Alien (aliens universe)

by Alan Dean Foster

  Colours chased one another for a second. The screen cleared.

  WHO TURNED ON AIRLOCK 2 WARNING SYSTEM?

  The response was flashed below.

  ASH.

  She sat digesting that. It was the reply she'd expected, but having it printed out coldly for anyone to read brought the real import of it down on her heavily. So it had been Ash. The critical question now was: Had it been Ash all the time? She entered the follow-up query:

  IS ASH PROTECTING THE ALIEN?

  This seemed to be Mother's day for brief responses.

  YES.

  She could be brief in turn. Her fingers moved on the keys.

  WHY?

  She leaned forward tensely. If the computer chose not to reveal further information, she knew of no additional codes that could pry answers free. There was also the possibility that the computer truly had no explanation for the science officer's bizarre actions.

  It did, though.

  SPECIAL ORDER 937 SCIENCE PERSONNEL EYES ONLY RESTRICTED INFORMATION.

  Well, she'd managed this long. She could work around those restrictions. She was starting to when a hand slammed down next to her, sinking up to the elbow in the computer terminal.

  Spinning in the chair, her heart missing a beat, she saw, not the creature, but a form and face now become equally alien to her.

  Ash smiled slightly. There was no humor in that upturning of lips. 'Command seems a bit too much for you to handle. But then, proper leadership is always difficult under these circumstances. I guess you can't be blamed.'

  Ripley slowly backed out of her chair, carefully keeping it between them. Ash's words might be conciliatory, even sympathetic. His actions were not

  'The problem's not leadership, Ash. It's loyalty.' She kept the wall at her back, started circling toward the doorway. Still grinning, he turned to face her.

  'Loyalty? I see no lack of that.' He was all charm now, she thought. 'I think we've all been doing our best. Lambert's getting a little pessimistic, but we've always known she's on the emotional side. She's very good at plotting the course of a ship, not so good at planning her own.'

  Ripley continued to edge around him, forcing herself to smile back. 'I'm not worried about Lambert right now. I'm worried about you.' She started to turn to face the open doorway, feeling her stomach muscles tightening in anticipation.

  'All that paranoia coming up again,' he said sadly. 'You just need to rest a little.' He took a step toward her, reached out helpfully.

  She bolted, ducking just beneath his clutching fingers. Then she was out in the corridor, sprinting for the bridge. She was too busy to scream for help, and she needed the wind.

  There was no one on the bridge. Somehow she got around him again, throwing emergency switches as she ran. Bulkhead doors responded by dropping shut behind her, each one just a second too late to cut him off.

  He finally caught her in the mess chamber. Parker and Lambert arrived seconds later. The signals set off by the closing bulkhead doors had alerted them that something was wrong in the vicinity of the bridge, and they'd been on their way there when they encountered pursuer and pursued.

  While it was not the type of emergency they'd expected to find, they reacted well. Lambert was first in. She jumped on Ash's back. Annoyed, he let go of Ripley, grabbed the navigator, and threw her across the room, then returned to what he'd been doing a moment before, trying to squeeze the life out of Ripley.

  Parker's reaction was less immediate but better thought out. Ash would have appreciated the engineer's reasoning. Parker hefted one of the compact trackers and stepped behind Ash, who single-mindedly continued to choke Ripley. The engineer swung the tracker with all his strength.

  There was a dull thunk. The tracker continued through its arc while Ash's head went a different way.

  There was no blood. Only multihued wires and printed circuits showed, protruding from the terminated stump of the science officer's neck.

  Ash released Ripley. She collapsed on the floor, choking and holding her throat. His hands performed a macabre pantomime above his shoulders while hunting for the missing skull. Then he, or more properly, it, stumbled backward, regained its balance, and commenced searching the deck for the separated head. .

  XIII

  'A robot. . a goddamn robot!' Parker muttered. The tracker hung limp and unbloodied in one hand.

  Apparently there were audio sensors located in the torso as well as the skull, because the powerful form turned immediately at the sound of Parker's voice and began to advance on him. Raising the tracker, the engineer banged it down on Ash's shoulder, then again, and again. . to no effect. Groping arms swung close, embraced Parker in a hug that was anything but affectionate. The hands climbed upward, locked around his neck, and contracted with inhuman strength.

  Ripley had recovered, now searched frantically until she spotted one of the old shock tubes they'd first planned to drive the alien with. She snatched it up, noting that it still carried a full charge.

  Lambert was pulling at Ash's legs, trying to upend the rampaging machine. Naked wiring and contacts showed from the open neck. Ripley dug at them. Parker's eyes were glazing over, and faint wheezing sounds were coming from his constricted throat.

  Finding a knot thick with circuitry, Ripley jabbed the prod inward and depressed the trigger. Ash's grip on the engineer appeared to weaken slightly. She withdrew the prod, aligned it differently, and stabbed downward a second time.

  Blue sparks flew from the stump. She jabbed again, crying inside, holding the trigger down. There was a bright flash and the smell of burnt insulation.

  Ash collapsed. Chest rising and falling as he struggled to regain his wind, Parker rolled over, coughed a couple of times, spat phlegm onto the deck.

  He blinked a few times, glared at the motionless hulk of the machine. 'Damn you. Goddamn company machine.' He climbed to his feet, kicked at the metal. It did not react, lay supine and innocent on the deck.

  Lambert looked uncertainly from Parker to Ripley. 'Will somebody please tell me what the hell's going on?'

  'There's only one way to find out.' Ripley carefully set the shock tube aside, making certain it was within easy reach in case they needed it quickly, and approached the body.

  'What's that?' Lambert asked.

  Ripley looked over at Parker, who was massaging his throat. 'Wire the head back up. I think I burnt out the locomotor system in the torso, but the head and memory ought to be functional when powered up.

  'He's been protecting the alien from the beginning. I tried to tell you.' She gestured at the corpse. It was hard to start thinking of fellow crew member Ash as just another piece of equipment. 'He let it on board, remember, against regulations.' Her expression twisted as she remembered.

  'He was using Kane's life as an excuse, but he was never interested in Kane. He let that thing grow inside him, knew what was happening all the time. And he set off the emergency airlock Klaxon to save it.

  'But why?' Lambert was struggling, still couldn't put it all together.

  'I'm only guessing, but the only reason I can come up with for putting a robot crew member on board with the rest of us and not letting us know about it at the time is that someone wanted a slave observer to report developments back to them.' She glanced up at Lambert. 'Who assigns personnel to the ships, makes last-minute changes like trading science officers, and would be the only entity capable of secretly slipping a robot on board? For whatever purpose?'

  Lambert no longer looked confused. 'The company.'

  'Sure.' Ripley smiled humorlessly. 'The company's drone probes must have picked up the transmission from the derelict. The Nostromo happened to be the next Company vessel scheduled to pass through this spatial quadrant. They put Ash on board to monitor things for them and to make sure we followed something Mother calls Special Order 937.

  'If the follow-up on the transmission turns out to be worthless, Ash can report that back to them without us ever knowing what was going on. If worthwhile,
then the Company learns what it needs to know before it goes to the trouble of sending out an expensively equipped exploration team. Simple, matter of maximizing profit, minimizing loss. Their profit, our loss.'

  'Great,' Parker snorted. 'You got it all figured out so far. Now tell me why we've got to put this sonofabitch back together.' He spat at Ash's body.

  Ripley already had Ash's head set up on a counter, was running a power line from a wall outlet near the autochef back to the quiescent skull. 'We have to find out what else they might be holding back. Agreed?'

  Parker nodded reluctantly. 'Agreed.' He started forward. 'Here, let me do that.'

  The engineer fooled with the wires and the connections located in the back of Ash's head, beneath the artificial hair. When the science officer's eyelids began to flicker, Parker grunted in satisfaction and stepped clear. Ripley leaned close. 'Ash, can you hear me?' No response. She looked back to Parker.

  'The hookup's clean. Power level is self-adjusting. Unless some critical circuits were interrupted when the head hit the deck, he ought to reply. Memory cells and verbal-visual components are packed pretty tight in these sophisticated models. I'd expect it to talk.'

  She tried again. 'Can you hear me, Ash?'

  A familiar voice, not distant at all, sounded in the mess. 'Yes, I can hear you.'

  It was hard for her to address the disembodied head, for all that she knew it was only part of a machine, like the shock tube or the tracker. She'd served too many hours with Ash.

  'What. . what was Special Order 937?'

  'That's against regulations and my internal programming. You know I can't tell you.'

  She stood back. 'Then there's no point in talking. Parker, pull the plug.'

  The engineer reached for the wires and Ash reacted with sufficient speed to show that his cognitive circuits were indeed intact. 'In essence, my orders were as follows.' Parker's hand hovered threateningly over the power line.

  'I was directed to reroute the Nostromo or make sure that this crew rerouted it from its assigned course so that it would pick up the signal, program Mother to bring you out of hypersleep, and program her memory to feed you the story about the emergency call. Company specialists already knew that the transmission was a warning and not a distress signal.'

  Parker's hands clenched into fists.

  'At the source of the signal,' Ash continued, 'we were to investigate a life form, almost certainly hostile according to what the Company experts distilled from the transmission, and bring it back for observation and Company evaluation of any potential commercial applications. Using discretion, of course.'

  'Of course,' agreed Ripley, mimicking the machine's indifferent tone. 'That explains a lot about why we were chosen, beyond the expense of sending a valuable exploration team in first.' She looked coldly pleased at having traced the reasoning behind Ash's words.

  'Importation to any inhabited world, let alone Earth, of a dangerous alien life form is strictly prohibited. By making it look like we simple tug jockeys had accidentally stumbled onto it, the Company had a way of seeing it arrive at Earth "unintentionally". While we maybe got ourselves thrown in jail, something would have to be done with the creature. Naturally, Company specialists would magnanimously be standing ready to take this dangerous arrival off the hands of the customs officers, with a few judicious bribes prepaid just to smooth the transition.

  'And if we were lucky, the Company would bail us out and take proper care of us as soon as the authorities determined we were honestly as stupid as we appeared. Which we've been.'

  'Why?' Lambert wanted to know. 'Why didn't you warn us? Why couldn't we have been told what we were getting ourselves into?'

  'Because you might not have gone along,' Ash explained with cold logic. 'Company policy required your unknowing co-operation. What Ripley said about your honest ignorance fooling customs was quite correct.'

  'You and the damn Company,' Parker growled. 'What about our lives, man?'

  'Not man.' Ash made the correction without anger. 'As to your lives, I'm afraid the Company considered them expendable. It was the alien life form they were principally concerned with. It was hoped you could contain it and survive to collect your shares, but that was, I must admit, a secondary consideration. It wasn't personal on the Company's part. Just the luck of the draw.'

  'How comforting,' sneered Ripley. She thought a moment, said, 'You've already told us that our purpose in being sent to that world was to "investigate a life form, almost certainly hostile". And that Company experts knew all along the transmission was a warning and not a distress signal.'

  'Yes,' Ash replied. 'It was much too late, according to what the translators determined, for a distress signal to do the senders any good. The signal itself was frighteningly specific, very detailed.

  'The derelict spacecraft we found had landed on the planet, apparently in the course of normal exploration. Like Kane, they encountered one or more of the alien spore pods. The transmission did not say whether the explorers had time to determine if the spores originated on that particular world or if they had migrated there from somewhere else.

  'Before they all were overcome, they managed to set up the warning, to keep the inhabitants of other ships that might consider setting down on that world from suffering the same fate. Wherever they came from, they were a noble people. Hopefully mankind will encounter them again, under more pleasant circumstances.'

  'They were a better people than some I can think of,' Ripley said tightly. 'The alien that's aboard: How do we kill it?'

  'The explorers who crewed the derelict ship were larger and possibly more intelligent than humankind. I don't think that you can kill it. But I might be able to. As I'm not organic in composition, the alien does not regard me as a potential danger. Nor as a source of food. I am considerably stronger than any of you. I might be able to match the alien.

  'However, I am not exactly at my best at the moment. If you would simply replace. .'

  'Nice try, Ash,' Ripley interrupted him, shaking her head from side to side, 'but no way.'

  'You idiots! You still don't realize what you're dealing with. The alien is a perfectly organized organism. Superbly structured, cunning, quintessentially violent. With your limited capabilities you have no chance against it.'

  'My God.' Lambert stared dully at the head. 'You admire the damned thing.'

  'How can you not admire the simple symmetry it presents? An interspecies parasite, capable of preying on any life form that breathes, regardless of the atmospheric composition involved. One capable of lying dormant for indefinite periods under the most inhospitable conditions. Its sole purpose to reproduce its own kind, a task it pursues with supreme efficiency. There is nothing in mankind's experience to compare with it.

  'The parasites men are used to combating are mosquitoes and minute arthropods and their ilk. This creature is to them in savagery and efficiency as man is to the worm in intelligence. You cannot even begin to imagine how to deal with it.'

  'I've heard enough of this shit.' Parker's hand dropped toward the power line. Ripley put up a restraining hand, stared at the head.

  'You're supposed to be part of our complement, Ash. You're our science officer as well as a Company tool.'

  'You gave me intelligence. With intellect comes the inevitability of choice. I am loyal only to discovering the truth. A scientific truth demands beauty, harmony, and, above all, simplicity. The problem of you versus the alien will produce a simple and elegant solution. Only one of you will survive.'

  'I guess that puts us poor humans in our place, doesn't it? Tell me something, Ash. The Company expected the Nostromo to arrive at Earth station with only you and the alien alive all along, didn't it?'

  'No. It was honestly hoped you would survive and contain the alien. The Company officials simply had no idea how dangerous and efficient the alien was.'

  'What do you think's going to happen when the ship arrives, assuming we're all dead and the alien, instead of being properly re
strained, has the run of the ship?'

  'I cannot say. There is a distinct possibility the alien will successfully infect the boarding party and any others it comes in contact with before they realize the magnitude of the danger it presents and can take steps to combat it. By then it may be too late.

  'Thousands of years of effort have not enabled man to eradicate other parasites. He has never before encountered one this advanced. Try to imagine several billion mosquitoes functioning in intelligent consort with one another. Would mankind have a chance?

  'Of course, if I am present and functional when the Nostromo arrives, I can inform the boarding party of what they may expect and how to proceed safely against it. By destroying me, you risk loosing a terrible plague on mankind.'

  There was silence in the mess, but not for long. Parker spoke first.

  'Mankind, in the person of the Company, doesn't seem to give a damn about us. We'll take our chances against the alien. At least we know where it stands.' He glanced over at Ripley. 'No plague's going to bother me if I'm not around to worry about it. I say pull the plug.'

  'I agree,' said Lambert.

  Ripley moved around the table, started to disconnect the power cord.

  'A last word,' Ash said quickly. 'A legacy, if you will.'

  Ripley hesitated. 'Well?'

  'Maybe it is truly intelligent. Maybe you should try to communicate with it.'

  'Did you?'

  'Please let my grave hold some secrets.'

  Ripley pulled the wire from the socket. 'Good-bye, Ash.' She turned her attention from the silent head to her companions. 'When it comes to choosing between parasites, I'd rather take my chances with one that doesn't lie. Besides, if we can't beat that thing we can die happy knowing that it's likely to get its hooks into a few Company experts. .'

  She was seated before the central computer console in the main annex when Parker and Lambert rejoined her. She spoke dejectedly. 'He was right about one thing, Ash was. We haven't got much of a chance.' She indicated a flashing readout. 'We've got less than twelve hours of oxygen left.'