In the Company of Others

by Julie E. Czerneda

  Not that Aaron seemed to mind being stolen. They’d turned the Athena into a makeshift camp, putting up a tentlike shade over the ramp surface to give some relief from the unrelenting sunshine of the day, and shared their first meal outdoors.

  A meal she’d never forget. It didn’t matter that the menu consisted of tasteless nutrient paste and tepid water. The two of them, alone on a brand-new world. It didn’t matter that her portion came via a straw, that straw leading to a bag in a doubled pocket lined in anti-Quill fabric. They’d toasted each other with ration tubes, laughing and talking like friends who hadn’t met in years. She’d surprised him with the chess set he’d given her and found, to her delight, that the ’sider was her equal or better at the game.

  Then, after a sudden, solemn silence, they’d exchanged the simplest of vows:

  Always yours.

  Were they fools? Gail really didn’t care. She’d never felt happier and Aaron acted like a man in a dream. He’d turn to her every few minutes, devouring her with his eyes as if making sure this was real.

  It was real—but so was everything else, including the Quill. Aaron wouldn’t let her step off the ramp, not yet. Gail wasn’t in a hurry to push their luck herself.

  “We have two days, likely less, before the other ships come back,” she reminded him now, as they watched the Quill. As the Quill were presently doing nothing more interesting than swaying hypnotically with the grass in the wind, this watching was pretty much taking a rest themselves.

  “Then we hide?” Aaron said in a deceptively casual tone. He was stretched out on his back, seemingly enchanted by the way the wind played with the translucent material of their shelter.

  Gail bounced a chess piece on his stomach. “Then we’d better have answers to the main questions, Aaron.” So they won’t need you, she added, but only to herself.

  “Such as why her face?”

  Gail nodded, caught up in the mystery again. “This isn’t the same representation they made for you the first time. Something happened between that moment and now.” She lay back, careful of the suit. They didn’t know if a person had to be fully covered to be protected, but it was a reasonable guess. Gail didn’t plan to find out for sure.

  The suit . . . there was a problem she hadn’t shared. The suit was designed for extended wear, just as a space suit would be, but much lighter since it didn’t have to provide life support. In theory, it should be easy to keep it on for another forty-eight standard hours.

  Gail wasn’t sure she’d last another three in the hot, itchy thing, but she kept that doubt to herself. Aaron had enough on his mind.

  After a moment, the ’sider rolled over on one elbow to face her. “Are you smiling?” he asked curiously, eyes green with reflected sunlight as he tried to see inside the headgear.

  Gail stuck out her tongue.

  “Why do I think you just made a rude face at me?” he said.

  “Because I did,” she confessed, scrutinizing every plane and angle of his face, memorizing features she already knew by heart. His expressions flickered from one emotion to another like the play of shadow and sunlight in the moving grass. Curiosity, interest, exasperation, affection . . .

  “What are you planning now?” Pardell asked.

  Gail braced herself “I’m not planning. I’m hoping.” She reached up and switched her comm so only Aaron should hear her voice. The feed from the pod itself was visual only, with audio recorded but not transmitted. They had that much privacy. “Aaron, what did the Quill say to you?”

  A flicker of fear—not of her, of the question. “There wasn’t a conversation. Just the statue.”

  “No one else can hear what you tell me.” Gail propped herself up and faced him.

  Almost sullen. “I don’t care what they hear.”

  Gail smiled to herself “An impression? An emotion? You might as well tell me exactly what it was. In the best tradition of brides, I’ll find out anyway.” She could make him smile like this at whim, it seemed. It was very distracting—both the smile and the power he granted her.

  “Then I’d best be honest,” Aaron said, as if surrendering. “Emotion? More than that—almost concepts. I’m not sure what to call it. But the first time I touched that fragment, I was recognized. ”

  “Go on,” Gail said quietly, looking over the rippling waves of grass. And Quill.

  “The second time, when I picked up the fragment, it was more than recognition. There was a conclusion—some decision made. I knew I was . . . welcomed.” At this, his face tightened into hard, unhappy lines. “It sounded crazy to me then, Gail, and still does. I could have imagined all of it. It was nothing like I’ve—sensed—from people.”

  “Perhaps,” Gail agreed thoughtfully. “But I doubt it. When people touch you, any message is confused with the experience. The Quill . . . they evolved this way—it stands to reason they’d be better at it.”

  Aaron stood up and walked to the edge of the ramp, looking out at the waving grass. “You think I could—talk—to them?”

  Gail rose and followed, fighting the impulse to pull him back. “I think you could be able to listen. I don’t know what it would take to be understood in turn. This all supposes there really is something out there to talk to, of course. Are you willing to try?” The question was forced past the gorge rising in her throat. If there was to be an always, she scolded herself, it had to begin with the Quill.

  “Why not ...” he said almost as though she wasn’t there, then stepped off the ramp.

  Chapter 81

  MALLEY held his breath as Aaron stepped off the ramp, hearing faint echoes as those around him did the same. The lab was still quarantined—according to the FDs, anyway—but the techs had rigged up displays in several rooms, the largest and best attended in this lounge. He’d heard the crew was busy reconnecting the waist, along with unpleasant details such as how soon it would be ready for those in suits to slide through the corridor. Everyone else was glued to a display.

  The stationer assumed he was the only one watching who was struck by how the moving air . . . wind . . . pressed the ’sider’s worn stationer clothing against his legs and back, creating new folds and wrinkles that changed as he walked. What did it feel like, to be inside air that moved when and how it chose?

  “We’ve got vitals for Dr. Smith only,” a voice said from behind. “She’s showing some stress—normal levels.”

  Trust the Earther to make herself part of the experiment. “What’s Aaron doing?” he asked out loud, reasonably sure someone among those gathered to watch would have an informed opinion.

  “Not a clue,” Aisha said, from beside him. “They don’t have a box ready, so he’s not after a sample. . . . Okay, there. He’s trying to touch one.”

  That much Malley could see for himself. Aaron’s hands came up empty, the Quill fragments nearest him slipping from the stalks. He looked back toward the pod, toward the small blue-suited figure that was Gail, and shrugged. She pointed at the new statue. She wasn’t the only one.

  The Quill hadn’t simply vanished from Aaron’s reach—they’d left a clear path to their construction. An invitation.

  “He wouldn’t,” someone said. Malley realized it was him and closed his mouth. Of course, Aaron started walking over the bent grass. Damn fool. This wasn’t Thromberg, where warnings came with convenient red-and-amber markings. The stationer’s fists curled as if around a throat, but there was nothing he could do but watch.

  “Dr. Smith’s vitals are up.”

  Malley growled under his breath.

  Aaron reached the statue. With him nearby for comparison, it was easier to see the figure was too wide and short, the arms overly long for the body. The face was the amazing part. Several here had called out in startled recognition when Gail initially brought the features close with her handvid.

  So that was Susan Witts. Malley hadn’t seen the face before himself, but the Quill had done a remarkable job of portraying a high forehead, distinctive cheekbones, and firm jaw.
It was so lifelike, except for the shimmer of Quill amid the brown stalks, Malley wondered if Aaron saw the resemblance. Did it reassure the ’sider to see his unusual bone structure repeated here? Probably not, Malley thought grimly.

  Aaron seemed to be waiting. Then his head turned. They could see his face and watch his lips move as he said something to Gail.

  “I don’t like the look of that,” the stationer said to Aisha very quietly.

  “Why?” she asked. “Your friend looks calm—unafraid. Determined, I’d say.”

  Malley grunted disapproval. “Exactly. That’s how he looks before starting a brawl at Sammie’s. You haven’t seen anything like our Aaron when he’s ready to make things happen.” Before she uttered the obvious, Malley explained: “Chairs. Bottles. He’s a mean shot with a boot, too. Can’t trust those shy, introverted types.”

  “As if you’re the angel,” she said, but absently, intent on the screen.

  Aaron looked to be arguing with Gail—probably about what he proposed to do. If she didn’t like it, Malley realized with a chill, he certainly didn’t. “Anyone here lip-read?”

  “Malley.” Grant appeared out of nowhere, tapping the stationer on the shoulder to draw his attention. He was wearing a comm link in his ear. “Come with me.”

  The stationer shot an anxious look at the screen, but followed Grant away from the crowd standing immediately in front, Malley could see over everyone’s head anyway.

  The commander had been conspicuously absent since the latest incident in the lab. Until the feed from Pardell’s World had started appearing on everyone’s screens, courtesy of Gail Smith, no doubt, Malley had presumed the Earther was busy with the Quill.

  “It’s a nice change—not having my people lined up at the infirmary after an encounter with you, Malley,” Grant said.

  Malley felt something being pushed into his hand; he slid it into a pocket without looking. “I’m making an effort,” he played along.

  Grant tilted his head downward, his eyes gleaming. “What did you know about all this?” he asked. “About Dr. Smith and your friend—”

  A question from Grant himself, or something aimed at those “listening” to his conversations? Malley decided it didn’t matter. Aaron’s business was his own. “A surprise to me,” he shrugged. “But the woman tends to jump where you least expect—I take it you weren’t consulted either.”

  Grant’s frown was real enough. “There was an explosive device rigged to the Quill’s stasis chamber. We’ve talked to Dr. Temujin about its origins—he claims, naturally, to know nothing about it. Doesn’t matter. The whole thing was an excuse to allow Dr. Smith to invoke her override on the Seeker’s waist controls. It looks as though she and Aaron planned this very well. But why?”

  Malley nodded at the screen. “That much seems obvious. You got in her way—blocked how she wanted things done. She couldn’t remove you, so she removed herself. As I said, the woman tends to jump.”

  “Maybe—” Grant looked suddenly alarmed, his head swinging to face the screen just as there were cries from everyone in the room.

  Malley pushed forward, staring, like the rest, at Aaron Pardell as the ’sider stepped into the statue’s embrace . . .

  And was consumed by Quill.

  Chapter 82

  STATUES didn’t move. Gail stood like one, watching in horror as the Quill’s version unfolded itself with blinding, inescapable speed, wrapping around Aaron Pardell until there was nothing to see . . .

  But another statue . . . this one man-sized, slender, better proportioned, and unmoving.

  “Aaron!” Gail heard herself screaming his name and closed her mouth. Her paralysis broke and she ran to him as quickly as the suit and uneven terrain allowed, only to be forced to a staggering halt—confronting a barrier that built itself before she was close enough to tear the Quill from his body and head.

  Grass writhed into a chest-high wall, reinforced with streaks of shiny alien tissue. The wall formed a circle with one opening—gate to the path behind her, safe passage to the ramp, the pod, and—presumably—off Pardell’s World. “Not without him,” she promised, as if anything could hear.

  Talk to the Quill? A flamethrower—or even a scythe—either would suit her mood at the moment. A shame there wasn’t anything remotely dangerous on the Athena.

  A glint of light from the wrong direction forced her to look up. A ’bot hovered an arm’s length beyond the wall, nearer to where Aaron stood imprisoned. “I thought we disabled that,” Gail said numbly, at this evidence they obviously hadn’t.

  “Get back in the pod, Gail. Before they attack you, too.” Grant’s voice filled her ears, picked up by the exterior mikes on her headgear, not the comm. It must be coming from the ’bot.

  If ever there was a moment to rise above fear, Gail knew, this was hers. “No,” she said, talking to herself as much as to those she couldn’t see. “We don’t know this is an attack. Aaron— Aaron thought they’d have to touch him before there’d be a chance to communicate. I was—am—alarmed. But he was determined. Maybe he sensed this would be necessary.” Somehow she mustered a lighter note to her voice, reassurance. For whom? “First contact, Grant. None of us knows what to expect from it. Maybe this is it.”

  “And maybe this is what the Quill Effect looks like in person. There’s nothing here suggesting intelligence—a spider can build an elaborate trap! I want you back up here—”

  “A mindless trap? Then why her face, Commander?” Gail countered. “Why Susan Witts, a woman he’d never seen? It could have shown him his own face—or his mother’s.” Experimentally, Gail moved toward the wall, her gloved hand outstretched. The wall immediately grew higher. She backed away slightly and the wall stopped growing. Finally, she sat, very slowly, on the yielding softness of bent grass. The wall sank down with her, until it was barely more than a lump.

  “I take it you saw all that,” she told the ’bot dryly.

  “Copy that.” Grant’s response sounded as though blurted out on automatic, as if the man himself were stupefied.

  She felt much the same way. Reaction to stimuli was one thing. Purposeful response was quite another.

  Gail no longer doubted they were dealing with an intelligence here. Grant had been right. She reserved judgment on whether he was also right that this was an elaborate trap and she might be the next prey.

  Folding her hands neatly in her lap, eyes never leaving the iridescent tower that was all she could see of Aaron, Gail prepared to wait and see.

  Chapter 83

  HE couldn’t see, but understood vision was irrelevant—at best, an interaction with the stimulating poison of solar radiation, at worst considerable threat.

  He couldn’t hear, but valued the intimacy of resonance and vibration—indicators of movement—always a warning of danger.

  He couldn’t speak, yet knew and expressed. Concepts flowed over and through him, as they always had, but instead of being a distraction from the world, they were sharp, purposeful, as if guided. Or as if this was the proper way to construct meaning, to see the whole before examining the parts, to look to the ending, before the beginning is contemplated.

  On some level, there remained a human named Aaron Pardell, a man who gibbered in stark, utter terror at the imminent loss of his humanity, revolted by the way his skin crawled inside and out in gentle reacquaintance with others.

  Other.

  The concept of one was comfortable, normal. There was only One.

  No, he thought desperately. He was something else—something different. There were more. Gail . . . Malley . . . many upon many . . .

  Others?

  The concept of multiple intelligences, cooperating as a species, rocked the universe. It was absorbed, tasted, ultimately accepted as a premise.

  Pardell suddenly found himself able to think again, if still disturbingly unaware of his body or location.

  Recognition . . . Welcome.

  Not those words, but those meanings—couched in what his mi
nd read as emotion, but he knew was far more complex.

  A sense of waiting . . . expectation.

  The Earthers probably had university degrees in what to say to a nonhuman intelligence. It was, of course, too late to return to the Seeker and ask for a crash course. Pardell groped for a way to respond, then fastened on the recognition and turned it back, trying to ask: Identity?

  Surprise . . . as if he should be aware. A tinge of disappointment . . . as if he’d failed, somehow.

  Pardell struggled to control what he felt, knowing it was the medium they used and quite sure he was failing miserably to make any sense. Finally, he gave up and discovered himself simply . . . afraid. For himself. For Gail. For Thromberg.

  Reassurance . . . but tangled in complex strands of confusion. A repeat of recognition and welcome. Then, slowly, a building pressure, as though the Other sought to push one concept, one framework, into Pardell’s being, but his very human-ness was an obstacle.

  He hadn’t been aware of breathing until now, when breathing became impossible.

  Terror!

  The pressure didn’t stop, but abruptly shifted focus, as if an opening had been detected. Pardell gasped for air as certainty lanced through him.

  There was . . . identity.

  More . . . a name.

  However the information became part of him, as his lungs refilled, Pardell knew beyond question that the Quill on this planet, every fragment and piece, comprised one—person.

  Susan Witts.

  His great-grandmother, who’d encased him in her alien flesh, now sent waves of approval and love crashing through his body.