The Fila Epiphany Page 2
He was traveling south, keeping the vehicle a short distance above the beach so that he had a close view of it and the bordering land as he went along. In the fading light, the landscape was changing rapidly. The many-branched plants were giving way to low, spindly bushes similar to the ones that had once covered his farm. The terrain inland was turning flat, and the sand extended from the beach between the bushes. He hoped to find some kind of hilly ground soon. Sleeping inside the only raised object for kilometers around would make him feel exposed.
No hills appeared, however, and consulting the map told him there were none for kilometers. When he could no longer see into the distance, Ethan stopped the flitter and increased its elevation until it was about his own height above the ground. He set it to hover. A breeze was blowing in from the ocean that would probably push him inland overnight, but that wouldn’t matter much. If the flitter encountered raised ground it would automatically alter its direction to avoid a collision.
Ethan was about to take out a food parcel and eat his evening meal when he thought of something else he wanted to record. After turning on the device hanging around his neck, he said:
“From as far back as I can remember, I was told that I was coming to a new home. Everyone said we were special because we would be the first Gens not to die aboard the ship. They also told us that we were deep space pioneers. If we succeeded in building a settlement outside the Solar System, it meant that humans weren’t confined to a place that would eventually no longer support life. If we could build a deep space colony, it meant that, as a species, we could be immortal. They said our descendants would grow so numerous and so advanced that one day a colony ship would depart our new planet just as the Nova Fortuna had departed Earth. And so on and so on, throughout the galaxy, perhaps even billions of years into the future, maybe even spreading to another galaxy and on into eternity.”
He paused briefly to collect his thoughts, then went on, “I was a kid at the time I was told that, and not a smart one. I didn’t really get what they were saying. But I think I understand now. I’m the first human who ever saw the things I’ve seen today and the first to pass over the ground I traveled. And for the rest of my journey it’ll be the same, whether I make it back or not. In a way, I don’t care if anyone in the future remembers what I’ve done. I don’t want this land or that ocean named after me. But I finally get what I was told all those years ago. Though others will come after, I’m the first. When my ancestors decided to come down from the trees they didn’t know what they were doing. They had no understanding of where it might lead, and to be honest I’m not sure my own understanding is that much better. But I do get this. I feel it. I’m at the very tip of a finger of human life that’s reaching out. I just wanted to say that I’m glad and happy to be doing this, no matter what happens.”
He turned off the recorder, deciding not to play it back to check it. He’d probably spoken nonsense and made a fool of himself, but he’d spoken from the heart and he felt better for it.
Outside the flitter, all was dark except for starlight. The moon hadn’t risen yet. Ethan turned on the flitter’s light and pulled out some parcels of food. A lot of the food supplies he’d brought were dried and required rehydrating and heating up, but some of them were ready to eat. He chewed some protein strips and washed them down with water. He also took out fresh algae cakes. They weren’t a favorite but they were nutritious and light to carry.
After his long day’s travel, Ethan found he was soon ready to go to sleep. He packed up loose items scattered around the cabin and pushed down the flitter’s seats to make a bed. One folded blanket served as a pillow. He covered himself with the other. The soughing of the waves quickly sent him to sleep.
***
It was nighttime and Ethan was barefoot on soft, mossy ground. Darkness surrounded him except for a row of lights that shone from behind, their glow quickly fading into black night. He was heading away from the lights, looking for something though he didn’t know what exactly. Something had disturbed his sleep and he wanted to know what it was. The air was strangely thick and he was having to force himself through it.
A shape moved in the darkness ahead. Darker than the surrounding black, it was long and low down to the ground. The creature seemed to glide rather than walk and it was moving across his view. Was this what had made the sound he’d heard? He wasn’t sure if he wanted to get close to the thing. For some reason, it scared him.
Yet Ethan followed the creature, moving deeper into the night until he couldn’t see it any longer. It didn’t matter. He had something else to head toward. Lauren had appeared ahead. She was wearing a little girl’s playsuit, though she was grown up. She saw him too and waved.
Relief overwhelmed him. He felt he’d lost her for a long time but now he’d finally found her again. He began to run toward her. He wanted to reach her before she went away again. He would tell her he wanted her to stay with him forever, and that she mustn’t ever leave.
Then he saw the creature had returned. It was ahead of him, moving toward Lauren. He shouted out a warning but she didn’t seem to hear. He yelled again and again, and all the while the creature was getting closer to her. Why wouldn’t she move? She only smiled and waved and waited for him.
He was running as fast as he could but he was getting nowhere. He couldn’t catch up to the creature. It glided along swiftly, bearing down on unsuspecting Lauren. It would reach her before he could. It would—
Ethan started awake, his hands reaching for Lauren. He almost cried out to warn her, to tell her a predator was about to kill her, but then the realization that he’d been dreaming hit him. His arms slumped down and the words died before they left his mouth. Where was he? He saw the starlit sky through the flitter windows and heard the waves. His memory of the last few months returned.
Lauren was dead, and so was Dr. Crowley.
Ethan sighed, turned over, and tried to go back to sleep. The same dream about Lauren had visited him many times. His subconscious mind couldn’t seem to accept that she was gone. It wanted to give him the chance to save her over and over again. Recurring nightmares were one reason that he’d wanted to go on his expedition, hoping that the journey might give him time to process his girlfriend’s death and that of his close friend, Dr. Crowley.
Dr. Crowley had always been full of good advice. Ethan liked to think back over his conversations with her, but he couldn’t remember her saying anything about how to cope with the death of someone you loved. He guessed that if she’d been comfortable with death or wise about how to accept it, she might not have joined the Nova Fortuna Project. The doctor had outlived her natural lifespan by at least one hundred and eighty-four years. It was a shame she’d only spent one night on the planet she’d worked so hard to reach.
Sleep was refusing to return to Ethan. He moved onto his back and stared at the roof, wondering if he should give up and read for a while. Cariad had uploaded all the Wokens’ data covering what they’d discovered about Concordia. Maybe he might read something useful.
Suddenly, the flitter tipped, rolling him over. He sat up, trying to maintain his balance as the flitter leaned farther to one side. Something was pulling at the vehicle or trying to climb onto it in the darkness. He felt for his weapon. His fingers touched cool, smooth metal.
Where was the thing? It was too dark for a clear view outside. Then he saw it. Tens of scrabbling legs appeared at the window. Ethan knew those legs. It was one of the sluglimpet creatures. He had to get it off the flitter fast. The creatures exuded a powerful acid and if the thing disabled his vehicle he would be at its mercy.
Ethan lowered the window and fired into the organism’s underside. The flitter immediately filled with choking, acrid smoke. He couldn’t breathe. He opened the other windows. The flitter was tipping precariously on its side, borne over by the creature’s weight. Though he’d hit it squarely, the sluglimpet continued to cling on. He fired at it again and another burst of suffocating smoke erupted.
Ethan raised the flitter higher and took off his boot, taking care not to touch the sticky gloop. He quickly wiped the sole clean and dropped the rag from the open window. Peering out he saw the predator hobbling slowly away into the undergrowth by the shore, black against the shadowy gray sand. It wasn’t the only one, however. As it retreated, more were emerging. Ethan quickly raised the flitter higher still, doubling its previous elevation. He’d thought that setting the vehicle at roughly his own height above the beach would provide sufficient protection from the local wildlife. He’d clearly been wrong. These sluglimpets were larger than any he’d ever seen before.
Had they followed him all the way from the area around the settlement? It seemed unlikely. The creatures appeared to be widespread on the continent, living in low undergrowth as well as among trees. Ethan watched the animals as they milled around and lifted the front halves of their bodies every so often, reaching up toward the flitter with groping legs. They knew he was there. What were they sensing? His body heat?
He turned on the recorder and pointed it downward to capture a vid of the organisms. Then when he thought he’d recorded enough, he flew the flitter down the beach away from them. Although the predators wouldn’t have been able reach him at the flitter’s elevation, he didn’t think he would be able to sleep knowing they were roaming underneath, hungry and waiting.
Was nowhere on the continent safe from the sluglimpets? Wherever he went, would the horrible creatures always be there waiting to attack as soon as the sun went down? Ethan flew on, wondering what the coming weeks or months might hold.
Chapter Three
It chilled Cariad to the bone to see the forty or so deactivated Guardians. They were standing still and silent, lined up in ranks in an empty room on the lowest deck of the Mistral. Part of the creepy effect was because they’d deactivated while upright, not lying down like humans in cryo. Yet they looked as human as ever, aside from the fact that none of them breathed or moved even a micrometer. Some hadn’t even bothered to close their eyes before shutting themselves down. They stared blankly ahead, their gazes unfocused. The lighting in the room was dim, yet it was bright enough to glint on the Guardians’ eyes as if they were moist.
Cariad mused that the Guardians’ eye tissue probably wasn’t damp. She imagined that if she reached out to touch an eye it would feel smooth and dry, or perhaps greasy. The impression given of moist eyes was an illusion, like everything else about these strange androids from an Earth she had never known.
“I’m not sure whether you will believe me,” Strongquist said, diverting Cariad’s attention from the motionless Guardians, “but I would like to assure you that neither we nor our creators meant any harm to the people of Concordia. I hope the fact that we have voluntarily chosen to take this hiatus from the colonization is evidence of that.”
“To be frank,” Cariad replied, “I still don’t know what to make of you all or what you intended to do here. And I think I speak for most Woken and Gens. We feel deeply deceived. I don’t know how long it’s going to take us to process and understand what you’ve done.” As she spoke, Cariad’s obsession with staring at the android’s skin and hair reawakened. Strongquist looked perfectly imperfect. Uneven skin coloration, five o’clock shadow, flecks of gray in his eyebrows—everything about him was convincingly human. Cariad marveled at the skill and artistry that had gone into making him.
“We are aware of the problems resulting from our presence, but—”
“Are you?” Cariad asked. “Do you really understand what you did? Are you even capable of understanding? It isn’t only that you disrupted the colony, dividing us into factions by lending your support to one group. There are wider effects that I can barely guess at. When it was just Woken and Gens, everyone knew the score. Sure, the two groups didn’t mix much, but they would have been brought together by the work of colonizing the planet. We had the Mandate and the Manual and we had to make a go of the colony as best we could because there was no going back. We were on our own, sink or swim.
“Now we don’t know anything any more. Our foundation has been ripped from us. You’ve come here and told us we aren’t only the first deep-space colony, but we’re also probably human civilization’s last gasp. Can you understand how that feels? I don’t think you can. You aren’t human. You have no empathy, and you don’t even grasp basic human rights. If you did, you wouldn’t have sedated Aubriot. You’ve behaved like the machines you are from the moment you arrived. I don’t know why it took us so long to see it.”
Strongquist looked down, as if in shame or regret. Was he only mimicking the emotions, responding appropriately to the conversation? Cariad didn’t know. The Guardian Faina had said their minds were programmed with information from many human personalities, giving them some semblance of humanity, but Cariad didn’t know what to think about the Guardians anymore. “Is there anything else you want to say to me before you deactivate?”
“Aubriot has been taken out of sedation,” he replied. “And there are some things I haven’t told you—things that we deemed inexpedient to divulge at the time.”
“Like what?” Cariad replied. “What have you got to say now? Are you going to tell me everything you said about what’s happened on Earth isn’t true?”
“No, not that.”
“Why should I believe you?” Cariad gave a huff of frustration. “You could have been lying when you told us about what’s happened on Earth since we left, or you could be lying now. Why did your creators make it possible for you to lie?”
“We were never given any information on the rationale behind our programming,” said Strongquist. “If I were to guess, I would say that it wasn’t possible due to the organic origins of our mind, or to prevent us from divulging information that could be harmful to the success of the colony, or in order to make us seem more convincingly human.”
His final comment took the wind from Cariad’s sails. The android had a point. Humans could be just as deceitful as the Guardians had been. Strongquist’s guess also reminded her of something she’d wanted to ask him about before he deactivated.
Although he had explained the reactivation process, Cariad had no intention of waking up any of the Guardians ever again if she could help it. She wanted to get all the important discussions over while Strongquist was conscious or “switched on.”
“Do you have anything else to tell me about the Natural Movement terrorists?” Cariad asked. “You didn’t lie about that, did you?”
“I believe we’ve been entirely transparent about our investigation into the Natural Movement infiltration of the colony. If there’s anything we didn’t tell you, it was an inadvertent omission. In any case, all of the files relating to the investigation are on the Mistral’s databases along with the historical data from Earth that we brought with us. You may be able to discover information there that eluded us.”
Cariad said, “There was something else I wanted to ask you about that: Why did you invite me aboard the Mistral when you wanted to show me the vids of Aparicio? It occurred to me later that you could have just sent them to the Nova Fortuna.”
“The reason for that ties in with something we didn’t tell you because we feared it might destabilize the colony. Cariad, from the moment of the stadium bombing, we undertook extensive covert assessments of the psychological profiles of each of the Gens and Woken. Our initial motivation was to attempt to discover the bomber. However, as events unfolded, we began to use the assessments to look for individuals who were best suited to steer the colony in a more favorable direction.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Strongquist?” Cariad snapped. “You were spying on everything we did
and said?”
“Not exactly, but we did look deeply into each individual’s history of behavior as far as it was possible,” Strongquist explained. “I’m aware we may have appeared ignorant to exactly what was happening politically among the colonists, but we understood more than you probably supposed. We were seeking ways to attempt to heal the schism that was developing between the Woken and the Gens. To do that, we tried to support those we identified as most likely to be able to move the divided relationships in a better direction. One of those we identified was you.”
“Me? So you invited me to the Mistral to…?”
“As an act of conspicuous support. We were aware of the aura of mystique we had. By inviting you to our own vessel—you were the first person we invited, remember?—we were attempting to raise your profile and status among the Woken. Your personality type isn’t the kind to seek out power over others, yet we felt you possessed the qualities needed to bring the two sides together.”
Cariad wasn’t sure how to take the android’s statements, but his words spurred another question. “So was it for the same reason that you helped me defuse the situation when the Gen farmers refused to hand over their weapons?” At the time, Strongquist had dropped a broad hint that gave Cariad the means to assume temporary control and prevent any of the farmers from being hurt.
“That’s correct. We could not openly defy Anahi after she declared herself Leader, so we did what we could to support you, knowing your actions would calm things down.”
His words kind of made sense but Cariad wasn’t convinced. If the Guardians had truly wanted to play politics to promote the success of the colony, they would have thrown their support behind someone else. If anyone was born to lead the colonization of Concordia, it was Ethan.