The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Third Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  Coati has learned to relax a little while her own voice goes on, and she hears Syllobene start with a nice little preface: “Greetings to my Human hearers!” and go on to recite the Eea-Eeadron system.

  “Now,” says Coati, “I was just asking her whether the Eea are the only life-forms on their planet to have their brains in separate animals, so to speak?”

  “Oh, no,” says her Syllobene voice, “it is general in our, ah, animal world. In fact, we are still amazed that there is another way. But always in other animals, the two are very closely attached. For instance, in the Enquaalons the En is born with the Quaalon, mates when it mates, gives birth when it does, and dies when it dies. The same for all the En—that is what we call the brain animal—except for ourselves, the Eea. Only the Eea are separate from the Dron, and do not die when their Dron dies.… But we have seen aged Endalamines—that is the nearest animal to the Eeadron—holding their heads against newborn Dalamines as though the En were striving to pass to a new body, while the seed-Ens proper to that newborn hovered about in frustration. We think in some cases they succeed.”

  “So you Eea can pass to a new body when yours is old! Does that make you immortal?”

  “Ah, no; Eea, too, age and die. But very slowly. They may use many Dron in a lifetime.”

  “I see. But tell about your society, your government, and how you get whatever you eat, and so on. Are there rich or poor, or servants and master Eeadron?”

  “No, if I understand those words. But we have farms—”

  And so, by random stages and probings, Coati pieces together a picture of the green and golden planet Syllobene calls Nolian, with its sun Anella. All ruled over by the big white Eeadron, who have no wars, and only the most rudimentary monetary system. The climate is so benign that housing is largely decorative, except for shelter from the nightly mists and drizzles. It seems a paradise. Their ferocious teeth, which had so alarmed Boney and Ko, derive from a forgotten, presumably carnivorous past; they now eat plant products and fruits. (Here Coati recollects that certain herbivorous primates of antique Earth also had fierce-looking canines.)

  As to material technology, the Eeadron have the wheel, which they use for transporting farm crops and what few building materials they employ. And long ago they learned to control fire, which they regard almost as a toy except for some use in cooking. Their big interest now appears to be the development of a written code for their language; they picked up the idea from Ponz and Leslie. It’s a source of great pleasure and excitement, although some of the older Eea, who serve as the racial memory, grumble a bit at this innovation.

  Midway through this account, Coati has an idea, and when Syllobene runs down, she bursts out, “Listen! Oh—this is Coati speaking—you said you cleaned out my arteries, my blood tubes. And you cure other hosts. Would you—I mean, your race—be interested in being healers to other races like mine, who can’t heal themselves? We call such healers doctors. But our doctors can’t get inside and really fix what’s wrong, without cutting the sick person up. Why, you could travel all over the Federation, visiting sick people and curing them—or, wait, you could set up a big clinic, and people, Humans and others, would come from everywhere to have the Eea go into them and fix their blood vessels, or their kidneys, or whatever was wrong. Oh, hey, and they’d pay you—You’re going to need Federation credits—and everybody would love you! You’d be the most famous, valuable race in the Federation!”

  “Oh, oh—” replies the Syllobene voice, sounding breathless, “I don’t know your exclamations! We would say—” She gives an untranslatable trill of excitement. “How amazing if I understand you—”

  “Well, we can talk about that later. Now, you learned about Humans from what you call visiting, in the brains of Boney or Ko, is that right?”

  “Yes. But if I had not had the experience of visiting my mentor and a few other Eeadron, I would not have known how to enter and live there without causing damage. You see, the brains of the Dron are just unformed matter; one can go anywhere and eat anything without ill effect on the host’s brains. In fact, it is up to the Eea to form them.… And, I almost forgot, my mentor was old; and was one of those who had known the living Humans Ponz and Leslie. The two who landed violently and died. They were beyond our powers to cure then, but we could abolish their pain. I believe they mated before they died, but no seeds came. My mentor told me how your brains are developed and functioning. We are still amazed.”

  “Why do you visit other Eeadron?”

  “To learn many facts about some subject in a short time. We send out tendrils—I think you have a word, for your fungus plants—mycelia. Very frail threads and knots, permeating the other brain—I believe that is what I look like in your brain now—and by making a shadow pattern in a certain way, we acquire all sorts of information, like history, or the form of landscapes, and keep it intact when we withdraw.”

  “Look, couldn’t you learn all about Humans and the Federation by doing that in my head?”

  “Oh, I would not dare. Your speech centers alone frightened me with their complexity. I proceeded with infinite care. It was lucky I had so much time while you slept. I wouldn’t dare try anything more delicate and extensive and emotion-connected.”

  “Well, thanks for your consideration…” Coati doesn’t want to stall the interview there, so she asks at random, “Do you have any social problems? Troubles or dilemmas that concern your whole race?”

  This seems to puzzle the Eea. “Well. If I understand you, I don’t think so. Oh, there is a heated disagreement among two groups of Eeadron as to how much interest we should take in aliens, but that has been going on ever since Ponz. A panel of senior councillors—is that the word for old wise ones?—is judging it.”

  “And will the factions abide by the panel’s judgment?”

  “Oh, naturally. It will be wiped from memory.”

  “Whew!”

  “And … and there is the problem of a shortage of faleth fruit trees. But that is being solved. Oh—I believe I know one social problem, as you put it. Since the Eea are becoming personally so long-lived, there is arising a reluctance to mate and start young. Mating is very, ah, disruptive, especially to the Dron body. So people like to go along as they are. The elders have learned how to suppress the mating urge. For example, I and my siblings were the only young born during one whole season. There are still plenty of seeds about—you saw them—but they are becoming just wasted. Wasted … I think I perceive something applicable in your verbal sayings, about nature.”

  “Huh? Oh—‘Nature’s notorious wastefulness,’ right?”

  “Yes. But our seeds are very long-lived. Very. And that golden coat, which is what you see, is impervious to most everything. So maybe all will be well.”

  Her informant seems to want to say no more on this topic, so Coati seizes the pause to say, “Look, our throat—my throat—is about to close up or break into flames. Water!” She seizes the flask and drinks. “I always thought that business of getting a sore throat from talking too much was a joke. It isn’t. Can’t you do something, Dr. Syllobene?”

  “I can only block off some of the inflamed channels, and help time do its work. I could abolish the pain, but if we use the throat, it would quickly grow much worse.”

  “You sound like a doctor already,” Coati grumbles hoarsely. “Well, we’ll just cut this off here—Oh, I wish I had one of those message pipes! Ouch.… Then we’ll have some refreshments—I got some honey, thank the gods—and take a nap. Cold-sleep doesn’t rest us, you know. Could you take a sleep, too, Syllobene?”

  “Excellent idea.” That hurts.

  “Look, couldn’t you learn just to nod my head like this for ‘yes’ or like this for ‘no’?”

  Nothing happens for a moment, then Coati feels her head nod gently as if elfin fingers were brushing her chin and brow, yes.

  “Fantastic,” she rasps. “Ouch.”

  She clicks off the recorder, takes a last look through the scope at th
e blue-green-white planet—still far, far ahead—sets an alarm, and curls up comfortably in the pilot couch.

  “Sleep well, Syllobene,” she whispers painfully. The answer is breathed back, “You, too, dear Coati Cass.”

  * * *

  Excitement wakes her before the alarm. The planet is just coming into good bare-eye view. But when she starts to speak to Syllobene, she finds she has no voice at all. She hunts up the med-aid kit and takes out some throat lozenges.

  “Syllobene,” she whispers. “Hello?”

  “Wha—er, what? Hello?” Syllobene discovers whispering.

  “We’ve lost our voice. That happens sometimes. It’ll wear off. But if it’s still like this when we get on the planet, you’ll have to do something so we can record. You can, can’t you?”

  “Yes, I believe so. But you must understand it will make it worse latter.”

  “Green.”

  “What?”

  “Green … means ‘I understand, too.’ Listen, I’m sorry about your turn to ask questions. That’ll be later. For now we’ll just shut up.”

  “I wait.”

  “Go.”

  “What?”

  “Oh, green, go—that means ‘Understood, and we will proceed on that course.’” Coati can scarcely force out the words.

  “Ah, informal speech … most difficult.…”

  “Syl, this is killing me. We shut up now, green?”

  A painful giggle. “Go.”

  Some hot tea from the snack pack proves soothing. Meanwhile the enforced silence for the first time gives Coati a chance to think things over. She is, of course, entranced by the novelty of it all, and seriously stirred by the idea that Syllobene’s race could provide the most astounding, hitherto inconceivable type of medical help to the others. If they want to. And if a terrible crowd-jam doesn’t ensue. But that’s for the big minds to wrestle out.

  And, like the kid she is, Coati relishes the sensation she fancies her return will provoke—with a real live new alien carried in her head! But, gods, they won’t be able to see Syllobene—suppose they jump to the obvious conclusion that Coati’s gone nutters, and hustle her off to the hospital? She and Syl better talk that over before they get home; Syllobene has to be able to think of some way to prove she exists.

  Funny how firmly she’s thinking of Syllobene as “she,” Coati muses. Is that just sheer projection? Or—after all, they’re in pretty intimate contact—is this some deep instinctive perception, like one of Syl’s “primitive tropisms”? Whatever, when they get it unscrambled, it’ll be a bit of a shock if Syl’s a young “he” … or, gods forbid, an “it” or a “them.” What was it that Boney had said about the Dron, that some of them had two sets of “private parts”? That’d be his modest term for sex organs; he must have meant they were like hermaphrodites. Whew. Well, that still doesn’t necessarily mean anything about the Eea.

  When they can talk, she must get things straightened out. And until then not get too romantically fixated on the idea that they’re two girls together.

  All this brings her to a sobering sense of how little she really knows about the entity she’s letting stay in her head—in her very brain. If indeed Syl was serious about being able to leave.… With this sobriety comes—or rather, surfaces—a slight, undefined sense of trouble. She’s had it all along. Coati realizes. A peculiar feeling that there’s more. That all isn’t quite being told to her. Funny, she doesn’t suspect Syl herself of some bad intent, of being secretly evil. No. Syllobene is good, as good as she can be; all Coati’s radar and perceptions seem to assure her of that. But nevertheless this feeling persists—it’s becoming clearer as she concentrates—that something was making the alien a little sad and wary now and then—that something troubling to Syl had been touched on but not explored.

  The lords know, she and Syl had literally talked all they could; Syl had answered every question until their voice gave out. But Coati’s sense of incompleteness lingers. Let’s see, when had it been strongest?… Around that business of the seeds in the message pipe, for one. Maybe every time they touched on seeds. Well, seeds were being wasted. That meant dying. And a seed is a living thing; an encysted, complete beginning of a new life. Not just a gamete, like pollen, say. Maybe they’re like embryos, or even living babies, to Syllobene. The thought of hundreds of doomed babies surely wouldn’t be a very cheerful one for Coati herself.

  Could that be it? That Syl didn’t want to go into the sadness? Seems plausible. Or, wait—what about Syl herself? By any chance did she want to mate, and now she can’t—or had she, and that’s the mystery of where those seeds in the message pipe had come from? Whew! Is Syl old enough, is she sexually mature? Somehow Coati doesn’t think so, but again, she knows so little—not even that Syl’s a she.

  As Coati ruminates, her eyes have been on the front view-ports, where the planet is rapidly growing bigger and bigger. She must put her wonderment aside, with the mental note to question Syl at the first opportunity. In a few minim it’ll be time to kill the torches and go on antigrav for the maneuvers that will bring her into a close-orbit search pattern. She will have to fly a lot of extra orbits, doing the best she can by eye and with her narrow little civilian radarscope. It’ll be tedious; not for the first time, she deplores the unsuitability of a little space-coupe for serious exploration work.

  The planet still looks remarkably like holos of Terra. It has two big ice caps, but only three large landmasses set in blue ocean. It looks cold, too. Cloud cover is thin, wispy cirrus. And for many degrees south of the northern ice, the land is a flat gray-green, featureless except for an intricate, shallow lake system, which changes from silver to black as the angle of reflection changes. Like some exotic silken fabric, Coati thinks. The technical name for such a plain is tundra, or maybe muskeg.

  No straight lines or curves, no dams, no signs of artificial works appear. The place seems devoid of intelligent life.

  Hello, what’s this ahead? A twinkling light is rounding the shadowed curve of the planet, far enough out to catch the sun. That’s reflected light; the thing is tumbling slowly. Coati slows and turns to the scope. Big sausage tanks! Such tanks must belong to a DRS, a depot resupply ship. Boney and Ko must have left them in orbit before they landed. And they wouldn’t fail to pick them up when they left; that means the men are here. Oh, good. That’ll give her the enthusiasm to sit out a long, boring search.

  She tunes up every sensor on CC-One and starts the pattern while she’s still, really, too far out. This is going to be a long chore, unless some really wild luck strikes.

  And luck does strike! On her second figure eight orbit, she sees an immense blackened swath just south of the northern ice cap. A burn. Can it have been caused by lightning, or volcanism? Or even a natural meteorite?

  No … on the next pass she can see a central line of scorch, growing as it leads north, with a perceptible zigzag such as no incoming natural object could make. She clicks on the recorder and whisperingly reports the burn and the tanks in orbit.

  On the third pass she’s sure. There’s a gleam at the north end of the burn scar.

  “Oh, the poor men! They must have been sick; they had to correct course with rockets.… Syl! Syllobene! Are you awake?”

  “Uh—hello?” her voice mumbles. Funny to hear herself sounding sleepy.

  “Look, you have to do something about our throat so I can report. I think I’ve found the men.”

  “Oh. Yes. Wait … I fear I need nourishment.…”

  “Go right ahead. Be my guest.”

  For an instant Coati pictures Syl sipping blood, like a vampire; but no, Syl is too small. It’ll be more like the little being snagging a red blood corpuscle or two as they rush by. Weird. Coati doesn’t feel the least bit nervous about this. Syl had said she’s increased the blood flow overall. And in fact Coati feels great, very alert and well. They would make wonderful healers; she thinks.

  The gleam at the end of the burn is definitely a ship; the scope shows her a
big Federation supply tug. Her calls on Fed frequencies bring no response. She kills the search pattern and prepares to land on antigrav. The plain beside the strange ship looks good. But maybe there was another reason for their use of torches, she thinks; those two men were super-experienced planetary pilots. Maybe this place was weird mascons or something that had to be corrected for? She’d better keep alert, and be ready to torch if she finds her course going unsteady.

  When she calls the supply ship again, her voice is back and her throat suddenly feels great.

  “Hey, thanks Syl.”

  “Coati, why are we landing?”

  “The Humans you left are down somewhere on the planet. They were never heard of after you left them; they’re officially missing. That means, everybody search. Now I’ve found their ship, but they don’t answer. I have to land and find out what’s happened to them. So you’ll get to see a strange planet.”

  The news doesn’t seem to cheer her little passenger, who only repeats, “We must land?”

  “Oh, yes. Among other things, they may need help.”

  “Help.…” Syllobene’s voice repeats, with an odd, almost bitter inflection.

  But Coati is too busy to brood over this. “What condition were they in when you left them, Syl?”

  “Oh.…” her throat sighs. “I do not know your race well enough to tell what is normal. They were speaking of going to cold-sleep when I withdrew and left them. I was trying to hurry because I understood that the message device would soon be sent out. As I said, it’s a slow process. As soon as I was dependent on my Eea senses, the men were too large to perceive—for example, I could not longer discern the sound waves of their voices.”

  Coati thinks this over as she gentles the ship down through thick atmosphere. Her ablation shielding isn’t all that good.