Analog SFF, November 2009 Read online

  Exhausted, they spent the entire next day in the cave, consuming nutrition bars and creating small private areas with shards of fallen pahoehoe lava cleared from the floor. The raindrops hitting the top of their cave sounded like distant, muffled drums. At one place, water dripped down from the roof of the lava tube. They “corked” a segment of hollow blackwood log left over from the Resolution II's construction, a volume of about half a cubic meter, to place beneath it.

  Jacques nursed his swollen foot and recounted his adventures as the storm subsided. He also made another plaque:

  New Landing, Day 35

  Great storm. Rescued—

  Below he laboriously scratched in the full names of his party.

  Rainwater, seeping in, filled a large sandy-bottomed depression in the lower part of the cave, and they bathed in shifts. Then they washed their shipsuits and hung them to dry.

  Jacques arose before the others to watch the sun rise the next day. While he was happy to have achieved his goal in rescuing other survivors, he had grown used to being alone and not entirely unhappy with it. In the morning light, he found the shore almost lapping at their cave entrance and the remains of the Resolution II bobbing in the still-disturbed lake at the end of its tether. He found a secure place above the cave entrance to place his plaque and went back in to wake the others.

  There was, he realized a decision to make. Most of the camp outside the lava tube had been washed away. The raft was in no shape to set out again, but every day, every hour, of delay meant that someone might die who might otherwise be saved. Alone, Jacques would have gone back to forest camp for more supplies. Now, with others present who might question his judgment, he hesitated.

  Collette stepped smoothly into the silence with a clear, bell-like voice. “Here we are, four naked savages at the mercy of storms and hungry monsters with dreams of climbing back to starflight. Well, what should we do, Jacques?” Collette asked. “You know this place better than we do."

  Jacques looked around at them, uncertain.

  "What would you do if we weren't here?” Doc Yu asked.

  Jacques told him.

  "Ah.” Yu smiled. “And how does our being here change that?"

  Jacques shrugged. His situation had suddenly moved from straightforward survival to something involving leadership and perhaps even politics. He was not comfortable with that.

  "With all of us working together, we should be able to do it faster,” Soob interjected. “We can hunt more and carry more. I think we should add another log to the raft, and some more cross bracing."

  Jacques looked around him. Heads nodded. A consensus seemed to be forming. “Very well. Let us pack our things and go. We should be able to make Rim Cave by sunset if we leave now.” The sun, he reflected, seemed to be larger, warmer, and up longer than when he first revived. But he had no way of measuring it.

  About halfway up the caldera wall, Jacques saw a dark shape against a towering white cloud.

  "Everyone, look up, about thirty degrees left of the trail. That's a megabat."

  "It looks as big as an airliner,” Collette said. “Do you think it's the one that ate Ascendant?"

  "I've only seen one at a time, but I can't imagine there's only one in the whole ecosystem. I think they prefer feeding at night—probably see well into the infrared."

  "The one that ate Ascendant,” she replied calmly, “was one that found something to eat in the daytime."

  Jacques nodded nervously and increased his pace as they all took turns watching the sky.

  They reached Rim Cave at sunset and nervously worked to expand its sleeping area well into twilight. The soft whummm, whummm of huge wings was heard in the night, but no long beak attempted the entrance this time.

  As dawn broke, Collette and Jacques found themselves together outside the cave mouth.

  "An early riser, too, I see,” she said.

  "And one with a French given name, too. This seems auspicious.” Jacques smiled.

  "It's my mother's name. My parents met in Kindu, centuries ago now,” Collette said. “It dates from the Belgian colonial period."

  "My great-grandmother was a French diplomat in Papua New Guinea,” Jacques replied. “My great grandfather was a Hong Kong businessman. They settled there, in the high mountains. Someone in each of the last four generations has had a French given name."

  At Forest Camp, hunting and gathering was problematic. There were few bitterwood tree fruits to be found, and those seemed well past their prime. Hirachnoids had grown scarce as well and for the first time, Jacques failed to see a kangasaur.

  That night in the lava tube, Soob was worried. “It is very difficult to be sure, but we have found in one day somewhat less than is needed to sustain us for three—even supposing that we are not missing crucial trace nutrients. We need another food source. What else have you tried?"

  Jacques shook his head. “My priority has been the rescue of other crew members. After finding enough to keep me going, I focused on that and did not take additional chances."

  "I see."

  "Did the bitterwood pulp wood actually make you sick?” Doc Yu asked.

  Jacques laughed. “I didn't try very much."

  "The molecules that cause the bitterness may be more fragile than the molecules of nourishment. I suggest we try cooking it. What about tanglegrass?"

  "I haven't tried that at all,” Jacques answered. Then he remembered what he'd seen when he'd caught his foot in some and pulled it out of loose earth. “It has a thick white root, however."

  And so the conversation went. By mid-morning the next day, they had determined that bitterwood pulp was indigestible, regardless of what one did to it. Tanglegrass root was too hard to eat raw, but could be pounded into a paste that didn't make anyone sick; whether it was nourishing would have to be determined later.

  But the big surprise, in Jacques mind, was flute plant fronds. Boiled, they proved almost indistinguishable from spinach. Young flute plant shoots also proved edible when boiled soft enough to chew.

  They set out for Rim Cave by noon with a corked blackwood log and forty person-days worth of provisions. Soob and Doc Yu carried the log, packed with the supplies, while Collette and Jacques headed over to Ascendant's CSU to see if there was anything else to salvage.

  Jacques attacked the area behind the access panel with his multitool. Wires, connectors, optical fibers, braces, components—anything he could pull out quickly went into their emergency kit bags. In the main compartment, the smell had gone and Ascendant's skull lay, face still away, completely clean.

  "She had beautiful bones,” Collette said. “I wonder what cleaned them?"

  "I don't know,” he said. “Why?"

  She smiled at him. “Protein.” Then she laughed at his reaction. “There are only a few ways to do carbon-based life, and what we find here, like about 45 percent of what we find anywhere, must do it our way. If they can eat us, we might be able to eat them."

  "We need to be on our way,” Jacques said, recovering his equilibrium. “The sun is about halfway down."

  As they strode up the fairly well-worn path toward Rim Cave and the tree-bearers, Jacques contemplated the path of their sun. It seemed to be setting in the same place, yet days seemed to be getting longer and hotter. The planet's orbit must be eccentric, he thought. How close to its sun would it get?

  Lost in thought, he was utterly and totally surprised when one of the most bizarre apparitions he had ever seen in his life loomed in front of him, held up a hand, and said, “Well, praise the lord! Jack's Song, I presume?"

  * * * *

  Chapter 6

  Community

  It was a large ruddy-faced man dressed in a kind of caveman get up—an animal skin of some kind wrapped around his waist and over a shoulder. He had a large bag made of the same skin slung over his shoulder and a large flute plant staff with the fronds still attached.

  "That's me,” Jacques said. “But how did you know? What do you call yourself?"
/>   "Gabe Eddie,” he stuck out a hand, which Jacques shook. “Just call me Gabe. I was a psych warfare troop on the Resolution. I'm from New Jerusalem. I've been following your trails for days now—all those cairns and markers, with your name on several."

  "Of course,” Jacques said.

  "We need to catch up with the rest of our party,” Collette said. “We have a camp on the rim in a lava tube, which we should be in before the megabats come out."

  "Jacques, you don't mind me joining your party, do you? My dragon hole's a little farther south on the rim than yours."

  "Agreed, but we should start walking,” Jacques said, starting to pace up the trail. “My colleague is Lieutenant Collette Obota, of the expeditionary police."

  A transient frown passed Eddie's face. “That's long ago and far away now."

  "Nonetheless, that is our governing authority. Anyway, we all live forever now. Empress Marie may still rule—and our laws as well."

  Gabe's expression resolved itself into a smile and a nod as he tagged along. “Well, maybe. But your gal's prettier than the Empress is, though a bit underdressed."

  Collette laughed. “But very comfortable. How do you put up with that ... skin?"

  "Smoked, scraped, soaked, scraped, and soaked. Rendered some fat to oil and soften it."

  "Really?” Collette sounded skeptical. “Gabe, do you know more about how we got here?"

  "More than what?” There was a hint of wariness in this answer of a question with a question.

  "None of our CSUs seem to have a full record of what happened at 36 Ophiuchi, except that the homing lasers failed. Resolution didn't stop there and ended up here."

  "Mem'ry triage,” Gabe said quickly. “Takes power to correct and refresh memory—when the CSUs get low, they skip whatever ain't immediately needed. I'd guess we all been here a while. Wakin’ someone up alone at the bottom of the sea is kind of the last resort."

  The power needed to refresh memory was trivial, but Jacques didn't want to start out on Eddie's wrong side. He simply said, “That's interesting. Do you have any ideas, Collette?"

  "Those who crashed on land may have used more power for cooling than those of us deep in the lake needed for oxygen,” she said. “That's why there's still hope to rescue some more."

  "You kill a dinoroo, yet Jacques?” Gabe asked

  "Dinoroo? There is an animal I call a kangasaur. That's a bipedal hopper about six meters tall as an adult, pretty much hairless?"

  "That's a dinoroo!"

  "I almost killed one by hitting it in the head when it came at me. They've left me alone since—I wonder if they aren't able to communicate the danger to each other?"

  "Wouldn't know. I got me a whole family of ‘em with a spear thrower, though—great meat and useful skins. Almost like the Lord put ‘em there for us. Haven't seen many around lately, though."

  "Me neither,” Jacques answered. “I suspect something seasonal.” He saw movement on the path ahead of them. “There's Soob and Doc!” During the conversation, they'd caught up with the tree-bearers. Collette gave her emergency bag to Jacques and rushed forward to help.

  With three people carrying the blackwood log, they were able to arrive at Rim Cave well before sunset. Excited by the new arrival, they talked well into the night, comparing notes. Gabe told of hunting at night, from blinds, and had observed a list of critters Jacques hadn't seen, including what he called a “roachrunner,” a hairy beetlelike thing that went after any meat left out for more than an hour.

  "You wouldn't believe how they fly,” he said. “No sound at all. They just float up. I swatted one once; it kind of popped."

  For his part, Gabe was surprised that the legs of “spinyballs,” as he called the hirachnoids, were edible. Jacques offered him one of the last remaining ones, but Gabe turned it down. “Got my own meat,” he said.

  The next morning Jacques and Collette got up to watch the sunrise. It was even bigger and redder near the horizon.

  "I don't believe this character,” Collette said. “New Jerusalem?"

  Jacques shook his head. “New Jerusalem is a big Baptist space colony at the Earth-Sun L4 point. We had a lot of old line Christians among the volunteers. From our point of view, it may seem like a family fight, but nobody was more ready to go after this New Reformation fringe group than the Old Reformation."

  Collette nodded. “I get the picture. Well, he's going to need to realize this isn't New Jerusalem, and it isn't going to be."

  "We're all in this together now,” Jacques said.

  "Watch,” Collette said. “Just watch."

  The walk from the rim down to the beach only took an hour in the relatively cool morning. The water had receded since the storm and the Resolution II was laid out on the sand, its five logs barely held together—mostly by the remaining lashings of its deck braces. The cargo basket was pretty much gone, but they'd brought the makings of another. With five people working, the expanded raft was shipshape again before sunset.

  At daybreak the four men lifted the raft and carried it to the water. “I'm not much of a swimmer, so you three go on,” Gabe said. “I'll hold down the fort here."

  At that point, Collette carried a supply basket down to the raft and handed it up to Doc. She and Jacques pushed the back end of the raft off the sand, jumped on, and waved goodbye to Gabe. Gabe stood on the shore alone, dressed in his Robinson Crusoe costume, open-mouthed, then seemed to recover himself and returned their waves.

  It was very hot on the lake and surprisingly still. As they rowed, they had time to talk.

  "It is too bad we do not have any working electronics,” Doc said.

  Jacques nodded. “Given a thousand years with no maintenance, it's not that surprising. Even my photovoltaic unit didn't work."

  "You thought it might?” Collette said. “Maybe we should try mine."

  Focused on the rescue effort, they had been too busy during daylight hours to perform any such experiments. Collette got her emergency kit and they spread the array on the slightly rolling deck and plugged it into the kit's wristcomp. Nothing happened. They tried Jacques'. It stayed dark. Then they tried Soob's. The comp screen glowed. Jacques felt a surge of relief. Maybe they wouldn't have to reinvent everything.

  "Time?” Soob said. But the screen stayed blank. The device refused to recognize any commands.

  "We have power,” Jacques said at last. “And five wrist comps. When we get back, maybe I can make a working one using pieces of all five."

  "People!” Doc shouted. “Below us, a CSU!"

  Jacques scrambled over to Doc's side and looked down—it was deep, maybe as deep as his had been. That was hopeful.

  Collette donned her emergency suit. By consensus, she and Jacques were the best swimmers. Soob tossed overboard green twine line weighted by a net full of rock to serve as an anchor and communication line. After first sticking their heads in the water to look for parrot-beaked sharks, they dove.

  They came up with Edith Lu. She had spent a day trying to get her damaged CSU to release its canopy—which Jacques managed in seconds from the controls under its access panel. Once on deck, she threw her arms around Jacques and sobbed.

  By sunset, they had completed their circumnavigation of the lake and counted two new companions and four nonsurvivors. Besides Edith Lu, they found social engineer Maria Lopes. Despite being in shallow water, Lopes’ CSU seemed to be in the best shape, and they took careful note of its location for potential future salvage.

  The Resolution II rowed out the next two days, crisscrossing the lake, but no more CSUs were found. Submahn, however, operating on the hunch that behavioral evolution may have had some parallels, made a trap and snared a two-meter parrot-beaked shark. He also caught a previously unseen, flat, eel-like critter and what looked to be a lacustrine version of a hirachnoid. The shark proved delectable.

  When they returned, they had three more mouths to help eat it.

  Leo Suretta, a weapons engineer, had left his CSU-based campsite in t
he forest and, like Gabe, had followed Jacques’ cairns to New Landing. A small, dark man with straight black hair, he had little to say. Evgenie Malenkov, a tall, blond biologist from Coriolis, Luna, an expert in artificial ecologies, had wandered in from a CSU landfall the other side of the mountain with Arroya Montez, a diminutive cyberneticist of striking beauty, who stayed very close to Evgenie and spoke very little.

  Maria Lopes was another matter entirely. A talkative forester from a Portuguese family, she almost immediately started a theological debate with Evgenie, who Jacques took to be Reformed Orthodox, or something of the sort. Lopes was Roman Catholic.

  Edith Lu nodded her head to the theological discussion. “Ascendant would have loved that."

  "You knew her?” Jacques asked.

  "We were physical skills training partners. She was convinced the Anglican communion had found its way to a world view that was both Christian and consistent with ‘the book of nature,’ as she called it. She liked to quote Bacon."

  "Are you part of any belief system?” Jacques asked. He'd been raised Buddhist, himself, but had given it up, unwilling to swallow the notion of rebirth, and unwilling to ignore it.

  Edith shook her head, “As far as I can tell, what you see is what you get. My people have some wonderful old rituals that are fun to reenact, as long as you take them allegorically, and not too seriously at that. I suppose I'm Confucian, in a way. I like traditions and feel comfort in them, but I don't ascribe magical powers to them."

  At dusk, they retreated to the cave, created more rooms, and then slept as people got tired. Sometime in the night, Edith found her way to Jacques’ “room” and nestled in beside him.

  "Are you sure this is wise?” he asked.

  "You're the only one I know,” she said. “Just hold me. Please don't send me away."

  Jacques didn't. They'd had one night together while at the academy, a very sweet but unexciting experience for him. While he was fond of Edith in a brotherly way, he hadn't seen her as a partner; they were both too reticent. In a good pairing, he thought, people's natures would be complementary, filling in each other's weaknesses and abating each other's enthusiasms. He dreamed of a strong partner, to compensate for his own hesitation and diffidence.