There was no point in tapping the acceleration stud again. I had the jitney maxed, or close to it, and speed was not what the designers had in mind. We were explorers, supposed to be calmly, casually examining the surroundings wherever we went. Not two guys rushing back to base from an accident.
I silently swore and cursed at everything. Damn the execs who wouldn’t give us the flyer for a trip this far out. Damn the mediocre precautions against known dangers. Damn this planet. Damn the distance. Damn, damn, damn.
I glanced again over at Roy, sitting impassively strapped in the other seat and watching the view ahead. He hates my constantly looking over at him, but I was scared and frustrated and angry, and I justified myself that I was just keeping an eye on his condition.
“I hope there’s no traffic cops around,” said Roy, his words coming out low, soft, and slow. “And I know you’re checking on me again, Peter. I’m okay — just focus on your driving. No use piling up this fancy buggy and spilling us both.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, and tried to force a joke. “The paperwork alone would be murder. Who wants to die twice?” The corner of Roy’s mouth edged up slightly.
We’d been working together for the company a few years when we got the assignment offer for Carter’s Planet. A routine assay to be made of the planet’s useful minerals and plant life, nothing unusual. Out about a year, three months on-planet, sign the releases, kiss the wife and kids goodbye, then come home to a fat paycheck and retire easy. Simple plan.
Two weeks before we came out of transition stasis, the advance team on the planet discovered the critters. More specifically, the critters discovered the team.
The planet already hosted a variety of flora and fauna, all of which seemed fairly bucolic, according to the reports. Interestingly, anything over about 55 kilos just sort of ambled around, ignoring the newcomers. Maybe one or two showed teeth, but then they’d get over what they were trying to express and slowly wander off. No human counterparts. Quiet little world.
One of the team, Simkins, had been outside, working a small research square of soil so they could see how Earth plants did in that environment. There was no concern about contaminating the planet — the soil was in containers, and the shields were still operating at the base, committed to the task of keeping CO2 low and our breathables comfortable. Nothing else was supposed to pass through.
We still aren’t sure how they got in, but we surmise Simkins had a tear in his encounter suit. As they say, that’s all it takes. Beatty, who was watching Simkins the entire time from inside the lab (standard precaution), said later that a dark translucent fog settled around Simkins for a minute, then dissipated. Simkins didn’t say anything, didn’t shout, just slumped to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut.
All hell broke loose in the lab, however. Everyone dived into their suits and readied the iso lab which, fortunately, had a door to the outside. Several went out to pick up Simkins who, to everyone’s surprise, got his feet under him as they stood him up, thanked everyone, and slowly made his way to the iso lab door. Under escort, of course.
The iso lab gear was good, as good as you can get set up on a remote planet, but it still took a week to find them in Simkins. They were miniscule — you needed magnification to see them well. They probably started as a few, but they reproduced quickly, and they were apparently organized. They had started at Simkins’ extremities and were working their way to his core, slowly, inexorably. And they were feeding, not on the meat, not on the blood components. They were consuming axons and dendrites, particularly along those nerves that twitched the muscles, the same pathways that Galvani’s electricity made the legs of dead frogs move. They were like gourmets at a fete, slowly gobbling up everything on the buffet. Simkins grew steadily more paralyzed, conscious the entire time, until they found the non-muscled inner organs and took a liking to the nerve cells there. The critters were chewing up all the energy, taking it for their own needs, and didn’t stop or leave until they were done — they were pretty dedicated to their grisly task. The swarm exited the host only after the host died from the massive organ failure. Apparently they lost interest in a food supply gone stale. Not unlike parasitic wasps, I was told.
They named the damned things for Simkins. Obscene way to be memorialized. “That which does kill us, makes us immortal.” Something like that. Simkins, himself, tried to make light of the situation and called them ZomBees. Stupid joke. The name stuck.
It also explained the behavior of the larger native animals beyond the shields, the ones that just wandered around seemingly aimlessly. Brain was firing, but the body was just carrying it around and not feeling much else. Run? No. Feel pain? Maybe. Feed? Oh, sure, why not? This looks okay. And, repeat, until your insides stopped getting instructions, the connections vacuumed away by the Bees, and you laid down and stopped living. Except it was different for us Earthers, as Simkins demonstrated. They liked us — we didn’t malinger so long.
So, yeah. Roy got Bee’d. I’d heard a soft hum as we worked opposite corners of a target spot, no more than a couple meters apart. I turned, saw the cloud around him, watched him drop and the cloud clear. Without thinking about much else, even my own safety, I scooped up Roy, carried him to the jitney, strapped him in and punched the controls to life, screaming to the base over the radio every ten minutes the entire way out of the zone.
“How much further do you figure?” asked Roy.
I gave him an estimate.
“You should just chuck it into autopilot and get some sleep.”
I told him what I thought of that.
“Suit yourself. ‘I have miles to go before I sleep.’ Robert Frost – ever read poetry, Peter?”
“Couldn’t get into it,” I replied, “but maybe I’ll try again some time.”
“It’s really kinda remarkable. Our species has developed so many languages in its span of existence, and so many ways to express itself within those languages. Different styles of music, different ways to tell stories…”
“You should save your strength, Roy. You want some water, or something?”
“No, I’m good. Funny, my body is kinda numb, but my mind is racing with all kinds of thoughts.”
“Yeah? Like what? Something dirty, maybe?”
“Nah, that’s all shut down. No drive. But I’ve got a fix for the base power distribution that should work a neat trick.”
See, that was Roy, the kind of guy who could juggle plant identification, quantum physics, and Italian poetry in his head, all at the same time. While working a crossword puzzle. And cooking a perfect omelet. Just a little touch of the madman, perhaps, but a hell of a partner when things were going off the rails.
“Y’know, Peter,” he said a little while later, “I’ve always read and heard about people who become quadriplegics by an accident, or an illness. I’ve wondered what that could be like. And now I feel like that insect, millions of years ago on the stem of some tree, caught in a bit of sap. And that sap will turn to amber, over time, preserving that insect’s body through the ages but, y’know, that insect, over the last, slow minutes of his dying, was just going ‘Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.’ He more than likely didn’t want to go yet, either. But this is another kind of nature that we have to come to accept.”
He turned his head to look at me, like a 19th century clockwork automaton – a steady, slow, mechanical rotation revealing an expressionless face. You could almost hear the mesh of gears. The eyes, unblinking, were shining and alert – more than alert, they were lively, simultaneously semaphoring both acute frustration and the high activity of the brain behind them. He was screaming rage through his eyes. I wanted to just reach in and yank my friend free of his besieged body.
“Nothing you could do, Pete,” he said, his words working their way from his thoughts like troops marching a muddy road. One syllable up, one syllable down… “Nothing you can do. The job is dangerous, we knew that from the get-go. My turn to be a report. Now turn on the recorder. I can’t get to the button.”
For the next 20 minutes, I got to sit there watching him record a message to home. I had to stay at the jitney’s controls, and we weren’t stopping so he could have privacy while I stepped off to catch a smoke. Nothing like listening to your buddy tell his loved ones all the sorrys, the I-love-yous, the I-wishes, the take-care-ofs. And all of it in the slow, muted cadence of his suffering. Odysseus lashed himself to the mast of his ship against the maddening song of the Sirens. I had no mast, and no wax for my ears. No alluring Sirens, either.
“Sorry, buddy. You know I had to do that.” He turned his head to me, again. Whirrr…
“Yeah, no problem, Roy. You do what’cha gotta…”
“Bullshit. I can still see, and your eyes are damp. I appreciate the sentiment.”
“It’s just so fucking…”
“…unfair? Yeah. Same words spoken a zillion times throughout history. Usually by kids younger than us. We’re the other side of halfway-in, halfway-out and, I dunno ‘bout you, but I’ve seen a fair share of unfair, already. Not that I wouldn’t agree with you — there’s a few things I wanted to do in my time I hadn’t yet done.”
“Like what?”
“Aw, heck… the usual. Travel, maybe write about my experiences… I was going to give you at least a paragraph.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“Don’t grouse. And keep your eyes on the road. ‘Miles from nowhere, guess I’ll take my time…’ You know that old tune, Peter?”
“No.”
“Fellow named Yusuf Islam. Let’s see… ‘Lord, my body, has been a good friend, but I won’t need it, when I reach the end.’ Wow, that feels appropriate. All these ‘road’ themes popping into my head. Stories of journeys, too…” His voice trailed off, and he turned his head forward again. Slow, mechanical.
“Easy metaphor, Roy. Life is a journey. That goes back to the ancients.”
“Mm-hmm.”
I shut up. Roy needed a rest.
He had me pegged, told me later how he knew what I was thinking, all that guy-with-all-his-talents stuff. Roy said he’d heard that all his life, ever since he was a kid winning science fairs and such. And you know? It bored him, winning awards and all the praises. He was just having fun, making things, studying science, and making his kind of magic for his friends.
At one point he mustered up enough energy to get pissed at me and snarl, “Get over it already, Pete. I’m going. Not now, or today, maybe not even tomorrow. You’ve been a good friend on this leg of my journey, but it had to end sometime. If you really need, I’ll promise I’ll write.”
And then we came out of the dense forested hills in which we’d spent the last bunch of hours, and saw the flyer parked a klick away. I admit, my first thought was that I could finally get out of my encounter suit, which I had kept on the entire time and, thankfully, kept tight. Primal thoughts first, when you’re an itching, hungry, rank-smelling mess. But, in a larger sense, this was the end of a road.
I won’t say how long they kept Roy alive after that. I think he lasted more than a month, but I was long gone. The company handed me my check, made sure all my reports were turned in, and pushed me though the door. Home I went, to my family and my thoughts.
I’ve been reading poetry, Roy. I don’t get all of it, but some of it I kinda like. I thought it was supposed to be all rhyme-y but, like you told me another time, unless one does even the smallest bit of research, they don’t know nuthin’. And the research comes easily now. Even pleasant. Haiku is interesting, especially. I like how many ideas can be expressed in that structure.
I’m even learning to play guitar. Not good, by any means, but it’s nice.
Thanks, Roy. Vaya con dios.
Richard Mandel is a retired electronics technician, and technical writer and editor for engineering trade magazines. He lives in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, with his wife and an array of four-legged critters.