Space 1999 #7 - Alien Seed

by E. C. Tubb

  ‘You’re afraid of something,’ said Bergman as Koenig lowered the commlock. ‘But, John, it’s only a plant. It can’t hold anything really dangerous. For one thing, it isn’t big enough.’

  ‘How large is a virus, Victor?’

  ‘It’s very small, John.’ Bergman got the point. ‘But it can kill despite its size. You’re right, of course; we mustn’t take chances. But look at it.’ He gestured towards the plant. ‘It has a unique beauty. How can such a thing hold terror?’

  A question only time could answer, but, guided by the gesture, Koenig’s eyes studied the alien growth with a sharpened suspicion. The leaves, once edged with saw-like teeth, now hung like a drape of silken veils at the foot of the bole. The great flower drooped on the end of its stalk, the petals frayed like tassels, the colours those of old tapestries. The bole, darkly green, seemed to have enhanced the contrast of the elegant traceries, the patterns of red and yellow more prominent now, deeper, wider.

  Like the cracks starring the shell of an egg and growing even as he watched.

  ‘John!’ Bergman stared his disbelief. ‘It’s opening! The bole is opening!’

  Splitting along a thousand lines of fracture, the pieces supported now only by a delicate inner membrane, the entire side of the bole facing them now starred and flaking.

  ‘Nancy?’

  ‘It could have reached fruition, Commander. Don’t get too close. Many plants have some form of ejection mechanism for their seeds. This could be one of them.’

  Accumulated gases used to literally fire the seeds far from the parent growth. Organic springs that would fling them like stones from a sling. Vapours, even, designed to stun or kill any hungry predator—who could tell what defence mechanisms had been developed in an alien world?

  They should run, but nothing would have dragged the botanist from where she stood busy with her camera. Nothing would have pulled Bergman from the chance to observe what had never been seen by man before. And he, like the others, was expendable should the worst happen and the security guards be forced to destroy the cavern and all it contained.

  ‘Look!’ breathed Bergman, entranced. ‘Look!’

  A flake fell from the bole, another, a rain of thick, green particles that rustled as they fell to form a mound on the drape of leaves. An opening showed, widening even as they watched, an oval space over six feet in height and four feet in width. A gaping orifice that revealed an inner compartment lined with strands softer than any silk forming a roseate nest that cradled the incredible.

  ‘A woman!’ Shocked, Nancy Coleman lowered her camera. ‘A woman—but in God’s name, how?’

  Koenig said nothing, watching, looking at the shape held snugly in the cradle of roseate moss. A girl—the loveliest he had ever seen.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  They named her Enalus—the child, if not of the sea, then of space, that great ocean of emptiness between the stars—and she was beautiful.

  Beautiful beyond all visions of loveliness, a fact confirmed by his eyes and one to be added to another verified by his brain. She was beautiful and she was more alien than anything he had previously known.

  A thing Koenig found hard to accept as he watched her in Medical Centre, moving to Helena’s direction, her small, high-arched feet carrying her with a dancer’s grace.

  ‘Again? Of course, Dr Russell, anything you wish.’

  Her voice was softly resonant, echoing in the mind like the distant sound of chiming bells, plucking at the strings of emotion so that he responded to her attraction as if to a thing of delicate wonder beyond the concept of price.

  ‘And again?’ She moved like a wisp of perfumed cloud. ‘And again?’

  Exercises to check her coordination, the cold eyes of scanning instruments following her every gesture as others sniffed the air and her body with electronic nostrils. She ignored them, turning, the mane of glowingly roseate hair streaming like a dawn-touched waterfall from the high curve of her brow, rippling over the soft roundness of her shoulders. Beneath the simple garment she wore, the lines of her figure were prominently feminine; the mound of her breasts sharply delineated by the narrow construction of her waist, the swell of hips and thighs, the taper of calves and ankles.

  Her face was angelic—soft lips, gentle eyes, ears like shells, a chin touched with a dimple, nostrils made to be touched, a brow designed to be stroked, skin that yearned for kisses as her hands with the delicate fingers had been made for caresses and . . .

  ‘John!’ Helena’s voice eat through his reverie and Koenig started, conscious that he had been daydreaming, lost In a world of imagination. ‘I’ve finished for the time being. You can have Enalus taken back to her room now.’

  ‘Must I be locked away, Commander?’ She took a step towards him, hands lifted in mute appeal. ‘I get so lonely at times and it has been so long. Why must I be shut away in a prison?’

  ‘For protection,’ said Helena. ‘Yours and ours.’

  ‘Commander?’ She ignored the comment. ‘That’s so cold, isn’t it? May I call you John? Helena calls you that; may I?’ She smiled at his nod, her face irradiated as if from within by a glowing luminescence. ‘That’s wonderful! You are so kind to me, John. You are all so kind. But why must I be kept shut away as if I were a prisoner? What harm have I done you? What harm could I do? Please, John, couldn’t I be allowed a little freedom?’

  It was incredible to think that she had come from a plant. Even more incredible that she should have the power to communicate as she did with words of such familiarity. An ability she had demonstrated from the very first when she had stepped from the opened bole to stretch and smile and extend her hands to those watching as if she had been a traveller at the end of a long voyage who had just arrived to be greeted by friends.

  ‘John?’

  The siren call of her voice laved him with its warmth and intimacy, hinting of secrets shared and episodes to come, of promises unspoken but implied.

  With an effort he said, ‘No, Enalus, not yet.’

  ‘But, why, John? Why?’

  ‘Because you are strange to us, as you must know. We have to be careful. Alpha must not be put at risk. I . . . well, just be patient for a little while longer. I promise you it won’t be long. You can trust me for that, Enalus. Just be patient for a little while longer.’

  He was babbling and knew it, but a part of him was unable to halt the spate of words. Beyond the girl he could see Helena, the disapproval on her face. An emotion not matched by Mathias, who stared as a man entranced.

  ‘John, will you summon security, or shall I?’ Helena lifted her commlock.

  ‘No.’ Koenig turned and clenched his hands and felt the nails drive into his palm. The pain cleared his head a little, giving him a measure of detachment so that, when he turned again to face the little group, he was able to speak with direct firmness.

  ‘Helena, take Enalus to her room. Make certain she is secured.’

  ‘John! Please! You promised—’

  ‘After you have done that, summon Victor to join us here.’

  ‘John?’

  Without looking at her, Koenig said, ‘I haven’t forgotten my promise, Enalus. You’ll be given more freedom as soon as I’m certain you present no danger to the Moonbase. Until then I’m taking no chances. Now please be sensible and cooperate. Do you need help, Helena?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘An orderly, perhaps?’

  ‘I can manage.’

  Koenig sagged a little as she ushered the girl from the chamber. Watching him, Dr Mathias said softly, ‘Did she get to you, Commander?’

  It would have been stupid to lie.

  ‘Yes. And you?’

  ‘Me, too.’ Mathias drew in his breath and released it with an audible sigh. Then he said quietly, ‘What the hell have we got here?’

  ‘Something alien.’

  ‘I know, but when you’re with her you tend to forget that. She seems more human than any other human I know. And she’s lovely with it—that
hair, those eyes, that figure, that skin! Men dream about such things and try to put their thoughts into words. They call it poetry. Others make songs and paint images and still more can do nothing but sit and think and think and destroy themselves with hopeless longing. I’ve seen them. Pathetic creatures who are obsessed. We call them mad.’ Again Mathias drew in his breath. ‘Is that what we have here—a source of madness? Or have we found an angel? Which, Commander? Which?’

  Bergman listened to the silent humming of the tape and looked at the others. ‘Well, that’s one problem solved. Enalus isn’t using vocal communications at all. If she had, her voice would have registered on the recorder.’

  ‘Telepathy?’ Koenig switched off the machine. ‘So she’s reading our minds.’

  ‘Not necessarily. All she needs to do is to bypass the normal vibratory sequence of sound communication and impinge her words directly on the receptors of the cortex. She would reverse the procedure in order to understand what you were saying. Imagine using radios instead of ears and tongues. In fact, the use of suit-radios is a good analogy.’ Frowning, he added, ‘But it still doesn’t explain how she knew the language. She could have learned it from someone, perhaps, but whom?’

  ‘I can answer that, Victor.’ Helena glanced at Mathias. ‘From Constance Boswell. Right, Bob?’

  ‘We can’t be certain of that, Doctor.’

  ‘But the evidence points to it.’ From among the papers littering the desk she produced a file. ‘This is Connie’s. I won’t read it, but the facts are plain. After the initial examination and emergency transfusions, another examination was made during which a pattern of tiny punctures was found on the scalp previously hidden by the hair. The penetration was to the bone. There was no blood. On the sides of the face we found a peculiar abrasion. I thought it to be beard-rash; then I remembered that Edward Markham was closely shaven.’

  ‘And he hadn’t been close to her for days before she collapsed.’ Koenig narrowed his eyes in thought. ‘A connection?’

  ‘We know that she lied about the condition of the plant,’ said Bergman. ‘That could have been an instilled protective device. If so, there must have been some form of contact. My guess is that the flower could have caused the punctures and, if it did, there could have been some form of mental contact.’

  ‘Between a girl and a plant?’ Koenig waved a hand to dismiss the anticipated explanation. ‘All right, I know. The thing is alien, so normal experience doesn’t apply. So somehow it read her mind and gained a knowledge of the language at least. And what else?’

  Bergman said slowly, ‘An image.’

  ‘Victor?’

  ‘A pattern, then, if you like. Something on which to build whatever was being formed in the pod. Haven’t you noticed the similarity?’ He glanced from Koenig to Mathias and raised his eyebrows. ‘No? I spotted it from the first and so did Nancy. There is a striking resemblance between Enalus and Constance Boswell. They could almost be sisters—but one is far more refined and enhanced than the other. More attractive in every way. Yet the basic similarities are there. You agree, Helena.’

  ‘Superficially they are, but it is only skin-deep. As yet I’ve found it impossible to take X rays of Enalus—her body is opaque to any form of scanning. She apparently has no blood; the tissue beneath the skin is a homogeneous mass of fibroid and the skin itself is more of a flexible layer than a true epidermis. The navel is a mere indentation, as to be expected, and both secondary and primary sexual features are nonfunctional—that is, she could neither give birth to a child or suckle it if she did.’

  ‘She must eat,’ said Bergman. ‘Does she?’

  ‘Yes—that function, at least, seems normal. Her ingestion of solid and liquid matter is that of a young, healthy girl with a good appetite.’ Helena added dully, ‘She also has a perfect set of teeth—or would have if it were not for a minor irregularity in the upper left molar. Constance Boswell has exactly the same irregularity.’

  More proof, if it were needed, that the girl had been used as a pattern by whatever forces had determined the shape of what grew within the bole of the alien growth. And if there had been no pattern?

  Pollination, thought Koenig. Plants, like animals, were bisexual. A flower needed to be fertilised before a plant could bear fruit and, even though the growth had been alien, the same principles could apply. Had the other plants died because they had not been stimulated into entering the final stage of their life-cycle?

  Bergman cleared his throat and said, ‘Well, so far, so good. We know, or can make a reasonable assumption, how Enalus gained her knowledge of the language and how she communicates. We can also have a fair idea of how she comes to look as she does. The question now is—what do we do with her?’

  She had been placed in a room at the end of a residential corridor, the other chambers empty now, the passage secured by a pair of guards. They snapped to attention as Koenig approached and he acknowledged their salute before passing on to halt at the sealed door. For a moment he stood before it, then lifting his commlock, he fired the stream of electronic particles that triggered the catch.

  Closing the panel behind him, he turned to look at Enalus.

  She lay on the bed, her legs sprawled in an elegant disregard for normal convention, the long, smooth lines of her thighs gleaming like pearl in the glow of the lights. She had slit the sides of the gown she had been given and adjusted the neck so that it hung in appealing folds, catching the eye and leading it to the double swell of her breasts.

  Or, he reminded himself, savagely, the mounds of tissue that gave the appearance of breasts. But it was hard, so hard, to think of her as other than human.

  ‘John?’ She turned to face him, her elfin face wreathed in the mane of her hair, the eyes like lambent pools beneath the arc of her brows. ‘Do you want me, John? You did say I could call you that.’

  ‘Yes, Enalus, I did.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘We’ve been talking about you. Or perhaps you know that.’

  ‘How could I know, John?’ Did the sweet resonance of her voice hold a tinkle of mockery? ‘How could I know what you have been doing?’

  ‘Don’t you read minds?’

  ‘No.’ She straightened with a swirl of material, hair flying, strands deftly swept back by a lifted hand. ‘Why should you think that? I speak and you hear my words. You speak and I hear mine. But what you think and how you feel—those things are a mystery to me.’ Her face brightened a little. ‘My freedom, John? Did you come to give me that?’

  ‘What would you do with it, Enalus?’

  ‘Enalus. That is a nice name. I haven’t yet thanked you for giving it to me. My freedom?’ She paused and sat with her hands locked around one uplifted knee. Aureoled by the light, her hair glowed like a crest, a halo around the small neatness of her skull, the delicate structure of her face. ‘I wish to learn,’ she said, after a moment. ‘There is so much to learn. And I need to grow.’

  ‘To grow?’

  ‘In wisdom,’ she said quickly. ‘Is that how I should say it? To grow in wisdom. To gain understanding. To increase my stature. Words! They are so limited. How I wish that you could understand me with a thought or that I could you. Words are so very slow, so slow. John, why did you send me here with Helena?’

  He blinked at the sudden question, not expecting it, surprised that she should have considered the matter important enough to have remembered.

  ‘I thought it best, Enalus.’

  ‘And what you think best, you do. This much already I have learned about you, John, as I have learned that all are different in small ways. Helena is different from you and Bob is darker and Victor is older and Nancy is as old but different again. Why is that, John?’

  ‘We have two sexes and are of different ages. Also, there are various races among us.’

  ‘But you are basically all the same,’ she said, wistfully. ‘You are all human.’

  Which is something you are not and can never be, he thought, and felt a sharp reg
ret at the coldness of the truth. A regret rendered the more poignant by the realisation that, of them all, she would be the most alone—a solitary member of her species who could never find her way home, a lost waif whose world might be nothing more now than a cloud of cosmic dust. It would be such a small thing to give what comfort they could. To help her. To pretend that she had a right to belong.

  ‘John?’ Enalus slipped from the bed and stood before him, looking very demure, very fragile and helpless, very young and alone. ‘Is the door to be opened? Am I to be allowed to mix with the others? Please!’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘You are. That’s what I came to tell you.’

  The decision insisted on by Bergman, who had hammered home the need to learn, to observe, to reap what knowledge could be gained while they had the chance, Mathias had backed him; Helena had not. She was waiting in the passage, coming to join him after he had given instructions to the guards.

  ‘You told her, John?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You should have given her a key,’ she said bitterly. ‘The key to Alpha, What would it be, John? A laser? The master component of Main Control? Or should we all have put our necks on a block?’

  ‘Precautions will be taken,’ he said patiently. ‘She will be accompanied at all times and only allowed access to certain parts of the Moonbase. Damn it, Helena!’ he flared as he saw her expression. ‘What else should we do? Lock her in a cage?’

  ‘That or plant it in a garden.’ She halted and met his eyes. ‘It, John. No matter how that thing looks, it isn’t human. It came from a plant and it robbed the brain of a girl. And it—’

  ‘You don’t like her,’ he interrupted. ‘You hate her.’

  ‘No, John,’ she said after a moment, ‘I don’t hate her. You can’t hate something so alien—not if you are rational. But you don’t have to trust it, either. Enalus will cause trouble; I’m sure of it.’

  He smiled, trying to lighten the situation. ‘Woman’s intuition, Helena?’