The Eternal Enemy (24 page)

“But no one asked me if I wanted to be changed into something like this!”

“You were in no condition to be asked. It was either change you or leave you insane, dying in your human form.”

Kominski sat beside Straka, silent, staring at the floor.

The others drifted in over the next hour.

“The hardest thing you face in your new bodies is your emotions. They used to serve an important purpose—now they're a vestige you'll have to learn how to overcome. When you were human and you got angry, hormones prepared your body for fighting or fleeing,” Markos said.

“Adrenaline increased your strength, your heart rate, sharpened your senses, made everything around you appear to move more slowly. But you don't have adrenaline anymore. You don't need it either. Your emotions expect certain physical reactions—it's a learned response, one you're going to have to unlearn.

“Do you all understand?”

The group of changed Terrans nodded their heads and murmured their understanding.

“This is the hardest time for you. You're being overwhelmed by the sensory inputs your bodies are providing, and you have to sort it all out. Your emotions are acting as they did when you inhabited human bodies. You can control the arms and legs you were given, but not the entire body. There are tricks—ways of altering what information your eyes pick up, what your tactile senses tell you. You don't have to hear all the time. You can shut off some parts of your body and turn others on that you don't even know about yet,” Markos said.

“But there's time. I want you all to follow me outside, into the afternoon light, onto the surface of Aurianta. You can get hypnotized by the beauty you'll see. You have to learn how to dampen your vision before we go out.”

“I think I know how to do it,” McGowen said.

“Sure you do,” Jackson said. “Care to explain it?”

“I focus my attention on a spot right behind my eyes. I imagine I still have eyelids, and I'm squinting. That cuts down some of the light and images that get through.”

“Hey!” Kominski shouted. “I can do it too! It works!”

Markos was surprised. They were learning fast.

Straka learned the trick instantly, too, and found she was proud of herself and her fellow … fellow … fellow what? What the hell were they, anyway? What had they been changed into?

“Markos,” Straka said.

“Yes?”

“What are we? I mean, we're not crossbreeds, we're not Terrans, and we're not Habers. So then what the hell do we call ourselves?”

“You can call yourself whatever you like, but you are all Habers, like it or not. Genetically speaking, that is.”

Haber? That race must cover a lot of genetic territory, a lot of phenotypical variations, Straka thought.

“Shall we go?” Markos asked. “You seem ready, but please be careful. These are not idle warnings. Don't get carried away by what you see, and don't wander off too far, and don't fight your emotions. Study them, analyze them, and learn how your bodies respond.

“I'm going out with you, and I'll teach you some things you didn't know Habers could do. You'll be pleasantly surprised.”

Markos led the group through the circular passageways and out into the street. Straka was in the lead, and as she saw what the light in the sky did to the buildings, she felt like crying.

She felt that the years she'd spent as a human being had been wasted, spent in a sensory-deprivation tank. Nothing she'd seen as a human being was the same now. Everything was alive. And everything was constantly changing.

Markos brought them to a small area in the city that was not developed, where no houses or streets existed. The crew stood in their new bodies as if standing in a new set of clothes, craning their necks to see their backs, turning their hands over and over, searching for new functions for their anatomies.

Kominski was on his hands and knees, staring at the ground. Every few minutes he would mutter, “Oh, wow,” then fall silent again. Wilhelm took his change stoically, wandering around, wondering at the strange sights, smells, sounds like the others.

Markos kept a close watch, supervising as a nursery school teacher would during recess, concerned for the safety of his charges.

Straka knew what Markos was doing and was grateful for his stabilizing presence. She knew the transformation and the adaptation necessary would have been a knife-edged experience, too painful and emotionally charged to have to undergo without his supervision.

Jackson, Katawba, and—who was that?—Martinez? Yes, Martinez. They played like children, running and leaping into the air, shouting in glee, chasing each other around. Straka understood what they felt and wanted to join them. They weren't reverting back to a second childhood; they were simply enjoying themselves for the first time in a decade, totally free of the autocratic control of NASA 2, of its geltank imprinting, of the Terran feelings of loyalty, duty, and responsibility. They were reveling in the simple joys of motion, of being in healthy, strong bodies, elated with the prospect of immortality in bodies that saw, felt, and could do things they never could before.

Yes, Straka thought, immortality. We're more than halfway there.

She was in no rush to join the frolicking crewmembers. She didn't need the physical release yet, the expression of pure joy in physical form. For now, she was content to watch, to think, to wonder what immortality was like.

“Something wrong?” Markos asked in his rough voice.

Straka turned. For a moment she felt surprised to find she was no longer repulsed by Markos's physical form. The violently clashing reds, greens, and oranges of his translucent skin, his lack of Haber fur, all added up to a strange totality, some awesome beauty. Even the fluids detectable beneath the surface of Markos's skin. Straka had been blind to it all until now.

“Straka?”

“Oh, sorry. No, nothing's wrong. Everything's right for a change. I was just enjoying it.”

“It's good to see you indulging, but remember that everything is far from being right. We're at war.”

“The war. I know. But I was talking about now, right here, inside my head. Being thankful for life.”

Markos nodded and flashed red. Straka noticed her own eyes tingle. “It's almost sundown,” Markos said. “Gather up the crew with me and we'll link up.”

“Link?”

“You'll see.”

Straka tried to smile but had no idea as to what it looked like. She called out, and the crew slowly stopped what they were doing. They drifted over to where Markos and Straka stood and listened while Markos explained the techniques required for linking up.

“It's the easiest way to learn about touch and change. It should also introduce you to the little power source we have inside.”

“Power source?” De Sola asked.

“It's simpler to show you than to explain it. Here,” he said.

De Sola and the others reached forward and touched Markos's proffered arm. It became incredibly hard, the skin inpenetrable. “I add mesons to the atoms of my outer skin. It increases my outer density,” Markos commented.

“I like that,” Jackson said.

Straka was about to say something, but she felt the need to be silent. The others had fallen silent too. It was time to link up. Straka had no idea how she knew that, yet she knew. An emotional change had occurred, one she could detect on an almost tangible level. A huge gaping void had opened inside as though someone she had once loved deeply had died. But that wasn't quite it; there was no pain or grief there—just the void.

Someone touched her hand and she did as Markos instructed, grabbing hold, groping for Markos's hand with her right. Her eyes were drawn to the sky, to the blob of shifting light on the horizon. Markos grabbed her right hand, and the link up was complete.

As she felt her skin dissolve, the barrier between her and the others dropped away. She understood the strange feeling for a split second—gates had swung open in her mind and soul, creating that void. And then she lost the grasp she had of the abstract concept as the physical reality overwhelmed her. The others were surging through her body, entering through her hands, buoying her, comforting her, giving her immense company within her singular body, sharing themselves on a soul-baring level far deeper, far richer than love. In a split second all distinctions between their personalities were gone as they blended into a whole, a gestalt that swept her away deep into Aurianta's core, high into its insanely refractive sky.

The colors she stared at, created by the setting sun, said something, composed some inscrutable visible message. She was sure of that, and yet she couldn't understand it. She could gather some of the emotional content as her body surged and fell with the rapid changes in the sky. She wanted to tell it she understood. All she was capable of doing was opening her mouth to thank the sun, the sky, the planet, and all the Habers for their existence, to be a part of such an awesome whole. It was more than she'd ever dreamed of accomplishing.

The words came out as a steady hum.

The feeling of belonging, of being truly accepted, was intense. And then the sun fell below the horizon, the colors faded in intensity from the sky, and it was over. She was Cathy Straka again.

But she was no longer human.

Some subtle change had been worked inside through the linkup. Now she belonged. She felt at peace with herself and the others. She was home.

“Come,” Markos said. “We'll go back to the building. We should rest for a while and eat. Then we work. There's a lot yet to learn.”

Part Three

AFTER THE CHANGE

19

He stood on the bridge, a place he thought he'd never see again. It felt strange being back on board—especially with Van Pelt dead, with the crew waiting to transfer from the Haber ship. Old memories drifted by, reminding him of who and what he'd once been.

His hand rested on the back of the command chair, surrounded on all sides by bulkheads lined with screens. Markos could remember too many watches when he'd sat at the west-quadrant control seat, staring at the screen before him, his psyche easily absorbed into the awesome view he faced, only to be snapped back by Van Pelt's half-insane exclamations of how nothing made sense. Van Pelt had occupied this chair, had earned the privilege and the responsibility.

And Markos had taken that and everything else away from him with an uncontrolled burst from his newly found Haber eyes. It's ironic, he thought. Van Pelt was always afraid of an alien threat, and look where his destruction came from.

Van Pelt's essence lingered in the control center, permeated the screens, the chairs, the control panels mounted on the pedestals. Markos tried to ignore the strange feeling of someone looking over his shoulder.

He edged around to the small panel before the command chair and touched a sensor switch. The walls melted away as the screens came to life, and Markos realized he'd made his body hard without thinking. Surrounded by the unobstructed view of space, his mind had jumped back to when he'd been floating between the two ships.

He felt someone there, wheeled around to fight, and saw no one.

Calm down, cool out, he told himself. There's no one there. Van Pelt is dead.

And yet he couldn't shake the eerie feeling of someone watching, someone disapproving of his very presence on the bridge.

Too jumpy, he thought. Like waiting for the owner of the ship to wander in and catch me trying to steal it. I've got to calm down.

He edged around the control seat, eased into Van Pelt's chair, and gazed at the screens. The Haber ship hung in space several hundred meters away off the port side, while Aurianta rotated slowly, majestically, beneath him. It would have been so simple to throw a few of the familiar switches, plot a course, and lay it into the navigational computer. A few switches are what separate me from getting the hell out of here, letting the whole mess resolve itself in its own natural way, or sticking around, waiting for the Terrans to transfer aboard, seeing this situation through to the end.

A small section of the Haber ship started changing color—the bay door must have been opening. That meant that Markatens had given them the ready signal and they would be starting the transfer procedure. If he was going to do something about taking the ship and going somewhere else, he would have to do it now.

Tiny specks of light appeared outside the bay, and Markos pressed one of the switches on the console. The view off the port side was magnified. He increased magnification until he could see the specks of light as forms, the crew making their way across the dangerous distance. Leave them? he thought. Before they're too far away from the wedge?

They all liked Aurianta well enough. And they've been changed, so they could survive there. And the wedges were capable of f-t-l travel. I wouldn't really be abandoning them.

The Habers don't really need me. They just need someone. It could be Straka. Or Wilhelm.

But Markatens was on board. What would he do with him? Come on, son, we're off to see the galaxy? Let me show you some of my favorite night spots? Let's find some life-forms and get weird?

Not likely.

And he couldn't very well throw him off the ship, point him toward the wedge, and hope he made it to safety.

He sighed, something very strange to do while in a body that had no physical excuse for sighing. He figured he'd better get down to the airlock and help on this end, in case any of Straka's people had trouble with the transfer. He switched off the screens, his window into space, and walked up the ramp to the door.

They sat around the rec lounge, an old, familiar place for the crew, oddly different for each of them in thousands of minute ways. Nothing looked the same, felt or sounded the same, yet they knew that nothing had changed but them.

They had all lived on board the ship for a long time, and a lot had happened there. Each cabin, each passageway held some reminder of the past. Markos remembered arguments over geltank time, over standing watches, over what they should do if and when they encountered an alien race.