humans?” As he said it, he guessed why he knew so little about the Plict. Studying them would be like eavesdropping on God.

  “Perhaps they are a bit, but not so you’d notice. There’s just as much crime for a reason, to make them ‘safe, satisfied or solvent,’ as Nero Wolfe said, but not as much mischievous damage. Their news is just as full of crime and wars as ours. In theory, they’re under one government, but the government is pretty weak and they’re regional rivalries, which often erupt into warfare.”

  “Well, we’re about to make it worse. This community is the Buds’ worst fear. I’m
sure somewhere there’s a community that is the mouthed Plict’s worst fear.”

  “That seems reasonable. It may be small scale, but someone is bound to have tried it,” Arthur said.

  “Can I quote you on that?” John asked.

  “Of course. Give me a couple of minutes and I’ll make a few wild assumptions and even come up with some inadequately based numbers. Numbers make things more plausible and always impress people.”

  Natalie handed him a tablet and pen even while asking, “Will it impress the Plict?” Arthur nodded absently, but was quickly lost in calculations.

  While Arthur started scribbling numbers, John asked Natalie, “Do you consider the Plict people?”

  Natalie thought for several seconds before answering. “I suppose I do. They’re my jailers, and I can’t be terribly sympathetic toward them. It’s been hard to fight the Stockholm syndrome because some of them are nice individuals. This community is the dream of so many of them, and sometimes I’ve been convinced it is my duty to keep it a secret.”

  “You didn’t stay convinced,” John said, analyzing less what she said than how she said it.

  “I can never forgive what they’ve done to Patience,” Natalie said. “They think she can help with increased safety for jobs, but she’ll never do that in secret. She’ll have to see the jobs to figure out what is needed.”

  “Why do they want increased safety?” John asked.

  “Because mouthed Plict would be able to do the jobs if they were safer. There would be no need for Buds.”

  “What did they do to me?” asked a girl who must have been Patience, who was coming through the doorway. She spoke English with a stronger accent than Natalie’s. John thought she was small for her age, but wasn’t sure. Her brown hair was braided and she wore pants that looked like cargo pants and a jacket with many pockets.