In the Company of Others

by Julie E. Czerneda

  “That didn’t stop you,” Grant concluded, leaning back and studying her.

  Gail nodded. “I was interested. And I’d already begun recreating Susan Witts’ genome as part of this project. As you know.”

  Grant had been briefed—he’d had to be, as his people were the ones who would conduct the planetside trials and, hopefully, find the Quill at last. Risking their lives on her logic, Gail thought with an inner chill, but didn’t dare doubt herself now.

  The Quill weren’t the mysterious monsters the public at large believed. At least, they hadn’t been. While no one claimed to understand how they’d become a threat on the terraformed worlds or how they killed, the reason Quill couldn’t be found and captured by remotes was simple enough.

  They were perfect biochemical mimics—so perfect, current methods constantly and utterly failed to distinguish what was Quill from anything else alive.

  The Quill, according to admittedly sketchy observations, were little more than fungallike filaments with an alien, but not inexplicable, biochemistry. Some of that biochemistry resulted in an attractively fluid play of color on their surface, making the filaments into living jewelry—supposedly the reason some deep-space explorers had kept the filaments in the first place. Gail had her own ideas about that, controversial and not publicized.

  Those ideas hadn’t gained her funding for this project and control of the Seeker. What had was something much more acceptable, based on the finding that the Quill’s biochemistry was also designed to produce a camouflage of genetic markers on the organism’s exterior. Where an Earth animal might detect, then reproduce the color of its background in order to hide, the Quill seemed to detect, then reproduce the genome of its living background, perhaps for the same reason.

  It hadn’t been a scientist who’d made this discovery about the Quill. Spacers who wore Quill bracelets found they couldn’t give their bracelets to anyone else. A filament was so attuned to its biological background that, once it touched one person’s skin, an individual Quill wouldn’t be worn against the skin of any other—reputed to drop to the ground and die rather than linger on a stranger. There were unconfirmed rumors that a Quill might move from a parent to a young child. The original match was precise enough, some stories had spacers using their Quills as substitutes for their gene keys.

  This talent of the harmless, pretty Quill might have remained one curiosity among the millions recorded from the myriad life-forms found outside of Sol System, but the Quill became killers—killers with the ability to blend into their preferred biological background, completely hidden among the plant life on the terraformed worlds.

  Until Gail Smith had her inspiration. Humans could find Quill—they had originally. So what was needed was a way to put humans on the surface to do the hunting. No technology had provided protection against the lethal Quill Effect. So Gail decided on a different approach.

  She would use the Quill’s camouflage technique against them.

  They knew the original Quill had been brought to the terraformed worlds by the leaders of the various Stage Three teams—rare, previously untouched Quill that had been gifts from Susan Witts to celebrate their project. So Gail painstakingly identified and obtained the genomes of each terraformer, making the assumption that these would be the “human” patterns recognized by the alien life-forms.

  Ironically, that of Susan Witts had been the hardest to obtain. Opening these letters had been the reward.

  “What you were told about this mission—my project—was the truth,” she told Grant. “I am collecting certain genetic markers and Pardell’s, because of his heritage from Susan Witts, will be a useful piece of that puzzle. But I needed more—and I found it in this letter. A place.” Gail paused triumphantly.

  “A place,” Grant repeated, looking puzzled. “What sort of place?”

  “Somewhere new and untouched to conduct our trials,” Gail put all her determination into her voice. He had to be convinced. “Titan University insists we use World IV. Nonsense! They’ve used it for all their failed experiments. The place is a minefield of mistakes—the last and worse when they sprayed one continent with herbicide then sent down three techs—who all died.”

  “Before our time, Dr. Smith,” Grant commented. “Am I to take it you don’t plan to follow Titan’s directives?”

  Dangerous question, from a man who could stop her with a word in the wrong ears. Gail met the commander’s challenging look with one of her own. “We all want this to work, with no more lives lost, but if it’s to work, we need to do it properly.” Gail flattened her hands on her desktop. “I’ve spent years analyzing their mistakes; I don’t plan to repeat them. First and foremost, we aren’t going to a world where we’ll hardly find room to land among the litter of dead shuttles and dessicated corpses.”

  Grant paused a heartbeat longer than comfortable before he said: “You’re the boss.” There was an unspoken “for now” in the sentence. “But how do we find this pristine playground? If Witts didn’t inform Titan—I assume her colleagues were equally secretive . . . ?”

  Gail nodded acknowledgment. “Those that survived weren’t about to admit to anything—they were struggling to avoid lynch mobs, let alone Titan’s review board or the ERC’s Tribunal. I wouldn’t have known without these letters.” She smiled. “And these.” She waved at the handful of disks in the box. “From a stationer named Aaron Raner.”

  “I was wondering when he’d come up. The station records we’ve pulled so far just give his name, some sparse details about his work on-station, then the man disappears. So, how does Raner tie in with this world you want—and the ship?” Grant nodded encouragingly, as if he was afraid she was regretting sharing this many secrets. Despite this, Gail couldn’t be sure how much she told him actually was a surprise.

  It didn’t matter, she told herself. As long as he went along. “I’d been tracking Susan Witts’ descendants; her son’s ship, this letter, were all part of the trail I followed. But then I lost the ’Mate. She’d been inherited by Jeremy Pardell, who’d applied for immigration for himself and his wife. But they weren’t assigned to any station, since he was still running his freight business. One day, they just vanished from any records. I’d almost given up, when, lo and behold,” Gail paused, reliving that dead-of-night moment when her board had lit up with a Christmas tree of cross-referencing hits and she’d known this was it, “up pops the Merry Mate II again—in Titan University archives. A letter from Thromberg Station, written by a stationer named Aaron Raner, to his uncle at a Titan-affiliated hospital.

  “One of several letters, in fact. Raner had adopted a baby right after the blockade went up, a seriously ill baby whose symptoms suggested extreme dysesthesia, an impairment of the sense of touch in which light contact of the skin is misread by the nervous system as pain. Needless to say, Thromberg wasn’t in a position to offer that level of care. Raner’s uncle did his best to conceal his efforts to help—the climate of the times was not in favor of private communication with anyone outside of Sol System—but he needed data for those colleagues he consulted. As far as I can tell, they believed they worked on a hypothetical case study, but the uncle kept Raner’s letters for reference. Those letters ended up—I’m sure unintentionally—in the university’s data banks when the uncle died in retirement. Where I found them.”

  “Aaron Pardell.” Grant’s eyes became slits. “You knew about his condition before we arrived ...”

  Gail shook her head. “Not that it was anything like we’ve seen. That was as much a surprise to me as to you. And I wasn’t interested in his medical history. You can imagine I am now.”

  “So what brought you after Pardell if not that—or to finish the genome profile for Witts?” Dangerous and suspicious, Gail saw both in his eyes.

  She took Susan Witts’ letter from his hand, keeping it in her own. “This. The planet she mentions here and nowhere else. It’s where Witts started her work, Grant. I’m convinced it’s the first place where the Quill ran wild
. Untouched, all this time, because no one knew this place existed. Lost, really, until Jeremy Pardell took his ship there.”

  “He—what?”

  Gail leaned forward, looking intently at Grant as if it were possible to will him into understanding. He was quick enough, she thought. “Raner had to tell his uncle where the baby came from—that he’d found him, half-frozen, on a shuttle that had made an emergency return to an abandoned ship—the Merry Mate II. He left out Jeremy Pardell’s name, saying only that the ’Mate had been left in orbit around an unnamed planet. I asked myself—where would a man take his family, when the stations were bursting at the seams and Sol System was about to lock its door?”

  “There are catalogs filled with planets—”

  “Gas giants, balls of ice or molten rock, or with poisonous atmospheres,” Gail rejoined. “The ’Mate was a freighter—a temporary home—not a deep explorer. Pardell picked this world for a reason, Grant. He expected it to welcome his family. Raymond must have read his mother’s letters after all, probably copied them. For all I know, he saved all of Susan Witts’ documentation on that world and her early work. I believe Jeremy Pardell found his grandmother’s world—”

  Gail lost her train of thought for an instant, distracted by the feel of the letter in her hand and the terrible irony it represented. Had Susan ever met her grandson? The only surety was that she had died first, spared that added grief. Gail shook away the thoughts. The past was the past. “That’s what’s in the Merry Mate II’s records,” she continued brusquely. “The location of that world—and probably the answer to many other questions, Grant. We can’t leave here without them.”

  “Why? Why would he do it?”

  “Save her letters?” she asked, surprised this bothered the commander. “How should I know?”

  “No. Jeremy Pardell. Why would he risk landing? Why risk the Quill? Surely the warn offs—”

  “Warn offs?” Gail carefully replaced the letter and closed her box. “That’s the point, Grant. There wouldn’t have been any around this world—no one but Susan and her most trusted team leaders even knew it existed.” She stood up in her excitement, pacing back and forth behind her desk, firing words him. “Maybe the ’Mate was damaged or they had some emergency. Pardell must have believed the planet was safe. Who cares? That world is what matters. It’s perfect.”

  Grant continued to look doubtful. “So you’re saying Raner went after Jeremy Pardell—for whatever reason—and saved his ship and son. That he raised that son as his own. All without telling anyone about this, this mystery planet—maybe not even Aaron Pardell. Why?”

  “Raner couldn’t take the chance. Everyone feared the Quill. No matter how welcoming that world may have looked to him, he had to know something took his friends. Something triggered the ’Mate’s distress beacon. And when Raner arrived back at the station—everything was going to hell here. He and whoever was with him couldn’t risk any rumors about that ship, the baby—and the Quill.”

  “What if Raner was wrong?” Grant asked in a low voice. “What if this world is free of Quill? After all, the baby lived.”

  Gail understood the hope in his eyes, but raised her hand to stop him. “The baby lived,” she echoed. “The only fact within their Survivor Legend—adding several dozen questions about our new guest to my list for the research team,” Gail said dryly. “Unfortunately for Thromberg and the other stations, I’ve no doubt the Quill have beaten us to this world, as well as all the others. In fact, I’m convinced it will prove to be the first planet they contaminated. And they’ve been left alone since that time.

  “Making it the perfect testing ground—and our legend, Aaron Pardell, the ideal subject.”

  Chapter 23

  HE must have ignored Aaron’s warning and succumbed to temptation again. He knew better than to add some of Syd’s special joy juice to Sammie’s beer. The last time . . . Malley groaned to test that he still had a voice . . . the last time had felt pretty much like this, when he’d finally come to. Which, come to think about it, had been a day and a half odd-cycle after Sammie had insisted Malley had broken three tables and two noses—accomplishments he couldn’t remember to this day.

  What day was this?

  Malley cracked open an eye and tried to focus, squinting against the onslaught of light. Light? Bad sign. Meant he was late for work. Of course, dark would be a bad sign as well. Could mean he’d missed an entire day of work. Problem with no longer having an even-cycle roommate—someone wanting his turn in the sheets made a great alarm clock. He’d missed rations. Maybe more than one set. Malley wasn’t a big fan of sleep; he did like eating.

  Not at the moment, he discovered, as the mere thought sent him heaving over the side of his bed, automatically aiming for where his boots shouldn’t be.

  Cool fingers supported his forehead. Malley froze in an agony of self-consciousness. He didn’t usually forget bringing a friend home. To the best of his knowledge, he’d never subjected such a friend to watching him retch out his guts.

  Mind you, he couldn’t remember a headache as vile as this one before and found himself leaning gratefully against the hand now holding a cold compress to his forehead, imagining how Syd would look hanging by his ankles.

  “Mr. Malley.”

  It was a such nice image—Syd’s face all puckered up and red. Malley refused to budge or open his eyes. He had the sudden feeling this wasn’t a hangover, but something far worse.

  “Sir. Your head’s rather heavy.”

  Nice voice. Soft, with an unusual lilt to the words as if the unseen woman almost sang them. Malley wanted to ask her a question, just to hear more of that voice, but realized he’d prefer to stay ignorant, with his eyes shut. He did roll back, freeing the hand of responsibility for keeping his face off the floor. As his head hit the pillow, he had a second of vertigo as he realized this wasn’t his pillow, or his bed, or the orientation within the room he expected . . . but all that faded as he let himself spin back into sleep.

  “Mr. Malley. Hugh! Wake up.”

  “Go ’way,” he mumbled, then yelped in protest as someone rudely poked two fingers into the lower section of his rib cage. His eyes shot open, and Malley blinked several times as he processed where he was . . .

  And what had happened . . .

  The fingers left him alone during this discovery, their owner, Gail Smith, looking down at him instead. There were worse things to wake up to, Malley decided. The hair escaping from behind one ear had red streaks in its gold. Quite pretty. Seen this close, her blue eyes had intriguing dark rings around their irises, like the faceted edge of crystal. She hadn’t slept—her lower eyelids were smudged with purple and her cheeks were pale. He smiled at her and caught a quick smile in return—complete with dimples.

  A shame he’d love to wring her elegant little neck.

  He sat up quickly, startling her back, and regretted the action as his head pounded—violently—twice. “This will help, sir,” came the lilting voice again, followed by a slim dark hand holding out a cup of some obnoxiously thick liquid.

  Malley took it, grimly ordering his stomach to behave—not that it felt as though there was anything in it, but having past experience as a warning. Over the rim, he scanned the room.

  No sign of Aaron.

  There were walls—real ones, without gaping holes to nothingness ready to swallow them all—

  Steady, he told himself, taking a reluctant gulp of the liquid. Anything to get back his strength; anything to keep them guessing. Falling on his face in this company wouldn’t just be embarrassing.

  The cool mouthful was a pleasant shock. Malley took another hastily, then a third, letting that one linger over his tongue. “What is this stuff?” he asked in wonder.

  “Orange juice—with a few additions to get rid of the trank aftereffects,” Smith answered, pulling up a rolling stool and perching herself nearby with the obvious intention of waiting for him.

  “It should help immediately.”—This time Malley lo
oked for the voice.

  “Dr. Aisha Lynn,” Smith introduced the woman who came to stand beside her and bow in his direction. “Mr. Hugh Malley. Dr. Lynn is one of our senior biologists as well as a medical specialist.” The dimples showed again. “And she makes remarkable orange juice.”

  “Aisha, please,” the doctor said with another quick half bow, hands tucked inside the pockets of a blindingly bright yellow-and-red coat, especially striking against the rich brown of her skin. The coat was worked with some kind of thread. Malley made the effort and focused his eyes. Yes, he hadn’t been mistaken. Every possible bit of fabric had been embroidered with little six-legged creatures conducting what appeared to be very busy lives. It was almost an anticlimax to look up at her face and meet a wide, friendly smile under warm brown eyes. Her black hair was tightly braided to her head, stuck through at seeming random with more of the little six-legged figures, these in a gold-toned metal.

  “Malley. Thanks.” They didn’t have cups of their own, so Malley regretfully shelved the idea of asking for more in his. Doubtless a medicinal beverage in short supply. His headache was fading anyway.

  And he had more important needs. “Where’s Aaron?”

  “There.” Smith pointed to a long, coffinlike box a few meters away. “He’s—I’m told nothing’s changed.”

  Malley stood, surprised to be able to do so without reeling. Remarkable juice indeed. He should introduce Aisha to Syd. Wonder what they could whip up together.

  Had to be better than Sammie’s beer.

  Deliberately inane thoughts, keeping him from too close attention to surroundings more reminiscent of the tube and vat chambers on Thromberg than the cozy, crowded med wards in Outward Five.