“Good thing I have friends in powerful places with lots of spaceships and fancy guns.”
“We’ll see about that.”
Then we pause, and the moment becomes thick between us. I breathe deep, the asteroid breathes with me, and I let the moment slide away, because there will be another, better one in the not too distant future. Right now, though, right now the galaxy around us has just let out an enormous cheer all at the same time, like a breath released in perfect synchronicity, as one.
The Death of Pax
Santiago Belluco
I leave the planet in a ship sculpted out of my dead friend’s bones and stitched with his elastic skin. The ship is but a token of Gendo technology, an improvisation built with cast-off parts and borrowed labor. Still it’s greater than anything I will find back on Earth. The outlines of Pax’s corpse are clear below as I ascend: his fifty-kilometer long shell eerily still, the familiar plains and crags of his back refusing to blend into the surrounding geography. Even from low orbit I see the telltale signs of design in his form, the combined effort of the myriad symbionts on his shell and flesh, a culmination of thousands of years of meticulous work and study. Maybe Alina is down there, looking for me again, and in many ways I will miss her.
I can see the other eleven Gendoji on Naginata’s surface crawling towards Pax to show their final respects, the world redrawn in their wake. Soon even the single Gendoji living in orbit will join the others by gently reentering the atmosphere, an expenditure of energy dwarfing the combined power output of all human history several times over. Not for the first time I regret having to leave the sprawling depth of the Gendo civilization for our feeble struggles in the Sol system. Our struggles, not theirs. I need to get used to belonging to humanity again. As if to punctuate my expulsion, my ship passes the small orbital research station I used to call home. It looks so frail and insignificant compared to the Gendoji below, a little tin can rusting away in space.
§
My last day with Pax was inefficient, but all I had left was my chosen duty. I grabbed each of the many shoulder-high hairs jutting out of the ground and gently pulled up with both my hands, the thick, silky bundle brushing against my legs, chest, and face. The mites lodged onto the hair’s cuticle clawed out at the disturbance and spread across the field to help clear off the slowly accumulating dust. Pax was beyond such preening, which is probably why the mites needed rousing in the first place, but I continued the minor task nonetheless. It felt like the proper thing to do.
The ground shifted as Pax groaned, the cracks in his claws exhaling steam in the distance. Claws that once broke open mountains and slashed the sky to drink clouds now swayed in agony and smelled of spreading rot. I was reminded of my mother surrounded by the pale cloth of a hospital gown, her dark skin dulled, as if the prim Japanese nurses packed away the offending color together with her clothes, just to get it out of the way.
I straightened up so I could be seen over the swaying hairs and waved at Alina. She was too loud in her environmental suit, its tubes and rough edges improperly crashing through the red brush.
“How are you feeling, Sanjit?” she asked, her voice warped by ill-tuned speakers.
The suit broke my ability to feel her in the way that I felt the mites sulking at the hair and the claw-sharpening birds flying above, occasionally even some of Pax himself. She was an absence, a tear at something meant to be whole.
That was the Handy Worm speaking, of course, so I asked the small symbiont nestled inside my chest to be quiet for a while. It took the Worm a moment, but she eventually drifted into a restful lull. My Worm-sense dulled as Handy Worm restricted herself to the core functions that kept me alive in Naginata’s atmosphere.
I looked up at Alina again. I couldn’t feel the air currents warping along the sky or the depths of biological complexity unfurling beneath my feet. Left behind were my shallow human senses, and the first thing they saw were Alina’s sharp green eyes, bright even behind her visor.
To be the first human to engage in symbiotic contract with a Gendoji was a great source of pride to me during my early days on Pax, a desperate grasp for meaning after I was expelled from the station and cut off from the scientific community, left adrift from any chance of scientific immortality. Much of that ambition fell away in my time with the Gendo, all except for my need to impress Alina. The life we once shared still pulled at me, even after so much had changed.
“I’m well enough,” I replied, “given the circumstances.”
She waited, expecting more, whether out of genuine worry or professional concern, I couldn’t tell. I thought back to her sitting on my room’s tatami at the station, perfect posture and a lithe beauty I couldn’t bear to look away from. Some of it was her own charm, I’m sure, but in retrospect, much of the appeal was probably due to the aesthetic modifications. Not her fault, of course, just an inheritance passed down in her genetic code, a minor genetic alteration her Martian great-grandparents bought before even such trifling modifications were made illegal.
“Your Worm-pulse is getting erratic,” she said.
“I know.”
“You might not survive when Handy Worm fails.” She must have been serious, she hated using the nickname I idly gave my Worm when I first took her on, unaware of what having a symbiont really meant and trying to mask my ignorance with humor.
“I know.”
“We’re worried about you.”
We. The orbital station monitoring staff, the field of Gendo-system research, the suit. Not Alina, not really. I wished she would not come during the day, when the mucosal membrane clinging to my naked body was so thick and bright.
“Is this why you came down again? These daily visits are probably getting expensive.”
Alina paused and straightened up, turned on the mic, then off, then on again, eyes looking away.
“No, it’s not. Did you get the chance to ask Pax for a sample?”
I suspected this was why she kept coming, but I was still disappointed. Even after all these years off-station and after all I became under Pax, she still had this much sway over me. Such a feeble dependence, a weakness even more pathetic than losing my career in the vain attempt to get her back. Around her I wasn’t a scientist, a man, or even a Pax symbiont, I was refuse cast aside. I swore never to be so stupid during the countless nights my mother stayed up weeping for the man who left us for the nostalgia of India and a new wife. Another promise broken to the lonely child growing up in one of the many gaijin run-ups packing the outskirts of Osaka.
“Pax hasn’t spoken to me since he fell,” I confessed, with more shame than I cared to admit. “He has billions of symbionts to directly care for. Trillions, maybe. A third-panther of my level barely hears directly from him once a week, even at a feeding lull.”
“You’re not a third-panther.” Alina couldn’t know how much the rank meant to me, how hard I struggled to earn the position within Pax’s ecosystem. And she clearly didn’t care how much her glib dismissal stung.
Gendo symbionts are crafted well before conception, but each symbiont must develop the skill to modify themselves beyond their original designs to earn a rank worthy of the higher needs of a Gendoji. That a human could work as a sensorial panther at all was damn near impossible. My rising as high as a third felt better than any of the academic trivialities that consumed me before I joined Pax. Alina never fully understood that, never saw past the mucus and the Worm in my chest.
“I may not be a proper panther, but I’m also not quite human anymore either. And Pax is dying.”
Alina’s brow furrowed, and she looked at me, past me. I knew this look. She was steeling herself to do what needed to be done, itching for a hint that would lead to the replication of Gendo bio-fusion, the most tempting technology available to the Gendoji. I still don’t know what it is, what morsel of Pax provided the seemingly limitless energy that can fuel something as massive as a Gendoji. The promise of such a power source is the only reason the orbital stati
on gets any funding these days.
“I know you’ve gotten close to Pax over the years, but you need to step up. Too much is at stake, and you are the only one who took to its parasite. Stop sulking, go up to the damn thing, and do your fucking job.”
“Stop it.” I can see now what she was doing, but at the time I just got angry and walked up to her, refusing to feel small even as she towered over me. “You do not get to talk about him like this, not here!”
My chest was shaking with anger, Handy Worm shivering, warping my sight with leaking Worm-sense. Alina looked down at me, eyes soft with pity. I tried to push her away, but the suit was too solid, and I only managed to throw myself back, tripping over a cuticle’s ridge and stumbling across Pax’s outer skin. As I collapsed in an awkward tangle of long-hair and disturbed mites, I realized it wasn’t pity that I saw in her eyes. It was disgust.
Handy Worm went tight, and my heart clenched. My vision blurred as my senses, human and Worm, melted together with a dull ache. Handy Worm curled up at a pocket between my heart and left lung, releasing her grip on my body cavity. I tried to calm her down, but she retreated even further, forgetting to purify the noxious air entering my lungs. The yellow serum she continually released from my skin to protect against the air turned sour and thin. My eyes burned as my tears became inadequately buffered. I vaguely remember crying out for my mother as I gasped for air. The pain quickly grew too intense, and I passed out.
I woke up to a haze of green sky streaked with too many pale orange clouds. I lifted my head and saw Alina a few meters away, kneeling on the ground between two fifth-raptors. Against the haze of confusion I remembered our argument, that Pax was no longer moving, that he was about to die. That I was about to die. Alina had a patch of my yellow ichor on her suit where I had tried to push her away, streaked and blurred by a failed attempt to wipe it off with the back of her gloves.
I struggled to get up but was pushed back down by a soft paw covered in golden fur. I looked to the side and saw a first-panther looking down at me, her sensory tendrils forming a thick aura around a vaguely equine face. Oquail, come to help again.
“Remain still a while longer, Sanjit,” the panther spoke, whispering through Handy Worm. “Your symbiont Worm is still recovering from the strain.”
I lifted a hand to rub an itch on my face, but it was covered by a sticky ooze connected to a small hole in the first-panther’s otherwise immaculate flank. I once saw a white tiger at the Uedo zoo and was struck by its quiet grace and implicit power. I felt that same awe every time I saw Oquail. “How long have I been out?”
Oquail took my hand in her paw and put it to the side, away from the mask keeping me alive. “Half a day. I’m glad I was within assist range, any further delay in treatment and you could have suffered real organ damage. Pax wants to see you now. I will bring you to him when you are stable.”
I noticed my pulse rise and Handy Worm stir at the chance to talk to Pax before he died. The thought hit me with equal parts dread and relief. The last time I felt this way, I was opening the sliding door to my dying mother’s room before heading off to the Gendoji system, still hoping that she would understand this priceless opportunity. But she just started sobbing at the idea of being left alone. I heard of her death as my flight was halfway to Naginata.
“Are you all right?” Alina asked as she started to get up, but a low growl from the raptors brought her back down.
“How dare you?” Oquail replied, a deep human voice rumbling from a raised paw. “Reckless human, you knew his symbiont was vulnerable, and you still taunted him in a foolish attempt to draw Pax’s attention. A childish, ill-conceived notion. You will be quiet or you will be forcefully removed from our presence.”
“Sanjit,” Oquail continued through Handy Worm, “should we send her back as punishment for her willful aggression?”
“No,” I muttered, “I’ll ask the raptors to keep her here, we might need to talk after I speak to Pax.”
“As is your right, fellow panther,” Oquail replied, then retracted her supporting limbs and facemask as I slowly got up.
Without a word, Oquail lowered her flank and let me climb on. It had been a long time since she needed to carry me, but I didn’t really mind meeting Pax this way. All symbionts were suffering with their Gendoji retracting, some differently than others, but we all suffered. In some small way I appreciated this. My weakness drew me closer to my fellow symbionts, bridging the impossible divide in our biology. Still, as I climbed onto Oquail I tried to hide my slow movement and hunched back from Alina.
Oquail, on the other hand, barely seemed affected by Pax’s retraction, her five large eyes still sharp and clear. It’s unlikely I will ever see her eyes again, and I now regret not accepting her offers to study them more often. Each of Oquail’s eyes has a triple-pupil that refracts light of different wavelengths far beyond the human visible light spectrum, each wavelength band channeled into unique foveal furrows. She can see to the very edge of the planet’s curvature, crisp to the resolution of a single photon. There seems to be nothing she cannot see. I can only imagine the extent to which she understands her own biology, the thought she must have put into designing such subtle detectors and robust neurocircuitry.
Maybe humanity could have been able to obtain such wonders if not for the genetic engineering bans implemented back in the Sol system. Sitting in a ship that hums with pliable sinew stronger than the densest carbon lattice and pulsing with blood richer than concentrated uranium makes such bans seem medieval and absurd. But these old fears routinely threaten the funding of the orbital monitoring station, the entire field of Gendo-systems research suffering from mistrust back on Earth and Mars. So many have been convinced that no good can come from studying creatures that so heavily modify themselves. Well, the Sol traditionalists will soon have much more to mistrust when a Gendo-designed ship lands on Earth and delivers Pax’s dying gift.
I assumed at the time that Oquail would choose another Gendoji once Pax died, dreading that she might be placed in a position unsuited to her talents or that she might even be torn apart for study. I had seen it happen with samples Pax got from other Gendoji, small animals that were dissected in sterile alcoves full of prodding first-raptors under the supervision of his cruelest silphid beetles. The thought of long silphid talons touching Oquail’s golden fur made Handy Worm shudder again.
“I am touched by your concern,” Oquail spoke to me, calming Handy Worm with skill I didn’t possess, “but I won’t contract to another. I will live out my life among Pax’s ruins, hunting prey for nourishment and perhaps even breeding a clutch of my own.”
I was embarrassed that she could so readily detect my thoughts. Even after all this time with Handy Worm, I was barely as competent in the field of symbiont manipulation as a third-panther mewling. Thankfully this is not an important skillset for a sensorial panther, since we detect the nuances of Gendoji environmental conditions and don’t really manage symbionts downstream in ranking. But to see Oquail be so competent at nearly everything was always impressive.
“You are also misinformed,” she continued, “only symbionts of lesser than sixth rank are studied as you witnessed. They have limited conscious thought and contain neural patterns that are mostly instinct and reflex. The Gendoji do not use such invasive methods on one of our complexity; we must be recruited under very specific and mutually agreed upon terms.”
“I apologize. I assumed when I should not have.” I was careful, knowing that I was nearing a topic I was not allowed to discuss.
“None is needed. Since you have not been permitted to inquire about other Gendoji, your ignorance is understandable. This might change now.”
“Really? Why?”
“It’s not my place to tell you, my friend.”
We arrived. I felt it as soon as we crested a steep slope. A central tower almost a hundred meters high rose up at the highest point of Pax’s gently arched back. It looked like a simple bony outgrowth, almost a claw, but gn
arled and twisted. Many of the higher-ranked symbionts idled about the tower’s base: panthers, raptors, pterosyls, and dozens of creatures I couldn’t identify. There was even a silphid, a much larger one than I saw at the dissections, all knobbed carapace and arachnid arms.
Oquail slowed down and brought me closer to a side of the tower that almost looked like it had a human face carved into it. But the pattern shifted like liquid mercury tinted with the color of bone.
“Sanjit.” Pax spoke, and Handy Worm was fully functional, letting me see not only the world around Pax’s body, but within my own form. The pulsing heart and firing nerves, cleansing stream of blood into liver into blood, the guttural peristalsis of the digestive system, the soft hum of shedding skin. Not much detail but a comforting totality to the mechanism of my humanity, a glimpse of the carefully constructed insight of the Gendoji and their higher symbionts. “You have taken to my Worm as well as any human could, but its design is incomplete and will not survive without my control.”
“Should I then go to another Gendoji?” I did not like the idea, but must admit I was a bit curious about life on a Gendoji other than Pax.
“None have accepted you, not the eleven remaining in this planet nor any in our other fifty-six colonies. I even asked the few who keep to various orbits and those in transit between systems. There is no place for you among us.”
“I see,” I said, assured of my death sentence. I saw myself covered by a thin gown in the station’s infirmary, my death as disjointed as my mother’s. A foreigner dying in a borrowed bed. I tried to keep the bitter thought from Pax, but couldn’t with Handy Worm so aroused.
“There is an alternative. A different role you may choose to take.”
“What is it?” I asked, a bit too quickly.
“I assume you have wondered why I have accepted a human onto myself while the rest of the Gendo refuse to interact with your species.”
Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation Page 8