Alien Earth (42 page)

But more acute than the sensations from the interior of the gondola was her awareness of the womb chambers that had always been a physical part of her natural body. The ones adapted to Humans were very accessible, especially the sad loneliness of the one Raef had once occupied. Scar tissue stood thick between her and the Arthroplana’s chamber, but even that was not totally proof against her new awareness. She groped after sensations of the parasite. He was still alive, that she could ascertain, but very still. The thought of him inside her, crouched motionless, made her abruptly uneasy. She wished she could shake him from his stillness, compel him to action as he had once compelled her, but he was beyond her, safely insulated within her own body from any revenge she might ever want to extract. In his own way, he was as inscrutable as this object she followed.

[Parasite!] she tried again, despite how it angered her to speak to him at all. [I would have words with you concerning something I have found.]

Still no response. [Then be silent,] she warned him angrily. [Be silent until the end of time, for you’ll get no more words from me.] And she left them, Tug in his silence and the object in its wordless cry, and turned back toward a blue-green planet and a friend.

Dawns were colder now
.
Colder, but still well worth it. Her eyes had adjusted to the predawn dimness, and Connie walked well and surely eastward over the face of the plain. Already she knew this area, every dip and swell, the place where the ground suddenly became stonier, the patch of little dry-leaved bushes whose tiny twigs clawed at her legs as she walked through them. Her feet had become toughened, so that only the most determined thorn could get through her callused soles. She walked steadily, letting her body’s efforts warm her, heading toward the spot where she liked to meet the dawn.

It was getting easier not to think all the time. After all
those years spent worrying and thinking, chewing every moment of her existence in a desperate attempt to force it to make sense, she had learned how to stop thinking and just be. Finding peace just by being Human, by accepting the day-by-day aspect of her future. Nothing would be sure. But nothing would be impossible.

At first the prospect of being awake the rest of her life had frightened her. It shortened her span so much. Without ever consciously planning it, she had made Waitsleep her clutch at immortality. What ancient women had once tried to do by having children, to assure that some part of themselves would continue into the future, she had tried to do by hyphenating her life, living it only in tiny miserly snatches that never gave her time to taste anything. Now that was taken from her, and she had found that the true way to extend her life was to simply be conscious of it, every passing moment, not by planning ahead or worrying about what came next, but simply by experiencing it.

To what purpose? That had been her next panic attack. John had been so full of purposes that it daunted her. Gathering specimens, attempting to repair the shuttle, monitoring the screens and radios in case some message came from somewhere. And then Raef had come, to raise and dash all his hopes in one insane hour. Well, now he had Raef to talk to and care for. But when Raef was gone, what would he do?

“He’ll have me. And I’ll have him.” She said the words aloud, tasted the inherent stillness and burden of them. And still she was glad he had come to her, that night, and every night since then. Still she was glad they could touch, could mate even if in the midst of their passions she could not forget that the act was devoid of any lasting significance, that the closeness they strained toward was momentary and would never be expressed in a child.

She thought of what John had told her concerning Earth Affirmed’s secret colony attempts. Women there had actually conceived. She wondered how long they had lived without the growth suppressants and aging retardants before that had happened. She would have years ahead of her in which her body might reawaken to a more natural cycle. For a few moments she tempted herself to hope as she hiked along. Then her more pragmatic side reminded herself that any eggs her
body might ever release were already well over a hundred years old due to her Waitsleep sojourns, as were the sperm John released into her. She forced herself to realize how minute the chance that such could join and produce a viable child, let alone that her body could bear one to full term. And if they did, then what would become of it? Would it outlive her and John, to wander the Earth alone, the very last Human of all?

No. She was resigned to it now. The purpose of their mating was not to ensure the continuance of their species, but only for themselves. We come together, she thought, like the day and the night, merging briefly into one, but maintaining our separateness. The simplicity of it filled her with a sort of awe. This we do, not even because it is good and healthy for us, but for the joy of it. For the now of being one.

It all came back to purpose. And she had none. None save living and being a part of it all. Taking and giving, without worrying if traces of her passage were left or not. She would never be able to measure the worth of her day in accomplished tasks again. All purpose was so artificial and tiny when balanced against being. Sometimes, when she stood still, she thought she could feel it pulsing through her with the blood that her heart pumped. She wanted to be able to express to John that current that joined her to the Earth, with the air that flowed into her lungs and the moisture that evaporated from her skin. Being part of it is enough, she wanted to tell him. When we are joined and are part of each other, that is enough.

She let the thoughts fade out of her mind and kept walking. She moved up a slight grade. Soon she would come to where it softly peaked. It was no ridge, no more than a higher swell in the prairie’s constant undulation. But from the top, she would be able to look down to a distant horizon and watch the sun rise over it. Every dawn she came here for this.

Myths and rituals. She was consciously aware of how she was leaning toward them, of how she imposed them on her days. She had decided it was good. It felt right to her, and anymore, that was as good a justification of any. So she would greet the sun each dawn, and visit the stream for water every day, and clasp maleness within her every night. She smiled into the predawn greyness, waiting for the sun.

Raef came awake again
.
Again and again and again. He seemed he never really slept anymore. Maybe all the years inside Evangeline had robbed him of the trick of sleep, maybe he could no longer really do it. He felt like a cork on a heavy net, that bobs out of sight in the swell, but rises again to the surface when the wave is past. He dipped into unconsciousness and up again, and the unconsciousness might have been sleep, or something else.

But now he was awake. Evangeline’s voice had awakened him, Evangeline, using Mother’s voice, but he knew it was her, calling out to him, “I’m coming, I’m coming,” so that he almost expected to hear foot treads on a carpeted staircase, smell the familiar smell of hair spray mixed with diner grease that was his mom’s smell when she came home from work.

It didn’t come, and he opened his eyes. Shuttle. The walls were greening, moss or slime mold or something was gently greening the interior walls, fuzzing them here, slicking them there. The rotting rich smell of a greenhouse was around him, and he recognized that that was where the warmth inside the shuttle was coming from. He was as snug as a bug in a compost heap. He thought of just staying there in the lounger and dying, and rotting down right along with the rest of the shuttle. Make a greener spot on the plain’s brown face. Not a bad destiny.

But no. Not with Evangeline’s voice still ringing in his ears.

He sat up slowly, gripping the arms of the lounger to pull himself up. It must have taken him longer than he thought, because suddenly John was beside him, saying, “Need help, Raef?”

“Nope.” He sat breathing a minute. The one arm was still almost useless, but his leg had almost come back. He could thud and drag along on it if he had to, and he had a feeling that he needed to now. “I’m going outside.” He swung his feet carefully over the side of the lounger.

John didn’t argue. Just, “Why?”

“Give me some water, will you? My cup’s around here somewhere.” And while John found the cup and filled it, he said, “When I was a kid, we lived for a while in a house in
a bad neighborhood; it was right on the edge of the industrial district. Trains went through at night, just a few blocks from the place. Most of the people in the neighborhood only lived there because they had to, uh, it was the only place they could afford. Packs of kids gathered on the corner at night, and there was a crackhouse that had been busted and condemned, and one night the kids burned it down. Anyway. It was that kind of a place. No one there was much of anything.”

John gave him the water. Raef knew that he barely understood any of his reminiscences, but he always nodded and listened. Good kid. He drank, set the cup carefully down on the lounger arm.

“Where’s Connie?” Raef asked suddenly.

“Outside, probably. She likes dawn, even when it’s cold. Look, Raef, why don’t you lie back and take it easy for a while? I’ll help you go outside later in the day, when it’s warmer.”

Raef shook his head and cleared his throat. “There was this real old black lady, lived next door to us. Real old. But sometimes in summers she’d still come outside and try to work in her garden. And every day, no matter what, rain or shine or snow, she’d get up real early and go out and look up at the sky. I asked her why, one time, and she told me she knew the end of the world was coming, and that when it came, Jesus was going to come out of the sky on a big white horse and carry her away.”

Raef pushed out of the lounger. It was only a couple of inches to the floor. There. Take a deep breath and stand up. John made as if to help him but Raef waved him aside. “I’m gonna go outside and look for Jesus,” he said, and then laughed wildly at the consternation on John’s face.

He set out down the companionway, going from grip to grip while John fluttered and clucked behind him. Briefly he wished for weightlessness, to be able to rung down this aisle and then fling himself out into space. Then he decided it was good, really, to die on Earth and be able to rot back into being a part of something.

Here was the door, blowing brisk blue air in at him, and he stood in it, just breathing it, feeling the sweat chill on his body. The ladder down looked very long. He maneuvered his
body around until his back was to the opening, and went down the ladder, first his good foot, then bad foot to the same step, then good foot down while his bad leg wobbled and he tried to hold most of his weight on his hand. He’d intended to count the steps, but found that anything more than eight might just as well be infinite. He went down them forever.

At the bottom he clung to the ladder and sweated and breathed while John came swiftly down it. He was grinning, but silent. He let Raef turn, to see Connie, brown and strong, racing across the plain toward them. She was leaping and shouting and waving her arms, but her words were carried away by the wind that followed her.

Behind her, Evangeline, bigger and whiter than any horse, swept down from the horizon to save them all.

E
VANGELINE WAS SO CLOSE
,
she had become the horizon, a magic floating mountain that had materialized east of the shuttle. Her shadow was a pool of night in the midst of the early day, and the contrast between it and the sharp white glittering of her body was almost more than Human eyes could bear. Mostly they walked with their eyes cast down. “Solar power,” Raef said once, inanely.

“What?” asked John. Twice he tried to take Raef’s arm but the older man insisted on limping on his own. It made the going much slower, and listening to his labored breathing was painful.

“I always wondered … what she lived on … what made her go. Never got to asking her about it. But I bet … she gets energy from sunlight … somehow.”

“Maybe.” John shrugged. It was outside his area of expertise to even guess. He glanced over at Connie, who kept silent pace beside them. Her eyes were downcast, from more than the glare of Evangeline’s body, he suspected. It was as if she memorized every granule of soil, every leaf and node on every plant they passed. He didn’t need to ask her what she was thinking. Only last night they had talked about it, Connie being brief as poetry when she spoke and as clear. Earlier they had coupled, but then they had lain side by side, feeling the warmth between them and the chill touch of the autumn night against their backs.

“I never want to leave this planet again,” she’d said, as if he’d just proposed it. “After Raef is dead,” (and she’d said it matter-of-factly, not coldly, but not with the dread she once imparted to the word) “we should travel. Always. To see as much as we can before we, too, die and become part of it again. That’s all I want anymore.”

Her words hadn’t seemed to require any consent from him, and he hadn’t replied at all in words. Only moved closer to her, and held her warmth as a charm against the chill of the night.

“Can almost hear her … sometimes … in my head.” Raef paused abruptly and stood, head thrust forward and eyes down. The effort of his breathing moved his shoulders up and down, and the air made a noise through his nose.

“Hear who?” John asked as they waited for Raef to catch his breath.

“Evangeline, of course. Who else?” He asked as if it made perfect sense. And he’d set out at his stubborn plod again.

In the end, they’d more than half carried him that final stretch to the ship. His height made it awkward, but John got an arm around his waist and was able to take most of the weight off his bad side. Either John’s sojourn on Earth had built up his muscles, or Raef weighed much less than he looked. Perhaps both, John thought. He glanced over once at Connie, who had Raef’s good hand pressing on her shoulder. The sturdy brown woman who met his gaze bore little resemblance to the timid crew person who had begun this voyage so long ago.

She spoke without preamble. “Are you going all the way back to the ship, too?”

John silently mulled it for a few steps. “I don’t think Raef can make it without us. Could you, Raef?”

Sweat was cutting runnels through the dust on the old man’s face. Old. Yes, Raef had gotten old in the gravity and pain of his last few days. “Probably not,” he admitted. The skin around his mouth was grey and pinched.

John spoke to Connie. “We have to get him to a medic chamber, and put some monitors on him. Then, the ship’s computer can advise …”

“No.” Raef’s emphasis was calm but strong. “Just take me to a womb chamber. That’ll be good enough.”

“You sure that’s what you want?”

“I’m sure,” Raef said. He managed a grim smile. “Just get me that far. Then if you two want to leave—I’ll understand.”

“But Tug might not understand. Almost certainly won’t understand,” Connie pointed out. “What do we do if he seals up the gondola and just takes off into space again?”

“I don’t know,” John admitted.

“He won’t. He can’t … It’s not up to Tug, anymore…. And if I know Evangeline at all … she’ll let you do whatever you want.” The words were hard for Raef.

“You sure of that?” Connie asked softly.

“After what she’s been through … she’s not about to start forcing other people … to do things they don’t want to do,” Raef asserted breathlessly.

“Not that part. Are you sure Tug’s not in charge anymore?”

“Almost sure,” Raef hedged. Sharp as a knife edge was the change as they stepped from sunlight into the dimness of Evangeline’s shadow. Raef halted them with a motion. “Because,” he added a breath later. “If it was up to Tug, I don’t think they’d have come back at all…. He was none too fond of me at our last parting. And he didn’t seem overly concerned over you two, either…. If you want the honest truth. He was more wrapped up in how he was going to get control of Evangeline again.”

John and Connie exchanged doubtful glances.

“Tug never gave a damn about any of us,” Raef said bluntly. “Not in any way we’d call Humane. Me in particular…. I was a house cat, maybe, but one … that he’d dump at the pound or have put to sleep the first time I was any trouble.”

“What?” Connie asked in consternation.

“Never mind,” Raef snorted disgruntledly. “Just get me back inside and back into a womb … where I can talk to someone who understands what the hell I’m saying…. And if you don’t want to stay then, well, no hard feelings.”

He shook off their support suddenly and lurched forward determinedly. For the first time John perceived that Raef
knew he and Connie would rather stay on Earth. Knew it, and felt abandoned by them, but would not ask them to do anything else.

“We are possibly the closest things to generation mates that he’s ever had,” Connie observed in her new and disconcerting way of replying to one of his thoughts.

“Probably,” John muttered, and in a few steps had caught up to Raef and taken his arm again. Raef pretended not to notice. Ahead of them, a lock on the gondola’s flat face abruptly cycled open, and stood silently gaping for them.

The agony was constant
rather than fluctuating now. A steady crush of gravity all but immobilized his truncated body. He could not survive the additional G’s it would take for Evangeline to leave this world again. Didn’t matter. This body didn’t have to live much longer. Just long enough to strike a deal with John, to extract a promise. Once his segments were returned Home and fertilized, he would continue. That this particular consciousness had been extinguished would not matter. His memories would continue. His people would gain the knowledge bought with his life. His memory would not go down in infamy. He dragged himself to the bank of instruments that would let him speak to the Humans, as Evangeline could not, must never be allowed to. He must be ready. Gather his strength to speak.

She could feel them
,
smell them, “see” their bodies in her own way. What surprised her was that now she could also sense their minds. Three different little sparks of self-cognizance, moving about under her. She could even tell which one was Raef, not just by mass and temperature and scent, but by her sensing of his mental processes. None of them produced enough signal for her to actually share the thoughts. Each human was just a muzzy little whimper of cogitation, but Raef’s pattern was so familiar to her now that she recognized the ebb and flow of his thinking. Perhaps this was how it would have felt to return to an egg net and listen to the first eager clamorings of babies. But instead of opening womb chambers to her own offspring, she’d be cycling open a door to readmit the Humans to the artificial housing attached to her body. It might be as close as she would ever
come to welcoming children within her. Her friend had come back. She focused herself at him. [Welcome back, Raef.]

Sudden agitation in the thoughts of the Humans, and to her dismay, Raef’s signal became erratic, and almost failed entirely. [Hurry, hurry, bring him inside,] she begged them, and seemed to feel a quickening in their actions in response. She cycled the lock open, felt them enter. As she cycled the lock closed behind them, she felt her parasite stir.

“John, Connie. Welcome aboard
.
Are you well?”

Tug’s familiar voice boomed out around them. John and Connie exchanged glances. Raef had slumped to the floor and was curled forward, clutching at his chest. “Evangeline,” he said softly.

“Thanks, Tug.” John crouched, put a reassuring hand on Raef’s shoulder. “But we need to be cycled through as swiftly as possible. Raef’s in bad shape.”

“I’ll ready a medic chamber. But decontamination is not a process that can be rushed.” Tug paused. “Once you’re all cleansed, we’ll evaluate Raef and the progression of his disease, and consider the best treatment.”

“Womb.” Raef looked at Connie as he spoke the single word.

“Tug. He doesn’t want a medic chamber. He wants to go straight to a womb, to reenter Waitsleep.”

“We’ll have to get you stabilized first, old friend.” Tug paused, and then grated out a chuckle. “Bet you two were a little shocked to find out Raef existed. It’s quite a story, how he came to be on board. I’ll tell it all to you … sometime. Starting atmosphere change.”

John watched Raef gather himself, and thought for a moment he was going to stand. Instead, he drew a deep breath, and “Evangeline!” he cried aloud. “Make him let me in!”

“Raef and his imaginings,” Tug commented sadly. “As if Evangeline could even be aware of him as an entity. It’s the progression of his disease. When I sent him to search for you, I worried that something like this might happen.” Tug paused. Overlong, it sounded to John. “But I had no one else to send. Poor Raef. I had to sacrifice him, for your sakes. But we’ll do our best to save him now. John, the man needs medical attention. He needs to be stabilized before Waistsleep can
even be considered.” Tug lowered his voice suddenly, spoke as if Raef could not hear him. “And there is the matter of the disease he carries, and whether contamination should be chanced. It may be he should be discarded here, rather than risk the both of you.”

The damn parasite
was blocking her. [Raef, Raef!] Would he think she had abandoned him? She cast about frantically for solutions. She had no voice to talk to Raef, to explain what the problem was. She gathered herself, slammed the full force of her newfound strength against Tug’s block, commanding the interior door to cycle open. Nothing. She felt the spark that was Raef flicker for an instant, and then resume. Fainter? [Hang on, friend. I’m coming for you.] She focused the thought fiercely, and for an instant his spark seemed brighter. Again she slammed against Tug’s control, and this time she thought she felt a weakening.

“
She’s trying to get through
,”
Raef said, softly, foolishly. “She’s trying to let me in.”

“Sshh,” Connie cautioned him, kneeling beside him. She spoke by his ear, ignoring Tug’s voice telling how he had taken Raef in. “Take it easy. As soon as we’re out of here, we’ll go straight to the medic chamber.” She put a hand to the side of his face. Dear Raef. Connie was surprised at the depth of affection she felt for the huge, old man. A fine mist of decontaminant spray had begun to fill the chamber.

“Don’t you understand?” Raef pleaded with her. He lifted one hand, gripped her wrist feebly. “Don’t you feel her at all?”

“… So it was a misplaced sort of pity I felt for him at first.” Tug paused yet again. “Please remove your contaminated clothing now. Leave it in the lock. I’ll have a biodegrader released into the chamber to break it down.”

In one movement, John kicked free of his trousers, then flung his tunic into a corner. “There.” He crouched beside Raef, began working his shirt loose. Connie saw his fingers fumble at the catches. “Dammit, Tug, can’t you hurry this at all?” John demanded suddenly.

“John, I’ve told you …” Tug began placatingly, and the lock doors suddenly slammed themselves open.

“Thanks, Tug,” John said with feeling. He crouched, dragged one of Raef’s arms up across his shoulders. “Take his other side,” he ordered Connie, and then, “please,” he added, even though she was already taking Raef’s weight. She flashed him a brief grin as they helped Raef through the lock door. They were scarcely through before the door clashed shut behind them.

“Return to the lock. Decontamination isn’t complete,” Tug warned them, but simultaneously the doors to the lift leading to the womb levels opened. A welcoming light shone within it.

Raef lifted a hand, pointed. “Evangeline,” he said quietly. “That way.”

John and Connie looked at each other. Behind them, the lock door cycled open. “Return to the lock to complete decontamination,” Tug instructed them.

John lifted his chin. “Ultimately, the Human crew is my responsibility. I’m putting him in a womb, Tug.”

“John, I can’t allow it. Not when it endangers the Beastship; that is my ultimate responsibility. And I might point out that Raef is not crew, not officially.” Tug paused again. “He is more like my guest, you might say. Hence my responsibility.”

“He’s Human,” Connie said quietly. “He’s ours.”

“I won’t allow it,” Tug told them firmly.

She saw John hesitate.

“I don’t think you can stop us,” Connie observed. To John she said only, “Let’s go.”

The lights in the lift flickered momentarily, but remained on. They were barely inside before the doors shut of their own accord. The lift slammed into motion, went without pause up to the womb levels. As the doors opened, a faint smile passed over Raef’s face. “I’m going to make it,” he announced. Then his eyes closed and he slumped between them.

“I forbid this,” Tug said sternly. But his voice synthesis quavered.

[
They’re inside my body now, Tug
.
Don’t even try to interfere here.] Evangeline focused the thought at him savagely, not caring whether he could perceive it or not.

She lit passages for them, guiding them directly to the
nearest womb chamber, which happened to be the one John usually used. It didn’t matter. There wasn’t time to have them wind their way down to the chamber where Tug had previously secreted Raef. No reason to hide him anymore.