The Eternal Enemy Read online

  “That’s not what Straka says.”

  “Don’t listen to her. She has a flair for the dramatic.”

  Jackson laughed. “You can still go for the testing, become a captain of the first f-t-l ship ever.”

  “Yeah, I could. I could also be number eight on the fried-brain list.”

  Jackson laughed again.

  But Markos hadn’t really meant it as a joke. He thought about Van Pelt, a nice enough guy, considering, submerged within the geltank, wired up to a couple of computers, all to find out whether he could withstand the pressures of command. The programs were designed to put you through your paces, and the biofeedback loops made everything seem real enough. When Markos had gone through the xenobiological training procedures, such as they were, he could have sworn he’d actually met and talked to the ridiculous creatures the computers had summoned up. Of course, since no one had ever met an alien creature or even confirmed any alien creature’s existence, the training was all pretty fictional in nature.

  He wondered what kind of mind trips they were putting Van Pelt through. If the guy was really that smart and that good a leader, then maybe they could fix what made him a psycho. Still, Markos figured, they might end up doing him more harm than good. He was glad he wasn’t a shrink and didn’t have to deal with those kinds of problems. All he had to do was sit and wait for the rest of the crew to be selected. And after the Paladin left the Solar System, all he’d have to do was wait, take orders, and do what was expected. Which was probably wait.

  He wasn’t a leader, and he didn’t need to be one. Markos knew how to wait.

  3

  The Haber stood a few meters away, waiting, watching.

  Markos rose unsteadily to his feet, felt stabs of needle-sharp pain running through the soles of his feet, and advanced on the Haber. Immediately its face emitted pulsating combinations of colors. The patterns were organized and geometric, each pulse with its own color scheme and rhythm. Points of light within the Haber’s face sparkled, danced before Markos’s eyes in a rapturous display. He stood transfixed, gently swaying in time to the light pulses. The rhythms were soothing and hypnotic, but more importantly, draining away the pain and agony.

  The Haber pointed to the bed of grass.

  Still staring at its face, Markos backed up and sat on the bed. His body still twitched as its alien biology tried to balance itself.

  “What’s … going … on?” he asked, trying to ignore the vile sounds he made, but not succeeding.

  “You died and then we, we brought you back.”

  Brought back? Back to life?

  Markos said nothing. A diagonal slash of heat ran through his chest. What was there to say? It was bad enough thinking it, fearing it, seeing it as the only possible answer for what had happened, but it was another thing to hear it spoken aloud, to have his worst fears confirmed.

  Dead.

  Dead, but alive again—an accomplishment beyond Terran technology. His life had been extended before the journey; due to the prolonging effects of the geltank, he could have lived for centuries, barring accidental death. But piecing together a human being, a body, a corpse, after it had smashed into a boulder at the speed of sound? Impossible. If there hadn’t been an explosion—his body jerked and spasmed—he should have been nothing more than protoplasmic goop.

  “How?” Markos demanded. He had to shut his mouth with his hand. For some reason it didn’t close on its own that time.

  “It was not that difficult for us, us to do. The form of a mendil supplied us, us with some of the needed materials for your new body. Your skin had burned off …”

  A mendil? One of those obscene birdlike creatures? He thought he shuddered at the thought, but then realized his body did something else—his palms felt cold. He shook his head to try to think this insanity through. How could the Habers do that? He’d never seen any Haber technology. But if the artifact existed, which it did, then there could have been some technology hidden somewhere.

  “I can’t believe you,” Markos said, wincing at the sound of his voice. “It’s your speech and what your eyes did that’s convinced me. I know I haven’t really changed at all.”

  “No,” the Haber said.

  “Then where are your machines? Your instruments?” he shouted.

  “They are here, all around us, us and here,” the Haber said, touching its chest, “within us, us.”

  “I don’t see anything,” Markos said.

  “You will. As your eyes develop, you will see more.”

  “Let me touch something, then. Hold some of your instruments out for me to feel.”

  “No,” the Haber said. “They do not exist in that physical sense. They do exist, though, as a part of us, us. As we, we have learned by touching and helping you, just as we, we touched and helped another of your kind many years ago, your life is based on a single molecule, a chain that is what you are. And you are what it is.”

  “DNA,” Markos said.

  “All life on our, our planet is based on a different complex molecule and we, we can mold and shape life through it. The mendil supplied some of its pieces, as did some molecules from your old body, as did some other life-forms, all evolved from the same source, the same molecule as yours. Interesting that one of our own volunteered to have his, his base molecule altered to reflect yours and supply you with your basic form.”

  “I don’t believe this. This has to be some kind of trick.”

  “You as well as we, we remember what has happened to you. You abandoned your friends to help us, us.”

  Markos’s eyes stung and he found it harder and harder to follow what the Haber was talking about. Something was happening to him physically, bathing him in chemicals that didn’t quite fit together in a way he could easily deal with. Disordered thoughts raced through his mind, mixing pain with relief, curiosity with detachment, reality with paranoid fantasies. For all he knew, he could be in a geltank on board the Paladin, with mind-altering chemicals mixed in with the gel. His body twitched, spasmed, then was still.

  “If I did die, then why did you bring me back?”

  A short prismatic flash of blue, softened and textured by surrounding, complementary colors, pulsed through the Haber’s face. “Do you want me, me to reverse the process? Would you prefer being as you were? Dead? Eternally quiet?”

  Markos swallowed and stared at the dirt floor.

  “It would be no difficulty,” the Haber said. “The mendil would be happy to get back its form, as would the other, other. Only it seemed so important to you—this living and helping. I, I thought you would have been pleased.”

  Pleased? Pleased? If it weren’t so revolting, Markos might have laughed. If he could still laugh. A patchwork creature—that’s what he was now, where all the pain in this … body came from. He would have been better off dead and forgotten, his atoms mingled with the soil of Gandji, fertilizer for the plants, food for the alien worms. He was alive. But in this body, that meant almost nothing.

  He couldn’t go back to the ship now, even if he wanted to. Not like this. Van Pelt would probably have him shot on sight as a Haber, a new and dangerous mutation. Markos’s life work was finished. No more alien cultures to observe, no more watching Van Pelt slip over the edge of reason, no more all-night sessions with Straka and Wilhelm trying to figure out similarities and differences between Terran and Haber cultures. No more wrestling with his conscience over disrupting an alien civilization.

  Earth held nothing for him—it never had—and yet he felt a loss, knowing he could never go back, never interact with people again. He was, in the true sense of the word, dead. All the things he’d ever held important were now only memories.

  And what the hell was he good for now? An amusement for the aliens? A horrible freak show for the Terrans?

  “The form I’m in doesn’t please me,” he said, trying to sound calm, in control.

  “I, I don’t understand. Forms are mutable, are they not? You live now, do you not? Things change. What
else matters?”

  What else matters? What was the use in trying to explain it? It would be like trying to explain piety to a hedonist, space travel to a slug. The Habers, as well as himself, were finished. It was over. Van Pelt would act as soon as Straka came up with the answer to blocking the flow-bridge, and they’d wipe the planet clean of Habers. He and the crew would carve out a fortune by destroying Gandji. And Van Pelt would be in charge of the exploitation; whatever Gandji offered that could be of use to Terra and her colonies would pass under his watchful eyes. A finder’s fee, NASA 2 had called it.

  He found it ironic that he would still be around, alive, to witness the end.

  Markos sat on a soft cushion of flattened-down grass watching the semicircle of Habers watch him. Parts of his body burned with heat that should have blistered his leathery skin, while other parts of his body burned with cutting frostbite. A section of his abdomen right below skin level itched incessantly; scratching it did no good. Tiny, sharp, pinpricks of pain covered the rest of his body like a thorny blanket, throbbing with each erratic, irregular beat of his nonhuman heart.

  Breathing was no longer an automatic reflex; his breaths were shallow, sometimes within seconds of each other, sometimes long minutes apart. Each inhalation with its new, odd smells and sensations made him instantly aware of the soil, the grass, and himself. Even the air tasted different, a strange, almost cloying mixture of sweetness and spice, stimulating him, heightening what little appreciation for Gandji he could muster.

  His eyes had changed, too; despite their constant irritation, their burning and itching, they revealed inexplicable shifts in colors and forms that were distracting in a new, semipleasant way. The Habers, their deceptively simple dwellings, and the surrounding wall of waving grass exposed visual patterns, an organic geometry, a solid foundation for his new view of the universe.

  He was adjusting to his new body slowly, painfully, doing his best to accept the repulsive transformation. Less than a man, less than a Haber. A freak to both civilizations. His physique was that of a Haber—humanoid enough—but his skin was a horrifying tapestry of mendil and haber flesh. The Paladin’s crew was trained by the geltanks to deal with all the life-forms the psychologists at NASA 2 could create. Some had been beautiful, some had been ugly, and all had been imaginary. Markos knew that no preparation would be good enough for the crew to handle seeing him. The vestiges of his human self added horror to his form, the horror any Terran might feel when the jolt of recognition hit—that thing had once been human. Interacting on a one-to-one level would be impossible.

  And what about the Habers? Were they cringing beneath their inscrutable faces? What did they expect from him?

  “What are you staring at?” he asked in his liquid voice.

  A Haber, old and very small, flashed a reply. The order and color of light he generated with the beads of his eyes made Markos uncomfortable. They were different from any he’d seen before.

  A metallic taste bit his tongue. “Can’t you talk, for God’s sake?”

  “I, I can,” the old Haber said.

  The metallic taste increased as a pounding started in his head. “Tell me what you’re staring at.”

  The Haber said nothing.

  “Speak, dammit. Please speak.”

  “I, I will speak, but only to explain. Speaking takes too much energy,” the old Haber said. “It is easier for the young, for those of us, us born changed. I, I am trying to prepare for death—not for communication.”

  “What did you say with your eyes? Tell me,” Markos asked.

  “I, I said to be still. Death will come soon enough.”

  Markos spat the metallic taste to the gray-brown earth before him, then glared at the old Haber with searing eyes. “Sooner than you think, old one. You creatures make me ill. Have you got any idea about what’s happening?”

  “We, we are aware,” one of the young ones said. “When you were changed, we, we learned what might happen.”

  “And you sit here, waiting for the end?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Silence.

  “Why don’t you do something?”

  “What is there to do that hasn’t already been done?” the young one asked. “Would you have us, us march on your ship? Touch and change the crew? We, we could not. We, we understand change and how to accept it.

  “Change,” the Haber said, “is as real and as important as life, as death. Things will never be the same, but they will continue. Even if we, we are not there to watch.”

  In unison the group of Habers flashed a pulse of red through the area around their eyes, a sign of agreement and support. Markos shook his head. These creatures were no more than ambulatory vegetables. He felt cheated, robbed of the things he’d held important—ideals, principles, and basic rights for which he’d been willing to sacrifice himself. They wouldn’t fight. Not for themselves, their civilization, their planet. They couldn’t do a thing to stop Van Pelt and had killed Markos’s chances of dealing with the Captain. And this was the race of sentient beings for which he’d given his life.

  By trying to help these creatures he’d been pursued to a violent death, brought back to life in a patchwork, crippled body, and put on the sidelines to watch and wait. If they’d left him dead, he could have died knowing he’d tried to help, and died a man, not a … a … thing. What was left for him? Sit and watch their death songs? Watch them meditate their way down to zero energy consumption, to total immobility, to death?

  “There’s something we can do,” Markos said, “but you don’t care enough to do it. And since you don’t care, I don’t care.” He realized he couldn’t speak without consciously breathing. He forced in a breath. “I was wrong in thinking of you as having some human qualities. There are fewer similarities between our races than I thought. I don’t think I want to help you.” He sighed, but it sounded like air bubbling up in a pot of boiling metal.

  “But you have,” the young one said.

  They pulsed a flash of red in unison. He realized he had no eyelids.

  “We, we would not have this any other way,” the old one said.

  They sat in silence. Markos tasted the air, felt the life and decay in the soil beneath him. The Habers drifted off into meditation, their breathing spaced by minutes. Markos watched with aching eyes, trying to understand.

  He pushed himself up, turned his back on the quiescent aliens, and plunged into the field of high, wild grass. He had taken just two steps when the stalks and blades of grass around him dully reflected light from an intricate light-speech that was going on in the settlement just a few meters behind. Markos watched the colors; with new, heightened capacities, even in their dulled, reflected hues, they were beautiful and hypnotic. He realized they had to be arguing, discussing some important point; he had no idea how he knew that, or what the discussion was about.

  The grass around him suddenly changed, showing reflected red light.

  The Habers had reached a decision.

  He walked slowly, aimlessly over the plain, following snaking paths, stumbling across old, abandoned Haber settlements. He tried to adjust to his new form both physically and mentally. He found he lacked two familiar, human drives: hunger and sex.

  In his altered body eating was unnecessary. Gandji’s native life was similar to most Terran-based life in that eating was required. The Habers, though, ingested food only while in their first cycle, converting it to a complex storage molecule, a molecule that made the human fat molecule seem like a simple, small, volatile storage system prone to flash burning. After the first cycle a Haber never ate. Eating would prolong his life. His final cycle was spent in quiet atonement for ever having eaten living things.

  By comparing his size and general shape to individual Habers, Markos figured he was just out of the first cycle and could go without eating for about twenty-five years. Any food he chose to eat would increase his physical size and add years onto his lifespan. He had no idea how the prior geltank tre
atments would affect his aging, and he had no desire, physically or mentally, to eat.

  Sex as he had known it was impossible in this form.

  He had walked about twenty-five or thirty kilometers and was exhausted. He found a smooth, flat stone to use as a seat. As soon as he sat, his breathing shifted to regular, deep breaths, providing his body with the necessary oxygen for metabolizing its stored food.

  The body was disconcerting and uncomfortable, not at all designed for physical exercise, stress, or abuse. He silently cursed the Habers; if they’d used half a brain, they would have given him a better body. Or left him dead.

  A glint of sunlight off polished metal near the horizon caught his eye. A screamer, making its low, swift passage. Van Pelt was up to something. Maybe Straka had already come up with the key to the flow-bridge problem.

  He tried to ignore his rising curiosity, telling himself that the Habers knew and didn’t care, Van Pelt knew and didn’t care, so he shouldn’t care either. Neither civilization wanted his interference—the Terrans had taught him the price of caring, and the Habers had taught him its futility.

  The screamer disappeared in the distance, its howl finally fading from his ears. Markos felt a chill run through him, a bone-jarring spasm that sent him into paroxysms of pain. He fought to stand, not yet fully recovered from the expenditure of energy spent on the long, rambling walk, and instantly realized his mistake. His body went suddenly rigid, then relaxed. A series of prickly waves rushed over him right below his skin. He felt ill and confused, worse than ever before, and his mind went blank.

  He felt weaker—too weak to stand, and pitched forward, falling to his hands and knees. He lacked the strength to support himself and collapsed facedown on the ground. Thought returned, his mind racing with thousands of thought fragments, skeletons of ideas, glimmerings of new concepts, none of which would slow enough to gel, to coalesce into a unified whole, a complete system of thought.

  Finally, three hours later, his strength returned as suddenly as it had fled. He glanced upward, scanning the light-blue sky for another screamer, and saw only clouds. Clouds in a blue sky, he thought. So much like Terra, so teeming with life. And yet the natives were far removed from their Terran counterparts. He hadn’t truly realized that before; each time he felt he’d had a grip on the Habers’ culture, he’d been wrong. He’d understood only in Terran terms, drawing oversimplified analogies, not taking the culture as a truly alien system.