“The thought hadn't even crossed my mind, Alex."
“Like hell it hadn't."
* * * *
By the sixty-fifth day, the sky's monotone of muted silver had given way to the steady invasion of cerulean during the main part of the day. The sea had brightened to fine jade color along the coast. The continental shelf had become a well-defined line, though directionally confused, beyond which the color of the sea changed to a deep aubergine purple. Mornings and evenings fell prey to dense fog when the winds were calm, the night sky giving only ephemeral images of the brighter stars and ghostly glimpses of the two moons.
The trees around Reese Station were clothing themselves in their early spring finery, while numerous plants that had lain hidden from all but the ship's botanists clawed their way into Gamma One's radiance. Then came the flowers. Everywhere the eye was besieged by colors of all hues and shades. There were tiny ground flowers, so small they had to band together to make their presence known, and there were giants. The most beautiful and mysterious of them all reached out with a single petal of poppy-red at its base and changed smoothly to crimson at its sharply pointed tip some ten centimeters away. The blossom looked like a carpet of fire that extended stiffly by virtue of its ‘veed’ shape over which an alabaster stamen of incredible complexity hovered, awaiting visitations from a strange, suddenly plentiful flying insect, the planet's version of Earth's apian. The bouquet that filled the air was nearly overpowering in its heady sweetness.
Pax and Lavan stood at the northern end of the rail, watching the evening haze rolling down the mountains toward the station. As the sky darkened, the mountains, still wearing their mantle of snow, glowed a dull coral in the remnant of light from Gamma One, and their lower slopes seemed like a vast black wall, separating them from a horizon Gamma One had not yet touched.
“Is it okay to say I wish I could see the sunset?"
“I don't see why not. It sounds a lot better than gammaset. That sounds more like a small, furry animal."
“Good. I wish I could see the sunset."
“We're expanding the search into the mountains next week. If you can spare the time you're welcome to join us for a few days. Would you like that?"
“Is a day twenty-four hours?"
“No. Actually it's—"
“Figure of speech, Alex. What about the colonists?"
“You're starting again."
“No, I'm continuing. What about them?"
“Not yet, Marta. Soon, though—soon."
“How soon?"
“Marta, please."
“Just give me a time. Any time. I'll accept it."
“All right. One hundred and twenty days. Then we'll attempt contact."
“A hundred and twenty ... I can't accept that."
“Marta, you said—"
“Something realistic, Alex."
“That's as realistic as I can—"
“Wait. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Did you see that?"
“See what?"
“A light. A light in the woods. Do we have anyone out?"
“No. Sundown curfew has been in effect since we got here. Are you sure you saw a light out there?"
“Absolutely."
“Rammix."
“Yes, Alex."
“Northern quadrant sensors at full sensitivity and report immediately."
“That was a creepy feeling."
“It set my nerves on edge—and I didn't see it. You're certain?"
“Damn it, Alex—yes."
“Two biological entities of substantial size moving northwest at fourteen point three meters per second. Bipedal. Body temperature approximately thirty-three degrees."
“Control, get a flyer ready. I'll be there in five,” Pax said into her com patch.
* * * *
Infrared picked them up when they sprinted out of the forest east of the station and ran the ten kilometers to the foot of the mountains where they disappeared.
“Caverns?"
“There's no other way they could vanish like that. Let's go back and see what we have."
Pax hovered in the area a few minutes longer to see if they would emerge from their hiding place, then returned to the station.
“Well, Marta? No human I know can move that fast, especially not in this gravity over such a long distance, but you're the doctor. From those pictures can you tell if they're human?"
“I ... I can't say with any certainty. I believe they are but—who are our resident anthropologists?"
“Ask Rammix."
“Rammix."
“Yes, Dr. Lavan."
“Who are our anthropologists?"
“Dr. Seymour and Dr. Wei."
“Summon them, please."
“They are in their dormant state."
“Wake them. Tell them it's important."
“Why anthropologists, Marta?” Pax asked.
“I'm not an expert, Alex, so I can't say for sure. I'd just be guessing."
“So, guess."
“Well-l-l, I think they're human all right, but not Homo Sapiens. But—just wild guessing now—if I'm right, we've just seen two Neanderthals in coveralls with backpacks and flashlights."
Dr. Wei was the first to arrive. He listened while Lavan explained what she'd seen in the pictures he had just watched and gave him her conclusion. He laughed, on the verge of hysteria. He threw his hands over his head and, on his way out, advised Lavan to stay with molecular biology and to keep a safe distance from the wine the techs were brewing in the labs.
Another hour passed before Seymour showed up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes and yawning mightily. Seymour's response to the pictures and Lavan's explanation was altogether different, and he insisted on seeing the pictures several more times. Then he interlaced his fingers, cracked his knuckles, and sat quietly with his face buried in his hands for several minutes before saying anything.
“Yes. Yes, Dr. Lavan, Lead Officer Pax, that's what we have all right. Oh, not as if that comes as any surprise to me. I half expected it. What we see in those pictures is Mr. Neanderthal—not in the flesh, of course, but a reasonable, sensible approximation of a primitive man. And I must say,” he went on with a satisfied smile, “a magnificent solution to their problem and intent. It shows that twenty-third century man was, in some ways, smarter than we gave him credit for."
“And what's that supposed to mean?” Pax demanded in an angry voice.
“You really should get your sensitivities in check, Pax,” Seymour said calmly.
“Never mind my sensitivities. What did you mean?"
“Dr. Lavan, you are a gene jockey, right?” he said, intentionally ignoring Pax, which infuriated her all the more.
“Uh, yes."
“Right. I'm going to ask you to think like one for a while. Can you do that and follow along without throwing fits?” he said, looking directly at Pax.
“What fits?” Pax retorted. “Do you understand who I am?” She was enraged with this pompous ass—or was it the realization that Seymour had some reason for being sarcastic?
“This is a small community, Pax, and we spent six miserable years in training together. I know who each and every one of us is and frankly, knowing who you are and what you do makes me cringe in light of the current circumstances."
“Please, both of you. Save it for later, huh? Get on with it, Dr. Seymour,” Lavan said, casting as stern a look as her babyish face would allow at Pax.
“Of course. Forgive me, Pax? Now, Dr. Lavan, you are living on twenty-third century Earth. You know enough of the history of your discipline to put yourself in that position?"
“Yes-s-s."
“Fine. Let us suppose you have been given the job of overseeing a project to save our species from the perceived coming solar annihilation of all life in the solar system. The project involves sending out seedlings to be planted in new ground, here and there around your astronomically immediate neighborhood. With me, so far?"
“So far."
“But
you don't know what the conditions of that new ground will be. You must assume your seedlings need to survive in circumstances that come close to being intolerable—maybe worse. Okay?"
“Mm-hmm."
“You are free to design your seedlings from the ground up, but there are several things running contrary to your project. First, the secrecy surrounding your work imposes limits that essentially tie your hands in many ways. Second, there are any number of groups with magnifying glasses, trying to see what the government is doing with this project. Yes?"
“All right."
“You are also limited in what you can do, because it is still old science we are talking about here, and you don't know how much time you have before it happens. You have mastered splicing, cloning, and some basic DNA recoding. That is to say, you can create almost anything, as long as the parts you need are available off the shelf. Now, knowing that, we can proceed, right?"
“Right."
“You want this future man of yours to be as strong and sturdy as he can be, yet you want him to be as intelligent as you—or more so. Lots of brains. Now, I ask you to consider this carefully. What would you do?"
Lavan thought for a few moments, then said, “I suppose I'd begin by looking for material from existing specimens naturally disposed to high bone mass and muscle to combine with other specimens of high intelligence, not that the two are necessarily mutually exclusive. After making the DNA match the plan, I would use it to clone as my modifier gene."
“Ah, you are following, but you are also forgetting you don't have the time to chase up blind alleys by screening the family history as far back as would be necessary to ensure you don't have a dud. Furthermore, there are adversaries watching intently, like the Rifkin Society and certain fanatic religious groups, to make damned sure the people we send out are people and not engineered freaks. You can't afford to be in the public eye, and such searches have a way of becoming public knowledge very quickly."
“That's true."
“Now, do you remember anything about the find of twenty-one seventeen?"
“Vaguely. Something about Neanderthals being found in a glacier in what was known as, um, the United States."
“Unfair question, really. That is something I should not expect anyone outside my field and some paleontologists to know much about. Even though the geneticists of the time were extremely interested in the find, the information they uncovered did not make it into the journals for a myriad reasons—mainly social. Twenty-four near perfectly preserved cadavers were discovered in an ice bed near the Juneau Complex. It was assumed they had crossed over from Siberia looking for new ground. This was unique because we had never before found that species outside the Middle East and a couple of minor finds in Asia. They were also special because they were carrying modern tools and weapons that bore the mark of their own making, so they were not stolen from modern man, Homo Sapiens—perhaps modeled after, but not stolen. The specimens were named for the letters of the Greek alphabet—Alpha through Omega."
“Dear God,” Pax said half to herself.
“Ah, the LO's been keeping pace, too."
“Please,” Lavan said. “Go on. This is fascinating."
“Yes. As you say, fascinating. You now have a perfectly good prototype to use without going into the public sector. Something you can more easily keep secret. To your surprise, you find that most of the DNA is not too badly fractured, at least not to the point that it can't be rebuilt. So, what we have here is right in keeping with the purpose. Plenty of bone mass and the muscle to throw it around with authority, even in this gravity, and adequate native intelligence—lots of gray matter. We have a hybrid assembled from parts in the stock room—let's call him—or her, if you want—Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis—whose native intelligence is possibly greater than our own."
“Smart monkeys,” Pax said sarcastically.
“Alex."
“Come on, Marta, all this is—"
“It's all right, Dr. Lavan. Many teachers, even during our enlightened age, perpetuated that notion because that had been the prevailing idea for centuries, and it is why it exists—even to this day. Pax, Mr. and Mrs. Neander had a cranial capacity equal to or exceeding Cro-Magnon, our immediate ancestor, and we know from the data those cadavers provided us that their extinction was probably not a result of stupidity or lack of language."
“What's the significance?"
“The prefrontal cortex of these people—"
“People?"
“Yes, Pax, people. The prefrontal cortex was more convoluted in Neanderthal than in us, making it very possible that they were, in many ways, more human on an intellectual level than our direct ancestor. It has been my belief for many years that they died off because they weren't capable of the same level of viciousness as we are, and they were not able to interbreed and merely meld away, hence their extinction."
“Your peaceful Neanderthals fired on us."
“Indeed they did, but, if you recall, I said these are hybrid specimens who have been subjected to an unknown amount of engineering as well. In their original form they were a different species, but these people are as human as we are—capable of interbreeding and all that. Something that was probably quite important to the Prep Teams. Their stature, if these two in the pictures are representative of the whole, is a little too short for Neanderthal—they, the original Neanderthals, were pretty big, even by today's standards."
“And the upshot?"
“The what? Oh, yes, archaic language—the upshot. I had suspected this, but our information was too lacking to form any conclusions. Now ... now we know. What they did back then was take a forty thousand year step backwards to plant our feet—forgive the pun—firmly in the future. These people are strong, rugged, possibly more intelligent than we, have a well-developed sense of self, and undoubtedly have been given a liberal dose of our capacity to do violence. Perhaps more than we can handle if we should provoke them in any way. We may be their relatives, but we know from history that relatives quite frequently engage in the bloodiest battles over the most trivial of supposed reasons."
“My God,” Pax said, combing trembling fingers through her hair and alternately crossing left leg over right, right over left—a nervous habit from her childhood.
“Well, we're not going to go anywhere in the immediate future,” Lavan said. “How would you handle this, Dr. Seymour?"
“Good question. Our landing may have been seen by them as an offensive move. I would say that, until we establish peaceful contact, we will be competing for every square centimeter we occupy, and the more we have to compete, the less likely our chances for establishing that dialogue will be. I also suggest that you get your best Contact Specialists to work on that communication as soon as possible, Pax. Time is ... against us."
“Damned if we do, damned if we don't,” Pax sighed."
“Could be, Pax, though I'm not that pessimistic. Now, if you will excuse me, I have a particularly lurid dream I'd like to get back to—if I can manage to sleep after this. Honestly, I shall probably not sleep for a few days."
Seymour pushed his chair back from the table, performed his knuckle cracking exercise again and left the room, slowly shaking his head. He was wringing his hands nervously and his expression was as serious as sudden death.
“My God,” Pax said, staring at the ceiling. She was having difficulty accepting the idea that real humans had been replaced by what she thought of as brutes from another time. On the surface of her mind she realized that Seymour was very likely correct on all counts and that she would have to find a way to forgive her teachers. It was they who had given her the idea that the Neanderthal was nothing more than an intelligent ape—something she knew, on an intellectual level, was not the case, but emotionally—"
“Where do you suppose the others went?"
“What others? Oh, you mean in the ISCU?"
“Uh-huh."
“I have no idea, Marta."
“Rammix."
“Yes, Dr. Lavan."
“Have you established the destination of ISCU-9?"
“The destination is unknown at this time. Current track and acceleration indicate it is preparing to leave this planetary system."
“Leave this system? Where do you suppose they're going, Alex?"
“I don't know, Marta. All I can say right now is, I'm dead tired."
Pax said good night to Lavan, and retired to her quarters. She had much to think about, and she was exceptionally tired—leaden would be a better word to describe how she felt. In spite of her aversion to drugs of any kind, she took a couple of Lavan's specials to help her get to sleep. She drew back the covers of her bed. It looked more than inviting. Pax laid out her clothes and arranged things so she could get an early start in the morning. She stripped and set the shower to a high temperature as further inducement to a good night's sleep.
“Alex."
She couldn't think of any reason for it, outside of the fact that she now ascribed a personality to the Rammix, but she felt naked—exposed, when the Rammix spoke.
“Yes, Rammix, what is it?"
“There is a message for you on Finder two-one."
“What? That's impossible,” she said in a fading voice. “Go ahead and run it, Rammix."
The screen came to life, and there appeared a familiar, rugged face wearing a huge smile.
“Hello, Pax."
Dean—Dean ... Whitaker?
“For reasons I will explain later, several of us had to leave our system. We ... commandeered one of the fastest ships in existence, retrofitted it with cryo-pods, and, according to the onboard AI, we should be entering the system where you are no more than a year behind you.
“This message will repeat several times so I can be sure you received it. Our AI has been instructed to set up a dialogue with your Rammix and to instruct it to begin transmitting a locator beacon for us to home on once we enter your neighborhood. In the meantime, here's something for you to think about. I hope it doesn't upset you too much. I have been, and still am very much in love with you, Alexandra Guzman-Pax. As much as I wanted you to go ... I ... I didn't want to see you leave. I'll be seeing you soon."
END
Seeds of Memory Page 42