Worlds Enough and Time w-3

by Joe Haldeman

  “Really.”

  “Worse than that. As I said… any one of them can kill every one of us with very little effort. You don’t have any choice.”

  “Ah, but I do. I do.” He looked around his office, with its sheet-metal walls, metal and plastic furniture, monitors instead of windows. The air was cooled and filtered and a ficus tree grew under an artificial light. It was a crude handmade caricature of his office in ’Home, and it spoke volumes. “I have three choices. Inaction comes to mind first. Second, hold off action until you have been properly examined.”

  He swiveled to stare at me, seated slightly below his level, how subtle. “Actually, there are two more choices, even if I take what you have said at face value. I could tell everybody to put away their weapons and start treating the brain-eaters as the sentient, omnipotent creatures they are. Or I could see that you’ve been through a terrible experience that resulted in completely convincing hallucinations—”

  “You can’t—”

  “—and suggest that you seek help from the specialists in ’Home. Strongly suggest it.”

  Dan spoke up from the corner where he was leaning, watching. “That’s ridiculous. She’s the sanest person in this room.”

  “You’re not the best judge of that,” Dennison said.

  I appealed to Bishop. “What do you think, Doctor? Can a person respond to physical trauma with a sequence of ‘completely convincing hallucinations’?”

  Bishop started to speak, but Dennison interrupted. “Maybe not a normal person, but Dr. O’Hara is not normal! Her alien torturer supposedly made a big deal of that!”

  “Alien torturer, come on—”

  “And one very significant way she is not normal is a half-century of dependence on virtual reality machines. A dream world is natural to her.”

  “That’s a stupid libel. I’m not dependent on VR or anything else.”

  He leaned back with a smug smile. “I have access to ’Home’s dream room logs. You essentially had your own private machine for most of the time you were Entertainment Director. No one alive has logged even half the VR time you have. Can you deny that?”

  “I have no reason to. Most of that use was job related. If I were addicted to the damned thing, why would I have worked so hard to be assigned down here, where there aren’t any of them? If I’m addicted, why haven’t I been bouncing off the walls for two years?”

  “You go back to ’Home all the time,” he said. “I assume that you—”

  “Assume away. Try to find one time I used the dream room in the past two years. You won’t.” I stood up and turned my back to him. “This isn’t productive. Dan, how long will it take to cook off the shuttle?”

  “Thirty-four minutes.” He checked his watch and pushed a button. “We can rendezvous with ’Home in seventy-two minutes.”

  “Let’s go.”

  “I can’t authorize that,” Dennison said.

  I turned around and planted both hands on his desk and leaned down. “Read the fine print, Raleigh. You’re temporarily in charge of this settlement, but you don’t outrank me. That shuttle belongs to ’Home, and on ’Home’s table of organization I’m a twelve, and you’re a ten. I’ll let you come along, if you want. You might want to talk to some people about a new job.”

  He leaned away, almost comically. “Hold on, now. Let’s not be hasty.”

  “We have eight hours to save the lives of everybody here and on Earth, and you don’t want to be hasty. We don’t have time for you.”

  “All right, all right!” He put on a headset and asked it for Channel 12. “This is Dennison, anybody there?” He pushed a button and we heard the response through a desk speaker.

  “Niels here. What’s up?”

  “There’s been a… well, quite a complication. I want you to bring all units back immediately. Stop killing the creatures.”

  “Easy enough. We haven’t even seen one since yesterday afternoon. I think they’re pretty smart.”

  “Yes. They probably are.”

  “We can be back before noon. Endit?”

  “Endit.” He took off the headset. “Will that satisfy you?”

  “For now, yes. Of course you’ll want to get the message to the other outposts, and put it on the day’s announcements here.”

  “Of course. If you want, you can go tell Red Heliven how you want it worded. He should be in his office by now.”

  “Okay.”

  “Look. I’m sorry I was so short with you. But you know I’m… close to Katy Paz, and one of your damned things almost killed her last night.”

  “The specimens she was guarding?”

  He nodded. “One of them got out and started to choke her. She blacked out and woke up inside the damned cage. It was hours before somebody came by and released her.”

  “How did she get in the cage? The thing didn’t carry her.”

  “She didn’t say. She’s under sedation. The other one was in the cage with her all that time.”

  “Did it try to attack her?”

  “No, it never moved. The recording shows that it stayed in the, what you call it, vegetative state.”

  “I hope nobody harmed it.”

  “It’s under guard, armed guard. They won’t shoot unless it tries something.”

  “I’ll talk to her when she wakes up. Maybe I could make her feel better about it. I don’t think it wanted to hurt anybody.”

  “It hurt her.” He suddenly flinched. “Jesus!”

  One of them had materialized behind me, floating at eye level. I wondered whether it was the one that had taken me to Earth. Or whether it made any difference which one it was. “Don’t do anything,” I said softly.

  It spoke. Actually, it made a sound that can’t be described politely, like a modulated belch or fart. “O’Hara. Thank you for this thing. Dennison. Thank you for this thing.” It was forcing air through a slit between two tentacles. It slowly descended as it spoke, losing helium. It spilled swamp water onto Dennison’s floor and rose again.

  “What do I do next?” I asked.

  “This way is not enough. Let me into your head.” A pink tendril uncoiled toward me.

  Daniel stepped forward. “Use me instead.” It didn’t surprise me that he would do that, but it made me proud. He would be a lot more afraid of it than I was.

  “No,” the thing buzzed. “It has to be her.”

  “It’s okay, Dan.” But it was worse when you could watch it happening. The wet thing felt its way through my hair, and there was a little pain as it removed the scab and a kind of pressure, like the onset of a sinus headache, as it slipped down into my brain. The room got blurry, but I realized it was just that I was looking through the creature’s skirt as it enveloped me. Tell them we are going somewhere and will be back soon. I did that and we fell through the floor, to the sloping metal ramp. Without being told, I walked forward until we passed through the resistance—

  And stepped into a hall of monsters. Bipedal lizards with huge tyrannosaur heads, barracuda snouts with needlesharp fangs, black globes for eyes; three meters tall and slab muscle under gray wrinkled skin. They wore elaborate vests of metal links, some short, some reaching the ground, rattling as they moved, and they moved constantly, tails flowing in counterpoise, almost human hands gesturing as they growled. The near ones also made a noise like leather folding, creaking, and they smelled good, sweet and fresh like a baby’s hair. There were about thirty of them, and they all turned to look at me. Feel like a snack, O’Hara? Oh yes.

  We were in a cave where dripping limestone had calcified into fantastic shapes, pink like melting flesh or the grayish white of exposed bone. Yellow flames flickered from a hundred oil lamps.

  This is a sort of tribunal. When a case is morally peculiar, they enlist our help to bring in foreign advisors, to give them a different perspective. What you decide will not be binding, but will add to the sum of their deliberations.

  I asked what the moral problem was.

  It has to do with
familial responsibility. The female lays eggs in clusters, typically fifty to sixty at once, in pools of warm water. They do this only three times in their life. A male of their choice sprays the eggs with milt and then guards them until they hatch.

  It takes about thirty days for them to hatch. The male never leaves, never sleeps. It is physically difficult for him, but an honor that happens only a few times in his life.

  He eats about half of the eggs in order to stay alive, one per day. It is his responsibility to study the egg cluster, and cull the least active ones, so as to increase the probability that the ones that hatch will be strong, and survive.

  Eating the eggs is physically and spiritually revolting. Sometimes the eggs die, though, and that is much easier.

  In this case the male could not bring himself to eat. He starved for eleven days, and then removed fifteen of the eggs from the water. When they dried out and died, he ate them all. He was seen doing this, and does not deny it. Many males do encourage the egg to die before they eat it, although this is considered a venial sin, because the male’s suffering supposedly invests the remaining eggs with strength. Most males and some females consider this to be a meaningless superstition.

  But to devour fifteen dead eggs at once is unheard of. The male claims that he was irrational from hunger and a virus that affected his central nervous system. A healer confirmed the presence of the virus, but pointed out that he would not have been infected if he had been properly eating the eggs. It is well known that there is a protein in the eggs that strengthens the immune system, and watcher males who don’t eat them fall ill.

  The problem is further complicated because this is the female’s last brood, the brood expected to provide physical support for a female in her declining years. But they are physically incompetent, slow and feeble, all but five of them carried away by predators in their first year.

  I said that an obvious approach would be to require that the male support the female, or in some way guarantee her support.

  This is not possible. The male agrees that he must die for his irresponsibility.

  I asked Why couldn’t he put off dying long enough to guarantee her support?

  He must die while the guilt is fresh.

  I asked if it could tell me something about the nature of this support. I said that in most human societies, it would be a form of money, which the female would use for food, shelter, and protection.

  This culture has evolved beyond the need for that particular abstraction. The support normally offered by the brood is physical: they take turns bringing her food and guarding her while she sleeps.

  I asked why the male should not be required to do this himself.

  The very sight of him infuriates the female. Only the solemnity of this time and place keeps her from taking his life now.

  I asked about his other offspring; whether they could divide among themselves the responsibility for the female’s care.

  That would be a possible solution if he had any. This is the first time a female has asked him to mate.

  I suggested a community solution, that one baby from each of the next fifteen or twenty broods be given to the female to raise as her own.

  They would not obey her. Parents communicate with their infants by smell and they would know she was not their mother.

  The tribunal thanks you for your contribution. They have decided. One saurian came up behind another and, in a quick smooth motion, pulled the back of its vest down, pinioning its arms. The trapped one looked up, closed its eyes, and roared. A third one leaned forward almost delicately and bit down on the exposed neck and tore half of the flesh away in one jerk. The roar became a gurgle and the creature sagged, brown blood drooling from the wound. The others looked away until it dropped unconscious, and then they fell on it, feeding noisily.

  I said that by my culture’s standards that was an extreme punishment for irresponsibility.

  That was not the male who was killed. It was the female, granted a swift and dignified end. The male now faces a premature old age, unprotected by family or society.

  Your confusion is understood. Your anger is inappropriate.

  I said that I could never be so cosmically objective as to approve of that inequity. If this test is to see whether I can mimic your alien attitudes, then you may as well stop now.

  That is not what is being measured. This is not a “test.” Step forward.

  We were up in ’Home, in John’s room. He was sleeping calmly, though in his usual tense position, a respirator taped over his nose.

  This male faces his old age well protected by family and society. Yet his life is over, except for pain and frustration. At a word from you I will end it quietly, by stopping his heart. No pain, not even a consciousness of the end.

  I said no.

  You say you love him. You have admitted to yourself that, as far as you can divine his feelings, he does wish to die but is physically incapable of ending his own life. You believe he is not asking for your help only in order to spare you moral pain. You have said this to your wife: “If he wanted our help I would know.”

  I said that was an accurate assessment. I asked whether it could use its powers instead to restore John’s abilities.

  No more than I could unscramble an egg. Disorder at the quantum level is sacred. Allow me to end his pain.

  I said that I could not. That it would be the same as my taking off his respirator and smothering him with a pillow.

  This is something you have done in your imagination.

  I said of course. Although my imagination favors pills washed down with boo, or intravenous potassium chloride. Die Gedanken sind frei, I told it; my thoughts freely flower. My actions are limited.

  Follow me, then.

  It was not a planet where humans could live without protection. There was a killing methane smell that stopped after one breath. The gravity was crushing; cartilage creaked and popped and both breasts sagged heavily, as if someone small were hanging on there for dear life. We stood on a pebble beach, like the one at Brighton, but the gray fluid that greasily curled ashore was not water. A thick yellow vapor crawled around my ankles. Lightning danced green overhead, in a sky where particolored clouds raced in swirling parallel bands. I said it felt like Jupiter, in the old Solar System.

  It is not. This is much more clement, a neighbor of Epsilon’s. Some day your descendants may live here independent of life support. Of course they will no longer be recognizably human in form. They will be something like this.

  I changed. It was horrible. My skin became scales, overlapping plates of some clear mineral like mica. My arms and legs split into four pairs and I fell to the ground, hands and feet like flippers splaying over the shifting pebbles. From my thorax grew two pairs of prehensile tentacles, one pair muscular, ending in hooklike claws, the other ending in a delicate cluster of fingers. I tried to speak, but there was just a clattering of mandibles.

  Go into the sea. Eat or die. This is real.

  I tried to ask it mentally whether I could breathe under the fluid, like a fish, but the connection had evidently been broken. I would find out when I got to the sea.

  At first, trying to operate the eight limbs, all I did was push pebbles rattling away in all directions. I had never paid much attention to the way a crab or spider walked. Then I figured out that going sideways was the key: reach out with all the right-“hand” ones, set them down, then a little hop with the left ones. Turning was pretty simple, by coordinating upper and lower pairs.

  The trick, though, was not to think about it at all. This body did know all it needed. In fact, to use a mundane analogy, it was a lot like VR in the abstract mode; you just un-concentrate and trust the brain to tune in to whatever the environment throws at it.

  I looked up and the sinister roiling poisonous sky was calmingly beautiful, like a sunset after a storm. I liked the way the pebbles slid around under the paddles of my feet, and deliberately skidded in a 360-degree twirl. The smell of the ocean was th
e smell of life: life to be taken. I was famished.

  I slid quietly into the greasy surf and the breathing holes on the top of my carapace automatically closed with a soft sneeze; the gill plates on my belly opened and sucked in the earth-flavored shallows. A little deeper and it would be refreshing. I discharged wastes and kicked forward and down.

  Blind at first, confused. As the rattle of surf diminished behind me, I realized this was a world of sound, of ranging distances by loudness, and relative speeds by a kind of color, blue things approaching and red things fleeing. Sonar interpreted as sight. The rocks of the shoreline were dimming rust, then out of the billowing darkness in front of me a bright blue S undulated, an eel or a snake with outsized jaws. I instinctively pulled in the soft tentacles and extended the muscular ones en garde; all eight paddle-feet slapped together to make a cage protecting the thorax.

  The thing halted and regarded me for a moment, and then slipped away, reddening. The lesson was obvious, though. I was hungry, but I was also food.

  So what did this body eat? I had no inclination to pursue the predator; there was a vague impression of how vile they tasted when you had to bite one in defense.

  There were things under the mud here that were delicacies, spiny clusters like sea urchins on Earth, but I would be vulnerable, digging for them. Why? The body’s memories were unspecific, childlike. Nice to eat but ooh watch out. Safer to go into the deep coldness where nothing can sneak up on you, chase down the small swift things that live on the hard bottom.

  Swam over a precipice and down deeper, pressure painful but then the carapace creaked, valves fluttered and popped, the pain went away. I bumped once against the cliff face but then paddled away from it. No noise going down.

  The things on the bottom resembled the king crabs I remembered from Alaska, absurdly small bodies and long legs full of meat. They were all over the rocky bottom; all I had to do to catch one was extend my legs like a cage and envelop one at random. As it tried to scrabble away, I reached in with the claws and snipped off two legs, then crunched into the thorax.

  I had to eat carefully. The noise of cracking the crab’s shell momentarily blinded me, and I was certainly the biggest meal in town, if something larger than me was hunting. Instinct took over while I was anxiously looking around, and the thing’s long serrated tongue slipped into the broken-off claw and sucked the meat out quietly.