Mirror Image

Book 373: Gateway Essentials

by Michael G. Coney

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Military Sci-Fi

Synopsis

If an alien creature can so perfectly imitate a human being that not only is it physically and mentally indistinguishable from a man but it actually believes itself to be one, what do you do with it? Is it human? This is the question which confronts Alex Stordahl, supervisor of the harsh planet Marilyn. Initially nobody had suspected anything unusual about the largely reptilian animal life. Then Stordahl discovered the amorphs - shapeless in their natural state, but possessing a unique defence mechanism: when closely approached by a possible aggressor, they could adopt the form least likely to be attacked by the creature. When it transpires that the creatures are harmless they are quickly absorbed into the colony to provide extra labour. The the ruthless owner of the development corporation arrives from Earth. He wants to test the amorphs, and brings with him a group of four brilliant, but totally egotistical men. And trouble soon starts...

Release date: May 20, 2013

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 219

Sample

THREE ROUGH TIMBER huts rose on stilts from the warm brown tidal waters of the delta. For the past week twelve men and six women had lived in these huts. Eighteen humans until this morning when, suddenly, there were seventeen. The waters swirled past the piling as Stordahl clung to the crude ladder, still uneasy with shock, while the body of Cable drifted with the tide facedown. If Cable could be said to have a face any more. …

The huts stood in a triangle with the entrances facing inward; these openings were now crowded with colonists watching the flurry of bloody activity as the body drifted on, presently hesitating against the twisting roots of one of the mangrove-like trees which, apart from the tall reeds, were the delta’s only visible form of plant life. The water was now seething around Cable and his clothes were gone; there were brief glimpses of white flesh before this turned crimson as the shoal of small silver fish ripped and fed with needle teeth.

“Stay where you are, all of you!” shouted Stordahl—unnecessarily, because nobody was about to step into that water. Several people, including the Supervisor himself, had seen what happened to Cable, yet no one ventured to assist. That would have been pointless from the first instant when a fish, rising glittering from the dull water, had torn out Cable’s throat.

“It jumped,” someone was muttering. “It jumped clear out of the water and went for his neck as though it knew how to finish him quick. I…” The man swallowed nervously, staring at the suddenly menacing waters. “I could have sworn it had … wings. …” Behind him, a woman wept softly.

Later Stordahl called a meeting. “This is our first setback,” he said, watching their faces carefully. He stood at the entrance to Hut One with ten men behind him; fifteen yards of murky water separated him from Huts Two and Three. Men and women thronged the entrances but nobody cared to cross the intervening distance. The tide was falling; about six inches of water remained and the body of Cable was now grounded thirty yards away, the fleshless rib cage exposed. A vague shape moved in the branches above the body, oozing formlessly through the dark foliage like a giant amoeba.

“And naturally,” continued Stordahl, “we are deeply shocked. Suddenly, the planet seems hostile. After a few months of having it easy, we’ve had a reminder that our environment is alien. Back in the colony, under the domes, we developed a sense of security—but we knew that sooner or later we would have to venture out and explore our surroundings.”

So the expedition to the delta had been mounted; difficulties in growing Earth-type crops at the colony on the plain had been partly responsible for the decision. Armed with sacks of super-rice seedlings they had travelled the short distance to the coast—the plant had been developed for use in saline, tidal waters, and promised to supplement the largely imported food supplies. Small experimental paddy-fields had been constructed and planting, until now, had proceeded daily. The seedlings appeared to be taking well.

A woman spoke sharply across from Hut Three. “If you think I’m going to work knee-deep in water with those fish around you’re damned well mistaken, Mr. Stordahl.” There was a murmur of agreement from the other colonists.

“We’ll work when the tide is below the level of the paddy-field banks,” Stordahl informed her coldly.

“How will we be sure that the fish aren’t already in the enclosures?” someone asked nervously.

A large lizard watched them unblinking from among the upturned bowl-shaped leaves of a nearby mangrove. “Like this,” said Stordahl, climbing to the ground. The tide was down to the last two inches; nevertheless slime and ochre water rose to the knees of his thigh-boots. Anxious faces regarded him, scanning the surrounding film of water closely.

Stordahl moved away from the triangle of huts, drew his gun and sent a pulse crackling among the branches of the mangrove. The lizard fell, smoking, and hit the water with an audible hiss. Stordahl took it by the tail—it was about two and a half feet long—and dragged it across to one of the small enclosures which held some two feet of water left by the receding tide. He threw the lizard in. It floated to the surface, rolling slowly. Nothing happened.

“Satisfied?” Stordahl climbed to the bank of clay and upright piles and jumped into the water. He waded about casually, examining the super-rice seedlings which already projected above the surface. Despite his apparent confidence he found that he was fingering his throat nervously, visualizing the terrifyingly abrupt death of Cable. The diabolical killer fish had been about the size and shape of a Terrestrial piranha, although in the brief glimpse he had caught he had seen a peculiar, almost transparent membrane running the length of the flank. … It was the first time they had seen such a fish, and they had been here for a week. Stordahl hoped the fish were not capable of learning by experience where the food supply was. …

It was much later in the day that the team suffered the second and final disaster. Work had proceeded from mid-morning onward without incident and as the early rain gave way to bright watery sunshine the morale of the team rose. The women were planting the seedlings, bent double with arms plunged below the surface, while the men were engaged in construction of a further enclosure, driving short piles hewn from the mangroves to reinforce the banks of muddy clay. Stordahl himself had climbed back to Hut One to radio his daily report back to the colony and to ascertain the latest news. Following the death of Cable, he had decided that the present team should be relieved the next day—a week in these surroundings was enough for anyone, but progress to date had satisfied him that the project was worthwhile. Now he could go back to his normal duties as Colony Supervisor, sending back somebody else in charge of the new team.

He had just made contact with Bill Myers when he heard the screams from outside. He dropped the mike and ran to the hut entrance.

The tide was slipping in slowly across the gleaming mud, a creeping iridescence flecked with scum. In the paddy-fields the colonists thrashed and flailed, shouting. A number were struggling towards the huts; others twisted on the ground or lay still, while among them glittered silver shapes.

Stordahl half climbed, half fell down the ladder, drawing his pistol as he sank into the mud. “Hurry!” he shouted.

The glistening forms flitted in from the sea, a huge shoal of the killer fish, undeterred by the shallow water. They were skimming the surface with the thin membrane of their wings outspread and fluttering, diving into the deeper pools, re-emerging and gaining height, gliding across the intervening stretch of uncovered mud, diving into the water of the enclosures. The colonists were struggling from the paddy-fields, beating them off; Stordahl saw another man go down with a metallic gleam at his throat and the crimson blood pumping. The narrow beam of his laser probed the air, bringing down two fish in quick succession as he hurried to assist the wounded back to the huts. People passed him going the other way, paddling through the clinging mud with faces blank with fear, making for the safety of the huts’ height. They fought at the foot of the ladders, screaming, while the killer fish veered around them like hungry gulls. Stordahl switched his pistol to broad beam for short-range work, frying a small flight of fish as they headed towards him.

There were no wounded whom Stordahl could assist. He realized this as he stood half-way between the huts and the enclosures, his feet sinking deeper into mud. People were either hurrying for the huts, or dead. Those behind him were alive, but there was no movement from those lying around the enclosures, merely the impression of shifting silver mounds as the fish wrenched and tore and fed in their dozens. Stordahl turned back and made for the nearest hut, climbing the ladder one-handed and burning any fish which swooped too close.

Seven more lives had been lost. That night, the colonists were besieged by fluttering fish which found the height of the huts no obstacle; indeed they seemed to be attracted by the light and, despite guards at the windows and entrances, were constantly finding their way in, where they dashed themselves against the lamps and fell to the floor, trashing and snapping at anything within reach. … They were accustomed to spending minutes at a time out of the water, and took a long time to die.

The following morning, as soon as the tide was low enough, the remainder of the colonists left the huts and made for the vehicles on the high ground about a mile away. The journey back to the colony was a silent one; the setback had become a rout. At a later meeting it was agreed to postpone all attempts to cultivate super-rice in the delta until some defence against the piranavas, as they came to be known, was devised. The eroding tide began to smooth away the traces of the colony’s first unsuccessful experiment.

*        *        *

Colonists en masse tend to be phlegmatic and by the end of the week the disaster at the delta had become history. There were so many other matters to think of. The dead were mourned as is fitting but the grief was short-lived, and life on the new planet resumed its normal busy course.

Until one day Stordahl, with an unaccustomed hour or two to spare, set off in the direction of a small hillock. …

The low knoll was capped with a grove of cuptrees and he paused some two hundred yards from the nearest; turned, and surveyed the embryo colony, white blisters on the wet plain, with some pride. He would have to think of a name for the site before someone else did. As Supervisor, it was his prerogative, failing instructions from the top. It was an oversight by Hetherington, the colony’s financial backer, not to have named the first town; the armless tycoon back on Earth had already named the planet Marilyn, after his blonde and reputedly oversexed wife. Alex Stordahl, Supervisor, standing on the slopes of a low hill on the planet Marilyn, smiled to himself. He had met the original Marilyn, once.

Fifteen large silver domes were clustered on the broad plain; they glittered in the unusual Marilyn morning sunlight, as did the ground foliage and the groves of cuptrees. Last night, like every night and most days, it had rained heavily. Around the domes moved the half-tracks and people miniature with distance. There seemed to be a lot of colonists about this morning, due as much to the unusual weather as to the overcrowded living quarters. Almost five hundred people lived in those domes. To the right, or east, of the camp was a black area of vitrified soil, legacy of the shuttle service performed by Hetherington Ferry IV some months ago while the FTL starship Hetherington Endeavor orbited, disgorging.

This landing pad bore testimony to the colony’s virility; building work was in progress using local materials. Five families were constructing timber cabins from felled cuptrees, taking advantage of the only firm dry ground for miles around. Stordahl had warned them that such a site might in time be liable to subsidence and eventually become a lake, but they had proceeded nevertheless. Anything, they said, was better than living in those damned domes, with no privacy. At least, the women had said that. Their husbands, being male and therefore susceptible to reason, had said nothing, but built the cabins on platforms in the manner of houseboats.

Alex Stordahl looked north; forty miles beyond the camp the plain rose to a long crescent-shaped mountain range. Stark and jagged in the clear morning sun, these mountains curved from a point due north of the camp to somewhere south of west. Aerial surveys had revealed a vast desert beyond the mountains, and spectroscopic analysis had shown this to consist of huge surface deposits of ferrous oxide. There was also considerable radioactivity. This readily obtainable source of wealth had been of great interest to the financier and was the principal reason for the founding of the colony on the planet Marilyn.

Hetherington’s last message had inquired when the hell Stordahl proposed to send an exploratory team into the desert. Stordahl had replied to the effect that he would do so when he was good and ready. This would, in fact, be within the next week, but Stordahl was an independent personality who disliked giving his boss the impression that he jumped to obey commands. …

Apart from the disaster at the delta, in the six months of the colony’s existence they had lost two other members, their zoologist and his wife. These two had taken a half-track and ploughed off into the distance one day two months ago; they had not returned.

Stordahl had blamed himself for that; he should have realized that Arnott Walsh was getting impatient. The fauna of Marilyn had, apart from the occasional elephant worm, shunned the camp area and Walsh had been champing at the bit, having to be satisfied with telescopic views of lizard-things slinking around the distant cuptree groves, in addition to the few specimens Stordahl had brought back from the ill-fated delta expedition.

Walsh’s wife had been no happier; they were both highly regarded in their profession and had been accustomed to World Government sponsored expeditions complete with fully-equipped enclosed vehicles and teams of technical assistants. Hetherington’s shoestring operation complete with cramped accommodation, no laboratory, and open half-tracks had not, apparently, appealed to them. If they had known it was going to be like this, they had said, they would never have come.

In fact Hetherington would never have included them in the colony if he had not found out that the World Government was prepared to make a grant towards the colony if research work such as zoology were carried out in addition to the usual exploitation of resources. So the Walshes were signed up, Hetherington calculating that the grant would be well in excess of the cost of their passage and upkeep.

But Alex Stordahl, who had supervised colonies before, had insisted on a six months’ settling down period before any work of a research nature commenced apart from essential investigations into food sources such as the delta project. Even six months, he felt, was barely enough to get the housing and supplies sorted out, test the local water (heavy in minerals but drinkable) and sink the wells, set up the essential laboratories, plant crops, explore briefly the vicinity and make provision for unexpected attack. Five hundred assorted people, including a few children, take a great deal of organizing.

So far it had gone well, apart from the disappearance of the Walshes and the failure of the super-rice, and Stordahl felt, on this optimistic morning, that they were ready to go at last. Teams in half-tracks supported by the colony’s one helicopter would now start commercial exploration. Within a few days they would be analysing samples from the desert and a few months later, all being well, the smelting plant would arrive from Earth with its attendant team who would themselves become additional members of the community.

For this was a community. Stordahl had insisted from the start; it was not just a factory with accommodation. The intention was to colonize Marilyn, to provide a new world for people to live in; not merely to set up a trading post, a small industrial offshoot of the Hetherington empire. People were going to live here. If Stordahl liked it enough, he might stay here himself when his contract was up.

His gaze dropped from the mountain to the camp, and he wondered how many times he had thought the same thing. This was his eighth planet, and he had always moved on. I’m forty years old, he thought; and with the thought came its inevitable companion: I wonder if I ought to get married again.

The girl was twenty yards away; her hair was long and black and it hid her face as she bent low, examining the ground, parting the saucerplants to get at the soil. He called to her.

“Joan!”

She looked up, smiling towards him. Her face was flushed. She was very pretty. Damn Hetherington, he thought.

“What?”

“Nothing,” he said, smiling back.

Damn Hetherington and his animal assumptions. “I’ve interviewed the applicants personally,” the man had said. “There are an equal number of men and women, plus a few children just to make people think they’re building for the future, you know. Equal males and females—that way everyone can get his oats. I think you’ll like your girl.”

Stordahl had stared at the armless obscenity behind the mahogany desk, holding on to his fury and his job. My God, he thought, does he expect us all to walk up the gangplank two by two? And for the next week before blast-off he had been wondering what his assigned bed-mate would be like, suspecting that she would be the twin sister of the blonde and breasty Marilyn, who had wandered into the room during his talk with Hetherington, given him a suggestive look, then sat on the table and fondled the tycoon’s thinning hair.

Hetherington couldn’t have known, could he, that Stordahl’s wife and child had died a year ago when the westbound monocar from Capital City had been blown from the rail by the latest cult of have-nots?

And Joan, who he had avoided meeting until the last possible moment aboard Hetherington Endeavor, had turned out to be so very nice. So anxious to please, so desperately afraid that he wouldn’t like her (because, after all, there were some two hundred and fifty other women aboard), so young and sweet and pretty and unHetherington-like that he wondered what the hell was the matter with him, because he couldn’t fancy her.

Even now, they had never been to bed together; because Stordahl knew that, at the moment of impact, the ghost of Hetherington would appear leering in his mind’s eye, saying: “I knew you’d like her. …”

“Come on up here,” he called.

The wind was as reliable as the rain on Marilyn. During most of the day it blew from the south-east—from the sea to the desert as the reflective land heated and the air rose. In the late afternoon it reversed direction, bringing with it fine particles of dust which caused spectacular auroral displays in the rays of the sinking sun. At present the wind blew towards the hills; as Joan arrived at his side her face was framed in flying hair like a dark-petalled flower, a black tulip.

“Well … what do you think o. . .