by Nathan Dodge
He sank down beside her, feeling more frustration than anger. “Maria, there isn’t any anti-venom in the medical kit.” Even scratches were fatal in time.
And painful. Maria should be crying out in agony. But she wasn’t.
“Did you numb the other leg, too?” Dat asked.
“The second it happened.”
“But we don’t have any painkiller in the med kit.”
Silence.
“Who are you?” Dante asked.
The face—the face he had once loved—stared back at him. “What do you mean?”
“Maria would never say ‘intercourse.’ She’d say sex, or fucking, or even going to bed, if she were feeling particularly sentimental.”
A moment passed. Maria’s face grew slack. She reached out and took his hand, placing it on her shoulder in a gesture he didn’t understand, except to know that it was alien.
“You noticed. We did not think you would.”
“I did.”
“We ask forgiveness,” she said. “We were trying to help.”
“Is Maria still alive in there?” Perhaps it was a measure of his insanity or the trauma of the crash that he didn’t run and scream. Instead, he simply listened, rocking ever so slightly as he did.
“For now,” it said. “But she is no longer talking to us. The body is struggling.”
“Why?”
“You think we took over? No. She was warm and welcoming. The one you called Cates was afraid and rejected us. We are sorry. We would have kept Maria safe in the cave and healed her, but she wished to go with you. She wished to help you more than she wished to help herself. The Community thinks very highly of her. If she survives, we would welcome her.”
“Are you native to this planet?”
“Yes. The only intelligent life form, as you would measure it. We have lived here for eons as co-habitants with a number of other life forms.”
“I see.” He accepted the explanation and considered. “Can you keep her alive long enough for a rescue? If I make it, can you keep her alive until I can get back to her?”
“We can try. If she does not survive, we will have to leave. We cannot live inside a corpse. You are well-suited to the nights, but the days…. We overestimated your tolerance. Maria has corrected our understanding. We are working to improve her responses, but there is much to adjust.”
She shook her head. “No matter. You must go, or you will die. And it is Maria’s wish you live.”
“I don’t think I can leave her.”
“It is your decision. The Community respects that. We could call our friends, should you wish to remain with us. We may be able to adjust you, too.” She paused.
“Adjust.” He laughed, ran a hand through his hair. “Adjust.” And for a moment he did think about it: an endless desert, a world unknown to any other creature. An adventure. With Maria. All those years he’d missed out with her, chasing other dreams. Even if it were only friendship, it would be with the one that got away. A new world; a new beginning.
But then he remembered his ship, and his crew, and Cates, and twenty-odd years spent building his own life. And all the reasons he’d chosen them.
“No,” Dante said, softly at first, then more firmly. “You’re right. I have to go.”
He stood up, tears beginning to stream down his face. He unbuckled the pack, letting it drop off his shoulders. The heater had never left his hand. He unbuckled the other heater holster, helped her close to the overhang, and sprayed the recess with a heavy blast from the second heater. Nothing moved; it had apparently been deserted. Without a word, she crawled beneath it. He dropped the pack and the spare heater.
“I don’t need anything but the heater and the personal. Keep it all. I’ll either make it or I won’t. Use the first-aid kit to clean out those scratches—maybe it’ll help. You understand how to use them?”
The creature that inhabited Maria nodded her head, and gestured to the water bottle sticking out of the top of the pack. “Take the water. It might make the difference in getting to the station.”
“Don’t you need it?”
“We are managing.”
“All right.” Eyes still wet, he moved away a few paces, turned, stared back at her. “I’m going to fly, I promise.”
She smiled. “Maria was awake again, for a moment. She says you will make it. She says she’s not worried.”
“You’re the best friend I ever had, Maria,” he said, and turned before the Community could tell him if Maria had heard or not.
Dante walked. Half a kilometer more, then a kilometer. Finally, another kilometer. Without the pack his breath was much improved, but now more than eight hundred meters above the plain, his energy was once more fading and soreness was kicking in. His feet, he noticed, were beginning to burn more vigorously. His boots were of extraordinary design, tough enough for combat and flexible enough to run in, but after forty-some hard kilometers the blisters could no longer be ignored. His socks would soon be sopping up blood.
Climbing over rocks, edging past sharp crags and scrambling up shale-filled declines, he constantly looked skyward, dreading the first gray of dawn. The sky was still black, but the starlight made his surroundings sharp and clear.
He debated whether to stop and rest both feet if only for a moment, but decided against it. To stop might be to never rise again. Instead, he slowed a little, giving himself more time to search the rocks and ledges, trying to spot sandspiders or ridge scorpions before he came too close. Vipret also inhabited the cracks and crevices of the mountains, but he saw no more as he continued to climb.
Intent on the ground and its rocky features, he failed to glance skyward for a good time. When he finally did, he was horrified to see a faint gray in the eastern sky.
There were two problems. First, he was very near exhaustion. Second, he could tell that the slopes above were becoming progressively steeper. No, three: time. Time was flying away.
He never even saw the sandspider. He brushed the ledge to his left, and it was suddenly on his arm, fully five centimeters in diameter, sinking its fangs through his shirt into the flesh below. Screaming, he brushed it off, raking its body with heater fire, turning it into a lump of carbon. Ripping off the shirt sleeve, he saw the bite.
He never stopped to think, never gave the action any consideration. He simply set the heater on full, minimal beam width, and cut off his left arm.
* * *
He awakened abruptly, sitting up, then crying out in pain as the stump of his left arm touched the ground. From just above the elbow the arm was gone, the severed length and attached hand a meter away. It had bled only a bit, the heater effectively cauterizing the wound. Fortunately, if his current situation could be considered fortunate in the slightest, he had not further damaged his body as he passed out.
Trying to stand up, he struggled to pull himself erect. His missing arm burned with an intensity that only added to the symphony of aches and pains that assaulted him. For a moment, he wasn’t sure that he could stand, as his head swam and nausea caused his eyes to blur. Steadying himself with his good hand on the slope beside him, he managed to regain his balance.
He couldn’t find the heater at first, then saw it meters downslope. Gingerly, he edged down, retrieved it with his right hand, stuffed it under his belt. The water bottle was where he had fallen. Picking it up, he saw that there were no more than a few swallows.
Holding it against his body with his maimed arm, he managed to unscrew the top. The remaining liquid was still cool from the night air, and he savored it before letting the bottle fall to his feet.
His headache was growing—the first symptom of the quick-coming end of his mortality. He had probably saved his immediate life by his quick action, but the circulatory system moved blood quickly. Two seconds had been long enough.
Determined, he turned up-slope only to stumble over his left arm, lying where it had fallen on the slope. He laughed hysterically as he moved uphill; more weight he didn’t have to ca
rry.
One foot forward. A second foot forward. Every step in slow motion, every movement a study in balance. A slip to the left ended in agony. He could only catch himself with the black-crusted stump, an exercise in such blinding pain that he fell both times. Each time he managed to right himself, stumble on.
Warmth on the right side of his head finally roused him to stop. Lomai’s sun, an orange-golden ball over a hundred million kilometers away, glared back at him over the crags to the east. Cringing, he tried to hurry, moving forward at a staggering pace that barely allowed him to keep his balance.
He lost his sense of self as the sun rose. Whether it was the venom, or the growing heat, or the effect of the Community, he found himself thinking not of Maria, the one that got away, but all of them: of Cates, and Mai from Scaldi II, and Lizbeth the cook, and Belidon in security, even the old shipkeeper Amron, everyone he’d worked with some twenty years. Their names, their children’s names—he ran through them like it was a spelling bee, a math quiz, as if the higher powers had demanded the accounting. And he told every one of them he was sorry.
* * *
He could go no farther. Instead, he lay back and removed the personal from his shirt pocket to try once more. Activated, it hissed softly, and then he caught the softest buzz.
“Lomai Station One, can you hear me?” Dante realized he was whispering and trying to sit up. Lying back, trying to lower his voice and protect his dry throat, he called again, his speech halting and raspy.
A tiny, barely decipherable voice materialized out of the hissing background. “Caller, this is Lomai Station One. We hear you. You are calling from a—” the voice seemed not to believe what it was saying, “—from a mobile personal assistant? Is that correct?”
Dante almost cried out for joy. “Yes. Yes! This is Dante Kumali, a crew member of the hauler Cosmos Six that went down day before yesterday.”
The voice seemed even more shocked. “Cosmos Six? Where the hell are you? There are a few hundred volunteers looking for you in the Black Desert.”
The Black Desert. A monstrous expanse of lava sand nearly on the opposite side of the planet. He could’ve laughed. “I’m about two kilometers from you. Directly down slope, I think. You got to find me quick, ’cause I have no water left, and I had to leave a crewmember down a few kilometers below me in bad shape. And the other crewmembers’ bodies—I promised I’d recover their bodies.”
The voice fizzled, hissed, finally returned. “We’ll come as quick as we can, Dante. I checked the crew list. You’re the engineer, right?”
His mouth was so dry that he could barely make a single word. “Yes,” he rasped, “come quick. It was a vipret, just a scratch, but you need to hurry.”
The faint voice sounded skeptical. “We’ll come as fast as we can. Try to put your personal in a clear spot so that we can navigate on the signal. Then wait right there.”
And where else would I go? he thought. He’d traveled trillions upon trillions of kilometers just to be here, after all. Just to lose everything, and remember why he’d chosen it. Just to make friends again one last time.
It was a beautiful morning, he decided.
* * *
See: the Sun rising.
It brings the Community strength. As sandspiders close in, tantalized by Maria’s salty sweat, the Community fuse with the light, redirecting it, cooking its prey neatly. It inhales their corpses, pleased with the ashen bounty, drawing strength from its meal. The one called Maria raises her arms, delighted, standing finally. She looks into the distance, waving at something unseen.
An hour later, she is gone.
Base Pair
Sharon
I don’t know if the humans would have made me, or my son, as well as they did if everyone hadn’t been about to die. Knowing the end is coming does that to people: brings out the best and the worst. Although really, I saw mostly the best.
Part of it, I’m sure, was the laboratory. They were hardly going to let in maniacs. But I watched the news, too, and most everyone was working so hard to do the right thing. Everyone contributing to the cause, submitting their genes for consideration. Almost a million samples accepted, some ten thousand of those by request, another thousand or so clones. Folks contributing their life savings to the installation when the governments flatly said they needed it, scientists spending their after-hours helping on the processing, the filing, even cleaning the floors in the laboratory.
It was a great thing to be able to say you’d been there, I’m sure, but it was even better knowing I would be there for all of us, Kentaro told me once. Kentaro was my maker. Not that I didn’t have many ancestors, but he was the one who fine-tuned me, who molded me into really being me. And—not that I didn’t love them, the Americans—but they always saw me as this wonderful creation, this caretaker, this . . . machine. Kentaro just saw me as me.
He’s probably dead now. They might have made it. My little pod was only the back-up plan, after all. But Kentaro promised me he’d send a notification, a messenger pod to let me know if they made it. Not that I could turn around, but so I’d know. And it’s been a long time now, long enough for them to send many messages, probably long enough to have succeeded in building the faster-than-light engines they’d been trying so hard to create with the help of my brothers and sisters. They could have caught up with me. I could assume they didn’t care enough about me to inform me, but that seems worse somehow than assuming they’re dead, in a way. So I try to let them be dead, even though I keep trying to hope them back into life, too.
So I was here, stuck with a million-odd fertilized eggs to care for and my ship falling slowly into orbit around the planet they’d chosen for their children, waiting for my own child to wake up after our long journey. I glanced out the window to the round red planet below, with its occasional ponds and glaciers. So little water—but enough. A soft bleep called my attention, and I turned to address the monitor. In case of malfunction, we were set up to be independent systems. Except for the times when I made a few downloads, for which I created a separate partition as a precaution, we hardly interacted. Since the ship barely qualified as intelligent, it was no real loss, though on occasion I’ve regretted the loss of conversation.
It was notifying me of the intended landing pattern, the bright screen illuminating the cramped room around me. Most of the space on the ship was dedicated to the cargo. Like a string of pearls, each separate laboratory was made to be self-sufficient, detachable if need be. Our housing pearl was the smallest of all, with hardly enough space for me to stand and walk ten paces. I thought of it as the nursery, however, and the small space had never bothered me. I’d even drawn microscopic murals on the vaulted metal ceiling, pictures within pictures on the tiny expanse above. A human would find it too busy, but to my eyes it was pleasant.
“S’cold,” my son murmured, and I abandoned the monitor to attend his awakening. He’d been asleep for so long. His fat baby hands were rubbing disarmingly at his eyes, looking for all the world like a little human child.
“Where are we? Did we make it to the new home?”
“Yes,” I murmured gently. “We made it to the moon. We are going to set down soon and begin preparing the place for all the children.”
“The babies,” he said.
“The babies,” I agreed, tucking a blanket around him. I could tell him to increase the temperature of his body through thermoregulation. If I gave the command, his body would follow it, after all. And it wasn’t as if we’re on the planet yet. But somehow, the blanket seemed easier. He curled under it, and my heart tightened a little.
“I’m thirsty,” he said finally. My hand cautiously evaluated his skin beneath mine. Unlike me, he wasn’t built to be so self-aware, and he didn’t notice the tests I quietly ran on him. My fingers hummed as I injected him with a few dozen of my own nanites to check his status in addition to taking a few of his for testing, and he unconsciously rubbed at his hand after I let it go. I kissed his forehead and got hi
m a water packet.
Considering I was about to raise the human race from infancy, my maternal nature made sense. There was a small part of me that vaguely wished I’d had some knitting wool, or at least some real decorating materials, so I could have done a little domestic work while I waited. As it was, I just drew a little and mostly worked on organizing the records so hastily dumped in my data banks and the ship’s banks, as well as reading all the theories of childcare throughout history. I had earned myself a few doctorates studying the more recent scientific discoveries that had not yet been entered in my personal memory—or at least, I assumed I had earned them; I’d awarded them to myself, since there was no one else to do so. I’d even practiced reading storybooks aloud, making use of the decades. I had nothing but knowledge to welcome my children with, after all. Although in the end, perhaps that’s all that matters.
The landing procedure was relatively simple, but little Terre watched with interest as our ship evolved, expanding and contracting and pushing out new pieces to make the descent smoother. (Should we name him Chikyu? I had asked Kentaro, watching with my fingers gripped so tight they should be turning white as he exited the building module. I was so afraid something would go wrong in his birth, and naming him for the Earth felt like a blessing, a protection to see him safely through. No, Kentaro said, laughing. Not that little boy. We made him strong. If anything, you should name him Terre, because he will be a little terror.)
Terre asked me more about the moon, and the stars, all the questions that other children will ask, the children he would be growing up amongst for such a long, long time.
“This is a little moon, gently floating around a gas giant,” I said, “and it has been waiting for us for billions of years, living and growing. It was the only planet we could find with an atmosphere so close to ours on Earth, even though its days are thirty hours long. It is filled with tiny little creatures similar to our algae back home, and an atmosphere with only a little too much carbon dioxide. Our babies were adapted to live here,” I reminded him.