If making your enemies fall down a hole was your weapon of choice, you probably didn't have any deadlier weapons. So how would I feel if my species had invented micro-circuits and radio communications but not, say, guns, and aliens had landed on my planet, armed with technology centuries beyond what my species had achieved? Wouldn't I try to remain hidden while carefully studying the invaders if they'd demonstrated that they had guns? The reports I'd seen had showed UWs being fired at those few animals that had attacked explorers....
Emily, I told myself, understanding the motivations of snakes is good and necessary, but right now getting my men medical help is far more important.
Micah groaned, tried to sit up, and thought better of it. I rushed back to his side.
"How bad is it?" I asked, trying to sound calm.
The big jerk actually grinned up at me. "A few ribs on my left side will need some mending, but I think it would be best to lie here for a bit longer. Please help me roll over onto my right side so that I can assess Priam."
He must've been hurt worse than he'd admitted because he let me do all the work of turning him. He studied the Martian, letting his medical implants work triage, and for once he stopped smiling.
"Em, we have a challenge here. Priam has a collapsed lung punctured by a broken rib."
"What should I do?"
"Did Coriaca fall with us?"
"'Fraid so. He's dead, Micah."
"Oh. I'm so sorry to hear it. He seemed a fine fellow. Is his bag here?"
"I've looked and don't see it. Probably buried."
Micah thought he could shrug, but proved he could wince. "Then you must find the explorer's communicator, climb out of this pit, and call for immediate... immediate..."
"Micah. His com-link's broken, and climbing the walls here would be, um, problematic. Did you notice— Micah?"
No response, but I could see his belly moving as he breathed. So he'd either passed out or decided this was the perfect time for another nap. I didn't try to shake him awake, but I sure wanted to.
I couldn't let Priam die and wasn't at all convinced that Micah's life wasn't also hanging on my decisions here. So my duty was clear: get out of this damn hole and after that keep trying my emergency signal in hopes it would get through, meanwhile heading for the station as fast as I could.
Climbing was ruled out, so what did that leave me?
Then I remembered Priam, during the San Diego fiasco, demonstrating a trick that I'd always considered only a theoretical possibility, and had never even attempted. P-levitation, the "p" standing in for pressure. The basic principle was simple enough, if counterintuitive.
It was a matter of using inertial control to balance the force of gravity with air-pressure. You jump and gravity starts making you fall, but by removing enough inertia, countless air molecules continuously stop you and you can wind up floating. Then if the air beneath you is warmer than the air somewhere above and therefore rising? You can rise with it.
That was the principle I had to count on, but removing just the right amount of inertia would be crucial, and a host of complex factors were involved. My size and shape would make a big difference, as would the local gravity, air-pressure in this cave, and no doubt a host of other variables that I hadn't thought of.
I looked straight up. The thermals here should be good, but once I reached the opening above, I might have a real problem moving sideways far enough to reach solid ground. Build that bridge, I told myself, when you come to it. I retrieved my snowshoes and tied them onto my back.
Moving as far from the snake-filled wall as possible without stepping in Coriaca's blood, I climbed onto the fallen tree to gain some height. Then I adjusted my suit for minimal inertia, jumped up with all my strength, increased inertia as my feet left the tree trunk, and immediately cut it again while spreading my body horizontally to catch enough air resistance. I wafted to the ground three times, cursing. Priam had made it look so easy. On the fourth try I finally got everything right and began rising. The thermals were crucial to this, but they were so inconsistent that I had to struggle to keep horizontal. Halfway to the big opening above, I noticed activity among my tubular observers.
As individuals, they were rather inflexible, but dozens were linking up, using the fingers at the ends of their bodies to grip the head of the next snake in what was rapidly becoming a long chain. I rose another meter or two before one end of this chain swung loose from the wall. With an enormous joint muscular contraction, the chain's end whipped across the cave whistling and slammed into my ribs.
That would've been my death right there except that in my unbound state, all it did was push me to the side, and the push only lasted as long as the chain was touching me. The score now stood snakes zero, Emily one. I kept rising, but my confidence didn't.
Which proved justified a moment later when the chain found me again but this time wrapped itself around my waist and pulled me down, at speed, all the way to the cave's floor. The chain then kindly unwrapped me, and swung back to the original wall where it separated into individuals who soon found holes to occupy. In less than a minute, my audience seemed to be entirely back in place, ready for more entertainment.
I got up off the floor and brushed myself off. Okay. I wasn't getting out of here until my hosts let me go. I checked on my companions again. Both out of it, and Priam's wheezing had gotten distinctly worse. I had to admit that my attitude had shifted. Priam had done everything he'd promised by having a team-careersaving insight, and Micah had shown me how much I'd underestimated him by his quick actions and his courage in risking his life to save Priam's. They both deserved more of me.
Project personnel would surely come looking for us when we'd been missing for long enough. But I felt in my bones that Priam wouldn't last nearly that long. And it didn't seem a good sign that Micah hadn't reawakened yet.
It was all up to me and I almost choked on the responsibility. I couldn't think.
Staring at Priam, I remembered something he'd said the only time an astrophysics problem had him baffled. I'd asked him, in an overly sweet voice, how he handled such rare events and was surprised to get an answer. "Even for me," he'd bragged, "parts of my intellect are brighter than other parts. I'll just loosely hold the problem in mind, relax, and let my genius work it out on its own."
Wasn't sure I had an inner genius, let alone one raring to work on my present dilemma, but every part of my intellect I knew of was stumped.
I sat on a mound near my companions, facing the watching crowd, and tried to hold the problem loosely in mind. I managed to loosen my hold to a mere death grip, and suddenly wasn't so sure that the snakes had had murder in mind. Thanks to their hollow but super-strong bones and their widespread weight distribution, most Abreathon creatures could've probably survived that fall. Certainly, our hosts weren't being at all aggressive now.
Fine. The solution here was obvious. Convince my audience that humans meant them no harm, and then they'd let me leave. Simple. What wasn't obvious was how to accomplish that. And the crazy thing was that I had a distinct feeling that I'd already noticed something that held the answer.
But what? I was hold-loosening and relaxing my heart out and the only thing that my inner genius slipped me was a completely useless image: chopsticks—on fire, no less. Apparently, I thought, some parts of my intellect were stupider than other parts. Still, the picture hung in my mind with the persistence of a bad sunburn, and I had no other leads. So I thought about it.
What would make me think of burning chopsticks? Maybe it had something to do with this audience giving me the evil six-eyes. After all, they were stiff little creatures and had those weird two-finger tails. Then what about the fire part? Good question and I had no answer. "This," I muttered after long minutes of insight vacuum, "is a waste of time. To hell with it."
What I'd just said echoed in my mind and felt so right that I said it out loud again, "To hell with it." I might've shouted with triumph then, except I hadn't proved my new idea wo
uld work, and I was so damn worried about my teammates, and sad about Coriaca. Besides, it wouldn't do to scare the snakes.
It was much later that I learned that my emergency signal had only reached the safe-camp because the snakes had repeated my message on their own frequency, one that Abreathon personnel continually monitored just in case the natives finally decided to open communications.
The Academy auditorium was packed almost solid with EE cadets, higher-ups, and family members. The graduating teams remained on the wide stage although all the new commissions had been handed out. Priam, Micah, and I were the last to get ours, yet the Chief stood behind her lectern, looking beatific, in no rush to close the overlong ceremony. You could practically smell everyone's impatience to finally get out of the hall.
I'd never seen the Chief smile much, but she suddenly grinned like a beacon and the beams seemed to be aimed at my team.
"This is a remarkable occasion," she said. "It is not often we bestow the EE's highest honor on newly graduating cadets, but Graduates Emily Asari of Earth, Priam Galanis of Mars, and Micah Cohen of Venus please step forward."
As we stepped, I glanced at my teammates. They both looked as stunned as I felt. Priam had suffered a collapsed lung, internal bleeding, a concussion, four broken ribs, and a broken arm; Micah only matched him with a concussion and three broken ribs. Now both of them moved easily and stood tall, Micah of course standing much taller. Modern medical tech is magic.
"I present to you three," the Chief continued, "the Triple Sun. Wear it proudly. Thanks to you, the Abreathon project has succeeded in establishing friendly relations with another alien species, and you have—"
"Saved a thirty-year project from going down the toilet," Priam interrupted.
The Chief gave him a look appropriate to something that should be flushed down a toilet, but only said, "Just so."
Lips, I commanded, stay as you are. Do not rise at the corners, do not even twitch....
The Triple Sun was represented by a garish ribbon in gold, silver, and blue. The Chief herself attached one to each of our formal uniforms. When they'd been properly "bestowed," she dismissed everyone but signaled to me that I should remain behind. The exiting music was as pompous as you could want as I watched everyone else heading out to fresh air. Both my teammates turned to look at me before they reached the doors, but I could only look wistful and shrug.
"I've studied your report," the Chief said, "and found it incomplete."
"Oh? What's missing?"
"Two things. Why did the Anguis reveal themselves after Priam Galanis placed the radio bracelet on one of them?"
"Hard to be sure, Commandant. Priam wanted to let them know he was on to them, so he activated the bracelet as he slipped it on, and had arranged for it to send out the kind of greeting squeal that begin all Anguis transmissions. I suppose the aliens could've ignored the message."
"He took quite a risk there."
"So true, and I'm certain he knew it."
"Last, I'd like to know how, exactly, you determined the key to opening diplomatic relations with the Anguis."
Trust the EE to come up with dumb names for intelligent alien species, but at least Anguis was shorter than Abreathon Serpentines, which had been the runner-up contender.
I couldn't fully explain why the idea had felt so right at the time, but the Chief had what Priam called "her gimlet eye" on me and I had to say something.
"I noticed that the aliens can't bend worth beans, and they have something like thin fingers at the end of their tails. And that reminded me of an old Persian fable my father used to tell when I was a kid. I've heard it many times since, described as a Buddhist or Christian or whatever parable, but pretty much the same story. In them all, someone gets a look at heaven and hell, and finds that each has an identical table loaded with an identical fabulous feast. A host of people in both places are sitting at the tables, ready to party, but they only have long skewers or tongs or chopsticks or forks—depending on who's telling the story—for utensils. These utensils are so long that no one can feed themselves, although why they can't choke up on their tongs or simply use their hands to—"
"Explorer Asari!" the Chief barked. "Are you under the impression that I have time to listen to you ramble?"
"Sorry, Commandant." A fat lie, because mostly I was glowing from hearing myself, for the first time, called "Explorer." "I'll get to the point. In the fable, the person visiting heaven and hell learns that the only difference is that in hell, everyone starves, but in heaven everyone is having a terrific time because they're feeding each other."
"I see. You realized that the Anguis weren't flexible enough to feed themselves, at least not with their, ah, fingers."
"Not only that, I'll bet that almost everything they do requires a team effort. Can't imagine one of them alone building radios. I doubt they could even see their own bodies without a mirror."
The Chief's expression turned thoughtful. "Interesting. Creatures that evolved as an entirely cooperative society."
"So in that pit where we were trapped, I dug through debris and found the kind of leaves I'd noticed the supposed tentacles were grabbing before the cave-in. The aliens actually helped me reach the surface after I fed the leaves to the largest sna—Anguis watching me. I was using p-levitation to rise, but sort of got stuck in a holding pattern at the top. They gave me the final shove that I needed."
"In short you provided them a peace offering."
"You said a mouthful, sir." I kept my expression neutral.
"This isn't a joking matter, Explorer." Her lips remained stern, but her eyes didn't seem to agree.
* * *
Code Blue Love
Bill Johnson | 9156 words
Mayer Vanderbrink waved his hotel cardkey in front of the lock plate. He pushed the door open and held it while DeAnne walked inside past him carrying a box of Jimmy's old photographs and high school yearbooks.
DeAnne set the box on the suite's coffee table. Mayer collapsed on the bed and propped himself up with pillows, his hands behind his head.
"And then there were two."
Mayer's face twisted into a half smile and he chuckled half a chuck. "You sound like an old Agatha Christie novel."
"That was the idea," DeAnne said. She sat on the side of the other queen-sized bed. "It was a joke. Still, no one should have to arrange a funeral without help."
Mayer shrugged. "You did everything for Christine. It's only fair I do Jimmy."
DeAnne glanced at the box on the table. "I am so sick of burying our brothers and sisters."
"Tell that to our DNA," Mayer said. He sounded tired but his face was calm and still, like a mask. He paused, then continued.
"I finished String. Final version. I fixed all the bugs you found. He's done."
"You're sure?"
Mayer snorted. "Of course I'm not sure. I broke every rule of how to build an AI. I included start-up and shut-down instructions but after that he's nothing but tens of thousands of open if-thens. And most of those just write even more if-thens. In my lab they'd say he's a half-assed mess and tell me to start over."
"Will he work?"
"I have no idea. And I have no idea what it might look like when he finishes."
"You want more time?"
"To test? Sure. But there's an old saying that, sooner or later, you have to shoot the engineer and put the damned thing into production." He smiled. "I think it's time to shoot the engineer. I think I'm out of time."
DeAnne studied him for a moment. Her eyes went wide.
"You got another CAT scan." It was a statement, not a question. "How many? How big?"
Mayer thought about lying but there was no point.
"We have each other," he said fiercely. He reached over and gripped her hand. "We're the babies. We never give up."
"How many? How big? What did the CAT show?"
He released her hand and sat up straight.
"At least five aneurysms in the prefrontal cortex and amy
gdala. Two were at three centimeters. One was four centimeters. There might be others but they stopped the dye. Always jumps my blood pressure and they didn't want to risk it."
"Damn!" DeAnne swore. She rubbed her eyes, squeezed them tight, then looked back at Mayer. "You have to go first."
Mayer shook his head. "You have more damage. Your aneurysms are bigger. And you have a surgeon lined up. Besides, aren't big sisters supposed to go first? To protect the baby brother? That's what Mom and Dad always said."
"I can't—"
"Is it ready?" Mayer interrupted.
DeAnne went silent. She thought about the stent back in her lab, the gentle blur of billions of nano-threads around it.
"I have no idea," she said, honestly.
"Can I download String into the stent?"
"Yes. It's loaded with memory and the threads have been growing for the last two months. It's as ready as I can make it." "Now it's your turn. Will it work?"
DeAnne hesitated and looked down at her hands.
"In the computer simulations, it works. In the lab, I feed the stent blood and it grows a thread and slips it into a cell," she said slowly. "In the mice, the threads manipulated the cells, turned them back to normal. So, yes, the stent will work. I think. In the simulations and in the lab and in a mouse. With me controlling the stent and telling it exactly what to do."
She looked up at Mayer. "But a cell in a simulator or a lab or a mouse isn't a cell in a human body. And me telling a stent what to do, controlling it in a lab, isn't the same as live testing with an artificial intelligence in charge."
"There are two ways to find out." Mayer leaned back against the pillows. "We can follow the rules. Submit String and the stent and go through all the years of testing and trials and submissions and stages of approvals."
Analog Science Fiction and Fact - 2014-07 Page 16