Apes and Angels Read online

  Yamagata’s smile widened. “I can guarantee you at least one thing, Dr. MacDaniels.”

  “What is it?”

  “You are going to lose weight.”

  PREPARATIONS

  Felicia walked beside Brad’s gurney as it guided itself toward the surgical center. She looked grim, tight-lipped.

  Already slightly woozy from the preoperative sedation, he reached out and clutched her hand. “Don’t be mad at me.”

  Her eyes widened with surprise. “Mad at you? I’m not mad at you!”

  “You’re not happy.”

  “Oh Brad … you … I…”

  The doors to the operating room swung open automatically, but the gurney stopped itself. “No visitors allowed beyond this point,” it announced flatly.

  Felicia leaned over Brad’s supine body and kissed him. “I’ll be waiting for you, darling.”

  “Yeah,” he mumbled. “Me too.”

  “I love you.”

  “Me too.”

  * * *

  Brad awoke and saw Felicia drowsing in a big cushioned chair at the side of his bed. He was in one of the infirmary’s recovery rooms. It was small but neat, clean and bright, smelling faintly of antiseptics and … flowers? A row of diagnostic machines lined one wall, but they were silent. No beeps or hums.

  He felt no pain, but everything seemed slightly fuzzy, out of focus.

  They’ve screwed up my eyes! he thought.

  He blinked a few times and his vision cleared somewhat. But it was different, somehow.

  Okay, he told himself, your left eye has been replaced by a miniaturized camera. Dr. Yamagata said it’s sending signals through my optic nerve just the way my real eye did, so I’ve still got stereoscopic vision.

  But it wasn’t quite the same. Somehow his vision seemed sharper, he realized. He focused on the far wall of the room and could make out tiny cracks in the plastic facing that were invisible when he closed his left eye. I’m a lot better than twenty-twenty now, he realized.

  No pain, although he felt slightly dopey, slow-witted. He raised his right hand and started counting the pale blond hairs along his fingers.

  “You’re awake!”

  Felicia was staring at him.

  “Hi.”

  She got up from the chair and took his face in both her hands. “You’re awake,” she repeated breathlessly.

  “How do I look?”

  “Fine.”

  “My new eye?”

  “It looks just like your old one,” she said, smiling happily.

  He wrapped an arm around her neck, pulled her to him, and they kissed.

  Then he heard the door open. Felicia straightened up and Brad saw Dr. Yamagata stride into the room, peering at him intently. He must have been watching me, Brad thought, although he couldn’t see a surveillance camera anywhere in the small room.

  “How do you feel?” Yamagata asked.

  “Okay. A little dull, sort of.”

  “That’s the anesthetics. It takes an hour or two for the nervous system to fully recuperate from the electrical blocks.”

  Felicia asked, “Is he all right?”

  Grinning broadly, the physician replied, “Your husband was an ideal patient. Everything went quite smoothly. His new eye is transmitting quite clearly to the monitoring system.”

  Brad realized what that meant. “It’s transmitting everything?”

  “Everything you see,” said Yamagata. “In a few days we will implant the aural transmitter in your ear. Then we will receive everything you hear, as well.”

  “I won’t have any privacy at all.”

  “Not while you have the implants in you. You will have guardian angels with you at every moment.”

  Thirty million klicks away, Brad knew.

  He glanced at Felicia. Instead of looking distressed, she seemed almost mischievously cheery.

  “You’ll have to keep your eyes closed in bed,” she said, with a giggle.

  Brad thought, And we’ll have to keep damned quiet, too.

  * * *

  “Now I know what it’s like to be in the army, in basic training,” Brad complained.

  The two months after his surgery had been spent in survival training, and stuffing every bit of knowledge about conditions on Gamma’s surface into Brad’s brain.

  Yamagata and his surgical team had implanted a communications link that connected Brad to Emcee with the speed of light. Still, Kosoff, Littlejohn, and every other department head tried to pour all their specialized knowledge into Brad’s brain.

  And Kosoff insisted that Brad take a course in survival. The ship’s auditorium was converted into a virtual-reality simulation of Gamma’s surface, with utterly realistic-looking trees and rocks and even streams gurgling past Brad’s booted feet.

  Tifa Valente drove Brad mercilessly through the simulated wilderness.

  Whenever he complained about the rigors of the training, she would reply urgently, “This could be the difference between life and death for you, Brad. You’ve got to learn to live with the planet’s environment. We won’t be there to rescue you if you fall into a puddle of quicksand.”

  “There isn’t any quicksand on Gamma,” he grumbled.

  “None that we’ve discovered,” Tifa countered. “Yet.”

  So day after day Brad plowed through survival training, learning how to keep himself alive on the surface of Gamma.

  “I’m not going to be alone down there,” he pointed out to Tifa one afternoon as they took a break for tea. “The whole idea of this mission is to make contact with the aliens.”

  The cafeteria was half empty. Tifa had walked them to a small table far from the dispensing machines where people pulled their choices of food and drink. Not even the serving robots came near their table.

  Her long face totally serious, she said, “Those aliens might not like having a stranger suddenly invade their territory. You might have to run for your life.”

  Groaning inwardly at the thought of adding wind sprints to his training, Brad replied with equal seriousness, “They’re not violent. We haven’t seen one single act of violent behavior.”

  “And how many scenes of having a human burst in on them have we seen?” she countered.

  Brad shrugged. Tifa looked determined, unyielding. Her deep violet eyes were staring at him. He saw that tears were welling in them.

  “Brad,” she said, her voice low, throaty. “If anything happened to you … I…”

  He sat across the table from her, dumbfounded.

  She lowered her eyes, murmuring, “You look and look and look, then when you find the man you want he’s already married.”

  “Tifa … I had no idea. I mean … I never thought…”

  “It’s all right.” She tried to smile. “You just make sure you get back here in one piece. Don’t you make a widow out of Felicia, she’s too nice a kid for that.”

  Brad grabbed his teacup and took a long swallow. In the self-heated cup, the tea was burning hot. He gulped and choked and tried not to cough.

  Tifa pushed her chair back and got up from the table. “I’ll see you in the VR sim,” she said, then hurried away.

  OBJECTIONS

  Kosoff was smoldering. Thumping his fingers angrily on the conference table, he practically snarled, “This is a hell of a time to bring up such objections.”

  The meeting of the science staff’s department chiefs fell absolutely silent. Kosoff had called the meeting for a final check from each department for their approvals to send Brad to the surface of Gamma. Now, seated at the head of the table, he glared at Quentin Abbott, the chief of the astronomy department.

  Abbott exuded Englishness. Brad, at the foot of the conference table, thought that the astronomer could not have looked more English if he were wearing a derby hat and a monocle. Abbott was slim, his thin face sculpted with prominent cheekbones, a finely arched nose, and a long pointy jaw. His carefully brushed hair was silver gray, as was his tidy little moustache. Like everyone else a
long the table, he wore a comfortable tunic and slacks, but on him somehow the clothes looked almost like a Savile Row morning suit.

  His bright blue eyes could sparkle, but at the moment they were staring back at Kosoff almost defiantly.

  “Can’t be helped, I’m afraid,” he said, quite undaunted by Kosoff’s ire. “Facts, you know, are facts.”

  “But we’re practically ready to send our contact man to Gamma,” Kosoff objected. Jabbing a finger toward Brad, he said, “Our man is prepared to go to the surface and make physical contact with the aliens.”

  Clasping his hands together on the tabletop as if he were about to pray, Abbott said quite calmly, “You cannot stop the coming conjunction of the planet with Beta, no more than King Canute could stop the tide from coming in.”

  “And you believe that conditions on the planet will become dangerous?”

  “Dangerous?” Abbott almost laughed. “They’ll be catastrophic. You won’t be able to keep this ship in orbit around Gamma while Beta speeds past. Tidal surges will be enormous, the entire planet will be swept by storms and upheavals of biblical proportions.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us of this earlier?” Kosoff demanded.

  Very calmly, Abbott replied, “Because we didn’t know about it earlier. We’d done some preliminary calculations, of course, but the closer we looked at the conditions when the two planets meet, the more catastrophic the effects, we realized.”

  “It took you more than a year to realize this?”

  “I’m afraid so. Extraordinary situation, you understand. Awfully sorry we couldn’t scope out the details earlier, of course.”

  From the foot of the table, Brad said, “But the Gammans survive the two planets’ meeting.”

  Abbott turned his fine-featured face in Brad’s direction. “Yes, they do, apparently. And then the planet swings away from Mithra and starts its long winter season.”

  “And the Gammans survive that, too,” Brad pointed out.

  “Somehow,” Abbott conceded.

  “Then, if I’m down on the surface with them, I can survive the conjunction along with them.”

  “Rather chancy, I’d say.”

  “Anything they can do, I can do,” Brad insisted.

  Kosoff raised a stubby finger. “But you won’t have the rest of us in orbit around Gamma. We’ll have to move this ship to Alpha, with all of us in it.”

  Brad said, “That’s still only about three minutes away. I’ll still be able to talk with you, and with Emcee.”

  In his softly courteous tone, Captain Desai pointed out, “Three minutes can be very critical in an emergency situation. It can be a lifetime. The difference between life and death.”

  “I’m willing to risk it,” Brad replied. “In fact, I’m eager to see how the Gammans get themselves through the crisis.”

  The others around the table fell silent. They all turned toward Kosoff, waiting for him to make a decision.

  “We actually don’t have much time to waste,” Kosoff said, as if thinking out loud. “We’ve already used up more than a year. We’ll have to return to Earth in a little less than four years.”

  Abbott interjected, “That’s still plenty of time—”

  Kosoff cut him off. “No, it’s not plenty of time. Do you think it’s enough time to do the job, Dr. Littlejohn?”

  Looking startled, Littlejohn replied, “Enough time to make meaningful contact with the Gammans, tell them of the death wave, and convince them to let us install the shielding equipment? Barely.”

  “And we’ll have to test the shields before we leave,” the chief engineer added.

  Abbott suggested, “You could put in a call to the World Council’s mission controllers, see what they think about all this.”

  “Call Earth?” Kosoff snapped.

  “On the FTL system. You could thrash this out with them in a few days. After all, they are supposed to be in control of this mission. You don’t have to take the responsibility for this decision on your own shoulders, old man.”

  Brad saw the flash of anger in Kosoff’s eyes. He took a deep, deliberate breath, then answered, “But the responsibility is on my shoulders, Dr. Abbott. Those mission controllers back on Earth picked me to head this expedition. I make the decisions here, not a committee two hundred light-years away.”

  Abbott stood his ground. “And you’re willing to send this young man into grievous peril?”

  “He’s willing,” said Kosoff.

  Brad nodded.

  “Well, I admire your courage, Dr. MacDaniels, although I doubt your sanity.”

  A few tentative chuckles broke out along the table.

  Kosoff rapped his knuckles on the tabletop, then said, “So it’s settled. We send MacDaniels to the surface of Gamma before its conjunction with Beta. We move this ship to orbit Alpha while the two planets go through their closest approach. Then we return to Gamma and pick up MacDaniels when he’s ready to return to us.”

  “If he’s still alive,” Abbott said in a stage whisper.

  * * *

  It wasn’t an official going-away party. No one planned it. The night before Brad was scheduled to go into isolation in preparation for his flight to Gamma’s surface, he and Felicia went to dinner in the Crystal Palace and, in ones and twos, friends and acquaintances drifted into the restaurant and joined them. The sturdy little robot waiters dutifully pushed tables together and carried up chairs as the group grew.

  Larry Untermeyer was the first to come by, with Tifa Valente on his arm.

  “So you go into solitary confinement tomorrow,” he said as he sat on the chair one of the robots held for him.

  “It’s not solitary,” Brad corrected. “There’ll be plenty of medical and engineering people in the isolation area with me.”

  Tifa said nothing. She merely sat next to Larry, but kept her eyes on Brad. It made him uncomfortable; Brad had not told Felicia about Tifa’s confession.

  Gregory Nyerere showed up, with a Valkyrie-like blond companion: tall, skin like ivory, full in the hips and bosom. Greg goes for large-sized women, Brad thought.

  “Bring your umbrella,” Nyerere joked in his high-pitched voice. “I understand the weather’s going to be rough.”

  Brad nodded and smiled.

  His brows knitting, Nyerere said, “I understand that you’ll have to wear a full-body suit while you’re down on the surface.”

  “That’s right.”

  Glancing at the others around the still-growing table, Nyerere said, “Um, this may be indelicate, but … how will you, eh … defecate?”

  Brad blinked once, twice, then replied, “Carefully.”

  ISOLATION

  “Time to test my comm link,” Brad said.

  He and Felicia were sitting on the sofa in their sitting room. The impromptu going-away party in the Crystal Palace was long over. Tomorrow Brad would go into the isolation area and then, three days later, to the surface of planet Gamma.

  Felicia tried to smile, and almost made it.

  “Comm crew,” Brad called out. “Please cut the link until daybreak tomorrow.”

  Instantly a voice in Brad’s head replied, “Cutting link.”

  “Thank you.”

  No response.

  Doubtfully, Felicia whispered, “Do you think they’ve really cut it?”

  Brad nodded, then realized he hadn’t spoken. “Yes. I’m sure it’s okay.”

  “You trust them?”

  “I have to.”

  He got up from the sofa and held out his hand to Felicia. He realized she was trembling.

  “It’ll be all right,” he said, trying to sound reassuring.

  Her face blossomed into a genuine smile. “Well, if they are watching, let’s give them something worth looking at.”

  Brad grinned at her. “And listening to.”

  Hand in hand, they walked to the bedroom.

  * * *

  The chief engineer eyed Brad sourly and said, “Let’s go through it one more time.”
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  Brad groaned inwardly. All morning long they had made him go through the procedure for safely removing the defecation package without breaching the integrity of his biosuit. Now they stood facing each other, Brad encased in the specially designed suit, the chief engineer in rolled-up shirtsleeves and baggy shorts.

  “Didn’t I get it right?” Brad asked.

  “One time out of three,” said the chief engineer. “That means twice you got yourself killed.”

  “No it doesn’t. Breaking the suit’s integrity for a minute or so shouldn’t be dangerous.”

  The chief engineer gave the impression of being far larger than his actual physical size. He was swarthy, shaved bald, with a stubbled jaw and narrow gray eyes. His normal expression, it seemed to Brad, was a disgusted scowl.

  Planting his thick-wristed fists on his hips, he countered, “And you’ve been on the planet’s surface so many times that you know that for a fact?”

  Brad’s chin drooped. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll do it again.”

  The biosuit was necessary, everyone told him. But they didn’t have to wear it, Brad thought resentfully. It was like trying to live inside a sarcophagus. The suit was stiff; it smelled faintly of plastic and lubricating oils. The helmet, shaped like a bullet to resemble the heads of the Gammans, was made of one-way plastiglas: Brad could see out, but anyone outside could not see in, even through the two bulbous false eyes on each side.

  Brad went through the removal procedure again, feeling somewhere between indignant and embarrassed.

  The chief engineer actually smiled at him! “You got it right two times in a row,” he said. “You might get through this after all.”

  Before Brad could recover from his surprise and respond, the man demanded, “Now what do you do with your package of shit?”

  “Seal it, bury it, and make sure its transponder is emitting its signal so we can find it and return it to the ship when I leave the planet.”

  The chief engineer nodded. “Okay. Now we go through the feeding procedure.”

  Brad had an urge to wash his hands first.

  * * *

  The night before he would leave the orbiting starship Brad called Felicia for the final time.