Pariah

by W. Michael Gear

  Dan nodded to himself. “Deb was fast. Talina Perez was even faster. Right there in the street. Talina’s the solution. Plead with her to return. Shig, she’ll come for you. Let’s wander down to the radio room and solve this whole fucking mess. Hell, I’ll even build her a new house. Big as mine.”

  Shig lifted his wine, slowly drank it. Not that it was that big a glass to start with. Finished, he set it carefully on the bar. Turning to Dan, he smiled, expression benign. “No sense in bothering Talina. Like I said, I told Benteen everything he needed to know. If he didn’t listen, that’s not my fault.”

  And with that, Shig slipped off the stool and strolled his way through the crowd. His hands were clasped behind him as he climbed the steps and disappeared outside.

  49

  Breakfast consisted of the unexpected delight of purple sweet potatoes. Dortmund hadn’t expected the treat, especially after the utilitarian food at Corporate Mine, or the greens from supper the night before. He promised himself that the moment he got back to Transluna, he was eating an entire plate of bacon and eggs.

  The spooky little girl was doing the dishes while Talina fiddled with the radio she’d discovered in one of the cabinets.

  Dortmund sat at the table, his head slightly fuzzy from last night’s whiskey, and tried to put everything Talina had told him into context. It was so damned hard to accept her version of history when it was his inconceivable future.

  “Last night you told me that all the re-wilded bison are dead in the Great Plains preserve. They are an iconic keystone species. The notion that they could all just die? Unacceptable.” He’d spent half the night fretting about it.

  Talina plugged in the power, lights on the radio glowing to life. “Yep. I remember that rinderpest was the final knockout.”

  “Rinderpest? In North America? Impossible. It’s only in South Africa.”

  “Hey, climate was changing, right? Maybe conditions in the Great Plains got similar enough that the disease was viable. Some tourist from Johannesburg stepped out of a tube and opened his suitcase. Out came a tsetse fly. I don’t know how it happened, it just did.”

  He played with his cup, having drunk all of the tea. “Was it only the genetically pure Yellowstone animals that died? What about the commercial bison?”

  “Most of them made it. The ranchers had corrals, could vaccinate. A lot of them used gene therapy to introduce rinderpest resistance from Cape buffalo to their animals.” Talina turned a knob and a scratchy voice talking about some mine could be heard through what looked like a homemade speaker.

  “What about the other preserves? The Arctic one? The Siberian steppe? The reintroduced mammoths, polar bears, and Irish elk?”

  “Pretty much the same story,” Talina told him. “I do remember that when the evolutionists stepped in, they saved the mammoths by injecting them with elephant genes. Something about the immune system.”

  “They turned them into hybrids!” he thundered. “Polluted the genetic purity of those animals?”

  Talina shot him a sidelong look. “You make it sound like sacrilege.”

  “More like an abomination,” he growled, aware that Kylee was studying him through those wide blue eyes that gave him the chills. They seemed too large, the oversized pupils too black. Like they should be in some alien’s face.

  Talina turned the radio off. “If there’s an emergency, just flip the switch and call Port Authority.”

  Then she walked over, bent down to stare into Dortmund’s eyes. Something violent was stirring in those abnormally dark pupils as Talina said, “Here’s the thing, Doc: You’re looking right at a hybrid. Me. I’m chock full of quetzal TriNA. So, I guess in your book, I’m an abomination. Makes me really sensitive after that comment last night about locking me into a lab.”

  He blinked, an unaccustomed shiver of fear fingering its way through his guts.

  She chuckled then, reading his unease. Backing away, she said, “Come on. Time to check what’s left of the garden.”

  Dortmund exhaled his tension and fingered his empty tea cup. He wondered what disturbed him the most, that his precious genetically pure animals were dead? That the only way to save other species had been to pollute them by the addition of tailored genes? Or that he was stuck in the wilderness with a heartless bitch like Talina or her weird child?

  “Doc? You coming?” Talina called from the door where she had grabbed up her rifle. “This is your chance to get a feel for the bush. See what damage the evolutionists have done to Donovan.”

  “Wouldn’t miss it,” he murmured dully and climbed to his feet.

  He followed them out into the morning, Capella’s bright light warm and reassuring on his skin as he accompanied the woman and girl down a faint path in the stone. Again the perfume of the morning air filled his nostrils. The musical hum of the invertebrates rose from the vegetation-filled drainage toward which the trail descended.

  On the way they passed the trash dump. Humans were such pigs. Among the old containers he could see cans, packaging, and, much to his surprise, even the angular fragments of a Delftware bowl. The blue-and-white pattern looked so out of place on this distant world. What bizarre circumstances had brought the Delft bowl across the stars, clear out to Rork Springs Base, only to have it end up dropped and shattered?

  “Doc,” Talina called over her shoulder, “you stay close. Just about everything out here will kill you. We’re in the transition zone between the bush and true forest, so watch out for the roots.”

  “The roots?”

  “Yeah, most of the plants move. If the roots grab you, it can be really tough to pull loose. Listen to Kylee. If she gives you an order, follow it. Immediately.”

  “That little girl?”

  “She’s survived alone in the forest for a year, Doc.”

  “I’m not a child!” Weisbacher objected indignantly.

  “As good as,” the little girl mumbled. “Even Tuska knew when to shut up and learn.”

  “Who’s Tuska?” Dortmund asked as he paid attention to the steep footing. Then they encountered steps cut into the stone.

  “Her little brother,” Talina answered.

  Dortmund rolled his eyes, figuring there was no sense in provoking more abuse.

  He got his first good look at the trees growing up out of the drainage. Dendritically patterned, similar to terrestrial trees, but different in that the branches were triangular in cross section. Then it hit him that they had a much more uniform morphology, not as random as earthly specimens. And the leaves were different, broader, curiously blue in tint. He stopped short, aware that the branches were moving, shifting the leaves to better reap Capella’s energy.

  “Amazing! Do you see the movement?”

  “It gets even better, Doc,” Talina called from below. “Unlike Earth, the whole plant moves, travels. Plant a tree in your yard, you could come home a week later and it’s halfway down the block.”

  “Are they sentient?” He scrambled to catch up.

  “We don’t know. Not enough research done. And Iji tells me that he’s not sure where the division is between what’s a plant and what’s an animal. Unlike Earth, the kingdoms might just blur together in the middle. You’ll find what we call ‘live vines’ in the trees. They look just like a plant, but they move like an animal. Seem to hunt as well as photosynthesize.”

  At the bottom of the stone steps, Talina had stopped. She was sniffing the air, as was the little girl. The sight made Dortmund think of hunting dogs at the edge of a woods.

  He looked around the blue-green paradise, tried to take in the unusual forms of plants, the slightly off coloration, as if a color-blind child had painted them. The chime was louder here, almost enough to be uncomfortable.

  “What are you smelling?” he asked, sniffing on his own.

  “Checking for quetzal or one of the other predators,” Talina told him
. “Each has its own odor.”

  He sniffed again. “Like what?”

  “Forget it, Doc. You’re not an abomination like Kylee and me. Best you’ll get is the slight tang of vinegar. If you do, stop. Back away the way you came. It means a bem or skewer are way too close.”

  “Vinegar.”

  “Yeah, that’s about the only warning you’ll get. But if you look close at the rocks, you’ll finally figure out which is the real predator. When you pick out the two rocks that look the same, one is real and the other is ready to kill you.”

  Step by step he followed them into a world of blue green. Thumb-sized creatures flitted from branch to branch, hanging vines graced with peculiarly shaped leaves shifted as he passed, and he was surprised when the plants he brushed either recoiled or turned their leaves toward him, as if to discern the nature of his intrusion upon their world.

  I shouldn’t be out here without a protective suit.

  As soon as he thought it, the notion struck him as ludicrous. Humans had been wandering around here for almost thirty years now. Any damage had been done. And Talina had told him that quetzal contamination had to be up close and personal. He recoiled at the thought of sharing saliva with any creature, let alone an alien.

  Hard to think of Talina and the girl as hybrids, their bodies polluted by alien genetic material. The conservationists had steered clear of discussions about humans and purity, arguing that the intermixture of African, Neandertal, Denisovan, Heidlbergensis, and Java genes were just variations accumulated from isolated loops of the human gene pool that finally returned to the main trunk of human evolution.

  Now, who knew what was going on in Talina and Kylee’s genes? This was more than inserting Cape buffalo genes into a bison to provide the animal with resistance to rinderpest, as horrifying as that was. This was the making of something beyond the worst conservationist’s nightmare.

  And Donovanian TriNA has already been carried back to Solar System?

  The true impact finally began to settle in.

  God, I’m a fool. I was so worried about our impact on Donovan when it might be that humanity itself is already doomed.

  He had to get back to Solar System. Raise the alarm. It would require screening, registration and removal of all suspect humans. The best course would be to concentrate them into special stations, separate them from the general population, and maintain a strict quarantine. Implement rigid protocols that . . .

  He lost the thought, distracted by a flight of the most remarkable flying animals cavorting through the high branches; their colors were an almost iridescent red.

  “What are those?” He pointed.

  “Scarlet fliers. One of the most common avian species. Mostly they feed on invertebrates. But you see any fliers with four wings, two front, two rear? You freeze immediately. They’re mobbers, death fliers, the same creatures that almost killed Supervisor Aguila.”

  “She was out here?”

  “They got her in the mine yard, maybe ten meters from where you hid in my aircar.” Talina jabbed a finger his way, her eyes gimlet hard. “You see them, you freeze. Like stone. And you don’t fucking move until they’ve flown away. It’s your only chance. You panic and strike at them, try and bat them away? You’ll be sliced thinner than sandwich meat. After five minutes, only your bloody skeleton will be left.”

  “Aren’t you being a bit melodramatic?”

  She turned away, saying, “Might as well let Donovan kill you right off. Sooner or later stupid is always a death sentence.”

  Dortmund felt the flare of anger, knotted his fists. He was on the verge of storming off into the underbrush when the little girl reached out and grabbed his pants, saying, “You don’t want to go that way.”

  He stopped short, glanced down in irritation. “Why not?”

  She pointed at a delicate lacing of vine with what looked like crimson and orange fruits. “That’s called you’re screwed vine.”

  Dortmund squinted at it, unnerved enough to actually trust the child rather than accede to his initial impression that she was having fun at his expense. Somehow the alien-eyed child didn’t strike him as the usual juvenile prankster.

  “You’re screwed vine? That’s really its name?”

  The little girl nodded. “It drops around you like a net and draws tight. Then those orange globes start digesting you.”

  Dortmund couldn’t help it, he burst out laughing. “Is everything here deadly?”

  “Pretty much,” the girl told him solemnly. “You follow me. Put your feet where I put mine. And don’t blow Talina off. She means it about being stupid.”

  Dortmund took a deep breath, a curious tension around his heart. Taking a glance back at the you’re screwed vine, he shook his head but did as the little girl told him.

  The spring could have been locked away in a sylvan hollow somewhere on Earth but for the slightly too-blue vegetation. The water leaked out of the sandstone, maybe ten gallons per minute. A sialon collector led to a small solar electric pump, which sent water uphill to the dome through a flexible pipeline.

  “That’s the water supply,” Talina told him. Then she gave him a ghoulish grin. “It’s always nice to check the source, don’t you think? Make sure there’s not a dead chamois decomposing just up from the intake.”

  He made a face, hand to his stomach. “I could have gone all day and not heard that.”

  “Sorry, Doc. But you tend to set yourself up for that kind of abuse.”

  He didn’t find it funny. “Where’s this garden supposed to be?”

  “Just downstream.” Talina eased around him, careful not to disturb a low plant with four-inch thorns. “That’s thorncactus. Trust me, you don’t want to be stuck.”

  For once he could agree without skepticism. Again he surrendered himself to follow the little girl, mimicking her steps and actions.

  He could almost believe the child had indeed survived on her own in the bush. Everything these people told him defied credulity, but he was slowly coming to the conclusion that it was all a staggering truth.

  They hadn’t gone more than twenty meters before the narrow sandstone walls opened. Here the larger trees were missing. In their place he could see decomposing stumps. Among them, looking remarkably alien, but reassuringly familiar, were sprinkled terrestrial plants. Each growing in an open patch of soil.

  “Who tends this?” he asked. “Looks like someone weeded it.”

  “Doc, no one’s lived here for over a decade now.” Talina bent down, snapped a green bean from one of the plants, and popped it into her mouth. After chewing, she said, “That’s why there’s no corn. It’s so much of a domesticate it can’t broadcast its kernels past the husks. Hey, look! Poblanos!”

  Dortmund watched her pick a large green pepper from a waist-high plant.

  “Not as good as Mundo,” Kylee said. “But it will do. ’Specially if there’s hunting here.”

  “Should be crest and fastbreak,” Talina answered. To Dortmund she said, “We can digest the animal proteins. As to the native plants? Forget it. If they don’t poison you outright, you shit it out exactly as it went in.”

  “What a charming mental image you’ve just conjured,” he muttered to himself, taking an inventory of the garden. Peas, beans, peppers, what looked like potatoes, several grains that grew in different clumps, grapes, and an apple tree. One of the genetically augmented varieties that bloomed and produced fruit year round.

  He walked over, was about to reach for one of the low-hanging fruit when Kylee shouted, “No!”

  Dortmund froze, more out of start than understanding.

  “Look up the branch a ways,” Kylee told him. “See the blue-green plant?”

  “I do.”

  “That’s gotcha vine. It won’t kill you, but pulling the little hooks out of your skin really hurts and takes hours.”

 
Talina stepped up and studied the length of plant. “Unusual to see one in a terrestrial tree.” She wandered around, followed the long body of the vine down, then across the ground almost three meters to where the roots appeared to have a tenuous hold on the soil.

  “I don’t get it? Why’s it rooted way out here?” Dortmund looked around. “In fact there’s nothing growing under the tree. Or around any of the garden plants. What gives?”

  “Chemistry,” Kylee told him, her voice filled with little-girl pride. “Earth plants have roots that produce chemicals. It’s how they compete for space. Donovan’s plants don’t use chemicals in the roots. Instead they move, try and strangle the other plants’ roots.”

  “She’s right,” Talina added as she plucked a small red tomato from a vine. “You get into deep forest and you’ll see giant trees uprooting each other.”

  “So, how long has this garden been here?”

  “Maybe twenty-five, twenty-six years.”

  “Has it spread? Traveled down the drainage? Is it crowding out Donovanian plants?”

  “Don’t know. Let’s go look.”

  Again Talina led the way, Kylee following. Twice she stopped, made them back away, and circle around. Once it was for something called a sidewinder, the second time for inoffensive-looking stalks that stood about knee high. She called them brown caps.

  All in all, they traveled half a kilometer down the drainage and found only two terrestrial plants: a grape vine and a large prickly pear cactus.

  Climbing out onto the slickrock, Dortmund seated himself and looked back up the barren stone incline toward the Rork Springs Dome. “The question is begged: Why aren’t the terrestrial plants expanding if their root chemistry keeps Donovanian plants at bay?”

  “Rebecca monitored the same thing at Mundo,” Kylee told him.