GROUND / CH. 3:MEDICINE
SPACE, DAY THREE AFTER CONTACT
“A brief study of frontier-village life among the shape-shifting forest-dwellers of planet, errr, what's the number again?”
“34-98-C” Maggie supplied.
“Well, what do you think?”
“Congratulations Doctor, we'll give you the doctorate for that title alone.” Maggie said.
“Oh stop it, I was serious.” Rachel protested.
“So was I, almost.” Maggie said, “You've worked out what was the big question in my mind, anyway. Why are there roads and signs of civilisation over there, but not much of it here. This is outside their preferred zone. And now we know what to look for, they're farmers, aren't they?”
“It certainly looks like it, and it isn't quite harvest season.”
“And the grain-stores are getting empty. No wonder there's not much trade.”
Maggie added.
“So, do we do the whole 'take me to your leader' thing?” Rachel asked.
“No. You write up your thesis, I'll work on our joint paper about what the flora and fauna we've seen here.”
“Paper? It's going to be a book!”
“I know. And we've got a duty to publish as soon as possible. We don't need to go instituting formal first contact. We'll leave that to the government. Governments.”
“OK if I move the probe?” Rachel asked.
“Of course. Just make sure you're concentrating on writing. I think we're heading home in a week.”
“A week?”
“That ought to be enough to write the first draft, we can finish it on our trip home. You don't need a hundred thousand words, Rach. This is scientific dynamite and twenty thousand words ought to be plenty, especially with the video.”
“Then what'll we do?”
“Go swimming for a bit and then come back, of course.”
“And if there's any justice, you'll be queen-bee of a whole research department into this new world of new people.” Rachel said.
Dr Magdalena(Maggie) Karella John PhD of the University of Mars looked startled. A memory came back, from a happier age, long before her big brother had vanished, and been presumed dead. /'What do you want God to let you do Mags?'/ he'd asked. She, aged ten, had said 'I want to go and find a new people on a new world, and be in charge of lots of scientists like mummy.'
'If you find a new people, you'll need to tell them about God, too.'
'I don't know much.'
'It's always good to know more about God, Mags. He's great.'
Maggie started to cry. Eventually, she explained to Rachel.
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GROUND, DAY FOUR AFTER CONTACT
Jakav was back on border patrol, making sure that no foraging scrub-land herbivores had got into the fields. All seemed OK so far, as he surveyed the scene. A glint of metal caught his eye; the alien machine. The probe hadn't done much since the battle, it just hung there, arrogantly defying the known laws of physics. Occasionally it moved, or turned. It hadn't shown any sign of trying to communicate since the predator had bitten it. Maybe it couldn't now.
But Jakav was near the scrub, so he was alert. And he had his spear and a sword with him, just in case. Aza had been true to her word, and had done one change after their discussion, as had he. Rather than swap wings for arms, she'd asked her wing bones to split, giving her wings, and separate arms. She'd never had both arms and wings before, and had embarrased herself by flapping her arms rather than her wings once yesterday. Also, she needed to be careful — Both sets of her upper limbs were now thin and hollow. She needed more calcium to let her bone organisms thicken up her arms and the most stressed parts of her wing more. Arms when flying were extra weight, and a bit of a pain; wings on the ground were an annoyance, but he'd demonstrated the benefits of avoiding changes. She was prepared to try it, and he liked the idea of being able to fly and use a spear at the same time, so Jakav had used his protein intake to grow muscles for his stored wing-bones too. But he wasn't a good flyer, really. Theoretically, they could both now fly and run and swing a sword. He just hoped neither of them would need to before they'd had more practice with the extra limbs.
There was a sound behind him. He turned, spear ready; his eyes had time to identify a grey shape with red splotches, mid-pounce before it hit. His spear entered its chest and shattered, so did his bones; the world went black.
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SPACE
“He killed it, but the carcass is still on him,” Rachel said.
“I see that. I also saw that the atmosphere is entirely Earth-like, gravity is roughly Mars-like, and all our biological samples so far have proven entirely immune to Earth bacteria and other pathogens, and vice-versa.”
“You're going down?” Rachel was shocked.
“I'm not going to leave someone to suffocate, no. The probe can't move the dog, or bear, or whatever it is. Pilot us down, please. I'm taking a full decontamination shower before and after, don't worry, and I'll keep my helmet on so I won't breathe on him, either.”
“What are you going to do if he doesn't wake up?”
“Take him home with his kill, of course. I'm sure the probe can play ambulance as well as elevator.”
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GROUND
The bear-sized predator - far bigger than the ones the shape-shifter had killed before - probably weighed two hundred kilos, so Maggie was glad the gravity was only a third of Earth's, or it would have weighed too much even for the probe. Not wanting to hurt the hunter more than he was already, she put ropes around it's head and legs, and got the probe to lift the corpse off his body. As she did, she saw the victim take a deep breath, and his chest started to rise and fall, and he made some kind of groaning sound. So, she judged, he was badly wounded, probably not dead. With a symbiotic organism of specialised slime-mould like organisms, of course, defining dead was going to be tricky.
“Get well soon, guy. I hope this doesn't hurt.” The ground was the same sand that seemed ubiquitous in this area, and after some digging she got the probe to extend a forcefield just below the surface he was lying on. For good measure, she drew her knife. She'd always held there was nothing quite like a wickedly serrated knife to help predators know you didn't want to be messed with. Her rock-cutter was on her belt, but in her experience more animals recognised sharp as dangerous than glowing. The probe struggled to lift, so she scraped the sand off the forcefield with her foot, keeping her eyes and ears open for more suicidal predators. Sharks with claws were still sharks, and she was a Mer warrior; some things didn't change much.
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SPACE
“OK, Maggie,” Rachel said, “I've plotted you a route to what I've tentatively identified as the village clinic. Happens to be the house where he dropped his love interest off the other night, so I guess it's where she lives, but who knows.”
“Great, thanks! And the sound clip for some kind of 'get help' message?”
“The best I've found so far is when the one with wings went to get help before the big fight. So it's not great, but...”
“Better than nothing. It'll do.”
“Just don't turn into anything's dinner.”
“Hey, fast though they may be, these doggies haven't ever met a Mer warrior.”
“You've never met one of them either,”
“Ha! A shark's a shark, no matter how many legs it's got. D'nae fash ye'sel, lassie.”
“Err, what language was that in?”
“English, Scottish dialect. I think. Translation: don't worry. Anyway, I'm off.”
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GROUND, FRONTIER VILLAGE
The alien creature ran towards the village. It was bipedal, with two arms, two eyes, one mouth, two ears. Nothing very unusual there, but it also had long hair tied back out of its face, moved faster than a predator, and perhaps strangest of all it seemed to have some kind of fabric covering most of its body and a glass thing all around its head. It was about the same height as the people, but its bones seemed too heavy, it's limbs carrying too much muscle. Even its fingers seemed to exude strength. It also had a knife in one hand, a vicious looking one. Beside it flew the alien flying machine, with Jakav somehow suspended between them, looking dead or half-dead. On the other side of the flying machine, was the red-splotched pack leader, clearly dead, with blood slowly dripping from its mouth. Was the alien after more victims? Fear claimed the heart of the field workers on the road, they took one look and dived out of the way.
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Witnesses near the town later said that as the alien got to the edge of town it put away its vicious knife. The alien seemed to know where it was going, and it ran down the main road of the town to where Aza lived, making strange noises with its mouth. Those who'd only managed to press themselves against the wall said there seemed to be another source of strange noises coming from the alien's wrist.
It stopped outside the clinic and knocked loudly on the door. Then it fiddled with something on its wrist, and Aza's voice called out, unnaturally loud, 'There's something moving over there, I'll go sound the alarm'.
It didn't make much sense, but at the banging on the door and the sound of her daughter's voice, made Uza, Aza's mother open up. The sight of the alien terrified her, but before she could retreat the alien grabbed her and pulled her in front of the broken form of Jakav. Then the alien made her look at its wrist, where there were pictures, moving on some kind of device strapped there. Jakav walking, the predator springing onto his spear, Jakav crushed by its dying form. Then the alien stepped away, ridiculously fast, and made some more noises. The alien machine shot into the air, leaving Uza facing the broken form of Jakav, with the alien looking at her. Uza guessed the alien expected her to do something. What was she supposed to do? The poor young man was either going to live or die, an immunization wasn't going to help him. But where was Aza? “Aza?” She asked the alien. “My daughter?” She cupped her hand to her ear and looked around.
The alien made some strange noises, then pressed something on it's wrist, and Uza saw the recording of Aza saying those words and flying away from the fields, where Jakav had two predators on his spear. The alien pointed at the suns and moved her finger backwards along it's path, turning a full circle. Yesterday, Uza realised, well, a few days ago. So, Aza wasn't involved in today's attack, and Aza was presumably safe, but Jakav — crushed and suffocated, just after getting engaged to her beloved daughter — groaned what might have been Aza's name.
Uza called her daughter's name, but it was no use.
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SPACE
“I guess that is the girlfriend's name,” Rachel said.
“Sure sounds like it,” Maggie agreed. “And it is the same one who flew away for help. I don't suppose the probe can spot her?”
“I'm scanning. OK, I've got a ninety-five percent match.”
“Feed me directions and her mother's voice, will you?”
“Yes, Maam! Back the way you came to start with.”
“I'll go and find Aza,” Maggie said in Mer and sprinted off — there didn't seem much point in not speaking Mer to the aliens. Maybe she'd try ancient Hebrew next.
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GROUND
Aza was about to leave the town when suddenly the alien machine was in front of her, flashing its light. Danger? Behind her, she heard the sounds of panic in the market. She turned, and the probe hopped in front of her, and moved towards the sound of alarm. Aza tightened her grip on her spear, and steeled herself, ready to face her worst nightmare: a predator in the market square. She ran as fast as she could after the probe.
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SPACE
“OK, Maggie, she's coming, and the way she's holding her spear I think she thinks you're a predator.”
“Ha, she's about to get a surprise then.”
“Just don't get accidentally speared. Left at the next corner, she's two metres behind the probe.”
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GROUND
Turning the corner, Maggie saw the probe and the face she was looking for.
“Aza, go to your house,” she called in ancient Hebrew, as she'd promised herself she would. She probably had a terrible accent, she knew, but what's the point of speaking English to aliens, when you know other languages, and you've got a monolingual companion you can't use them with?
Aza dropped her spear in shock and stopped. A probe maker, or a messenger from God? It knew her name! Why was this being here? Why was it looking for her? The alien or angel turned and ran back the way it had come from; too fast. It stopped, looking back at her, and she heard her mother's voice calling.
Aza picked up her spear and followed. A small crowd had gathered outside her house, she saw. She also saw the unmistakable shape of a dead pack-leader. Had her mother been attacked? Fear hurried her steps more. No, not her mother, there she was. But there was a body: Jakav's.
“He's alive, barely,” Uza reported. “The alien brought him here, and the pack leader. It pounced on him from behind, somehow he killed it, but it crushed him.”
“How do you know?” Aza asked, kneeling beside her fiancé's barely breathing body, not knowing if she could believe her mother.
“I think the alien machine records what it sees, and what it hears.”
“I mean how do you know he lives?”
“He called for you. Muscles can't do that on their own.”
“I'm here, Jakav,” Aza said.
One of his eyes flickered around randomly, seemingly unable to focus. Eventually it stopped. It looked to her like it was pointing at her left milk gland, rather than her face. “Hey, eyeball, wrong bit of my anatomy,” she said. His eye then found her face and he smiled.
“No it's not,” her mother corrected, quietly. “Trauma like this is going to wreck his digestion and circulation, you know that.”
“Can we get him inside?” Aza asked, embarrassed at forgetting that, and embarrassed at the thought of giving milk to an adult. But it was the one food all the organisms that made up Jakav could digest and pass along to their neighbours.
“I don't really want to risk moving him. At the moment his lungs are working.”
“You got him this far, didn't you?”
“Not me! The alien, complete with the sand he was on, somehow. I guess the machine did it. I think it thought I could help somehow.”
“What, give an injection to keep away crushing injuries? That's crazy!”
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SPACE
“I really don't understand this,” Maggie said, “they're not doing anything to help him.
“Maybe there's nothing they think they can do,” Rachel said, “if they're self-healing....”
“At least some kind of intravenous fluid, surely!” Maggie protested. “At the moment all they've done is talk to him.”
“Tell you what, show them some of your favourite hospital scenes, maybe they'll get the idea.” Rachel said, facetiously. “But maybe they think he's too far gone, or they don't dare move him even that much.”
“The hospital scenes might work, actually. Can you dial some up?”
“I guess so.”
“Hold on, Aza's coming.”
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GROUND
Aza picked up a stick from the ground, and walked towards the alien who was talking to a box on her wrist. Some kind of advanced miniature radio, Aza guessed.
“Please, can you help? His ribs are crushed, we can see that.” She pointed to her rib bones and laced her six fingers on each hand together, showing how they ought to be. Then she pointed to Jakav, and smashed the stick, and showed what she thought his ribs might be like. “I'd like him to be in the house, but if we move him he might die,” Then she mimed lifting Jakav into the house, and what might happen to his ribs then.
“Shalom,” Maggie said. “Can I see where?” She pointed at her eyes, and the doorway.
Aza understood, the alien wanted to see where the Jakav needed to get to. She beckoned.
The doorway was narrow, then Aza led her through what Maggie was fairly sure was the waiting room for a medical area: she saw seats and what she guessed were children's toys in one corner. The other corner had a series of medical implements, bottles of heavily stoppered powders and fluids, but hardly any space. Aza then led her up some narrow stairs to the living quarters. No way was a stretcher getting up here, she realised. There were three rooms, and a smaller room which seemed to have what looked like washing facilities. The room that Aza led her to had two sleeping platforms. One looked unused. The other had a rumpled pile of blankets, and a pile of what she guessed were books. There was also a window, tall but narrow, too narrow for the probe to enter while carrying someone.
Maggie stuck her head out of the window and called down the probe. After she'd turned on on the forcefield and sat down on it, as close to the probe as she could, and showed Aza the edge with her hand.
Aza found it totally unreal, seeing the alien sitting in mid air on nothingness, but she got the idea. There was just no way for the probe to get through the window.
Aza showed Maggie another room, with a single, wider sleeping platform. Again the window was too narrow. The third room was bare, and dusty; seemingly unused. It was smaller than the other two, just big enough to lie down in. There was no sleeping platform in here, but it seemed the whole room was designed to be either waterproof or sterile after a good clean, Maggie couldn't make up her mind. The window was high in the room, above head height, and long — as wide as the room, almost, but narrow. But it wasn't so narrow that a prone person couldn't be carried through on a forcefield, as Maggie demonstrated. She also demonstrated the problem. The probe couldn't get her to floor level without dropping her.
Aza was deeply embarrassed when she told her mother the news.
“Mother, Jakav will have to sleep in my bed, since its the only one we can move.”
“Where to?” Uza asked.
“The urm....” she couldn't bring herself to say it. “The only room with a wide window.”
“You mean...”
“It's that or we risk carrying him, or he stays outside.”
Her mother laughed, which wasn't what Aza had expected at all, “Well? Get on with it, Aza. But remind him that he is there due to medical necessity. Not because you've any immediate plans to pour yourself over his vitals.”
“It's dirty in there, mum.”
“Well then! That'll help re-assure the neighbours, won't it? Take him up, and take lots of food. And drink lots.”
“Drink lots?”
“You clearly have very little idea, young one, what you're about to do to yourself. Drink more than you can hold. You'll be thirsty within the hour if you're giving him what he needs.” Aza realised she did have some idea about what she'd be doing: she'd be eating for two and processing the food into the most perfect nutrition her people knew. She'd be extracting nutrients from her blood enough to bathe his organisms in food in a way that they'd not had since he'd been podling, and she realised, like she'd also do in preparation for a mixing, when the enzymes she'd add to the milk would calm immune responses and thin the walls of his reproductive cells ready for their task of handing over their DNA.
But she shouldn't think of that. She didn't want to thin his cell walls, after all. Uncertain, she had a terrible thought. “Mother, how do I feed him without... you know, enzymes?”
“You don't, dear. Enzymes are only half of the story, after all. The other part is getting your ready-cells next to his. Enzymes on their own will just help him heal faster.”
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SPACE
“Successful rescue?” Rachel asked.
“Yes. One broken party delivered where his girlfriend or wife can take good care of him.”
“You're sure she is a she?” Rachel asked.
“Rach, you know we decided gender based on breast-like anatomical features?”
“Yes.”
“She did the same, mimicked suckling a child. Only it's not quite the same, of course. She had some illustrated 'facts of life' books she showed me.”
“Really? What a wonderful data source!”
“Yes. So, we did show and not much tell. I showed her that hospital film, she showed me the books. They're definitely symbiotic life-forms, and she'd correctly guessed we weren't. Her people are the most developed symbiotic forms of course, and they're equally at home in rivers or on land. Based on pictures in her book, there seem to be a some other symbiotic life forms, smaller brained types. The predators are the highest non-symbiotic land animals, and the predator marking is not genetic. The huge size difference is a case of smaller females, big males. If I understood the book right, female predators often do parthenogenesis if there's no male around.”
“How did they draw that?”
“Diagram one: big dog gives sperm, little dog egg, makes big dog or little dog. Diagram two, little dog makes egg, makes little dog.”
“Fascinating!”
“And for them it's even more complicated.”
“Go on.”
“They can bud, they can bud cooperatively, and they can reproduce by direct genetic exchange, sperm and ova not involved.”
“Interesting!”
“And completing the circle, when I showed her intravenous drips she pointed at the breast-feeding page, with all the happy organisms holding hands and slurping up the river. To emphasize the point, she was drinking lots and her breast-like features were engorging.”
“That gives a whole different meaning to the phrase nursing him back to health, doesn't it?”
“It does, yes.”