Echoterminus: Echogenesis Book 3, page 8
“How did you survive?” Jess asked haltingly. “I mean…alone, without the lander. How could you even…?”
“They only come out at night,” the old man explained. “I don’t know why. They hide in deep burrows until sunset. During the day, you’re safe—mostly. But at night they come out to hunt.”
“If they have spears,” said Amit, “and fire, they must be intelligent. And that raises questions as to how and why the Tsiolkovsky chose a world demonstrably already home to an intelligent, tool-using species. Have you had a chance to examine their culture, or learn their language? In all these years, you must have—”
“They’re animals,” the older Traynor spat. “They wiped us out, and they’ll wipe you out soon enough unless you take action. That’s all you need to know.”
Amit, Sam could see, was once again on the verge of exploding. Before he could say anything more, Sam reached out and touched the scientist’s arm. Amit glared at him, but sat back again, with his arms folded across his chest.
“We can always try querying the Tsiolkovsky again,” Sam suggested to Amit. “See if it can tell us why it ignored signs of intelligent life. It could be it missed something.”
“Query it?” the older Traynor asked, looking puzzled. “How?”
The younger Traynor turned to his doppelgänger with confusion. “What do you mean, how?”
At first the old man appeared entirely lost for words, his expression agitated. “I mean,” he said, “I could never get the Tsiolkovsky to respond to my hails.”
“In all this time?” Jess asked in amazement.
“Did you forget the command-level code we set up?” asked Sam.
Judging by his expression, the older Traynor had no idea what Sam was talking about. The feeling that something was wrong sank deeper roots into Sam’s flesh.
“No,” the older Traynor said, but Sam could see he was lying. “No, I didn’t. But there was damage to the lander’s comms system.”
Judging by the younger Traynor’s evident discomfort, he didn’t believe his doppelgänger any more than Sam did.
“We talked about moving the lander,” Amit said to the older Traynor. “We discussed finding some location suitably distant from these Howlers. Why didn’t your own crew do the same?”
“We did,” the older Traynor replied. “But it made little difference—the creatures are everywhere. There is nowhere to hide from them. Would you even have enough fuel for such a relocation?” He looked around them all and nodded as if reading their minds. “You don’t, do you?”
“But there must be somewhere safe for us,” Amit insisted. “How far have you explored?”
“Far enough,” said the older Traynor. “However, there is one place I believe could offer temporary shelter, and not too far from here. Caves, deeper in the forest, and quite inaccessible to the creatures.”
“How far?” Sam asked.
“Far enough,” said the older Traynor, “My own lander is on the way there. If necessary, we can stop there.”
“And how do you propose getting to these caves?” asked Sam. “We have a mini-copter on board, but it can only carry two people.”
Amit leaned forward. “Your own lander must also have a mini-copter, yes?” He looked at Sam. “We could ferry people there using both machines in half the time.”
“That won’t work,” the older Traynor said patiently. “You’re up on a hill here, where you can see just how dense the forest is. How easy do you think it would be to find a spot where a mini-copter could safely land?”
He had a point, Sam realised. “What about our truck?”
“Yes,” the older Traynor agreed. “That would carry us part of the way, but not all. I would have brought the one on my own lander, but I fear it failed many, many years ago.”
“Why,” asked Jess, “would we be safer in these caves than in here?”
“The caves are high in a series of cliffs,” the older Traynor explained. “The Howlers cannot climb, or at least are reluctant to do any such thing. Plus, I have this to keep them away.”
Reaching down, he pushed a hand inside his backpack, which he had placed next to him, and withdrew a small and clearly handmade clay jar.
“This,” he said, opening the jar, “will help keep us safe.”
Inside the jar, Sam saw an oily, black, treacle-like substance. A second later the smell hit him and he leaned back from it as if physically repulsed.
The old man offered the jar to his younger counterpart, who jerked back the moment he caught its rancid scent. Jess made a sound of revulsion, while Amit just stared at the old man with a kind of fascination.
“Spider-leech oil,” the old man explained, replacing the lid on the jar and placing it on the table before him. “The Howlers are terrified of spider-leeches.”
“And what are spider-leeches?” Amit asked, his voice laden with curiosity.
“You don’t want to know,” the older Traynor replied. “They live in the trees and fall on any animal that passes beneath them, burrowing deep into their flesh and eating them from the inside out. I know how to avoid them. So do the Howlers. But if they catch the scent, they stay away. They’ll never know we’re there. I have this stuff smeared all around the forest nearest the caves.”
“And if we don’t take up your offer?” the younger Traynor asked.
“Then you will all die.”
“You seem to expect us to put a lot of trust in you,” Sam noted.
“I survived half a century,” the older Traynor said with a curled lip. “The rest of my crew didn’t last five days. I think that speaks well enough for itself.”
“I cannot believe,” Amit said heatedly, “that in all these years you failed to communicate with these creatures! They can make tools and use fire, the use of which strongly implies a social structure, as well as a high level of intelligence and cooperation!”
“Jackdaws use tools,” the old man spat. “Ants perform complex dances. Nobody thinks they’re intelligent in the way a human is.”
“I think,” said Sam, pushing himself upright, “we should take a break.” He nodded to the older Traynor. “There are some things we’d like to discuss among ourselves, if you don’t mind waiting here.”
The lines on the old man’s face deepened, his hands curling into claws on the table before him. “You’re wasting time,” he muttered.“They’re coming.”
Kevin Amaro brought the older Traynor something more to eat and drink while the rest of them departed the bay.
By some unspoken consent, they all headed outside, stopping at the foot of the lower bay ramp. Sam realised he was getting used to the smell of the forest; at first, it had been overwhelming in its alienness, but now, after just a few days on a new world, it seemed almost familiar.
Even so, with DeWitt and Ethan’s graves visible just metres away, and the strange old doppelgänger’s warnings ringing in his head, Sam couldn’t help but see the forest in an entirely different, and significantly less pleasant, light.
Traynor—the younger version—stepped past Sam and out from under the shadow of the lander’s hull. He kept walking until he was halfway to the tree line, then stood there with his back to the rest of them, staring into the distance.
Now that they were out from under the flat artificial light of the bay, Sam could see the unhealthy grey pallor that clung to the younger Traynor’s skin. Jess saw it too, and she stepped past Sam, clearly intent on joining her husband. Before she could go any further, Sam stopped her with a hand on her shoulder.
She turned to him in surprise and he shook his head. Give him time.
Jess nodded. “When I saw him…” she said quietly.
“Once you get past the caveman skins and the hair, he doesn’t look so different than he did back on Earth before the launch,” said Sam. “When he showed up out of nowhere, I thought maybe we’d come back to Earth.”
“The same thought occurred to me,” said Amit. He looked around at the strange, twisted trees with their odd, clashing colours. “Obviously, we didn’t, but…”
Over by the lander’s tail, Sun was talking with Kim. Concern rippled through Sam: if the old man was telling the truth, and despite the risks he had mentioned, it still seemed to him that they had a far better chance of surviving if they remained inside the lander. If they left the lander, then surely that placed them at greater risk of encountering these Howlers? The old doppelgänger had said they only came out at night, but it occurred to Sam on a world so completely unknown to them, there were almost certainly other, likely equal, dangers lurking in the forest.
The younger Traynor turned at last, taking a few steps back toward Sam and the rest of them. “I know this is going to sound odd,” he said, his voice trembling slightly, “but I don’t trust him.”
“Me neither,” said Amit from beside Sam.
“Nor do I,” said Sam. He allowed himself a small smile. “Then again, the jury’s still out whether I trust you.”
“Noted,” said Traynor, with a small incline of his head. “I don’t think he’s so much lying to us as leaving something out.”
“Are you shitting me?” said Jess. “He lied in his teeth about remembering when he—when you—first met me.”
Sam raised his eyebrows. “You were lying?”
“Not entirely,” said Jess. “We were together at the Cambodian temple, but we’d met before then in Hong Kong. I was half-dead from an overdose when he recruited me into Broken Wheel.”
“You could have called him out,” said Sam.
“Could have,” Jess agreed. “Except if one of us had, he might have clammed up, and we still need information from him. His entire story might be a pack of lies, or it might be half-true, or even completely true. We need to find out which.”
“None of this changes the fact something out there is trying to kill us,” said Sam. “And if he’s lying, or holding something back…then why? What motive does he have? After all these years alone out here, why would he want to hurt the first people he’s seen in all that time?”
“I have,” said Amit, “a suggestion.”
SEVEN
TRAYNOR
Soon after his interrogation began, the older Traynor realised matters were spinning rapidly out of his control.
First, there was the revelation that these people had established full communications with the Tsiolkovsky. The younger Sam had mentioned some code in passing but, of course, he had not dared ask what it might be.
Then there was the fact that this newly decanted Sam was, he now realised, very different from the one that lived on the mesa. There was an authority to this version of Sam lacking in his counterpart, for one. Then there was the fact that, much like the crew of the coastal expedition, they clearly retained all their memories post-2050…except, of course, that half of the coastal expedition’s crew were reported to be entirely different.
Traynor glanced toward the closed bay door, hearing muffled voices. He listened for a moment, but they soon faded as they made their way down through the craft.
It didn’t take much to guess they were deciding what to do with him.
How he wanted, more than anything else, to find out what had become of him in those lost years after 2050. How he wanted to sit down with his doppelgänger and hear the story of his life.
It was hard, too, seeing Jess reborn. The first time he had laid eyes on her, it had been like seeing a ghost step out of his memories. He had known he would almost certainly encounter her, but no amount of preparation had prepared him for the reality.
And yet, even these revelations had not left him as uncertain and feeling off-balance as the sight of the pendants worn by the newborn Vic and Jess. Traynor recognised the designs as dharmachakra—ancient Buddhist symbols—but why did the rest of his people wear them as well? He had almost asked them if they were part of some cult, holding back only because he was too afraid of the answer.
He’d never had a single religious impulse in his life that he could recall. Jess had had a Catholic upbringing, but hadn’t been a believer. Angel had had some spiritual beliefs, but nothing related to Buddhism so far as Traynor knew.
The implications were…unsettling.
Not long after awakening on Aranyani, he had learned that he and Sam had, back on Earth, been co-conspirators intent on subverting Martin Tenenbaum’s publicly-stated mission. Yet everything he now knew about Tenenbaum showed that those public statements had little to do with the truth: indeed, the more he learned, the more evident it was that Tenenbaum’s true vision had little to do with the eco-radical, Mannite nonsense he had espoused in public. Instead, Tenenbaum’s vision was a clearly imperial one, by which he intended to rule over a reborn humanity.
Now, to his disgust, Traynor found that his future self was intent on working against that grand vision. Which meant it wasn’t Sam who had changed beyond recognition in the years after 2050…but him.
Leaning his elbows on the table, the remains of his meal beside him, the older Traynor put his head in his wrinkled hands and groaned.
It was all too much.
As soon as he had seen the new lander arrive, a new plan had come to him: one in which he would use the lander to rescue his people and fly them to the islands discovered by the mesa-dwellers. Even the pathogen, he suspected, would not be enough to hold back the vast army of Cents collecting around the base of the mesa.
And while he was certain this new lander had likely burned through most of its onboard fuel reserves while searching for an appropriate landing spot not already occupied by some mouldering derelict, there was plenty of fuel stored in silos back on the mesa. As for the new arrivals themselves…as he had told his daughter, there could be no benefit in rescuing any of them.
He listened for a moment more to be sure they were not hurrying back, then turned his attention to something he had spotted as soon as they had brought him inside: a marble-sized ball of ruby light floating next to the closed bay door.
All of the landers were coded to respond to overrides available only to himself and Sam Newman. And the easiest way to take control of this new lander, he had surmised, while travelling first by ‘copter and then by foot in case the new arrivals had drones that could spot his mini-copter from the air, was by using those command privileges.
And he’d had to wait much too long to be left alone by these people long enough to attempt just that.
Standing, he stepped toward the virtual icon and reached toward it, his hand almost trembling with anticipation. In response, the icon expanded into a flat virtual panel…only for it to flare an angry red.
Stupefied, he watched the panel vanish to be replaced by the same glowing ruby sphere.
Why hadn’t it worked?
He tried a second time. And a third. On the fourth failed attempt, he angrily swatted at the ball of light, as if it were an actual physical object and not just a virtual projection.
Then, with a hollow, sinking feeling, he realised why it wouldn’t respond. A Vic Traynor was already logged into the system: his doppelgänger. The system, clearly, could not accept the authority of two clones identical in every respect but age.
The more he thought about it, the more sense it made…and the more obvious the solution was. To assume control, he would first have to get the younger Traynor far away from the lander, then return to take control of it.
He started at the sound of voices coming closer. He hurried to resume his seat, quickly composing himself just as the bay door slid open.
“We have a proposal,” said the new Sam, who was followed by Amit and the younger Traynor as he re-entered the bay. The latter resumed his seat without quite meeting his counterpart’s eyes. “We’d like to reconnoitre these caves before we make any firm decision about moving the entire crew there.” Sam nodded to Amit. “Amit and I will travel with you so that we can assess the situation and report back to the rest of the crew.”
Damn it! The older Traynor had been afraid something like this might happen. Judging by their expressions, it wasn’t so much that they didn’t believe him, more that they didn’t trust him.
And he had been evasive; and knew, too, that this other Sam had spotted his evasiveness. Perhaps if he’d had more time to prepare…but that was something he could not wish into existence.
“We’ll take our truck as far as we can go,” said Amit. “We have eight hours of daylight left. If you came here on foot, and assuming the forest here is of roughly the same density as where these caves are, I believe we could set out and return within the day.”
“You’ve already lost too much daylight hemming and hawing,” the older Traynor grumbled. He looked at his doppelgänger. “Why aren’t you coming?”
There was a brief, barely noticeable pause, but the older Traynor saw the look that briefly flitted between his doppelgänger and Sam. They were afraid that if they both departed, the civilian scientists among the crew might decide they’d rather be in charge.
“Sam, Vic,” he said to the two younger men, “might I ask that the three of us speak alone for a moment?”
The younger Traynor glanced at Amit, then at Sam. Sam nodded, but hesitantly.
“Amit?” said Sam, turning to Subarash. “I’m sure this won’t take long.”
Amit regarded the mission commander sourly, then stood and exited the bay without another word.
“I know what you’re thinking,” the older Traynor said as soon as the door closed behind Amit. “You’re afraid you can’t maintain control of the crew if you’re both away from the lander. Especially not with everything turning out differently than you could possibly have anticipated.”
“Is that what happened to you?” asked the younger Sam. “You lost control of your crew?”
Damn the man and his needling! He was trying to provoke him, the older Traynor knew; trying to set him off-balance so he’d let something slip that would reveal him as a liar.
