Apes and Angels Page 31

  “You said there were three types?”

  Nodding tightly, Steiner replied, “The steriles, which seem to be little more than killing machines. They are incubated in the eggs that fly to Gamma, hatch from those eggs, and hunt down the Gammans. Within a few days they die—of starvation.”

  A woman’s voice from the audience asked again, “How could such creatures evolve?”

  “Frankly,” Steiner replied, “I am at a loss to understand how such a creature could evolve naturally. As I said a few moments ago, it looks to me as if they were designed, purposely, by some other species. It is a biological analog to the robots that we design and use.”

  That caused a stir among the audience.

  “Designed? By whom?” someone from a back row shouted.

  “We don’t know,” said Steiner.

  “Designed for what purpose?” asked another.

  “To slaughter the Gammans. That’s the only discernible reason for their existence.”

  The questions came faster then, and some members of the audience began arguing with others.

  Typical, thought Brad. Each scientist wants to solve the riddle with his or her own brilliant ideas.

  Steiner went through the cats’ life cycle. “They reproduce sexually. The males and females produce the eggs that reproduce themselves, and also the eggs that bear the steriles—which fly to Gamma when the two planets are nearest to one another. Once on Gamma they hatch and slaughter the Gammans, then die within a few days.”

  “What kills them?”

  “Starvation. As I showed you, their digestive systems shut down.”

  “The females lay their eggs, and then what?”

  “Ah yes, those eggs,” Steiner said. “They sit on the ground, drawing nourishment from sunlight and elements in the air and soil.”

  “Like photosynthesis!”

  “Very much like photosynthesis. The eggs grow and reach maturity at the time when Beta comes to its closest approach to Gamma.”

  Steiner pointed to Pedersen, sitting three rows back in the auditorium. “Dr. Pedersen, you understand the mechanics of those eggs better than I. Perhaps you could explain?”

  Pedersen rose to his feet. “I wish I could explain. The eggs are laced with nano-sized control systems that we have not yet been able to fully understand. The eggs themselves are a rudimentary sort of spacecraft, it seems.”

  Kosoff turned in his seat. “They are actively guided to Gamma?”

  Shaking his head, the planetologist answered, “Apparently not. The tremendous atmospheric disturbances caused by the two planets’ near collision cause cyclonic winds that lift the eggs off the ground on Beta and hurl them across the gap to land on Gamma.”

  “They land without breaking?”

  “Most of them do. Even those that do break hatch out full-grown cats.”

  Steiner resumed her narrative. “Once the eggs arrive on Gamma, the sterile cats break out of them, fully adult, and begin to track down and kill the Gammans.”

  The 3-D image behind her showed footage of the mangled bodies of Gammans sprawled on the ground in their own blood.

  “Incredible!”

  “But true,” said Steiner.

  “Wait a moment,” said Quentin Abbott. Rising to his feet, the astronomer confessed, “I’m a bit confused here. You say the beasts mate and lay eggs. I presume that happens before the conjunction of the two planets.”

  “Yes. Only a relative few of the animals break out of their eggs before the planets’ closest approach. They do the mating and lay the eggs that eventually become the next generation.”

  “Lucky critters,” someone said, in a stage whisper.

  “The early bird gets the worm.”

  “So to speak.”

  Chuckles and outright laughter swept through the audience. Breaking the tension, thought Brad.

  Still on his feet, Abbott said, “So that means the eggs for the next generation of beasts have already been laid.”

  “Yes,” said Steiner. “Our observation satellites have spotted nearly a hundred caches of eggs on the ground. They will apparently stay there, growing and maturing, until the planet nears Gamma once again.”

  “They survive their winter, then,” said one of the planetologists.

  “Evidently so.”

  “And hatch after they fly off Beta and land on Gamma,” Abbott said.

  Nodding, Steiner confirmed, “That is our conclusion, yes.”

  The auditorium hummed with voices. Steiner broke through the chatter with, “Now I’d like to ask Dr. MacDaniels to tell you about the Gammans’ response to the invasion and slaughter.”

  Surprised, Brad got to his feet.

  “Up here, Dr. MacDaniels,” Steiner urged, motioning for Brad to join her on the stage. “Here, where everyone can see you.”

  Trying to put his thoughts in order, Brad slid past Felicia and the others sitting in the row, then climbed the steps to the stage.

  Littlejohn was watching him like a proud father; Kosoff looked warier.

  “Thank you, Dr. Steiner,” Brad began. “The Gammans have a mythology—or maybe it’s more of a philosophy—of passivity and acceptance. They believe that in the distant past their ancestors built cities and created a civilization that spanned the whole planet. Based on their history or mythology or whatever you want to call it, we have found the remains of a city and are excavating it.”

  Littlejohn called out, “The city was destroyed, wasn’t it?”

  “Smashed flat,” Brad acknowledged. “Nothing left but the foundations of the original buildings.”

  Kosoff said, “And they believe it was deliberately destroyed.”

  Nodding, Brad replied, “Destroyed by some force which they call the Sky Masters. The Gammans believe the Sky Masters—whatever they are—crushed their ancient civilization and send those cats from Beta to kill them every time the two planets approach each other.”

  “You mean there was a war?” an incredulous voice from the audience asked. “An interstellar war?”

  “That’s one possible explanation,” Brad answered. “Whatever the Sky Masters are, or were, they apparently are intent on preventing the Gammans from rebuilding their civilization.”

  Steiner added, “The biology of the cats from Beta fits in with that interpretation.”

  Pedersen said, “This must have happened on the order of a hundred thousand years ago—when this planetary system was disrupted.”

  Dead silence fell over the auditorium. Brad understood what they were all thinking: A war, interstellar invaders destroyed the Gammans’ civilization, using technology far in advance of our own.

  “It’s a fantastic story,” said Pedersen. “But it just might be true.”

  “If it is,” Kosoff said, his voice heavy with apprehension, “by helping the Gammans we’ve made ourselves enemies of the Sky Masters—whoever or whatever they may be.”

  OCCAM’S RAZOR

  Adrian Kosoff stood on the cracked stone floor of the ancient building’s foundation, with Brad and Littlejohn on either side of him. Off in the distance the remotely controlled digging machines were patiently enlarging the excavation, uncovering more and more of the remains of the city.

  Kosoff had picked a frosty day for his first visit to Gamma. He had decided to come down and see the evidence of the ancient cataclysm for himself. He wore a fur-trimmed arctic jacket and a fur hat jammed down over his ears. Its brim nearly covered the professor’s bushy eyebrows.

  He was peering at the inscription chiseled neatly into the remains of the stone wall.

  “It must be writing of some sort,” he said, more to himself than the others. “Has to be.”

  Bundled into a thick windbreaker, Brad said, “None of the Gammans understand it. They have no writing of their own.”

  Only a handful of the Gammans had worked up the courage to come and look at the city. Even Lnng had shuffled his feet nervously on the few occasions when he’d visited. Superstitious dread was the villagers
’ common reaction, together with awe and outright fear of the heavy earth-moving equipment that was methodically uncovering the ancient city.

  It didn’t help, Brad thought, that Mnnx dolefully repeated to them every evening that he expected the Sky Masters to reappear and punish them all for surviving the attack of the monsters from Beta.

  Raising his voice over the clatter of the digging machines and the keening wind, Brad said, “They smashed this city and everything in it, then diverted the river to bury the remains in silt.”

  “They?” Kosoff asked. “You mean these so-called Sky Masters?”

  Littlejohn, also swaddled in winter gear, said, “Mythology isn’t merely stories made up out of whole cloth, you know. Most myths are based on a kernel of truth.”

  Kosoff nodded curtly. His gaze sweeping the crumbling stones, he muttered, “Pretty big kernel here.”

  “So what will your report back to Earth say?” Brad asked.

  Putting out a hand to touch the stub of stone standing erect before him, Kosoff said slowly, “Abbott’s astronomers have searched with their best telescopes for a star that might have disrupted this planetary system. There’s nothing in the area that might fit the bill.”

  “Then whatever perturbed the orbits of the planets here was not a passing star,” said Littlejohn.

  “Whatever smashed this city flat and then buried it was not a natural cataclysm,” Brad added.

  Kosoff glowered at them. “There must be a natural explanation for this. There’s got to be! You can’t believe that some interstellar war took place here a hundred thousand years ago. It’s too fantastic.”

  “Is it?” Littlejohn asked mildly.

  “Perhaps a passing mini black hole disrupted this planetary system,” Kosoff mused.

  “And created the cats on Beta?” Brad challenged.

  Kosoff had no answer.

  “Occam’s Razor, Professor,” said Brad. “Fantastic as it may seem, an interstellar invader fits all the observed facts, including the biology of the cats from Beta.” Before Kosoff could reply, Brad went on, “And it fits the Gammans’ mythology.”

  With a single brisk nod, Littlejohn agreed, “Perhaps it isn’t mythology, after all. Perhaps it’s history.”

  Kosoff muttered, “Perhaps. Perhaps. I wish we could stay here longer, dig up more evidence.”

  “We’ve got about eighteen months before we head back to Earth,” Littlejohn said.

  “Too soon,” said Kosoff. “We need more time here.”

  “The follow-on mission is already on its way,” said Littlejohn.

  “Yes. They’ll get all the glory, after we’ve done the groundbreaking work.”

  Brad interrupted Kosoff’s brooding. “In the meantime, we’ve got to decide what we should do about the cats. We can’t let them invade this planet again and slaughter the Gammans.”

  “The follow-on mission won’t be here in time to stop that,” said Kosoff.

  “We’ve saved the Gammans once, but we won’t be here to save them the next time.”

  “That can’t be helped. We don’t have the resources to remain here until the follow-on mission arrives,” Kosoff said. “Even if we did, I doubt that the World Council would approve our staying.”

  Brad started, “They don’t understand—”

  “No, you don’t understand,” Kosoff interrupted. “We’re under the World Council’s control, whether you like it or not.”

  * * *

  That night, as he lay in bed with Felicia, Brad blurted, “Fil, I’ve got to stay here.”

  He felt her body tense. “What do you mean?”

  In the darkened room he couldn’t make out the expression on her face. But he heard the stress in her voice.

  “I’ve got to stay here through the winter. I’ve got to help Mnnx and Lnng and the others when the cats from Beta come back.”

  She turned toward him. “Brad, you can’t! You can’t stay here alone. How will you survive? You won’t have enough food—”

  “I’ve been working through the numbers,” he said, keeping his voice soft, not giving in to his own doubts, his own fears. “There’s enough food in the backup reserves to feed the two of us until the follow-on mission arrives.”

  “The two of us?”

  “You’ll stay with me, won’t you?”

  A long silence. Brad could feel his pulse thudding in his ears.

  At last Felicia said, “If I don’t stay, what will you do?”

  “You won’t stay?”

  “If I don’t, will you stay here or come back home with me?”

  “Fil, don’t ask me that. Don’t make me choose.”

  “You’ve got to choose, Brad. It’s one or the other.”

  “You’d leave me?”

  Another long silence. Brad felt as if he were being torn apart.

  “You’d leave me,” Felicia said softly, sadly.

  “But I have to—”

  “You’d be killing both of us,” Felicia said.

  “You’d stay?”

  “I shouldn’t. I should go back. I should let Kosoff court me all the way home.”

  “Don’t joke. This is serious.”

  “Brad, I want a normal life. I want to have children, your children.”

  “But you’d stay.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “But you’d stay. You’d really stay with me.”

  In the darkness, she sighed. “There’s got to be some other way. Brad, you’ve got to find another option.”

  “There isn’t any other option. Either we stay and help the Gammans protect themselves, or we go back to Earth and leave them to face the cats by themselves. Leave them to be butchered.”

  “You’ve got to find another way,” Felicia insisted. “Otherwise you’ll be killing us both.”

  Brad didn’t reply. But he felt a wall separating him from his wife now, even though they lay side by side.

  SEARCHING

  The next morning brought snow. The cheerless weather outside their quarters matched the atmosphere inside. Felicia was up and busy in their minuscule kitchen when Brad awoke, blurry and disturbed by his dreams.

  They were a combination of the old nightmare about Tithonium Chasma, plus a new sense of impending doom. Felicia was in his dreams, Brad recalled, but he couldn’t quite grasp what she had been doing. He knew that he had felt helpless once again, torn between his guilt and his sense of duty.

  Feeling tired, drained, he slipped into the lavatory, then once freshened and dressed, stepped into the kitchen area.

  “Good morning,” he said to Felicia, as brightly as he could.

  She was wearing a simple gray coverall, standing before the microwave as it ticked off its final seconds.

  “Morning, Brad.” She did not turn to offer him even a perfunctory kiss.

  “Uh … did you sleep well?”

  “Not very,” said Felicia. Her face was serious, her luminous gray eyes unsmiling. “You were moaning in your sleep again.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  “The nightmare again?”

  He nodded. “With some new twists.”

  Her stern expression softened. “I’ve put you under a lot of stress, haven’t I?”

  He reached for her, pulled her close. “No, it’s my own fault. I wish…”

  “You wish what, Brad?”

  Feeling nearly desperate, he answered, “I wish there was some way I could leave here and go back to Earth. Bring you back to Earth.”

  Felicia smiled gently at him. “Then you’ll just have to find a way, won’t you?”

  * * *

  As he drove one of the buggies toward the village, through the thickly falling snow, Brad wondered what he should do. The buggy’s energy screen protected him from the snow and the biting wind that was sweeping down from the mountains. Bundled inside his hooded parka, Brad felt warm enough. Yet inside, he was bleak.

  Winter, he thought. In another few months Mnnx and the rest of them will have to face the d
epth of winter. Can they do it on their own? They’ve gathered in their crops and they have the food supplies we made for them; will it be enough to feed them through the long winter? Or am I killing them just as the cats do, only slower, more painfully?

  And over on Beta, Brad knew, the eggs holding the embryos of the cats will hibernate through the time of cold. In the spring the two planets will come close enough to each other so that those eggs will fly to Gamma and they’ll hatch and the cats will come out and start killing.

  Brad had suggested to Mnnx and the others that they should defend themselves against the cats.

  “We don’t have your death beam,” Lnng replied, sounding almost envious.

  “It is wrong for us to disobey the will of the Sky Masters,” Mnnx intoned.

  “You could make spears,” Brad had told them. “We could show you how to make bows and arrows, train you how to kill the cats.”

  “Even if we could,” Mnnx had answered, “the Sky Masters would return and punish us.”

  Lnng disagreed. “Better to face their punishment than to allow the cats to kill us.”

  “Do you think you could kill one of the monsters?” Mnnx challenged.

  “Yes! If I had to.”

  Sounding sorrowful, Mnnx said, “No, my sibling. Brrd can kill the monsters. He is not one of us. But we are bound by the commands of the Sky Masters. Without Brrd to protect us, we will be killed by the monsters.”

  Great, Brad thought as he recalled their discussions. They’ll be happy to let me stay and protect them. Otherwise they’ll let the cats kill them all. And argue about it until they’re all dead.

  He heard Felicia’s voice in his mind, “Then you’ll just have to find a way, won’t you?”

  Easier said than done, Brad told himself. Easier said than done.

  The buggy reached the crest of the low hills that surrounded the village. No, Brad corrected mentally: villages. There’s two of them now, one empty.

  He stopped and looked down at the villages. A layer of snow covered everything. Looks like an old-fashioned Christmas card, Brad thought. Two hundred light-years from home. Merry Christmas. He didn’t feel a holiday mood.

  What month is it, anyway? he wondered.

  Aloud, he asked, “Emcee, what season is it back on Earth?”