Read Ten Sigmas & Other Unlikelihoods Online
Authors: Paul Melko
Tags: #Fiction, #Science Fiction, #Collections & Anthologies
“We go down,” I say.
David’s face is taut. He spins and the four fall into consensus.
I push David away from his podmates, breaking their contact. I push Ahmed and Maggie onto their backs.
“No consensus! We go now!”
I pick up Susan’s travois and drag her down the streambed. Fast. I look back once and the three are standing there, watching. Then they come.
Maybe I am reaching false consensus too. Maybe I will kill us all. But it is all I can do.
The trek down the gorge is not easy on Susan, as the snow has disappeared in spots and the travois rides roughly across the ground. I find myself issuing soothing thoughts, though I know she cannot understand them. Only crude emotions can pass between pods, and sometimes not even that if they aren’t from the same creche. I change the thoughts to feelings of well-being. Perhaps she can understand the simple pheromones.
Each time I glance behind, I see the other three trailing. I have broken their re-formed pod again with trauma, and I hope that I have done no irreparable damage to them. The doctors of the Institute will be the judge of that. Perhaps they can save them. I am a useless case and will probably have to emigrate to one of the singleton enclaves in Europe or Australia.
A line of boulders face me, surrounded by smaller stones and rocks, too large for the travois to travel freely across.
“Take one end each,” I say to Ahmed and David. The travois becomes a stretcher. If I walk slowly, we make awkward progress.
The forest has changed. The pines are gone, and we are surrounded by maples. I keep checking the horizon for any sign of search parties. Why aren’t they frantically trying to find us? Had we passed too far beyond the search pattern? Do they already know where we are? Perhaps they found us in the night, noted that we were broken pods and left us to fend for ourselves.
The paranoia drowns me, and I stumble on a loose rock. Even they would not be so callous. Everything is a test, Moira says. Is this just another? Would they kill a pod to test the rest of us?
That I cannot believe.
At the edge of a four-meter drop, our stream falls into the river, adding its small momentum to the charging rapids. I see no easy way down; we are forced to unlash Susan and help her down the jagged slope.
The rocks are wet and slimy. I slip, and we are flying to the ground, falling less than a meter, but the wind is knocked from me. Susan lands atop me, and she screams in pain.
I roll over and try to breathe. Then Ahmed and David are there, helping us up. I don’t want to stand up. I just want to lie there.
“Up,” David says. “More to go.”
Everything is hazy in my vision, and I feel dizzy. The pain in my chest is not going away. I have a sharp sting in my ribs, and I prod myself. I have broken ribs. I almost collapse, but Ahmed pulls me up.
Susan manages to stand too now, and we limp along the flat stones of the shrunken river bed. In a few months it will fill the entire wash.
We are an ad hoc pod, all of us clinging together as we walk, step after step down-river. I am no longer strength. I am weakness and pain.
We pass a boulder and the smell hits me as we see it.
A bear, almost as big as the boulder. No, three bears pawing through the slow water for fish. We are not five meters from the biggest and closest.
Fear sweeps through the air; my fight response kicks in, and the pain washes out of me like cold rain.
We have surprised the bears.
The closest rears up on its hind legs. On all fours, it came up to my chest. Standing, it is a meter above me. Its claws are six centimeters long.
We back away. I know we cannot outrun a bear in this open terrain. Our only hope is to flee alone.
Separate
, I send, then remember that the four are not of my pod. “We need to separate and run,” I say.
The bear stops coming toward us. I think for a moment that it is reacting to my voice, but then I remember the smell I had caught as I passed the boulder. Pheromones.
The bears aren’t a natural species.
Hello
, I send, in the simplest of glyph thoughts.
The bear’s jaws snap shut and it lands on its four legs again.
Not food
,
it sends.
The thought is more than simple. I can taste it like my own podmates’ thoughts.
Not food. Friend
.
The bear considers us with liquid brown eyes, then seems to shrug before turning away.
Come
.
I start to follow, but fear emanating from the four stops me. I realize that they have not tasted the bear’s thoughts.
“Come on,” I say. “They aren’t going to eat us.”
“You . . . you can understand it?” David asks.
“A little.”
“They’re a pod,” he says, wonderingly.
My shock has faded with recognition. On the farm with Mother Redd, we have gone swimming with the bioengineered beavers. We have ourselves modified clutches of ducks into clusters. Now that I know, I can see the glands on the backs of the bears’ arms. At the neck are slits that release the chemical memories. And to receive them, the olfactory lobe of their brain will have been enhanced.
That they are bears, that they are wild things, seems at first incongruent. The experiments on composite animals have been all on smaller, manageable beasts. But why
not
bears?
They amble along the riverbed, and I jog to follow them, though my ribs hurt. In a moment, I am among them, and I smell their thoughts, like silver fish in the river. Intelligent, not simple at all.
Sending
Friendship
, I reach out and touch the side of the bear who confronted us.
His fur is wet from his splashing at fish, and the smell is thick, not just pheromones and memories, but a wild animal’s smell. I think I must smell worse. His mane is silver-tipped; his claws click on the stones.
I rub his neck just above the memory glands, and he pushes against me in response. I smell his affection. I sense deepness of thought and playfulness. I feel the power of his body. This is strength.
I catch images of topography, of places where fish swarm, of a dead elk. I see assessments of danger, and choices of path and best approach. I catch the consensus of decision. These three are a functioning pod.
The thoughts swirl through my head, but they shouldn’t. I should not be able to catch their thoughts, but I can. Even humans can’t share chemical memories between pods, just emotions sometimes.
I send an image of the avalanche.
The bears shudder. I understand their fear of the river of snow. They have seen it; it is part of their memories.
I ask them where the camp is. They know, and I see it on the edge of this river, near the rotten stump with the tasty termites.
I laugh, and they echo my joy, and, for a moment, I forget that I am alone.
Come on
, they send.
“Come on,” I call back to the four. Hesitantly, they follow.
The bears lead us through the trees, and, abruptly, we push through onto a trail, smashed flat by hikers’ boots, a human trail. They sniff once, then amble across it and vanish into the brush.
I want to follow. Why shouldn’t I? I have fulfilled my duty to Hagar Julian. Surely the bears would allow me to join them. My body shudders. I would still be a singleton. I would still be alone.
Goodbye
, I send, though I doubt they are close enough to catch it. The chemical memories can not travel far.
I lead Susan down the trail, supporting her. I hear the sounds of camp, the voices, the whine of an aircar, before we round the last curve of the trail. We all stop. David looks at me, perhaps with pity, perhaps with thanks, then he leads the remainder of his pod into the camp.
I stand alone.
I fall to my knees, so tired, so weak. My strength can get me no farther.
Then I feel a push at my back, and it is the bear. He nudges me again. One arm around his steel-like neck, I stand, and we walk together into the camp.
The camp is awhirl, twice as many tents as when we left it, a bevy of aircars, and everyone stops to watch me and the bear.
Everyone but my pod, who are rushing at me, alive, and I feel them before I touch them, and we are one. Sweet consensus.
I see everything that has happened, and they see everything that I have done, and in one moment it is I who surfed the avalanche, dangling on the line Strom tied to a tree trunk, and it is we who walked down the mountain and communed with bears.
You saved us, Strom
, Moira sends. Bola shows me how the tent dangling on my line of spider-silk, rode the top of the cascade of snow instead of plunging down the mountain. I hug Meda, Quant, and Manuel to my chest, squeezing. It hurts my ribs, but I don’t let go.
“Careful!” Meda says, but she buries her face in my chest.
I am strength again, I think, as my pod helps me to the infirmary, not because they are weak, but because we are all strong.
DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILY CAT
I
’m leaving,” said Tricia, punctuating the words with three short sneezes. She dug into the pocket of her flannel shirt, found a used tissue, and wiped her nose.
“All right, dear. Have a nice time.” Her mother’s glazed eyes never left the television as it blared the bantering dialogue of a late-afternoon talk-show.
“No, Mother. I’m leaving home.”
“All right, dear. Have a nice time anyway.”
“Have you been drinking again, Mother?” Tricia held her nose close to her mother’s lips. Sour, yes, but no whiff of alcohol. Tricia realized that her mother wasn’t watching the television, but that her eyes were fixed on the central speaker above it.
“Jesus, Mom. You’re fried.”
“Honey, you sound all congested. Do you have a cold?” Her mother’s gaze wandered from the TV to Tricia’s face.
“No, Mother, I’m just fucking allergic to cat hair.”
“That’s too bad, dear, now that we have Plonk.”
“Well, here’s a thought. Maybe we should get rid of the cat.”
“Oh, no, we couldn’t do that. Send it out into the world? Alone? Oh, never.”
“That’s what I thought. Goodbye forever.”
“Bye, dear.”
Tricia shrugged on her backpack and walked down the hall to her younger brother’s room. Timo was sprawled across his bed, naked except for some tattered shorts, staring at the ceiling.
“I’m leaving home.”
“Bye.”
“Hey! I said I’m outta here for good. Don’t you want this for your report?” For his seventh-grade social studies class, Timo was doing a case study on dysfunctional family units, using his family as the basis. His thesis was that since 57% of all family units were dysfunctional, the definitions of normal and abnormal could be reversed.
“Naw. I’m bored with that.”
“What the fuck is wrong with this family?”
“Read chapter one through four in my report.”
“What is wrong with you?”
“I’m going through one of my depression swings. They come and go.”
“Timo, you are not suffering from bipolar disorder. You’re just a moody preteen.”
“You’re just jealous of my creativity and its mystical link to my manic-depressive problem.”
“I’m not jealous. Anorexia is a valid psychological disorder, too.” Tricia paused, smiling sadly. “I’m gonna miss you.”
“Then don’t go.”
Tricia sneezed. “It’s either me or the cat.”
“Oh. Okay. Bye.”
Tricia rolled her eyes. As she turned to leave, Timo shouted, “Hey, if you see Plonk, could you bring him up here?”
Over her shoulder, Tricia snarled, “If I see it, I’m gonna kick it.”
“Hey! You’re kidding, right? You wouldn’t . . .” Timo’s voice faded as she ran down the stairs. In the den, her stepfather and stepbrother Chad sat in their two recliners watching the sports channel. In Chad’s lap sat Plonk, a ball of white fluff, like an overweight, albino gerbil. Tricia sneezed, and Plonk looked up at her, pink eyes in a snow white face.
A phlegmy snore slithered from Chad’s half-open mouth. Both of them were asleep, Tricia realized. She walked behind Chad’s recliner and lifted an eyelid. The pupil beneath was huge and glazed, like a greased marble. Around Chad’s nostrils and mouth were tiny white hairs. Tricia sneezed three times in succession.
“You need some monoxidil, cat,” she said. Her eyes were tearing and her lungs felt like they were the size of beanbags. “Fuck it. I’m outta here.”
She stood in the hall at the base of the stairs. She yelled, “I’m running away from home! I told you it was me or the cat. And now I’m leaving.” Silence, punctuated by the sporadic drone of the TV’s sports announcer. “Next time you’ll see me, I’ll be on Oprah!” Tricia paused a moment, her hand on the knob. No one rushed down the stairs to stop her. She half expected someone to tell her to bring back a gallon of milk.
Plonk wandered out of the den, pausing to rub its face against the doorway. Tricia looked down at the animal then kicked it in the stomach. “I hate cats,” she said as she slammed the door shut.
She dumped the contents of her backpack out on the bus stop bench. Her inventory was sparse: thirty-seven dollars, a pack of gum, a can of mace, her address book, an emergency Kotex, a copy of
The Catcher in the Rye
,
and her mother’s Visa card. She noted each item, then sighed. Now that the drama of the act was over, despondency washed over her. She stuffed everything into her backpack, deciding to go wherever the next bus went.
Tricia waited on the sun-warmed bench, sitting in the red-violet of the sunset. The warmth seeped into her, calming her. Her sinuses cleared, and she took pleasure in the simple act of breathing.
Across the street, a young, poorly-dressed man stumbled down the sidewalk. In one hand he clutched a staple gun and in the other a ream of red paper. He paused at the light pole on the corner, then dropped the paper on the ground. He pulled at his earlobe, shook his head, and snorted like a horse. Taking the sheet from the top of the ream, he stapled it to the pole with four randomly-placed kerchunks.
The man stood back from his work, pulled at his earlobe again, and then crossed the street. He spotted Tricia, aimed himself at her.
“Have you seen my cat?”
The man waved a flyer in Tricia’s face. She took it from him, glanced at it, and threw it on the ground. The man surged to pick it up again, but Tricia placed her foot squarely on the flier. The man pulled at it, ripped it in half. He stood straight up, then let the piece flutter away.
“A-a-a simple yes-or-no would have sufficed,” he muttered, again pulling at his earlobe.
Tricia noted the man’s red eyes and jittery manner. She’d seen the symptoms in her mother. He looked like he was coming down off something hard. His clothes were in disarray, his shirt untucked, socks unmatching, pants too short. His hair was uncombed, and his breath was foul. A badge clipped to his shirt pocket labeled the man as Dr. Jerry Wilder of Genomads Inc.
“How much of a reward?”
“A hundred dollars. You should have read the flier.”
“A thousand, and I’ll take you right to him.”
“A thousand? That’s . . . Wait! You know where he is? Tell me.” Jerry grabbed Tricia’s shirt and pulled her to her feet. “Where is my cat?”
Tricia calmly reached into her backpack and maced him.
*
“Are twenties all right?”
“Yeah. Fine. And don’t forget the extra five hundred for not pressing charges.”
Jerry handed the cash to Tricia as fast as the machine would spit it out. She was impressed with the limit on his bank card.
“All right. Let’s go.” The two walked back to Jerry’s car. As Jerry pulled out his keys, Tricia stood in front of the driver’s side door and held out her hand. “I’m driving.”
Jerry paused, eyed her wearily, then shrugged and handed the keys to her. “You have a license?”
“Well, a permit. But that’s pretty much the same thing, right?” she said as she heavily dropped the car into gear.
Tricia sped the car out of the strip-mall parking lot, narrowly avoiding a collision with a shopping cart. Unfortunately, she saw no one she knew on the way home. With a scraping of metal against concrete, she bounced the car into her driveway.
“Come on, Jer.” Tricia popped the door open with a flick of the knob. “I’m home!” she called up the stairs.
Jerry pushed past her, stumbling on the step. “Mendel! Here kitty-kitty! Come here, Gregor!”
“Hey, Sis. Who’s the geek?” Chad stood in the doorway to the den, scratching his crotch.
“This is Plonk’s owner.”
“Really? Cool. Thanks for letting us keep him, man.”
Jerry noticed Chad for the first time. “He’s my cat. I’ve come to take him back.”
“The fuck you are, man. He’s ours now.” Chad turned around. “Hey, Dad, this fuck wants to steal our cat.”
Tricia refrained from laughing and wandered into the kitchen where she filled a bowl with milk. Behind her, she heard her father join the argument.
“Anyone who’s so irresponsible as to lose a cat doesn’t deserve to own one,” he said. “I think you better just leave before we call the police.”
“He’s m-m-my cat, sir. I en-en-en . . . raised him from a kitten. I couldn’t live without him.”
“Well, you ain’t getting him out of this house,” said Chad. “’Cause there’s two of us and only one of you.”
“What’s going on down here?” Tricia’s mother had joined the fray. “And who is this young man? Are you a friend of Tricia’s? Is she finally showing an interest in men?”
“Dream on, Mom,” Tricia said, walking into the front hallway. She had left the bowl of milk on the kitchen counter. “This is Plonk’s owner, Jerry Wilder.”
“Gregor Mendel,” Jerry corrected.
“How do you do, Mr. Mendel?”
“Uh . . . No. The cat’s name is Mendel. My name is Jerry Wilder, and I’ve come to get my cat.” He pulled at his earlobe.
“No, no, no. Plonk’s name . . .”
Tricia leaned close to Jerry. “Why do you keep pulling at your earlobe?”
Jerry whirled on her, turning his head so that his left earlobe was out of view. “Nervous habit.”
“You’ve got some sort of bump, man,” Chad said. “Bad piercing, dude?”
Jerry whirled again, then backed up to the front door. “It’s just-just-just . . . a pimple.”
Tricia edged closer to the man, intent upon his lobe. Jerry stood, back against the door, eyes dancing like butter in a hot skillet. Tricia jumped forward and squeezed the earlobe between her finger and her thumb.
Jerry screamed like a madman, and leaped away. Tricia jumped on his back, wrapping her legs around the man’s chest. She squeezed his lobe, feeling something wet and soft squirm under the pressure.
“You’re gonna OD me!” Jerry yelled. “Let go! Let go! Let gooooo.” Jerry fell face first onto the carpet of the front hall. “I am soooo high, man,” he muttered, then started to giggle.
“That was pretty cool, Sis,” said Timo from where he stood on the stairs. “I’m glad you’re back.”
Tricia smiled at Timo. “Just for a few laughs.”
“So what’s with the geek?” asked Timo as he bounded down the steps. He and Chad rolled Jerry over.
“Oh, what’s that smell?” said Tricia’s mother in a nasal voice.
“He pissed himself,” said Chad.
Jerry found that exceptionally humorous and began to giggle again.
“I think he’s got a drug gland in his earlobe.”
“Drug gland?” Timo, Chad, and her stepfather leaned close to Jerry’s head.
“Can you do that with a beer, dude?”
Jerry paused in his fit of giggling. “Nawwwww!” He gulped in breath for a moment, then added, “Just en-en-endolphins! Endorphins! Enporpoises!” Drool rolled out of his mouth as he giggled.
“He works for a genetic engineering company. I think he made that drug gland to keep his fix nearby and ever-ready,” said Tricia.
“Hey, that’s pretty cool,” said Timo.
“I think he engineered the cat too.”
“Yeah, I did.” Jerry sat up, coughing. He seemed to have partially recovered from the spurt of drugs into his system. His eyes were still glassy, and his voice was slightly slurred. “I made him to make me happy. Like God.” He vomited on Chad’s shoes.
“Shit. What a waste,” said Chad. He wiped his shoe on Jerry’s shirt. “Being such a loser you have to build your own friend.” He paused. “Can you do me a chick?”
“Fuck you. I want my cat.”
“Hey, wait a minute,” Timo said. “Why are we so obsessed about a stupid cat?”
“Yeah,” added Tricia.
“He’s modified,” said Jerry. “His odor is a mild euphoric. Well, actually, it’s a highly addictive depressant.”
“We’re addicted to a cat?” asked Timo.
“Cool, beer-in-a-cat,” said Chad.
“So why don’t you just make yourself another cat?” asked Tricia. “Why don’t you just make a gland to give you the drug? And why not a cute puppy next time?
Jerry shook his head. “It was a mutation. I can’t reproduce the recombination sequence. I thought it was the retrocomb of the iris allele, but when I try to duplicate it, all I get is abortions. I was trying to breed him when he got away from me.” He held his head in his hands and began to cry. “My one big success is a fluke.”
“Here’s a tissue, young man,” said Tricia’s mother.
“Well, I think that earlobe thing is pretty cool,” said Chad.
Jerry sniffed. “I stole that from a colleague.”
“You really are a fuck,” said Timo.
“Well, I just stopped to bring Jerry by,” said Tricia. “I’m outta here now.” She waved at her family. “Bye.”
“Bye, now Tricia, dear,” called her mother.
Her stepfather said to Jerry, “Here’s a solution, Jerry; you can move in with us. We got a room empty now.”
“Really? That would be so . . . so . . . nice of you.”
“See ya, Sis,” said Timo.
Tricia stopped. “Come with me, Timo,” she said softly. “We don’t belong in this family.”
Timo smiled. “I wish I could.” He shrugged. “I’m stuck now.”
Tricia nodded, then walked back to the kitchen. Holding her breath, even though she knew it wouldn’t work, she plucked Gregor-Plonk-Mendel off the counter top and exited out the kitchen door into the backyard.
She managed to stifle the sneeze until she reached Jerry’s car. Seven straight sneezes left the windshield speckled with mucus.
“I hate cats,” she said to her companion, who blinked pink eyes at her.
Tricia gunned the car, flying out of the driveway. She threw the car into drive, and floored it with a screech of tires. In minutes she was in downtown Ormdon, headed for the interstate.
Tricia made one stop on the way.
“Oh, he’s so cute,” Wendy Morse said, taking Plonk into her arms, and squeezing him. Tricia knew Wendy from her gym class.
“Could you take care of him for just a few days? We’re going on vacation.”
“He’s neutered, right? He’s safe to put with Princess Gwen?”
“Oh, yeah. I think they’ll be great pals.”
“All right. I hope you and your family have a nice vacation.”
Tricia turned around as she pulled open the car door. She smiled and said, “Thanks. I’ll try.”
Tricia adjusted her Raybans. She wondered how long it would be before the world was full of Plonks, then shrugged. As she sped up the highway, she rolled down the windows and inhaled the fresh air.