In the Company of Others

by Julie E. Czerneda

  It wasn’t instinct. The Quill riding her legs had dropped off before she’d set foot on the ramp. The one on her wrist had showed no sign of wanting to burrow under her skin. She’d experimented: she could unwrap and hold it. The fragment simply rewound itself over her arm the moment she released it. Despite feeling a new reluctance to give up its comfort, Gail had no difficulty coaxing it to leave her for the grass.

  What was different about Aaron?

  She was missing something—something fundamental about the Quill and its environment. The Quill was alien here, yet it must be reacting to them and to this world as it would to its home. The clues were here.

  After the briefest—and utterly blissful—effort to clean herself, Gail pulled on a plain pair of coveralls and stuffed the pockets with ration tubes and water containers. She yanked out the sled and dumped the monitoring equipment from it without apology to anyone spying. It was the work of a few minutes to load it with all the blankets and protective gear she could find. It might be early summer, but at this altitude and with no shelter from the wind, it could be a cold night.

  And a dark one. On that thought, Gail went back and found as many portable light sources as she could, adding them to her pile.

  When Gail was satisfied she’d scoured everything useful, she dropped into the pilot’s chair and reactivated the remote control system. The Athena could now be operated from the Seeker—allowing its eventual retrieval, if no one was left to fly it.

  Or a very quick retrieval, if she was dragging Aaron inside on the sled.

  She was about to leave, when a small flashing light on the comm board caught her attention.

  Message waiting . . .

  “Another drink?”

  “Maybe in a while, thanks,” Aaron responded. The hat—technically a piece of blanket material Gail had cut into a triangle—drooped on either side of his head as he spoke. He’d appreciated it—especially as the sun dropped low on the horizon and the air immediately took a chill. They were both used to a more regulated climate.

  Gail wished he could turn around and see his first sunset. The last rays were torching the river below the hills and igniting the clouds spired to the south. The lighting had also turned the grass pink, rather than green/brown. A temporary change, as the dimming encouraged the Quill to slip farther up each stalk, adding their purples, reds, and golds to the landscape.

  The hat, and drinks she suspected Aaron accepted more to make her feel better than because he needed them, were the only comforts she’d been able to offer. He claimed to be warm enough. The woven grass would be insulating, although Gail had concerns about his circulation.

  “You sure you want to sleep there?”

  Gail chuckled, busy creating a layer of blankets for herself “Did I ever tell you I used to camp every summer as a kid? This is great. A little hard,” she thumped the dried soil beneath her with one foot, “but that’s good for the back.”

  A whirlwind of activity began a few meters away. Gail stared as grass bent and broke, then seemed to drag itself like a beast of straw toward her. Before she could do more than say, “Oh ...” the mass settled into a pile beside her blankets. The Quill in the mass slithered into the soil and away. “Thank you,” Gail said as calmly as possible.

  The Susan-Quill, as Aaron referred to it/her, was becoming capable of acting appropriately—even generously—on some understandings. Frustratingly, these usually involved needs or wants—as if its intelligence favored those ideas over others. Aaron assumed this was due to the template of Susan Witts, his great-grandmother.

  Gail wasn’t so sure. She was beginning to grasp when they were up against something more alien. To her, this was one of those somethings. She accepted the gift of the bedding material, but she reserved judgment on the reason.

  She curled up inside the blankets, not needing to feign exhaustion—the boost shot was taking its toll as well as all else. “I’ll be here, Aaron,” she promised, finding the comfort of lying down almost painful. “Call if you need me, or if anything changes. Grant will have people monitoring us through ‘Bob,’ there.” Gail had nicknamed the ’bot; only fitting—it represented a visitor, in a sense. Aaron hadn’t questioned her choice of “Bob” beyond a raised brow. She hadn’t bothered to explain, but it made the exposed hillside seem friendlier, less alien-infested, to name the sophisticated machine after the smelly, grouchy old uncle whose stories had kept her entertained so long ago.

  “Good night, wife,” Aaron said softly. She felt tears come to her eyes and didn’t let him see—just blew a theatrical kiss toward his silhouette before tucking herself under the top blanket.

  Once there, she didn’t waste any time bringing out the disk containing whatever message had waited for her inside the Athena, slipping it into a small reader whose light Gail hoped wouldn’t show beyond the blanket. It wasn’t Aaron’s attention she avoided, but the unknown watchers represented by “Bob.”

  She read quickly. Then again, more slowly.

  It was from Aisha. Temujin had performed his customary sleight-of-hand to get it to her without going through the FDs. Her scientists might be trusting sorts, but recent events were doubtless making even them uneasy.

  Once the Quill fragment had been safely contained—by having Dafoe use the protective suit to simply walk into the lab and put their “guest” into another container, the teams had gone straight back to work. There was a lot to be said for the inertia of research, Gail told herself with a smile. Through everything else, they’d kept to their list of analyses and experiments.

  And results were already pouring in—

  First, and as predicted, biochemical analysis of the exterior of Quill produced results consistent with bluegrass, not only in its DNA, but other molecules as well. Ideal camouflage, if you were hiding from sensors—or something that searched by taste. The interior was alien enough to completely confound their machines.

  Sazaad’s report—typically self-congratulatory—was a little late to be useful. Thanks to Aaron, Gail had already confirmed her suspicions that the Quill interacted on a level which tapped into what humans experienced as emotion. She moved past his list of suggested commercial applications to the next report.

  Aisha’s. Opposite to Sazaad in approach and assumption, the biologist had included the raw data as well as her conclusions. Gail didn’t bother with the former, not when the latter made such sense to her. The missing something.

  The wind picked up, finding a tiny opening by her feet. Gail used her toes to fold over the blanket, less worried about the cold than a curious Quill fragment. Aaron had told her how the Susan-Quill wasn’t always aware of the impact of her intrusions.

  Curiosity. How much of that was the original Quill and how much the human?

  Among Aisha’s findings: the Quill lived on the grass because they had to—they were symbionts, taking a share of the abundant energy harvested from sunlight by the plant’s chloroplasts, in return—well, Aisha hadn’t been sure what benefit the grass experienced, but she felt there had to be one or more. Wherever the grass on Pardell’s World was exceptionally lush and healthy, it contained Quill. In Terran ecosystems, a symbiont might have antibacterial properties, perhaps grant protection from fungi. In the case of the Quill? Difficult to determine the partnership’s parameters, when one of the symbionts had evolved . . . elsewhere. For all they knew, on the Quill’s homeworld plants competed to attract Quill of their own. Gail examined the premise thoughtfully.

  More significantly, Aisha had had some growth models run by her team’s population dynamics expert. It looked as though the terraformers’ very choice of seed species had been their downfall.

  Gail closed her eyes and tried to imagine what it had been like—the rain of seeds from the shuttles landing on the vast, waiting expanse of prepared soil, bouncing, lodging in every crevice. The terraformer, perhaps almost forgetting the Quill on his or her wrist—beyond enjoying its soothing effect—walking out to inspect the first sprouts of green after the ob
edient rains.

  The Quill fragment, sensing the first appropriate partner since being taken from its homeworld, flows from wrist to soil before the human can stop it.

  Did the terraformer even hunt for it? Futile. And how many did as Susan Witts and simply discard their Quill, confident the organisms would die?

  Instead, how quickly did the fragment multiply and spread? The loss of all human life on the terraformed worlds had come before the grasses had set their first seeds. Aisha’s modeler had a chilling conclusion. The fragment was morphically uniform, simple at the macro level. It likely reproduced by multiple fission—its strength was in numbers, after all. Given an entire planet that was basically a monoculture of a suitable partner? The Quill had virtually exploded over their new homes. How many had been needed before the Quill Effect had been deadly? The calculation was there—less than she’d expected. It didn’t matter now.

  What had been created that day? Gail asked herself sleepily. Something unintended and of dreadful consequence—but was it evil? Something alien and new—but was it merely the stranger’s face before being introduced?

  She fell into dreams of coexistence that faded into nightmares of being imprisoned by stalks of dying grass.

  A whistle? Gail dug her way free of blankets and straw, not sure what she’d heard but recognizing a summons. “Aaron!” she called immediately.

  “You were snoring,” he said with reassuring levity. Gail climbed to her feet, pulling what she hoped were blades of grass and not Quill bits from her hair. “And I missed you. How many hours of sleep do you need? It’s almost dawn.”

  Almost being the word. She walked over to him, stretching as she went, peering at the glow behind the mountains—its light insufficient to reveal color, although one of the paired moons helped. “Implying you didn’t sleep at all,” she mock-scolded.

  “I don’t need much,” Aaron reminded her. His hat had fallen or been blown off. Gail went in search of it; the exposure to yesterday’s sun had already burned his nose and forehead. “Here,” she said, taking her time close to him, letting herself bask in the warmth of his smile.

  “I watched the stars. They jiggled.”

  “Twinkled,” Gail corrected.

  “Explaining much about a certain rhyme which always puzzled me,” the ’sider said with a laugh, then grew serious. “Susan and I had—well, I think it was a conversation. She’s quick to learn. Quicker than I am.”

  “What did you talk about?” Gail asked, waving cheerfully at Bob as she grabbed a ration tube out of the pack on the sled. Amazing what even a partial night of sleep—despite the dreams—could do. She patted the gear. It might be lonely on Pardell’s World, but camping out was easier without flies or mice.

  He accepted a squirt from the tube with a nod of thanks. The Quill might be sustaining him, but the idea wasn’t comforting either of them. “I was trying to convey how we—humans—are independent beings, but work together in a society. The concept of identity, of oneness.” He hesitated. “It seemed a place to start talking about living together. Coexisting.”

  Gail swallowed her own share thoughtfully. Coexisting? This from the ’sider who’d wanted the Quill eradicated from his people’s worlds—who was, at the very least, being forced into the role of diplomat by both sides. Perhaps, she thought, this was more ’sider philosophy: share and move on, survive together or not at all.

  “How frank can I be, Aaron?” she asked bluntly. “Will it hurt you if Susan objects to something I say?”

  “She’s become quite good at sparing me the worst of her reaction.” Calm words, but Aaron looked unhappy, as if he’d whistled her awake because he’d made some kind of wonderful discovery or pact—and now doubted she’d be pleased.

  Gail pretended she hadn’t noticed. “So, did Susan grasp this idea? It must have been difficult to express.”

  “I found it difficult—she didn’t. There’s a similar concept in her nature . . . an awareness of multiplicity. I couldn’t make sense of it until I began thinking of music.”

  “Music?” Gail glanced at the Quill now rising up the stalks on all sides. They must spend the hours of true darkness in the soil. “Does she hear?”

  “No. Her fragments sense vibrations and movement, but not sound as we do. But that’s not what I meant—her conceptualization reminded me of music. It contains an awareness that existence can consist of different parts in combination. Like the way a group of singers can sing different keys but together produce one unique note.”

  “Harmony.”

  “Or not. Right now, she feels great loneliness, as though she is only one, from one, like a single string being plucked over and over. There aren’t other ‘sounds’ in her consciousness. I think that’s why she felt such joy to learn I was something separate—but it hasn’t worked, Gail. I’m not distinct enough to ‘sing’ with her, maybe because I’m—part of her.”

  “What about me?”

  “You aren’t Quill. She longs for—needs—more Quill, but somehow I don’t believe she means more of her own fragments. So I thought, maybe there’s more than one ‘sound’ of Quill—or more than one entity—on her homeworld.” Aaron nodded his head in enthusiasm. “It made it easier to help her understand there can be more than one intelligence in a place, and those intelligences can work to a common goal. A good start, don’t you think?”

  Gail stared into the distance, her gaze caught by a beam of sunlight as it broke over the mountains, streaking living green down the hillsides.

  “Gail?” Aaron sounded a little hurt, as though she should have responded to his accomplishment.

  He was right—but she held up her hand for patience; she dared not disturb the thought slipping into her mind like that beam of light.

  What was thought . . . how did it move through a mind, a consciousness? What made it possible for an organism like Susan-Quill to think, but not the grass? What if . . . Gail’s lips parted . . . what if different Quill fragments produced their defensive Effect at slightly different ‘frequencies?’ What if those frequencies normally interfered with one another, dampening the Effect, reducing it in strength and distance? It would be reasonable, possibly essential, in order for the different Quill to react to local situations. But then, the Quill Effect couldn’t be a carrier of thought—it would be like a jumble of white noise.

  She looked out at one Quill, all its parts operating at one unique frequency, all its parts able to produce the same Effect at the same time. Thought? Nothing would stop it traveling around the planet and back—nothing would interfere with it. Given a conceptual model, such as a human host—perhaps Quill intelligence had been—inevitable.

  As was something else, Gail realized with a shock. “Aaron, from what you’re saying . . . I believe Susan is able to think for the same reason her natural defense has turned deadly,” Gail whispered. “It’s being the only Quill of her type here. It’s not normal for her kind. On some level, she knows it.”

  “Gail, you’re frightening her.”

  She turned to look at Aaron. His face was troubled, flashing between fear and determination. Was she witnessing a conversation based in emotional parameters? “I’m sorry, Susan,” she said quietly. “I am, like Aaron, trying to understand you. Part of that understanding is how you came to be.”

  His face subsided into something more like melancholy. Gail decided it was probably a shared feeling. Could Aaron see the deeper possibilities in what she’d said? He’d confessed he wasn’t as good as Susan in keeping his reactions to himself

  Gail didn’t know if Aaron or Susan saw the full consequences. With Bob hovering nearby, she wasn’t about to ask. They were the only two humans on this planet, but had never been less alone. Hundreds, millions, could be listening to every word—possibly as far away as Sol System and Titan. For all she knew, they could be on the evening news.

  First contact? Who was she kidding? They’d be the only news.

  And of all of those listening—would any hesitate if they reache
d the same conclusion she had?

  Gail’s mind felt as though it was on fire. If there were other Quill here, different Quill, there would no longer be a single Quill entity—and no deadly Quill Effect.

  The flip side of the coin?

  There would no longer be a Quill entity capable of thought.

  The Susan-Quill would die.

  “What the hell is that?”

  Gail, shaken from her dark thoughts by that shout, looked at Aaron in time to see the alarmed expression on his face turn to dread. He swung his head as far around as he could to follow a blaze of light across the dawn sky. She watched with him, as the light turned in midair to become a focused cone directed downward.

  “Dr. Smith! Dr. Smith!” From the ’bot, Grant’s voice yelled, full volume and desperate. “We have an unauthorized landing. A station ship, the Mississauga, slipped past the patrol—they claim to be out of fuel. Can Aaron protect them from the Quill?”

  “I don’t know!” that worthy said before closing his eyes, his face screwing into a tight knot of concentration.

  Gail walked away, numb, knowing there wasn’t anything she could do but avoid being a distraction. She could see the Mississauga , already fin-down on the flat plain, midway between the base of this hill and the distant river. She couldn’t make out much detail from here, except that it had burned a landing pad for itself as well as starting a series of small grass fires in every direction.

  That wasn’t going to help.

  “Aaron’s doing his best,” she said to anyone listening, but mostly to Aaron himself, in case he could still hear. Gail hugged herself, trying to keep her emotions from adding to whatever milieu the Quill tapped into, trying to observe. It was hard to keep calm. On the thought, she bent over and offered her wrist to the Quill around her feet; it didn’t seem a good sign when they slithered deeper into the soil rather than approach.

  “We’re sending the ’bot over there, Gail,” Grant informed her. “Before I do, and we lose voice contact, I wanted you to know the Payette’s pod has docked with the Seeker. We’re going to load her up for a drop. Seeker out.”