Apes and Angels Read online

  Brad nodded. “I had to wear an exoskeleton suit until my body adapted to a full g. I still get back pains now and then.”

  “Even though we’re at half Earth-normal gravity?”

  He nodded and changed the subject. “So where are you from?”

  Once Felicia started talking there was no stopping her. Brad happily listened right through the appetizers and their main courses, glad that he didn’t have to say anything more than the occasional “Really,” as Felicia spoke warmly of her childhood in Oregon and her family.

  But then her tone changed and her face grew somber. “Then my parents divorced. I was twelve. It was a blow.”

  “You didn’t know…?”

  With a sad shake of her head, Felicia replied, “I thought they were happy together. They kept their quarrels from me until the very end.”

  “That’s sad,” Brad sympathized.

  “It hurt,” she said softly. “It still hurts. You wonder if maybe it was your fault, maybe you made them unhappy.”

  Brad reached across the table and took her hand in his. “It wasn’t your fault. Couldn’t be.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Couldn’t have been your fault,” Brad insisted.

  Felicia tried to smile. “Strange. I’ve never told anybody on the ship about the divorce. It hurt too much.” Her smile brightened. “But I told you. We’re practically strangers and I told you.”

  Suddenly feeling uncomfortable, Brad tried to think of some way to change the subject. “Have you ever been married?” he blurted, as their serving robot trundled up to their table with two orders of tiramisu on its flat top.

  “Almost,” she said, her smile dimming again, “but it didn’t work out.”

  Smart move, Brad chided himself. You picked a great subject to lighten the mood. He wondered if the failed romance led to Felicia’s joining the star-voyaging volunteers. Or did she leave Earth because of her parents’ divorce?

  “And you?” she was asking. “Have you been married?”

  “Almost,” he echoed.

  “What happened?”

  “She walked out on me. I guess I wasn’t enough of a party animal for her.”

  “On Mars?”

  “Tithonium Chasma.”

  Felicia’s tentative smile disappeared completely. “That must have hurt.”

  “Yeah,” he said tightly.

  “Your whole family died in that avalanche?”

  “Father, mother, and kid brother.”

  “How terrible for you.”

  “Yeah,” he repeated.

  Trying to brighten up, Felicia said, “Well, that’s all in the past. We’re here now, and we’ve got an important job to do.”

  Brad nodded agreement. Glad to be on easier ground, he asked, “Felicia, you’re a biologist. Do you think it could be possible to bring a couple of the natives up here to the ship and then return them to their villages without their being aware of it?”

  “We’d have to keep them sedated the whole time. Otherwise it would be a tremendous emotional shock to them. They wouldn’t know what to make of us.”

  “Maybe they’d think we’re gods, and they’ve been transported to heaven.”

  Shaking her head, “Where the gods open them up to see what’s inside them?”

  “We’d have to keep them sedated, like you said.”

  “I suppose so. Dr. Steiner doesn’t seem to be happy with the idea, though.”

  “She’d rather kill them once she’s through with them,” Brad grumbled.

  Strangely, Felicia’s smile came back. “The difference between biology and anthropology,” she said. “She sees her subjects as animal specimens, you see them as equivalent to humans.”

  “They’re intelligent.”

  “Do they have souls?” Felicia asked, almost jokingly.

  Brad answered, “If they do, Steiner won’t find them on her dissecting table.”

  More seriously, Felicia wondered, “Do we have souls?”

  “We have intelligence, that’s what a soul really is: the smarts to recognize the difference between right and wrong.”

  “You think?”

  “Yes, I do. Don’t you?”

  She shrugged her slim shoulders. “I’m not sure. I know it’s an old, ancient concept, the soul. But maybe it’s something more than intelligence, some divine spark…”

  Brad countered, “Look, those intelligent machines that the New Earth people call their Predecessors—do you think they have souls?”

  “Machines?” She seemed startled by the thought. “No, they can’t have souls. They’re not alive, not the way we are.”

  “But they have an ethical sense. They built New Earth—built an entire planet—and populated it with humanlike creatures, just like us. And why? To get us to help them reach other intelligent species that’re going to be wiped out by the death wave unless we can save them.”

  “And here we are,” Felicia said, “two hundred light-years from Earth, trying to save a world.”

  “A world that hosts intelligent creatures.”

  “Yes.”

  “And Steiner wouldn’t blink at killing a few of them, so she can study their innards.”

  “It’s not right, is it?”

  Brad felt his guts clenching. “I didn’t come all this way to commit murder.”

  Felicia stared at him for a long, silent moment. Then she asked, “Why did you come all this way, Brad?”

  He started to answer, held himself back. At last he murmured, “To save an intelligent species from the death wave.”

  But he knew that wasn’t the truth. Not all of the truth, at least. He had come to Mithra to save his own soul.

  THE EVENING AND THE MORNING

  Dinner finished, Brad and Felicia left the Crystal Palace. He saw that they would have to pass a table filled with department heads, and Adrian Kosoff, who was cheerily telling a longish joke as they approached.

  “Oh, oh,” Brad muttered.

  Felicia took his hand in hers and said, “Pay them no attention.”

  Kosoff hit his punchline and the whole table erupted in raucous laughter. Brad hoped that Kosoff wouldn’t notice them, but he thought he saw, out of the corner of his eye, Kosoff’s face abruptly turn from laughter to smoldering anger as he and Felicia passed by.

  “He’s sore at me,” Brad said as they reached the restaurant’s door.

  “He’s sore at us,” Felicia corrected.

  They walked hand in hand to the moving stairs, then down two levels to the area where their living quarters were, Brad feeling as if they were being watched every step of the way.

  When they reached Felicia’s door, she said, “I’m pretty sure that I have some lime juice in the fridge.”

  Brad hesitated, but only for a moment. Kosoff can see the surveillance camera footage, he knew. All the passageways are scanned constantly. But not the living quarters, they’re private.

  Yet he heard himself say, “It’s a little late. Thanks for having dinner with me. I hope we can do it again.”

  Felicia seemed neither surprised nor hurt. Releasing Brad’s hand, she merely said, “Sure, anytime.”

  Impulsively, Brad leaned down and kissed her. Felicia’s lips felt warm and soft.

  “Goodnight,” she whispered.

  Feeling awkward and stupid, Brad mumbled, “Night.”

  Then he turned away and started down the passageway. He heard Felicia’s door slide open and, a moment later, click shut again.

  And he realized he was heading the wrong way. Hoping she wouldn’t see him go past, he put his head down and resolutely marched to his own quarters.

  * * *

  The phone woke him. Casting a bleary eye at its screen, Brad saw that it was 0645 hours, and his caller was the head of the anthropology department, not Felicia.

  The black, heavy-browed face of the chief of the anthropology team filled the phone’s screen. James Littlejohn was an Australian Aborigine: short, slightly potbellied, but nimbl
e both in body and mind.

  “Sleeping the day away, Bradford, my boy?”

  Brad told his phone, “Audio only,” then rose to a sitting position, the sheet slipping from his shoulders onto the floor.

  “I’m awake, sir.”

  Littlejohn smiled maliciously. “A strenuous night, eh?”

  “Nossir, nothing like that.”

  “According to Professor Kosoff you had a very romantic dinner with a lovely little biologist.”

  “I, uh, had dinner, yes.”

  “You must have impressed Kosoff. He called me at the crack of dawn.”

  Dawn, on the ship, was 0600 hours, when the internal lighting system went into its daytime mode.

  “About me?”

  “Yes. He tells me that you brought up a good point at the bio team meeting yesterday.”

  “I did?”

  Littlejohn barely suppressed the grin that was trying to curve his thick lips. “He thinks so. Come over to my quarters and we’ll have breakfast over it.”

  “I’ll be there in half an hour, sir.”

  Littlejohn’s eyes flicked away from the phone camera for an instant. Then he said, “Take your time, no hurry. I’ll see you here in forty-five minutes.”

  SPECIAL ASSIGNMENT

  Littlejohn seemed amused. He was always an agile sort; Brad often pictured him as a black leprechaun, grinning as he hopped across the Australian outback.

  This morning, in his quarters, he appeared to be even more sprightly than usual. The chief of the anthropology department, amused beyond words at the antics of the people he was studying.

  “You seem to have made quite an impression on Professor Kosoff,” Littlejohn said to Brad as he gestured to the bar that separated the sitting room from his tiny kitchen.

  Pulling out one of the stools at the bar, Brad replied, “I think he’s sore at me.”

  “Really?”

  Littlejohn’s quarters were superficially identical to Brad’s and almost everyone else’s on the ship. A sitting room, bedroom, efficient little kitchen, and a lavatory. But the Aborigine had filled his sitting room with items from home: family photos, a holographic image of a kangaroo standing in the corner beside the sofa, a stuffed dingo snarling at the world, and a sagging little potted dwarf tree that looked close to death.

  Littlejohn sat next to Brad, whose long legs allowed him to plant both his feet on the tiled floor. Littlejohn’s feet were hooked on his stool’s rung. A pair of faux omelets sat on the bar, with a red-labeled bottle between the two plates. Hot sauce, Brad figured. He decided to steer clear of the stuff.

  Liberally sprinkling his omelet with the sauce, Littlejohn said, “Kosoff told me that you rattled Dr. Steiner’s cage when you asked about keeping any subjects we bring up from the surface from knowing they’d been taken to the ship.”

  Brad swallowed a bite of omelet, then answered, “It seemed kind of callous to murder them after she’s finished examining their innards.”

  Littlejohn nodded his heavy-browed head. “You brought an ethical question into her meeting. She didn’t like that.”

  “I didn’t mean to challenge her.”

  “But that’s what she felt—challenged. As an anthropologist, you should have realized she’d resent your stepping onto her turf.”

  Nodding unhappily, Brad said, “Yes, I suppose I should have.”

  Littlejohn brightened. “But you impressed Kosoff. He called me first thing this morning and suggested a special assignment for you.”

  “Special assignment?”

  His features clouding slightly, Littlejohn answered, “It might be more like an exile.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He wants to send you to Alpha for a while.”

  Feeling stupid, Brad echoed, “Alpha?”

  “Yes,” said Littlejohn, his face totally serious now. “Kosoff saw that you minored in languages, and wants you to try to decode the sounds that those octopus-like creatures are making. See if they have a true language. See if they’re intelligent.”

  “How in hell am I supposed to do that? I’m not a philologist. We’ve got a whole team of linguists, why doesn’t he tap one of them? I don’t—”

  “The philology team is fully occupied studying the Gammans’ language.”

  “I’m not a philologist,” Brad repeated.

  “It’s strictly voluntary,” Littlejohn interrupted. “I made sure of that.”

  Almost sullenly, Brad asked, “Who else is going?”

  “Only you—with the neuronal analysis equipment and as much computing power as can be packed into a shuttlecraft.”

  Brad got off the stool and paced across the sitting room. Think before you speak, he told himself. Don’t get angry at Littlejohn; this isn’t his doing.

  Turning back to face the Aborigine, Brad asked, “So what did you say to Kosoff?”

  “I told him I’d ask you about it. I made no commitment. This is your decision to make.”

  Brad went back to the breakfast bar and leaned his rump on the stool he’d been sitting on. “Kosoff wants me out of his way,” he said. “He’s sore because I got between him and one of the female biologists.”

  “So he’s punishing you by sending you to Siberia.”

  “If I refuse, my name’ll be mud.”

  “I’ll protect you as much as I can,” Littlejohn offered.

  “Yeah. And then I’ll be the cause of a rift between you and Kosoff. Most of the scientific staff already resents being studied by the anthropology team.”

  With a sigh, Littlejohn admitted, “That’s one way to look at it.”

  “Is there another way?”

  The department head’s deep brown eyes were rimmed with red, Brad saw. The man looked … not sad, so much as resigned. He’s seen his share of unfair deals, Brad realized.

  “How long am I supposed to be out there, alone?”

  Littlejohn shrugged. “A few months, at least.”

  “An exile. A leper.”

  “But if you actually do make something of the aliens’ beeps and twitters you’ll be a hero.”

  “The chances for that are somewhere between zero and negative numbers.”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Littlejohn countered. “Neuronal analysis systems have translated the brain activities of chimps and dolphins on Earth into recognizable language. Even the leviathans on Jupiter.”

  Brad mused, “We’d have to drop scanners into the ocean, guide them to trail the octopods.”

  “It’s possible.”

  “It’s a million-to-one long shot.”

  With a meager smile, Littlejohn said, “That’s better than zero or negative numbers.”

  Brad said, “Not by much.”

  “All right, I’ll tell Kosoff that I won’t go along with the idea. I’ll refuse to allow you to go.”

  “And then you’ll be on Kosoff’s shit list. Most of the scientific staff thinks the anthropology department’s a waste of time, anyway. We’ll just be putting the whole department in Siberia.”

  Littlejohn nodded sadly. “I hate to admit it, but I think you’re right.”

  “Damn.”

  “What do you want to do?” Littlejohn asked softly. “What do you want me to do?”

  “How soon does Kosoff expect an answer?”

  “Before the day is out.”

  Brad got to his feet again. “I’ll be back in an hour or two.”

  He strode to the door, leaving his mentor behind him.

  * * *

  “Alone?” Felicia looked aghast. “For three months?”

  “Or more,” Brad said.

  He had phoned her and they met in one of the starship’s observation blisters, a bubble of transparent glassteel on the ship’s outer hull, where they could be alone with no cameras watching them. It was almost like being out in space itself: the stars were spread across the infinite blackness, the lushly green planet hung overhead.

  Felicia hugged herself against the chill. Brad felt warm, tho
ugh. The cold of space couldn’t penetrate the heat of his anger.

  “He can’t do that to you,” Felicia said. She looked fearful, though, her eyes glistening with tears.

  “I’m afraid he can,” Brad replied gently.

  She shook her head. “It’s all my fault. This is all over me, isn’t it?”

  “Most likely.”

  “What can I do?”

  A vision of the opera Tosca flashed in Brad’s mind: the soprano jamming a knife into the villain’s gut.

  But instead he said, “Keep away from him until I get back.”

  Felicia pressed her lips together and nodded. “I will, Brad,” she said in a near whisper. “I will.”

  Then she slid her arms around his neck and they kissed.

  “We have tonight,” she said.

  “Tonight,” he agreed. Yet he knew that tonight was all they had.

  CONFESSIONS

  That night, Brad felt the relentless stare of the surveillance camera like a laser beam boring into his chest as he approached Felicia’s quarters. The cameras watched every square centimeter of the ship’s passageways and public spaces. He only hoped that Kosoff wasn’t searching their files for a sight of him.

  He had put on his best tunic: black with silver piping. And brought a bouquet of colorful flowers which he hid behind his back as he pressed Felicia’s door buzzer.

  The door slid open and she stood there, in a simple golden-yellow frock. Still, she looked like a princess to him.

  He stepped into her sitting room and presented her with the flowers.

  “Daffodils!” Felicia gasped, delighted. “Where did you get them?”

  “Uh, Larry Untermeyer grows them. It’s his hobby. Says it helps to remind him of home.”

  Felicia headed for the tiny kitchen and pulled a plastic vase from an overhead closet. “They’re lovely. It was very sweet of you, Brad.”

  “It was sweet of you to cook dinner,” he said, stepping up to the bar that separated the sitting room from the kitchen.

  “Microwaving prepackaged meals isn’t exactly cooking,” she said.

  “It’s the thought that counts.”

  Felicia gave him a long-lashed look, then turned her attention to arranging the daffodils in the vase.

  “Reminds him of home,” she said, almost wistfully. “We’re a long way from home, aren’t we?”