Jim Baen's Universe Volume 1 Number 5

by Eric Flint

  * * *

  "The damnedest thing," Amanda said. She did not puzzle easily, or admit to it readily.

  She had been poring over long-range fauna surveys from microsats I had deployed and low-flying drones she had deployed. "We've got very stable populations. The herbivores don't overgraze anywhere, which means the carnivores are keeping them in balance. The carnivores are nicely dispersed, too. Very uniform."

  From our years together, I more or less understood her point. Natural systems tend toward equilibrium—but outside shocks to the system disturb that equilibrium: forest fires, earthquakes, volcanoes. Disaster strikes; in that region, one species or other is disproportionately killed off. Surviving species burst into a new niche, for a while with dis-equilibrating effects. Why weren't there more areas in which the predator/prey balance was off? "What do you make of it?"

  "Nothing." She grimaced at the camera. "I'm not getting it."

  Constantly vidding Amanda made separation that much harder. I even found myself jealous of Brian. The neighborhood primitive showed no interest in her, but at least he had the unused option of seeing her, in person. Until, with no obvious reason, he was back.

  Back to the fringes of the burned-out region, that is. He was in plain sight of the lander and Amanda's outside equipment, but he did not come close. His attention was on planting seedlings even when she donned her envirosuit and hiked to visit him. When she asked if anyone else would join them, the translator's best guess at his answer was confusion.

  * * *

  I was running out of excuses why Amanda should maintain isolation from Paradise's environment—although, as the mission's biologist, that decision was logically and factually hers. Why I sought excuses was unclear. A planet declared safe would mean our reunion. My innate caution outweighing my loneliness, I speculated. Airless "worlds" like the rock I grew up inside had no tolerance for mistakes.

  Long searching eventually revealed some poisonous vegetation, but no more than could be found on large swatches of Earth. Mice (the four-legged, Earthly kind) set outside sniffed and peered about curiously, perfectly content within their wire cages. The big mystery remained how Brian's people lived on what grew here. Amanda's lab animals had ignored samples put into their enclosures. As long as that critical detail eluded us she agreed, reluctantly, to continue avoiding all exposure to the biosphere.

  And then. . . .

  "These guys were brilliant."

  We kept comm channels open at all times. Amanda's whoop roused me from deep sleep. I had reset my body clock to sun time at the landing site, where it was now far from daylight. Why was she up? "A chipped rock is their idea of advanced engineering," I grumbled. It was an attitude I knew I had to lose. The reunification protocols—our reason for being here, after all, and my job to implement once I was on the ground—were meant to be executed with an open mind.

  "Trust me." On-screen, her eyes shone. She could be so enthusiastic; that passion for her work is yet another reason I love her. "I couldn't sleep, so I got up to finish some lab work." She brushed an unruly lock of hair from her forehead. "Cameron, I know how they eat here."

  That brought me fully awake.

  "The Firsters left Earth many thousands of years ago, and we don't know the human genome of the time in detail. Ever since, they've been an isolated, in-bred community. And shipboard shielding is never perfect: There are always the random effects of generations spent exposed to increased cosmic radiation. We always expect to find minor genetic drift in rediscovered colonists." She finally paused for breath. "I think this bunch made a genetic change on purpose."

  I found I did not share her enthusiasm, even if genetic tinkering had enabled the colonists' survival. "What, exactly, did you find?"

  "Gifts from Patches." The lander's galley was tiny; Amanda's body blocked my view of whatever late-night snack she had cooking. A buzzer announced the completion of something. I saw only her back as she turned to remove something from the infrared oven. "From Brian, too, although he is equally oblivious." She turned back to the camera, a mug of steaming whatever clasped in her hands.

  Patches was the calico cat. "What did . . . she"—a dazzling smile rewarded me—"give you?"

  "Gnawed exoskeletons of the local mice. In Brian's case, spit fruit-glob seeds. In both cases, piles of excrement."

  "And?"

  "Enzyme traces, Cameron." An arm waved excitedly in, I knew, the direction of her lab. "Enzymes like I've never seen. In the saliva. In the excrement. Enzymes that convert indigenous biochemicals into amino acids and sugars our enzymes can process. The colonists must have reengineered themselves, in a way we're not smart enough to manage."

  Our civilization has its technological advances, primarily in physics—hence our FTL ships—but all those years ago the Firsters knew much about bioscience we still do not. We could never have gotten to the stars by slowboat—we couldn't keep a shipboard biosphere viable for generations, not for even one slowboat crossing. The ancestors of these Stone Age primitives had sustained an ecology in their slowboat for four.

  I shared, for a moment, my lover's awe in the colonists' accomplishments. That emotion demanded suppression of the misgivings Paradise continued to generate.

  "Do you agree?"

  An amused tone of voice revealed I had missed an earlier iteration of a question. "Sorry?"

  "Do you agree it's time to lose the envirosuit? The lab mice outside are still fine."

  What could I say? That I had a bad feeling about this? Again? "I can't think of a reason why you shouldn't."

  By the time I was ready once more to consider sleep, Amanda was outside, casually dressed, pitching a tent.

  * * *

  Amanda grew up in an Earth megalopolis with, if it were possible, less vegetation than most asteroid habitats. At one level, that's why she went into the life sciences. She is an expert by modern standards, if not those of the Firsters. Her parents are interplanetary traders, and, from my between-mission contacts with them, egotistical, self-centered, and greedy.

  The popular image of the Reunification Corps is of a band of romantics. The truth is very different. Most members enlist for the adventure, the fame of discovering a lost civilization, or the rewards of recovering a lost Firster technology. Amanda, and I love her for it, was idealistic. Sure, a part of her recognized her selfless behavior as rebellion. Independence is another part of her charm.

  Sudden interest in gardening was no more surprising than many of her whims, and unshielded immersion in Paradise's environment was the last phase of eco-safety assessment. I would be joining her soon. I took her new hobby as an indirect compliment, a way for her to fill the time until our reunion.

  Finally, the regulation quarantine period was complete. Amanda suggested that I delay joining her. "I just have a bad feeling." The lopsided grin was like her, if the words were not.

  Days laboring outside had left her tanned and toned. Sunshine had bleached brown hair almost blonde. We had been having steamy radio sex since she landed. I wanted to land immediately. What was happening?

  The radio sex had become a bit routine, I realized. That was surely from repetition. What to many people would have been the obvious explanation never crossed my mind. There was no way Amanda had become involved with someone else—I know her. And Brian, still the only other human in the area, kept his distance more than ever since she had shucked the envirosuit. Only Patches was a frequent caller.

  Hurt, I redoubled my own cultivation: of techno-archeological insights coaxed and reconstructed from the slowboat's balky computers. Why was Paradise so much greener than upon the colonists' arrival? Why were the animal populations so well balanced? How had the colonists accomplished their genetic adaptation?

  Those questions were no more tractable than the one that most troubled me. Besides being my wife, Amanda was the mission's commander and biologist—and she had ordered me to stay where I was.

  Why?

  * * *

  Adrenaline coursing, I
startled awake. I had not been sleeping well. My body coped by springing catnaps on me.

  A half-heard shout still rang in my mind's ears. On a nearby screen, Amanda stared at me, wide-eyed. The sensors that surrounded the landing site read uniformly normal. "Are you all right?"

  She swallowed loudly. Her forehead furrowed. "I am."

  I needed to be down there to comfort and support, as well as to see and hear. If not her, then who? There were few choices. "Did something happen to Brian?"

  A shiver ruined her shrug of denial.

  "Amanda! What is it?"

  She stepped aside, revealing a mouse cage suspended by steel cable from a local tree at about her shoulder level. She shivered again.

  Within the wholly intact wire-mesh cage, the scarcely recognizable remains of two mice lay bloody and still.

  * * *

  Perimeter sensors had detected nothing approaching. The lander's cameras had not been watching the cage. Brian, whom she sought out, reacted to the bloody cage with an inscrutable comment about the weather. He kept his distance from her.

  Amanda's bad feeling suddenly was not so implausible.

  For lack of other ideas, we deployed more sensors and camera drones. We encountered a plethora of local species, both predators and herbivores. I have described this world as Earth-like, but I should clarify: I refer to a much younger Earth than knew humans. None of the indigenous forms was as advanced as a cockroach; Paradise had yet to evolve endoskeletons, multi-chambered hearts, or lungs. At great separations, we saw several cats, a dog, a goat, and two rabbits. Nothing had the incredibly thin claws that would have been required to reach into the still-intact mouse cage.

  What kept down the human population? Did something invisible shred them unawares, like the mice? Brian did not understand the question, let alone have an answer.

  We closely observed Brian, and, far around the periphery of the forest-fire zone, his closest human neighbor: a woman. Both spent their time thinning underbrush, pruning weather-damaged fronds, and doing other pastoral tasks. Don't expect details: On my home rock, we cultured our food in vats.

  To meet that newly revealed neighbor meant leaving line-of-sight of the lander and its automatic gun turret. Stun rifle in hand, camera on her shoulder, and translator in her backpack, Amanda trekked to see her. Myra's vocabulary was as limited as Brian's; her curiosity, if anything, even less. Her attitude, which I once again chose to infer from body language, was hostile.

  Once more, I was left to wonder: Why?

  * * *

  Three days after the first incident, more mice set outside were slaughtered. This time, the cages had been under constant video surveillance. We replayed the episode, time and again, in confusion and horror.

  The mice tore each other apart.

  * * *

  I kept sifting through the digital detritus of a lost civilization, as Amanda grew ever more restless at the landing site. Neither of us found answers.

  Amanda started taking long hikes, gleaning samples from the scattered flora poking up through nearby ashes and specimens from the periphery of the native forest. Studying the local plant life was unsurprising enough for a biologist, but, "It seems like the thing to do," was not the answer I expected to her planting and nurturing far more seedlings than she analyzed. What I had called a garden now evolved, by my standards, into a farm. A restful pastime, I supposed. One I would try to get into after I joined her.

  Brian, meanwhile, had become openly sullen. He was curt, even belligerent, whenever she approached the fringe of new growth that separated the fire-scarred region from his forest. Without quite knowing why, Amanda found herself taking an unprofessional dislike to him.

  There was a Firster expression that applied: about how the cobbler's children went barefoot. Mining the data of an ancient slowboat was second nature to me. Analyzing our own situation—that it had not occurred to me to do. Data about the present was Amanda's purview. When I finally did a correlation, two things stood out. Brian only visited when the wind came from his forested home region. Both mice incidents followed weather shifts such that the wind blew briskly from the inland sea.

  Brian's ever-cryptic references to wind and weather suddenly took on importance.

  * * *

  "Cameron!"

  My heart instantly pounding, I looked up from a dissected Firster computer. On-screen, Amanda shuddered. I was relieved to see her safe inside the lander. Behind her, visible through open airlock doors, stretched the still unnamed inland sea. I could hear the surf. "What is it?"

  Still shaking, she pointed to her left; a ship-controlled camera panned to follow the gesture. Two more caged mice, dead. Other mice scurried frantically around their own cages, squealing. The survivors were scant inches from the enclosure of the latest victims.

  "Cameron." Sweat beaded on her forehead, ran down her face and neck. An eyelid twitched uncontrollably. "Cameron, if it can strike in here. . . ."

  It: The madness that made creatures kill each other. No need to finish the thought.

  Unable to concentrate on my work, I watched her autopsy and analyze the dead rodents. She soon had an answer of sorts. "The enzymes from Patches' and Brian's saliva . . . they're also in the dead mice's stomachs."

  I asked the one question whose answer might have negated my sense of doom. It did not. "Have you fed these mice any local food?"

  "No."

  Which suggested that whatever caused these deaths was transmitted by air. But what could it be?

  * * *

  Patches mostly disdained Amanda's offered snacks. It was a small surprise that local descendants of Earth mice, when caught and caged, would, once they got hungry enough, eat ship's food. It was a far bigger surprise when Earth-bred lab mice ate local food. So far, they were doing fine on a diet of it. I watched her peel a piece of native fruit and feed slivers to mice in their cages. They were delighted.

  Then she popped a piece into her mouth. "Spit it out!" I yelled.

  She swallowed instead, and licked her lips. "It smelled good," she said, as though that were a justification.

  * * *

  The final lab mice were gone, their self-destructive struggles captured on video. The early deaths had involved pairs of mice, who killed each other. Separating them, attempted more for lack of ideas than a theory, accomplished little. Solitary mice fatally injured themselves in a frenzy of failed escape attempts. The one thing we learned was that mice did not die before puberty.

  Amanda refused to quicken any more mice from frozen embryos. "I have no theories to test, no experiments to perform. Creating new mice would be wanton, pointless cruelty."

  Misery and fear had us speaking almost constantly; stress made us snap and snarl at each other. When would the self-destructive insanity strike Amanda? I respected the wisdom of Corps protocols, the reasons for her quarantine below . . . all the while hating them.

  Meanwhile, she endlessly cultivated her ever-expanding fields. Dirt streaked her face where she had, distractedly, brushed at trickles of sweat. Her bare arms and legs grew filthy, as though she dare not pause to rinse the caked, dried mud.

  * * *

  So we dug, side by virtual side, Amanda in her garden and I, in my own way, in the vast, gap-filled digital archives of the slowboat. "What," I finally asked, on repeatedly encountering the same exotic term, "is an eco-pheromone? Our colonist friends were fascinated with them." On-screen, she shivered. "What? Is that significant?"

  "Don't know. A bit of a breeze here, is all." She was kneeling; her attention fixed on the ground until she had tamped down the soil and moistened mulch around the most recent bit of transplanted greenery. It took her a long time; I couldn't imagine what she found so interesting. Finally, she looked up to wink at the camera. "Some pheromones would be welcome."

  "Hmm." It had been a very long time, even by radio. "I could be talked into that."

  "That has never required rhetorical skill." She cackled at my mock glower. "What do you say? Give me a w
hile to wash up, and I'll call you from," and she batted her eyes, "my private chambers."

  "Hmm," I repeated enthusiastically. This time we both laughed.

  We met at the appointed time, each in our own cabin. The only alcohol on the lander was in the form of lab supplies, pure but without character. Amanda named a brandy we both favored, suggesting that I enjoy for two.

  Then, touchingly, she called up one of my compositions, the first she had ever experienced. Arpeggios from a thousand synthesized instruments rippled and interlaced in counterpoint to a spectacular video from Alpha Centauri 4. Snowcapped mountains glittered in countless colors. Shadows cast by three suns lengthened and blended. One by one, the suns set, until only a warm red twilight glow remained. Music and dusk faded together into an infinite sea of stars.

  What we said and did . . . those are important only to us. Afterward, I slept soundly for the first time in a long while.

  * * *