Chains of Redemption (17 page)

Poley left chiming as he went after Topaz. "Your brush couldn't be here, Topaz. You have never been here before. Your thought is illogical."

"So?" Levits asked.

RJ shrugged. "This is a big planet, a moon actually, but not much smaller in size than Earth. The air seems good; the gravitational pull is close to Earth normal. The animal life we can see certainly doesn't look dangerous . . ."

"But?" Levits prompted.

"As you suggested, just because this city is in ruins doesn't mean that every intelligent being on the planet is dead."

"Just their civilization. If they had survived surely they would have made an attempt to rebuild what they lost. You heard what Tin Pants said. No signs of intelligent life," Levits reminded.

"That's not what he said, he said he detected no radio waves, no working motor vehicles, no satellites. Technology does not necessarily equal intelligence, and the lack of technology does not necessarily rule out the presence of intelligent life. Don't forget the Beta 4 humanoids, they were so ignorant of technology that they thought thermo generators where gods, but they were by no means stupid."

"Alright they may be smart, but if they don't have technology . . ."

"Maybe they have found some energy source so different from our traditional sources that our equipment can't detect it, any more than it can give us any information about compounds it doesn't understand. Of course that's mostly just wishful thinking on my part."

"Wishful thinking?" Levits asked in confusion.

"If there isn't any intelligent population, then there is no energy source. There will be no one to help us, and we'll never get off this planet," RJ said.

"In which case we might as well walk out on the surface without any protective gear, because I for one don't plan to spend my life cooped up in this tin can."

"The rest of us could leave the ship without protective gear, but you should wear it just in case. The ship will be able to filter the air and . . ."

"For how long?" Levits demanded. "Twelve years in space, even with most systems shut down, solar cells at maximum, and using the gold in the fusion reactor, how much stored fuel do you think we actually have left? A year's worth, two, three, ten? And what about food rations? We've got six months worth at the most . . ."

"Actually closer to twenty years."

Levits was momentarily taken aback, but only momentarily. "Yeah, but it all tastes like crap, and I plan on living longer than twenty years. Eventually we're going to have to find food here, and there's no guarantee that even after the computer analyzes and says it's safe that there won't be something in it that will kill us. I'm sick to death of being the weak link in your chain, RJ. No, I don't have superhuman abilities like the rest of you, but I'm not exactly a sniveling, pants-shitting infant, either. I'd rather die if I'm going to die, and get it over with. I don't want to sit any longer with death hanging over my head. We just spent twelve years sleeping in goo waiting for this. Waiting to find a planet that might sustain us. This is it; it's our only shot. We will most probably be stuck here for the rest of our lives, the rest of my life at the very least. So as soon as we've had some time to rest, eat and have sex, not necessarily in that order, I want to leave the ship
without a suit
and check out this planet of ours."

Well rested and sated on all levels, RJ opened the airlock. The air was heavy in oxygen content and for a minute she saw Levits waver.

"You all right?" she asked.

"Give me a second to adjust," Levits said with a smile. "I'm not really used to good air."

"My god it smells wonderful here," Topaz said, starting down the gangplank.

"Nothing toxic. I believe that smell is flowers," Poley announced.

"I didn't say it smelled toxic you tin idiot," Topaz hissed in Poley's direction.

"For the record, I'm not really made of tin," Poley corrected, sounding ever so slightly put out.

Topaz ignored him and stepped off the gangplank.

"Don't wander off," RJ warned.

She watched as the primate-looking animals swung quickly through the trees away from them. "Did you see that?" she asked no one in particular.

"What?" Topaz asked, returning reluctantly to the group still at the top of the gangplank.

"How the little monkey things ran from us," RJ said.

"So?" Topaz shrugged and moved away from them again.

"Why would they run from us unless they had seen something like us before? Unless they have been hunted by something like us," Poley said.

"Oh, I don't know, RJ, maybe because we're twenty times their size and look nothing like anything they've seen before." Topaz stepped on the planet again and this time they followed him. Poley had landed the ship in a large flat area in the middle of the ruined city where the plant growth wasn't as dense. Topaz got down on the ground and brushed the leaves away with his hand and under it found a hard concrete-like surface. "RJ, what do you make of this?"

She looked at the spot of ground and then around at the circle they had landed in. It wasn't that big, in fact not much bigger than their ship. Poley had no doubt used the landing program on the ship to find the best possible spot. On a planet that was mostly ocean and jungle, this would have been it. "It might have been a parking lot."

"Oh yes, of course," Topaz said in a superior tone. "Because of course anything intelligent, any advanced civilization must be humanoid. I suppose you have also deduced that they must have two arms, two legs, two eyes, and hair on their head and around their privates, which of course are exactly like ours as well." He started walking while continuing his tirade. RJ looked at Levits and smiled. He rolled his eyes and took her hand as they walked.

Topaz ranted on. "I used to watch all those stupid science-fiction movies and read all those stupid science-fiction books and I used to wonder why no one was ever bright enough to figure out that not all intelligent life would be humanoid. I used to wonder why every alien they found on Star Trek was always bipedal and exactly like us, except for bigger brains, ridges on their foreheads or pointed ears."

"Perhaps because they were visionary. After all the Argy are humanoid, so much like us that we can interbreed. In fact, to date all intelligent life we've found has had basically a similar body design to ours," RJ said. "Besides this planet has those little primate type creatures we've already seen, and they naturally would have evolved into something humanoid."

Poley continued where his sister had stopped. "It's logical to assume that any Earth-type planet would evolve in a similar fashion to our own. That being the case, the flora, fauna and intelligent species would be very similar. It's a good design, the whole two arms, two legs, two eyes thing. I mean what would be done with, say, a third leg? Tentacles certainly wouldn't be as versatile as hands . . ."

"I expect such narrow-mindedness from something so unimaginative," Topaz snapped at the robot. Not paying any attention to where he was going, he tripped over something knee high and fell. He landed on his ass. He jumped up and turned to investigate the offending obstacle that had been hidden from view by plant life. "Well, shit," he said as he looked at what was obviously an ancient commode.

They explored deep into the heart of the ruined city where some of the structures were still twenty stories tall and looked like they had been sheared off at the top. Age, weather and plants were ripping the buildings apart, and RJ had suggested early on that they steer clear of the taller buildings to keep from being crushed by falling debris, which littered the streets and had to be climbed over.

"Are we looking for anything in particular?" Levits asked after they had been walking for several hours.

"Just looking," RJ answered. "Why, do you feel bad? Do we need to go back to the ship?"

"I feel fine," Levits snapped. He was not about to tell them that he felt nauseous and was tired. No doubt from doing this much exercise so soon after a twelve-year hibernation. He was going to have to learn to keep up with the superhumans and the robot or he was going to find himself constantly left behind. Much to his amazement he found himself wishing that David was here, so he wouldn't be the only normal human around.

RJ stopped abruptly and threw her arms out. They all knew what that meant, so they stopped and listened.

"Poley what is that?" she asked.

"I hear breathing. A larger animal, and more than one of them."

RJ nodded. "We are being watched."

"By what?" Levits whispered back.

"How the hell would I know? But I can tell you this. Whatever they are they have emotions, because I felt them before I heard them," RJ said. "They are curious about us, and afraid."

"So something has survived?" Topaz whispered.

"Yes." She turned around and started back the way they had come.

"What are we doing?" Topaz asked, still talking in a whisper.

"Going back to the ship," RJ said. "Stop whispering. They won't be able to understand us, and if we start whispering they're going to know something's wrong."

"Is something wrong?" Levits asked.

"Well they were stalking us, tracking us. They are no doubt hunters, and we don't know what weapons they have. Could be anything from stone axes to sophisticated weapons left over from this crumbled civilization. Don't forget the thing we found in the ancient Argy ship that damn near killed you all."

Levits doubled his pace and had soon passed RJ.

Two weeks later, though they'd set up monitoring equipment and had gone on several expeditions, they were no closer to putting a face on the beings they shared the planet with.

"Well they certainly aren't stupid," RJ said, as she watched the screen go dead; yet another monitor had been taken out. "They know we're trying to see them, and they know what the cameras do."

"Why don't you force a confrontation?" Topaz asked. He was growing more impatient by the day. He wanted to meet the creatures they shared the planet with, because as he kept saying . . . "They are so different from us that they find our form hideous and repulsive." He wanted very much to have his theory proven true. "You could catch one, RJ."

"If these creatures lack technology, and I'm sort of guessing they do, then they aren't going to be able to help us get fuel to get our craft off this planet even if we don't piss them off. As such we will be stuck here. Since we're going to be stuck here with them, and I'm guessing there are a hell of a lot more of them than there are of us, I don't think forcing a confrontation is a very good idea."

"So far they have allowed us to leave the ship and run our tests for edible food without even attempting to attack us. This means one of two things. Either they are as curious about us as we are about them, or they are sizing us up making sure there aren't any more of us in this big-assed contraption before they attack."

"Well that's a comforting thought," Levits said from where he and Poley were running tests on some plant samples they had brought back to the ship on their last expedition.

"Any data yet on exactly what catastrophe caused the collapse of this society?" RJ asked Poley.

"Nothing concrete, but I'm still ninety-five percent sure it's meteor destruction. Little else would have done so much damage. This was a very advanced civilization. In many ways more advanced than our own," Poley said, not bothering to look up from what he was doing.

"Why do you say that, Tin Pants?" Topaz asked.

"Well every single plant we have tested has not only been edible but has also been filled with nutritional value and highly digestible . . ."

"Don't taste too bad, either," Levits said walking away from the lab bench and dropping into a nearby chair.

"The chances of this being natural selection are highly unlikely . . ."

"I'm so proud, did you notice he didn't spit out numbers?" Topaz asked.

"I don't see why you should be proud," Poley said, sounding almost angry. "You didn't build me with the ability to learn and to deduce that it annoyed people when I gave them the exact numbers contained in a probability factor."

"Please finish what you were saying, Poley," RJ pleaded.

"These plants have been genetically engineered in such a way that they have reproduced themselves identically from the time they were created. They have in many generations killed off all other forms of plant life on the planet. They have done so without either cross-pollinating with the native plants or each other. Each plant is still what it was originally created to be. Humans have never been able to do that with their gene tampering. We were never able to create a genetically engineered plant whose seeds came up true."

RJ nodded. "I've also noticed that the plants seem to have an uncanny ability to adapt to their surroundings. I've seen the same variety of plant doing just as well in full sun as full shade. There are plants growing inside buildings whose roofs still don't leak, so the ground inside is dry. Yet the plants are doing just as well there as they are doing out on the surface where it rains three and four times a week."