New Earth (39 page)

ALIENS

“What do you mean?” asked Meek, his long bony face streaked with tears.

“Come to the city with me,” Jordan said.

“No.”

“Yes. Come to the city. Just as the aliens took care of my virus, I think they can take care of your problem.”

“If you think I’m going to let them manipulate my mind, use their so-called education machine to turn me into a happy zombie, think again.”

“No, no, nothing
like that,” Jordan coaxed. “Just come with me. Come and talk with Adri.”

“I don’t see what good it would do.”

“It won’t do any harm. You’ll be no worse off than you are now if you simply talk with Adri a bit.”

Clearly suspicious, but also wondering what Jordan was up to, Meek got shakily to his feet. Jordan stood up too and, grasping Meek’s arm by the elbow, they started walking back into the
camp.

“I ought to get cleaned up first,” Meek muttered.

“Certainly,” said Jordan. “Me too. That was quite a run you led me on.”

They returned to the barracks tent, washed up, and changed into clean clothes. Jordan never let Meek far out of his sight. Together they went to Brandon, who was in the geology lab with de Falla, and told him they were going to the city.

“Really?” Brandon looked surprised.
“May I ask why?”

“An astrobiology conference,” Jordan replied. “With Adri.”

*   *   *

They took one of the buggies, Jordan driving with Meek sitting beside him, long legs poking up uncomfortably.

Just as Jordan expected, Adri was waiting at the city’s perimeter walkway, in his usual blue-gray robe. No sign of his little pet. Aditi hurried up and stood beside him.

“Welcome, friends,” said
Adri.

Jordan murmured a hello, his attention on Aditi. She was wearing a ruby red blouse, tan shorts, and a happy smile. He clasped both her hands; they felt warm as she gripped his hands tightly.

Jordan helped Aditi into the second row of the buggy, as Adri went around the other side and climbed in unassisted. Jordan started the vehicle’s quiet electrical motor, and they drove up the city’s
main thoroughfare.

Adri asked, “To what do we owe this visit, Dr. Meek?”

Almost testily, Meek replied, “Ask Mr. Kell, here. This is his idea, not mine.”

Over his shoulder, Jordan said to Adri, “I thought that you and Dr. Meek might have a useful discussion of alien biospheres.”

Adri asked, “You mean the alien societies that our Predecessors have encountered?”

Jordon nodded.

“Alien societies?”
Meek blurted. “You mean you’ve encountered other aliens?”

“Not we,” said Adri. “We have never been off this planet. But our Predecessors have found many intelligent civilizations scattered among the stars. And many more planets that bear life, but not intelligence.”

Meek swallowed hard before asking, “And you have records of these encounters?”

“Of course. All sorts of data: biological, geological,
social … complete and detailed files.”

“Can I …
may
I see them? Inspect them?”

“To your heart’s content, sir.”

Meek broke into an ear-to-ear grin. Jordan had never seen him look so happy.

*   *   *

Once they parked in the heart of the city, Meek went off with Adri, leaving Jordan alone with Aditi.

“You’ll stay here tonight?” she asked, as they climbed the stairs of the administrative building.

“Wild horses couldn’t drag me away—not even Meek could.” And he pulled her to him and kissed her. A pair of young men coming down the steps grinned at them, but Jordan paid them scant attention.

Once they resumed climbing the stairs, Aditi asked, “Didn’t Dr. Meek know that our Predecessors have found many life-bearing planets?”

“He heard it, I’m sure, but it never really registered in his mind.
His attention was focused on … personal problems,” Jordan explained.

“Strange,” Aditi murmured.

“The strange thing is that I didn’t realize what was making Harmon so bitter. I should have tumbled to his problem much earlier.”

She smiled at him. “You tend to take responsibility for other people’s problems, you know.”

“That’s my job,” he answered.

They walked through the administration building
and out to the tree-lined courtyard behind it, heading for the dormitory.

“I presume the suite I’ve used before is still there for me,” Jordan said.

“For us,” Aditi corrected.

“For us, of course. Yes, certainly, for us.”

She smiled naughtily. “You’ve never seen my room, Jordan. Suppose we go there, instead.”

“Now?”

With an elfin shrug, Aditi said, “We have plenty of time before dinner.”

*   *   *

As he lay in Aditi’s bed, with her warm and lovely body curled next to his, Jordan watched a tiny green lizard hanging upside down from the ceiling. It seemed asleep. Good idea, he said to himself, yawning. A nap would be—

His phone chirped. Frowning, Jordan disengaged from Aditi and slipped out of the bed. She stirred and murmured something drowsily.

He reached his shirt, slung over
the back of an elaborately carved chair, and yanked out the damned phone.

Meek’s scowling face filled the tiny screen. “Jordan, where on earth are you? I’ve been pounding on your door for at least ten minutes.”

“I’ve been busy,” Jordan replied in a hushed voice. “What do you want?”

“Want? Why, it’s nearly dinner time and Adri and I thought you’d like to see some of his files about exoplanet
biospheres before we went to the dining hall.”

Jordan glanced at Aditi. She was half sitting up in bed, nodding at him.

To Meek, he said, “Give me fifteen minutes or so. Where are you?”

“Where am I?” Meek looked surprised at the question, almost insulted. “Why, I’m in Adri’s office, up on the top floor of the administration building. Jordan, you simply have to see what they’ve got here! Dozens
of exoplanets. A handful of intelligent civilizations! None of them have reached a stage of high technology, of course, but they’re intelligent, with languages and writing and even the beginnings of cities! I tell you, it’s a treasure trove, an absolute treasure trove. Why, I could—”

“Give me fifteen minutes, Harmon,” Jordan interrupted. “I’ll see you there.” And he clicked the phone shut.

Aditi giggled from the bed. “You’d better shower by yourself, love. You don’t have time for wet games.”

RECONCILIATION

When Jordan got to Adri’s office, the walls were covered with images, graphs, star charts, alphanumerical data files.

It was like stepping into a kaleidoscope; the displays shifted and changed as Jordan walked from the door to the couch where Meek and Adri were sitting side by side.

“The next set is depressing, very sad,” Adri said, while gesturing Jordan to sit with them.
“When the Predecessors reached this planet, their civilization had been dead for only a few centuries. The Predecessors got there too late to help them.”

Jordan sat next to Meek, who was staring transfixed at the images of an empty, decaying city, collapsed buildings, monuments coated with dust and guano. One camera view zoomed in dizzyingly until he saw a deserted city street lined with statues
of strange shapes, windblown clumps of vegetation tumbling by, debris from the crumbling structures littering everywhere. And in the middle of it all, a slithering snakelike creature, clearly stalking some prey that Jordan could not see.

“Of course, not all life on the planet was destroyed,” said Adri. “Perhaps intelligence will arise there again, in time.”

Jordan stared, transfixed. The ruins
looked so much like an ancient city of Earth. Pompeii, almost. He thought of Angkor Wat, Chichen Itza, all the petrified remains of dead civilizations. But this was a whole world, an entire population of intelligent creatures—gone. Extinct.

“What happened to them?” Meek asked, his voice hushed, awed.

Adri shrugged. “We don’t know. Our Predecessors were focused on finding living intelligences,
they had scant interest in extinct ones.”

“But that’s wrong,” Meek flared. “It’s stupid!”

Adri tilted his head. “You see, our Predecessors do not have human curiosity. They have a single goal, implanted in them by their organic progenitors. They are driven to find living intelligent species and help them to survive. The task is so huge that they have neither the time nor the energy to delve
into the histories of extinct species.”

“But we do,” Meek said firmly. “We have the interest, and the time, and the energy.”

“Yes,” Jordan agreed.

“You would go to this dead world, to study its lost people?”

“Yes,” Meek and Jordan said simultaneously.

Adri smiled. “Very well. We will give you all the help we can.”

Meek looked like a man who had just seen a vision of paradise.

The wall screens
darkened and then went blank. Jordan saw through the room’s windows that it was fully night outside.

Adri got to his feet. “You must be hungry. Let’s go to dinner.”

Standing up, Jordan said, “I’ll get Aditi.”

“Oh, she’ll meet us at the dining hall,” said Adri.

And Jordan thought, I’ve got to get one of their communicators implanted into my head. It’s much better than a phone.

Meek stood up
also, a thoughtful expression on his face. “You know, there’s a lifetime of work for me to do. A long, long lifetime of work.”

Adri nodded and said, “We can help you to live a long and productive life, Dr. Meek.”

“Harmon. Call me Harmon, please.”

Jordan said, “Adri, you’re right. I’m rather famished. Let’s get to dinner.”

But Adri held up a slender-fingered hand. “I’ve taken the liberty of
inviting the rest of your team to join us at dinner. Including the three persons from your orbiting spaceship.”

“You have?” Jordan replied, surprised. “And they all accepted?”

“Yes, of course.” Adri’s expression became slightly guilty. “I’m afraid I told them that we’re holding this dinner in Dr. Meek … er, in Harmon’s honor.”

Meek’s shaggy brows shot up. “My honor?”

“Why, yes,” Adri replied.
“Today is your birthday, isn’t it?”

“No, my birth—” Meek’s face eased into a knowing grin. “Yes, it is my birthday, of a sort. I’ve come to life today, haven’t I?”

And the three of them headed down to the dining hall.

*   *   *

It was a long, boisterous dinner, with real wine and lots of laughter. Jordan looked over the faces of the team: Brandon, Hazzard, Longyear, and all the others. All
the suspicions were gone. All the fears. Adri relaxed enough to dig heartily into a spicy roast. Aditi sat next to Jordan, beaming at him.

“It’s done,” she said into his ear. “You’re going to help us.”

“And you’re going to help us,” he said.

Then he got to his feet and tapped his wineglass with a spoon. All the conversations stopped. Every face along the table turned toward Jordan. Even people
at other tables looked toward him, their faces filled with curiosity and hope.

“It was a countryman of mine,” Jordan began, “who said: I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.”

“Come on, Jordy,” Brandon groused.

Yamaguchi said, “We’re not going to war, are we?”

“In a sense,” Jordan said, “we will be going to war. War against the human race’s ancient enemies: ignorance, fear,
and the ultimate enemy—death.”

The entire dining hall fell absolutely quiet.

“We’ve got to convince the people of Earth that they’re in mortal danger. And once we’ve done that—”

“Assuming we can,” Hazzard said.

“I assume that we can and we will. And once we do, we have to search out other intelligent species and protect them from the gamma burst that’s spreading across the galaxy.”

“We must
help them to survive,” Elyse said.

“That is our task,” said Jordan. “That is our mission. Are we up to the challenge?”

“Damned right we are,” Brandon snapped.

Longyear broke into a crooked grin and said, “We few, we happy few.”

Adri, seated across the table from Jordan, slowly rose to his feet. “To continue in the vein that Jordan started with, let each of us therefore brace himself—and herself—to
our duty.”

Jordan finished, “And so bear ourselves that if the human race lasts a billion years, our descendents will still say, This was their finest hour.”

Everyone in the dining hall broke into applause.

Jordan sat down, and Aditi squeezed his arm. “I’m proud of you, Jordan.”

“I couldn’t have done it without you,” he said.

“Of course you could have. And you would have. But I’m happy that
I’m here beside you.”

“It’s a huge task that we have ahead of us,” said Jordan. “It won’t be easy to convince the people of Earth that they’re in danger.”

“And others are in danger, too,” Aditi said. “The people of Earth can help them to survive.”

Jordan nodded. “We struggle against the inevitable.”

“Nothing is inevitable, Jordan.”

He grasped her hand tightly. “Not as long as you’re with
me.”

“I will be, wherever you go.”

Adri raised his voice to be heard over the laughter and talk of the others.

“Long life to you, Jordan Kell. Long life and happiness to you all.”

Jordan dipped his chin in acknowledgment. “Happiness is working hard at a task worth doing.” Then he turned to Aditi and added, “With the woman you love at your side.”

EPILOGUE

Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts.

E
DWARD
R. M
URROW

EIGHT YEARS AND EIGHT MONTHS LATER

If this wasn’t so stupid, Pancho Lane said to herself, it would be funny.

As a newly elected member of the World Council, Pancho had flown to Earth from the
Goddard
habitat in orbit around Saturn on a special high-g boost just to attend this session of the Council. And here she was, sitting at the foot of the long conference table, while the leaders of the
human race made asses of themselves through this farce of a meeting.

Chiang Chantao was sitting in his powerchair up at the head of the table, more machinery than human being, wheezing and frowning and trying to make himself heard while the others argued and shouted at one another.