GROUND / CH. 5: INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE

GROUND, NEAR THE UNIVERSITY

[Mick,] the female head of the two headed creature thought to the other, [what is it?]

[My sister is leaving,] Mick said, watching the dot in the sky move from its position. James' focus had not been well controlled at all, and for some reason he'd been echoing Maggie's thoughts, so Mick had heard both ends of their conversations. It was, as far as Mick was concerned, a God-send.

[Didn't you want to speak to her?]

[The One said it was not time; not yet. She'll be back, she has re-found her faith, at least.]

[She still misses you, I expect.]

[Yes. I miss her, but she has been learning to cope. It will be easier for her now, I think.] Especially since James had finally spoken about his feelings for her; he'd asked Mick about asking her out before he'd left on this mission, so many years before.

[You have been learning to cope. You're getting better and better control of our muscles every day.]

[I suppose I have, yes. I know I've said it before, Lana, but you took an enormous risk. Thank you.]

[My very own thankful alien,] Lana thought fondly.

[What did make you think of it?]

[I knew you were an intelligent being, capable of space-travel, I knew you were badly wounded, and would very probably die, since a lot of your insides were broken and on the outside, and I had no idea how you went back together. I knew your strange mind held secrets.]

Mick's mind laughed, [It still does Lana.]

[There's still time to pry them out of you. And I had hosted other minds before yours, in the interests of science.]

[You had?]

[Yes. Lower animals, mostly. Another person, once. That... that didn't end well.]

[What happened?]

[We were colleagues, both investigating symbiosis and mind to mind communication. I wasn't the first, you understand, but no one had tried a complete person-to-person meld. There are differences between our genders, in mating, females can — do, sometimes — take the male apart to find the right cells and then of course put him back together again. So, it was obvious who'd be taking who apart. It wasn't to be mating, you understand, it was pushing the boundaries of scientific curiosity, seeing if there was some hope of one person being a life-support for another.]

[But you ended up mating?]

[No. But when I called his brain organisms, they wouldn't all come, some held on to the rest of his body. It was uncharted territory, but we'd agreed I'd continue if that happened. I shouldn't have done. If all his brain organisms had come, his body would have been paralysed. But they didn't, and when the sedatives wore off his body had adult strength, no conscious thought, and extreme panic. It ripped its own arms off to get out of the restraining straps. I managed to sedate it, but his brain was traumatised by the separation from his body too, and it fragmented into a thousand pieces, every bit of it trying to pod.]

[To pod?]

[To form a new body, using the needed organisms — mine. It would have killed me, so I had to expel them. Most, I was able to return to his body, but not all. Amazingly, he even recovered his memory, eventually.]

[It sounds devastating, though.] Mick said.

[It was. That experiment very almost killed both of us, it certainly ended his academic career. His brain didn't recover that much. I.... I wrote up the paper describing what went wrong, why it should have never been done, and became the tyrant of the safety office you now know me as.]

[What do your old colleagues think of you hosting me?] He'd been wondering. No

one had made any mention of him in the past few months that he'd understood her

language well enough.

[I haven't actually told them.]

[How do you explain the second head?]

[I told people I was experimenting with extra eyes. If you remember, I always take control of the eyes at work. It's actually very useful having a second pair.]

[Lana, you are an amazing race.]

[Thank you.]

[And an amazing person.]

[You're just saying that because you don't know me.]

[No? You've been hosting me for almost five years now.]

[See, and I've only just told you what happened two years before that.]

[Well, it took me ages to learn your language, didn't it? We couldn't have talked like this even a year ago. My life depends utterly on you.]

[Well, you not having your own body... that's true. But once you're more capable I suppose I could split.]

[Does having me around cause you problems, Lana?]

[What? No. You're no trouble.]

[Do I impede your desire for society, or solitude, or anything like that?]

[What are you going on about, Mick?]

[Gearing up to ask you not to split. I like our current arrangement, baring one or two details.]

[So do I. Hey, are you making hormones?]

[Maybe, not consciously. We've got some glands right next to our brains.]

[What are they supposed to do?]

[Basic things, body growth, sleep cycles, blood pressure, pain relief, sex organ functions]

[Interesting. Oh well, sorry, I interrupted.]

[Lana, I expect I've felt to you like your baby until now. But I'm an adult male, or I was. In the Bible, our holy book, being one flesh is a description for marriage, and we share one flesh — more and more. I don't want to ever split from you, I think it would feel like divorce to me. But if you don't feel like that, I understand. It's not like a disembodied multi-cellular mind can ever give you children.]

[Mick, stop,]

[Sorry.]

[Mick, you don't know what I did to you, do you?]

[Cut away the dead and dying bits, I guess, and fed my brain-cells nutrients. I honestly don't know how I survived atmospheric entry.]

[Do you remember what happened before?]

[I arrived in your solar system, aimed my ship roughly at your planet, since it seemed the most interesting, went to do something, turned round too quickly and hit my head. I woke up just in time to turn off the drive before hitting the atmosphere. I was going much too fast to stop, but if I'd been five seconds earlier, I would have been able to turn on forcefields which would have let me control the ship properly, but I didn't have five seconds.]

[And you landed in a heap of tangled technology roughly at my feet.]

[You were at the impact point? I'm amazed you weren't injured. But instead you saved me!]

[I was injured, Mick. I suffered burns and shrapnel wounds, serious ones. And there you were, dying but not totally burnt protein and bones and iron. Just within reach, and just what I needed. I didn't just save you, Mick. I also saved myself. My skin flowed round you and quite deliberately I consumed you. I took you apart, digested your muscles, and dissolved some of your bones.]

[That's not how you normally eat.]

[No. It's something I learned to do when hosting the minds of lesser animals. But I didn't know your biology, so there were some bits of you I didn't know what to do with, and didn't seem injured, so I left them. So... you're not just a disembodied brain, Mick. I tried to save what I could of your nerves and confusing bits. Your eyes seemed to be OK, except for pointing in the wrong direction, your breathing and digestive system were a mess, and your heart had a bone through it which I presume wasn't original.]

[I was almost dead then. You digested them too?]

[The bits that weren't spread over or mixed up with the landscape, yes. Well, there are some bits of your muscles left, not much.]

[But it's actually my original nerve cells that are making our muscles move?] Mick asked, fascinated.

[Mostly, but the signals are mostly compatible, so there's some cooperation too.]

[I didn't realise. Thank you, Lana.]

[And some of your confusing bits seem to be responding to your hormones, so I'm thinking they might well be sex organs. What happens if I send some some gentle signals to this bit?]

[{Shock} Lana!]

[Did I hurt you? Sorry, Mick.]

[You didn't hurt. But I beg you... don't do that until we marry.]

[I won't do it again, Mick. But we're not going to marry.]

[But...] Mick said.

[Mick, I'm the scientist, you're the test subject. Sorry, that's too harsh. I'm the doctor, your the patient. But still, one day, I expect to meet someone of my own species I can marry and raise podlings with. One day, if your sister comes back with friends, you might meet someone of your species, and I might have even saved enough of you that you can make children your way. Let's not marry, OK? Sorry for pumping you full of sex hormones. They must work on you differently than our males. I hoped you'd get calm and trusting not brainlessly optimistic about an impossible and probably immoral future.]

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

[You pumped me full of hormones?] Mick asked.

[I've been feeling guilty about eating you and you not knowing, Mick. When you started making them I helped. I didn't want you getting angry about it and thought some might help.]

[What you did made perfect sense, Lana.]

[Tell me that when you're not on an artificial overdose of hormones, OK?]

[I will. Anything else you want to tell me while I'm feeling emotionally crushed and chemically abused?]

[Yes. I like you, and I'm glad you're my friend. And you need to think of this body as a living live-support machine, not actually me, Lana.]

[Would one of your people accept muscles from someone else?] Mick asked.

[No, we wouldn't, so OK, it's more intimate than just a machine. But still... when I give you some cells to make a body, they will become yours. Joining again just for companionship would be.... wrong, disgusting.]

[Perverted?] Mick suggested.

[Yes. But my patient isn't healed.]

[And your test subject hasn't earned you your place back on your academic career.]

[What?]

[Lana, I hear enough of your thoughts to know you're increasingly frustrated as a safety officer, and you ought to know it. Report yourself for excessive risk taking, breaking experimental protocols, smuggling sentient beings, and get back in the lab where you belong. As long as you're not planning to digest me, torture me or trigger my reproductive urges again, I probably won't mind.]

[You're sure?]

[Present your findings about the aliens who originated on the land-masses of Sol-3 who have no idea what hormones are doing to them, and get so competitive sometimes they've used almost every technology they've ever developed to kill thousands or millions of each other. And of course about the peace-loving semi-aquatic sub-species who hid from them for two and a half millennia for fear they'd be wiped out.]

[Hold on, what's this about a semi-aquatic sub-species?]

[My people.]

[Semi-aquatic?] Lana asked.

[Those lovely iron-rich muscles you digested? My oxygen store. Land-folk don't have as much iron.]

[I didn't digest all of them. I tried to keep some of each cell type.]

[That's very good news, thanks. Keep them safe and maybe we can regrow me a body eventually.]

[That's impossible!]

[No it's not. You just persuade the cells they're stem cells really.]

[Stem cells?]

[The cells that haven't differentiated, that still have the potential of turning into lots of other sorts of cells. I guess you might not have them.]

[Oh! You can do that?]

[I'm told its much easier using a cell that's already roughly the right sort, but yes. Not personally, but it's quite a regular procedure in hospitals.]

[I wonder how.]

[Sorry, I don't know.]

[You said your people had used technology for killing millions. You were

exaggerating, weren't you?]

[Imagine, my friend, that the predators with their rival clans were the technology-using dominant species. Imagine there were fifty million of them in one clan, two hundred million in another, five hundred million in another, and so on until you had reached a population of almost a thousand million spread out over the planet. Imagine that one clan decided they wanted some resource, or they needed to repay some insult, or that several neighbours decided that one clan was treacherous and needed to be removed from its dominant position. And imagine they are organised and each clan gathers the young men who are best at fighting or perhaps just worst at farming, and they go to settle their differences and win their resources. And imagine that is the history of the planet for thousands of years. And then as time goes on, and everyone agrees that fighting like this is a terrible thing, but it still happens as one clan or another forgets that, or thinks this cause is worth fighting over, and then someone invents explosives, and discovers how to make poison gas and someone else discovers powered flight and then and nuclear fission and nuclear fusion.]

[You used your own language at the end there.]

[I know. As far as I know your people have not discovered those things yet. Which reminds me, the crash site.]

[You keep asking about it.]

[And you keep changing the subject. Is it far?]

[A few days travel. Why?]

[I guess I should ask, rather, are what remains of my ship still there, or have they been moved?]

[I did not tell anyone it. It was an isolated place, I do not know if anyone has been there since. Someone might have been. Why?]

[There are dangerous tools there, things that should not be investigated with the technology your people have.]

Lana was cross with herself, and embarrassed. [And in my shame at what I did there, I didn't understand why you were so interested in it. Sorry. I brought back some things.]

[You did? They're here?]

[Yes. That draw over there.] she pointed all four eyes at it. [Want to see if you can imagine some limbs to open it with?]

----------------------------------------

GROUND, THE UNIVERSITY

Jana and Kov were surprised to be met by a person with twin torsos hovering on quadruple wings. It was a very strange experience, they agreed later. Two heads on one body just didn't seem.... sensible. Why carry all the extra mass? They both also guessed that this person hadn't been anywhere near predators recently, surely! One head looked perfectly normal, except it supported unreasonably long hair in the city fashion. The other's hair was quite short, which was more practical, but the eyes seemed to work together, as though it was determined to fix everything in it's three-dimensional position. That was unnerving. But maybe that in itself was why this person, this academician Lana, chief university safety officer, had grown the other head.

“You have a book about to be reprinted,” the normal-looking head said.

“Yes, Academician.” Jana said.

“And, on this intervention request you state that you have new information, that you believe there are dangerous errors in it, and that it should be altered before reprinting.”

“Yes, academician.” Jana agreed.

“And you are secreting surprise pheromones, and disapproval pheromones.”

“I apologise, academician,” Kov said. “Should I leave?”

“What do you disapprove of so strongly?” Lana asked.

“I am not used to city life, academician,” Kov said, “and am on the perimeter guard at home. I... I just cannot stop myself thinking in terms of a predator attack.”

“Ah. And you don't think I'm exactly fit for survival, although I'm hovering in mid-air?”

“I am assuming, academician that you have a very light-weight bone structure.”

“Unfit for lifting more than paper?” Lana asked, with a wry smile on her face. “I am experimenting, as you might imagine, as is fitting for someone in the department of frontier biology. A lot of my apparent body is gas-filled. My total mass is somewhat higher than normal, but my stamina is far greater than many, as I've not changed most of my bone structure much for several months. Your son reported it.”

“Yes, academician.”

“His report crossed my desk, and I have been confirming his results. His paper will be published, along with my confirmation. The great library contains similar data, from a few lifetimes ago, so it's not ground-breaking, but his documentation and measurements are excellent and well worth publishing. Now, the reason you're here...”

“We were told the waiting time for an interview was a week.”

“Oh, at least. Even for ground-breaking experimental biologists. Fortunately, you have connections in all the right places,” Lana said.

“We do?”

“Me. Your son and future daughter-in-law sent another report also, more recently. Alien visitors. My colleagues thought it very humorous.”

“I didn't,” Mick said, running his five fingers through his hair. Kov and Jana were temporarily stunned that the other head had a lung connection and voice box as well.

“You are not a colleague, now hush, experiment.” Lana reprimanded him. “They told me they thought the whole thing about them counting in base ten, and getting the circle number wrong was pure genius.”

“Three point one four one five nine two urm, I forget, is it six or seven?” Mick said.

“Shh,” Lana said to the other head. [You're supposed to be dumb, remember?] “But on the other hand, they pointed out that interstellar travel has been proven impossible in any creature's lifespan, and the floating machine with a laser cutting tool was, they decided, a work of pure fiction and not at all worthy of an academic. Thus they don't expect to be seeing much more of your son's work in an academic publication. So, let's not talk about strange lights in the sky that moved off a two and a half weeks ago, and we'll turn instead to your book.”

“Strange lights in the sky?” Kov asked.

“I said we wouldn't talk about departing space-ships. That's apparently academic suicide. So, let's stick to the point, the urgent safety review of your book, Jana.”

“Yes, academician.” Jana said, trying to get her head straight after that mental roller-coaster “My book.... I made a terrible mistake in my research. The right thing to do, the safe thing to do, is have patience, for Threeday's child, as the rhyme suggests. On day three the ready-cells are mobile, and come in answer to the call, on the sixth day, it becomes dangerous to continue to offer milk — the ready-cells are not just mobile; according to an ancient book on folklore I read they become equipped to embed themselves into the female's tissues, leading to involuntary podding the following day. Aza's 'experiment' if you call it that, bringing our son back to health led me to the folklore book.”

“Tell me of your son's injuries.”

“Extensive crushing wounds. Almost certainly they would have been fatal if he'd been moved. His ribs and most of his bones were shattered, even his skull was fractured. Digestive system was also a mess. As it was, it took a lot of recovery, and we didn't dare move him.” Jana looked defiantly at Lana, “The alien's machine had some invisible ability to move things, and it brought him and the pack-leader to the village, on some kind of invisible disk.”

[Forcefield. Probably entirely invisible.] Mick thought to Lana.

“So, continuing to ignore the contact you had with alien life forms who know far more about physics than we do, your son needed more milk than the average patient.” Lana said.

“Yes, Aza stopped on day four, even then, he was not fully healed.”

“Far more milk,” Lana noted, “and I presume lots of self control?”

“Yes. They will be building a house as part of his convalescence.”

“As university safety officer, I agree with your request. The reprint should be stopped until a correction can be made. The general public attempting to get a whole podding room sterile enough for a full internal investigation is needlessly dangerous if there's a better way. So, the only question is whether the education department pays, in exchange for which I expect they'll demand lots of your time educating people of their choosing, or alternatively, the biology department might show an interest. I observe an experiment in progress. How far into it are you?”

“Not long. We arrived yesterday, and then we were told we'd need to wait a week...” Kov said, embarrassed.

“In other words, your message interrupted what only started this morning,” Jana said.

“Excellent! Sorry for the interruption of intimacy, but the university has wanted to do some tests on extended exposure to milk for two years, but totally failed to find a single couple willing to be a test case. If you're willing, then I assure you the biology department would be very keen to publish your book with whatever edits are required, along with granting you ample solitude. We would want to perform some tests, of course.”

“What sort of tests?” Jana asked, suspiciously.

“Nothing too intrusive, I assure you. Occasional testing of your milk and his blood, that sort of thing.”

“Why no test couples then?” Kov asked.

“Because a lot of people in this city say 'Genetic diversity? There's plenty. I'm far to busy to spend that long away from work, plus of course, much though I love my wife, I don't want to be so zonked out on her hormones that I'd let her take me apart!' So, the same reasons that mixing became unpopular, really. There have also been some applicants who were deemed unsuitable, because of maturity issues, and not being aware of the risks of a bad mix.

“That reminds me, I'd like you to include at least half a chapter on avoiding mixing between genetically close pairs, as that raises the risks to an unacceptable level.”

“Could you expand on exactly what you mean with that?” Kov asked.

Lana looked at Jana enquiringly, “I think your wife is more an expert in that field than I am.”

----------------------------------------

During the discussion that ensued, both Kov and Mick learned that a female could give some guidance to her reproductive cells, and that Jana hadn't made any conscious decisions about what characteristics she wanted for Jakav except that she wanted genetic diversity, not regressive genes. Lana suggested it be written in the amended book, having declared that to be by far the safest choice.

[So you could actually choose the gender?] Mick asked.

[Gender? Oh, that's genetic for you I expect?]

[It's not for you?]

[It comes down to whether the individual is inward focussed or outward focussed. Males focus on the outside world, females on the chemistry that makes us people. In other words, gender is random.]

[Genetics is random.]

[Not when the ready-cells start making gametes that get tasted and inspected and chosen it's not.]

[I guess I need to ask you about ready-cells. I thought they were gametes.]

[They're special organisms, ready to mix genetics with others — to produce gametes, as I said — or they wander around the body checking for genetic errors or invaders.]

[You're amazingly complex creatures, even if things work more slowly than I'm used to.] It was a constant problem for him. Reaction times, hand-eye coordination, they were all just... slow. It was the price of a redesignable anatomy: cooperative organisms not all getting the message at the same time, working against each other, links formed by interlocking cell walls rather than permanently bonded chemistry. Muscles were inefficient, bones were weak, and it seemed almost every motion required explicit thought, even for Lana. Running one of these bodies was hard work.

[Thank you, you're not doing so badly yourselves, even if you seem to have no idea what's going on inside yourselves.]

[Hey, I'm genetically male remember? By the way, Kov's just asked you about the spaceship.]

[You watched it.]

“The ship was most visible at dusk, reflecting sunlight,” Mick said. “I saw it arrive, it stayed in place for about a month, no, more, quite a long time, anyway, and then went away.”

“You didn't tell anyone?” Kov asked.

“The One said it wasn't time yet. It doesn't matter, anyway. Magdalena will be back, I'm sure.”

It was only later, when Kov and Jana were discussing names for their new daughter on the way home, that they remembered that neither they nor Jakav's report had mentioned Magdalena's name. If it hadn't been for the fact that the harvest was due to start soon, Kov would have turned round. But it was due, and perimeter guards were more needed then than ever. He couldn't put his friends at risk just for the sake of curiosity.