With that, Gail disconnected the clasps holding the headgear of her suit to the neck ring and lifted it free of her head.
Her first thought, as she squinted in the direct sunlight, was how incredible it felt to have warm, fresh air playing against her cheeks. Her hair, sweat-soaked, began to dry at its ends almost immediately.
There wasn’t a word from the comm, either from the ’bot’s speakers or from those embedded in the suit. A measure of the man, that Grant didn’t diminish this act with meaningless protest, that he left everything to her. She was grateful.
Unfortunately, Gail didn’t want to die. She realized it with her next breath. Stay calm, emotionless, cool as ice.
It wasn’t humanly possible, but she tried. And failed. She looked toward Aaron, as if he could help.
LOVE.
Gail began to sob helplessly. Hopeless, desperate, her completion, their loss—she moaned and dropped to her knees, feeling as if she was being torn apart. The headgear had dropped out of reach. Was this what Aaron went through? How had he endured . . . she pressed her hands against her skull, trying to keep it out ...
LOVE surged again and crushed her into oblivion.
Chapter 87
LOVE ...?
A passing reflection. A dimpling of consciousness. Nothing more.
DESPAIR!
That which was Aaron Pardell writhed with the echo.
Surprise . . . as if he should be safe, unharmed. Concern . . .
Pardell found himself abruptly aware of his body, bound and motionless, every nerve ending on fire. He still couldn’t see, but the impact of emotion was gone. No. It wasn’t gone. He fought back the physical sensations and could feel something—someone—but the impression was fading . . .
Gail?
Something seemed to snap loose inside him. He lashed out with terror . . . fury . . . dread . . .
LOVE . . . longing, hope, peace . . . drove him back.
LOVE. It wasn’t his. It belonged to Susan Witts. He shook free of confusion. Not his great-grandmother. Not human. It belonged to the Susan-Quill.
Suddenly, it was his. For an instant, he was the Susan-Quill, spread over rolling hills, in shadow and sun, near ocean and limits of desert—not the entire world. There were endings, places where he/she was not, but had been, or would be. At the same time, he/she was Susan Witts, mother of this world, nurturer and protector.
His partner in this union, his other self, was confused by his reaction to the natural way of things. He should detect the strange—the not-belonging. He should fear those who moved—those who ate.
And why did he not know safety lay within the barrier—the barrier that drove the strange away?
Away? Pardell lurched free. Madness and death! He sent the feelings as many ways as he could. Gail was almost gone. DENIAL!
Confusion . . . doubt . . .
He reached into depths he didn’t know he possessed for the strength to make one last effort to communicate. He couldn’t stop the Quill Effect. Only she had that power.
Identity . . . Susan-Quill . . . he sent, infusing the concept with singularity, uniqueness, the need to survive.
Identitiy . . . Gail . . . he sent, overlapping the two until they grew inseparable to his mind. As he weakened, despairing it had worked at all, or in time, all Pardell had left to send was LOVE . . .
And he feared it would kill Gail. . . .
Chapter 88
NOT dead. Yet. How very strange.
“Dr. Smith. Can you hear me? Gail!”
I hear you. Funny how the words were there, just not coming out of her mouth. Bad words. Disobedient, contrary things. She laughed, and heard that sound.
How very strange.
“Gail. We’re trying to get down there. Hold on. There’s a chance we can get one of the station ships. Try not to move.”
Not moving. That meant something. Gail rolled her head to one side, wincing as her skull wanted to come loose from her spine, and found herself staring at a maze of brown stems covered in oil. She sneezed at the musty smell. The grass? She’d been in this suit for over a day now. Must be her.
Gail laughed again, quite impressed by her reasoning ability. Musty Gail. That’s what happened in universities when your career was going nowhere. You went musty after a few years—like Manuel. Musty Manuel. They were a team.
“Gail,” the voice was growing rather distraught. Not very professional, Gail thought scornfully. There were standards to uphold. “Dr. Lynn wants me to tell you ...” a pause, as though the voice consulted a list, “. . . your vitals indicate a conscious state, but you’re in shock. Blood pressure’s too low. Your pulse is thready. . . . Are you sure I should ...” This in a different tone, as if the voice spoke to someone else.
The someone else spoke next, to her, a lilting, lovely voice, like raindrops collecting on lilacs. Raindrops. She could use a bath. “Gail. I want you to follow the seam down your right side until you feel the waist seam cross it. Do that for me, please.”
Why not? Gail walked her fingers around and down, stopping at the raised area where the two seams overlapped.
“When you find the junction, Gail, press it as firmly as you can. Press it now, Gail. Now!”
Why not? Gail pressed, only to flinch as something stabbed her in the side. She must have made a sound of protest, for the voice said soothingly: “It’s okay, Gail. It’s a boost shot. It should get your metabolism closer to normal. Just relax. You gave us a scare, but you’re going to be fine.”
What about the ships. Ships? More bad words, hiding from her mouth. “Ships?” came out suddenly, surprising her. Ships. Ships. Musty ships.
The first voice came back: “Holding, Gail. You stopped them from trying to land. Let’s hope long enough.”
It made no sense, but every sense. Gail watched the oil near her face shimmer and move, then closed her eyes, disinterested.
And so tired.
Chapter 89
“I’M just saying it would have been more convincing if she’d died.” Malley wasn’t in the habit of soft-pedaling the truth.
“You saw the monitors, Malley,” Aisha protested. “She came close enough. I don’t know what kept her alive, but it wasn’t anything I’d trust my life to—would you?”
“As if I’d go down there.” The stationer’s neck muscles tightened in a defensive reflex. “Lucky for me, you don’t have a suit big enough,” he reminded the scientist, smugly pushing away any further thought of stepping on that ball of dirt—even if they had practiced it all week.
“And we don’t have a ship to use—yet,” reminded Grant, who settled his long body into the corner seat as though someone had melted his spine. He rubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes. “I’m not getting any cooperation from our new arrivals. No surprise.”
Malley studied the Earther, then made a sound of disgust. “I thought Gail was the only one on boost,” he accused. “You’re not going to be good for much in a while.”
Grant blinked bleary, red-rimmed eyes, but chuckled. “Your concern is noted, Stationer, but believe me—military issue is considerably more effective and reliable—”
“Not to mention costs your body more,” Aisha said clinically, but not with disapproval. She showed no signs of fatigue, despite being up for over a day as well. When Malley had commented, she’d smiled at him and told him it was clean living. But she had to be wearing thin—they all were. Even the stationer could feel the acid building up in his muscles and aching through his bones.
What kept him from sleep was the sure knowledge that Gail and Aaron were going through worse.
Grant must have thought along the same lines, saying: “Anyway, I’m functional—let’s hope the same for Dr. Smith.”
They watched—it was all anyone could do for the pair on the planet until the arrival of the Payette or the patrol ships. None of Thromberg’s adventurers had agreed to dock with the Seeker and offload passengers, so Grant could commandeer their ship. To say the stationers viewed
the mere suggestion as a trick was to put it mildly. Like Grant, Malley hadn’t been surprised.
What had been a surprise, and an unpleasant one, was how many he knew on those ships. They’d stripped Thromberg Station of anything remotely spaceworthy, crewed them with sympathetic stationers and ’siders—despite Rosalind’s assertion, there’d been more than enough—and loaded up with first rounders and their families. Malley had forgotten the designation until hearing it again: First Round, the most cherished distinction among the stranded immies, those selected and trained to prepare their new home for the rest. Tough, smart, survival-oriented folks—few had died in the Ration Riots; rumor said they’d started the first, most deadly one. Time had been their true enemy, the oldest among them now so frail they had a special corner table at Sammie’s, where they waited, gnarled hands curled around mugs, pale sunken eyes still challenging the future.
Amy Denery’s father was a first rounder, so Syd and Amy could be out there. Of course they were, Malley thought despairingly. Amy’d never given up her dreams of a home, her hopes for a family. He tried not to think of other names, fearing the darkness now held pretty well everyone he knew or cared about—ready to snuff out their lives.
He tried not to think of his best friend, wrapped in Quill, or the small woman lying crumpled in the grass, helpless and totally alone.
“We do have some good news,” Grant offered, as if his thoughts had been heavy as well. “The remaining expeditions succeeded in obtaining Quill fragments—no loss of life, no problems.”
“Did they see statues, too?”
The commander slid down until his head rested on the back of the seat, eyes slitted as though he didn’t dare close them completely or he might pass out—or miss something. “One each, just like here and just like the Payette. Strangest thing ...” Before Malley could ask, Grant continued “. . . in every case, the Quill statue was a duplicate of the individual used to make the suit.”
“Or a statue of the terraformer who brought the first Quill,” Malley thought out loud. “More than recognition . . . worship of a founder or creator?”
Grant sighed. “The brains on the Payette and back on Earth can muddle through that knot. I’d rather not leap to any conclusions. We don’t even know if the Quill think—yet. There’s still the possibility all we’ve seen is an alien life-form’s reaction to the information on the suits themselves. A reflex. Maybe if we used a suit with another genome—”
“Empty, I hope,” Aisha said quickly. “What Gail went through—that’s enough.”
Enough? Malley repeated, but to himself. Everyone watching had realized what the Earther was doing the horrifying instant she’d removed her headgear: sacrificing herself to demonstrate the Quill Effect. She’d hoped her death live and on screen would turn back those from the station.
Gail Smith might be difficult, opinionated, self-centered, and several other things Malley didn’t like—but he finally understood what Aaron had seen in her. That didn’t mean he was going to apologize, Malley vowed to himself, hoping he’d get the chance to make that clear.
His mind replayed what Grant had just said, turned it over, examined it from another direction. “That experiment’s done, Aisha,” Malley concluded, feeling the snick of at least one piece of the puzzle. “If it was a reflex, we should have seen the Quill weaving statues of Aaron—or Gail, once her genome was revealed. But the Quill on this world keeps making Susan Witts. It’s as though that identity matters to this Quill—why is another issue—” he said when Grant’s eyes opened and the man prepared to argue.
“Let me talk it through,” Malley urged, sensing he was on the track of something important. “What if the Quill on this world and the others somehow incorporated a human—template.”
“What kind of template?” Aisha asked. “Physical appearance?”
“No, no. Not only appearance—what if the Quill intelligence has a human pattern to it—provided by the person who wore the fragment before it escaped and multiplied.”
“So you’re saying the Quill on this world thinks it’s Susan Witts, the terraformer.” Grant’s lips twisted. “And you complained Dr. Smith’s mind leaps around.”
Malley refused to be distracted. “No. I’m saying we have a species which has never shown intelligence before—but now it does. How? Why? It didn’t evolve that trait overnight. Maybe Gail’s idea of a critical biomass or number of fragments is involved, but that doesn’t take us from nonthinking to comprehensible, purposeful thought.
“We know they are biochemical mimics. What if they copy more? What if each Quill somehow copied a template for intelligence from the person who wore it? Then, regardless what on these worlds let them multiply, the result was an immense number of fragments that also incorporated that template.” Malley found himself on his feet and sat down somewhat sheepishly. Aaron was always after him for getting physical about his ideas. “First contact, Commander Grant? What if it’s multiple first contacts—a unique Quill entity on each of over a hundred worlds? They’d have thought processes as different from one another’s as any two humans could be—while being as different from human as anyone could imagine.”
“If that’s true, if the Quill are becoming intelligent based on individual human models. . . . Oh, my God. Not McNab ...” Aisha stopped, her voice shaking. Her dark eyes were wide, as if she’d seen a ghost.
Malley felt suddenly cold, all the fire of his ideas quenched. “One of the terraformers. What about him?”
“If McNab was the pattern for the intelligence of that Quill, what might we be dealing with?” Aisha said slowly. “Gail’s research on McNab’s descendants turned up an inheritable mental disorder. He didn’t show symptoms, or he wouldn’t have been put in charge of such a project, but three of his four sons required treatment for dementia—one found not guilty of the murder of his own children by virtue of insanity.”
“Monsters in our own image? It wasn’t bad enough for you that the Quill were deadly simply by existing? Listen, you two. All I wanted,” Grant claimed, heels of his hands pressing into his eyes again, and sounding completely frustrated, “all I ever wanted, was to someday find another civilization—a civilization with people in it I could recognize, talk to—”
“Take out for a beer?” Malley suggested.
“Take out for a beer,” Grant agreed, then smiled wistfully. “Sounds like a dream, doesn’t it?”
Aisha covered Grant’s hand with hers. “You aren’t the only dreamer, Commander.”
“In the meantime,” Malley said, “look on the bright side—if I’m right, it could mean the Quill think like we do. That’s the first step in being able to communicate with one another, right? And they don’t drink, which saves you money.”
Grant’s appreciative chuckle died as one of his FDs came running up to their corner. “Commander,” the woman said urgently. “Something’s happening on the planet.”
Chapter 90
“GAIL ... Gail.”
At the rate her name was being abused, Gail grumbled to herself, she should have it changed. This couldn’t be morning. She’d barely fallen asleep. The nagging someone could just go away. There were more than ten in the science sphere alone who could handle any minor emergencies, and likely major ones. Wake them up.
Start with Sazaad.
“Gail! Something’s happening to Pardell.”
Aaron?
Gail wasn’t sure which came first: the flood of memory—she’d almost died—or the burst of energy driving her to her knees and then to a shaky stand.
Aaron! He was as she’d last seen him—or couldn’t see him. A man-shaped statue of Quill and grass, gripped by another, facing the distant mountains.
No . . . wait. Nearly imperceptibly at first, then more quickly, Quill fragments were slipping from his head, neck, and shoulders, exposing the black of his hair, the faded, almost-gray of his stationer tunic. As they left, they dislodged others below, until the whole mass appeared to flow down his body.
“We can see his face, Gail,” this in Tobo’s excited voice. “His eyes are—closed. No. They’re open. Looks like he’s unconscious, but breathing. Do you hear me? He’s alive!”
Of course he was alive, Gail thought, knowing she hadn’t dared doubt it.
In the blink of an eye, the shimmer of movement was over. Aaron’s head and shoulders had been freed, nothing more.
Why?
Once she was convinced the Quill had finished whatever they—or it—was doing, Gail took a cautious step forward, then waited for the wall to rebuild to block her way.
The grass stayed quiescent.
She took another step, feeling exposed without her headgear and fragile without the full protection of the suit. Survived thus far, she reminded herself.
No reaction. She lifted her left foot to avoid stepping directly on the mound of Quill-coated grass marking where the wall had been. Her heart began pounding—her next step had to be on Quill, unless they conveniently moved out of her way.
They didn’t. She gingerly put down her foot, and a fragment climbed her leg.
“Gail—are you all right? Should you be moving?”
“Hello, Commander,” she said, more or less normally. “As you can see, we’re making some progress.” Another step, another Quill hitchhiker. She continued, walking slowly and more-or-less steadily toward Aaron, carrying her pair of Quill with her. There wasn’t any detectable sensation to having them on her legs, just as Dafoe and Aaron had reported. But her heart wouldn’t settle down. She knew what to expect now. The Quill Effect.
Who’d ever sung that love could kill—they’d been right.
So why wasn’t she dead?
She kept moving until she was directly behind the Quill’s original statue, finding the head low enough that she could see over it to Aaron’s face. Gail sagged with relief. He wasn’t dead.
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