by Jeff Carlson
Vibrations shook the tent before Vonnie felt a jarring thud in the ice. “O’Neal, what happened!?” she yelled.
Ben answered first. “The new pack of smaller males are closing fast. Radar shows a half-ton collapse in their tunnel. They tore down its roof behind them like they’re containing a threat—like they’re containing you.”
“The matriarchs are losing control, although Tom is advocating for us,” O’Neal said.
He posted new transcripts on Vonnie’s display. The sunfish had responded to the cave-in with their shrill cries, warning her, welcoming her, a flood of clashing intent. Tom was exultant. So were many of the larger breed. Lam moved among them with body shapes requesting patience, but the smaller males convulsed in their hysteria.
TOM: Ghost Clan is coming!
SMALLER MALES: Intruders / Strange life!
CHARLOTTE AND BRIGIT: We hear them / Great size / Great strength approaches us!
LARGER FEMALES:
SMALLER MALES: Strange life / Danger!
CHARLOTTE AND BRIGIT:
TOM: Strange flesh Strange bodies Strong and smart.
SMALLER MALES: Attack! Attack!
“If you’re really going down there, get ready for a fight,” O’Neal said. “You may need to immobilize several of them before they’ll quit.”
Vonnie winced at the memory of stomping on two sunfish. She had sobbed in the wet carnage when they burst.
I don’t want to hurt you, she thought.
“If my transcripts are correct, the larger breed hopes you’ll come in swinging,” O’Neal said. “They need you to pacify the smaller males.”
“Lam?” she asked. “Lam, tell the matriarchs! If I fight the smaller males… Will anyone else attack me?”
She knew them too well. Their hair-trigger reflex to kill or be killed was as unstoppable as the innate human need to protect the eyes and face.
“Lam!?” she yelled.
His voice was steady, but he merely echoed the conflicting moods of the tribe. —Yes. No. Yes. Yes.
“He’s useless. We can’t rely on him,” Koebsch said.
“Let me grab him with a slavecast,” Ash suggested. “We’ll take over. We need him to protect Von.”
“We need him to talk to them,” Vonnie said. “If you lock him down, they’ll reject him. He won’t move like a sunfish anymore. He’ll move like a probe.”
“He is a probe.”
“He’s something else now. He’s one of them. Koebsch, don’t try to fix him. We could lose whatever qualities make him like a sunfish.”
“Ash, I want you on standby,” Koebsch said. “If he makes one wrong move…”
“Yes, sir.”
Fans had cooled Vonnie’s suit to -142˚ Celsius, the hellish temperature in the cavern. Shaking, she forced herself to exhibit the same composure as the matriarchs.
She opened her chest pack. It held ten “lab tabs,” the samples drawn weekly from her skin, blood, stools and urine. Twice a month, the ESA crew also gave bone marrow. Living on the surface, they were bathed in an unimaginable sleet of radiation. Their modules and suits couldn’t protect them entirely, and, working with the medical teams on Earth, Harmeet devised individually-tailored regimens of genesmithing and nanotech. Someday they would need surgeries to root out various cancers. For now, each crewmember produced an extensive library of fluids and tissues. Ash had stocked the chest pack with Vonnie’s most recent samples.
The tabs were too tiny for her gloves. Like any mecha, however, the scout suit had auto programs. It could efficiently stack supply crates or perform construction welds by itself.
Vonnie opened a checklist with an up-and-down movement of her eyes. Then she directed her right hand to remove one tab with the magnetic pad on her ring finger. Another magnetic pad activated on her thumb. The tab unlocked. She blotted its contents on the suit’s collar and wrists where a woman might dab perfume on herself before a date.
She snorted at the idea. Most of the urine boiled off in the cold, but the sunfish would detect every stray molecule like a man would respond to a tempting fragrance.
I wish I had the guts to climb down in person, she thought. Will we ever go back into the ice?
“Sir, what’s your decision about our tribe name?” she asked Koebsch. She knew he didn’t want to hear such formality from her, but the record of their next few minutes would be meticulously analyzed on Earth. Despite what anyone believed, she wanted to defer to him. She owed him that much. She knew she wasn’t easy to work with, no more than the sunfish were an easy puzzle to solve.
“We’ll go with O’Neal’s analysis,” Koebsch said. “Tell them we’re Ghost Clan Twenty-Sixteen.”
“Roger that,” she said, clamping down on a victorious laugh. Her adrenaline was too powerful. If she laughed, it would be a titter, and she didn’t want sound like a frightened ape in their recordings. Everything she did now would be studied by millions of people for years to come. She didn’t want to overlook a single detail.
She walked from decon into the central part of the tent. The floor was steel plating. The hatch was mechanized. It would open with a voice command.
“Stage two, go,” she said.
As the hatch raised, the tube shook with a grinding cacophony as the savages drummed and scraped on the bottom end. Bam bam bam bam. Eeeeeeeee. Bam bam.
Anarchy had reclaimed the tribe. Ben’s radar showed the savage males tussling with Lam and the larger breed, who were thrown aside by the smaller males’ ferocity. The matriarchs had retreated. Did they believe the smaller males would tire out?
Her spotlight swept downward and her visor modified her radar signals into holo imagery. The ladder was starkly illuminated. Nevertheless, her claustrophobia returned as she climbed in, so she called Ash, diverting her fear with shop talk. “What did you put inside the suit?”
“Con foam and plastic,” Ash said. “Henri fabricated an assembly that looks like a rib cage and a skull. The plastic almost has the same density as bone, and we made hollows and thick spots in the foam like organs and muscle. We also put a relay inside. It’s on sleep mode and producing a weak electrical field, not quite the same as a person. That’s the best we could do on short notice.”
“Fantastic. Thank you.” On the ladder, Vonnie lifted her gaze for last look overhead. All she could see was the ceiling of the tent. “Seal me in.”
“I’m doing it now.”
The hatch closed with a boom, eliciting more screams and banging from the savage males.
Caught in the tube, Vonnie felt her mind divide. The vulnerable part of her went away. The proficient, economical woman took over. “I want a link to our translation AIs,” she said. “Equalize the tube with the cavern. Lower the oxygen mix. Let’s bring more food and tools into the tent above me. The mecha should make as much noise as possible.”
“Roger that,” Ash said. “Pumps on.”
“Here’s your link,” O’Neal said, posting new AI menus on her visor.
The tube hummed as life support kicked in, reducing the air pressure and screening out the O2. Sunfish metabolism was too receptive. If the air surrounding her was oxygen-rich when she emerged, they would convert it to energy. The savages would grow wilder.
Vonnie stepped off the ladder. Despite her adrenaline, a final thought nagged at her. The Top Clans’ written and oral histories tell stories about lost colonies and foreign races, but their concepts are rarely abstract.
“O’Neal, are you sure our name is correct?” she asked. “It’s weird that they even have a word for ‘ghost.’”
“Their shapes for it mean ‘unseen’ or ‘immaterial,’” he said. “You have to remember, over time they’ve found traces of other beings without physically encountering them. Bones. Spoor. Prints. Those creatures are phantoms to them. That’s what we are, too. Tom has met you. The larger s
unfish believe his accounts, and they’ve touched our mecha and Submodule 07, but I’m not sure they know what to think.”
No more doubt, she decided. Not for me, not for them. If the two breeds haven’t worked together for centuries, this meeting is more than a stepping stone. It could be the foundation of something much greater.
I need to confront the tribe like a legend. Shock and awe. I need to impress them.
Her helmet was equipped with a voice box for communicating with workers who weren’t in suits. She upped her volume to deafening levels, using sonar as well as frequencies in the human range. She took one breath to center herself. Then she activated her speakers and screeched:
—WE ARE GHOST CLAN TWENTY-SIXTEEN! WE ARE BREACHING THE ICE! MOVE BACK! WE ARE GHOST CLAN TWENTY-SIXTEEN!
10.
The tube reverberated with the sound. It amplified and distorted her screams into a roar. Then she punched the hatch. She dropped through.
Landing beside Submodule 07, Vonnie bent down onto her left hand and her toes. The pose was a hulking, predatory crouch. She held her right arm across her chest, ready to shield herself, ready to fight.
—WE ARE TWENTY-SIXTEEN! she screeched.
The smaller males recoiled, knuckling their arms against their bodies to protect their ears. As her spotlight swept the cavern, they flinched like they’d been burned.
One clacked his beak, snapping and howling. —Attack!
Lam spoke for the matriarchs and the larger breed as they coalesced into a defiant, more unified pack. They shrieked at her, but they also called among themselves, lashing their pedicellaria. —We are here! We are here!
Vonnie understood some of their actions. Their hierarchy was still being decided. The process was unfolding quickly now. They contracted and squirmed, testing each individual in the group, trying new combinations, although Vonnie saw more questions than certainty in their body shapes.
Charlotte emerged as one of the strongest-willed matriarchs. She drew the other females into alignment with her by encouraging the hostility of the savage males. She riled the males with her arms, jabbing, squeezing, forcing the other females to support her or allow the savages to dominate. Then she screamed her own challenges at Vonnie:
—You are wrong! You are strange!
Vonnie’s hopes sank, but she kept her shoulders up and her fist cocked. —I am your friend, she cried. —Your scouts have met with me for many days.
Charlotte denied it. —You have her scent, but your metal holds something wrong and dead. You are not you. You are crippled. You are weak.
“She knows the suit isn’t Von,” Koebsch muttered as Ash said, “The males are going to attack.”
—WE ARE GHOST CLAN TWENTY-SIXTEEN! Vonnie roared at them. —Don’t make me crush you! We have always sent our machines into the ice. You know our suits can kill and build and hear in ways beyond any sunfish.
In fact, she realized, the tribe’s discovery of her ruse might convey more status to her. Sending the empty suit in her place should make her appear more like a matriarch while the suit served as a lesser male.
Charlotte trembled. Then she made her choice. Lam seemed to anticipate it. He and Charlotte leapt into the air, but they did not attack. They corralled the savage males. Lam shoved two of them away from Vonnie before Charlotte grabbed two more, keeping the males from a confrontation with her.
—Your kind is strange, Charlotte called.
—I am a friend! Vonnie cried. She could never match their frantic wriggling, yet she lifted her left hand and gave partial control of it to the AI programs, which made her fingers jerk in an approximation of sunfish shapes. —I control this suit, but my tribemates are not different from yours. We live. We breathe. We mate. We die.
The savage males shrieked. Lam and Tom held onto them. At the same time, Brigit was addressing the other sunfish. Charlotte joined her song.
The females of both breeds grasped at each other. Their group tightened. They called to Vonnie, an avalanche of meaning too fast for Lam to wholly translate. —We are bigger smaller stronger different smarter same.
—Yes, Vonnie cried. She didn’t know if they’d agreed that sunfish and human beings weren’t completely unlike or if they’d merely stated the similarities between their cousin breeds. She was glad to find anything positive to say… but her immediate “yes” might have been a mistake.
The matriarchs howled again. —We would be Thirty! they screamed.
“O’Neal, what are they telling me?” Vonnie asked. Studying her display, she hedged her response. She cried at the matriarchs. —Your ambition is useful. Your diseases can be cured. Together we will rule the ice.
“Don’t back off,” O’Neal said. “I think they want our treaty and they’re going to accept it, but my guess is they usually argue with each other for days. Their pecking order is so intricate. They want to haggle with you.”
“I can’t do this forever,” Vonnie said. She had been in her session with Tom for an hour before he’d abandoned her. Then she’d endured another busy hour as Top Clan Eight-Six returned with the larger breed. Excitement would only carry her so far. Stress was taking its toll. Could the sunfish read her growing fatigue in how she wore the suit?
Of course they can, she thought, shaking off her exhaustion. She scraped her left glove over the ice like a skater in a turn, marking the cavern floor, claiming it.
—We will rule this world, she said. —We can take it without you, but we want allies and guides.
—Attack! screamed two of the smaller males.
Vonnie didn’t look at them. —Decide, she said.
—Danger! Attack! the males screamed, exhorting the others to swarm her.
—Decide before we crush your savages, she said. —They cannot wait. You cannot wait. Decide before we kill them and war exists between us again.
The larger females called insistently to Vonnie and to the smaller matriarchs. —Who leads? Who leads?
—I lead, she said, pointing at herself, not her friends overhead. She wondered if she should have used a plural noun by saying ‘We lead.’ The sunfish never did anything in solitude except for ragged, expendable scouts like Tom. Even scouts typically moved in fours.
If her crewmates had activated more suits to present an even-numbered group, she might have said ‘we,’ but the tribes were influenced by standouts like Charlotte and Brigit and Lam. They had chiefs and lieutenants. More important, she remembered how Lam had convinced her to enter the cavern.
You’ll fight for me because I’m with the tribe, he’d said. Because it’s wrong. Because it’s right. Your voice is why they listened to you.
Teaching individuality to the sunfish was a crucial aspect of teaching them to work with humankind. She also wanted to make herself essential to their future. If anyone on Earth complained, she would ask why nobody else had been in the ice. She was the one who’d endured failures and pain. She wanted to personally offer herself to the tribe, so she squared her shoulders and moved closer, reiterating her decree.
—I lead, she said.
They reached a verdict. It rippled among them like an electric current, altering their group.
Vonnie glimpsed fragments of meaning in their body shapes, but it was O’Neal who latched onto an explanation. “The larger breed has accepted the smaller sunfish,” he said. “They’re sharing their status with the matriarchs and the intelligent males like Tom and Lam.”
In front of her, the mixed sunfish contracted into a knot. Just as suddenly, they expanded, thrashing wildly as the matriarchs rejoiced.
—We are Mid Clan Six-Six! they cried.
The emotion was too much for the smaller males. The eight of them scurried and twitched, slashing at each other. —Attack! they screamed.
—No, Vonnie said. —Mid Clan joins Ghost Clan. Treaty. Same tribe. There is no danger here.
—Strange life! Attack!
“Damn it,” O’Neal said calmly as the smaller males snapped at her. Then they separate
d themselves into two fateful lines of four. “Von, here they come.”
Vonnie tried to stop them. She bunched her arms and legs like a sunfish taking the offensive. She knew her size wouldn’t scare them, but they’d backed down earlier when she combined the appropriate body language with her voice.
—WE ARE TWENTY-SIXTEEN! she roared.
The eight males jumped in crisscrossing waves of four. The front wave bounced off the cavern floor. The trailing wave went into the ceiling. In the air, many of them shoved each other to complicate their trajectories.
Closing on her from multiple directions, they somersaulted. They led with their gaping beaks.
Vonnie batted three of them aside with her first blow. She smacked her metal fist up through their bodies, ricocheting her glove from one male to the next like a dot-to-dot holo game.
The fourth male flew past her head as the fifth snatched at her thigh, but she rocked sideways to meet the fourth one, catching him between her shoulder and her helmet, jamming his beak against her cheekbone.
She felt the arms of a sixth male graze her back. Then she slammed her knee into the side of Submodule 07, bruising the male on her thigh. Stunned, he loosened. She pounded him with her fist and he peeled away.
She swung to face the rest.
In front of her, the larger sunfish and the matriarchs called among themselves. A few had retreated. Others lashed and snapped, unable to resist their blood thirst.
Three of the smaller males rebounded from the cavern walls, taking new angles above and behind Vonnie. Her radar targeting was faster. She batted the nearest male with another non-lethal blow, striking the hard cartilage-and-muscle of his arms rather than slamming her fist into his underside.
Did they understand mercy? The matriarchs were also rough with the savages, and Vonnie screamed: —Control yourselves! Control your males!
In the chaos, a new thought cut her like a knife. Where are the two savages I tracked overhead? Her insides went cold when Ash yelled, “They’re digging at the ice! Von! They’ll cause a blowout!”
She glanced up. The two males had grasped the cavern ceiling. They’d found seams with their pedicellaria, worming their arms deeper to create fissures and cracks, tugging in clockwise patterns.